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More "Peck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... can wish. A peck o' trouble, by the looks of it. Chris Blanchard be gone—vanished like a dream! Mother Blanchard called her this marnin', an' found her bed not so much as creased. She've flown, an' there's a braave ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... handsome craft, she is," the cook would say, and give her sugar from his pocket, and then the bird would peck at the bars and swear straight on, passing belief for wickedness. "There," John would add, "you can't touch pitch and not be mucked, lad. Here's this poor old innocent bird of mine swearing blue fire and none the wiser, ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... For a peck of pease, set on a sauce-pan with a gallon of water in it; when it boils, put in your pease, with a table-spoonful of salt; skim it well, keep them boiling quick from twenty to thirty minutes, according to their age and size. The best way to judge of their being done enough, and indeed ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... listened. "Zounds!" he said, "what's that I hear there? Whence doth come that trumpet-blowing?" Werner's music through the March night, Plaintive soared up to the castle, Begging entrance like a pet-dove, Which, returning to its mistress, Finds the window closed and fastened, And begins to peck and hammer. To the terrace went the Baron And his daughter; Hiddigeigei Followed both with step majestic. Through the cat's heart then swept omens Of a great, eventful future. All around they looked—but vainly. For the turret's gloomy shadow Covered both the bank and Werner. Like the blowing of ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... was aroused by an Indian guide, who informed him that a party of some two hundred Arapahoes had started away some two hours before, and were on a journey northward. The red man does not wear his heart upon his sleeve for government daws to peck at. One knows what he proposes to do after he has done it. The red man is conspicuously among the things that are not always what ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... ago I have seen hanging up on the wall of the principal entry of this inn, a print of its original front, comprising the various figure, coats of arms, &c. which adorned it: in this account the founder Peck was called a citizen of Norwich, and the traveller was puzzled by this piece of information. "It is called Scole Inn, because it is at about the same distance from Norwich, Ipswich, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 18. Saturday, March 2, 1850 • Various
... Clara, holding her work at arms' length, and examining it, with her head on one side, like a bird eyeing the cherry he longs to peck ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... our private conversation! and me with my feathers all anyhow!" She began to peck at herself vigorously; but this was straying from the point, and annoyed me. However, ...
— The Five Jars • Montague Rhodes James
... Take a peck of cling-stone peaches; such as come late in the season, and are very juicy. Pare them, and cut them from the stones. Crack about half the stones and save the kernels. Leave the remainder of the stones whole, and mix them with the cut peaches; add also the kernels. Put the whole into a wide-mouthed ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... slowly round the table, and they rested on one man after another without seeming to see them. And yet he saw them better than any one, though he himself was not conscious of it. He did not, like these Jews and Frenchmen, peck at the things he saw and dissect them, tear them to rags, and leave them in tiny, tiny pieces. Slowly, like a sponge, he sucked up the essence of men and women, and bore away their image in his soul. He seemed to have seen nothing and to remember nothing. It was ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... on, Old Top, shine on! Across the realms of space Shine on! What though I'm in a sorry case? What though my collar is a wreck, And hangs a rag about my neck? What though at food I can but peck? Never you ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... appears in Peak, Pike, Peck, or Pick, but the many compounds in Pick-, e.g. Pickbourne, Pickford, Pickwick, etc., suggest a personal name Pick of which we have the dim. in Pickett (cf. Fr. Picot) and the softened Piggot. Peak may be in some cases from the Derbyshire Peak, which has, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... only the merest handful escaped, including one of the consuls. The slaughter was so great that, according to Livy, when Mago, a brother of Hannibal, carried the news of the victory to Carthage, he, in confirmation of the intelligence, poured down in the porch of the Senate- house, nearly a peck of gold rings taken from ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... waste, and the most prodigal waste, on every hand. In every street-car and on every ferry-boat the floors and seats were littered with newspapers that had been read and thrown away or left behind. If I went to a grocery store to buy a peck of potatoes, and a potato rolled off the heaping measure, the groceryman, instead of picking it up, kicked it into the gutter for the wheels of his wagon to run over. The butcher's waste filled my mother's soul with dismay. If I bought a scuttle of coal at the corner grocery, the ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... flocks of gulls, pigeons, and geese, which were directing their flight towards the Great Fish Lake, whither I, too, was making my way. I concluded their object was to procure food, of which a profusion was here spread before them, consisting of every thing which such birds most delight to peck at; but no sooner had they settled near the bank, than they were seized upon by a Fisherman, (who was lying in wait for them,) and completely plucked of their feathers, an operation to which they very quietly submitted, and were then suffered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... parlour-beam Amidst his wives, he had a deadly dream, Just at the dawn; and sigh'd, and groan'd so fast, As every breath he drew would be his last. Dame Partlet, ever nearest to his side, Heard all his piteous moan, and how he cried For help from gods and men: and sore aghast She peck'd and pull'd, and waken'd him at last. 100 Dear heart, said she, for love of heaven declare Your pain, and make me partner in your care! You groan, sir, ever since the morning-light, As something had ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... driveway, and build a couple of two-story rooms, with basement for cellar and furnace, and a bathroom in front of the cabin and use it with some fixing over for a dining-room and kitchen. Then we will deepen and widen Singing Water, stick a bushel of bulbs and roots and sow a peck of flower seeds in the marsh, plant a hedge along the drive, and straighten the lake shore a little. I can make a beautiful wild-flower garden and arrange so that with one season's work this will appear very well. We will express this stuff ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... dells and hillsides cleft with fern-choked ravines. Still we were in Burns's country, for by Craigie Burn lived Jean Lorimer, to whom he wrote love-songs; and a little farther on was the scene where "Willie brewed a peck o' maut." The next bit of beauty was associated with the Ettrick Shepherd (I can't bear to think of his name being Hogg), for he wrote a Covenanter story, "Brownie of Bodesbeck," about a mountain we could see ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... getting itself up in Poland at this time. Nothing known about it for certain; much guessed. "Something in the rumor!" nods this wig; "Nothing!" wags that, slightly oscillating; and gazetteers, who would earn their wages, and have a peck of coals apiece to glad them in the cold weather, had to watch with all eagerness the movements of King August, our poor old friend, the Dilapidated-Strong, who is in Saxony at present; but bound ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... splay foot? Come up, now, prithee, Bridewell Bird! You will drink, will you? I saw no dust or cobwebs come out of your mouth. Go hang, you moon-calf, false faucet, you roaring horse-courser, you ranger of Turnbull, you dull malt-house with a mouth of a peck and the sign of the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... and social life, making no demands upon one's credulity, but satisfying the requirements in the way of a thoroughly good novel. The characters are all drawn with real fidelity to life.—HARRY THURSTON PECK, Editor ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... got buck-shot," said Gid. "And they could mow us down before we could cross that place. They still outnumber us two to one—packed in there like sardines. Don't you think we'd better scatter about and peck at 'em when they show an eye? I'd like to know who built that church. Confound him, he cut out too many ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... this marriage took effect or not I cannot say; for sure it is that she died in her tender years."(58) Drake(59) affirms, that Richard knighted at York a natural son called Richard of Gloucester, and supposes it to be the same person of whom Peck has preserved so extraordinary an account.(60) But never was a supposition worse grounded. The relation given by the latter of himself, was, that he never saw the king till the night before the battle of Bosworth: and that ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... held his breath for a moment; then literally heaved a sigh. What he most feared had indeed come upon him. The world knew; his heart was on his sleeve for daws to peck at. ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... in turning up her Tail To bear the Threshing of her Gallant's Frail, A Groat (which always is a Cuckold's Fee) Under the Candlestick I've laid for me; Besides good Peck and Booze, so till she's Dead, She may and will Whore on ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... he won't let any of his guests smoke when he's got a shoot on, He's got "No Smoking" posted up in big letters in every room in the house. REGGIE said it was awful. He had to lock his bedroom door, shove the chest-of-drawers against it, and smoke with his head stuck right up the chimney. He got a peck of soot, one night, right on the top of his nut. Now I ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 19, 1892 • Various
... Separate streams of water entered the tops of his ridingboots—they were a borrowed pair and too big for him—and his feet were in puddles. It was only by degrees that he realised this misery. Then in the boggy track his horse began to stumble. The fourth or fifth peck woke irritation, and he jerked savagely at the bridle, and struck the beast's dripping flanks with his whip. The result was a jib and a flounder, and the shock squeezed out the water from his garments as from a sponge. ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... it to little wooden splints. And behold it really set: the bird got quite well and fluttered about the workshops again as sound as before, and whenever it saw me it would perch upon my shoulder and peck very gently at my hair with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the rainy months of March and April to water it, sprung up very pleasantly, and yielded a very good crop; but having part of the seed left only, and not daring to sow all that I had, I had but a small quantity at last, my whole crop not amounting to above half a peck of each kind. But by this experiment I was made master of my business, and knew exactly when the proper season was to sow, and that I might expect two seed-times and two harvests ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... large, smooth, white eggs, and when she had as many as she could conveniently take care of, she began to sit on them to keep them warm, till the little ducks should be ready to peck their way out. She plucked the soft white down from her breast, to line the nest, and to make it of a more even temperature for the eggs; and, whenever she left to procure food, or to take a short swim on the pond, she ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... soup aside, and John Thomas brings in the roast ducks. How appetizing they would be at home! The Chief wrenches them apart in perspiring silence, and we fall to. We peck at the food; the sweat drops from our faces into the plates, the utensils slide from our hands, and so we make the best of it. But when the pudding arrives our courage fails us. We cannot face plum pudding, sentiment or no sentiment. ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... have often seen hogs, by their rooting and rubbing, kill the trees. Better to pick up the apples that fall too early, and give them to the swine. Turkeys and hens in an orchard will do much to destroy the various insects. They may be removed for a short time when they begin to peck the ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... Peloponnesian Wars, seems to have regarded art as a matter of illusion, if one may judge by the stories told of his work. The tale of his painting a bunch of grapes so like reality that the birds came to peck at them proves either that the painter's motive was deception, or that the narrator of the tale picked out the deceptive part of his picture for admiration. He painted many subjects, like Helen, Penelope, and many genre ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... established duty is sometimes wonderfully strong.' LOWE. 'A hen, Sir, will feed her chickens in preference to herself.' JOHNSON. 'But we don't know that the hen is hungry; let the hen be fairly hungry, and I'll warrant she'll peck the corn herself. A cock, I believe, will feed hens instead of himself; but we don't know that the cock is hungry.' BOSWELL. 'And that, Sir, is not from affection but gallantry. But some of the Indians have affection.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, that they help some of their children ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... on my twenty-first birthday. To my shame I awoke in the early morning at Riversley, forgetful of my father's old appointment for the great Dipwell feast. Not long after sunrise, when blackbirds peck the lawns, and swallows are out from under eaves to the flood's face, I was hailed by Janet Ilchester beneath my open windows. I knew she had a bet with the squire that she would be the first to hail me legal man, and was prepared for it. She sat ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... on, gleefully, 'that I got off about as cleanly as any criminal ever did, thanks to you. If we'd fixed the thing up between us it couldn't have been any neater, could it? Because I went straight to Far Harbor and got you into a peck of trouble, right away, and then slipped quietly into Canada, and put on the outfit of a travelling salesman. And right here another bright idea struck me. Why not carry the thing farther? I knew that you had advertised a trip to Europe (why, the Lord only knows), so ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... picked a peck of pickled pepper; A peck of pickled pepper Peter Piper picked; If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper, Where's the peck of pickled pepper Peter ...
— Young Canada's Nursery Rhymes • Various
... catch a grub, and then It would never feed again. My fields he'd skip, And peck, and nip, And on the caterpillars feed; And nought should crawl, or hop, or run When he his hearty meal had done. Alas! it was a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... heroes, the rival of a mighty king? Which of you will compare yourself with him,—whom you dared not even strike, you and your robber crew, fairly in front, but, skulked round him till he fell pecked to death by you, as Lapland Skratlings peck to death the bear. Ten years ago he swept this hall of such as you, and hung their heads upon yon gable outside; and were he alive but one five minutes again, this hall would be right cleanly swept ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... in the State!" denied the stranger. "I know a man who can lift a barrel of flour as easily as I can a peck of potatoes." ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... with iron missiles, and asked where he was going, replied, "To die on my threshold"; Watkins, of Baltimore; Frederick Hinton, with his polished eloquence; James Forten, the merchant prince; William Whipper, just essaying his youthful powers; Lewis Woodson and John Peck, of Pittsburg; Austin Steward, then of Rochester; Samuel E. Cornish, who had the distinguished honor of reasoning Gerrit Smith out of colonization, and of telling Henry Clay that he would never be president of anything higher than the American Colonization Society; Philip A. Bell, ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... madame know that her order for a steak, a peck of potatoes, and two lemons, is registered in the grocery boy's book under the laconic ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... of life was not knocked out of me I don't know, but it wasn't, and I kicked and thrashed about till I got my head and shoulders to the surface, with a peck of snow down the back of my neck. I looked for the buffaloes, and there they stood in blank astonishment, wondering, I guess, if I always got off of a horse that way. I ran my sleeve along the barrel of my rifle, rested it over a lump of frozen ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth
... remembered the book she was reading. He come back with a copy he'd bought at Spokane and kept it on his bureau. Not that he read it much. It was harder to get into than 'Peck's Bad Boy,' which was his favourite reading ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... the table with a sinuous, beguiling motion, and, extending his long neck towards the prospector, with the air of a turkey-gobbler about to peck, he crooned, softly: "Ira, it's a heap risky puttin' your faith in maverick sharps that trail around the country, God-a'mightying it, renaming little, old rocks into precious stones, seein' gold mines in every gopher-hole they come to. ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... and Rimini, beside Ravenna, now remained to Odovacar, and for the next two years and a half (from the autumn of 490 to the spring of 493) Ravenna was straitly besieged. Corn rose to a terrible famine price (seventy-two shillings a peck), and before the end of the siege the inhabitants had to feed on the hides of animals, and all sorts of foul and fearful aliments, and many of them perished of hunger. A sortie made in 491 by a number of barbarian recruits ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... liable, in cases of reasonable doubt. Pitt v. Yalden, 4 Burrows, 2060. He shall be protected, when he acts with good faith, and to the best of his skill and knowledge. Gilbert v. Williams, 8 Mass. 57. The want of ordinary care and skill in such a person is gross negligence. Holmes v. Peck, 1 Rhode Island, Rep. 245; Cox v. Sullivan, 7 Georgia, 144; Pennington v. Yell, 6 Engl. 212. As between the client and the attorney, the responsibility of the latter is as great and as strict here as in any country when ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... and cry by and by,' says Aunt B. 'You'll pick over a peck-measure and get a bitter apple at last. You are old enough to have more consideration. There he has got a house all finished off and furnished, English carpet in the spare room, and yellow chairs up chamber, brass andirons and fire-tongs, great wheel and little wheel, rugs braided, quilts ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... mortal life, which starts from an egg, corresponds with that of Job, when he says, "Man 552:15 that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble." Mortals must emerge from this notion of material life as all-in-all. They must peck 552:18 open their shells with Christian Science, and look outward and upward. But thought, loosened from a material basis but not yet instructed by Science, may become wild 552:21 with freedom ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... there, in a little apartment near Saint-Roch. Drinking in the fresh air, under the striped awning of the Cafe de la Rotunde, he read the journals, one after the other, or watched the sparrows fly about and peck up the grains in the sand. Children ran here and there, playing at ball; and, above the noise of the promenaders, arose the music ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... in like case a good fellow that had but a peck of corn weekly to grind, yet would needs build a new mill for it, found his error eftsoons, for either he must let his mill lie waste, pull it quite down, or let others grind at it. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... 15 years old, one of them about a foot in diameter and twenty feet high, that have borne for two years. Peach trees will not live at this place. Two miles away at Newburyport is a tree a year or two younger that bore a half peck of nuts last year, and another tree 35 years old in bearing for 15 or 20 years. The nuts were spoken of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... said aloud: "be ye bird, or be ye beast, ye are safe from these old hands. I have eaten and I have drunk: why should I take life, when my wants call for no sacrifice? It will not be long afore the birds will peck at eyes that shall not see them, and perhaps light on my very bones; for if things like these are only made to perish, why am I to expect to live for ever? Come forth, come forth; you are safe from harm ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... vainly to snatch a moment's sleep between shots and the trains that go roaring overhead on the elevated road. Roused by the sharp crack of the rifles, they blink at the lights in the street, and peck moodily at a crust in ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... chirp and a twitter, and when she looked at the bare flower-bed at her left side there he was hopping about and pretending to peck things out of the earth to persuade her that he had not followed her. But she knew he had followed her and the surprise so filled her with delight that she almost ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... interesting account of scaffold burial, furnished by Dr. L. S. Turner, U. S. A., Fort Peck, Mont., and relating to the Sioux, is here given entire, as it refers to certain curious mourning observances which have prevailed to a great extent ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... guess they got pretty tired of Mr. Rogers, even before he died; and they kept the supply a-goin' till—all was blue, before they could settle on anybody. In fact they couldn't seem to agree on anybody till Mr. Peck come." ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... was," said Tom Betts, with a chuckle, "and I could string off more'n a few times when that same curiosity hauled Bobolink into a peck of trouble. But p'raps your father might let out the secret to you, after the old boxes have been taken away, and then you can ease his mind. Because it's just like he says, and he'll keep on dreamin' the most wonderful things about those cases you ever heard ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... a very hearty eater, so that the peck of corn flour allowed the slaves for a week's ration lasted him only a half. He used to lug large sticks of wood on his shoulders from the woods, which was from a mile to a mile and a half away, to first one and then another of his fellow negroes, who gave him something to eat; and in ...
— My Life In The South • Jacob Stroyer
... himself, old Mr. Crow loved to look on while others wrangled. And though he had no taste himself for actual fighting, he liked to see his neighbors pummel and peck and ...
— The Tale of Nimble Deer - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... trees are now 7 years old from seed. These trees had about 1/2 bushel of hulled walnuts last summer and I expect to have about 2 bushels this summer. Last summer I also had about a peck of hard shell almonds from my two trees that were planted in 1927. In 1931 my 6 filberts had about 1/2 peck of nuts. These trees are now big enough to have at least a bushel or two of nuts if the catkins had not frozen ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... though our human vision does not see the point; so all mysteries are radii, and could we follow one implicitly, then we have found the centre of all. Therefore the best critic of art is the man whose life has been hid with God in nature; and therefore the triumph of art is complete when birds peck at the grapes. ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... estimate of the world's honors and the rewards of the Muses, you will forgive me, if you will remember how the great Burke reduced the value of earthly honors and emoluments to less than that of a peck of wheat. My fire is gone out. My candle is flickering in the socket. There is light in the cold, gray East. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... Badshah in cover and waited. Presently there was a patter over the dry leaves lying on the ground, and a jungle cock, a bird similar to an English bantam, stalked across the glade twenty yards away. It stopped and began to peck. Dermot quietly raised his rifle and took careful aim at its head. He fired, and the body of the cock fell to the ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... word he carries about as a hen carries a boiled potato—something too big to swallow but nice to peck at. And he pecks at ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... me take one out, Clara! I won't hurt it; dear, sweet little thing!' she exclaimed, as she was just putting out her hand to take one of them up, but was held back by her cousin, and so prevented from receiving the meditated peck which the old hen was evidently ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... the money, and I need it now," he replied doggedly. "It's not for myself, but for that friend I told you about. He's in a peck of trouble, and he's got to get his lift ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... Spanish dictionaries I have consulted. The Academy dictionary gives mojoda as a square measure, deriving it from the low Latin modiata from modius. Perhaps one should read mojada instead of mozada and give it a meaning similar to that of modius or about a peck. Major's translation follows the explanation of De Verneuil, who says: "Mozada signifie la mesure que peut ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... acrobats. It is only when they have found their feet that the disorder begins. Whether it is worms or insects or verdure they seek among the grazing cows, there is evidently little enough to go round, and starling fights starling with peck and protest all over the field. It is a scene of civil war, save that the birds do not form themselves into sides but each wrestles with its neighbour at random. But, after all, they are very hungry. They cluster ravenously on the green patches, even on the sides of the old stone walls. ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... experiencing some kindness when they cheerfully submit. This is the principle at any rate adopted in the breaking of young horses. The animal obeys its trainer, and something sweet is sure to follow; or it disobeys, and in place of something sweet it finds a peck of trouble; and so on, until it comes at last to yield obedience to the trainer's every wish. Or to take another instance: Young dogs, [6] however far inferior to man in thought and language, [7] can still be taught to run on errands and turn somersaults, [8] and do a host of other clever things, ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... small change—you look, and there's neither head nor tail to the coins, and the denomination's rubbed off long ago. But do as you please here! You'd better not show your goods to the tradesman of this place; any one of 'em'll go into any warehouse and sniff and peck, and peck, and then clear out. It'd be all right if there were no goods, but what do you expect a man to trade in? I've got one apothecary shop, one dry goods, the third a grocery. No use, none of them pays. You needn't even go to the market; they cut the prices down worse ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... She watched him peck a morsel of cheese into five tiny pieces, then fly, with full beak, on eager wing, to the hidden nest, from which five gaping mouths shrieked a shrill and hungry welcome. Then, back again—swift as an arrow from the archer's bow—noting, with bright eye, ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... Hostilities began the moment the door was shut upon them; he drove her away from the food-cup, he fought her over the bathing-dish, he answered her sweet call with a harsh "chack" or an insulting "huff," he twitched her feathers if she came near him, and gave her a peck if she seemed to be having too easy a time. Withal, such was his villainous temper that he desired a victim to abuse, and never let her out of his sight for two minutes, lest she should enjoy something he could ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... caws solemnly to them for ten minutes. I have noticed (through an opera-glass) that the congregation wears a very devout appearance. Churchwarden rooks go round while the service is proceeding, and peck any birds that seem inattentive. At the close there is a universal caw, which I believe stands for "Amen." It is a curious fact that the chaplain rook on these occasions always ornaments himself with a wisp of white grass tied round his neck, which increases his clerical aspect. I have tried ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... on the burning deck Eating peanuts by the peck. His father called, he would not go Because he loved his ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... out on the plantation per week, was invariably one peck of corn or meal for each slave. This allowance was given in meal when it could be obtained; when it could not, they received corn, which they pounded in mortars after they returned from their labor in the field. The slaves on our plantation ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... truth, I have had to pay constant visits to my cousin, who lives in a big castle on the sea-side, ten miles from here, over the mountains, and who is in a peck of troubles;—in spite of her prosperity one of the unhappiest women, I should say, that you could meet anywhere. You know so much of her affairs that, without breach of trust, I may say so much. I wish she had a father or a brother to manage her matters for her; but she has none, and I cannot ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... attempts at melody, made with much choking and wheezing and many wry faces,—as if the countless flies he had swallowed were sticking in his throat,—pleased her more than carols. Within a week after his capture he was so tame that he would sit on her shoulder as she walked about her room and peck at her teeth. She was certain that he was giving her so many loving kisses; but her big brothers unsympathetically explained that he thought she had some kernels of corn between ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... special day on each plantation when de Master and de o'seer give out de week's rations, like dis: Four pounds o' bacon; one peck o' meal; quart o' flour; quart o' molasses;—dey was dat black; and dey was de rations fer a whole endurin' week. Had a big choppin' block where all de meat was chopped on. In dem days every bit o' de meat was raised on de plantation from de Master's hogs. Into de grooves o' dis choppin' block ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... we should prefer new to old friends, just as we prefer young to aged horses? The answer admits of no doubt whatever. For there should be no satiety in friendship, as there is in other things. The older the sweeter, as in wines that keep well. And the proverb is a true one, "You must eat many a peck of salt with a man to be thorough friends with him." Novelty, indeed, has its advantage, which we must not despise. There is always hope of fruit, as there is in healthy blades of corn. But age too must have its proper position; and, in fact, the influence of time and habit is ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the owners of the paper. Horace found him working in his garden. Mr. Bliss looked up. He saw a big boy coming toward him. The boy had on a white felt hat with a narrow brim. It looked like a half-peck measure. His hair was white. His trousers were too short for him. All his clothes were coarse and poor. He was such a strange-looking boy, that Mr. Bliss wanted ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston
... complications arising from the evil influence of demons or devils. One whole chapter is devoted to "Extraordinary Diseases," and teaches anxious relatives to give instant relief in cases of "the face swelling as big as a peck measure, and little men three feet long appearing in the eyes." "Seeing one thing as if it were two," would hardly be classed by London doctors as an extraordinary disease, and is not altogether unknown ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... my—of the young person for whom I am the alternative, is in a peck of trouble; I quote her verbatim. She and her two daughters hold some three thousand shares of Western Pacific stock. It was purchased at fifty-seven, and it ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... browse, and free them from these pests. In the low country the same acceptable office is performed by the "cattle-keeper heron" (Ardea bubulcus), which is "sure to be found in attendance on them while grazing; and the animals seem to know their benefactors, and stand quietly, while the birds peck their tormentors from their flanks."—Mag. Nat. Hist. ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... girl, but you can't throw worth a cent," replied Jamie, gamboling down the hall in his slippers and producing a ball from some of the mysterious receptacles in which boys have the art of storing rubbish enough to fill a peck measure. ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... a lamentably scattered family. Another Scops owl, with one eye, lives in the eastern aviary, in Church's care. He is a charming, furious little ruffian (I am speaking of the owl, and not of Church), and perfectly ready to peck any living thing, quite irrespective of size. Where he lost his eye is a story of his own, for he was first met with but one. He sits on his perch with a furious cock of the ears—which are not ears at all, but feathers—with the aspect of being permanently prepared to repel boarders; and the ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... down into it, and gave a quick, sharp "m-i-e-o-u," as if to say, "What do you think of that?" And the children looked in and saw a hen sitting upon the old cat's kittens and trying to keep them all covered up! When the cat tried to go near them, the hen would peck at her and drive her away. How the children laughed! Mollie said: "Did you ever see anything so funny! I am going to ask Mama to write a funny story about it,—how our old hen ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... dinner. The estimate is called 150,000l. All your members were present yesterday, and if we had voted against the Government, only see how we would have diminished their numbers.—Mr. Chard is in a peck of troubles. He has not got the address, without which it is useless to go to the Levee.—I was glad of Brougham's mention of Lady Grenville's pension (it certainly was not an attack), because it produced an authorized declaration ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... in one it hath; its blood is eath and quick of flow, Wide-mouthed, though all the rest be black, its ears are white as snow. It hath an idol like a cock, that doth its belly peck, And half a dirhem is its worth, if thou its price ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... see,' interrupting her delightedly, 'his very language borrows its most powerful imagery from his past belongings! Do you or I, Audrey, in our wildest and most despairing moments, ever talk of a peck of trouble? Depend upon it, my dear, when Thomas made that speech, he was among his bins again; in his mind's eye he was measuring out his oats and beans. I think I hear him repeating again what he once said to me: "It is such a clean, ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... produced undeniable proofs of his elegance and art in the wedding-supper, which had been committed to his management and direction. This genial banquet was entirely composed of sea-dishes; a huge pillaw, consisting of a large piece of beef sliced, a couple of fowls, and half a peck of rice, smoked in the middle of the board: a dish of hard fish, swimming in oil, appeared at each end; the sides being furnished with a mess of that savoury composition known by the name of lub's-course, and a plate of salmagundy. The second course displayed a goose of a monstrous ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... S. Reinsch, formerly American Minister to China, Dr. C. D. Tenney, Mr. Willys Peck, Mr. Ernest B. Price and other members of the Legation staff obtained import permits and attended to many details connected with the ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... a new enemy of three year's known existence there, has injured every crop, and destroyed many in that and other counties both sides and along the Blue Ridge. I saw many fields that would not yield more than seed, and not a few from which not one peck per acre could be calculated upon. I saw more than one field without a head. The most fortunate calculate upon a half crop only. Corn is backward on the lower James River, embracing my own farm. I have heard to-day from my manager that the ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... transported for the rest of the life that had thus been given back to him. While he was on his way down the town to go on board the vessel, I should think that if he had one dollar given him, he had at least half a peck, though I do not expect they would be much use to him where he was going to. I never heard any more of him, but I don't suppose many men could say that they had been hanged ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... twenty-two pictures, principally of Dutch interiors, with some sketches in English towns, which last, being more unusual, were thought her best work. Her picture, "Mother Claudius," is in the collection of Walter J. Peck, New York; "High Noon at Cape Ann" is owned by W. B. Lockwood, New York; and a "Holland Interior" by Dr. Gessler, Philadelphia. Of her recent exhibition a critic writes: "The pictures are notable for their careful attention to ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... She was a woman whose sunken mouth, ruddy cheeks, and quick brown eyes gave her the appearance of a bird which walks about pecking suddenly here and there. As Helena reluctantly entered the mother drew herself up, and immediately relaxed, seeming to peck ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... a peck, and a hug around the neck. (She embraces JIM playfully. He hands her the gum, patting his shoulder as he sits on box.) Oh, thank ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... to get rid of, usually went to the Palais-Royal. He had lived for twenty years not far from there, in a little apartment near Saint-Roch. Drinking in the fresh air, under the striped awning of the Cafe de la Rotunde, he read the journals, one after the other, or watched the sparrows fly about and peck up the grains in the sand. Children ran here and there, playing at ball; and, above the noise of the promenaders, arose the music ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... rest perished; near two hundred souls Had left their bodies; and what's worse, alas! When over Catholics the Ocean rolls, They must wait several weeks before a mass Takes off one peck of purgatorial coals, Because, till people know what's come to pass, They won't lay out their money on the dead— It costs three francs for every mass ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... we do with her now we have her here?" asked the rash Tufter; but he was sorry he asked, for the Phoenix gave him a terrible peck. ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... Use a half peck of kale. Strip the leaves from the stems and choose the crisp and curly ones for use, wash through two waters and drain. Boil in salted water twenty minutes, then pour into a colander and let cold water run over it, drain and chop fine. Brown a small onion in a tablespoonful ...
