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More "Bumble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... River.' Over and over, time and again, they rehearse all these bowlders, etc., describing each minutely and by name, with its surroundings. Then when the children are old enough, they take them around to beat the bounds like Bumble the Beadle; and so wonderful is the Indian memory naturally, and so faithful has been their instruction, that the little shavers generally recognize the objects from the descriptions of them previously ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... make the Sudden Remedy, grandma got roots, herbs, barks, twigs, leaves, mints, moss, and tree gum. These were scraped, grated, or pounded; sifted, weighed, measured, stewed, and stirred; and the juice simmered down with the oil of juniper, and bumble-bees' wax, and various smarty, peppery, slippery things whose names must be kept private for a particular reason. The Sudden Remedy cured her instantly; and as meal was wanted, and no other person could be spared from the place, she offered to go ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... master of the situation, and he directed ten thousand bees under General Bumble, and another ten thousand wasps under Colonel Hornet, to fall on the robber and cruel Sigli and sting them to death. But this was hardly necessary, as the wriggling of their bodies so fixed them to the figure that they died ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... she knelt, her prayer book open upon the carved margin of the tomb, the slender crossed legs and paws of the alert little marble dog serving as so often before for bookrest. Canon Horniblow boomed and droned, like some unctuous giant bumble-bee, from the reading-desk. The choir intoned responses from the gallery with liberal diversity of pitch. And presently, alas! Damaris' thoughts began to wander, making flitting excursions right and left. For half-way through the litany some belated worshipper arrived, causing movement in ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... appetite left out. Like Lord Dundreary's lady-love, they are "so delicate," unless caught in the pantry hastily devouring onions and beefsteak. To be hungry is so vulgar! One should live by nothing grosser than inhalation, and should never have an appetite greater than that of a healthy bumble-bee. But, thanks to the robust, latter-day theory, that the best saints have the best bodies, this puerile class is diminishing. For who can doubt that the senses are entitled to their full blossom? Gustation was meant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... always fill me with despair!' cried Bess. 'I am never ready when ours begins to buzz through the house, like a gigantic, melancholy-mad bumble bee. Of course I must change, dear; firstly, because I am smothered with dust, and sixthly, as Dogberry says, because I have brought a pretty gown to do honour ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... head." My most favourite form of literature, I may remark, is accounts of mountaineering exploits, though I have never seen a glacier or a permanent snow mountain in my life. I do not care a row of pins how badly they may be written, and what form of bumble-puppy grammar and composition is employed, as long as the writer will walk along the edge of a precipice with a sheer fall of thousands of feet on one side and a sheer wall on the other; or better still crawl up an arete with a precipice on either. Nothing ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... help Colonel Bellairs not to make a fool of himself about the disputed right of way across his property where it joined Wentworth's own land. Colonel Bellairs always bungled into business matters of the simplest nature as a bumble bee bungles into a spider's web. For Colonel Bellairs to touch business of any kind was immediately to become hopelessly and inextricably involved in it, with much furious buzzing. His mere presence entangled the plainest matter into a confused cocoon, with himself struggling ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... have clothed the recital! what attraction! what novelty! How the reformation, which originated in the cell of an obscure cloister, had already germinated in the mind of Waldo; how the rich merchant of Lyons, in search of the treasures of the age, was suddenly changed into a bumble disciple, voluntarily poor; and what were the principal traits of his ministry, his voyages, his relations, his life, his death! Concerning such men, we cannot regret too deeply the almost utter silence of this historian of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... and Mrs. Gummidge, Dickens draws types rather than characters. Pecksniff, Podsnap, Dolly Varden, Mr. Bumble, Mrs. Gamp, Mark Tapley, Turveydrop, Mrs. Jellyby—these are not characters; they are human ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... Buzz! A great bumble-bee, with a band of red gold across his back, flew up, and hovered near, wavering to and fro in the air as he stayed ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... was a hen cackling in the barn, and a big bumble-bee buzzing and bumbling around in a consequential way among the roses under the window, and I could hear the voices of the children in the front yard playing with ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... men are! (Of course women are all alike!) While Osborne, like a good-natured bumble-bee, was buzzing noisily about, as though all the world were his clover-blossom; and Allen, so far as I know, was doing nothing; M. Godin, alert and keen despite his gentleness and a modesty which kept him for the most part unobtrusively in the shadow ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... when there is nothing doing, he is still happy; waiting cheerfully upon events until they arrange themselves for his amusement. He will sit for twenty minutes opposite the garden bank, watching for a bumble-bee to come out of its hole. "I saw him go in," he says to himself, "so he's bound to come out. Extraordinarily interesting world." But to his inferiors (such as the gardener) he pretends that it is not pleasure but duty which keeps him. "Don't talk to me, fool. Can't you ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... not alone in puns and conundrums that the social life of Brook Farm was rich. It was rich in cheerful buzz. The bumble-bees had no more melodious hum than the Brook Farmers. They had thrown aside the forms that bind outside humanity. They were sailing on a voyage of discovery, seeking a modern El Dorado, but they did not carry with them the lust for gold. They were seeking something ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... Play; To the fairy land afar Where the Little People are; Where the clover-tops are trees, And the rain-pools are the seas, And the leaves like little ships Sail about on tiny trips; And above the daisy tree Through the grasses, High o'erhead the Bumble Bee Hums ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Bumble-Bee was heard in every nook and corner of the wood, and from end to end of the deep valley, for Unktomee, the generous, was giving a feast, and the Bee was his herald, the ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman
... One sort, called pardelas by the Spaniards, burrow in the ground like rabbits, and are said to be good eating. There are also humming-birds, not much larger than bumble bees, their bills no thicker than a pin, their legs proportional to their bodies, and their minute feathers of most beautiful colours. These are seldom taken or seen but in the evenings, when they fly about, and they flew sometimes at night into our fire. There is here a sort of cabbage ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... 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 dog-roses, the bells of the bilberries droop down along the wood-side, and the red-hipped bumble bees hum over them. Out of the woodland and up Snaperake Lane I rise to the moorland, and then the sea coast comes in sight, and the longing to know what lies ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... the creatures running the length of the ridge pole, and from half an inch to two inches deep! Every pack was black with them on the march, and the wagon carried its millions. When the shadow of a branch would cross that slowly lumbering vehicle, the swarm would rise and bumble around distractedly for a moment before settling down again. They fairly made ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... inhabitants took their turn in keeping watch. To find the Parish Beadle in the full-blown dignity of his office we must therefore go to the towns, to Royston for instance, where we shall find Mr. Bumble in all the stately pomp of cocked hat, great coat with a red cape, and gold lace, breeches and hose, and a staff with the royal authority of Georgius {53} Rex emblazoned thereon! A full figure, and an interesting character, ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... black satin. This time, not without a certain strain on my eyes, which are already growing tired, I succeeded in finding the said organ in the Bembex-wasps, the Halicti (Cf. Chapters 12 to 14 of the present volume.—Translator's Note.), the Carpenter-bees, the Bumble-bees, the Andrenae (A species of Burrowing Bees.—Translator's Note.) and the Megachiles. (Or Leaf-cutting Bees. Cf. Chapter 8 of the present volume.—Translator's Note.) I failed in the case of the Osmiae, the Chalicodomae and the Anthophorae. Is the organ really absent? Or was there want of ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... headed notepaper, envelopes, cut quill-pens, wax, matches, sealing-wax, and all scrupulously neat and orderly. There are magnificent specimens of Newfoundland dogs on the grounds, such animals as Landseer would love to paint. One of these, named Bumble, seems to be a ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... rush that flooded him with water and sent him off blowing the tide from his nostrils like a whale. Perhaps these things were permitted because the sight of the victim's suffering was so funny. Half the pleasure in fighting wasps or bumble-bees was in killing them and destroying their nests; the other half was in seeing the fellows get stung. If you could fool a fellow into a mass-meeting of bumble-bees, and see him lead them off in a steeple-chase, it was right and fair to do so. ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... explain, is a mere code address, and I use it here symbolically. I have seen commerce pretty close. I know what it is worth, and I have no particular regard for commercial magnates, but one must protest against these Bumble-like proceedings. Is it indignation at the loss of so many lives which is at work here? Well, the American railroads kill very many people during one single year, I dare say. Then why don't these dignitaries come down on the presidents ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... to the enormity of the offence. By his profound wisdom he has discovered that the great increase of crime in these countries is entirely attributable to over-feeding the multitude. Like the worthy Mr. Bumble, in "Oliver Twist," he protests "it is meat and not madness" that ails the people. He can even trace the origin of every felony to the particular kind of food in which the felon has indulged. He detects incipient incendiarism in eggs and fried bacon—homicide in an Irish stew—robbery and house-breaking ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... corners of the meadow fence stand clumps of flower-stalks,—joe-pye-weed, boneset, goldenrod,—bare and already bleaching; and deep within their matted shade, where the brook bends about an elder bush, a single amber pendant of the jewel-weed, to which a bumble-bee comes droning on wings so loud that a little hyla near us stops his pipe ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... the songs and habits of all the common birds, and with field mice and the frogs, toads, lizards, and snakes. Also with the wild bees and wasps. One season I made a collection of bumblebee honey, studying the habits of five or six different kinds and rifling their nests. I kept my store of bumble-bee honey in the attic where I had a small box full of the comb and a large phial filled with the honey. How well I came to know the different dispositions of the various kinds—the small red-vested that made its nest in a hole in the ground; the small black-vested, the large black-vested, ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... electric power or interfere with transit, is accountable for much disheartening bungling. Instead of taking a clear line from the outset, and denouncing these glorified vestries as useless, impossible and entirely unscientific organs, too many Socialists tried to claim Bumble as their friend and use him as their tool. And Bumble turned out to be a very bad friend and ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... BUMBLE will ope his eyes, egad, In hutter consternation. He'd think as soon of a park-prad For covies in my station. Our Board o' Works knows wot is wot, And has a feller-feeling. About the parish must I trot? No, hang it! I'll ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various
... up a whole class. Such are Bill Sikes, whose ruffianism has an almost epic grandeur; and black-hearted Fagin, the Jew, receiver of stolen goods and trainer of youth in the way they should not go; and Master Dawkins, the Artful Dodger. Such, too, is Mr. Bumble, greatest and most ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... bee, yellow as gold Sat perched on a red-clover top, When a grasshopper, wiry and old, Came along with a skip and a hop. "Good morrow" cried he, "Mr. Bumble Bee, You seem to have come ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... why? Because it's too cold for them? Oh, dear, no: on sunny days in early English spring, when the thermometer doesn't rise above freezing in the shade, you will see both the honey-bees and the great black bumble as busy as their conventional character demands of them among the golden cups of the first timid crocuses. Give the bee sunshine, indeed, with a temperature just about freezing-point, and he'll flit about joyously on his communistic errand. But bees, one must remember, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... "I certainly have most outspoken cousins! They don't seem to hesitate to tell me what to bring and what not to bring them. But I'm sure of one thing! Bumble Barlow won't be so fussy particular; she'll take whatever ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... and quiet and restful are the silent, scented, spreading fields! How soothing to a spirit tired of the city's din is this solitude, broken only by the singing of the birds and the drowsy droning of the bee, erroneously termed 'bumble'! The green fields, the shady trees, the sweet freshness of the summer air, untainted by city smoke, and over all the eternal serenity of the blue unclouded sky—how can human spite and human passion exist in such a paradise? Does it all not make you feel as if ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... "statutes" and "digests"! "Convenience of reference." Ah! that is one of their imperent sly jests. Removal of Noosances? Yah! If we started on that lay perniskers There is more than a few in the Westries 'ud feel suthin' singein' their wiskers, Or BUMBLE'S a Dutchman. Their Circ'lar—it's mighty obliging—defines 'em, The Noosances namely; I wonder if parties read Circ'lars as signs 'em, If so, Local Government Boarders must be most oncommonly knowin', And I'd like to 'eave bricks at that ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... patience to bring the Tarantula who has bitten into the insidious spikelet to the entrance of the burrow. The following method is quicker: I procure a supply of live Bumble-bees. I put one into a little bottle with a mouth just wide enough to cover the opening of the burrow; and I turn the apparatus thus baited over the said opening. The powerful Bee at first flutters and hums about her glass prison; then, perceiving a burrow similar ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... this instant an irate bumble-bee darted in, and Ella, in a spasmodic effort of self-defence, threw the spoon at it, and both went flying out of the window. The girl sat down half-crying, half-laughing in her vexation, while Aun' Sheba shook with mirth in ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... The bumble-bee that tipped the lily-vases Along the road-side in the shadows dim, Went following the blossoms of their faces As though their sweets must ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... church arm in arm with the pretty cause of all this beneficent disturbance. And the spectacle is mighty taking and commendable; but you'll excuse me for holding that it is not Love. It bears about the same relation to Love that Bumble-puppy bears to good whist. Among the eccentricities that make up the Average Man I find none more diverting than his complacent belief that he is, or has been, or will certainly some day be, in love. As a matter of fact, the capacity to love belongs to one man or woman in ten thousand. Listen ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... horns; then a part of the body and two more legs; then, with one tremendous effort, he was free!—an odd beast of no particular color, looking exceedingly damp and disagreeable, with his fat chunky body and short legs, like an exaggerated bumble-bee, only not at all pretty. He was shaky on his legs and half tumbled from his box to the window-sill, along which he walked trembling till he came to the tassel of the shade, just within his reach. This he grabbed with all four claws, his ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... by the side of a narrow brook for our dinner, and one incident of that meal I think of always when I think of Uncle Eb. It shows the manner of man he was and with what understanding and sympathy he regarded every living thing. In rinsing his teapot he accidentally poured a bit of water on a big bumble-bee. The poor creature struggled to lift hill, and then another downpour caught him and still another until his wings fell drenched. Then his breast began heaving violently, his legs stiffened behind him and he sank, head downward, in the grass. Uncle Eb saw the death throes of the bee and ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... interested in the parish boy's progress, that she took his history into her bedroom (where it was discovered, under Blatherwick's Voice from Mesopotamia, by her ladyship's maid), and that Kew laughed so immensely at Mr. Bumble, the Beadle, as to endanger ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mosquitoes. April 21st, Plover, two hawks, and a butterfly. April 22nd, Gulls, white waveys, robins. April 28th, White cranes. April 30th, Frogs, most of snow gone. May 2nd, Dark butterfly, four purple crocuses. May 4th, Frogs noisy, bumble bees. May 5th, Nearly clear of ice. May 8th, Water from Peace River flowing into lake. An Eagle. May 10th, Sand martins. Ice drifting in channel in front of fort. May 20th, Swans passing north. May 21st, Trees bursting into leaf. July 11th, ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... ever have thought," says Preyer, "that the abundance and beauty of the pansy and of the clover were dependent upon the number of cats and owls But so it is. The clover and the pansy cannot exist without the bumble-bee, which, in search of his vegetable nectar, transports unconciously the pollen from the masculine to the feminine flower, a service which other insects perform only partially for these plants. Their existence therefore ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... are fixed on something directly in front of him. He does not seem to be a boy given to day-dreaming, and he is much too active to sit still a long time. It must be something very interesting which awakens his curiosity. Perhaps a bumble-bee, buzzing in and out the bell-shaped blossoms of some sweet wild flower, catches his eye, and he almost holds his breath and ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... Every one twittered and chirped, and made a great noise; but no one would give up, and all went to roost in a great state of uncertainty. But, the next day, it became evident that Mrs. Wing was right; for Major Bumble-bee came buzzing in to tell them that old Daddy Winter's hut was empty, and his white head had been seen in the sunny porch of ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... It was of no use to angle for them by day any more. They knew all the flies in my book; could tell the new Jenny Lind from the old Bumble Bee before it struck the water; and seemed to know perfectly, both by instinct and experience, that they were all frauds, which might as well be called Jenny Bee and Bumble Lind for any sweet reasonableness that was in them. Besides all this, the water was warm; the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... when the child-larks had settled beside him he uttered a peculiar, shrill whistle. The humming sound grew louder, then, and presently hundreds of great bees rose above the flower tops and hovered in the air. But none of them approached the bush except one monstrous bumble-bee that had a body striped with black and gold, and this one sailed slowly toward the visitors and alighted gracefully upon a branch in ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... the walls and ceiling; to watch the fitfulness of its streams was a sufficient occupation. A hen laid an egg outside and began to cackle—it was an event of magnitude; a peasant sharpening his scythe, a blacksmith hammering at his anvil, the clack of a wooden shoe upon the pavement, the boom of a bumble-bee, the dripping of the fountain, all these things, with such concert as they kept, invited the dewy-feathered sleep that visited him, and held him for the ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... state of great animation when silently watched awhile. A timid animal world had come to life for the season. Little tadpoles and efts began to bubble up through the water, and to race along beneath it; toads made noises like very young ducks, and advanced to the margin in twos and threes; overhead, bumble-bees flew hither and thither in the thickening light, their drone coming and going like the sound ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... and girls who live in the country, and probably a large share of those who live in the city, know the bumble-bee. We had a little different name for him in our neighborhood. Bumble-bee was, however, the only name the family was known by, in Willow Lane, and I think it quite possible that such a corruption, (if it is a corruption, and the wise ones tell us it is, though I should ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank
... "Troth, Nippi-Bumble, he's about right," added Briant coaxingly. "Come now, avic, wot's the raisin ye won't go? Sure we ain't blackguards enough to ax ye to come for to be sold; it's all fair and above ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... he beat you? Did he beat you?' Phyllopneustes wise folk call them, But don't know what did befall them, Why they ever thought of coming All that way to hear gnats humming, Why they built not nests but houses, Like the bumble-bees and mousies. Nor how little birds got wings, Nor what 'tis the small cock sings— How should they know—stupid fogies? They daren't even believe in bogies. Once they were a girl and boy, Each the other's life and joy. He a Daphnis, she a Chloe, Only they were brown, ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... bumble-bee from a butternut," said Will. "City children don't know anything, and she'll be awfully in the way. Won't she tag after ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... midst of Gerald's instructive account of the holy abbot's endeavors to purify the monastic orders from the stain of simony, her hand clutched his, and doing a delicate cake-walk she compelled him along with her, announcing, "The Hornet and the Bumble-bee went walking hand in hand!" Fancying this prank not to have been without success, she next performed an improvised pas seul illustrative of the text, "The mountains ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... into the building in a very short time, thronged about the bier, the black table, and Panna, who was leaning against it, carrying on a low, eager hum of conversation till it seemed as though countless swarms of bumble-bees ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... popular prices, A clever Cook, and oh! such whopping slices! What wonder then that customers are clamorous, That appetites, of good cheap victuals amorous, Sharpen at sight of that big toothsome joint? The carver does not wish to disappoint; He is no Union Bumble, stingy, truculent, He knows his dish is savoury and succulent, That "Cut and Come again's" a pleasant motto, But deal out "portions" all this hungry lot to? Amphitryon feels the thing cannot be done, Though he should slice the saddle to the bone With all the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... out. The Governor came, with his Light-horse Troop And his mounted truckmen, all cock-a-hoop; Halberds glittered and colors flew, French horns whinnied and trumpets blew, The yellow fifes whistled between their teeth And the bumble-bee bass-drums boomed beneath; So he rode with all his band, Till the President met him, cap in hand. - The Governor "hefted" the crowns, and said, - "A will is a will, and the Parson's dead." The Governor hefted the crowns. Said he, - "There is your p'int. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... move again. Mr. Bob, Hinpoha's black cocker, shared in the prevailing laziness; he lay sprawled on his back with all four feet up in the air, breathing in panting gasps that shook his whole body. A bumble bee, blundering up on the porch, broke the spell. It lit on Mr. Bob's face, whereupon Mr. Bob sprang into the air, quivering with excitement, and knocked Hinpoha's glass out of her hand. Hinpoha picked up the pieces with one hand and patted Mr. ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... individual and unique, very pleasant to some persons, but quite repellent to others. Gray squirrels and the young of the fox-squirrel eat the buds and flowers as well as the cone-shaped fruit. Humming-birds and bumble-bees in the blossoming-time make a dreamy booming among the shadowy sprays. A saccharine, sticky substance, not unlike honey-dew, may often be found in the hollows of the immense petals, in search of which large black ants make pilgrimages from the root to the top of the largest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... in its spangled cloud. Victoria blossomed in diamonds, William Adolphus sprouted in plumes; my mother embodied the stately, Cousin Elizabeth a gorgeous heartiness; the Duke's eyes wore a bored look, but the remainder of his person was fittingly resplendent. Bederhof was Bumble in Olympus; beyond these came a sea of smiles, bows, silks, and uniforms. Really I believe that the whole thing was done as handsomely as possible, and the proceedings are duly recorded in a book of red leather, clasped in gold and embellished with many pictures, which the Municipality ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... many a homely name has a complimentary meaning. Mr. Wegg did not like the name Boffin, but its oldest form is bon-fin, good and fine. In 1273 Mr. Bumble's name was spelt bon-bel, good and beautiful. With these we may group Bunker, of which the oldest form is bon-quer (bon coeur), and Boffey, which corresponds to the common French name Bonnefoy, good faith; while the much more assertive Beaufoy means ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... "But, bumble-bee, Your gauzy wings, It seems to me, Are flimsy things; Should they get drenched, 'twould spoil them quite, And you'd ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... a fearful thing. Whatever had been in Faith's speech, her look, bright, wistful, and happy, had no fear, truly bumble though it was. "There is no danger of my loving this letter too much"—she said as she carefully restored it to its envelope; said with a secret utterance of ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... handled. Many other Hymenoptera, honey-gatherers or hunters, are quite as spiritless; and I can assert to-day, after a long experience, that only the Social Hymenoptera, the Hive-bees, the Common Wasps and the Bumble-bees, know how to devise a common defence; and only they dare fall singly upon the aggressor, to wreak ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... think Borrow's experience was very convincing. I have known people who "have gone where money was" and have fallen honestly and rapturously into love, but you have got to be very sure that money in such a case is not the motive. If it is the penalty never fails to follow. Mr. Bumble married Mrs. Corney for "six teaspoons, a pair of sugar tongs, and a milk-pot, with a small quantity of secondhand furniture and twenty pounds in money." And in two months he regretted his bargain and admitted that he had gone "dirt cheap." "Only two months to-morrow," ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... what "phen-dubs" means? I can. Can you say all off by heart The "onery twoery ickery ann," Or tell "alleys" and "commons" apart? Can you fling a top, I would like to know, Till it hums like a bumble-bee? Can you make a kite yourself that will go 'Most as high as the eye can see, Till it sails and soars like a hawk on the wing, And the little birds come and ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... 'a flute couldn't touch that z sound. Indeed what can? What is there like it? Has a church-bell any tone approximating it even? Has a violin? Has a hautboy? Has a French horn? Has a jew's-harp? Ay, that's the thing! A Jew's-harp has something like it; and so—so has a bumble-bee. A thought strikes me! It is possible that Zounds and Sounds are—Yes,' said I, rising and shouting with the excitement, 'Zounds and Sounds are bumble-bees!—bumble-bees curiously prepared; gathered ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... several of which were new to him. The air of the place was heavy with mingled odours—one might almost have called them perfumes, were it not for a certain smack of rankness and pungency in them—and alive with birds, varying in size from that of a bumble bee up to that of a carrion crow, a few specimens of which could be seen perched here and there on the topmost branches of the tallest trees. Several of the birds were of the humming bird or sunbird species, and these, of course, ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... their nests to pieces. Small birds of half a dozen kinds were also there, and one tinkle-tinkled his spring song quite merrily in spite of the cold that kept the others silent and made me blue. One day I spied a big queen bumble-bee on the ground, looking extremely conspicuous in its black and chestnut coat on the fresh green sward; and thinking it numbed by the cold I picked it up. It moved its legs feebly, but alas! its enemy had found and struck it down, and with its hard, ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... chrysalises, flowers, funguses, mosses, earth-nuts, and land-snails, all just as I find them. If one began with different note-books for the creatures, and the plants, and the shells, it would be quite endless. I think I shall start at that place in the hedge in the croft where we found the bumble-bee's nest. I should like to find a mole-cricket, but I don't know if they live about here. Perhaps our soil isn't light enough for them to make their tunnels in, but one ought to find no end of curious burrowing creatures when one is on one's face, besides grubs ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... swore at them, the animals would not budge an inch until she permitted them to go. Here are a few of the common superstitions current in Berkshire. If a corpse be kept over a Sunday another death will occur before the week is out; should a big bumble-bee enter the window, a guest may be expected; and when the woodpecker, commonly called the yaffle, laughs, they say the rain is coming. When the thick mist lies in the valley, the people say it is the ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... purpose he chooses a bush with thorns, perhaps a hawthorn, and then when he catches any small creature he sticks it on the thorns and leaves it there spiked until it is wanted. Look at this one's larder. He has a wretched little dead sparrow hanging by its neck from a big thorn, and two or three bumble-bees spiked too. We can imagine the mamma saying to the little ones: 'No, dears, you mustn't have any sparrow to-night just before you go to bed; it would give you indigestion and make you dream. Papa ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... to the Crumpetty Tree Came the Stork, the Duck, and the Owl; The Snail and the Bumble-Bee, The Frog and the Fimble Fowl (The Fimble Fowl, with a Corkscrew leg); And all of them said, "We humbly beg We may build our homes on your lovely Hat,— Mr. Quangle Wangle, grant us that! ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... the business—but he had done nothing to deserve the Copley, and all I can say is that if the present award is contrary to law, the "law's a hass" as Mr. Bumble said. But I don't believe ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... the low ceiling; and hung against the wall, between two glaring woodcuts representing "Lady Caroline" in red and "Highland Mary" in blue, is a deep frame filled with worsted flowers, to which a butterfly and a bumble-bee have been pinned. Paper lacework depends from their kitchen-shelves, and common eggshells, artificially colored, decorate the lilac-bushes in the side yard. They are always making new mats or piecing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... the sewing-machine began to hum through the old house like a cheerful bumble-bee, and Mag entered upon what was certainly the happiest period of her career. Laces, silks, fine muslins—these had the effect upon her developing soul that a virgin canvas has upon the painter. Her fingers wrought ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... abdomen are yellow incircled with transverse rings of black, they are ferce and sting very severely, we found them troublesome in frightening our horses as we passed those mountains. the honey bee is not found here. the bumble bee is. one of the men brought me today some onions from the high plain of a different speceis from those near the borders of the river as they are also from the shive or small onion noticed below the falls of the Columbia. these onions were ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... his game was the apotheosis of bumble-puppy. Archibald, his partner, was much irritated ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... all, Fossell was an excellent player. With the smallest luck, he and Fossell ought to be more than a match for a pair of whom, if one (Miss Gabriel) was wily, the other played a game not usually distinguishable from bumble-puppy. ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... a tiny field that ran up to the woods, and there, among the brilliantly varnished buttercups, the bees sounded like the tides coming in on the coasts of faery. Hazel forgot her dread—an inexplicable sickening dread of the quarry. She chased a fat bumble-bee all across the golden floor—one eager, fluffy, shining head after the other. They might have been, in the all-permeating glory on their hill terrace, with the sapphire-circled plain around—they might have been the two youngest ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... same case, I looked another way while the two girls joined us, Theodora having for the moment directed my attention to a tremendously large queen bumble-bee which came booming along the ground and began burrowing in a little heap of ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... in question was in the handwriting of a fussy officious "bumble" friend of the wealthy man, who dwelt in the town of Covelly. It ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... world, as indeed he had. He was feeling very good-natured, was Jimmy Skunk. And why shouldn't he? There was everything to make him feel good-natured. Summer had arrived to stay. On every side he heard glad voices. Bumble the Bee was humming a song. Best of all, Jimmy had found three beetles that very morning, and he knew that there were more if he could find them. So why ...
