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More "Roost" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... over to New York every two weeks to see a show,' says the farmer, hanging up the receiver. 'I catch the eighteen-hour flyer at Indianapolis, spend ten hours in the heyday of night on the Yappian Way, and get home in time to see the chickens go to roost forty-eight hours later. Oh, the pristine Hubbard squasherino of the cave-dwelling period is getting geared up some for the annual meeting of the Don't-Blow-Out-the-Gas Association, don't you think, ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... now set forth the beauty and harmony of the world, seen from the loftiness of the divine roost: below all was dark, unjust, sorrowful; seen from on high, it all became clear, luminous, ordered: the world was like the works of a ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... child, Muster Barton,' she exclaimed, further manifesting her maternal instincts by applying her apron to her offspring's nose. 'He's al'ys a-findin' faut wi' him, and a-poundin' him for nothin'. Let him goo an' eat his roost goose as is a-smellin' up in our noses while we're a-swallering them greasy broth, an' let my ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... said Petullo. "Likely the Baron's thrawn. Man, he hasna a roost, and he should be glad—" He stopped on reflection that the Frenchman was an intimate of the family he spoke of, and hastily returned to his side without seeing the ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... chewing some checkerberry-leaves as he spoke; "but I may have the fun of looking on, I suppose. But see, these fellows are kinder debating down there, and looking up, like hens when they are going to fly up on to the roost. Hadn't thee better give 'em a word of advice, before they come up, just to tell 'em handsomely they'll be shot ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... years. One or two got off with a caution, and with instructions to preach to the locations on the heinousness of hooliganism, and of the power of Martial Law to hang "boys" for less than murder—as the next roost-robber would learn to his cost. No remarkable curiosity to be learned in the "Law" was afterwards manifested for ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... go on," said the page, "for you will be presently interrupted; the two good dames have been soaring yonder on the balcony, like two old hooded crows, and their croak grows hoarser as night comes on; they will wing to roost presently.—This mistress of yours, fair gentlewoman, who was ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... haven't. You shall tell her yourself on Monday. What an incredible tradition it will be! But you mustn't worry; you mustn't even think. And no more of these jaunts, eh? That Ferguson business—that was too bad. What are we going to do with the fellow now we have created him? He will come home to roost—mark my words. And as likely as not down the Vicarage chimney. I wouldn't have believed it of you, my dear fellow.' He beamed, but looked, none the less, very lean and ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... again. Yes sir, dat's de way turkey buzzards does. Dey pukes on folks to keep dem away, and you can't go near kaise it be's so nasty; but dem buzzards don't waste nothing. Little young buzzards looks like down till dey gits over three days old. You can go to a buzzard roost and see for yourself, but you sho better stay out'n de way of de old buzzard's puke. Dey sets around de little ones and ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... cattle in order to secure the insects put up by the grazing quadrupeds. Taking advantage of the social habits of these egrets the plume-hunters issue forth early in May and betake themselves, in parties of five or six, to the villages where the birds roost. Their apparatus consists of two nets, each some eight feet long and three broad. These are laid flat on the ground in shallow water, parallel to one another, about a yard apart. The inner side of each ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... my own roof I have witnessed affecting instances of the creature's friendly visits to the chambers of sick persons, as described in the verses to the Redbreast [No. 83]. One of these welcome intruders used frequently to roost upon a nail in the wall, from which a picture had hung, and was ready, as morning came, to pipe his song in the hearing of the invalid, who had been long confined to her room. These attachments to a particular person, when marked ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... nevertheless! There are thousands of them that roost among the hills in that quarter. I know the place thoroughly. The heights are the greatest that we have in the surrounding country. The distance from this spot is about five miles. He, no doubt, has some fish, or bird now within his talons, with which to feed his young. He ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... slowly into the station of the little seaport town. It was late, as always at this turning-point of the season, when the summer population was changing its roost from sea to mountain or from the north to the south shore. Falkner, glancing anxiously along the line of cars for a certain figure, said again to himself, 'If she shouldn't come—at the last moment!' and ashamed of his doubt, replied, 'She will, if humanly possible.' ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... chance," said Ned, "is to wait for them at the edge of the prairie. It's getting late and pretty soon they'll be looking for places to roost among these trees. They may come right here. Anyhow, by spreading out we will cover quite a stretch of woods. It may be too late for the rifle but the shotgun ought ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... of course, were quite right; he had given her plenty of run and ignored her cackle, and now she had come home to roost. There is nothing like a knowledge of farming, and an acquaintance with the habits of domestic animals, to teach a man how to ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... least six pence at night, until at last she ran away from Screech-Owl and hid in a wood-yard for the night. Next day she was found, taken before a magistrate and sent to a reformatory as a vagrant until she was sixteen. It was a perfect paradise compared to Screech-Owl's miserable roost. But when she came out she fell into the hands of the Ogress who kept the inn they were now in. The clothes she stood in belonged to the Ogress, she owed her for board and lodgings and could not stir from her or she must be taken up ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... carelessly hung on the hat rack in the royal hall for the flies to roost upon, but it should be thoroughly cleaned and put away as soon as the weather becomes too hot ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... sneered Mortimer. "I believe you roost on the foot-board of your bed, like a confounded turkey. Come on! You'd better begin training, you know. People in this town are not going to stand for the merry ploughboy ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... also arrived at the ranch on New Year's eve. He brought the report that wild pigeons were again roosting at the big bend of the river. It was a well-known pigeon roost, but the birds went to other winter feeding grounds, except during years when there was a plentiful sweet mast. This bend was about midway between the ranch and Shepherd's, contained about two thousand acres, and was heavily timbered with ash, ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... job with no peepers to spy me. All the chickens were gone to roost. The shiners are three feet underground behind some wine-bottles. And I spread some stones and mortar ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... running the risk of catching cold in searching over the house, have this morning been at the expense of new fastenings to the doors and windows. The next time, however, you rise, Richard, to alarm the family, you shall in future roost with the hens or ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... the great Nation of the Esaw Indians, and the pleasant Stream of Sapona, which is the West-Branch of Clarendon, or Cape-Fair River) that they had broke down the Limbs of a great many large Trees all over those Woods, whereon they chanced to sit and roost; especially the great Pines, which are a more brittle Wood, than our sorts of Oak are. These Pigeons, about Sun-Rise, when we were preparing to march on our Journey, would fly by us in such vast Flocks, that they would ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... after she had gone back to roost in the henhouse, it seemed to Henrietta that she had scarcely fallen asleep ...
— The Tale of Henrietta Hen • Arthur Scott Bailey
... maids of baser birth, in consideration of a substantial dowry attached to each bride, and a solemn obligation, accepted and signed by the paternal Puddle, forever to feed at home her and her improved progeny. So the fifty continue to roost in the old paternal coops, while Kooleen, like a pampered Brahmapootra, struts, in pompous patronage, from one to the other, his sense of duty satisfied when he has left a crow and a cackle behind him. It is said that many fine fowls ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... dollars to spend getting the brass band half drunk before the six o'clock train, on which your Mr. Bennett comes. He has spent five dollars paying the negroes to polish up their instruments and clean up the uniforms and it cost him twenty-five to bail the cornettist out of jail for roost robbing, and it takes a whole gallon of whisky to get any spirit into the drummer. He says tell you that as this is your shindig you ought at least to pay the piper. Hurry up, he's waiting for me, and here's the kiss he told me to put ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... all the swift changes of life, God's attempts to lead him to yield himself up, and bow his will? And was not God striving with him now, in the anxieties which gnawed at his heart, and in his dread of the morrow? Was He not trying to teach him how crime always comes home to roost, with a brood of pains running behind it? Was not the weird duel in the brooding stillness a disclosure, which would more and more possess his soul as the night passed on, of a Presence which in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... hand of every farmer is uplifted, are very shy and cunning; as is well known, they nearly always post a sentinel in some tree top to keep watch while the rest of the flock is feeding in the field below. In the fall and winter, large numbers of them flock, and at night all roost in one piece of woods; some of the "crow roosts" are of vast extent and contain thousands of individuals. Crows nest near the tops of large trees, preferably pines, either in woods or single trees in fields. ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... he, 'it has been my sad lot to witness a most fearful sight. That dog whom you keep down below to guard the house slipped in at the door, and going to the corner where the lovely young chickens roost, quicker than thought killed two that were more beautiful than angels. I was chasing a mouse under the stairs at the time, and happened to come up just as the dreadful deed was done, and I saw the robber making off with his booty. Only ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... nests. The chickens went to roost. The cows came home from the pasture and stood mooing at the gate. It grew so dark that the people could not see their ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... running on in this impudent manner, when the Hen answered him from the roost: "Truly, dear Reynard, you are in the right. I was seldom in more danger than I am now. Pray excuse my coming down; I am sure I should ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... marked in a Spanish chart; but the frequency of the birds seems to evince, that there are many more than have been hitherto discovered: For the greatest part of the birds we observed were such as are known to roost on shore; and the manner of their appearance sufficiently made out, that they came from some distant haunt every morning, and returned thither again in the evening; for we never saw them early or late; and the hour of their arrival and departure gradually varied, which we ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... skyward at almost any hour of the day and you will see a plane, its propeller a roar or a hum according to its altitude. Sometimes it is circling in practice; again, it is off to the front. At break of day the planes appear; in the gloaming they return to roost. ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... searching hopefully for something to eat among the ashes, "you'll burn your toes as like as not! Begone, unless you want to be put at once into the pot! Go for them, Argos! Dion, you feed them. They'll be under foot until they've had their supper, and it's time they were on the roost this minute! Daphne, your face is dirty; go wash it, while I get the fire started and see if I can't find something to eat more fitting to ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins
... drive to Eastboro village, "I give you my word, Seth, they dummed nigh et me alive. They covered the horse all up, so that he looked for all the world like a sheep, woolly. I don't mind moskeeters in moderation, but when they roost on my eyelids and make 'em so heavy I can't open 'em, then I'm ready to swear. But I couldn't get even that relief, because every time I unbattened my mouth a million or so flew in and choked me. That's what I said—a million. Some moskeeters are fat, but these don't get a ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... said Florence, frowning slightly, "what is the good of going over that now? Uncle Tom has been in his grave for the last six years, hasn't he? and Aunt Susan rules the roost. It's Aunt Susan we have got to think about. What did she say in that ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... given to dreams. A dream is a sort of a shadow, no profit in it to anyone at all. A coach now is a real thing and a thing that will last for generations and be made use of the last, and maybe turn to be a hen-roost at its ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... coming down to the bunkhouse!" said Weary under his breath, and glanced back over his shoulder at the White House bulking large in the night. "Let's go on down to the stable and roost in ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... last, and I was not long in making acquaintance with it. I awoke to find, by the light of the lantern swung from the roost overhead, the dozen men in the loft awake and pulling on their boots. They had lain in their sodden clothes all night: but of their boots, I found, they were as careful as dandies, and to grease them would hoard up a lump ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a British soldier having a good deal of the machine about him, Harry stands fast, and Chunder pulls up short, grinning rolling his eyes, and twisting his hands about, just for all the world like as if he was robbing a hen-roost, and wringing all the ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... it is started. A man must come into court with clean hands. I had started by rotting the other fellow's eggs and he finished by souring my milk. I wanted justice and I got it, but I didn't recognize it when it landed on me with all four feet. Chickens come home to roost, and my pigeons had found a nesting-place on my anatomy; and the spot they had chosen was ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... to show you the little Carrs, and I don't know that I could ever have a better chance than one day when five out of the six were perched on top of the ice-house, like chickens on a roost. This ice-house was one of their favorite places. It was only a low roof set over a hole in the ground, and, as it stood in the middle of the side-yard, it always seemed to the children that the shortest road to every place was up one ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... boys came sauntering along, and found places on the "roost." One of these was a burly fellow with a pugnacious face and a bold eye. He seemed to be no favorite among the boys, though they treated him with a certain amount of respect. Well, there is never a town or a village but has its ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... know I'm very mean. But I had such a bad night. I thought that all the devils in hell were jeering at me because I had told you my romance was dead. Oh, Jack! it was a great big lie, and it's come home to roost. I can't get rid of it. ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... had said that he had spent the summer at Coole with Lady Gregory, I saw it all. Coole is but three miles from Tillyra [Mr. Martyn's estate in Galway]; Edward is often at Coole; Lady Gregory and Yeats are often at Tillyra; Yeats and Edward had written plays—the drama brings strange fowls to roost." ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... was the nearly uniform answer, and the travelers had the satisfaction of writing their names and going their way in search of entertainment. "We've eight hundred people stowed away," said the clerk, "and not a spot left for a hen to roost." ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... dust on the dried leaves; the cannon-balls do not intrude too much, but have subsided into the shade; the awkward squads are in bed; even the loungers are gone, the fan-flirting Spanish ladies, the sallow black-eyed children, and the trim white-jacketed dandies. A fife is heard from some craft at roost on the quiet waters somewhere; or a faint cheer from yonder black steamer at the Mole, which is about to set out on some night expedition. You forget that the town is at all like Wapping, and deliver yourself up entirely to romance; the sentries look noble pacing there, ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not to take the cock away before dark. Ned agreed to wait till then. Just before his bed time, he went for Chanticleer, and brought him as quietly as possible to the house. He was afraid to put the new master of the poultry yard on the roost with the old cock, lest they should fight in the morning; so he carried his treasure softly up to his own bedroom in which was a large closet where he had prepared a temporary roost. The cock, who was very tame, as he had been always a pet, made no fuss, but went to sleep on his ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... haunt the woods; but the former, as long as it stays with us, from November perhaps to February, lives the same wild life with the ring-dove, palumbus torquatus; frequents coppices and groves, supports itself chiefly by mast, and delights to roost in the tallest beeches. Could it be known in what manner stock-doves build, the doubt would be settled with me at once, provided they construct their nests on trees, like the ring-dove, as I much suspect ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... respite from the presence of any natives, as did the men, who were rejoiced at my having taken up so snug a berth. It happened, however, that a little after sunset, a flight of the new paroquets perched in the lofty trees that grew on the island, to roost; when we immediately commenced the work of death, and succeeded in killing eight or ten. The reports of our guns were heard by some natives up the river, and several came over to us. Although I ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... Anyway the wind was, it was always sea air, as salt as on a ship; the gulls were as free as moorfowl over all the Ross; and whenever the way rose a little, your eye would kindle with the brightness of the sea. From the very midst of the land, on a day of wind and a high spring, I have heard the Roost roaring, like a battle where it runs by Aros, and the great and fearful voices of the breakers that we call ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to talk to some one opposite to it. He, of course, looks up; Pompilia looks down; the neighbours say, 'What of that?' The Count is uncomfortable, but he is only laughed at for his pains; the fox prowls round the hen-roost undisturbed. He wakes one morning, after a drugged sleep, to find the house ransacked, and Pompilia gone, and everyone able to inform him that she has gone with Caponsacchi, and to Rome. He pursues them, and overtakes them where they have spent the night together. She brazens the matter out, ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... they should have done so, for she placed her chair in such a posture as to occupy almost the whole fire. She then ordered a chicken to be broiled that instant, declaring, if it was not ready in a quarter of an hour, she would not stay for it. Now, though the said chicken was then at roost in the stable, and required the several ceremonies of catching, killing, and picking, before it was brought to the gridiron, my landlady would nevertheless have undertaken to do all within the time; but the guest, being unfortunately ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... introduced to the knowledge of Europe on the return of his expedition. An idea of their number may be formed from the following statement of Mr. Layard, as to the multitudes which are found on the western coast. "At Chilaw I have seen such vast flights of parroquets coming to roost in the coco-nut trees which overhang the bazaar, that their noise drowned the Babel of tongues bargaining for the evening provisions. Hearing of the swarms which resorted to this spot, I posted ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... muezzin sounded, cracked voices cried unmelodiously from all the minaret tops. Immediately, as if it were their signal, all the crows arose from the town, hovered around in batches for a moment, chattering, and flew away up the hill to roost in the trees round the hospital ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... one—and make a holy show of you before the neighbours. The honest softy is more often mistaken for a swindler, and accused of being one, than the out-and-out scamp; and the man that tells the truth too much is set down as an irreclaimable liar. But most of the time crow low and roost high, for it's a funny world, and you never ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... not; but it was for no brief space, for when he awoke, the rich light had faded, the sombre hues of night were falling fast upon the landscape, and a few bright stars were already twinkling overhead. The birds were all at roost, the daisies on the green had closed their fairy hoods, the honeysuckle twining round the porch exhaled its perfume in a twofold degree, as though it lost its coyness at that silent time and loved to shed its fragrance on the night; the ivy scarcely ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... Return, my Dear, my Joy, my only Love, Unto thy Hinde, thy Mullet and thy Dove, Who neither joys in pasture, house nor streams, The substance gone, O me, these are but dreams, Together at one Tree, O let us brouse, And like two Turtles roost within one house. And like the Mullets in one River glide, Let's still remain one till death divide. Thy loving Love and Dearest Dear, At home, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... afterwards, that he might, after all, be as devoted to his country as they were. For years now his life had been without blemish. It was impossible to believe that even in his youth he could have sown any wild oats; terrible to think that these wild oats might now be coming home to roost. ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... night, for Yonge Street is still a tiresome journey, although only a stage of thirty three miles, at Winch's Tavern. This is a very good road-side house, and the landlord and landlady are civil and attentive. Before you go to roost, for stopping by the way-side is pretty much like roosting, as you must be up with Chanticleer, you can just look over Mr. Laughton's paling, and you will see as pretty a florist's display as may be imagined. The owner is fond of flowers, and he has lots of them, and, when you make ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... cool wide stairs that led from the great hall. For while in summer the shadows on some vine-covered porch swallowed the lovers, in winter the stairs were generally the trysting-place—and the top step the one most sought—because there was nobody behind to see. This was the roost for which Kate and Harry scampered, and there they intended to sit until the music struck ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... rustle and shake as if an army of cats were galloping over it, and immediately afterwards my bed shook too, so that for an instant I imagined myself back in New Guinea, in my fragile house, which shook when an old cock went to roost on the ridge; but remembering that I was now on a solid earthen floor, I said to myself, "Why, it's an earthquake," and lay still in the pleasing expectation of another shock; but none came, and this was the only earthquake ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... beginning it was not so simple. Alas! for that first story of mine—the raven I sent you of my ark and never saw again. Unlike the proverbial curse, it did not come home to roost; it stayed where I had sent it. The only thing I ever heard of it again was a polite letter from the editor in whose office it lay, telling me I could have it back if I enclosed stamps to the amount of twopence halfpenny, otherwise he should feel it his unpleasant duty ...