— Vaughan's Vegetable Cook Book (4th edition) - How to Cook and Use Rarer Vegetables and Herbs • Anonymous
... doesn't suit me. I was made for society. I adorn it. She never appreciated me. She couldn't soar to it. When I think of the way she treated me," he exclaimed, suddenly getting into a rage, "I've a great mind to turn back into a robin and peck her head off!" ...
— Little Saint Elizabeth and Other Stories • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the envy attendant upon literary excellence might with equal justice be extended to every species of merit, and might be urged against all that is good in art or nature.—Scandal is said to attack always the fairest characters, as the birds always peck most at the ripest fruit; but would you for this reason have no fruit ripen, or no characters aspire to excellence? But if it be your opinion that women are naturally inferior to us in capacity, why do you feel so much apprehension of their becoming eminent, ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... Men of England who inherit Mine be a cot beside the hill Move eastward, happy earth, and leave My banks they are furnished with bees My heart is sair, I darena tell My heart is wasted with my woe My mind to me a kingdom is O, Willie brew'd a peck o' maut ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... almost burst myself with eating and drinking, and all of the very best, but she has gone and filled my portmanteau too, filled it up chock full, sir! A fine ham of bacon, sir, and a pair of roasted fowls, with two bottles of brandy, and a matter of a peck ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... what was the matter. That blow on the hip had ruined Greer's right hand, strained it, perhaps broken it. Greer's rushes had stopped, and Smith, who was a boxer, not a fighter, could stand off and peck at his man's eyes or jaw ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... be said to have commenced with 1856, the year the first house was built. This house was enlarged in 1858 by Hite and Beardsley and used for a hotel. Sullivan and Cushman secured it for a debt the following year, and it was operated in turn by Peck, Longhurst, and Hutchings until 1871. Meantime J.C. Lamon settled in 1860, the first actual resident of the valley, an honor which he did not share ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... little cubby-hole. Never was boy more taken aback! "Who dah knockin' at mah door?" he said again, standing within two feet of my elbow, looking past me not two inches from my nose. "Humph! Somebody knockin' at mah door better look at what dey doin' or dey gwine git into a peck ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... in session, one of the machine's most effective workers, Walter Parker, could not be present at his post at Sacramento, because he was required at Los Angeles, where, because of the "recall," the machine was in a peck of trouble. ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... we live in History? Erostratus by a torch; Milo by a bullock; Henry Darnley, an unfledged booby and bustard, by his limbs; most Kings and Queens by being born under such and such a bed-tester; Boileau Despreaux (according to Helvetius) by the peck of a turkey; and this ill-starred individual by a rent in his breeches,—for no Memoirist of Kaiser Otto's Court omits him. Vain was the prayer of Themistocles for a talent of Forgetting: my Friends, yield cheerfully ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... head. "Well, I don't know. For two reasons, maybe. First, I'd hate to be responsible for tippin' over such a sky-towerin' idol as you've been to make ruins for Angie Phinney and the other blackbirds to peck at and caw over. And second—well, it does sound presumin', don't it, but I kind of pity you. Say, Heman," he added with a chuckle, "that's a kind of distinction, in a way, ain't it? A good many folks have hurrahed over you and worshipped ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... prays her not to find The father's, but her own. 'He is yet green And may grow straight,' so flickers his last jest, Then out for ever. At the last he begged A penny-pott of malmsey. In the bill, All's printed now for crows and daws to peck, You'll find four shillings for his winding sheet. He had the poet's heart and God help all Who have that heart and somehow lose their way For lack of helm, souls that are blown abroad By the great winds of passion, without power To sway them, chartless captains. ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... storehouses had been growing for thousands of years in the Amazon jungle with their wealth securely sealed up in their bark, the peck of a bird, the boring of a beetle, or the scratch of a climbing animal being the only draft upon their treasure. The trees around the mouth of the river supplied whatever was needed for the little manufacturing that was at ...
— The Romance of Rubber • United States Rubber Company
... differed as to the source from which our [author] drew the first hint of writing Paradise Lost; Peck conjectures that it was from a celebrated Spanish Romance called Guzman, and Dr. Zachary Pearce, now bishop of Bangor, has alledged, that he took the first hint of it from an Italian Tragedy, called Il Paradiso Perso, still extant, and printed many years before ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... to tavern, picking out his men. There is an ale-house in Sea-coal Lane—the same where lady-like George Peele was found by the barber, who had subscribed an hour before for his decent burial, "all alone with a peck of oysters"—and here Ned is detained an unconscionable time. Just as he is leaving with Kempe and Cowley, Armin and Will Shakespeare burst in with a cry for wine. It is Armin who gives the orders, but his ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... freely confess that in some of my most important achievements his example, wish, and advice, though then but a very young man, largely influenced my action." In a sketch of the relations of the two men by Dr. John M. Peck we are told that "after Jefferson became President of the United States, he retained all of his early affection for Mr. Lemen"; and upon the occasion of a visit of a mutual friend to the President, in 1808, "he inquired after him with all the ...
— The Jefferson-Lemen Compact • Willard C. MacNaul
... with all her strength against the shutter. She had thought the wooden buttons would give way, but by the clinking sound she knew that the iron bar had been put across. She was quite quiet for a time. Clambering down, she took from the table a small one-bladed penknife, with which she began to peck at the hard ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... along Moffat Water, with a succession of wild green dells and hillsides cleft with fern-choked ravines. Still we were in Burns's country, for by Craigie Burn lived Jean Lorimer, to whom he wrote love-songs; and a little farther on was the scene where "Willie brewed a peck o' maut." The next bit of beauty was associated with the Ettrick Shepherd (I can't bear to think of his name being Hogg), for he wrote a Covenanter story, "Brownie of Bodesbeck," about a mountain we could ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... broad road led in a straight line to the large gate. Upon entering the Hall, and raising her head, she first of all perceived before her a large tablet with blue ground, upon which figured nine dragons of reddish gold. The inscription on this tablet consisted of three characters as large as a peck-measure, and declared that this was the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... distinguished names, as patrons and patronesses of the celebrated animal called the Bonassus. Crossing the road in their approach to the door, Tallyho could not help admiring the simple elegance of a shop-front belonging to a grocer, whose name is Peck. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... of ours keep the chicks quite as warm, and never peck the little fellows, or step upon them, as ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... your station is humble, and your fortune lowly. It isn't the waistcoat that I look at. It is the heart. The checks in the waistcoat are but the wires of the cage. But the heart is the bird. Ah! How many sich birds are perpetually moulting, and putting their beaks through the wires to peck at all mankind!' ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... told him the girl had come to beg a little rice, as they had had nothing to eat all day. "She's a good daughter," said his mother, "and I'm very sorry for her. We must try and help them a little." Ku thereupon shouldered a peck of rice, and, knocking at their door, presented it with his mother's compliments. The young lady received the rice, but said nothing; and then she got into the habit of coming over and helping Ku's mother with her work and household ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... peck of cling-stone peaches; such as come late in the season, and are very juicy. Pare them, and cut them from the stones. Crack about half the stones and save the kernels. Leave the remainder of the stones whole, ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... from these pests. In the low country the same acceptable office is performed by the "cattle-keeper heron" (Ardea bubuleus), which is "sure to be found in attendance on them while grazing; and the animals seem to know their benefactors, and stand quietly, while the birds peck their tormentors from their flanks."—Mag. Nat. Hist. ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... you, Bluff, standing up for a friend. Well, I'm rather inclined to believe the same way. Anyhow, it was a mighty mean dodge. If that Andy Lasher keeps on he'll get in a peck of trouble sooner or later. Why, for such a thing as this he deserves a peppering of shot at a distance," ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... known put a Peck or more of Peas, and malt them with five Quarters of Barley, and they'll greatly mellow the Drink, and so will Beans; but they won't come so soon, nor mix so conveniently with the Malt, as the ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... of children flies to the back-door when school lets out. "Don't you come in here with all that mud!" she squalls excitedly. "Look at you! A peck o' dirt on each foot. Right in my nice clean kitchen that I just scrubbed. Go 'long now and clean your shoes. Go 'long, I tell you. Slave and slave for you and that's all the thanks I get. You'd keep the place looking like a hogpen, if I wasn't at ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... gentleman pensioner. "'I can better take a blister of a nettle than a prick of a rose; more willing that a raven should peck out my eyes than a dove. To die of the meat one liketh not is better than to surfeit of that he loveth; and I had rather an enemy should bury me quick than a friend belie me when I ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... heart can wish. A peck o' trouble, by the looks of it. Chris Blanchard be gone—vanished like a dream! Mother Blanchard called her this marnin', an' found her bed not so much as creased. She've flown, an' there's a braave upstore 'bout it, for every Blanchard's wrong in the head more or less, beggin' ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... singing with the utter joy of the ride. Beneath her Brunette was spurning the turf with dainty hooves; stretching out in her gallop, yet gathering herself cleverly at her fences, with alert, pricked ears—judging her distance, and landing with never a peck or stumble. The light weight on the pony's back was nothing to her; the delicate touch on her mouth was all she needed to steady her ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... White Officers commanding Negro Soldiers.—The New York Press calls upon the Government to protect its Negro Soldiers.—Secretary Stanton's Action.—The President's Order.—Correspondence between Gen. Peck and Gen. Pickett in Regard to the Killing of a Colored Man after he had surrendered at the Battle of Newbern.—Southern Press on the Capture and Treatment of Negro Soldiers.—The Rebels refuse to exchange Negro Soldiers captured on Morris and James Islands on Account of the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... worked on the railroad he had allowed him for food, one peck of corn meal, four pounds of bacon, and one quart of molasses per week. He cooked it himself at night, for the next day's use. He worked at packing cotton for four or five months, and in the middle of November, 1852, was sent back to the railroad, where he was again ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... authority in any cause or hearing before the same." The only limitation placed on this power was that summary attachment was made a negation of all other modes of punishment. The abuse of this extensive power led, following the unsuccessful impeachment of Judge James H. Peck of the Federal District Court of Missouri, to the passage of the act of 1831 limiting the power of the federal courts to punish contempts to misbehavior in the presence of the courts, "or so near thereto as to obstruct the administration of justice," to the misbehavior ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... Amidst his wives, he had a deadly dream, Just at the dawn; and sigh'd, and groan'd so fast, As every breath he drew would be his last. Dame Partlet, ever nearest to his side, Heard all his piteous moan, and how he cried For help from gods and men: and sore aghast She peck'd and pull'd, and waken'd him at last. 100 Dear heart, said she, for love of heaven declare Your pain, and make me partner in your care! You groan, sir, ever since the morning-light, As something ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Peck, Prof. Mary Gray, elected natl headqrs. secy, 261; gives report of new headqrs, value of New York center, increased demand for literature, large sales, valuable suggestions, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... few minutes, Gahogan, of the Tenth; Gilder-sleeve, of the Fourteenth; Peck, of the First; Thomas, of the Seventh; Taylor, of the Eighth, and Colburn, of the Fifth, were gathered around their commander. There, too, was Bradley, the boyish, red-cheeked chief of the artillery; and Stilton, the rough, old, bearded regular, ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... when it sees a flock of herons or magpies or birds of that kind, suddenly flings himself on the ground with his mouth open to look as he were dead; and these birds want to peck at his tongue, and he bites off ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... around genuinely surprised. "Why—a mere mouthful, a taste, a tidbit, was all any of you had. See—there's a pigeon or two left, and half a duck, and part of the beef pie—why, you do but peck at your food, all of you, like ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... This suggests the legend of Quentin Massys of Antwerp and the fly, or the still older, but perhaps not more historical story of the Greek painters, Zeuxis and the bunch of grapes, which the birds came to peck at, and Parrhasius, whose curtain ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... success of our own particular mess, all scattered after "retreat" roll call in different directions. About midnight they had all come in, and pots, kettles, ovens, and hot coals were in demand. Henry Donoho had shelled out about a peck of cornfield beans from the nearly ...
— A History of Lumsden's Battery, C.S.A. • George Little
... an indiwidooal who has a mind inside of his hat, and a whole soul packed away under his jacket. You'll never rise, a flutterin' and a ringin' like a bald-headed eagle—men like you have got no wings, and can only go about nibblin' the grass, while we fly up and peck cherries from the trees. I'm always thinkin' on what I'm going to be, and a preparin' myself for what natur' intended, though I don't know exactly what it is yet. But I don't believe that sich a man as Montezuma Moggs was brought into ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... done by pedants and tenebrific persons, under the name of men; dwelling not on things, but, at endless length, on the outer husks of things: of unparalleled confusion, too;—not so much as an Index granted you; to the poor half-peck of cinders, hidden in these wagon-loads of ashes, no sieve allowed! Books tending really to fill the mind with mere dust-whirlwinds,—if the mind did not straightway blow them out again; which it does. Of these let us say ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... especial mark of gratitude for the favour about to be bestowed; then he explained with a serious weighing of his words, "It was her love of children. I had barely been introduced to her when she turned her back upon me and gave her whole attention to Professor Peck's little boy Willie. I said to myself, 'any girl of that age who prefers children to young chaps of my age, is the girl ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... the seed that was exposed. I saw them on many occasions returning in countless numbers from a foray, each carrying in its mouth a grain of barley or wheat. I tracked them to their subterranean nests, in one of which I found about a peck of corn which had been conveyed by separate grains; and patches of land had been ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... minds of the State. Not only did it show a brilliant array of eminent names, but a remarkable contrast of former antagonisms: Whigs, Democrats, Free-Soilers, Know-Nothings, Abolitionists; Norman B. Judd, Richard Yates, Ebenezer Peck, Leonard Swett, Lyman Trumbull, David Davis, Owen Lovejoy, Orville H. Browning, Ichabod Godding, Archibald Williams, and many more. Chief among these, as adviser and ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... work to be had, that the report has been called for and read and discussed to a degree unknown to any of its predecessors. While it gives results only in the most compact form and by no means compares with work like that of Mr. Charles Peck in his investigations for the New York Bureau of Statistics of Labor, it still holds a mass of information invaluable to all who are seeking light on the cause of present evils. As with us the system is closely a part of the manufacture of cheap clothing of every ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... by Peck's Invisible Tubular Ear Cushions. Whispers heard. Successful when all remedies fail. Sold only by F. Hiscox, 853 B'way, N.Y. Write ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... misery makes a poetess of you! But as to the mud, I don't mind a little mud. It is only dirt, and has its part in the inevitable peck, I hope." ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... eighty-fourth day. Up to the seventeenth month there is great uncertainty in finding the mouth with anything held in the hand—a spoon, for instance, striking the cheeks, chin, or nose, instead of at once going between the lips; this forms a striking contrast to the case of young chickens which are able to peck grains, etc., soon after they are hatched. Sucking is not a pure reflex, because a satisfied child will not suck when its lips are properly stimulated, and further, the action may be originated centrally, as in a sleeping suckling. At a later stage biting is as instinctive as sucking, and was ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... hurry to the grizzled mender of roads, already at work on the hill-top beyond the village, with his day's dinner (not much to carry) lying in a bundle that it was worth no crow's while to peck at, on a heap of stones? Had the birds, carrying some grains of it to a distance, dropped one over him as they sow chance seeds? Whether or no, the mender of roads ran, on the sultry morning, as if for his life, down the hill, knee-high ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... Cotemporaries," Vol I., p. 307.] On that sacred day, so desecrated by the havoc of war, he gathered the neighbours together and buried the slain, friend and foe, in one wide, common grave. Among the traditions of the war is one which records that the boys of the Gage family gathered up a peck of bullets which had been intercepted by the stone fence bounding the lane that ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... see Mr. Bliss. Mr. Bliss was one of the owners of the paper. Horace found him working in his garden. Mr. Bliss looked up. He saw a big boy coming toward him. The boy had on a white felt hat with a narrow brim. It looked like a half-peck measure. His hair was white. His trousers were too short for him. All his clothes were coarse and poor. He was such a strange-looking boy, that Mr. ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston
... this thought, which seemed to her a bright solution of the puzzle, and saw James rise and stretch his length without mutiny. She received the taps on the cheek of his rolled Punch, allowed, nay, procured, another chilly peck, with no pouting lips, no reproachful eyes. Then came a jar, and her puzzlement renewed. "Shall you be late?" "Oh, my dear soul, how can I possibly say? I brought papers home with me—and you know what that means! It's an interesting case. We have Merridew for us. I am settling the brief." ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... began abstractedly to tear a small piece of paper into tiny fragments. When she had reduced it to the smallest shreds, she scraped the pieces out of her silk lap and again collected them in the pink hollow of her little hand, kneeling down on the scrupulously well-swept carpet to peck up with a bird-like action of her thumb and forefinger an escaped atom here and there. These and the contents of her hand she poured into the chilly cavity of a sepulchral-looking alabaster vase that stood on the etagere. Returning to her old seat, and making a nest for her clasped fingers ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... the twig to which the leaf is attached. Here, when all the leaves fall, he hangs, the plaything of every breeze, attracting the attention of all the hungry birds. But little does Prometheus care. Sparrows may hover about him and peck in vain; chickadees may clutch the dangling finger and pound with all their tiny might. Prometheus is "bound," indeed, and merely swings the faster, up and down, ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... we hurry—come." He turned to Dufrenne, excitement showing in every line of his face. As he hurried toward the door he spoke over his shoulder to Monsieur Perrier. "Don't open your mouth to a soul—do you hear? If you do, you'll get yourself into a peck of trouble." The last thing they heard as they left the shop was ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... Although a man may not wish to buy anything from you, you know, he is always willing to sell you something, even if it is only a cigar. I've caught many a merchant's ear by buying something of him. My specialty is bone collar buttons—they come cheap. I'll bet that I bought a peck of them the first time I made a trip through ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... patch of level ground, save the rocky bed of the impetuous mountain torrent, is laboriously, carefully cultivated. Such mere scraps of earth do not admit of efficient husbandry, but are made to produce liberally by dint of patient effort. I should judge that a peck of corn is about the average product of a day's work through all this region. There is some pasturage, mainly on the less abrupt declivities far up the mountains, but not one acre in fifty of the Canton yields aught but ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... long periods of time without a drop of water. Exactly the same thing happens at home to many of our pretty little European stone-crops. I have a rockery near my house overgrown with the little white sedum of our gardens. The birds often peck off a tiny leaf or branch; it drops on the dry soil, and remains there for days without giving a sign of life. But its thick epidermis effectually saves it from withering; and as soon as rain falls, wee ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... bird of the group had suddenly seemed to take umbrage at the appearance of the stranger, and stalking straight up to it darted its head sharply, evidently giving a vicious peck. ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... you order a rump of meat. Gravy lies about it like a moat around a castle, and if there is in you the zest for encounter, you attack it above these murky waters. "This castle hath a pleasant seat," you cry, and charge upon it with pike advanced. But if your appetite is one to peck and mince, the whiffs that breathe upon the place come unwelcome to your nostrils. In no wise are they like the sweet South upon your senses. There is even a suspicion in you—such is your distemper—that it is too much a witch's cauldron in the kitchen, "eye of newt, and toe of frog," ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... two quarts of barley, four quarts of split peas, one bushel of potatoes, half a bushel of turnips, half a bushel of carrots, half a peck of onions, one ounce of pepper, two pounds of salt, an ox's head, parsley, herbs, boiled six hours, produce one hundred and thirty pints. Boil the meat and take off the first scum before the other ingredients ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... sit down at the edge of the wood to trim it. Here and there among the trees a yellow leaf or so still hangs, but the birches are full of catkins set with pearly drops. Now and again half, a dozen small birds swoop down on one of these birches, to peck at the catkins, and then look about for a stone or a rough tree trunk to rub the gum from their beaks. Each is jealous of the rest; they watch and chase and drive one another away, though there are millions of catkins for them to take all they will. And the one that is chased never does ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... a handsome craft, she is," the cook would say, and give her sugar from his pocket, and then the bird would peck at the bars and swear straight on, passing belief for wickedness. "There," John would add, "you can't touch pitch and not be mucked, lad. Here's this poor old innocent bird of mine swearing blue fire and none the wiser, you may lay to that. She would swear the same, in a manner of speaking, ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... flew down from off his tree and approaching little by little (with a heart beating for fear of the Trap) picked up a few grains which lay beside it until he came to the corn set in the loop of the springe. Hereupon he pecked at it with one peck nor had he gained aught of good therefrom ere the Trap came down heavily upon him and entangled his neck and held him fast. Hereupon he was seized with a fit of sore affright and he cried out, "Zik! zik!" and "Mik! mik![FN291] Verily I have fallen into wreak ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... being the hedge-sparrow. For days a sparrow has been watched while it fed a hungry complaining intruder. It used to fly on the cuckoo's back and then, standing on its head and leaning downwards, give it a caterpillar. The tit-bit having been greedily snatched and devoured, the cuckoo would peck fiercely at its tiny attendant—bidding it, as it were, fetch more food and not be long about it. Wordsworth tells us in a famous line that "the child is father of the man," and no apter illustration of this truth could be found than the cuckoo. Let us ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... how old Blinkie will look?" said Bob, trying to picture the jackdaw as he would appear when conscious of his owner's return; and then, deciding in his own mind that the only tribute of affection which he might expect would, most probably, be a sharp peck from Blinkie's beak, he added, "I dare say he won't ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... story of English political and social life, making no demands upon one's credulity, but satisfying the requirements in the way of a thoroughly good novel. The characters are all drawn with real fidelity to life.—HARRY THURSTON PECK, Editor of ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... that few liked and many could not eat. It was boiled cracked wheat with a little meat chopped in, no sauce or other relish upon it. I mentioned the case to the doctor, who said, "They purchased a quantity of potatoes, half a peck of which I took to my house and cooked, finding only one or two, among the whole, fit to put into the human stomach. Hence, I looked over my army dietary, found the cracked wheat answered a good purpose, and proposed it ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... would be more likely to take up mud and pelt you with it, provided they saw you in trouble, than to help you. So take care of your horse, and feed him every day with your own hands; give him three-quarters of a peck of corn each day, mixed up with a little hay-chaff, and allow him besides one hundred weight of hay in the course of the week; some say that the hay should be hardland hay, because it is wholesomest, but I say, let it be clover hay, because the horse likes it ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... merest handful escaped, including one of the consuls. The slaughter was so great that, according to Livy, when Mago, a brother of Hannibal, carried the news of the victory to Carthage, he, in confirmation of the intelligence, poured down in the porch of the Senate- house, nearly a peck of gold rings taken from the fingers of ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... tried to count those worn by "Young Tiger Tail's" wife, number one, Mo-ki, who had come through the Everglades to visit her relatives. She was the proud wearer of certainly not fewer than two hundred strings of good sized beads. She had six quarts (probably a peck of the beads) gathered about her neck, hanging down her back, down upon her breasts, filling the space under her chin, and covering her neck up to her ears. It was an effort for her to move her head. She, however, ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... of pray." Every Saturday he assembles all the rooks on one large tree, and caws solemnly to them for ten minutes. I have noticed (through an opera-glass) that the congregation wears a very devout appearance. Churchwarden rooks go round while the service is proceeding, and peck any birds that seem inattentive. At the close there is a universal caw, which I believe stands for "Amen." It is a curious fact that the chaplain rook on these occasions always ornaments himself with a wisp of white ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... please the more they drink, the more they drink the less they please. They don't quit because they can, if they couldn't quit they would, because they can, they won't. Thus they reason, while appetite eats its way into their wills, birds of ill omen peck into their characters and finally they will go down to drunkards' graves, as thousands before them have gone. Young men, in the morning of life, while the dew of youth is yet upon your brow, I beg you to bind the pledge of total-abstinence ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... without any remarkable accident, was practised for about three months, when on a sudden the book-keeper vanished, and for three weeks' time Alice heard not a word of him. This threw both the sisters into a heavy peck of troubles, and the more because he had always kept it a secret in whose family he lived and went to the people where Alice lodged by another name than his own. However they got money enough by sparks they picked up to live pretty easily together, and that no misfortune might go too near their ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... he passed through Hertford to order four horses to come to Tytten after six o'clock and four more to be ready at the Inn to change, but knowing the forgetfulness of the young gentleman, Mama and I were in a peck of troubles lest he should forget the horses, and then we could not have gone. However, they did come, and at eleven o'clock after various directions and orders given we packed off and got to Hertford ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... the rappin' o' my finger ef old Blatch Turrentine hisself had been thar. I'd 'a' stood right up to him an' told him what I thort o' him an' his works." There are conditions, it is said, in which even the timid hare becomes militant, and doves will peck at the intruder. ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... light. They are for wrist frills, are they not? Will you condescend to accept a yard of lace made up into nothing? I thought I would not offer to spoil it by stitching it into any shape. Your creative fingers will turn it to better account than my destructive ones. I hope, such as it is, they will not peck it out of the envelope at the Bradford Post-office, where they generally take the liberty of opening letters when they feel soft as if they contained articles. I had forgotten all about your birthday and mine, till your ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... gol-dum little cuss!" D'ri shouted as he went over to him. "Can't no snookin' wolf crack our bones fer us. Peeled 'em—thet 's what we done tew 'em! Tuk 'n' knocked 'em head over heels. Judas Priest! He can peck a ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... the strange bird. But he did not like to admit it. "He's a great credit to the neighborhood," said old Mr. Crow. "And you'd better let him alone, if you should happen to find him, because he's solid gold, you know. And if you flew at him and tried to peck him, just as likely as not you'd break your bill on ...
