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More "Downy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... difficult for her. Opening her eyes wide she looked at her son, and he seemed to her new, as if a stranger. His voice was different, lower, deeper, more sonorous. He pinched his thin, downy mustache, and looked oddly askance into the corner. She grew anxious for ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... hours of undisturbed consecutive repose in the downy bed at the Mehadia hotel had made up the deficiency of sleep during the foregoing week, and drowsiness overcame us. I think we must have had a couple of hours of monotonous jog-trot on the fairly level road ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... of plumage, the Cape pigeons were white and downy, with the head and wings striped with brown like butterflies, a large species of which they strongly resembled when flying away from the ship, with their ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... came out. She started to walk toward him, but presently turned to the right. Lewis followed her. At first she walked fast, but soon she began to pause beside some burst of green or tempting downy mass of pussy-willow, as though she were in two minds whether to fill her arms and rush back, carrying spring into the house or to go on. She went on slowly until she reached the barrier of rails that closed the ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... a march of thirty miles due north into Loudoun County, and a mile or two east of this attractive town went into bivouac about sunset in a beautiful grassy meadow which afforded what seemed to us a downy couch, and to the horses luxuriant pasturage, recalling former and better days. Next morning, while lying sound asleep wrapped in my blanket, I became painfully conscious of a crushing weight on my foot. Opening my eyes, there stood a horse almost over me, quietly cropping the grass, ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... And of this quality there are three remarkable instances in the Scuola. No one but Tintoretto could have evoked the fiend in his 'Temptation of Christ.' It is an indescribable hermaphroditic genius, the genius of carnal fascination, with outspread downy rose-plumed wings, and flaming bracelets on the full but sinewy arms, who kneels and lifts aloft great stones, smiling entreatingly to the sad, grey Christ seated beneath a rugged pent-house of the desert. No one again but Tintoretto could ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... downy head of the newly born baby was covered with a cap of delicatest material incrusted to hardness with needlework. The baby's caps of the period are a perfect chapter of human emotions; mother-love, emulation, pride, and declaration of family or personal ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... sudden fear assailed Tattiana, And I, remembering Svetlana,(54) Become alarmed. So never mind! I'm not for witchcraft now inclined. So she her silken sash unlaced, Undressed herself and went to bed And soon Lel hovered o'er her head.(55) Beneath her downy pillow placed, A little virgin mirror peeps. 'Tis silent ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... ray, And oped those eyes that must eclipse the day: Now lap-dogs give themselves the rousing shake, 15 And sleepless lovers, just at twelve, awake: Thrice rung the bell, the slipper knock'd the ground, And the press'd watch return'd a silver sound. Belinda still her downy pillow prest, Her guardian SYLPH prolong'd the balmy rest: 20 'Twas He had summon'd to her silent bed The morning-dream that hover'd o'er her head; A Youth more glitt'ring than a Birth-night Beau, (That ev'n in slumber ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... feathers are marvelous. I am very glad to see them. I never had any of their downy ones before. My compliments to the bird, upon ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... cry, And all its curse and care shall die, When Age on downy couches throws His weary limbs and only knows The tender ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... seen them scores of times, and as you'll be able to if we catch one, as I hope we shall, you'll find they are very like a large pigeon, only that they have webbed feet; and they always seem plump and fat. See, their feathers are white and downy, while their heads are brown and their wings striped with the same colour, giving them the appearance, if you look down on them from a ship, of being large white and brown butterflies, with their large wings outspread. Draw in your line a bit, Jonathan, and let the ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... their drawers with cedar, serves tea carefully drawn, at a certain hour, banishes dust, nails the carpets to the floors in every corner of the house, brushes the cellar walls, polishes the knocker of the front door, oils the springs of the carriage,—in short, makes matter a nutritive and downy pulp, clean and shining, in the midst of which the soul expires of enjoyment and the frightful monotony of comfort in a life without contrasts, deprived of spontaneity, and which, to sum all in one word, makes a machine ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... through the lonely dale, And, Fancy, to thy faerie bower betake! Even now, with balmy freshness, breathes the gale, Dimpling with downy wing the stilly lake; Through the pale willows faltering whispers wake, And evening comes with locks bedropt with dew; On Desmond's moldering turrets slowly shake The trembling rye-grass and the harebell blue, And ever and anon fair ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... braces for you," and she set to work again. But, as in cutting out she kept her head bent, I noticed, on passing behind her, her soft, white neck, which she had left bare that evening by dressing her hair higher than usual. A number of little downy hairs were curling there. This kind of down made me think of those ripe peaches one bites so greedily. I drew near, the better to see, and I kissed the back of ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... or pitch, and which are known as "heroic" measures, are equally undesirable, since they are not permanent cures any more than the depilatory powders. The worst feature of these cures is that for every hair pulled out or burnt off a coarser one takes its place, and for every tiny, downy growth a fully developed hair appears. Of course, the plaster removes this soft lanuginous growth with the hardier one, and for that reason should be left severely alone. The tweezers are therefore less objectionable than the plaster, but ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... dozen "cocks of the game," [1] On the prigging lay to the flash-house came, [2] Lushing blue ruin and heavy wet [3] Till the darkey, when the downy set. [4] All toddled and begun the hunt For readers, tattlers, ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... he felt ever so slowly the hair combed back above his ears. Again. Fibres of fine fine straw. Then gently his finger felt the skin of his right cheek. Downy hair there too. Not smooth enough. The belly is the smoothest. No-one about. There he goes into Frederick street. Perhaps to Levenston's dancing academy piano. Might be ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... friendly little chap, at first, about the size of a small hen—very much like most other young birds, only bigger. His plumage was a dirty brown to begin with, with a sort of grey scab that fell off it very soon, and scarcely feathers—a kind of downy hair. I can hardly express how pleased I was to see him. I tell you, Robinson Crusoe don't make near enough of his loneliness. But here was interesting company. He looked at me and winked his eye from the front backwards, like a hen, and gave a chirp ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... gentlemen burst into a loud laugh, said I was a "rum chap"—a "downy cove," and made other remarks which I could not understand then; but the meaning of which I have since comprehended, for they took me to be a great rascal, I am sorry to say, and supposed that I had robbed the I. W. D. Association, and, in order to make my money secure, settled ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with his gavel) Two bar. Rockbottom figure and cheap at the price. Fourteen hands high. Touch and examine his points. Handle him. This downy skin, these soft muscles, this tender flesh. If I had only my gold piercer here! And quite easy to milk. Three newlaid gallons a day. A pure stockgetter, due to lay within the hour. His sire's milk record was a thousand gallons of whole ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... you fasten this up firmly, Ralph," answered Mrs. Minot, as she took from its wrappings the waxen figure of a little child. The rosy limbs were very life-like, so was the smiling face under the locks of shining hair. Both plump arms were outspread as if to scatter blessings over all, and downy wings seemed to flutter from the dimpled shoulders, making an angel of ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... days since, I climbed up to the nest of the downy woodpecker, in the decayed top of a sugar-maple. For better protection against driving rains, the hole which was rather more than an inch in diameter, was made immediately beneath a branch which stretched out almost horizontally from the ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... outward appearance, was undergoing a subtle change. Graham was the first to observe it, and at last it was apparent to all. As her mind became inert, sleeping on a downy couch of forgetfulness, closely curtained, the silent forces of physical life, in her deep tranquillity, were doing an artist's work. The hollow cheeks were gradually rounded and given the faintest possible bloom. Her form was gaining a contour ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... a peasant boy, little Petter Nord. He was short and round; he was brown-eyed and smiling. His hair was paler than birch leaves in the autumn; his cheeks were red and downy. And he was from Vaermland. No one, seeing him, could imagine that he was from any other place. His native land had equipped him with its excellent qualities. He was quick at his work, nimble with his fingers, ready with his tongue, ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... mustache and reviewing the day's wandering. When the gas was lighted he yearned over pictures in a geographical magazine for a happy hour, then yawned to himself, "Well-l-l, Willum, guess it's time to crawl into the downy." ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... than gold is the sweet repose Of the sons of toil when labors close; Better than gold is the poor man's sleep And the balm that drops on his slumbers deep. Bring sleeping draughts to the downy bed, Where luxury pillows its aching head; The toiler a simple opiate deems A shorter route to ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... you, Mr. Scott, I've a deal to do before I get to my downy; and I don't like those doctored tipples. Good night, Mr. Scott. I wishes you good night, sir;' and making another slight reference to his hat, which had not been removed from his head during the whole interview, Mr. ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... of "Mother Corn" among the Pueblos Indians: "A flawless ear of pure white corn (type of fertility and motherhood) is decked out with a downy mass of snow-white feathers, and hung with ornaments of silver, coral, and the precious ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... text, which bore the words, "I will lay me down to sleep, and take my rest, for it is thou, Lord, only who makest me dwell in safety," was painted in soft purples and grays, and among the poppies and silver lilies which wreathed it appeared a cunning little downy bird, fast asleep, with his head under his wing. The morning text, "When I awake, I am still with Thee," was in bright colors, scarlet and blue and gold, and had a frame of rose garlands and wide-awake-looking butterflies and humming-birds. ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... girls take part in a very formal little affair on the lawn of Beth's home. Each of the guests receives a present in the shape of a downy white kitten. The drive home in Beth's pony cart furnishes a few exciting moments, but Patsy bravely comes ...
