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More "Flea" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Quixote, "if you will not be a spectator of what you think will prove a tragedy, spur your flea-bitten, and save yourself." ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... worker is indispensable to the owner, as much so as (to use the classical illustration) the dog to the flea; but the owner is no more indispensable to the worker than a flea to a dog. As dogs would be much better off without fleas, so would workers ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... love for the Demoiselle de Puysange; and, to himself, he swore gloomily that if she had a mind to Hugues she must have Hugues, come what might. Having reached this conclusion, Adhelmar wheeled upon his men, and cursed them for tavern-idlers and laggards and flea-hearted snails, and ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... fool, Against the grain, this fifteen-year: my son And that dead woman were too strong for me: They turned me false to my nature; broke me in Like a flea in harness, that draws a nutshell-coach. Till then I'd jumped, and bit, at my own sweet will. Oh! amn't I the wiseacre, the downy owl, Fancying myself as knowing as a signpost? And yet, there's always some new twist to learn. Life's an old thimblerigger; and, it seems, Can ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... attacking an elephant! But a flea can be annoying, and we would keep it up. I was encouraged when civic leaders of several small towns sent for copies of the article to use in their petitions to the company. It was the voice of the Lower Brule, and already the ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... of study—of sides of life with which she was unfamiliar as to be, for the most part, blind to what took place immediately around her. General Bellairs himself (who vaguely supposed that some man might try to make love to his daughter five years hence, and thereupon be promptly sent off with a flea in his ear) was not more unconscious than she that there was, had been, or might be anything, as the phrase runs, 'between' the two junior members of the party. Lady Deane had no hints to give and no questions to ask; she seated herself placidly in a corner and began to write in a ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... all back at their loopholes, the rest were busy loading the spare muskets, and every one with a red face, you may be certain, and a flea in his ear, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... showing how a person's weight operated the contrivance, shutting the doors behind and simultaneously opening the doors in front; but Mr. Harnden did not draw attention to the palpable fact that a waiter would need to have the agility of a flea to escape being swatted in the rear or ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... from being rational, our notions on cleanliness are in the highest degree superficial. We make a great fuss over a flea; hardly mention it in polite company; but we tolerate the dirty housefly on all our food. We eat high game which our cook's more natural taste calls muck. We are only just beginning to realise the indescribable filthiness of carious teeth, ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... to see him; or having seen him,—for a man may force his way in anywhere with a little trouble,—if she sends him away with a flea in his ear, as ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... furnish you scientific names, yet he will tell you at once that red snow is caused by the snow flea. The snow flea is very small. It would require about fifty of them to equal their larger brother of the ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... dryly, "learn that Sir John Franklin made a scruple of killing the smallest insect, be it a mosquito, whose attacks are otherwise formidable as those of a flea; and meanwhile you will not hesitate to allow, that Sir John Franklin was a seaman who was as good ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... Scaliot, blacksmith, in the 20th of Queen Elizabeth, made a lock of eleven pieces of iron, steel, and brass, with a pipe key, and golden chain of forty-three links, which were hung round the neck of a flea.—The animal, together with this burthen, weighed only one grain ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... letter. While doing so an announcement was made that there was a deputation from Hyde, near Manchester, wishing to see Mr. Huskisson. "Oh!" said that gentleman, "I know what they want; but I will send them back to Hyde with a flea in their ears!" The gentlemen of the deputation having been ushered into the room, they stated their case, to the effect that they solicited Mr. Huskisson to support a petition in parliament to enable them to construct a railway between their town and ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... on red roan steeds—or, to be more explicit, on a paint and a flea-bitten sorrel—two wooers. One was Madison Lane, and the other was the Frio Kid. But at that time they did not call him the Frio Kid, for he had not earned the honours of special nomenclature. His name was ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... This bear, as it chanced, had had advantages in the way of education not often shared by his fellow-roamers of the wilderness. He had passed several seasons in captivity in one of the settlements far south of the Quah-Davic Valley. Afterwards, he had served an unpleasant term in a flea-ridden travelling menagerie, from which a railway smash-up had given him release at the moderate cost of the loss of one eye. During his captivity he had acquired a profound respect for men, as creatures who had a tendency to beat him over the nose and hurt him terribly if he failed to do ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... others have manufactured. The wolf hunts, fights, and tears its victim in pieces; and then, by means of that interior labor which I have spent so much time in describing, transforms it into nourishing liquid: and when all this is accomplished, the little flea, who lives hidden among his hairs, coolly draws out for his own use the valuable blood obtained with so much effort. There are many parasites in the world, my dear child—yourself, for instance, to begin with—who ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... on account of his wife, a pretty and coquettish barberess. M. Gillenormand admired his own discernment in all things, and declared that he was extremely sagacious; here is one of his sayings: "I have, in truth, some penetration; I am able to say when a flea bites me, from what ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... not to go back," said Carmen. "I want you to stay with me as long as you can. I like you in those clothes." She smiled at him as if she would like him in anything; but Nick was thinking about Jim Beach, wondering if the boy would have trouble with the flea-bitten gray, which he himself ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... with a gold chaine in't for my Wife & some pretty things for my Children, given me by your honourd Lady would else cry out on me. There's a Spanish shirt, richly lacd & seemd, her guift too; & whosoever layes a foul hand upon her linnen in scorne of her bounty, were as good flea[54] the Divells ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... was, an' jus' crazy fer dogs. Any old mutt'd do fer him—jus' so's it was in the shape of a pup. He was fair wild fer 'em. He picked up a yeller cur out there the day after the Yangtsin fight, an' that there no-account, mangy, flea-bitten mutt had ter stay with us the whole time. If the pup didn't stand in me an' Buck an' Ranch, he swore he'd quit too, so we had to let him come, an' he messed an' bunked with our outfit right along. Ranch named him Daggett, after the Colonel, which was right ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... Dat night dere 'us a-gittin' up, shores you're born. De louse go to supper, an' de flea blow de horn. Dat raccoon paced, an' dat 'possum trot; Dat ole goose ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... proportion with five million dollars as with five dollars. And the result, I was perfectly aware, would be to those achieved by John as the elephant in his normal strength compares with the elephant whose strength is to his size as the flea's strength to his size. John could take the flea's leap with five dollars, but was satisfied with the elephant's leap with ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... to rise. And the alternation of ascent and descent constitutes one of life's main charms, as fortune is solely determined by comparison. And to the man with a programme, who wants to remedy the sad circumstance that the hawk eats the dove, and the flea eats the hawk, I have this question to put: why should it be remedied? Life is not so mathematically idiotic that it lets only the big eat the small, but it happens just as often that the bee kills the lion, or drives ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... rights in a moment, with one drop of styptic—my styptic, or rather my wife's, sir—She makes the water herself. One drop of the styptic, sir, and a bit of black taffeta patch, just big enough to be the saddle to a flea, sir—Yes, sir, rather improves than otherwise. The Prince had a patch the other day, and so had the Duke: and, if you will believe me, there are seventeen yards three quarters of black taffeta already cut into ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... of shame. In his perplexity, he always finds relief in endeavoring with his paw to scrape a supposititious fly from the side of his nose. He then deals with what I suppose to be an equally imaginary flea; after he has thus gained a few seconds for readjustment, he welcomes me joyously. All this is so thoroughly human-like, that even the naturalist, the professional doubter, is forced to believe that the dog's mind works ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... to foment a plentiful supply of saliva, and the game simply consists in a series of attempts on the part of the two opponents to spit on the tips of each others noses. At first, this cleanly interchange of saliva goes on slowly and deliberately—Socrates never measured the leap of a flea with more seriousness—but presently one receives a dab in the eye, another in the mouth. They begin to grow hot and angry. "I hit your nose," cries one. "No, it was my cheek!" replied the other. They draw a little nearer, in order to ascertain the truth by feeling; spit, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... washing up in the cook-house she would say: "You must come out and tighten the tent ropes with this gale blowing, it won't be funny if the whole thing blows over in the night." But none of the horrors she depicted ever persuaded me to turn out once I was safely tucked up in my "flea bag" with "Tuppence" acting as a weight to keep the top blankets in place. In the morning when I awoke after a sound night's sleep, I would exclaim triumphantly: "There you are, 'Squig,' what price the tent blowing down? It's as safe as a rock ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... one of those," cried Peter, "Old man Gilman ought to get a dozen. I'll tell them he's the author of the longest and dullest history of their flea-bitten empire that was ever written. And he's a real professor and a real author, and I can prove it. I'll show them the five volumes with his name in each. How much did that ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... lots of such little properties which are of no use to him at all. What do you say, for instance, to an estate of one hundred acres or so; it would be a mere flea-bite to him. But flea-bite or no flea-bite that's all one to me. I wish him to give it me and give it he must. I mean to ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... I do, love? Well, I do not know. How can I tell till you are more explicit? If 'twere a rose you held me, I would smell it; If 'twere a mouth you held me, I would kiss it; If 'twere a frog, I'd scream than furies louder' If 'twere a flea, I'd ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... said Mir Jan to Suleiman, 'should this rat-flea escape, thy soul and thy body shall pay, for I will put out thine eyes with glowing charcoal and hang thee in the skin of a pig, if I have to follow thee to Cabul to do it—yea, to Balkh or Bokhara. See to it.' And Suleiman put his head upon my brother's feet, poured ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... sickness and my long unrest, that unto him I may Make moan of all that I endure for dole and drearihead And of my sleepless eyes, oppressed of wakefulness alway? My night in torments is prolonged; I burn, without reprieve, In flames of heart-consuming care that rage in me for aye. The bug and flea do drink my blood, even as one drinks of wine, Poured by the hand of damask-lipped and slender-waisted may. The body of me, amongst the lice, is as an orphan's good, That in an unjust Cadi's hands doth dwindle and decay. My dwelling-place is in a tomb, three scanty cubits wide, Wherein ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... Fatal Maryage, MS. play Father-in-law Feare no colours Feeres Felt locks Feltham's Resolves Fend ( make shift with) Fins (a very doubtful correction for sins) Fisguigge Flat cap Flea ( flay) Fletcher, John, MS. copy of his Elder Brother; his share in the authorship of Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt Flewd Fly boat (see Addenda to vol. i.) Fool (play on the words fool and fowl) Fooles paradysse For I did but kisse her (See Appendix) ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... the Forest Ranger, "that is a well known, game old elderly spinster lady commonly called the Moon; and that other on the branch chittering swear words is nothing in the world but a Douglas squirrel hunting—I think he is really hunting—a flea to mix in his ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... results from the introduction of the eggs of the sand-flea (Pulex penetrans) into the tissues. It occurs in tropical Africa, South America, and the West Indies. The impregnated female flea remains attached to the part till the eggs mature, when by their irritation ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... under such circumstances, there was majesty in the roar. The spectacle of Hugo, prancing on the ramparts and hurling bad names at the German armies, recalls the persistent but painful manoeuvres of a lion with a flea. Both are terribly in earnest—neither ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... corps, a feather-weight, and quite a boy, but with plenty of science in him. These were the three favorites. Day Star ran them close, the property of Durham Vavassour, of the Scots Greys, and to be ridden by his owner; a handsome, flea-bitten, gray sixteen-hander, with ragged hips, and action that looked a trifle string-halty, but noble shoulders, and great force in the loins and withers; the rest of the field, though unusually excellent, did not find so many "sweet voices" for ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... know," drawled Jim, as he patted his timid little pilgrim on the back in a way of comfort. "All dogs look alike to a flea, and I reckon Tintoretto is as good flea-feed as the next. And, anyhow, I wouldn't have a dog the fleas had deserted. When the fleas desert a dog, it's the same as when the rats desert a ship. About that time a dog has lost his ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... Whether man, woman, or girl, or boy, That long life and happiness all may enjoy; May they of potatoes and herrings have plenty, With butter and cheese, and each other dainty; And may their sleep never, by night or day, Disturbed be by even the tooth of a flea: Until at the Quaaltagh again we appear, To wish you, as now, ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... Dialogue with nicknames— doctrinaires, airy metaphysicians, and the like. The thing she loved of all else was to chaff them and drench them in holiday impertinence, exhibit them treading on air and arguing with the clouds, or measuring the jump of a flea, as a type of their ethereal refinements. But Dialogue continued his deep speculations upon Nature and Virtue, till, as the musicians say, the interval between them was two full octaves, from the highest to the lowest note. This ill-assorted pair it is that we have dared to unite ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... rile me a thing to be told the things he guesses my mother was. Maybe that's a matter of opinion, and, anyway, she's mixin' with a crop of angels who don't figger to have no truck with Scotch machine bosses. I guess a sight of his flea-bitten features 'ud set 'em seein' things so they wouldn't rec'nise their harps from frypans, and they'd moult feathers till you wouldn't know it from a snowfall on Labrador. But when he mixes his ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... for his presumption, if it hath not quite demented him," said the parson. "These persons are like those addressed by St Chrysostom, fitly called the golden-mouthed, who said, 'Miserable wretches that ye be! ye cannot expel a flea, much less a devil!' It will be well if it serves no other purpose but to bring back these stray sheep to the fold of the Church. So this story has gained ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... apology from McGregor, on learning what he had done, and patronisingly cool were the assurances of Ivor that the injury was a mere flea-bite. And intense was the astonishment when it was discovered that a stag and a hind had fallen to old MacRummle with that "treemendious" repeater! And great was the laughter afterwards, at lunch time on the field of battle, when Junkie gravely related ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... it amounts to the same thing. Every dog knows that you meant to be there, or at any rate, that to be there was the scheme of someone equally bad. The slightest rustle of the wind, the call of a bird, the ejaculation responsive to a flea—any of these, anything to set the ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... and wife, though the woman spared not to doe all necessary things that appertained to a good housewife indifferently for them both, as in making cleane their Cabin, and euery other thing that appertained to his ease: for when he was seasicke, she would make him cleane, she would kill and flea the dogs for their eating, and dresse his meate. [Sidenote: The shamefastess and chastity of those Sauage captiues.] Only I think it worth the noting, the continencie of them both: for the man would neuer ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... he would give me a written character of the very best description, whenever I chose to apply for it. "You're honest," he said; "you're willing, though lazy; you would pull, if you had the strength of a flea; and, though a monstrous coward, you don't run away." My own demurs to these harsh judgments were not so many as they might have been. The idiocy I confessed; because, though positive that I was not uniformly an idiot, I felt inclined to think that, in a majority of cases, I really was; ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... at the celebrated tavern in the Avenue de l'Opera. Nor do the numerous scribbled inscriptions on the other walls, such saucy epigrams as "To hell with the prefect of police," "The police are damned low flea-full dogs" and the like impress me less favourably than the scribbled inscriptions on notes of assignation placed covertly by subsidised waiters into the serviettes of the Callot-adorned Thaises in the spectacularized haunts of the Bois. The piano in Le Caveau ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... which had made of him a Socialist—envy and sloth. So deeply was he imbued with envy that he was quite unable to rest so long as anyone else was better off than himself; and although he did not care one jot for "humanity" of which he prated so freely, and was incapable of regenerating a flea, he found in a certain section of the Socialist and Anarchist party that degree of dissatisfaction and covetousness which appealed to his degraded soul. Besides which the movement afforded him grand opportunities for living in sloth and sponging ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... suction. The acrita, or polypes, among the sub-kingdoms; the intestina, among the annulosa; the tortoises, among the reptilia; the armadillo and scaly ant-eater, pig, mouse, jerboa, and kangaroo, among quadrupeds; the waders and tenuirostres, among birds; the coleoptera, (bug, louse, flea, &c.) among insects; the gastrobranchus, among fishes; are examples which will illustrate the special characters of this type. These are smallness, particularly in the head and mouth, feebleness, and want of ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... differently made from other men, just because he is a priest. Well, as a matter of fact, he is very firm and determined. I have known some who wouldn't have had to be wheedled so long. And he is quite capable of crushing his heart, just as one might crush a flea. It must be the Almighty who gives ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... as your mother, you dog! D— you, I've a good mind to box your jaws instead of your comepiss. I'll let you know, as how I am meat for your master, you saucy blackguard. You are worse than a dog, you old flinty-faced, flea-bitten scrub. A dog wears his own coat, but ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... of your coquette airs, therefore, with me, madam,' said he, 'for I am resolved to have you this night. No struggling nor squalling, for both will be impertinent. The first man who offers to come in here, I will have his skin flea'd off at the gangway.' He then attempted to pull me violently towards his bed. I threw myself on my knees, and with tears and entreaties besought his compassion; but this was, I found, to no purpose: ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... agency in the affair to Mr. Checkynshaw. The great man refused to acknowledge his shining abilities. Mr. Checkynshaw was prejudiced—he was. But the barber was a singularly simple-hearted man. He would not rob a flea of the mite of warm blood needed for its supper. Maggie was known throughout the neighborhood as a good little girl, and Leo was a mere tinker. These people might be brought to see the justice of his claim, and to acknowledge that through his advice ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... mean artistic individualism, which is so much crueller, so much blinder and so much more irrational even than commercial individualism. The decay of society was praised by artists as the decay of a corpse is praised by worms. The aesthete was all receptiveness, like the flea. His only affair in this world was to feed on its facts and colours, like a parasite upon blood. The ego was the all; and the praise of it was enunciated in madder and madder rhythms by poets whose Helicon was absinthe and whose Pegasus was the nightmare. This diseased pride ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... had no sense of dependence; they were not dependents, for they gave more than value received. Yet so corrupting is the atmosphere about rich people that Gourdain, who had other rich clients, no less than Clelie who got her whole living from Palmer, was at a glance in the flea class and not in the dog class. Brent looked for signs of the same thing in Susan's face. The signs should have been there; but they were not. "Not yet," thought he. "And never will ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... chorus would interrupt him!—a chorus of agreement. Then would follow a description of that terrible flea-bitten mare, and of Johnnie's bravery; of the fierce kick, and the boy's quiet bearing of his agony, all closing with a word about the wound ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... hairless patches on a scalded dog are preferred by the fleas of Constantinople to a wider range on a healthier dog; and the exposed places suit the fleas exactly. I saw a dog of this kind start to nibble at a flea—a fly attracted his attention, and he made a snatch at him; the flea called for him once more, and that forever unsettled him; he looked sadly at his flea-pasture, then sadly looked at his bald spot. Then he heaved a sigh and dropped ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... you could take it out in talking," snorted Andy. "My chips are in. I've got three-hundred-and-twenty acres picked out, up here, and I'm going to file on 'em before these damned nesters get off the train. Uh course, that won't be more'n a flea bite—but I can make it interesting for my next door neighbors, anyway; and every flea bite helps to keep a dog ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... such been the case their death would have been certain. It attacks, however, only domesticated animals, for wild beasts range over the country infested by it with impunity; while human beings are scarcely more annoyed by it than they are by flea-bites. It is confined to certain localities, and is never known to shift its haunts. He told me that it was found generally in the bush or among reeds. Though the insect is small, yet the poison it contains is of so virulent a nature that its bite is as deadly to horses and oxen as ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... folk" within will fancy that he really belongs to the natural variety of aristocratic humanity. He has the good taste to refuse condescension sufficient to allow him to eat at table with a Frederick Douglass, a Samuel R. Ward, or a Dr. Pennington. Poor light little soul! It can borrow a pair of flea's legs, and, hopping up to the magnificent lights of public opinion, sit looking down upon the whole ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... party entered the Columbia; and from that point to the Pacific the journey was without particular adventure, save for the difficulty of passing numerous rapids and cascades. Indian villages were everywhere upon the banks; but their people were of a very low order,—very jackals of humanity; dirty, flea-bitten packs, whose physical and moral constitutions plainly showed the debilitating effects of unnumbered generations of fish-eating, purposeless life. Physical and moral decency usually go hand in hand, even in a state of nature. The Columbia tribes had no conception of either; ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... mitis. The scarlet fever exists with all degrees of virulence, from a flea-bite to the plague. The infectious material of this disease, like that of the small-pox, I suppose to be diffused, not dissolved, in the air; on which account I suspect, that it requires a much nearer approach to the sick, for a well person to receive ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... Scotch are always capturing something—whether it be an idea, a flea, or the itch. Let's hear what ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... that he had reached the cool glade of topmost Tinnaburra, he found that his arrival had caused considerable perturbation among a small mob of brumbies, or wild horses, consisting of some seven or eight mares and foals, led by a flea-bitten old grey stallion, who snorted angrily as he saw Finn, and minced forward toward the Wolfhound, his long chisel teeth bared, his four-foot tail billowing out behind him like a flag, and his black hoofs (the feet of mountain-bred brumbies are prodigiously hard and punishing ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... galaxy,' he said; and, having reduced me by one glance to the proportions of a performing flea, rather poorly trained, he gave his ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... in a ditch to have a go at him, but he would ride by, looking for all the world as if he would shoot a flea off the tail of a shnipe, so that, with all the whisky in the world to help me, I dared not do it,' was his explanation before ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... The flea of man and those of poultry, when numerous, will bite the horse and give rise to rounded swellings on the skin. To dispose of them it is needful to clear the surroundings of the grublike larvae as ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... lounging at Blood's elbow, looked darkly upon the departure of the Deputy-Governor. Behind them a little mob of grim, stalwart, sun-tanned buccaneers were restrained from cracking Bishop like a flea only by their submission to the dominant will of their leader. They had learnt from Pitt while yet in Port Royal of their Captain's danger, and whilst as ready as he to throw over the King's service which had been thrust upon them, yet they resented the manner in which this had been ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... because he was all muddy anyway, where he fell down the cellar; and how could it matter to anybody that had any sense at all? Well, then we had the rixual, and—and—why, the teeny little paddlin' he got wouldn't hurt a flea! It was that little coloured boy lives in the alley did it—he isn't anyways near HALF Georgie's size but Georgie got mad and said he didn't want any ole nigger to paddle him. That's what he said, and it was his own foolishness, because Verman won't let ANYBODY call him 'nigger', ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... getting under way, it was already packed to the gunwale with Jews, pedlars and such vermin, and the captain swore by the three thousand relics of Saint Justina that he had no room on board for so much as a hungry flea. ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... Extraordinary intelligence, kindness and gentleness showed forth from every feature of their handsome countenances. Judging from their well-proportioned frames, each one looked powerful enough to battle single handed with an elephant. Judging from their faces not one of them would have hurt a flea. Each man appeared to be buried in the depth of thought—serious thought— notwithstanding every physiognomy plainly showed that the utmost happiness and contentment existed within each, and good will ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... said they, "and void of genius: he does not make the flea to fly, and stars to fall, nor the sun to melt wax; he has not the true Oriental style." Zadig contented himself with having the style of reason. All the world favored him, not because he was in the right road or followed the dictates ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... That's the flee that fled, not the flea who refuses to flee," went on Tom. And at this sally, the other ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... the most difficult and dangerous kind. "Our ancient" is a philosopher, who fancies that a lie that kills has more point in it than an alliteration or an antithesis; who thinks a fatal experiment on the peace of a family a better thing than watching the palpitations in the heart of a flea in a microscope; who plots the ruin of his friends as an exercise for his ingenuity, and stabs men in the dark to prevent ennui. His gaiety, such as it is, arises from the success of his treachery; his ease ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... who, sitting astride a flea-bitten gray mare that seemed to be in a perpetual doze, looked more like an Apache squaw than a boss cowboy. The old man's clothes were even more ragged than when Hardy had seen him at Bender, his copper-riveted hat was further reinforced by a buckskin thong around the ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... something, as if, in fact, he were resenting the man's words, but it might have only been that he was being troubled by the flea which he had several times that morning tried to scratch ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... feathers of the phoenix tayle' I do not remember at Oxford, nor 'a cherrystone holding ten dozen tortoiseshell combs, made by Edward Gibbons.' But I think the Ashmolean collection still holds the 'flea chains of silver and gold, with 300 links apiece, and yet but an inch long,' and, of course, the Oxford dodo's skin is famous. It was not a dodo, though, to John Tradescant. It was a 'dodar, from the island of Mauritius: it is not able to flie, being ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... I play a trick on you? Come, sir, and you will see her presently, all dressed up and decked with jewels. Her damsels and she are all covered with diamonds, and rubies, and cloth of gold. And what is more, they are riding three flea-bitten gambling hags, the like of which ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... Spofford and her niece about him this morning,—and the poor girl has been making quite a fool of herself over him, you may have observed. Mrs. Spofford owns quite a block of stock in our institution, so I considered it my duty to put a flea in her ear, if you ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... attitude disposed of my last doubt. We had come, thinking to photograph him surrounded by his guards, and at the first word of the design his piety revolted. We were reminded of the day—the Sabbath, in which thou shalt take no photographs—and returned with a flea in our ear, bearing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "That's a flea in his ear," said Bunce chuckling, as Sir Francis went one way, Philip the other. "What do you think ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... came to see me in my official capacity as justice of the peace, and not postmaster. He wanted a warrant for the arrest of Chester Randel, and I made out one. The next thing is to arrest that good-for-nothing lad, but he's like a flea, I never can catch him when I want him. I've got ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... blankets, urged me to return with him to his island domain, where he might have an opportunity to make me comfortable. The kind gentleman little knew how hardened I had become to such annoyances as hard floors and the active flea. Such inconveniences had been robbed of their discomforts by the kind voices of welcome which, with few exceptions, came from every southern gentleman whose territory had been invaded by ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... surface, an occasional outburst from the ducks, an angry clamour from the water-hens and blue-fowl. My dogs were lying round me blinking and winking, and making an occasional futile snap at an imaginary fly or flea. It was a drowsy and peaceful scene. I was nearly dropping off to sleep, from the heat and the monotonous drone of the putwarrie, who was intoning nasally some formidable document about fishery rights ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... appeared first in the natural state of the ourang outang, with a suit of buffalo robe stuff that looked exactly like a big monkey. I bowed and the audience cheered, and I stood on my hands and scratched at an imaginary flea, and pa, who was leaning against the platform, whispered to me that I was making ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... quaint a manner as possible became the chief aim of English poets during the first three-quarters of the seventeenth century. Donne had encountered trouble in obtaining his wife from her father. Finding one morning a flea that had feasted during the night on his wife and himself, he was overcome by its ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... joke, an' cracks her crack, As spunkie as a growin' flea; An' there she sits upon my back A livin' perpetuity. She hurkles by her ingle side, An' toasts an' tans her wrinkled hide; Lord kens how lang she yet may bide To ca' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... times, his interest doubtless attracted by the respectability of the other's appearance and the bulging saddle-bags. But he did not stop. Neither did he return. The young man with the old horse looked to him like a fighter—and even if the saddle-bags were stuffed with gold they would prove but a flea bite to the stake ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... a-sleepin' in de cyprus swamp; Need n't wake de gent'man, not fu' me. Mule, you need n't wake him w'en you switch an' stomp, Fightin' off a 'skeeter er a flea. Florida is lovely, she's de fines' lan' Evah seed de sunlight f'om de Mastah's han', 'Ceptin' fu' de varmints an' huh fleas an' san' An' de nights w'en Lizy ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... next time I get the misery you can hold my hand as long as your little heart desires. 'Leven hundred to the good! Good night! Get down off my shoulder, you little flea, you. I got to turn in here and take a drink on the strength of that! 'Leven hundred to the good! ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... naturalists observe, a flea Has smaller that upon them prey And these have smaller still to bite 'em And so proceed ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... Miss Violet showed up like a trump as she is, and backed us up; so it's just as well you hadn't come. Violet nodded to me! She's the most beautiful girl in the world. Smedley turned up too; brickish, wasn't it? Bickers of course came, and tried to spoil our sports, but Marky gave him a flea in his ear, and Dig and I howled; so he didn't ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... one day; not Lady Pollock, who knows better. . . . When I look over the little Prose Dialogue, I see lots that might be weeded. I wonder at one word which is already crossed—'Emergency.' 'An Emergency!' I think Blake could have made a Picture of it as he did of the Flea. Something of the same disgusting Shape too. . . . Blake seems to me to have fine things: but as by random, like those of a Child, or a Madman, of Genius. Is there one good whole Piece, of ever so few lines? ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... stamina it affords him in most cases, what a waste of good food it is! The dishes are so numerous and so quickly changed, that he has no time to decide on which he likes best. Like an industrious flea, rather than a bee, he hops from flower to flower in the educational garden, without one penny-worth of honey to show for it. And then—though I feel how degrading it is to allude to so vulgar a matter—how high ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... a flea than a glow-worm," said Hinpoha. "It's never where you expect to find it. I really believe Nyoda has lost control of the car and it is taking ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... burnt-out block with a pounder rigged to a well-sweep. A water-mill being set up ten miles off, on Anderson's Creek, that was superseded, as improvement marched, by a horse-power one. To this Lincoln, as a lad of sixteen or seventeen, would carry the corn in a bag upon an old flea-bitten gray mare. One day, on unhitching the animal and loading it, and running his arm through the head-gear loop to lead, he had no sooner struck it and cried "Get up, you de——," when the beast whirled around, and, lashing out, kicked him in the forehead ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... travelling during the summer, and some people recommend me to sleep in a bag drawn tightly round the throat, others to sprinkle my bedding freely with insect powder, others to smear the skin all over with carbolic oil, and some to make a plentiful use of dried and powdered flea-bane. All admit, however, that these are but feeble palliatives. Hammocks unfortunately cannot ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... or nigua (Pulex penetrans of science) is a microscopic flea, that buries itself under the skin and lays a myriad eggs; the result is a painful tumor. Jiggers are ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... enough sight. And the fust mate's got a uniform cap on, like a purser on a steamboat. Make that artist feller take that cap off him, Jim. He's got to. I wish he could have seen some of my mates. They wa'n't Cunarder dudes, but they could make a crew hop 'round like a sand-flea in a clam bake." ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... air. It distracted her, and for about a quarter of an hour she sat perfectly still, doing nothing. At last she pushed the spoilt paper aside, took afresh piece, and was beginning to write, "On May the 14th, 1842," when there was a crunch on the gravel, and a furious voice said, "I am sorry for Flea Thompson." ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... was absurd and she knew it. Margaret could go where she liked. It would all be chaste as a piano-recital. But the flea that she had been trying to put in the girl's ear seemed very ineffective. She is just as I was at her age, thought this lady, who, in so thinking, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... together with a key to it, weighed but one grain of gold. He also made a chain of gold, consisting of forty-three links, and, having fastened this to the before-mentioned lock and key, he put the chain about the neck of a flea, which drew them all with ease. All these together, lock and key, chain and flea, weighed only one ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... ashes, dilutions of oil-soap, and plaster of Paris, applied while the plants are wet, will be found of greater or less efficacy in their protection. The pungent smell of guano is said to prevent the depredation of the flea-beetle, which, in many localities, seriously injures the plants early in the season, through its attacks ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... a vigorous flea in each ear, which did much to disturb his complacency. Bennie had not made him thoughtful, only vengeful. There is nothing quite so discomposing as the scornful rejection of proffers of self-seeking philanthropy. Bennie's indignation was instinctive ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... happens he'll freeze to death in hell. It don't rile me a thing to be told the things he guesses my mother was. Maybe that's a matter of opinion, and, anyway, she's mixin' with a crop of angels who don't figger to have no truck with Scotch machine bosses. I guess a sight of his flea-bitten features 'ud set 'em seein' things so they wouldn't rec'nise their harps from frypans, and they'd moult feathers till you wouldn't know it from a snowfall on Labrador. But when he mixes his notions of my ma with 'lazy'! Lazy! Lazy! Gee! Why, if I signed in a half hour late ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... blockhead land-men submitted. 'None of your coquette airs, therefore, with me, madam,' said he, 'for I am resolved to have you this night. No struggling nor squalling, for both will be impertinent. The first man who offers to come in here, I will have his skin flea'd off at the gangway.' He then attempted to pull me violently towards his bed. I threw myself on my knees, and with tears and entreaties besought his compassion; but this was, I found, to no purpose: I then had recourse to threats, and endeavoured to frighten ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... the master, lounging at Blood's elbow, looked darkly upon the departure of the Deputy-Governor. Behind them a little mob of grim, stalwart, sun-tanned buccaneers were restrained from cracking Bishop like a flea only by their submission to the dominant will of their leader. They had learnt from Pitt while yet in Port Royal of their Captain's danger, and whilst as ready as he to throw over the King's service which had been ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... a benign and almost paternal glance. "You're tremendously sweet to put that flea in my ear, Kay. It's a wonderful prescription, but it lacks one small ingredient—the wealthy, courageous and self-sacrificing friend who will consent to run the sandy on your astute parent, as ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... in front; that young fellow—what had they nicknamed him—'The Buccaneer?' looked precious hangdog there behind her; had got a flea in his ear, he shouldn't wonder. Serve him right, taking her down all that way to look at the house! The proper place to look at a house ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... monsters of mythology and geology, for nothing could be a more terrible or ferocious antagonist than many of our well-known insects, if sufficiently enlarged. No animal now alive has more than a small fraction of the strength, in proportion to its size, of the minutest spider or flea. It may be that through lack of food, difficulties imposed by changing climate, and the necessity of burrowing in winter, or through some other conditions changed from what they were accustomed to, their size has been ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... you not charmed with the splendid accommodations of your fancy ship?" whispered the mischievous Jim. "There is not room for a flea to hop, without giving him the cramp in ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... jumping, such as jumping is supposed to be in the shires, he knew nothing. He was, too, a bad hand at galloping, but with a shambling, half cantering trot, which he had invented for himself, he could go along all day, not very quickly, but in such fashion as never to be left altogether behind. He was a flea-bitten horse, if my readers know what that is,—a flea-bitten roan, or white covered with small red spots. Horses of this colour are ugly to look at, but are very seldom bad animals. Such as he was, Crocker, who did not ride ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... at something, as if, in fact, he were resenting the man's words, but it might have only been that he was being troubled by the flea which he had several times that morning tried to scratch out of ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... thunder-gods, sons of the chief thunder-god, fell violently in love with the same Aino woman. Said one of them to the other, in a joking way: "I will become a flea, so as to be able to hop into her bosom." Said the other: "I will become a louse, so as to be able to stay ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... one relic of antiquity, a Pythagorean. He has obliged me with his biography. He was, to use his own words, engendered by the sun shining on a dunghill at his father's door,' and began his career as a flea; but his identity was, somehow, shifted to a boy of nine years old. He has had a long spell of humanity, and awaits the great change—which is to turn him to a bee. It will not find him unprepared; ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... thereby gets a chance to rise. And the alternation of ascent and descent constitutes one of life's main charms, as fortune is solely determined by comparison. And to the man with a programme, who wants to remedy the sad circumstance that the hawk eats the dove, and the flea eats the hawk, I have this question to put: why should it be remedied? Life is not so mathematically idiotic that it lets only the big eat the small, but it happens just as often that the bee kills the lion, or drives it to madness ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... also that immortal Parliamentary metaphor, emanating from the same mysterious source,—"The feature upon which the question hinges!" The only man who could have properly painted this was the enthusiastic BLAKE, who so successfully limned the ghost of a flea! These matters, however, are to be considered as merely supplementary ornaments to great themes. The grand subjects are to be sought for in Hansard's Reports, in petitions against returns of members, in the evidence that comes out in the committee-rooms, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... only love, And that they loved fu' dearly, O! They dinna care a flea for men, Let them court hooe'er ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... decency," replied the big man, in his most commanding manner. "It's life and death to you—and it doesn't matter a flea-bite to me. So, since you came to grief through me, why shouldn't I do the fair thing, and put you back on your ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... the old school. "Ah, your honour," said the girl, with a malicious leer, "you were not in such a tantrum last year, when I told you about the widow, you know who; but if you had taken a friend's advice, you'd never have come away from Doncaster races with a flea in your ear!" There was a secret sting in this speech, that seemed quite to disconcert Master Simon. He jerked away his hand in a pet, smacked his whip, whistled to his dogs, and intimated that it was high time to go home. The girl, however, was determined not ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... persistence, even though he was a pest. Johnny saw more in him than his companions could find, and had quite a little sport with him: he made fine practice for roping, for he was about as elusive as a grasshopper and uncertain as a flea. Johnny was in the same general class and he could sympathize with the irrepressible nuisance in its efforts to stir up a little life and excitement in so dull a crowd; Johnny hoped to be as successful in his ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... A Flea, a Grasshopper, and a Leap-frog once wanted to see which could jump highest; and they invited the whole world, and everybody else besides who chose to come to see the festival. Three famous jumpers were they, as everyone would say, when they all ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... the executioner, with half a shrug and half a shiver; 'they are dust—they are nothing—the possession of Georgia by the Russians is to Persia what a flea which has got into my shirt is to me: it teazes me now and then, but if I gave myself the least trouble, I would hunt it out in a minute. The Russians are nothing.' Then, as if he were anxious to waive the subject, he turned to me, and said: ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... intellectually, he looked upon me as below notice; but, morally, he assured me that he would give me a written character of the very best description, whenever I chose to apply for it. "You're honest," he said; "you're willing, though lazy; you would pull, if you had the strength of a flea; and, though a monstrous coward, you don't run away." My own demurs to these harsh judgments were not so many as they might have been. The idiocy I confessed; because, though positive that I was not uniformly an idiot, I felt inclined to think that, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... troublesome enemies attacking these plants are: the flea- beetle, the cabbage-worm, the cabbage-maggot (root) and "club-root"; directions for fighting all of which will be found in the ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... the bare foot of a Wrestler and bit him, causing the man to call loudly upon Hercules for help. When the Flea a second time hopped upon his foot, he groaned and said, "O Hercules! if you will not help me against a Flea, how can I hope for your assistance against ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... to do one thing, and that is to give up my keys as soon as possible. I am tired of this profession of jailer. Besides, I shall not be able to stay here much longer. This escape has put a flea into the ear of the authorities, and they are going to give me an assistant, a former police sergeant, who is as bad as a watchdog. Ah! the good days of M. de Boiscoran are over: no more stolen visits, no more promenades. He is to ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... Fairy. When I feel a girl a-sleep, Underneath her frock I peep, There to sport, and there I play; Then I bite her like a flea, And about I skip." ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... of insects without wings, from the spider to the scorpion, from the flea to the lobster; or with wings, from the gnat and the ant to the wasp and the dragon-fly, differ so totally from each other, and from the red-blooded classes above described, both in the forms of their bodies, and their modes of life; besides the organ of sense, which they ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... down upon the wretched little scribbler, the man of mere letters and jargon, half-clothed in untanned hides, his only weapon an inkhorn at his belt, his pennon the feather of a goosequill! How they laughed at him, calling him an atom or a flea, good for nothing! 'He does nothing, he cannot even collect our taxes, or look after our estates, whilst we bold riders, armed to the teeth, sword in hand and lance on thigh, we fight, and we are the finest fellows in the land!' So they said when they saw the poor devil dragging himself on ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... was a wise man than a rich one. He then told me that it was a custom among the Romans for a man to give his slaves their liberty when he lay upon his death-bed. I could not imagine what this meant, until, after having a little composed himself, he ordered me to bring him a flea which he had kept for several months in a chain, with a design, as he said, to give it its manumission. This was done accordingly. He then made the will, which I have since seen printed in your works word for word. Only I must take notice that you ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... generous offer of his own. Her reply to a pursuer of that sort was easy. Comedy, after the barbaric attack, refreshed her wits and reliance on her natural fencing weapons. To Westlake, the unwritten No was conveyed in a series of kindly ironic subterfuges, that, played it like an impish flea across the pages, just giving the bloom of the word; and rich smiles come to Emma's life in reading the dexterous composition: which, however, proved so thoroughly to Westlake's taste, that a second ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... he must learn to have an eye to the main chance, and eschew heroics: what was life without money! It was not as if he gave it grudgingly, for he made him heartily welcome. The property was in truth but a flea-bite to him! He hoped the Macruadh would live long to enjoy it, and make his father-in-law the great grandfather of chiefs, perpetuating his memory to ages unborn. There was more to the same effect, void neither of eloquence nor of a certain ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... nearly white or variegated with large liver-coloured patches. We now see them either completely liver-coloured, or of a flea-bitten blue or grey, or else black, with fine sterns showing much blood, and extremely thin ears. There can be no doubt but that the crosses by which they have obtained the qualities and appearance I have mentioned, render ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... shame, St. Ronan's, that the game laws, whilk are the very best protection that is left to country gentlemen against the encroachment of their inferiors, rin sae short a course of prescription—a poacher may just jink ye back and forward like a flea in a blanket, (wi' pardon)—hap ye out of ae county and into anither at their pleasure, like pyots—and unless ye get your thum-nail on them in the very nick o' time, ye may dine on a dish of prescription, and sup ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Fly; the Teeth of a Snail; the Eggs of Silk-worms; the Blue Fly; a water Insect; the Tufted Gnat; a White Moth; the Shepheards-spider; the Hunting Spider, the Ant; the wandring Mite; the Crab-like insect, the Book-worm, the Flea, the Louse, Mites, Vine mites. He concludeth with taking occasion to discourse of two or three very considerable subjects, viz. The inflexion of the Rays of Lights in the Air; ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... retaining fee into Alan's hand as he left the court, shook their heads as they returned the money into their leathern pouches, and said, 'that the lad was clever, but they would like to see more of him before they engaged him in the way of business—they did not like his lowping away like a flea in ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... Professor. "This particular kind of bath is not adapted for a flea. Let us suppose," he continued, folding his table-napkin into a graceful festoon, "that this represents what is perhaps the necessity of this Age—the Active Tourist's Portable Bath. You may describe it briefly, if you like," looking at the ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... excitability were not limited to women. It is said that 'the legal male mind' is the only mind fit for suffrage." Miss Shaw then made her wit play around the legal male mind like chain lightning. "It is said that women are illogical, and jump to their conclusions, flea-like. I shall not try to prove that women are logical, for I know they are not, but it is beyond me how men ever got it into their heads that they are. When we read the arguments against woman suffrage, we see that flea-like ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... who calls for a fugue on the "Amen," and the roisterers improvise one on the theme of the rat song, which calls out hearty commendation from Mephistopheles, and a reward in the shape of the song of the flea—a delightful piece of grotesquerie with its accompaniment suggestive of the skipping of the pestiferous little insect which is the subject ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the skittles dance again, and bang goes the bowl at her sconce instead of the skittles: it vas lucky for her it did not hit her, for if it had, I'll be d———d if ever she'd a cried Buy my live flounders any more—he vas at play vith Sam Stripe the tailor; so the flea-catcher he jumps in between 'em, and being a piece-botcher, he thought he could be peace-maker, but it voudn't do, tho' he jump'd about like a parch'd pea in a frying-pan—Poll called him Stitch louse, bid him pick up his needles ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Norandino's will A thousand tortures shall their guerdon be: But Gryphon, who the dame alone can ill Excuse, entreats for both impunity; And many matters urges with much skill. But well is answered: and 'tis ruled, to flea Martano's body with the hangman's scourge, And only short of ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... manufactured. The wolf hunts, fights, and tears its victim in pieces; and then, by means of that interior labor which I have spent so much time in describing, transforms it into nourishing liquid: and when all this is accomplished, the little flea, who lives hidden among his hairs, coolly draws out for his own use the valuable blood obtained with so much effort. There are many parasites in the world, my dear child—yourself, for instance, to begin with—who ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... the surf, the darting of the fishes, the drifting of the snow, the white crystals of the frost, the shrieking of the ice, the boom of the bittern, the barking of the sea lions, the honk of the wild geese, the skulking coyote who knows that each beast is his enemy and has not even a flea to help him "forget that he is a dog," the leap of the salmon, the ecstasy of the mocking-bird and bobolink, the nesting of the field-mice, the chatter of the squirrel, the gray lichen of the oak, the green moss on the log, the poppies of the field and the Mariposa ...