— The Tale of Jolly Robin • Arthur Scott Bailey
... the Northern Illinois Merino Sheep Breeders' Association was held at Elgin, January 9th. The meeting was well attended and enthusiastic. George E. Peck presided. The annual report of Secretary Vandercook showed the association to be in a growing condition. The discussion of the day was mainly on the tariff question. A communication from Columbus Delano, ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... those mellow notes are still, It hops from off its choral perch, O'er path and sward, with busy bill, All grateful gifts to peck and search. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... good, clean, wholesome-looking countryman's cart stops opposite my door.—Do I want any huckleberries?—If I do not, there are those that do. Thereupon my soft-voiced handmaid bears out a large tin pan, and then the wholesome countryman, heaping the peck-measure, spreads his broad hands around its lower arc to confine the wild and frisky berries, and so they run nimbly along the narrowing channel until they tumble rustling down in a black cascade and tinkle on the resounding metal beneath.—I won't say that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... at a bound, and was met by a peck between the eyes that would have turned most dogs; but Crusoe only winked, and the next moment the eagle's career ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... across the lawn to meet his father, seizing him warmly by the hand, and having administered a dutiful peck to his aunt, turned to introduce the little group of strangers who had ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... a special day on each plantation when de Master and de o'seer give out de week's rations, like dis: Four pounds o' bacon; one peck o' meal; quart o' flour; quart o' molasses;—dey was dat black; and dey was de rations fer a whole endurin' week. Had a big choppin' block where all de meat was chopped on. In dem days every bit o' de meat was raised on de plantation ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... to read moral, political, and economical lectures on his misery. I am alone. I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. Indeed, my Lord, I greatly deceive myself, if in this hard season I would give a peck of refuse wheat for all that is called fame and honour in the world. This is the appetite but of a few. It is a luxury, it is a privilege, it is an indulgence for those who are at their ease. But we ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... Wife, in turning up her Tail To bear the Threshing of her Gallant's Frail, A Groat (which always is a Cuckold's Fee) Under the Candlestick I've laid for me; Besides good Peck and Booze, so till she's Dead, She may and will Whore on ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... to start my garden this spring. As fur back as the time I was gittin' the seed in, them hens of Widder Sidene Pike, that lives next farm to mine, began their hellishness, with that old wart-legged ostrich of a rooster of her'n to lead 'em. They'd almost peck the seeds out of my hand, and the minit I'd turn my back they was over into that patch, right foot, left foot, kick heel and toe, and swing to pardners—and you couldn't see the sun for dirt. And at every rake that rooster lifts ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... in the Pineta with a view to preventing food or reinforcements arriving to his enemy from the sea. Ravenna was closed upon all sides and before the end of the siege corn rose in the beleaguered city to famine price, some seventy-two shillings of our money per peck, and the inhabitants were forced to eat the skins of animals and all sorts of offal, and many died ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... trick which he had acquired, of pitching a pea into a distant hole, which just fitted it;—when the reward which the great conqueror bestowed upon the soldier for his useless application of time was a peck of peas. P.T.W. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... workmen by a stranger whom he had shown through his grounds, and who gave him a dime; Longworth thanked him and put it in his pocket For a long time he received the poor every Monday morning at his house, and gave whoever asked a loaf of bread, or a peck of meal, or their worth in money. His charity was of the divine order which does not seek desert in its objects. "I will help the devil's poor," he said, "the miserable drunken dog, whom nobody else will do anything for but despise and kick," and he left the deserving poor to others, ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... the left will help him out. I want your men and Peck's for the fight on top of the hill. Of course the rebels will try to retake it; then I shall ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... flight. They lighted on a great tree and a goodly and circled round about it; and he saw amongst them a bird of marvel-beauty, the goodliest of them all, and the nine stood around it and did it service; and Hasan marvelled to see it peck them with its bill and lord it over them while they fled from it. He stood gazing at them from afar as they entered the pavilion and perched on the couch; after which each bird rent open its neck-skin with its ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... foot of an oak tree that I had chopped down one cold winter day, I found a poor ground squirrel frozen solid in its snug grassy nest, in the middle of a store of nearly a peck of wheat it had carefully gathered. I carried it home and gradually thawed and warmed it in the kitchen, hoping it would come to life like a pickerel I caught in our lake through a hole in the ice, which, after being frozen as hard as a bone ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... down a coarse bag containing a peck of corn, "thar, nigger, grab, you won't get no more ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... afraid of him," she went on, after she had had a little cry, "I'd ask him. But likely as not he'd peck at me—old peckjabber!" and here she laughed through her tears as she thought of the Caravan in their little sunbonnets. "Or p'r'aps he'd snap me up! I've often heard of snapping people up when they asked too many questions, but seems to me it never meant anything so awful as that before"; and ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... they've got buck-shot," said Gid. "And they could mow us down before we could cross that place. They still outnumber us two to one—packed in there like sardines. Don't you think we'd better scatter about and peck at 'em when they show an eye? I'd like to know who built that church. Confound him, he cut out too many windows ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... great admirer of his genius, wishing to show the perfection of the picture, said to some people who were looking at it, 'These strawberries are so very natural and perfect, that I have seen birds coming down from the trees to peck them, mistaking them ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... replied his host; "'cause they've got the same extinguisher on; and ain't it curious to see 'em puffing and blowing at the old lamp? I get 'most tired of talking common sense and common feeling to the Deacon. You can't get it into him, and it won't stay on him. You might as well try to heap a peck o' flax-seed. He keeps eating his own words, too; though they don't seem to agree with him, neither. He maintains that the slaves are perfectly contented and happy; and the next minute, if you quote any of their cruel laws, he tells you they are obliged ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... ii., p. 358.).—Your correspondent asks, Who was Salgado? and his question has not yet, I believe, been answered. James Salgado, whose name does not appear in any biographical dictionary, though it deserves to do, and whose pieces are unnoticed in Peck's Catalogue, though they should certainly not have been omitted, was a Spanish priest, who renounced the Roman Catholic belief, and was imprisoned by the Inquisition, and after undergoing many sufferings made his escape to England in the latter part of the reign of Charles II. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... disturbed by this open corruption, that I went to him, and expressed my great surprise. Hot words ensued between us; and I told him very plainly that I would have nothing further to say to him or his political profligacy. However, his potatoes were sold, and brought upwards of three guineas the peck, the nabob being the purchaser, who, to show his contentment with the bargain, made Mrs M'Lucre, and the bailie's three daughters, presents of new gowns and princods, that ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... Egypt was sufficiently enterprising to line its coast with windmills, while this state has not yet arrived at a stage of civilization sufficiently advanced to provide them. So, there being no water-power and no steam, every negro grinds his peck of corn in a handmill as in the year one. We came to anchor about one P. M. and have been waiting for the necessary passes from the quartermaster to enable us to proceed up to Beaufort, the only town in possession of our forces. Here ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... buffeting, astounding me, Nipping and clipping through my wraps and all. I wear my mask for warmth: who ever shows His nose to Russian snows To be pecked at by every wind that blows? 20 You would not peck? I thank you for good will, Believe, but leave that ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... were a pleasure and a joy to both mistress and maids, where bright copper stewpans reflected the blazing fire on all sides, and metal covers shone like mirrors; while as for "eating off the floor," one might certainly do it if so inclined, without the "peck of dirt" at once. ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... best chums. Not a great while back he had fallen into what he called a "peck of trouble, with the pot boiling over," and Fred had been of great help to him. In fact, had it not been for him the mystery of who was taking some of Miss Muster's opals might never have been cleared up; and the elderly spinster, who was Bristles' ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... minutes elapsed. A fearless blue-jay alighted on the bank and made a prospecting peck at the tobacco pouch. It yielded in favor of a gopher, who endeavored to draw it toward his hole, but in turn gave way to a red squirrel, whose attention was divided, however, between the pouch and the revolver, ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... was now the babu speaking, while he hopped around Amber with his head critically to one side, like an inquisitive jackdaw, now and again darting forward to peck at him with hands that nervously but deftly arranged details of his attire to please a taste fastidious and exacting in such matters—"Oah, my dear fallow, surely you appreciate danger of venturing into nateeve quarters in European dress? ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... away a great number of snakes, evenly laid side by side, so as to take up as little room as possible. The majority of these creatures were rattlesnakes; but there were black snakes among them, and one large spotted snake. Besides these, there were, as the narrator expressed it, at least a peck of spring frogs; these having probably crawled in to fill up all corners and vacant places. All these reptiles were of course dormant and insensible, ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... sprinkled.' The sharp, quick tones of the sergeant of the guard (more like the sound of a tenpenny nail scratching mahogany than aught else in nature) soon set matters right. You think you have surely swallowed your peck of dirt that morning, and feel even more gastric than you usually do on an empty stomach. You can go home to breakfast now: but you hear Johnny Todd's cheery voice sing out; 'Fall in, cocktail squad!' and march off with a score ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of them wore a native bonnet tied about the ears. They formed in line on the stairs and then the coal was passed along from hand to hand until it reached the bunkers. These baskets held a little over a peck of coal, and the rapidity with which they moved along this living line ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... a tall, well-set-up woman, with a handsome face and keen eyes. She wore her usual morning costume—a breakfast sacque of black silk profusely trimmed with lace, and a black silk skirt. She kissed Annie, with a slight peck of closely set lips, for she liked her. Then she sat down opposite her and regarded her with as much of a smile as her sternly set mouth could manage, and inquired politely regarding her health and that of the family. When Annie broached the subject of her ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... with a gun across his knees, first one and then half-a-dozen large birds, emboldened by the silence, came stalking out from beneath the bushes, looking something like so many farmyard hens as they began to peck and ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... I'm crowdin' twenty,' goes on the Colonel, followin' the ministrations of Black Jack, 'an' I'm visitin' about the meetropolis of Looeyville. I've been sellin' a passel of runnin' hosses; an' as I rounds up a full peck of doubloons for the fourteen I disposes of, I'm feelin' too contentedly cunnin' to live. It's evenin' an' the moon is shinin' same as now. I jest pays six bits for my supper at the Galt House, an' lights a ten cent seegyar—Oh! I has ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... perpetual, tremulous passing of heaven and earth over and round and by and beneath one! Every least incident, indoors or out, was large and vivid, and a mere look from a window became a picture in the memory, to hang there through life. Nay, a sound was enough, too much. The remote peck-peck of that carpenter's hammer smote into her mind the indelible image of the only thing he could be making at such an hour. Trying to be deaf, she thought of Joy—timely thought! At any moment the old dear might steal in. She dropped from her berth, and when the ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... ruff use ob de swoard. Now, as de modern poet says, our swoards rust in deir cubbards, an' peas, sweet peas, cover de lan'. An' what has wrot all dis change? De pen. Do I take a swoard now to get me a peck ob sweet taters, a pair ob chickens, a pair ob shoes? No, saar. I jess take my pen an' write an order for 'em. Do I want money? I don't git it by de edge ob de swoard; I writes a check. I want a suit ob clothes, ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... stood on two eminences, facing each other, and looking like a couple of fighting-cocks with their necks straight up in the air,—as if they would flap their roofs, the next thing, and crow out of their upstretched steeples, and peck at each other's glass eyes with ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... ignorance of southern institutions! What mockery, to talk of pecuniary intercourse between a slave and his master! The slave himself, with all he is and has, is an article of merchandise. What can he owe his master? A rustic may lay a wager with his mule, and give the creature the peck of oats which he has permitted it to win. But who, in sober earnest, would ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... ground, by that sudden dash, but it wasn't long before they were in full cry like a pack of hounds, and the carbines began to pop in a futile sort of way. Mac had not been far astray when he hazarded the guess that the troop would have orders to shoot on sight, for they began to peck at us the moment we came in view. We had just enough of a start, though, and our mounts were just good enough and fresh enough to gradually draw away from them. And as we were then out of the network of protecting coulees ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... said when I came up on the porch. She shook my hand as limply as always, and gave me a reluctant duty peck on the cheek, then backed into the house to give me room ...
— The Gallery • Roger Phillips Graham
... die mord vo danne un wil schleisse vn redern die rappen volget alle zit hin nach vn stechet sy." "Here they bring the murderers, in order to drag them upon the hurdle to execution, and to break them upon the wheel. The crows follow and peck them." ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... it to Peck Slip, closely followed by his chums, and there the three boarded a Second avenue car, all unsuspecting as to what a prize they had. At the corner of the Bowery and Bayard street they got out and entered that old red brick hotel on the corner—I forget the name. They ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... ye're a talkin baout," said Abner grimly, "I've got quite a slew on em tew hum, mebbe a peck or tew. I got em fer pay in the army. They're tew greasy tew kindle a fire with, an I dunno o' nothin else ez they're good for. Ye're welcome to em, Ezry. My little Bijah assed me fer some on em tew make a kite outer ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... then inquired if there was any one spot where they were more numerous than elsewhere. "Yes," he answered again, pointing towards the farm-house on the meadow: "on my farm down yonder by the river, my tenant ploughs up teeth and bones by the peck every spring, besides arrow-heads, beads, stone hatchets, and other things of that sort." I replied that this was precisely what I had expected, as I had been led to believe that the principal town of the Illinois Indians once covered that very spot. "If," ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... Heald had, in his marriage, all unwittingly laid up a peck of fresh trouble for himself. This was brought to a head by the action of his spinster aunt, Miss Susannah Heald, who, until he came of age, had been his guardian. Suspecting Lola of a "past," she set herself to pry into it. Gathering that her nephew's inamorata had already been married, she ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... the turtle dove. But at heart she was an eagle. Did you ask her to peck and twitter like a tame robin? I could have told you that ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... for the field the Thirteenth New York, Colonel Quinby; the Sixty-ninth New York, Colonel Corcoran; the Seventy-ninth New York, Colonel Cameron; and the Second Wisconsin, Lieutenant- Colonel Peck. These were all good, strong, volunteer regiments, pretty well commanded; and I had reason to believe that I had one of the best brigades in the whole army. Captain Ayres's battery of the Third Regular Artillery was also attached to my brigade. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... snatch out of my hand, with his bill, a piece of cake that Glumdalclitch had just given me for my breakfast. When I attempted to catch any of these birds they would boldly turn against me, endeavoring to peck my fingers, which I durst not venture within their reach; and then they would turn back unconcerned, to hunt for worms or snails, as they did before. But one day I took a thick cudgel, and threw it with all my strength so luckily at a linnet that ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... th' monkey on 'is back ower this letter job,' said the father secretly to me. 'Mother, 'er knows nowt about it. Lot o' tom-foolery, isn't it? Ay! What's good o' makkin' a peck o' trouble over what's far enough off, an' ned niver come no nigher. No—not a smite o' use. That's what I tell 'er. 'Er should ta'e no notice on't. ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... not she, nor any other woman, shall ever see what I am or am not. My heart is not for them to peck ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... streamed slowly out to mingle with the multitudes gathered before the great Entrance where Queen Anne in crown and scepter keeps majestic guard, and where in peaceful days doves flit and flutter down to peck at the grain ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... the situation when the case of Fletcher vs. Peck * in 1810 raised before the Supreme Court the question whether the Georgia Legislature had the right to rescind a land grant made by a preceding Legislature. On any of three grounds Marshall might easily have disposed of this case before coming to the principal question. In the first ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... 5th, 1832, and was succeeded by Kinau, half-sister of the king. The king's minority was declared to be at an end in March, 1833. A tract of land was leased to Ladd & Co. in 1835, and about the same time a silk plantation was commenced by Peck & Titcomb. Cotton was raised and manufactured on a small scale ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs
... in the cities were dressing and undressing their dolls, Wanda was taming a palpitating heart in some little fury [Transcriber's note: furry?] breast or leaning breathlessly, like a small mother bird herself, over a nest in the grass watching eagerly for the tender bills to peck and chip their way out into the ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... . . The kea is pretty to look at, having rich red and green plumage, but it is a cruel bird. It is said that it will fasten on the back of a living sheep and peck its way down to the kidney-fat, for which this parrot has a special fancy. No tourist need feel compunction ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... small birds is only equaled by their courage, or rather their audacity. Sometimes they may be seen furiously chasing birds twenty times their size, fastening upon their bodies, letting themselves be carried along in their flight, while they peck fiercely until their tiny rage is satisfied. Sometimes they fight each other vigorously. Impatience seems their very essence. If they approach a blossom and find it faded, they mark their spite by a hasty rending of the petals. Their only voice ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... the rival of a mighty king? Which of you will compare yourself with him,—whom you dared not even strike, you and your robber crew, fairly in front, but, skulked round him till he fell pecked to death by you, as Lapland Skratlings peck to death the bear. Ten years ago he swept this hall of such as you, and hung their heads upon yon gable outside; and were he alive but one five minutes again, this hall would be right cleanly swept again! Give me his body,—or ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... Robert must and ought to be a favorite. He is not yet forty, and for this he is himself my authority, and forty is the prime of life; yet, with an immense fortune and strong temptations, he has never launched out into a single act of imprudence or folly. No, Helen, he never sowed a peck of wild oats in his life. He is, on the contrary, sober, grave, silent—a little too much so, by the way—cautious, prudent, and saving. No man knows the value of money better, nor can contrive to make it go further. Then, as for managing a bargain—upon my soul, ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... towers bedight. Now seeing that the sun was getting low, Our travellers at quicker pace did go. Thus as in haste near to the gate they came, Before them limped a bent and hag-like dame, With long, sharp nose that downward curved as though It beak-like wished to peck sharp chin below. Humbly she crept in cloak all torn and rent, And o'er a staff her tottering limbs were bent. So came she to the gate, then cried in fear, And started back from sudden-levelled spear; For 'neath the gate lounged lusty ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... one would think I was a hungry pussy-cat, and she a hen-sparrow, with her wings all fluttering, and her little eyes aflame, and her beak ready to peck me just because I happened to look near her nest. Nay, child! if thou lik'st to be stifled in a nasty close room, learning things as is of no earthly good when they is learnt, instead o' riding on Job Donkin's hay-cart, it's thy look-out, not mine. She's a little ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... failing utterly to gather food. The king Powhatan was grown so lofty in his bearing, because of the honor some of our foolish people had shown him, that it was well nigh impossible to pay the price he asked, even in trinkets, for so small an amount as a single peck of corn. ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis
... child— See—in its face he prays her not to find The father's, but her own. 'He is yet green And may grow straight,' so flickers his last jest, Then out for ever. At the last he begged A penny-pott of malmsey. In the bill, All's printed now for crows and daws to peck, You'll find four shillings for his winding sheet. He had the poet's heart and God help all Who have that heart and somehow lose their way For lack of helm, souls that are blown abroad By the great winds of passion, without power To sway them, chartless captains. Multitudes ply Trimly enough from ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... starting a new fashion. This may be done by an ornament, if it is well selected so that it will "take."[381] Beads have been a fashionable ornament from the days of savagery until to-day. An Indian woman in Florida "had six quarts (probably a peck) of the beads gathered about her neck, hanging down her back, down upon her breasts, filling the space under her chin, and covering her neck up to her ears. It was an effort for her to move her head. She, however, was ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... "I'm in a peck of trouble, Miss Constance. And the worst is, I don't know whether to tell about it, or to keep it in. He'd not like it to get to the missis's ears, I know: but then, you see, perhaps I ought to tell her—for ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... man eats a peck of dirt in the course of his life," said Happy Tom, "but I know that I've already beat the measure a dozen times over. Why, I took in a bushel at least at the Second Manassas, but I still live, ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... bushel and a peck, and a hug around the neck. (She embraces JIM playfully. He hands her the gum, patting his shoulder as he sits on box.) Oh, thank ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... should always be money. A foot is always twelve inches, but when is a dollar a dollar? If ton weights changed in the coal yard, and peck measures changed in the grocery, and yard sticks were to-day 42 inches and to-morrow 33 inches (by some occult process called "exchange") the people would mighty soon remedy that. When a dollar is not always a dollar, when the 100-cent dollar becomes the 65-cent ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... in the county, and again proceeded at the gallop. When he reached the Grassmarket, Edinburgh—a full hour before the mail,—the grain-selling was just starting, and before the alarming war news had got time to spread Rennie had every peck of wheat in the market bought up. He must have coined an enormous profit by this smart transaction; but to him it seemed to matter nothing at all. He was one of the most careless of the harum-scarum sons of Adam, and if he made money easily, so in a like manner ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... eight pounds of the undercut of prime beef, half a Bayonne ham, two young chickens, and a sweetbread. To these add leeks, chervil, carrots, turnips, fifty heads of asparagus, a few truffles, a large cow-cabbage, a pint of French beans, a peck of very young peas, a tomato cut in slices, some potatoes, and a couple of bananas. Pour in three gallons of water, and boil furiously till your soup is reduced to about a pint and a-half. As it boils, add, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 21, 1892 • Various
... and very fond of children, and very good to all the world as long as it was good to him. Only one fault he had, which cock-robins have likewise, as you may see if you look out of the nursery window—that when any one else found a curious worm, he would hop round them, and peck them, and bristle up his feathers, just as a cock-robin would; and declare that he found the worm first; and that it was his worm; and, if not, that then it was not a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... imp, and she was sentenced to be burned, and twenty shillings went into the pockets of Master Hopkins. In this manner he made one old woman confess, because four flies had appeared in the room, that she was attended by four imps, named "Ilemazar," "Pye-wackett," "Peck-in-the-crown," ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... they were off in the way of food. She replied that they had about a peck of corn meal in the house and several bushels of potatoes buried in the garden; and she reckoned they could do right well till she could get some more washing and other work to do. I gave that patient, ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... admitted? But, no! no! I tell you, no! You shall never be able to utter more than pec, pec, pec; and while with your mouths open you are stammering and stuttering to get out cavi, Satan and his blackguards shall come and peck you, even as crows peck carrion. Yes, Jehu and Jezebel! Remember! I give ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... for the onslaught of the ten, as men had thought they must, sprang forward, each at the line of foes who were before him. While the ten still stood confused, for it had been their plan to attack, the Wolf-Brethren were upon them. Groan-Maker was up, but as for no great stroke. He did but peck, as a bird pecks with his bill, and yet a man dropped dead. The Watcher also was up, but he fell like a falling tree, and was the death of one. Through the lines of the ten passed the Wolf-Brethren in the gaps that each had made. Then they turned swiftly and charged towards each ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... me afore he deed,' continued Reuben, slowly; 'an he towd me aw about his affairs. Six hunderd pund he'd got saved—six-hunderd-pund! Aye, it wor a lot for a yoong mon like him, and after sich a peck o' troobles! And he towd me Mr. Gurney ud pay us th' interest for yor bringin-up—th' two on yo; an whan yo got big, Davy, I wor to tak keawnsel wi Mr. Gurney, an, if yo chose for t' land, yo were to ha yor money ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... understand it: some people are worms, others sparrows. The sparrows are the merchants. They peck the worms. Such is their destined lot. They are necessary But I and you—all of you—are to no purpose. We live so that we cannot be compared to anything—without justification, merely at random. And we ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... earth has turned its brown to green After three nights of humming rain, And in the valleys peck and preen Linnets with a ...
