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More "Nibble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... anyhow?' I says, flat 'n' plain, for Lord knows 'f he'd found a rich relation I wanted my old flannels for cleanin' cloths hereafter. But he 'xplained 's Felicia Hemans got Brunhilde out o' a book—the Nibble suthin' 'r other. 'Oh, well,' I says, 'if you c'n be suited with namin' your family after rats 'n' mice I guess you c'n leave me out,' I says, 'n' I kind o' backed off so 's to try 'n' set him a-goin', but he stood still, 'n' o' course no true Christian c'n shut her ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... Fitz's nerve seemed to have failed him. To the Colonel's direct inquiry regarding the slight nibble of an English syndicate—(that syndicate which some months later made the Colonel's fortune and with which Fitz had buoyed up his hopes) the broker had only an evasive answer. The Colonel noticed the altered tone and thought he had divined ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... genius arises he makes his place in the world and explains himself. Criticism does not make him and cannot unmake him. He may have great defects and great faults. By exposing them and dwelling upon them, the critics may apparently nibble him all away. When the critics get through, however, he remains pretty much the force he was originally. For real genius is a sort of elemental force that enters the human world, both for good and evil, and leaves its lasting impression. It is like a new river, of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... forgot them, for they appear to haunt his guilty imagination through the whole of his progress; nor can he complain of wanting room. But the answer is easy. He knew it would make his bait so very bad that even his own gulls would not nibble.— ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... bestow" on the saddest of us all. Look at yonder thoroughbred colt grazing peacefully in the paddock: if you had turned him out a month ago he would have galloped and fretted himself to death; but now that the grass is sweet and health-giving, he is content to nibble the young shoots all day long. What a lovely, satin-like coat he has, now that his winter garments are put off! There is a picture of health and symmetry! He has just reached the interesting age of four years, ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... gelding, sun-faded to a sand color nearly, cantered into view around the corner of a shed and approached them. He came to a pause nearby, and having studied Bull Hunter with large, unafraid, curious eyes for a moment, began to nibble impertinently at the ragged hat ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... are termed Impedimenta. Without this, a large author is but a labyrinth without a clue to direct the reader therein. I confess there is a lazy kind of learning which is only Indical; when scholars (like adders which only bite the horse's heels) nibble but at the tables, which are calces librorum, neglecting the body of the book. But though the idle deserve no crutches (let not a staff be used by them, but on them), pity it is the weary should be denied the benefit thereof, and industrious scholars prohibited the accommodation ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... had always wanted. She tried with all her might to be herself, but she knows me well enough to know what I would think and what I would write to you concerning the conditions under which I met her. We were simply forced to lunch with them. We could only nibble at the too rich, too highly seasoned food set before us. And I noticed that Eileen nibbled also. She is not going to grow fat and waddle and redden her nose, but, my dear, back deep in her eyes and in the curve of her lips ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... to the nearest tree. All around the trunk of the tree, from the ground clear up higher than Peter could reach, was wrapped wire netting. Peter couldn't get so much as a nibble of the delicious bark. He hadn't intended to take any, for he had meant to go right straight home, but now that he couldn't get any, he wanted some more than ever—just a bite. Peter looked around. Everything was quiet. He would try the next ...
— The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... holoku and not I," she retorted. "I see you are like Dick—always with a string on your compliments, and lo, when we poor sillies start to nibble, back goes the compliment dragging at the end of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... likely to guess the gimmick. We'll let them stew all evening while they enjoy the Country Gentleman House-Warming hospitality. Then, very casually, we toss it out and let it lie there in front of them. They will be sniffing, ready to nibble. The clincher will drive them right in. I'd stake my sales reputation on it." If it matters a damn, ...
— The Real Hard Sell • William W Stuart
... squirrel can creep directly in. The bait, which is generally a part of an ear of corn, is fastened to the end of the spindle, which is within the trap. The squirrel sees the bait, and creeps in to get it. He begins to nibble upon the corn. The ear is tied so firmly to the spindle that he can not get it away. In gnawing upon it to get off the corn, he finally disengages the end of the spindle from the bar, by working the lower end of the bar out of its notch; this ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... night, sure enough," said Jack. "The buffalo started along feeling pretty good. Stopped to nibble here. The rogue struck into his trail and swished right along careless. Stopped to rub on that tree—there's buffalo hair—whew! Say, that ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... Bay Colt," said his mother. "Since he was brought into the barn last fall and had a stall away from me, he has gotten into bad ways. I have told him again and again that he must not nibble the edge of the manger, yet the first thing I heard this morning was the grating of his teeth on ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... hobby-horse, His name was Neddy Grey, His head was stuffed with pea-straw, His tail was made of hay. He could nibble, he could trot, He could carry the mustard pot, From the table to the shop. Whoa! ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... elsewhere, would dig a knife into a well cooked potato and add it to their bit of bread; for I must say that, if we did little work in my school, at least we did a deal of eating. It was the regular custom to crack a few nuts and nibble at a crust while writing our page or setting out our ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... for I had never an idea of such a splendid place being in Caneville. It was upon a little hill that stood at some distance from the river, and the ground which sloped down from the house into the water was covered with such beautiful grass, that it made one long to nibble and ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... led the way down the shore to the spot where the sedge extended out into the pond, with the lily pads beyond it. She walked beside me. Then she seated herself on a fallen tree and I baited the hook with a lively minnow and cast. For some time I got not even a nibble. As I waited she and I talked. But now it was I ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... prove that point right on Terra. But did Rule One mean that you had to let a monster nibble at you because it might just be a high type of alien intelligence? Let Karara spout Rule One while backed into a crevice under water with that horn stabbing ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... it much!" said David. "His teeth aren't good; he can only eat chicken bones, but hunger will make him nibble it by-and-by. Now, Fly, will you go behind that furze bush and bring me a square, flat board, which ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... medically possible, against the evil consequences of consuming food not originally intended for Terran stomachs. One of the results being that Traders acquired a far flung reputation of possessing bird-like appetites—since it was always better to nibble and live, than ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... grazing peacefully on the side of the stream, and looked up at the explorers with no more surprise or excitement than it would have shown if but twenty hours had passed since it last saw human faces. It had found air to breathe and water to drink and grass to nibble; what did it care about the world? But with man it is otherwise. He wants to know what is on the other side of the hill, what is on the other side of the water, what is on the other side of the world! If he cannot go North, South, East and West himself, he must at least have ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... came again, and with it orders to prepare for further movements, this time to the firing line in support of their own men on the summit of the hills above. They made the best possible meal from the dry rations, dry enough when there was unlimited water, but quite impossible to more than nibble in these almost waterless days. Mac did not feel very hungry; but he had room inside his thin frame for a tankful of water. He had started on Friday evening with a liberally rum-tinctured bottleful, which had since been restocked with ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... requisite for the due health and requirements of the animal. If the weather is fine and genial, it should be turned into an orchard or small paddock for a few hours each day, to give it an opportunity to acquire a relish for the fresh pasture, which, by the tenth or twelfth week, it will begin to nibble and enjoy. After a certain time, the quantity of milk may be diminished, and its place supplied by water thickened with meal. Hay-tea and linseed-jelly are also highly nutritious substances, and may be used ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... know that! Here, Sarah, hold your rod lower," said Gypsy, assuming a professional air. Mr. Hallam and Tom walked away, and the girls fished for just half an hour in silence. That is to say, they sat on the bank, and held a rod. Sarah had had one faint nibble, but that was all that had happened, and the sun ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... baby calves was not such hard work as they had expected, for they were very amiable beasties and only wanted to nibble a little fresh sweet grass as they were driven on toward the barnyard. But Meg and Bobby had so much fun doing this that they forgot to be quiet, and just as they had the last calf safely inside and the big gate barred, two figures came ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Brookside Farm • Mabel C. Hawley
... margs, which are frequent in the forest slopes, being ideal places of rendezvous for merrymakers on horse or foot. Picnics of all sorts and sizes, from the little impromptu gatherings of half-a-dozen congenial young souls (always an even number, please), who ride off into the romantic shades to nibble biscuits and make tea, to the dainty repasts provided by a hospitable lady, whose official hut overlooks the Ferozepore Nullah, and who, in turn, overlooks her cook, to the great gratification ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... are so careful of their charge that you may stand close by in the water and examine them at your leisure. I have thus stood over them half an hour at a time, and stroked them familiarly without frightening them, suffering them to nibble my fingers harmlessly, and seen them erect their dorsal fins in anger when my hand approached their ova, and have even taken them gently out of the water with my hand; though this cannot be accomplished by a sudden movement, however dexterous, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... birds and red squirrels. Once I fell asleep in my cradle, suspended five or six feet from the ground, while Uncheedah was some distance away, gathering birch bark for a canoe. A squirrel had found it convenient to come upon the bow of my cradle and nibble his hickory nut, until he awoke me by dropping the crumbs of his meal. My disapproval of his intrusion was so decided that he had to take a sudden and quick flight to another bough, and from there he began to pour out his wrath upon me, while I continued ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... plenty of fish in the creek, fresh-water bream, cod, cat-fish, and tailers. The party were fond of fish, and Andy and Dave of fishing. Andy would fish for three hours at a stretch if encouraged by a 'nibble' or a 'bite' now and then—say once in twenty minutes. The butcher was always willing to give meat in exchange for fish when they caught more than they could eat; but now it was winter, and these fish wouldn't ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... a bear and athletic as a panther. There was never a farmer who kept cleaner fields, or handsomer stake-and-rider fence than he; or had earlier corn, or a larger woodpile; yet he did love a hunt more dearly than a venison pie; he caught fish from pools where others received not a nibble; and he enjoyed a leisure day, and a feast, ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... to nibble some grass at Carmela's feet, suddenly threw his head up, for the cruel South American bit had tightened under ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... forced on to the end of the blade, the bowl is then balanced on the edge, allowing the bait to project about an inch and a half beneath the bowl. The odor of cheese will attract a mouse almost anywhere, and he soon finds [Page 136] his way to the tempting morsel in this case. A very slight nibble is sufficient to tilt the blade and the bowl falls over ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... please to help yourself" said Mr. Earlsdown offering him three or four plates of sugar and other cakes. Leslie took a small jam wafer and proceeded to nibble it quietly. "How far did you come?" asked the girl as she was busy pouring ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... diner; hippophage; glutton &c. 957. V. eat, feed, fare, devour, swallow, take; gulp, bolt, snap; fall to; despatch, dispatch; discuss; take down, get down, gulp down; lay in, tuck in*; lick, pick, peck; gormandize &c. 957; bite, champ, munch, cranch[obs3], craunch[obs3], crunch, chew, masticate, nibble, gnaw, mumble. live on; feed upon, batten upon, fatten upon, feast upon; browse, graze, crop, regale; carouse &c. (make merry) 840; eat heartily, do justice to, play a good knife and fork, banquet. break bread, break one's fast; breakfast, lunch, dine, take tea, sup. drink in, drink ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... night for extraordinary behavior, evidently. She certainly showed that she had designs on Jake. She held out the feed pan, and gritted her teeth when Tango gratefully ducked his nose into it. She let him have one quivery-lipped nibble, and pushed the pan ingratiatingly toward the ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... That's what we'll do." Plump down in the meadow grass, Stella and Minna, With their round yellow hats, Like cheeses, Beside them. Drop, Drop, Daisy petals. "One I love, Two I love, Three I love I say..." The ground is peppered with daisy petals, And the little girls nibble the golden centres, And ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... preserves, and upset the egg-basket, and open the oven door and let the heat all out when the pies were baking, and leave the cover off the sugar bucket, and dip into the milk to feed her kitty, and disturb the cream, and nibble round a loaf of fresh cake, ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... him a new study, and a dark corner of education. As he lay on Wenlock Edge, with the sheep nibbling the grass close about him as they or their betters had nibbled the grass — or whatever there was to nibble — in the Silurian kingdom of Pteraspis, he seemed to have fallen on an evolution far more wonderful than that of fishes. He did not like it; he could not account for it; and he determined to stop ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... And what a horse it was! All fire—simply explosive as gunpowder—and stately as a boyar! Untiring, enduring, obedient, whatever you might put him to; and costing nothing for his keep; he'd be ready to nibble at the ground under his feet if there was nothing else. When he stepped at a walking pace, it was like being lulled to sleep in a nurse's arms; when he trotted, it was like rocking at sea; when he galloped, he outstripped the wind! ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... Pao-ch'ai played for a time with a twig of olea she held in her hand, then resting on the window-sill, she plucked the petals, and threw them into the water, attracting the fish, which went by, to rise to the surface and nibble at them. Hsiang-yn, after a few moments of abstraction, urged Hsi Jen and the other girls to help themselves to anything they wanted, and beckoned to the servants, seated at the foot of the hill, to eat to their heart's content. Tan Ch'un, in company with Li Wan and Hsi Ch'un, stood ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... afternoon shadows began to lengthen, Miss Dorcas and Anne started on their homeward journey. Miss Dorcas clucked and jerked the lines, and Firefly ambled homeward, now jog-trotting along the road, now pausing to nibble grass on the wayside. ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... horse, having just touched the oats with his mouth, as if in obedience to his master, returned to them no more, and began to nibble at the sleeve of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... but Tom—he was held up in the traffic. You see, I don't eat much, anyhow. I just nibble around and take a cold snack where ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... her in her altered form, addressed her and said, "Good fisherman, whither went the maiden whom I saw just now, with hair dishevelled and in humble garb, standing about where you stand? Tell me truly; so may your luck be good, and not a fish nibble at your hook and get away." She perceived that her prayer was answered, and rejoiced inwardly at hearing the question asked her of herself. She replied, "Pardon me, stranger, but I have been so intent upon my line, that I have seen nothing else; but I wish I may never catch another fish if I believe ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... Bird!" cried the Captain. "I do not want to hurt you, but I can not allow you to pull wool from the back of my friend, Miss Lamb. You must stop it, or I will drive you away with my shiny, tin sword, as I drove away the bad rat that wanted to nibble the ears of the Candy Rabbit! Stop it, ...
— The Story of a Bold Tin Soldier • Laura Lee Hope
... covers, too, but it never keeps its best wings tucked in. They are always hanging out in a crumpled way. These bugs eat the leaves of the trees, and their children, little, fat, white grubs with horny heads, nibble, as they crawl around under the surface of the earth, the tender roots of the grass and the ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... wur exchangin' a few pleasant remarks with one of the maid-servants, when I hears the Egyptian say, 'It's gwine beautiful.' 'How?' says t'other. 'He'll nibble like hanything,' was the answer, and then I hearn a nasty sort o' laugh. Soon after, I see you with a bootiful young lady, and I see that hinfidel a-watchin' yer, with a snaky look in his eyes. And so I kep on watchin', and scuse me, yer honour, but I can guess as 'ow things be, and I'm fear'd ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... of Philadelphia. He said that he was minded to become an author, an' had come out to study the aboriginal types an' get the true local color. Whenever I hear this little bunch o' sounds, I know I got a nibble. Any time a man goes nosin' around after local color, you can bet your saddle he's got ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... could not be from the want of assiduity or perseverance; for he would sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long and heavy as a Tartar's lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even though he should not be encouraged by a single nibble. He would carry a fowling-piece on his shoulder for hours together, trudging through woods and swamps, and up hill and down dale, to shoot a few squirrels or wild pigeons. He would never refuse to ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... can't stop.' 'My toes were there first,' said Georgiana, and went on eating her biscuit. 'Take them out of the way, I tell you,' he shouted as he came nearer, 'or they'll get cut off.' 'They were there first,' repeated Georgiana, and took another delicious nibble. Joe cut straight along, and went whack right into her five toes. Georgiana screamed with all her might, but she held her foot on the log, till Joe dropped the hatchet with horror, and caught her in his arms. 'Georgiana, I told you to take your toes away,' he ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... dining-room is the centre of all things; the ladies sip the custards and nibble the cake the gallants cram the cake and gulp the punch. The fiddler-improvisator disappears, reappears, and with crumbs on his breast and pan-gravy and punch on his breath remounts his seat; and the couples are again on the floor. The departing ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... scour the hill; The hare lies hid and holds his breath, His ears pricked up, he lies there still Waiting for death. O hunters! what harm have I done, To vex or injure you? Although Among the cabbages I run, One leaf I nibble—only one, And that's not yours! ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... With his satchel and his books he hies away to school in the morning, but his truant feet carry him the other way, to the mill pond "a-fishin'." And there he sits the livelong day under the shade of the tree, with sapling pole and pin hook, and fishes, and fishes, and fishes, and waits for a nibble of the drowsy sucker that sleeps on his oozy bed, oblivious of the baitless hook from which he has long since stolen the worm. There he sits, and fishes, and fishes, and fishes, and like Micawber, waits for something to "turn-up." But nothing turns up ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... woodsman. "Where on earth do you city men pick up your notions about forest creatures—that's what I'd like to know? A moose can't get its horns to the ground without dropping on its knees; and it can't nibble grass from the ground neither without sprawling out its long legs,—which for an animal of its size are as thin as pipe-stems,—and tumbling in a heap. So I don't credit that yarn about their digging up the moss, ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... event was concluded it would be too late for the departing mails. She seemed to have no difficulty in composing her thoughts and transferring them to paper. There were times when she would lean back, nibble the end of her pen and smile in a dreamy, retrospective fashion. No doubt her thoughts ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... to prowl,— Sly Grab-and-Snatch, the cat, Grave Evil-bode, the owl, Thief Nibble-stitch, the rat, And Madam Weasel, prim and fine,— Inhabited a rotten pine. A man their home discover'd there, And set, one night, a cunning snare. The cat, a noted early-riser, Went forth, at break of day, To hunt her usual prey. Not much the wiser ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... black velvet bag; it had a bouquet wrought in beads of subdued color upon it, and it hung by two sombre silk puckering ribbons over grandma's arm. In the bag grandma carried a supply of crackers and peppermint lozenges, and upon these she would nibble in meeting whenever she felt that feeling of goneness in the pit of her stomach, which I was told old ladies sometimes suffer with. It was proper enough, I was assured, for old ladies to nibble at crackers and peppermint lozenges in meeting, but that such ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... it. She had dressed a wound for him, and had got to talking with him. I was able to treat him to some cigarettes, and also gave him a cake of chocolate on the sly; because that's really against orders, you know. But he promised to nibble it in secret, and not let any ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... to caress his woolly-fleeced companion; and the mother talks softly to her child of the innocent darlings, and asks if they are not lovely creatures, and beautiful to look at, as they timidly wander from spot to spot, and nibble the delicate pasture. So it is to the lively fancy of childhood, and so it is to the mother whose affections are naturally melted into softness in the presence of simplicity; but when economic considerations arise, and the question is one of service and value, all such sentimental and aesthetic ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... a hat!" cried Symes confidently. "I know the difference between a nibble and a bite. I tell you ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... in fury. "Put down there what you hold," he said, "and go." The king cast his money into the silver basin and slunk away. John's insult was all the greater because out of Lincoln none of the bishop's people was ever allowed to nibble one crumb of the alms. That day the bishop had preached upon the conduct and future prospects of princes. John neither liked the duration nor the direction of the sermon, and sent thrice to the preacher to stop his talk and get on with the Mass so that he might go to his ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... had a nibble for small space; you could get fifty a month for that attic you're using ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... cried to the small twin, and thus Mr. Bobbsey also warned his son, who had pulled up his pole with a jerk, when he felt a nibble on the fish-line. ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat • Laura Lee Hope
... Little Foxes," said I; "by which I mean those unsuspected, unwatched, insignificant little causes that nibble away domestic happiness, and make home less than so noble an institution should be. You may build beautiful, convenient, attractive houses,—you may hang the walls with lovely pictures and stud them with gems of Art; and there may be living there together persons bound ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... came her hunger became more intense, till finally she began to cut some twigs and nibble on them, but they were hard and bitter, and after chewing on them for a few minutes she threw them away. She tried the leaves; they ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... perched on a bare rock at the top of a hill,—partly because this was a conspicuous site for the temple of learning, and partly because land is cheap where there is no chance even for rye or buckwheat, and the very sheep find nothing to nibble. About the little porch were carved initials and dates, at various heights, from the stature of nine to that of eighteen. Inside were old unpainted desks,—unpainted, but browned with the umber of human contact,—and hacked by innumerable jack-knives. It was ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... like this little playmate, sister, you seem to be alone so much. This baby doesn't know how to nibble grass yet and you'll have to get mamma to show you ...