— The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad • Thornton W. Burgess
... the riddle, and began, in his pleasant holiday idleness, to look about at other things in the unfrequented wilderness through which the river ran. To trace the raven by following it home seemed too difficult, but it was easy to follow a great bumble-bee, which went blundering by, alighting upon a block of stone, took flight again, and landed upon a slope covered with moss, entering at last a hole which went sloping ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... nicely so far without one. Did I have one on the Miele? And yet I was the only woman on board. There are only three things I am afraid of—bumble-bees, scarlet fever, and chaperones. Ugh! the clucking, evil-minded monsters, finding wrong in everything, seeing sin in the most innocent actions, and suggesting sin—yes, causing sin—by ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... You'd think from that first growling note, He'd a bumble-bee inside his throat; 'Tis not a bee, but only a bark; For ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... that he was "an example to his order," and yet better than this stately panegyric is the happy accident, if it be one, that the poor flower girls of London have pitched their camp upon the steps, and have successfully defied all the efforts of Mr. Bumble to remove them. ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... Seemed like I saw the march o' regiments o' children, Marching to the robin's fife and cricket's rat-ta-tat! Lily-banners overhead, with the dew upon 'em, On flashed the little army, as with sword and flame; Like the buzz o' bumble-wings, with the honey on 'em, Came an eerie, cheery ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley
... human fly ever buzzed himself so fatally into the spider-webs of other people's love affairs? I asked myself sternly. As soon as Providence plucked me out of one web, back I would bumble into another, though I had no time for a love affair ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... constables. No sooner had they departed down the flagged path than back flitted the bevy of girls again into the study, until the small room was full to overflowing. It was like seeing a company of fat bumble-bees, their portly bodies resplendent in black and gold, buzz heavily out of a room, and a gay flight of pale-blue and lemon butterflies flit back in their places. All the daughters fell upon their father, Margaret, Bridget, Isabel, Sarah, Mary, and Susanna; there ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... who has been stung by a bumble-bee; she places herself once more, and of her own accord, upon the griddle of suspicion, and begins her struggle with ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... you the native names of all insects, such as caterpillars, crickets, cockroaches, grasshoppers, locusts, mantis, honey bees, bumble bees, wasps, hornets, yellow jackets, goliath beetles, stage ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... there was no mistake about it, "Steam-pudding or pumpkin-pie?" echoed the maiden, giving me the terrible alternative in her most cutting tones; "Both!" I ejaculated, with equal distinctness, but, I believe, audacity unparalleled since the times of Twist. The female Bumble seemed to reel beneath the shock, and I noticed that after communicating her experience to her fellow waiting-woman, I was not thought of much account for the remainder ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... humble—of porterhouse steak and peas, and honey from bees that bumble, and maybe imported cheese—I think, with a bitter feeling, of insolent money kings, who, drunk with their wealth and reeling, condemn me to eat such things. The pirate and banknote monger still gloat o'er their golden stacks, while I must appease my hunger with oysters ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... young firs and pines, as shiny as metal, and so motionless that the drops which still hung here and there on their needles seemed frozen. Everything was motionless under this yellow light, the grass-blades, the moss-blossoms, and the little blue butterflies, and a bumble-bee crawled into the bell of a bennet and hung there as if enchanted. In the thicket a fox drew near, his head lowered to sniff the ground, and suddenly he too stood still without stirring a muscle and stared ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... said that worthy. "Only my game is bumble-puppy. You can hardly call it whist. Who's ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... have one supreme and devastating study of the illiterate minor official in Bumble. That one figure lit up and still lights the whole problem of Poor Law administration for the English reading community. It was a translation of well-meant regulations and pseudo-scientific conceptions of social order into blundering, arrogant, ill-bred flesh and blood. It was ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... straight down to that dress-maker's house, and handed the square paper cousin had written on to a lady who was fluttering round among a lot of girls, all hard at work sewing, like bumble-bees in a rose-bush. ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... back in his chair he closed his eyes. Some thistle-down came on what little air there was, and pitched on his moustache more white than itself. He did not know; but his breathing stirred it, caught there. A ray of sunlight struck through and lodged on his boot. A bumble-bee alighted and strolled on the crown of his Panama hat. And the delicious surge of slumber reached the brain beneath that hat, and the head swayed forward and rested on his breast. Summer—summer! So ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... wings for the girls and stick pins with bumble bees in black and gold for the boys. On the back of each pin was the date and Janet's and ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... writing a story, he had removed but one-eighth of his mind for the consideration of mundane affairs, and that, as any one knows, is insufficient to judge fairly whether the winged thing I was reaching out for was a fly or a bumble bee. In the morning, the story being finished and the other seven-eights of brain at liberty to dwell upon the same question, he decided to follow me, with the result that in the afternoon I ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... and you'll forget that I wouldn't let you kiss me, won't you?" he answered as he drew back from the table and lit a cigarette after passing me the case. "Everybody calls me Buzz the Bumble Bee because of a historic encounter of mine with a whole nest of bumblebees right out here in the General's garden. It is a title of heroism and I'd like to have you use it as if we'd been kids together as we were slated to have been. Gee, I bet you could have beat the bees down some. You looked ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... moment of silence. The drone of a bumble-bee near by seemed to make the silence swim drowsily in their ears; far off they heard the faint beat of a woodpecker. The suggestion of their kneeling figures in this magic mirror was vague, unreasoning, yet for the moment none the less irresistible. His arm instinctively crept around her little ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... lad dropped on hands and toes and ran along like a dog, thus far untouched by bullets, though they were thick as a nest of liberated bumble bees ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... schoolboy, a number of my companions brought the news that the strangest bird in the world had come that day to our garden and hovered over the flowers. It was no bigger than a bumble-bee. "No! It was not a humming-bird," they said, "it was smaller by far, much more beautiful, and it came and went so fast that no one ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... old man, with long white hair hanging down his coat-collar, in the fashion of bygone days. It was his habit to take extensive walks, for miles around the country, moving forward with long strides, and either talking to himself or humming soft tunes; on which account his pupils styled him 'the bumble-bee.' The old man was passionately fond of music, and devoted every minute spared from school duties and his long walks, to his violin. To the more promising of his pupils Mr. James Merrishaw showed great kindness, allowing them, among other things, the run of his library, ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... animals and plants. on the effects of slight differences of colour. on fertilisation of scarlet runner. on fossil maize in Peru. on fresh-water mollusks. on the bumble bee. on the migration ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... looks so. The boys found a bumble bees' nest and Tubby didn't have any paddle to hit them with. So they all went for poor Tubby and they stung him so that his face is twice as big as ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... to America. Her elder son is married too, but she does not agree with his wife. The Wesleyan minister came along and took the younger boy. She is alone in the house. A steamer, probably bound for Cardiff, now crosses the horizon, while near at hand one bell of a foxglove swings to and fro with a bumble-bee for clapper. These white Cornish cottages are built on the edge of the cliff; the garden grows gorse more readily than cabbages; and for hedge, some primeval man has piled granite boulders. In ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... taking rank with the class in which live everlastingly the dozen unique inventions that have immortalized the English novel. The groups in Oliver Twist, Fagin and his pupils, Sikes and Nancy, Mr. Bumble and his parish-boy, belong to the same period; when Dickens also began those pathetic delineations that opened to the neglected, the poor, and the fallen, a world of compassion and tenderness. Yet I think it was not until the third book, Nickleby, that he began to have his place ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... a bumble-bee was beating itself against the window-pane and buzzing. Sofya Petrovna looked at the threads on the socks, listened to the bee, and pictured how she would set off . . . . vis-a-vis Ilyin would sit, day and night, never taking his eyes off her, wrathful at his own weakness and pale with spiritual ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... The bumble-bee that tipped the lily-vases Along the road-side in the shadows dim, Went following the blossoms of their faces As though their sweets must needs be shared ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... With yellow feathers instead of hair, And bumble bees crocheted in the trees— And bumble bees crocheted in the trees— And all the birds ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... foundation of its national existence, trait upon trait, must be laid in the lives of the children," said Mr. Goodloe, slowly, and he smiled as across from the Little House came wee Susan's exquisite treble in a waltz song which was backed up by Mother Spurlock's bumble and Charlotte's none too accurate accompaniment. And ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... cat came fiddling out of a barn. With a pair of bag-pipes under her arm: She could sing nothing but fiddle cum fee, The mouse has married the bumble-bee; Pipe, cat—dance, mouse, We'll have a wedding at our ...
— The Little Mother Goose • Anonymous
... and Jenny Wren. For whom, perhaps with some old instinct of his race, the gentle Jew had spread a carpet. Seated on it, against no more romantic object than a blackened chimney-stack over which some bumble creeper had been trained, they both pored over one book; both with attentive faces; Jenny with the sharper; Lizzie with the more perplexed. Another little book or two were lying near, and a common basket of common fruit, and ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... around them. Mrs. Howard led the traveller to speak of what he had seen in different countries—of natural history—of the beaver, and the moose-deer, and the humming-bird, that is scarcely larger than a bumble bee; and the mocking-bird, that can imitate the notes of all other birds. Charles niched himself into a corner of the sofa upon which the gentlemen were sitting, and grew very attentive. He was rather surprised to perceive that his tutor was as much entertained with ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... lovely and quiet and restful are the silent, scented, spreading fields! How soothing to a spirit tired of the city's din is this solitude, broken only by the singing of the birds and the drowsy droning of the bee, erroneously termed 'bumble'! The green fields, the shady trees, the sweet freshness of the summer air, untainted by city smoke, and over all the eternal serenity of the blue unclouded sky—how can human spite and human passion exist in ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... the hands of the mistress of the poorhouse, who was named Mrs. Bumble. It contained the dead mother's wedding-ring, and, as Mrs. Bumble was a dishonest woman, she hid both locket and ring, ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... and jogs jovially to church arm in arm with the pretty cause of all this beneficent disturbance. And the spectacle is mighty taking and commendable; but you'll excuse me for holding that it is not Love. It bears about the same relation to Love that Bumble-puppy bears to good whist. Among the eccentricities that make up the Average Man I find none more diverting than his complacent belief that he is, or has been, or will certainly some day be, in love. As a matter of fact, the capacity to love belongs to one man or woman in ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... firs and pines, as shiny as metal, and so motionless that the drops which still hung here and there on their needles seemed frozen. Everything was motionless under this yellow light, the grass-blades, the moss-blossoms, and the little blue butterflies, and a bumble-bee crawled into the bell of a bennet and hung there as if enchanted. In the thicket a fox drew near, his head lowered to sniff the ground, and suddenly he too stood still without stirring a muscle and stared into space, his eyes transparent as green glass, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... goldfinches were darting around inviting all creation to "See me?" as they gathered the silken down for nest lining. Over the sweetly perfumed purple heads, the humming-birds held high carnival on Sunshine Hillside all the day. The honey and bumble bees fled at the birds' approach, but what were these others, numerous everywhere, that clung to the blooms, greedily thrusting their red noses between the petals, and ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... (Of course women are all alike!) While Osborne, like a good-natured bumble-bee, was buzzing noisily about, as though all the world were his clover-blossom; and Allen, so far as I know, was doing nothing; M. Godin, alert and keen despite his gentleness and a modesty which ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... life-history of the flies which dwell as unbidden guests or social parasites in the nests and hives of wild honey-bees. These burglarious flies are belted and bearded in the very self-same pattern as the bumble-bees themselves; but their larvae live upon the young grubs of the hive, and repay the unconscious hospitality of the busy workers by devouring the future hope of their unwilling hosts. Obviously, any fly which entered a bee-hive could only escape detection and extermination at the hands (or stings) ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... certain strain on my eyes, which are already growing tired, I succeeded in finding the said organ in the Bembex-wasps, the Halicti (Cf. Chapters 12 to 14 of the present volume.—Translator's Note.), the Carpenter-bees, the Bumble-bees, the Andrenae (A species of Burrowing Bees.—Translator's Note.) and the Megachiles. (Or Leaf-cutting Bees. Cf. Chapter 8 of the present volume.—Translator's Note.) I failed in the case of ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... Rose order of plants. It has long been esteemed for its bark and leaves as a [54] capital astringent, these containing much tannin; also for its fruit, which is supplied with malic and citric acids, pectin, and albumen. Blackberries go often by the name of "bumblekites," from "bumble," the cry of the bittern, and kyte, a Scotch word for belly; the name bumblekite being applied, says Dr. Prior, "from the rumbling and bumbling caused in the bellies of children who eat the fruit too greedily." "Rubus" is ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... no one never has no doubts about his orthodoxy; Whereby—if folks was wise—instead of either of them Scholars, And straining their own lungs along of contradictious hollers, They'll lend their ears to reason, and take my advice as follers, Namely—Bumble for the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... and comings of an ant or the capricious flight of a bumble-bee; then with his eyes lost in space, immersed in the profundity of ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... holler? Does the leetle chatterin', sassy wren, No bigger'n my thumb, know more than men? Jest show me that! er prove 't bat Hez got more brains than's in my hat, An' I'll back down, an' not till then!" He argued further: "Ner I can't see What's the use o' wings to a bumble-bee, Fer to git a livin' with, more'n to me;— Ain't my business importanter'n his'n is? That Icarus was a silly cuss,— Him an' his daddy Daedalus; They might 'a' knowed wings made o' wax Wouldn't stan' sun-heat an' hard whacks: I'll make mine o' luther, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... labour, hard fare, hard bed, numbing cold all night, and gnawing hunger most days. That is her lot. Is it lawful in my prayers to say, "Thank heaven, I am not as one of these"? If I were eighty, would I like to feel the hunger always gnawing, gnawing? to have to get up and make a bow when Mr Bumble the beadle entered the common room? to have to listen to Miss Prim, who came to give me her ideas of the next world? If I were eighty, I own I should not like to have to sleep with another gentleman of my own age, gouty, a bad sleeper, kicking in his ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... Richard took his smoking boots from the fire-place, and was called upon for various entertainments for which he was famous: such as the accurate imitation of a train just starting, in which two pieces of bone were used with considerable effect; as also of a bumble-bee, who (very much out of season) went buzzing about, and was always being caught with a heavy bang on the heads and shoulders of those who least expected it; all which specimens of his talents were received ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the hens cackling and calling to their chickens. I thought I heard our dog bark; but all was so warm, and still, and sleepy, that I felt as if I should go to sleep too if I kept my eyes shut much longer. I heard the birds though, and a great bumble-bee that flew by ...
— Woodside - or, Look, Listen, and Learn. • Caroline Hadley
... those who do not play bridge, which means "auction," are seldom asked out. And the epidemic is just as widespread among girls and boys as among older people. Bridge is always taken seriously; a bumble puppy game won't do at all, even among the youngest players, and other qualifications of character and of etiquette must be observed by every one who would be sought after to "make up ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... animal world had come to life for the season. Little tadpoles and efts began to bubble up through the water, and to race along beneath it; toads made noises like very young ducks, and advanced to the margin in twos and threes; overhead, bumble-bees flew hither and thither in the thickening light, their drone coming and going like the sound ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... was in the handwriting of a fussy officious "bumble" friend of the wealthy man, who dwelt in the town of Covelly. ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... Another bumble-bee went over along the tips of the wheat—burr-rr—as he passed; then a scarlet fly, and next a bright yellow wasp who was telling a friend flying behind him that he knew where there was such a capital ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... Bumble Bee," he comforted her. "It came between us for a bit, its shadow fell upon you, nothing more! Such things will happen; we must be prepared for them. It was nothing in myself that ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... day a jolly bumble-bee, In coat of black and yellow, Got caught inside a window-pane; The silly ...
— Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper and Other Stories • Anonymous
... the chinless curate, whose voice without consonants gave the effect of an intoning bumble-bee, never took advantage of her suggestions (frequently repeated) that he should drop ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... the curse uv Australia; an' Ted's got it worsen most. Don't I know it? I gave him a chanst here in my store. Might ha' made a Persition frimself. But, no; no Systum at all. He was off in a fortnight, trappin' dingoes in the bush, or some such nonsense. He's for no more use than—than a bumble bee, isn't Ted Reilly; nor ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... the hills; or when Thyrsis would carry the child upon his shoulder, and they would wander about the meadows, picking daisies and clover, and making garlands for Corydon. Once Cedric sat down upon a bumble-bee, and that was hard upon him, and perhaps upon the bee. But for the most part the little one was enraptured during these excursions. He was fascinated with the flowers, and continually seeking for an opportunity to devour some of them; while he ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... and principles. Ajax said with reason that Johnnie Kapus, the nephew of our neighbour, old man Kapus, played the game of life in such a sorry, blundering fashion that he marvelled why his uncle gave him house-room. Ajax christened Johnnie—Bumble-puppy. ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... prefer bumble-bees to humble-bees, and even to honey-bees, notwithstanding the dictionaries, and never lie down in the long rich grass, with a great-coat under me; and am not afraid of catching cold though I may sit ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... out of his eyes an instant; then with a shout he abandoned Kobuk and the bean-pot for the moment, and scattering the red-vested bumble-bees that were avidly working for honey in the lupine flowers he began gathering a bouquet ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... butterflies and enameled wings for the girls and stick pins with bumble bees in black and gold for the boys. On the back of each pin was the date and Janet's and ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... his work. Perhaps it can best be considered as the extension of one of his old sketches, of some sketch that happened to be about a visit to a workhouse or a gaol. In the Sketches by Boz he might well have visited a workhouse where he saw Bumble; in the Sketches by Boz he might well have visited a prison where he saw Fagin. We are still in the realm of sketches and sketchiness. The Pickwick Papers may be called an extension of one of his bright sketches. Oliver Twist ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... recipe were given her by an Indian woman. To make the Sudden Remedy, grandma got roots, herbs, barks, twigs, leaves, mints, moss, and tree gum. These were scraped, grated, or pounded; sifted, weighed, measured, stewed, and stirred; and the juice simmered down with the oil of juniper, and bumble-bees' wax, and various smarty, peppery, slippery things whose names must be kept private for a particular reason. The Sudden Remedy cured her instantly; and as meal was wanted, and no other person could be spared from the place, she offered to go ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... period in the life of every child when he is especially susceptible to the "call of the fields;" when he roams through woods or by shady brooks gathering flowers, fishing for mud-cats and cleaning out bumble-bees' nests. It is often compared with the life of the savage and is merely the outward expression of an inward craving for a closer relation with nature and her creatures. If one can reach a child while ...
— An Elementary Study of Insects • Leonard Haseman
... knelt, her prayer book open upon the carved margin of the tomb, the slender crossed legs and paws of the alert little marble dog serving as so often before for bookrest. Canon Horniblow boomed and droned, like some unctuous giant bumble-bee, from the reading-desk. The choir intoned responses from the gallery with liberal diversity of pitch. And presently, alas! Damaris' thoughts began to wander, making flitting excursions right and left. For half-way through the litany some belated worshipper arrived, causing movement ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... he had. He was feeling very good-natured, was Jimmy Skunk. And why shouldn't he? There was everything to make him feel good-natured. Summer had arrived to stay. On every side he heard glad voices. Bumble the Bee was humming a song. Best of all, Jimmy had found three beetles that very morning, and he knew that there were more if he could find them. So why shouldn't ...
— The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad • Thornton W. Burgess
... what I started to say. I wanted to tell you how the least thing distracts me nowadays from my duty to the Sadhana. In my last letter[1] I told you of the bumble-bees which hover round me in some fruitless quest, to the tune of a ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... stuck-up, cross-grained, meddlin', bumble-bee-backed old hag of a soup-slopper; to come stickin' yer big nose into other people's kitchens! If there was a rale misthress to the house instead of the little gal upstairs, you'd be rowled down the front steps afore you'd been let come into my kitchen." And ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... attend this gentleman," said the Queen. "Feed him with apricots and dewberries, purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries. Steal honey-bags for him from the bumble-bees, and with the wings of painted butterflies fan the moonbeams from his ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... sweet you, Did he beat you? Did he beat you?' Phyllopneustes wise folk call them, But don't know what did befall them, Why they ever thought of coming All that way to hear gnats humming, Why they built not nests but houses, Like the bumble-bees and mousies. Nor how little birds got wings, Nor what 'tis the small cock sings— How should they know—stupid fogies? They daren't even believe in bogies. Once they were a girl and boy, Each the other's life and joy. He a Daphnis, she a Chloe, Only they were brown, not snowy, Till ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... certainly have most outspoken cousins! They don't seem to hesitate to tell me what to bring and what not to bring them. But I'm sure of one thing! Bumble Barlow won't be so fussy particular; she'll take whatever I bring and ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... White, Black, Greathead, Longshanks, etc., told what a person in the eyes of men the owner presented. The hereditary or aristocratic process has killed this entirely. Men no longer make their names; even the poor foundlings, like Oliver Twist, are christened alphabetically by some Bumble the Beadle. But the nickname restores his lost rights, and takes the man at once out of the ignoble vulgus to give him identity. We recognize this gift and are proud of our nicknames, when we can get them to suit us. Only the sharp judgment of our peers reverses ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... GOVERNOR HANCOCK out. The Governor came, with his Light-horse Troop And his mounted truckmen, all cock-a-hoop; Halberds glittered and colors flew, French horns whinnied and trumpets blew, The yellow fifes whistled between their teeth And the bumble-bee bass-drums boomed beneath; So he rode with all his band, Till the President met him, cap in hand. - The Governor "hefted" the crowns, and said, - "A will is a will, and the Parson's dead." The Governor hefted the crowns. Said he, - "There is your p'int. And here's my fee. These are the terms ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... when it is seized and handled. Many other Hymenoptera, honey-gatherers or hunters, are quite as spiritless; and I can assert to-day, after a long experience, that only the Social Hymenoptera, the Hive-bees, the Common Wasps and the Bumble-bees, know how to devise a common defence; and only they dare fall singly upon the aggressor, to wreak an ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... Adolphus sprouted in plumes; my mother embodied the stately, Cousin Elizabeth a gorgeous heartiness; the Duke's eyes wore a bored look, but the remainder of his person was fittingly resplendent. Bederhof was Bumble in Olympus; beyond these came a sea of smiles, bows, silks, and uniforms. Really I believe that the whole thing was done as handsomely as possible, and the proceedings are duly recorded in a book of red leather, clasped in gold and embellished with many pictures, which the Municipality ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... little one-room 'ouse in our white folkses' back yard. Us had a white teacher and all he larnt slave chillun was jus' plain readin' and writin'. I had to pass Dr. Willingham's office lots and he was all de time pesterin' me 'bout spellin'. One day he stopped me and axed me if I could spell 'bumble bee widout its tail,' and he said dat when I larnt to spell it, he would gimme some candy. Mr. Sanders, at Lexin'ton, gimme a dime onct. It was de fust money I ever had. I was plumb rich and I never let my Daddy have no peace 'til he ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... the flowers In my garden Butterflies, golden-spotted tawny, Blue-spangled and sulphur; Glistening dragon-flies, zooming bumble ...
— A Little Window • Jean M. Snyder
... to bring the Tarantula who has bitten into the insidious spikelet to the entrance of the burrow. The following method is quicker: I procure a supply of live Bumble-bees. I put one into a little bottle with a mouth just wide enough to cover the opening of the burrow; and I turn the apparatus thus baited over the said opening. The powerful Bee at first flutters and hums about her glass prison; then, perceiving a burrow similar to that of her family, she enters ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... work, work don't bother me. I'se fo' times as happy as a bumble bee. Us eats when us kin git it, sleeps ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... Little Cousin and the "Gnats." The Aurora Borealis. A Bumble-bee Scrape. Another Bee Scrape. Justification by Faith Alone. Readiness to Fight. Love ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... feeling undecided whether to own they were wrong, or to put Mrs. Wing down. Every one twittered and chirped, and made a great noise; but no one would give up, and all went to roost in a great state of uncertainty. But, the next day, it became evident that Mrs. Wing was right; for Major Bumble-bee came buzzing in to tell them that old Daddy Winter's hut was empty, and his white head had been seen in the sunny porch of ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... freely and his game was the apotheosis of bumble-puppy. Archibald, his partner, was ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... her indignation the absurd Fyne dog began to bark in the porch. It might have been at a trespassing bumble-bee however. That animal was capable of any eccentricity. Fyne got up quickly and went out to him. I think he was glad to leave us alone to discuss that matter of his journey to London. A sort of anti-sentimental journey. He, too, ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... instances of what was expected of him; and his thick voice drowsed in the still air like the obstinate droning of an enormous bumble-bee. Captain Whalley did not know what was the force or the weakness that prevented him from saying good-night and walking away. It was as though he had been too tired to make the effort. How queer. More queer than any of Ned's instances. Or was it that overpowering ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... "Hell." For some time thereafter we made regular raids into the surrounding country in quest of an enemy. We were eventually successful in our quest, as in quick order we ran across and captured a company of bumble bees. This we called the "Battle of the Wilderness." Victory over a nest of hornets we called the capture of "Fort Sumter." A large nest of wasps gave us perhaps the hardest fight of our campaigning. This we ran across in the fields not far from home. There was ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... fill me with despair!' cried Bess. 'I am never ready when ours begins to buzz through the house, like a gigantic, melancholy-mad bumble bee. Of course I must change, dear; firstly, because I am smothered with dust, and sixthly, as Dogberry says, because I have brought a pretty gown ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... little astonishment, Benassis beheld Genestas pacing to and fro in the salon, like a bumble-bee in quest of an exit from the room which he ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... number of his pieces in my book, and I'm fond of 'em. But this man makes things so kind of true and natural I feel at home with HIM. And this one I've longed to read, though I guess I can't understand much of it. His 'Bumble Bee' was just lovely; with the grass and columbines and the yellow breeches of the bee. I'm never tired of that;" and Becky's face woke up into something like beauty as she glanced hungrily at the Emerson ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... there was enough to catch even a bumble-bee. The birds are back. They came directly I'd gone a dozen ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... it from a girl," said Sally; "and many a time, when the door's been shut, I did not know if it was you in the parlour, or a big bumble-bee in the kitchen, as was making that drumbling noise. I heard you ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... don't think Borrow's experience was very convincing. I have known people who "have gone where money was" and have fallen honestly and rapturously into love, but you have got to be very sure that money in such a case is not the motive. If it is the penalty never fails to follow. Mr. Bumble married Mrs. Corney for "six teaspoons, a pair of sugar tongs, and a milk-pot, with a small quantity of secondhand furniture and twenty pounds in money." And in two months he regretted his bargain and admitted that he had gone ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... toads, lizards, and snakes. Also with the wild bees and wasps. One season I made a collection of bumblebee honey, studying the habits of five or six different kinds and rifling their nests. I kept my store of bumble-bee honey in the attic where I had a small box full of the comb and a large phial filled with the honey. How well I came to know the different dispositions of the various kinds—the small red-vested that made its nest in a hole in the ground; the small ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... a large stock yet in reserve, and I think, papa, that I'll ask Bob and Bumble to visit ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... before that, Seemed like I saw the march o' regiments o' children, Marching to the robin's fife and cricket's rat-ta-tat! Lily-banners overhead, with the dew upon 'em, On flashed the little army, as with sword and flame; Like the buzz o' bumble-wings, with the honey on 'em, Came an eerie, cheery chant, ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley
... fixed on something directly in front of him. He does not seem to be a boy given to day-dreaming, and he is much too active to sit still a long time. It must be something very interesting which awakens his curiosity. Perhaps a bumble-bee, buzzing in and out the bell-shaped blossoms of some sweet wild flower, catches his eye, and he almost holds his ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... information as this: 'California. Sacramento, on the Sacramento River.' Over and over, time and again, they rehearse all these bowlders, etc., describing each minutely and by name, with its surroundings. Then when the children are old enough, they take them around to beat the bounds like Bumble the Beadle; and so wonderful is the Indian memory naturally, and so faithful has been their instruction, that the little shavers generally recognize the objects from the descriptions of them previously given by their mothers. If an Indian knows but little ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... boy's progress, that she took his history into her bedroom (where it was discovered, under Blatherwick's Voice from Mesopotamia, by her ladyship's maid), and that Kew laughed so immensely at Mr. Bumble, the Beadle, as to endanger the reopening ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... like a lion who has been stung by a bumble-bee; she places herself once more, and of her own accord, upon the griddle of suspicion, and begins her struggle with the ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... he began bluffly, "it's a cursed shame! I'm hanged if it isn't! If we weren't so solemn, my boy, I should quote Bumble about the law. Of course it's the grossest absurdity, and as far as I'm concerned——. By Jove, Piers!" he cried, with sudden change of subject, "if you knew the hard times Biddy and I have been going through! Eh, but she's a brick, is Biddy; she sent you her love, ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... like a golden river, streaming down between the two rows of houses, and always in the same direction, down to the sea. Then a speck of white down came floating on the air, followed by whitish-gray thistle-seeds, and a whole swarm of gnats, and a big broad bumble-bee swung to and fro. All these eddied, gleaming, in the open doorway, and they went on circling as though there was something there which attracted them all—doubtless an accident, or perhaps ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... by appointment on the first ridge of Bore Hill. A sunny summer morning smiled fresh after the rain. Bumble-bees bustled busily about the closed lips of the red-rattle, and ripe gorse pods burst with little elastic explosions in the ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... besides, to the Crumpetty Tree Came the Stork, the Duck, and the Owl; The Snail and the Bumble-Bee, The Frog and the Fimble Fowl (The Fimble Fowl, with a Corkscrew leg); And all of them said, "We humbly beg We may build our homes on your lovely Hat,— Mr. Quangle Wangle, grant us that! Mr. Quangle ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... steps and laughed until a busy old bumble-bee came down from a late honeysuckle blossom and buzzed around to see what it was all about. Henrietta's statement of the case was a graphic and just one. Sallie has got a tendril around Henrietta which grows by the day. Poor tot, she does have a hard and hardening time—and ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... it easy for a Frog to jog On with a kind King Log. But in the fulness of the time, there came A would-be monarch—Legion his fit name; A Plebs-appointed Autocrat, Stork-throated, Goggle-eyed, Paul-Pry-coated; A poking, peering, pompous, petty creature, A Bumble-King, with beak for its chief feature. This new King Stork, With a fierce, fussy appetite for work; Not satisfied with fixing like a vice Authority on Town and Country Mice, Tried to extend his sway to pools and bogs, And rule ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... got old GOVERNOR HANCOCK out. The Governor came with his Lighthorse Troop And his mounted truckmen, all cock-a-hoop; Halberds glittered and colors flew, French horns whinnied and trumpets blew, The yellow fifes whistled between their teeth, And the bumble-bee bass-drums boomed beneath; So he rode with all his band, Till the President met him, cap in hand. The Governor "hefted" the crowns, and said,— "A will is a will, and the Parson's dead." The Governor hefted the crowns. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... what can? What is there like it? Has a church-bell any tone approximating it even? Has a violin? Has a hautboy? Has a French horn? Has a jew's-harp? Ay, that's the thing! A Jew's-harp has something like it; and so—so has a bumble-bee. A thought strikes me! It is possible that Zounds and Sounds are—Yes,' said I, rising and shouting with the excitement, 'Zounds and Sounds are bumble-bees!—bumble-bees curiously prepared; gathered in some warm climate where they abound, and pickled! Henceforth let no man ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... limitations, he resembles Dickens; and had he illustrated more of that writer's works the resemblance would probably have been more evident. In "Oliver Twist," for example, where Dickens is strong, Cruikshank is strong; where Dickens is weak, he is weak too. His Fagin, his Bill Sikes, his Bumble, and their following, are on a level with Dickens's conceptions; his Monk and Rose Maylie are as poor as the originals. But as the defects of Dickens are overbalanced by his merits, so Cruikshank's strength is far in excess of his weakness. It is not to his melodramatic heroes ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... you'll forget that I wouldn't let you kiss me, won't you?" he answered as he drew back from the table and lit a cigarette after passing me the case. "Everybody calls me Buzz the Bumble Bee because of a historic encounter of mine with a whole nest of bumblebees right out here in the General's garden. It is a title of heroism and I'd like to have you use it as if we'd been kids together as we were slated ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... oh, I nearly died of fright, and I ran and ran all the way to Wenmere Woods, and I meant never to come back again—never! And it was all Mrs. Henderson's fault that I did come—at least Mrs. Henderson's and Bumble's, and," drawing herself up with great dignity, "I am never going to speak to either of them again. When I had had my tea—she gave me cream and jam, but not any ham—and when I had played about for a little while, she told me she thought I had better be going home, ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... snow-level. And why? Because it's too cold for them? Oh, dear, no: on sunny days in early English spring, when the thermometer doesn't rise above freezing in the shade, you will see both the honey-bees and the great black bumble as busy as their conventional character demands of them among the golden cups of the first timid crocuses. Give the bee sunshine, indeed, with a temperature just about freezing-point, and he'll flit about joyously on his communistic errand. But bees, one ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... said the clown, "the red bumble-bee on the top of the thistle yonder, and bring me ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... Where the Little People are; Where the clover-tops are trees, And the rain-pools are the seas, And the leaves like little ships Sail about on tiny trips; And above the daisy tree Through the grasses, High o'erhead the Bumble Bee Hums and passes. In that forest to and fro I can wander, I can go; See the spider and the fly, And the ants go marching by Carrying parcels with their feet Down the green and grassy street I can in the sorrel sit Where ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... A great crowd of people, among them many women, and even little children, flocked into the building in a very short time, thronged about the bier, the black table, and Panna, who was leaning against it, carrying on a low, eager hum of conversation till it seemed as though countless swarms of bumble-bees were ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... squirrels brought a present of wild honey; it was so sweet and sticky that they licked their fingers as they put it down upon the stone. They had stolen it out of a bumble BEES' nest on the tippity ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... door-posts, and waiting to see if anything would happen! As a rule, nothing did happen, but there was no knowing what joyful day might bring a new sensation. Sometimes there was a dog-fight. Once—thrilling recollection!—Ozias Brisket's horse had run away ("Think 't 's likely a bumble-bee must ha' stung him; couldn't nothin' else ha' stirred him out of a walk, haw! haw!") and had scattered the joints of ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... shaking hands, a file or a gimlet, and a bit of tobacco, are as likely to pass as not. That warder can see every thing, my dear young Sir; but he can no more hear what we say than he can understand what a couple of bumble-bees are murmuring about who are barred up in a double window. We can therefore converse with one another as much without reserve as we please, or rather"—and here the little man's eyes twinkled significantly—"as you please. What I hear from a client in this ridiculous place is never revealed ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... nearer the warm bricks and waited, purring a bumble-y duet to pass the time. "Just look at that moon!" sighed Twinkletoes, still musically inclined. "Got whiskers or something, hasn't it?" asked Whitey staring curiously at the illuminated clock-face. ...
— The Book of the Cat • Mabel Humphrey and Elizabeth Fearne Bonsall
... sparks of fire. Not only did he see and feel, he could even hear it now: his ears were filled with a humming sound, growing louder and louder every minute, like the noise made by a large colony of bumble-bees when a person carelessly treads on their nest, and they are angered and thrown into a great commotion and swarm out to defend their home. Very soon out of this confused murmur louder, clearer sounds began to rise; and these ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... holiday idleness, to look about at other things in the unfrequented wilderness through which the river ran. To trace the raven by following it home seemed too difficult, but it was easy to follow a great bumble-bee, which went blundering by, alighting upon a block of stone, took flight again, and landed upon a slope covered with moss, entering at last a hole which went sloping ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... Playing bumble-puppy with Minnie Beebe, niece to the rector, and aged thirteen—an ancient and most honourable game, which consists in striking tennis-balls high into the air, so that they fall over the net and immoderately bounce; some hit Mrs. Honeychurch; ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... pond the yellow iris hangs out its golden banners over which the dragon fly skims. The hedgerows are gay with the full-blown dog-roses, the bells of the bilberries droop down along the wood-side, and the red-hipped bumble bees hum over them. Out of the woodland and up Snaperake Lane I rise to the moorland, and then the sea coast comes in sight, and the longing to know what ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... great bumble-bee, with a band of red gold across his back, flew up, and hovered near, wavering to and fro in the air as he stayed to ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... some minutes before he could find out what they were doing, but at last he discovered that they had found a bumble-bees' nest. They had long paddles in their hands and were running around, yelling, and waving the paddles frantically. Occasionally one of the boys screamed, and then several of the others would run toward him, all beating the air with ...