— How I write my novels • Mrs. Hungerford
... rather eat stewed fish-heads than steal out of other folkses houses so much till you went to sleep on the roost and fell down one night and broke up the settin' hen. ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... of the Comic Annual of the year. At the beginning of 1839 he paid a visit of about three weeks to his often-regretted England, staying with one of his oldest and most intimate friends, Mr. Dilke, then editor of the Athenaeum. Another of his best friends—one indeed who continued to the end roost unwearied and affectionate in his professional and other attentions, Dr. Elliot—now made a medical examination of Hood's condition. He pronounced the lungs to be organically sound; the chief seat of disease being the liver, and the heart, which was placed lower down than usual. At a later stage ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... banks. Once or twice I went by a lonely cottage with a smell of earthy turf coming from the chimney, weeds or oats sprouting on the thatch, and a broken cart before the door, with many straggling hens going to roost on the shafts. Near these cottages little bands of half-naked children, filled with the excitement of evening, were running and screaming over the bogs, where the heather was purple already, giving me the strained feeling of regret one has so often in these places when ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... he could himself take a high part in high affairs when his own turn came. He was biding his time, and patiently looking forward to the days when he himself would sit authoritative at some board, and talk and direct, and rule the roost, while lesser stars sat round and obeyed, as he had so well ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... just getting ready to send forth his hoarse cry as I went to bed, and he was still on his roost a few hours later, when I awoke. I looked from my window of the Brunswick across the Square, now flooded with the pure sunlight of early morning, and all the kinks and quirks and hobgoblins which the rush and irritation of yesterday had generated ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... bed was too short for her, and there was no ease in it, even had her mind and heart been at rest. All the fantasies she had beguiled from the boy's brain had come to roost in her own, with a hundred other vivid and painful impressions. The night, too, was fuller than usual of disquietude. The wind, which had been rising steadily, now tore at the shutters and rushed shrieking through the trees. There was a savage rumble of thunder among the hills, ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... come home to roost. My attitude of indifference and coldness toward my fellow citizens had been misinterpreted, as it deserved to be. George Taylor was right when he said ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... right," nodded Flanders, "but then it's happened the same way with others I could tell about. As long as he was winnin' Sandy was the king of any roost. The minute he lost a fight he wasn't worth so many pounds of salt pork. Take a hoss; a fine hoss is often jest the same. Long as it wins nothin' can touch some of them blooded boys. But let 'em go under the wire second, maybe jest because they's packing twenty pounds ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... completed what his poems had begun. We have a sight of him at his first visit to Adamhill, in his ploughman's shoes, coasting around the carpet as though that were sacred ground. But he soon grew used to carpets and their owners; and he was still the superior of all whom he encountered, and ruled the roost in conversation. Such was the impression made, that a young clergyman, himself a man of ability, trembled and became confused when he saw Robert enter the church in which he was to preach. It is not surprising that the poet determined to publish: he had now ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... prevailed slavery was universal in civilized communities, labour, as conducted under that regime, was a curse, and this at length came home to roost on the gaunt wreckage of imperialism. Thereafter came slowly increasing liberty under the feudal system with its small social units and its system of production for use not profits, monasticism with its doctrine and practice of the sanctity of ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... Sherman's Atlanta Campaign commenced, and, simultaneously, General Grant began his movement toward Richmond. In quick succession came the news of the bloody battles of the Wilderness, and those around Spottsylvania, Va.; at Buzzard Roost Gap, Snake Creek Gap, and Dalton, Ga.; Drury's Bluff, Va.; Resaca, Ga.; the battles of the North Anna, Va.; those around Dallas, and New Hope church, Ga; the crossing of Grant's forces to the South side of the James and the assault on Petersburg. While the Union Armies were ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... those dissipations of his, which, after all, had touched him but lightly—these had, like chickens, come home to roost! And how these chickens had multiplied and grown! On the way home it seemed that everybody had striven to fatten them up a bit and add surreptitiously a chicken or two of his own. Oh, these meddlers, these idle tongues! None of them would ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... was as sorry as anybody. I climbed down from my cormorant roost, and picked my way between the alleys of aromatic piled lumber in order to avoid the press, and cursed the little gods heartily for undue partiality in the wrong direction. In this manner I happened ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... the other officer, "this is a feather out of your cap. I thought your fellows had cleared out every hen-roost within twenty miles ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... and marsh lilies, But I'll plant here, and if they chance to wither, My tears shall water them; there's not a bird That trails a sad soft note, as ringdoves do, Or twitters painfully like the dun martlet, But I will lure by my best art, to roost And plain them in these branches. Larks and finches Will I fright hence, nor aught shall dare approach This pensive spot, save solitary things That love to mourn ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... meeting in the top of a walnut tree near the gate, adjourned to the sycamore grove that overshadowed the barn in the rear of the house; and Stanley's pigeons, which had been cooing and strutting in the avenue, went to roost in the pretty painted pagoda Dr. Grey had erected for their comfort. Finally, the low-swung, heavy carriage, with its stout dappled horses, gladdened Salome's strained eyes; and, soon after, she heard the thump of Miss Jane's crutches ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... the yellow, smoke-stained walls of the well of the staircase, where each worm-eaten step shook under the heavy foot-fall of his uncle, his expectations began to sober more and more. He fancied himself in a hen-roost. His aunt and cousin, to whom he turned an inquiring look, were so used to the staircase that they did not guess the cause of his amazement, and took the glance for an expression of friendliness, which they answered by a ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... net is first held upright about a foot from the bush, and the light thrown upon the back of it. The bush is then moderately beaten, and the birds affrighted and bewildered fly against the net, which is instantly closed. The bird is thus captured, and when a full roost can be discovered a large number may be taken in a single night. The lantern should be closed while not in actual use, and everything should be done as quietly as possible. The dark lantern in itself is useful without the net. The light often so bewilders ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... rooks of the neighbourhood gathered into vast flocks and returned to roost in the woods of the Chace. But one winter afternoon there came on the most dense fog that had been known for a length of time, and a flock of rooks on their way as usual to the Chace stopped all night in a clump of trees on the farm ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... including Bohemia, into Federal States—viz., give them Home Rule—is exactly what Hungary wants, for she will then be head state of the Empire; not number two, as she is at present. Nothing would please her more than to see Austria broken up into a number of little States and Hungary ruling the roost. Well, these are my political remarks! It is a great blessing getting out of rifle fire, even for a minute. The constant strike of the bullets whirling round, or its scream as it ricochets over one's head, is very trying. ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... shyster doctor like Abrams with his advertisements all over the newspapers should sponge off you and your holiday! By golly! Mrs. Kaufman, just like Ruby says, how you let a whole houseful of old hens rule this roost it's ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... dark brown with the peaty earth which, well mixed with scattered bark, scantily covered the surface of its huge foundation rock. There was no pavement, and it was the less needed that the ways were rarely used by wheels of any description. The village was but a roost, like the dwellings of the sea birds which also ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... four appreciated to the full: a long, low room with a French window standing wide open to the garden just a step or two below. On the evening breeze wafted in the scent of mignonette and flowers, and the low sleepy clucking of the hens, about to go to roost. Near the window stood the table, with a silver kettle boiling merrily on its stand, and fruit and flowers and pretty china in abundance, all looking as dainty and tempting as heart could desire. There was an abundance too of more substantial fare, ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... illumination somewhat akin to full moonlight. Usually the planet Venus and a few stars shine out the while in the darkened heaven. Meantime around the observer animal and plant life behave as at nightfall. Birds go to roost, bats fly out, worms come to the surface of the ground, flowers close up. In the Norwegian eclipse of 1896 fish were seen rising to the surface of the water. When the total phase at length is over, and the moon in her progress across the sky has allowed ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... time), razeed his top-boots into seamen's shoes, and that he had his smock-frock reduced into a seaman's shirt. The soil hung upon him, he slouched over the deck, as if he were walking over the furrows of ploughed land, and looking up into the rigging, as if he saw a cock-pheasant at roost upon the rattlins. Moreover, he could talk of nothing else excepting "feyther," and "our Moll," and he really ate his bread (subintellige biscuit) moistened with his tears (if tears can moisten such flinty preparations), ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... tell you, w'y you kin tie me ter er tree an' whup me ef you wants ter, but I got ter tell you. Not laung ergo, I stole er chicken from yo' roost. An' now you ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... rarely frank; his passions, like Noah's dove, come home to roost. The fire, sensibility, and volume of his own nature, that is all that he has learned to recognise. The tumultuary and gray tide of life, the empire of routine, the unrejoicing faces of his elders, fill him with contemptuous surprise; there also he seems to ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... made was that he was to take no murderous action against his countrymen. The man at the helm and the quarter-master being the only men on deck, and I being gone to roost, all seemed easy enough, but ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... three fresh eggs to-day; one had dropped from the roost and frozen; it was cracked, but it will do for the ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... its volume is twice that of the Cosireni. The climate is very trying. The nights are hot. Insect pests are numerous. Mr. Heller found that "the forest was filled with annoying, though sting-less, bees which persisted in attempting to roost on the countenance of any human being available." On the banks of the Comberciato he found several families of savages. All the men were keen hunters and fishermen. Their weapons consisted of powerful bows made from the wood of a small palm and long arrows made of reeds and finished with ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... high-explosive shell or of fuses from every point of view, and showing greater disposition to worry over such points than to get the stuff into the field and to kill Germans with it. The technicalist, indeed, almost seemed to rule the roost, although this unfortunately did not lead to even reasonably good care being taken of war material that arrived in the country. The Russians had done wonders in respect to developing the port of Archangel; they had performed the miracle actually during the war. But if they had achieved a veritable ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... hen does he come across; they are suspicious, and roost out of reach. At last, half dead, he desires to drink, and sees a well with two pails on the chain; he descends in one of the pails, and finds it impossible to scramble out: he weeps for rage. The wolf, as a matter of course, comes that way, and they begin to talk. Though wanting very ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... change is mighty particular about the employment he accepts, so, although the lads hunted high and low, from early till late, they could not find suitable places, and after supper they returned to the "Golden Rule Hotel" to "roost" again in their bunks, surrounded by those occupied by ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... though alive, yet not a breath of air was stirring. His wonder at the beautiful spectacle was so great, that he ceased moving the paddle and drifted with the current toward the snowy looking tree. When opposite, he saw it was a roost for some sort of water fowl. He shouted and a cloud of white heron rose in the air ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... eagles for a roost In Rimini! The air is black with them. When go they hence? Wherever yon bird builds, The nest remains for ages. Have an eye, Or Malatesta's elephant ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... gittin' on in Ho'sford. He sed dat ebbery white man in de county 'cept about ten or twelve was inter it, an' dey wuz a gwine ter clean out nigger rule h'yer, shore. He sed de fust big thing they got on hand wuz ter break up dis buzzard-roost h'yer at Red Wing, an' he 'llowed dat wouldn't be no hard wuk kase dey'd got some pretty tough tings on Nimbus an" ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... get called in, he'll come home to roost like the rest of them," said Mr. Plimpton, cheerfully. "The people can't govern themselves,—only Bedloe doesn't know it. Some day he'll find ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... wondered if there were a notice posted up over the door forbidding plain ladies to enter. Two or three had yellow hair, yellower than mine, and Mrs. Ess Kay said they were actresses who always came back to New York in summer to wait for Things to turn up, just as chickens come home to roost; and that they were supposed ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the animals, and that they must thus inflict the most abominable tortures every day. What could be a sadder sight than a tiger in a cage, save it be a forest monkey climbing dispairingly up a barked stump, or an eagle chained to its roost? How can man be benefitted and made better by robbing the seal of its arctic ice, the hippopotamus of its soft wallow, the buffalo of its open range, the lion of its kingship, ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... and pretty, the philosopher watches with indescribable emotion and interest. What a number of pretty coquetries do the ladies perform, and into what pretty attitudes do they take care to fall! All the little children have been gathered up by the nursery-maids, and are taken down to roost below. Balmy sleep seals the eyes of many tired wayfarers, as you see in the case of the Russian nobleman asleep among the portmanteaus; and Titmarsh, who has been walking the deck for some time with a great mattress ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... should not be carelessly hung on the hat rack in the royal hall for the flies to roost upon, but it should be thoroughly cleaned and put away as soon as the weather becomes too hot ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... make up; they had to! There! Ma Sills certinly did rule the roost, and no mistake. She'd been a widder ever since the boys were a year old, so she had to do for herself and them, and she done it. She was a master hand; ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... ranged in our wagon yard. The next evening our cracker took a handful of his corn and passed innocent-like near a large, gentle hen, and dropping a few grains on into our shop quarters, the hen, following, was soon inside and the door was closed; and that hen failed to return home to roost. Uncle Tom was out at the time and never knew where that chicken came from. The next morning, when Uncle Tom was shown how thick the grease was on the pot, he said, "That sho' is a fat chicken." Then we told him if he had ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
... mother came home with a fat hen slung across her shoulders. She had been down to Farmer Green's hen- house, right in the middle of the night, when Farmer Green and his family were asleep; and she had snatched one of the sleeping hens off the roost and stolen away with ...