— Pages for Laughing Eyes • Unknown
... and the envious, nibble at the successes of other men, with vermin teeth and venomous tongue. Those people who can never praise anything whole-heartedly come by their cautious censure from an uneasy doubt of their own deserving. The contempt of Frederick William ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... The men of Pharaoh's, beautiful with red And with red gold, fair foreign-footed men, The bountiful fair men, the courteous men, The delicate men with delicate feet, that went Curling their small beards Agag-fashion, yea Pruning their mouths to nibble words behind With pecking at God's skirts-small broken oaths Fretted to shreds between most dainty lips, And underbreath some praise of ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... TOWN with a critical frown To the jests of St. Albans' gay Bishop demurs; But the Bishop denies the offence and implies 'Tis the way of all asses to nibble at FURSE. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... heavily after a life such as mine has been, and since the bronco blundering into a badger-hole fell and broke my leg the surgeon who rode forty miles to set it said that if I was to work at harvest I must not move before—and the harvest is already near. So I nibble the pen and look around the long match-boarded hall, waiting for the inspiration which is strangely slow in coming, while my wife, who was Grace Carrington, smiles over her sewing and suggests that it is high ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... little mouse familiar to her chamber—an intruder for which she would never permit Fanny to lay a trap—came rattling amongst the links of her locket-chain, her one ring, and another trinket or two on the toilet-table, to nibble a bit of biscuit laid ready for it, she looked up, recalled momentarily to the real. Then she said half aloud, as if deprecating the accusation of some unseen and unheard monitor, "I am not cherishing love dreams; I ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... black pirate!" she shouted; but finding that harsh words had no effect, she took a convenient broom, and advanced to strike a gallant blow upon the creature's back. This had the simple effect of making him step a little to one side and modestly begin to nibble at a ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... snow. Even then they could not keep their shelter long, for they had to eat. For eighteen hours out of the twenty-four the moose had to feed to keep himself alive during the winter. His big stomach demanded quantity, and it took him most of his time to nibble from the tops of bushes the two or three bushels he needed a day. The caribou required almost as much—the deer least ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... heap o' leaves an' stibble Has cost thee mony a weary nibble! Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble, But house or hald, To thole the winter's sleety dribble, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... frozen fleece, and licking all his face and feet, to restore his warmth to him. Then fighting Tom jumped up at once, and made a little butt at Watch, as if nothing had ever ailed him, and then set off to a shallow place, and looked for something to nibble at. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... see. Well, I saw more than I cared for. Within five paces of me there was a great fish, as long pretty nigh as the spar that I was grippin'. It's a mighty pleasant thing to have your legs in the water and a beast like that all ready for a nibble at your toes." ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... three, without making any special scandal. But if I did this thing, do you not think that my experience of married life has given me the most ineradicable prejudices against women as daily companions? Am I not persuaded that they all bicker and chatter and nibble sweetmeats alike—absolutely alike? Or if ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... outcast empty away? But sentiment is a mistake when kindness can do no more than prolong misery. There is no horse sickness yet in the epidemic form. They simply pine for want of nourishment until, too weak even to nibble the grass about them, they drop and die. Some day we may have a use for them before things come to that extremity, but at present the difficulty is to dispose of their carcases. Sanitary considerations forbid that they shall be buried in town or near camp. The enemy shells working ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... I am going to be drowned— if I am going to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees? Was I brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was about to nibble the sacred cheese of life? It is preposterous. If this old ninny-woman, Fate, cannot do better than this, she should be deprived of the management of men's fortunes. She is an old hen who knows not her intention. If ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... under the crust and began to nibble and, of course, did not see Puss; but when she reached the fish she gave it a pull and the ...
— Sandman's Goodnight Stories • Abbie Phillips Walker
... fish begin to nibble, an' de co'k begin to jump, I 's erfeahed dat dey 'll quit bitin', case dey hyeah my hea't go "thump," 'Twell de co'k go way down undah, an' I raise a awful shout, Ez a big ol' yallah belly comes a ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... gut out of her throat, which (like as an Angler does his line) she sendeth, forth and pulleth in again at her pleasure, according as she sees some little fish come neer to her; [Mount El. sayes: and others affirm this] and the Cuttle-fish (being then hid in the gravel) lets the smaller fish nibble and bite the end of it; at which time shee by little and little draws the smaller fish so neer to her, that she may leap upon her, and then catches and devours her: and for this reason some have called this ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... thirstily, as one who before everything else needs a stimulant to keep her up. At the entrance of her mother-in-law she was on her guard again, and sank languidly into the nearest chair. "Oh, I'm so hungry!" she yawned, pulling off her gloves, and pretending to nibble at a sandwich. "Do sit down," she went on, as Mrs. Eveleth remained standing. "I should ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... an enclosure. Jamieson, Ayr. Cp. O.N. snap, a pasture for cattle, especially a winter pasture (Haldorson), snapa, vb. to nibble, M.E. snaipen. The vowel in the Sco. word proves an original open a, hence it is from the vb. snapa. O.N. snap, sb. would have given ...
— Scandinavian influence on Southern Lowland Scotch • George Tobias Flom
... the Master spake Blew down the mount the dust of pattering feet, White goats and black sheep winding slow their way, With many a lingering nibble at the tufts, And wanderings from the path, where water gleamed Or wild figs hung. But always as they strayed The herdsman cried, or slung his sling, and kept The silly crowd still moving to the plain. A ewe with couplets in the flock there was. Some hurt had lamed one lamb, which toiled ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... where they may be stepped on; or where mice may nibble them; or next the stovepipe or chimney; or thrown down before the last spark ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... whoever drank from it was cured of his or her malady, and it had been passed freely round to all sufferers ever since it came into her family's keeping. That they might make doubly sure of the miracle, it was the custom of the sick not only to empty the cup, but to nibble a little bit of the wood, and swallow that, so that in whatever state the monks of Strata Florida had confided it, the vessel was now in the state we saw. Saying this the lady opened the casket holding it, and showed us the crescent-shaped rim of a wooden bowl, ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... he drifted back to the second counter, smiled cheerfully at the clerk, picked up the basket and started for the door, stopping beside a barrel of dried apples to run his fingers through the contents and to nibble one of the gritty chunks. He was squeezing his way hastily through the crowd, nearing the door, when a hand was laid firmly on his left shoulder. Turning quickly he found himself gazing into the face of a stranger, fairly well dressed and not ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... and picturesque in their way as the hills and the villages—the men in red-lined jackets; the women in black petticoats, short-waisted green bodices, and broad-brimmed straw hats with black-and-crimson pompons. But on the steepest gradient, just before reaching Hornberg, I got my first nibble—strange to say, from two German students; they wore Heidelberg caps, and were toiling up the incline with short, broken wind; I put on a spurt with the Manitou, and passed them easily. I did it just at first in pure wantonness ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... betrayed him. Philury got a good breakfast which we couldn't eat. My trunk wuz packed and in the democrat. The neighborin' wimmen brung me warm good-byes and bokays offen their house plants, and sister Sypher sent me some woosted flowers, which I left to home, and some caraway seed to nibble on my ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... them, could be cut from the bushes at the margin, and little fish could be taken at the same time that they were trying for large ones. They found too, before long, that sometimes a very respectable perch or bass would stoop to nibble at one of the "elegant worms" with which Dick Lee ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... word, there are no ugly ones. I do not notice that Miss Keepsake has feet like the English, and I forget the barmaid's ruddy complexion, if she is attractive otherwise. Now do not talk in this stupid fashion, but do as I do; nibble all the apples while you have teeth. Do you know the reason why, at the moment that I am talking to the lady of the house, I notice the nose of the pretty waitress who brings in a letter on a salver? Do you know the reason why, just as I am leaving Cydalize's house, who has put a rose in my buttonhole, ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... suddenly left all alone in a wood, like those pretty squirrels who nibble hazel-nuts so daintily, you would soon discover, from being thus thrown upon your own resources, that the mouth is not the only thing required for eating, and that whether it be a paw or a hand, there must always be a servant to go to market for Mr. Mouth, and to ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... Chirpy Cricket and his cousin stopped to eat a little grass, or paused to carry a few spears into their holes, because they liked to have something to nibble on in the daytime. But they always returned to their fiddling again; and they never stopped for good until ...
— The Tale of Chirpy Cricket • Arthur Scott Bailey
... a devilled egg and a spice cake to nibble on," said Wilma, "for there won't be a crust of bread left in the house when this lunch is taken out of it. I'm glad genius burns. What a heavenly day this is going to ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... curling up to sleep. Rogers smoked a cigarette, pleased and satisfied like the cat.) A hush fell on the room. It was the hour of peace between tea and the noisy Pension supper that later broke the spell. So quiet was it that the mouse began to nibble in the bedroom walls, and even peeped through the cracks it knew between the boards. It came out, flicked its whiskers, and then darted in again like lightning. Jane Anne, rinsing out the big teapot in the scullery, frightened it. Presently she came in softly, put the lamp ready for ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... writing to you from Farleys. Sort of small dead place, but there's business moving round it, so I got washed up here for a few days. I ain't had anything that's good yet, but there's a feller that looks like he might nibble, and take it from me my hooks are out. Anyways if he does I'll let you know. Plenty lot of rain, but I've been comfortable right along. Got a good room here and swell grub. And don't you worry about my roomatiz. All you want to know is I ain't got it. I can't give you no ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... of the group. The stuff was written with a crude force that at times became almost distinguished, but with a bitterness that he felt he must reprove. And suddenly he came upon a passionate tirade against the present period. It made him nibble softly with his lips at the top of his fountain ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... party to sip their claret and water, and nibble their midday food, while they rambled back to the past or schemed into the future, we will return ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... nibble a morsel and drink a mouthful; they tell one another the history of their martyrs; their sorrow becomes vehement; their libations increase; their eyes, swimming with tears, are fixed on one another; they stammer with inebriety ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... brought down the box trap that night. It was a long box, about as big as a cricket, with a tall, pointed back, which looked like a steeple; so Rollo called it the steeple trap. It was so made that if the squirrel should go in, and begin to nibble some corn, which they were going to put in there, it would make the cover come down and shut him in. They fixed the trap on the end of the log, and Jonas observed, as he sat on the log, that he could see the barn chamber window through a little ...
— Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott
... Longinus Rotundus Caterpillar, or by his more familiar name Glummie, had been killed. Then his master, Toadie Todson, with whom he at least had a lazy time, was killed in a sand slide. And now he spent all his days at work for Stingy, who was a very exacting master. If he so much as stopped to nibble a little from a tender green birch leaf, Stingy would fly at him and bid him go ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... years, they tell me, since anyone fished that brook; And there's nothing in it but minnows that nibble the bait off your hook. But before the sun has risen and after the moon has set I know that it's full of ghostly trout for Lilly's ghost ...
— Trees and Other Poems • Joyce Kilmer
... equal to his father-in-law's, as Beatrice wished. He saw no other way out of the situation. To do so in his present interests was impossible—he had fancied that half a million was a fair sum to offer a Gorgeous Girl—but he saw it was only a nibble at the line. He must outdo Constantine. He cast about for some unsuspected fields of effort, this time to strike out into work of which Constantine was ignorant. He began to resent the fact that after his lucky strike on the exchange he had played ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... both horse and rider abandoned the effort, and, full fifty yards below the point where the battalion commander and his scouts were in consultation, the lieutenant dismounted, and leaving his steed unguarded to nibble at a patch of scant and sodden herbage that had survived the Indian fires, he slowly climbed the ascent. "I am ordered to report to you, sir," was all he ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... on the water, but after a while I saw some fish darting around, only they didn't seem to be hungry; for they would come right up and nibble a tiny bit at my worm, but they wouldn't swallow it. Then one did, so I jerked with all my might, jerked so hard the fish and worm both flew off, and I had only the hook left. I put on the other half and tried again. I prayed straight along, but the tears would come that time, and the prayer was ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... tiny piece of bread and begins to nibble it, affecting great enjoyment. The child begins to eat ...
— The Southern Cross - A Play in Four Acts • Foxhall Daingerfield, Jr.
... short time they were beside him the poor animal seemed to be much relieved; and though at first he could scarcely open his mouth to eat the warm, soft mash Stephens had prepared for him, before they left he was beginning to nibble at a tuft of hay that had been ...
— Carry's Rose - or, the Magic of Kindness. A Tale for the Young • Mrs. George Cupples
... west, an unbroken sweep of dark, glossy green. Straight up stood the mighty trunks, but the leaves rippled and sang low when a gentle south wind breathed upon them. It was the forest as God made it, the magnificent valley of North America, upon whose edges the white man had just begun to nibble. ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... In the morn to our own church, where Mr. Mills did begin to nibble at the Common Prayer, by saying "Glory be to the Father, &c." after he had read the two psalms; but the people had been so little used to it, that they could not tell what to answer. This declaration of the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... help for it, we baited up and started. "Nary nibble ermong 'em!" growled Sam, as we sat impatiently waiting for a bite. When we hauled up to see what was wrong, fish followed the hook up in hundreds, letting us know plainly as possible that they only wanted something tasty. It was ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... Confabulationes Pueriles, under the garden hedge, and skirting the town, makes his way along the river. And there, hidden among the willows and green alders and rustling sedge, he spends the morning; and when in the heat of the day the fish refuse to nibble, he takes his hunk of bread out of his pocket and lies on his back among the rushes, while lazy dreams flit across his consciousness as the light summer clouds rock mistily ...
— A Warwickshire Lad - The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare • George Madden Martin
... drink its food, if two fingers be held in its mouth. Let it have all the first drawn milk for three days as soon as milked; after this, skimmed milk warmed to blood heat. Soon a little fine scalded meal may be mixed with the milk; and it will, at three to five weeks old, nibble hay and grass. It is well also to keep a box containing some dry wheat-bran and fine corn-meal mixed in the calf-pen, so that calves may take as much as ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... pushed in and under. I later reduced the guards to a 6-foot diameter of stronger woven fence-wire with 6-inch stays, not 12-inch, and raised the height to not less than 10 feet. The cattle may now nibble off the side shoots if they wish but the vertical growth is protected. Above 10 feet the trees can spread ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... defended, protected, this one and that, I might perhaps be called, in my own fashion, brave. You need not take these mighty airs with me. I came here knowing that you would come. That rose was dangled to afford you the opportunity for brutal stupidity. You did not fail to nibble at ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... time with a twig of olea she held in her hand, then resting on the window-sill, she plucked the petals, and threw them into the water, attracting the fish, which went by, to rise to the surface and nibble at them. Hsiang-yuen, after a few moments of abstraction, urged Hsi Jen and the other girls to help themselves to anything they wanted, and beckoned to the servants, seated at the foot of the hill, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... road, and the space between is a pasture for sheep, which also browse in the inner court, and shelter themselves in the dungeons and state apartments of the castle. Goats would be fitter occupants, because they would climb to the tops of the crumbling towers, and nibble the weeds and shrubbery that grow there. The first part of the castle which we reach is called Caesar's Tower, being the oldest portion of the ruins, and still very stalwart and massive, and built of red freestone, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was prevailed upon to lap a saucer of warm milk, and even to nibble at a crust of soaked bread. Link was ashamed of his own keen and growing interest in his find. For the first time he realized how bleakly lonesome had been his home life, since the death of his father had left ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... beautiful garden at last, but she had to nibble a bit of the mushroom again to bring herself down to twelve inches after she had got the golden key, so as to get through the little door. It was a lovely garden, and in it was the Queen's croquet-ground. The Queen of Hearts was very fond of ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... so rustic a duty on his hands, instead of accompanying the parade of his royal master. "It goes against my conscience to decree the chastisement of these fellows. For i' faith, they that fight, must feed; and hunger, that eats through stone walls, is apt to have a nibble at honesty. My royal brother, or those who have the distribution of his graces, is so much more liberal of edicts and anathemas than of orders on the treasury of Spain, that money and rations are evermore wanting. If these Protestants persist in their stand against us, I shall have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... soon as the cart had turned over, looked back once, and then he stopped running, and began to nibble ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home • Laura Lee Hope
... the chariot off from the road into the edge of the thicket, unharnessed the horse, and left him free to forage for himself; whereupon he began to nibble, with great apparent relish, at the scattered spears of grass peeping up here and there through the snow. A large rug was brought from the chariot and spread upon the ground in a sheltered spot, upon which the comedians ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... mere statement that "Heaven helps those who help themselves," and thus leave him to his own devices. If Southey's, "The Curse of Kehama," happens to be nearest his plate, he will naturally begin with that as I did with the deviled eggs. Or he may nibble at "The House-Boat on the Styx" while some one is passing the Shakespeare along. He may like Emerson, and ask for a second helping, and that's all right, too, for that's a nourishing sort of food. Having partaken of this generously, he will enjoy all the more the ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... pots and pans with spices of all kinds. In battle I have never flinched from the cruel onset, but plunged straight into the fray and fought among the foremost. I fear not man though he has a big body, but run along his bed and bite the tip of his toe and nibble at his heel; and the man feels no hurt and his sweet sleep is not broken by my biting. But there are two things I fear above all else the whole world over, the hawk and the ferret—for these bring great grief on me—and the piteous trap wherein is treacherous death. Most of all I fear the ferret ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... stroaking Clover's shaggy Mane. I felte a little ashamed; for Dick had sett me on the Poney just as I was, my Gown somewhat too shorte for riding: however, I drewe up my Feet and let Clover nibble a little Grasse, and then got rounde to the neare Side, our new Companion stille between us. He offered me some wild Flowers, and askt me theire Names; and when I tolde them, he sayd I knew more than he did, though he accounted himselfe a prettie fayre Botaniste: and we went on ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... "I'll nibble at these," I said, "until you get through." And I reached for a little saucer of salted peanuts that lurked in the shadow of the bowl containing the olives and the celery. For this, you should know, was a table d'hote establishment, and no such place is ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... much at home here as the birds. They nibble contentedly in the road by the wall, and are undisturbed by the approach of a villager. Beyond, at the left, is a glimpse of the level stretch of the sea. This is a spot where earth and sky and water meet, where the fishermen from the sea and the ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... great stove and get a soda cracker. Just one soda cracker, but a fabulous luxury. Saloons were good for something. Back behind the plodding horses, I would take an hour in consuming that one cracker. I took the smallest nibbles, never losing a crumb, and chewed the nibble till it became the thinnest and most delectable of pastes. I never voluntarily swallowed this paste. I just tasted it, and went on tasting it, turning it over with my tongue, spreading it on the inside of this cheek, ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... place to go fishing. You just lie down on a rock, nibble it occasionally, chew up a few pebbles, take a bite at a stone, and if you are thirsty—as, of course, you would be—there is a whole river of eau sucre—that is what the French call sweetened water—running right by, enough to supply all France. And, all the time, ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... smell the fresh wood as you go through the lumber yard. Or, read another of his boyish excursions, and you find yourself on that first spring outing to a distant, low-lying meadow after "cowslips"; another, and you are trudging along with your brother after the cows, stopping to nibble spearmint, or pick buttercups by the way. Prosaic recollections, compared to spring paths and trout brooks in the Catskill valleys, yet this is what our author's writings do—re-create for each of us our ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... that thereby he might be remembered. A peach—a blushing, rich-flavored fruit, nestling in the trellis work on the garden-wall, hidden beneath its long, green leaves,—this little vegetable production, that a dormouse would nibble up without a thought, was sufficient to recall to the memory of this great monarch the mournful shade of ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... not be from the want of assiduity or perseverance; for he would sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long and heavy as a Tartar's lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even though he should not be encouraged by a single nibble. He would carry a fowling-piece on his shoulder for hours together, trudging through woods and swamps, and up hill and down dale, to shoot a few squirrels or wild pigeons. He would never refuse to assist a neighbour, ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... coffee has many other enemies. Both rats and mice are fond of the juicy stalks of the berries when they are nearly ripe, and they nibble at them until the berries fall. The long-haired black rat is the greatest of these pests. Cats are kept on each plantation to prey upon the animal pests; but, unfortunately, the natives are very fond of cats—not ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... spake Blew down the mount the dust of pattering feet, White goats and black sheep winding slow their way With many a lingering nibble at the tufts, And wanderings from the path, where water gleamed Or wild figs hung. But always as they strayed The herdsman cried, or slung his sling, and kept The silly crowd still moving to the plain. A ewe ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... everything you could think of, erotic, exotic and narcotic. An orgy in cans and bottles, a bacchanalian revel: a cupboard full of indigestion, joy, forgetfulness and katzenjammer. Oh, my suffering palate, to have to leave it all without one sniff, one sip, one nibble!" ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... places there was no path at all, but this did not seem to worry Whisker. He went along anyhow, now and then stopping to nibble at some green leaves, and again turning to one side to ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island • Laura Lee Hope