— Hazel Squirrel and Other Stories • Howard B. Famous
... at her apologetically and trotted off. Her gaze followed him wistfully, for he was a very human dear dog, and with a sympathetic understanding of all her difficulties in his deep topaz eyes. After that she had as companions a couple of butterflies and a bumble-bee and a perky, portly robin who hopped within an inch of her feet and looked up at her sideways out of his hard little eye (so different from the dog's) with the expression of one who would say: "The most beauteous and delectable worm I have ever encountered. If I were a bit bigger, say ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... "digests"! "Convenience of reference." Ah! that is one of their imperent sly jests. Removal of Noosances? Yah! If we started on that lay perniskers There is more than a few in the Westries 'ud feel suthin' singein' their wiskers, Or BUMBLE'S a Dutchman. Their Circ'lar—it's mighty obliging—defines 'em, The Noosances namely; I wonder if parties read Circ'lars as signs 'em, If so, Local Government Boarders must be most oncommonly knowin', And I'd like to 'eave bricks at that DILKE and his long-winded myrmidon OWEN. The public's ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... cable goes down into the sea, to reappear again upon the distant shores of Portugal. From here the signals are sent that give notice of arriving ships. Beneath the cliffs rises out of the sea that strange black crag, looking like a projecting pulpit, which is known as the Bumble Rock. In the green sward above the cliffs a yawning gulf opens its rocky mouth, and is called the Lion's Den. It terminates in a rocky tunnel which communicates with the sea through a natural archway. This was a cavern, the rocky roof of which fell in ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... hoaxing - to survive it - than Mr. Verdant Green; and yet, by a system of retaliation, only paralleled by the quadrupedal case of the before-mentioned elephant, and the biped-beadle case of the illustrious Mr. Bumble, who after having his own ears boxed by the late Mrs. Corney, relieved his feelings by boxing the ears of the small boy who opened the gate for him, - our hero took the greatest delight in seeking every opportunity to play off upon a Freshman some one of those numerous hoaxes which had been so ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... is a mere code address, and I use it here symbolically. I have seen commerce pretty close. I know what it is worth, and I have no particular regard for commercial magnates, but one must protest against these Bumble-like proceedings. Is it indignation at the loss of so many lives which is at work here? Well, the American railroads kill very many people during one single year, I dare say. Then why don't these dignitaries come down on the presidents of their own ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... When loud the bumble-bee makes haste, Belated, thriftless, vagrant, And golden-rod is dying fast, And lanes ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... not a fearful thing. Whatever had been in Faith's speech, her look, bright, wistful, and happy, had no fear, truly bumble though it was. "There is no danger of my loving this letter too much"—she said as she carefully restored it to its envelope; said with a secret utterance of ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... coming down on the pump-handle with a rush that flooded him with water and sent him off blowing the tide from his nostrils like a whale. Perhaps these things were permitted because the sight of the victim's suffering was so funny. Half the pleasure in fighting wasps or bumble-bees was in killing them and destroying their nests; the other half was in seeing the fellows get stung. If you could fool a fellow into a mass-meeting of bumble-bees, and see him lead them off in a steeple-chase, it was right and fair ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... spring, the most joyful season of the year? It is then that the spring bonnet of the workaday world crosses the earth's orbit and makes the bank account of the husband and father look fatigued. The low shoe and the low hum of the bumble-bee are again with us. The little striped hornet heats his nose with a spirit lamp and goes forth searching for the man with the linen pantaloons. All nature is full of life and activity. So is the man with the linen pantaloons. Anon, the thrush will ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... no very great chance of hiding myself, so resolved to run up one of the houses, and get in at the first window I found open, and trust to the temper of some little boy or girl, rather than starve. The house I chanced to ascend belonged to Alderman Bumble. I happened to enter the window of Miss Henrietta Bumble's chamber; so I crept into her cap, which was lying in a chair, and lay till she wanted to put it on. I chanced to lay in such a manner, that she distinguished me as she lay in bed; and bouncing out, she took ...
— The Adventures of a Squirrel, Supposed to be Related by Himself • Anonymous
... as he parted the rings of her hair from her low brow. 'I don't know whether I am crazy or not They say so, and perhaps I am, when my head is full of bumble-bees.' ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... blackbird an' catbird beat us holler? Does the little, chatterin', sassy wren, No bigger'n my thumb, know more than men? Jest show me that! Ur prove't the bat Hez got more brains than's in my hat, An' I'll back down, an' not till then!" He argued further, "Nur I can't see What's the use o' wings to a bumble-bee, Fur to git a livin' with, more'n to me; Ain't my business Important's his'n is? That Icarus Made a perty muss: Him an' his daddy Daedalus They might 'a' knowed wings made o' wax Wouldn't stand sun-heat an' hard whacks. I'll make ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... other hand, many a homely name has a complimentary meaning. Mr. Wegg did not like the name Boffin, but its oldest form is bon-fin, good and fine. In 1273 Mr. Bumble's name was spelt bon-bel, good and beautiful. With these we may group Bunker, of which the oldest form is bon-quer (bon coeur), and Boffey, which corresponds to the common French name Bonnefoy, good faith; ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... "Never lose your head." My most favourite form of literature, I may remark, is accounts of mountaineering exploits, though I have never seen a glacier or a permanent snow mountain in my life. I do not care a row of pins how badly they may be written, and what form of bumble-puppy grammar and composition is employed, as long as the writer will walk along the edge of a precipice with a sheer fall of thousands of feet on one side and a sheer wall on the other; or better still crawl up an arete with a precipice on either. Nothing on earth would persuade me ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... lips together like the stem-end of a tomato and shot a bumble-bee dead that had lit on a weed seven feet away. One after another the several chewers expressed a charge of tobacco juice and delivered it at the deceased with steady, ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... flaming Cock's Comb by the little path. I hear the honeybees droning in the Crab Apple tree by the back gate, and watch the robins crowding the branches of the Mountain Ash, where the bright red berries cluster. I see the terrible bumble-bee bear down the Poppy on its slender stem and go buzzing ...
— The Long Ago • Jacob William Wright
... but somewhat odious, and certainly at times very absurd officer. He was in a degree a constable, a selectman, a teacher, a tax-collector, an inspector, a sexton, a home-watcher, and above all, a Puritan Bumble, whose motto was Hie et ubique. He was, in fact, a general law-enforcer and order-keeper, whose various duties, wherever still necessary and still performed, are now apportioned to several individuals. ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... And the man had taken a fancy to the song and remembered it after in London, and whenever it came to his mind it made him think of evenings—the kind you don't get in London—and he heard a soft wind going idly over the moor and the bumble-bees in a hurry, and forgot the noise of the traffic. And always, whenever he heard men speak of Time, he grudged to Time most this song. Once afterwards he went to that Northern moor again and found the tiny valley, but there was no old woman in the ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... so far without one. Did I have one on the Miele? And yet I was the only woman on board. There are only three things I am afraid of—bumble-bees, scarlet fever, and chaperones. Ugh! the clucking, evil-minded monsters, finding wrong in everything, seeing sin in the most innocent actions, and suggesting sin—yes, causing ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... retreat; and then I was following a line of bees. I lost the bees but I got the gentians. How curiously this flower looks, with its deep blue petals folded together so tightly—a bud and yet a blossom. It is the nun among our wild flowers, a form closely veiled and cloaked. The buccaneer bumble-bee sometimes tries to rifle it of its sweets. I have seen the blossom with the bee entombed in it. He had forced his way into the virgin corolla as if determined to know its secret, but he had never returned with the knowledge ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... stores it in the hive, is one of the most fascinating of stories, as good as a fairy tale. In connection with this comes very naturally the story of the bees and the pollen. The child will be delighted to learn that the bees collect pollen as well as honey; that the honey bees and bumble-bees have baskets on their legs on purpose to carry it home; that they knead it up with honey and make it into what is known ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... country mansion sort of a place. Might have come straight, slap-bang out of a novel! You should see the Bumble Bee! I can tell you she's pleased with life! Buzzing about no end! Even the Wasp's got a smile on! Fact! You needn't look so incredulous. ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... filled the air. First like the drone of a huge bumble-bee, it gradually increased in intensity. The ranchers strained their eyes toward the east, where the copper tint had merged to a sickly green. A light ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... the march o' regiments o' children, Marching to the robin's fife and cricket's rat-ta-tat! Lily-banners overhead, with the dew upon 'em, On flashed the little army, as with sword and flame; Like the buzz o' bumble-wings, with the honey on 'em, Came an eerie, cheery chant, chiming as ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley
... Heart,—Only a few lines in the press of business to tell you I am well, but very lonely, with a view out over the green, in this dull, rainy weather, while the bumble-bees hum and the sparrows twitter. Grand audience tomorrow. It's vexatious that I have to buy linen, towels, table-cloths, and sheets. * * * Farewell. Hearty love, and write! Your ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... supply electric power or interfere with transit, is accountable for much disheartening bungling. Instead of taking a clear line from the outset, and denouncing these glorified vestries as useless, impossible and entirely unscientific organs, too many Socialists tried to claim Bumble as their friend and use him as their tool. And Bumble turned out to be a very bad friend and ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... grandmother. "What in the world do you want with bees? Isn't it bad enough around the farm already with yellow-jackets and bumble-bees, without bringing any more here? I should think you would get stung enough by the wild bees without wanting to bring a lot of ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... breath was stirring. They looked like whitest snow-flakes, yet stung his cheeks like sparks of fire. Not only did he see and feel, he could even hear it now: his ears were filled with a humming sound, growing louder and louder every minute, like the noise made by a large colony of bumble-bees when a person carelessly treads on their nest, and they are angered and thrown into a great commotion and swarm out to defend their home. Very soon out of this confused murmur louder, clearer ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... fairies after this," said the little green man, as he changed into a bumble bee and flew off. Now, how would you like to hear about Susie and the fairy godmother ...
— Sammie and Susie Littletail • Howard R. Garis
... brook for our dinner, and one incident of that meal I think of always when I think of Uncle Eb. It shows the manner of man he was and with what understanding and sympathy he regarded every living thing. In rinsing his teapot he accidentally poured a bit of water on a big bumble-bee. The poor creature struggled to lift hill, and then another downpour caught him and still another until his wings fell drenched. Then his breast began heaving violently, his legs stiffened behind him and ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... note: bumble-bee?] voice of the crowd below the windows watching Volney Sprague's bulletin suddenly lifted in a lion roar. Elation in that quarter was ominous, and Shelby drew a curtain. It appeared that a minor revolt against the ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... a lion who has been stung by a bumble-bee; she places herself once more, and of her own accord, upon the griddle of suspicion, and begins her struggle with the ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... doubt, They got old GOVERNOR HANCOCK out. The Governor came, with his Light-horse Troop And his mounted truckmen, all cock-a-hoop; Halberds glittered and colors flew, French horns whinnied and trumpets blew, The yellow fifes whistled between their teeth And the bumble-bee bass-drums boomed beneath; So he rode with all his band, Till the President met him, cap in hand. - The Governor "hefted" the crowns, and said, - "A will is a will, and the Parson's dead." The Governor hefted the crowns. Said he, - "There is your p'int. And here's my fee. These are the terms ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Mischief. His Little Cousin and the "Gnats." The Aurora Borealis. A Bumble-bee Scrape. Another Bee Scrape. Justification by Faith Alone. Readiness to Fight. Love of Justice. No ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... me into this folly was a bumble of the utmost beauty. The bars of his coat "burned" as "brightly" as those of the tiger in Wombwell's menagerie, and his fur was softer than my mother's black velvet mantle. I knew, for I had kissed him lightly as he sat on the window-frame. ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... ain't fought out any bumble-bees' nest since the time you got one up your pant leg and pretty near pounded yourself to death with a ball bat," said Sim. "Can you still run as fast as the time Wert Payley and I dared ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... abuses of his institutions been portrayed! How have the poor-house, the jail, the police courts of justice, passed before his magic mirror, and displayed to us the petty tyranny of the low-minded official, from the magnificent Mr. Bumble, and the hard-hearted Mr. Roker, to the authoritative Justice Fang, the positive Judge Starleigh! And as we contemplate them, how strongly have we realized the time-worn evils of some of the systems they revealed to our eyesight, sharpened to detect ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... A bumble-bee lit on a hollyhock flower That was wet with the rain of a morning shower. While the honey he sipped His left foot slipped, And he could n't fly ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... experience was very convincing. I have known people who "have gone where money was" and have fallen honestly and rapturously into love, but you have got to be very sure that money in such a case is not the motive. If it is the penalty never fails to follow. Mr. Bumble married Mrs. Corney for "six teaspoons, a pair of sugar tongs, and a milk-pot, with a small quantity of secondhand furniture and twenty pounds in money." And in two months he regretted his bargain and admitted that ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... workshop the light was like a golden river, streaming down between the two rows of houses, and always in the same direction, down to the sea. Then a speck of white down came floating on the air, followed by whitish-gray thistle-seeds, and a whole swarm of gnats, and a big broad bumble-bee swung to and fro. All these eddied, gleaming, in the open doorway, and they went on circling as though there was something there which attracted them all—doubtless an accident, or perhaps ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... doubly perilous by a sea-covered stack of rocks lying to the southward. Before oil was introduced for the lamps it is said the lantern was lit by coal-fires—a kind of first-hand use of gas. Below the lighthouse is the striking Bumble Rock, and close to this the hollow known as the Lion's Den, formed by a natural sudden subsidence in 1847. This formation was an immediate object-lesson as to the manner in which these remarkable hollows, caverns, and rock-freaks have been ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... yard. Us had a white teacher and all he larnt slave chillun was jus' plain readin' and writin'. I had to pass Dr. Willingham's office lots and he was all de time pesterin' me 'bout spellin'. One day he stopped me and axed me if I could spell 'bumble bee widout its tail,' and he said dat when I larnt to spell it, he would gimme some candy. Mr. Sanders, at Lexin'ton, gimme a dime onct. It was de fust money I ever had. I was plumb rich and I never ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... "It was a Bumble Bee," he comforted her. "It came between us for a bit, its shadow fell upon you, nothing more! Such things will happen; we must be prepared for them. It was nothing in ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... not feeling inclined to mix with coxcombs like Ripple, (here the Queen frowned, and Ripple, who was just behind him, made a grimace,) I went to one of the mushroom tables, and sat down to finish my memorial regarding the loan for the hospital for sick bumble-bees, when this torment of a Slyboots comes up, and looking over my shoulder, exclaims, 'What! my lord; surely you are not going to stupefy the Queen with the odious sick bumble-bee memorial ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... and enameled wings for the girls and stick pins with bumble bees in black and gold for the boys. On the back of each pin was the date and ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... if anything would happen! As a rule, nothing did happen, but there was no knowing what joyful day might bring a new sensation. Sometimes there was a dog-fight. Once—thrilling recollection!—Ozias Brisket's horse had run away ("Think 't 's likely a bumble-bee must ha' stung him; couldn't nothin' else ha' stirred him out of a walk, haw! haw!") and had scattered the joints of meat all ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... answered, as he parted the rings of her hair from her low brow. 'I don't know whether I am crazy or not They say so, and perhaps I am, when my head is full of bumble-bees.' ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... in a soft shirt. There are plenty of men now who would wear dog-harness if they thought they could work more in it. I know another man who walks away out into the country every Sunday: not that he likes the country—he wouldn't recognize a bumble bee if he saw it—but he claims that if he walks on Sunday his head is as clear as a bell ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... Chorus)— Spring is coming, hear the humming Of the bumble bees; Life is waking, buds are breaking, Love is in ...
— The Last West and Paolo's Virginia • G. B. Warren
... wished himself a boy again. He was too much exhausted to take the trouble of cutting any fern or seeking for moss, but just threw himself down under a tree, when exactly above his head he heard a great buzzing as a bumble-bee alighted on a honeysuckle branch. 'What are you doing here?' asked the bee in a cross voice; 'at your age you ought to be safe ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... two saddle-horses—those were their names, Nell and Ned, a mare and a colt. Fine hacks they were, too! Anybody could ride them, they were so quiet. Dad reckoned Ned was the better of the two. He was well-bred, and had a pedigree and a gentle disposition, and a bald-face, and a bumble-foot, and a raw wither, and a sore back that gave him a habit of "flinching"—a habit that discounted his uselessness a great deal, because, when we were n't at home, the women could n't saddle him to run the cows in. Whenever ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... out to the Bumble Bee Inn for tea. You needn't be a prig about it! Lots of really nice people go, and what's the harm?" She picked up her gloves and trailed to the door. "I suppose you'll ask who I was with next, and I sha'n't tell you, my dear. I'm bored to death doing the same old ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... instructive account of the holy abbot's endeavors to purify the monastic orders from the stain of simony, her hand clutched his, and doing a delicate cake-walk she compelled him along with her, announcing, "The Hornet and the Bumble-bee went walking hand in hand!" Fancying this prank not to have been without success, she next performed an improvised pas seul illustrative of the text, "The mountains shall ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... The oppressors of the poor knew and feared him well. Injustice once proved before him, vengeance followed sure. If the law would not help, he never hesitated to employ lawlessness, of which he could always command a satisfactory supply. Bumble might have the Board of Guardians at his back, Shylock legal support for his pound of flesh; but sooner or later the dark night brought punishment, a ducking in dock basin or canal, "Brutal Assault Upon a Respected Resident" (according to the local papers), the "miscreants" always ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... The Governor came with his Lighthorse Troop And his mounted truckmen, all cock-a-hoop; Halberds glittered and colors flew, French horns whinnied and trumpets blew, The yellow fifes whistled between their teeth, And the bumble-bee bass-drums boomed beneath; So he rode with all his band, Till the President met him, cap in hand. The Governor "hefted" the crowns, and said,— "A will is a will, and the Parson's dead." The Governor hefted the crowns. Said he,— "There is your ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... made from a quill and a tiny piece of cork, that brought him many a fish from the centre of a mill-pond. He knew the best baits for every season,—worms, white grubs, striped minnows, miller's thumbs, bumble-bees, grasshoppers, young field-mice,—and he knew ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... you see, he started with a fly, as they say, and now it's grown to a bumble-bee. It was a fly then, and now—it's a bumble-bee.... And he still loves her. Look at him, he loves her! I expect he's walking now to the town to get a glimpse of her with one eye.... He'll get a glimpse ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... was the boy on 'is back? Why, 'e went past All of a minute, and off down the track. —"The 'orse went as fast?" True, so 'e did! But, my eyes, what a treat! 'Ow can I notice the 'ands and the seat Of each bumble-faced kid of a boy that I meet? Lor'! ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... and habits of all the common birds, and with field mice and the frogs, toads, lizards, and snakes. Also with the wild bees and wasps. One season I made a collection of bumblebee honey, studying the habits of five or six different kinds and rifling their nests. I kept my store of bumble-bee honey in the attic where I had a small box full of the comb and a large phial filled with the honey. How well I came to know the different dispositions of the various kinds—the small red-vested that made its nest in a hole in ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... of what was expected of him; and his thick voice drowsed in the still air like the obstinate droning of an enormous bumble-bee. Captain Whalley did not know what was the force or the weakness that prevented him from saying good-night and walking away. It was as though he had been too tired to make the effort. How queer. More queer than any of Ned's instances. Or ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... Hagerstown, which developed a hornets' nest of sharpshooters armed with telescopic rifles, who could pick a man's ear off half-a-mile away. The bullets from their guns had a peculiar sound, something like the buzz of a bumble-bee, and the troopers' horses would stop, prick up their ears and gaze in the direction whence the hum of those invisible messengers could be heard. Unable to reach them mounted, we finally deployed dismounted along a staked rail fence. The confederates ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... building in a very short time, thronged about the bier, the black table, and Panna, who was leaning against it, carrying on a low, eager hum of conversation till it seemed as though countless swarms of bumble-bees ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... face since Dakota Milt chuckled, "The Teal is a grand car for mountains. Aside from overheating, bum lights, thin upholstery, faulty ignition, tissue-paper brake-bands, and this-here special aviation engine, specially built for a bumble-bee, it's what the ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... stop with the name of a plant. That is a mere beginning. Even slight attention will uncover many fascinating things in the lives of plants. Why cannot a farmer raise a good crop of clover-seed without the bumble-bees? What devices are there among the Orchids to bring about cross-pollination? (See "Our Native Orchids," by William Hamilton Gibson). Examine the flower of the wild Blue Flag, and see whether you can determine how ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... in the handwriting of a fussy officious "bumble" friend of the wealthy man, who dwelt in the town of Covelly. It ran ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... the ear without causing the observer the least discomfort. You would never have imagined, dear master, the charm which one feels in perceiving these thousands of imperceptible sounds which are confounded, on a fine summer day, in an immense murmuring. The bumble-bee has his song as well as the nightingale, the honey-bee is the warbler of the mosses, the cricket is the lark of the tall grass, the maggot is the wren—it has only a sigh, ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... when the explosion came. Branches and pieces of tree trunk were whirled upward, and the air became populated with deadly bumble bees and humming birds, for such is the sound that the shell splinters make. When I essayed our shell hole afterward, I couldn't fathom how five of us had managed to accommodate ourselves in it, but in the rush of necessity, ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... manner, and their sympathy is quickly influenced by the example of those around them. Mrs. Howard led the traveller to speak of what he had seen in different countries—of natural history—of the beaver, and the moose-deer, and the humming-bird, that is scarcely larger than a bumble bee; and the mocking-bird, that can imitate the notes of all other birds. Charles niched himself into a corner of the sofa upon which the gentlemen were sitting, and grew very attentive. He was rather surprised to perceive that his tutor was as ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... it while there was enough to catch even a bumble-bee. The birds are back. They came directly I'd gone a ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... they had left it the night before. Rollo felt quite confident of the success of his experiment. The only thing that gave him any uneasiness was the want of a queen bee. He and Henry were just speculating upon the expediency of sending in a bumble-bee instead, for a king, when their attention was arrested by hearing Jonas calling Rollo. They looked up, and saw him standing at ...