— Christmas Holidays at Merryvale - The Merryvale Boys • Alice Hale Burnett
... a warm woman face, made for fireside nooks, Not a face to be bent over medical books. There was nothing aggressive in features or form; She was meant for still harbors, and not for the storm And the strife of rude waters. The swell of her breast Suggested love's sweet downy cushion of rest For the cheeks of fair children. Her plump little hands, Seemed fashioned for sewing small gussets and bands And fussing with laces and ribbons, instead Of cutting cold flesh and dissecting the dead. And yet, as a student ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Columbia Wombat in list of fur-bearers Women promote bird slaughter Wood, George E. Wood, Lieut.-Col. William Woodcock Wood-Duck eaten in seventeen States, disappearing in Louisiana, nesting in Zoological Park Woodpecker, Downy golden-winged, hairy Woodpeckers, food of Wooley-Dod, Arthur G. Wool-Growers' Association opposes game preserves World, New York Worthington, C.C. Wrens destroy boll weevil Wyoming efforts by, to feed starving elk, elk ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... miserable. They are satisfied and content with food, on which the better portion of the white race can hardly subsist. Nor would soft beds and fine houses conduce to their comfort. There are many of them, who, if they were provided with downy beds, would prefer to repose on the hearth or the floor. They are by nature a happier people than the Anglo-Saxon race, and of course, less will suffice for their happiness and comfort. All that I contend for is, that ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... give up the search, much disappointed, when he perceived something "like a slight mouldiness among the withered leaves, and, on stooping down, discovered it to be a young whip-poor-will, seemingly asleep." Wilson's description of the young is very accurate, as its downy covering does look precisely like a "slight mouldiness." Returning a few moments afterward to the spot to get a pencil he had forgotten, he could find ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... buries us up to the neck in snow, before the Thanksgiving dinner is cold. Then the seasons when Gabe's much-coveted bottle stood unclaimed on the shelf in its bravery of fine ribbons till far into the New Year, and was won then literally "by a scratch" on a road hardly downy with white, seem like a tale that is told, and we realize that latitude does not unaided make temperature. It is only in exceptional winters, after all, that we class for a brief spell with Naples. ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... guess they do," was the laughing answer, for Freddie and Flossie had a pet duck which they took about with them almost as faithfully as they did Snoop. "How is Downy, ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope
... to go and see Curly, and spent a pleasant afternoon with him, recalling the old times, and the old stories, and the old companions; for the youth with the downy chin has a past as ancient as that of the man with the gray beard. And Curly told him the story of his encounter with young Bruce on the bank of the Wan Water. And over and over again Annie's name came up, but Curly never ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... been some kind of a fairy, for we didn't mention kittens, but we wanted one, and here are two darlings," cried Polly, almost purring with delight as the downy bunches unrolled and gaped till their bits ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... skins of the guanico, sewed together into pieces about six feet long and five wide: These are wrapped round the body, and fastened with a girdle, with the hairy side inwards; some of them had also what the Spaniards have called a puncho, a square piece of cloth made of the downy hair of the guanico, through which a hole being cut for the head, the rest hangs round them about as low as the knee. The guanico is an animal that in size, make, and colour, resembles a deer, but it has a hump on its back, and no horns. These people ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... dear, precious secret of Mr. and Mrs. Quack was kept, for not even Paddy the Beaver knew just where that nest was, and in due time, early one morning, Mrs. Quack proudly led forth for their first swim ten downy, funny ducklings. ...
— The Adventures of Poor Mrs. Quack • Thornton W. Burgess
... the soft, downy cheek greedily, with the same ardour she had just been throwing into her own dreams ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was laughing and crying with his new parental emotions, and running to the side of the plain crib in which his alter egg, as he used to say, was swinging, to hang over the little heap of stirring clothes, from which looked the minute, red, downy, still, round face, with unfixed eyes and working lips,—in that unearthly gravity which has never yet been broken by a smile, and which gives to the earliest moon-year or two of an infant's life the character ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... pure spot of rest (Love's little throne!) shalt thou be torn; Time hovers o'er thy downy nest, To ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... leads past the mineral baths and then strikes uphill, at first through lanes cut deep in the black lava. The trees met almost overhead. It is like Devonshire, except that one half hopes to see tropical foxgloves with violet bells and downy leaves sprouting among the lush grasses and sweet-scented ferns upon those gloomy, damp, warm walls. After this we skirted a thicket of arbutus, and came upon the long volcanic ridge, with divinest outlook over Procida ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... boy, A lover of green fields and flowers,— One, who with laughing rills could toy, And hold companionship for hours, With leaves that whispered low at night, Or fountains bubbling from their springs, Or summer winds, whose downy flight, Seemed but the sweep of angel wings:— 'Twas strange that I should love the clash Of ocean in its maddest hour, And joy to see the billows dash O'er the rent cliff with fearful power. 'Twas strange,—but I was ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... I could hear thee still; The nightingale to thee sings out of tune, While on thy faithful breast my head reclines, The downy pillow's hard; while from thy lips I drink delicious draughts of nectar down, Falernian wines seem bitter to ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... the whole thing off. Kurt was also sitting up, a yard away from him, pink as ever, wrapped in blankets, and with an aluminium diver's helmet over his knee, staring at him with a severe expression, and rubbing his downy unshaven chin. They were both on a slanting floor of crimson padding, and above them was an opening like a long, low cellar flap that Bert by an effort perceived to be the cabin door in a half-inverted condition. The whole cabin had in ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... voice frightens it, and makes it shrink into a corner of its cage, but it will show a great deal of fight, and peck vigorously, when disturbed by a familiar finger. But either way, if it is loving or enraged, a canary is always the same dear downy little pet, and deserves the tenderest care and ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... having retrograded several miles. In the cove there is a small sandy beach, upon which the waves have drifted, and deposited a large quantity of oat-straw, and feathers shed by the millions of water-fowls which sport upon the bay. On this downy deposit furnished by nature we spread our blankets, ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... diamond that, if thrown Well in the eyes of even noble men, Will blind them to a host of flagrant faults. The moon was full, and 'twixt two silvered clouds Looked forth, like any princess from between The tasseled curtains of her downy bed. The vagrant wind came through the opened blind, And whispered of the desert; with its hand Fanning the flame that in the silver urn Mimicked a star. Beneath the rays I wrote: I should have slain you both for your intent Of murder; but I spare, you, and I go. So, take the kingdom, ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... beside a basinette that might have been lined with the breast feathers of a dove, so downy was it. An imitation-ivory clock ticked among a litter of imitation-ivory dresser fittings. On the edge of the bed, and with no thought for its lacy coverlet, she sat down heavily, her wet coat dragging it awry. An hour ticked past. The maid completed her tasks, announced her departure, and ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... fragrant isle Where Nature ever seems to smile, The cheerful gang{16}!—the negroes see Perform the task of industry: Ev'n at their labour hear them sing, 245 While time flies quick on downy wing; Finish'd the bus'ness of the day, No human beings are more gay: Of food, clothes, cleanly lodging sure, Each has his property secure; 250 Their wives and children are protected, In sickness they are not neglected; And when old age brings a release, Their ...
— No Abolition of Slavery - Or the Universal Empire of Love, A poem • James Boswell
... first birds return from their winter sojourn. The teacher and pupils may now learn to recognize the birds, because there are only a few, and these are easily seen, as the robin, blue-bird, junco, meadow-lark, goldfinch, bronzed grackle, sapsucker, blue jay, downy ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... Peter consumed the rice and stew, his bruised feet were bathed in warm water, rubbed with a soothing ointment, and wrapped in a downy bandage. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... escape. But how? This question had not yet presented itself. Escape from the jail!—from death!—himself,—more than himself, his wife! Stone walls lost their appalling firmness, and were no more than downy masses, which ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... in the sky, on the trees, on the wall of the hut, and on the still wet tiles of the roof, which had a chicken perching upon its ridge. The wind pulled out sideways the wild grass that grew in the wall, and the chicken's downy feathers, both of which things let themselves float upon the wind's breath to their full extent, with the unresisting submissiveness of light and lifeless matter. The tiled roof cast upon the pond, whose reflections were now clear again in the sunlight, a square of pink marble, the like of which ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... ten years old then clasped hands above its downy head, and in childish earnestness vowed to one another to protect, to cherish, to defend it as long as life was spared to either. Hannibal was not older than we were when he swore his famous oath at Carthage, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... to the facts of birth, I do not think we ought to find much difficulty. You can point out how the baby seed has a soft, downy place provided for it in the pod of the parent plant till it has ripened and is fit to be sown, when the pod opens and lets it fall to the earth, and it becomes a plant in its turn. You can point out that the egg in a similar way is carried in the mother bird's body till the shell has hardened ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... a cannot punish thee; Thou wert no actor of their Tragaedie. But for my beard thou canst not counterfet And bring gray haires uppon thy downy chinne; White frostes are ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... and the bright, glossy color of its beautifully tasseled fronds render it a most welcome addition to a group of ferns naturally rich in decorative plants. Its curiously and irregularly pinnate fronds are borne on slender stalks, terete toward the base, and covered with reddish brown, downy scales, instead of being produced loosely, as in most other Nephrolepises; these are densily crowded, and the outcome of closely clustered crowns. They measure from 15 inches to 18 inches long, and are terminated by very ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... sadly tried bushes, bearing a beautiful yellow flower, like a large yellow wild rose, only scentless. It is not a rose at all, I may remark. The ground, where there is any basin made by the rocks, grows a great sedum, with a grand head of whity-pink flower, also a tall herb, with soft downy leaves silver grey in colour, and having a very pleasant aromatic scent, and here and there patches of good honest parsley. Bright blue, flannelly-looking flowers stud the grass in sheltered places and a very ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Cyril," said Eva, pointing to a gorgeous peacock-butterfly which had settled amicably by a bee on the pink-and-downy coronet of a ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... sculptured back [a chair said to have come over in the Mayflower, and owned by the Hawthorne family]; and whenever I look up, two stars beneath a brow of serene white radiate love and sympathy upon me. Can you think of a happier life, with its rich intellectual feasts? That downy bloom of happiness, which unfaithful and ignoble poets have persisted in declaring always vanished at the touch and wear of life, is delicate and fresh as ever, and must remain so if we remain unprofane. The sacredness, the loftiness, the ethereal delicacy of such a soul ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... found himself between silken covers, and for a moment he gazed thoughtfully at a high arched ceiling that was entirely unfamiliar. Then, remembering, he sprang from the downy bed to his feet. The room, the furnishings, his silken robe, everything was strange. His bed, he saw, was a high one, and the frame was of the same gleaming silver as the dome under which they had been trapped. The arched ceiling glowed softly with the same rosy ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... had so nearly demolished the restraint on her friend's dimples, that she turned her back on her, and commended the finish of a solitary downy feather that lay detached ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... chair an inch or two higher than the rest, between two bundles. From the first, a huge heap of feathers and wings, she was taking the downy plumes, and pulling the others from the quills, and so filling bundle two littering the floor ankle-deep, and contributing to the general stock a stuffy little malaria, which might have played a distinguished part in a sweet room, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Straits' settlements of the East, the following are the most approved varieties:—The royal plantain, which fruits in eight months; one which bears in a year, the milk plantain, the downy plantain, and the golden plantain or banana. A species termed gindy has been lately imported from Madras, where it is in great request. It has this advantage over the other kinds, that it can be stewed down like an ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... there was not a single bone in his back. The attitude of his whole body was expressive of a certain nervous weakness; he looked, as he sat, like one of Balzac's thirty-year-old coquettes resting in her downy arm-chair after a fatiguing ball. From my first glance at his face I should not have supposed his age to be more than twenty-three, though afterwards I should have put it down as thirty. His smile had something ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... I remembered that Miss Dagget's bed wuz jest the other side of the thin board partition. I sez, "Yes, Josiah, with weariness and a easy conscience, any bed will seem soft as downy pillows are." ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... dogs," said the black-and-white Downy Woodpecker, running up a telegraph pole in search of grubs; "dogs have bones to eat and I like to ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... as a tilting-ground, where the new-made knights were to prove their skill. The storm had given place to a soft breezy morning, the cool freshness of which appearing peculiarly grateful from the oppressiveness of the night; light downy clouds sailed over the blue expanse of heaven, tempering without clouding the brilliant rays of the sun. Every face was clothed with smiles, and the loud shouts which hailed the youthful candidates for knighthood, as they severally entered, told well the feeling with which ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... winter provisions by a free use of my gun. The eider ducks, or dunter geese, as we call them in Orkney, are always plentiful in the winter time, and valuable not only for their flesh, but also for their rich downy feathers, and I managed to procure a good number of these. Over at the fresh-water loch of Harray, too, several teals and sheldrakes were taken. And then, when my sport was over, I hung up my gun in its place in the warm byre, believing that I was ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... so there's an end o' thy love! But pray you, Sir Downy Daintiness, how come ye that are so gentle so ungently dight? Discourse, ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... and out of the old shop, but none came his way. As he stared across the street at his rival's shop, his face changed; it was like a hawk's, threatening and predatory, indifferent to the agony of the downy breast and fluttering wings that it ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... as you see, and I will report it to the other lovely Maria, and 'twill be pretty to see the rapiers flash between the two. 'Tis not only the men carry dress swords, child. But I thought Miss Maria a downy nestling, with never a thought of repartee, till now. 'Tis born in us, child. It begins with our first word and is ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... come," said the people in the rich house on the banks of the Nile, where the royal lord lay in the open hall on the downy cushions, covered with a leopard skin, not alive and yet not dead, but waiting and hoping for the lotos-flower from the deep moorland, in the far North. Friends and servants ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... leaves fell, the white birches showered the hill-sides with crumpled gold, the ruffed grouse put on its downy stockings, the great hare's flanks became patched with white. Cold was surely coming; somewhere behind the blue north the Great White ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... provided with terms of correct and classical criticism. One of my friends begged me to observe, the other day, that Claude was "pulpy;" another added the yet more gratifying information that he was "juicy;" and it is now happily discovered that Cuyp is "downy." Now I dare say that the sky of this first-rate Cuyp is very like an unripe nectarine: all that I have to say about it is, that it is exceedingly unlike a sky. The blue remains unchanged and ungraduated over three-fourths of it, down to the horizon; while the sun, in the left-hand corner, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... boat, he brought Sam one of the soft, light coverings peculiar to the country. The foundation was a wide-meshed net of cord, to which had been tied hundreds of the fragile, downy pelts. Sam could stick his finger anywhere through the interstices, yet it was warmer than a blanket, ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... landmarks disappeared and unknown fields lay about her. Crude rail fences divided acres of rustling corn from orchards whose trees were laden with red apples or downy peaches. Occasionally flocks of startled birds rose from fields freshly plowed for the fall sowing of wheat. Huge red barns and spacious open tobacco sheds, hung with drying tobacco, gave evidence of the prosperity of the farmers ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... thy lay and loud, Far in the downy cloud, Love gives it energy, love gave it birth. Where, on thy dewy wing, Where art thou journeying? Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... awoke, as was her custom,—when the very faintest hue of dawn streaked the horizon. A hen who has seen a hawk balancing his wings and cawing in mid-air over her downy family could not have awakened with her feathers, metaphorically speaking, in a more bristling state ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... its iron tongue remorse entered her youthful conscience. Was this obeying mamma? Mamma had said, "Go to bed:" not, "Go upstairs and meditate: upon young gentlemen." She gave an expressive shake of her fair shoulders, like a swan flapping the water off its downy wings, and so dismissed the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... mi-careme dance. . . . Besides, Suddy Gray is a bore with the martyred smile he's been cultivating. . . . As though a happy girl would dream of marrying anybody with all life before her to learn important things in! . . . And that dreadful, downy Scott Innis—trying to make me listen to him! . . . until I was ashamed to be alive! And Bradley Harmon—ugh!—and oh, that mushy widower, Percy Draymore, who got hold of my arm ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... through the leaves, checkering all the ground with gold. The wood now glowed with colour, russet and green and brown, wine-like red of the tree-trunks where the sun struck aslant on them, soft yellow greens where the young ferns uncurled their downy heads. The air was sweet, sweet, with the smell of morning; was the whole world new since ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... perfecting of that green until the whole earth is hidden away; then the soft, juicy look of the young blades nodding and waving at each other in the wind, that seems almost tender of them, and at last the fleecy, downy ears all whispering together." ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... now quit their holes and lurking sheds, Most mute and melancholy, where thro' night All nestling close to keep each other warm, In downy sleep they had forgot their hardships; But not to chant and carol in the air, Or lightly swing upon some waving bough, And merrily return each other's notes; No; silently they hop from bush to bush, Yet find no seeds to stop ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... a more fervent word of praise of her sister, and had not the hushing response to it. She heard the soft regular breathing. Her own was in downy fellowship with it a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... from inside his jacket a little downy bird, who blinked and ruffled his feathers, looking very plump and ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... village was very still. A train thundered by, and Potter's windmill creaked and splashed,—creaked and splashed. A cow-bell clanked in the lane, and Mary Bell looked up to see the Dickeys' cow dawdle by, her nose sniffing idly at the clover, her downy great bag leaving a trail of foam on the fresh grass. From up the road came the ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... a bar of ivory, impatient for a breach to be opened for his advance to the assault of her tender virginity. Nervously my fingers pulled at the impeding linen, till they found a small opening and could touch the downy furniture of her mount, and finding the entrance to Love's Palace of Pleasure, slowly parted the velvety lips of her maiden slit. Then gently tickling the sensitive clitty, that source of every girl's delight, made her sigh out: "Ah, oh! how nice, Mr. Percy! don't hurt me, will you—there's ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... find," says Solomon Don Dunce, "Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet. Through all the flimsy things we see at once As easily as through a Naples bonnet— Trash of all trash! how can a lady don it? 5 Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff, Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff Twirls into trunk-paper the while you con it." And, veritably, Sol is right enough. The general tuckermanities are arrant 10 Bubbles, ephemeral and so transparent; But this is, now, you may depend upon it, Stable, opaque, ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... fancies,—the scene was weird, And the witches [63] dance at the midnight hour. She leaped the brook and she swam the river; Her course through the forest Wiwaste wist By the star that gleamed through the glimmering mist That fell from the dim moon's downy quiver. In her heart she spoke to her spirit-mother: "Look down from your teepee, O starry spirit. The cry of Wiwaste, O mother, hear it; And touch the heart of my cruel father. He hearkened not ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... and she was reclining on the soft downy pillows, the special pride of Mrs. Aldergrass, who bustled in and out, while her husband, ashamed of his stinginess, said "they should of moved her afore, only ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... warmtemperate region of the Old World. It ripens its fruit in the south of England. It is a tree of moderate size; the leaves are lanceolate, and serrated at the edges; and it flowers early in spring. The fruit is a drupe, having a downy outer coat, called the epicarp, which encloses the reticulated hard stony shell or endocarp. The seed is the kernel which is contained within these coverings. The shell-almonds of trade consist of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... satins,—that shining hair shall be made radiant with gems,—jewels shall sparkle on that fair neck, and on those taper fingers,—you shall ride in a carriage, and have servants to wait on you,—and you shall sleep on a downy bed, and live in a grand house, like this. Say, will not all these fine things be better than selling fruit in ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... peeps, and as she peeps, 'tis no more one, but three, And eye of bat, and downy wing of owl within the tree, And the bells of that sweet belfry a-pealing as before, And now it is not three she sees, and now it is ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... ordinaire of Europe: In the end it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder—not like the ordinary Egyptian adder, but like a patent adder in the office of a loan shark, which is the worst stinger of the whole adder family. If consumed with any degree of freedom it puts a downy coat on your tongue next morning that causes you to think you inadvertently swallowed the pillow in your sleep. Good domestic wine costs as much in Europe as good domestic wine costs in America—possibly more ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... is impossible for any woman to surpass this girl; she is like the cat who rubs herself against your legs; a white girl with ash-colored hair, delicate in appearance, but who must have downy threads on the third phalanx of her fingers, and all along her cheeks a white down whose line, luminous on fine days, begins at her ears and loses ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... silk-lined cap on her head, over which a downy growth of pale-brown fuzz was gradually thickening. Already it showed a tendency to form into tiny rings, which to Amy, who had always hankered for curls, was an extreme satisfaction. Strange to say, the same thing exactly had happened to ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... indeed; it is one of the most beautiful of all the birds' nests—such a nice round shape, and so firm that it does not easily fall to pieces. Inside it is lined with hair and feathers, and downy things, which make it ever so soft. Just put your finger inside, Annie, and feel it. Outside it is made of moss, fine dry grass, and wool, all matted together, and covered all over with the lichen which grows on the trunks and branches of trees. It is often very difficult ...
— Woodside - or, Look, Listen, and Learn. • Caroline Hadley
... like flaming catherine wheels, but there are certain requests which one has not the option of refusing. Tommy crept nearer, and put his lips to the round face out of which the eyes shone. Oh! it was so downy and warm, so soft, so indescribably soft. Tommy's lips sank into it, and couldn't get to the bottom. It ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... as you have drawn trees carefully a little while, you will be impressed, and impressed more strongly the better you draw them, with the idea of their softness of surface. A distant tree is not a flat and even piece of colour, but a more or less globular mass of a downy or bloomy texture, partly passing into a misty vagueness. I find, practically, this lovely softness of far-away trees the most difficult of all characters to reach, because it cannot be got by mere scratching or roughening the surface, but is always associated with such delicate ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... nature—speaks in a very interesting and autobiographical volume (2) of the extraordinary fascination exercised upon him as a boy, not only by a snake, but by certain trees, and especially by a particular flowering-plant "not more than a foot in height, with downy soft pale green leaves, and clusters of reddish blossoms, something like valerian." ... "One of my sacred flowers," he calls it, and insists on the "inexplicable attraction" which it had for him. In various ways of this kind one can perceive ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... senses like a strong drug; and when the child was awake, and she could bathe the much creased little body, and handle the soft arms, and drop passionate kisses on the satin-smooth skin, and rub her cheek on the downy head, she found herself sometimes trembling and dizzy with emotion. She felt constantly buoyed up by a deep trust and belief in life which she had not known before. The huge and steadying continuity of existence ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... taste than I, father," she said. "You have been enjoying the beauty of nature, while I was lying on a downy pillow." ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... plenteous day; When fruitful Summer loads the teeming plain, She crops the harvest, and she stores the grain. How long shall sloth usurp thy useless hours, Unnerve thy vigour, and enchain thy powers? While artful shades thy downy couch enclose, And soft solicitation courts repose, Amidst the drowsy charms of dull delight, Year chases year with unremitted flight, Till Want now following, fraudulent and slow, Shall spring to seize ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... it blends again with the other parts, and the line is perpetually changing, above, below, upon every side. In this description I have before me the idea of a dove; it agrees very well with most of the conditions of beauty. It is smooth and downy; its parts are (to use that expression) melted into one another; you are presented with no sudden protuberance through the whole, and yet the whole is continually changing. Observe that part of a beautiful woman where she is perhaps ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... with greener bays Than twine the chaplet of the minstrel's lays; Nor heed, while poring o'er each graver line, The far, faint music of a flute like mine. His was no head contentedly which press'd The downy pillow in obedient rest, Where lazy pilots, with their canvas furl'd, Let up the Gades of their mental world; His was no tongue which meanly stoop'd to wear The guise of virtue, while his heart was bare; But all he thought through ev'ry ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... good-looking; while the peculiar manner in which the blonde male peasants cut their hair is not becoming to their sunburnt skins, which are generally a brilliant red, especially about the neck where it appears below the light, fluffy, downy locks. Fat men are not uncommon; and their fatness is too frequently of a kind to make one shudder, for it resembles dropsy, and is, as a rule, the outcome of liqueur drinking, a very pernicious habit, in which many Finlanders indulge to excess. There are men in Suomi—dozens of them—so fat ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... back into the shop to talk, leaving Louie to her nursing. As soon as she was alone she laid back the flannel which lay round the child's head, and examined every inch of its downy poll and puckered face, her warm breath making the tiny lips twitch in sleep as it travelled across them. Then she lifted the little nightgown and looked at the pink feet nestling in their flannel wrapping. A glow sprang into her cheek; her great eyes ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... rose-color White Mts., rocky hills; N. E. Alum-root Greenish-purple Rocky woodlands; Conn. to Wis. Alum-root, downy Purplish-white Rich woods; Lancaster, Pa. American ipecac Rose-color Deep woods; N. Y., Pa., and West. Arrow-wood White, light blue berries Wet places. Common North. Bell-shaped sullivantia White Limestone cliffs; Ohio, Wis. Bird's-eye primrose Pale lilac Shores of Western lakes; Mt. Kineo, ...