— Life's Enthusiasms • David Starr Jordan
... the Dutch!" exclaimed Mr. Hennage disgustedly. "If that young feller ain't one fool of a bridegroom, a- runnin' away from his bride like this! For quick moves that feller's got the California flea faded to a whisper. Two weeks ago he was a- practicin' law in Sacramento, a-puttin' through a deal in lieu lands; then he jumps to Stockton an' wires me for fifty dollars; then he hops to Bakersfield an' gits married, after which he lands in the Yosemite Valley ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... "I've come to ask you up to tea," he added. "The Unclekins is there. When I told him that Kathleen had sent Fairing away with a flea in his ear, he nearly fell off his chair. He lent me twenty dollars on the spot. Are you coming our way?" he continued, suddenly trying to imitate Charley's manner. Charley nodded, and they left the office together and moved away under a long avenue ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... (Haltica cucumeris, Harris.) This nimble minute beetle (Fig. 13) belongs to the flea-beetles, (Haltica family,) the same sub-group of the leaf-beetles (Phytophaga) to which also appertains the notorious steel-blue flea-beetle (Haltica chalybea, Illiger) that is such a pest to the vineyardist. Like all the rest of the flea-beetles, ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... him!—a chorus of agreement. Then would follow a description of that terrible flea-bitten mare, and of Johnnie's bravery; of the fierce kick, and the boy's quiet bearing of his agony, all closing with a word about the wound ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... mental stamina it affords him in most cases, what a waste of good food it is! The dishes are so numerous and so quickly changed, that he has no time to decide on which he likes best. Like an industrious flea, rather than a bee, he hops from flower to flower in the educational garden, without one penny-worth of honey to show for it. And then—though I feel how degrading it is to allude to so vulgar a matter—how high ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... were all back at their loopholes, the rest were busy loading the spare muskets, and everyone with a red face, you may be certain, and a flea in his ear, ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... blood? Look ye, friend, it shall not be lost blood to me.—I take you all to witness, that there surgeon, or apothecary, or farrier, or dog-doctor, or whatsoever he may be, has robbed me of the balsam of life.—He has not left so much blood in my body as would fatten a starved flea.—O! that there was a lawyer here to serve ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... This supposes that there was at the beginning but one single species, an elementary and very slightly defined organization, from which all that lives descended in the way of regular generation. The oak and the wild boar which eats its acorn, the cat and the flea which lodges in its fur, have common ancestors. The family, originally one, has been divided under the influence of soil, climate, food, moisture, mode of life, and by virtue of the natural selection which has preserved and ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... know about his absurd drill, Tregellis, and I had other things to think of, as you may suppose. I had no difficulty in taking my right place on parade, for there was a trooper with a red nose on a flea-bitten grey, and I had observed that my post was always immediately in front of him. This saved a great deal of trouble. The other day, however, when I came on parade, I galloped up one line and down the other, but the deuce a glimpse could I get of that ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... then; and by all means stir on the youth to an answer. I think oxen and wain-ropes cannot hale them together. For Andrew, if he were open'd, and you find so much blood in his liver as will clog the foot of a flea, I'll eat ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... in which we live. But that is no reason why a man should indulge in fretful complaints, and, like Beresford,[1] pull a long face over the Miseries of Human Life,—and not a single hour is free from them; or still less, call upon the Deity at every flea-bite—in pulicis morsu Deum invocare. Our aim should be to look well about us, to ward off misfortune by going to meet it, to attain such perfection and refinement in averting the disagreeable things of life,—whether they come from our fellow-men or from the physical world,—that, ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... wills made out, you lads? You're a-go'n' to see a scrap presently, an' it ain't a-go'n' to be no flea-bite, I give you ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... vivacity than of historical recollections compiled out of histories, or filched out of handbooks. But to speak of the best inn in a place needs no apology: that, at least, is useful information. As every person intending to visit Gibraltar cannot have seen the flea-bitten countenances of our companions, who fled from their Spanish venta to take refuge at the club the morning after our arrival, they may surely be thankful for being directed to the best house of accommodation in one of the most unromantic, ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... costly galaxy,' he said; and, having reduced me by one glance to the proportions of a performing flea, rather poorly trained, he gave his attention indulgently to ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... 'a saw a flea stick upon Bardolph's nose, and 'a said it was a black soul burning ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... thought I had I'd take something for it, dontcherknow! When I cannot live among my fellows without surrendering my independence— forswearing freedom of speech and liberty of thought; without having to play the canting hypocrite or go hungry—to fawn like a flea-bitten fice to win public favor—I'll make me a suit of leather, take to the woods and chop bee trees. I'd rather my babes were born in a cane-brake and reared on bark and wild berries, with the blood of independence burning in their veins, than spawned ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... disease-producing organism is introduced into the body of the healthy person, and beginning to multiply, brings about the symptoms of the disease. Malaria is transmitted in this way by the anopheles mosquito; typhus fever by lice, and plague by the rat flea. These are all diseases greatly to ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... upon the horizon, waiting for the outcome of the search, got a start. Yonder, far away on the other side of the river, between a little wood and the Staria Derevnia, a light boat drew to the shore, and a little black spot jumped from it like a flea. Koupriane recognized the little black spot as Kathanna. She was safe. Now he could not reach her. It would be useless to search the maze of the Bohemian quarter, where her country-people lived in full control, with ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... here a while ago. He came to see me in my official capacity as justice of the peace, and not postmaster. He wanted a warrant for the arrest of Chester Randel, and I made out one. The next thing is to arrest that good-for-nothing lad, but he's like a flea, I never can catch him when I want him. I've got another ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... knew what was the matter, darling," he said at last in a dispirited voice. "Good heavens! what flea has bitten you?" ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... goodness!" gasped Bea. "Well," firmly, "I shall put a flea in Edith's ear. She must call a halt. She is simply letting that crazy imagination of hers run rampant. I shall speak ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... not, it amounts to the same thing. Every dog knows that you meant to be there, or at any rate, that to be there was the scheme of someone equally bad. The slightest rustle of the wind, the call of a bird, the ejaculation responsive to a flea—any of these, anything ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... Omaha or roystering blades from Pittsburgh or boulevardeers from Bucyrus—not a New Yorker in sight. He said he'd been reading where a wealthy nut had seat out an expedition to the North Pole to capture a certain kind of Arctic flea that haunts only a certain rare fox—but he'd bet a born New Yorker was harder to find. He said what this millionaire defective ought to of done with his inherited wealth was to find a male and female born ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... not so different from the rest of us!" threw out Magin. "What flea bites us? Why do you come here, courting destruction in a cockleshell that may any minute split on a rock and spill you to the sharks, when you might be punting some pretty girl up the backwaters of the Thames? Why do I float around in this old ark of reeds and bulrushes, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... was the only member of the party who from habit insisted on leggings and boots. Their horses were steady, flea-bitten little beasts, not unlike mustangs, and mounts had been provided for the gun-bearers, to the huge delight of all three. Gholab Singh also demanded a horse, which he obtained, as being worthy of ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... converted at a Methodist camp-meeting, and as he became a kind of preacher among his own people, he staid converted. He had one fault, to speak not of others. He was irascible to a great degree; a mosquito or a flea would drive him into a passion. But throughout his long career as guardian of his master, he had been never known to lose patience with him. Even mothers become vexed exceedingly with undutiful children; but this care of Mat for his worthless master exceeded even that ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... and Dagger, Were us'd all in vighting; Ch've heard my Father swear and swagger, That it was but a Flea-biting: But ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... steep rise. And now that he had reached the cool glade of topmost Tinnaburra, he found that his arrival had caused considerable perturbation among a small mob of brumbies, or wild horses, consisting of some seven or eight mares and foals, led by a flea-bitten old grey stallion, who snorted angrily as he saw Finn, and minced forward toward the Wolfhound, his long chisel teeth bared, his four-foot tail billowing out behind him like a flag, and his black hoofs (the feet of mountain-bred brumbies are prodigiously hard ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... breaking off and throwing an affable nod towards Godolphus who, having attracted no attention by flinging himself on the grass with a lolling tongue and every appearance of fatigue, was now filling up the time in quest of a flea. "No breed, but he has points. Where ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... chops in their slobbery rest, Nor our mirth be stirred at his solemn looks, As wise, and as dull, as divinity books. Our old friend's dead, but we all well know He's gone to the Kennels where the good dogs go, Where the cooks be not, but the beef-bones be, And his old head never need turn for a flea. ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... volume with firstling violets, roses, and quadrifoils. He will next apply his wet hands, oozing with sweat, to turning over the volumes, then beat the white parchment all over with his dusty gloves, or hunt over the page, line by line, with his forefinger covered with dirty leather. Then, as the flea bites, the holy book is thrown aside, which, however, is scarcely closed in a month, and is so swelled with the dust that has fallen into it, that it will not yield to ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... life, would require a volume. The process is scarcely less complex in insects. Lyonnet found 3,993 muscles in a caterpillar, and while a large proportion belong to the internal organs, over a thousand assist in locomotion. Hence the muscular power of insects is enormous. A flea will leap two hundred times its own height, and certain large, solid beetles will move enormous weights as compared to the bulk ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... day I'm goin' to git tired o' hearin' you cuss my proxy," Mr. Gibney bawled after him, "an' when that fatal time arrives I'll scatter a can o' Kill-Flea over you an' the shippin' ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... wife, a pretty and coquettish barberess. M. Gillenormand admired his own discernment in all things, and declared that he was extremely sagacious; here is one of his sayings: "I have, in truth, some penetration; I am able to say when a flea bites me, from ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... whole of yesterday, and thou art weary and exhausted. Let me fight this day." When the warriors caught sight of Judah's lion face and his lion teeth, and heard his lion voice, they were greatly afraid. Judah hopped and jumped over the army like a flea, from one warrior to the next, raining blows down upon them incessantly, and by evening he had slain eighty thousand and ninety-six men, armed with swords and bows. But fatigue overcame him, and Zebulon took up his station at his brother's left hand, and mowed down eighty thousand of the ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... Saunders lose most of the stuff, and put a flea in his ear to the effect that you think Carson is the guilty party. This will cause the fellow's room to be searched and the stuff will be found. You must be on hand to identify the ...