— Rollo's Experiments • Jacob Abbott
... side steps and laughed until a busy old bumble-bee came down from a late honeysuckle blossom and buzzed around to see what it was all about. Henrietta's statement of the case was a graphic and just one. Sallie has got a tendril around Henrietta which grows by the day. Poor ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the hive, especially the stings. Indeed, some schemes of labor and Poor Law reform recently advanced by distinguished Socialists, amount to little more than putting the largest number of people in the despotic power of Mr. Bumble. Apparently, progress means being ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... in order to get something with the rich honey-producing properties of the red, and yet with a short blossom into which the honey-bee might insert its proboscis. The red clover produces a vast amount of food for the bumble-bee, but is of no use at all to the honey-bee. I had hoped to procure a variety which might answer all the purposes of our farmers as a field crop. Quite recently I have ascertained that such a hybrid has been originated in Sweden, and has been imported into this country, by Mr. B. ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... with sweet honeycomb To feast the bumble bees, Saying, "O bees, be this your home, For ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... fierceness. We were all out on the piazza—as the coolest place we could find—my wife, my sister-in-law and I. The only sounds that broke the Sabbath stillness were the hum of an occasional vagrant bumble-bee, or the fragmentary song of a mocking-bird in a neighboring elm, who lazily trolled a stave of melody, now and then, as a sample of what he could do in the cool of the morning, or after a light shower, when the conditions ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... nice to hear the bumble-bee When you go out a fishin', But if you happen to sot down on him, He'll spoil ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... botany, declared that most of them were orchids, several of which were new to him. The air of the place was heavy with mingled odours—one might almost have called them perfumes, were it not for a certain smack of rankness and pungency in them—and alive with birds, varying in size from that of a bumble bee up to that of a carrion crow, a few specimens of which could be seen perched here and there on the topmost branches of the tallest trees. Several of the birds were of the humming bird or sunbird species, and these, of course, gleamed and flashed in the sunlight like winged ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... blind a bumble-bee was beating itself against the window-pane and buzzing. Sofya Petrovna looked at the threads on the socks, listened to the bee, and pictured how she would set off . . . . vis-a-vis Ilyin would sit, day and night, never taking ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... fairy land afar Where the Little People are; Where the clover-tops are trees, And the rain-pools are the seas, And the leaves like little ships Sail about on tiny trips; And above the daisy tree Through the grasses, High o'erhead the Bumble Bee Hums and passes. In that forest to and fro I can wander, I can go; See the spider and the fly, And the ants go marching by Carrying parcels with their feet Down the green and grassy street I can ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... stood young firs and pines, as shiny as metal, and so motionless that the drops which still hung here and there on their needles seemed frozen. Everything was motionless under this yellow light, the grass-blades, the moss-blossoms, and the little blue butterflies, and a bumble-bee crawled into the bell of a bennet and hung there as if enchanted. In the thicket a fox drew near, his head lowered to sniff the ground, and suddenly he too stood still without stirring a muscle and stared into space, his eyes transparent ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... men who had perished by a sudden and unexpected death. When one eyed from close by the storehouse, granary, and cottage, he saw that the walls were peppered from ground to summit as with a swarm of black insects; in the centre of each spot sat a bullet, like a bumble-bee ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... middle of the low ceiling; and hung against the wall, between two glaring woodcuts representing "Lady Caroline" in red and "Highland Mary" in blue, is a deep frame filled with worsted flowers, to which a butterfly and a bumble-bee have been pinned. Paper lacework depends from their kitchen-shelves, and common eggshells, artificially colored, decorate the lilac-bushes in the side yard. They are always making new mats or piecing quilts in a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... but few birds. One sort, called pardelas by the Spaniards, burrow in the ground like rabbits, and are said to be good eating. There are also humming-birds, not much larger than bumble bees, their bills no thicker than a pin, their legs proportional to their bodies, and their minute feathers of most beautiful colours. These are seldom taken or seen but in the evenings, when they fly about, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... have you?" said Mrs. Nichols. "Mebby 'twas a bumble-bee—seems 'sef I smelt one; but like enough it's the scent ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... sought a nook Beneath a thick and widely-spreading tree, And there I sat to con my little book, My book of old black-letter grammarie. All stillness in that deep and lonely dell Save hum of bumble-bee on nimble wing, Or zephyr sporting round the wild blue bell, While fancy feigned ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... wild notion, Finding it easy for a Frog to jog On with a kind King Log. But in the fulness of the time, there came A would-be monarch—Legion his fit name; A Plebs-appointed Autocrat, Stork-throated, Goggle-eyed, Paul-Pry-coated; A poking, peering, pompous, petty creature, A Bumble-King, with beak for its chief feature. This new King Stork, With a fierce, fussy appetite for work; Not satisfied with fixing like a vice Authority on Town and Country Mice, Tried to extend his ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... animation when silently watched awhile. A timid animal world had come to life for the season. Little tadpoles and efts began to bubble up through the water, and to race along beneath it; toads made noises like very young ducks, and advanced to the margin in twos and threes; overhead, bumble-bees flew hither and thither in the thickening light, their drone coming and going like the ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... goings and comings of an ant or the capricious flight of a bumble-bee; then with his eyes lost in space, immersed in the profundity ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... She disappeared. I returned to Hafiz. Soon a bumble-bee, a great fellow splendid in gold and black and crimson, blundered into the room and immediately made furious racket against a window pane. Now I can't concentrate my mind on serious things, if there's a bumble-bee buzzing about. So I had ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... present, or to come. I in my time many thousands have directed, And likewise have as many more dissected, And I never met a gravedigger who to me objected. If a man gets nineteen bees in his bonnet, I'll cast twenty of 'em out. I've got in my pocket crutches for lame ducks, spectacles for blind bumble-bees, pack-saddles and panniers for grasshoppers, and many other needful things. Surely I can cure this poor man. Here, Slasher, take a little out of my bottle, and let it run down thy throttle; and if thou beest not quite slain, rise, man, and ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... was trying to bring Lyveden into smooth water. She had already earmarked a congenial billet at The Shrubbery, Hawthorne. The difficulty was to make Anthony apply for the post. Since Mrs. Bumble could hardly be advised to ask a footman to quit the service of the Marquess of Banff, Valerie, who was determined to remain incognito, had recourse to the Press. Her advertisement for ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... of the situation, and he directed ten thousand bees under General Bumble, and another ten thousand wasps under Colonel Hornet, to fall on the robber and cruel Sigli and sting them to death. But this was hardly necessary, as the wriggling of their bodies so fixed them to the figure that they died ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... erect, but in most species are broad and colored like the outer ones. Corresponding to the outer, perianth-segments are the three stamens and the three, petal-like divisions of the style, each bearing a transverse stigma immediately above the anther. They are pollinated by bumble-bees, and in some instances by flies of the genus Rhingia, which search for the honey, brush the pollen out of the anthers and afterwards deposit it on the stigma. According to systematic views of the monocotyledons the original prototype of the genus Iris must have had a whorl ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... suspiciously. "You've birthed another promotional bumble, Roger. I can see it in your eyes. I only hope it's not as big a one as when you put the Martian ambassador on 3D and he thanked you profusely for the gross of Puffyloaves, assuring you that he'd never slept on a softer mattress in all his life ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... of plants. It has long been esteemed for its bark and leaves as a [54] capital astringent, these containing much tannin; also for its fruit, which is supplied with malic and citric acids, pectin, and albumen. Blackberries go often by the name of "bumblekites," from "bumble," the cry of the bittern, and kyte, a Scotch word for belly; the name bumblekite being applied, says Dr. Prior, "from the rumbling and bumbling caused in the bellies of children who eat the fruit too greedily." "Rubus" is from the ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... by the black god, M. Darwin, in his Origin of Species, has called attention to the form of the comb built by this bee, and considers its irregular cells of from three to six sides intermediate in their degree of perfection between those of the bumble bee (Bombus) and the honey bee of Europe (Apis mellifica). The Caban form in connnection[TN-4] with the hive in fig. 10 may have some phonetic signifiance[TN-5] as kab is honey in Maya. This sign occurs very frequently in the pages devoted ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... that there was a hen cackling in the barn, and a big bumble-bee buzzing and bumbling around in a consequential way among the roses under the window, and I could hear the voices of the children in the front yard playing ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... file or a gimlet, and a bit of tobacco, are as likely to pass as not. That warder can see every thing, my dear young Sir; but he can no more hear what we say than he can understand what a couple of bumble-bees are murmuring about who are barred up in a double window. We can therefore converse with one another as much without reserve as we please, or rather"—and here the little man's eyes twinkled significantly—"as you please. What I hear from a client in this ridiculous ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... fifteen hundred feet below snow-level. And why? Because it's too cold for them? Oh, dear, no: on sunny days in early English spring, when the thermometer doesn't rise above freezing in the shade, you will see both the honey-bees and the great black bumble as busy as their conventional character demands of them among the golden cups of the first timid crocuses. Give the bee sunshine, indeed, with a temperature just about freezing-point, and he'll flit about joyously on his communistic errand. But bees, one ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... trait upon trait, must be laid in the lives of the children," said Mr. Goodloe, slowly, and he smiled as across from the Little House came wee Susan's exquisite treble in a waltz song which was backed up by Mother Spurlock's bumble and Charlotte's none too accurate accompaniment. And we all ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... be the last—for I never saw her again. But in proof that she loved me to the end, I was remembered in her will; and did I not believe that if living, her generous affection, that was the precious oil through which floated her eccentricities like "flies as big as bumble-bees," would smooth over all appearance of ridicule in these reminiscences, they should never amuse any one save myself. But really, I cannot better carry out her restless desire of pleasing others, than by reproducing the merriment which throughout a long life was occasioned by her, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... have Comic Histories, Comic Geographies, and Comic Grammars, but a Comic Bible would horrify us. At sight of such blasphemy Bumble would stand aghast, and Mrs. Grundy would scream with terror. But Bumble and Mrs. Grundy are less important personages in France, and so the country of Rabelais and Voltaire produces what we are unable ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... in, leaving the boy in the summer-house. He sat there gazing out at a bed of tulips, which, although they had closed for the night, could not go quite asleep for the wind that kept waving them about. All at once he saw a great bumble-bee fly out of ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... was alone until he began to back the team to rush the hill once more. Then he heard angry exclamations coming from the rear of the wagon—exclamations which sounded not unlike the buzzing of an enraged bumble-bee. He stretched his neck and saw that which suggested an overgrown hoop-snake rolling down the hill. At the bottom a little mud-coated man stood up. The part of his face that was visible above his beard was pale with anger. His brown eyes gleamed ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... these plants, for goldfinches were darting around inviting all creation to "See me?" as they gathered the silken down for nest lining. Over the sweetly perfumed purple heads, the humming-birds held high carnival on Sunshine Hillside all the day. The honey and bumble bees fled at the birds' approach, but what were these others, numerous everywhere, that clung to the blooms, greedily thrusting their red noses between the petals, and giving place ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Man's Cave, 'cause a skellington was found there," observed the child as they passed a dark, yawning mouth in the cliff. "And that's Bumble Cave, 'cause the bumblebees make nests in the top of it. And here's Smuggler's Cave, 'cause the smugglers used to hide things ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... luncheon and then everybody must take a nap," commanded Judith and everybody was very glad to, after the strenuous morning's work, but first Billy slipped out to the carriage house and pulled the corn cob out of the bumble ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... jovially to church arm in arm with the pretty cause of all this beneficent disturbance. And the spectacle is mighty taking and commendable; but you'll excuse me for holding that it is not Love. It bears about the same relation to Love that Bumble-puppy bears to good whist. Among the eccentricities that make up the Average Man I find none more diverting than his complacent belief that he is, or has been, or will certainly some day be, in love. As a matter of fact, the capacity ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... safe under leaf and flower, Has found a roof, knowing how true thou art; The bumble-bee, within the last half-hour, Has ceased to hug the honey to its heart; While in the barnyard, under shed and cart, Brood-hens have housed.—But I, who scorned thy power, Barometer of the birds,—like August there,— Beneath a beech, dripping from foot to hair, Like some ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... soldiers. This engagement we called the capture of fort "Hell." For some time thereafter we made regular raids into the surrounding country in quest of an enemy. We were eventually successful in our quest, as in quick order we ran across and captured a company of bumble bees. This we called the "Battle of the Wilderness." Victory over a nest of hornets we called the capture of "Fort Sumter." A large nest of wasps gave us perhaps the hardest fight of our campaigning. This we ran across in the fields ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... there, I'll have even ripe tomatoes! 'Cause, with sun all the time, the stuff grows like fury, they say. I'll have string beans and onions and flowers, anyhow! Helps keep the air oxygen-fresh, too. Wish I had a few bumble bees! 'Cause now I'll have to ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... searching along the hedge-bank. A dozen times she vanished into a hole, and, after a minute or so, came out again with the air of one dissatisfied. Half-a-dozen times she came out tail first, buzzing warnings and very angry, at the invitation of a bumble-bee queen, a big, hook-jawed, carnivorous beetle in shining mail, and so forth, but ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... expressive word,—an informer, both in and out of meeting,—a very necessary, but somewhat odious, and certainly at times very absurd officer. He was in a degree a constable, a selectman, a teacher, a tax-collector, an inspector, a sexton, a home-watcher, and above all, a Puritan Bumble, whose motto was Hie et ubique. He was, in fact, a general law-enforcer and order-keeper, whose various duties, wherever still necessary and still performed, are now apportioned to several individuals. The ecclesiastical functions and authority of ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... which originated in the cell of an obscure cloister, had already germinated in the mind of Waldo; how the rich merchant of Lyons, in search of the treasures of the age, was suddenly changed into a bumble disciple, voluntarily poor; and what were the principal traits of his ministry, his voyages, his relations, his life, his death! Concerning such men, we cannot regret too deeply the almost utter silence of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... pleasant holiday idleness, to look about at other things in the unfrequented wilderness through which the river ran. To trace the raven by following it home seemed too difficult, but it was easy to follow a great bumble-bee, which went blundering by, alighting upon a block of stone, took flight again, and landed upon a slope covered with moss, entering at last a hole which went ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... And no one never has no doubts about his orthodoxy; Whereby—if folks was wise—instead of either of them Scholars, And straining their own lungs along of contradictious hollers, They'll lend their ears to reason, and take my advice as follers, Namely—Bumble for the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... manifold and laborious as its duties are. He must have a quick intelligence and a retentive memory. He is a public carrier of knowledge in its germs. His office is like that which naturalists attribute to the bumble-bee,—he lays up little honey for himself, but he conveys the fertilizing ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... voice of the Bumble-Bee was heard in every nook and corner of the wood, and from end to end of the deep valley, for Unktomee, the generous, was giving a feast, and the Bee was his herald, the crier ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman
... into the sea, to reappear again upon the distant shores of Portugal. From here the signals are sent that give notice of arriving ships. Beneath the cliffs rises out of the sea that strange black crag, looking like a projecting pulpit, which is known as the Bumble Rock. In the green sward above the cliffs a yawning gulf opens its rocky mouth, and is called the Lion's Den. It terminates in a rocky tunnel which communicates with the sea through a natural archway. This ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... scenes and characters than any other novel he wrote, excepting "Hard Times" and "Great Expectations." But the description of the workhouse, its inmates and governors, is done in Dickens's best style, and was a frontal attack on the Poor Law administration of the time. Bumble, indeed, has passed into common use as the typical workhouse official of the least satisfactory sort. No less powerful than the picture of Oliver's wretched childhood is the description of the thieves' kitchen, presided over by Fagin. Bill Sikes and the Artful Dodger are household words ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... stand clumps of flower-stalks,—joe-pye-weed, boneset, goldenrod,—bare and already bleaching; and deep within their matted shade, where the brook bends about an elder bush, a single amber pendant of the jewel-weed, to which a bumble-bee comes droning on wings so loud that a little hyla near us stops his ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... says: 'Oh, dear! those horrid boys! They act so rough an' make sech a noise!' Good gracious! ye wouldn't think 'at she Could talk as loud as a bumble ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... great big dewdrop, right in the middle of a purple violet, that was growing underneath a shady fern. Oh, how beautiful it was in the sunlight, and Uncle Wiggily was glad he had looked at it. And pretty soon, as he was still looking, a big, buzzing bumble bee buzzed along and stopped to take a sip ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Travels • Howard R. Garis
... fifth day the squirrels brought a present of wild honey; it was so sweet and sticky that they licked their fingers as they put it down upon the stone. They had stolen it out of a bumble BEES' nest on the tippity top of ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... cut quill-pens, wax, matches, sealing-wax, and all scrupulously neat and orderly. There are magnificent specimens of Newfoundland dogs on the grounds, such animals as Landseer would love to paint. One of these, named Bumble, seems to be a favorite ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... clown, "the red bumble-bee on the top of the thistle yonder, and bring me the honey-bag. ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... caught in the pantry hastily devouring onions and beefsteak. To be hungry is so vulgar! One should live by nothing grosser than inhalation, and should never have an appetite greater than that of a healthy bumble-bee. But, thanks to the robust, latter-day theory, that the best saints have the best bodies, this puerile class is diminishing. For who can doubt that the senses are entitled to their full blossom? Gustation was meant to be delightful; and cooking is certainly half as good as tasting. At times one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... a toy theatre at Easton and among other things dramatized the minority report of the Poor Law Commission. The play began by the Commissioners taking to pieces Bumble the Beadle, putting him into a huge cauldron and stewing him. Then out from the cauldron leaped a renewed rejuvenated Bumble several sizes larger than when he ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... all the birds sought of these plants, for goldfinches were darting around inviting all creation to "See me?" as they gathered the silken down for nest lining. Over the sweetly perfumed purple heads, the humming-birds held high carnival on Sunshine Hillside all the day. The honey and bumble bees fled at the birds' approach, but what were these others, numerous everywhere, that clung to the blooms, greedily thrusting their red noses between the petals, and ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... what she can do; an' she don't know what she can do; but just you send for her! She'll come, and go to fussin' an' hummin' about just like an old bumble-bee, an' furst thing you know you won't know nothin', for the pain'll be gone ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... never does come down no-more! An' it's all done as easy as a set-lock rifle! The wizard climbs the danglin' string of kyarpet-rags, hand over hand; then he drifts off an' up'ards ontil he don't look bigger than a bumble-bee; an' then he's lost in the gatherin' shadows ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... after another pause, and jumping up smartly, "this will never do. Rouse yourself, John, an' give up this mumble-bumble style o' thing. Why, it'll kill you in the long-run if you don't. Besides, you promised Mr Young to carry on the work, and you must ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... down. Every one twittered and chirped, and made a great noise; but no one would give up, and all went to roost in a great state of uncertainty. But, the next day, it became evident that Mrs. Wing was right; for Major Bumble-bee came buzzing in to tell them that old Daddy Winter's hut was empty, and his white head had been seen in the sunny ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... I saw the march o' regiments o' children, Marching to the robin's fife and cricket's rat-ta-tat! Lily-banners overhead, with the dew upon 'em, On flashed the little army, as with sword and flame; Like the buzz o' bumble-wings, with the honey on 'em, Came an eerie, cheery chant, ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley
... from them, reverent, "Their bed-time 't is," she said; "The bumble-bees will wake them When April ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... the lad dropped on hands and toes and ran along like a dog, thus far untouched by bullets, though they were thick as a nest of liberated bumble bees about his head. ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... directed, And likewise have as many more dissected, And I never met a gravedigger who to me objected. If a man gets nineteen bees in his bonnet, I'll cast twenty of 'em out. I've got in my pocket crutches for lame ducks, spectacles for blind bumble-bees, pack-saddles and panniers for grasshoppers, and many other needful things. Surely I can cure this poor man. Here, Slasher, take a little out of my bottle, and let it run down thy throttle; and if thou beest not quite slain, ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... some strange motive, he took the path over the Ridge again. It had been a long day and a wearing one. He had tried Hannibal once more; but his pupils cared less for Hannibal than for the bumble-bees droning in the window-frame. For some reason the dull routine of lessons had been duller than usual. The scholars had never been so stupid. Again and again the face that he had seen rest on his arm the day before ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... greatly. The people of this village have only one spring to resort to, and it is a couple of miles from many cottages. I do not let the great dogs swim in the canal, because the people have to drink of it. But when they get into the Medway it is hard to get them out again. The other day Bumble (the son, Newfoundland dog) got into difficulties among some floating timber, and became frightened. Don (the father) was standing by me, shaking off the wet and looking on carelessly, when all of a sudden he perceived something amiss, and went in with a bound and brought Bumble ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... own, saying he was out on his own hook when the mine was located, which was a falsehood. But though Baxter claimed the mine he could not locate it, nor could I do so. It was along a creek which a certain Jack Wumble had called Bumble Bee, but we could not locate this creek, and Jack Wumble had departed for fresh fields. But I have located the old miner, and he has told me that Bumble Bee Creek was in reality one of the south branches of the ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... beheld Genestas pacing to and fro in the salon, like a bumble-bee in quest of an exit from the room which he ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... novelty! How the reformation, which originated in the cell of an obscure cloister, had already germinated in the mind of Waldo; how the rich merchant of Lyons, in search of the treasures of the age, was suddenly changed into a bumble disciple, voluntarily poor; and what were the principal traits of his ministry, his voyages, his relations, his life, his death! Concerning such men, we cannot regret too deeply the almost utter silence of this historian of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... air. First like the drone of a huge bumble-bee, it gradually increased in intensity. The ranchers strained their eyes toward the east, where the copper tint had merged to a sickly green. A light breeze sprang ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... and swore at them, the animals would not budge an inch until she permitted them to go. Here are a few of the common superstitions current in Berkshire. If a corpse be kept over a Sunday another death will occur before the week is out; should a big bumble-bee enter the window, a guest may be expected; and when the woodpecker, commonly called the yaffle, laughs, they say the rain is coming. When the thick mist lies in the valley, the people say it is the White Lady, a belief closely akin to the Dame Blanche, who is said in Normandy to haunt streams. ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... range about a thousand or fifteen hundred feet below snow-level. And why? Because it's too cold for them? Oh, dear, no: on sunny days in early English spring, when the thermometer doesn't rise above freezing in the shade, you will see both the honey-bees and the great black bumble as busy as their conventional character demands of them among the golden cups of the first timid crocuses. Give the bee sunshine, indeed, with a temperature just about freezing-point, and he'll flit about joyously on his communistic errand. But bees, one must ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... soft shirt. There are plenty of men now who would wear dog-harness if they thought they could work more in it. I know another man who walks away out into the country every Sunday: not that he likes the country—he wouldn't recognize a bumble bee if he saw it—but he claims that if he walks on Sunday his head is as clear as a bell for ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... Circus records that he was "an example to his order," and yet better than this stately panegyric is the happy accident, if it be one, that the poor flower girls of London have pitched their camp upon the steps, and have successfully defied all the efforts of Mr. Bumble to ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... down between the two rows of houses, and always in the same direction, down to the sea. Then a speck of white down came floating on the air, followed by whitish-gray thistle-seeds, and a whole swarm of gnats, and a big broad bumble-bee swung to and fro. All these eddied, gleaming, in the open doorway, and they went on circling as though there was something there which attracted them all—doubtless an accident, or ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... begin," continued Israel, still looking away from me. "We'll take old Smiler right to the Lizard, jist off Carligga Rocks, we'll kip on cloase by Polpeor, an' on to Bumble. I reckon by that time she'll be on the rocks. You c'n board 'er there, ef needs be, and we'll mit you in the saicret ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... for refurnishing and redecorating, she was busy as a bumble-bee. As the mistress of a big garden and a real kitchen she invited all her Chicago friends to come and share her good fortune. She was filled with the spirit of ownership and exulted over the four-acre patch as if it were a noble ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... hornets, flies, ants. The bumblebees, which at this season are hungry vagrants with no fixed place of abode, would gorge themselves, then creep beneath the bits of empty comb or fragments of bark and pass the night, and renew the feast next day. The bumble-bee is an insect of which the bee-hunter sees much. There are all sorts and sizes of them. They are dull and clumsy compared with the honeybee. Attracted in the fields by the bee-hunter's box, they will come up the wind on the scent and blunder into it in the ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... when silently watched awhile. A timid animal world had come to life for the season. Little tadpoles and efts began to bubble up through the water, and to race along beneath it; toads made noises like very young ducks, and advanced to the margin in twos and threes; overhead, bumble-bees flew hither and thither in the thickening light, their drone coming and going like the ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... broad and colored like the outer ones. Corresponding to the outer, perianth-segments are the three stamens and the three, petal-like divisions of the style, each bearing a transverse stigma immediately above the anther. They are pollinated by bumble-bees, and in some instances by flies of the genus Rhingia, which search for the honey, brush the pollen out of the anthers and afterwards deposit it on the stigma. According to systematic views of the monocotyledons the original prototype of the genus Iris must have had a whorl ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... "Bandy-legged Borachio Mustachio Whiskerifusticus the bold and brave Bombardino of Bagdad helped Abomilique Blue-beard Bashaw of Babelmandeb to beat down an abominable Bumble-Bee at Balsora." ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Three in a row!— Billy Bumble, Benny Bell, and little Kitty Coe. Little Kitty sighs; Little Benny cries; And little Billy Bumble pokes ...