— Harper's Young People, June 8, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... He floated through cool space away from the imps of torment; his bed was of downy clouds, and on these clouds he drifted with a great shining river under him; and at last the cloud he was in began to shape itself into walls and on these walls were pictures, and a window through which the sun was shining, and a black pennon—and he heard a soft, ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... build their nest? Robin Red Breast told me, First a wisp of yellow hay In a pretty round they lay; Then some shreds of downy floss, Feathers too, and bits of moss, Woven with a sweet, sweet song, This way, that way, and across: That's ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous
... happiness and sweet content flung open to such suitors? far from it! The poor slave, on his hard, pine plank, but scantily covered with his thin blanket, sleeps more soundly than the feverish voluptuary who reclines upon his feather bed and downy pillow. Food, to the indolent lounger, is poison, not sustenance. Lurking beneath all their dishes, are invisible spirits of evil, ready to feed the self-deluded gormandizers{87} which aches, pains, fierce temper, uncontrolled passions, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... on a couch of downy grass, With delicate blossoms strewn, And I feel the throb of Nature's heart Responsive to my own. Oh, the world is fair, and God is good, That maketh life so dear; For is not this the rare, sweet time, The blossoming time ...
— Ballads • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... sat down upon it, sinking so low in downy luxuriance that she found herself resting not far from the floor. But, looking out through the marble latticework into the blue twilight, she was somewhat reassured. Though thick foliage obscured the stars, it was not really dark, as ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... notice your white shoulders at first," said Phyllis, "but I saw at once what fine downy feathers you have. They are beautifully soft. Do they make a warm winter dress? How do you chance to be ...
— Stories of Birds • Lenore Elizabeth Mulets
... I were her earring, Ambushed in auburn ringlets sleek, (So might my shadow tremble Over her downy cheek), Hid in her hair, all day and night, Touching her ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... No-book preferred, and quite charmed at his own good fortune in receiving so agreeable an invitation, he eagerly gave his hand to the splendid new acquaintance who promised him so much pleasure and ease, and gladly proceeded in a carriage lined with velvet, stuffed with downy pillows, and drawn by milk-white swans, to that magnificent residence, Castle Needless, which was lighted by a thousand windows during the day, and by a ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... chirped in glee for the very joy of living, and the hungry crows, in great crowds, called loudly the tidings of spring. But not long could they stop to sing, for the homes must be made, and soon from every tree and bush could be seen these dainty, downy nests, and in every nest the eggs, and in every egg a wonderful secret about which all the happy birds twittered ...
— A Child's Story Garden • Compiled by Elizabeth Heber
... through a breeding-herd of camels, browsing on the short grass. The old ones are in the process of the spring moulting; their thick, matted hair is peeling off in large flakes, like fragments of a ragged, moth-eaten coat. The young ones are covered with pearl-gray wool, soft and almost downy, like gigantic goslings with four legs. (What is the word for a young camel, I wonder; is it camelet or camelot?) But young and old have a family ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... at present little known in this country. It forms a low bush with spreading wiry purplish downy branches, and loose terminal panicles of white flowers. Its peculiar spreading habit, dark green leaves, and abundant flowers render it a desirable acquisition to the shrubbery. It is quite ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... was a tall, powerful, plump and florid young man, with very curly golden hair, very light blue eyes, and the merest trace of downy, curly yellow beard. He was very handsome, with small delicate nose and mouth, a round chin and the most beautiful ears I ever saw on any man. He wore senators' boots and a tunic of pure silk, dyed a very brilliant ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... Mousehunt is given in The History of a Field-mouse by Miss Black. Should it be thought of sufficient authority to deserve a place in "N. & Q.," the coincidence which led "Little Downy" to be read to a little girl on the morning of Nov. 26 ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... to the door, when presently, in rushed Carl, breathless. In his hands, held up lovingly against his neck, was a poor little snow-white dove. Some crimson drops upon the downy breast, showed that it ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... peaches were rosy and downy, the plums ready to drop with lusciousness; ruddy-cheeked pears were crowded on the drooping branches; the apples, not so plentiful, were taking on the colors that proclaimed their near fruition; and even the knotty quinces were growing fair and golden. On the upper terrace the stately, ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... dust-like feathers the pattern of the mottling of the under surface of the wings. What finicking dilettantism—was ever such "antic, lisping, affecting fantastico?"—that rough Neptune, who in blind fury bombards the stubborn beaches with blocks of coral, should be delicately susceptible to the downy print of ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... is a fine, downy undercovering, obtained by combing the fleece of a goat native to the Kashmir Valley in India. A single animal yields scarcely more than an ounce or two, and the best product is worth about its weight in gold. It is used in the manufacture of the famous Cashmere shawls, ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... instinctive dread prompted her to turn round, and indeed there lay Jeanne, lowering upon them with deadly pale face and great inky-black eyes. The child had not made the least movement; her chin was still buried in the downy pillow, which she clasped with her little arms. She had only opened her eyes a moment ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... the broad Pactolus, stemming the waters with its downy breast; and anon, it would rise upon the wing, and soar to other skies; so, taking down that snow-white sail, it seeks for a moment to rest its foot on shore, and thence take flight: alas, poor bird! thou ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... just as three canoes, carved in bizarre shapes of birds' heads and eagle claws, came paddling across the inlet. Three savages were in one, six in the other, ten in the third. They came slowly over the water, singing some song of welcome, beating time with their paddles, {186} scattering downy white feathers on the air, at intervals standing up to harangue a welcome to the newcomers. Soon thirty canoes were around the ships with some ten warriors in each. Still they came, shoals of them, like fish, with savages almost naked, the harbor smooth as glass, the grand tyee, or great ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... day I have attended such little schools unseen and unsuspected by the mother bird. Sometimes it was the a-b-c class, wee little downy fellows, learning to hide on a lily pad, and never getting a reward of merit in the shape of a young trout till they hid so well that the teacher (somewhat over-critical, I thought) was satisfied. Sometimes it was the baccalaureates ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... years and years since it was laid, In her own gentle way, On tangled curls of brown and jet Above the downy coverlet 'Neath which the ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... streets and actual want already has its clutch on many a poor devil, society goes on giving its expensive parties and living in its little round of selfish pleasure just as if the volcano was a downy little bed of roses for it to go to sleep in whenever it wearies of the pleasure and wishes to retire to happy dreams. Oh, but the bubble will burst one of ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... moved her head and smiled at Helen Cumberly; then seemed to sink deeper into the downy billows of the bed. Dr. Cumberly stood up very slowly, and turned, ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... dream-children—strong sons and daughters yet unborn. Their eyes seemed smiling, their fingers closing on hers. Cloudlike, yet very real, they beckoned her, and in her stirred the call of motherhood—of life to be. Her heart-strings echoed to that harmony; it seemed already as though a tiny head, downy—soft, was nestling in her bosom, while eager lips ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... the feathered tribe at this time; how some rudely push before and peck the others in their anxiety to obtain the first grains that fall from the basket, and how the little children take care that the most greedy shall not get it all; their joy at seeing the young broods of tiny chicks covered with downy feathers, and the anxiety of the hens each to protect her own from danger, and teach them to scratch and pick up food for themselves; while they never forget to admire and praise the beauty of the fine old cock, as he struts about ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... villages, reconciling differences, and extending the sacred influences of the gospel, so that in a very short time he attained the appellation of Bishop Bunyan—a title much better merited by him than by the downy prelates who sent him to jail for preaching that which they ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... bed with its snowy counterpane and downy pillows roomy enough for two, but a wide cot had been placed on the other side of the neat little room for whoever chose to ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... by spiders spun; With jacket wove of thistle's down; His trowsers were of feathers done. His stockings, of apple-rind, they tie With eyelash from his mother's eye His shoes were made of mouse's skin, Tann'd with the downy hair within." ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... determined to escape. But how? This question had not yet presented itself. Escape from the jail!—from death!—himself,—more than himself, his wife! Stone walls lost their appalling firmness, and were no more than downy masses, which his ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... the field Old Biddy Brown has four wee chickens, little soft downy balls, scarcely bigger than the eggs they came from ...