— The Tale of Tommy Fox • Arthur Scott Bailey
... ysope. and saueray. quinces. and peeres [1], garlek and Grapes. and fylle the gees erwith. and sowe the hole at no grece come out. and roost hem wel. and kepe the grece at fallith erof. take galytyne and grece and do in a possynet, whan the gees buth rosted ynowh; take an smyte hem on pecys. and at tat [2] is withinne and do it in a possynet and put erinne wyne if it be to thyk. do erto powdour of galyngale. powdour douce ...
— The Forme of Cury • Samuel Pegge
... human musical notation that will touch its depth. Yet it is a musical tone and a most goblin-like and eerie one. The partridge may be commonplace enough and his drumming but a strut of complacency and self-satisfaction. With patience and good luck I may see him doing it and follow him from his roost in the morning till he returns to it at night. But I cannot fathom the mystery which haunts the pasture in the genial melancholy of these sunny October days, to which his drum seems to ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... through eons on the surface of the world, where men loved and hated, bred and slew, triumphed and failed, lorded and cringed as had been the way since the beginning, when the cave man that handled the heavier knuckle-bone ruled the roost. But to the unphilosophic eye of the majority of mankind things seemed to change greatly in a very little while; and it seemed, therefore, to the superficial, that many things had happened in France and in Paris during the seventeen years that had elapsed since the fight in the ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... as though confirming a pleasant surprise. "Is it not strange," he said, "how genius will roost on any perch? It is true, then, that he is a person who offends your taste? That is bad. Tell me ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... echoed Buckheath darkly. "She won't have to. If Gray Stoddard marries Johnnie Consadine, you and me will just about roost in the penitentiary for the rest of ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... I was as sorry as anybody. I climbed down from my cormorant roost, and picked my way between the alleys of aromatic piled lumber in order to avoid the press, and cursed the little gods heartily for undue partiality in the wrong direction. In this manner I happened on Jimmy Powers himself seated dripping ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... said to Confucius, How dost thou still find roosts to roost on, Ch'iu, unless by ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... right to expect it to be. A dish on which the hostess had evidently striven to use her best art was of orange mushrooms in a sauce of verjuice; but the substantial one was a roast fowl—an unfortunate bird that was just going to roost with an easy mind, when my coming upset the arrangements of the inn and the poultry house. One fowl, at all events, had had good reason to think it was an ill wind that blew me ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... in Pamlico Sound I once got some fishermen to cover me with sand and sea-shells, and in that way managed to get a close view of {17} the large flocks of Cormorants that came there to roost every night. The island was small and perfectly barren, and any other method of attempted ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... we went down to the beach to bathe. The trees along the shore were occupied by immense crowds of exemplary sea-fowl, whose regular and primitive habits of life had sent them to roost at this early hour. Notwithstanding their webbed feet, they managed to perch securely among the branches, many of which were so heavily freighted, that they bent almost to ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... thrushes sang, jays called, wood-pigeons uttered the old familiar notes in the little copse hard by. Even a heron went over now and then, and in the evening from the window I could hear partridges calling each other to roost. ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... he turned about, all bristling, and went too. He went straight up to, and through, the wood, disturbing in clouds the starlings, who had just come in to roost in the rhododendrons, so that they rose with a rushing of wings like the voice of a thunder-shower on forest leaves, and incidentally drenched the cat with a deluge of raindrops collected in the ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... his story, begins by showing the doomed fox more than a little "failed"—the shadow of fate dwelling coldly beforehand on him. He is badly mauled at the opening (though, it is true, he takes vengeance for it) by monks whose hen-roost he is robbing, and when he meets Coart the hare, sur son destrier, with a vilain whom he has captured (this is a mark of lateness, some of the verisimilitude of the early time having been dropped), he plays him no tricks. Nay, when Isengrim and he begin to play chess he is ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... him to yield himself up, and bow his will? And was not God striving with him now, in the anxieties which gnawed at his heart, and in his dread of the morrow? Was He not trying to teach him how crime always comes home to roost, with a brood of pains running behind it? Was not the weird duel in the brooding stillness a disclosure, which would more and more possess his soul as the night passed on, of a Presence which in silence strove with him, and only desired to overcome ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... as if trimmed by the gardener's art. In the pastures on Nobscot Hill and its spurs, they make fine dark shadows when the sun is low. They are also an excellent covert from hawks for many small birds that roost and build in them. Whole flocks perch in them at night, and I have seen three robins' nests in one which was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... "We'll have to roost here, sir, all night. There's no getting out of this cutting, nohow. Thank you, sir; I'll see ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... get big enough to roost in the fall, I expect we'll have to gather that crop with a gun," Hiram ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... son Willie, this night, This ae night wi' me; The best hen in a' my roost Sall be well ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... companion of Aeneas, whose form was assumed by Neptune in luring Palinuras the helmsman from his roost ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... at country people for beating the chickens to roost. But what are you going to do when going to bed is the most fascinating diversion available after supper? I've noticed that as fast as a small town man discovers something else to do in the evening, ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... table fingering things in such a dainty way, that I'd have her at the head of my table in a fine, new house, or bust a trace. I'm to come out again next Sunday. In the mean time I'm going to try to think up some way to choke that old pair of hens off my roost." ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... last two years, from adding to the heavy tax which casual visitors began to levy upon the quiet hours of the host. Ten years ago, when Mr. Irving was in his best estate of health and spirits, when his mood was of the sunniest, and Wolfert's Roost was in the spring-time of its charms, it was my fortune to pass a few days there with my wife. Mr. Irving himself drove a snug pair of ponies down to the steamboat to meet us—(for, even then, Thackeray's "one old horse" was not the only ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... roosting 'midst his feather'd dames, Now lifts his beak and snuffs the morning air, Stretches his neck and claps his heavy wings, Gives three hoarse crows, and glad his talk is done; Low, chuckling, turns himself upon the roost, Then nestles down again amongst his mates. The lab'ring hind, who on his bed of straw, Beneath his home-made coverings, coarse, but warm, Lock'd in the kindly arms of her who spun them, Dreams of the gain that next year's crop should bring; Or at some fair ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... and as many sets of hens, the boy cultivates the fighting qualities of the cocks by keeping them around together, and not letting them forget each other. The turkeys—strange birds! so tender in youth a spring rain kills them, so tough in age they roost in the tree-tops in winter, and come down o' mornings covered with frozen sleet and looking as if they enjoyed it—are objects of no interest to the boy; but for the geese he has a kindness, not because they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... coming to see why Manuello doesn't show up with the cows," remarked the Captain, "we don't want to stir up this hen roost as we've got other chicken to ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... our housekeeper, and, to tell the plain truth, madame, we have lived nicely, although money was scarce, since she ruled the roost. Ah, these ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... kitchen chair to Cis; and when she was seated, got the wood box and set it on its side. "Come and roost along with me," he bade Johnnie, the single eye under the wet-combed, tawny bang smiling almost ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... to roost. My attitude of indifference and coldness toward my fellow citizens had been misinterpreted, as it deserved to be. George Taylor was right when he said ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... neighbour hard by—a good man, and, to say truth, a good neighbour—though he was carried off from his allegiance in the late times by a d—d Presbyterian scoundrel, who calls himself a parson, and whom I hope to fetch down from his perch presently, with a wannion to him! He has been cock of the roost long enough.—There are rods in pickle to switch the Geneva cloak with, I can tell the sour-faced rogues that much. But this child is the daughter of Bridgenorth—neighbour Bridgenorth, of ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... you could be as proud as Cuffy an' exhibit 'em at the County Fair! They'd give yer prizes for size an' numbers an' speed, I guess! Why, say, they're real crowded for room—the plants ain't give 'em enough leaves to roost on! Have you ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... through the old house for the last time, sniffing the agreeable odor of aged hypo still permeating the dark room, re-covering the empty stains of skins and traces of maps on the walls, and re-filling in my mind the vacant shelves. The vampires had returned to their chosen roost, the martins still swept through the corridors, and as I went down the hill, a moriche oriole sent a silver shaft of song after me from the sentinel palm, just as he had greeted ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... York every two weeks to see a show,' says the farmer, hanging up the receiver. 'I catch the eighteen-hour flyer at Indianapolis, spend ten hours in the heyday of night on the Yappian Way, and get home in time to see the chickens go to roost forty-eight hours later. Oh, the pristine Hubbard squasherino of the cave-dwelling period is getting geared up some for the annual meeting of the Don't-Blow-Out-the-Gas Association, don't you ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... Among other things, the farmer raised turkeys for the market and, although the season was late, there were a few birds left for seed. I went out to the barn with a lantern and picked the plumpest gobbler I could find off the roost, and an hour later had him in the oven. This was at eight o'clock in the evening. While he was baking I canvassed the old farmer's wardrobe. I'd grown like a mushroom those last years and, though I was only sixteen, ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... desolation; but the current was not so strong, so we turned round, seeing the flood was going down, and by nightfall we had got back to where the house had stood. Every vestige of the once pretty homestead had disappeared, with sheep and cattle, though the fowls had managed to find a roost on the topmost branches of some orange trees, which alone ...