— The Nursery, No. 103, July, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... by her indignation the absurd Fyne dog began to bark in the porch. It might have been at a trespassing bumble-bee however. That animal was capable of any eccentricity. Fyne got up quickly and went out to him. I think he was glad to leave us alone to discuss that matter of his journey to London. A sort of anti-sentimental journey. He, too, apparently, had confidence in my sagacity. It was touching, ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... day the squirrels brought a present of wild honey; it was so sweet and sticky that they licked their fingers as they put it down upon the stone. They had stolen it out of a bumble BEES' nest on the tippity top ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... nothing did happen, but there was no knowing what joyful day might bring a new sensation. Sometimes there was a dog-fight. Once—thrilling recollection!—Ozias Brisket's horse had run away ("Think 't 's likely a bumble-bee must ha' stung him; couldn't nothin' else ha' stirred him out of a walk, haw! haw!") and had scattered the joints of meat ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... have known people who "have gone where money was" and have fallen honestly and rapturously into love, but you have got to be very sure that money in such a case is not the motive. If it is the penalty never fails to follow. Mr. Bumble married Mrs. Corney for "six teaspoons, a pair of sugar tongs, and a milk-pot, with a small quantity of secondhand furniture and twenty pounds in money." And in two months he regretted his bargain and admitted that he had gone "dirt cheap." "Only two months to-morrow," ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... all,' said I, 'a flute couldn't touch that z sound. Indeed what can? What is there like it? Has a church-bell any tone approximating it even? Has a violin? Has a hautboy? Has a French horn? Has a jew's-harp? Ay, that's the thing! A Jew's-harp has something like it; and so—so has a bumble-bee. A thought strikes me! It is possible that Zounds and Sounds are—Yes,' said I, rising and shouting with the excitement, 'Zounds and Sounds are bumble-bees!—bumble-bees curiously prepared; gathered in some warm climate where they abound, and pickled! Henceforth let no man call that bee 'humble;' ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... of our soldiers. This engagement we called the capture of fort "Hell." For some time thereafter we made regular raids into the surrounding country in quest of an enemy. We were eventually successful in our quest, as in quick order we ran across and captured a company of bumble bees. This we called the "Battle of the Wilderness." Victory over a nest of hornets we called the capture of "Fort Sumter." A large nest of wasps gave us perhaps the hardest fight of our campaigning. This we ran across ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... smiles when we meet; and I don't think any the less of him because he was called "Bumble" at school and afterwards made Governor of Bombay. Men drift unconsciously into these things. But when I happen to be near him he has a nervous way of lunging with his stick that I can't quite get over. They say he once dreamt that I had poked fun at him in a newspaper; and the hallucination ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... our white folkses' back yard. Us had a white teacher and all he larnt slave chillun was jus' plain readin' and writin'. I had to pass Dr. Willingham's office lots and he was all de time pesterin' me 'bout spellin'. One day he stopped me and axed me if I could spell 'bumble bee widout its tail,' and he said dat when I larnt to spell it, he would gimme some candy. Mr. Sanders, at Lexin'ton, gimme a dime onct. It was de fust money I ever had. I was plumb rich and I never let my Daddy have no peace 'til he fetched me to town to do my tradin'. I was all sot to buy myself ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... says he looks so. The boys found a bumble bees' nest and Tubby didn't have any paddle to hit them with. So they all went for poor Tubby and they stung him so that his face is twice as ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... seed is not produced from the first cutting for the season of medium red clover. It is claimed that this is due to lack of pollenization in the blossoms, and because they are in advance of the active period of working in bumble bees, the medium through which fertilization is chiefly effected. This would seem to be a sufficient explanation as to why medium red clover plants will frequently bear seed the first year, if allowed to, though the first ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... Drat them and their "statutes" and "digests"! "Convenience of reference." Ah! that is one of their imperent sly jests. Removal of Noosances? Yah! If we started on that lay perniskers There is more than a few in the Westries 'ud feel suthin' singein' their wiskers, Or BUMBLE'S a Dutchman. Their Circ'lar—it's mighty obliging—defines 'em, The Noosances namely; I wonder if parties read Circ'lars as signs 'em, If so, Local Government Boarders must be most oncommonly knowin', And I'd like to 'eave bricks at that DILKE and his long-winded myrmidon ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... names, Nell and Ned, a mare and a colt. Fine hacks they were, too! Anybody could ride them, they were so quiet. Dad reckoned Ned was the better of the two. He was well-bred, and had a pedigree and a gentle disposition, and a bald-face, and a bumble-foot, and a raw wither, and a sore back that gave him a habit of "flinching"—a habit that discounted his uselessness a great deal, because, when we were n't at home, the women could n't saddle him to run the cows in. Whenever he saw the saddle or heard the girth-buckles ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... even than I did, and ran us in up the wind with a steady hand till the roadstead opened before us. But it was empty. Torode was off after plunder, and we turned and ran for Peter Port. We found John Ozanne as busy as a big bumble-bee, but he made time to greet my grandfather very jovially, and showed him all over his little ship with much pride. He was in high spirits and anxious to be off, especially since he ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... are! (Of course women are all alike!) While Osborne, like a good-natured bumble-bee, was buzzing noisily about, as though all the world were his clover-blossom; and Allen, so far as I know, was doing nothing; M. Godin, alert and keen despite his gentleness and a modesty which kept him for the most part unobtrusively in the shadow ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... Quinny!" said Gilbert. "I won't call you 'sloppy' again because I'm tired of telling you that, but really that's what you are. You've only got to see a beautiful woman for a couple of seconds and you start buzzing round her like a bumble bee. Of course, I'm sloppy myself. We're all sloppy. Damn it, here we are, two healthy young fellows who ought to be working hard, and we're wasting a fine morning in gabbling ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... with horns; then a part of the body and two more legs; then, with one tremendous effort, he was free!—an odd beast of no particular color, looking exceedingly damp and disagreeable, with his fat chunky body and short legs, like an exaggerated bumble-bee, only not at all pretty. He was shaky on his legs and half tumbled from his box to the window-sill, along which he walked trembling till he came to the tassel of the shade, just within his reach. This he grabbed with all four claws, his ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... pilgrimage it seemed to him, as he lay in the little bedroom, with the scent of Nell's flowers floating up to him from the garden beneath, with the sound of the sea, flinging itself against the cliffs, burring like a giant bumble bee in his ears. If any one had asked him whether his life had been worth living, he would have answered with a decided negative; and yet he was young, the gods had been exceeding good to him in many ways, almost every way, and ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... harsher than before. While they leave the home in ruins, they restore the hive, especially the stings. Indeed, some schemes of labor and Poor Law reform recently advanced by distinguished Socialists, amount to little more than putting the largest number of people in the despotic power of Mr. Bumble. Apparently, progress means being moved on—by ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... case, I looked another way while the two girls joined us, Theodora having for the moment directed my attention to a tremendously large queen bumble-bee which came booming along the ground and began burrowing in a little heap ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... buzzing visitor encroaches on its domain, and is drawn to its silken vortex, and is eventually shed below as a clean dried specimen; for this is an agalena spider, which dispenses with the winding-sheet of the field species—epeira and argiope. Last week a big bumble-bee-like fly paid me a visit and suddenly disappeared. To-day I find him dried and ready for the insect-pin and the cabinet on the window-sill beneath the web, which affords at all times its liberal entomological assortment—Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, Diptera, and ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... unexpected death. When one eyed from close by the storehouse, granary, and cottage, he saw that the walls were peppered from ground to summit as with a swarm of black insects; in the centre of each spot sat a bullet, like a bumble-bee in ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... sometimes. These gentry are much exercised in their minds by my letters about them, and some of them fly out at me very much as bumble-bees do at one who stirs up their nest. For instance, I received, not long ago, from my good friends, Messrs. Cauldwell & Whitney, an anonymous letter to them, dated at Washington, and suggesting that if I would attend what the latter calls "a seance of that ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... liked in the good things, and assured their anxious guardian that he had chosen the lunch expressly from the point of view of suitability for the delicate digestions of children. And he laid down the maxim that appetite was the safest guide in the world, and when it said "More" no one but a Bumble would ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... in shaking hands, a file or a gimlet, and a bit of tobacco, are as likely to pass as not. That warder can see every thing, my dear young Sir; but he can no more hear what we say than he can understand what a couple of bumble-bees are murmuring about who are barred up in a double window. We can therefore converse with one another as much without reserve as we please, or rather"—and here the little man's eyes twinkled significantly—"as you please. What I hear from a client in this ridiculous place is never ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... of the sewing-machine began to hum through the old house like a cheerful bumble-bee, and Mag entered upon what was certainly the happiest period of her career. Laces, silks, fine muslins—these had the effect upon her developing soul that a virgin canvas has upon the painter. Her fingers wrought with them eagerly, deftly, achieving results ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... learned how to live as comfortably in the air as they had done in the water. They increased in size and became shrubs and trees and at last they learned how to grow lovely flowers which attracted the attention of the busy big bumble-bees and the birds who carried the seeds far and wide until the whole earth had become covered with green pastures, or lay dark under the shadow of the big trees. But some of the fishes too had begun to leave the sea, and they had ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... I may remark, is accounts of mountaineering exploits, though I have never seen a glacier or a permanent snow mountain in my life. I do not care a row of pins how badly they may be written, and what form of bumble-puppy grammar and composition is employed, as long as the writer will walk along the edge of a precipice with a sheer fall of thousands of feet on one side and a sheer wall on the other; or better still crawl up an arete with a precipice on either. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... All for me the bumble-bee Drones his song in the perfect weather; And, just on purpose to sing to me, Thrush and blue-bird came North together. Just for me, in red and white, Bloom and blossom the fields of clover; And all for me and my delight The wild Wind ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... hands of the mistress of the poorhouse, who was named Mrs. Bumble. It contained the dead mother's wedding-ring, and, as Mrs. Bumble was a dishonest woman, she hid both locket and ring, ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... of silence. The drone of a bumble-bee near by seemed to make the silence swim drowsily in their ears; far off they heard the faint beat of a woodpecker. The suggestion of their kneeling figures in this magic mirror was vague, unreasoning, yet for the moment none the less irresistible. His ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... hunger most days. That is her lot. Is it lawful in my prayers to say, "Thank heaven, I am not as one of these"? If I were eighty, would I like to feel the hunger always gnawing, gnawing? to have to get up and make a bow when Mr Bumble the beadle entered the common room? to have to listen to Miss Prim, who came to give me her ideas of the next world? If I were eighty, I own I should not like to have to sleep with another gentleman of my own age, gouty, a bad sleeper, kicking in his old dreams, ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... found every thing as they had left it the night before. Rollo felt quite confident of the success of his experiment. The only thing that gave him any uneasiness was the want of a queen bee. He and Henry were just speculating upon the expediency of sending in a bumble-bee instead, for a king, when their attention was arrested by hearing Jonas calling Rollo. They looked up, and saw him standing at ...
— Rollo's Experiments • Jacob Abbott
... girls who live in the country, and probably a large share of those who live in the city, know the bumble-bee. We had a little different name for him in our neighborhood. Bumble-bee was, however, the only name the family was known by, in Willow Lane, and I think it quite possible that such a corruption, (if it is a corruption, and the wise ones tell us ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank
... a few lines in the press of business to tell you I am well, but very lonely, with a view out over the green, in this dull, rainy weather, while the bumble-bees hum and the sparrows twitter. Grand audience tomorrow. It's vexatious that I have to buy linen, towels, table-cloths, and sheets. * * * Farewell. Hearty love, and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... these. In their millions they have perished; but somewhere, coiled up, as it were, and sealed under the snow, there must have been the mothers and germs of the equally vast crowds that will fill the atmosphere this year. The great bumble-bee that shall be mother of hundreds, the yellow wasp that shall be mother of thousands, were hidden there somewhere. The food of the migrant birds that are coming from over sea was there dormant under the snow. Many ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... the most delicate skill, the exact amount of the punishment to the enormity of the offence. By his profound wisdom he has discovered that the great increase of crime in these countries is entirely attributable to over-feeding the multitude. Like the worthy Mr. Bumble, in "Oliver Twist," he protests "it is meat and not madness" that ails the people. He can even trace the origin of every felony to the particular kind of food in which the felon has indulged. He detects incipient incendiarism ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various
... should not stop with the name of a plant. That is a mere beginning. Even slight attention will uncover many fascinating things in the lives of plants. Why cannot a farmer raise a good crop of clover-seed without the bumble-bees? What devices are there among the Orchids to bring about cross-pollination? (See "Our Native Orchids," by William Hamilton Gibson). Examine the flower of the wild Blue Flag, and see whether you can determine how the ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... happened. Even the chinless curate, whose voice without consonants gave the effect of an intoning bumble-bee, never took advantage of her suggestions (frequently repeated) that he should drop in ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... one never has no doubts about his orthodoxy; Whereby—if folks was wise—instead of either of them Scholars, And straining their own lungs along of contradictious hollers, They'll lend their ears to reason, and take my advice as follers, Namely—Bumble for the Chairman of the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... window; an elaborate air-castle, made of straw and bright worsted, hangs from the middle of the low ceiling; and hung against the wall, between two glaring woodcuts representing "Lady Caroline" in red and "Highland Mary" in blue, is a deep frame filled with worsted flowers, to which a butterfly and a bumble-bee have been pinned. Paper lacework depends from their kitchen-shelves, and common eggshells, artificially colored, decorate the lilac-bushes in the side yard. They are always making new mats or piecing quilts in a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... hedge-bank. A dozen times she vanished into a hole, and, after a minute or so, came out again with the air of one dissatisfied. Half-a-dozen times she came out tail first, buzzing warnings and very angry, at the invitation of a bumble-bee queen, a big, hook-jawed, carnivorous beetle in shining mail, and so forth, but she never lost ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... tribe is better dressed, better fed and more liberally provided in all respects than his confrere of other nations. He is the street bully, par excellence, inspired to this tyranny by unfailing beef and beer. When Mr Bumble heard of Oliver Twist's resistance to the combined authority of Mrs Sowerberry and Charlotte and Noah Claypole, he repudiated the idea of madness which was offered as an explanation of the boy's conduct. "It isn't madness, ma'am," ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... me! Things combine so a hero to humble! I fancied that Bull-headed Minotaur—BUMBLE, Would fall to my hand like Pasiphae's monster To Theseus. But oh! every step that I on stir Bemuddles me more. I did think myself clever, But fear from the Centre I'm farther than ever, Oh, this is a Labyrinth! Worse than the Cretan! Yet shall the new Theseus ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various
... came fiddling out of a barn, With a pair of bagpipes under her arm; She could sing nothing but fiddle cum fee, The mouse has married the bumble-bee. Pipe cat—dance, mouse, We'll have a wedding at ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... know a bumble-bee from a butternut," said Will. "City children don't know anything, and she'll be awfully in the way. Won't she tag after you and me, ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... accountable for much disheartening bungling. Instead of taking a clear line from the outset, and denouncing these glorified vestries as useless, impossible and entirely unscientific organs, too many Socialists tried to claim Bumble as their friend and use him as their tool. And Bumble turned out to be a very bad friend and a ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... his habit to take extensive walks, for miles around the country, moving forward with long strides, and either talking to himself or humming soft tunes; on which account his pupils styled him 'the bumble-bee.' The old man was passionately fond of music, and devoted every minute spared from school duties and his long walks, to his violin. To the more promising of his pupils Mr. James Merrishaw showed great kindness, allowing them, among other things, ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... a human being, the thing I saw so dimly might possibly not have been a lethal weapon (and if it was a weapon, what in Heaven's name could it be? I wondered); it might conceivably have been a large bird some distance off, just as by a reverse illusion men are said to have fired at bumble bees when grouse driving. Also, it was within the bounds of possibility that the tinkling stones might not have been thrown down by some one above in order to draw me under that face. Everything had been so vague that all these alternatives ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... that I wouldn't let you kiss me, won't you?" he answered as he drew back from the table and lit a cigarette after passing me the case. "Everybody calls me Buzz the Bumble Bee because of a historic encounter of mine with a whole nest of bumblebees right out here in the General's garden. It is a title of heroism and I'd like to have you use it as if we'd been kids together as we were slated ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... venomous sting, except when it is seized and handled. Many other Hymenoptera, honey-gatherers or hunters, are quite as spiritless; and I can assert to-day, after a long experience, that only the Social Hymenoptera, the Hive-bees, the Common Wasps and the Bumble-bees, know how to devise a common defence; and only they dare fall singly upon the aggressor, to ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... The Bumble-bee brushed off the pollen from his legs; and the humbler Honey-bee, after allowing his children to suck his paws, to get the honey sticking to them, spruced up and listened attentively to the orders read ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... the works of Persius Flaccus, Silius Italicus, and Claudianus. He also reprinted the Caltha Poetarum, or the Bumble Bee, of T. Cutwode, from the edition of 1599, for the Roxburghe Club, and assisted in the preparation of the third edition of Ellis's Specimens of the Early ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... leave it while there was enough to catch even a bumble-bee. The birds are back. They came directly I'd gone a dozen ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... tell what "phen-dubs" means? I can. Can you say all off by heart The "onery twoery ickery ann," Or tell "alleys" and "commons" apart? Can you fling a top, I would like to know, Till it hums like a bumble-bee? Can you make a kite yourself that will go 'Most as high as the eye can see, Till it sails and soars like a hawk on the wing, And the little birds come and light on ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... Ruth and the dolls in her own donkey-cart to the scene of action, where the school children, and some of the idlest or most good-natured of Mrs. Alwynn's friends, were even then assembling, and where Mrs. Alwynn herself was already dashing from point to point, buzzing like a large "bumble" bee. ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... was made on the lines around Hagerstown, which developed a hornets' nest of sharpshooters armed with telescopic rifles, who could pick a man's ear off half-a-mile away. The bullets from their guns had a peculiar sound, something like the buzz of a bumble-bee, and the troopers' horses would stop, prick up their ears and gaze in the direction whence the hum of those invisible messengers could be heard. Unable to reach them mounted, we finally deployed dismounted along a staked rail fence. ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... the most joyful season of the year? It is then that the spring bonnet of the workaday world crosses the earth's orbit and makes the bank account of the husband and father look fatigued. The low shoe and the low hum of the bumble-bee are again with us. The little striped hornet heats his nose with a spirit lamp and goes forth searching for the man with the linen pantaloons. All nature is full of life and activity. So is the man with the linen pantaloons. Anon, the thrush will sing in the underbrush, and the ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... in the matter of University Education for the Irish Catholics, have hitherto imitated the doctrine laid down by Mr. Bumble—that "the great principle of out-of-door relief is, to give the paupers exactly what they don't want; and then they get tired ...
