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More "Owl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... half-seen, half-guessed, as if a wisp of wood mist had broken loose and was floating about. Once a fox, somewhere in the utter silence of the forest depths, barked a hoarse, sharp, malicious sound; and once, hoarser still and very hollowly, a great horned owl hooted with disconcerting suddenness. (The scream of a rabbit followed these two, but whether fox or owl had been in at that killing the wolverine never knew.) Twice a wood-hare turning now to match the whiteness ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... moon drifted behind a cloud, the sea darkened, something huge and shadowy lumbered down to the water and splashed heavily away, the cat owl hooted. A mist drooped trailing fingers over the water as the ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... droves of cattle with their drivers, passing through the streets of the city. Some of the men have a way of leading the cattle by a peculiar call, a wild, pensive hoot, quite musical, prolong'd, indescribable, sounding something between the cooing of a pigeon and the hoot of an owl. I like to stand and look at the sight of one of these immense droves—a little way off—(as the dust is great.) There are always men on horseback, cracking their whips and shouting—the cattle low—some obstinate ox or steer attempts to escape—then a lively scene—the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... shining, columned marble here. The Latin put the Mongol horde to flight, And Mussulmans prayed eastward morn and night. The owl and vulture of dark wing and drear Are fluttering like black banners overhead In cities where the ...
— Sonnets from the Crimea • Adam Mickiewicz
... the deaf for the cause of mankind? The owl hoots at noon that the eagle is blind! We ask not your reasons,—'t were wasting our time,— Our life is a ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of Nature strung out in a wild, sweet forest song. Jinnie had backed against the wall as she played, and when out of her soul came the twitter of the morning birds, the babbling of the brook on its way to the sea, the scream of the owl in a high woodland tree, Lafe turned to watch her, and from that moment until she dropped exhausted into a chair, he did not take ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... about losing the Roma and getting canned by the boss," explained a fisherman who was passing by. "Boris is sorer than a boiled owl at being run on the rocks by ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... perfort'ajxo, -i. oval : ovalo, ovoforma. oven : forno. overall : kitelo, supervesto. overcoat : palto. overlook : esplori, pardoni, malatenti. overseer : laborestro, kontrolisto, vokto. overtake : kuratingi. overturn : renversi. owe : sxuldi. owing to : pro, kauxze de. owl : strigo, gufo. own : propra; posedi; konfesi. ox ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... which stage their questions became so searching as to completely confound me; and as no one likes being confounded, and it is especially regrettable when a parent is placed in such a position, I brought the course to an abrupt end by assuming that owl-like air of wisdom peculiar to infallibility in a corner, and telling them that they were too young to understand these things for the present; and they, having a touching faith in the truth of every word I say, gave three contented little purrs of assent, and proposed that we should play ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... There 's some stratagem In the confining all our courtiers To their several wards: I must have part of it; My intelligence will freeze else. List, again! It may be 'twas the melancholy bird, Best friend of silence and of solitariness, The owl, that ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... thoroughly bad man; he had been turned out of the provincial treasury and had had to stand his trial on more than one occasion; he was often of use to my father.... They used to "do business" together. In appearance he was a round, podgy figure; and his face was like a fox's with a nose like an owl's. His eyes were brown, bright, also like a fox's, and he was always moving them, those eyes, to right and to left, and he twitched his nose, too, as though he were sniffing the air. He wore shoes without ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the several statues of Discoboli, or Quoit-throwers—was found by the present writer in the Montreal Museum of Natural History; it was, however, banished from public view, to a room where were all manner of skins, plants, snakes, insects, &c., and in the middle of these, an old man, stuffing an owl. The dialogue—perhaps true, perhaps imaginary, perhaps a little of one and a little of the other—between the writer and this old man gave rise to the lines ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... toss. It fell upon the ermine muff of a furbelowed old dowager, who was skating bravely about, notwithstanding her seventy years. "I will see how I look," she said, with a simpering smile; and behold, there was a puffy white owl in the mirror. Down fell the glass, but Rosamond caught and ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... the night, the solemn silence and lonely situation of the place, conspired with the occasion of his coming and the dismal images of his fancy, to produce a real rapture of gloomy expectation... The clock struck twelve, the owl screeched from the ruined battlement, the door was opened by the sexton, who, by the light of a glimmering taper, conducted the despairing ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... after walking nearly a mile without seeing a sign of him, they began to fear that their search would prove fruitless. They kept calling, "Matamore! Matamore!" but there was no reply, nothing to be heard but the howling of the large black dog, at intervals now, or the scream of an owl, disturbed by the light of the lantern. At last de Sigognac, with his penetrating vision, thought he could make out a recumbent figure at the foot of a tree, a little way off from the road, and they all pressed forward to the ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... the land of Nod When the rascal was alone Like an owl in an ivy tod Built a city as ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... Annie's hand with his cold nose, but hurrying away, though she would fain have patted him.—Success to your search, Fidelity!—And there sits a great yellow cat upon a window-sill, a very corpulent and comfortable cat, gazing at this transitory world with owl's eyes, and making pithy comments, doubtless, or what appear such, to the silly beast.—Oh, sage puss, make room for me beside you, and we will be a ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the doctor; "birds are the warmest blooded, and of these the duck and hen are the most remarkable; their temperature is above 110 degrees, while that of the owl is not more than 104 degrees; then come the mammalia, men; the temperature of Englishmen is generally ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... the side of a cliff, and was dark and gloomy as a tomb. The only sounds they heard were the hooting of an owl and the wails and howls of wandering ghosts; the only sights were the corpses of men hanging on trees or lying stark upon the ground. Sir Trevisan turned his horse's head and would fain have fled, but the Red ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... found a songbird," he went on smiling, "but I was afraid he didn't know the difference between that and an owl—I see he did. I'll be glad to have you for a pupil. Royal can bring you to ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... Monte-a-l'assaut and Chante-en-hiver. He gave them further orders, and continued on his way, bearing to the left and skirting the edges of a little wood which lies between Grandchamp and Larre. There Cadoudal halted, imitated, three separate times in succession, the cry of an owl, and was presently surrounded by his ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... but wouldn't it!" said Ferguson. "Then we'd have seen scientific work. Intellect—just pure intellect—away up on the upper levels, dontchuknow. Archy is all right, and it don't become anybody to belittle him, I can tell you. But his gift is only just eyesight, sharp as an owl's, as near as I can make it out just a grand natural animal talent, no more, no less, and prime as far as it goes, but no intellect in it, and for awfulness and marvelousness no more to be compared ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... cried, running wildly up and down till his dressing-gown flapped round him like the wings of an owl. "So he has made nearly three thousand dollars! I have always had a bad opinion of that man; now I know what he is. He is a rascal—a double dealer. He never advanced the seven thousand either; his whole shop is not ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... belts of pinewood, where the wild cat howled and the owl screeched, and across broad stretches of fenland and moor, where the silence was only broken by the booming cry of the bittern or the fluttering of wild duck far above our heads. The road was in parts overgrown with brambles, and was so deeply rutted and so studded with sharp and dangerous hollows, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... damnation!" he exclaimed, as he strode away after the encounter; "'tis the ugliest yet. A yellow-faced girl brat, with eyes like an owl's in an ivy-bush, and with a voice like a very peacocks. Another mawking, plain slut that no man ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... upbraid thee with thy foolish speeches, yet would I thou hadst not spoken so lightly of the good people. But take courage, goodman; thou art never the worse yet for thy mishap, I trow; so tell me what has befallen thee, and ha' done snoring there, like an owl in a barn riggin'." ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... to a few telling strokes their wearers are overwhelmed with the honors of publicity; with which, on the other hand, nothing is more likely to interfere than the possession of a countenance neatly classical. Daumier had only to give M. Thiers the face of a clever owl, and the trick was played. Of course skill was needed to individualize the symbol, but that is what caricaturists propose to themselves. Of how well he succeeded the admirable plate of the lively little minister in ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... (patience under trial by pain); and Temperance (patience under trial by pleasure). With respect to these four virtues, the attributes of Athena are all distinct. In her prudence, or sight in darkness, she is "Glaukopis," "owl-eyed."* In her justice, which is the dominant virtue, she wears two robes, one of light, and one of darkness; the robe of light, saffron color, or the color of the daybreak, falls to her feet, covering her wholly with favor and love,—the calm of the sky in blessing; ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... plan the king put it into execution. Satan incensed with indignation stood unterrified. My friend seeing me in need offered his services. James being weary with his journey sat down on the wall. The owl hid in the tree hooted ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... of the same mind as he. They acted as if they would rather make the nights ring with their music than do anything else. And Johnnie Green said one evening, when he heard Solomon Owl hooting over in the hemlock woods, that it was lucky there weren't as many Owls as there were ...
— The Tale of Chirpy Cricket • Arthur Scott Bailey
... half-ruined Genoese tower, on the shore of the Bay of Ajaccio, with this inscription on a tarnished panel over its hermetically closed door: 'Paganetti Agency, Maritime Company, Bureau of Information.' The bureau is kept by fat gray lizards in company with a screech-owl. As for the railroads, I noticed that all the excellent Corsicans to whom I mentioned them, replied with cunning smiles, disconnected phrases, full of mystery; and not until this morning did I obtain the exceedingly farcical ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... to the Western sea, they did— To a land all covered with trees; And they bought an owl, and a useful cart, And a pound of rice, and a cranberry-tart, And a hive of silvery bees; And they bought a pig, and some green jackdaws, And a lovely monkey with lollipop paws, And forty bottles of ring-bo-ree, And no end of Stilton cheese. Far and ...
— The Best Nonsense Verses • Various
... might have been told to bring from a far distant country before he could hope to win the hand of some lovely princess. Among them was a clock under a glass case, consisting of a golden tree, with a peacock, an owl, a cock, a mouse, a stream of running water, and many other things. At each hour the peacock unfolds his tail, the cock crows, the owl rolls his goggle eyes, and the mouse runs out of its hole. But far more interesting than ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... be buried pretty deep. Your grandfather was a trifle eccentric, I judge, but not a fool by any manner of means. The situation appeals to my imagination, Jack. I like the idea of it,— the lost treasure and the whole business. Lord, what a salad that is! Cheer up, comrade! You’re as grim as an owl!” ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... clink of glass and rattle of crushed ice, while next the church, on old Mrs. Pancoast's portico, with its tall Corinthian columns—Mr. Pancoast was the archdeacon of the Noah's ark church—one or two old grandmothers and a grave old owl of a family doctor were sure to fill the rocking-chairs. As for Richard Horn's marble steps they were never free from stray young couples who flew in to rest on Malachi's chairs and cushions. Sometimes only one bird and her mate would be tucked away in the shadow of ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... perpetual fountain of "hot water". Among less important controversies may be mentioned that with Grainger, the translator of Tibullus. Grainger replied in a pamphlet; and in the next number of the Review we find him threatened with "castigation", as an "owl that has broken ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of light in all the sad landscape, and the abyss seems waiting at my feet to swallow me up with everything that I cherish. It is no use saying to this demon of the darkness that I know he is a humbug, a mere Dismal Jemmy of the brain, who sits there croaking like a night owl or a tenth-rate journalist. My Dismal Jemmy is not to be exorcised by argument. He can only be driven out by a ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... Crumpetty Tree Came the Stork, the Duck, and the Owl; The Snail and the Bumblebee, The Frog and the Fimble Fowl (The Fimble Fowl, with a corkscrew leg); And all of them said, "We humbly beg We may build our homes on your lovely Hat,— Mr. Quangle Wangle, grant us that! Mr. Quangle ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... Jeekie went the round of the camp to see that everyone was at his post. Then he did what most people would have thought a very curious and strange thing, namely climbed the fence and vanished into the forest, where presently a sound was heard as of an owl hooting. ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... proved that they were some distance beyond where they had entered the woody labyrinth on the previous day, but their guide was at no loss, and after about an hour's walking the black set up a long, low, penetrating, owl-like cry, which before long was answered from apparently a great distance, but which must have been close at hand, for before a couple of minutes had elapsed a pair of the pigmies glided into sight, turned and led the way back from ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... them, from my post of observation behind the kitchen door, and he did appear so ridiculous with his gold eye-glasses, looking as solemn as an owl, and glancing around with that expression of supercilious curiosity, as though he expected to find us all wild Indians, or ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... twig snapped under Hugh's foot and the boys stopped short, their breath coming fast. The hoot of an owl directly overhead startled them violently and unconsciously they clutched each other's arm. The giant trees loomed black and forbidding in the darkness, and it was easy to imagine all kinds of things lurking behind to spring out ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene
... shafts having been similarly prepared, the Indian was ready to feather them. A feather he called pu nee. In fledging arrows Ishi used eagle, buzzard, hawk or flicker feathers. Owl feathers Indians seem to avoid, thinking they bring bad luck. By preference he took them from the wings, but did not hesitate to use tail feathers if reduced to it. With us ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... resulted to him individually, if not to the world at large, from the discovery? It seems to me quite incredible that any man of common understanding could have discovered what Mr. Kissam says he did, and yet have subsequently acted so like a baby—so like an owl—as Mr. Kissam admits that he did. By-the-way, who is Mr. Kissam? and is not the whole paragraph in the 'Courier and Enquirer' a fabrication got up to 'make a talk'? It must be confessed that it has an amazingly moon-hoaxy-air. Very little ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... he called to her; 'tell me if you see a squirrel stirring, or the eyes of an owl ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... waving hands, without any spiritual act of deprecation or supplication. In such a sense and such alone they worship the sun and moon (but not the stars), the forest, and the sea. The wolf, the black snake, the owl, and several other beasts and birds have the word kamoi, god, attached to them, as the wolf is the "howling god," the owl "the bird of the gods," a black snake the "raven god;" but none of these things are now "worshipped," wolf-worship having quite ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... with weary gait, His day's hot task hath ended in the west; The owl (Night's herald) shrieks; 'tis very late, The sheep are gone to fold, the birds to nest, The cool black clouds that shadow heaven's light Do summon us to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various
... higher up the walls. They clung around the necks of the big stone idols and shrieked as they skipped along the battlements, while Mowgli, dancing in the summerhouse, put his eye to the screenwork and hooted owl-fashion between his front teeth, to show ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... the birds, their solemn, dignified faces, their flight so soft and broad-winged. And then to the birds his brother had shot, fluffy, dust-coloured, dead heaps of softness with faces absurdly asleep. It was a queer thing, a dead owl. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... pluck'd up the latch, And with his knee the door he opens wide. The dove sleeps fast that this night-owl will catch: Thus treason works ere traitors be espied. Who sees the lurking serpent steps aside; But she, sound sleeping, fearing no such thing, Lies at the mercy ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... (Dr. 12b and 13b) he is represented apparently with distended abdomen. A distinguishing article of his costume is the stiff feather collar, which is worn only by this god, his companion, the war-god F, and by his animal symbol, the owl, which will both be discussed farther on. His head ornament varies in the Dresden Codex; in the first portion of the manuscript, relating in part to pregnancy and child-birth (see the pictures of women on p. 16, et ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas
... in the air, The evening gnats; and there The owl opes broad his eyes and wings to sail For prey; the bat wakes; and the shell-less snail Comes forth, ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... better ask me. Well, her name is Musetta Her surname is Temptation. As to her vocation: Like a rose in the breezes, So she changes lover for lover without number. And like the spiteful screech owl, A bird that's most rapacious, The food that most she favors is the heart! Her food the heart is; Thus have I now none left! (to his friends, concealing his agitation) So pass me ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... a hooting Owl, A Hawk, a Canary, an old Marsh-Fowl, One day all meet together To hold a caucus and settle the fate Of a certain bird (without a mate), A ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... come to pass. For the strain had been too great, and at nine o'clock on a working day morning, steady, reliable, dependable, automatic Andrew Daney having imbibed Dutch courage in lieu of Nature's own brand, was, for the first time in his life, jingled to an extent comparable to that of a boiled owl. ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... woodpeckers, bluebirds and their like, the mahogany-like dense heart-wood rots, leaving hollow passages in the trunk and larger limbs, and often in the smaller ones, too. Here are homes for all who seek complete seclusion from storms and enemies. The little screech owl loves these hollows more than those of any other tree, and sings his little quavering night song from the dusky tops, while his mate and her eggs are safely hidden in the blackness of the hollow below. The downy woodpecker bores his nest hole in the softened heart-wood of upright ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... complete accordance with all directions, and then went off to finish her Latin translation. It was a particularly stiff piece of Virgil, and she puzzled over it so long that she utterly forgot all about the chickens, and it was only the call of an owl waking up on the ivy-covered ash tree at the bottom of the garden that reminded her of her ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... the moving stream, And fling, as its ripples gently flow, A burnished length of wavy beam In an eel-like, spiral line below; The winds are whist, and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid. And naught is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill Of the gauze-winged katy-did, And the plaint of the wailing whippoorwill, Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings, Ever a note of wail and woe, Till the morning ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... without eating, drinking, or sleeping. On the evening of the third day he was quite worn-out with fatigue, and stopping his horse in a field, got down to rest for a short time. Suddenly he heard cries, as of something in pain, and looking round saw an enormous owl tearing a hare with its claws. The prince laid hold of the first hard thing that came to his hand; he imagined it to be a stone, but it was really a skull, and aiming it at the owl, killed the bird with the first blow. The rescued hare ran up to him and gratefully licked ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... back of the head. For a moment I was so terrified that I nearly fell off the plank, as I thought that the lion had sprung on me from behind. Regaining my senses in a second or two, I realised that I had been hit by nothing more formidable than an owl, which had doubtless mistaken me for the branch of a tree—not a very alarming thing to happen in ordinary circumstances, I admit, but coming at the time it did, it almost paralysed me. The involuntary start which I could not ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... spruce-tops; but in this silence it fell upon the starving man's hearing with a distinctness that drew his muscles rigid and set his eyes staring about him in wild search. Just beyond the hanging pails a moose-bird hopped out upon the snow. It chirped hungrily, its big, owl-like eyes scrutinizing Dixon. The man stared back, fearing to move. Slowly he forced his right foot through the snow to the rear of his left, and as cautiously brought his left behind his right, working himself backward step ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... "r's" with unctuous joy And, preening, wonders whom he may annoy, Then imitates a hen, a water-fowl And next the "Be quick" of a white barn-owl. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... suddenly by the creaking of a door. It was an extraordinary thing at that hour. The whole house hold was asleep. Nothing could be heard save the footsteps of the watch-dogs on the sand, or their scratching at the foot of a tree in which an owl was screeching. An excellent opportunity to use his listening-tube! Upon putting it to his ear, M. Gardinois was assured that he had made no mistake. The sounds continued. One door was opened, then another. The bolt of the front door was ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... 'Cause why? You don't generally kill a little gopher or a little owl that's settin' up tendin' to his business, because you ain't scared of them. But you will go off of the trail to kill a rattler, a side-winder, because he's able to kill you if he takes a notion. Correct. Now ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... beard, a pair of piercing owl-like eyes and large bare feet, mark "Prophet" Kemp among the citizenry of Daytona Beach, Florida. The "Prophet", christened John Henry—as nearly as he can remember—is an 80 year old ex-slave whose remininiscences of the past, delight all those who can prevail ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... There waits a haven, pleasant, bright, and warm, And one to lead you thither from the storm And lurking dangers, yet you turn away, And, thinking to be your own protector, stray Into the open jaws of death: for, see! An owl is sitting in this very tree You thought safe shelter. Go now to your pen." And, followed by the clucking, clamorous hen, So like the human mother here again, Moaning because a strong, protecting arm Would shield her little ones from cold and harm, I carried ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Joseph with asses' ears. Such foolish Munchausenisms give to young girls a false idea of the opposite sex, relax their vigilance and imperil their virtue. From such ridiculous romances, solemnly approved by an owl-like priesthood, sprung that false code—so insulting to womankind—that a wife's honor is not committed to her own keeping, but to the tender care of every man with whom she comes in contact. When ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... me whether any Fringillidae or Sylviadae erect their feathers when frightened or enraged? (469/1. See "Expression of the Emotions," page 99.) I want to show that this expression is common to all or most of the families of birds. I know of this only in the fowl, swan, tropic-bird, owl, ruff and reeve, and cuckoo. I fancy that I remember having seen nestling birds erect their feathers greatly when looking into nests, as is said to be the case with young cuckoos. I should much like to know whether nestlings ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... a huge stuffed albatross, and just opposite was a small but exquisitely-carved Venetian cabinet adorned with grotesque heads of men and animals, and surmounted by a small square case in which was a beautifully-mounted specimen of the little spotted brown owl of Greece, the species so common among the ruins of the Acropolis. On the mantelpiece were a small bronze clock, a quaint Chinese teapot and a pair of delicately-flowered Sevres vases. On the table the engraved tooth of a sperm whale did duty as a paper-weight, a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... over a forest far away with slow sweep of its wings; another flew with exactly the same motion in the same direction and vanished. The birds twittered more and more loudly and busily in the thicket. An owl hooted not far off, and Laska, starting, stepped cautiously a few steps forward, and putting her head on one side, began to listen intently. Beyond the stream was heard the cuckoo. Twice she uttered her usual cuckoo call, and then gave ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... plains; for the armadillos were most abundant, and in the long grass it was impossible to see their holes. In addition to the armadillos, the ground is in many places honeycombed by the bischachas, which somewhat in size and appearance resemble rabbits, and by a little burrowing owl. ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... though the tigers which infest the jungle never attack a party, we might chance to see their glaring eyeballs; that even if men could be bribed to undertake to carry us, they would fall with us, or put us down and run away, for no better reason than that they caught sight of the "spectre bird" (the owl); and he adds, with a gallantry remarkable in a Mohammedan, that he should not care about Mr. Hayward, "but it would not do for the ladies." So we are apparently stuck fast, the chief cause for anxiety ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... they grew worse and worse; Downy had warned them of all the dangers which they ran in roaming so far from home, and told them of the cat that haunted the garden, and of the mousehunt, and the great white owl, but these bad mice paid no attention to what their kind good mother said ...
— Little Downy - The History of A Field-Mouse • Catharine Parr Traill
... in some provinces, elsewhere a doe. The Athene of the Acropolis is a serpent. Apollo is sometimes connected with the mouse. Along with these identifications of the gods with animals we may mention the animal emblems with which they are generally represented. The eagle is the bird of Zeus, the owl of Athene, the peacock of Hera, the dove of Aphrodite. In this connection we cannot help thinking of the sacred animals of the Egyptian nomes; and the question may be asked whether such animals must be taken to be in Greece also the signs ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... echoed with the songs of jubilant multitudes welcoming them home from victory are buried under the drifting desert sands; in the ruins of thy holy temples the statues of the gods lie prone in the dust, and the owl rears her brood on thy crumbling altars, and hoots to the moon where once rose the solemn chant of priests and the sweet hymns of the Sacred Virgins; the jackal barks where once the mightiest monarchs of earth gave judgment ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... woods and rocks around—the fire, throwing fitful gleams on the faces of the sleeping savages—and the Heer Antony, too, who so singularly, yet vaguely reminded him of the nightly visitant to the haunted house. Now and then he heard the cry of some animal from the forest; or the hooting of the owl; or the notes of the whip-poor-will, which seemed to abound among these solitudes; or the splash of a sturgeon, leaping out of the river, and falling back full length on its placid surface. He contrasted all this with his accustomed nest in the garret-room of the doctor's ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... too, and an old lame horse-twenty-five years of age—and chickens, and pigeons, and two lambs, and many other animals. But his favorite pets were Dab-Dab the duck, Jip the dog, Gub-Gub the baby pig, Polynesia the parrot, and the owl Too-Too. ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... ask Nan to play and sing now," said Daisy to her brother, who sat looking very much like an owl, as he gravely regarded the festive scene between ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... better buried in oblivion. You and your camera want to remind a fellow constantly of events that ought to be forgotten. But Frank, that must have been an owl you heard. I haven't caught any call for ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... Bison Herd Pheasant Snares Pheasant Skins Seized at Rangoon Deadfall Traps in Burma One Morning's Catch of Trout near Spokane The Cut-Worm The Gypsy Moth Downy Woodpecker Baltimore Oriole Nighthawk Purple Martin Bob-White Rose-Breasted Grosbeak Barn Owl Golden-Winged Woodpecker Kildeer Plover Jacksnipe A Food Supply of White-Tailed Deer White-Tailed Deer Notable Protectors of Wild Life: Madison Grant, Henry Fairfield Osborn, John F. Lacey, and William Dutcher Notable Protectors: Forbush, Pearson, Burnham, Napier Notable ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... with a windy glitter that was flung back by a neighboring tarn. The call of the curlew seemed more mournful, the crying of lapwing rose from the meadow land, and she started at a hollow hoot as an owl swept by on muffled wing. The night voices filled her with an eerie sensation—there was, she recollected, always something creepy about Crosbie Ghyll, and, for Millicent was superstitious, she shivered ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... and voluminous individual who had joined them sat down before Stuart and Jules and treated the two of them to an amiable grin, made all the more amiable and owl-like by those glasses. ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... and the stars are in the sky, Then the owl awakes and sings a plaintive song, While the crickets in the thickets sing the soothing lullaby, And the katydid ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... would enjoy his company, and every woman would adore him. He had not then published "Piccadilly"; perhaps he was writing it; while, like all the young men about the Foreign Office, he contributed to The Owl. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... thousand lamps. Odours of the woods floated on the air: the spicy fragrance of the firs; the breath of hidden banks of twin-flower. Muskrats swam noiselessly in the shadows, diving with a great commotion as the canoe ran upon them suddenly. A horned owl hooted from the branch of a dead pine-tree; far back in the forest a fox barked twice. The moon crept up behind the wall of trees and ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... felt the wound. Next Anger rushed, his eyes on fire. The moping Owl doth to the Moon complain. True Hope is swift and flies with swallow's wings. Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, as to be hated needs but to be seen. Speckled Vanity ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... into misfortunes, and suffer as much from trifling accidents as from real evils. I have known the shooting of a star spoil a night's rest; and have seen a man in love grow pale, and lose his appetite, upon the plucking of a merry-thought. A screech-owl at midnight has alarmed a family more than a band of robbers; nay, the voice of a cricket hath struck more terror than the roaring of a lion. There is nothing so inconsiderable, which may not appear ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... beauteous scenery. Seated in the cool of the evening under one of the noble trees on your shore, the only sounds I heard were the soft ripple of the water, and the late warbling of the redbreast—Yes, I forget the humming beetle as it rapidly passed, and the owl calling to its mate in the distant wood. How ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... out of my own pocket to see Godolphin's face when he reads my dispatch, and finds that he's got to honor bills for a hundred thousand pounds; it will be better than any comedy that ever was acted. How the pompous old owl will fret and fume! But he will have to find the money for all that. He can't begin the campaign by dishonoring bills of her majesty's general, or no one would trust us hereafter. You haven't seen my lord ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... seemed very faint, and it heaved and panted. By that time a conglomeration like a mass of writhing serpents was letting itself down the side of the den, and when it got to the bottom it shot out a head, made itself into the exact shape of an owl without wings, and began to fly about the place. ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... little boy cried: "Let me go—let me go!" For a scared—scared boy was he! But the Thunder growled from a black cloud: "No!" And the Wind roared: "Follow me!" And an old gray Owl from a treetop flew, Saying: "Who are you-oo? Who are you-oo?" And the little boy sobbed: "I'm lost away, And I want to go home where my parents stay!" Oh, the awful day When the little boy ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... night in Korea, he had been wakened by the yammering of a tigress. His terror for a moment had been primal, literally a simian's helpless quaking. Earlier still, he had heard a hoot-owl, and encountered through it, his first realization of phantom horrors; he knew then there was an Unseen, and nether acoustics; here was a key to ghostly doors. A mourning-dove had brought back in a swift passage ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... sketching portraits," said the Baronet. "I am a blind owl; I had misread you strangely. And yet remember this: a sprint is one thing, and to run all day another. For I still mistrust your constitution; the short nose, the hair and eyes of several complexions; no, they are diagnostic; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the grass, the tits playing on the branches of a silver birch silhouetted against the sky, the little blue butterflies chasing each other over the pink crab-apple bloom. He would follow the tapping of a woodpecker, and wait in the evening for the owl's cry to begin; and here, as elsewhere, to be with him was to ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... him tilted back in his chair in a debonnair manner beside his polished desk, the hint of a smile on his lips; and leaning close to him was a yellow, owl-like person whose eyes, as they turned to me, gave the impression of having stared for years into hard, artificial lights. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... her own head Megaera[1] takes A periwig of twisted snakes: Which in the nicest fashion curl'd, (Like toupees[2] of this upper world) With flower of sulphur powder'd well, That graceful on his shoulders fell; An adder of the sable kind In line direct hung down behind: The owl, the raven, and the bat, Clubb'd for a feather to his hat: His coat, a usurer's velvet pall, Bequeath'd to Pluto, corpse and all. But, loath his person to expose Bare, like a carcass pick'd by crows, A lawyer, o'er his hands and face Stuck artfully a parchment case. No new ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... was whispering this in my ear, his arm round me, my head resting on his shoulder, the cries of a bat, surprised by an owl, disturbed us. This death-cry struck me with such terror that Felipe carried me half-fainting to my bed. But don't be alarmed! Though this augury of evil still resounds in my soul, I am quite myself this morning. As soon as I was up, I went to Felipe, and, kneeling before him, ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... Tree, that stands beside the grave Of the Self-slaughter'd, to the misty Moon Calls the complaining Owl in Night's pale noon; And from a hut, far on the hill, to rave Is heard the angry Ban-Dog. With loud wave The rous'd and turbid River surges down, Swoln with the mountain-rains, and dimly shown Appals the Sense.—Yet see! from yonder cave, Her shelter in the recent, stormy showers, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... markings of very dark colour and white on the thorax, head, shoulders, and back wings next the body. The big eyes, quite the largest of any moth I remember, reminded me of owl eyes in the light. The antennae, dark, grey-brown on top, and white on the under side, turned back and drooped beside the costa, no doubt in the position they occupied ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Lescarbot calls it "La Baye des Iles:" and Charlevoix, "Baye de toutes les Isles." It was the bay, or rather the waters, that stretch along the shores of Halifax County, between Owl's ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... to our board. I was too sleepy to see much of you after your arrival last night. Mine eyes blinked like those of an owl. Kiss me, wife and daughter," he added, giving the ladies a salute that resounded through the room. "Have they told you yet about our poor ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... bark canoe, in which they crossed the Ohio, near the mouth of Licking, and having buried it, so as to secure it from the action of the sun, they advanced into the country and encamped at the distance of fifteen miles from the river. Here their father was alarmed by hearing an owl cry in a peculiar tone, which he declared boded death or captivity to themselves, if they continued their expedition—and announced his intention of returning without delay to the river. Both of his sons vehemently opposed this resolution, and at length prevailed upon ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... the image of an owl, I hurried to the cliffs of Donegal, And saw, creeping on the uneasy surge, Those ships that bring the woman grain and meal; They are five days from us. I hurried east, A grey owl flitting, flitting in the dew, And saw nine ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... ale; and I paid the scot. Towards midnight Sergeant Inch had so far forgot his rancour as to strike up his song of Robin and the Night Owl—'Robin,' I should explain, being the Earl of Essex, and the 'Night Owl' our own general, so nicknamed ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... and the wind blew louder, rushing amongst the branches of the old pines, and making them moan more and more sadly. The cries of strange weird birds were heard, probably the shrieks of the ill-omened screech-owl, and the place seemed more and more remote from all human sympathy. Genji could only helplessly repeat, "How could I have chosen such a retreat." While Ukon, quite dismayed, cried pitifully at his side. ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... of several spiders and of some larvae. The spider, it appears, is an "undescribed species of Erigone," and the larvae are probably lepidopterous. A small shrike was also secured as a specimen. We saw several species of gulls, a snowy owl—which by the way was very shy—a few lemmings, and the tracks ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... the winter-tam most all the animals in the wood he'll go white. Those hare, he'll get white just same color as the snow. Those picheu, those lynx, he'll get gray, almost white. The ptarmigan, he'll get white, too, so those owl won' see heem on the snow; an' the owl he'll get white, so nothing will see heem when he goes on the snow. Some tam up north the wolf he'll be white all over, an' some fox he'll also be white all same ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... a degree of loudness are found that enable him to recognize these sounds with unfailing accuracy, or at least 90 per cent. of the time, then other sounds can be added, such as aw (a with diaresis below), (a with breve) (as in hat), (i with macron) (as in ice), oo (as in cool), ow (as in owl). Using these sounds at different pitches, and with different intensities and distances, a sufficiently accurate estimate can be formed of the degree of his hearing power so far as his present ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... help me to remember the levers of the second order. It's my physiology class tonight, and I feel, as Tom would express it, like a 'boiled owl.'" ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... an embarrassing position? Anything, anywhere, any time, regardless of nature or location. Everybody's friend. Consultation at all hours. Suite 152, Owl Building, Brooklyn. ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... sagely, "is like any other sin, it's only sinful when it is. That's elementary sophistry, but I invented it, and I'm strong for it. Besides, we've got just twenty minutes now to get aboard the Owl—and I've got to beg, borrow, or buy transportation on it, because there wasn't a room left but the two I bought for you and me—and now Adele will have to ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... of the lake there is an island covered with trees and nut bushes; and amongst those trees stands a hollow oak-tree, which is the house of an owl who is called ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... smitten the heretics of our times, was never found fault with. How finely, how, clearly, has Hippolytus, Bishop of Porto pointed out beforehand the power of Antichrist, the times of Luther! They call him, therefore, "a most babyish writer, an owl." Cyprian, the delight and glory of Africa, that French critic Caussee, and the Centuriators of Magdeburg, have termed "stupid, God-forsaken corrupter of repentance." What harm has he done? He has written On Virgins, On the ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... home to my regular bed!" said Sue. "This tent is all right, but a owl might bite through it. You'd better ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... "Wisdom from the young owl!" laughed Amy. "Well, I don't suppose, after all, it is any of our business, or ever will be. The poor thing is now a captive and being borne away to the dungeon-keep. Whatever that is," she added, ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... he is!—"Hope the mother's doing well? My card":—eh? Grave as an owl! Look, there goes the donkey, lady to right and left, all ears for him—ha! ha! I must have another turn with your friend. "Mother lived, did she?" Dam funny fellow, all of the olden time! And a dinner, bachelor dinner, six of us, at my place, next week, say ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Kongros stood forth with all her pinnacles, and the winged figure of Poesy carved upon the eastern portal of her gate, and the squat figure of Avarice carved facing it upon the west; and the bat began to tire of going up and down her streets, and already the owl was home. And the dark lions went up out of the plain back to their caves again. Not as yet shone any dew upon the spider's snare nor came the sound of any insects stirring or bird of the day, and full allegiance all the valleys ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... in the elegance of simplicity, and Smilax extinguished our small fire of buttonwood. Leaning my back against a stalwart pine, I watched the shadows stealing through our avenue of trees. Somewhere above my head a whistling owl, one of those lovable little feathered cavaliers that showers his mate with unstinted adulation, fluttered and courted. Later the mournful call of a whooping crane ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... I was nearly gone. Just then a warrior came up. This was Red Owl's son, He ran up, put his gun to the volunteer's side and fired. The ball passed through the man and killed him. I had my arm around the waist of the man when the shot was fired, and the ball, after going through the ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... brother?" asked the old friar, in a high, wheezing voice. "Whence comest thou, and whither art thou going?" And he winked and blinked at stout Friar Tuck like an owl at the sun. ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... this species of Owl has been appropriately called, appears to be peculiar to America. They are quite scarce in the south, but above the Falls of the Ohio they increase in number, and are numerous in Virginia, Maryland, and all the eastern districts. ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... is quiet, give an owl's cry thrice, and a friend will bring him. He will warn the king against his Grand Constable; he will praise Tristan, applaud Olivier, and commend Messire Noel ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... these anxious periods of listening, she thought she detected the barking of old Hecla, but was not certain. Perhaps it was only the wind playing pranks upon her overwrought nerves, or the hooting of an owl. ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... Reaching the terrace, she went out and called softly, but there was no answer, nor could she hear any sound. The night was not cold now, but the breeze chilled her a little, and just then the melancholy cry of a screech owl pierced the air, and she ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... a red gown never trembled that way under a bed unless there was something living inside of it." When the witch-girl heard this her fright increased, so that, to make matters worse, she pulled her gown in under the bed, upon which Clara kneeled down, lifted the coverlet, and found the owl in its nest. Now she had to creep out weeping and howling, and promised to ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... Owl's Head,—a watering-place, terminating a point of land, six or seven miles from Thomaston. A long island shuts out the prospect of the sea. Hither coasters and fishing-smacks run in when a storm is anticipated. Two fat landlords, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... York City, the sort of places that get themselves called "quaint." No one else manages the affairs of young lovers (on paper) with quite so much of the airy spirit of young love. I can think of no one else who could write such a scene as that in The Owl Taxi, where the dead-wagon, on its way in the night to the vast cemetery in a New York suburb, is held up for the removal of a much-needed corpse. Such material is bizarre. The handling of it must be very deft or the result will be revolting; and yet the thing can be done. In the latter ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... the same, and that the deil's got into 'em," said Captain Gillespie gravely, wrinkling up his nose so much and nodding his head, and looking so like an old owl in the bright light of the moon which had rapidly risen, and was already shining with all the fulness and brilliancy it has in these southern latitudes, that it was as much as I could do to keep from bursting out laughing and so betraying ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... never got farther than Noah, at which stage their questions became so searching as to completely confound me; and as no one likes being confounded, and it is especially regrettable when a parent is placed in such a position, I brought the course to an abrupt end by assuming that owl-like air of wisdom peculiar to infallibility in a corner, and telling them that they were too young to understand these things for the present; and they, having a touching faith in the truth of every word I say, gave three contented little purrs of ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... among the branches of the trees on every hand during their descent of the western slope. Ravens croaked and called from the heart of the forest, and the owl flitted by on silent wing. Black birds with orange heads and throats and splashed with scarlet on their wings, greeted them at the foot of the mountain among the reeds which grew along the stream they were following. Deer broke from the willow copse and bounded ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... lost on the thick purple carpet under the amber light, all too brilliant for her. She had come from a world of darkness, owl-like she must blink before the blaze. Some one came forward to her, some one so kind and comforting, so easy and unsurprised that Maggie suddenly felt herself steadied as though a friend had put an arm around her. Before she had ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... creatures of sunlight seek their rest, a new realm of life awakens into being. The flaring colours and loud bustle of the day fade and are lost, and in their place come soft, gray tones and silence. The scarlet tanager seeks some hidden perch and soon from the same tree slips a silent, ghostly owl; the ruby of the hummingbird dies out as the gaudy flowers of day close their petals, and the gray wraiths of sphinx moths appear and sip nectar ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... the figure under the group, although horned, bears but slight resemblance to an owl; yet, comparing the marks on the tail with those of two of the birds on Plate XVIII* of the Manuscript Troano, I think ...
— Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices • Cyrus Thomas
... problem. "Some fellows have a gift for collecting Toby jugs. Everywhere they go they discover a Toby jug. I couldn't find one if I tried for a year. It's the same thing. At Cambridge they used to call me the Owl." ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... gave a faint giggle, as if he would like to join in if he only had the strength to do it. But his legs shook under him, and he felt a queer dizziness; so he could only hold on to Sancho, and blink at the light like a young owl. ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... no owl staring at me, either," he said to himself, as he caught the singular glow of what seemed like two balls of fire, just under the ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... Ambition-fired once on a day He took himself to flight, And in a castle all decay He nestled out of sight. "O why," said he, "should mind like mine "Midst gosling-flock be lost? "In learning I was meant to shine!" And up his bill he tossed. "I'll hide," said he, "and in the dark "I'll like an owl cry out ("In wisdom owls are birds of mark), "And none shall find me out!" And so from turret hooted he At all he saw and heard; Hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo! What melody! And what a silly bird! At length a Starling which had flown ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... Europe and in the Alps. But I will not weary you; but I really and truly think your last objection is not so strong as it looks at first. You never make an objection without doing me much good. Hurrah! a seed has just germinated after 21 1/2 hours in owl's stomach. This, according to ornithologists' calculation, would carry it God knows how many miles; but I think an owl really might go in storm in this time ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... along, was telling me more of her strange country, pointing out birds or flowers and naming them to me. "Now that," she said, pointing to a small grey owl who sat reflective on a floating log we were approaching—"that is a bird of omen; cover your face and look away, for it is not ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... collection of several spiders and of some larvae. The spider, it appears, is an "undescribed species of Erigone," and the larvae are probably lepidopterous. A small shrike was also secured as a specimen. We saw several species of gulls, a snowy owl—which by the way was very shy—a few lemmings, and the tracks of ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... take wing. These birds are the bane of sportsmen, and frequently put me into a passion, and obliged me to shoot them, (Adanson's Voyage to Senegal, 78). For the same intent the lesser birds of our climate seem to fly after a hawk, cuckoo, or owl, and scream to prevent their companions from being surprised by the general enemies of themselves, or ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... surface, which is naturally exposed to the light, being darker than the lower which is in shadow. When the caterpillar is large, the green area is often broken up by pale lines, longitudinal as on the larvae of many Owl Moths (Noctuidae) or oblique, as on the great caterpillars of most Hawk Moths (Sphingidae). Such an arrangement tends to make the insect less easily seen than were it to display a continuous area of the same colour. ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... observed in the open air. I have collected materials with indefatigable pertinacity. I have gathered glow-worms in the evening, and snails in the morning; I have seen the daisy close and open, I have heard the owl shriek at midnight, and hunted insects in the heat ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... have seen the goddess, descending from the Acropolis with an owl perched upon her helmet; on your head she was pouring out ambrosia, on ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... head of owl, Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl, Feathered and ruffled in every part, Skipper Ireson stood in the cart. Scores of women, old and young, Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue, Pushed and pulled up the rocky ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... awakened suddenly by the creaking of a door. It was an extraordinary thing at that hour. The whole house hold was asleep. Nothing could be heard save the footsteps of the watch-dogs on the sand, or their scratching at the foot of a tree in which an owl was screeching. An excellent opportunity to use his listening-tube! Upon putting it to his ear, M. Gardinois was assured that he had made no mistake. The sounds continued. One door was opened, then another. The bolt ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... forever must be filled. It is not by any amount of material splendor or prosperity, but only by moral greatness, by ideas, by works of imagination, that a race can conquer the future. No voice comes to us from the once mighty Assyria but the hoot of the owl that nests amid her crumbling palaces. Of Carthage, whose merchant-fleets once furled their sails in every port of the known world, nothing is left but the deeds of Hannibal. She lies dead on the shore of her once subject sea, and the wind ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... writes that even the Syracusans made no account of Gylippus, at the first sight mocking at his staff and long hair, as afterwards they found reason to blame his covetousness and meanness. The same author, however, adds that on Gylippus's first appearance, as it might have been at the sight of an owl abroad in the air, there was a general flocking together of men to serve in the war. And this is the truer saying of the two; for in the staff and the cloak they saw the badge and authority of Sparta, and crowded to him accordingly. And not only Thucydides affirms that the whole thing was ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the "paper of questions," "Why did Mr. Pickwick wear circular spectacles?" Was there any local weakness? The artist never forgot this direction. In the author of the Tittlebatian system, &c., the "circular spectacles" would impart a sort of wise and owl-like stare. It was, of course, due to Chapman, the publisher, and was ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... warrior turned in that direction, but ere he could fetch his light to bear upon the right spot, Ixtli sprung forth to the rescue, hooting like a frightened owl, as he dashed the light to earth, and, at the same time, deftly tripping ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... our own, were made. Maffitt, in command of the "Owl" crossed the Western Bar a night or two after the fall of Fort Fisher, and while our troops were evacuating Fort Caswell and other military stations along the river. Crossing the bar, and suspecting no danger, he continued on his way up to Smithville, where ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... from trouble—and I have no recollection of exchanging a word for more than an hour. We merely continued to pull sturdily against the downward rush of the stream, the deep silence of the night broken only by the dripping of uplifted blades, or the occasional far-off hooting of an owl upon the bank to our left. The pressure of the river's current was scarcely perceptible close against the shore, so we made fair progress. Yet it was hard work, neither of us being accustomed to such exercise, the heavy oars feeling awkward to the hand. The grim uncertainty of the future, ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... Having approved of the plan the king put it into execution. Satan incensed with indignation stood unterrified. My friend seeing me in need offered his services. James being weary with his journey sat down on the wall. The owl hid in the tree hooted ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... look like an owl! I thought it was nothing less than a stuffed owl coming in. Why can't you wear your hat? That would hide your crown and your ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... star, Lingering and listening, wander'd down the vale. There would he dream of graves, and corses pale, And ghosts that to the charnel-dungeon throng, And drag a length of clanking chain, and wail, Till silenced by the owl's terrific song, Or blast that shrieks by fits the shuddering ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... been scant time to tell you my life's story. We have had other cats to whip. Yes, I was a play-actor once, and played for great poets, for men whose names have never tickled your ears. But the owl-public would have none of me, and, owllike, hooted me off the boards. But I've had my revenge of them. I've played a devil's part on the devil's stage for thirty red years. ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... he acknowledges it!" roared the magician. "Wretch, dotard, owl, mole, miserable buzzard! I have no reason to tell thee now that thy form is monstrous, that children cry, that cowards turn pale, that teeming matrons shudder to behold it. It is not thy fault that thou art thus ungainly: but wherefore so blind? wherefore so ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... be the most valuable scouts we could have," said the young officer. "They would be more useful than aeroplanes in locating the enemy's gun-positions. A properly reliable owl would come back and say that a German patrol was out in the wheatfield at such a point and a machine-gun ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... soon as we got in Miss Howard told us to put books away; then she gave us the breeziest lecture and was as solemn as an owl. I couldn't imagine what was up. Susie Darrow was crying with her handkerchief to her nose, Kat looked as if she was sitting on pins and needles, and I really thought that Sadie Brooks and May Moor would eat us up, the way they actually ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... Chinamen, Malays, Seedee boys, and all them sort of animals. Laff? You should ha' seen me standing up in the boat, hollerin' at Sartoris, and laffin' so as I couldn't hardly keep me feet. 'Sartoris,' I says, 'when do the animals feed?' An' he looks over the rail, just like a stuffed owl in a glass case, and says nothing. I took a bottle from the boat's locker, and held it up. 'What wouldn't you give for a drop o' that!' I shouts. But he shook his fist, and said something disrespectful about port ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... Like an owl in an ivy bush; a simile for a meagre or weasel-faced man, with a large wig, or very ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... of the village began to come one by one to the spring. Joe Lake made friendly and joking remarks to each. And as each one passed on down the path he poised a biscuit in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, and with his head cocked sidewise like an owl he said, "Reckon I've got to get me a ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... uproar—tree-frogs, crickets, goat-suckers, and owls all joining to perform a deafening concert. One kind of goat- sucker kept repeating at intervals throughout the night a phrase similar to the Portuguese words, "Joao corta pao,"—"John, cut wood"— a phrase which forms the Brazilian name of the bird. An owl in one of the Genipapa trees muttered now and then a succession of syllables resembling the word "Murucututu." Sometimes the croaking and hooting of frogs and toads were so loud that we could not hear one another's voices within doors. Swarms of dragonflies appeared ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... himself at a soft, purring noise, a shadowy fluttering in the air. Graylock's animal flew past him, settled on its master's shoulder, turned to stare at Dasinger and Egavine. Dasinger looked at the yellow owl-eyes, the odd little tube of a mouth, continued to Egavine, "Ask him where the haul was ...
— The Star Hyacinths • James H. Schmitz
... Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breeds Along the pebbled shore of memory! Many old rotten-timber'd boats there be Upon thy vaporous bosom, magnified To goodly vessels; many a sail of pride, 20 And golden keel'd, is left unlaunch'd and dry. But wherefore this? What care, though owl did fly About the great Athenian admiral's mast? What care, though striding Alexander past The Indus with his Macedonian numbers? Though old Ulysses tortured from his slumbers The glutted Cyclops, what care?—Juliet ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... and motley family lived here in cages and hutches of all kinds, generally made out of old packing-cases. There was a large colony of white rats, two dormice named Paul and Silas, a jackdaw, rabbits, and a little yellow owl, not to mention the pigeons who fluttered in and out through the open door at will. They came whirling round Bridget now as she entered and settled on her shoulders and head, and pecked boldly at her shoes expecting to be fed. All the different little ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... heads waved many a poplar, many an elm tree, while close at hand the sacred water from the nymphs' own cave welled forth with murmurs musical. On shadowy boughs the burnt cicalas kept their chattering toil, far off the little owl cried in the thick thorn brake, the larks and finches were singing, the ring-dove moaned, the yellow bees were flitting about the springs. All breathed the scent of the opulent summer, of the season of fruits; pears at our feet and apples by our sides ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... it be and may it mean so; for never come you here but to stir in me anger or mourning. Ever were you the screech owl or the Osprey that boded ill when you spoke of Tristan; what ...
— The Romance Of Tristan And Iseult • M. Joseph Bedier
... our board. I was too sleepy to see much of you after your arrival last night. Mine eyes blinked like those of an owl. Kiss me, wife and daughter," he added, giving the ladies a salute that resounded through the room. "Have they told you yet about our ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... konturo, skizo. outrage : perfort'ajxo, -i. oval : ovalo, ovoforma. oven : forno. overall : kitelo, supervesto. overcoat : palto. overlook : esplori, pardoni, malatenti. overseer : laborestro, kontrolisto, vokto. overtake : kuratingi. overturn : renversi. owe : sxuldi. owing to : pro, kauxze de. owl : strigo, gufo. own : propra; posedi; konfesi. ox ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... the library yesterday with holly, and crowned plaster-of-Paris Sappho with laurels, and Mrs. Hope's picture with myrtle (i.e. box), and perched a great stuffed owl in an ivy bush on the top of a great screen which shades the sofa by the fire from the window at its back. I am excessively happy to be at home again, after my four months' absence at ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... exclaimed, as he strode away after the encounter; "'tis the ugliest yet. A yellow-faced girl brat, with eyes like an owl's in an ivy-bush, and with a voice like a very peacocks. Another mawking, plain slut that no man will ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... was there to help with the singin', as a matter of course, and he begun to git mightily interested in Babtist doctrines. Used to go home with 'em after church and talk about Greek and Hebrew words till the clock struck twelve. And one communion Sunday he got up solemn as a owl and marched out o' church jest before the bread and wine was passed. Made out like he warn't sure he'd been rightly babtized. The choir was mightily tickled at the idea o' gittin' shed o' the old pest, and Sam Crawford ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... Poiriers, that the four Chouan brothers were born to Pierre Cottereau and Jeanne Moyne. One of their ancestors, a misanthropical woodcutter, a morose peasant, kept himself aloof from the other peasants as the chat-huant (screech-owl) keeps aloof from the other birds; hence the name ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... back to the cab, and then that old joker comes out slowly. I hadn't noticed him inside. I hadn't expected to see anybody. It gave me a start. She says: 'My father—Mr Franklin.' He was staring at me like an owl. 'How do you do, sir?' says I. Both of them looked funny. It was as if something had happened to them on the way. Neither of them moved, and I stood by waiting. The captain showed himself on the poop; and I saw him at the side looking over, and then he disappeared; on the ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... boys then jumped and began beating up the sacks violently. But as suddenly, a pair of wings flapped up in their faces with a whirring sound, and a barn-owl began to screech madly as she rose and flew through a ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... "We're the owl and the pussy-cat who went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat, 'With plenty of honey and lots of money, wrapped up in a ten-pound note.' Some day when we've settled down in our Harlem flat, and I'm working hard, we'll look back on this and consider ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... the liquor, warmed ale; and I paid the scot. Towards midnight Sergeant Inch had so far forgot his rancour as to strike up his song of Robin and the Night Owl—'Robin,' I should explain, being the Earl of Essex, and the 'Night Owl' our own general, so nicknamed ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... niver stirs out o' Liver Lane, Paul's is stuck fast in Kidney Close, Kinyon's in Mookis Membrin Mews, and Hibbard's in Lung Passage. Look see! nixt time y' are out of sorts, stid o' consultin' three bats an' a n'owl at a guinea the piece, send direct to me, and I'll give y' all their opinions, and all their prescriptions, gratis. And deevilich dear ye'll find 'em at the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... along the line. Not a sign of life was visible. The tiny mounds in the villages of the prairie-dogs seemed blocked and frozen; even the trusty sentinel had "deserted post" and huddled with his fellows for warmth and shelter in the bowels of the earth. Fluttering owl and skulking coyote, too, had vanished from the face of nature. Timid antelope—fleetest coursers of the prairie—and stolid horned cattle had gone, none knew whither, nor cared to know until the "blizzard" had ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... does just as well for them as another: your cousin Sophy bothers me to build an Elizabethan pigsty, and wanted her poor mother to dance with the butler in the servants' hall last Christmas, when the fellow was as drunk as an owl: I hope it mayn't end in her figuring off herself with the footman; for Sophy is rather a pet of mine, and a right-down English girl after all. But, Frank, if you can't read in peace in the library, you surely could have a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... Jedge Owl 's so pompious on 'is limb, You'd s'pose dey was nobody roun' but him; He's afeard ef he was too polite You'd ax 'im whar he spent de night. But he ain't by 'isself in dat, in dat— But he ain't ...
— Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... discrimination still lives in tepee of the Cree and Eskimo topik. The North is full of rivers, the cold bottle is always at your disposal, and generally, if you are any shot at all, you can get the hot bird. But this son of a thousand earls, or of something else, wouldn't eat owl when owl was served, though he would eat crow. Now, eating crow is to most a distasteful task, and the guides questioned the Englishman regarding the gastronomic line he drew. "Aw!" replied he, "No fellow eats owl, you know. ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... recognize these sounds with unfailing accuracy, or at least 90 per cent. of the time, then other sounds can be added, such as aw (a with diaresis below), (a with breve) (as in hat), (i with macron) (as in ice), oo (as in cool), ow (as in owl). Using these sounds at different pitches, and with different intensities and distances, a sufficiently accurate estimate can be formed of the degree of his hearing power so far as his present needs ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... northern territories of Canada—from the basin of Lake Winnipeg, with its white pelicans, to the Arctic circle—swarm with birds, wild swans, geese, ducks, plovers, grouse, cranes, eagles, owls of several kinds—especially the great snowy eagle-owl—red-breasted thrushes, black and white snow-buntings, scarlet grosbeaks (the female green and grey), crested jays, and ravens "of a beautiful glossy black, richly tinged with purple", but smaller in size than ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... "damsels bright," and "maidens mild?" That celebrated town was no other than our modern Leslie; and, though we cannot say that that once favoured haunt of the satyrs of merrymaking has escaped the dull blight that comes from the sleepy eye of the owl of modern wisdom, we have good authority for asserting that long after James celebrated the place for its unrivalled festivities, the character of the inhabitants was kept for many an after-day; and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... night there was plenty of danger. There was Mr. Owl to be watched out for, and other night prowlers. In fact, little Mr. Squirrel didn't feel safe on the ground a minute, and so he kept to the trees as much as possible. Of course, when the branches of one tree reached ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... as drunk as a piper, drunk as an owl, drunk as David's sow, drunk as a lord, fuddled as an ape, merry as a grig, happy ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... owl in one of the trees began to call. I knew what it was for Mustagan had taught me. At first Roddy said it was ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... cautiously all about him, inserted the key in the lock, an owl hooted dismally almost immediately above our heads. I caught my breath sharply, for it might be a signal; but, looking upward, I saw a great black shape float slantingly from the tree beyond the studio into the coppice on the right which hemmed in the Gables. Silently the owl ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... coat of white drill with frogging across the front such as Chinese mess boys wear; and a battered, rimless straw hat. He drew near the table with weary feet, hesitatingly and dazed, as though he had lost his way, peering about like an owl thrust into the light of ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... forgot him," laughed Elliott. "What a queer bird you are, Braith, squatting over there as silent as a stuffed owl!" ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... of very dark colour and white on the thorax, head, shoulders, and back wings next the body. The big eyes, quite the largest of any moth I remember, reminded me of owl eyes in the light. The antennae, dark, grey-brown on top, and white on the under side, turned back and drooped beside the costa, no doubt in the position they occupied ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... "The Appeal to the Dead," that Barres, like an owl perched on a cypress in a graveyard, ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... the progression of the mother's song to her babe, other than declaring lullabies to be about as old as babies, a statement which recalls to mind an old story, entitled "The Owl's Advice to an ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... America. Amethyst Hummingbird West Indies, Cent, and S. America. Resplendent Trogon, several species Central America. Cock-of-the-Rock South America. Macaw South America. Toucan South America. Emu Australia. Sun-Bird East Indies. Owl All unprotected regions. Kingfisher All unprotected regions. Jabiru Stork South America. Albatross All unprotected regions. Tern, all species All unprotected regions. Gull, all ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... glory, shines less brightly through the murky shadows of the century than he that made a nobler conquest of himself. The haughty empires one did rear have long since crumbled into dust; the wild goat browses in their deserted capitals, the lizard sleeps upon their broken thrones, and the owl hoots from their forgotten altars and ruined fanes; but the philosophy of the other lives on from age to age, to point the folly of such mad rainbow-chasing as that of him who thought to ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... bound, and the fire he had stolen from heaven lay imbedded in the flints of his rock. For so costly was the mould in which Uncle Jack and the Anti-Publisher Society had contrived to cast this exposition of Human Error that every bookseller shied at its very sight, as an owl blinks at daylight, or human error at truth. In vain Squills and I, before we left London, had carried a gigantic specimen of the Magnum Opus into the back parlors of firms the most opulent and adventurous. Publisher after publisher started, as if we had held a blunderbuss to his ear. All ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... three of us then, unincumbered, walked to Stamford. Here Grady lived, and he wished us to go to a barn, and said he would bring us something to eat; but McGuire and I thought it best to go back to New York as soon as possible; so we got aboard a freight train for Norwalk and took the Owl, a midnight train, from there. Going to New York we sat in different parts of the car and did not speak. The train stopped for some reason or other at One Hundred and Twentieth street, and there McGuire and I ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... dignified poise, on a pair of wide, flat shoulders. His chest was broad and swelling, his limbs straight, muscular, and strong. His eyes were large, round, and blue. When his mind was in a state of repose and his countenance at rest, they had a solemn, owl-like expression. But when in an excited, observant mood, they were keen and searching; and human orbs surely never expressed more rollicking fun than did his, in his hours of recreation. He had a habit of darting them around a wide circle ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... the Sheriff, The egg-nogs gethered him in; And Shelby's boy Leviticus Was, New Year's, tight as sin; And along in March the Golyers Got so drunk that a fresh-biled owl Would 'a' looked 'longside o' them two young men, Like ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... ears at intervals, while the unfamiliar music of rustling branches and whispering leaves filled the souls of these two little travellers with a feeling of awe and vague alarm. Nevertheless they kept moving on, on; now stumbling over a fallen branch, again shrinking in terror as a great soft owl flitted slowly by, or hooted solemnly right above ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... chapel last night I riz up and hoorayed till my wife shut the windows. She said the neighbors all thought I was loony, anyhow, and I needn't prove it to 'em. He, he! But Elkanah ain't got any funny bone. He's as solemn as a stuffed owl, and he'll—Well, I'm goin' to put MY oar in. I'm parish committee, too, I cal'late, and I've got somethin' to say, even if I wa'n't christened Daniels. ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Smith instructions to stay where he was unless he heard the hooting of an owl. If the call came once he was to advance very quietly; if twice, as fast as he could cover ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... may toss and turn; His leaden lids shall he ne'er unclose So long as that magical taper glows. Life and treasures shall he command Who knoweth the charm of the Glorious Hand! But of black cat's gall let him aye have care, And of screech-owl's venomous ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to the place where was the Owl of Cwm Cawlwyd. "Owl of Cwm Cawlwyd, here is an embassy from Arthur; knowest thou aught of Mabon the son of Modron, who was taken after three nights from his mother?" "If I knew I would tell you. When first I came hither, the wide valley you see was a wooded ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... spelled out his message, telling that he suspected that at least two Germans were trailing him. And at the end he signalled a request that if he had understood, Greene should wait a half minute and then imitate an owl's cry. He chose an owl because he had heard one or two earlier in the night. And he added that if he got the signal he would keep on heading for the monoplane. He suggested nothing to Greene; the rest was decidedly up to the aviator. Frank had ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... Creatures derive their Sight from this Original, who, besides his being the great Director of Opticks, is the surest Test whether Eyes be of the same Species with that of an Eagle, or that of an Owl: The one he emboldens with a manly Assurance to look, speak, act or plead before the Faces of a numerous Assembly; the other he dazzles out of Countenance into a sheepish Dejectedness. The Sun-Proof Eye dares lead up a Dance in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... clear daylight to make them. More than once Miss Charity started back in fright, and Miss Hope, who was stronger, shook so with nervousness that she found it difficult to walk. Betty, too, was much overwrought, and it is probable that if either a jack rabbit or a white owl had crossed the path of the three there would have been instant flight. However, they saw nothing more alarming than their own shadows and a few harmless little insects that the glow of ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... tree was full of giant birds. Every now and then, one would sweep through, with a great noise. But, except an occasional chirp, sounding like a shrill pipe in a great organ, they made no noise. All at once an owl began to hoot. He thought he was singing. As soon as he began, other birds replied, making rare game of him. To their astonishment, the children found they could understand every word they sang. And what they said was ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... myriads of wooings that are carried on in the fastnesses of his green woods, sounded a long, low, guttural groan that rose to a blood-curdling shriek, from the branches just above the head of the moon-mad man and girl. For an instrument he used the throat of an enraged old hoot-owl, perturbed by the intrusion of the noise of the distant hunt and the low-voiced conversation ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... sound—their breathing—I told you at the time that I heard something stirring in the closet. But you had your answer. For an experienced man, Munro, you are duller than an owl by daylight." ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... breath of a sleeping child, and then, as they lisped from the soft, tender leaves of beeches and maples, like the half-articulate whisper of the mother hushing all the intrusive sounds that might awaken it. Then came the pulsating monotone of the frogs from a far-off pool, the harsh cry of an owl from an old tree that overhung it, the splash of a mink or musquash, and nearer by, the light step of a woodchuck, as he cantered off in his quiet way to his hole in the nearest bank. The laurels ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... to bore the holes for the blasting powder that should scatter it to the winds, and let death and destruction, and the wild sea howling in upon Scaurnose, that the cormorant and the bittern might possess it, the owl and the raven dwell in it? But it would be seen what their husbands and fathers would say to it when they came home! In the meantime they must themselves do what they could. What were they men's wives for, if not to act for their husbands when ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... duchess' lodgings. There 's some stratagem In the confining all our courtiers To their several wards: I must have part of it; My intelligence will freeze else. List, again! It may be 'twas the melancholy bird, Best friend of silence and of solitariness, The owl, that screamed so.—Ha! Antonio! ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... had been of such value to Grant. All about them was rough, hilly country, almost wholly covered with brushwood and tall forest. There were three deep creeks, given significant names by the pioneers. Lick Creek flowed to the south of them into the Tennessee, and Owl Creek to the north sought the same destination. A third, Snake Creek, was lined with deep and impassable swamps to its very ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and midges, Now the tired planes drone homeward through the haze, And distant wood-fires wink behind the ridges, And the first flare some timorous Hun betrays; Now no shell circulates, but all men brood Over their evening food; The bats flit warily and owl and rat With muffled cries their shadowy loves pursue, And pleasant, Corporal, it is to chat In this hushed moment with a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... fairies, how they were to employ themselves while she slept. "Some of you," said her Majesty, "must kill cankers in the musk-rose buds, and some wage war with the bats for their leathern wings, to make my small elves coats; and some of you keep watch that the clamorous owl, that nightly boots, come not near me: but first sing me to sleep." Then they began ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... on the wet grass where it had fallen. There was a half-framed accusing thought that he might have gone for it; but she put the thought away; the time had passed for courtesies from him. When she stooped for the shawl, an owl flew viciously at her, snapping its bill close to her face and stirring the air with its wings. Unnerved, she ran back into the porch, but stopped there ashamed and looking kindly toward the tree in which ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... It was even as I had seen it on first arriving, save that now a clear moonlight rested on it, instead of the doubtful twilight. The ivy was black against the white light, the empty doorway yawned like a toothless mouth, and the round eye above looked blindness on us. As I gazed, a white owl came from within, and blinked at us over the curve. Yvon started, thinking it a spirit, perhaps; but I laughed, and taking off my hat, ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... sister?" asked Eustace Bright. "If I had thought of it sooner, I would have described her as a maiden lady, who kept a pet owl!" ...
— The Gorgon's Head - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... cottage, and increasing in size and brilliancy as it neared the earth, until the wooded ridge and the shore could be seen as distinctly from the ship-deck as by day. A dog howled piteously from one of the out-houses,—an owl whooped from the wood. The meteor descended until it almost touched the roof, when a cock crew from within; its progress seemed instantly arrested; it stood still, rose about the height of a ship's mast, and then began ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... "We scared an owl in the ravine," related the boy. "That was fun! It began to fly about and struck against a tree—bang! It even began to squeak so pitifully. And we scared it again; again it rose and flew about here and there, and again it struck against something, so that its feathers were coming out. ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... the discovery of Mark's true position was not one of unmixed sorrow—the knowledge that he was, after all, an ordinary being, one of themselves, had its consolations, particularly as no lustre from his glorification had shone on them. Mr. Ashburn felt less like an owl who had accidentally hatched a cherub, than he had done lately, and his wife considered that a snare and a pitfall had been removed from her son's path. Cuthbert thought his elder brother a fool, but probably had never felt more amiable towards him, while Martha ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... Death, thou art joint-twin To sweetest Slumber! no rough-bearded comet Stares on thy mild departure; the dull owl Beats not against thy casement; the hoarse wolf Scents not thy carrion: pity winds thy corse, Whilst horror ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... the ever obliging, was here unwilling to oblige. "Shall the owl croak the notes of the nightingale?" he asked, extending his open palms in a gesture of ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... burning with a desire to see his way out, Peter began to hear strange sounds. Strangest of all, and most fearsome, was a hissing that came and went, sometimes very near to him, and always accompanied by a grating noise that curdled his blood. Twice after that he saw the shadow of the great owl as it swooped over him, and he flattened himself down, the knot in his throat growing bigger and more choking. And then he heard the soft and uncanny movement of huge feathered bodies in the thick ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... Who are you?" asked an owl, blinking his eyes at the brightness of her face; and a little rabbit, startled by the sound, sprang from its hiding place in the bushes and ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... you lie back on those cushions?" she asked one morning when we were out in her boat. "You ought to be dozing half the day—and instead you're as wide awake as an owl." ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... younger one take his seat at the luncheon table. But now they spoke of a raid on the settlement to procure "grub," as the American slang for food has it. Bidding me stop on there and to utter the cry of the great horned owl if danger threatened, they stealthily crept toward the buildings of the camp. Presently came a scream, followed by a hoarse shout of rage. A second later the two dashed by me into the dense woods, Hawk Eye bearing a plucked fowl. ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... from the wide meadow come we into a close of corn, and then into an orchard-close beyond it. There in the ancient walnut-tree the owl sitteth breathing hard in the night-time; but thou shalt not hear him for the joy of the nightingales singing from the apple-trees of the close. Then from out of the shadowed orchard shall we come into the open ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... went into the owl-room again, and stood there silently a long, long time. Then he stole back again toward the library door, but caught a glimpse of that old, motionless shoe through the doorway as he came near. Then he spied ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... he had left the Chouan, Marche-a-Terre, who had seen with apparent indifference the various movements of the commander, but who was now watching with extraordinary intelligence the two soldiers in the woods to the right, suddenly gave the shrill and piercing cry of the chouette, or screech-owl. The three famous smugglers already mentioned were in the habit of using the various intonations of this cry to warn each other of danger or of any event that might concern them. From this came the nickname of "Chuin" which means chouette or owl in the dialect of that region. This corrupted ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... fern enchanted, Where but tempered spirits rule; Stars do not trace their mystic lines In my confines; I take a double night within my breast A night of darkened heavens, a night of leaves, And in the two-fold dark I hear the owl Puff at his velvet horn And the wolves howl. Even daylight comes with a touch of gold Not overbold, And shows dwarf-cornel and the twin-flowers, Below the balsam bowers, Their tints enamelled in my dew-drop shield. Too small even for a thirsty ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... very dark, but the old man was familiar with his menagerie out there on the parapet; he loved his stone monsters—the owl, the griffin, the gorgon, and stroked them every time that he passed them. But the creature with a man's body, goat's feet and horns, inspired him with a certain awe, as it stood there leaning on its hands like a priest, and bending forward as if to preach to the godless city or ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... first twenty years of his London life, in what he called "the Devil's oven," he is constantly clamouring to return to the den. His wife, more and more forlorn though ever loyal, consistently disliked it; little wonder, between sluttish maid-servants and owl-like solitude: and she expressed her dislike in the pathetic verses, "To a Swallow Building under our Eaves," sent to Jeffrey ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... horse at the gate and was on the point of riding forth when Jim came up. "Why, good-morning, James," the old gentleman heartily greeted him. "Have you just crawled out of that old man's kennel? I see that the old owl must have kept you up all night. Why, sir, if I were to listen to him I'd never get another wink ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... one will henceforth come from a mind that does not in outlook transcend the region on which it is focused. That is not to imply that the processes of evolution have brought all parts of the world into such interrelationships that a writer cannot depict the manners and morals of a community up Owl Hoot Creek without enmeshing them with the complexities of the Atlantic Pact. Awareness of other times and other wheres, not insistence on that awareness, is the requisite. James M. Barrie said that he could ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... and the detective was on the alert in a moment. It was a well-known signal. Was the owl a feathered one or ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... feather is now to be seen, save the ubiquitous paddy-bird. Jungles, where a pig was a certain find, only now contain a measly jackal, and not always that; and cover in which partridge, quail, and sometimes even florican were numerous, are now only tenanted by the great ground-owl, or a colony of field rats. I am far from wishing to limit sport to the European community. I would let every native that so wished sport his double barrels or handle his spear with the best of us, but he should follow and indulge in his sport with ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... every bush or spoke in every sound! The faint creak of a tree as the night wind stirred the branches; the rustle of leaves on the ground or the breaking of a twig as some prowling animal moved about; the flight of a bird, disturbed at its rest; the hoot of an owl on the hillside or the croak of a frog in the swamp were all magnified tenfold by the half-darkness and the sense of danger near. One end of his beat ended at the brook and here he waited longest, for the sentry he met there ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... wild, and drear, Doth this gaping gulf appear! It seems the hue of hell to wear. The bellowing thunder bursts yon clouds, The moon with blood has stained her light! What forms are those in misty shrouds, That stalk before my sight? And now, hush! hush! The owl is hooting in yon bush; How yonder oak-tree's blasted arms Upon me seem to frown! My heart recoils, but all alarms Are vain: fate ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... the dogs are found in frantic excitement around the foot of a tree, in whose shadowy foliage something is supposed to be hidden. Will it be a 'coon, or will it turn out a 'possum, a wild-cat, or mayhap an owl? ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... like an owl in the sudden glare. "Good even to you, comrades! Hola! a woman, by my soul!" and in an instant he had clipped Dame Eliza round the waist and was kissing her violently. His eye happening to wander upon the maid, ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... melancholy as an owl of late,' retorted Mab, caressing the old lady; 'ever since the arrest of that man Mosk she has ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... wilderness blotted him out for the time. The little wild animals scurried through the grass or ran up trees. In the far distance an owl hooted solemnly at nothing, and he slept the mighty sleep ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of owl's light that has no distinctness in it, and yet is far removed from darkness. Vera's perfect figure, clad in some white, clinging garment that fell about her in thick, heavy folds, stood out with a statue-like clearness against the dark shrubs behind her. She seemed like some ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... quiet with the peace which the centuries can bring, it seemed to him, with its fantastic towers, and imperfectly visible outline, like a palace of dreams rather than a dwelling house, however magnificent, of material stone and brick. An owl flew out from the trees a few yards to the left of him, and drifted slowly over his head, with much flapping of wings, and a weird, soft call, faintly answered in the distance by his mate; from far away down in the valley came the slow ringing of ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... It's as good as a gift, though, with the cards you held," said Mr. Whitmore, and I heard the coins jingle in changing hands, when from the shrubbery, where the gravel sweep narrowed, there sounded the low hoot of an owl. Being town-bred and unused to owls, I took it for a human cry in the darkness and shrank closer against ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... service that morning very readily. Roger appeared in time to take Belle, as usual, but she found him so taciturn and preoccupied that she whispered to Mildred, "You've spoiled him for me. He sits staring like an owl in the sunlight, and seeing just about as much. You ought to be ashamed of yourself to make him so glum. I intend to have a dozen beaux, and to keep them ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... Hebrew tribes had each its own standard—that of Ephraim, for instance, was a steer; of Benjamin, a wolf. Among the Greeks, the Athenians had an owl, and the Thebans a sphynx. The standard of Romulus was a bundle of hay tied to a pole, afterwards a human hand, and finally an eagle. Eagles were at first made of wood, then of silver, with thunderbolts of gold. Under Caesar they were all gold, without ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... over the fells with a company of schoolfellows, a poor blind lamb ran bleating past them, a black cloud of ravens, crows, and owl-eagles flying about it. The merciless birds had fallen upon the innocent creature as it lay sleeping under the shadow of a tree, had picked at its eyes and fed on them, and now, as the blood trickled in red beads down its nose, they croaked and cried and screamed to ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... indifferent circumstances into misfortunes, and suffer as much from trifling accidents as from real evils. I have known the shooting of a star spoil a night's rest; and have seen a man in love grow pale, and lose his appetite, upon the plucking of a merry-thought. A screech-owl at midnight has alarmed a family more than a band of robbers; nay, the voice of a cricket hath struck more terror than the roaring of a lion. There is nothing so inconsiderable, which may not appear dreadful to an imagination that is filled with omens and ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... nurse to keep an rye on me, and see that I did not raise Cain. At the end of the first day she struck for one-and six, and got it. We now pass to my boyhood. At an early age, I was sent to Eton, everybody predicting a bright career for me. But," said Psmith solemnly, fixing an owl-like gaze on Mike through the eye-glass, ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... de Medici, he had two distinct persons in him. I will determine of them all, they are like these double or turning pictures; stand before which you see a fair maid, on the one side an ape, on the other an owl; look upon them at the first sight, all is well, but farther examine, you shall find them wise on the one side, and fools on the other; in some few things praiseworthy, in the rest incomparably faulty. I will ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... topic of his lecture was "My Foster Children," and these foster children were some animals which he had had as pets, whose habits he had carefully studied. One was a Gila monster from the plains of Arizona, another was a horned owl, the third was a rat, and the fourth was an opossum. If you can imagine more uninteresting subjects than these you are more imaginative than myself, and yet he thrilled me and held three thousand people in ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... I'm glad we're going, for you're looking as solemn as an owl. Cheer up and have a lovely time with your book and that jolly fire, and don't forget to go to bed at nine o'clock like ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... The partner of his first intrigue is the maid of a woman skilled in witchcraft. The curiosity of Lucius being greatly exercised about the sorceress and her magic, he importunes the girl to procure from her mistress a magic salve which will transform him at will into an owl. By mistake he receives the wrong salve; and instead of the bird metamorphosis which he had looked for, he undergoes an unlooked-for change into an ass. In this guise, and in the service of various masters, he has opportunities of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 'Go thou to-night, and stand under the branches of the hornbeam, and wait for my coming. If a black dog run towards thee, strike it with a rod of willow, and it will go away. If an owl speak to thee, make it no answer. When the moon is full I shall be with thee, and we will dance together on ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... youth, welled within him and mounted to his brain. He felt tingling with power as he lay there, apparently lax; it seemed to him he could hear the blood leaping in his veins and the beating of his pulses all over his body, could hear the faintest sound of calling lamb or far-off owl, could catch, with ears refined to a demigod's, the ineffably quiet rubbing of the millions of grass-blades, as though he could almost hear the evening falling.... From afar came the babble of the others as ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... yell. Swift as the doe's Wiwaste's feet Fled away to the forest. The hunters fleet In vain pursue, and in vain they prowl And lurk in the forest till dawn of day. They hear the hoot of the mottled owl; They hear the were-wolf's[52] winding howl; But the swift Wiwaste is far away. They found no trace in the forest land; They found no trail in the dew-damp grass; They found no track in the river sand, Where they thought ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... of; and I am of the mould as of the race of those whose swords have conquered thrones. For the rest, your news of the alliance of Louis of Hungary with your Tribune makes it necessary for the friend of Louis to withdraw from all feud with Rome. Ere the week expire, the owl and the bat may seek refuge ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... see the grouse; and I did see several, but could not shoot them, for reasons which one must be a huntsman to understand. My companion shot one, and, if I had been well, I might have shot two; I was too exhausted. After three it cleared and became wonderfully fine, the horn-owl gave place to the thrush, and at sunrise the bird-chorus became deafening; the wood-pigeons singing bass, withal. At five I was down again, and, as it began to pour once more, I abandoned further attempts, returned hither, ate very ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... your eyes now, you would not have been able to see, and no countryman can do with a blind wife, so I should leave you where you are. But you, little one, have hearing as sharp as a bird's? And what bird—pretty little things—did you ever see with ears, unless it were a bat or a nasty owl?—That is all nonsense. Besides, who can see what you have lost now that Pulcheria has brought your hair down so prettily? And do not you remember the head-dress our women wear? You might have ears as long ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... pleasant face, and long, deliberate step upon the steep, and cheerful shout for his Sylvia, to come and ease down his basket, and say—"Well done, father!" But the shadows of the trees grew darker, and the song of the gray-bird died out among them, and the silent wings of the owl swept by, and all the mysterious sounds of night in the depth of forest loneliness, and the glimmer of a star through the leaves here and there, to tell us that there still was light in heaven—but of an earthly ...
— Slain By The Doones • R. D. Blackmore
... swaying of the spruce-tops; but in this silence it fell upon the starving man's hearing with a distinctness that drew his muscles rigid and set his eyes staring about him in wild search. Just beyond the hanging pails a moose-bird hopped out upon the snow. It chirped hungrily, its big, owl-like eyes scrutinizing Dixon. The man stared back, fearing to move. Slowly he forced his right foot through the snow to the rear of his left, and as cautiously brought his left behind his right, working ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... Me ondherstand? Of coorse. Am I an owl? Be dad, I nivir laughed so much these tin years. Ondherstand! Every bit of it. But we won't have any expleeneetions about that. What concerns us is the code of honor, and the jewty of gintlemin. A rigid sinse of honor, and a shuprame reygard for the sancteties ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... an eye upon the rascal, and you will soon find what I say is true. Let us hang these three miscreants, and all will go smooth." Suvaroff was not more complimentary. "How can that desk-worm, that night-owl, direct an army from his dusky nest, even if he had the sword of ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... They saved the legs of the grouse for him, too. They waited and waited, but still Hawk-Eye did not come. They began to get a little frightened, he was gone so long. At last there was a call, "Hoo, hoo, hoooooo," like the hooting of an owl, and he appeared crashing through the bushes. He had a rabbit hanging from his shoulder. Then Firefly played a ...
— The Cave Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... for they all knew that Mac would "be mad," since he hated nonsense of this sort, and had gone to talk with the elders when the game began. At this moment he was standing before the fire, listening to a discussion between his uncles and his father, looking as wise as a young owl, and blissfully unconscious of ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... faint smell of roasted meat that floated out to them from the camp-fires. Once during the night the cry of a wandering cougar came wailing through the silence and was followed by that of a horned owl who had noiselessly flapped near enough to blink his great eyes at the blaze. For all that, it was the loneliest kind of a place, and the hours went by until sunrise without the smallest real disturbance or hint of perils ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... yesterday with holly, and crowned plaster-of-Paris Sappho with laurels, and Mrs. Hope's picture with myrtle (i.e. box), and perched a great stuffed owl in an ivy bush on the top of a great screen which shades the sofa by the fire from the window at its back. I am excessively happy to be at home again, after my four ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... docks, in the owl-light, they fell in with an elderly hunks just returned from West Indies, who asks the time at the door of a shipping agent. Castro pulls out a watch, and the old fellow jumps on it, vows it's his own, taken from him years before by some picaroons on his outward voyage. Out from the agent's ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... in the night. Mice, rats, and rabbits destroy millions of young trees. These bold animals often flay baby trees in the daylight, and while at their deadly feast many a time have they been surprised by hawks, and then they are at a banquet where they themselves are eaten. The owl, the faithful nightwatchman of trees, often swoops down at night, and as a result some little tree is splashed with the blood of the very animal that ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... Jerry said, "Drat these losers of caps! will they NEVER be done with disturbing the newts and me? Tis the fifth in a summer. And first there's one with a step like a wagtail, and next there's one as bold as a hawk, and after him one as comely as a wild swan, and last was one as wise as an owl. And now there's this one with nothing particular to him, but he grips as hard as all the rest rolled into one. ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... better presented to the reader in the Weekly News-books." Hence we find some papers, entitled "News from Hull," "Truths from York," "Warranted Tidings from Ireland," &c. We find also, "The Scots' Dove" opposed to "The Parliament Kite," or "The Secret Owl."—Keener animosities produced keener titles: "Heraclitus ridens" found an antagonist in "Democritus ridens," and "The Weekly Discoverer" was shortly met by "The Discoverer stript naked." "Mercuriua Britannicus" was grappled by "Mercurius ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... she exclaimed. "Why, Leonetta would fall in love with a stuffed owl at present, provided it could dance attendance ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... him out a beau; From her own head Megaera[1] takes A periwig of twisted snakes: Which in the nicest fashion curl'd, (Like toupees[2] of this upper world) With flower of sulphur powder'd well, That graceful on his shoulders fell; An adder of the sable kind In line direct hung down behind: The owl, the raven, and the bat, Clubb'd for a feather to his hat: His coat, a usurer's velvet pall, Bequeath'd to Pluto, corpse and all. But, loath his person to expose Bare, like a carcass pick'd by crows, A lawyer, o'er his hands and face ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... laughter, conversation, altercation were all going on at the same moment at the utmost pitch of the human voice, and apparently with the whole strength of the assembled company, which, after winking and blinking like an owl for several moments, I succeeded in dimly making out through the dense cloud of suffocating smoke which pervaded the place, and which appeared to emanate from a wood fire burning on the pavement at the far end of the hall, and from some three or four flaring oil lamps which were suspended from nails ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... night when men crouched over their rifle waiting to kill, when the owl had gone far from the slaughter and even not the fitful flutter of a bat sped through the dark pall. Only man: savage, primitive man, glared at where each remained hidden. The blood lust to kill, always to kill. Animal ferocity ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... offices whom he knew. And then there would be high-balls and stories, and he would hurry home to dinner a little late but feeling good, and a little sorry for the poor Standard Oil Company. On this evening as he entered he heard some one say: "Babbitt was in last night as full as a boiled owl." ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... the house, perhaps six hundred yards, it stood, ghostly, with a face like that of a dark-eyed white owl, made by the crossing of its narrow sails. With a black companion—a yew-tree cut to pyramid form, on the central point of Sussex—it was watching us, for though one must presume it built of old time by man, it looked up there against the sky, with its owl's ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... Porthos sitting at the entrance of the grotto, and bowing his head, he penetrated into the interior of the cavern, imitating the cry of the owl. A little plaintive cooing, a scarcely distinct echo, replied from the depths of the cave. Aramis pursued his way cautiously, and soon was stopped by the same kind of cry as he had first uttered, within ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... at the closed shutters, through a hole in one of which the morning sun was streaming. Turning round he encountered the deeply solemn gaze of an owl which stood on a shelf at ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... ladies of the king's seraglio were his principal customers. Their most urgent demand was some powerful charm to ensure the attention of the king. The collection of materials for this purpose, which the Dervish Bideen had made, was very great. He had the hairs of a lynx, the back-bone of an owl, and bear's grease in various preparations. To one of the ladies, who, owing to her advanced age, was more pressing than the others, he sold the liver of my monkey, assuring her, that as soon as she appeared wearing it about her person, his majesty would distinguish her from her ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... Unknown "Johnny Shall Have a New Bonnet" Unknown The City Mouse and the Garden Mouse Christina Rossetti Robin Redbreast Unknown Solomon Grundy Unknown "Merry Are the Bells" Unknown "When Good King Arthur Ruled This Land" Unknown The Bells of London Unknown "The Owl and the Eel and the Warming Pan" Laura E. Richards The Cow Ann Taylor The Lamb William Blake Little Raindrops Unknown "Moon, So Round and Yellow" Matthias Barr The House That Jack Built Unknown Old Mother Hubbard Unknown The Death and Burial of ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... the solemn hoot of a distant owl was heard. One of the men holding the rope dropped it, and shivered ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... was that inclosed between Owl and Lick creeks, which run nearly parallel with each other, and empty into the Tennessee river. The flanks of the two armies rested upon these little streams, and the front of each was just the distances, at their respective positions, between the two creeks. The Confederate ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... with life, my dear, won't we? Let it frown like a blind owl in the sun—we'll compel ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... in the fastnesses of his green woods, sounded a long, low, guttural groan that rose to a blood-curdling shriek, from the branches just above the head of the moon-mad man and girl. For an instrument he used the throat of an enraged old hoot-owl, perturbed by the intrusion of the noise of the distant hunt and the low-voiced conversation on ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... of the room facing the hearth-place; his huge arms were bare—for bare-armed he always worked—his black beard was knotted into little curls, his face was so broad that you hardly remarked that his nose was hooked like an owl's beak. And about the man there was an air of sombreness and mystery. He had certain papers on his lectern, and several sheets of the great Bible that he was then printing by the Archbishop's license and command. They sang all ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... that there yelling be?' he asked. 'I was walking along, a-taking of the evening air and a-thinking on the stars, when I 'ears 'owl after 'owl.' ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... had stacked it. But who can describe their surprise when they reached the cottage. They saw all the windows open and on the kitchen-table sat a large white cat. The fur around her head looked like a cap. Her eyes were blue and round like those of an owl. Her long broad tail hung out of the window. Around her neck she had a band decorated with small pearls, and a small gilt bell was hanging from it. When they saw her they were glad they had not brought the dogs ...