— The Missing Tin Box - or, The Stolen Railroad Bonds • Arthur M. Winfield
... faithful and true witnesses. But saving Dr. Nichol of Swallo-Street, and Dr. Manuel of London-Wall, there is nothing sound in the way of preaching here; and when I tell you that Mr. John Gant, your friend, and some other flea-lugged fallows, have set up a Heelon congregation, and got a young man to preach Erse to the English, ye maun think in what a state sinful souls are left in London. But what I have been the most consarned ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... island of Cahini, almost touching the north coast of Hispaniola at the place where the colony was once founded. The remainder of the island along the west coast forms the province of Guaccaiarima, thus called because it is the extremity of the island. The word Iarima means a flea. Guaccaiarima means, therefore, the flea of the island; Gua being the article in their language. There are very few of their names, particularly those of kings which do not begin with this article gua., such as Guarionex ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... friends, Atterbury and Warburton. The misfortune is that the more just his satire, the more perishable is its interest; and if we regard the 'Dunciad' simply as an assault upon the vermin who then infested literature, we must consider him as a man who should use a steam-hammer to crack a flea. Unluckily for ourselves, however, it cannot be admitted so easily that Curll and Dennis and the rest had a merely temporary interest. Regarded as types of literary nuisances—and Pope does not condescend in his poetry, though the want is partly supplied in the notes, to indulge in much personal ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... by nicht and they slept by day; I wot they rade by an unkenned track; "The Bishop was licht as a flea," said Sim, "Or ever we cam' to ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... neuer shrinke nor shame, ne shed no teare at all, You make my wounds your selfe, and fill them up with gall: Yea you can see me sound, and faint for want of breath, And gaspe and grone for life, and struggle still with death, What can you now do more, sweare by your maydenhead, The for to flea me quicke, or strip me ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... man, will you? That last fellow you had ought to have been tied up himself. His flogging wouldn't have killed a flea." ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... much damage on the potato, tomato, eggplant, and other garden plants. The accompanying figure shows the common striped flea-beetle which lives on the tomato. The larva of this beetle lives inside of the leaves, mining its way through the leaf in a real tunnel. Any substance disagreeable to the beetle, such as plaster, soot, ashes, or tobacco, will repel its ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... said the tailor, 'I don't care a flea, There'll be still black-puddings, souse, and chitterlings for me.' Heigho! the ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... to the memory of "Dooley" to rename the bench-legged fyce "Sooner" and locate the scene of his "chronic repose" in St. Jo rather than under the flea-proof tree of Mrs. Emerson in Amherst. But who regrets the poetic license as ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... at Orenburg, Russia, Dec. 14, 1830, of a multitude of small, black insects, said to have been gnats, but also said to have had flea-like motions. ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... thousand yet," rejoined the organist; "and when he does, I'll send him away with a flea in his ear." ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... you, the person spoken to. ern, the sea-eagle. die, to expire. yew (yu), a kind of tree. dye, to color. eye, the organ of sight. draught (draft), drawing I, myself. ay, yes. draft, a bill of exchange. aye, an affirmative vote. dun, a dark color. flee, to run away. done, performed. flea, an insect. fate, destiny. flew (flu) , did fly. fete, a festival. flue, ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... down into that unsatisfactory fellow-creature and try to reach some common root of feeling other than those physiological needs which we share with every beast of earth. Diverting; hardly profitable. It would be like looking for a flea in a haystack, or a joke in the Bible. They can perhaps be found; at the expense ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... it done, and at the same time getting rid of the body? Great heavens! was I to be devoured piecemeal by a rapacious horde of the wild beasts that are said to infest the Russian beds! And utterly helpless, too, without the power to grapple with as much as a single flea—the least formidable, perhaps, of the entire gang! It was absolutely fearful to contemplate such an act of premeditated barbarity; yet what could I do, unable to speak a ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... not," retorted Mrs. Jenkins. "All the world knows you are soft enough for anything. I have sent him away with a flea in his ear; that's what ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... tables upon him completely; he ought to be ashamed of himself; she knew what he meant by his insinuations; if he must know how that moisture come on the bed, why she put the soap there in a hurry to catch a flea. He believed her and brought her a present next day in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Admiral of the Ocean Seas and Viceroy of the Indies who thus takes what can only be called a mean advantage of a poor seaman in his employ? It would have been a competence and a snug little fortune to Rodrigo de Triana; it was a mere flea-bite to a man who was thinking in eighth parts of continents. It may be true, as Oviedo alleges, that Columbus transferred it to Beatriz Enriquez; but he had no right to provide for her out of money that in all equity and decency ought to have gone to another and ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... shouted, 'or I'll call for the police. A nice thing for customers to 'ear you a-coming 'ere a-charging me with finding things in goods what I sells. 'Ere, be off, afore I sends you off with a flea in your ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... come," declared Joe. "I'll send them off with a flea in their ear. They'll find that I'm no ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... all determined not to leave little Inez in these poor lodgings. "Goodness knows," Bess remarked, "if she gets out of our sight now we may never find her again. She's just as elusive as a flea!" ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... 'That's a flea-bite. When we've got a little ahead with this it won't matter, sir, whether you spend twenty thousand or forty thousand dollars a year. We've got the concession from the United States Government through the territories, and we're in correspondence with the President of the Mexican ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... are quite as humiliating or as elevating as those given to girls. He may be Number One, Two or Three, Pig, Dog or Flea, or he may be like Wu T'ing Fang a "Fragrant Palace," or like Li Hung Chang, an ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... from the introduction of the eggs of the sand-flea (Pulex penetrans) into the tissues. It occurs in tropical Africa, South America, and the West Indies. The impregnated female flea remains attached to the part till the eggs mature, when by their irritation ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... in the cook-house she would say: "You must come out and tighten the tent ropes with this gale blowing, it won't be funny if the whole thing blows over in the night." But none of the horrors she depicted ever persuaded me to turn out once I was safely tucked up in my "flea bag" with "Tuppence" acting as a weight to keep the top blankets in place. In the morning when I awoke after a sound night's sleep, I would exclaim triumphantly: "There you are, 'Squig,' what price the tent blowing down? It's as safe as a rock ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... generous to a fault and accustomed to living like a gentleman—and he invested very heavily in real estate, too—but this Mr. Blount was always out for his interest and Honest John would skin a dead flea." ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... he, snug as a flea, Lay all this time a snoring, Nor dream'd of harm, as he lay warm, While all without ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... my mistress, M'sieur. I assure you it is the first time she has committed an indiscretion of this kind. May I put a flea in M'sieur's ear? The place is quite empty to-night, and besides there is the drive back to the Inn with Mademoiselle. Is not that ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Mr. Jonathan, our butler, is a very grave good sort of old man, with his hair as white as silver! and an honest worthy man he is. I was hurrying out with a flea in my ear, as the saying is, and going down stairs into the parlour, met him. He took hold of my hand (in a gentler manner, though, than my master) with both his; and he said, Ah! sweet, sweet ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... about cooties, but I take it back—I never knowed nothin' about them insecks till last night. Where they come from I dunno, but I'll tell the world they come, and if they wasn't half an inch long I'll eat 'em. They darn near dragged me off whole, and all the sleep I got ye could stick in a flea's eye. Lookit here." ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... much on chin-chin. Little an' dark an' quiet he was, an' jus' crazy fer dogs. Any old mutt'd do fer him—jus' so's it was in the shape of a pup. He was fair wild fer 'em. He picked up a yeller cur out there the day after the Yangtsin fight, an' that there no-account, mangy, flea-bitten mutt had ter stay with us the whole time. If the pup didn't stand in me an' Buck an' Ranch, he swore he'd quit too, so we had to let him come, an' he messed an' bunked with our outfit right along. Ranch named him Daggett, after the Colonel, which ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... universities) "satisfied with her own progress"; she added, being under intoxication, "that, if any danger existed, her scheme was to drown it in the bo-o-owl;" and two days afterward he saw her puffing and panting, and fiercely dragging a gigantic three-decker out into deep water, like an industrious flea pulling his phaeton. ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... I had for many a day held his observes and admonishments in no very reverential estimation. So that, when I heard him address me in such a memorializing manner, I was inclined and tempted to set him off with a flea in his lug. However, I was enabled to bridle and rein in this prejudicial humour, and answer him in his ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... 'Hist, Madonna.' She turned and looked at me with her eyes wide open. They are handsome eyes for a Sienese woman. That I allow. She said, 'Do you call me?' Says I, 'I do.' She says, 'Well?' I reply, 'He is well if you are.' 'Who, then?' says she. I say, 'Your lover.' This makes her jump like a flea on the bed. But she brazens it out finely, turning to her old crone with a 'What does the girl mean?' Bless you, THEY knew well enough. I folded my arms—so; I said, 'He has walked the stony hills barefoot to find you. ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... hands to turn over the volumes; then he will thump the white vellum with gloves covered with all kinds of dust, and with his finger clad in long-used leather will hunt line by line through the page; then at the sting of the biting flea the sacred book is flung aside, and is hardly shut for another month, until it is so full of the dust that has found its way within, that it resists the effort to ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... was a king once reigning, Who had a big black flea, And loved him past explaining, As his own son were he. He called his man of stitches; The tailor came straightway: Here, measure the lad for breeches. And measure his coat, ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... was, and for which his accounts were regularly discharged), it seems, has a Clock or a Beetle, I think it is called a Diamond Beetle, which he is very fond of, and has a fancy for, and the defender has compared it to a Louse, or a Bug, or a Flea, or a worse thing of that kind, with a view to render it despicable or ridiculous, and the petitioner so likewise, as the proprietor or owner thereof. It is said that this is a Louse in fact, and that the veritas convicii excusat; and mention ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... a good Christmas fire is to them like the heats of the dog-days. Though they are frequently heard by day, yet is their natural time of motion only in the night. As soon as it grows dusk, the chirping increases, and they come running forth, and are from the size of a flea to that of their full stature. As one should suppose, from the burning atmosphere which they inhabit, they are a thirsty race, and show a great propensity for liquids, being found frequently drowned in pans of water, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... later the Cavour was grappled securely to the skin of the Valhalla like a flea riding an elephant, and Alan was climbing in through the main airlock. It felt good to be aboard the big ship once again, after all ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... "But I got to do this personal. This here pen is like a rabbit gone loco. Now, here I set like a bag of beans, tryin' to tell John Torrance why I'm quittin' this here job without makin' him think I'm glad to quit—which I am, and I ain't. It's like tryin' to split a flea's ear with a axe; it can't be did without mashin' the flea. Now, if John was here I could tell him in three jumps. The man that invented writin' must 'a' been tongue-tied or had sore throat some time when ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... common failin' with church choirs, I've noticed. Milly Amos sung soprano, and my Jane was the alto; John Petty sung bass, and young Sam Crawford tenor; and as for Uncle Jim Matthews, he sung everything, and a plenty of it, too. Milly Amos used to say he was worse'n a flea. He'd start out on the bass, and first thing you knew he'd be singin' tenor with Sam Crawford; and by the time Sam was good and mad, he'd be off onto the alto or the soprano. He was one o' these meddlesome old creeturs that thinks the ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... when they was real sick. There was lots of typhoid fever then. I don't know nothing about no herbs, they used for diseases; only boneset and hoarhound tea for colds and croup. They put penrile (pennyroyal) in the house to keep out flies and fleas, and if there was a flea in the house he would shoo from that place right then ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... was writing that last chapter a flea appeared upon the page before me, as there once did to St. Dominic." He proceeds to say that his flea was a flea of flea-flesh, but that ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... got no more blood in his liver than a flea. Gatchell would hang his grandmother on a point of law. Why should you, or any other ordinarily intelligent person, ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... many of her sons to this curious race of vagabond students, when she herself was without any university to satisfy the cravings of her thoughtful and intellectual people. 