— True Stories of Wonderful Deeds - Pictures and Stories for Little Folk • Anonymous
... be as devoted to his country as they were. For years now his life had been without blemish. It was impossible to believe that even in his youth he could have sown any wild oats; terrible to think that these wild oats might now be coming home to roost. ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... himself a home, where he could pursue his calling undisturbed, and indulge the sweets of domestic and rural life, which of all things lay nearest his heart. And these two undertakings compelled him to be diligent with his pen to the end of his life. The spot he chose for his "Roost" was a little farm on the bank of the river at Tarrytown, close to his old Sleepy Hollow haunt, one of the loveliest, if not the most picturesque, situations on the Hudson. At first he intended nothing more than a summer retreat, inexpensive ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... last dinner here. To-morrow the four of us turn our faces toward the most beautiful spot this side of Heaven, home. The happy runaways to Nebraska, Jack and I to the little roost ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... on murd'ring errands toil'd, Lone from your savage homes exiled, The blood-stained roost, and sheep-cote spoiled My heart forgets, While pitiless the tempest ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... comparative secrecy of the inquisitorial chamber he could easily pretend that he had originally made an honest mistake and was no longer positive of the defendant's identity, in which case when the grand jury threw out the case nobody would ever know the reason and no chickens would come home to roost on him. ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... black-hearted rogue and vagabond. I have passed an hour with you. Oh! believe me, I feel myself disgraced! And you have eaten and drunk at my table. But now I am sick at your presence; the day has come, and the night-bird should be off to his roost. Will ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were—very few people will tell the tale of the valley of hobgoblins, or probably cannot! In the Pilgrim's Progress itself, the unreality of the spirits of fear, their secrecy and leniency, is very firmly and wittily told. They scream in their dens, sitting together, I have thought, like fowls in a roost. They come padding after the pilgrim, they show themselves obscurely, swollen by the mist at the corners of the road. They give the sense of being banded together in a numerous ambush, they can deceive eye and ear, and even nose with noisome stenches; but they cannot show ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... etiquette at these small drawing-rooms. People came and went at pleasure. The window embrasures became the roost of happy couples; at the great chimney the talkers mostly congregated, each full-charged with scandal; and down at the farther end the gamblers gambled. It was towards this point that Otto moved, not ostentatiously, but ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... expressive and beautiful. There is an eloquent charm which, while it touches the chords of truth, makes the heart respond to the tale. The raven would find sufficient for its carnivorous appetite in the floatage of the animal remains, on the briny flood, and would return to roost on the ark; but it was far different with Noah's bird, so long as the waters prevailed, there could be no pause for her weary wing, and the messenger would return to the ark. So soon, however, as the subsidence of the waters had permitted the olive to emerge, a sprig ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various
... the road so little used; spring was early here, and the boughs were getting quite dense already. How pleasant to see the broad red moon go up behind the feathery branches, and listen to the evensong of the thrush, just departing to roost, and leaving the field clear for the woodlark all night. There were a few sounds from the village, a lowing of cows, and the noise of the boys at play; but they were so tempered down by the distance, that they only added to the ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... of the indefatigable interpreter. I have seen people packed into this space like herrings in a barrel, and many merry evenings prolonged there until five bells, when the lights were ruthlessly extinguished and all must go to roost. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... She kissed Horney, and hugged her calf in the adjoining stall; and as they crossed the haggard, Philip carrying the pail, she scattered great handfuls of oats to a cock and his two hens as they cackled their way to roost. ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... placed in the balance to her credit. She was condemned as a selfish criminal, with no account taken of motives. Was it for herself she forged? Was it for herself she lied, when her sin came home to roost? Was it through any lack of love for Dick that she allowed the foul slander to besmirch his memory, when everybody had believed him dead? No, a ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... dey started on uncle Alex again. Yes sir, dat's de way turkey buzzards does. Dey pukes on folks to keep dem away, and you can't go near kaise it be's so nasty; but dem buzzards don't waste nothing. Little young buzzards looks like down till dey gits over three days old. You can go to a buzzard roost and see for yourself, but you sho better stay out'n de way of de old buzzard's puke. Dey sets around de little ones and keeps everything ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... well av it worn't Stiff, for ye've no reason to be proud o't," observed Larry O'Dowd, with a grin; "don't spake so loud, man, but shut up yer potatie trap and go to roost. Ye'll need it all if ye wouldn't like to fall behind to-morrow. There now, don't reply; ye've no call to make me yer father confessor, and apologise for boastin'; good night, an' ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... the roost. It's one of the few places in the world where a government of labor has been instituted. And yet, I'm wondering the noo if those labor leaders in Australia have reckoned on one or twa things I think of? They're a' ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... six weeks these woods will be mine, and hang me, if I don't shoot every bird that has roost in them! Then, Miss Helen Armstrong, you'll not feel in such conceit with yourself. It will be different when you haven't a roof over your head". So good-bye, sweetheart! Good-bye ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... on Still Water Creek, De Niggers grows up some ten or twelve feet. Dey goes to bed but dere hain't no use, Caze deir feet sticks out fer de chickens t' roost. ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... in our garden in Bailleul one evening at the end of April reading "The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne," three aeroplanes like great birds volplaned slowly down from the clouds—coming home to roost—until they were within 100 feet of the ground, just clearing the house tops as they dropped into their nesting ground on the other side of the town. I could ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... and wistful, with reflections of islands and reeds, mysteriously still. Rose-coloured clouds descended, revealing many new and beautiful mountain forms, every pass and every crest distinguishable. It was the hour when the cormorants come home to roost, and he saw three black specks flying low about the glittering surface; rising from the water, they alighted with a flutter of wings on the corner wall of what remained of Castle Hag, 'and they will sleep there ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... Office, on the suicidal behaviour of the Military Censor. In South Africa, my Chief of the Staff's latchkey let many a clandestine tit-bit slip through to keep interest alive in England. K. regularly, when the mails came back to roost, went for me, but the messages had got home and done their duty as good little tit-bits should. The B.P. cannot work up the full steam of their war energy when the furnaces of their enthusiasms are systematically damped down; shut off from any breath from outside. Your ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... For while in summer the shadows on some vine-covered porch swallowed the lovers, in winter the stairs were generally the trysting-place—and the top step the one most sought—because there was nobody behind to see. This was the roost for which Kate and Harry scampered, and there they intended to sit until the ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... send across the road to me in the night, a crown will be ready for the messenger.' In the same spirit, he walked up and down outside the iron gate for the best part of an hour, with some solicitude; occasionally looking in between the bars, as if he had laid a dove in a high roost in a cage of lions, and had it on his mind that she might ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... aware of this, and made preparations to combat the difficulty in front; two crawled under the seats, and two more went up on the racks, where they lay quiet as mice, stretched out at full length and covered over with several khaki overcoats. One man, a brisk Cockney, who would not deign to roost or crawl, took up his position as far away as possible from the ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... For Marten's read Martins' [the name is wrongly spelt in the "Origin of Species."]) experiments on seeds "in a box in the actual sea.") that my observations on the effects of sea-water have been confirmed. I still suspect that the legs of birds which roost on the ground may be an efficient means; but I was interrupted when going to make trials on this subject, and have never ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... subsided into the shade; the awkward squads are in bed; even the loungers are gone, the fan-flirting Spanish ladies, the sallow black-eyed children, and the trim white-jacketed dandies. A fife is heard from some craft at roost on the quiet waters somewhere; or a faint cheer from yonder black steamer at the Mole, which is about to set out on some night expedition. You forget that the town is at all like Wapping, and deliver yourself up entirely to romance; the sentries look noble pacing there, silent in the ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... informing his companions that the lady approaching them was not to be sneezed at in any particular whatever, as she ruled the roost of Piney Cove, and had, everybody said, laid up lots of rocks; besides, as for cooking—well, he said nothing, it was not necessary; they would see what Clorinda was in that line when the supper came on. She had learned down South where people knew ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... nuisance to live anywhere. I was born to be a bird—to roost on trees." I had considerable difficulty in disentangling the words from his thick speech. He shut his eyes—then opened ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... that flowering prairie. In the morning we could hear the clear call of the prairie chickens. I used to love to hear it. There were great flocks of them and millions of passenger pigeons. Their call of "pigie! pigie!" was very companionable on that lonely prairie. Sometimes when they were flying to roost they would darken the sun, there were such numbers of them. Geese and ducks were very numerous, too. Black birds were so thick they were a menace to the growing crops. I used to shoot them when I was ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... barge, as I have said, above Assmannshausen, probably at night, and then cross directly over the river. The first castle with which I intend to deal is that celebrated robber's roost, Rheinstein, standing two hundred and sixty feet above the water. Disembarking about a league up the river from Rheinstein, before daybreak we will all lie concealed in the forest within sight of the Castle gates. When the sun is well risen, Captain Blumenfels will navigate his boat down the ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... her; she felt that there was a void somewhere or other, an empty place provocative of yawns. Her life dragged on, devoid of occupation, and successive days only brought back the same monotonous hours. Tomorrow had ceased to be; she lived like a bird: sure of her food and ready to perch and roost on any branch which she came to. This certainty of food and drink left her lolling effortless for whole days, lulled her to sleep in conventual idleness and submission as though she were the prisoner of her trade. Never going out except to drive, she was losing ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... sky became greenish and murky, merging into a vast tent of deepest blue studded with a myriad of shining golden stars. Then the eider-ducks and swans grew silent and went to roost for the night, and the soft warm air was thrilled by the whines of bear-cubs and the cries of land-rails. It was then that the maidens assembled on the slope to sing of Lada and to dance their ancient dances, ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... on the brows of Ben-Connal, He kens of his bed in a sweet mossy hame; The eagle that soars o'er the cliffs of Clan-Ronald, Unawed and unhunted his eyrie can claim; The solan can sleep on the shelve of the shore, The cormorant roost on his rock of the sea, But, ah! there is one whose hard fate I deplore, Nor house, ha', nor hame in his country has he: The conflict is past, and our name is no more— There 's nought left but ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... lot with the Burgdalers, and they were exceeding merry; and especially the women of them, they were chattering like the stares in the autumn evening, when they gather from the fields in the tall elm-trees before they go to roost. ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... but the beds were made, and Christo the cook (who was a capital fellow for speed in preparing a dinner) was enveloped in savoury steam, when the usual inmates of the hut quietly invaded us. Cocks and hens marched in, and went to roost upon some sticks within a corner; two or three dogs arrived, evidently with the intention of staying through the night; a donkey at length walked composedly through the entrance door and steered for ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... your charity and your allegories," says the wife angrily; "I tell you they are my relations, not yours, and they shall not roost here; they shall ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... are, no doubt you know, To which a fox is used; A rooster that is bound to crow, A crow that's bound to roost, And whichsoever he espies He tells ...