— University Education in Ireland • Samuel Haughton
... ever buzzed himself so fatally into the spider-webs of other people's love affairs? I asked myself sternly. As soon as Providence plucked me out of one web, back I would bumble into another, though I had no time for a love affair of ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... get something with the rich honey-producing properties of the red, and yet with a short blossom into which the honey-bee might insert its proboscis. The red clover produces a vast amount of food for the bumble-bee, but is of no use at all to the honey-bee. I had hoped to procure a variety which might answer all the purposes of our farmers as a field crop. Quite recently I have ascertained that such a hybrid has been originated in Sweden, ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... thinking how happy they are,' she said quietly; and withdrawing her eyes from the tender pair, she turned and followed him, not knowing that the seeming sound of a passing bumble-bee was ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... herbs, barks, twigs, leaves, mints, moss, and tree gum. These were scraped, grated, or pounded; sifted, weighed, measured, stewed, and stirred; and the juice simmered down with the oil of juniper, and bumble-bees' wax, and various smarty, peppery, slippery things whose names must be kept private for a particular reason. The Sudden Remedy cured her instantly; and as meal was wanted, and no other person could be spared from the place, she ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... entomology, or else one afflicted with a combination of myopy and bulimy. Even now there is room for plenty of improvement in our counterfeit presentment; but in those days the body was made with yellow mohair, ribbed with red silk and gold twist, and as thick as a fertile bumble-bee. John Pike perceived that to offer such a thing to Crocker's trout would probably consign him—even if his great stamina should over-get the horror—to an uneatable death, through just and natural indignation. On the other hand, while the May-fly lasted, ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... property in Saundersfoot. He must go over and help Colonel Bellairs not to make a fool of himself about the disputed right of way across his property where it joined Wentworth's own land. Colonel Bellairs always bungled into business matters of the simplest nature as a bumble bee bungles into a spider's web. For Colonel Bellairs to touch business of any kind was immediately to become hopelessly and inextricably involved in it, with much furious buzzing. His mere presence entangled the plainest matter into ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... brow, bedecks him with a bunch of white ribbons, and jogs jovially to church arm in arm with the pretty cause of all this beneficent disturbance. And the spectacle is mighty taking and commendable; but you'll excuse me for holding that it is not Love. It bears about the same relation to Love that Bumble-puppy bears to good whist. Among the eccentricities that make up the Average Man I find none more diverting than his complacent belief that he is, or has been, or will certainly some day be, in love. As a matter of fact, the capacity to ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... taken a fancy to the song and remembered it after in London, and whenever it came to his mind it made him think of evenings—the kind you don't get in London—and he heard a soft wind going idly over the moor and the bumble-bees in a hurry, and forgot the noise of the traffic. And always, whenever he heard men speak of Time, he grudged to Time most this song. Once afterwards he went to that Northern moor again and found the tiny valley, but there was no old woman in ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... on his face since Dakota Milt chuckled, "The Teal is a grand car for mountains. Aside from overheating, bum lights, thin upholstery, faulty ignition, tissue-paper brake-bands, and this-here special aviation engine, specially built for a bumble-bee, it's what the catalogues call ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... began to hear voices. Yes, from under nearly every seat. Voices praying. A mumble-bumble that filled the car. I didn't know what to make of it for a few minutes. But then I remembered. Of course, the car was full of rabbis or at least holy men and they were as usual riding with their beards folded ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... very nicely so far without one. Did I have one on the Miele? And yet I was the only woman on board. There are only three things I am afraid of—bumble-bees, scarlet fever, and chaperones. Ugh! the clucking, evil-minded monsters, finding wrong in everything, seeing sin in the most innocent actions, and suggesting sin—yes, causing sin—by ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... topping! Regular old country mansion sort of a place. Might have come straight, slap-bang out of a novel! You should see the Bumble Bee! I can tell you she's pleased with life! Buzzing about no end! Even the Wasp's got a smile on! Fact! You needn't look so incredulous. ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... of his guardians writes to me about him. He is a country gentleman, with a large estate, who married a cousin of my pupil. He is a big, pompous, bumble-bee kind of man, who prides himself on speaking his mind, and is quite unaware that it is only his position that saves him from the plainest retorts. He writes to say that he is much exercised about his ward's progress. The boy, he says, is fanciful and delicate, and has much ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... out!" At this instant an irate bumble-bee darted in, and Ella, in a spasmodic effort of self-defence, threw the spoon at it, and both went flying out of the window. The girl sat down half-crying, half-laughing in her vexation, while Aun' Sheba shook with mirth in ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... about it, "Steam-pudding or pumpkin-pie?" echoed the maiden, giving me the terrible alternative in her most cutting tones; "Both!" I ejaculated, with equal distinctness, but, I believe, audacity unparalleled since the times of Twist. The female Bumble seemed to reel beneath the shock, and I noticed that after communicating her experience to her fellow waiting-woman, I was not thought of much account for the remainder of ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... and flower, Has found a roof, knowing how true thou art; The bumble-bee, within the last half-hour, Has ceased to hug the honey to its heart; While in the barnyard, under shed and cart, Brood-hens have housed.—But I, who scorned thy power, Barometer of the birds,—like August there,— Beneath a beech, dripping from foot ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... The Restaurant is famed for popular prices, A clever Cook, and oh! such whopping slices! What wonder then that customers are clamorous, That appetites, of good cheap victuals amorous, Sharpen at sight of that big toothsome joint? The carver does not wish to disappoint; He is no Union Bumble, stingy, truculent, He knows his dish is savoury and succulent, That "Cut and Come again's" a pleasant motto, But deal out "portions" all this hungry lot to? Amphitryon feels the thing cannot be done, Though he should slice the saddle to the bone With all the deftness ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... cheeks like sparks of fire. Not only did he see and feel, he could even hear it now: his ears were filled with a humming sound, growing louder and louder every minute, like the noise made by a large colony of bumble-bees when a person carelessly treads on their nest, and they are angered and thrown into a great commotion and swarm out to defend their home. Very soon out of this confused murmur louder, clearer sounds ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... novel he wrote, excepting "Hard Times" and "Great Expectations." But the description of the workhouse, its inmates and governors, is done in Dickens's best style, and was a frontal attack on the Poor Law administration of the time. Bumble, indeed, has passed into common use as the typical workhouse official of the least satisfactory sort. No less powerful than the picture of Oliver's wretched childhood is the description of the thieves' kitchen, presided over by Fagin. Bill Sikes and the Artful ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... only Inn of any suitability" in the place. Thereby be made an unexpected acquaintance. Before a week had elapsed, he became much interested in the fact that under the same roof, but in more bumble quarters than his own, was lying and dying another stranger in the place. This was a man of some forty years, known only as "Mr. George." His home is not a clear matter, nor that he had any relatives except a little girl of six or seven years old, his child. It is likely that in alluding to him ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... noises of the ship, the thump and bumble of the engines, the distant droning of the screws under water. From time to time stewards moved down the corridor outside, and the footsteps of some late passenger still paced the decks overhead. He heard voices, too, and ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... Hickle is quite a girl and very beautiful—and is starting on a tour round the world or something—she'll get most of his millions, I believe. By the way, who do you think have fixed it up. Dear old Bumble and Diana Lytham. Heaven be good to him. Your turn next, old boy! Well she'll be darned lucky who gets you, see how well I trained you, d'you ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... all. Just opened fire. Sent a bullet through the top of my hat. He's either a damn good shot or a damn poor one. I hung up both hands and yelled we was down and out. What could I do? This outfit couldn't a fit a bumble bee. And I couldn't git away, or git hold of no gun, or see anything to shoot, if I did. He ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... think of a thing to say in reply, and so he hurried on, trying to find a place where he would be left in peace. But nowhere that he could go was he free from those taunting voices. Not even when he had crawled into his house was he free from them, for buzzing around his doorway was Bumble ...
— The Adventures of Prickly Porky • Thornton W. Burgess
... useful when plunging through brambles in the forest, felt rather heavy, and he wished himself a boy again. He was too much exhausted to take the trouble of cutting any fern or seeking for moss, but just threw himself down under a tree, when exactly above his head he heard a great buzzing as a bumble-bee alighted on a honeysuckle branch. 'What are you doing here?' asked the bee in a cross voice; 'at your age you ought ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... each fresh gust to blow their nests to pieces. Small birds of half a dozen kinds were also there, and one tinkle-tinkled his spring song quite merrily in spite of the cold that kept the others silent and made me blue. One day I spied a big queen bumble-bee on the ground, looking extremely conspicuous in its black and chestnut coat on the fresh green sward; and thinking it numbed by the cold I picked it up. It moved its legs feebly, but alas! its enemy had found and struck it down, and with its hard, ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... uttered a peculiar, shrill whistle. The humming sound grew louder, then, and presently hundreds of great bees rose above the flower tops and hovered in the air. But none of them approached the bush except one monstrous bumble-bee that had a body striped with black and gold, and this one sailed slowly toward the visitors and alighted gracefully upon a branch in front ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... tiny field that ran up to the woods, and there, among the brilliantly varnished buttercups, the bees sounded like the tides coming in on the coasts of faery. Hazel forgot her dread—an inexplicable sickening dread of the quarry. She chased a fat bumble-bee all across the golden floor—one eager, fluffy, shining head after the other. They might have been, in the all-permeating glory on their hill terrace, with the sapphire-circled plain around—they might have been the two youngest ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... and began, in his pleasant holiday idleness, to look about at other things in the unfrequented wilderness through which the river ran. To trace the raven by following it home seemed too difficult, but it was easy to follow a great bumble-bee, which went blundering by, alighting upon a block of stone, took flight again, and landed upon a slope covered with moss, entering at last a hole which went sloping ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... on the pump-handle with a rush that flooded him with water and sent him off blowing the tide from his nostrils like a whale. Perhaps these things were permitted because the sight of the victim's suffering was so funny. Half the pleasure in fighting wasps or bumble-bees was in killing them and destroying their nests; the other half was in seeing the fellows get stung. If you could fool a fellow into a mass-meeting of bumble-bees, and see him lead them off in a steeple-chase, it was right and fair to do so. But there were other cases in which deceit ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... kiss the pretty baby, she scandalized her neighbours by laughing outright the next minute. A particularly portly, pious-looking priest, who was marching with superb dignity, and chanting like a devout bumble-bee, suddenly mislaid his temper, and injured the effect by boxing a charity boy's ears with his gilded missal, and then capped the climax by taking a pinch of snuff with a sonorous satisfaction ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... gold, Sat perched on a red-clover top, When a grasshopper, wiry and old, Came along with a skip and a hop. "Good-morrow!" cried he, "Mr. Bumble-Bee! You seem to have come ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... and in the corners of the meadow fence stand clumps of flower-stalks,—joe-pye-weed, boneset, goldenrod,—bare and already bleaching; and deep within their matted shade, where the brook bends about an elder bush, a single amber pendant of the jewel-weed, to which a bumble-bee comes droning on wings so loud that a little hyla near us stops his ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... he brims with sweet honeycomb To feast the bumble bees, Saying, "O bees, be this your home, For grief is ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... big as all out-of-doors, and e'en BUMBLE was hardly as bumptious. He'd make my London a Paradise, which is a prospect that's perfectly scrumptious. But oh! he is big, with the funniest rig; a Titan who, if he should tumble, Might squelch me as flat as an opera-hat, and make ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... Pauline sat silent for some moments; she was watching a fat bumble bee buzzing in and out among the flowers in the garden. It was always still, over here at the farm, but to-day, it seemed a different sort of stillness, as if bees and birds and flowers knew that it ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... transit, is accountable for much disheartening bungling. Instead of taking a clear line from the outset, and denouncing these glorified vestries as useless, impossible and entirely unscientific organs, too many Socialists tried to claim Bumble as their friend and use him as their tool. And Bumble turned out to be a very bad friend and ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... England have Comic Histories, Comic Geographies, and Comic Grammars, but a Comic Bible would horrify us. At sight of such blasphemy Bumble would stand aghast, and Mrs. Grundy would scream with terror. But Bumble and Mrs. Grundy are less important personages in France, and so the country of Rabelais and Voltaire produces what we are unable ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... as metal, and so motionless that the drops which still hung here and there on their needles seemed frozen. Everything was motionless under this yellow light, the grass-blades, the moss-blossoms, and the little blue butterflies, and a bumble-bee crawled into the bell of a bennet and hung there as if enchanted. In the thicket a fox drew near, his head lowered to sniff the ground, and suddenly he too stood still without stirring a muscle and stared into space, his eyes transparent as green glass, spell-bound by the overpowering ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Cousin and the "Gnats." The Aurora Borealis. A Bumble-bee Scrape. Another Bee Scrape. Justification by Faith Alone. Readiness to Fight. Love of Justice. ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... her prayer book open upon the carved margin of the tomb, the slender crossed legs and paws of the alert little marble dog serving as so often before for bookrest. Canon Horniblow boomed and droned, like some unctuous giant bumble-bee, from the reading-desk. The choir intoned responses from the gallery with liberal diversity of pitch. And presently, alas! Damaris' thoughts began to wander, making flitting excursions right and left. For half-way ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... supreme and devastating study of the illiterate minor official in Bumble. That one figure lit up and still lights the whole problem of Poor Law administration for the English reading community. It was a translation of well-meant regulations and pseudo-scientific conceptions of social order into blundering, ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... worked; no lover lent His aid; and yet with glee At dusk she sought her home, content, That beauteous Bumble Bee. ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... echoed the maiden, giving me the terrible alternative in her most cutting tones; "Both!" I ejaculated, with equal distinctness, but, I believe, audacity unparalleled since the times of Twist. The female Bumble seemed to reel beneath the shock, and I noticed that after communicating her experience to her fellow waiting-woman, I was not thought of much account for the remainder ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... and their "statutes" and "digests"! "Convenience of reference." Ah! that is one of their imperent sly jests. Removal of Noosances? Yah! If we started on that lay perniskers There is more than a few in the Westries 'ud feel suthin' singein' their wiskers, Or BUMBLE'S a Dutchman. Their Circ'lar—it's mighty obliging—defines 'em, The Noosances namely; I wonder if parties read Circ'lars as signs 'em, If so, Local Government Boarders must be most oncommonly knowin', And I'd like to 'eave bricks at that DILKE and his long-winded myrmidon ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... birthed another promotional bumble, Roger. I can see it in your eyes. I only hope it's not as big a one as when you put the Martian ambassador on 3D and he thanked you profusely for the gross of Puffyloaves, assuring you that he'd never slept on a softer mattress in all his life ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... Perhaps it can best be considered as the extension of one of his old sketches, of some sketch that happened to be about a visit to a workhouse or a gaol. In the Sketches by Boz he might well have visited a workhouse where he saw Bumble; in the Sketches by Boz he might well have visited a prison where he saw Fagin. We are still in the realm of sketches and sketchiness. The Pickwick Papers may be called an extension of one of his bright sketches. Oliver Twist may be called an extension ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... her earlier years, will remember Bumble as the cousin who lived at the "Hurly-Burly" down ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... but lost none of our soldiers. This engagement we called the capture of fort "Hell." For some time thereafter we made regular raids into the surrounding country in quest of an enemy. We were eventually successful in our quest, as in quick order we ran across and captured a company of bumble bees. This we called the "Battle of the Wilderness." Victory over a nest of hornets we called the capture of "Fort Sumter." A large nest of wasps gave us perhaps the hardest fight of our campaigning. This we ran across in the fields not far from home. There was an unusually large number ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... fellow, Quinny!" said Gilbert. "I won't call you 'sloppy' again because I'm tired of telling you that, but really that's what you are. You've only got to see a beautiful woman for a couple of seconds and you start buzzing round her like a bumble bee. Of course, I'm sloppy myself. We're all sloppy. Damn it, here we are, two healthy young fellows who ought to be working hard, and we're wasting a fine morning ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... gongs, they always fill me with despair!' cried Bess. 'I am never ready when ours begins to buzz through the house, like a gigantic, melancholy-mad bumble bee. Of course I must change, dear; firstly, because I am smothered with dust, and sixthly, as Dogberry says, because I have brought a pretty gown to do ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... power," she said; "you must utilize them, or be content to remain forever the inferior race. Get land, every one that can, and as fast as you ean. A landless people must be dependent upon the landed people. A few acres to till for food and a roof, however bumble, over your head, are the castle of your independence, and when you have it you are fortified to act and vote independently whenever your interests are at stake." That part of her lecture (and there was much of it) that dwelt on the moral ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... long feet, short feet, broad feet, splay feet, club feet, and bumble feet, to which may be added cloven feet in the case of certain animals, and ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... observer the least discomfort. You would never have imagined, dear master, the charm which one feels in perceiving these thousands of imperceptible sounds which are confounded, on a fine summer day, in an immense murmuring. The bumble-bee has his song as well as the nightingale, the honey-bee is the warbler of the mosses, the cricket is the lark of the tall grass, the maggot is the wren—it has only a sigh, but ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... of making use of its venomous sting, except when it is seized and handled. Many other Hymenoptera, honey-gatherers or hunters, are quite as spiritless; and I can assert to-day, after a long experience, that only the Social Hymenoptera, the Hive-bees, the Common Wasps and the Bumble-bees, know how to devise a common defence; and only they dare fall singly upon the aggressor, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... how happy they are,' she said quietly; and withdrawing her eyes from the tender pair, she turned and followed him, not knowing that the seeming sound of a passing bumble-bee was a suppressed groan ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... against the door-posts, and waiting to see if anything would happen! As a rule, nothing did happen, but there was no knowing what joyful day might bring a new sensation. Sometimes there was a dog-fight. Once—thrilling recollection!—Ozias Brisket's horse had run away ("Think 't 's likely a bumble-bee must ha' stung him; couldn't nothin' else ha' stirred him out of a walk, haw! haw!") and had scattered the joints of meat all about ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... air-castle, made of straw and bright worsted, hangs from the middle of the low ceiling; and hung against the wall, between two glaring woodcuts representing "Lady Caroline" in red and "Highland Mary" in blue, is a deep frame filled with worsted flowers, to which a butterfly and a bumble-bee have been pinned. Paper lacework depends from their kitchen-shelves, and common eggshells, artificially colored, decorate the lilac-bushes in the side yard. They are always making new mats or piecing quilts ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... they tripped, Where the dandelions dipped In crimson foam of clover-bloom, And dripped and dripped and dripped; And they clinched the bumble-stings, Gauming honey on their wings, And bundling them in lily-bells, With ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... comings of an ant or the capricious flight of a bumble-bee; then with his eyes lost in space, immersed in the profundity of nature, ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... beyond the nettles, some one began to sing, in the shrillest of voices; a gnat seemed to be chiming in with the voice. Now it ceased, but the gnat still squeaked on; athwart the energetic, insistently-plaintive buzzing of the flies resounded the booming of a fat bumble-bee, which kept bumping its head against the ceiling; a cock on the road began to crow, hoarsely prolonging the last note; a peasant cart rumbled past; the gate toward the village creaked. "Well?" suddenly quavered a woman's voice.—"Okh, thou my dear little sweetheart," ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... rejoicing over the discomfiture of the constables. No sooner had they departed down the flagged path than back flitted the bevy of girls again into the study, until the small room was full to overflowing. It was like seeing a company of fat bumble-bees, their portly bodies resplendent in black and gold, buzz heavily out of a room, and a gay flight of pale-blue and lemon butterflies flit back in their places. All the daughters fell upon their father, Margaret, ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... in our white folkses' back yard. Us had a white teacher and all he larnt slave chillun was jus' plain readin' and writin'. I had to pass Dr. Willingham's office lots and he was all de time pesterin' me 'bout spellin'. One day he stopped me and axed me if I could spell 'bumble bee widout its tail,' and he said dat when I larnt to spell it, he would gimme some candy. Mr. Sanders, at Lexin'ton, gimme a dime onct. It was de fust money I ever had. I was plumb rich and I never let my Daddy have no peace 'til he fetched me to town to do my tradin'. I was all sot to buy ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... themselves to sum up a whole class. Such are Bill Sikes, whose ruffianism has an almost epic grandeur; and black-hearted Fagin, the Jew, receiver of stolen goods and trainer of youth in the way they should not go; and Master Dawkins, the Artful Dodger. Such, too, is Mr. Bumble, greatest and ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... to give instances of what was expected of him; and his thick voice drowsed in the still air like the obstinate droning of an enormous bumble-bee. Captain Whalley did not know what was the force or the weakness that prevented him from saying good-night and walking away. It was as though he had been too tired to make the effort. How queer. More queer than any of Ned's instances. Or was it that ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... I wondered what had happened to her, being a girl and so much softer. But she didn't seem to mind much, for when I sang out, she answered quite cheerfully, "I'm sitting in the middle of a bramble bush like a bumble-bee. Do they sit in bushes, though? I think ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... the scythe drop and he picked up the chunk, And sneaked up as soft as a breeze, And poked at the noise in that rotten rail's bunk Till out came a bumble of bees. ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... and plants. on the effects of slight differences of colour. on fertilisation of scarlet runner. on fossil maize in Peru. on fresh-water mollusks. on the bumble bee. on ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... what is it then? You see, I'm as stupid as a bumble bee; I don't understand nothin' without it's druv into me—unless it's my garden. Ef you ask me about cabbages, or early corn, I kin tell you. But I don't know no more'n the dead what ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... a Bumble Bee," he comforted her. "It came between us for a bit, its shadow fell upon you, nothing more! Such things will happen; we must be prepared for them. It was nothing in myself that dimmed ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... pleasure, of absolute uselessness, of unthinking selfishness. What a dreary pilgrimage it seemed to him, as he lay in the little bedroom, with the scent of Nell's flowers floating up to him from the garden beneath, with the sound of the sea, flinging itself against the cliffs, burring like a giant bumble bee in his ears. If any one had asked him whether his life had been worth living, he would have answered with a decided negative; and yet he was young, the gods had been exceeding good to him in ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... the bumble-bee Drones his song in the perfect weather; And, just on purpose to sing to me, Thrush and blue-bird came North together. Just for me, in red and white, Bloom and blossom the fields of clover; And all for me and my delight The wild Wind ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... looked like whitest snow-flakes, yet stung his cheeks like sparks of fire. Not only did he see and feel, he could even hear it now: his ears were filled with a humming sound, growing louder and louder every minute, like the noise made by a large colony of bumble-bees when a person carelessly treads on their nest, and they are angered and thrown into a great commotion and swarm out to defend their home. Very soon out of this confused murmur louder, clearer sounds began to rise; and these could be distinguished as the notes of numberless musical ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... Poetry, himself, or else by proxy, And no one never has no doubts about his orthodoxy; Whereby—if folks was wise—instead of either of them Scholars, And straining their own lungs along of contradictious hollers, They'll lend their ears to reason, and take my advice as follers, Namely—Bumble for the Chairman of ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... skill, the exact amount of the punishment to the enormity of the offence. By his profound wisdom he has discovered that the great increase of crime in these countries is entirely attributable to over-feeding the multitude. Like the worthy Mr. Bumble, in "Oliver Twist," he protests "it is meat and not madness" that ails the people. He can even trace the origin of every felony to the particular kind of food in which the felon has indulged. He detects incipient incendiarism in eggs and fried bacon—homicide in an Irish stew—robbery and house-breaking ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various