... burrowed into the limestone knot (the softest part of the stone to his jaws, though the hardest to your chisel) is scandalized at having the soft mouths of his siphons so rudely touched, and taking your finger for some bothering Annelid, who wants to nibble him, is defending himself; shooting you, as naturalists do humming-birds, with water. Let him rest in peace; it will cost you ten minutes' hard work, and much dirt, to extract him; but if you are fond of shells, secure one or two of those beautiful pink and straw-coloured ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... said the thrush, and he turned round to listen: "My dearest Bevis, have you forgotten the meadow, and the buttercups, and the sorrel? You know the sorrel, don't you, that tastes so pleasant if you nibble the leaf? And I have a nest in the bushes, not very far up the hedge, and you may take just one egg; there are only two yet. But don't tell any more boys about it, or we shall not have one left. That is a very sweet garden, but it is very small. I like all these fields ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... if you were suddenly left all alone in a wood, like those pretty squirrels who nibble hazel-nuts so daintily, you would soon discover, from being thus thrown upon your own resources, that the mouth is not the only thing required for eating, and that whether it be a paw or a hand, there must always be a servant to go to market for Mr. Mouth, and to provide ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... boomerangs, stooped a little, drooped his hands before him, and bent his head down, pretending to nibble at the grass, after which he made a little bound, then another; then a few jumps, raised himself up and looked round over his shoulder, as if in search of danger, and then went off in a series of wonderful leaps, ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... immediately by a whinny, and a little chestnut gelding, sun-faded to a sand color nearly, cantered into view around the corner of a shed and approached them. He came to a pause nearby, and having studied Bull Hunter with large, unafraid, curious eyes for a moment, began to nibble impertinently at the ragged hat ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... rises with it, so that when the lid is raised a little the squirrel can creep directly in. The bait, which is generally a part of an ear of corn, is fastened to the end of the spindle, which is within the trap. The squirrel sees the bait, and creeps in to get it. He begins to nibble upon the corn. The ear is tied so firmly to the spindle that he can not get it away. In gnawing upon it to get off the corn, he finally disengages the end of the spindle from the bar, by working the lower end of the bar out of its notch; this lets the string up, and of course the lid comes down, ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... shade, on which the horses could graze. The trunks of the trees also were close enough together to hide them from anyone else who was not very near. Here the men ate cold food from their haversacks and let their horses nibble the grass for a ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of an army are termed Impedimenta. Without this, a large author is but a labyrinth without a clue to direct the reader therein. I confess there is a lazy kind of learning which is only Indical; when scholars (like adders which only bite the horse's heels) nibble but at the tables, which are calces librorum, neglecting the body of the book. But though the idle deserve no crutches (let not a staff be used by them, but on them), pity it is the weary should be denied the benefit thereof, and industrious scholars prohibited the accommodation of an index, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Within five paces of me there was a great fish, as long pretty nigh as the spar that I was grippin'. It's a mighty pleasant thing to have your legs in the water and a beast like that all ready for a nibble at your toes." ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... wine!" cried Stafford, while his guests began to nibble the dainty appetizers which preceded the more ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... little something, too. I stood over the block while the man cut that three-inch hunk from the top of the round, and then I made a mortal enemy of the cook by jugglin' the broiler myself. But Pinckney did more than nibble. After that he wanted to turn in. Sleep? I had to lift him out at four G. M. The water-cure woke him, though. He tried to beg off on the last few glasses, but I made him down 'em. Then we starts towards Boston, Goggles behind, and Pinckney ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... begged, and walked on his hind legs. He even permitted a pair of thin little arms to come near strangling him, in an excess of affection. Then he wagged his tail and lolled his tongue to show that he was friendly, and trotted away about his business. Tammy took an oat-cake from his pocket to nibble, and began ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... never hear o' no Brunhilde, 'n' I up 'n' told the minister so to his face. 'Who is she anyhow?' I says, flat 'n' plain, for Lord knows 'f he'd found a rich relation I wanted my old flannels for cleanin' cloths hereafter. But he 'xplained 's Felicia Hemans got Brunhilde out o' a book—the Nibble suthin' 'r other. 'Oh, well,' I says, 'if you c'n be suited with namin' your family after rats 'n' mice I guess you c'n leave me out,' I says, 'n' I kind o' backed off so 's to try 'n' set him a-goin', but he stood still, 'n' o' course no true ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... of them were carrying the corn into their private holes, profiting by the confusion to make ample provision for themselves. No one passed the quince confection of Orleans without saluting it with one nibble, and oftener with two. It was like a Roman carnival. In short, anyone with a sharp ear might have heard the frizzling frying-pans, the cries and clamours of the kitchens, the crackling of their furnaces, the noise of the turnspits, the creaking of ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... pitched, hundreds of fish played at its surface, keeping the water in constant commotion. They were in no wise disturbed by our presence and would turn leisurely over within two feet of the canoe. I ran out my troll as we paddled down the lake—but not a nibble did I get. The men said they were ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... And you, you prosper. Yet you were poor when you said, "I am the Mysian Telephus,"[548] and used to stuff your wallet with maxims of Pandeletus[549] to nibble at. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... mat By the fire in the servants' hall: "If the little Mice peep, they'll think I'm asleep;" So she rolled herself up like a ball. "Squeak," said the little Mouse, "we'll creep out And eat some Cheshire cheese, That silly old Cat is asleep on the mat, And we may sup at our ease." Nibble, nibble, nibble went all the little mice, And they licked their little paws; Then the cunning old Cat sprang up from the mat, And caught them all with ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... swept off our feet; it seems as if the whole mountain-side must go. We hang on to each other, avoiding the trickles as best we can. Hullo! this plant is a cardamom, carrying little seeds rather like spicy pepper; nibble one, it may keep off the effects of the wetting we have been unable to avoid altogether. How cold it seems to have grown all of a sudden! Is it the rain, or because we are so much higher up? I suppose really it is the latter, ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... wonder that Englishmen, who are fond of looking at prize-oxen in the shape of butcher's-meat, do not generally better estimate the aesthetic gormandism of devouring the whole dinner with their eyesight, before proceeding to nibble the comparatively few morsels which, after all, the most heroic appetite and widest stomachic capacity of mere mortals can enable even an alderman really to eat. There fell to my lot three delectable things enough, which I take pains ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... occasionally did us damage, in a single night, to the tune of two or three pounds—wasting what they could not devour. You could keep nothing sacred from their strong teeth. When hard pressed they more than once attacked the live sheep; and at last they went so far as to nibble one of our black cooks, Francis, who slept among the flour barrels. On the following morning he came to me, his eyes rolling angrily, and his white teeth gleaming, to show me a mangled finger, which they had bitten, and ask me to dress ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... third floor and tell Miss Thorley and Miss Carter what a wonderful day she had had and they always seemed glad to hear. She often found Mr. Strahan there and generally there were grapes or pears or peaches or candy to nibble while she ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... grassy point above me to drink. First she wandered all over the point, making it look afterwards as if a herd had passed. Then she took a sip of water by a rock, crossed to my side of the point, and took a sip there; then to the end of the point, and another sip; then back to the first place. A nibble of grass, and she waded far out from shore to sip there; then back, with a nod to a lily pad, and a sip nearer the brook. Finally she meandered a long way up the shore out of sight, and when I picked up the paddle to go, she came back again. Truly a Wandergeist ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... "Billy Ivins swears that the planetary bodies have nothing to do with fish—it's all confounded superstition." So they cast in their hooks, "Sutherland's best," and talk about Harper's Ferry and "old Brown" until one of the party "thinks he has a nibble" and begs for silence, which at once supervenes out of respect for the momentous interests hanging in the balance. When the excitement is over the frivolous Bagby takes advantage of the relief from suspense to make an exasperating ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... when it was so dark that people could not see what he was up to, he caught the old horse, laid the stick between his ears and strapped it to his neck, and tied the hay to the end of the stick; then it hung a few inches beyond old Whitey's nose. The old horse took a step ahead to nibble the hay,—another,—another,—another! "Don't you wish you may get it?" said Paul. Tramp,—tramp,—tramp. Old Whitey went down the road. Paul heard him go across the bridge by the mill, and up the hill the other side ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... forward with the greatest delight to our acquaintance. By the way, the deuce a bit of Cake has come to hand, which hath an inauspicious look at first, but I comfort myself that that Mysterious Service hath the property of Sacramental Bread, which mice cannot nibble, nor time moulder. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... This was, I imagine, due chiefly to living with John and Mrs. John. She may have got a touch of the sun-parlour. Her man is a terrific young scientist, who once with four colleagues deliberately let a dangerous Cuban mosquito nibble his arm. The colleagues died while Ernest survived, which I regretted. However he became demonstrator at the Institute of Bacteriology, with Helen as his assistant, and in the excitement of the imminent discovery of his new bacillus the two ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... greasy light, Are snapt, as men catch larks by night; Ensnar'd and hamper'd by the soul, As nooses by their legs catch fowl l0 Some with a med'cine, and receipt, Are drawn to nibble at the bait; And tho' it be a two-foot trout, 'Tis with a ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... spang inter it en w'innied like he moughty glad ter see me—en he wuz, too, dat's sho'. Well, I ketch holt er his bridle en lead 'im thoo de woods up ter my do' whar he tu'n right in en begin ter nibble in de patch er kebbage. All dis time I 'uz 'lowin' dat de sodger wuz stone dead, but w'en I took 'im down he opened his eyes en axed fur water. Den I gun 'im a drink outer de goa'd en laid 'im flat on my bed, en in a little w'ile a nigger come by dat ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... ketch de chap w'at stole de butter. Den dey all lie down en Brer Fox en Brer Possum dey soon drapt off ter sleep, but Brer Rabbit he stay 'wake, en w'en de time come he raise up easy en smear Brer Possum mouf wid de butter on his paws, en den he run off en nibble up de bes' er de dinner w'at dey lef' layin' out, en den he come back en wake up Brer Fox, en show 'im de butter on Brer Possum mouf. Den dey wake up Brer Possum, en tell 'im 'bout it, but c'ose Brer Possum 'ny it ter de las'. Brer Fox, dough, ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... balanced on the edge, allowing the bait to project about an inch and a half beneath the bowl. The odor of cheese will attract a mouse almost anywhere, and he soon finds [Page 136] his way to the tempting morsel in this case. A very slight nibble is sufficient to tilt the blade and the ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... the reign of Pius VI., is reduced to an annual average of 5,000 or 6,000 under the paternal inspection of Pius IX. Not only is the planting of young trees abandoned, but the sheep are allowed to nibble down the tender shoots of the old ones. Besides this, speculators are tolerated, who burn down whole forests, for the ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... idle hours pass heavily after a life such as mine has been, and since the bronco blundering into a badger-hole fell and broke my leg the surgeon who rode forty miles to set it said that if I was to work at harvest I must not move before—and the harvest is already near. So I nibble the pen and look around the long match-boarded hall, waiting for the inspiration which is strangely slow in coming, while my wife, who was Grace Carrington, smiles over her sewing and suggests that it is ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... easy control. People that don't know us so well they might be likely to guess the gimmick. We'll let them stew all evening while they enjoy the Country Gentleman House-Warming hospitality. Then, very casually, we toss it out and let it lie there in front of them. They will be sniffing, ready to nibble. The clincher will drive them right in. I'd stake my sales reputation on it." If it matters a damn, ...
— The Real Hard Sell • William W Stuart
... the greatest difficulty. They pushed forward step by step, and by fits and starts. On the 19th our troops were hard put to it to hold the ground they had taken the day before; on the 20th they barely began to nibble at the ravines, at Ploisy and L'Echelle. On the 21st the Americans took Berzy-le-Sec, and the French were astride the lower waters of the Crise; on the 23d they went down into the ravine of Buzancy. But not until the 25th did they gain possession ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... I love candy!" bleated the goat, wiggling his whiskers and smacking his lips. "How I love sugar! I'm going to nibble some sweetness off the ears ...
— The Story of a Monkey on a Stick • Laura Lee Hope
... of the brook just then, and she ran to check him up; not an easy task for little hands, as he preferred to nibble the grass on the bank. But she did it cleverly, smoothed the ruffled mane, and, dropping another curtsy, stood aside to let the ...
— Marjorie's Three Gifts • Louisa May Alcott
... convinced that the object before which he had halted was supernatural, started back violently upon seeing it apparently turn to a man. But seeing that it had turned to nothing but a man, he wandered up into the deserted fence corner, and began to nibble ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... myths of the past. I might have known better. The nervousness from which I suffered, and which I have already alluded to, was becoming so marked that it greatly stood in my way, particularly whenever I had any writing to do. I would fidget, bite my fingers, nibble the pen, break the nibs, a thousand things sooner than deliberately sit down to write. Concentration seemed at times to me wholly impossible. One day, after sacrificing many nibs, and breaking my only ink-bottle, I settled down sufficiently to finish Murkel's catalogue, and received the sum of ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... banquet was immunized, as far as was medically possible, against the evil consequences of consuming food not originally intended for Terran stomachs. One of the results being that Traders acquired a far flung reputation of possessing bird-like appetites—since it was always better to nibble and live, than to ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... gradually merging into wind-swept moreland on the south and east and west. Here, again, Bostonians should be at home, for the streets grew no doubt from cow-paths winding leisurely from house to pasture, and down them at night, even now, some of them, the cows stray and nibble on the homeward way. I fancy no town so individual in its characteristics still remains in the State. The very pavements smack of it. Here is an old-time cobblestone, then long, smooth stretches of asphalt. Again, just dirt, and the three ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... Parliament's Reform, A set of Irish Propositions, Impeachment—on your own conditions, 130 Or RICHMOND'S wild fortifications, Enough to ruin twenty nations, Or any thing you know can't fail, To be a tub to Party's whale. Then whilst they nibble, growl, and worry, 135 All keen and busy, hurry-scurry; Britannia's ship you onward guide, Wrapt in security ...
— No Abolition of Slavery - Or the Universal Empire of Love, A poem • James Boswell
... jewel of my soul. I'm hard hit, Stephen, and the girl won't have me. She's poorer than any church or other mouse I ever met, yet she turns up her little French nose at me and my palace, and all the cheese I should like to see her nibble—my cheese." ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... A mouthful of water was all I dare drink, and there remained less than a pint in the water-skin. Almost stupefied, exhausted, and despondent, I lay down beside a tiny bush, at whose dry twigs the famished horses were now trying to nibble, and sank into a state of half sleep, ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... his namesake in every way, from his glossy black coat to the white star on his forehead. I spent many of my happiest hours on his back. Occasionally, when it was quite safe, my teacher would let go the leading-rein, and the pony sauntered on or stopped at his sweet will to eat grass or nibble the leaves of the trees that grew beside ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... I fed him some salt mixed with lard, and after a doze in the sun he began to nibble grass with the others, and at last stretched out on the warm dry sward to let the glorious sun soak into his blood. It was a joyous thing to us to see the faithful ones revelling in the healing sunlight, their stomachs filled at last with sweet rich ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... the hill; The hare lies hid and holds his breath, His ears pricked up, he lies there still Waiting for death. O hunters! what harm have I done, To vex or injure you? Although Among the cabbages I run, One leaf I nibble—only one, And ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... that we do not usually choose to keep company with them; but whether it be because their forms are coarser, their manners less refined, and their pedigree not so long, or whether it be because they sometimes have a fancy to nibble off the ears of their neighbours, or, when their appetite is uncommonly sharp, make a meal of their Norman cousins, we need ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... which he knew nothing, that he, who in his blind complacency had imagined himself to have sucked the orange and thrown away the skin, had really, in point of fact, had a strange lovely fruit snatched from him before his blunt teeth had done more than nibble at its seemingly ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... front of me. He stopped and we looked in each others eyes. It was hard to tell which of us was the most surprised, however, I was the first to run away, and run I did. I ran like a black tailed deer. Many times I thought I felt him nibble at my shirt tails, and his eyes grew in my imagination as large as wagon wheels and Mr. Fox, himself, seemed to grow as big as an elephant. When at last I dropped from sheer exhaustion and could summon courage to look behind ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... party, with its eighty candles, and I was made happy that he could be at mine and nibble my cake. Not all good and great ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... up it the better," cried Tom; "for if I don't get something solid to eat soon, I must turn into a sheep, and begin to nibble the grass and leaves." ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... the bridge itself; the Gothic-arched gate, a relic of the old fortifications; the battlements of yellowish, chipped rock, which looked as if all the rats of the river had come at night to nibble at them; then two niches with a collection of mutilated, dust-laden images—San Bernardo, patron Saint of Alcira, and his estimable sisters. Dear old San Bernardo, alias Prince Hamete, son of the Moorish king of Carlet, ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... for us, Abe. Hip, hurrah! You've only to nibble a pen to make poetry, and only to mount a stump to be a speaker. Now, Abe, speak for the cause of the people, or anybody's cause. Give it to us strong, and we will do ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... had not long to wait. He heard her shrill, warning whistle, then the big chuck trotted and waddled into sight, stopping occasionally to nibble or look around. Close behind her were the two fat cubs. Arrived near the den their confidence was restored, and again they began to feed, the young ones close to the den. Then Quonab put a blunt bird dart in his bow and laid two others ready. Rising as little as possible, ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... of the monks, for the man concerned was out of earshot. At the first words which had shown him the turn which affairs had taken he had run swiftly to the spot where he had left his pony. From its mouth he removed the bit and the stout bridle which held it. Then leaving the creature to nibble the grass by the wayside he sped back ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the oasis with a good supply of cool, though curious tasting water, and canteens were soon being let down into it at the end of puttees in a hopeless effort to cope with our thirst, after which the bolder spirits went so far as to nibble a ration biscuit. But one cannot help reflecting on what might have been the consequences for us if the Turks had adopted ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... my holoku and not I," she retorted. "I see you are like Dick—always with a string on your compliments, and lo, when we poor sillies start to nibble, back goes the compliment dragging at the end of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... the backs of books to get at the glue, so, means should be taken to get rid of these vermin if they should appear. Mice especially will nibble vellum binding or the edges of vellum books that have become greasy ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... children running about over the manure pile in the neighborhood of the barn, to keep the pigs company; here and there a strapping lout of a boy swinging on a gate and whistling for his own amusement; while cows, sheep, goats, chickens, and other domestic animals and birds browse, nibble, and peck all over the yard in such a lazy and rural manner as would delight an artist. This ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... At this time she pastured on dreams and fancies. Her emotions were not starved, but they were kept down and only allowed to nibble. She thought often of the man who had been kind to her, and sometimes she wished that he had kissed her. It would have been something to remember. Often, if she closed her eyes, she could almost cheat herself into believing him there close beside her, ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... no," said he. "I never smoke. But you will perhaps pardon me if I nibble two or three of these khat leaves. You yourself, from your experience in Oriental countries, know ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... chinchillas resemble the rabbit in form and color, but they have shorter ears and long rough tails. They live on the steep rocky mountains, and in the morning and evening they creep out from their holes and crevices to nibble the alpine grasses. At night the Indians set before their holes traps made of horse-hair, in which the animals are easily caught. The most remarkable of the beasts of prey in these high regions is the Atoc (Canis Azarae, Pr. Max.). It ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... way interestedly in and out of sleeping forms, investigate with deliberate intent the contents of your pack, or perchance make a tentative nibble at an odd toe or so. If anything digestible is found in an overcoat pocket the exasperating rodents do not enter by the obvious pocket-flap, but CHEW their ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... effectual wisdom was quite unmixed; a certain mirage would now and then rise on the desert of the future, in which she seemed to see herself honored for her surprising attainments. And so the poor child, with her soul's hunger and her illusions of self-flattery, began to nibble at this thick-rinded fruit of the tree of knowledge, filling her vacant hours with Latin, geometry, and the forms of the syllogism, and feeling a gleam of triumph now and then that her understanding was quite ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... The horse ceased to nibble the grass, looked at the sleeping boy, touched his blankets lightly with his nose, and walked to the other side of the opening, where he lay down and went to his own horse heaven ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... floor where they may be stepped on; or where mice may nibble them; or next the stovepipe or chimney; or thrown down before the ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... not sail with the next draft. Ten minutes after being warned for it, the old complaint caught him again, and when the band played our lads out of barracks he was snugly tucked away in sick-bay with sweet girl V.A.D.'s coaxing him to nibble a little calves-foot jelly and keep his strength up. Nor did he figure among either of the two subsequent drafts; his malaria wouldn't hear ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... mill site, upon which work had not yet begun. They found a shady spot, and seating themselves upon the bank, baited their lines, and dropped them into a quiet pool. For quite a while their patience was unrewarded by anything more than a nibble. By and by a black cat came down from the ruined mill, and sat down upon the bank at ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... answered. He, too, pointed at the row of gibbets. "To be frightened will provide us with no armor against destiny! There was little I had to lose; lo, I have left that for the mice to nibble! Let us see what destiny can do to bold men! Lead ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... toes were there first,' said Georgiana, and went on eating her biscuit. 'Take them out of the way, I tell you,' he shouted as he came nearer, 'or they'll get cut off.' 'They were there first,' repeated Georgiana, and took another delicious nibble. Joe cut straight along, and went whack right into her five toes. Georgiana screamed with all her might, but she held her foot on the log, till Joe dropped the hatchet with horror, and caught her in ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... night came her hunger became more intense, till finally she began to cut some twigs and nibble on them, but they were hard and bitter, and after chewing on them for a few minutes she threw them away. She tried the ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... a new study, and a dark corner of education. As he lay on Wenlock Edge, with the sheep nibbling the grass close about him as they or their betters had nibbled the grass — or whatever there was to nibble — in the Silurian kingdom of Pteraspis, he seemed to have fallen on an evolution far more wonderful than that of fishes. He did not like it; he could not account for it; and he determined to stop it. Never since the days of his Limulus ancestry ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... claimed Kate once more. His long face was once more thrust against her arm, and his soft lips began to nibble at the wrist frill of her sleeve. She turned to him with a laugh, and placed an arm ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... The horse wanted to nibble a little of the grass by the side of the way; but Solomon John remembered what a long neck he had, and ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... valley, to the small market-town, glimpses of which might be caught over the tops of the trees. As the baronet sat there on horseback, and looked around, more than one living object met his eye. To say nothing of some sheep wandering along the uninclosed part of the hill, now stopping to nibble the short grass, now trotting forward for a sweeter bite,—not to notice the oxen in the pastures below, there was a large cart slowly winding its way along an open part of the road, about half a mile distant, and upon the bridle-path which I have mentioned, the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... like the cold, and the rain made them look deplorably wretched, but they got rations and drinking-water right up to the crags where our infantry were practising mountaineering. Shell-fire did not disturb them much, and they would nibble at any rank stuff growing on the hillsides to supplement the rations which did not always reach their lines at regular intervals. The Gyppy boys were excellent leaders, and to them and the donkeys the front-line fighting ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... started their planting. But no sooner had the first plants been embedded than fish darted in to nibble them. Even the roots disappeared ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... an old match-woman selling matches on a freezing night in the streets than be dead. Nothing nonsensical ever held me so tightly or kept me so interested. I suppose really I am full of that very same formless faith on which you rely. But with me it's not only shapeless but intangible.... I nibble at religion. I am immensely attracted. I stand in the doorway. Only when they come out to persuade me to come in I am like a shy child and I go away. The temples beguile me and the music, but not the men. I feel I want to join it and they say 'join us.' They ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... your living up to your motto, sonny boy," she said, as she held out a lump of sugar for the pretty creature to nibble. "It was your 'good name' that brought you into Mrs. ...