— The Best Nonsense Verses • Various
... their regular traders used to meet monthly; but it was necessary, for purposes of effect, that the dreary sublimities of Shetland should be wrought up into the same piece of rich tissue with the imposing antiquities of Orkney,—Sumburgh Head and Roost with the ancient Cathedral of St. Magnus and the earl's palace, and Fitful Head and the sand-enveloped kirk of St. Ringan with the Standing Stones of Stennis and the Dwarfie Stone of Hoy; and so the little jury-court probabilities have been sacrificed ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... constant daylight, and the effect which it always has upon the system, until accustomed to it, of depriving one of the inclination to go to roost at regular hours, told upon us, and often have I found myself returning from five hours' work, chasing, shooting, and pulling a boat, just as the boatswain's mates were piping "stow hammocks!" That I was not singular, ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... laughed the other officer, "this is a feather out of your cap. I thought your fellows had cleared out every hen-roost within ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... the babies, and undoubtedly would destroy every one within a few moments. All the weasel family, to which the polecat belongs, kill for the pure joy of killing, and in China one such animal will entirely depopulate a hen-roost in ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... China shop"? You remember, sir, that "intelligent contraband" who, when asked his opinion of an offending white brother, delicately hinted his distrust by replying: "Sar, if I was a chicken, and that man was about, I should take care to roost high." Well, all that we can say of China is, that for a long time she "roosted high"—withdrew suspiciously into her own civilization to escape the rough contact with the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... low-growing branches. Underneath this embodied spirit of night galloped the dog, filling the woods with barks, leaping high into the air, his teeth snapping and clicking like castanets. In the edge of a straw field looked down upon by stars he rushed a covey on the roost. One struck against a tree and came chirping down. Dan leaped upon him. His hunger satisfied, he tramped a pile of leaves into a ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... similar to that of the thought-form he generated, is thrown into respondent vibrations, and suffers the destructive effects he had intended to cause to another. Thus "curses [and blessings] come home to roost." From this arise also the very serious effects of hating or suspecting a good and highly-advanced man; the thought-forms sent against him cannot injure him, and they rebound against their projectors, shattering them mentally, morally, or physically. Several ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... you get home, do you yourself ask her whom she loves. But remember this—if it should chance that she should say that it is you, you must be prepared to bear the burden, whatever may be urged to the contrary at the vicarage. And now we will retire to roost ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... praised Nora. "I like it ever so much better than Jessica's, Anne's or mine. I can't blame you for wanting to dress up in it beforehand. I take back all my croaking. Here's hoping good luck will roost ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... cradle," growl'd another; "and times enough I've told 'n: 'Cap'n,' says I, 'there's no sense o' proportions about ye.' A master mind, sirs, but 'a 'll be hang'd for a hen-roost, so sure ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... the west snapped asunder suddenly, and a single forked flame shot above the jagged pines and went out in the dove-coloured clouds. In a huge oak beyond the rail fence there was a harsh rustling of wings where a flock of buzzards settled to roost. ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... don't make mo' honey dan he want. Kwishins on mule's foots done gone out er fashun. Pigs dunno w'at a pen's fer. Possum's tail good as a paw. Dogs don't bite at de front gate. Colt in de barley-patch kick high. Jay-bird don't rob his own nes'. Pullet can't roost too high for de owl. Meat fried 'fo' day won't las' twel night. Stump water won't kyo' de gripes. De howlin' dog know w'at he sees. Blin' hoss don't fall w'en he follers de bit. Hongry nigger won't w'ar his maul out. Don't fling away de empty wallet. Black-snake ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... their nestling for a certain length of time, till at last the youngsters started off to forage on their own account, and the family, as a family, broke up. From habit, however, or from good will, the youngsters kept coming back to roost on the branches beside the nest, and remained on the most friendly, though easy-going, relations with ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Now louder in one place, now lower in another, like the combinations of orchestral music, the constant mass of sound was hardly varied for a moment. And loud above all this hurly-burly I could hear the changeful voices of the Roost and the intermittent roaring of the Merry Men. At that hour there flashed into my mind the reason of the name that they were called. For the noise of them seemed almost mirthful, as it out-topped ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wren, a magpie, a cuckoo, and a wag-tail. But the old continental hen has now set so long, that we conclude that her eggs are addled, and incubation frustrated. During all this time, the Gallick cock is on his roost at Elba, with his head under ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... held sway; the manner and metre of Pope or Thomson ruled the roost of singing fowl. In the main it had done its work, and the bulk of fresh things conceived in it were dull and imitative, even though occasionally, as in the poems of Johnson himself and of Goldsmith, an author arose who was able to infuse sincerity and emotion into ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... started it, Abe, was me when I went down to Madison Street and give Uncle Mosha that cigar, Abe. I tell you, Abe, it's an old saying and a true one: Throw away a loaf of bread in the water, y'understand, and sooner or later, Abe, it would come home like chickens to roost." ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... of the whip-poor-will from the hillside, the boding cry of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech owl, or the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle came winging his blundering flight ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... in an inconsistency!" he answered. "I've been afraid, though, that this desire to roost in one place was a sign ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... sounds of music. It might have been a phonograph playing in one of the summer cabins with names like Polly Ann Roost and Patches and Seventh Heaven, but to Kimmy it was the hated cry of the Father of Therns calling the dreadful Plant Men to their feast of victims borne into this Valley ...
— The Hills of Home • Alfred Coppel
... Barbesieur, trying to look amiable, "pray don't be so concise. Tell me the condition of the marquis, at once: I did not come to this old owl's roost for pastime. I came to see what could be done to restore its unhappy lord to reason. That you are observing, I remember; you proved it by the good care you took ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... run at the person she supposed the dog barked at, and try to bite him by the heels. Sometimes she would attempt to feed with the dog; but this the dog, who treated his faithful companion with indifference, would not suffer. This bird would not go to roost with the others at night, unless driven by main force; and when in the morning they were turned into the field, she would never stir from the yard gate, but sit there the whole day in sight of the dog. At length orders were given that she should no longer be molested; ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... grove upon the top of a hill overlooking the city of Bombay and the sea, surrounded by a high, ugly wall, are the so-called Towers of Silence, upon which these hideous birds can always be seen, waiting for their feast. They roost upon palm trees in the neighborhood, and, often in their flight, drop pieces of human flesh from their beaks or their talons, which lie rotting in the fields below. An English lady driving past the Towers of Silence was naturally horrified when the ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... reward was pilfering, and a crown put into her hand, gave her less pleasure than a halfpenny which she had stolen. Neither was it any use to dream of ruling her as the sole male, or as the proud master of the hen roost, for which of them, no matter how broad shouldered he was, would have been capable of it? Some had tried to vanquish her, but ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... among the rocks, the cocks and hens perched on the frame of the tent, and the geese and ducks chose to roost in a marsh, covered with bushes, near the sea. We prepared for our rest; we loaded all our arms, then offered up our prayers together, thanking God for his signal mercy to us, and commending ourselves ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... sleepy one; so, if you please, I'll go to roost." And thus there was nothing more said about ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... out of the question, and each one of them realized it. Their only safe course, indeed, was to remain hidden as they were in that cover till the night came again, when, tramp-like, they would take to the road once more, and, tramp-like, might rob some hen-roost to provide a meal for the morrow. Yet it was hard, and became harder still as the hours went by, to put up without even those scanty meals which had ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... see this clearly. I have a great mind to send Blacas over to Stowe. I can trust to him to look to the crates and coops, and to see that the pheasants have enough of air and water, and that the Governor of Calais finds a commodious place for them to roost in, forbidding the drums to beat and disturb them, evening or morning. The next night, according to my calculation, they repose at Montreuil. I must look at them before they are let loose. I cannot ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... when I had forgotten them, the Admiral sent for me. It was to show me, now without emotion, the two little visitors who had gone to roost in his room, perched upon a slender silken cord above his bed. They nestled closely together, two little balls of feathers, touching and almost merged one in the other, and slept without the slightest fear, sure of our pity. And those little Belgians sleeping side by side ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... up on the barn, sot down on the ridgepole and waited for Kingdom Come. He sot there and tooted all mornin' and 'spected the angel Gabriel would answer back. He sot there and tooted all the arternoon till the cows come home and the chickens went to roost. I had three good square meals that day, but Silas didn't get a bite. 'Bout six o'clock I did think of takin' him out some doughnuts, but then I decided if he was goin' up so soon it was no use a wastin' em, so I put 'em back in the pantry. He sot there and tooted all the evenin' ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... muttered running-fire of the most horrible execrations that I ever listened to even in this hard-swearing country. Whether this ebullition of blasphemy comforted him at the moment I cannot say; but, if "curses come home to roost," a black brood was hatched that night, unless one whole page be blotted out from the register ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... a rule Aren't looked on as man-killers, and although I'd rather be the beast that sleeps the sleep Under it all, his door sealed up and lost, Than the man fighting it to keep above it, Yet think of the small birds at roost and not In nests. Shall I be counted less than they are? Their bulk in water would be frozen rock In no time out to-night. And yet to-morrow They will come budding boughs from tree to tree Flirting their wings and saying Chickadee, As if not knowing ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... the gloom of semi-darkness over the scene. Spasmodic bursts of lightning laid thin dull, unearthly flares upon the desolate land, and the rumble of apple-carts filled the ear with promise of disaster. The chickens had gone to roost; several cows, confined in a pen surrounded by the customary stockade of poles driven deep into the earth and lashed together with the bark of the sturdy elm, were huddled in front of a rude shed; a number of squealing, grunting pigs nosed the cracks in ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... sat a Japanese fireman, wrapped up in his cloak, keeping watch against fires. He looked unpleasantly like a Bulgarian atrocity or a Burmese 'deviation from the laws of humanity,' being very still and all huddled up in his roost. That was a superb picture and it arranged itself to admiration. Now, disregarding these things and others—wonders and miracles all—men are content to sit in studios and, by light that is not light, to fake subjects from pots and pans and rags and bricks that are called 'pieces of colour.' ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... understand how people can habitually take Turks in bad part; Mohammed had his good points; respect for the inventor of seraglios with houris and paradises with odalisques! Let us not insult Mohammedanism, the only religion which is ornamented with a hen-roost! Now, I insist on a drink. The earth is a great piece of stupidity. And it appears that they are going to fight, all those imbeciles, and to break each other's profiles and to massacre each other in the heart of summer, in the month of June, when they might go off with a creature on their ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... work. Ye shall have gay holyday times, and holyday fare, and anything the old man can do, and anything the old man can give to make you merry, he will do, and he will give, because you have come back gallantly, and have not brought dishonour to the roost where ye were hatched—but more than this I will not agree to. Ye would not abide at home, as I desired, and this therefore is no longer a home for you; ye would not be content to be forgers of weapons, but ye must e'en use them too, and ye have ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... alleged date of his shipwreck, and as they have two hundred additional feast days they have just one hundred and sixty-four days left for their regular business—loafing. They have novel names for their hotels and saloons,—the "Sea and Land Hotel," "The Pirates' Roost" saloon, the "Quick Fire" lunch-room, "The Englishers' Chop-House," and "The Camel's Drink," are some examples. Not from greed, but purely out of curiosity, mind you, we tested the latter, and it would have taken three of what they gave us to make a regular ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... of a minute species of fly, which, without stinging, is nevertheless productive of no little annoyance. The tameness of the birds and lizards is as nothing when compared to the fearless confidence of this insect. He will perch upon one of your eye-lashes, and go to roost there if you do not disturb him, or force his way through your hair, or along the cavity of the nostril, till you almost fancy he is resolved to explore the very brain itself. On one occasion I was so inconsiderate as to yawn while a number of them were hovering around me. I never repeated ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... feeds well, bekase he's the cock o' the roost; but the poor Naygurs are not overly well fed, and the critters are up to their knees in wather all day, washing di'monds; so they suffer much from rheumatiz and colds. Och, but it's murther entirely; an' I've more than wance felt inclined to fill their pockets with di'monds and set them all free! ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... ears, which, by bunging up these apertures, were supposed to keep his ghost in the body till his friends had got a good start away from him. As a further precaution they lit fires and put bushes in the forks of trees, with the idea that the ghost would roost in the bushes and warm himself at the fires, while they were hastening away.