'No country without a Scot or a flea' was an uncomplimentary proverb due to the numerous young clerks, equally fierce for frays and for lectures, who flocked to the seats of learning on the Continent, and sometimes became naturalized there, sometimes came home again, ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all over town, for nobody believed any longer in their late idol. The simpletons and poltroons—all the fellows of Bezuquet's stamp, whom a flea would put to flight, and who could not fire a shot without closing their eyes—were conspicuously pitiless. In the club-rooms or on the esplanade, they accosted ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... Socialist—envy and sloth. So deeply was he imbued with envy that he was quite unable to rest so long as anyone else was better off than himself; and although he did not care one jot for "humanity" of which he prated so freely, and was incapable of regenerating a flea, he found in a certain section of the Socialist and Anarchist party that degree of dissatisfaction and covetousness which appealed to his degraded soul. Besides which the movement afforded him grand opportunities for living in sloth and sponging ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... on his paws, and watches the wall. He is not a very beautiful dog, and the light shows numerous old wounds where the hair will not grow. He is afraid of nothing on the face of the earth or under it. He will tackle a bullock as readily as he will tackle a flea. He hates all other dogs—except kangaroo-dogs—and has a marked dislike to friends or relations of the family. They seldom call, however. He sometimes makes friends with strangers. He hates snakes and has killed ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... smashed up completely, won't pay sixpence in the pound. As we find it a hard matter to live, he is not likely to make you an allowance of thirty pounds, or thirty pence a year, or to trouble himself by going to the Admiralty with the certainty of being sent away with a flea in his ear; so you see, Tom, you must just grin and bear it. If you don't get killed, I would advise you—should you ever wish to come home—to make your appearance with your pockets full of the prize-money ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... vague. The autopsy showed a state of things not precisely to be called peculiar to poisoning cases the intestines, which the fatal poison had not had time to burn as in the case of the d'Aubrays, were marked with reddish spots like flea-bites. In June Penautier obtained the post that had been held by ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... thing if I get rid of Spitfire"—he had named him thus—"for two hundred and fifty dollars. He's a bad-tempered brute, and blind into the bargain. But I'm not bound to tell Mr. Richmond that, and so spoil my trade. I've put a flea in his ear about Nichols, and I guess he will ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... that your French physic? If every one of us should be whipped according to our faults, to be lashed at a cart's tail would be held but a flea biting. ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... Monsieur Paul still sat in the office, the following reply came in from the Secretary: "All you need do is to say to the French Consul, when he calls, that you obey your instructions, and have no authority to discuss with him the rights of French subjects. J. P. B." Monsieur Paul departed with "a flea in his ear." But he received an invitation to ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... sake, aunt," he said, "'twouldn't be no manner of good if it come down to a runnin' chase. Nearest depot's fifty mile' across the county line. Racin' this car ag'in' the sheriff's 'ud be like matchin' a flea ag'in' a grasshopper. Dern it, she's balked ag'in." He wrestled with the crank, conquered it and the machine shivered like a hunting dog while his aunt adjusted spark and gas. She nodded to him to start ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... is enough sight. And the fust mate's got a uniform cap on, like a purser on a steamboat. Make that artist feller take that cap off him, Jim. He's got to. I wish he could have seen some of my mates. They wa'n't Cunarder dudes, but they could make a crew hop 'round like a sand-flea in a ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... natural variety of aristocratic humanity. He has the good taste to refuse condescension sufficient to allow him to eat at table with a Frederick Douglass, a Samuel R. Ward, or a Dr. Pennington. Poor light little soul! It can borrow a pair of flea's legs, and, hopping up to the magnificent lights of public opinion, sit looking down upon the whole colored race ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... cattle to be driven, fields to be tilled, and men and women to be talked to. They were all real and true—solidly planted upon the feet—perfectly comprehensible—clay of his clay, neither more nor less. He shook himself like a dog with a flea in his ear, and rambled out of the gate. Said the Sahiba, to whom watchful eyes reported this move: 'Let him go. I have done my share. Mother Earth must do the rest. When the Holy One comes ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... prevent the malice of his accusers? What made him the instrument of his own death, but only his excessiveness of wisdom? whereby, while he was searching into the nature of clouds, while he was plodding and contemplating upon ideas, while he was exercising his geometry upon the measure of a flea, and diving into the recesses of nature, for an account how little insects, when they were so small, could make so great a buzz and hum; while he was intent upon these fooleries he minded nothing of the world, or ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... John's foot on her knee, instantly began to work away with as much skill as the most experienced surgeon. We all stood by watching her. After a little time she produced between her finger and thumb a creature considerably smaller than an ordinary flea, which she had taken out alive and uninjured. Giving it a squeeze, she threw it to the ground with an expression of anger at its having dared to molest her young master; and thus in a very short time she had extracted three or four insects from each of his feet. We had meantime begun to feel something ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... and here we heard for the first time of the Yorkshireman's coat-of-arms, which the lady of the house told us every Yorkshireman was entitled to place on his carriage free of tax! It consisted of a flea, and a fly, a flitch of bacon, and a magpie, which we thought was a curious combination. The meaning, however, was forthcoming, and we give the following interpretation as ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... then we took him out and got him to lay down on his stummick, because he was all muddy anyway, where he fell down the cellar; and how could it matter to anybody that had any sense at all? Well, then we had the rixual, and—and—why, the teeny little paddlin' he got wouldn't hurt a flea! It was that little coloured boy lives in the alley did it—he isn't anyways near HALF Georgie's size but Georgie got mad and said he didn't want any ole nigger to paddle him. That's what he said, and it was his own foolishness, because Verman won't let ANYBODY ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... woman in Suk el Ghurb named Fetneh or Civil War, and her sister is Hada, or Peace. An old lady lately died in Beirut named Feinus or Lantern. In the Beirut school are and have been girls named Pearl, Diamond, Morning Dawn, Dew, Rose, Only one, and Mary Flea. That girl America's full name was America Wolves, a curious name for ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... over the parapet, finding rest in a mild melancholy, his thoughts chiefly occupied with the decay of Prepimpin who sat by his heels gazing at the roadway, occupied possibly by the same sere reflections. Presently the flea-catching antics of a ragged mongrel in the middle of the roadway disturbed Prepimpin's sense of the afternoon's decorum. He rose and with stiff dignity stalked towards him. He stood nose to nose with the mongrel, his tufted tail in straight ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... had never been talked about, Caesar might have searched London for a wife in vain. Good Mr. Lumley professed a great affection for me, and would occasionally favour me with long and technical dissertations on the interior economy of the flea, for example; and once in the fullness of his heart confided to his wife that "Miss Coventry was really a dear girl; it's my belief, Madge, that if she'd been a man she'd have been a naturalist." These little dinners were indeed ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... their delectation and amusement. No band of enthusiastic pilgrims ever started in such high feather to see a dramatic and terpsichorean feast as did we. There was an expression of mystery and expectancy on every face. Mary Garden and all she does would be a mere flea bite to what we should see of pure and simple naughtiness. But alack and alas for our blasted hopes and the human weakness that had been worked on by the adroit press agent! The show was a "fake:" there was nothing naughty about it—and very little that was nice. No refrigerating plant ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... Suspicions were excited; but again they remained vague. The autopsy showed a state of things not precisely to be called peculiar to poisoning cases the intestines, which the fatal poison had not had time to burn as in the case of the d'Aubrays, were marked with reddish spots like flea-bites. In June Penautier obtained the post that had been held by ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... POLICY. Well, I hope I haven't. If I thought I had I'd take something for it, dontcherknow! When I cannot live among my fellows without surrendering my independence— forswearing freedom of speech and liberty of thought; without having to play the canting hypocrite or go hungry—to fawn like a flea-bitten fice to win public favor—I'll make me a suit of leather, take to the woods and chop bee trees. I'd rather my babes were born in a cane-brake and reared on bark and wild berries, with the blood of independence burning in their veins, than spawned in ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... 'I don't care a flea, There'll be still black-puddings, souse, and chitterlings for me.' Heigho! the ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... again! Turmoil and flurry may be characteristic of the manners of to-day; both are far from the ideal of beautiful manners which should be as assured, as smooth, as controlled as the running of a high-grade automobile. Flea-like motions are no better suited to manners ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... John." "Not a whit," rejoins a Radical reformer, "the income tax is popular, especially with people who don't pay it; Lord John's opposition to Locke King's motion sealed his fate." "Locke King's division was a flea-bite," cries a staunch Protestant, "the Pope has ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... quicken hymns, that they did hear, incensed, Satiric comments overbold, From one whose part was by decree The jester's; but they boiled to feel him bite. Better for them had they with Reason fenced Or smiled corrected! They in the great Gods' might Their prober crushed, as fingers flea. Crumbled Olympus when the sovereign sire His fatal kick to Momus gave, albeit Men could behold the sacred Mount aspire, The Satirist pass by on limping feet. Those Gods who saw the ejected laugh alight Below had then their last of airy glee; They in the cup sought Laughter's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... would give me a written character of the very best description, whenever I chose to apply for it. "You're honest," he said; "you're willing, though lazy; you would pull, if you had the strength of a flea; and, though a monstrous coward, you don't run away." My own demurs to these harsh judgments were not so many as they might have been. The idiocy I confessed; because, though positive that I was not uniformly an idiot, I felt inclined ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... done weel 'ud's done in a hurry, unless its catchin a flea, aw've heeard sed, but Joa Trailer wod'nt ha believed 'at that should be done in a hurry, for he hurried for nowt. It wor allus sed 'at he wor born to th' tune o'th' Deead March, an suckled wi' Slowman's Soothin Syrup. His mother declared ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... course you've heard of the Nancy Lee, and how she sailed away On her famous quest of the Arctic flea, to the wilds of Hudson's Bay? For it was a foreign Prince's whim to collect this tiny cuss, And a golden quid was no more to him than a copper to coves like us. So we sailed away and our hearts were gay as we gazed on the gorgeous scene; And we laughed with glee as we caught the flea ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... idea of a man that speaks with a squeaking voice through his nose, to express a timid and weak fellow, who is always thrashed by the other actors, and always boasts of victory after they are gone."—Tolondron, p. 324. In Italian, Policinello is a little flea, active and biting and skipping; and his mask puce-colour, the nose imitating in shape the flea's proboscis. This grotesque etymology was added by Mrs. Thrale. I cannot decide between "the hen-chicken" of the scholar and "the skipping flea" of the lady, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... moral sentiment which applies out of Pigdom. This creature would not have passed muster at a county fair; no Suffolk blood compacted and rounded him; he belonged to the "racers," and skipped about his pen with the alacrity of a large flea, wiggling his curly tail as expressively as a dog's, and "all but speakin'," as Israel said. He was always glad to see Miss Lucinda, and established a firm friendship with her dog Fun, a pretty, sentimental, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... one by the bare shoulder and spoke him burning words. "Canalla," he cried him, "horrible flea! Thou makest the air to reek—impossible to breathe. Fly, thou gnat of the midden, or I crack ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... horses could draw it easily. Holger Danske was so big a man, that when he had a suit of clothes made, the tailors were obliged to use ladders to take his measure; but one day an unfortunate tailor tickled him in the ear with his scissors, and Holger Danske thought it was a flea, and squeezed him to death between ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... they have broken through the soil, an enemy awaits them in the small black insect commonly known as the cabbage or turnip fly, beetle, or flea. This insect, though so small as to appear to the eye as a black dot, is very voracious and surprisingly active. He apparently feeds on the juice of the young plant, perforating it with small holes the size of a pin point. He is so active when disturbed that ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... pictures of the Plum-pudding flea, and the Moppsikon Floppsikon Bear, and state by whom waterproof tubs ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... to be, for the most part, blind to what took place immediately around her. General Bellairs himself (who vaguely supposed that some man might try to make love to his daughter five years hence, and thereupon be promptly sent off with a flea in his ear) was not more unconscious than she that there was, had been, or might be anything, as the phrase runs, 'between' the two junior members of the party. Lady Deane had no hints to give and ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... ounce of pleasure from the Rule of Three,— I was bad right through; sweared 'hully gee,' And worse sometimes, like 'jiminee;' Scrawled with a pencil on my jographee, Stole birds' eggs in the huckleberry tree,— Oh, I was bad; tried to learn a flea How to keep his balance on a rolling pea,— Oh, regular bad; and my ma, said she, 'If you don't be better than what you be, I'll put you in the cupboard and turn the key.' But I wouldn't ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... and quickened breath of Temporary Captain Bobby Little endorsed every word that Major Wagstaffe had spoken. As he rolled into his "flea-bag" that night, Bobby requoted to himself, for the hundredth time, a passage from Shakespeare which had recently come to his notice. He was not a Shakespearian scholar, nor indeed a student of literature at all; but these lines had been sent to him, cut out of a daily almanac, ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... acrita, or polypes, among the sub-kingdoms; the intestina, among the annulosa; the tortoises, among the reptilia; the armadillo and scaly ant-eater, pig, mouse, jerboa, and kangaroo, among quadrupeds; the waders and tenuirostres, among birds; the coleoptera, (bug, louse, flea, &c.) among insects; the gastrobranchus, among fishes; are examples which will illustrate the special characters of this type. These are smallness, particularly in the head and mouth, feebleness, and ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... enemies attacking these plants are: the flea- beetle, the cabbage-worm, the cabbage-maggot (root) and "club-root"; directions for fighting all of which will be found ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... said Mike Flannery, "ye would not say that same, for to the flea professor th' flea is as big as a house. He studies him throo a telescope, Mrs. Muldoon, that magnifies th' flea a million times. Th' flea professor will take a dog with a flea on him, mam, and look at th' same ...