... for the season. Little tadpoles and efts began to bubble up through the water, and to race along beneath it; toads made noises like very young ducks, and advanced to the margin in twos and threes; overhead, bumble-bees flew hither and thither in the thickening light, their drone coming and going like the ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... lunch expressly from the point of view of suitability for the delicate digestions of children. And he laid down the maxim that appetite was the safest guide in the world, and when it said "More" no one but a Bumble would say it nay. ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... frogs, toads, lizards, and snakes. Also with the wild bees and wasps. One season I made a collection of bumblebee honey, studying the habits of five or six different kinds and rifling their nests. I kept my store of bumble-bee honey in the attic where I had a small box full of the comb and a large phial filled with the honey. How well I came to know the different dispositions of the various kinds—the small red-vested that made its nest in a hole in the ground; the small black-vested, the large black-vested, ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... buzzed himself so fatally into the spider-webs of other people's love affairs? I asked myself sternly. As soon as Providence plucked me out of one web, back I would bumble into another, though I had no time for a love affair of ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... couple of miles from many cottages. I do not let the great dogs swim in the canal, because the people have to drink of it. But when they get into the Medway it is hard to get them out again. The other day Bumble (the son, Newfoundland dog) got into difficulties among some floating timber, and became frightened. Don (the father) was standing by me, shaking off the wet and looking on carelessly, when all of a sudden he perceived something amiss, and went ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... As soon as he rises from supper he bawls for his shoes and away he rushes down there before dawn to sleep beforehand, glued fast to the column like an oyster.[22] He is a merciless judge, never failing to draw the convicting line[23] and return home with his nails full of wax like a bumble-bee. Fearing he might run short of pebbles[24] he keeps enough at home to cover a sea-beach, so that he may have the means of recording his sentence. Such is his madness, and all advice is useless; he only judges the more each day. So we keep him under lock ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... venture to think that his "all" merely includes his own circle. At the same time, however, we admit that militant Atheism is still, as of old, an offence to the superfine sceptics who desire to stand well with the great firm of Bumble and Grundy, as well as to the vast army of priests and preachers who have a professional interest in keeping heresy "dark," and to the ruling and privileged classes, who feel that militant Atheism is a great ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... mysteriously affected by her indignation the absurd Fyne dog began to bark in the porch. It might have been at a trespassing bumble-bee however. That animal was capable of any eccentricity. Fyne got up quickly and went out to him. I think he was glad to leave us alone to discuss that matter of his journey to London. A sort of anti-sentimental journey. He, too, apparently, had confidence in my sagacity. It was touching, this ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... upon his back with his face lifted to the sky. Where his head rested, the wild thyme grew, and one great, black bumble-bee boomed at a deaf ear as it clumsily struggled in the purple blossoms. He lay almost naturally, but some distortion of his neck and a film upon his open eyes proclaimed that the man ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... and Ned, a mare and a colt. Fine hacks they were, too! Anybody could ride them, they were so quiet. Dad reckoned Ned was the better of the two. He was well-bred, and had a pedigree and a gentle disposition, and a bald-face, and a bumble-foot, and a raw wither, and a sore back that gave him a habit of "flinching"—a habit that discounted his uselessness a great deal, because, when we were n't at home, the women could n't saddle him to run the cows in. Whenever he saw the saddle ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... who betrayed me into this folly was a bumble of the utmost beauty. The bars of his coat "burned" as "brightly" as those of the tiger in Wombwell's menagerie, and his fur was softer than my mother's black velvet mantle. I knew, for I had kissed him lightly as he sat on the window-frame. I had seen ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... here," said Bleak—"Rather a friend of mine, who can give a bumble bee the knock-out after he gets his drop of rum. I've seen him chase a wasp ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... desire to catch and kiss the pretty baby, she scandalized her neighbours by laughing outright the next minute. A particularly portly, pious-looking priest, who was marching with superb dignity, and chanting like a devout bumble-bee, suddenly mislaid his temper, and injured the effect by boxing a charity boy's ears with his gilded missal, and then capped the climax by taking a pinch of snuff with a sonorous ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... not stop with the name of a plant. That is a mere beginning. Even slight attention will uncover many fascinating things in the lives of plants. Why cannot a farmer raise a good crop of clover-seed without the bumble-bees? What devices are there among the Orchids to bring about cross-pollination? (See "Our Native Orchids," by William Hamilton Gibson). Examine the flower of the wild Blue Flag, and see whether you ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... on the angry air Around with the bumble bees, While the brussels-sprouts were pulling the snouts Of ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... Patty, "I certainly have most outspoken cousins! They don't seem to hesitate to tell me what to bring and what not to bring them. But I'm sure of one thing! Bumble Barlow won't be so fussy particular; she'll take whatever I bring and ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... beat you?' Phyllopneustes wise folk call them, But don't know what did befall them, Why they ever thought of coming All that way to hear gnats humming, Why they built not nests but houses, Like the bumble-bees and mousies. Nor how little birds got wings, Nor what 'tis the small cock sings— How should they know—stupid fogies? They daren't even believe in bogies. Once they were a girl and boy, Each the other's life and joy. He a Daphnis, she a Chloe, Only they were brown, not snowy, Till an Arab ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... had perished by a sudden and unexpected death. When one eyed from close by the storehouse, granary, and cottage, he saw that the walls were peppered from ground to summit as with a swarm of black insects; in the centre of each spot sat a bullet, like a bumble-bee in its earthy burrow. ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... of the meadow fence stand clumps of flower-stalks,—joe-pye-weed, boneset, goldenrod,—bare and already bleaching; and deep within their matted shade, where the brook bends about an elder bush, a single amber pendant of the jewel-weed, to which a bumble-bee comes droning on wings so loud that a little hyla near us stops his pipe ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... of the creatures running the length of the ridge pole, and from half an inch to two inches deep! Every pack was black with them on the march, and the wagon carried its millions. When the shadow of a branch would cross that slowly lumbering vehicle, the swarm would rise and bumble around distractedly for a moment before settling down again. They fairly made ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... supremely lovely and quiet and restful are the silent, scented, spreading fields! How soothing to a spirit tired of the city's din is this solitude, broken only by the singing of the birds and the drowsy droning of the bee, erroneously termed 'bumble'! The green fields, the shady trees, the sweet freshness of the summer air, untainted by city smoke, and over all the eternal serenity of the blue unclouded sky—how can human spite and human passion exist in such a paradise? Does it all not make you feel as if you were an innocent ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... the pretty cause of all this beneficent disturbance. And the spectacle is mighty taking and commendable; but you'll excuse me for holding that it is not Love. It bears about the same relation to Love that Bumble-puppy bears to good whist. Among the eccentricities that make up the Average Man I find none more diverting than his complacent belief that he is, or has been, or will certainly some day be, in love. As a matter of fact, the ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... "phen-dubs" means? I can. Can you say all off by heart The "onery twoery ickery ann," Or tell "alleys" and "commons" apart? Can you fling a top, I would like to know, Till it hums like a bumble-bee? Can you make a kite yourself that will go 'Most as high as the eye can see, Till it sails and soars like a hawk on the wing, And the little birds come ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... a fancy to the song and remembered it after in London, and whenever it came to his mind it made him think of evenings—the kind you don't get in London—and he heard a soft wind going idly over the moor and the bumble-bees in a hurry, and forgot the noise of the traffic. And always, whenever he heard men speak of Time, he grudged to Time most this song. Once afterwards he went to that Northern moor again and found the tiny valley, but there was no old woman in the garden, and no one ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... sea-covered stack of rocks lying to the southward. Before oil was introduced for the lamps it is said the lantern was lit by coal-fires—a kind of first-hand use of gas. Below the lighthouse is the striking Bumble Rock, and close to this the hollow known as the Lion's Den, formed by a natural sudden subsidence in 1847. This formation was an immediate object-lesson as to the manner in which these remarkable hollows, caverns, and rock-freaks have been produced in the course of time; and there ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... this trip sure. He was all organized for business. Never showed himself at all. Just opened fire. Sent a bullet through the top of my hat. He's either a damn good shot or a damn poor one. I hung up both hands and yelled we was down and out. What could I do? This outfit couldn't a fit a bumble bee. And I couldn't git away, or git hold of no gun, or see anything to shoot, if I did. He was behind ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... that, however much the carters lashed and swore at them, the animals would not budge an inch until she permitted them to go. Here are a few of the common superstitions current in Berkshire. If a corpse be kept over a Sunday another death will occur before the week is out; should a big bumble-bee enter the window, a guest may be expected; and when the woodpecker, commonly called the yaffle, laughs, they say the rain is coming. When the thick mist lies in the valley, the people say it is the White Lady, ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... the child-larks had settled beside him he uttered a peculiar, shrill whistle. The humming sound grew louder, then, and presently hundreds of great bees rose above the flower tops and hovered in the air. But none of them approached the bush except one monstrous bumble-bee that had a body striped with black and gold, and this one sailed slowly toward the visitors and alighted gracefully upon a branch in front ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... at "the only Inn of any suitability" in the place. Thereby be made an unexpected acquaintance. Before a week had elapsed, he became much interested in the fact that under the same roof, but in more bumble quarters than his own, was lying and dying another stranger in the place. This was a man of some forty years, known only as "Mr. George." His home is not a clear matter, nor that he had any relatives except a little ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... come. I in my time many thousands have directed, And likewise have as many more dissected, And I never met a gravedigger who to me objected. If a man gets nineteen bees in his bonnet, I'll cast twenty of 'em out. I've got in my pocket crutches for lame ducks, spectacles for blind bumble-bees, pack-saddles and panniers for grasshoppers, and many other needful things. Surely I can cure this poor man. Here, Slasher, take a little out of my bottle, and let it run down thy throttle; and if thou beest not quite slain, rise, ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... coming, hear the humming Of the bumble bees; Life is waking, buds are breaking, Love is in ...
— The Last West and Paolo's Virginia • G. B. Warren
... it when I sit Among the broadcloth'd heirs of BUMBLE! But Foreign Minister too humble Were butt of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 29, 1892 • Various
... a meadow, without shaking the boggy ground. He had a trick with a detachable float, made from a quill and a tiny piece of cork, that brought him many a fish from the centre of a mill-pond. He knew the best baits for every season,—worms, white grubs, striped minnows, miller's thumbs, bumble-bees, grasshoppers, young field-mice,—and he knew where ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... while there was enough to catch even a bumble-bee. The birds are back. They came directly I'd gone a dozen ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... pump-spout, and then coming down on the pump-handle with a rush that flooded him with water and sent him off blowing the tide from his nostrils like a whale. Perhaps these things were permitted because the sight of the victim's suffering was so funny. Half the pleasure in fighting wasps or bumble-bees was in killing them and destroying their nests; the other half was in seeing the fellows get stung. If you could fool a fellow into a mass-meeting of bumble-bees, and see him lead them off in a steeple-chase, it was right and fair to do so. But ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... the squirrels brought a present of wild honey; it was so sweet and sticky that they licked their fingers as they put it down upon the stone. They had stolen it out of a bumble BEES' nest on the tippity top of ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... sprouted in plumes; my mother embodied the stately, Cousin Elizabeth a gorgeous heartiness; the Duke's eyes wore a bored look, but the remainder of his person was fittingly resplendent. Bederhof was Bumble in Olympus; beyond these came a sea of smiles, bows, silks, and uniforms. Really I believe that the whole thing was done as handsomely as possible, and the proceedings are duly recorded in a book of red leather, clasped in gold and embellished with many pictures, ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... stories, as good as a fairy tale. In connection with this comes very naturally the story of the bees and the pollen. The child will be delighted to learn that the bees collect pollen as well as honey; that the honey bees and bumble-bees have baskets on their legs on purpose to carry it home; that they knead it up with honey and make it into what ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... married too, but she does not agree with his wife. The Wesleyan minister came along and took the younger boy. She is alone in the house. A steamer, probably bound for Cardiff, now crosses the horizon, while near at hand one bell of a foxglove swings to and fro with a bumble-bee for clapper. These white Cornish cottages are built on the edge of the cliff; the garden grows gorse more readily than cabbages; and for hedge, some primeval man has piled granite boulders. In one of these, to hold, an historian conjectures, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... 'cause a skellington was found there," observed the child as they passed a dark, yawning mouth in the cliff. "And that's Bumble Cave, 'cause the bumblebees make nests in the top of it. And here's Smuggler's Cave, 'cause the smugglers used to hide things ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... ambled along as if he had all the time in the world, as indeed he had. He was feeling very good-natured, was Jimmy Skunk. And why shouldn't he? There was everything to make him feel good-natured. Summer had arrived to stay. On every side he heard glad voices. Bumble the Bee was humming a song. Best of all, Jimmy had found three beetles that very morning, and he knew that there were more if he could find them. So why shouldn't ...
— The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad • Thornton W. Burgess
... don't bother work, work don't bother me. I'se fo' times as happy as a bumble bee. Us eats when us kin git it, ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... "That bumble-bee's gettin' home late," observed Jed. "The rest of the hive up there at East Harniss have gone to roost two or three hours ago. Wonder what kept him out this scandalous hour. ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... being engaged in writing a story, he had removed but one-eighth of his mind for the consideration of mundane affairs, and that, as any one knows, is insufficient to judge fairly whether the winged thing I was reaching out for was a fly or a bumble bee. In the morning, the story being finished and the other seven-eights of brain at liberty to dwell upon the same question, he decided to follow me, with the result that in the afternoon ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... between the two rows of houses, and always in the same direction, down to the sea. Then a speck of white down came floating on the air, followed by whitish-gray thistle-seeds, and a whole swarm of gnats, and a big broad bumble-bee swung to and fro. All these eddied, gleaming, in the open doorway, and they went on circling as though there was something there which attracted them all—doubtless an accident, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... capture. And my guess was correct. By dint of waiting and watching I beheld that victim; I saw it in the huntress' mandibles. It is the Black-bellied Tarantula, the terrible Spider who slays a Carpenter-bee or a Bumble-bee outright with one stroke of her weapon; the Spider who kills a Sparrow or a Mole; the formidable creature whose bite would perhaps not be without danger to ourselves. Yes, this is the bill of fare which the proud Pompilus provides ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... informer, both in and out of meeting,—a very necessary, but somewhat odious, and certainly at times very absurd officer. He was in a degree a constable, a selectman, a teacher, a tax-collector, an inspector, a sexton, a home-watcher, and above all, a Puritan Bumble, whose motto was Hie et ubique. He was, in fact, a general law-enforcer and order-keeper, whose various duties, wherever still necessary and still performed, are now apportioned to several individuals. The ecclesiastical functions and authority of the tithingman lingered ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... the old bumble-bee down alow yonder. Keep as still as mice, and stir not, nor laugh for ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... I sought a nook Beneath a thick and widely-spreading tree, And there I sat to con my little book, My book of old black-letter grammarie. All stillness in that deep and lonely dell Save hum of bumble-bee on nimble wing, Or zephyr sporting round the wild blue bell, While ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... though I don't think Borrow's experience was very convincing. I have known people who "have gone where money was" and have fallen honestly and rapturously into love, but you have got to be very sure that money in such a case is not the motive. If it is the penalty never fails to follow. Mr. Bumble married Mrs. Corney for "six teaspoons, a pair of sugar tongs, and a milk-pot, with a small quantity of secondhand furniture and twenty pounds in money." And in two months he regretted his bargain and admitted that he had gone "dirt cheap." "Only two ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... grandma got roots, herbs, barks, twigs, leaves, mints, moss, and tree gum. These were scraped, grated, or pounded; sifted, weighed, measured, stewed, and stirred; and the juice simmered down with the oil of juniper, and bumble-bees' wax, and various smarty, peppery, slippery things whose names must be kept private for a particular reason. The Sudden Remedy cured her instantly; and as meal was wanted, and no other person could be spared from the place, she ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... accounted for by the fact that there were no old maids in that polygamous country. Old maids naturally were not allowed! And there being none, there were of course no cats to kill the mice that eat the bumble-bees' nests; thus, no bumble-bees to fertilize it, therefore no clover. Old maids have found ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... down when the explosion came. Branches and pieces of tree trunk were whirled upward, and the air became populated with deadly bumble bees and humming birds, for such is the sound that the shell splinters make. When I essayed our shell hole afterward, I couldn't fathom how five of us had managed to accommodate ourselves in it, but in the rush of necessity, no difficulty ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... Jenny Wren. For whom, perhaps with some old instinct of his race, the gentle Jew had spread a carpet. Seated on it, against no more romantic object than a blackened chimney-stack over which some bumble creeper had been trained, they both pored over one book; both with attentive faces; Jenny with the sharper; Lizzie with the more perplexed. Another little book or two were lying near, and a common basket of common fruit, and another basket full of strings of beads and tinsel scraps. A few ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... a mere code address, and I use it here symbolically. I have seen commerce pretty close. I know what it is worth, and I have no particular regard for commercial magnates, but one must protest against these Bumble-like proceedings. Is it indignation at the loss of so many lives which is at work here? Well, the American railroads kill very many people during one single year, I dare say. Then why don't these dignitaries ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... with a combination of myopy and bulimy. Even now there is room for plenty of improvement in our counterfeit presentment; but in those days the body was made with yellow mohair, ribbed with red silk and gold twist, and as thick as a fertile bumble-bee. John Pike perceived that to offer such a thing to Crocker's trout would probably consign him—even if his great stamina should over-get the horror—to an uneatable death, through just and natural indignation. ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... Regular old country mansion sort of a place. Might have come straight, slap-bang out of a novel! You should see the Bumble Bee! I can tell you she's pleased with life! Buzzing about no end! Even the Wasp's got a smile on! Fact! You needn't look so incredulous. I'm ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... a passion with him. The oppressors of the poor knew and feared him well. Injustice once proved before him, vengeance followed sure. If the law would not help, he never hesitated to employ lawlessness, of which he could always command a satisfactory supply. Bumble might have the Board of Guardians at his back, Shylock legal support for his pound of flesh; but sooner or later the dark night brought punishment, a ducking in dock basin or canal, "Brutal Assault Upon a Respected Resident" (according ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... up the riddle, and began, in his pleasant holiday idleness, to look about at other things in the unfrequented wilderness through which the river ran. To trace the raven by following it home seemed too difficult, but it was easy to follow a great bumble-bee, which went blundering by, alighting upon a block of stone, took flight again, and landed upon a slope covered with moss, entering at last a hole which went sloping down ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... children, flocked into the building in a very short time, thronged about the bier, the black table, and Panna, who was leaning against it, carrying on a low, eager hum of conversation till it seemed as though countless swarms of bumble-bees ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... a schoolboy, a number of my companions brought the news that the strangest bird in the world had come that day to our garden and hovered over the flowers. It was no bigger than a bumble-bee. "No! It was not a humming-bird," they said, "it was smaller by far, much more beautiful, and it came and went so fast that no one could see ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... was not alone in puns and conundrums that the social life of Brook Farm was rich. It was rich in cheerful buzz. The bumble-bees had no more melodious hum than the Brook Farmers. They had thrown aside the forms that bind outside humanity. They were sailing on a voyage of discovery, seeking a modern El Dorado, but they did not carry with them the lust for gold. They were seeking something which, ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
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