— Flame and Shadow • Sara Teasdale
... dwarfs he was the smallest. His feet were like an eagle's, and close to the knees, for legs he had none. His royal robes were not above half a yard long, and trailed one-third part upon the ground. His head was as big as a peck, and his nose long enough for twelve birds to perch on. His beard was bushy enough for a canary's nest, and his ears reached a foot above his head.—Comtesse D'Aulnoy, Fairy Tales ("The ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... of the round year God sends some day-doves of summer into the barren spring-time, to sing of coming joys and peck the buds into opening. One of His sending brooded over Redleaf when I walked forth in its morning-time to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... the first mention of the potato occurs in the household book of the Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth. From Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh we learn that the price in 1701 was half-a-crown a peck. Robertson, of Irvine discovered what he thought the earliest evidence of potatoes in Scotland in the household book of the Eglinton family. The date of this entry, however, was 1733, and Robert Chambers showed that the date in the Buccleuch ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... describes the blotches. In this one ordinary speech seemed to have been insufficient to describe the blotch, and he had to resort to a neologism. "Is that supposed to be a 'perpendicament'? It's got a head like a sea devil; the upper part seems like a peacock trying to peck him in ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... left upon the mountain side, more desolate and helpless than before, with no possessions in all the world except a pair of pistols, a saddle, a bridle, a side of bacon, a peck of corn meal, and a few ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... recollections of my childhood are my mother, with her pretty hair and youthful shape, and Peggotty, our faithful serving maid, with no shape at all, and eyes so dark that they seemed to darken their whole neighbourhood in her face, and cheeks and arms so hard and red that I wonder the birds didn't peck her ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... we were threatened with a tremendous influx of people. The new bridge at Fulton Ferry across the East River would soon be opened. It looked as though there was to be another bridge at South Ferry, and another at Peck Slip Ferry. Montauk Point was to be purchased by some enterprising Americans, and a railroad was to connect it with Brooklyn. Steamers from Europe were to find wharfage in some of the bays of Long Island, and the passage across the Atlantic reduced to six days! Passengers six days out of Queenstown ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... think she is, at all," said Hester, her plumage ruffled, administering her contradiction right and left to her two best friends like a sharp peck from a wren. "I think we ought to believe the best of people until they prove themselves ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... discarded my first notes, and in another week of ten hours a day labor I had results which astonished myself and satisfied him. Still there was no trace of praise in words or manner. He signified that it would do by placing before me about a half a peck of bones, telling me to see what I could make of them, with no further directions to guide me. I soon found that they were the skeletons of half a dozen fishes of different species; the jaws told me so much at a first inspection. The task evidently was to fit the separate bones together ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper
... to melt at the tongue's root, Confounding taste with scent, Beats a full peck of garden fruit: ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... name was given to the old gaol formerly existing in Peck Lane. A writer, in 1802, described it as a shocking place, the establishment consisting of one day room, two underground dungeons (in which sometimes half-a-dozen persons had to sleep), and six or seven night-rooms, some of them constructed ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... chicken, Miss West. He was just a little golden ball. He would run up to me and peck out of my hand. And he was handsome when he grew up, too—white as snow, with such a beautiful curving white tail, though Mary Vance said it was too short. He knew his name and always came when I called him—he was a very intelligent rooster. And Aunt Martha had no right to kill ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... with a speckled coat and a comb the color of red coral: very small, but lively and vigorous, and exhibiting in all her movements both grace and stateliness. She would nestle in my lap, take a ride on my shoulder, and walk the length of my arm to peck at a bit of cake in my hand, regarding me all the while with a queer sidelong glance, and croaking out her satisfaction and content. When she was ready to go she walked to the kitchen door, and asked in a very shrill voice to be let out. She continued these visits till late in the fall, when she ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... which they were created. On this point, the evidence is clear and satisfactory. In Vermont, a prohibitory law has existed for over twenty-three years. In some parts of the State it is rigidly enforced; in others with less severity. Judge Peck, of the Supreme Court says: "The law has had an effect upon our customs, and has done away with that of treating and promiscuous drinking. * * * In attending court for ten years, I do not remember to have seen a drunken man." In St. Johnsbury, where there ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... third was an aged starling, for whose convenience a wicker cage hung in one corner; but the owner was hopping in perfect freedom about the hearth, and occasionally varying that exercise by pausing to give a mischievous peck to the tail of the fourth, a very large white and tan dog. The dog appeared so familiarised with this treatment as scarcely to notice it, unless the starling gave a harder peck than usual, when he merely moved his tail out of its way, accompanying the action in specially severe ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... occasionally, and keep the vessel well covered. When slacked, strain into another barrel through a sieve. Put a pound of glue in a glue-pot; melt it over a slow fire until dissolved. Soak the glue in cold water before putting the pot over the fire. Dissolve a peck of salt in boiling water. Make a thin paste of three pounds of ground rice boiled half an hour. Stir to this half a pound of Spanish whiting. Now add the rice paste to the lime; stir it in well; then the glue; mix well; cover the barrel, ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... the most prodigal waste, on every hand. In every street-car and on every ferry-boat the floors and seats were littered with newspapers that had been read and thrown away or left behind. If I went to a grocery store to buy a peck of potatoes, and a potato rolled off the heaping measure, the groceryman, instead of picking it up, kicked it into the gutter for the wheels of his wagon to run over. The butcher's waste filled my mother's soul with ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... scenery worth looking at," said Harry, as we started again, after watering the horses, and taking in a bag with a peck of oats—"to feed at three o'clock, Frank, when we stop to grub, which must do al fresco—" my friend explained—"for the landlord, who kept the only tavern on the road, went West this summer, bit by the land mania, and there is now no stopping place 'twixt this and Warwick," ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... make a road with his club among the albatross. These birds were sitting upon their nests, and almost covered the surface of the ground, nor did they otherwise derange themselves for their new visitors than to peck at their legs ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... one of Fred's best chums. Not a great while back he had fallen into what he called a "peck of trouble, with the pot boiling over," and Fred had been of great help to him. In fact, had it not been for him the mystery of who was taking some of Miss Muster's opals might never have been cleared up; and the elderly spinster, who was Bristles' mother's aunt, must ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... a laugh. "A peck of them will completely satisfy me, my boy." Then, turning to Lobelalatutu, who was keenly watching ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... sky, that boded ill for the future. The cold was intense. Although dressed in the thickest of tweeds and sheepskin jacket, sable pelisse, enormous "bourka," and high felt boots, it was all I could do to keep warm even when going at a hand gallop, varied every hundred yards or so by a desperate "peck" on ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... Aunt Polly," argued the little girl, her eyes widening; "and I thought sisters were always alike. We had two sets of 'em in the Ladies' Aiders. One set was twins, and THEY were so alike you couldn't tell which was Mrs. Peck and which was Mrs. Jones, until a wart grew on Mrs. Jones's nose, then of course we could, because we looked for the wart the first thing. And that's what I told her one day when she was complaining that people called her Mrs. Peck, and I said if they'd only look for the wart as I ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... enough; but he was not going to tell this crushing fine lady how well he remembered. If he had not exposed his heart for Elisabeth to peck at in the old days, he certainly was not going to expose it now; then she would only have been scientifically interested—now she would probably be ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... but he bore up. When she was asleep, he said, he would hop on to the frilly things of her night-gown and peck at ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... passing property in the air, which may have left something to eat behind it. They look upon old shoes, wrecks of kettles and saucepans, and fragments of bonnets, as a kind of meteoric discharge, for fowls to peck at. Peg-tops and hoops they account, I think, as a sort of hail; shuttlecocks, as rain, or dew. Gaslight comes quite as natural to them as any other light; and I have more than a suspicion that, in the minds of the ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... a certain thing Ferdinand Laxley had said he had heard from the mouth of this lady's brother when ale was in him. Alas! how one seed of a piece of folly will lurk and sprout to confound us; though, like the cock in the eastern tale, we peck up zealously ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Hullo there, Peck! where are you?" roared a stern voice from the stable department of the circus, just as the clown's wife seemed about to ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... get away from here; nothing has ever grown on this farm for us two but wormwood. Perhaps there are new, happy days waiting for us out there; and there are parsons everywhere. If we two work together at some good work out there, we shall earn a peck of money. Then one day we'll go up to a parson, and throw down half a hundred krones in front of his face, and it 'u'd be funny if he didn't confirm you on the spot—and perhaps let himself be kicked into the bargain. Those kind of folk ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... of March and April to water it, sprung up very pleasantly, and yielded a very good crop; but having part of the seed left only, and not daring to sow all that I had yet, I had but a small quantity at last, my whole crop not amounting to above half a peck of each kind. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... the mast does universally yield (once in two years at least) for the fatting of hogs and deer, I shall shew upon another occasion, before the conclusion of this Discourse. A peck of acorns a day, with a little bran, will make an hog ('tis said) increase a pound-weight per diem for two months together. They give them also to oxen mingled with bran, chop'd or broken; otherwise they ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... devil with systems and avenues! said he. That was all the doing of those cursed Frenchmen. He knew how it would be when they brought their plaguy frigate here in the first fever year—'93—and the fools marched up from Peck's Slip after a red nightcap, and howled their cut-throat ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... conduct. It is a sound old book, written in the thirteenth century by a certain good Bishop Poore (excellent name!) for a household of such good women at Tarrent, on the River Stour; and it contains a peck of counsel which might be preached not only upon the scandal-mongering women who are the curse of this place—yes, and applied; for it recommends here and there, a whipping as salutary—but even, ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... waist line, with the opening straight and wide, And there wasn't any limit to what you could get inside; They would hold a peck of marbles, and a knife and top and string, And snakes and frogs and turtles; ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... you can't throw worth a cent," replied Jamie, gamboling down the hall in his slippers and producing a ball from some of the mysterious receptacles in which boys have the art of storing rubbish enough to fill a peck measure. ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... and gave him a peck of a kiss, "and does not that prove what I say, that there are no villainies in Ferrara? For, see, the trees are as thick as a forest." She made him laugh again before many paces. His ringing tones caught the ears of Captain Mosca, and set ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... doctor. "I am not. I would like to see her married some day. Meanwhile I would like to see a dozen lovers about her. It is as natural for a young girl to coquet as it is for a canary to peck at its seed or trim its bill on a bit of fishbone. It is had for the girl and the canary when ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... position. Pleasant as that had been, it no longer contented the restless, ambitious Barnum. He opened a "porter-home," but sold out a few months later, at a good profit, and took another clerkship, this time at 29 Peck Slip, New York, in the store of a certain David Thorp. He lived in his employer's family, with which he was a great favorite, and where he had frequent opportunities of meeting old friends, for Mr. Thorp's place was a great resort for Bethel ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... 15 acres of arable land at least, for which his rent was chiefly corn and labour, though there were two money payments, a halfpenny on November 12 and a penny whenever he brewed. He had to pay a quarter of seed wheat at Michaelmas, a peck of wheat, 4 bushels of oats, and 3 hens on November 12, and at Christmas a cock, two hens, and two pennyworth of bread. His labour services were to plough, sow, and till half an acre of the lord's ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... just like they were children, too. Sometimes Aunt Nellie seems just like a girl, she is so jolly, she is not a bit like Aunt Josephine, though I am sure Aunt Josephine is a very nice lady and I don't mean that I don't love her, only Aunt Nellie kisses me as if she liked too and does not just peck my cheek. Last week she brought me home some lovly middy bloses like Peggy wears, and I play in bloomers all day and put on a white skirt for supper; Mr. Lee says Peggy and I look like twins. Auntie brought me a bathing suit, too, and a tennis raket Peggy ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... the little orphan, but he did not know how to peck it with his bill. I tried to catch him, but he escaped into the forsaken nest. What will become of him there, if his mother does not ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... a great noise of some that endeavor to peck out the crows' eyes; that is, to blind the doctors of our times and smoke out their eyes with new annotations; among whom my friend Erasmus, whom for honor's sake I often mention, deserves if not the first place ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... you waited" Ernest Dowson Romance Andrew Lang Good-Night Hester A. Benedict Requiescat Rosamund Marriott Watson The Four Winds Charles Henry Luders The King's Ballad Joyce Kilmer Heliotrope Harry Thurston Peck "Lydia is Gone this Many a Year" Lizette Woodworth Reese After Lizette Woodworth Reese Memories Arthur Stringer To Diane Helen Hay Whitney "Music I Heard" Conrad Aiken Her Dwelling-place Ada Foster Murray The Wife from Fairyland Richard Le Gallienne In the Fall o' Year Thomas ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... ob de pen. Deir han's was only fit for de ruff use ob de swoard. Now, as de modern poet says, our swoards rust in deir cubbards, an' peas, sweet peas, cover de lan'. An' what has wrot all dis change? De pen. Do I take a swoard now to get me a peck ob sweet taters, a pair ob chickens, a pair ob shoes? No, saar. I jess take my pen an' write an order for 'em. Do I want money? I don't git it by de edge ob de swoard; I writes a check. I want a suit ob clothes, for instance—a stroke ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... that art to be! Is Royalty grown a mere wooden Scarecrow; whereon thou, pert scald-headed crow, mayest alight at pleasure, and peck? ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... some good,' said he turning into Peck Slip. 'Saved two young women. Took 'em off the streets. Fine women now both of them—respectable, prosperous, and one is beautiful. Man who s got a mother, or a sister, can't help ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... and gave them hearts without fear. One of them, perhaps the original bold explorer, seeking vainly for another crumb, hopped upon his bare hand as it lay in the grass, but feeling its warmth flew away a foot, hung hovering a moment or two, then came back and took a peck. ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... un wil schleisse vn redern die rappen volget alle zit hin nach vn stechet sy." "Here they bring the murderers, in order to drag them upon the hurdle to execution, and to break them upon the wheel. The crows follow and peck them." ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... of driving beautiful white horses beside sparkling waters ... and through flowery meadows ... And great green birds perched on all the trees and flew towards her as if to peck the cherries of her lips ... but when she tried to beat them off they all turned into Timothys and she hugged them close to ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... small ball or a marble. His game was to give it a hard peck and see it roll. If it rolled away from him, he ran after it and pecked again; but sometimes it rolled toward him, and then he bounded into the air as if he thought it would bite. And what was funny, he was always offended at this conduct of the ball, and went off ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... hatched, of picking up small particles of food, seems to be started into action through the sense of hearing; for with chickens hatched by artificial heat, a good observer found that "making a noise with the finger-nail against a board, in imitation of the hen-mother, first taught them to peck at their meat."[18] ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... attendant upon literary excellence might with equal justice be extended to every species of merit, and might be urged against all that is good in art or nature.—Scandal is said to attack always the fairest characters, as the birds always peck most at the ripest fruit; but would you for this reason have no fruit ripen, or no characters aspire to excellence? But if it be your opinion that women are naturally inferior to us in capacity, why do you feel so much apprehension ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... at the House of the interpreter, the fighting, the adventures, the pleasing young ladies at the palace the name of which was Beautiful, and their very interesting museum of curiosities. As for the allegorical meaning, it went through her consciousness like a peck of wheat through a bushel measure with ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... pretty tired of Mr. Rogers, even before he died; and they kept the supply a-goin' till—all was blue, before they could settle on anybody. In fact they couldn't seem to agree on anybody till Mr. Peck come." ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... man!" Trigger jumped up, bent over his chair and gave him a quick peck on an ear tip. "If I ask one more question, we'll be sitting here the next two hours. I'll run instead! See you ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... as heart can wish. A peck o' trouble, by the looks of it. Chris Blanchard be gone—vanished like a dream! Mother Blanchard called her this marnin', an' found her bed not so much as creased. She've flown, an' there's a braave upstore 'bout it, for every ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... comrades assured me the jays were not in need of my sympathy or pity. They liked the invigorating cold and chattered merrily in the desolate boughs and enjoyed many a nice meal from under the melting snow. The crimson dogwood berries, standing out like rosettes of coral, at which they liked to peck, also furnished them an aesthetic and sumptuous feast. Much more to be dreaded than the winter's cold was the cruel sportsman, ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... accomplished and deeply lamented Lady Amberly; and they seem to prove conclusively that the chick does not need a single moment's tuition to enable it to stand, run, govern the muscles of its eyes, and peck. Helmholtz, however, is contending against the notion of pre-established harmony; and I am not aware of his views as to the organisation of experiences of race or breed.] In fact, the whole process of evolution is the manifestation of a Power absolutely ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... been sprinkled.' The sharp, quick tones of the sergeant of the guard (more like the sound of a tenpenny nail scratching mahogany than aught else in nature) soon set matters right. You think you have surely swallowed your peck of dirt that morning, and feel even more gastric than you usually do on an empty stomach. You can go home to breakfast now: but you hear Johnny Todd's cheery voice sing out; 'Fall in, cocktail squad!' and march off with a score of your comrades to the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... see from the table, that the plot which had the superphosphate, potash, etc., the year before, gives a peck less wheat this year than the other plot which had none. Practically, the yield is the same. There is an increase of 13 bushels of wheat per acre—and this increase is clearly ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... them was a real one; not the perfunctory peck of greeting that usurps its name. For, as flowers most exquisite spring from strangely unpromising soil, so had those two weeks of isolation and heart-hunger on the unloveliest hill-top of Northern India generated an ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... unexpected quarter. Grace's rooster had at last been persuaded to rush violently between the required posts. In one of its excited turns, it brushed close behind the old goose. Here was a chance for revenge! The rooster gave a flying peck at the goose's tail ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... squares one peck of small potatoes and a pound and a half of salt pork; arrange the fish, pork, and potatoes into mounds; divide each equally into four parts; add one quarter of the fish to the stock, next a quarter of the pork, ...
— Fifty Soups • Thomas J. Murrey
... were, in the streets, people to press against you, or horses to collide with you, as to make (his horse) shy, and he were to fall, would that too be a joke? The gall of both of you is larger than a peck measure; but it's all you, Ming Yen, who has incited him, and when I go back, I'll surely tell the nurses ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... and New York were John Peck, John B. Vashon and Peyton Harris and all through the North, each state held colored men who were anxious to do what they could to elevate the race, and it seems as if God gave each one a special duty to perform, which combined, made one mighty stimulus to the young colored youth to do what he ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... well as the Greeks, and it is a fact that in the year 1073 her poems were burnt at Rome and Constantinople, "as being," in the words of Professor Gilbert Murray, "too much for the shaky morals of the time." Another recent writer, Professor Peck of Columbia University, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... heart, if you can find it," declared Winnie, "but unless you handle her just right, you're in for a peck of trouble. Rosemary's temper blazes up and burns fierce enough dear knows, but it burns itself out good and clean and leaves a good clean ash. Now you take Sarah—she goes into a fit of the ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... indispensable importations from other quarters of the town were on a remarkably diminutive scale: for example, the wealthier inhabitants purchased their coal by the wheelbarrow-load, and the poorer ones by the peck-measure. It was a curious and melancholy spectacle, when an overladen coal-cart happened to pass through the street and drop a handful or two of its burden in the mud, to see half a dozen women and children scrambling for the treasure-trove, like a dock of hens and chickens ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... work I am able ter do now is a little work in de garden. Dey say I is too ole ter work, so charity gives me a little ter go upon every week. For one weeks 'lowance o' sumptin' ter eat dey gives me, hold on, I will show you, dat beats guessin'. Here it is: 1/2 peck meal (corn meal), 2 lbs oat meal, 2 lb dry skim milk, and 1 lb plate meat. Dis is what I gits fer one week 'lowance. I can't work much, but de white folks gib me meals fur washin' de woodwork in dere houses, de white folks in Hayes's Bottom. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... liked and many could not eat. It was boiled cracked wheat with a little meat chopped in, no sauce or other relish upon it. I mentioned the case to the doctor, who said, "They purchased a quantity of potatoes, half a peck of which I took to my house and cooked, finding only one or two, among the whole, fit to put into the human stomach. Hence, I looked over my army dietary, found the cracked wheat answered a good purpose, and proposed it ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... that I was at the picture show today I'd be in a peck of trouble," she said. "She won't let me go to the movies at all and I have to sneak away and I do enjoy them so much. Now you won't tell your mother or my mother or ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... feathers—a kind of downy hair. I can hardly express how pleased I was to see him. I tell you, Robinson Crusoe don't make near enough of his loneliness. But here was interesting company. He looked at me and winked his eye from the front backwards, like a hen, and gave a chirp and began to peck about at once, as though being hatched three hundred years too late was just nothing. 'Glad to see you, Man Friday!' says I, for I had naturally settled he was to be called Man Friday if ever he was hatched, as soon as ever I found the ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... been shot when very young, some stray pellets having found their way into his wing. Norah had found him fluttering helplessly along the ground, and had picked him up, sustaining a severe peck in doing so. It was, however, the first and last peck he ever gave Norah. From that moment he seemed to recognize her as a friend, and to adopt her as an intimate—marks of esteem he accorded to very few others. Norah had handed him to Jim on arriving at the house, a change which ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... woman, and a mother into the bargain. She had, too, the remains of a woman's heart, where lingered a few maternal sympathies. These were quick to prompt her to duty. Turning away without a reply, she weighed out two pounds of fish, measured a peck of potatoes, poured out some milk in a cup, and filled a small paper with flour. These she handed to Mrs. ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... get out soon. The sun and the rain will thaw us out if we don't dig a way. Hullo! The lid's off the tin, and the biscuits are half of them in the snow. Never mind. Set to work and eat, while I pick up all I can find. I'm hungry. Peck away, lad, and think you're a squirrel eating your winter store. I say, who would think one could be so warm and snug surrounded ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... of houses at bleak and bare spots,—you wonder how there can be any enjoyment in them. I meet a girl in a chintz gown, with a small shawl on her shoulders, white stockings, and summer morocco shoes,—it looks observable. Turkeys, queer, solemn objects, in black attire, grazing about, and trying to peck the fallen apples, which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... any anxiety to say a word to any soul concerning the Master whom they profess to love. I know, of course, that deep feeling is silent, and that the secrets of Christian experience are not to be worn on the sleeve for daws to peck at. And I know that the conventionalities of this generation frown very largely upon the frank utterance of religious convictions on the part of religious people, except on Sundays, in Sunday-schools, pulpits, and the like. But for all that, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... reflecting on the chances that Sara and Lottie might turn out to be big cats and jump on him. At last his heart told him they were really nicer than they looked, and he hopped nearer and nearer, darted at the biggest crumb with a lightning peck, seized it, and carried it away to the other side ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... was not knocked out of me I don't know, but it wasn't, and I kicked and thrashed about till I got my head and shoulders to the surface, with a peck of snow down the back of my neck. I looked for the buffaloes, and there they stood in blank astonishment, wondering, I guess, if I always got off of a horse that way. I ran my sleeve along the barrel of my rifle, rested it over a lump of frozen snow ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth
... no fool," declared Nick, hotly. "He's made a peck o' money there in London town, and 's going to buy the Great House in Chapel lane, and ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... stops opposite my door.—Do I want any huckleberries?—If I do not, there are those that do. Thereupon my soft-voiced handmaid bears out a large tin pan, and then the wholesome countryman, heaping the peck-measure, spreads his broad hands around its lower arc to confine the wild and frisky berries, and so they run nimbly along the narrowing channel until they tumble rustling down in a black cascade and tinkle on the resounding ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... not know that for ten years Mr. Stockton had refused the offers of his friends to put him up for membership at the literary club to which his fancy turned so fondly and so often. He could not afford it. When friends from out of town called on him, he took them to Peck's for a French table ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... he sees your eye upon him, he hops a little nearer; not too near, however, either to mislead you or to put himself in your hands, but just near enough to tempt you to try to tempt him. You hold out a nut, and then, with a quick dart and a sharp peck with a bill trained to certain and sure work, your thumb and finger lose that which they held, and Mr. Bluejay is eating it in perfect security well beyond your reach. Oh, he is a fascinating creature is this bunch of beautiful blue feathers decorating the harshest voice of all birddom ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... bugs and angleworms and arranged them temptingly in rows, but the big, white rooster passed them by with a feeble peck or two. Bits of bread failed to tempt him, or even his favorite cooky crumbs. His eighth appetite departed—his seventh, sixth, ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... and bent his head in thought. An instant later he looked up. "You can't do it," he informed the detective vehemently; "you haven't got a shred of evidence against me! What's there? A pile of oranges and a peck of trash! What of it?... Besides," he threatened, "if you pinch me, you'll have to take the girl in, too. I swear that whatever stealing was done, she did it. I'll not be trapped this way by her and let her off without a squeal. Take me—take her; ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... nor stone was to be seen, for Mrs. Rachel would have seen it if there had been. Privately she was of the opinion that Marilla Cuthbert swept that yard over as often as she swept her house. One could have eaten a meal off the ground without overbrimming the proverbial peck of dirt. ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... poetess of you! But as to the mud, I don't mind a little mud. It is only dirt, and has its part in the inevitable peck, I hope." ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... character of the Moor, Iago despises Othello's unsuspicious trustingness as imbecility, while he hates him as a man because his nature is the perpetual opposite and perpetual reproach of his own. Now, Reineke would not have hurt a creature, not even Scharfenebbe, the crow's wife, when she came to peck his eyes out, if he had not been hungry; and that [Greek: gastros ananke], that craving of the stomach, makes a difference quite infinite. It is true that, like Iago, Reineke rejoices in the exercise of his intellect: the sense of his power and the scientific employment ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... you don't get us into a peck of it," chuckled Grace, tucking herself in under the blankets. "Thank you for getting the bed so ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... life of Priest Sander began in 1901. Then Jos. C. Peck, racer and raiser of trotting horses, met this priest in Albany, who wore the ordinary garb of a citizen. They met at the race track, which was not a very good recommendation to say the least of it, ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... again, sprang toward her friend, dabbed a little kiss, like the peck of a bird, on each cheek, cried: "Well, I must be off, or mother will have to tie up the professor to keep him," and was off accordingly with the speed and lightness ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... way, was rendered with Victorian propriety by a well-known Oxford professor, "What a quantity of perspiration!" etc. Probably Horace had been watching the sowing of barley or oats on a fine March morning, "the peck of March dust," which we know is "worth a King's ransom," flying behind the harrows. George Cruikshank gives a very spirited and comic realization of Horace's lines, in Hoskin's Talpa, where ploughing, sowing, harrowing, reaping, harvesting, thrashing, grinding ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... the Volksmaerchen der Serben collected by Karadschitsch, the youngest brother has to take his brother-in-law's horse over a bridge under which he sees an immense kettle full of boiling water in which men's heads are cooking while eagles peck at them. He then passes through a village where all is song and joyfulness because, so the inhabitants tell him, each year is fruitful with them and they live, therefore, in the midst of plenty. Then he sees two dogs quarrelling which he cannot succeed in separating. He next ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... Nag, if you ask for Humfrey the Ostler, by the same token he has bin there this foure dayes and had but one peck of provender. ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... said Jo. "Do you remember the time he had here last fall, with that braggin' hunter chap, Mc-Something, who came along with his rifle, darin' all hands about here to shute with him? He had one of them new peck-lock rifles, and nobody dared shute with him; and Bart came along, and asked to look at the feller's gun, and said something 'bout it, and Mc-Somebody dared him to shute, and Bart sent over to Haw's and got 'old Potleg,' that Steve Patterson shot himself with, and loaded 'er up, and then ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... been known to fly on her shoulder and peck her neck, so that now she carried a stick or took one of the children with her when she went ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... can be finished with a dark stain and waxed, or, as it is small, it can be easily fumed. If stain is used, stain and wax the pieces before putting them together. The fuming process is more easily done after the clock is assembled. Secure a bucket, a peck measure, or any receptacle large enough, when inverted, to put over the clock. Pour about 2 oz. of strong ammonia into a saucer or small pan. Support the clock above the saucer and cover both with the inverted bucket. Allow it to stand for three or four days—the ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 2 • H. H. Windsor
... of his elegance and art in the wedding-supper, which had been committed to his management and direction. This genial banquet was entirely composed of sea-dishes; a huge pillaw, consisting of a large piece of beef sliced, a couple of fowls, and half a peck of rice, smoked in the middle of the board: a dish of hard fish, swimming in oil, appeared at each end; the sides being furnished with a mess of that savoury composition known by the name of lub's-course, and a plate of salmagundy. The second course displayed a goose of a monstrous magnitude, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... ready to leave, and the locomotive was filling the great train-shed with stertorous hissings, when a red-faced man slipped through the gates to saunter over to the Pullman and to peck inquisitively at the porter. ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... thy pan o' milk, missus, and set on t' kettle. Milk may do for wenches, but Philip and me is for a drop o' good Hollands and watter this cold night. I'm a'most chilled to t' marrow wi' looking out for thee, lass, for t' mother was in a peck o' troubles about thy none coining home i' t' dayleet, and I'd to keep ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... his sentient heart For crows and jays to peck, ofttimes to such He seemed a silent fellow, who o'ermuch Held from the general gossip-ground apart, Or tersely spoke, and tart: How should they guess what eagle tore, within, His quick of sympathy for humblest smart Of human wretchedness, or probed his spleen ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... playing with pigeons. The number of pigeons she collects about her is quite amazing; you would never have thought that San Massimo or the neighboring hills contained as many. They flutter down like snowflakes, and strut and swell themselves out, and furl and unfurl their tails, and peck with little sharp movements of their silly, sensual heads and a little throb and gurgle in their throats, while Dionea lies stretched out full length in the sun, putting out her lips, which they come to kiss, and uttering strange, cooing sounds; or hopping about, flapping ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... something of a troubled fashion at Anderson, then at Carroll. His mind was in the throes of displacing a barrel of sugar and a half-peck of pease by a little boy. Then his face brightened. He ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... it knows how to run about as soon as it is hatched. So it does; but had it no knowledge before it was hatched? What made it lay the foundations of those limbs which should enable it to run about? What made it grow a horny tip to its bill before it was hatched, so that it might peck all round the larger end of the eggshell and make a hole for itself to get out at? Having once got outside the eggshell, the chicken throws away this horny tip; but is it reasonable to suppose that it would have grown it at all unless it had known that it would want something with which to break ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... I had lost control, and if you'd only wanted you could have stopped its plunge; but you'd rather see me get into a peck of trouble. How d'ye suppose I'm ever going to lug that heavy thing back up to the road now?" ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... quarreling himself, old Mr. Crow loved to look on while others wrangled. And though he had no taste himself for actual fighting, he liked to see his neighbors pummel and peck and buffet and ...