— The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle • Annie Fellows Johnston
... he said earnestly, "This is a bad climate to go hungry in. You'd 'ave a touch of the sun in less'n no time. Just go below, an' force yerself to nibble a bit. It'll do you good, an' I don't ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... ass with an ivory comb? Give the beast thistles for provender. I do but yet angle with a silken fly, to see whether martins will nibble; and if I see that, why then I have worms for the nonce, and will give them line enough like a trout, till they swallow both hook and line, and then, Martin, beware your gills, for I'll make you dance at the ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... straw is left, besides that which the "headers" burn as fuel, and farmers stack this straw for cattle to nibble at. The stock feed in the stubble fields, too, and strange visitors also come to these ranches to pick up the scattered grains of wheat. These strangers are wild white geese, in such large flocks that when feeding they look like snow patches ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... a fishing-rod and began to fish. Pao-ch'ai played for a time with a twig of olea she held in her hand, then resting on the window-sill, she plucked the petals, and threw them into the water, attracting the fish, which went by, to rise to the surface and nibble at them. Hsiang-yuen, after a few moments of abstraction, urged Hsi Jen and the other girls to help themselves to anything they wanted, and beckoned to the servants, seated at the foot of the hill, to eat to their heart's content. Tan Ch'un, in company with ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... patiently waited for the bite. But the water in these cracks soon freezes again, especially when it is fifty or sixty degrees below zero, and so it was not long before in this crack it was solid again. And so when the bear got tired waiting for a bite, or even a nibble, he tried to leave the place, but found it was impossible without leaving his tail behind him. This he had to do, or freeze or starve to death, and so he broke loose, and ever after has ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... which I had for some time thrown off, returned, and I crept back to the spot which I had selected for my couch. I wrapt myself up in the canvas, taking care to guard my feet, and putting one hand over my nose, and the other under me, so that the rats should not be able to nibble any of my extremities, which I thought it likely they would try to do. I hoped, however, that if they made the attempt I should be ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... pine-woods, of logging, measuring, and spring-drives, and of moose-hunting on snow-shoes, until our mouths had a wild flavor more spicy than if we had chewed spruce-gum by the hour. Spruce-gum is the aboriginal quid of these regions. Foresters chew this tenacious morsel as tars nibble at a bit of oakum, grooms at a straw, Southerns at tobacco, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... his empty head, 210 Until some oracle adored pronounce The passive bard a poet or a dunce; Then in loud clamour echoes back the word, 'Tis bold, insipid—soaring, or absurd. These, and the unnumber'd shoals of smaller fry, That nibble round, I ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... than even to Nedopyuskin. And what a horse it was! All fire—simply explosive as gunpowder—and stately as a boyar! Untiring, enduring, obedient, whatever you might put him to; and costing nothing for his keep; he'd be ready to nibble at the ground under his feet if there was nothing else. When he stepped at a walking pace, it was like being lulled to sleep in a nurse's arms; when he trotted, it was like rocking at sea; when he galloped, he outstripped the wind! Never out of breath, perfectly sound in his wind. Sinews of steel: ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... she watched them, it came home to her that there were hinds among them with calves. One she noticed in particular feed a little apart, having two calves near her which had just begun to nibble a little grass. Vaguely wondering still over her plight, she pictured her days of shepherding in the downs where food had often failed her, and the ewes perforce mothered another lamb. That hind's udder was full of milk: a sudden thought ran like wine through ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... having cover'd the dead baronet's body with sprays of the wither'd bracken, I drew her to a little distance and prevail'd on her to nibble a crust of the loaf. Now, all this while, it must be remembered, I was in my shirt sleeves, and the weather bitter cold. Which at length her sorrow ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... periodicals, then apples and pears, common bon-bons, and corn pop, of which I am trying to keep a specimen to send you. It is a kind of corn which is roasted on the fire, and in so doing, makes a popping noise, whence its name. It is pleasant to nibble. Then came iced water, highly necessary after the dry corn pop, and finally about twenty good and well-chosen books. Papa bought the ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... he ate, there I sat not able to more than nibble because I was making up my mind to do something that scared me to death to think about. That gaunt, craggy man in a shabby gray coat, cut ante-bellum wise, with a cravat that wound itself around his collar, snowy and dainty, but on the ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... moisten their mouths. Water for the men there was little, except the pittance which they were allowed to draw from the regimental water-carts. Neither was there shade from the merciless sun. The six inches of spare Karoo bush, though it served as a nibble for the less fastidious of animals, was useless either as bed or shade; other vegetable growth there was none within sight. Men crawled under waggons and water-carts if they were fortunate enough to find themselves near them, or, unrolling ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... clever ones, like the silly ones, run even from a distance, from their leafy ambush. How do they know? Certainly not by sight. Before recognizing their mistake, they have to hold the object between their legs and even to nibble at it a little. They are extremely short- sighted. At a hand's-breadth's distance, the lifeless prey, unable to shake the web, remains unperceived. Besides, in many cases, the hunting takes place in the dense darkness of the night, ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... delightedly; "old Principle has had them, taming them for over a month. Their names are Nibble and Dibble. Look! This is Dibble with the little black spot on his nose. You never guessed, did you? I've been down to see them lots of times and they'll eat food out of my hand. ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... they had begun to work at Michaelmas. Possibly it was to frustrate these preparations that Haig reopened his campaign so early as he did. On 11 January, the day on which the Allies answered President Wilson's note, British troops began to nibble at the point of the salient on the Ancre which had been created by the battle of the Somme. It was a modest sort of offensive; for it was no part of the Allies' combined plan of operations, which had been settled in conference during November, to launch a first-class attack across the devastated ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... she loves me, And she too must be fighting me for ever With her dim ravenous unsated mind.... Ay, Hallgerd, there's that in her which desires Men to fight on for ever because she lives: When she took form she did it like a hunger To nibble earth's lip away until the sea Poured down the darkness. Why then should I sail Upon a voyage that can end but here? She means that I shall fight until I die: Why must she be put off by whittled years, When none can die until his ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... to its rest an' feed, Es quiet a crowd es ever wore hide; An' them boys in camp never heerd a lisp Of the thunder an' crash of that run an' ride. An' I'll never forget, while a wild cat claws, Or a cow loves a nibble of sweet blue grass, The cur'us pardner that rode with me In the night stampede ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... ever been west of Philadelphia. He said that he was minded to become an author, an' had come out to study the aboriginal types an' get the true local color. Whenever I hear this little bunch o' sounds, I know I got a nibble. Any time a man goes nosin' around after local color, you can bet your saddle he's got several zigzags in ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... containing nothing to suck, the Sitaris-larvae took up their customary position and there remained motionless as on the living insect. They obtain nothing, therefore, from the Anthophora's body; but perhaps they nibble her fleece, even as the ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... was no sign of Don, the barking dog, nor the farmer, either. There was nothing to stop Squinty from running away. Soon he was some distance from the pen, and then he thought it would be safe to nibble at a bit of pig weed. He took a large mouthful from ...
— Squinty the Comical Pig - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum
... Bumpus; but he did not explain whether his pleasure lay in the fact that any would-be boarders might find it difficult to cross over from the rocks to the boat; or that there were likely to be fish in the pool, affording a chance for a nibble at the tempting bait he had dropped overboard, attached to the concealed hook at the end ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... out to the barn to get some hair for a slipping-noose. Kate, the raw-boned cultivator horse, standing idle in her stall, turned her head and nickered when she heard the door creak open, expecting a nibble of sugar-bread. But the little girl had nothing for her. Instead, she rolled a dry-goods box into an adjoining stall, climbed upon it, and, reaching over the rough board side, got hold of Kate's long ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... circles when, upheld by Erasmus's world-wide reputation, it was available in a number of translations, English, Czech, German, Dutch, Spanish, and French. But then it began to fall under suspicion, for that was the time when Luther had unchained the great struggle. 'Now they have begun to nibble at the Enchiridion also, that used to be so popular with divines,' Erasmus writes in 1526. For the rest it was only two passages to which the orthodox ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... fire, but enclosed within the half-open jaws, had been cooked to a turn. A-ya possessed herself of this ever-coveted delicacy. It looked so queer, in its cooked state, charred black along the lower edge, that she hesitated to taste it. At last, persuaded by its fragrance, she brought herself to nibble at it. ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... have wished, and yet I should be as present as only Mr. Pinhorn could conceive. My allusion to the sequestered manner in which Mr. Paraday lived—it had formed part of my explanation, though I knew of it only by hearsay—was, I could divine, very much what had made Mr. Pinhorn nibble. It struck him as inconsistent with the success of his paper that any one should be so sequestered as that. And then wasn't an immediate exposure of everything just what the public wanted? Mr. Pinhorn effectually called me to order by reminding me of the promptness ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... seems also to be the cattle-market. There the small buff cows of North Italy repose after their long voyage or march, kneeling on the sandy ground or rubbing their sides against the wooden cross awry with age and shorn of all its symbols. Lambs frisk among the boats; impudent kids nibble the drooping ears of patient mules. Hinds in white jackets and knee-breeches made of skins, lead shaggy rams and fiercely bearded goats, ready to butt at every barking dog, and always seeking opportunities ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... were. Some afternoons they went fishing, and, with a strange reversal of type, Suzanna was the patient one, Maizie the impatient. Suzanna would sit in the boat next to Mr. Bartlett, holding her line, and breathlessly wait for hours if need be, statue-like, till she felt the thrilling nibble. Maizie would grow tired immediately, and to Peter's disgust, she would wriggle her feet or move restlessly about, quite spoiling for him the day's outing. Maizie at last begged to be let off from ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... stone and began delicately to nibble at the fruit which still bore its soft purple bloom. "I don't believe I shall eat very many," she said, "for my dinner is still lasting, and there will be supper before I am ready for it. We are not going to have a real, regular set-the-table supper, because grandma thinks Amanda ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... touched the oats with his mouth, as if in obedience to his master, returned to them no more, and began to nibble at the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... few moments we saw the graceful creatures, one after another, turn and attentively look at the signal. Then they slowly walked towards it. Then came a pause and a nibble of grass, and again, as though they could not resist the desire to ascertain what this singular thing fluttering in the breeze was, they hesitatingly came still nearer, as though they feared some hidden danger. In this way they soon ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... said the child, calmly, as she took a bite first of the chocolate in her left hand, and then a nibble from the one in the right. "One live dat ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... (The little girl comes with the milk.) The girl said to her brother that she may fall over the wooden in the river for what he cared; yet the boy said that when she would fall down she would chin a bit, and all the fish would come and nibble at her. Horras and her bull; and then they began the scrubble, and begins to scould her brother for not going to meet her, when they boath have a scuffel over the fire, and very near knocks the jockett over, when the boy hops away upon one leg, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... I did this thing, do you not think that my experience of married life has given me the most ineradicable prejudices against women as daily companions? Am I not persuaded that they all bicker and chatter and nibble sweetmeats alike—absolutely alike? Or if ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... happen? Nothin' in de roun' worl' but what been happenin' sence greens an' sparrer-grass wuz planted in de groun'. Dey look fine an' dey tas'e fine, an' long to'rds de shank er de mornin', Brer Rabbit 'ud creep thoo de crack er de fence an' nibble at um. He'd take de greens, but leave his tracks, mo' speshually right atter a rain. Takin' an' leavin'—it's de way er ...
— Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit • Joel Chandler Harris
... Bobbsey cried to the small twin, and thus Mr. Bobbsey also warned his son, who had pulled up his pole with a jerk, when he felt a nibble on ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat • Laura Lee Hope
... lame boy," said the Chattering Squirrel. "He is very kind to me. He puts nuts out for me to eat. I am eating one now. Will you have a nibble?" and the squirrel held out the nut ...
— The Story of a Nodding Donkey • Laura Lee Hope
... work!" panted the fat, lazy, little fellow. "I wonder where I can hide 'em so I can have candy to nibble when ...
— The Graymouse Family • Nellie M. Leonard
... near the ground while taking his food. In the matter of voice, too, they flattered themselves there was a wide difference. However, all this might be changed or improved by judicious training, except the feet. The hoofs they despaired of. The tail they proposed to nibble off at a proper length from the body. This operation the donkey positively refused to submit to, but finally consented to hold his tail up over his back as much like a rabbit as possible, and, moreover, would at once set about his ...
— Harper's Young People, May 11, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... she watched her patron nibble at the carefully-prepared delicacy with his eyes fixed intently upon his newspaper. The dimples disappeared quickly from the girl's face as she noted that the mackerel were growing cold. Then she turned from the table with a sigh. Men did not care what they ate ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... we commandeered to help maintain our solvency. Seattle was quite given to food fairs in those days, and we kept a weather eye out for such. We would eat no lunch, make for the Food Show about three, nibble at samples all afternoon, and come home well-fed about eight, having bought enough necessities here and there to keep our consciences ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... each, which vanished at my approach. Looking closer, I was surprised to find a colony of tropical doodle-bugs. Straightway I chose a grass-stem and squatting, began fishing as I had fished many years ago in the southern states. Soon a nibble and then an angry pull, and I jerked out the irate little chap. He had the same naked bumpy body and the fierce head, and when two or three were put together, they fought blindly and with the ferocity ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... advances, d'ye see? Teach him bridge, on the square, at night. Let him win a little—just enough to keep him satisfied with himself—you'll see. Wait till he draws his wad, and we'll throw the gaff in him to the queen's taste. If he won't nibble at one hook try another. But, I say, Billy, you'll have to furnish the scads for bait, in case he don't? rise to something easy. I know you're flush from that ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... he said softly; and then, when the horse's nose was thrust in his face: "No, not me—kiss the kid." He lifted the child up in his arms, and when Redcloud touched his soft nose to Dorman's cheek and lifted his lip for a dainty, toothless nibble, Dorman was speechless with fright ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... a half-hour, luncheon was swallowed quickly by most of the girls, eager to steal away to a sequestered bower among the boxes, there to lose themselves in paper-backed romance. A few of less literary taste were content to nibble ice-cream sandwiches and gossip. Dress, the inevitable masquerade ball, murders and fires, were favorite topics of discussion,—the last always with lowered voices and deep-drawn breathing. For fire is the box-maker's terror, ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... shouted; but finding that harsh words had no effect, she took a convenient broom, and advanced to strike a gallant blow upon the creature's back. This had the simple effect of making him step a little to one side and modestly begin to nibble at ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... everybody in the house and from some of the neighbors. She will even send for Rosie just when she is trying to get dinner started and keep her a half-hour telling just what she wants and how it's got to be fixed, then more often she'll just nibble at it just enough to spoil it for everybody else, after Rosie's spent an hour getting it ready for her. Tonics don't help her a bit. I've given her iron, arsenic and strychnin enough to cure a dozen weak women. ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... was grass for them to nibble," she decided. "But they never would in this hole. Come on, ponies, let's see what we can do." And gathering up the reins she led the horses in the direction Scott had gone. She saw the place where he had scrambled ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... matters, setting them right in cases of discipline, interviewing members of the faculty on necessary plans. The work was overwhelming and sometimes her one assistant would urge her, late in the evening, to nibble a bite from a tray which, to save time, had been sent in to her room at the dinner hour, only to remain untouched.... No wonder that professors often left their lectures to be written in the wee small hours, to help in uncongenial administrative work, which was not ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... was unending war between the horses and cattle on one side, and sheep on the other. Though it cannot be said that the meek sheep did any fighting. They never stampeded because they had to drink from streams where cows and horses had watered, nor did they refuse to nibble grass ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... my uncle, leaning against the wall, tried to nibble away at some pieces of biscuit, while deep groans and sighs escaped from my scorched and swollen lips. Then I fell off into a kind of ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... stop on the trail, for some reason or another, thus dropping behind the pack-train. Instantly the saddle-horse so detained would begin to grow uneasy. Bullet used by all means in his power to try to induce me to proceed. He would nibble me with his lips, paw the ground, dance in a circle, and finally sidle up to me in the position of being mounted, than which he could think of no stronger hint. Then when I had finally remounted, it was hard to hold ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labour. It could not be from the want of assiduity or perseverance; for he would sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long and heavy as a Tartar's lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even though he should not be encouraged by a single nibble. He would carry a fowling-piece on his shoulder for hours together, trudging through woods and swamps, and up hill and down dale, to shoot a few squirrels or wild pigeons. He would never refuse to assist a neighbour, ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... sugar in the sunshine. To the left is the Witch's oven, to the right a cage, all inside a fence of gingerbread children. A duet of admiration and amazement follows in a new, undulatory melody. Hansel wants to enter the house, but Gretel holds him back. Finally they decide to venture so far as to nibble a bit. Hansel stealthily breaks a piece of gingerbread off the corner, and at once the voice of the Witch is heard in ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... scrubbing and brushing and combing the thick fleeces, and at last, after much labor, considered their toilets done for the day; then, giving each a handful of fresh hay to nibble, he left the fold and ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... Mr. Bird!" cried the Captain. "I do not want to hurt you, but I can not allow you to pull wool from the back of my friend, Miss Lamb. You must stop it, or I will drive you away with my shiny, tin sword, as I drove away the bad rat that wanted to nibble the ears of the Candy Rabbit! ...
— The Story of a Bold Tin Soldier • Laura Lee Hope
... of "pone" between thumb and forefinger, holding it tightly. Then it was a joy to watch Satan. He tried to tug it all away at once, but only a fragment broke off. He stamped in impatience, and then went to work to nibble the bread away on all sides of Dan's fingers, very fine work for such broad, keen chisels as Satan's teeth, but he went about it with the skill of long practice, turning his head this way and that and always watching ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... to go fishing. You just lie down on a rock, nibble it occasionally, chew up a few pebbles, take a bite at a stone, and if you are thirsty—as, of course, you would be—there is a whole river of eau sucre—that is what the French call sweetened water—running right by, enough to supply all France. And, all ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... I sat not able to more than nibble because I was making up my mind to do something that scared me to death to think about. That gaunt, craggy man in a shabby gray coat, cut ante-bellum wise, with a cravat that wound itself around his collar, snowy and dainty, but on the same lines as the coat and evidently of rural manufacture ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... their shelter long, for they had to eat. For eighteen hours out of the twenty-four the moose had to feed to keep himself alive during the winter. His big stomach demanded quantity, and it took him most of his time to nibble from the tops of bushes the two or three bushels he needed a day. The caribou required almost as much—the deer ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... out the idea to Jedwood the other day,' said Mr Quarmby, 'and he seemed to nibble ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... years old, therefore she has been ready for some time; the door of her emotions is ajar. If I take precaution and kindle her heart little by little, there is no need to fear that she will refuse to nibble at my hook." ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... horses could graze. The trunks of the trees also were close enough together to hide them from anyone else who was not very near. Here the men ate cold food from their haversacks and let their horses nibble the grass for ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... his face. 'Who is she anyhow?' I says, flat 'n' plain, for Lord knows 'f he'd found a rich relation I wanted my old flannels for cleanin' cloths hereafter. But he 'xplained 's Felicia Hemans got Brunhilde out o' a book—the Nibble suthin' 'r other. 'Oh, well,' I says, 'if you c'n be suited with namin' your family after rats 'n' mice I guess you c'n leave me out,' I says, 'n' I kind o' backed off so 's to try 'n' set him ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... after metal, same as we did, and find us accidentally? However, it all works out the same—they're apparently out to get us. I'm afraid this is going to be a whole lot like a rabbit fighting back at a man with a gun; but we'll sure try to nibble us off a lunch while they're getting a square meal ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... hearing the ass's braying I was a long time before I came upon him quite down upon the stony shore, with not a blade of grass nor even a thistle for him to nibble at. How he got there is to me a problem to this day; but how I laboured to get him up again will ever remain in my mind, for it makes me feel sore all over to ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... not think there is any insect enemy of books worth description. The domestic black-beetle, or cockroach, is far too modern an introduction to our country to have done much harm, though he will sometimes nibble the binding of books, especially if they rest ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... imagine, due chiefly to living with John and Mrs. John. She may have got a touch of the sun-parlour. Her man is a terrific young scientist, who once with four colleagues deliberately let a dangerous Cuban mosquito nibble his arm. The colleagues died while Ernest survived, which I regretted. However he became demonstrator at the Institute of Bacteriology, with Helen as his assistant, and in the excitement of the imminent discovery of his new bacillus the two spend the night ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... another of his boyish excursions, and you find yourself on that first spring outing to a distant, low-lying meadow after "cowslips"; another, and you are trudging along with your brother after the cows, stopping to nibble spearmint, or pick buttercups by the way. Prosaic recollections, compared to spring paths and trout brooks in the Catskill valleys, yet this is what our author's writings do—re-create for each of us our own youth, with our own childhood ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... o' leaves an' stibble Has cost thee mony a weary nibble! Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble, But house or hald, To thole the winter's ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... preparatory action was taking place, and here and there small local engagements, but the fact that they were local made it very difficult for me to get to hear of them. None of the Corps Commanders knew exactly when or where the nibble would develop, or, if they did know, they were naturally chary of giving me the information. On occasions too when I did know I had not sufficient time to make my arrangements, I had to be content with scenes which unfolded themselves after ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... Om wasted little time. There were women about her, but she regarded their presence no more than a carter his horses. I sat beside her on deep mats that made the room half a couch, and wine was given me and sweets to nibble, served on tiny, foot-high tables ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... upon a bush and said, "Little bush, give good little sparrow a swing."—"I won't!" said the little bush. Then the sparrow was angry, and went to the goat and said, "Goat, goat, nibble bush, bush won't give good little sparrow a swing."—"I won't!" said the goat.—Then the sparrow went to the wolf and said, "Wolf, wolf, eat goat, goat won't nibble bush, bush won't give good little sparrow a swing."—"I won't!" ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... during reaping; and when the mother went away for a short time leaving the girl at work, she told her on no account to eat any of the rice. But no sooner was the mother gone than the girl began to husk some PADI and nibble at it. Then at once her body began to itch, and hair began to grow on her arms like the hair of a DOK. Soon the mother returned and the girl said, "Why am I itching so?" The mother answered, "You have done some wicked thing, you have eaten some rice." Then hair grew all over ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... there was a belt of smooth water on the west side of the rock. Here the fishermen cast anchor, and, baiting their hand-lines, began to fish. At first they were unsuccessful, but before half an hour had elapsed, the cod began to nibble, and Big Swankie ere long hauled up a fish of goodly size. Davy Spink followed suit, and in a few minutes a dozen fish lay spluttering in ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... on Little Foxes," said I; "by which I mean those unsuspected, unwatched, insignificant little causes that nibble away domestic happiness, and make home less than so noble an institution should be. You may build beautiful, convenient, attractive houses,—you may hang the walls with lovely pictures and stud them with gems of Art; and there may be living there together persons bound by blood and affection ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... he arched his tail over his head, and letting go of it suddenly, began to nibble at a sandwich held in his two front paws. ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... the wine!" cried Stafford, while his guests began to nibble the dainty appetizers which preceded the more ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... fisherman one must have a great deal of patience, so though he didn't get a bite right away as he had expected to, he wasn't the least bit discouraged. He kept very quiet and fished and fished, patiently waiting for a foolish trout to take his hook. But he didn't get so much as a nibble. "Either the trout have lost their appetite or they have grown very wise," muttered Farmer Brown's boy, as after a long time he moved on to the next ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess
... fully explained the distant reception and cautious bearing of my associates. My positive refusal to accommodate produced a very polite bow, and the party immediately retired to reconnoitre among some less suspicious visitants. "A nibble," said Transit, "from an ivory turner."{5} "By the honour of my ancestry," said Lionise, "a very finished sharper; I remember Lord F——— pointing him out to me at the last Newmarket spring meeting, when we met him, arm in arm, with a sporting ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... and I was miserably thin, and so weak that I could hardly drag myself about my dungeon. So, many weeks of the winter went on, and at last I was not able to rise from my bed of straw, and could do little more than lift a cup of water to my lips and nibble at some bread. I felt ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... me suppose my big soldier couldn't handle that matter as well as I? No, sir! Go and do it, sir. And, mind you, I'm going to invite them all up here to the gallery to hear the band play and have a cup of tea and a nibble when they come down this evening. He's going to ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... all of us sooner or later? Where is yours? Safe under lock and key, or hanging on some crag, ripening for the confectioner; or filched by some stealthy white hand, devoured by some eager lips that smile derisively at you while they nibble?" ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... from it to gather wood-berries beneath the trees. And, besides the feet of grown people and children, there are the cloven hoofs of a small herd of cows, who seek their subsistence from the native grasses, and help to deepen the track of the future thoroughfare. Goats also browse along it, and nibble at the twigs that thrust themselves across the way. Not seldom, in its more secluded portions, where the black shadow of the forest strives to hide the trace of human- footsteps, stalks a gaunt wolf, on the watch for a kid or a young calf; or fixes his hungry gaze on the group of children gathering ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... should have been swept off our feet; it seems as if the whole mountain-side must go. We hang on to each other, avoiding the trickles as best we can. Hullo! this plant is a cardamom, carrying little seeds rather like spicy pepper; nibble one, it may keep off the effects of the wetting we have been unable to avoid altogether. How cold it seems to have grown all of a sudden! Is it the rain, or because we are so much higher up? I suppose really ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... once more perfect, Alan shouldered the portmanteau, carried it in, and shut and locked the garden door; and then, once more, abstraction seemed to fall upon him, and he stood with his hand on the key, until the cold began to nibble at ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of medicine should come from a quite different herb that flourishes in Mexico and South America, this one furnishes a commercial substitute enormously used as a blood purifier and cooling summer drink. Burrowing rabbits delight to nibble the long, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... coat in the morning to great advantage in the evening; and if he couldn't hunt every day in the week, as he could have wished, he felt he might fill up his time perhaps quite as profitably in other ways. The ladies, to do them justice, are never at all suspicious about men—on the 'nibble'—always taking it for granted, they are 'all they could wish,' and they know each other so well, that any cautionary hint acts rather in a man's favour than otherwise. Moreover, hunting men, as we said before, are all supposed to be rich, and as very few ladies are aware that a horse can't ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... her cage was cleaned, she always had a cup of canary seed; but at other times she ate potato, cracker, bread, apple, and sometimes a piece of raw meat. She liked, too, to pick a chicken bone, and would nibble away upon it, laughing and talking to herself ...