— Mike Flannery On Duty and Off • Ellis Parker Butler
... be a flea in Rosario, however—just one flea; but he is a most ubiquitous and a most insatiably blood-thirsty little person. The worst of it is that, night or day, you are never perfectly sure where he may be. It is ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... a very steep rise. And now that he had reached the cool glade of topmost Tinnaburra, he found that his arrival had caused considerable perturbation among a small mob of brumbies, or wild horses, consisting of some seven or eight mares and foals, led by a flea-bitten old grey stallion, who snorted angrily as he saw Finn, and minced forward toward the Wolfhound, his long chisel teeth bared, his four-foot tail billowing out behind him like a flag, and his black hoofs (the feet of mountain-bred ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... in general; and if it be meant that all true spiders spin, it is no doubt correct; but the Gossamer which "A Young Inquirer" asks about is the production of a small black spider about the size of a flea, which was a true aeronaut long before Montgolfier or Lunardi, and if "A Young Inquirer" has access to either the "Linnean Transactions" or the first series of Loudon's "Magazine of Natural History," ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... hath moste of suche handkerchers, is compted the valeauntest manne. There are many also that sowe together these skinnes of menne, as other doe the skinnes of beastes, and weare theim for their clothyng. Some of them flea the right hand of their enemies beyng slaine, so that the nailes also remain vpon the fingres, and make couers of ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... became converted at a Methodist camp-meeting, and as he became a kind of preacher among his own people, he staid converted. He had one fault, to speak not of others. He was irascible to a great degree; a mosquito or a flea would drive him into a passion. But throughout his long career as guardian of his master, he had been never known to lose patience with him. Even mothers become vexed exceedingly with undutiful children; but this care of Mat for ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... I say!' he shouted, 'or I'll call for the police. A nice thing for customers to 'ear you a-coming 'ere a-charging me with finding things in goods what I sells. 'Ere, be off, afore I sends you off with a flea in your ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... her head maliciously upon her arm like a child that sleeps; but in making her preparations she opened fond eyes, that smiled and winked in advance of the little secret thrills, sneezes, squints, and trances of the page who was about to lie at her feet, separated from her by the jump of an old flea; and in fact she advanced so much and so near the square of velvet where the poor child should kneel, whose life and soul she trifled with, that had he been a saint of stone, his glance would have been constrained to follow ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... that addressed Orpheus, in the infernal regions, and offered him for food a roasted ant, a flea's thigh, butterflies' brains, some sucking mites, a rainbow tart etc., to be washed down with dew-drops and beer made from seven barleycorns—a very heady liquor.—King, Orpheus and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... it?' he said. 'The understanding of a flea, a hopping flea with a proboscis. Why should you crawl abject before the understanding of ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... the top of the wave; I mean artistic individualism, which is so much crueller, so much blinder and so much more irrational even than commercial individualism. The decay of society was praised by artists as the decay of a corpse is praised by worms. The aesthete was all receptiveness, like the flea. His only affair in this world was to feed on its facts and colours, like a parasite upon blood. The ego was the all; and the praise of it was enunciated in madder and madder rhythms by poets whose Helicon was absinthe and whose Pegasus was the nightmare. This diseased pride was not even ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... farther and fared worse. These sort of things never come singly, it seems. I had another request for your hand, my dear, only this afternoon, from that scoundrel Frank Muller, of all men in the world," and his face darkened as he said the name. "I sent him off with a flea in his ear, I can tell you. Had I known then what I know now, I should have referred him to John. There, there! He is a bad man, and a dangerous man, but let him be. He is taking plenty of rope, and he will hang himself one of these ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... followin' glimpsin' that flea-bitten cayouse at Tramperos. But the mules can't think or talk of nothin' else. It arouses their religious enthoosiasm to highest pitch; even the cynic Jerry gets half-way keyed up over it. I looks ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... on the particular book that I had designated as their dining-table. We have seen that fleas are capable of being highly educated, hence it is reasonable to presume that other insects, specially and generically akin to the flea, likewise possess the faculty of remembering events. Of course, this faculty is necessarily more highly developed in some animals than in others; it differs in degree of development, not ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... When a person feels an irritation in these parts, he must immediately look at the place; and if he discern a tiny black point, surrounded by a small white ring, the former is the chigoe, or sand- flea, and the latter the eggs which it has deposited in the flesh. The first thing to be done is to loosen the skin all round as far as the white skin is visible; the whole deposit is then extracted, and a little snuff strewn in the ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... turning himself into some small commonplace creature to plague his friends on board—a mouse, one day, a flea the next, a fly on the third. Quite naturally, no one suspected his ability to adopt such fantastic disguises. So little did they guess—he had one or two narrow escapes from being swatted or ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... successful art of no mean order, Ronsard's method of admitting us, as it were, to his conversation with himself is definitely his own. His interruptions of a verse with 'Ha' or 'He'; his 'Mon Dieu, que j'aime!' or 'He, que ne suis-je puce?' (the difference between Ronsard's flea and Donne's would be worth examination) have in them an element of irresistible bonhomie. We feel that he is making us his confidant. He does not have to tear agonies out of himself, so that what he confides has no chance of making ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... this rule, the curator cracked a flea under his robe, but Joseph did not call his attention to his disobedience, but bowed his head and left him to the scruple of conscience which he hoped would awaken in ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... louse, apply linseed oil. Paris green, in water, will kill the canker worm. Tobacco water does the work for plant lice. Peach-tree borers are excluded with tarred or felt paper, and cut out with a knife. Jar the grape flea beetle on an inverted umbrella early in the morning. Among small-fruit insects, the strawberry worms are readily destroyed with hellebore, an ounce to a gallon of warm water. The same remedy destroys ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... Yankee spy, do you want to be pinched between my thumb and finger as if you was a flea?" bellowed the boxer. ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... doctrinaires, airy metaphysicians, and the like. The thing she loved of all else was to chaff them and drench them in holiday impertinence, exhibit them treading on air and arguing with the clouds, or measuring the jump of a flea, as a type of their ethereal refinements. But Dialogue continued his deep speculations upon Nature and Virtue, till, as the musicians say, the interval between them was two full octaves, from the highest to the lowest note. This ill-assorted pair it is that we have dared to unite and harmonize-reluctant ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... now perceived behind the stockman a black boy on a young colt, leading a sturdy flea-bitten grey, laden with a pack bag on either side. He jumped off as lightly as Moongarr Bill and hitched his horses also to the veranda posts. Except that he was black as a coal, save for the whites of his eyes and his gleaming teeth, ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... each evening—and he always had some audience. So that Alvina had opportunity to come into contact with all the odd people of the inferior stage. She found they were very much of a type: a little frowsy, a little flea-bitten as a rule, indifferent to ordinary morality, and philosophical even if irritable. They were often very irritable. And they had always a certain fund of callous philosophy. Alvina did not like them—you were not supposed, really, to get deeply emotional over them. But she found it ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... little Prose Dialogue, I see lots that might be weeded. I wonder at one word which is already crossed—'Emergency.' 'An Emergency!' I think Blake could have made a Picture of it as he did of the Flea. Something of the same disgusting Shape too. . . . Blake seems to me to have fine things: but as by random, like those of a Child, or a Madman, of Genius. Is there one good whole Piece, of ever so few ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... stick in front of his father's house; and Tom went down to Main Street for her, and bought a mattress which he carried home on his shoulder. This she spread on the bedroom floor, Mrs. Hemmerde having already given both rooms a sound scouring, just in case a flea or a spider should be lying perdu. After which Polly fell to baking again in good earnest; for the travellers would be famished by ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... winter, whereas in the summer months it appears to be immensely remote from the rest of the civilised world. From having been the prey of the inexpressible foreigner in his shooting season, it suddenly becomes, and remains during about five months, the happy hunting ground of the silent flea, the buzzing fly and the insinuating mosquito. The streets are, indeed, still full of people, and long lines of carriages may be seen towards sunset in the Villa Borghesa and in the narrow Corso. Rome and the Romans are not easily parted as London and London ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... in the East, is really efficacious. It is the powdered "Pire oti" (or flea-bane), mentioned in Curzon's 'Armenia' as growing in that country; it has since become an important article of export. A correspondent writes to me, "I have often found a light cotton or linen ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... terrible clarity—that to be a Winner was to be absolutely nothing. Like being the best flea, among all the fleas on ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... such as jumping is supposed to be in the shires, he knew nothing. He was, too, a bad hand at galloping, but with a shambling, half cantering trot, which he had invented for himself, he could go along all day, not very quickly, but in such fashion as never to be left altogether behind. He was a flea-bitten horse, if my readers know what that is,—a flea-bitten roan, or white covered with small red spots. Horses of this colour are ugly to look at, but are very seldom bad animals. Such as he was, Crocker, who did not ride much when up in London, was very proud of him. Crocker was dressed ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... Against the grain, this fifteen-year: my son And that dead woman were too strong for me: They turned me false to my nature; broke me in Like a flea in harness, that draws a nutshell-coach. Till then I'd jumped, and bit, at my own sweet will. Oh! amn't I the wiseacre, the downy owl, Fancying myself as knowing as a signpost? And yet, there's always some ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... the women too. I made it a point to speak to Mrs. Spofford and her niece about him this morning,—and the poor girl has been making quite a fool of herself over him, you may have observed. Mrs. Spofford owns quite a block of stock in our institution, so I considered it my duty to put a flea in her ear, if you see ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... track of HIM. Might's well try to put your finger on a flea. He's here to-day and gone yesterday, as the Scriptur' says. He ate a little mite of supper, but not much, and then off he puts. Says he's goin' to walk the fog out'n his head. I told him, s' I, 'You'll walk a plaguey sight more in than you do out, THIS night,' but he went just the ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... was wroth and his face reddened with rage and he said to the servant; "Let him walk the highway of the Moslems; but, when we turn off it to our tents, and find that he still follows us, we will send him about his business with a flea in his ear." Then he bowed his head and walked on, the Eunuch walking behind him. But Hasan of Bassorah followed them to the plain Al-Hasa; and, as they drew near to the tents, they turned round and saw him close on their heels; so Ajib was very angry, fearing that the Eunuch might tell his grandfather ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... more, for such was uncle's last intimation. Never mind; he can't take his money and comfort with him, and in all probability will find himself in the same boat as myself. He never enquires whether I am starving or not. 3—a mere flea-bite to him—would have put us straight, and with his security and good interest might have obtained me a good situation long ago. I can face poverty and degradation no longer, and would sooner ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... idea of going somewhere else; and the chances of the stranger within their gates approached those of an icicle in Hades, as our friends across the water would say. Finally, in despair, Draycott rushed into the road and seized a venerable flea-bitten grey that was ambling along with Monsieur, Madame, and all the little olive-branches sitting solemnly inside the cab. He embraced Madame, he embraced the olive-branches; finally—in despair—I believe he embraced Monsieur. He wept, he entreated, he implored them to take ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... us back, as he thinks, with a flea in our ears, but it is a flea which will tickle his majesty before long," observed Lieutenant Blake, who had something of his ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... this psychological moment to pull a plug of black MacDonald from his pocket and bite off a mouthful, without taking the telescope from his eye—"an' the wind is in our favour an' he's as busy as a flea!" he finished. ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... The rough, ungarnished coffin of stained deal lay bare and unsightly on the floor of an old market- cart; a woman sat beside, steadying it with her feet. The husband drove; and the most depressed of the three was the horse, a broken- kneed, flea-bitten grey. It was pathetic, this bringing home in death of the old father whom, while he lived, they had been too poor to house; it was at no small sacrifice that they had spared him that terror of old age, a pauper's grave, and brought him to lie by his ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... one of Potts' ears or one of his shoulders, I was perfectly satisfied—first, because that sort of thing was good for the whole dog; and, second, because the thing would get about even when Potts' head would reach around and bite a flea off my hind legs ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... second week the symptoms above detailed continue, becoming often more severe, and there develops great nervousness and delirium. About this time there are frequently observed over the chest, abdomen and thighs, minute reddish spots resembling flea-bites; these spots last for a few days and then pass away and are followed by a fresh crop in other situations. During this period of the disease inflammation of the bronchial tubes frequently comes on, and now and then pneumonia develops. Bleeding from the bowels is an occasional highly ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... Great Britain; and to judge by the mental stamina it affords him in most cases, what a waste of good food it is! The dishes are so numerous and so quickly changed, that he has no time to decide on which he likes best. Like an industrious flea, rather than a bee, he hops from flower to flower in the educational garden, without one penny-worth of honey to show for it. And then—though I feel how degrading it is to allude to so vulgar a matter—how high is the price of admission to the ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... against a netting and looked vaguely out upon the horizon, waiting for the outcome of the search, got a start. Yonder, far away on the other side of the river, between a little wood and the Staria Derevnia, a light boat drew to the shore, and a little black spot jumped from it like a flea. Koupriane recognized the little black spot as Kathanna. She was safe. Now he could not reach her. It would be useless to search the maze of the Bohemian quarter, where her country-people lived in full control, with customs and privileges that had never been infringed. ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... cove time to breathe in. Well, in half an hour out comes my Carry as lively as a flea. She got into a passing cab and away she went. Fortunately I can run a bit, and reached the Palais Royal in time to see Caroline change two notes of two hundred francs ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... on earth Who beat all other bardies at a canter; Rob' Burns his mother called him at his birth. Though handicapped by rum and much a ranter, He won the madcap race in Tam O'Shanter. He drove a spanking span from Scottish heather, Strong-limbed, but light of foot as flea or feather— Rhyme and Reason, matched and yoked together, And reined them with light hand and limber leather. He wrote to me once on a time—I mind it— A bold epistle and the poet signed it. He thought to cheat ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... he feels like. Sometimes he's on and off the island half a dozen times a week, and again we don't hear nothing of him for months; sometimes he just stops here for days and mebbe weeks, and again he's here one minute and gone the next. Jumps round like a flea on a griddle, I say; you can't never tell nothing about what he's going to do or where he'll be next.... My land o' mercy, Mr. Searle! What a start you did ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... made on your aunt's opals. But perhaps you might have your mother go over and see Miss Alicia. She could mention what you thought, and even if the old lady did pretend to scoff at the idea, it would put a flea in her ear, so perhaps she'd keep an eye on ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... the third floor of the flea-bag. Part of the place was only two stories high. The door at the end of my corridor opened out onto the roof. When I had calmed down, I stepped through the door into the ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... word. It is remarkable, too, that, though articulating distinctly, he keeps his mouth shut most of the time, and speaks through his nose. I have occasionally observed him even eating Sequoia seeds and nibbling a troublesome flea, without ceasing or in any way confusing his "Pee-ah! pee-ah!" ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... to beef, butter, and good red wheat; white corn, sad vegetables, cold water, sackcloth take their place, with fasts on bread and water, and festivals mitigated by fish. Goodbye to pillows and bolsters and linen shirts. Welcome horse-hair vests, sacking sheets, and the "bitter bite of the flea,"—sad entertainment for gentlemen! Instead of wise and merry talk, wherein he excelled, solitary confinement in a wooden cell (the brethren now foist off a stone one upon credulous tourists) with willing slavery to stern Prior Basil. The long days of prayer and meditation, the nights short ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... Crocker had said, coming into the great man's room, "I hope you will do me the honour of being present at my wedding breakfast." The suggestion was an unpardonable impertinence. "I am asking no one else in the Department except the Duca," said Crocker. With what special flea in his ear Crocker was made to leave the room instantly cannot be reported; but the reader may be quite sure that neither did Aeolus nor the Duca accept the invitation. It was on that very afternoon that Mr. Jerningham, with the assistance of one of the messengers, discovered that Crocker had—actually ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... replied the officer. "We can't be bothered with a single prisoner. What is one flea on a blanket? Another time, if we come across you again with enough of your comrades to make the game worth while, why then, perhaps we may give ourselves the pain of keeping you. You've seen that we have enough food to feed your whole trench, ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... not!" agreed Cap sarcastically. "A mere A-number-one pair of mules belonging to another fellow is only a flea bite to offer a visitor for supper! Well, all I got ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... Lord!" he said, with even more than his usual deliberate utterance, "in England the liveliest flea that ever gave a triumphal jump in air would find his spirits inclined to droop! I tell you, ma'am," he continued, addressing himself to Zara, whose merry laugh rang out like a peal of little golden ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... close, and Charley went off to the Florida Keys, where he spent a month living with some friends before holing up with his mother and sister for the winter. He was offered a job in New York, at a year-round flea museum in Times Square, but after some thought he decided against it. He'd never had to work winters, and he wasn't going ...