— The Tale of Nimble Deer - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... be noticed from the table, only part of Longstreet's corps was present. The main body had been sent, about Feb. 1, under command of its chief, to operate in the region between Petersburg and Suffolk, where our forces under Peck were making a demonstration. This detail reduced Lee's army by ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... a district extending from Canal Street on the north to Wall Street on the south; but Edison soon realized that this territory was too extensive for the initial experiment, and he decided finally upon the district included between Wall, Nassau, Spruce, and Ferry streets, Peck Slip and the East River, an area nearly a square mile in extent. One of the preliminary steps taken to enable him to figure on such a station and system was to have men go through this district on various days and note the number of gas jets burning at each hour ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... admits of no doubt whatever. For there should be no satiety in friendship, as there is in other things. The older the sweeter, as in wines that keep well. And the proverb is a true one, "You must eat many a peck of salt with a man to be thorough friends with him." Novelty, indeed, has its advantage, which we must not despise. There is always hope of fruit, as there is in healthy blades of corn. But age too must have its ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... dinner served up just as the king had given these orders, the bird, flapping his wings, hopped off the king's hand, and flew on to the table, where he began to peck the bread and victuals, sometimes on one plate, and sometimes on another. The king was so surprised, that he immediately sent the officer to desire the queen to come and see this wonder. The officer related it to her majesty, and she ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... one, from a piece of birch bark in which they were rolled, and another pecked a large hole in a keg of castile soap. A duck which I had picked and laid down for a few minutes had the entire breast eaten out by one or more of these birds. I have seen one alight in the middle of my canoe and peck away at the carcass of a beaver I had skinned. They often spoil deer saddles by pecking into them near the kidneys. They do great damage to the trappers by stealing the bait from traps set for martens and minks, and by eating trapped game. ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... in a maze, in a peck of troubles, puzzled, or at a loss what course to take in any business. To look over the wood; to ascend the pulpit, to preach: I shall look over the wood at St. James's on Sunday next. To look through the wood; to stand in the pillory. Up ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... how there can be any enjoyment in them. I meet a girl in a chintz gown, with a small shawl on her shoulders, white stockings, and summer morocco shoes,—it looks observable. Turkeys, queer, solemn objects, in black attire, grazing about, and trying to peck the fallen apples, which slip away ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... felt a sharp peck; and a voice said close to his ear, "Halloo, little one, you had ...
— The Nursery, No. 165. September, 1880, Vol. 28 - A Monthly Magazine For Youngest Readers • Various
... take you farther than Sharon Peck's. Your folks would be pretty mad if you walked through the ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... word—had made but a meteoric appearance in her future sister-in-law's cottage—a hasty greeting, a brief peck on Ilona's two cheeks, and one on Aladar's bristly face, then the inevitable homily; and as soon as Ilona paused in the latter, in order to draw breath, Elsa gave her another peck, by way of farewell, explained hastily that her mother was waiting for her, and ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... her switch as proudly as if it had been a sceptre, was eager and quick to discover occasions to use it. Many a staid and demure-looking hen, or saucy, daring young chicken, had stolen quite near to her post, stopping every few moments to peer cautiously around, or to peck at a blade of grass or an imaginary worm, as if quite indifferent to the attractions presented by the field beyond, but just as they had come close to the fence, thinking themselves unnoticed, Nelly would jump from her perch, and, with a thwack of the switch, send them squawking back to their ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... generous, impulsive, and deficient in the selfish propensities and in ambition. He loves display and would like to have power, but is inadequate to the continued effort and the endurance necessary to obtain it. He wields a more potent influence in the pulpit, on the rostrum or in journalism. George W. Peck, T. DeWitt Talmage and R. B. Hayes represent three different types of this ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... necks like hungry fowls in their eagerness to peck at any problems Mark felt inclined to scatter before them. A ludicrous fancy passed through his mind that much of the good seed was pecked ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... other woman in the field, against whom if she tried conclusions she would be broken like the earthen pot in the fable, she generally succeeds in achieving her ambition, although she may be in name a servant. There are such phenomena as hen-pecked priests, and those who peck them have no right whatever to do it. It is a state of things brought about by too much submission, for the sake of peace, to a mind determined to be uppermost while ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... of pickled pepper; A peck of pickled pepper Peter Piper picked; If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper, Where's the peck of pickled pepper Peter ...
— Young Canada's Nursery Rhymes • Various
... the edge of the bar they have built a nicely finished woodwork wall which looks exactly like a great coffin, the coffin of John Barleycorn. After the manner of my species I wanted to see over the edge and the young man, thinking that I might be suspecting a blind pig, boosted me up to peck over. I asked him why they didn't remove the bar entirely and he said with unsmiling naivete that they were waiting "to see" and that they had saved the rail, ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... long that year, and then came March, rough and boisterous and dull as usual, with its cruel east wind and the dust, "a peck of which was worth a king's ransom," ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... into the small railed garden, where was a scent of red gillivers. By the open door were some floury loaves, put out to cool. A hen was just coming to peck them. Then, in the doorway suddenly appeared a girl in a dirty apron. She was about fourteen years old, had a rosy dark face, a bunch of short black curls, very fine and free, and dark eyes; shy, questioning, a little resentful of the strangers, she disappeared. In a minute another figure ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... Iago despises Othello's unsuspicious trustingness as imbecility, while he hates him as a man because his nature is the perpetual opposite and perpetual reproach of his own. Now, Reineke would not have hurt a creature, not even Scharfenebbe, the crow's wife, when she came to peck his eyes out, if he had not been hungry; and that [Greek: gastros ananke], that craving of the stomach, makes a difference quite infinite. It is true that, like Iago, Reineke rejoices in the exercise of his intellect: the sense of his power and the scientific employment of his time ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... hour later, and they are still there, and the black man lounging by the leaders has hardly shifted one leg; pass by at evening, and they have moved on three hundred yards, and are resting again. In the daytime hens peck and cackle in every street; at nightfall the bordering veldt hums with crickets and bullfrogs. At morn come a flight of locusts—first, yellow-white scouts whirring down every street, then a pelting snowstorm of them high up over the houses, ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... others would be more likely to take up mud and pelt you with it, provided they saw you in trouble, than to help you. So take care of your horse, and feed him every day with your own hands; give him three-quarters of a peck of corn each day, mixed up with a little hay-chaff, and allow him besides one hundred-weight of hay in the course of the week; some say that the hay should be hardland hay, because it is wholesomest, but I say, let it be clover hay, because the horse likes it best; give ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... to tell you one of the stories that some boys and girls tell about my red head. You will find it on another page of the book. Now I must fly away to peck for more bugs. ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous
... business, and took him by water to the Wardrobe, and shewed him all the house; and indeed there is a great deal of room in it, but very ugly till my Lord hath bestowed great cost upon it. So to the Exchequer, and there took Spicer and his fellow clerks to the Dog tavern, and did give them a peck of oysters, and so home to dinner, where I found my wife making of pies and tarts to try, her oven with, which she has never yet done, but not knowing the nature of it, did heat it too hot, and so a little overbake her things, but knows ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... carried in the mother bird's body till the shell has hardened and is fit to be laid, when she warms it with her own breast, patiently sitting on it for days, while the father bird feeds her, till the little chick is strong enough to break the walls of its tiny house, and come forth and peck and fend for itself. You can explain how the little kitten the child plays with has in the same way a safe place provided for it in the mother's body, where it grows and grows till all its organs are formed, and it can breathe and suck, when, like the ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... change—you look, and there's neither head nor tail to the coins, and the denomination's rubbed off long ago. But do as you please here! You'd better not show your goods to the tradesman of this place; any one of 'em'll go into any warehouse and sniff and peck, and peck, and then clear out. It'd be all right if there were no goods, but what do you expect a man to trade in? I've got one apothecary shop, one dry goods, the third a grocery. No use, none of them pays. You needn't even go to the market; ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... Susy, quite the contrary; there would not, indeed, be the same plea to save it; it would no longer be a young lady's first appearance in public; those who have met with less indulgence would all peck at any second work; and even those who most encouraged the first offspring might prove enemies to the second, by receiving it with expectations which it could not answer: and so, between either the friends or the foes of ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... benediction thousands streamed slowly out to mingle with the multitudes gathered before the great Entrance where Queen Anne in crown and scepter keeps majestic guard, and where in peaceful days doves flit and flutter down to peck at the grain strewn about ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... solitude: 15 And ever, scattered from his palsied hand, That, still attempting to prevent the waste, Was baffled still, the crumbs in little showers Fell on the ground; and the small mountain birds, Not venturing yet to peck their destined meal, 20 Approached within the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... the young person for whom I am the alternative, is in a peck of trouble; I quote her verbatim. She and her two daughters hold some three thousand shares of Western Pacific stock. It was purchased at fifty-seven, and it ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... from Republican quarters; but, with the same firmness, he set aside acts of state legislatures as well, whenever, in his opinion, they violated the federal Constitution. In 1810, in the case of Fletcher vs. Peck, he annulled an act of the Georgia legislature, informing the state that it was not sovereign, but "a part of a large empire, ... a member of the American union; and that union has a constitution ... which imposes limits to the legislatures of the several states." In the case of McCulloch ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... were changed into birds, and that these birds have their dwelling in the environs of the Temple of Diomede, which is situated near Mount Garganos; that these birds caress the Greeks who come to visit this temple, but fly at and peck the strangers ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... fill each man a peck of old sherry, This brimmer shall bid all our senses good-night; When old Aristotle was frolic and merry, By the juice of the grape, he stagger'd out-right; Copernicus once, in a drunken fit, found By the course of's brains that the world did turn ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... crops are full, but when we are starving, it is a wonder that we can hold our heads up at all. If I ever see that farmer's boy again, I'll—I'll—I'll peck ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... this afternoon and picked nearly a peck of blackberries. Berries of various kinds are very abundant. The fox-grape is also found in great plenty, and as big ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... further fact that, when a man has died of some pestilential disease, and, owing to the odour, the birds will not peck at the body, nor will the famished dogs go near it, then a large number of Lamas, having made the usual exorcisms, sit down by it, and do not get up again until they have devoured the whole of the rotten human flesh! The relatives and friends are wiser and less brutal. They rightly ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... reign of Edward III to the reign of Henry VII, a day's earnings, in corn, rose from a pack to near half a bushel, and from Henry VII to the end of Elizabeth, it fell from near half a bushel to little more than half a peck. ...
— Observations on the Effects of the Corn Laws, and of a Rise or Fall in the Price of Corn on the Agriculture and General Wealth of the Country • Thomas Malthus
... grateful; that's thy character.— Unveil the woman; I would view the face, That warmed our Mufti's zeal: These pious parrots peck the fairest fruit: Such tasters are for kings. [Officers go to ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... businesslike peck, emphasized by contact with the point of a stone-cold nose, on Magdalen's cheek. Aunt Aggie greeted her niece with small inarticulate cluckings of affection. Have you ever kissed a tepid poached egg? Then you know what it is to ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... is to remove from the blood the irritating waste which is inflaming the stomach, and this is better done by cleansing and stimulating the skin than by means of drastic drugs. A lazy man will swallow a peck of pills rather than go through an ordeal of cleansing like this, but in that case he need not be surprised if his poor stomach become only poorer still, while his purse will not get any heavier. Besides this cleansing, take sips of hot water as recommended under Indigestion. A very ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... which the prisoner made to free himself from the fatal trap only drew the ends tighter, and confined his foot more firmly. Suddenly a detachment took wing, and, retiring about a hundred paces, returned rapidly, and, one by one, gave a peck at the snare, which each time, owing to the determined manner of the attack, received a sharp twitch. Not one of the swallows missed its aim, so that, after half an hour of this persevering and ingenious labor, the chafed string broke, and the captive; ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... tweeds and sheepskin jacket, sable pelisse, enormous "bourka," and high felt boots, it was all I could do to keep warm even when going at a hand gallop, varied every hundred yards or so by a desperate "peck" on ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... Rollinson slid in on the general Democratic landslide in this district. He's got one son, a worthless pup, Henry, a sort of yokel Don Juan, always half drunk when his father has any money to give him, and just smart enough to keep the old man mesmerized. Lately Henry's been in a mighty serious peck of trouble. Last fall he got married to a girl here in town. Three weeks ago a family named Johnson, the most shiftless in the county, the real low-down white trash sort, living on a truck patch out Rollinson's way, heard that Henry was on a toot in town, spending money freely, and they ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... thus in mid-air. The glossy threads with which it is knitted are stout, and the structure is therefore, not liable to be torn by the beaks of insectivorous birds, while its pendulous position makes it doubly secure against their attacks, the apparatus giving way when they peck at it. There is a small orifice at each end of the egg-shaped bag, to admit of the escape of the moth when it changes from the little chrysalis which sleeps tranquilly in its airy cage. The moth is of a dull slatey colour, and belongs to the Lithosiide group of the ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... but I couldn't rightly see. Come, they are in a peck o' trouble up to Sister Barsett's, wonderin' where you be," grumbled the man. "They can't do nothin' with her; she's drove off everybody an' keeps a-screechin' for you. Come, step along, Sarah ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... I., p. 307.] On that sacred day, so desecrated by the havoc of war, he gathered the neighbours together and buried the slain, friend and foe, in one wide, common grave. Among the traditions of the war is one which records that the boys of the Gage family gathered up a peck of bullets which had been intercepted by the stone fence bounding the lane that led ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... desired my brother Phil as he passed through Hertford to order four horses to come to Tytten after six o'clock and four more to be ready at the Inn to change, but knowing the forgetfulness of the young gentleman, Mama and I were in a peck of troubles lest he should forget the horses, and then we could not have gone. However, they did come, and at eleven o'clock after various directions and orders given we packed off and got to Hertford safely. Changed horses without alighting and proceeded to Buntingford, ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... both the combatants hors-de-combat, by inflicting on them mortal wounds. Then begins the most disgusting part of the scene. The owner of each bird takes him up, blows into his mouth and eyes, and uses every exertion to make the poor tortured victim give the last peck to his adversary. Failing this last peck, the battle is a drawn one. Bets are usually paid, particularly in the country, in gold dust, which is weighed out in small ivory steelyards kept for the purpose. The Dutch, with their usual policy, derive a revenue from every cock-pit ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... dear bird!" cried John, tenderly taking the creature in his hands and lifting it to peck at his lips as it always loved to do. "You have come to me safely from far away. You have come from the place where my dear father is. Have you brought ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... he!" flared the girl. "Then you can tell him for me that he's goin' to get into a peck of trouble if he don't ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... over the edge of the lantern, intending to get on the rounds of the ladder, but his foot missed the first one. In his effort to regain it he slipped. At that instant the bird freed his head, and with a triumphant "caw!" gave Billy an awful peck on the nose. The result was that the poor boy fell back. He could not restrain a shriek as he did so, but he still kept hold of the raven, and made a wild grasp with his disengaged hand. Fortunately he caught the ladder, and remained swinging ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... few minutes Gahogan, of the Tenth; Gildersleeve, of the Fourteenth; Peck, of the First; Thomas, of the Seventh; Taylor, of the Eighth, and Colburn, of the Fifth, were gathered around their commander. There, too, was Bradley, the boyish, red-cheeked chief of the artillery; and Stilton, the rough, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... afterwards, when you are on your death-bed, he may happen to be passing; and if he should, you are safe; for three knocks with his staff will make you hale, and he never forgets any kindnesses. Many stories are current of his wonderful cures; but there is one to be found in Peck's History of Stamford which possesses the rare merit of being written by the patient himself. Upon Whitsunday, in the year of our Lord 1658, "about six of the clock, just after evensong," one Samuel Wallis, of Stamford, who ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... n' git erlong widout his trials en tribberlations. One day a woodpecker come erlong en 'mence' ter peck at de tree; en de nex' time Sandy wuz turnt back he had a little roun' hole in his arm, des lack a sharp stick be'n stuck in it. Atter dat Tenie sot a sparrer-hawk fer ter watch de tree; en w'en de woodpecker come erlong ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... he said, very gently holding up a bit of bread to the canary to peck at, "if I were in your place I would seize every master in Chancery by the throat to-morrow morning and shake him until his money rolled out of his pockets and his bones rattled in his skin. I would have a settlement out of somebody, by fair means or by foul. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... will care If I act like a bear And tear your two wings from your neck," "What a nice little pen You have got!" says the hen, Beginning to scratch and to peck. ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... political and social life, making no demands upon one's credulity, but satisfying the requirements in the way of a thoroughly good novel. The characters are all drawn with real fidelity to life.—HARRY THURSTON PECK, Editor ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... on others who have written in this field—Andrews, Beard, Paxson and Peck, and especially on the volumes written for the American Nation series by Professors Dunning, Sparks, Dewey, Latane and Ogg. Haworth's United States in Our Own Time, 1865-1920, was unfortunately printed too late to give me the benefit of the author's well-known ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... her delightedly, 'his very language borrows its most powerful imagery from his past belongings! Do you or I, Audrey, in our wildest and most despairing moments, ever talk of a peck of trouble? Depend upon it, my dear, when Thomas made that speech, he was among his bins again; in his mind's eye he was measuring out his oats and beans. I think I hear him repeating again what ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... decayed that it declined visibly.... I hope to see the saint fixed upon a firmer basis before the Winter." On the top of a turret opposite St. Hugh is the statue of the Swineherd of Stowe. This personage became famous through contributing a peck of silver pennies toward the building of the cathedral. As is usually the case, the saint and the donor therefore occupy positions of equal exaltation! The swineherd is equipped with a winding horn. A foolish tradition without ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... dozen turnes about the house and vanished at the doore"; the fourth, "Sack and Sugar, like a black rabbet"; the fifth, "News, like a polcat." Other names of his finding were Elemauzer, Pywacket, Peck-in-the-Crown, Grizzel, and Greedygut, "which," he adds, "no mortal could invent." The name of Robin, which we met with in the confession of Alice Duke, has, perhaps, wider associations than the woman herself dreamed of; for, through Robin des Bois and Robin ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... saw the last of his friend. I saw that, and set down the anxiety he expressed that I should write to him at its proper value. I have quite got over my weakness for him at last. No man who really loved me would have put what he owed to a peck of newspaper people before what he owed to his wife. I hate him for letting me convince him! I believe he was glad to get rid of me. I believe he has seen some woman whom he likes at Turin. Well, let him follow his new ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... the foe, spill his blood; take to your wings and surround them on all sides. Woe to them! let us get to work with our beaks, let us devour them. Nothing can save them from our wrath, neither the mountain forests, nor the clouds that float in the sky, nor the foaming deep. Come, peck, tear to ribbons. Where is the chief of the cohort? Let him ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... the elder is white, brew and bake a peck, When the elder is black, brew and bake ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... young flirts to get married?" said Dame Scratchard. "I don't expect she'll raise a single chick; and there's Gray Cock flirting about, fine as ever. Folks didn't do so when I was young. I'm sure my husband knew what treatment a sitting hen ought to have,—poor old Long Spur! he never minded a peck or so and then. I must say these modern fowls ain't what fowls ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Jack must have in his mind. He wanted to get close enough up before betraying their presence, so that he could cover the pilferers, and let them see that they were in range of a deadly weapon, so that to run away would very likely get them into a peck ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... be to go over to that henyard and just trust to luck for a chance to catch one of those biddies. Of course, they might be lucky and get a hen that way, but then again they might be unlucky and get in a peck of trouble. ...
— Old Granny Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... were the allowance of each individual or of each family; but if Dr. Arbuthnot be correct in estimating the modius at fourteen pounds, the allowance must have been for each family, amounting to one quarter seven bushels, and one peck per annum. ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... humble, and your fortune lowly. It isn't the waistcoat that I look at. It is the heart. The checks in the waistcoat are but the wires of the cage. But the heart is the bird. Ah! How many sich birds are perpetually moulting, and putting their beaks through the wires to peck at all mankind!' ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... stones and mud at him, and went their way. Then the wolves gathered at the foot of the cross, and the birds flew lower and lower. And presently the birds lighted all at once upon his head and arms and shoulders, and began to peck at him, and the wolves began to eat his feet. 'Outcasts,' he moaned, 'have you ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... come into the room, like a cold wind or a thin ghost, and there would be a kiss on the cheek, a cold, precise peck, like a bird's. And, "Did you have a good voyage?" just as if she said, "Do you think we'll ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... derived from three orders of the animate creation. Two were human. The third was an aged starling, for whose convenience a wicker cage hung in one corner; but the owner was hopping in perfect freedom about the hearth, and occasionally varying that exercise by pausing to give a mischievous peck to the tail of the fourth, a very large white and tan dog. The dog appeared so familiarised with this treatment as scarcely to notice it, unless the starling gave a harder peck than usual, when he merely moved his tail out of its way, accompanying the action in specially severe cases by the most ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... its beak, on branches, or bars of cage, in an absurd manner, as if partly imagining itself hung up in a larder, are by no means the most vital matters about the bird. Whereas, that its beak is always extremely short, and is bent down so roundly that the angriest parrot cannot peck, but only bite, if you give it a chance; that it can bite, pinch, or otherwise apply the mechanism of a pair of nut-crackers from the back of its head, with effect; that it has a little black tongue capable of much talk; above all, ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? They have got to live a man's life, pushing all these things before them, and get on as well as they can. How many a poor ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... a flock of birds of various plumage and power of song, but all amicably disposed, and ready to peck socially at any topic which might ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... into which place eight pounds of the undercut of prime beef, half a Bayonne ham, two young chickens, and a sweetbread. To these add leeks, chervil, carrots, turnips, fifty heads of asparagus, a few truffles, a large cow-cabbage, a pint of French beans, a peck of very young peas, a tomato cut in slices, some potatoes, and a couple of bananas. Pour in three gallons of water, and boil furiously till your soup is reduced to about a pint and a-half. As it boils, add, drop by drop, a bottle of JULES MUMM's Extra Dry, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 21, 1892 • Various
... investigator from the department of agriculture went to the Washington community store to make an experiment. He paid his 50-cent weekly membership fee and made some purchases. He bought a 10-cent carton of oatmeal for 8 cents; a 10-cent loaf of bread for 8 cents; one-half peck of string beans for 20 cents, instead of for 30 cents, the price in the non-cooeperative stores; three pounds of veal for 58 cents instead of 80 cents; a half dozen oranges for 13 cents instead of the usual price of from ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... the river bank he flamed and rioted. In the sumac he uttered not the faintest "Chip!" that might attract attention. He was so anxious to be inconspicuous that he appeared only half his real size. Always on leaving he gave her a tender little peck and ran his beak the length of her wing—a characteristic caress that he delighted to ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... occurs of "The Last of the Plantagenets" is, says the author of a Romance with the above name, in Peck's "Desiderata Curiosa," where a letter is inserted from Dr. Brett to Dr. Warren, the president of Trinity Hall, in which he says that, calling on Lord Winchilsea in 1720, his lordship pointed out to him this entry in the register of Eastwell—"Anno ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... for his own little peccadilloes by damning yours and mine. I forget how it goes. But there'll be more in by-and-by, and then we'll have another table. Those who come late will be more in your line; not so ready to peck your eyes out if you happen to forget a card. That Miss Ruff is dreadful." Here an awful note was heard, for the Lady Ruth had just put her thirteenth trump on Miss Ruff's thirteenth heart. What Littlebathian female ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... along. And the man drew up and said to Mr. Miller, "Here's your boy, bit by a snake." "What kind?" says Mr. Miller, all excited. "Here he is," said the man, and held up the snake. Mr. Miller says: "Oh, fiddlesticks! That's a blue racer, as harmless as the peck of a chicken." Then he took hold of Mitch and shook him and says: "Here, Mitch, this is all foolishness—you're just scart; that snake ain't pisen. He can't hurt you more than a chicken." So Mitch sat right up and looked at his hand which wasn't swelled. ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... all you wanted last week, by the bushel or peck or barrel,—finest, juiciest apples you ever laid your ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... had half done breakfast, I heard a bright, pleasant voice asking of our host, in a free and easy way,—"Captain Peck, is there considerable of a pretending chap here who's going out fishing in our craft to-day? When the salt water has washed some of his airs out of him he'll be good for something; and his brother ain't so ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... Weather, when they are half ripe, as I have explained in the above Preliminaries, pick them and bruise them in a Tub, with a wooden Mallet, or other such like Instrument, for no Metal is proper; then take about the quantity of a Peck of the bruised Goosberries, put them into a Bag made of Horse-Hair, and press them as much as possible, without breaking the Kernels: repeat this Work till all your Goosberries are press'd, and adding to this ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... back, the odd shows at the House of the interpreter, the fighting, the adventures, the pleasing young ladies at the palace the name of which was Beautiful, and their very interesting museum of curiosities. As for the allegorical meaning, it went through her consciousness like a peck of wheat through a bushel measure with ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... cover and waited. Presently there was a patter over the dry leaves lying on the ground, and a jungle cock, a bird similar to an English bantam, stalked across the glade twenty yards away. It stopped and began to peck. Dermot quietly raised his rifle and took careful aim at its head. He fired, and the body of the cock fell ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... and forth, hopped nimbly along the branches and raised their voices in low churrs or louder agonized wails. The cub was nonplussed and stared at the birds, at first blankly, then angrily; but they grew constantly more impertinent, even making daring sallies at his face as if to peck out ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... lanterne. 'Tis much the fashion in Paris, let me tell you. But murder, duelling, and pillage—they sacked the hotel of the Duc de Castries the other day because his son wounded Charles de Lameth in a duel—are every-day occurrences now. Lafayette is in a peck of trouble, and received me with the utmost coldness. He knows I cannot commend him, and therefore he feels embarrassed and impatient in my society. I am seriously pained for d'Azay, too. I met him at Montmorin's, and he confessed to me that he knew not how to steer his course. He is horrified ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... allowance of a full grown slave, working constantly in the open field, from morning until night, every day in the month except Sunday, and living on a fraction more than a quarter of a pound of meat per day, and less than a peck of corn-meal per week. There is no kind of work that a man can do which requires a better supply of food to prevent physical exhaustion, than the field-work of a slave. So much for the slave's allowance of food; now for ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... comparisons of creator and critic are unprofitable, being for the most part a confounding of intellectual substances. The painter paints, the composer makes music, the sculptor models, and the poet sings. Like the industrious crow the critic hops after these sowers of beauty, content to peck up in the furrows the chance grains dropped by genius. This, at least, is the popular notion. Balzac, and later Disraeli, asked: "After all, what are the critics? Men who have failed in literature ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... about a peck, called "fa-lo'-ko," is made of a'-nis bamboo. It is used in various capacities, for vegetables and cereals, in and about the house. It is made in all the pueblos and is shown in Pl. XCIV. A few other household baskets are ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... friend. The kitten, discovering this, assumed the post of leader, and used to conduct them about the grounds, amusing itself at their expense. Sometimes it would catch hold of their feet, as if going to bite them, when they would peck at it in return. At others it would hide behind a bush, and then springing out into their midst, purr and rub itself against their sides. One pullet was its especial favourite; it accompanied her ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... to be at all disturbed or frightened by the noise of carriages or the press of people; but would fly down, and light on the peddler's wrist, and peck the food from the palm ...