— Minnie's Pet Parrot • Madeline Leslie
... was my holoku and not I," she retorted. "I see you are like Dick—always with a string on your compliments, and lo, when we poor sillies start to nibble, back goes the compliment dragging at the ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... I must have been down very many days," he remarked. "I had my day's dinner with me, so I just took a little nibble of food for breakfast, and another for dinner, and a little more for supper. It seemed to me that I stopped five or six hours between each meal, and then I lay down and went to sleep, and when I awoke I thought ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... drooping heads and ears, the picture of dejection. A mouthful of water was all I dare drink, and there remained less than a pint in the water-skin. Almost stupefied, exhausted, and despondent, I lay down beside a tiny bush, at whose dry twigs the famished horses were now trying to nibble, and sank into a state of half ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... very particular about the sort and shape of the bait. Some men have taken to fishing wholly with pickles, but with very unsatisfactory results. The fish nibble, but are seldom landed apparently. And just a little bit out are fish that never have gotten a suggestion of ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... down the river. The current is up and I can't stop.' 'My toes were there first,' said Georgiana, and went on eating her biscuit. 'Take them out of the way, I tell you,' he shouted as he came nearer, 'or they'll get cut off.' 'They were there first,' repeated Georgiana, and took another delicious nibble. Joe cut straight along, and went whack right into her five toes. Georgiana screamed with all her might, but she held her foot on the log, till Joe dropped the hatchet with horror, and caught her in his arms. 'Georgiana, I told ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... into Inneraora on a debate-parade; let us change the subject Do you know I'm like a boy with a sweet-cake in this entrance to our native place. I would like not to gulp down the experience all at once like a glutton, but to nibble round the edges of it We'll take the highway by the shoulder of Creag Dubh, and let the loch ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... no cultivation until near morning, when we crossed through a heavy oat-field, soaking wet with the night's rain. When we came out we were as wet as if we had fallen into the ocean. We took some of the oats with us, to nibble at ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... time, the little gazelle would perish. It hath never happened that the proper minute of time was missed. Should I, then, have mistaken Job for another? The hind has a contracted womb, and would not be able to bring forth her young, if I did not send a dragon to her at the right second, to nibble at her womb and soften it, for then she can bear. Were the dragon to come a second before or after the right time, the hind would perish. It hath never happened that I missed the right second. Should I, then, have mistaken Job ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... uncle, leaning against the wall, tried to nibble away at some pieces of biscuit, while deep groans and sighs escaped from my scorched and swollen lips. Then I fell off into a ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... conceal her scorn. Lady Clara was very much afraid of her. Those timid little thoughts, which would come out, and frisk and gambol with pretty graceful antics, and advance confidingly at the sound of Jack Belsize's jolly voice, and nibble crumbs out of his hand, shrank away before Ethel, severe nymph with the bright eyes, and hid themselves under the thickets and in the shade. Who has not overheard a simple couple of girls, or of lovers possibly, pouring ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... all small towns, and there was at M. sur M. in particular, a class of young men who nibble away an income of fifteen hundred francs with the same air with which their prototypes devour two hundred thousand francs a year in Paris. These are beings of the great neuter species: impotent ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... hurried over to the nearest tree. All around the trunk of the tree, from the ground clear up higher than Peter could reach, was wrapped wire netting. Peter couldn't get so much as a nibble of the delicious bark. He hadn't intended to take any, for he had meant to go right straight home, but now that he couldn't get any, he wanted some more than ever—just a bite. Peter looked around. Everything was quiet. He ...
— The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... setting them right in cases of discipline, interviewing members of the faculty on necessary plans. The work was overwhelming and sometimes her one assistant would urge her, late in the evening, to nibble a bite from a tray which, to save time, had been sent in to her room at the dinner hour, only to remain untouched.... No wonder that professors often left their lectures to be written in the wee small hours, to help in ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... Peter claimed Kate once more. His long face was once more thrust against her arm, and his soft lips began to nibble at the wrist frill of her sleeve. She turned to him with a laugh, and placed an ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... considerable length. Thus constantly attached to its parent, it waxes bigger daily. From two to eight months of age it still continues an inhabitant of its curious cradle, but now often protrudes its little head to take an observation of the world at large, and to nibble the grass amongst which its mother is feeding. Sometimes it has a little run by itself, but seeks the maternal bosom at the slightest intimation of danger. It quits the pouch for good when it can crop the herbage freely; but even now it will often poke its head into its early home and get ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... announced Doctor Hugh, a night or two later. "The alarm clock is set for four and I'm coming home when the last nibble plays me false." ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... When the stone is felt the blades should be opened very widely, slightly withdrawn, and then pushed in again, the lower one, if possible, being insinuated under the stone. The blades must be made fairly to grasp and contain the stone in their hollow, for if they only nibble at the end of an oval stone, extraction is impossible. Extraction should then be performed slowly, with alternate wrigglings of the forceps from side to side, so as gradually to dilate, not to tear, the prostate, and the operator ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... half-formed berries. Clumps of white elderberry blossoms spilled their fragrance, and the wind rustling through the long stems of the weeds and prairie grass droned monotonous tunes. She found tufts of crisp sour sheep sorrel which she liked to nibble, while she made ladies out of the flowers, and the pups snapped at the grasshoppers and butterflies. Chicken Little was taking her time for this expedition. She knew her parents would not return before evening, and if Marian hunted her up, she would think she had gone ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... all three, without making any special scandal. But if I did this thing, do you not think that my experience of married life has given me the most ineradicable prejudices against women as daily companions? Am I not persuaded that they all bicker and chatter and nibble sweetmeats alike—absolutely alike? Or if I ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... gorges, we ride, our guide leading the way to the Grand View Trail, and our pack-mules and burros following, while we occupy the rear of the procession. We stop for noon lunch in one of the side canyons where is a spring of clear water. We take off the packs from the animals, and let them nibble away at the rich grama and gallinas grasses that flourish ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... bit heap o' leaves an' stibble, Has cost thee mony a weary nibble! Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble, But house or hald, To thole the winter's sleety ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... trying to nibble some grass at Carmela's feet, suddenly threw his head up, for the cruel South American bit had tightened under ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... let herself drop on her forepaws to nibble the nice, green grass, Keesa, on peeping out, found his own mouth close to the ground. Out of mere curiosity he tasted a little bit of the herbage, sniffing it very carefully, first of all, with his funny little ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... his ear with an augmented volume and distinctness that made the unseen singer seem for the moment a hundred yards nearer than he really was. At length, right leisurely, they crept in sight—Cornwallis first, with his piebald face; then, as the old horse would dip his head to nibble at the green blades under his nose, short glimpses of Burl, though for awhile no further down than his enormous coon-skin cap, made, it is said, of the biggest raccoon that was ever trapped, treed, or shot in the Paradise. But presently, observing the old horse prick up his ears at some ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... corn-bread, fried chicken that you were at perfect liberty to take up in your fingers and nibble to your heart's content, jelly and olives and hot cocoa in the thermos bottle with rich cream already in it—truly a feast even worthy ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... up to the tents, and begins to scould very much. (The little girl comes with the milk.) The girl said to her brother that she may fall over the wooden in the river for what he cared; yet the boy said that when she would fall down she would chin a bit, and all the fish would come and nibble at her. Horras and her bull; and then they began the scrubble, and begins to scould her brother for not going to meet her, when they boath have a scuffel over the fire, and very near knocks the jockett over, when the boy hops away ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... events, I wish Dick would hurry up, as he has charge of the arrangements," Greg made answer. "Oh, my! But I'm getting anxious to see the fish nibble." ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... cattle-market. There the small buff cows of North Italy repose after their long voyage or march, kneeling on the sandy ground or rubbing their sides against the wooden cross awry with age and shorn of all its symbols. Lambs frisk among the boats; impudent kids nibble the drooping ears of patient mules. Hinds in white jackets and knee-breeches made of skins, lead shaggy rams and fiercely bearded goats, ready to butt at every barking dog, and always seeking opportunities of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... there I fell into error. It has been known to nibble at a chiropodist's finger, but it prefers imported Brie cheese, aged in the wood. The mode employed in catching it is very interesting, and I shall now describe it to you. Selecting a body of water wherein ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... father-in-law's, as Beatrice wished. He saw no other way out of the situation. To do so in his present interests was impossible—he had fancied that half a million was a fair sum to offer a Gorgeous Girl—but he saw it was only a nibble at the line. He must outdo Constantine. He cast about for some unsuspected fields of effort, this time to strike out into work of which Constantine was ignorant. He began to resent the fact that after his lucky ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... must be disturbed by the awkward consciousness that this old letter-writer and his sister are watching and misinterpreting with all the zeal of match-makers who have baited their trap, and are ready to mistake anything for a nibble! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... remaining warm and not in rigour mortuis. Anyhow when they began to seek fresh fields and pastures new, being fed up with old rat—or rather not able to get fed up enough, they would be jolly well on the look out, and glad enough to take nibble even at an Englishman! (He! He!) So I argued, and put good old rat in drawer and did slopes. On Monday, Mr. Spensonly went early from office, feeling feverish; and when I called, as in duty bound, to make humble inquiries on Tuesday, he was reported ...
— 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
... the servants' hall: "If the little Mice peep, they'll think I'm asleep;" So she rolled herself up like a ball. "Squeak," said the little Mouse, "we'll creep out And eat some Cheshire cheese, That silly old Cat is asleep on the mat, And we may sup at our ease." Nibble, nibble, nibble went all the little mice, And they licked their little paws; Then the cunning old Cat sprang up from the mat, And caught them ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... over which lay a covering of snow eighteen inches in depth. In confident hope of now obtaining some fish, we proceeded exactly according to Toolemak's instructions; but, after four-and-twenty hours' trial at all depths, not even a single nibble rewarded our labour. ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... quite ashamed, but her grandmother assured her that although it was nearly ten o'clock, she was perfectly excusable. She seated her in an easy chair, and gave her a cracker to nibble; for Dotty said she was not hungry, and ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May
... climbing a fence now and then, until they reached the old mill site, upon which work had not yet begun. They found a shady spot, and seating themselves upon the bank, baited their lines, and dropped them into a quiet pool. For quite a while their patience was unrewarded by anything more than a nibble. By and by a black cat came down from the ruined mill, and sat down upon the bank at a ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Caneville. It was upon a little hill that stood at some distance from the river, and the ground which sloped down from the house into the water was covered with such beautiful grass, that it made one long to nibble and roll ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... As the tide flows in over the sand there come with it, first of all, myriads of small garfish, mullet, and lively red bream, who, if the bait were left exposed, would at once gather round and begin to nibble and tug at it. Then perhaps a swiftly swimming "Long Tom," hungry and defiant, may dart upon it with his terrible teethed jaws, or the great goggle-eyed, floundering sting-ray, as he flaps along his way, might ...
— The Colonial Mortuary Bard; "'Reo," The Fisherman; and The Black Bream Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... know what she is like, old boy; I just caught sight of her in the Bois, in an open carriage—but a long way off. She is a most accomplished harpy, Carabine says. She is trying to eat up Crevel, but he only lets her nibble. Crevel is a knowing hand, good-natured but hard-headed, who will always say Yes, and then go his own way. He is vain and passionate; but his cash is cold. You can never get anything out of such fellows beyond a thousand to three thousand francs a ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... in safety and his eyes sparkled as he hopped over to the nearest young tree. But when he reached it, Peter had a dreadful disappointment. All around the trunk of that young tree was wire netting. Peter couldn't get even a nibble of that bark. He tried the next tree with no better result. Then he hurried on from tree to tree, always with the same result. You see Farmer Brown knew all about Peter's liking for the bark of young fruit trees, and he had been wise enough ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... Dudley, delightedly; "old Principle has had them, taming them for over a month. Their names are Nibble and Dibble. Look! This is Dibble with the little black spot on his nose. You never guessed, did you? I've been down to see them lots of times and they'll eat food out of my ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... stops his gambols and steps gently aside to coax, to caress his woolly-fleeced companion; and the mother talks softly to her child of the innocent darlings, and asks if they are not lovely creatures, and beautiful to look at, as they timidly wander from spot to spot, and nibble the delicate pasture. So it is to the lively fancy of childhood, and so it is to the mother whose affections are naturally melted into softness in the presence of simplicity; but when economic considerations arise, and the question ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... to the tune of two or three pounds—wasting what they could not devour. You could keep nothing sacred from their strong teeth. When hard pressed they more than once attacked the live sheep; and at last they went so far as to nibble one of our black cooks, Francis, who slept among the flour barrels. On the following morning he came to me, his eyes rolling angrily, and his white teeth gleaming, to show me a mangled finger, which they had bitten, and ask me to dress it. He made a great ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... killed. Then his master, Toadie Todson, with whom he at least had a lazy time, was killed in a sand slide. And now he spent all his days at work for Stingy, who was a very exacting master. If he so much as stopped to nibble a little from a tender green birch leaf, Stingy would fly at him and bid him go to work ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... Bellamy were bent upon the partnership, and would secure it at any cost. Satisfied of this, like a lazy and plethoric fish he kept within sight of his bait, close upon it, without deigning for a time as much as a nibble. It was his when he chose to bite. But there were deep enquiries to make, and many things to do, before he could implicate himself so far. In every available quarter he sought information respecting the one partner, and the father of the other, and of both; the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... to wait. He heard her shrill, warning whistle, then the big chuck trotted and waddled into sight, stopping occasionally to nibble or look around. Close behind her were the two fat cubs. Arrived near the den their confidence was restored, and again they began to feed, the young ones close to the den. Then Quonab put a blunt bird dart in his bow and laid two others ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... men as well and little baby things, And some haves only dresses on and some of 'em haves wings, They nibble dandelions for meat, they drink the bubble frorf, They never spill their cocoa-milk all down the table-clorf, They never cry because it hurts, they always eat ...
— The Bay and Padie Book - Kiddie Songs • Furnley Maurice
... the immediate jewel of my soul. I'm hard hit, Stephen, and the girl won't have me. She's poorer than any church or other mouse I ever met, yet she turns up her little French nose at me and my palace, and all the cheese I should like to see her nibble—my cheese." ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... for lime, necessary to feed their bones, drives Russian children to nibble pieces of chalk or the whitewash off the wall. In this case the boy was running to one of the grown-ups in the house, and whom he called uncle, as Russian children call everybody uncle or aunt, to get a piece of the chalk that he had for writing on ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... de fish begin to nibble, an' de co'k begin to jump, I 's erfeahed dat dey 'll quit bitin', case dey hyeah my hea't go "thump," 'Twell de co'k go way down undah, an' I raise a awful shout, Ez a big ol' yallah belly comes a ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... precious little dearie here ashore, I went straight away back to the channel, and anchored the craft in a bit of a nook in the first reach, where I thought as I should find some sport. Well, I didn't get so much as a nibble, and, at last—whether 'twas the heat of the sun, or what 'twas, I can't tell ye—I dropped clean off to sleep. How long I slept I can't say, but I was woke up by the tug-tugging of the line, which I'd ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... that sometimes, after spending a night in one, it would have been impossible to place a five-cent piece on any part of my body that had not been bitten by them. Scorpions come out of the wood they burn on the earthen floor, and monster cockroaches nibble your toes at night. The thick, hot grass roofs of the ranches harbor centipedes, which drop on your face as you sleep, and bite alarmingly. These many-legged creatures grow to the length of eight or nine inches, and run to and fro with great speed. Well might the little girl, on seeing ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... said earnestly, "This is a bad climate to go hungry in. You'd 'ave a touch of the sun in less'n no time. Just go below, an' force yerself to nibble a bit. It'll do you good, an' I don't mind keepin' ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... great heat, and more fishing. At least thirty large fish were caught this morning, also an infant shark, a grandchild who had wandered forth to nibble, and met an untimely grave. We have seen several alacrans or scorpions on board, but these are said not to be poisonous. The ship is the perfection of cleanness. No disagreeable odour affects the olfactory nerves, in which it has a singular ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... omnipresent policemen or park-keepers could not disturb the beatific impression on my mind. One feature, at all events, of the Golden Age was to be seen in the herds of deer that encountered you in the somewhat remoter recesses of the Park, and were readily prevailed upon to nibble a bit of bread out of your hand. But, though no wrong had ever been done them, and no horn had sounded nor hound bayed at the heels of themselves or their antlered progenitors, for centuries past, there was still an apprehensiveness lingering in their hearts; so ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... returned, and I crept back to the spot which I had selected for my couch. I wrapt myself up in the canvas, taking care to guard my feet, and putting one hand over my nose, and the other under me, so that the rats should not be able to nibble any of my extremities, which I thought it likely they would try to do. I hoped, however, that if they made the attempt I should be more successful in ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... We'll tell fortunes. That's what we'll do." Plump down in the meadow grass, Stella and Minna, With their round yellow hats, Like cheeses, Beside them. Drop, Drop, Daisy petals. "One I love, Two I love, Three I love I say..." The ground is peppered with daisy petals, And the little girls nibble the golden centres, And ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... personal interest. Our famous lunch at Laruns was both so ample and so recent that now we ask only for "tea and toast," and so, while the lamps are lighted, the trays are brought to us in the parlor, and around the centre-table and before the fire we nibble tartines in soothed content and ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... welcome. He would know all about Uncle Tilbury and what his chances might be getting to be, cemeterywards. They could, of course, ask no questions, for that would squelch the bequest, but they could nibble around on the edge of the subject and hope for results. The scheme did not work. The obtuse editor did not know he was being nibbled at; but at last, chance accomplished what art had failed in. In illustration of something ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... The odors were intoxicating. There were flowers and birds and trees as well as succulent vegetables. A most wonderful elm tree spread out like an umbrella and shaded the whole lawn. Beneath this the girl stopped a moment, and let Bumper nibble ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... played for a time with a twig of olea she held in her hand, then resting on the window-sill, she plucked the petals, and threw them into the water, attracting the fish, which went by, to rise to the surface and nibble at them. Hsiang-yn, after a few moments of abstraction, urged Hsi Jen and the other girls to help themselves to anything they wanted, and beckoned to the servants, seated at the foot of the hill, to eat ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... now, while he did on this problem dwell, Two unexpected happenings befell: A fish to nibble on the worm began, And to him through the green a fair maid ran. Fast, fast amid the tangled brake she fled, Her cheeks all pale, her dark eyes wide with dread; But Pertinax her beauty nothing heeded, Since both his eyes to watch his fish were needed; ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... means were not discovered at all. Malicorne had, indeed, some occasional brilliant flashes of imagination, with which he tried to inspire the king with confidence; but whether from shame or suspicion, the king, who had at first begun to nibble at the bait, soon abandoned the hook. In this way, for instance, one evening, while the king was crossing the garden and looking up at Madame's window, Malicorne stumbled over a ladder lying beside a border of box, and said to Manicamp, who ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... and the pack-camel rose, moved a few paces on its noiseless feet, swaying from side to side as though to readjust its load, whisked its miserable tail, and stretching out its long neck began to nibble the leaves ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... feelings of emigrants, bound for the gold-fields of California, who have pushed into the Great Basin without knowing where to look for grass or water. They are camped by a spring of alkaline water scarcely fit to drink; their weary animals nibble at the scanty grass about the spring; far ahead stretches the pathless desert which they must cross; upon their choice of a route their ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... understand every word that is spoken. They are thought, also, to foresee both good and evil, and are considered vindictive, but yet capable of being conciliated by fair words and kindness. They are also very destructive among wearing-apparel, which they frequently nibble into holes; and this is always looked upon as a piece of revenge, occasioned by some disrespectful language used towards them, or some neglect of their little wants. This note was necessary in order to render the conduct and language ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... a rumor," Mr. Dowling continued, "that some one had bought one small plot on the outskirts of the estate. I dare say it is not true, and in any case it is not worth while troubling about, but it shows that the public is beginning to nibble. I am of opinion that the time is almost—yes, almost ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... they came to a country place, the squirrel would leap out, run along the road, climb to the tops of the trees, nibble the leaves and bark, and then scamper after his master, and nestle down ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... the room in which I ate breakfast so neat and demure with its whitewashed walls—pure and stainless like country snow—that I managed to swallow everything but the coffee. O that coffee! I had to nibble at a bit of chocolate I carried to get the taste of it out of my mouth. I tried hard not to let the blues get the upper hand again. I filled my pipe and pulled out my sketch-book. My notes of yesterday seemed so faint, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... one of us would stop on the trail, for some reason or another, thus dropping behind the pack-train. Instantly the saddle-horse so detained would begin to grow uneasy. Bullet used by all means in his power to try to induce me to proceed. He would nibble me with his lips, paw the ground, dance in a circle, and finally sidle up to me in the position of being mounted, than which he could think of no stronger hint. Then when I had finally remounted, it was hard to hold him in. He would whinny frantically, ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... but a fabulous luxury. Saloons were good for something. Back behind the plodding horses, I would take an hour in consuming that one cracker. I took the smallest nibbles, never losing a crumb, and chewed the nibble till it became the thinnest and most delectable of pastes. I never voluntarily swallowed this paste. I just tasted it, and went on tasting it, turning it over with my tongue, spreading it on the inside of this cheek, then on the inside of the other cheek, until, ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... kinds. In battle I have never flinched from the cruel onset, but plunged straight into the fray and fought among the foremost. I fear not man though he has a big body, but run along his bed and bite the tip of his toe and nibble at his heel; and the man feels no hurt and his sweet sleep is not broken by my biting. But there are two things I fear above all else the whole world over, the hawk and the ferret—for these bring great grief ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... once into the secret of our new acquaintance's character, and fully explained the distant reception and cautious bearing of my associates. My positive refusal to accommodate produced a very polite bow, and the party immediately retired to reconnoitre among some less suspicious visitants. "A nibble," said Transit, "from an ivory turner."{5} "By the honour of my ancestry," said Lionise, "a very finished sharper; I remember Lord F——— pointing him out to me at the last Newmarket spring meeting, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... you have me suppose my big soldier couldn't handle that matter as well as I? No, sir! Go and do it, sir. And, mind you, I'm going to invite them all up here to the gallery to hear the band play and have a cup of tea and a nibble when they come down this evening. He's going to ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... Abe. Hip, hurrah! You've only to nibble a pen to make poetry, and only to mount a stump to be a speaker. Now, Abe, speak for the cause of the people, or anybody's cause. Give it to us strong, and we will ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... are troubled with rats, Will you drive them out of the house? We have mice, too, in plenty, That feast in the pantry, But let them stay And nibble away, What harm in a little ...