— The Nursery, Volume 17, No. 101, May, 1875 • Various
... a cygnet on the broad Pactolus, stemming the waters with its downy breast; and anon, it would rise upon the wing, and soar to other skies; so, taking down that snow-white sail, it seeks for a moment to rest its foot on shore, and thence take flight: alas, poor bird! thou art sinking in those golden sands, the heavy morsels clog thy flapping wing—in ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... silence to continue a moment, educationally, drew a handkerchief across her upper lip, with its strange little downy mustache, and resumed: ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... does within resistance make; Which yet we moderately take; Who would not choose to be awake, While he's encompassed round with such delight; To the ear, the nose, the touch, the taste and sight? When Venus would her dear Ascanius keep A prisoner in the downy bands of sleep, She odorous herbs and flowers beneath him spread, As the most soft and sweetest bed; Not her own lap would more have charmed his head. Who that has reason and his smell Would not among roses and jasmine dwell, Rather than all his spirits choke, With exhalations ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... young that he was about to give up the search, much disappointed, when he perceived something "like a slight mouldiness among the withered leaves, and, on stooping down, discovered it to be a young whip-poor-will, seemingly asleep." Wilson's description of the young is very accurate, as its downy covering does look precisely like a "slight mouldiness." Returning a few moments afterward to the spot to get a pencil he had forgotten, he could find neither ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... paddling across the inlet. Three savages were in one, six in the other, ten in the third. They came slowly over the water, singing some song of welcome, beating time with their paddles, {186} scattering downy white feathers on the air, at intervals standing up to harangue a welcome to the newcomers. Soon thirty canoes were around the ships with some ten warriors in each. Still they came, shoals of them, like fish, with savages almost naked, the ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... passion which women at this age conceive towards men, and the idle and childish liking of a girl to a boy, which is often fixed on the outside only, and on things of little value and no duration; as on cherry-cheeks, small, lily-white hands, sloe-black eyes, flowing locks, downy chins, dapper shapes; nay, sometimes on charms more worthless than these, and less the party's own; such are the outward ornaments of the person, for which men are beholden to the taylor, the laceman, the ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... DESCRIPTION.—Fur short and downy; fulvous ashy, or dull light ashy brown colour, denser and paler beneath; the hairs whitish at the base; ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... measures, are equally undesirable, since they are not permanent cures any more than the depilatory powders. The worst feature of these cures is that for every hair pulled out or burnt off a coarser one takes its place, and for every tiny, downy growth a fully developed hair appears. Of course, the plaster removes this soft lanuginous growth with the hardier one, and for that reason should be left severely alone. The tweezers are therefore less objectionable than the plaster, but this is such a painful way of ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... The bolt, obedient to the silken cord, To the strong staple's inmost depth restored, Secured the valves. There, wrapped in silent shade, Pensive, the rules the goddess gave he weigh'd; Stretch'd on the downy fleece, no rest he knows, And in his raptured soul ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... weary cry, And all its curse and care shall die, When Age on downy couches throws His weary limbs and only knows The tender dreams of ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... chambers of her breast Love lives and makes his spicy nest, Midst downy blooms and fragrant flowers, And there he dreams away the hours— There let him rest! Some time hence, when the cuckoo sings, I'll come by night and bind his wings,— Bind him that he shall not roam From his ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... extensively distributed over the warmtemperate region of the Old World. It ripens its fruit in the south of England. It is a tree of moderate size; the leaves are lanceolate, and serrated at the edges; and it flowers early in spring. The fruit is a drupe, having a downy outer coat, called the epicarp, which encloses the reticulated hard stony shell or endocarp. The seed is the kernel which is contained within these coverings. The shell-almonds of trade consist of the endocarps enclosing ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... back to the Fourth of July. When Benton returned with the French clothes Fitzhugh Williams rose from his downy couch and bathed in cold water. He was even an eager bather in France, rejoicing in the feeling of superiority and stoicism which accompanied the pang and pain of it. But in England, where everybody bathed—or ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... central depression) and coalescing into broad convex vertical ribs: spine bearing areolae obsolete: flowers borne at the summit of nascent tubercles: ovary naked (that is free from scales, but often downy): fruit and ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter
... remembered him at a time when he was laughing and crying with his new parental emotions, and running to the side of the plain crib in which his alter egg, as he used to say, was swinging, to hang over the little heap of stirring clothes, from which looked the minute, red, downy, still, round face, with unfixed eyes and working lips,—in that unearthly gravity which has never yet been broken by a smile, and which gives to the earliest moon-year or two of an infant's life the character of a first old age, to counterpoise that second childhood ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... visitor. There he was, as neighbourly as you please, and not in the least awed by my intrusion; there he was, far out on the limb of a dead tree, stepping energetically up and down, like a sailor reefing a sail, and rapping and tapping as he worked—a downy woodpecker. ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... assuming a convulsive and ghastly aspect, "I arose on tiptoe, and collecting the heavy comforters and large downy pillows of the bed, I deliberately piled them on her one upon the other, and pressing them down with all my gathered force, I stifled her in ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... of little pattering feet were resting. Three rosy faces pressed the downy pillow, and ...
— Edna's Sacrifice and Other Stories - Edna's Sacrifice; Who Was the Thief?; The Ghost; The Two Brothers; and What He Left • Frances Henshaw Baden
... Imprimis—one cigar, one tumbler of weak Hollands' grog, better named swizzle, all to be disposed of in pleasant company during some half-hour's walk on deck; when, if you should sometimes, as I hope you often may, fall in with a soft downy south-west breeze, a clear deep-blue sky over head, gemmed full with little stars, and fringed about, down into the watery round, by a broad border of jet-black cloud, against which each curling wave appears to break, and the ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... in a world of golden skylight, warmth and tropical vegetation. The field on which they had landed was covered with a velvety green growth of very soft, fine-bladed grass, sprinkled with tiny, star-shaped blue flowers. A balmy, sweet-scented wind, downy as the breeze of a dream, blew gently along the grass and tingled against Northwood's skin refreshingly. Almost instantly he had the sensation of perfect well being, and this feeling of physical perfection ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... befuddling themselves into that dreamy state regarded by the profession as necessary to the clear bringing out of all the beauties with which a beneficent providence endowed the kings and conquerors they are to personate at night, on that sequestered world called the stage. You may know by the downy state of his wardrobe that he has a place to sleep. But where he gets his breakfast is a mystery no friend has ever yet solved for me. Aside from taking a two shilling dinner at an oyster cellar in William Street and wiping his greasy fingers on a leather apron, he would seem ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... all was still, and several young men that were sitting by the fire on account of every bed being occupied, gave note, by their deep breathing, that sleep had descended upon them, and darkened their senses with her gracious and downy wings, he rose softly from the side of Winterton, and stepping over him, slipped to the door, which he unbarred, and the moon shining bright he went to the stable to take out his horse. It was not his intent to have done this, but to have gone up into the streets of ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... and messy," Peter complained, following with Cherry nevertheless, to see her scatter her chopped food carelessly on the surface of the little pond, the struggling bodies of the ducklings, and the bobbing downy heads alike. With quacking and wriggling and dabbling, the meal was eaten, and Alix, scraping the bowls for last fragments, and blinking in a flood of sunlight, ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... he seems so blest, And leaves at six o'clock his downy nest, Dead to the charms of blanket, wife, and bolster; Unlike his officers, who, fond of cramming, And at reviews afraid of thirst and famine, With bread and cheese and ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... limbs; these are the chief characteristics of the Papuans. Their hair both in its nature and mode of arrangement varies a good deal. Most commonly it is dressed with great pains into a matted structure not less than eight inches in height; composed of a mass of soft downy hair curling naturally; or it is frizzed up, till it positively bristles, and with the assistance of a coating of grease, is plastered round the skull in the shape of a globe. A long wooden comb of six or seven teeth is also often stuck in, not so much to aid in keeping the mass together as to give ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... furrow beside some tufts of golden gorse. It may be interesting, however, to know, by way of completing their domestic history, that both had promising young households—the one of three, and the other of four—to support; and the wee downy children had arrived too at a very ravenous age, with any capacity for food, which indeed amounted, at times, on the part alike of father and mother, to ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... peaceful hush, broken only by the chiming of some distant church bells, and the faint, the very faint barking of dogs, enveloped everything and instilled in me a false sensation of security. Facing me was a diminutive glade padded with downy grass, transformed into a pale yellow by the lustrous rays of the now encrimsoned sun. Fainter and fainter grew the ruddy glow, until there was nought of it left but a pale pink streak, whose delicate marginal lines still ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... the small downy saxifrage [FN: Saxifraga nivalis.] with its white silky leaves covers the ground in early spring. In the fall, it is red with the bright berries and dark box-shaped leaves of a species of creeping winter-green, that ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... "Downy old bird!" said Stalky to the allies one wet afternoon in the study. "He must have gone on a bend and been locked ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... your tiny toes. To find your breathing-place, And touch the downy horn that grows Each side your ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... would frighten and worry Mrs. Quack. So the dear, precious secret of Mr. and Mrs. Quack was kept, for not even Paddy the Beaver knew just where that nest was, and in due time, early one morning, Mrs. Quack proudly led forth for their first swim ten downy, funny ducklings. ...
— The Adventures of Poor Mrs. Quack • Thornton W. Burgess
... scarcely know. But had you asked a little while ago, I should have said a camel; then your hump Dissolved, and you became a gosling plump, Downy and ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... discern. Not now can I be satiate with grace That gildeth but the superficial frame With the false tissue of deep-seeming life; The searching knife must pierce into the heart, And shew a frame veined with the same warm stream That melts in blushes on the downy cheek. My bright ideal, like the bow of heaven, Hath faded into nothingness, and made A blank upon the clouded sky of life. Can my soul live ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... (from which exuded an amber-coloured eatable gum), formed groves and thickets within it. A Capparis, a small stunted tree, was in fruit: this fruit is about one inch long and three-quarters of an inch broad, pear-shaped and smooth, with some irregular prominent lines. Capparis Mitchelii has a downy fruit, and is common in the scrubs. A small trailing Capparis, also with oblong eatable fruit, was first observed on a hill near Ruined Castle Creek, in lat. 25 degrees 10 minutes: we met with it frequently afterwards. We were encamped ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... certain, that, had the reality been less dreadful she would have been ashamed of the fuss she had made. She wanted only this final assurance that the boy was at home, safe and sound; then she would think of her own affairs. She watched the moths fly about the lantern, and when one poor downy pair of wings touched the hot, domed top and fell fluttering into the road, she bent forward and looked at it, wondering what she could do for it. To kill it would be the kindest thing,—to put it out of its pain. But some obscure connection of ideas made her shudder back ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... which appeal especially to the child's mind are the hen and chickens, the downy eider ducks, the family of red foxes, and the home of the muskrat. "Color in nature" is effectively illustrated by grouping together certain tropical fishes, minerals, shells, insects, and birds in such a manner as to bring out vivid red, yellow, ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... tumbling out of it. At first the rain pattered gently on the leaves overhead, and we congratulated ourselves on the snugness of our situation. There was something cheerful about this free life. We contrasted our condition with that of tired invalids who were tossing on downy beds, and wooing sleep in vain. Nothing was so wholesome and invigorating as this bivouac in the forest. But, somehow, sleep did not come. The rain had ceased to patter, and began to fall with a steady determination, a sort of soak, soak, all about us. In fact, it roared on the rubber ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... setting sun Is slowly rising in the west; The rapid rivers slowly run, The frog is on his downy nest. The pensive goat and sportive cow, Hilarious, leap ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... an effort, for he felt very stiff. "Me to hit the downy pillow, which ain't so soft after all, if it is made up of only air. But I'm dead tired, and want to rest the worst kind. Thank you, Tony, for helping me. Ain't used to be chased by a moss-back 'gator every day. Kind of gave me a bad five minutes, and I must have taken a little cold too. Now I'm ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... creeping vine, half transparent in their tempting lusciousness; the red cherries seemed, in the distance, like the burning brilliancy of a summer sunset struggling through the branches and tangled leaves that intervened; and the downy peach peered provokingly from amongst the sheltering green, where, all the summer long, it had stolen the first blush of saffron-vested Aurora, when seraph hands unbar the gates of morning, and the last ray of golden light that paused at the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... had better dispense with your company as soon as we have eaten a bite, and retire to it. On second thought, we will eat in it. Carnes, we will go to our downy couches at once and leave our substitutes in possession of the cabin. I trust, gentlemen, that things come out all right and that you ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... bonnet, And nearly swallows two, An' 'twas their hat and her locket Gave me a pummy stew. Gave me a pummy stew Which near forgot can be, And for bonnet and a locket I'd lame a downy deed." ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... and white is a very rare colour in terrestrial species of moderate size and inoffensive habits. The male, also, as described by Waterton, has a spiral tube, nearly three inches in length, which rises from the base of the beak. It is jet-black, dotted over with minute downy feathers. This tube can be inflated with air, through a communication with the palate; and when not inflated hangs down on one side. The genus consists of four species, the males of which are very distinct, whilst the females, as described by ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... it home, in cloths or blankets swung on their often already-burdened shoulders. Then comes the picking and cleaning process, and thawing the now frozen moss before their camp fires. Every leaf and twig must be removed, that nothing may hurt the little baby limbs. And now all is prepared; the sweet downy substance is spread out as pillow for the baby head, and both couch and covering for the rest of the body. Then the bag is laced up tight, making its small tenant as warm and cozy as possible; only ...