— The Nursery, March 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... too swiftly speed the happy hours away In the company of Silverman and Underwood and Shea; Of Yenowine, McNaughten, Kipp, Peck, Lush, and General Falk— Eight noble men in action, but nobler yet in talk! These are the genial spirits to be met with in that spot. Where are winters never chilly and summers never hot! And a fellow having been there always ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... of being preserved as pictures. At first, nearly the whole subjects chosen as ornaments, were taken from Burns's poems; and there can be no doubt, that the "Cotter's Saturday Night," "Tam O'Shanter," "Willie brewed a peck o' maut," &c. &c., have penetrated in this form into every quarter of the habitable globe. Now, however, the artists of Cumnock take a wider range; the studios of Wilkie, and other artists, have been laid under contribution; landscapes are as often met with as figures; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... of unslacked lime, and slack it with boiling water, covering it, during the process. Strain it, and add a peck of salt, dissolved in warm water; three pounds of ground rice, boiled to a thin paste, put in boiling hot; half a pound of powdered Spanish whiting; and a pound of clear glue, dissolved in warm water. Mix, and let it stand several days. Heat it in a kettle, on a portable furnace, ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... own brood is softened by no social requirements. If a poor lost waif from another coop strays into her realm, no pity, no sympathy springing from the memory of her own offspring, moves her to kindness; but she goes at it with a demoniac fury, and would peck its little life out, if fear did not lend it wings. She has a self-abnegation great as that of human mothers. Her voracity and timidity disappear. She goes almost without food herself, that her chicks may eat. She scatters the dough about with her own bill, that it may ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... bets were being arranged each bird was held, in turn, to let the other peck him ferociously, probably with the idea of making them mad enough to fight. When the bets were all arranged the birds were placed on the ground facing each other, and with lowered heads and neck feathers erected they dashed together like tigers, ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... the father, Earl of Norwich's operations against the parliament in Essex in 1648, is given in a curious autobiography of Arthur Wilson, the author of the History of James I., which is printed in Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, book xi. part 5. Wilson was living ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various
... fish, a flat-fish—caught with a bit of red rag; however, there must be a great deal in use—another element may be delightful, when used to it. There is no doubt my old friend Wideawake's attack upon the Captain was mere envy; and as to his insinuating that I should never eat a peck of salt with that man—to say I shall never know that man, is preposterous!—as to eating the literal peck, no man, probably, will do that; for the Captain has an aversion to saline food, saying it makes the bones ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... "Mrs. Peckover! Hullo there, Peck! where are you?" roared a stern voice from the stable department of the circus, just as the clown's wife seemed about to ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... You will drink, will you? I saw no dust or cobwebs come out of your mouth. Go hang, you moon-calf, false faucet, you roaring horse-courser, you ranger of Turnbull, you dull malt-house with a mouth of a peck and the sign of the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... literary excellence might with equal justice be extended to every species of merit, and might be urged against all that is good in art or nature.—Scandal is said to attack always the fairest characters, as the birds always peck most at the ripest fruit; but would you for this reason have no fruit ripen, or no characters aspire to excellence? But if it be your opinion that women are naturally inferior to us in capacity, why do you feel so much apprehension of their ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... a laugh. "Don't wear your heart on your sleeve, Mr. Keating. She wouldn't be above taking a peck ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... with crocks of milk and pecks of oaten cake for the entertainment of their guest. Then while they slept the Phynnodderee feasted, yet he always left the table exactly as he found it, eating the cake and drinking the milk, but filling up the peck and the crock afresh. Nobody ever intruded upon him, so nobody ever saw him, save the Manx Peeping Tom. I remember hearing an old Manxman say that his curiosity overcame his reverence, and he "leff the wife," stepped out of bed, ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... the parties purchasing and those opposed to the State's selling and her authority to sell, created immense excitement, and pervaded the entire State. The decision of the Supreme Court of the United States was invoked in the case of Fletcher versus Peck, which settled the question of the power of the State to sell the public domain, and the validity of the sale made by the State to the Georgia Company. In the meantime the Legislature of Georgia had repealed the law authorizing the Governor to sell. This decision of the ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... he was at once commissioned as Brigade Surgeon of U. S. Volunteers, and soon after promoted to the rank of Medical Director, serving as such on the staffs, successively, of Generale Stone, Casey, Sedgwick, and Peck. His army service was marked by the same strong individuality, the same resolute activity, the same executive talent, which we have seen stamped upon the boy and the youth. Added to all those other qualities, was that same genial ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... right, stick to the moccasins. Gee! That coat is sure wrinkled, an' it fits you a mite too swift. Just peck around at your vittles. If you eat hearty you'll bust through. An' if them women folks gets to droppin' handkerchiefs, just let 'em lay. Don't do any pickin' up. ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... friendy. Then she would stop and speak a few pretty words to me. She use to shake my cape, with all her strength and might, Every time I told her, They would both put one foot into my hand, Every time I told them, They would both scratch my hand, and peck on my cap, Every ...
— A Complete Edition of the Works of Nancy Luce • Nancy Luce
... has achieved a greater national reputation for books of genuine humor and mirth than GEORGE W. PECK, author of "Peck's ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... the average eating record of each man at the outing is about ten pounds of beef, two or three chickens, a pound of butter, a half peck of potatoes, and two dozen ears of corn. The drinking records, as given out, are still more phenomenal. For some reason, not yet explained, the district leader thinks that his popularity will be greatly increased if he can show that his followers can eat and drink more than the ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... case a good fellow that had but a peck of corn weekly to grind, yet would needs build a new mill for it, found his error eftsoons, for either he must let his mill lie waste, pull it quite down, or let others grind at it. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... ourselves," said Tom, looking a little sheepish, but anxious to set his mind at rest, "she never will let me kiss her on her cheek, nothing but an unsatisfactory peck at her lips. Then the other day, as I took a bit of heliotrope out of a vase to put in my button-hole, I whisked a drop of water into her face; I was going to wipe it off, but she pushed my hand away, and ran to the glass, ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... hang us like the cavaliers; Nor put them to the charge of gaols, To find us pill'ries and cart's-tails, 750 Or hangman's wages, which the State Was forc'd (before them) to be at, That cut, like tallies, to the stumps, Our ears for keeping true accompts, And burnt our vessels, like a new 755 Seal'd peck, or bushel, for b'ing true; But hand in hand, like faithful brothers, Held for the Cause against all others, Disdaining equally to yield One syllable of what we held, 760 And though we differ'd now and then 'Bout outward things, and outward ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... counterbore, and the spark between C and E ignites this and discharges the cannon. A cannon may be fired from a distance in this way, and as there is no danger of any spark remaining after the current is shut off, it is safer than the ordinary cannon which is fired by means of a fuse. —Contributed by Henry Peck, Big Rapids, Mich. ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... fastidious as to his tools; the bungling beginner can bungle with anything. The fiddle-bow, however, affords only one example of a rule which is equally well exemplified by many humbler tools. Quarryman's peck, coachman's whip, cricket-bat, fishing-rod, trowel, all have their intimate relation to the skill of those who use them; and like animals and plants, adapting themselves each to its own place in the universal order, they attain to beauty by force ...
— Progress and History • Various
... stay at Ellisland, many of them of his finest. The third volume of Johnson's Museum, published in February 1790, contained no fewer than forty songs by Burns. Among the Ellisland songs were such as, Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon, Auld Lang Syne, Willie brewed a Peck o' Maut, To Mary in Heaven, Of a' the Airts the Wind can blaw, My Love she's but a Lassie yet, Tam Glen, John Anderson my Jo, songs that have become the property of the world. Of the last-named song, Angellier ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... suggests the legend of Quentin Massys of Antwerp and the fly, or the still older, but perhaps not more historical story of the Greek painters, Zeuxis and the bunch of grapes, which the birds came to peck at, and Parrhasius, whose curtain deceived ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... good! Edward Cole sent by his daughter a turkey; Lord, accept it! Dec. 2nd.—Sara Frowt a dish of butter; accept, Lord! Dec. 6th.—Margaret Sitwell would not be paid for 2-1/2 lbs. of butter; is she not a daughter of Abraham? Father, be pleased to pay her. Walter Peck sent me, Dec. 14th, a partridge, and Mr. Webb the same day pork and puddings; Lord, forget not! Mrs. Thomasin Doidge—Lord, look on her in much mercy—Dec. 19th, gave me 5s. Jan. 25th.—Mrs. Audry sent me a bushel of barley malt for housekeeping; Lord, smell ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... Sergeant! the floor hasn't been sprinkled.' The sharp, quick tones of the sergeant of the guard (more like the sound of a tenpenny nail scratching mahogany than aught else in nature) soon set matters right. You think you have surely swallowed your peck of dirt that morning, and feel even more gastric than you usually do on an empty stomach. You can go home to breakfast now: but you hear Johnny Todd's cheery voice sing out; 'Fall in, cocktail squad!' and march off with a score of your comrades ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Peninsula, where they have become partly assimilated in dress and language to the local Chukches.[562] The same conditions also facilitated the passage of a few Chukches across Bering Strait to the Alaskan side. At Pak (or Peck) on East Cape and on Diomed Island, situated in the narrowest part of Bering Strait, are the great intercontinental markets of the polar tribes. Here American furs have for many decades been exchanged for the reindeer skins of northern Siberia and Russian goods from far-away Moscow.[563] ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... he goes. I may not go far or stay long. Just let it stand that way. Tell inquiring friends that. I'll keep you posted. You know what my business is; it takes me here—it takes me there." He gave his wife a peck of a kiss and patted Vona's shoulder when he passed her. He picked up a valise ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... One peck cucumbers; thirty small onions; four green peppers; two red peppers; slice and soak over night in salt water. Soak cucumbers separately, rinse in cold water. One-half gallon vinegar; two tablespoonfuls mustard seed; ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various
... organization of a Georgia Men's League. He did so immediately on returning home, with the following officers: President, Mr. Grossman; vice-presidents, the Rev. Fred A. Line, the Rev. J. Wade Conkling, C. W. McClure, Dr. Frank Peck, E. L. Martin, ex-president Macon Chamber of Commerce; S. B. Marks and L. Marquardt, ex-presidents of the State Federation of Labor. Mr. Grossman toured the State on behalf of woman suffrage under the joint auspices of the Men's League and the State association. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... sources of amusement. The two creatures had become great friends, though Quacko now and then showed an inclination to pick the feathers out of his companion's back; but when he made the attempt, she resented it by a severe peck on his head—and one day caught the tip of his tail, and gave it a bite which was calculated to teach him not to behave in the same manner again. Whenever we asked Kallolo to try and catch us some more pets, he invariably replied, "Wait till I can make my blowpipe and some poison, and then ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... eats a peck of dirt in the course of his life," said Happy Tom, "but I know that I've already beat the measure a dozen times over. Why, I took in a bushel at least at the Second Manassas, but I still live, and here I am, surveying this peaceful domestic scene. ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Physics; or, Natural Philosophy. Designed for the Use of Colleges and Schools. By Benjamin Silliman, Jr. Philadelphia. H.C. Peck & Theodore Bliss. 12mo. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... of sending out a gentleman to take money home to the families of the volunteers. But cuss the paymaster, "or any other man." Why don't the paymaster come? Send me some papers. I can't get any without a peck of trouble. ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... of the villeins had a messuage and half a virgate, 12 to 15 acres of arable land at least, for which his rent was chiefly corn and labour, though there were two money payments, a halfpenny on November 12 and a penny whenever he brewed. He had to pay a quarter of seed wheat at Michaelmas, a peck of wheat, 4 bushels of oats, and 3 hens on November 12, and at Christmas a cock, two hens, and two pennyworth of bread. His labour services were to plough, sow, and till half an acre of the lord's land, ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... taken the place of cotton, and had become the principal thing raised in that part of the country. Under the change sugar was raised and the slaves were made to experience harder times than ever; they were allowed to have only from three to three and a half pounds of pork a week, with a peck of meal; nothing else was allowed. They commenced work in the morning, just when they could barely see; they quit work in the evening when they could not ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... Not less than a peck is needed for a dinner for three or four. Pick over carefully, wash, and let it lie in cold water an hour or two. Put on in boiling, salted water, and boil an hour, or until tender. Take up in a colander, that it may ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... many a peck of apples and of peaches did I get When I helped 'em run the local on the "St. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... sincerity; singleness of purpose, singleness of heart; honesty &c. 939; plain speaking; epanchement[Fr]. rough diamond, matter of fact man; le palais de verite[Fr]; enfant terrible[Fr]. V. be artless &c. adj; look one in the face; wear one's heart upon his sleeves for daws to peck at[obs3]; think aloud; speak out, speak one's mind; be free with one, call a spade a spade. Adj. artless, natural, pure, native, confiding, simple, lain, inartificial[obs3], untutored, unsophisticated, ingenu[obs3], unaffected, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... counted on her fingers. "I know in reason it's correct," she said, extending the slip to Cahews. "No, wait a minute," drawing it back and looking at it again. "If I'm not powerfully mistaken, Jim, you are swindling yourself out of twenty cents on the string-beans. There was one peck ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... pleasantly, and yielded a very good crop; but having part of the seed left only, and not daring to sow all that I had yet, I had but a small quantity at last, my whole crop not amounting to above half a peck of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... moved about slowly without even noticing the wound, then it stopped as if overcome by a strange sense of stupor, but soon began to peck the ground. ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... that this incident of Franklin's early life is akin to Socrates's reply to King Archelaus, who pressed him to give up preaching in the dirty streets of Athens, and come and live with him in his costly palace: "Meal, please your Majesty, is a halfpenny a peck at Athens, and water I ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... wish to acknowledge my deep obligations to Mr. Forrest Morgan, of the Watkinson Library, Hartford, and to Miss Elizabeth P. Peck, of the Hartford Public High School, both of whom have read the manuscript and have made many ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... subjects. A dark, stout-bodied woman, placing a large bonti (a fish-cutter) on a heap of ashes in the court, is cutting fish; the kites, frightened at her gigantic size and her quick-handedness, keeping away, yet now and again darting forward to peck at the fish. Here a white-haired woman is bringing water; there one with powerful hand is grinding spices. Here, in the storehouse, a servant, a cook, and the store-keeper are quarrelling together; the store-keeper maintaining, "The ghi (clarified butter) I have given is the ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... were off in the way of food. She replied that they had about a peck of corn meal in the house and several bushels of potatoes buried in the garden; and she reckoned they could do right well till she could get some more washing and other work to do. I gave that patient, uncomplaining ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... undiminished stock in trade at nightfall. All indispensable importations from other quarters of the town were on a remarkably diminutive scale: for example, the wealthier inhabitants purchased their coal by the wheelbarrow-load, and the poorer ones by the peck-measure. It was a curious and melancholy spectacle, when an overladen coal-cart happened to pass through the street and drop a handful or two of its burden in the mud, to see half a dozen women and children ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... between a slave and his master! The slave himself, with all he is and has, is an article of merchandise. What can he owe his master?—A rustic may lay a wager with his mule, and give the creature the peck of oats which he had permitted it to win. But who in sober earnest would ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... way I understand it: some people are worms, others sparrows. The sparrows are the merchants. They peck the worms. Such is their destined lot. They are necessary But I and you—all of you—are to no purpose. We live so that we cannot be compared to anything—without justification, merely at random. And we are utterly unnecessary. ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... timely administration of a well-planted blow. Mr. Garth was probably too much taken by surprise to repay the obligation in kind, but he rapped out a volley of vigorous oaths that fell about his adversary as fast as a hen could peck. Then he remounted his horse, and, with such show of valorous reluctance as could still be assumed after so unequivocal an overthrow, he made the ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... best in the week, had been changed to a dish that few liked and many could not eat. It was boiled cracked wheat with a little meat chopped in, no sauce or other relish upon it. I mentioned the case to the doctor, who said, "They purchased a quantity of potatoes, half a peck of which I took to my house and cooked, finding only one or two, among the whole, fit to put into the human stomach. Hence, I looked over my army dietary, found the cracked wheat answered a good purpose, and proposed it here." ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... it sees a flock of herons or magpies or birds of that kind, suddenly flings himself on the ground with his mouth open to look as he were dead; and these birds want to peck at his tongue, and he bites ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... clubs amongst the albatrosses. These birds were sitting upon their nests, and almost covered the surface of the ground, nor did they any otherwise derange themselves for the new visitors, than to peck at their legs as they passed by. This species of albatross is white on the neck and breast, partly brown on the back and wings, and its size is less than many others met with at sea, particularly in the high southern latitudes. The seals were of the usual size, and bore a reddish fur, much ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... "That statement of yours lets me out of a peck of trouble, for having given the promise, of course I would not break it, and I could not quite see how we could carry this thing through to ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... find us pill'ries and cart's-tails, 750 Or hangman's wages, which the State Was forc'd (before them) to be at, That cut, like tallies, to the stumps, Our ears for keeping true accompts, And burnt our vessels, like a new 755 Seal'd peck, or bushel, for b'ing true; But hand in hand, like faithful brothers, Held for the Cause against all others, Disdaining equally to yield One syllable of what we held, 760 And though we differ'd now and then 'Bout outward things, and outward men, Our inward ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... passed between them was a real one; not the perfunctory peck of greeting that usurps its name. For, as flowers most exquisite spring from strangely unpromising soil, so had those two weeks of isolation and heart-hunger on the unloveliest hill-top of Northern India generated an enduring friendship between these ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... deep popular or scientific importance, the sense of need for more data by which to judge seemed in the air; and already the Labor Bureau of the State of New York, under the efficient guidance of Mr. Charles F. Peck, had begun a course of inquiries of the same nature. For years, beginning with the New York "Tribune," in the days when Margaret Fuller worked for it and touched at times upon social questions,—always ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... want to marry him, and I doubt whether he can be got to marry any one else. There is still a peck of difficulties." ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... degree of verbal asperity, those ill-natured neighbours of his, who visited his dunghill to read moral, political, and economical lectures on his misery. I am alone. I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. Indeed, my Lord, I greatly deceive myself, if in this hard season I would give a peck of refuse wheat for all that is called fame and honour in the world. This is the appetite but of a few. It is a luxury, it is a privilege, it is an indulgence for those who are at their ease. But we are all of us made to shun disgrace, as ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... June 5th, 1832, and was succeeded by Kinau, half-sister of the king. The king's minority was declared to be at an end in March, 1833. A tract of land was leased to Ladd & Co. in 1835, and about the same time a silk plantation was commenced by Peck & Titcomb. Cotton was raised and manufactured on a ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs
... (number) 102; immensity; enormity; infinity &c 105; might, strength, intensity, fullness; importance &c 642. great quantity, quantity, deal, power, sight, pot, volume, world; mass, heap &c (assemblage) 72; stock &c (store) 636; peck, bushel, load, cargo; cartload^, wagonload, shipload; flood, spring tide; abundance &c (sufficiency) 639. principal part, chief part, main part, greater part, major part, best part, essential part; bulk, mass &c (whole) 50. V. be great &c adj.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... purchase from the Indians a few chickens and eggs, five gallons of sirup, and a peck of rice; and on the river we helped ourselves to a little wild game, as fish, peccari, deer, and turtles' eggs. But these made only a drop in the commissary bucket; had we depended upon finding provisions on the road, we must have perished from sheer hunger. Game, in the dry ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... very hearty eater, so that the peck of corn flour allowed the slaves for a week's ration lasted him only a half. He used to lug large sticks of wood on his shoulders from the woods, which was from a mile to a mile and a half away, to first one and then another of his fellow negroes, who gave him something to eat; ...
— My Life In The South • Jacob Stroyer
... number of old motetts for Herr Carovius. Herr Carovius was so pleased that he ran into his pantry, and got a half dozen Boxdorf apples and put them in Daniel's pockets. He bought these apples every autumn by the peck, and cherished them ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... here; nothing has ever grown on this farm for us two but wormwood. Perhaps there are new, happy days waiting for us out there; and there are parsons everywhere. If we two work together at some good work out there, we shall earn a peck of money. Then one day we'll go up to a parson, and throw down half a hundred krones in front of his face, and it 'u'd be funny if he didn't confirm you on the spot—and perhaps let himself be kicked into the bargain. Those kind of folk are very ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... poor over-laboured drudge, who has served out his day of life, and wearied all his energies in the service of his fellow-mortals—he who has been for many years the slave of agriculture, or (still worse) of manufactures, engaged in raising a single peck of corn from year to year, or in the monotonous labours of the desk—can hardly remain dead to the general happiness when the chase sweeps past him with hound and horn, and for a moment feels all the exultation of the proudest ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... half a chine of mutton, or a chine of beef boiled, (p.73, 75.) Mass is ordered to be said at six o'clock, in order, says the household book that all my lord's servants may rise early, (p.170.) Only twenty-four fires are allowed, beside the kitchen and hall, and most of these have only a peck of coals a day allowed them. (p.99.) After Lady-day, no fires permitted in the rooms, except half-fires in my lord's and lady's, and lord Piercy's and the nursery, (p.101.) It is to be observed, that my lord kept house in Yorkshire, where there is certainly much cold weather after Lady-day. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... are showing bloom, unless of very gross habit, will receive benefit from a supply of a little weak manure water. For that purpose put cow, horse, or sheepdung into a tub, and to one peck add five gallons of rain or other soft water. When taking it for use draw it off clear, and give the plants a watering twice a week. Give air freely, shut up early, and syringe the plants overhead till the ...
— In-Door Gardening for Every Week in the Year • William Keane
... a regular old "Blue Beard;" and she knew very well that he wouldn't scratch her up another worm, for a good twelve-month, for being absent without leave. So she dug her claws into Hal's side, every now and then, and tried to peck him with her bill, but Hal told her it was no use, for go into that creek ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... Will you condescend to accept a yard of lace made up into nothing? I thought I would not offer to spoil it by stitching it into any shape. Your creative fingers will turn it to better account than my destructive ones. I hope, such as it is, they will not peck it out of the envelope at the Bradford Post-office, where they generally take the liberty of opening letters when they feel soft as if they contained articles. I had forgotten all about your birthday and mine, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... the best barnyard fertilizer. Wood-ashes are peculiarly agreeable to the constitution of this tree, and tend to maintain it in health and bearing long after others not so treated are dead. I should advise that half a peck be worked in lightly every spring around each tree as far as the branches extend. When enriching the ground about a tree, never heap the fertilizer round the trunk, but spread it evenly from the stem outward as far as the branches ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... will look?" said Bob, trying to picture the jackdaw as he would appear when conscious of his owner's return; and then, deciding in his own mind that the only tribute of affection which he might expect would, most probably, be a sharp peck from Blinkie's beak, he added, "I dare say he won't ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... own resources, practices at the County Courts in his old neighborhood, and drinks with all his clients, who are of the lowest imaginable order. He complains that "he can't peck," yet continues the cause of his infirmity, living almost entirely upon cock-a-doodle broth—eggs beat up in brandy and a little water. Like Scipio, he is never less alone than when alone; with this difference, that the companions of P. C.'s solitude do not add to the pleasure ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... Hampshire Volunteers, for three months' service. This being concluded, he was at once commissioned as Brigade Surgeon of U. S. Volunteers, and soon after promoted to the rank of Medical Director, serving as such on the staffs, successively, of Generale Stone, Casey, Sedgwick, and Peck. His army service was marked by the same strong individuality, the same resolute activity, the same executive talent, which we have seen stamped upon the boy and the youth. Added to all those other qualities, was that same genial humanity which made friends of every one. His brother officers ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... Mr. Peck is the American commissioner to the Exposition, and Mr. Thomas Walsh is one of the members of the commission. He gave a colossal dinner at the restaurant at d'Armenonville, and begged Mr. Martin, who knows every one in Paris, to select the guests. It was only on the evening of the ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... near, So neighbourly fancies to the spell that brought The run of Ali Baba's Cave Just for the saying 'Open Sesame,' With gold to measure, peck by peck, In round, brown wooden stoups You borrowed at the chandler's? . . . Or one time Made you Aladdin's friend at school, Free of his Garden of Jewels, Ring and Lamp In perfect trim? . . . Or Ladies, fair For all the ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... private conversation! and me with my feathers all anyhow!" She began to peck at herself vigorously; but this was straying from the point, and annoyed me. However, ...