[224] Here, therefore, we see that the real motive for kindling fires for the use of the dead is fear, not affection. In this respect the burial customs of the tribes at the Herbert River are still ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... into the station of the little seaport town. It was late, as always at this turning-point of the season, when the summer population was changing its roost from sea to mountain or from the north to the south shore. Falkner, glancing anxiously along the line of cars for a certain figure, said again to himself, 'If she shouldn't come—at the last moment!' and ashamed of his doubt, replied, ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... nuthin' to do but work. Dere were eight slaves on de place in slavery time. Clabber branch run into Swift Creek. Lord have mercy, I have caught many a fish on dat branch. I also piled brush in de winter time. Birds went in de brush ter roost. Den we went bird blindin'. We had torches made o' lightwood splinters, and brushes in our han's, we hit de piles o' brush after we got 'round 'em. When de birds come out we would kill 'em. Dere were lots o' birds den. We ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... windows of Cedar House. He glanced at her chamber window before seeing that she stood on the grass by the front door, giving the swan bits of bread from her fingers while the jealous birds, forgetting to go to roost, watched and scolded from the low branches overhead. But she had seen him a long way off and looked ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... all right," nodded Flanders, "but then it's happened the same way with others I could tell about. As long as he was winnin' Sandy was the king of any roost. The minute he lost a fight he wasn't worth so many pounds of salt pork. Take a hoss; a fine hoss is often jest the same. Long as it wins nothin' can touch some of them blooded boys. But let 'em go under ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... started by rotting the other fellow's eggs and he finished by souring my milk. I wanted justice and I got it, but I didn't recognize it when it landed on me with all four feet. Chickens come home to roost, and my pigeons had found a nesting-place on my anatomy; and the spot they had chosen ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... him Camorak went. And when at last they climbed from the third valley, and stood on the hill's summit in the golden sunlight of evening, their aged eyes saw only miles of forest and the birds going to roost. ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... everything he owned except what he had on. Lanier was not much better off. As to the origin of the fire, Bob merely said that he had turned the lights low in the sitting-room, and, obedient to "Shoe's" orders, had gone up to his roost, too wrathful and amazed over what had occurred even to think of sleep—to think, in fact, of anything but the colonel's words. So absorbed was he, as he slowly undressed, he never noted the sounds from below until his room of a sudden seemed filled with smoke, and, throwing open ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... does he come across; they are suspicious, and roost out of reach. At last, half dead, he desires to drink, and sees a well with two pails on the chain; he descends in one of the pails, and finds it impossible to scramble out: he weeps for rage. The ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... have sent out colonies to the other churches and campi of Venice. They have crossed the Grand Canal, and roost and croon among the volutes of the Salute, or, in wild weather, wheel high and airly above its domes. They have even found their way to Malamocco and Mazzorbo; so that all Venice in the sea owns ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... the intruder was, by producing a wild flutter and a frantic cackling! Before my companion could strike a light the mysterious attack was fully explained. The supposed midnight robber and possible assassin was simply a peaceable hen that had gone to roost on my arm, and, on finding her position unsteady, had dug her claws into what she mistook for ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... don't know," replied Bill. "I tell you what, Frank, if it wasn't for being cock of the roost myself, I should wish that Stewart headed this watch now. What fine times we used to have, eh?—but he has altered as well as the times—how odd he has acted by spells ever since we got that packet at Malta. I'm d—d if I don't ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... particular morning Dan was plainly inclined to rebel. He had had time to grow sore over the things that Felicity had said to him when Jimmy Patterson was thought lost, and he began the day with a flatly expressed determination that he was not going to let Felicity rule the roost. ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... feet from tip to tip of the wings, or about the size of a large Rhode Island turkey. Employing these birds for the removal of refuse is a remedy almost as bad as the disease, since the habits of the huge, ungainly, ill-omened creatures are extremely disgusting. Clouds of them roost upon the eaves of the houses, the church belfries, and all exposed balconies, and would invade the patios of the dwellings were they not vigorously driven away and thus taught better manners. The cathedral facade on ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... the shape of an aasvogel which was nearly twice as big as any of the others. This was what the Boers and the natives call the "king vulture," one of which goes with every flock. He it is who rules the roost and also the carcase, which without his presence and permission none dare to attack. Whether this vile fowl is of a different species from the others, or whether he is a bird of more vigorous growth and constitution that has outgrown the rest and thus become their overlord, is more than I can ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... the continuous plunge of a cascade somewhere near at hand among the mountains. The air struck chill, but tasted good and vigorous in the nostrils - a fine, dry, old mountain atmosphere. I was dead sleepy, but I returned to roost with a grateful mountain ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... birdmen (war correspondentese for flying officers) tire of trying to be offensive on a patrol, and by now we are varying our rubber-neck searchings with furtive glances at the time, in the hopes that the watch-hands may be in the home-to-roost position. At length the leader heads for the lines, and the lords of the air (more war correspondentese) forget their high estate and ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... Ray was a man-size man. When he was working downtown his mind did not take temporary refuge in the thought of the feverish little apartment to which he was to return at night. It wasn't a place to come back to, except for sleep. A roost. Bedding for the night. As permanent-seeming ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... very shy and cunning; as is well known, they nearly always post a sentinel in some tree top to keep watch while the rest of the flock is feeding in the field below. In the fall and winter, large numbers of them flock, and at night all roost in one piece of woods; some of the "crow roosts" are of vast extent and contain thousands of individuals. Crows nest near the tops of large trees, preferably pines, either in woods or single trees in ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... Dowthwaite made himself unpleasant about his broken wall, the Askews turned the grouse back, and then I found the Allerby cottage children, ransacking Redmire Wood when the pheasants were going to roost." ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... the Emperor with sword and counsel in field or Diet, and thereby win fame and honour such as can scarce be gained by carrying prey to yon eagle roost." ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thoroughly acquainted; and, truth to tell, he proved himself as great a thief as he was a genealogist among them. Many a time the unfortunate foxes from some neighboring cover were cursed and banned, when, if the truth had been known, the only fox that despoiled the roost was Raymond-na-hattha. One thing, however, was certain, that unless the cock was thoroughly game he might enjoy his liberty and ease long enough without molestation from Raymond. We had well nigh forgotten to say that he wore on the right side of ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... similar remark to Charles II. when he noticed a construction near Shoreditch: and the story of the man who complained that the chicken brought up for his dinner had only one leg, and was told to go and look into the roost-house, is to be found in an old Turkish jest-book of the fifteenth century. When Byron said of Southey's poems that "they would be read when Homer and Virgil were forgotten—but not till then," he was no doubt repeating what Porson said of Sir Richard Blackmore's. "Most literary ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... alarm of the plover rings over the plain—"Did he do it?"—the bird's harsh cry speaks these words as plainly as a human being. This alarm is a certain warning that some beast is stalking abroad which has disturbed it from its roost, but presciently it is ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... all the rooks of the neighbourhood gathered into vast flocks and returned to roost in the woods of the Chace. But one winter afternoon there came on the most dense fog that had been known for a length of time, and a flock of rooks on their way as usual to the Chace stopped all night in a clump of trees on the farm a mile from the roosting-place. This the oldest labourer ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... by the clock They roost upon or quit their rock, Or swim ashore and hold their levee, Lords of the mixed lacustrine bevy; Or with their slow unwieldy gait Their green domain perambulate, Or with prodigious flaps and prances Indulge in their peculiar dances, Returning to their feeding-ground What time the keeper ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... had been wounded by the events of the evening, "I didn't cut no el'phant ner no cow, ner rob no hen roost neither, but I guess he won't starve 'fore mornin'," and with that he proceeded to fill up the stove and shut ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... or the railroad. From Tunnel Hill I could look into the gorge by which the railroad passed through a straight and well-defined range of mountains, presenting sharp palisade faces, and known as "Rocky Face." The gorge itself was called the "Buzzard Roost." We could plainly see the enemy in this gorge and behind it, and Mill Creek which formed the gorge, flowing toward Dalton, had been dammed up, making a sort of irregular lake, filling the road, thereby ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... without falling off, and Betty enjoyed slow, luxurious swings while her sister was recovering from her tumbles. On this occasion, having indulged their respective tastes, they paused for a brief interval of conversation, sitting side by side on the gate like a pair of plump gray chickens gone to roost. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... shook the curtain covering his lost Idea. He felt sure he should grasp it soon and enter into its daylight: a muffled voice within him said, that he was kept waiting to do so by the inexplicable tardiness of a certain one to rise ascending to her spiritual roost. She was now harmless to strike: Themison, Carling, Jarniman, even the Rev. Groseman Buttermore, had been won to the cause of humanity. Her ascent, considering her inability to do further harm below, was most mysteriously delayed. Owing to it, in a manner ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... hope," said Musgrave, "that he may fall in love; that will bring him to his moorings! And now," he added, "we will go to the music-room and I will see if I cannot tempt the shy bird from his roost." And so we did—Musgrave is an excellent musician. We flung the windows open; he embarked upon a great Bach "Toccata"; and before many bars were over, our idealist crept softly into the room, with an ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... being secretary of the Academy, corresponded with, and directed the movements of all, in the absence of his chief. Every new book was criticised—refutations were published to the leading theological works of the age; but by far the roost effective progress was made by the means of poems, essays, romances, epigrams, and scientific papers. The songs of France at this era were written by the philosophers; and this spirit was diffused among the people. In a country so volatile and excitable as the French, it is difficult to estimate ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... charged to my bad luck. Then, as to the noise, never did I sleep at that enormous Hen and Chickens [2] to which usually my destiny brought me, but I had reason to complain that the discreet hen did not gather her vagrant flock to roost at less variable hours. Till two or three, I was kept waking by those who were retiring; and about three commenced the morning functions of the porter, or of "boots," or of "underboots," who began their rounds for collecting ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... into Duane Street, and, after groping our way up one of its wet and narrow alleys, halted at the cellar-door of a dilapidated little house that seemed to have been ignominiously crammed in between two dead walls and left for an owl roost. I was never wanting in courage, as my companions in Mexico can assert, but I confess that a sort of shaky sensation came over me just then. This was observed by my companion, who hoped I would not be alarmed, since the place we had arrived at was nothing more than the celebrated ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... roost on this side-hill for a month, if a lady told me to," he sneered, speaking aloud as he frequently did in the solitude of the range land. He glanced from ribbon to note, ended his indecision by stuffing the note carelessly into his coat pocket and letting the ribbon ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... 1833, he bought the little estate of Sunnyside, near the Sleepy Hollow which he had made famous. His first name for it was "The Roost" (Dutch for "Rest"), which he changed for reasons which are not recorded; possibly the little nieces who became regular inmates may have thought the old name not dignified enough. This he regarded as his home for ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... so sure of that. Trust a woman to find a place where she can't ruin her hat. My word for it, Cecil, she's found a safe roost. I say, by Jove!" The duke was staring more intently than ever at the windows far above. "I have it! Isn't it rather odd that a house should be lighted so brilliantly at this hour ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... is," said Noel Rainguesson, convincingly. "He is a terror; and not just in this vicinity. His mere name carries a shudder with it to distant lands—just his mere name; and when he frowns, the shadow of it falls as far as Rome, and the chickens go to roost an hour before schedule time. ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... me to go to roost. I will have my gruel a-bed," said my Lord Mohun: and limped off comically on Harry Esmond's arm. "By George, that woman is a pearl!" he said; "and 'tis only a pig that wouldn't value her. Have you seen the ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... requested Russ. "There's a big one over there I want to film. I guess he must be the grandfather of this alligator roost." ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... were now so tame that, having cut their wings, I let them out, when the weather favoured, at my door, where they would pick about in the wood, and get the best part of their subsistence; and having used them to roost in a corner of my ante-chamber, they all came in very regularly at night and took their places. My hens, at the usual season, laid me abundance of eggs, and hatched me a brood or two each of chickens; so that now I was at a loss to know what to do with them, they were become ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... not mind. Anyway, her cabbages have succeeded. Talolo (our native cook, and a very good one too) likened them the other day to the head of a German; and even this hyperbolical image was grudging. I remember all the trouble you had with servants at the Roost. The most of them were nothing to the trances that we have to go through here at times, when I have to hold a bed of justice, and take evidence which is never twice the same, and decide, practically blindfold, and after I have decided have the accuser take ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... led out to the further attentions of the soldiery. But during that afternoon zu Pfeiffer became conscious of a subtle air of defiance, a restlessness and exchanging of glances, so that the demon which Bakunjala had once seen so vividly came back to roost somewhere beneath ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... servant who had overheard Mrs. Eustis expostulating with her daughter, the news of Mary Virginia's unannounced engagement had sifted pretty thoroughly throughout the length and breadth of Appleboro; a town where an unfledged and callow rumor will start out of a morning and come home to roost at night ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... telling stories. So he shook his feathers out, half spread his wings to let the air blow under them, looked down at all the little meadow and forest people gathered about the foot of the tall, dead tree where he delights to roost, grinned at them in the funniest way, and ...