— Owindia • Charlotte Selina Bompas
... No. 7 (Pl. XI.) is made of the skin of a mink—Putorius vison, Gapp. White, downy feathers are secured to the nose, as an additional ornament. In this sack are carried the sacred objects belonging to its owner, such as colors for facial ornamentation, and the magic red powder employed in the preparation of hunters/ ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... have been some kind of a fairy, for we didn't mention kittens, but we wanted one, and here are two darlings," cried Polly, almost purring with delight as the downy bunches unrolled and gaped till their bits of pink tongues ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... and occupied a ranch at the stage-road crossing of Lance Creek, midway between the Platte and Deadwood, in the very heart of the Sioux country. Boone was then well under thirty, graceful of figure, dark-haired, wore a slender downy moustache that served only to emphasize his youth, but possessed that reserve and repose of manner most typical ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... can make a dying bed Feel soft as downy pillows are, While on his breast I lean my head, And breath my life out ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... impatience. To them I told my story with the brevity that I now recount it to you. They were intrigued greatly, and the sous-lieutenant struck me violently upon the back and said, ma foi, that I was a 'downy old bird,' It was a compliment tres 'bizarre mais tres aimable. I was, it appeared, an old bird of the downiest plumage. I had noted the name of the house, and the Inspector seized a Directory. 'We have suspected that house for some time,' said he. There ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... an African jungle or an Indian forest to hunt the tiger. One can lie in bed amid downy pillows and dream tigers as terrible as any in the pathless wild. I was a little girl when one night I tried to cross the garden in front of my aunt's house in Alabama. I was in pursuit of a large cat with a great bushy tail. A ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... she proved. Happily they were but a stone's throw from home, and it was not long before Nan was comfortably settled on the library lounge, luxuriously surrounded by all sorts of downy cushions and having her injured ankle bound in soothing cloths by the tenderest of hands. Delia, full of sympathy and the desire to help, was bustling about nervously, tripping over bandages and upsetting bottles of liniment, but meaning so well all the while ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... summer. Early in the season as it was, the sun was already drawing the colour out of the hills; the young green, hardly a week or two old, was darkening. Except the oaks. They were brilliance itself against the luminous gray-blue sky. So were the beeches, their young downy leaves just unpacked, tumbling loosely open to the light. But the larches and the birches and the hawthorns were already sobered by a longer acquaintance with ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wretch! canst thou expect to see The downy peach make court to thee? Or that thy sense shall ever meet The bean-flower's deep-embosom'd sweet Exhaling with an evening blast? Thy evenings then will all ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... of eider ducklets Up in Heaven, above the blue, And they're dropping off their feathers,— And such downy feathers, too! ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... the wee birdies a pan of water, and placed in it some finely-shred lettuce, with grits and brown bread crumbs, not forgetting suitable food for the poor distracted hen. It was charming to hear the little happy twitterings of the downy babes, how they gobbled and sputtered and talked to each other over their repast, swimming to and fro as if they had been ducks of mature age and experience, instead of mere yellow fluffs of a day old; and, finally, they seemed ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... sat on a chair an inch or two higher than the rest, between two bundles. From the first, a huge heap of feathers and wings, she was taking the downy plumes, and pulling the others from the quills, and so filling bundle two littering the floor ankle-deep, and contributing to the general stock a stuffy little malaria, which might have played a distinguished part in a sweet room, but went for nothing here. Gerard asked her if he could ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... which signify wild cochineal and fine cochineal. The latter may be considered a cultivated product, its food and wants being carefully attended to, while the former is left in a natural state, and is less valuable. Wild cochineal is distinguished by having a woolly downy coat, which is not the case with the fine cochineal. The females, of which there are from one hundred and fifty to two hundred for each male, are marked by the absence of wings, and constitute the commercial article. They are generally killed by immersion in boiling water, ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... cathedral, blue and noble against the sky, was reflected in her, something of the fatality. What was, WAS. With all his young will he could not alter it. He saw her face, the skin still fresh and pink and downy, but crow's-feet near her eyes, her eyelids steady, sinking a little, her mouth always closed with disillusion; and there was on her the same eternal look, as if she knew fate at last. He beat against it with all the strength of ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... Nymphs of Sion, as you go Arm'd with the sounding Quiver and the Bow, Whilst thro' the lonesome Woods you rove, You ne'er disturb my sleeping Love, Be only gentle Zephyrs there, With downy Wings to fan the Air; Let sacred Silence dwell around, To keep off each intruding Sound: And when the balmy Slumber leaves his Eyes, May he to Joys, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... with strong wings Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course High over the immeasurable main. His eyes pursued its flight:—"Thou hast a home, Beautiful bird! thou voyagest to thine home, Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy. And what am I that I should linger here, With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes, Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned To beauty, wasting these ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... the short grass. The old ones are in the process of the spring moulting; their thick, matted hair is peeling off in large flakes, like fragments of a ragged, moth-eaten coat. The young ones are covered with pearl-gray wool, soft and almost downy, like gigantic goslings with four legs. (What is the word for a young camel, I wonder; is it camelet or camelot?) But young and old have a family ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... tickled me so that I fell upon the floor. Then they raised a shout. We have cool nights here, sometimes, in the warmest weather, and we keep, on the foot-boards of our beds, cotton comforters, called delusions, because they are so downy and light. Two of the students took the Senior's comforter and laid it on me; then four of them sat down, one on each corner, to keep me underneath. I have told you that it was a sultry August day. ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... crooning its lullaby with one unceasing melody, lapped the island to sleep with a thousand soft touches of its wave's white hands. The vast sky, like the outspread azure wings of the brooding mother-bird, nestled the island round with its downy plume. For on the distant horizon a deep blue line betokened another shore. But no sound of quarrel or strife could reach the Island of Cards, ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... plumage, the Cape pigeons were white and downy, with the head and wings striped with brown like butterflies, a large species of which they strongly resembled when flying away from the ship, with their ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... mortar for the building of the nest and the midges for the young brood? No, he does nothing; perhaps alleging the excuse of his relative weakness. But this is a poor excuse; for to cut out little circles from a leaf, to rake a little cotton from a downy plant, or to gather a little mortar from a muddy spot, would hardly be a task beyond his powers. He might very well collaborate, at least as labourer; he could at least gather together the materials for the more intelligent mother to place in position. The true motive ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... glutinous substance, which is impervious to water; in spring this melts, and the bud-scales are then cast off. The leaves are composed of seven radiating leaflets (long-wedge-shaped); when young they are downy and drooping. From the early date of its leafing year by year, a horse-chestnut in the Tuileries is known as the "Marronnier du 20 mars." The flowers of the horse-chestnut, which are white dashed with red and yellow, appear in May, and sometimes, but quite exceptionally, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... clouds sailed across the sky at intervals like downy feathers blown before a breeze; the flycatcher continued its chattering song to us, some bees hummed with a warm summer-like sound over ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... thank you, sir—how are you?" Foker replied, imperturbably. "I'm not clever, p'raps: but I am rather downy; and partial friends say I know what's o'clock tolerably well. Can I tell you the time of day in ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... blossom? Fragile, fairy thing, Poised upon slender tip, and quivering To flight! a flower of the fields of air; A jeweled moth; a butterfly, with rare And tender tints upon his downy wings, A moment resting in our happy sight; A flower held captive by a thread so slight Its petal-wings of broidered gossamer Are light as the wind, with every wind astir, Wafting sweet odor, faint and exquisite. O dainty nursling of the field and sky. What fairer thing looks up to heaven's ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... be cultivated most profitably in the region between the Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic coast. The beauty of freshly picked bush chinquapin nuts is not rivalled by that of any other kind of nut that I have ever seen. The exquisitely polished mahogany color comes out of a light downy cloud near the apex of the nut, dark as midnight for a moment and then shading through glows of lively chestnut until it dawns in a dreamy cream color at the base, with just enough suggestion of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various
... apace, the bluebird, robin, cherry-bird, king-bird, and many more, came with haste and built their nests and warbled in its boughs, and so became orchard-birds, and multiplied more than ever. It was an era in the history of their race. The downy woodpecker found such a savory morsel under its bark, that he perforated it in a ring quite round the tree before he left it,—a thing which he had never done before, to my knowledge. It did not take the partridge long to find out how sweet its buds were, and every winter eve she flew, and ...