— The Five Jars • Montague Rhodes James
... crest. From the ground he looked to be not more than sixteen hands high, but as soon as I was up on top of him I immediately discerned that it was not sixteen hands—it was sixteen miles. What I had taken for the horse's blaze face was a snow-capped peak. Miss Anna Peck might have felt at home up there, because she has had the experience and is used to that sort of thing, but I am no mountain ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... "guyed" him unmercifully, and even Biff Bates, though his support was earnestly sought by the Signorina Caravaggio, also counseled him roughly against it, and through it all Bobby was made to feel that he was a small boy who had proposed to eat a peck of green apples and then go in swimming in dog-days. Another note from his father, handed to him by the faithful and worried Johnson, was the ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... field the Thirteenth New York, Colonel Quinby; the Sixty-ninth New York, Colonel Corcoran; the Seventy-ninth New York, Colonel Cameron; and the Second Wisconsin, Lieutenant- Colonel Peck. These were all good, strong, volunteer regiments, pretty well commanded; and I had reason to believe that I had one of the best brigades in the whole army. Captain Ayres's battery of the Third Regular Artillery was also attached to my brigade. The other regiment, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... to the livery-stables thus indicated, and waited to see him walked about to cool, well rubbed down, and made comfortable over half a peck of oats,—for Kenelm Chillingly was a humane man to the brute creation,—and then, in a state of ravenous appetite, returned to the Temperance Hotel, and was ushered into a small drawing-room, with a small bit of carpet ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a girl, she is so jolly, she is not a bit like Aunt Josephine, though I am sure Aunt Josephine is a very nice lady and I don't mean that I don't love her, only Aunt Nellie kisses me as if she liked too and does not just peck my cheek. Last week she brought me home some lovly middy bloses like Peggy wears, and I play in bloomers all day and put on a white skirt for supper; Mr. Lee says Peggy and I look like twins. Auntie brought me a bathing suit, too, and a tennis raket Peggy says is better than hers. She ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... our pathological collection. It shows the mature fruiting bodies of the fungus and it also shows that the twigs are killed. This fungus is known as Cryptosporella anomala. It was described as Diatrype anomala by Peck of Albany, N. Y., but was afterwards found to belong to another genus. There have been two or three articles published on it, the best one probably by Humphrey in Massachusetts. I have an abstract of that which can be copied in the proceedings, if ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... was in the pantry, eating bread and honey The maid was in the garden, hanging out the clothes; There came a little blackbird and peck'd off ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... have been persuaded to take a furnisht house, where we go on Monday; and we are to pay for it, for three months, no less than a hundred and fifty pounds, which is more than the half of the Doctor's whole stipend is, when the meal is twenty-pence the peck; and we are to have three servan' lassies, besides Andrew's man, and the coachman that we have hired altogether for ourselves, having been persuaded to trist a new carriage of our own by the Argents, which I trust the Argents will find money to pay for; and masters are ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... the world, I have learned that woman does not go to woman in cases such as mine is." And then pathetically: "I know no woman to whom I might go. Women are like daws; their sympathy comes but to peck. Do you know what it is to be alone in a city? The desert is not loneliness; it is only solitude. True loneliness is to be found only in great communities. To be without a single friend or confidant, when thousand of ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... loads the guns; "there's a lamp behind it." Three scared birds in the window recess try vainly to snatch a moment's sleep between shots and the trains that go roaring overhead on the elevated road. Roused by the sharp crack of the rifles, they blink at the lights in the street, and peck moodily at a crust in ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... beetles are borers in the hickory and other nut trees. Then, too, the leopard moth, zeuzera pyrina Linn., and the carpenter worm, Prionoxystus robiniae Peck, may be found occasionally in most any ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... each pound of goods, alum five ounces, red or cream of tartar one ounce. Put in the goods and bring the kettle to a boil for one-half hour; then air them and boil one-half hour longer; empty the kettle and fill with clean water; put in bran one peck; make it milk-warm, and let it stand until the bran rises; then skim off the bran and put in one-half pound madder; put in the goods and heat slowly until it boils and is done. Wash in ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... soldier was brought to Alexander to exhibit a trick which he had acquired, of pitching a pea into a distant hole, which just fitted it;—when the reward which the great conqueror bestowed upon the soldier for his useless application of time was a peck of peas. P.T.W. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... Afflictions, I should rather recommend to those who are visited with Women of Spirit, to form themselves for the World by Patience at home. Socrates, who is by all Accounts the undoubted Head of the Sect of the Hen-peck'd, own'd and acknowledged that he ow'd great part of his Virtue to the Exercise which his useful Wife constantly gave it. There are several good Instructions may be drawn from his wise Answers to People ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... luck!" gloomily remarked Miss Genie. "He was a regular dandy, and I liked him—but," she said, with a thirsty peck at a glass of champagne, as they waited for the breakfast, "Phenie will then have to give that long-legged Italian fellow the tip. The Marquis of Santa Marina! He's not much, but better than nothing at all. We'll have ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... erlong widout his trials en tribberlations. One day a woodpecker come erlong en 'mence' ter peck at de tree; en de nex' time Sandy wuz turnt back he had a little roun' hole in his arm, des lack a sharp stick be'n stuck in it. Atter dat Tenie sot a sparrer-hawk fer ter watch de tree; en w'en de woodpecker come erlong nex' mawnin' fer ter finish his nes', he got gobble' up mos' ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... clerical dresses, Flock round when the harvest's in play, And not minding the farmer's distresses, Like devils in grain peck away. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... her friend, dabbed a little kiss, like the peck of a bird, on each cheek, cried: "Well, I must be off, or mother will have to tie up the professor to keep him," and was off accordingly with the speed and lightness of a ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... doors from this was the office of The Birmingham Journal, a very different paper then from what it afterwards became. It had been originally started as a Tory paper by a few old "fogies" who used to meet at "Joe Lindon's," "The Minerva," in Peck Lane; and this was how it came about: The Times had, early in 1825, in a leader, held up to well-deserved ridicule some action on the part of the Birmingham Tory party. This gave awful and unpardonable offence, and retaliation was ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... tasted. When I left with Nick to catch the forenoon express, young Mrs. Talbot was chewin' the end of a lead pencil, with them pansy eyes of hers glued on a pad where she was dopin' out her first dinner order. She would break away from it only long enough to give Hubby a little bird peck on the cheek; but he seems tickled ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... a little estate in the vicinity of the Norfolk House, and raised vegetables and other "notions" with the usual success attendant upon the agricultural experiments of gentlemen amateurs; that is, his potatoes cost him about half a dollar a peck, and his quinces ninepence apiece. He had a greenhouse one quarter of a mile long, and kept a fire in it all the year round, at the suggestion of a rascally gardener, whose brother kept a wood and coal yard. We could tell some droll stories about Tubbs's gardening, if they were to the purpose. We ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... bats his consort oh-so-gently on the head, If he throttles her a little round the neck, He's a brute; if he's considerately conjugal instead, Everybody calls him Mr. Henry Peck. ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... life, which starts from an egg, corresponds with that of Job, when he says, "Man 552:15 that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble." Mortals must emerge from this notion of material life as all-in-all. They must peck 552:18 open their shells with Christian Science, and look outward and upward. But thought, loosened from a material basis but not yet instructed by Science, may become wild 552:21 with freedom ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... piece of birch bark in which they were rolled, and another pecked a large hole in a keg of castile soap. A duck which I had picked and laid down for a few minutes had the entire breast eaten out by one or more of these birds. I have seen one alight in the middle of my canoe and peck away at the carcass of a beaver I had skinned. They often spoil deer saddles by pecking into them near the kidneys. They do great damage to the trappers by stealing the bait from traps set for martens and minks, and by eating trapped game. They will sit quietly and see you ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... may be given to see the truth and comfort to be derived from the Communion. I have in some degree seen it must be a means of very great grace; but of this in the future. It is a beautiful subject. Do not peck at words. Communion is better than sacrament, but communion may exist without the eating of the bread, &c. Sacrament means the performance of a certain act, which is an outward and visible sign of spiritual grace. You need not fear my leaving off this subject, it is far too engrossing to me, ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... he was sent into hospital, and when he recovered, transported for the rest of the life that had thus been given back to him. While he was on his way down the town to go on board the vessel, I should think that if he had one dollar given him, he had at least half a peck, though I do not expect they would be much use to him where he was going to. I never heard any more of him, but I don't suppose many men could say that they had been hanged ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... not dead. It let her put her hand round it and draw it in, and to her delight she felt that it was soft and warm, and it even gave a gentle peck on her thumb. ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... out a plan to get that fat hen. No one knew better than she how foolish it would be to go over to that henyard and just trust to luck for a chance to catch one of those biddies. Of course, they might be lucky and get a hen that way, but then again they might be unlucky and get in a peck of trouble. ...
— Old Granny Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... dead, we examined it. It was over three feet long and about two feet high. Its tail was about six inches long. Its head was about as big as a half-peck measure. Its ears were pointed, with little black tassels at the ends. It had whiskers on its cheeks and smellers like a cat. The fur was gray, except that on the belly, which ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... Alcock was sore at me for getting the best of him and not falling for his gag and he was afraid to tackle me himself and he told big Shaffer a peck of lies about some dam letter or something and said I stole it and it made Shaffer sore and no wonder because who wouldn't be sore if they thought somebody was reading their male. But a man like Shaffer that if he stopped ...
— The Real Dope • Ring Lardner
... like the place. Mama had desired my brother Phil as he passed through Hertford to order four horses to come to Tytten after six o'clock and four more to be ready at the Inn to change, but knowing the forgetfulness of the young gentleman, Mama and I were in a peck of troubles lest he should forget the horses, and then we could not have gone. However, they did come, and at eleven o'clock after various directions and orders given we packed off and got to Hertford safely. Changed horses without alighting and proceeded to Buntingford, where ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... Major, they've got buck-shot," said Gid. "And they could mow us down before we could cross that place. They still outnumber us two to one—packed in there like sardines. Don't you think we'd better scatter about and peck at 'em when they show an eye? I'd like to know who built that church. Confound him, he cut out too ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... "Silvertail," which for speed and endurance had no rival in the county, and again proceeded at the gallop. When he reached the Grassmarket, Edinburgh—a full hour before the mail,—the grain-selling was just starting, and before the alarming war news had got time to spread Rennie had every peck of wheat in the market bought up. He must have coined an enormous profit by this smart transaction; but to him it seemed to matter nothing at all. He was one of the most careless of the harum-scarum sons of Adam, and if he made money ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... them. I meet a girl in a chintz gown, with a small shawl on her shoulders, white stockings, and summer morocco shoes,—it looks observable. Turkeys, queer, solemn objects, in black attire, grazing about, and trying to peck the fallen apples, which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... Lisbon, the writer is indebted for a set of European types, and to Professor Bethel, pathologist of Denver, for rich material from the fertile mountains of Colorado and California. To Professor Morton Peck, of Oregon, we are indebted for many notes of the color of plasmodia and for collections of Pacific coast forms. Mr. Bilgram, of Philadelphia, read the manuscript of the genus Physarum and has contributed many rare species. To Dr. Sturgis, of Massachusetts, we are indebted for material ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... composed, intelligent, courteous gentleman of a laird's degree. Take any old friend aside, and he will tell, with respectful sympathy, that the quiet, sensible, well-bred Laird, has suffered agonies in the course of his life, though too wise and modest a man to hold up his heart for daws to peck at, and you will believe him. Look narrowly at the well-preserved, well-veiled exterior, and you will be able to detect, through the nicely adjusted folds, or even when it is brightened by smiles, how remorse has sharpened the flesh, and grief hollowed it, and long abiding regret ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... is softened by no social requirements. If a poor lost waif from another coop strays into her realm, no pity, no sympathy springing from the memory of her own offspring, moves her to kindness; but she goes at it with a demoniac fury, and would peck its little life out, if fear did not lend it wings. She has a self-abnegation great as that of human mothers. Her voracity and timidity disappear. She goes almost without food herself, that her chicks may eat. She scatters the dough about with her own bill, that it may be accessible to the little ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... depths, without knowing what it is doing; the night distributes stellar essences to the sleeping flowers. All birds that fly have round their leg the thread of the infinite. Germination is complicated with the bursting forth of a meteor and with the peck of a swallow cracking its egg, and it places on one level the birth of an earthworm and the advent of Socrates. Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two possesses the larger ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... with anything held in the hand—a spoon, for instance, striking the cheeks, chin, or nose, instead of at once going between the lips; this forms a striking contrast to the case of young chickens which are able to peck grains, etc., soon after they are hatched. Sucking is not a pure reflex, because a satisfied child will not suck when its lips are properly stimulated, and further, the action may be originated centrally, as in a sleeping suckling. At a later stage biting is as instinctive as sucking, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... the Londoner, whose name was Peck. "Give me a bit of cover, a packet of cigarettes, and a hundred rounds, and ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... this vain-glorious Englishman to skite vinegar before all the world. So Panurge spent the night with tippling amongst the pages, and played away all the points of his breeches at primus secundus and at peck point, in French called La Vergette. Yet, when the condescended on time was come, he failed not to conduct his master Pantagruel to the appointed place, unto which, believe me, there was neither great nor small in Paris but came, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... ship him to a market, for there he would have to run a regular gauntlet of inspectors. There was another chance open, however. Fant, Taylor's employer, had many Indian contracts. One contract in particular required three thousand northern wintered cattle for the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northeast Montana. Fant had wintered the cattle with which to fill this contract on his Salt Fork range in the Cherokee Strip. When the cowman cast about for a foreman on starting the herd for Fort Peck, the fact that Abner Taylor was a Texan was sufficient ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... the lead, extracting a doleful tune from his concertina. Next came the bride and groom. The cook wore the gorgeous Navajo blanket tied around his waist and carried in one band the waxen-white Spanish dagger blossom as large as a peck-measure and weighing fifteen pounds. His hat was ornamented with mesquite branches and yellow ratama blooms. A resurrected mosquito bar served as a veil. After them stumbled Phonograph Davis, in the character of the bride's father, weeping into a saddle blanket ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... their positions; Hortense had Eliza in a cage, penned in by every fact; but it doesn't do to go too near some birds, even when they're caged, and, while these two birds had been giving their sweet manifestations of song, Eliza had driven a peck or two home through the bars, which, though they did not draw visible blood, as I have said, probably taught Hortense that a Newport education is not the only instruction which fits you for drawing-room ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... thing," he murmured cynically. "We wear our sentiments on our sleeves for publishers to peck at." (he made a mental note of this epigram for future use.) "I've an idea! Suppose you run home with me now and try over some of my songs, will you? There's a lot of stuff that might interest you. I've got one of Farwell's ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... those cold, but calm, bright days in winter, when the very air seems filled with silent ripples of gladness; when the sunshine rests like a glory on the leafless trees, and bright-eyed robins chirp and peck the moss, as they hop from bough to bough; when the light of heaven is so over all, that even the dun-colored earth, the decayed leaves and rotten branches, which the autumn blast has laid low, look beautiful, and seem to whisper resurgam; when a cold, bracing ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... which the leaf is attached. Here, when all the leaves fall, he hangs, the plaything of every breeze, attracting the attention of all the hungry birds. But little does Prometheus care. Sparrows may hover about him and peck in vain; chickadees may clutch the dangling finger and pound with all their tiny might. Prometheus is "bound," indeed, and merely swings the faster, up and down, ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... every man eats a peck of dirt in the course of his life," said Happy Tom, "but I know that I've already beat the measure a dozen times over. Why, I took in a bushel at least at the Second Manassas, but I still live, and here I am, surveying this peaceful domestic scene. ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... interrupting her delightedly, 'his very language borrows its most powerful imagery from his past belongings! Do you or I, Audrey, in our wildest and most despairing moments, ever talk of a peck of trouble? Depend upon it, my dear, when Thomas made that speech, he was among his bins again; in his mind's eye he was measuring out his oats and beans. I think I hear him repeating again what he once said ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... that happy day we spent together, we have been in what Sukey calls a peck of troubles; and, to crown all, last night one of our old chimneys was struck with lightning: part of it fell immediately, but I am thankful to be able to say, that by the care of Providence no one ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... prick them with a fork—lay them in a deep dish, and to each layer put a layer of salt. Let them remain in it four or five days, then take them out of the salt, and put them in vinegar and water for one night. Drain off the vinegar, and to each peck of tomatos put half a pint of mustard seed, half an ounce of cloves, and the same quantity of pepper. The tomatos should be put in a jar, with a layer of sliced onions to each layer of the tomatos, and the spices sprinkled ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... work of Apollodorus as regards realistic effect. Zeuxis, whose fame was at its height during the Peloponnesian Wars, seems to have regarded art as a matter of illusion, if one may judge by the stories told of his work. The tale of his painting a bunch of grapes so like reality that the birds came to peck at them proves either that the painter's motive was deception, or that the narrator of the tale picked out the deceptive part of his picture for admiration. He painted many subjects, like Helen, Penelope, and many genre pieces on panel. Quintilian says he ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... said Tom Betts, with a chuckle, "and I could string off more'n a few times when that same curiosity hauled Bobolink into a peck of trouble. But p'raps your father might let out the secret to you, after the old boxes have been taken away, and then you can ease his mind. Because it's just like he says, and he'll keep on dreamin' the most wonderful ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... idlers, and even grand-mamma goes weeding. His nett produce is less than the production of the larger methods, but his gross is greater, and usually it is mortgaged more or less. Along the selvage of many of the new roads we have foretold, his hens will peck and his children beg, far into the coming decades. This simple, virtuous, open-air life is to be found ripening in the north of France and Belgium, it culminated in Ireland in the famine years, it has held its own in China—with a use of female infanticide—for immemorable ages, and a number ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... great time, too! It's a peck of fun getting off here in the woods away from everything, and ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... old feller, lady. These young bucks ain't broke to the feed canvas. Now when you want to get off you call me. You don't weigh more'n a peck ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... Dorothy thoughtful. What Billina said was true enough, and it almost took away her appetite for breakfast. As for the yellow hen, she continued to peck away at the sand busily, and seemed quite contented with ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... midshipmen's berth, where he introduced me to my new messmates. I was at home in a few minutes, and made up my mind that I should be very jolly. In this opinion I was confirmed by the assurances of another midshipman of about my own age, or rather younger, Tommy Peck by name, who had also come to sea for the first time, and who naturally became my chief chum. He was a merry fellow, delighting in fun and mischief; caring very little about the result of the latter, ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... CLARY. Distil a peck of clary flowers in a cold still, and then another peck of flowers, adding to them the distilled liquor. Put to this a bottle of sack or sweet wine, and another peck of flowers, and put all together into a glass still. Let ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... voice, Mog, louder still, As sure as you were born, Why should you ask "How many loaves Came from the peck of corn?" ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... Natural Philosophy. Designed for the Use of Colleges and Schools. By Benjamin Silliman, Jr. Philadelphia. H.C. Peck & Theodore Bliss. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... a handful at a time, we reduced the speed of the stones gradually, and then suddenly piling in a peck or more slowed it down till it fairly came to a standstill, glutted with cobs. The water-wheel had stopped, although the water was still pouring down upon it; and in that condition we left it, with the miller boys peeping about the flume and the millstones and exclaiming ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... easily made and its uses are infinite. Sprinkled over steak (when it must be sifted) or chops, it is delicious. For ordinary purposes, such as flavoring soup or gravy, it need not be sifted. To prepare it, take a peck of large and very fresh mushrooms, look them over carefully that they are not wormy, then cleanse them with a piece of flannel from sand or grit, then peel them and put them in the sun or a cool oven to dry; they require long, slow drying, and must become in ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... with a laugh. "A peck of them will completely satisfy me, my boy." Then, turning to Lobelalatutu, who was keenly watching them ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... goes again," burst out Steve; "I tell you, fellows, we're going to have a peck of trouble with this ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... you of our journey, and how I like the place. Mama had desired my brother Phil as he passed through Hertford to order four horses to come to Tytten after six o'clock and four more to be ready at the Inn to change, but knowing the forgetfulness of the young gentleman, Mama and I were in a peck of troubles lest he should forget the horses, and then we could not have gone. However, they did come, and at eleven o'clock after various directions and orders given we packed off and got to Hertford safely. Changed horses without ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... his peck of trouble with the Sydney Ducks that roosted on his land. He sent the town authorities to dispossess them, but without result. There were too many squatters and too few police. Next he sent an agent to collect rents, but the man returned with a sore head and bruised body, minus coin. Shillaber ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... for twenty years not far from there, in a little apartment near Saint-Roch. Drinking in the fresh air, under the striped awning of the Cafe de la Rotunde, he read the journals, one after the other, or watched the sparrows fly about and peck up the grains in the sand. Children ran here and there, playing at ball; and, above the noise of the promenaders, arose the music ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... and shook his head. "Well, I don't know. For two reasons, maybe. First, I'd hate to be responsible for tippin' over such a sky-towerin' idol as you've been to make ruins for Angie Phinney and the other blackbirds to peck at and caw over. And second—well, it does sound presumin', don't it, but I kind of pity you. Say, Heman," he added with a chuckle, "that's a kind of distinction, in a way, ain't it? A good many folks have hurrahed over you and worshipped ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... disposition. This latter shows itself in his voluble emphasis on the alleged ill treatment of himself and family, even by his wives. He is never physically violent. On account of false accusations, whether delusional or not, he got at least one pastor into a peck of trouble, and, strangely enough, his wives have been involved in some other church embroilments when his own character was called severely into question. On one occasion we were interested to ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... bad as at any period of his wanderings. His clothes were of the coarsest, and they were in rags. Lady Clanranald's six good shirts had long since disappeared; it was as much as he could do to have a clean shirt once a fortnight. The provisions they carried were reduced to one peck of meal. In this state did the Prince arrive in the familiar country round Loch Arkaig. It was a year almost to the day since he had passed through that very country elate and hopeful at the head of his brave Macdonalds and Camerons. He was now a fugitive, ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... way to recover those two poor bodies, let us try it at once—at once, Barnes. Erema, run home. This is no scene for you. And tell Margaret to put on the double-bottomed boiler, with the stock she made on Friday, and a peck of patent pease. There is nothing to beat pea soup; and truly one ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... fixed upon Sir Giles. "I will tell the felon knight my mind. I am not afraid of him. Harkye, my masters," he called, in a loud voice, to those around him. "Do you know who that black raven before you is? If not, I will tell you. He would peck out your eyes if he could, and devour you and your substance, as he has done that of many others. That bird of ill ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... girls between fourteen and eighteen years old. They were dressed in all colors, but most of them wore a native bonnet tied about the ears. They formed in line on the stairs and then the coal was passed along from hand to hand until it reached the bunkers. These baskets held a little over a peck of coal, and the rapidity with which they moved along ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... got it on you, boys, this time," he remarked. "It seems that in some cases walking in your sleep may turn out to be the right thing. We do owe him something, because it saved our ham this time. But all the same he's got to stop the habit before it gets him into a peck of trouble." ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... the wheel. You may be sure that no one ever got a chance to stay abed more than his eight hours while Polynesia was around. She used to watch the ship's clock; and if you overslept a half-minute, she would come down to the cabin and peck you gently on the nose till ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... went into the new house and asked for a light for his pipe. But as soon as he got inside the door the sheep gave him such a butt that he fell head foremost into the hearth. Then the pig began to bite him, and the goose to nip and peck him, and the cock upon the roost to crow and chatter, and as for the hare, he was so frightened that he ran about aloft and on the floor and scratched and scrambled in every corner ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... order to become inured to hardships. From the first moment that you breathed the air of heaven, you have been accustomed to nothing else but hardships. The heroes of the American Revolution were never put upon harder fare, than a peck of corn, and a few herrings per week. You have not become enervated by the luxuries of life. Your sternest energies have been beaten out upon the anvil of severe trial. Slavery has done this, to make you subservient to its own purposes; ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... neither," added Emmet Wilson's husband, the baker; "but I'll give them a penn'orth of bread by the week, and a peck ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... why I don't believe in railway station kisses. Kisses given in public are at best but skimpy little things, suggesting the swift peck of a robin at a peach, whereas it is truer of kissing than of many other forms of industry that what is worth doing at all is worth doing well. Yet I knew that one of these enchantresses expected to be kissed, and that the other ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... abundant in the market. Eggs, butter, nearly all kinds of vegetables, excellent, and at moderate prices. From June till December tomatoes (the great luxury of the American table in the opinion of most Europeans) may be found in the highest perfection in the market for about sixpence the peck. They have a great variety of beans unknown in England, particularly the lima-bean, the seed of which is dressed like the French harico; it furnishes a very abundant crop, and is a most delicious vegetable: could it be naturalised with us it would be a valuable acquisition. The Windsor, ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... 65 per cent. of the raw gravel and costs from 23 to 30 cts. per cu. yd., for excavation, screening and washing. The drawings of Fig. 9 show a gravel washing plant having a capacity of 120 to 130 cu. yds. per hour, operated by the Stewart-Peck Sand Co., of Kansas City, Mo. Where washing alone is necessary a plant of one or two washer units like those here shown could be installed without excessive cost by a contractor at any point where water is available. Each washer unit consists of two hexagonal troughs 18 ins. in diameter and 18 ft. ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... startled as he snapped on the lights and grunted out something which optimism might translate into an affectionate husbandly greeting. She came dutifully forward and raised her face, still exquisite and cool from the outer air, for her lord's home-coming kiss. That resolved itself into a slovenly peck. ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... Rimini, beside Ravenna, now remained to Odovacar, and for the next two years and a half (from the autumn of 490 to the spring of 493) Ravenna was straitly besieged. Corn rose to a terrible famine price (seventy-two shillings a peck), and before the end of the siege the inhabitants had to feed on the hides of animals, and all sorts of foul and fearful aliments, and many of them perished of hunger. A sortie made in 491 by a number of barbarian ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... by opining that the artistic life made great demands, that the true artist must live entirely for his art, that domestic life might prove a hinderance. She had read somewhere that high hopes fainted on warm hearthstones. Mr. Tristram demolished these objections as ruthlessly as ducks peck their own ducklings if they have not seen them for a ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... you not take your draft of an apportionment bill and carefully revise it till it shall be strictly and obviously just in all particulars, and then by an early and persistent effort get enough of the enemies' men to enable you to pass it? I believe if you and Peck make a job of it, begin early and work earnestly and quietly, you can succeed in it. Unless something be done, Trumbull is inevitably beaten two years hence. Take ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... The cold was intense. Although dressed in the thickest of tweeds and sheepskin jacket, sable pelisse, enormous "bourka," and high felt boots, it was all I could do to keep warm even when going at a hand gallop, varied every hundred yards or so by a desperate "peck" on the part ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... rings to be poured out in the vestibule of the senate-house, of which there was such a heap that some have taken upon themselves to say that on being measured they filled three pecks and a half. The statement has obtained and is more like the truth, that there were not more than a peck. He then added, by way of explanation, to prove the greater extent of the slaughter, that none but knights, and of these the principal only, wore that ornament. The main drift of his speech was, "that the nearer the prospect ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... to time for answer upon impeachments before the Senate to which we have had opportunity to refer are those of Judge Chase and Judge Peck. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... us? This ain't no Tiffany & Co. Best butter? Uh! P'r'aps you'd like to take a peck of di'monds home wid jer—the best di'monds, mind, all ready shelled and fried in gold-dust. And just throw in a bunch of them German-silver banglelets for the salad. Yessir; charge 'em to Mr. Astor, ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... technique reached such marvellous fineness of power. For it is the accomplished artist who is fastidious as to his tools; the bungling beginner can bungle with anything. The fiddle-bow, however, affords only one example of a rule which is equally well exemplified by many humbler tools. Quarryman's peck, coachman's whip, cricket-bat, fishing-rod, trowel, all have their intimate relation to the skill of those who use them; and like animals and plants, adapting themselves each to its own place in the universal ...