— Mother Goose - The Original Volland Edition • Anonymous
... Anne!" Kit exclaimed, exultantly. "She knows how I love to nibble on good things to eat. Now we won't have to go into the dining-car for lunch, and it will seem like a ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... like to plead guilty. I know that we do not usually choose to keep company with them; but whether it be because their forms are coarser, their manners less refined, and their pedigree not so long, or whether it be because they sometimes have a fancy to nibble off the ears of their neighbours, or, when their appetite is uncommonly sharp, make a meal of their Norman cousins, we need ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... fungus disease, coffee has many other enemies. Both rats and mice are fond of the juicy stalks of the berries when they are nearly ripe, and they nibble at them until the berries fall. The long-haired black rat is the greatest of these pests. Cats are kept on each plantation to prey upon the animal pests; but, unfortunately, the natives are very fond of cats—not as pets, but as articles of food. This feline appetite ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... great size, abound in most houses, and are very destructive. They nibble the bindings of books, and cut quaint devices, which look almost as if they had been done with a pair of scissors, in clothes put away in drawers. They run at an amazing pace when they think ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... such bearers: the apples hung in ropes, for all the world like strings of onions, and the fruit was beautiful. Nobody touched the minister's apples, and when other folks lost their'n from the boys, his'n always hung there like bait t' a hook, but there never was so much as a nibble at 'em. So I said to him one day, 'Minister,' said I, 'how on airth do you manage to keep your fruit that's so exposed, when no one else can't do it nohow?' 'Why,' says he, 'they are dreadfully pretty fruit, ain't they?' ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... her grandmother assured her that although it was nearly ten o'clock, she was perfectly excusable. She seated her in an easy chair, and gave her a cracker to nibble; for Dotty said she was not hungry, and did not ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May
... replied the maid, still seething with indignation, "but I'm likely to think it wasn't a mountain rabbit that did the damage, for the plants were yanked up by the roots, and bunnies just nibble the tops!" ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... brought a fine big mushroom for the Turtle, for she had once seen a turtle nibble all around the ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... I like to nibble at a stuffed date, but do not enjoy having my memory stuffed with dates, though I am proud rather than sensitive in ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... there in a corner is a glimpse of the mouse-trap. Of course the children have real names, just like other children; but I have given them mouse-names, which I very much prefer to Harry and Bessie, and—but oh! dear, I didn't mean to tell you any of their real names. Nibble is the oldest. He is now a fine bright boy-mouse of twelve, but when he first came to the mouse-trap he was only eight years old, and Brighteyes, the oldest girl-mouse, was seven. Then came Fluff and Puff, the twins, who ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... is left, besides that which the "headers" burn as fuel, and farmers stack this straw for cattle to nibble at. The stock feed in the stubble fields, too, and strange visitors also come to these ranches to pick up the scattered grains of wheat. These strangers are wild white geese, in such large flocks that when feeding they look like snow patches on the ground. ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... with the mere statement that "Heaven helps those who help themselves," and thus leave him to his own devices. If Southey's, "The Curse of Kehama," happens to be nearest his plate, he will naturally begin with that as I did with the deviled eggs. Or he may nibble at "The House-Boat on the Styx" while some one is passing the Shakespeare along. He may like Emerson, and ask for a second helping, and that's all right, too, for that's a nourishing sort of food. Having partaken of this generously, he will enjoy all the more the jelly when ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... said he. "I never smoke. But you will perhaps pardon me if I nibble two or three of these khat leaves. You yourself, from your experience in Oriental countries, know ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... Nedopyuskin. And what a horse it was! All fire—simply explosive as gunpowder—and stately as a boyar! Untiring, enduring, obedient, whatever you might put him to; and costing nothing for his keep; he'd be ready to nibble at the ground under his feet if there was nothing else. When he stepped at a walking pace, it was like being lulled to sleep in a nurse's arms; when he trotted, it was like rocking at sea; when he galloped, he outstripped the wind! Never out of breath, perfectly ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... having just touched the oats with his mouth, as if in obedience to his master, returned to them no more, and began to nibble at the sleeve of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... belonged to a lady, used, when angry, to pull at her hair, and nibble the ends of her ringlets. It also possessed the accomplishment of being able ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... said David, "if I only had a line." Picking up his straw hat, he ripped out the thread, and taking the pin with which his sister had fastened the feather, he made a hook out of it and tied the thread to it. He searched for some worms, and soon, he began to angle. He tried again and again, but not a nibble could he get. At last luck favored him, and soon he had three fishes. Remembering the matches which his mother had put into the tin-covered pail, he decided to start a fire and cook his fish, adding a little salty water for seasoning. He relished this little repast more than ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... the morn to our own church, where Mr. Mills did begin to nibble at the Common Prayer, by saying "Glory be to the Father, &c." after he had read the two psalms; but the people had been so little used to it, that they could not tell what to answer. This declaration of the King's do give the Presbyterians some satisfaction, and a pretence to read the Common ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... lot, and so on to the edge of the swamp behind Squire Harrington's. Bess would take no harm there during the night and would be found safe enough on the morrow. I removed the bit from her mouth, so that she could nibble the grass, and left the bridle hanging round her neck, securing it so that she would not be likely to trip or throw herself. I showed far more consideration for her than I did for the wife of my bosom. I removed the saddle so that she could lie down and ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... wasted little time. There were women about her, but she regarded their presence no more than a carter his horses. I sat beside her on deep mats that made the room half a couch, and wine was given me and sweets to nibble, served on tiny, foot-high tables inlaid ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... I just had a nibble for small space; you could get fifty a month for that attic you're using ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... Cousin Bess, he added, when he announced this design, and Miss Grant, and Mr. Edwards; and I will show you what I call fishing not nibble, nibble, nibble, as Duke does when he goes after the salmon-trout. There he will sit for hours, in a broiling sun or, perhaps, over a hole in the lee, in the coldest days in winter, under the lee of a few ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... approached in that direction. These tendrils she had twisted together so as to form a band, never supposing that Brindle, though a young and female creature, could possibly be sufficiently capricious to leave her usual fragrant pasturage, in order to pull and nibble this withering band. But, however, so it was, as Tamar asserted, for there when she came up to the place, the band was broken, the gate forced open, and Brindle walking quietly forward through the ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... Charlie, your mother makes good pies!" he exclaimed with rapture, as soon as he could get his mouth sufficiently clear to speak. "Give us another bite,—only a nibble." ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... while now she expects attention from everybody in the house and from some of the neighbors. She will even send for Rosie just when she is trying to get dinner started and keep her a half-hour telling just what she wants and how it's got to be fixed, then more often she'll just nibble at it just enough to spoil it for everybody else, after Rosie's spent an hour getting it ready for her. Tonics don't help her a bit. I've given her iron, arsenic and strychnin enough to cure a dozen weak women. She's always too weak ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... it, he was in a fine great pantry. A pantry whose shelves were covered with such good things to eat as he had never seen. Rich cake, pies, cookies, and cheese such as he had heard the caller describe. The first nibble ...
— Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper and Other Stories • Anonymous
... that in nine days they only reaped 237 urdeps, or not one half that was actually upon the fields. They permitted the natives to steal by night, and the swarms of small birds destroyed an incredible quantity by day. These innumerable and ruinous pests do not consume the entire grain, but they nibble the soft sweet portion from the joint of each seed, neatly picking out the heart; thus the ground beneath is strewed ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... sand color nearly, cantered into view around the corner of a shed and approached them. He came to a pause nearby, and having studied Bull Hunter with large, unafraid, curious eyes for a moment, began to nibble impertinently at the ragged hat brim ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... of your living up to your motto, sonny boy," she said, as she held out a lump of sugar for the pretty creature to nibble. "It was your 'good name' that brought you ...
— The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle • Annie Fellows Johnston
... garden at last, but she had to nibble a bit of the mushroom again to bring herself down to twelve inches after she had got the golden key, so as to get through the little door. It was a lovely garden, and in it was the Queen's croquet-ground. The Queen of Hearts was very fond of ordering heads to be cut off. "Off with his head!" ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... painters; vainly had he fancied that thereby he might be remembered. A peach—a blushing, rich-flavored fruit, nestling in the trellis work on the garden-wall, hidden beneath its long, green leaves,—this little vegetable production, that a dormouse would nibble up without a thought, was sufficient to recall to the memory of this great monarch the mournful shade of ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... (like as an Angler does his line) she sendeth, forth and pulleth in again at her pleasure, according as she sees some little fish come neer to her [Mount Elsayes: and others affirm this]; and the Cuttle-fish (being then hid in the gravel) lets the smaller fish nibble and bite the end of it; at which time shee by little and little draws the smaller fish so neer to her, that she may leap upon her, and then catches and devours her: and for this reason some have ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... with a good supply of cool, though curious tasting water, and canteens were soon being let down into it at the end of puttees in a hopeless effort to cope with our thirst, after which the bolder spirits went so far as to nibble a ration biscuit. But one cannot help reflecting on what might have been the consequences for us if the Turks had adopted the German ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... would nestle in his warm coat, run races over and under him, and he would not move a limb, for fear of hurting one. As to a bone, he will allow me to take it out of his mouth at any time; and, what is more, he will readily give it up to Fiddy, whose little teeth can only nibble off the meat; and when he has done that, Bronti takes it, and ...
— Kindness to Animals - Or, The Sin of Cruelty Exposed and Rebuked • Charlotte Elizabeth
... common consent of the world's baseness, harshness, vulgarity, injustice? It means surely—and think of it!—that it is composed of men and women with the best of them killed out, as a nerve burnt away by acid; a heart won over to meaner things than it set out beating for; a mind persuaded to nibble at edges of dry crust that might have grown stout and serviceable on generous diet, and mellow ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... and a hundred other varieties of peripatetic tricksters, higher than these, and lower, who act their parts tolerably well, but seldom with an absolutely illusive effect. I knew at once, raw Yankee as I was, that they were humbugs, almost without an exception,—rats that nibble at the honest bread and cheese of the community, and grow fat by their petty pilferings,—yet often gave them what they asked, and privately owned myself a simpleton. There is a decorum which restrains you (unless you happen to be a police-constable) from breaking through a crust of plausible respectability, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... universe of modern speculation there remains no unexplored nook or cranny, where an immortal human soul can find refuge or haven. Having hunted it down, trampled and buried it as one of the little "inspired legendary" foxes that nibble and bruise the promising sprouts of the Science Vineyard, what are we requested to accept in lieu of the doctrine of spiritual immortality? ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... calm and quiet, used to their strange surroundings, and willing to nibble at the heap of fragrant hay put down at their feet. Tom was able to leave them with a clear conscience, and came over to where Lord Claud was standing in the fore part of the vessel, watching the sheets of green water that fell away from the prow ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... I nibble round the unpalatable morsel which has to be swallowed?" The recantation had seemed to himself to be almost base, and he had been ashamed of it. "But," says he, "farewell to all true, upright, honest policy. You could hardly believe what treachery there is ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... Ned. "I never yet met the man who really did see a ghost, though I've met scores who've heard of some one who's seen them, and for that matter come to fisticuffs with them; and certain sure I never see'd one myself till that young cheese-nibble made himself into one. Then, if he hadn't been found out, I'd have staked my davy that he ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... night, and she knew from experience that after that solemn event was concluded it would be too late for the departing mails. She seemed to have no difficulty in composing her thoughts and transferring them to paper. There were times when she would lean back, nibble the end of her pen and smile in a dreamy, retrospective fashion. No doubt her thoughts ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... the eastward, there was a belt of smooth water on the west side of the rock. Here the fishermen cast anchor, and, baiting their hand-lines, began to fish. At first they were unsuccessful, but before half an hour had elapsed, the cod began to nibble, and Big Swankie ere long hauled up a fish of goodly size. Davy Spink followed suit, and in a few minutes a dozen fish lay spluttering in the bottom of ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... his indigestion refused to subside, consequently the banker could only take the scantiest breakfast—that of a dyspeptic. In the midst of such luxury, and under the eye of a well-paid butler, M. Godefroy could only eat a couple of boiled eggs and nibble a little mutton chop. The man of money trifled with dessert—took only a crumb of Roquefort—not more than two cents' worth. Then the door opened and an overdressed but charming little child—young Raoul, four years old—the son of the company director, entered the room, accompanied ...
— The Lost Child - 1894 • Francois Edouard Joachim Coppee
... shan't walk, at any rate. I can borrow the constable's pony, old Nibble, the quietest beast in the world. He'll stand for a week if we like, while I fish and you lie and look on. I'll be off and bring him around in ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... mother was taking the goat out of the shed so that she could nibble the grass around the hut, he went with her step by step, for his mother had told him he must watch her so that she ...