— Wild Apples • Henry David Thoreau
... said she, in a low voice, that sank into my very heart. "You will not forget me?" As she spoke, her hand dropped heavily upon my shoulder, and her rich luxuriant hair fell upon my cheek. What a devil of a thing is proximity to a downy cheek and a black eyelash, more especially when they belong to one whom you are disposed to believe not indifferent to you! What I did at this precise moment there is no necessity for recording, even had not an adage interdicted such confessions, nor can I now remember ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... advanced a few steps, and fell on her knees at her richly covered bed. Amid furniture, finished in yellow damask, on a downy bed, covered with cambric and lace, she raised her clasped hands, and said, ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... it with a sense of physical satisfaction. The grass was soft and warm; it was scented with the aromatic odors of wild peppermint, and it yielded like a downy cushion beneath her limbs. Still, she was just a little uneasy in mind, for she fancied that she had seen a sudden sign of feeling in Wyllard's face when he had held her for a moment on the ledge of the wagon. She glanced at him and was reassured. He was looking straight before him with unwavering ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... court of the prince. But the fame of Sylvina's beauty and charms spread far and near, and hundreds visited the prince who had never before been seen at his castle. Especially did there come gay young sparks, with downy moustachelets to twirl, and swords that tinkled at their heels; and so attentive were these crowds of gallants that Sylvina never had time even to think, else her thoughts might have gone back to her ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... very beautiful home on Riverside Drive, New York City, a young lady, comfortably backed by downy pillows, sat in her bed and alternated her attention between coffee and rolls, ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... day came for Audrey to be admitted to that quiet room, and she saw Geraldine looking lovelier than ever in her weakness, with a dark, downy head nestled against her arm, a great rush of tenderness filled her heart, and she felt as though she had never loved ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Burrell held out. It was astonishing to witness the fortitude with which the fragile and delicate Jewess, who had been clothed in purple and fine linen, fed on the most costly viands, and slept on the most downy couch, encountered the illness, terrors, and miseries attendant on a sea voyage in the vessel of a Buccaneer. The Fire-fly certainly deserved every encomium bestowed upon her by her captain; yet was she not the most pleasing residence for ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... varieties, assuredly, in a state of nature, where the trees would have to struggle with other trees and with a host of enemies, such differences would effectually settle which variety, whether a smooth or downy, a yellow or ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... Patricia, noting the downy line that penciled the corners of her firm mouth, hesitated to put an inquiry that could be delicate enough to indicate the faint moustache ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... can unassisted vision do? What, but recoil where most it would pursue; His patient gaze but finish with a sigh, When musing waking speaks the sky-lark nigh! Just starting from the corn she cheerly sings, And trusts with conscious pride her downy wings; Still louder breathes, and in the face of day Mounts up, and calls on Giles to mark her way. Close to his eyes his hat he instant bends, And forms a friendly telescope, that lends Just aid enough to dull the glaring light, And place the wand'ring ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... also a bright red fruit, which colours the thickets;[237] the styrax, famous for yielding the gum storax of commerce, grows towards the east end of Carmel, and is a very large bush branching from the ground, but never assuming the form of a tree; it has small downy leaves, white flowers like orange blossoms, and round yellow fruit, pendulous from slender stalks, like cherries.[238] Travellers in Phoenicia do not often mention the caper plant, but it was seen by Canon Tristram hanging from the fissures of the rock, in the cleft of the ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... a wildcat on cold winter nights. Pete was wrong in his head like Paddy Ryan, only worse. As we passed we heard the faintest sounds, so we lay and looked, and there in the dark place under the roots, where the water was deepest, huddled some of the cunningest little downy wild ducks you ever saw. We looked at each other and never said a word. Leon chased them out with the hoe and they swam down stream faster than old ones. I stood in the shallow water behind them and kept them from going back to the deep place, while Leon worked to catch them. Every time he got one ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... beautiful; and wondering how even the land of the kara ghuz kiz, the material paradise of the Mohammedans, can possibly be more lovely. The contemplative young man is tall and slender, has large, dreamy, black eyes, a downy upper lip, a melancholy cast of countenance, and wears a long print wrapper of neat dotted pattern, gathered at the waist with a girdle ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... spoke unsuccess; no canker-bitten bud marked the cold finger of failure; for in that first rush of life all the earthborn host had set forth, if not equal, at least together. The primroses twinkled true on downy coral stems and the stars of anemone, celandine, and daisy opened perfect. Countless consummate, lustrous things were leaping, mingling, and uncurling, aloft and below, in the mazes of the wood, at the margins of the water. Verdant spears and blades expanded; fair fans ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... rewarded by seeing Maggie let her work fall, and gradually get so absorbed in his wonderful geological story that she sat looking at him, leaning forward with crossed arms, and with an entire absence of self-consciousness, as if he had been the snuffiest of old professors, and she a downy-lipped alumna. He was so fascinated by the clear, large gaze that at last he forgot to look away from it occasionally toward Lucy; but she, sweet child, was only rejoicing that Stephen was proving to Maggie ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... minutes South; longitude 118 degrees East:— Marsdenia Leichardti, the climber with edible pods and milky sap, the seeds with a downy top, ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... me a little pleasurable emotion when I see in the autumn woods where the downy woodpecker has just been excavating his winter quarters in a dead limb or tree-trunk. I am walking along a trail or wood-road when I see something like coarse new sawdust scattered on the ground. I know at once what carpenter has been at work in the trees overhead, and I proceed to ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... staying at Nab's," said Raffles, as he lit a Sullivan and opened his Daily Mail at its report of the robbery. "There was one thing Nab would have spotted like the downy old bird he always ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... neither sufficiently; of course, grow very fat at an early age; and when they have not this downy appearance, a comfortable idea, you will say, in a cold climate, they are not remarkable for fine forms. They have, however, mostly fine complexions; but indolence makes the lily soon displace the rose. The quantity of coffee, spices, and other things ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... through the woods, on some clear, still morning in March, while the metallic ring and tension of winter are still in the earth and air, the silence is suddenly broken by long, resonant hammering upon a dry limb or stub. It is Downy beating a reveille to Spring. In the utter stillness and amid the rigid forms we listen with pleasure, and as it comes to my ear oftener at this season than at any other, I freely exonerate the author of it from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... phosphoric acid at all the degrees of hydration, and even by a current of carbonic acid. All these precipitates redissolve with an excess of acid, sulphuric acid excepted. Concentrated sulphuric acid forms an insoluble downy white precipitate, and the concentrated vegetable acids, with the exception of tannic acid, do not determine any precipitate. Cerealine coagulated by an acid redissolves in an excess of the same acid, but it has become dead and has no more action on the starch. The alkalies do not form any precipitate, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... see, and I will report it to the other lovely Maria, and 'twill be pretty to see the rapiers flash between the two. 'Tis not only the men carry dress swords, child. But I thought Miss Maria a downy nestling, with never a thought of repartee, till now. 'Tis born in us, child. It begins with our first word and is our ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... on the downy floor-cushion, I was strangely annoyed by the faint and distant howling of a dog. It seemed to come from the banquet room adjoining mine, or from the doctor's room on the other side. I called in the doctor, who said he heard nothing and had ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... of the mocking-bird still rang from the downy cradle of myrtle blossoms, and a whip-poor-will answered from a cedar in the churchyard, when the slamming of the parsonage gate startled the shy thrush that slept in the vines that overarched it, and Mr. Leigh came slowly up the walk, which was lined with purple and ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... small except the hopes that she was stitching into it; they were so great that her heart could scarcely hold them. Nature was stirring everywhere. The seeds were springing in the warm earth. The hens were clucking to their downy chicks just out of the egg. The birds were flying hither and thither in the apple boughs, and there was one little home of straw so hung that Lyddy could look into it and see the patient mother brooding her nestlings. The sight ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... brocades and laces, And splendid porcelain vases, Enkindling strong desires, Most readily found buyers. In short, gold rain'd where'er he went— Abundance, more than could be spent— Dogs, horses, coaches, downy bedding— His very fasts were like a wedding. A bosom friend, a look his table giving, Inquired whence came such sumptuous living. 'Whence should it come,' said he, superb of brow, 'But from the fountain of ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... hung like diamond pendants from roof and balcony, and still the snow-flakes like downy feathers were falling lazily, as if they knew not whether to pause, ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... from top to bottom, where I fell upon a large mass of some soft substance, to which, in all probability, I owe my life. In a few seconds I recovered my senses, and what was my surprise to find that the downy cushion beneath, snored most audibly! I moved a little to one side, and then discovered that in reality it was nothing less than an alderman of Cork, who, from his position, I concluded had shared the same fate with myself; there he lay, "like a warrior ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... enterprise like this. Youth, too, in its early dawn, was hardly more adapted to our purpose; for it would behold the morning radiance of its own spirit beaming over the very same spots of withered grass and barren sand whence most of us had seen it vanish. We had very young people with us, it is true,—downy lads, rosy girls in their first teens, and children of all heights above one's knee; but these had chiefly been sent hither for education, which it was one of the objects and methods of our institution to supply. Then we had boarders, ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... we go up, up, up, And here we go down, down, downy, And here we go backwards and forwards, And here ...
— Traditional Nursery Songs of England - With Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists • Various
... soldier. Sir Everard would have fought twenty battles in the course of the month, if necessary, and yet not complained of the fatigue or severity of his service, provided only he had been suffered to press his downy couch to what is termed a decent hour in the day. But he had an innate and, perhaps, it may be, an instinctive horror of drills and early rising; a pastime in which the martinets and disciplinarians of the last century were very much ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... sweet! Under a flowery spray Downy heads and little pink feet Are cunningly tucked away! Along the shining furrows, The rows of sprouting corn Flash in the sun, and the orchards Are blushing red as morn; And the time o' the year for toil is here, And idle song and ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... living, and the hungry crows, in great crowds, called loudly the tidings of spring. But not long could they stop to sing, for the homes must be made, and soon from every tree and bush could be seen these dainty, downy nests, and in every nest the eggs, and in every egg a wonderful secret about which all the happy birds ...