— Progress and History • Various
... glossy threads with which it is knitted are stout, and the structure is therefore, not liable to be torn by the beaks of insectivorous birds, while its pendulous position makes it doubly secure against their attacks, the apparatus giving way when they peck at it. There is a small orifice at each end of the egg-shaped bag, to admit of the escape of the moth when it changes from the little chrysalis which sleeps tranquilly in its airy cage. The moth is of a dull slatey colour, and belongs to the Lithosiide group of the ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... to see Mr. Bliss. Mr. Bliss was one of the owners of the paper. Horace found him working in his garden. Mr. Bliss looked up. He saw a big boy coming toward him. The boy had on a white felt hat with a narrow brim. It looked like a half-peck measure. His hair was white. His trousers were too short for him. All his clothes were coarse and poor. He was such a strange-looking boy, that Mr. Bliss wanted ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston
... with a great noise of some that endeavor to peck out the crows' eyes; that is, to blind the doctors of our times and smoke out their eyes with new annotations; among whom my friend Erasmus, whom for honor's sake I often mention, deserves if not the first place yet certainly the second. ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... have therefore noticed it here, but I do not think it so good as many others. It grows on the sandy hills near Combe Wood in Surrey, and forms the principal part of the pasturage; but it is neither very productive, nor are cattle observed to thrive on it. The seeds are very small; one peck would ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... as Rhinelander in getting grants from the city officials. In 1806 he obtained two of large extent on the East Side—on Mangin street between Stanton and Houston streets, and on South street between Peck Slip and Dover street. On May 30, 1808, upon a favorable report handed in by the Finance Committee, of which the notorious John Bingham was a member, Astor received an extensive grant along the Hudson bounding the old ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... saw if we trot around and extract handshakes from some of the follows we used to pack schoolbooks with?" hinted Holmes. "For instance, Ennerton is down at the bank, in a new job. Foss is advertising manager in Curlham & Peck's department store. I know he'll be glad to see us if we don't take up too much of his employer's time. Then ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... with her now we have her here?" asked the rash Tufter; but he was sorry he asked, for the Phoenix gave him a terrible peck. ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... case.—The ladies are not to walk at the Coronation, and it is to be on the cheapest scale. No dinner. The estimate is called 150,000l. All your members were present yesterday, and if we had voted against the Government, only see how we would have diminished their numbers.—Mr. Chard is in a peck of troubles. He has not got the address, without which it is useless to go to the Levee.—I was glad of Brougham's mention of Lady Grenville's pension (it certainly was not an attack), because it produced an authorized ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... from the ditch to the trunk of an elm where the thick bark is green with lichen: he goes up the tree like a woodpecker, and peers into every crevice. His little beak strikes, peck, peck, at a place where something is hidden: then he proceeds farther up the trunk: next he descends a few steps in a sidelong way, and finally hops down some three inches head foremost, and alights ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... at a real concert, the people throw beautiful flowers to the singers that please them most. Annie and I got up an immense bouquet, about the size of a peck measure, without telling anybody a word about it; and saved it up, to throw at one of the ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... exceedingly interesting story of English political and social life, making no demands upon one's credulity, but satisfying the requirements in the way of a thoroughly good novel. The characters are all drawn with real fidelity to life.—HARRY THURSTON PECK, ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... found their feet that the disorder begins. Whether it is worms or insects or verdure they seek among the grazing cows, there is evidently little enough to go round, and starling fights starling with peck and protest all over the field. It is a scene of civil war, save that the birds do not form themselves into sides but each wrestles with its neighbour at random. But, after all, they are very hungry. ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... him home. She called his Name Ralph, and a fine Bird he is. Do look at him and remember what Solomon says, The Eye that despiseth his Father, and regardeth not the Distress of his Mother, the Ravens of the Valley shall peck it out, and the young Eagles eat it. Now this Bird she taught to speak, to spell and to read; and as he was particularly fond of playing with the large Letters, the Children used to call ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... in something of a troubled fashion at Anderson, then at Carroll. His mind was in the throes of displacing a barrel of sugar and a half-peck of pease by a little boy. Then his face brightened. He spoke quickly ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... thinks he knows, why certain late-bearing apple-trees have fruit only every other year, and what effect on the potato crop is caused by dressing our sandy soil with chalk or lime; so he watches the new mole-runs, or puzzles to make out what birds they can be that peck the ripening peas out of the pods, or estimates the yield of oats to the acre by counting the sheaves that he stacks, or examines the lawn to see what kinds of grass are thriving. About all such matters his talk is the talk of an experienced man habitually ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... buffeting, astounding me, Nipping and clipping through my wraps and all. I wear my mask for warmth: who ever shows His nose to Russian snows To be pecked at by every wind that blows? You would not peck? I thank you for good-will, Believe, but leave that ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... mountains of rice, scow-loads of apricots cooked in various ways, and a good sized flock of chickens spitted and smeared with peppery sauce. At a guess, I should say there were several pounds of meat, about two chickens, and a peck of rice per man, with apricots and raisins added; but they faced ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... lad," said the host, "for I have no time to attend to this business; I have too much to do, both indoors and out of doors. Come down and I will give you the book; and mind ye, these muleteers are the very devil, and will do you out of a peck of oats under your very nose, with no more conscience than if ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... went to him, and expressed my great surprise. Hot words ensued between us; and I told him very plainly that I would have nothing further to say to him or his political profligacy. However, his potatoes were sold, and brought upwards of three guineas the peck, the nabob being the purchaser, who, to show his contentment with the bargain, made Mrs M'Lucre, and the bailie's three daughters, presents of new gowns and princods, that ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... might have inferred that the speaker's opinion was anything but favorable. Considering him for a second, he concluded him inoffensive and began to peck ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... pass the evening as pleasantly as possible. Lincoln, with his usual good nature, went with them, and entertained the party for hours with graphic descriptions of Western life, anecdotes and witty stories. Judge Peck, who was of the party, and a warm friend of the ex-President, says that Lincoln was at his best. There was a constant succession of brilliant anecdotes and funny stories, accompanied by loud laughter in which Van Buren took his full share. "He also," says ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... reason we haven't hunted for buried treasure before is that we have lacked the opportunity. We think we have it now. Captain Killam, here, has told us of an island on which is a buried pirate hoard—millions in gold, priceless jewels by the peck. And that's ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... it," he would say sometimes to his wife; "I don't like it, Sarah. This doling out a peck of potatoes and two quarts of apples—why, Sarah, just think of the bushels and barrels I 've grown myself! It's so ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... Jesse James's place. There is no encouragement for a boy here. Well, good morning. If Pa comes in here asking for me tell him that you saw an express wagon going to the morgue with the remains of a pretty boy who acted as though he died from concussion of a bed slat on Peck's bad boy on the pistol pocket. That will make Pa feel sorry. O, he has got the awfulest cold, though." And the boy limped out to separate a couple of dogs that ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... A couple of gallons)—Ver. 921. "Modiales." Literally, containing a "modius," which contained sixteen sextarii, something more than a peck of ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... Marshall expounded this general principle in Fletcher v. Peck.[18] "When ... a law is in its nature a contract ... a repeal of the law cannot devest" rights which have vested under it. A couple of years later he applied his principle to the extreme case of an unlimited remission of taxation.[19] The State of New Jersey had granted an exemption from taxation ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... boy,' said my companion; 'we had better not show ourselves for a little. They may be friends; but birds though they are, if they see anything strange in our appearance, they will fall upon us, and may peck out our feathers, if ...
— The Cockatoo's Story • Mrs. George Cupples
... the scale for one barrel, in order to make it more generally useful to the community at large; however, the same proportions will answer for a greater or less quantity, only proportioning the materials and utensils. Take one peck of good malt ground, one pound of hops, put them in twenty gallons of water, and boil them for half an hour, then run them into a hair cloth bag, or sieve, so as to keep back the hops and malt from the wort, which, when cooled down to 65 degrees by Fahrenheit's thermometer, add ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... the use of these test-phrases and sentences has not yet entirely departed from the schools. Familiar are: "Up the high hill he heaved a huge round stone; around the rugged riven rock the ragged rascal rapid ran; Peter Piper picked a peck of prickly pears from the prickly-pear trees on the pleasant prairies," and many others still in use traditionally among the school-children of to-day, together with linguistic exercises of nonsense-syllables and the ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... name I cannot now recall, but who, I remember, was seen to walk towards the East River one March evening, and was not met with again till the 5th of April, when his body floated into one of the docks near Peck Slip. ...
— The Staircase At The Hearts Delight - 1894 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... carved, highly-coloured bird of grotesque shape. This figure at the Head Feast is erected on the top of a pole, thirty feet or more in height, with its beak pointing in the direction of the enemy's country, so that he may "peck at ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... and a half by four and a half, might have been contained in those chests; [according to my calculation, 1,464,578; —but I cannot pretend to be exact:] that for the sustenance of these gentlemen, alarge peck loaf may be placed in a maund basket in the said room, having been previously prepared and left in a damp place, so as to become mouldy, and the words and figures Thomas Flour, Bristol, 1769, being first impressed in common letters on the upper crust of ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... let me take one out, Clara! I won't hurt it; dear, sweet little thing!' she exclaimed, as she was just putting out her hand to take one of them up, but was held back by her cousin, and so prevented from receiving the meditated peck which the old hen was evidently ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... water for five days, and of another well-known millionaire whose name I cannot now recall, but who, I remember, was seen to walk towards the East River one March evening, and was not met with again till the 5th of April, when his body floated into one of the docks near Peck's Slip. ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... there? Whence doth come that trumpet-blowing?" Werner's music through the March night, Plaintive soared up to the castle, Begging entrance like a pet-dove, Which, returning to its mistress, Finds the window closed and fastened, And begins to peck and hammer. To the terrace went the Baron And his daughter; Hiddigeigei Followed both with step majestic. Through the cat's heart then swept omens Of a great, eventful future. All around they looked—but vainly. For the turret's gloomy shadow ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... spots,—you wonder how there can be any enjoyment in them. I meet a girl in a chintz gown, with a small shawl on her shoulders, white stockings, and summer morocco shoes,—it looks observable. Turkeys, queer, solemn objects, in black attire, grazing about, and trying to peck the fallen apples, which slip ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... wear our hearts upon our sleeves for cynics such as you to peck at?" she replied. "The art of dissembling is one of our few privileges. But do you think the Countess is ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... outline was visible beyond the first, that he might perhaps be able to do this. He reckoned that they could get there in an hour or two, and it was to this urgent exploration that he resolved to devote the first hours of the day. He looked round him. The cocks and hens were beginning to peck about among the high vegetation. Agouties, goats, sheep, went and came on the ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... Wash the fruit and remove the stems. Put into the preserving kettle with 1 quart of water for each peck of fruit. Cook gently until the plums are boiled to pieces. Strain the juice and proceed the same as for ...
— Canned Fruit, Preserves, and Jellies: Household Methods of Preparation - U.S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin No. 203 • Maria Parloa
... had brewed her 'peck of malt' and set the liquor out of doors to cool; the cow of B., a neighbour of A., chanced to come by, and seeing the good beverage, was allured to taste it, and finally to drink it up. When A. came to take in her liquor, she found her tub empty, and from the cow's staggering and staring, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... "Gee, Jack, here's a peck of trouble," he said. "I got down here and found that Mr. Simms, the big boss, and Mr. Carew, the manager, had been here ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland
... someone could explain one of my failures a few years ago in planting some Persian walnuts. I went to another tree in western New York, and got a peck or more. They were planted the same day, in the same ground, and all came up. Those I got from another tree resembled a hill of beans, and stayed that way for three years. Why wouldn't those grow? In soil three feet from those, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... and being filled, the juice slowly simmers Much of the foreign substance rises in a scum to the surface and is skimmed off by the sugar maker. It is further purified by the addition of Thomaston or what is called sugar lime. At one half a peck is considered sufficient for seven hundred and fifty gallons of juice, but much depends upon the quantity of saccharine matter it contains. Another set of pipes now permit the liquor to run into the evaporators, in the boiling room below. These are also heated ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... nonsapient animal, every experience is either totally novel or identical with some remembered experience. A rabbit will flee from one dog because to the rabbit mind it is identical with another dog that has chased it. A bird will be attracted to an apple, and each apple will be a unique red thing to peck at. The sapient being will say, 'These red objects are apples; as a class, they are edible and flavorsome.' He sets up a class under the general label of apples. This, in turn, leads to the formation of abstract ideas—redness, ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... proceeded at the gallop. When he reached the Grassmarket, Edinburgh—a full hour before the mail,—the grain-selling was just starting, and before the alarming war news had got time to spread Rennie had every peck of wheat in the market bought up. He must have coined an enormous profit by this smart transaction; but to him it seemed to matter nothing at all. He was one of the most careless of the harum-scarum sons of Adam, and if ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... give us three pounds of pork, a half gallon o' syrup, an' a peck o' meal. You had to have a garden connected wid yo' house fer yo' vegetables. De marster would let you go out in de woods an' cut you as large a space as you wanted. If you failed to plant, it wus jes' yo' bad luck. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... Tyrant knows That every peck she gives to thee Brings down a perfect show'r of blows On my companions and on me. Martyrs vicarious are we all: Too great a coward thou to rule Thy wife, or let thy vengeance fall On her—and so thou flog'st ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... wind, of late breath'd gently forth, Now shifted east, and east by north; Bare trees and shrubs but ill, you know, Could shelter them from rain and snow, Stepping into their nests, they paddled, Themselves were chill'd, their eggs were addled. Soon every father bird and mother Grew quarrelsome, and peck'd each other. Parted without the least regret, Except that they had ever met, And learn'd in future to be wiser Than to neglect ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... Betts, with a chuckle, "and I could string off more'n a few times when that same curiosity hauled Bobolink into a peck of trouble. But p'raps your father might let out the secret to you, after the old boxes have been taken away, and then you can ease his mind. Because it's just like he says, and he'll keep on dreamin' the most wonderful ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... hollow trunk of some tree, lays by a store of beechnuts for winter use. Every nut is carefully shelled, and the cavity that serves as storehouse lined with grass and leaves. The wood-chopper frequently squanders this precious store. I have seen half a peck taken from one tree, as clean and white as if put up by the most delicate hands,—as they were. How long it must have taken the little creature to collect this quantity, to hull them one by one, and convey them up to his fifth-story chamber! He is not confined to the woods, but is quite ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... hundreds of the like mistakes in the best humour possible; while the Grocer and his people were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas daws to peck at if ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... stoke back sack lick beck stock take slake pike Luke smoke tack slack pick luck smock rake stake peak duke croak rack stack peck duck crock lake dike speak coke cloak lack ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... sooner the better, to deserve well of her. Thorbeorn was very proud of her; but it had been her mother's work to have her carefully trained. If she had lived this tale might not have been written; but she did not. She died a year before it begins, and left her old husband to a peck ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... back, and since then, we went to see the wild animals, a hip'pottermas, an' lions, an' tigers, an' snakes, an' a bird with a neck as long as a hoe handle, an' a head like a tommyhawk. I wouldn't wonder if he could peck some, an' they say he can fetch a kick that would knock a hoss down. Gosh! I kind o' felt fer my gun! Gol darn his pictur'! Think o' bein' kicked by a bird an' havin' to be picked up an' carried off to be mended. We took a long, ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... change in the cultured speech of a language is a process that requires years to become pronounced, the evolution of slang is rapid and its usage ephemeral. For example Stephen Gaselee, in his bibliography of Petronius, calls attention to Harry Thurston Peck's rendering of "bell um pomum" by "he's a daisy," and remarks, appropriately enough, "that this was well enough for 1898; but we would now be more inclined to render it 'he's a peach.'" Again, Peck renders "illud erat vivere" ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... wings and surround them on all sides. Woe to them! let us get to work with our beaks, let us devour them. Nothing can save them from our wrath, neither the mountain forests, nor the clouds that float in the sky, nor the foaming deep. Come, peck, tear to ribbons. Where is the chief of the cohort? Let ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... for daws to peck at—that is the heart," laughed Mr. Ayrton. "Talking of woman's soul, how is Lady Earlscourt?" he added, to ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... (999-1019). In it the Emperor Romanus Argyrus (1028-1034) confined Prussianus, a relative of the Bulgarian royal family, on a charge of treason;[446] and there Michael VII., nicknamed Parapinakes (the peck-filcher), because he sold wheat at one-fourth of its proper weight, and then at an exorbitant price, ultimately retired after his deposition.[447] The connection of so many prominent persons with the monastery implies the importance ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... appears, "enlisted the Harts and others in an enterprise which his own genius planned," says Peck, the personal acquaintance and biographer of Boone, "and then encouraged several hunters to explore the country and learn where the best lands lay." Just why Henderson and his associates did not act sooner upon the reports brought back by the ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... his figures, the average eating record of each man at the outing is about ten pounds of beef, two or three chickens, a pound of butter, a half peck of potatoes, and two dozen ears of corn. The drinking records, as given out, are still more phenomenal. For some reason, not yet explained, the district leader thinks that his popularity will be greatly increased if he can show that his followers can eat and drink more than the followers of ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... sure Mrs. Vane had appeared a dove, but doves can peck on certain occasions, and no doubt she had a spirit at bottom. Her coming to him proved it. And had not the other been a dove all the morning and afternoon? Yet, jealousy had turned her to a fiend before his eyes. Then if (which was not probable) no collision took place, what a situation ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... Bennoch, and showed themselves quite as dull, in their aldermanic way, as the country squires. . . . . Bennoch pointed out Lord John Russell, a small, very short, elderly gentleman, in a brown coat, and so large a hat—not large of brim, but large like a peck-measure—that I saw really no face beneath it. By and by came a rather tall, slender person, in a black frock-coat, buttoned up, and black pantaloons, taking long steps, but I thought rather feebly ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "Sinful Peck." An undersized man, with a cultivated blond mustache, lifted his hat politely to Mr. Jackson, disclosing a smooth, bald head, and passed over, smiling sweetly. Whatever his character, his name belied his appearance; for his face was ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... him a start, he proceeded confidently on his way. Such was his confidence, that when a moose-bird impudently hopped up to him, he reached out at it with a playful paw. The result was a sharp peck on the end of his nose that made him cower down and ki-yi. The noise he made was too much for the moose-bird, who sought ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... of his friend. I saw that, and set down the anxiety he expressed that I should write to him at its proper value. I have quite got over my weakness for him at last. No man who really loved me would have put what he owed to a peck of newspaper people before what he owed to his wife. I hate him for letting me convince him! I believe he was glad to get rid of me. I believe he has seen some woman whom he likes at Turin. Well, let him follow his new fancy, if he pleases! I shall be the widow of Mr. Armadale of Thorpe ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... led me down into the midshipmen's berth, where he introduced me to my new messmates. I was at home in a few minutes, and made up my mind that I should be very jolly. In this opinion I was confirmed by the assurances of another midshipman of about my own age, or rather younger, Tommy Peck by name, who had also come to sea for the first time, and who naturally became my chief chum. He was a merry fellow, delighting in fun and mischief; caring very little about the result of the latter, provided he could amuse himself for ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... both mistress and maids, where bright copper stewpans reflected the blazing fire on all sides, and metal covers shone like mirrors; while as for "eating off the floor," one might certainly do it if so inclined, without the "peck of dirt" ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... was a woman, and a mother into the bargain. She had, too, the remains of a woman's heart, where lingered a few maternal sympathies. These were quick to prompt her to duty. Turning away without a reply, she weighed out two pounds of fish, measured a peck of potatoes, poured out some milk in a cup, and filled a small paper with flour. These she handed to Mrs. Gaston without uttering ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... fuss. And besides, she doesn't deserve it, if she's been mean to you." Romeo leaned over and bestowed a meaningless peck upon the fair cheek ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... and leading spirits among the colored men in the United States, such as James Forten, Robert Douglass, I. Bowers, A.D. Shadd, John Peck, Joseph Cassey, and John B. Vashon of Pennsylvania; John T. Hilton, Nathaniel and Thomas Paul, and James G. Barbodoes of Massachusetts; Henry Sipkins, Thomas Hamilton, Thomas L. Jennings, Thomas Downing, Samuel E. Cornish, ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... would come into the room, like a cold wind or a thin ghost, and there would be a kiss on the cheek, a cold, precise peck, like a bird's. And, "Did you have a good voyage?" just as if she said, "Do you ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... I have my peck of trouble without reckoning the ruin of my country. But my back is broad. It can bear a burden ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... body lie unburied! May he rot upon the earth! May the ravens peck out his eyes! May a murderer drink his blood! May the wolves eat his heart! May the spirit of the fog grow fat upon his entrails! And may the spirits of his body scatter—as the clouds in the wild anore (winds) scatter! May ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... relative forms part of the bulwarks. The attempt on the part of some birds to steal stones from surrounding nests is about the most fruitful cause of a riot, and the thief generally gets soundly thrashed, besides which all have a peck at him as he makes his way with as much haste as possible from the danger-zone. As the season advances, these rookeries become covered with filthy slush, but it seems to make no difference to the eggs, as the chicks appear in due course. When the moulting process is in full swing the ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... dangerous. They have taken to haunting the precincts of the Castle, and attack the servants when they go into the garden, particularly the laundry maids; for, when they go into the garden to hang out the clothes, they have to use both hands to do so, and then these wretched birds fly down and peck at their noses. One poor creature lost hers altogether, with the result that all of the maids have given notice, and we can't get laundry maids for ...
— The Mysterious Shin Shira • George Edward Farrow
... of meat. Gravy lies about it like a moat around a castle, and if there is in you the zest for encounter, you attack it above these murky waters. "This castle hath a pleasant seat," you cry, and charge upon it with pike advanced. But if your appetite is one to peck and mince, the whiffs that breathe upon the place come unwelcome to your nostrils. In no wise are they like the sweet South upon your senses. There is even a suspicion in you—such is your distemper—that it is too much a witch's cauldron ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... other's presence, but it need not be writ {57} large over their actions. It is sometimes debated whether lovers should kiss in public. As the sweetest kisses must ever be those exchanged "under four eyes," as the Germans put it, there seems little advantage in a mere conventional "peck" in the public gaze. A close clasp of the hand, a silent greeting of the eyes, will be truer to the love that is held too ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... Tom, looking a little sheepish, but anxious to set his mind at rest, "she never will let me kiss her on her cheek, nothing but an unsatisfactory peck at her lips. Then the other day, as I took a bit of heliotrope out of a vase to put in my button-hole, I whisked a drop of water into her face; I was going to wipe it off, but she pushed my hand away, and ran to the glass, where she carefully dabbed it dry, and came back with one cheek ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... steeper nearing the crest. From the ground he looked to be not more than sixteen hands high, but as soon as I was up on top of him I immediately discerned that it was not sixteen hands—it was sixteen miles. What I had taken for the horse's blaze face was a snow-capped peak. Miss Anna Peck might have felt at home up there, because she has had the experience and is used to that sort of thing, but I am ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... This was the spontaneous way in which the Chincoteague people welcomed me. "If you don't drink, stranger, up your way, what on airth keeps your buddies and soulds together?" queried a tall oysterman. A lady had kindly presented me with a peck of fine apples that very morning; so, in lieu of "drinks," I distributed the fruit among them. They joked and questioned me, and all were merry save one bilious-looking individual, not dressed, like the others, in ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... humble one, as I thought him) that I had the offender caught, and without more ado, in a pet of humanity, wrung his neck off. What followed this execution? Why that other grew insolent, as soon as his insulter was gone, and was continually pecking at one or two under him. Peck and be hanged, said I,—I might as well have preserved the first, for I see it is the nature ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... president of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, and Miss Minnie Bronson, secretary, both of New York, addressed the meeting. Forty people were present, including five reporters and a number of suffragists. Those who joined at that meeting were Mesdames Edward P. Peck, William Archibald Smith, T. J. Mackay, E. A. Benson and Misses Ada Alexander, Genevra March and Minnie Martison. A temporary committee on organization was appointed consisting of Mesdames Arthur C. Smith, J. C. Cowin, Herman Kountze, J. W. Crumpacker, E. A. Benson; ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... Meadowsweet," she said, running up to the good lady and giving her a kiss, which resembled the peck of an eager bird, on her cheek. "I ran on first, and Martha is following. I came to know how you are, and how you're bearing up—and ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... Old Top, shine on! Across the realms of space Shine on! What though I'm in a sorry case? What though my collar is a wreck, And hangs a rag about my neck? What though at food I can but peck? Never ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... young Princes gathered around me, and we sat down on the floor and the boys got out their knives, and we played mumbletypeg on the carpet, just as though we were at home, and all the boys talked English, and we had a bully time. The princes had all read "Peck's Bad Boy" and I think the Emperor and Empress have encouraged them in their wickedness, for the boys told me of several tricks they had played on their father, the Emperor, which they had copied ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... kitchen rolling-pin per day for each man. This had to serve for all purposes—cooking, as well as warming. We split the rations up into slips about the size of a carpenter's lead pencil, and used them parsimoniously, never building a fire so big that it could not be covered with a half-peck measure. We hovered closely over this—covering it, in fact, with our hands and bodies, so that not a particle of heat was lost. Remembering the Indian's sage remark, "That the white man built a big fire ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... well, and the winter of 1939 or 1940, I don't recall just which, was rather severe. We had below-zero weather, and all of my persimmons were killed—I thought. The next year I found a persimmon tree up in the woods with maybe a peck of great big nice persimmons and later I found that that was a Fuyugaki persimmon. All the rest of mine were winter killed. Those that I purchased were winter killed the first year. I don't know why. I grafted the persimmon about ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... his head at me as might a surly schoolmaster in a pause of leniency, he added, "As quiet, as quiet, and never did he fly at door of cage, nor peck at jailer—aho!" ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
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