— Toni, the Little Woodcarver • Johanna Spyri
... guide leading the way to the Grand View Trail, and our pack-mules and burros following, while we occupy the rear of the procession. We stop for noon lunch in one of the side canyons where is a spring of clear water. We take off the packs from the animals, and let them nibble away at the rich grama and gallinas grasses that flourish here after ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... due. No visitor could have been more welcome. He would know all about Uncle Tilbury and what his chances might be getting to be, cemeterywards. They could, of course, ask no questions, for that would squelch the bequest, but they could nibble around on the edge of the subject and hope for results. The scheme did not work. The obtuse editor did not know he was being nibbled at; but at last, chance accomplished what art had failed in. In illustration of something under discussion which required the help ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... therefore she has been ready for some time; the door of her emotions is ajar. If I take precaution and kindle her heart little by little, there is no need to fear that she will refuse to nibble at ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... planetary bodies have nothing to do with fish—it's all confounded superstition." So they cast in their hooks, "Sutherland's best," and talk about Harper's Ferry and "old Brown" until one of the party "thinks he has a nibble" and begs for silence, which at once supervenes out of respect for the momentous interests hanging in the balance. When the excitement is over the frivolous Bagby takes advantage of the relief from suspense to make an exasperating ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... little old gentleman in a red nightcap and flowered dressing-gown, with slippered feet, and spectacles on nose, entered the hall, followed by another in black, apparently his clerk. Two other persons also came in, and took their seats at the table, while the clerk began to nibble his pen ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... early, but Tom—he was held up in the traffic. You see, I don't eat much, anyhow. I just nibble around and take a cold snack where I can ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... yours is— well, we'll say unusual, and if what I do seems a little unusual too, it's to be excused. Ye can't throw stones at every one, me boy, and then be surprised when some one throws one at you. You bite the diamond holders, d'ye see, and I take a little nibble at ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... little about his own country, this bein' the first time he had ever been west of Philadelphia. He said that he was minded to become an author, an' had come out to study the aboriginal types an' get the true local color. Whenever I hear this little bunch o' sounds, I know I got a nibble. Any time a man goes nosin' around after local color, you can bet your saddle he's got several ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... was done with laughter. She ate a nibble of dinner as soberly as Amelia could have wished, then sat back, her eyes closed with a resolve to think clearly, closely, to some determination of her life. But Jim's note, which had so roused her amusement, began to force itself in another fashion ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... slowly opened the table-drawer, and softly slipped into it. The harsh grating noise of something heavy that he was moving unseen to me sounded for a moment, then ceased. The silence that followed was so intense that the faint ticking nibble of the white mice at their wires was distinctly audible ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... in the brightening February there came a few days of warm, misty weather. Petter Nord became suddenly serious and silent. He let the white mice nibble the steel bars of their cages without feeding them. He attended to his duties in the most irreproachable way. He fought with no more street boys. Could Petter Nord not bear the change ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... aerial insects. The Bat, an animal of an antediluvian type, comes out at the same time, and assists in lessening these multitudinous swarms. The little Owls, though they pursue the larger beetles and moths, direct their efforts chiefly at the small quadrupeds that steal out in the early evening to nibble the tender herbs and grasses. Thus the night, except the hours of total darkness, is with many species of animals, though they pursue their objects with comparative stillness and silence, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... smart!" said Horace, picking her up. "There, you sit down next time, and I'll prop up the pole with a rock—this way. There, now, you hold it a little easy, and when you feel a nibble you let ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... of good things. Then presently that store will be all gone, and then she will give him up, and he, the man, will go out and shoot himself, and she will pick up somebody else, and will begin to nibble-nibble just as before. As I say, there will be somebody else, and somebody else, right up to the end of the chapter. And with every one she will grow just an imperceptible bit older. By and by the wrinkles will appear; I fancy there are just one or two already. Then she ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... probability, and a drive beyond into France by the German forces concentrated at Neubreisach made triumphant. Doubtless the French General Staff fully grasped the German intention, but considered a nibble at the alluring German bait of some value for its sentimental effect upon the French and Alsatians. Otherwise the invasion of Upper Alsace with a brigade was doomed at the outset to win no ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... gambols and steps gently aside to coax, to caress his woolly-fleeced companion; and the mother talks softly to her child of the innocent darlings, and asks if they are not lovely creatures, and beautiful to look at, as they timidly wander from spot to spot, and nibble the delicate pasture. So it is to the lively fancy of childhood, and so it is to the mother whose affections are naturally melted into softness in the presence of simplicity; but when economic considerations arise, and the question ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... started on his quest for assistance the riderless horse, which had begun to nibble grass by the roadside, lifted his head with a snort that brought the lad to a sudden halt. Why not make use of this animal if he could catch it? Certainly his mission could be accomplished more quickly on horseback than on foot. He started gently toward ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... his hand, holding it so delicately poised that the slightest disturbance was sure to be detected. He was in the position of the fisherman who is angling for some plump piscatorial prize, which requires the most skillful kind of persuasion to induce him to nibble ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... begin to nibble, an' de co'k begin to jump, I 's erfeahed dat dey 'll quit bitin', case dey hyeah my hea't go "thump," 'Twell de co'k go way down undah, an' I raise a awful shout, Ez a big ol' yallah belly comes ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... pig yesterday," Barber said. "Some little purple berries that the woods goats nibble at sometimes, maybe to get a touch of some certain vitamin or something. I ate too many, I guess, because they hit my heart like the ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... towns, and there was at M. sur M. in particular, a class of young men who nibble away an income of fifteen hundred francs with the same air with which their prototypes devour two hundred thousand francs a year in Paris. These are beings of the great neuter species: impotent men, parasites, cyphers, who have a little land, a little folly, a little wit; who would be ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... time, having cover'd the dead baronet's body with sprays of the wither'd bracken, I drew her to a little distance and prevail'd on her to nibble a crust of the loaf. Now, all this while, it must be remembered, I was in my shirt sleeves, and the weather bitter cold. Which at length her sorrow allow'd her ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... valuing, discussing it in detail; the patron laudeth the ornaments, the grandeur of the columns, the weight of the work; the distributors of favour gamble away thy honour, or creep like mice under thy plan, and nibble at it in the darkness of night. No, my friend, the life of an artist is the life ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... was noticing to-day, not the least remarkable was this: the ghoulish fashion in which respectable people will nibble after blood. George Emerson had kept the ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... join at once in putting the employers in a stronger position than ever? Thank you! The 'rent of ability' in the present state of things is, no doubt, large. But in this particular case the Clarion will go on doing its best—I promise you—to nibble ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... turned the chariot off from the road into the edge of the thicket, unharnessed the horse, and left him free to forage for himself; whereupon he began to nibble, with great apparent relish, at the scattered spears of grass peeping up here and there through the snow. A large rug was brought from the chariot and spread upon the ground in a sheltered spot, upon which the comedians seated themselves, in Turkish fashion, in a circle, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... you'd let me have much of a chance," said her husband. When he came within easy hail of the man in the hay-field, he pulled up beside the meadow-wall, where the horse began to nibble the blackberry vines that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor. It could not be from the want of assiduity or perseverance; for he would sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long and heavy as a Tartar's lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even though he should not be encouraged by a single nibble. He would carry a fowling-piece on his shoulder for hours together, trudging through woods and swamps, and up hill and down dale, to shoot a few squirrels or wild pigeons. He would never refuse to assist a neighbor even in the roughest toil, and was a foremost ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... doing fairly well," said Russ, as he and his companion settled down in the shelter, to nibble at a bit of hard tack and drink some of the water Jack had ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... took up a fishing-rod and began to fish. Pao-ch'ai played for a time with a twig of olea she held in her hand, then resting on the window-sill, she plucked the petals, and threw them into the water, attracting the fish, which went by, to rise to the surface and nibble at them. Hsiang-yuen, after a few moments of abstraction, urged Hsi Jen and the other girls to help themselves to anything they wanted, and beckoned to the servants, seated at the foot of the hill, to eat to their heart's content. Tan ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... his hand to be kissed; shook his head at him in fury. "Put down there what you hold," he said, "and go." The king cast his money into the silver basin and slunk away. John's insult was all the greater because out of Lincoln none of the bishop's people was ever allowed to nibble one crumb of the alms. That day the bishop had preached upon the conduct and future prospects of princes. John neither liked the duration nor the direction of the sermon, and sent thrice to the preacher ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... an augmented volume and distinctness that made the unseen singer seem for the moment a hundred yards nearer than he really was. At length, right leisurely, they crept in sight—Cornwallis first, with his piebald face; then, as the old horse would dip his head to nibble at the green blades under his nose, short glimpses of Burl, though for awhile no further down than his enormous coon-skin cap, made, it is said, of the biggest raccoon that was ever trapped, treed, or shot in the Paradise. But presently, observing ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... the Ork squatted down beside them. Very reluctantly Cap'n Bill drew another biscuit from his pocket and held it out. The Ork promptly seized it in one of its front claws and began to nibble the biscuit in much the same manner a parrot might ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... to the small market-town, glimpses of which might be caught over the tops of the trees. As the baronet sat there on horseback, and looked around, more than one living object met his eye. To say nothing of some sheep wandering along the uninclosed part of the hill, now stopping to nibble the short grass, now trotting forward for a sweeter bite,—not to notice the oxen in the pastures below, there was a large cart slowly winding its way along an open part of the road, about half a mile distant, and upon the bridle-path which I have mentioned, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... got a nibble, Phyllis! I believe I can land him, too. And it will be the first I've really managed to catch!" Leslie began to play her line, her ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... and patience of the "Cracker" is equalled only by that of "their cousins, the Indians"; I have seen one of them sit for twelve hours continuously in one place fishing without being encouraged by even a little nibble; his face was as placid as that of a mummy which he closely resembles; then suddenly he would pull in scores of trout, but with the same ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... fourteen baby calves was not such hard work as they had expected, for they were very amiable beasties and only wanted to nibble a little fresh sweet grass as they were driven on toward the barnyard. But Meg and Bobby had so much fun doing this that they forgot to be quiet, and just as they had the last calf safely inside and the big gate barred, two figures came running up ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Brookside Farm • Mabel C. Hawley
... now and then, until they reached the old mill site, upon which work had not yet begun. They found a shady spot, and seating themselves upon the bank, baited their lines, and dropped them into a quiet pool. For quite a while their patience was unrewarded by anything more than a nibble. By and by a black cat came down from the ruined mill, and sat down upon the bank at a ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Rabbit 'gun ter feel his fat, he did, en dis make 'im git projecky terreckly. De mo' peace w'at dey had, de mo' wuss Brer Rabbit feel, twel bimeby he git restless in de min'. W'en de sun shine he'd go en lay off in de grass en kick at de gnats, en nibble at de mullen stalk en waller in de san'. One night atter supper, w'iles he 'uz romancin' 'roun', he run up wid ole Brer Tarrypin, en atter dey shuck han's dey sot down on de side er de road en run on 'bout ole times. Dey talk en dey talk, dey ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... breakfast I ever tasted, or at all events the best I have tasted in Natal. The mules were also unharnessed, and after taking, each, a good roll on the damp grass, turned out in the drizzling rain for a rest and a nibble until their more substantial repast was ready. The rain cleared up from time to time, but an occasional heavy shower warned us that the weather was still sulky. It was in much better heart and spirits, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... grunted again, and took in the less than imposing figure of Josip Pekic. Josip felt an urge to nibble at his fingernails, and repressed it. He had recently broken himself of the smoking habit and was hard put to find occupation ...
— Expediter • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... string in the water as long as anybody," he complained, "but I'd like to have the satisfaction of merely changing the bait OCCASIONALLY. I've not had a single bite—not a nibble, y' know, all day. Never mind, you got the big trout, Blix; that first one. That five minutes was worth the whole day. It's been glorious, the whole thing. We'll come down here once a ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... the tune of two or three pounds—wasting what they could not devour. You could keep nothing sacred from their strong teeth. When hard pressed they more than once attacked the live sheep; and at last they went so far as to nibble one of our black cooks, Francis, who slept among the flour barrels. On the following morning he came to me, his eyes rolling angrily, and his white teeth gleaming, to show me a mangled finger, which they ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... made hot biscuit, and opened a jar of strawberry preserves, and sliced a cold chicken which she had originally intended for to-morrow's dinner; but, in spite of that, she was forced to sit by and watch her two guests do scarcely more than nibble. ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... the patient one, Maizie the impatient. Suzanna would sit in the boat next to Mr. Bartlett, holding her line, and breathlessly wait for hours if need be, statue-like, till she felt the thrilling nibble. Maizie would grow tired immediately, and to Peter's disgust, she would wriggle her feet or move restlessly about, quite spoiling for him the day's outing. Maizie at last begged to be let ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... crust and began to nibble and, of course, did not see Puss; but when she reached the fish she gave it a pull and the tail hit ...
— Sandman's Goodnight Stories • Abbie Phillips Walker
... fifth day they made a more extended excursion towards the interior. It was now the season of midsummer, when the old males range up the banks of the streams: partly with the design of catching a few freshwater fish, partly to nibble at the sweet berries, but above all to meet the females, who just then, with their half-grown cubs, come coyly seaward to meet their old friends of the previous year, and introduce their offspring to their fathers, who up to this hour have not set ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... dare not follow after Too close. I try to keep in sight, Dreading his frown and worse his laughter. I steal out of the wood to light; I see the swift shoot from the rafter By the inn door: ere I alight I wait and hear the starlings wheeze And nibble like ducks: I wait his flight. He goes: I follow: no release Until he ceases. ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... If the boss grabber is on this ship, we should draw a new nibble from him." He appraised the green dress in the mirror again. His expression grew absent. It might be best, Trigger suspected, a trifle uneasily, to keep Major Quillan's thoughts turned away ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... up. Let him make all the advances, d'ye see? Teach him bridge, on the square, at night. Let him win a little—just enough to keep him satisfied with himself—you'll see. Wait till he draws his wad, and we'll throw the gaff in him to the queen's taste. If he won't nibble at one hook try another. But, I say, Billy, you'll have to furnish the scads for bait, in case he don't? rise to something easy. I know you're flush ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... making any special scandal. But if I did this thing, do you not think that my experience of married life has given me the most ineradicable prejudices against women as daily companions? Am I not persuaded that they all bicker and chatter and nibble sweetmeats alike—absolutely alike? Or ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... have to go far for the flies on which he lived, whilst the mouse had a very dangerous journey to take to his favourite feeding place. This was a barley field a short distance from the banyan tree, where he loved to nibble the full ears, running up the stalks to get at them. The mouse was the only one of the four creatures in the banyan tree who did not feed on others; for, like the rest of his family, he was a vegetarian, that is to say, he ate ...
— Hindu Tales from the Sanskrit • S. M. Mitra and Nancy Bell
... off the crescent of water biscuit he had been nibbling and, hungered, made ready to nibble the biscuit in ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... once; it must have been eaten little by little in many mouthfuls. The same amount of nibbling would have sawn a circle round the nut, and so, dividing the shell in two, would have let the kernel out bodily—a plan more to our fancy; but the mouse is a nibbler, and he preferred to nibble, nibble, nibble. Hard by one afternoon, as the cows were lazily swishing their tails coming home to milking, and the shadow of the thick hedge had already caused the anemones in the grass to close their petals, there was a slight rustling sound. Out into the ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... never above half spirit enough for a big thing. You nibble at it instead of swallowing it whole,—and then, of course, folks see that you're only nibbling. I thought that Melmotte ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... a certain mirage would now and then rise on the desert of the future, in which she seemed to see herself honored for her surprising attainments. And so the poor child, with her soul's hunger and her illusions of self-flattery, began to nibble at this thick-rinded fruit of the tree of knowledge, filling her vacant hours with Latin, geometry, and the forms of the syllogism, and feeling a gleam of triumph now and then that her understanding was quite equal to these peculiarly ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... underneath. The June-bug has wing covers, too, but it never keeps its best wings tucked in. They are always hanging out in a crumpled way. These bugs eat the leaves of the trees, and their children, little, fat, white grubs with horny heads, nibble, as they crawl around under the surface of the earth, the tender roots of the ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... few and hungry ones, ma'am, on an island more barren than Ithaca; no shady coverts, no young ash shoots to nibble, no turnip fields to break into and spoil . . . Jove's is the better ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... heads and ears, the picture of dejection. A mouthful of water was all I dare drink, and there remained less than a pint in the water-skin. Almost stupefied, exhausted, and despondent, I lay down beside a tiny bush, at whose dry twigs the famished horses were now trying to nibble, and sank into a state ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... take me if I don't [think](59) but what she has [finished](60) it herself, and dat's de fact. My nose always sniffs like a terrier's; 'tis in de cupboard, her Hollands;—so, here goes to nibble. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... other respects equal those distinguished men in their ability and virtue, nevertheless we must, like initiating priests of the gods and torchbearers of wisdom, attempt as far as possible to imitate and nibble at their practice. Then, again, if anyone thinks it a small and unimportant matter to govern the tongue, another point I promised to touch on, he is very far from the reality. For silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech. And that is, I think, the reason why the ancients ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... that I must have been down very many days," he remarked. "I had my day's dinner with me, so I just took a little nibble of food for breakfast, and another for dinner, and a little more for supper. It seemed to me that I stopped five or six hours between each meal, and then I lay down and went to sleep, and when I awoke I thought it was morning, and that the people would be coming ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... absurdly high bids in the belief that the auctioneer is up to some profitable little game. Mr. Alfred Burton himself becomes at a stroke a famous author just by merely writing what he sees and seeing true. (But wouldn't his readers also need a nibble at the bean?) Finally falling from grace as the effect of this food of the gods wears off, he accepts a directorship of the new mind-food company, "Menatogen," which brings him untold wealth. Quite innocent fooling which yet leaves one with the impression that our popular authors let themselves ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 28, 1914 • Various
... genuine British denseness, whenever he recollects that there are such people as Strauss, Bishop Colenso, and the men of the "Essays and Reviews" prowling around the preserve where the ill-kept Thirty-Nine Articles still find a little short grass to nibble. When we read the last three verses of "Gold Hair," we set him down for a High-Church bigot: the English discussions upon points of exegesis and theology appear to him threatening to prove the Christian faith false, but for his part he still sees reasons to suppose ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... took the Country Mouse to see was the kitchen cupboard of the house where he lived. There, on the lowest shelf, behind some stone jars, stood a big paper bag of brown sugar. The little City Mouse gnawed a hole in the bag and invited his friend to nibble for himself. ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... that the proper minute of time was missed. Should I, then, have mistaken Job for another? The hind has a contracted womb, and would not be able to bring forth her young, if I did not send a dragon to her at the right second, to nibble at her womb and soften it, for then she can bear. Were the dragon to come a second before or after the right time, the hind would perish. It hath never happened that I missed the right second. Should I, then, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... to know him, and turned about and walked by us, sometimes stroaking Clover's shaggy Mane. I felte a little ashamed; for Dick had sett me on the Poney just as I was, my Gown somewhat too shorte for riding: however, I drewe up my Feet and let Clover nibble a little Grasse, and then got rounde to the neare Side, our new Companion stille between us. He offered me some wild Flowers, and askt me theire Names; and when I tolde them, he sayd I knew more than he did, though he accounted himselfe a prettie fayre Botaniste: and we went on thus, talking ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... here who grieves she loves me, And she too must be fighting me for ever With her dim ravenous unsated mind.... Ay, Hallgerd, there's that in her which desires Men to fight on for ever because she lives: When she took form she did it like a hunger To nibble earth's lip away until the sea Poured down the darkness. Why then should I sail Upon a voyage that can end but here? She means that I shall fight until I die: Why must she be put off by whittled years, When none can die until his ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... praised his 'Debats.' Hein! if I didn't lead him along! Thread by thread, I began to net my man. I launched my four-horse phrases, and the F- sharp arguments, and all the rest of the cursed stuff. Everybody listened; and I saw a man who had July as plain as day on his mustache, just ready to nibble at a 'Movement.' Well, I don't know how it was, but I unluckily let fall the word 'blockhead.' Thunder! you should have seen my gray hat, my dynastic hat (shocking bad hat, anyhow), who got the bit in his teeth and was furiously angry. I put on my grand air—you know—and said to him: 'Ah, ca! ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... certainly does not flourish at Agath. It's odd, the only time I was seriously ill, and really wanted hospitality, I found it not. To-day we picked off several fine pieces of gum from the tholh. Many of the trees had their branches lopped off, first for allowing the goats to nibble the green leaves, and afterwards to use ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... glistening leaves; And sweeter still its fragrance that we breathe On throwing wide our lattice to the morn. Sweet to see thrushes bright-eyed speckle-bosomed, Search dew-grey lawns with keen inspective glance; And rabbits nimbly nibble tender grasses, Or pause when startled at each other's shade. And when the orchard boughs bend low with fruit, With joy we watch the mounded harvest wains Glide amid singing hedgerows smoothly by. 'Tis fair to watch hung pale in milky azure Mist slowly closing into wandering cloud ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... some green grass they found and stuck it through the wires for the colts to pull out of their hands and nibble. Mule colts seemed even more tame than horse colts, and the children each "chose" a colt and named it, although the colts ran around in such a lively way that it was difficult sometimes to keep them ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... mortuis. Anyhow when they began to seek fresh fields and pastures new, being fed up with old rat—or rather not able to get fed up enough, they would be jolly well on the look out, and glad enough to take nibble even at an Englishman! (He! He!) So I argued, and put good old rat in drawer and did slopes. On Monday, Mr. Spensonly went early from office, feeling feverish; and when I called, as in duty bound, ...
— 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
... faculty of acquisition, we happened to pay for the amiable weakness less in some connections than in others. The point was that we moved so oddly and consistently—as it was our only form of consistency—over our limited pasture, never straying to nibble in the strange or the steep places. What was the matter with us under this spell, and what the moral might have been for our case, are issues of small moment, after all, in face of the fact of our ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... see? Teach him bridge, on the square, at night. Let him win a little—just enough to keep him satisfied with himself—you'll see. Wait till he draws his wad, and we'll throw the gaff in him to the queen's taste. If he won't nibble at one hook try another. But, I say, Billy, you'll have to furnish the scads for bait, in case he don't? rise to something easy. I know you're flush from that ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... straw hat, he ripped out the thread, and taking the pin with which his sister had fastened the feather, he made a hook out of it and tied the thread to it. He searched for some worms, and soon, he began to angle. He tried again and again, but not a nibble could he get. At last luck favored him, and soon he had three fishes. Remembering the matches which his mother had put into the tin-covered pail, he decided to start a fire and cook his fish, adding a little salty water for seasoning. ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... worthies empty a twenty cup samovar with no appearance of surfeit. So much hot liquid inside generally sets them into a perspiration. Nothing but loaf sugar is used, and there is a very common practice of holding a lump in one hand and following a sip of the unsweetened tea with a nibble at the sugar. When several persons are engaged in this rasping process a curious ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... labor. It could not be from the want of assiduity or perseverance; for he would sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long and heavy as a Tartar's lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even though he should not be encouraged by a single nibble. He would carry a fowling-piece on his shoulder for hours together, trudging through woods and swamps, and up hill and down dale, to shoot a few squirrels or wild pigeons. He would never refuse to assist a neighbor even in the roughest toil, and was a foremost ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... hard pressed in the chase, hid himself beneath the large leaves of a Vine. The huntsmen, in their haste, overshot the place of his concealment. Supposing all danger to have passed, the Hart began to nibble the tendrils of the Vine. One of the huntsmen, attracted by the rustling of the leaves, looked back, and seeing the Hart, shot an arrow from his bow and struck it. The Hart, at the point of death, groaned: "I am rightly served, for I should ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... to himself, as he crouched there, and now softly picked a leaf to nibble, and feel suggestions of taking a powder in a spoonful of black-currant jelly, so strong was the flavour in the leaf. "Very rum," he thought. "One's wide-awake, and the next moment ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... while they nibble at the chocolate. Suddenly Pelle says: "Bodil, she's a child-seducer! She enticed Hans Peter away from Stone Farm—and he ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... have nothing to do with fish—it's all confounded superstition." So they cast in their hooks, "Sutherland's best," and talk about Harper's Ferry and "old Brown" until one of the party "thinks he has a nibble" and begs for silence, which at once supervenes out of respect for the momentous interests hanging in the balance. When the excitement is over the frivolous Bagby takes advantage of the relief from suspense to make an exasperating pun, after the manner of a newspaper man, and "Billy ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... garden hedge, and skirting the town, makes his way along the river. And there, hidden among the willows and green alders and rustling sedge, he spends the morning; and when in the heat of the day the fish refuse to nibble, he takes his hunk of bread out of his pocket and lies on his back among the rushes, while lazy dreams flit across his consciousness as the light summer clouds rock mistily ...
— A Warwickshire Lad - The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare • George Madden Martin
... choose to conceal her scorn. Lady Clara was very much afraid of her. Those timid little thoughts, which would come out, and frisk and gambol with pretty graceful antics, and advance confidingly at the sound of Jack Belsize's jolly voice, and nibble crumbs out of his hand, shrank away before Ethel, severe nymph with the bright eyes, and hid themselves under the thickets and in the shade. Who has not overheard a simple couple of girls, or of lovers possibly, pouring out their little hearts, laughing at ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... saddest of us all. Look at yonder thoroughbred colt grazing peacefully in the paddock: if you had turned him out a month ago he would have galloped and fretted himself to death; but now that the grass is sweet and health-giving, he is content to nibble the young shoots all day long. What a lovely, satin-like coat he has, now that his winter garments are put off! There is a picture of health and symmetry! He has just reached the interesting age of four ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... heat, and more fishing. At least thirty large fish were caught this morning, also an infant shark, a grandchild who had wandered forth to nibble, and met an untimely grave. We have seen several alacrans or scorpions on board, but these are said not to be poisonous. The ship is the perfection of cleanness. No disagreeable odour affects the olfactory nerves, in which it has a singular advantage over all packets. This, and having it all to ourselves, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... all points of interest, to the pond, the poorhouse, and the cemetery; you know how the courtship progresses, the long drives in the country, the idling along untravelled roads and woodland ways, the moonlight nights and misty meadows; you know when your stops to nibble by the wayside will not be noticed, and you alone know when it is time to get the young couple home; you know, alas! when the courtship—blissful period of loitering for you—is ended and when the marriage is made, by the tighter rein, the sharper word, and the ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... hours pass heavily after a life such as mine has been, and since the bronco blundering into a badger-hole fell and broke my leg the surgeon who rode forty miles to set it said that if I was to work at harvest I must not move before—and the harvest is already near. So I nibble the pen and look around the long match-boarded hall, waiting for the inspiration which is strangely slow in coming, while my wife, who was Grace Carrington, smiles over her sewing and suggests that it is high ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... soul. She lingered in her dressing, even in those days, falling into reveries from which Catherine gently and deferentially aroused her; and Uncle Tom would be carving the beefsteak and Aunt Mary pouring the coffee when she finally arrived in the dining room to nibble at one of Bridget's unforgettable rolls or hot biscuits. Uncle Tom had his joke, and at quarter-past eight precisely he would kiss Aunt Mary and walk to the corner to wait for the ambling horse-car that was to take him to the bank. Sometimes ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that it was fully a hundred feet down to the water and the water would natchelly be tolerable deep; so I let all my line run off the reel, a hundred and sixty feet of it; and I fished and fished and fished—and didn't get a strike, let alone a nibble. Yet I could look over and see all these hungry trouts down below looking up with expectant looks in their eyes—I could see their eyes—and jumping round regardless; and yet not a bite! So I changed bait—changed from live bait to dead bait, and back ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... familiar to her chamber—an intruder for which she would never permit Fanny to lay a trap—came rattling amongst the links of her locket-chain, her one ring, and another trinket or two on the toilet-table, to nibble a bit of biscuit laid ready for it, she looked up, recalled momentarily to the real. Then she said half aloud, as if deprecating the accusation of some unseen and unheard monitor, "I am not cherishing love dreams; I am only thinking because I cannot ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... supper. The guests break the bread into the mast and scoop the mixture out with their fingers, transferring it to their mouths with the dexterity of Chinese manipulating a pair of chop-sticks; now and then they take a nibble at the piece of cheese or the onion, and they finish up by consuming the pumpkin butter. The groom doesn't appear among the guests; he is under the special care of several female relations in another ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... "and my teeth are weak—how can I gnaw so much? No! no! I will nibble your strings as long as my teeth last, and afterwards do my best for the others. To preserve dependents by sacrificing oneself is nowhere enjoined by wise moralists; ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... upwards and caught it, and, being unusually powerful in the arms, drew himself up and got astride of it just as the bear reached the spot. But bruin was not to be baulked so easily. He was a black bear and a good climber. Finding that he could not at his utmost stretch obtain a nibble at Jack's toes, he rushed at the trunk of the tree and began to ascend rapidly. Jack at once moved towards the end of the branch, intending to drop to the ground, recover his gun and run for it; but the ...