— A Child's Story Garden • Compiled by Elizabeth Heber
... man opprest with mental pain, The goods of Fortune have no power to please, Even Suicide has oft been known to stain The downy ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... Oriental hornbeam) principally differs from our native species in its smaller size, the lesser leaves with downy petioles, and the green, much-lacerated bractlets. It is a native of the south of Europe, whence it extends to the Caucasus, and probably also to China; the Carpinus Turczaninovi of Hance scarcely seems to differ, in any material point ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... to that gilded cabin the which gave upon the stern-gallery; and here, outstretched on downy cushions and covered by a ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... wriggle himself free of the psychic gravitations that invest him than the earth can shake herself loose of the sun, or he of the omnipotences that rivet him to the universe. If by chance one shoots a downy hint of wings, an instant feeling of contrast puffs him with self-consciousness: a tragedy at once: the unconscious being "the alone complete." To attain to anything, he must needs screw the head up into the atmosphere ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... the air, coruscating diamond dust. Underfoot, on the path beaten betwixt house and stable, the snow crunched and complained as they walked, and in the open where the mad winds had piled it in hard, white windrows. But in the thick woods it lay as it had fallen, full five foot deep, a downy wrapping for the slumbering earth, over which Bill Wagstaff flitted on his snowshoes as silently as a ghost—a fur-clad ghost, however, who bore a rifle on his shoulder, and whose breath exhaled in white, ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... That haunts and horrifies her shrinking soul, And bursts in sighs and sobs and feverish prayers; And now, at last, the awful struggle ends, A sweet smile sits upon her angel face, And peace, with downy bosom, nestles close Where her worn heart throbs faintly; closer still As the death shadows gather; closer still, As, on white wings, the outward-going soul Flies to a home it never would have sought, Had a great evil failed to point the way. I see a youth whom God has crowned with ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... fitting a salad-green bodice on her elder daughter. That young woman's efforts to see her own spine, where her mother was distributing pins with solemn intentness, had dyed her face a somewhat unnatural red, but the hands that lay upon her downy arms were much whiter than those that hovered about her back. A dining-table, bearing the more permanent part of its outfit, was pushed into a corner of the room, and covered with a yellow mosquito-net, and from the kitchen came a sound of crockery accompanied by an occasional splash and a scraping ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... beholder was pleasant and cheering at first view, but a more critical observation would lead to the conclusion that there was too much of the voluptuous in the design and execution of the penciling. In one corner of the room was a door which opened into an inner room of small dimensions, in which was a downy couch, and all the paraphernalia of a luxurious and elegant bed-room. It was a place that contrasted very strangely with the misery and crime it had sheltered—with the tears of unavailing agony that had been wrung from eyes that sparkled above once ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... like softness with smaller branches and twigs. A similar but lighter platform overhead made him a roof that was anything but waterproof, and a few bushy branches served for walls. Such as it was, it was at least the beginning of a home. He loved it; and in defense of the little hairy brown mate and downy brown baby who shared it with him he would have fought both Dinosaur and Dinoceras with his ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... sewing resembles shoemakers' or saddlers' work; but, the leaf being like fine cloth and not like leather, perhaps the name "tailor-bird" is the most appropriate for the little worker. The bag is lined with soft, downy material, and in this the tiny eggs are laid—tiny indeed, for the tailor-bird is no larger than the hummingbird. The weight of the little creature does not even draw down the nest, and the leaf in which the eggs or young birds are hidden looks like the other leaves on the trees; so ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... paled again, beneath ruffle and ruffle of lace that lay like foam against the soft, snow-white throat. It was a symphony of colour. A perfect harmony of perfect tones in union with the brilliant fairness of her skin. The sleeves, half open to the elbow, revealed a white, rounded, downy arm, and the thousand subtle pink-and-white tints of her flesh seemed to melt and merge themselves into a bewildering, distracting glow within that rose-hued sleeve. She made one exquisite, intoxicating vision to the senses. ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... and falls constantly a black mist resembling shifting cloud smoke. Millions of auks swarm from their moss-ensconced grottos; an oppressive clamor beats the air. Along the ocean, where crevices of the descending iron-chiselled cliffs are fugitively green with ribbons of pale grass, downy-winged ducks purr, mating guillemots coo incessantly, and tremulous oogzooks chirrup ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... knows not if with that velocity and with that direction it will ever revisit this system, since its orbit does not look like a returning curve—with its steam cloud like a banner streaming behind in golden and silver wreaths, like many a downy cloud which I have seen, high in the heavens, unfolding its masses to the light—as if this traveling demigod, this cloud-compeller, would ere long take the sunset sky for the livery of his train; when I hear the iron horse make the hills echo with his snort ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... the one in surgery and the other in cooking. There is a singular fruit, growing six or eight together in a bunch, each as long and thick as one's finger, the skin being of a brownish yellow colour, and somewhat downy, and within the rind is a pulp of a pleasant taste; but I know not if ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... a necklet of diamonds at her throat, to gather up her gloves and lace hand-kerchief and allow Janet to wrap her up in her downy opera cloak, and she was ready. As she turned from the glass her gaze fell fully upon me. I could see that she was not disappointed, but her generous admiration in no way interfered with the consciousness ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... primroses living in what Southerners call 'the cold grey North' were obviously enjoying themselves. Their smooth, pale-yellow faces opened wider, and grew larger and more golden, day by day: while new, soft, pointed buds came poking up through their downy green blankets in unexpected places. Moreover, the warm weather lasted right through the summer. Not only did far more primroses flower than usual, but also, after they had faded, there was plenty of warmth to ripen the precious seed packet ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... anxious love, Still to retain him near her heart she strove! For when the father's fond inquiry came, Cautious, she still concealed his birth and name, And feign'd a daughter born, the evil fraught With misery to avert—but vain the thought; Not many years had passed, with downy flight, Ere he, Tahmineh's wonder and delight, With glistening eye, and youthful ardour warm, Filled her foreboding bosom with alarm. "O now relieve my heart!" he said, "declare, From whom I sprang and breathe the vital air. Since, ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... to die, and exclaiming that if he would live she would love him with all her heart. You can imagine that the chatelaine became still more enamoured while observing what a difference there was between a young knight like Jehan, white, downy, and agreeable, and an old fellow like Imbert, bristly, yellow, and wrinkled. This difference brought back to her memory that which she had found in the pleasure of love. Moved by this souvenir, her ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... arbors, grots, and flow'ry meads; There in soft murmurs interchange our souls; Together drink the crystal of the stream, Or taste the yellow fruit which autumn yields, And, when the golden evening calls us home, Wing to our downy nests, ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... The thick downy clothing of some vegetables seems designed to protect them from the injuries of cold, like the wool of animals. Those bodies, which are bad conductors of electricity, are also bad conductors of heat, as glass, wax, air. Hence either of the two former ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... seemed so good a thing to the handmaid frightened the daughter. Violet set her tray down hastily on the nearest table, and ran to her mother's sofa. She looked at the pale and sunken cheek, just visible in the downy hollow of the pillows; she touched the hand lying on the silken coverlet. That marble coldness, that waxen hue of the cheek, told her the awful truth. She fell on her knees beside the sofa, with a cry of ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... lay white under its first coverlet of snow, the trees were draped in their winter mantles, their very bed had its downy quilt of snowflakes that had sifted through the branches of ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... through the wood, all the labyrinths of summer are buried beneath one white inviting pathway, and the pledge of perfect loneliness is given by the unbroken surface of the all-revealing snow. There appears nothing living except a downy woodpecker, whirling round and round upon a young beech-stem, and a few sparrows, plump with grass-seed and hurrying with jerking flight down the sunny glade. But the trees furnish society enough. What ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... displays such astonishing industry to give her eggs a dwelling-house of incomparable perfection, becomes, after that, careless of her family. For what reason? She lacks the time. She has to die when the first cold comes, whereas the eggs are destined to pass the winter in their downy snuggery. The desertion of the nest is inevitable, owing to the very force of things. But, if the hatching were earlier and took place in the Epeira's lifetime, I imagine that she would rival the ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... of Louis XIV., represented with a Roman helmet and a peruke interlaced with laurel-leaves. Behind this bust was a round window, which looked upon the staircase; and just in front of the pedestal was the downy cushion that served as a bed for Moumouth, who would certainly have been crushed if the bust had taken it into its head to ...
— The Story of a Cat • mile Gigault de La Bdollire
... only two figures, a man and an angel, forth he starts in his full strength. I believe he must somewhere or another, the day before, have seen a kingfisher; for this picture seems entirely painted for the sake of the glorious downy wings of the angel,—white clouded with blue, as the bird's head and wings are with green,—the softest and most elaborate in plumage that I have seen in any of his works: but observe also the general sublimity obtained ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... of wool and cotton, of fur, and hair, and down, of hemp, flax, and silk:—microscope permissible if any cause can be shown why wool is soft, and fur fine, and cotton downy, and down downier; and how a flax fiber differs from a dandelion stalk, and how the substance of a mulberry leaf can become velvet for Queen Victoria's crown, and clothing of purple for the housewife ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... twelvemonth yet, although it seems ten years agone, since I blew the downy globe to learn the time of day, or set beneath my chin the veinings of the varnished buttercup, or fired the fox-glove cannonade, or made a captive of myself with dandelion fetters; for then I had ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... but one egg broke, and one tiny birdling died, but out of five eggs I have three fine young birds. Their names are Ganarra, Goldie, and Downy. They are hopping around on the perches now. The mother bird behaved so badly that I took her out of the cage, and now the father takes care of the little ones. Is such an action common on the father's ...
— Harper's Young People, July 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... soft, downy cheek greedily, with the same ardour she had just been throwing into her own dreams ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the feather beds were mother's measure of wealth. Before she was married she had begun saving for her first feather bed. It had taken a long time to acquire these two tickfuls of downy goose feathers. The bed is the foundation of the household. It is there that the babies are born. There sleep restores the weary toiler that he may rise and toil anew. And there at last when work is done, the old folks fall into a sleep that ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... ease Their pained hearts or aching heads, Nor fright nor bribe approaching death From glittering roofs and downy beds. ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... Miriam accompanied me, and on which occasion I am sure we were seen in our nightgowns, we finally went to bed. I won't say went to sleep, for I did not pretend to doze. All our side of the house had bars, except me; and the mosquitoes were unendurable; so I watched mother and Miriam in their downy slumbers and lay on my hard bed for hours, fighting the torments ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... girdle the downy feather of an eagle, stepped outside to the edge of the mesa and with a breath sent it beyond him into space. A current of air caught it and whirled it upwards in token that the prayer was ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... was richly and cosily furnished, the upholstery being of many tints, and both Betsy and Polychrome enjoyed resting themselves upon the downy divans after their ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... summer, Miss L—— came home from one of her rides, with a large basket closely covered; and what do you think it contained? Why, a great anxious mother-hen, all tawny-colored and white, with thirteen downy little chickens, who were frightened enough, and wondering where in the wide world they were. We made a house for them in the green meadow, of a barrel turned upside down; and they all crept under their mother's ...
— Gems Gathered in Haste - A New Year's Gift for Sunday Schools • Anonymous
... joy illumined that wretched countenance like the last ray of the sun before it disappears behind the clouds which bear the aspect, not of a downy couch, but of a tomb. But as we have said, he waited in vain for his son to come to his apartment with the account of his triumph. He easily understood why his son did not come to see him before he went to avenge his father's ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sail from the East, Half-tippled at a rainbow feast. In the bright moonshine, while winds whistle loud, Tivy, tivy, tivy, we mount and we fly, All racking along in a downy white cloud; And lest our leap from the sky prove too far, We slide on the back of a new falling star, And drop from above In a ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... dropped some of the mixture in the middle of the box, tapping lightly with the spoon to call the attention of the chicks to its presence. The chickens pecked hungrily, and there was a satisfied note in the twitterings of the downy little group as Mrs. Chamberlain turned to the ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there! She mingled with its gorgeous dyes The milky baldric of the skies, And striped its pure celestial white With streakings of the morning light; Then, from his mansion in the sun, She called her eagle bearer downy And gave into his mighty hand The symbol of ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... indefatigable in visiting the sick, and preaching from house to house, settling churches in the villages, reconciling differences, and extending the sacred influences of the gospel, so that in a very short time he attained the appellation of Bishop Bunyan—a title much better merited by him than by the downy prelates who sent him to jail for preaching that which ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
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