— The Three Comrades • Kristina Roy
... two persons. These were perfectly straight, and for the first eight feet free from boughs; above this nine branches were left upon each pole, having at their ends each a bunch of feathers of the hawk or owl. On the top of one of the standards was a bunch of emu feathers. The branches were stripped of all their smaller twigs and leaves, and of their bark. They were painted white, and wound round with the white down of the black swan, twisted ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... darkness of ignorance in us, and "the darkness of too much light" in him—caliginem nimiae lucis, which makes him as inaccessible to us as the other, the over-proportion of that glorious majesty of God to our low spirits, being as the sun in its brightness to a night owl, which is dark midnight to it. Hence it is, that those holy men who know most of God, think they know least, because they see more to be known but infinitely surpassing knowledge. Pride is the daughter of ignorance ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... lux'ries that cover'd the table. Each delicate viand that taste could denote, Wasps a la sauce piquante, and Flies en compote; Worms and Frogs en friture, for the web-footed Fowl; And a barbecu'd Mouse was prepar'd for the Owl; Nuts, grains, fruit, and fish, to regale ev'ry palate, And groundsel and chickweed serv'd up in a sallad, The RAZOR-BILL carv'd for the famishing group, And the SPOON-BILL obligingly ladled the soup; So ...
— The Peacock 'At Home:' - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball • Catherine Ann Dorset
... otherwise be a burden on their relatives. The others, unless out for suicide, must, one thinks, be tolerably safe. Ethelbertha is persuaded he is a sign of death; but seeing there isn't a square quarter of a mile in this county without its screech-owl, there can hardly by this time be a resident that an Assurance Society would look at. Veronica likes him. She even likes his screech. I found her under the tree the other night, wrapped up in a shawl, trying to learn it. As if one of them ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... dreadful idea of this bird. It was one of her legends that a little boy was once standing just outside of the teepee (tent), crying vigorously for his mother, when Hinakaga swooped down in the darkness and carried the poor little fellow up into the trees. It was well known that the hoot of the owl was commonly imitated by Indian scouts when on the war-path. There had been dreadful massacres immediately following this call. Therefore it was deemed wise to impress the sound early upon ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... about what part I was going to play in the life of the Order, but that I should be content to do whatever I was told. I'm boring you?" Mark broke off to inquire, for Brother Anselm was staring in front of him through his big horn spectacles like an owl. ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... would not let go of the idea; an impression at first, it quickly became a belief and then a conviction. He was lying on his chest, and, raising his head a little, he emitted the call of the night-owl, soft, long, and weird. He uttered the cry twice and waited. From the woods fifty yards away came the answering hoot of an owl, once, twice, thrice. Henry gave the cry twice again, and the second reply came from the same ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... rescuing Madge Plunket from a caitiff knight, or else hunting snakes and field-mice and lizards, and digging for lizard's eggs, which we would hatch at home—that happy refuge for all manner of beasts, as well as little boys and girls. For there were squirrels, hedgehogs, and guinea-pigs; an owl, a raven, a monkey, and white mice; little birds that had strayed from the maternal nest before they could fly (they always died!), the dog Medor, and any other dog who chose; not to mention a gigantic rocking-horse made out of a real ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... asked if he could assist her; she answered, through the medium of a sooty animal at her helm, that she was (like our universities) "satisfied with her own progress"; she added, being under intoxication, "that, if any danger existed, her scheme was to drown it in the bo-o-owl;" and two days afterward he saw her puffing and panting, and fiercely dragging a gigantic three-decker out into deep water, like an industrious flea pulling ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... to torment yourself with that little screech-owl?" said she. "Well, I must say it's very good of you; but I am afraid you will soon tire of her. Children are such plagues! Are they not, my darling?" ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Mr. Lathrop," he said with a smile, "but that darky cook seems not to believe it. He's prowling about like an old owl." ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... blockhead, how you have frightened me!" said Ludovicka, repulsing her almost rudely. "I was asleep here, dreaming such sweet dreams, and all at once you have come and waked me, you little night owl. Go, go to bed, Louisa, and do not be so timid, child. No robbers and murderers come here, and in our castle you need ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... Beneath yon ruined abbey's moss-grown piles Oft let me sit, at twilight hour of eve, When through some western window the pale moon Pours her long-levelled rule streaming light: While sullen sacred silence reigns around, Save the lone screech-owl's note, who build his bower Amid the moldering caverns dark and damp;[12] Or the calm breeze, that rustles in the leaves Of flaunting ivy, that with mantle green Invests some wasted tower. . . Then when the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... command of the sea, and were able to supply themselves with more warlike stores than they had possessed before. Aristotle even says that Pericles himself was before this beaten by Melissus in a sea-fight. The Samians branded the figure of an owl on the foreheads of their Athenian prisoners, to revenge themselves for the branding of their own prisoners by the Athenians with the figure of a samaina. This is a ship having a beak turned up like a swine's snout, but with a roomy hull, so as ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... blinking like an owl in the sudden glare. "Good even to you, comrades! Hola! a woman, by my soul!" and in an instant he had clipped Dame Eliza round the waist and was kissing her violently. His eye happening to wander upon the maid, however, he instantly abandoned the mistress and danced ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Arched its cowl like a black friar's hood; Fast, and fast, and they plunged therein,— But the viewless rider rode to win, Out of the wood to the highway's light Galloped the great-limbed steed in fright; The mail clashed cold, and the sad owl cried, And the weight of the ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... spot where, according to the map and compass, I thought Vayrac ought to be. I came to a seventeenth century country-house, large enough to be termed a chateau, but now the dwelling of some peasant-farmer. It was a dilapidated, apparently owl-haunted building, with a dovecote tower over grown with ivy, and was half surrounded by a wall, whose tottering, ornamental pinnacles told a story of comparative grandeur that had come to grief in this remote spot. The farmer had been winnowing ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... fault! You know whom I mean? Her, her!" Katerina Ivanovna nodded towards the landlady. "Look at her, she's making round eyes, she feels that we are talking about her and can't understand. Pfoo, the owl! Ha-ha! (Cough-cough-cough.) And what does she put on that cap for? (Cough-cough-cough.) Have you noticed that she wants everyone to consider that she is patronising me and doing me an honour by being here? I asked her like a sensible woman to invite people, especially ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... lamps aspir'd To the tops of the trees and beyond; And, what was most hugely admired, They looked all upside-down in a pond. The blaze scarce an eagle could bear And an owl had most surely been slain; We returned to the circle, and there— And there we went round ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... strict duty. He feared nothing except the supernatural powers of evil. There is nothing the Indian fears, nay hates, so much as sorcery. Topanashka could scarcely believe that his daughter had tampered with magic by causing the dark-coloured corn to speak, and keeping owl's feathers in her possession. Still, if such were really the case, he knew of no other course to pursue but to execute the penalty which according to Indian ideas she deserved, and which the leading men of the tribe composing its ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... will not regret it, I promise. He may not get Vancey back, but there are other estates to be won by a strong arm. Shake yourself, boy, and come out into the daylight. You are moping here like a barn-owl." ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... kind, by which the travellers had endeavored to elbow him out of their society, could not withstand the good-humored bantering, and occasionally sharp wit of She-wee-she. He evidently quailed under his jokes, and sat blinking like an owl in daylight, when pestered by the flouts and peckings of mischievous birds. At length his place was found vacant at meal-time; no one knew when he went off, or whither he had gone, but he was seen no more, and the vast ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... look So often thought a whim? God-willed, the willow shades the brook, The gray owl sings ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... is partly because of his fear of Yowler, but it is still more because he feels that Yowler is not fair in his hunting. He has no honor. There are many others whom Peter fears,—Reddy Fox, Old Man Coyote, Hooty the Owl,—and with very good reason. But Peter considers that these hunt him fairly. He knows when and where to be on the watch ...
— Mother West Wind "Where" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... Roman noses, which may be the reason why the Romans adopted the eagle as a standard; as also it may not. They have striking characteristics of their own, and have been found very useful by poets and other people who have to wander off the main subject to make plain what they mean. The owl is the wiseacre of Nature, the vulture is a vile harpy, and the eagle is the embodiment of everything great and mighty, and glorious and free, and swooping and catoptrical. There is very little to say against the ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... of smoke and steam, a horrid din As of a thousand clanking chains that pin A thousand giants that are whipped and howl,— And, suddenly, long hoots as of an owl. ...