— Charley de Milo • Laurence Mark Janifer AKA Larry M. Harris
... skittles dance again, and bang goes the bowl at her sconce instead of the skittles: it vas lucky for her it did not hit her, for if it had, I'll be d———d if ever she'd a cried Buy my live flounders any more—he vas at play vith Sam Stripe the tailor; so the flea-catcher he jumps in between 'em, and being a piece-botcher, he thought he could be peace-maker, but it voudn't do, tho' he jump'd about like a parch'd pea in a frying-pan—Poll called him Stitch louse, bid him pick up his needles and be off—Bill vanted to get at Poll, Poll ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... so he called her Russia. There is a young woman in Suk el Ghurb named Fetneh or Civil War, and her sister is Hada, or Peace. An old lady lately died in Beirut named Feinus or Lantern. In the Beirut school are and have been girls named Pearl, Diamond, Morning Dawn, Dew, Rose, Only one, and Mary Flea. That girl America's full name was America Wolves, a curious name for ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... The king, we found, was engaged in a war with the sun, and he offered me a commission, but I declined the honour his majesty intended me. Everything in this world is of extraordinary magnitude! a common flea being much larger than one of our sheep: in making war, their principal weapons are radishes, which are used as darts: those who are wounded by them die immediately. Their shields are made of mushrooms, and their darts (when radishes are out of ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... charmed with the splendid accommodations of your fancy ship?" whispered the mischievous Jim. "There is not room for a flea to hop, without giving him the cramp ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... knew that he had stepped closer to Mr. Potter, and was speaking in a trembling rage. "Don't ye intermate an' insinerate; for if ye do, I kin fling out some insinerations likewise. Yeou jest open yer mouth about me stealin' an' I'll put a flea in old man Cameron's ear. Ha! Ye know what I mean. Better hev a care, Jabe ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... only wanted to do all the jumping. "Let me do the taking," he would have said, "and you can do the winning." When Mr. Crabbe hopped over three in a row, Mr. Frye became gloomy. He felt that Mr. Crabbe was getting all the pleasure. "You're too spry for me," he said. "You're like a flea. Well. . . ." ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... was a real barracks. The town was an imitation town. The fort, spick, span, in rows, with nicely planted trees and green grass-plats (kept in condition at vast expense to the War Department), stood on the bank of the sluggish river, while just below it and across the stream sprawled the town, drab, flea-bitten, unkempt, littered with tin cans and old bottles, a collection of saloons, gambling-houses and nameless dives, with a few people—a very few—making an honest living by selling groceries, ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... yersel': I hae frichtit the deid afore noo. Sae gang yer wa's to Mistress Coorthoup, wi' a flech (flea) i' yer lug (ear). I wuss ye luck—sic luck as I ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... in and build the fire if we ain't going to freeze to death!" exclaimed Grandma Brown, jogging up on a flea-bitten black mule. ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... GRAHAMS and the STANLEYS. There is also that immortal Parliamentary metaphor, emanating from the same mysterious source,—"The feature upon which the question hinges!" The only man who could have properly painted this was the enthusiastic BLAKE, who so successfully limned the ghost of a flea! These matters, however, are to be considered as merely supplementary ornaments to great themes. The grand subjects are to be sought for in Hansard's Reports, in petitions against returns of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... had come up nicely; but no sooner had the first green leaves expanded than myriads of little flea-like beetles devoured them. A timely article in my horticultural paper explained that if little chickens were allowed to run in the garden they would soon destroy these and other insects. Therefore I improvised ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... bare foot of a Wrestler and bit him, causing the man to call loudly upon Hercules for help. When the Flea a second time hopped upon his foot, he groaned and said, "O Hercules! if you will not help me against a Flea, how can I hope for ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... Wormwood hath seed get a handful or twaine To save against March, to make flea to refraine: Where chamber is sweeped and Wormwood is strowne, No flea, for his life, dare abide to be knowne. What saver is better (if physick be true), For places infected than Wormwood and Rue? It is as a comfort for hart ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... That will do for cleanliness. Now for clothing. Lots of socks, but only one change of other things, unless you care to take a third shirt in your greatcoat pocket. Two good pairs of boots, and a pair of slacks. Then, as regards sleeping. Your flea-bag and your three Government blankets, with your valise underneath, will keep you (and your little bedfellows) as warm as toast. You may get separated from your valise, though, so take a ground-sheet in your pack. Then you will be ready to dine and ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... to squeeze out a tear and at the same moment depart in wrath to her room and lock the doors, refusing to answer—the trouble being why in heaven's name must a pound-and-a-half spaniel called Monster, nothing but a flea-bearing dust mop, do nothing but sit and yap for chocolates?—what man is going to dare do otherwise than suppress a little profanity and then go and whisper ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... said the man. "I know the guy, and how to handle him. You just watch him like he's watching you, Mr. Mershone, and if anything happens you skip as lively as a flea. I can use that two hundred ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... Curtesye promises his 'lytyl John' a breechless feast, or as the Oriel MS. reads it, a 'byrchely' one,[1] & as the Forewords have shown that young people did get floggings in olden time, it may be as well to give here the sketch of a boy flea-bitten, no doubt, with little bobs of hazel twigs, that Richard Hill has preserved for us. Boys of the present generation happily don't know the sensation of unwelcome warmth that a sound flogging produced, and how after it one ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... it was a flea—bite, last night, but, mercy, I am as stiff and sore as a gentleman need be. How do you feel? I see you have one of your fins in ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... fulmo. Flash (of wit) spritajxo. Flask boteleto. Flat plata. Flat (music) duontono sube. Flatten platigi. Flatter flati. Flatterer flatulo. Flattering flatema. Flavour gusto. Flaw difekto. Flax lino. Flay senhauxtigi. Flea pulo. Flee flugi. Fleece sxaflano. Fleecy laneca. Fleet (quick) rapida. Fleet sxiparo. Flesh (meat) viando. Flesh karno. Flexibility fleksebleco. Flexible fleksebla. Flexion flekso. Flicker lumsxanceli. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... this habite, doe so, and are thought to merite more then the other, but they which cannot doe so make a vowe to sacrifice a Ramme at the mountaine of pardons; and after they bee washed, it is not lawfull for any man or women, to kill either flea or lowse with their handes, neither yet to take them with their nailes, vntill they haue accomplished their vowed orations in the mountaine of pardons abouesayd: and therefore they cary with them certaine stickes ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... there was once reigning, Who had a goodly flea, Him loved he without feigning, As his own son were he! His tailor then he summon'd, The tailor to him goes: Now measure me the youngster For jerkin and ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... emigrating," the stranger went on, trying to make his coarse voice sound friendly. "I just had in mind puttin' a flea in your ear. Because it is the wrong time of year to be goin' west, in the first place, and the woods are full of Indians and the roads alive with cutthroats, in the second place. If I was you young shavers I'd sell out and wait a year or two, or till next spring ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... quarter of an hour she sat perfectly still, doing nothing. At last she pushed the spoilt paper aside, took afresh piece, and was beginning to write, "On May the 14th, 1842," when there was a crunch on the gravel, and a furious voice said, "I am sorry for Flea Thompson." ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... called tutsen, is the French tout-saine (heal all). There are some others which, however, are not peculiar to the West; as kickshaws (quelque chose), etc. We have also many inverted words, as swap for wasp, cruds for curds, etc. Then again we call a fly a flea; and a flea a flay; and the smallest stream of water ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... the boxes, if of the depth required. Applications of guano, ashes, dilutions of oil-soap, and plaster of Paris, applied while the plants are wet, will be found of greater or less efficacy in their protection. The pungent smell of guano is said to prevent the depredation of the flea-beetle, which, in many localities, seriously injures the plants early in the season, through its ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... of his force to salute him in the darkness was his next in command, Barry Whalen. They had been together in the old Rand Rifles, and had, in the words of the Kaffir, been as near as the flea to the blanket, since the day when Rudyard discovered that Barry Whalen was on the same ship bound for the seat of war. They were not youngsters, either of them; but they had the spring of youth in them, and a deep basis ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... stepped out of eternity for the sake of the picture. And not all the kings and kaisers, cardinals and courtezans rolled into one great swaggering splurge of majesty could hold a candle to a ragged Bedouin chief on a flea-bitten pony, on the way to a ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... wi' the bree,' Annapla's aye sayin', but here there's neither bree nor puddin'. To think that a' my traison against the master i' the interest o' his dochter and himsel' should come to naethin', and that Sim MacTaggart should be sent awa' wi' a flea in his lug, a' for the tirravee o' a lassie that canna' value a guid chance when it offers! I wonder what ails her, if it's no' that mon-sher's ta'en her fancy! Women are a' like weans; they never see the crack in an auld toy till some ane shows them a new ane. Weel! as sure as death I wash my ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... council were near the town-hall; and that those little animals moved from place to place with wonderful agility. Johnson sat in great impatience till the gentleman had finished his tedious narrative, and then burst out (playfully however), 'It is a pity, Sir, that you have not seen a lion; for a flea has taken you such a time, that a lion must ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... often told how they Saw Cupid bitten by a flea; And thereupon, in tears half drown'd, He cried aloud: Help, help the wound! He wept, he sobb'd, he call'd to some To bring him lint and balsamum, To make a tent, and put it in Where the stiletto pierced the skin; Which, being done, the fretful pain ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... pleased both Maimoune and Danhasch. Maimoune then changed herself into a flea, and leaping on the prince's neck, stung him so smartly, that he awoke, and put up his hand to the place; but Maimoune skipped away, and resumed her pristine form, which, like those of the two genies, was invisible, the better to observe what he ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... make their appearance, led by their queen, a most beautiful and amiable little lady no bigger than a cambric needle. Assembling on the pillow of the crib, they would order their minstrels and orchestra to seat themselves on little master's forehead. The minstrels invariably were the cricket, the flea, the katydid, and the gnat, while the orchestra consisted of mosquitos, bumblebees, and wasps. Once in a great while, on very important occasions, the fairies would bring the old blind hop-toad down the chimney and set him on the window-sill, where ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... Churms, cry you mercy, sir; I saw not you. I think I have sent the scholar away with a flea in his ear. I trow, he'll come no more at ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... no rain, no wind, no flea, no fly; there is no Enoch nor any Elias to be sure; but there are women with nothing pedantic about them, who are as loving as ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... Ned. Don't be confoundedly unjust. She didn't tell me to go and seek him. How can she help his whispering to her? And then she looks over at me, and I swear I'm not going to be defended by a woman. She must fancy I haven't got the pluck of a flea. I know what her idea of young fellows is. Why, she said to me, when Suckling went off from her, the other day, 'These are our Guards.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... you," said the section chief, "I haven't had to read mine yet. The doctor fixed up the baths in town and yesterday he passed around those flea charms. Have you ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... Orenburg, Russia, Dec. 14, 1830, of a multitude of small, black insects, said to have been gnats, but also said to have had flea-like motions. ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... nephew. "Sometimes I think that is why he hates to part with a book. He keeps a secondhand bookshop, you know, and he's positively insulting to customers who try to buy any of the books. The old boy is really queer in his head, but there's nothing to be afraid of. He wouldn't hurt a flea, ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... absurd and she knew it. Margaret could go where she liked. It would all be chaste as a piano-recital. But the flea that she had been trying to put in the girl's ear seemed very ineffective. She is just as I was at her age, thought this lady, who, in so thinking, flattered ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... Josh, that I know. But come, now—as between man and man—without humbug—a little capital might enable me to make a first-rate thing of the shop. The tobacco trade is growing. I should cut my own nose off in not doing the best I could at it. I should stick to it like a flea to a fleece for my own sake. I should always be on the spot. And nothing would make your poor mother so happy. I've pretty well done with my wild oats—turned fifty-five. I want to settle down in my chimney-corner. And if I once buckled to the tobacco trade, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... in some cases, the water flea, for example, for the female to produce young without the necessity of fertilization by the male. In order to perform the necessary work to insure food supplies for the winter other insects have developed highly specialized workers, especially fitted ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... internship in a hospital in Minneapolis, but still, oh well, you don't get to know folks here, way you do up home. I feel I've got something to say about running Gopher Prairie, but you take it in a big city of two-three hundred thousand, and I'm just one flea on the dog's back. And then I like country driving, and the hunting in the fall. Do you know Gopher ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... told them it had a little snake which used to suck on the lowest joint of its forefinger; and, when they (inquiring where) pointed to other places, it told them not there but here, pointing on the lowest joint of the forefinger, where they observed a deep red spot about the bigness of a flea-bite. They asked it who gave it that snake, whether the black man gave it: the child said no, its mother gave it. I heard this ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... grandfather dies; and you sendin' them both off with worse grace than if they had been beggars askin' you for a shillin'. Now, stop your snivellin' there, I tell you. You are like your poor sainted father,—God bless him where he lies,—he too used to cry, likely enough, if a flea bit him." ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... want to do one thing, and that is to give up my keys as soon as possible. I am tired of this profession of jailer. Besides, I shall not be able to stay here much longer. This escape has put a flea into the ear of the authorities, and they are going to give me an assistant, a former police sergeant, who is as bad as a watchdog. Ah! the good days of M. de Boiscoran are over: no more stolen visits, no more promenades. He is to be watched day ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... to disappointment, for not a chair was vacant—"Not room for a flea," as Madame explained to us, and we had to curb our appetites as ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... "roll of honour" at the celebrated tavern in the Avenue de l'Opera. Nor do the numerous scribbled inscriptions on the other walls, such saucy epigrams as "To hell with the prefect of police," "The police are damned low flea-full dogs" and the like impress me less favourably than the scribbled inscriptions on notes of assignation placed covertly by subsidised waiters into the serviettes of the Callot-adorned Thaises in the spectacularized haunts of the Bois. The piano in Le Caveau may be diabetic, senescent, ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... expressions of apology from McGregor, on learning what he had done, and patronisingly cool were the assurances of Ivor that the injury was a mere flea-bite. And intense was the astonishment when it was discovered that a stag and a hind had fallen to old MacRummle with that "treemendious" repeater! And great was the laughter afterwards, at lunch time ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... on his stummick, because he was all muddy anyway, where he fell down the cellar; and how could it matter to anybody that had any sense at all? Well, then we had the rixual, and—and—why, the teeny little paddlin' he got wouldn't hurt a flea! It was that little coloured boy lives in the alley did it—he isn't anyways near HALF Georgie's size but Georgie got mad and said he didn't want any ole nigger to paddle him. That's what he said, and it was his own foolishness, because ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
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