— Fort Desolation - Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land • R.M. Ballantyne
... get very particular about the sort and shape of the bait. Some men have taken to fishing wholly with pickles, but with very unsatisfactory results. The fish nibble, but are seldom landed apparently. And just a little bit out are fish that never have gotten a suggestion of a ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... Grand View Trail, and our pack-mules and burros following, while we occupy the rear of the procession. We stop for noon lunch in one of the side canyons where is a spring of clear water. We take off the packs from the animals, and let them nibble away at the rich grama and gallinas grasses that flourish ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... frequent in the forest slopes, being ideal places of rendezvous for merrymakers on horse or foot. Picnics of all sorts and sizes, from the little impromptu gatherings of half-a-dozen congenial young souls (always an even number, please), who ride off into the romantic shades to nibble biscuits and make tea, to the dainty repasts provided by a hospitable lady, whose official hut overlooks the Ferozepore Nullah, and who, in turn, overlooks her cook, to the ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... that one big one stand up on his hind legs and nibble a bun just like a squirrel!" said a man watching the antics of the white rats and mice among Mr. Capper's buns. If this man had only known it, squirrels and rats belong to the same family, that called "rodents," only a squirrel has a much larger tail than ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... on his quest for assistance the riderless horse, which had begun to nibble grass by the roadside, lifted his head with a snort that brought the lad to a sudden halt. Why not make use of this animal if he could catch it? Certainly his mission could be accomplished more quickly on horseback than on foot. He started gently toward ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... we'll do." Plump down in the meadow grass, Stella and Minna, With their round yellow hats, Like cheeses, Beside them. Drop, Drop, Daisy petals. "One I love, Two I love, Three I love I say..." The ground is peppered with daisy petals, And the little girls nibble the golden centres, And play ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... for the wretched waiters on solicitors' favours, and that is, that the men who have never had to work their way seldom rise to eminence or to any position but respectable mediocrity. They never knew hope, and will never know what it is to despair, or to nibble the short herbage of the common ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... Caterpillar, or by his more familiar name Glummie, had been killed. Then his master, Toadie Todson, with whom he at least had a lazy time, was killed in a sand slide. And now he spent all his days at work for Stingy, who was a very exacting master. If he so much as stopped to nibble a little from a tender green birch leaf, Stingy would fly at him and bid him go to ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... young goats to the well-known Pastures. They were wandering through lonely wastes and cropping The grasses, when a tree heavy with many berries—never seen before—met their eyes. At once, as they were able to reach the low branches, they began To pull off the leaves with many a nibble, and to pluck the tender Growth. Its bitterness attracts. The shepherd, not knowing this, Was meanwhile singing on the soft grass and telling the story of his loves to the woods. But when the evening star, rising, warned ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... to have failed him. To the Colonel's direct inquiry regarding the slight nibble of an English syndicate—(that syndicate which some months later made the Colonel's fortune and with which Fitz had buoyed up his hopes) the broker had only an evasive answer. The Colonel noticed the altered tone and thought he ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... there was no path at all, but this did not seem to worry Whisker. He went along anyhow, now and then stopping to nibble at some green leaves, and again turning to one side ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island • Laura Lee Hope
... lost much time by the way," he added, eyeing my reeking steed. "What a slap-up charger that mare would make! Here, you boy, take her into the shed there, and throw a sack or two over her, wash out her mouth, and give her a lock of hay to nibble; but don't go to let her drink, unless you want my cane about your shoulders—do ye hear? Now, sir, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... 'do you think I'm a fool? If I place the Crimson Diamond in any safe-deposit vault in New York, somebody will steal it, sooner or later.' Then she would nibble a sprig of catnip and peer cunningly at me. I loathed the odor of catnip and she knew it. I also loathed cats. This also she knew, and of course surrounded herself with a dozen. Poor old lady! One day she was found ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... match-woman selling matches on a freezing night in the streets than be dead. Nothing nonsensical ever held me so tightly or kept me so interested. I suppose really I am full of that very same formless faith on which you rely. But with me it's not only shapeless but intangible.... I nibble at religion. I am immensely attracted. I stand in the doorway. Only when they come out to persuade me to come in I am like a shy child and I go away. The temples beguile me and the music, but not the men. I feel I want to join it and they say 'join us.' They are—like ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... The tempter had the answer ready,—there was only one thing he could do,—run away with the magic thing and be a medicine-man, as his father had been, only he would be a much more powerful and cunning one. Sly tempter! Poor Pio! He had only meant to nibble, and here ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... open. There was a queer brass knocker on this, and the lower part fastened with an old-fashioned latch. The little courtyard looked tidy, and there was a great row of sweet clover along the fence, but now and then the goats would nibble ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... flagon of honest wine. The bait varies when the financier or promoter sets out to catch a capitalist, just as it does when one sets out to catch a mouse, and yet the two mammals are much alike—timid, one foot at a time, nosing about to find out if any of his friends have had a nibble; scared at the least disturbing echo—then the fat, toothsome cheese looms up (Breen's Madeira this time), and in ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... choose to keep company with them; but whether it be because their forms are coarser, their manners less refined, and their pedigree not so long, or whether it be because they sometimes have a fancy to nibble off the ears of their neighbours, or, when their appetite is uncommonly sharp, make a meal of their Norman cousins, we ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... turning over stones, the fact is given (s. 76), on the evidence of Alvarez, whose observations Brehm thinks quite trustworthy. For the cases of the old male baboons attacking the dogs, see s. 79; and with respect to the eagle, s. 56.) Social animals perform many little services for each other: horses nibble, and cows lick each other, on any spot which itches: monkeys search each other for external parasites; and Brehm states that after a troop of the Cercopithecus griseo-viridis has rushed through a thorny brake, each monkey stretches itself on a branch, and another monkey sitting by, "conscientiously" ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... left on floor where they may be stepped on; or where mice may nibble them; or next the stovepipe or chimney; or thrown down before the last spark ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... lids he watched the rat. For some minutes it stayed motionless. Tom never moved a muscle. Then the rat crept stealthily forward, and, with many half retreats, at last started in to nibble at the rope to get the cheese. Soon another rat came ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... time she pastured on dreams and fancies. Her emotions were not starved, but they were kept down and only allowed to nibble. She thought often of the man who had been kind to her, and sometimes she wished that he had kissed her. It would have been something to remember. Often, if she closed her eyes, she could almost cheat herself into believing him there close beside her, his brown gaze upon ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... thought we'd cut out that old green line of pretending. I ain't going to nibble, so just stop casting it at me. I mean ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... reaching an inn, where we enjoyed simply the best breakfast I ever tasted, or at all events the best I have tasted in Natal. The mules were also unharnessed, and after taking, each, a good roll on the damp grass, turned out in the drizzling rain for a rest and a nibble until their more substantial repast was ready. The rain cleared up from time to time, but an occasional heavy shower warned us that the weather was still sulky. It was in much better heart and spirits, however, that we made a second start about eleven ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... cunning of them were carrying the corn into their private holes, profiting by the confusion to make ample provision for themselves. No one passed the quince confection of Orleans without saluting it with one nibble, and oftener with two. It was like a Roman carnival. In short, anyone with a sharp ear might have heard the frizzling frying-pans, the cries and clamours of the kitchens, the crackling of their furnaces, the noise of the turnspits, the creaking of baskets, the haste of ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... old gentleman in a red nightcap and flowered dressing-gown, with slippered feet, and spectacles on nose, entered the hall, followed by another in black, apparently his clerk. Two other persons also came in, and took their seats at the table, while the clerk began to nibble his pen ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... The apples are for any one who may pass by when they are ripe. He wants to give apples to everybody. Animals often nibble the bark, or break down his young trees. It takes long for them to grow. But he ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... diminished. He intended to buy something very big and sensible: a knight's sword or a cross-bow; perhaps even—but this thought seemed like an evil temptation—the ginger-cake covered with almonds, which was exhibited in the booth of a Delft confectioner. He and Bessie could surely nibble for weeks upon this giant cake, if they were economical, and economy is an admirable virtue. Something must at any rate be spared for "little brothers,"—[A kind of griddle or pancake.]—the nice spiced cakes which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... hunger became more intense, till finally she began to cut some twigs and nibble on them, but they were hard and bitter, and after chewing on them for a few minutes she threw them away. She tried the leaves; they ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... party at Anglers' Bend. At first the four floats were watched with an intensity of regard that should surely have had some effect in luring fishes to the surface; but as the minutes dragged by and not a fish seemed inclined even to nibble, the solemn silence which had brooded on the quartet was broken by sundry fidgetings and wrigglings and suppressed remarks on the variableness of fish and the slowness of fishing. Men enjoy the sport, because they can light their ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... gate-house and the road, and the space between is a pasture for sheep, which also browse in the inner court, and shelter themselves in the dungeons and state apartments of the castle. Goats would be fitter occupants, because they would climb to the tops of the crumbling towers, and nibble the weeds and shrubbery that grow there. The first part of the castle which we reach is called Caesar's Tower, being the oldest portion of the ruins, and still very stalwart and massive, and built of red freestone, like all the rest. Caesar's Tower being on the right, Leicester's ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... command and the pack-camel rose, moved a few paces on its noiseless feet, swaying from side to side as though to readjust its load, whisked its miserable tail, and stretching out its long neck began to nibble the ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... acquaintance. By the way, the deuce a bit of cake has come to hand, which hath an inauspicious look at first; but I comfort myself that that Mysterious Service hath the property of Sacramental Bread, which mice cannot nibble, nor ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... does not feel the desire for food—or sleep either for that matter. Perhaps, during a lull, it may occur to him that he has not eaten since yesterday, and he may pull out a bit of biscuit or chocolate from his pocket, just to nibble. Or he may remember that he has had no sleep for twenty-four hours—so he just drops down and sleeps for ten minutes while there is time. But generally, matters of ordinary routine drop out of a man's ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... their trained ponies to nibble at the scanty bunch grass, the two came straight forward with extended hands and cordial "How, colah!" on their lips, one of them adding, in agency English, "Want talk chief. Indian poor. Heap sick." (And here he clasped his ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... enough for a bed, but he kept on making hay and storing it away just for fun. Then came cold weather and all the green things died. There was no food for Little Chief. He hunted and hunted, but there was nothing. Then because he was so hungry he began to nibble at his hay. It tasted good, very good indeed. It tasted almost as good as the fresh green things. Little Chief's heart gave a great leap. He had food in plenty! He had nothing to worry about, for his hay would last ...
— Mother West Wind "Where" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... a successful fisherman one must have a great deal of patience, so though he didn't get a bite right away as he had expected to, he wasn't the least bit discouraged. He kept very quiet and fished and fished, patiently waiting for a foolish trout to take his hook. But he didn't get so much as a nibble. "Either the trout have lost their appetite or they have grown very wise," muttered Farmer Brown's boy, as after a long time he moved on ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess
... "Why should I nibble round the unpalatable morsel which has to be swallowed?" The recantation had seemed to himself to be almost base, and he had been ashamed of it. "But," says he, "farewell to all true, upright, honest policy. You could hardly believe what treachery there is in those who ought to be our ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... war between the horses and cattle on one side, and sheep on the other. Though it cannot be said that the meek sheep did any fighting. They never stampeded because they had to drink from streams where cows and horses had watered, nor did they refuse to nibble grass left by the ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... didn't git a nibble," he laughed. "I hardly 'lowed you would. The water is too low and clear. I've ketched 'em with my hand under the rocks in such weather ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... varieties of peripatetic tricksters, higher than these, and lower, who act their parts tolerably well, but seldom with an absolutely illusive effect. I knew at once, raw Yankee as I was, that they were humbugs, almost without an exception,—rats that nibble at the honest bread and cheese of the community, and grow fat by their petty pilferings,—yet often gave them what they asked, and privately owned myself a simpleton. There is a decorum which restrains you ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and narcotic. An orgy in cans and bottles, a bacchanalian revel: a cupboard full of indigestion, joy, forgetfulness and katzenjammer. Oh, my suffering palate, to have to leave it all without one sniff, one sip, one nibble!" ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... broke in. "Don't think of such a thing. I wonder if we couldn't buy him off," he added, after a moment's musing. "I should think that he might be induced to go away. There is one thing in support of this; he has had a taste of success, or rather a nibble at ambition, and he may, even now, be thinking of going to a city. Suppose you go over and see him—offer him five ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... very willingly agreed, and next morning the two friends drove a flock of sheep on to the downs. The sheep at once began to nibble, the dog sat with his tongue out, panting, and the Knave and Fool lay down on their backs, and covered their faces with their hats to ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... ate, there I sat not able to more than nibble because I was making up my mind to do something that scared me to death to think about. That gaunt, craggy man in a shabby gray coat, cut ante-bellum wise, with a cravat that wound itself around his collar, snowy and dainty, but on the same lines as the coat and evidently of rural manufacture ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... this thing, do you not think that my experience of married life has given me the most ineradicable prejudices against women as daily companions? Am I not persuaded that they all bicker and chatter and nibble sweetmeats alike—absolutely alike? Or if ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... thereby he might be remembered. A peach—a blushing, rich-flavored fruit, nestling in the trellis work on the garden-wall, hidden beneath its long, green leaves,—this little vegetable production, that a dormouse would nibble up without a thought, was sufficient to recall to the memory of this great monarch the mournful shade of the last ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the hospital. The Sunshine Nurse inspected the cakes and approved them. She was so particular she even took a tiny nibble of one and said: "Sugar, flour, egg and shortening—all right Mickey, those can't hurt her. And how ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... farmers near by tethered his cow on the school grounds during the summer. One of the girls gave a workable solution for this problem. This was it: the boys should come back in relays all summer long and keep the grass so short that no cow could get a nibble from their new lawn. This ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... day we went out together, Sol and I, morning and afternoon. Bright, warm, open winter days, so soon as the spin he loved was finished, I slid off him, slipped the bit from his mouth (leaving head-stall hanging about his neck), and left him free to nibble the juicy green grasses of some woodland glade and, between nibble times, to spin me yarns of his experiences. For the subtle sympathy that existed between us—sprung of our trust in one another and sublimated in the heat of our mutual ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... air of the noblest patronage, lying on his frozen fleece, and licking all his face and feet, to restore his warmth to him. Then fighting Tom jumped up at once, and made a little butt at Watch, as if nothing had ever ailed him, and then set off to a shallow place, and looked for something to nibble at. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... stummack daan to that it ud noa daat feel better. It ud be pratty sewer to freat a bit but Sam ud tak noa noatice wol th' next day, an when he went to luk at it, if he fan th' breead an waiter untouched he'd leeav it agean. Abaht th' third day he says they generally begin to nibble a bit, an as sooin as he saw that he used to give 'em a bit o' sop or summat, but he took gooid care net to give 'em too mich. Bi th' end oth wick they wor cured, an' he used to wesh 'em an cooam 'em, an tee a bit a blue ribbon raand ther neck, an' tak 'em hooam, an' when ther mistresses ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... the room. And, indeed, I was much confused as to the management of the stick and amber mouth-piece with which I had been presented. With a cigar I am as much at home as any man in the City. I can nibble off the end of it, and smoke it to the last ash, when I am three parts asleep. But I had never before been invited to regale myself with such an instrument as this. What was I to do with that huge yellow ball? So I watched my new ...
— George Walker At Suez • Anthony Trollope
... a piece of cassava bread, I brought you, as you thought you would like to taste it. My old West Indian patient keeps me well supplied. I fancy to nibble it as I drive about in my cabriolet, or whatever they call this French ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... they were forced into it. She had dressed a wound for him, and had got to talking with him. I was able to treat him to some cigarettes, and also gave him a cake of chocolate on the sly; because that's really against orders, you know. But he promised to nibble it in secret, and not ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... the stone is felt the blades should be opened very widely, slightly withdrawn, and then pushed in again, the lower one, if possible, being insinuated under the stone. The blades must be made fairly to grasp and contain the stone in their hollow, for if they only nibble at the end of an oval stone, extraction is impossible. Extraction should then be performed slowly, with alternate wrigglings of the forceps from side to side, so as gradually to dilate, not to tear, the prostate, and the operator must remember ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... envious, nibble at the successes of other men, with vermin teeth and venomous tongue. Those people who can never praise anything whole-heartedly come by their cautious censure from an uneasy doubt of their own deserving. ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... fabula narratur. Perchance the mousey bantlings of my insignificant brain may nibble away the cords of prejudice and exclusiveness now encircling many highly respectable British lions. Be not angry with me therefore, if in the character of a damned but good-natured friend, I venture on occasions to ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... mouthful of water was all I dare drink, and there remained less than a pint in the water-skin. Almost stupefied, exhausted, and despondent, I lay down beside a tiny bush, at whose dry twigs the famished horses were now trying to nibble, and sank into a state of half ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... no Brunhilde, 'n' I up 'n' told the minister so to his face. 'Who is she anyhow?' I says, flat 'n' plain, for Lord knows 'f he'd found a rich relation I wanted my old flannels for cleanin' cloths hereafter. But he 'xplained 's Felicia Hemans got Brunhilde out o' a book—the Nibble suthin' 'r other. 'Oh, well,' I says, 'if you c'n be suited with namin' your family after rats 'n' mice I guess you c'n leave me out,' I says, 'n' I kind o' backed off so 's to try 'n' set him a-goin', but he stood still, 'n' o' course no true Christian c'n ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... need it. Try to nibble a few crumbs of this rusk," O'Reilly advised. "I've been thinking hard since you told me how 'Chuff' 'phoned to 'Pete,' and took you for Kit. As for the voice that called 'Come in', the wall being thin, a man in the room close by might think the knock was at his door. You're almost surely ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... red squirrels. Once I fell asleep in my cradle, suspended five or six feet from the ground, while Uncheedah was some distance away, gathering birch bark for a canoe. A squirrel had found it convenient to come upon the bow of my cradle and nibble his hickory nut, until he awoke me by dropping the crumbs of his meal. My disapproval of his intrusion was so decided that he had to take a sudden and quick flight to another bough, and from there he began to pour out his wrath upon me, while I continued my objections to his presence so audibly ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... made the unseen singer seem for the moment a hundred yards nearer than he really was. At length, right leisurely, they crept in sight—Cornwallis first, with his piebald face; then, as the old horse would dip his head to nibble at the green blades under his nose, short glimpses of Burl, though for awhile no further down than his enormous coon-skin cap, made, it is said, of the biggest raccoon that was ever trapped, treed, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... good a plan, my lord, that I think we had better extend it, and let a few of the rest have a parting nibble.' ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... whether come From vallies where the pipe is never dumb; 200 Or from your swelling downs, where sweet air stirs Blue hare-bells lightly, and where prickly furze Buds lavish gold; or ye, whose precious charge Nibble their fill at ocean's very marge, Whose mellow reeds are touch'd with sounds forlorn By the dim echoes of old Triton's horn: Mothers and wives! who day by day prepare The scrip, with needments, for the ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... over the point, making it look afterwards as if a herd had passed. Then she took a sip of water by a rock, crossed to my side of the point, and took a sip there; then to the end of the point, and another sip; then back to the first place. A nibble of grass, and she waded far out from shore to sip there; then back, with a nod to a lily pad, and a sip nearer the brook. Finally she meandered a long way up the shore out of sight, and when I picked up the paddle to go, she came back again. Truly a Wandergeist ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... feet high, one is a thick, solid mat; when it reaches an altitude of six to eight feet, it is an impenetrable thicket; except, that is, when it happens to be in a pasture. Horses and cattle find such scanty pickings in the fields, that they nibble every green thing, even oak leaves, and so they clear the brush as high as they can reach. When therefore it is fifteen feet high, there is a thick roof the animals are not able to reach, and one may ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... tameness, it must be hungry. "Poor little thing," said Agnes, "I wish I had something to give you." She took a few almonds from her pocket and went gently along towards the mouse and put it close by its side. The mouse began to nibble, and soon finished it. Agnes then put down two or three more, and left the mouse to eat its Christmas dinner. I think you would have enjoyed seeing the mouse eating the almonds. I hope you will always be kind ...
— The Pearl Box - Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People • "A Pastor"
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