— Poems of Paul Verlaine • Paul Verlaine
... Nor let house-fires, nor lightning's helpless harms, Nor let the Puck, nor other evil sprites, Nor let mischievous witches with their charms, Nor let hobgoblins, names whose sense we see not, Fray us with things that be not: Let not the screech-owl nor the stork be heard, Nor the night raven, that still deadly yells; Nor damned ghosts, called up with mighty spells, Nor grizzly vultures, make us once afraid: Nor let the unpleasant choir of frogs still croaking Make us to wish ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... write, is a big snowy owl whose yellow eyes seem to be always watching me, whatever I do. Perhaps he is still wondering at the curious way in which ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... Pete and Sallie to negro superstition. I could have dismissed their faith in a haunted house with a smile, and gone to sleep myself with an easy conscience, confident that a noisy wind, or a hooting owl, was the sum and substance of all the trouble. But Bill Coombs was a very different proposition. He was of the hard-headed kind, not to be easily alarmed by visionary terrors, and yet he was manifestly afraid to sleep in the house. I was sufficiently acquainted ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... hoo!" it came again, and with a light laugh, Elsie said, "Ah it is only an owl; but to my sleeping ear it seemed like a human ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... Mr. Owl called out from the top of the tree, "Oh, who? Oh, who?" and "He-he-he!" Mr. Fox slipped off in the woods and cried; Mr. Coon's broken heart caused a pain in his side. For it's good-by, ducky, And it's good-by, dear! If you ever come to see me, Come before ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... glass, and on gold, And on goodly silver, In wine and in wort, And the seat of the witch-wife; On Gungnir's point, And Grani's bosom; On the Norn's nail, And the neb of the night-owl. ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... the church owl, pushing his head out of the ivy-bush. "And shall she be Kyrkegrim when thou art turned preacher, and the preacher sits on the judgment seat? Not so, little Niss! Dust thou the pulpit, and leave the parson to preach, and let the Maker of ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... wide open to the lawn, a full moon flooded the country with pale gold light, and in that light the branches of the cedar-trees seemed printed black on the grey-blue paper of the sky; all was cold, still witchery out there, and not very far away an owl ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... up thy pipes Till they be weary: I will laugh, ho, ho, hoh! And make me merry. Make a ring on this grass With your quick measures: Tom shall play, I will sing For all your pleasures. The moon shines fair and bright, And the owl hollos, Mortals now take their rests Upon their pillows: The bat's abroad likewise, And the night-raven, Which doth use for to call Men to Death's haven. Now the mice peep abroad, And the cats take them, Now do young wenches sleep, Till their dreams wake them. ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... the sound—their breathing—I told you at the time that I heard something stirring in the closet. But you had your answer. For an experienced man, Munro, you are duller than an owl by daylight." ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... me. Well, her name is Musetta Her surname is Temptation. As to her vocation: Like a rose in the breezes, So she changes lover for lover without number. And like the spiteful screech owl, A bird that's most rapacious, The food that most she favors is the heart! Her food the heart is; Thus have I now none left! (to his friends, concealing his agitation) ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... laughing when their mother said that, and Ben gave a faint giggle, as if he would like to join in if he only had the strength to do it. But his legs shook under him, and he felt a queer dizziness; so he could only hold on to Sancho, and blink at the light like a young owl. ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... legs out in every direction, breaking them seemingly into a thousand joints, and settles back like an animated parachute awreck. Then perchance he perches on a rock knowingly, with the appearance of owl-like wisdom, albeit his head looks surprisingly like a frog's. Anon he holds his head erect and stretches out his long arms in what is most palpably a yawn. Then, for pure diversion, he may hold himself half erect on his umbrella frame ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... An owl that circled about the crumbling house, stooped now and then on muffled wing to inspect the sleeper. Once a stealthy panther, slipping through the willows, bared its fangs and passed the other way, and the pale green points of luminescence that twinkled in ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... and the bright moonlight flooding a field of young cotton on the other. Now they heard the distant baying of house-dogs, now the doleful call of the chuck-will's-widow, and once Mary's blood turned, for an instant, almost to ice at the unearthly shriek of the hoot owl just above her head. At length they found themselves in a dim, narrow ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... beauty to the secrets of anatomy and corruption." "Indeed," as he adds, "what were our consolations on this side of the grave—and our aspirations beyond it—if poetry did not ascend to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where the owl-winged faculty of calculation dare not ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... generally has to cave in. It does her good to cave in now and then. Armstrong's the only one can make her. I can't; nor can Brandram. Brandram's a stunner. I drive him in and out of Yeld every day, and he's up to no end of larks. And now Roger's pulling round, he's as festive as an owl. Jill's in jolly dumps because she's out of it all. Rosalind sits on her and tells her she's too much of a kid to be any good; and she doesn't get much change out of Armstrong. So she has to knock about with me all day, which is awful slow. I say, go and see Christy's ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... of you have," replied Old Mother Nature. "But the one he has most reason to fear is Hooty the Owl, and that is the one you have least reason to fear, because Hooty seldom ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... marked characteristic of the country hereabouts. I met never a soul upon the highway, nor indeed did I encounter any evidence of life whatever, until, turning into a narrow lane which would bring me to that road in the valley upon which stood the deserted lodge belonging to the Bell House, an owl hooted in the trees ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... came the bride, hanging on her brother, then two bridesmaids,—friends of Dorothy's, living in the town; and, lastly, Priscilla with her mother, for nothing would induce Priscilla to take the part of a bridesmaid. "You might as well ask an owl to sing to you," she said. "And then all the frippery would be thrown away upon me." But she stood close to Dorothy, and when the ceremony had been performed, was the first, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... as you sang this morning, high and pure, in the middle of the tone. Helmanoff has trained you well, child, you take the notes as if nature herself had been your teacher. Neumann is gone; she screeches like an owl! Elle a son conge!" He continued to look at the pillow and the gold curls spread ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... heads became still, and at last every feathered mother had her brood quiet under her wings, the talk in the little beds was over, and God's bird-nursery at rest beneath the waves of sleep. Once more a few flutterings made me look up: an owl went sailing across. I had only a glimpse of him, but several times felt the cool wafture of his silent wings. The mother birds did not move again; they saw that he was looking for ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... pewters. Now and then a crazy jarvey passed slowly by, while a hurrying mail, with a drowsy driver and sleeping guard, rattled by to deliver their cargo at the post office. Here and there appeared one of those beings, who like the owl hide themselves by day, and are visible only in the dusk. Many of them appeared to belong to the other world. Poor, puny, ragged, sickly-looking creatures, that seemed as though they had been suckled ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... through its leg when the man came. I remember that he had a cat with a little red collar on its neck, and an owl in his hand, both of them dead, for he was Giles, the head-keeper, going round his traps. He was a tall man with sandy whiskers and a rough voice, and he carried a single-barrelled ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... and upon the snow-capped mountains beyond. The river murmured softly as its shining folds curled back and forth across the dark green meadow, suddenly vanishing between dark canyon walls. Coyotes raised their eerie voices; across the canyon, from the cliffs of Mount Olympus, an owl hooted gloomily. Before me loomed the Rockies, strangely unreal in the moonlight and yet very like the mountains of my imagination. I gazed, spellbound. ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... He stopped and waited, owl-eyed, but the small physicist simply tackled his breakfast with no further comment than a ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... grandeur of the subject, and his position in expending so large a sum—I suppose a thousand guineas, for it was a full length—lifted my old friend into one of his dreams. The portrait was a richly-coloured and effective one, giving the staring owl-like eyes of the poet-diplomatist. Another of Forster's purchases was Maclise's huge picture of Caxton showing his first printed book ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... crows & ravens build their nests in great numbers along the high and inaccessable clifts of the Columbia river and it's S. E. branch where we passed along them.- we also met with the large hooting Owl under the Rocky mountain on the Kooskoskee river. it did not appear to differ materially from those of our country. I think it's colours reather deeper and brighter than with us, particularly the redish brown. it is the same size ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... for a range of hills in the distance. As it would not take us much out of our way, we rode towards them, when, as we approached we saw to our surprise that the top of every mound was occupied either by a small animal or a bird of an owl-like appearance, which appeared to be watching the rest of the community, employed in cropping the grass or running about in ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... and who knows? If aught went wrong, you might be wanted nearer home. Christopher, you shall never have my girl; she's not for you. Yet, perhaps, if need were, you would strike a blow for her even if it made you excommunicate. Get hence, wench. Why do you stand there gaping on us, like an owl in sunlight? And remember, if I catch you at more such tricks, you'll spend your days mumbling at prayers in a nunnery, and much good may they ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... beast. He was ready to shoot. But he saw nothing. He heard no sound that could have been made by a stumbling foot or a moving body. An hour later, the moon would have been up, but it was dark now except for the stars. He heard the hoot of an owl a hundred yards away. Out in the river something splashed. From the timber beyond Buffalo Prairie came the yapping bark of a coyote. For five minutes he stood as silent as one of the rocks behind him. He realized that to ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... it a condition of permanent strife that the human race could never escape from? Was man a being capable of high spiritual attainment, as he had heard in the church that morning? or was he no better than the ruthless creatures of the woodland, where the weasel preyed on the chipmunk, and the owl on the mouse, and the fox on the rabbit, and the shrike on the ph[oe]be, and the ph[oe]be on the insect, in an endless round of ferocity? Had man emerged above this estate? or was it as foolish ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... Down the rushy glen, We daren't go a-hunting For fear of little men; Wee folk, good folk, Trooping all together; Green jacket, red cap, And white owl's feather! ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... manner of means. The situation appeals to my imagination, Jack. I like the idea of it,— the lost treasure and the whole business. Lord, what a salad that is! Cheer up, comrade! You’re as grim as an owl!” ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... winds are whist, and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid; And naught is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket's chirp and the answer shrill Of the gauze-winged katydid; And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... people cannot know, and that is, the meeting of old friends. Mrs. Hawthorne was favorably impressed with Franklin Pierce's personality; while Horatio Bridge danced about and acted an impromptu pantomime, making up faces like an owl. They assured Hawthorne that something should be done to relieve his ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... moon; the night was pitch dark. They threaded their way through the graves, stumbling over them here and there. An owl was toowhooing from the church tower, a dog was howling somewhere, a cock began to crow, as they will sometimes ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... the owls at midnight, Hooting, laughing in the forest, "What is that?" he cried in terror; "What is that," he said, "Nokomis?" And the good Nokomis answered: "That is but the owl and owlet, Talking in their native language, Talking, scolding at ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... one in the town knows which way to go," answered their guide; "and it isn't often we have visitors. Last week a gray owl stopped with us for a couple of days, and we had a fine ball in her honor. But you are the first humans that have ever been entertained in our town, so it's quite an event with us." A few minutes later she said: "Here we are, at the Mayor's house," ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
... like other quadrupeds, must have holidays, and I have flown hither. But the wind has changed, and the owl, for all his feathers, is a-cold, as the poet observes. I shall return to the Metropolis—templa quam dilecta—as Plautus might have said in his Owlowlaria, if he had liked. I never thought much of these Latin dramatists, and indeed I never would read any of their works. For that matter, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... Dick reined up till the other horse was abreast of his, then dived into his pocket and handed Steve a letter. "She's quit taking any interest in me, has she? Don't know I'm on the earth, you old owl? Looks like it, and her sending me a letter this ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... said he, "confess you were afraid when my fellows cast the rope about your neck. I warrant the sky seemed to you the size of a sheepskin. And you would certainly have swung beneath the cross-beam but for your old servant. I knew the old owl again directly. Well, would you ever have thought, sir, that the man who guided you to a lodging in the steppe was the great Tzar himself?" As he said these words he assumed a grave and mysterious air. "You are very guilty as regards me," resumed he, "but I have pardoned ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... a rooster bookplate illustration at the beginning and an owl bookplate at the end. Each chapter begins and ends with ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... actions.... That Thugut is caballing.... Pray keep an eye upon the rascal, and you will soon find what I say is true. Let us hang these three miscreants, and all will go smooth." Suvaroff was not more complimentary. "How can that desk-worm, that night-owl, direct an army from his dusky nest, even if he had the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... found you having a cosy tte—tte with a young barrister of many inches and little brains," she laughed. "Come, Lorraine, spout away. What is your favourite hors d'oeuvre? Did you feel like a boiled owl at your first appearance? And which horse do you ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... milk from this breast. It tasted of woman and man, of sun and forest, of animal and flower, of every fruit, of every joyful desire. It intoxicated him and rendered him unconscious.—When Siddhartha woke up, the pale river shimmered through the door of the hut, and in the forest, a dark call of an owl ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... about that, lass. D'ye hear the hoot-owl? I like to hear them of nights. I found one's nest once an' I took the three eggs out an' slipped them under a hen that Mother McFarlane had settin'. It was at Long Lake post, Mother McFarlane was the factor's wife, an' I ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... hurry, I haven't finished yet," Holy Friday continued. "Don't look at the Fairy Aurora, for her eyes bewitch, her glances rob a man of his reason. She is ugly, too ugly to be described. She has owl's eyes, a fox's face, and cat's claws. Do you hear? Don't look at her. And may the Lord bring you back to me safe ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... ground spring to their feet, and Petard himself comes forth from that portion of the tower devoted to his retirement. That was some recognized signal-that cry which, to the uninitiated, might have been mistaken for the whoop of an owl, or some wild bird's cry ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... tower. It was even as I had seen it on first arriving, save that now a clear moonlight rested on it, instead of the doubtful twilight. The ivy was black against the white light, the empty doorway yawned like a toothless mouth, and the round eye above looked blindness on us. As I gazed, a white owl came from within, and blinked at us over the curve. Yvon started, thinking it a spirit, perhaps; but I laughed, and taking off my hat, saluted ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... Kalmuc Tartars attribute to the white owl the preservation of Jengis Khan, the founder of their empire; and they pay it on that account almost divine honours. The prince, with a small army, happened to be surprised and put to flight by his ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... in de moonlight, De owl is set'n high up in de tree; De little stars am twinklin' wid a sof' light, De night seems only jes fu' you an' me. Thoo de trees de breezes am a-sighin', Breathin' out a sort o' lover's croon, Der's nobody lookin' or a-spyin', Nobody but de owl ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... up, blowing across the pasture and whirling the dead leaves of distant trees into their faces. Overhead other stars came out, and far away an owl hooted. ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... omen of the noisy screech-owl and a pregnant bitch, or a tawny wolf running down from the Lanuvian fields, or a fox with whelp conduct the impious [on their way]; may the serpent also break their undertaken journey, if, like an arrow athwart the road, it has frightened the horses. What ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... stone like a scorpion, and similar deceptions. Others of these nanahualtin will transform themselves to all appearances (segun la aparencia), into a tiger, a dog or a weasel. Others again will take the form of an owl, a cock, or a weasel; and when one is preparing to seize them, they will appear now as a cock, now as an owl, and again as a weasel. These ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... chance o' helpin' a little cripple like that. He looks as if he couldn't turn over any handier than a turtle that's laid on his back; and I guess there a'n't many people that know how to lift better than I do. Ask him if he don't want any watchers. I don't mind settin' up any more 'n a cat-owl. I was up all ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... star. Star followed star, though yet day's golden light Upon the hills and headlands faintly stream'd; To their own pine the twin-doves took their flight; From crag and cliff the clamorous seamews screamed, In glade and glen the cottage windows gleam'd; Larks left the cloud, for flight the grey owl sat; The founts and lakes up silver radiance steamed; Winging his twilight journey, hummed the gnat— The drowsy beetle droned, and skimmed the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... transmit messages by means of rude pictures of objects, intended to represent things or thoughts, which afterwards became the symbols of sounds. For instance, the letter M is traced down from the conventionalized picture of an owl in the ancient language of Egypt, Mulak. This was used first to denote the bird itself; then it stood for the name of the bird; then gradually became a syllabic sign to express the sound "mu," the first syllable of the name, and ultimately to denote ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... distant farm-yard was baying at the moon. A whining screech owl sent a faint shudder of superstitious fear over the boy. For a long time he sat on the fence absorbing the night sounds—the claque of the frogs, the burring of the crickets, the hum of the water on the mill-dam far ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... of eve come slowly down, The woods are wrapt in deeper brown, The owl awakens from her dell, The fox is heard upon the fell; Enough remains of glimmering light 5 To guide the wanderer's steps aright, Yet not enough from far to show His figure to the watchful foe. With cautious step, and ear awake, He climbs the crag and threads the brake; 10 And not the summer ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... The white owl here appeared, like other birds, at noon-day; but there were also numerous other night birds. Here too the black-shouldered hawk collected in flights of thirty or forty constantly on the wing, but we never saw them take any prey; nor, (although we invariably examined their ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... astonished as an owl blinking in the sunshine, and two guards held my collar. The coaches lashed away, carrying the man of destiny—as I have since been told he called himself—as rapidly as possible, leaving the victim of destiny to be bayed at by that many-headed ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... a heap more than we have," Rob asserted, "because he always has been a timid sort of chap with regard to seeing blood when any of us got hurt. I remember how ghastly white Tubby grew that time one of the scouts in the Owl Patrol cut his foot with the ax. I thought for a while we'd have two patients on our hands. He had to sit down so as ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... sharp question, "Whether of them twain did the will of his father?" The answer is all too easy. The light is stronger than is comfortable for those owl-eyed Pharisees, who were prowling about like night-birds on the scent of their prey. The sudden glance of this sunbeam dazzles and confounds them. In utter helplessness, they confess the truth that condemns themselves; they ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
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