— Mother West Wind 'Why' Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... region were very shy of the old woman and her strange hens. The timid never ventured past her door after dark, after her hens went to roost. ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... remark to me, that the aboriginal parent must have been a species which roosted and built its nest on rocks; and I may add that it must have been a social bird. For all the domestic races are highly social, and none are known to build or habitually to roost on trees. The awkward manner in which some pigeons, kept by me in a summer-house near an old walnut-tree, occasionally alighted on the barer branches, was evident. (6/2. I have heard through Sir C. Lyell from Miss Buckley, that some half-bred Carriers kept during many years near London ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... cotton, and negroes, and yet, in her kindness and hospitality, she displayed a refinement of feeling and good breeding. She was daughter of the celebrated Daniel Boone, a name which has acquired a reputation even in Europe. She immediately ransacked her pantry, her hen-roost, and garden, and when we returned from the cotton-mill, to which our host, in his farmer's pride, had conducted us, we found, upon an immense table, a meal which would have satisfied fifty of those voracious Bostonians whom we had met with the day ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... I wouldn't face the shame; she told him I—I'd kill my own father, and that the blood would be on his hands; she told him if he'd let me go to the devil without another chance—me that had been named after him—that a curse would roost on his chest. He didn't want to give in to her—he didn't want to; but she scared him, and she's a woman and she knew how to get inside of him—she knew how. They're going to send me out to his mines, where I can start over, Renie. Out West, where it'll make a new man of me; where I can begin ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... was low. Across the square lawn—whereon the Clown had found death some thirteen years before—peacocks led home their hens and chicks to roost within the two sexagonal, pepper-pot summer-houses that fill in the angles of the red-walled enclosure. The pea-fowl stepped mincingly, high-shouldered, their heads carried low, their long necks undulating with a self-conscious grace. Dickie's imagination was aglow like ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... odor of aged hypo still permeating the dark room, re-covering the empty stains of skins and traces of maps on the walls, and re-filling in my mind the vacant shelves. The vampires had returned to their chosen roost, the martins still swept through the corridors, and as I went down the hill, a moriche oriole sent a silver shaft of song after me from the sentinel palm, just as he had greeted me ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... from one to four feet high, and more or less sharp, as if trimmed by the gardener's art. In the pastures on Nobscot Hill and its spurs, they make fine dark shadows when the sun is low. They are also an excellent covert from hawks for many small birds that roost and build in them. Whole flocks perch in them at night, and I have seen three robins' nests in one which ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... standing, A. A.," Peter had said, "and you can bet your boots no jailbird will ever roost on it if he thinks twice. And it's just that sort of thing that makes a man ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... poultry-yard and get a quill. But it was already dark. They had, however, two lanterns, and the little boys borrowed the neighbors'. They set out in procession for the poultry-yard. When they got there, the fowls were all at roost, so they could look at ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... little fuss with Murphy's Poland rooster here some time back, and instead of going at him and taking the chances of getting whipped, that chicken actually put himself into training, ate nothing but corn, took regular exercise, went to roost early, took a cold bath every morning and got a pullet to rub him down with a corn-cob. It was wonderful; and in a week or so he was all bone and muscle, and he flickered over the fence after Murphy's rooster and sent him whizzing into ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... lovingly studied them at least half a dozen distinct modifications. In the fledgling male who just begins to feel the spirit of his kind, and who goes through his performance in the adolescent way, it is a cheap and often pitiful call. From the open roost in the trees, where the birds are gradually aroused by the slow-coming day, we can often hear the note of the half-awakened cock, as full of the sense of slumber as the speech of a sleeping man. As the creature gradually awakens, his cry becomes more resonant ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... assister^; make one of, make one at; look on, attend, remain; find oneself, present oneself; show one's face; fall in the way of, occur in a place; lie, stand; occupy; be there. people; inhabit, dwell, reside, stay, sojourn, live, abide, lodge, nestle, roost, perch; take up one's abode &c (be located) 184; tenant. resort to, frequent, haunt; revisit. fill, pervade, permeate; be diffused, be disseminated, be through; over spread, overrun; run through; meet one at every turn. Adj. present; occupying, inhabiting &c v.; moored ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to hear that. But if you knew all, you might. Let the curse fly where it may, it will come back to roost. So, darling, let us discuss him no more. Your wish is ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... peacocks and pigeons had gone to roost among the trees that shadowed the Lake; and the light behind the hills had passed swiftly from gold to flame-colour, from flame-colour to rose. For the sun, that had already departed in effect, was now ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... criminals in the same way as mentioned under the other tree. The space beneath the boughs is also swept clean. This tree is more spreading, and of another sort; it is crowned with the filthy vultures, which roost day and night in considerable numbers on its upper branches. Yusuf tells me the history of these trees, when the inhabitants were pagans. It was under them that the people sacrificed their oxen and sheep ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... Confucius, How dost thou still find roosts to roost on, Ch'iu, unless by wagging ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... keg. Then he turned the keg upside down, without taking away the pan. The water ran into the pan only as far as the hole in the keg, and it would have to be used before more would flow in. Now let us go and see my beautiful, bronze turkeys. They don't need any houses, for they roost in ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... up into the loft under the high peaked roof, where lay numberless forgotten things covered with the dim dust of years. There a flock of pigeons had made their roost, and flapped noisily out into the sunlight when he pushed open the door from below. Here he hunted among the mouldering things of the past until, oh, joy of joys! in an ancient oaken chest he found a great lot of worm-eaten ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... about Bedloe,—he'll get called in, he'll come home to roost like the rest of them," said Mr. Plimpton, cheerfully. "The people can't govern themselves,—only Bedloe doesn't know it. Some day he'll find it out." . ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... people for beating the chickens to roost. But what are you going to do when going to bed is the most fascinating diversion available after supper? I've noticed that as fast as a small town man discovers something else to do in the evening, his light bill goes ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... for yonder town," observed Squire Harwood, pointing southward with his hand. "I cannot forget my father's account of the times when Red-nosed Noll ruled the roost, and that arch-traitor Hutchinson held the castle, and insulted all the Cavaliers in the town and neighbourhood by his preaching, and his cant, and his strict rules and regulations; and now, forsooth, every man and woman in the place thinks fit to stand up for the usurper William, and ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... free as moorfowl over all the Ross; and whenever the way rose a little, your eye would kindle with the brightness of the sea. From the very midst of the land, on a day of wind and a high spring, I have heard the Roost roaring, like a battle where it runs by Aros, and the great and fearful voices of the breakers that we call ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... third of the year; fire, without which we could not bake a morsel of bread, and would have to eat our meat raw; fire, which lights up the night for us, and without which we should have to go to bed when the hens go to roost; fire, which subdues metals, and without which we should have neither iron, nor copper, nor silver, nor anything that is manufactured from those materials; fire, without which, in short, human industry could not rise to much higher results than that of the monkey ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... 'ain't no reason to be 'fraid of her. She ain't crazy. She's only lettin' the birds that fly over your an' my heads settle down to roost. You and me, both of us, if we was situated jest as she is, might think of doin' jest what she's a-doin', but we won't neither of us do it. We'd let our best dresses hang in the closet, safe and sound, while we cut them up in our ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the morning," said Mr. Tucker. "We go to bed early here. The paupers go to roost at seven, and me and my wife and Zeke at eight. You'd better go ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... almost darkening the air with their myriads. As I sit a moment writing this by the bank, I see the black, clear-cut reflection of them far below, flying through the watery looking-glass, by ones, twos, or long strings. All last night I heard the noises from their great roost in a neighboring wood. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Maybrick is on, if we can," said Cora. "She goes to bed to sleep! No prowling around for her after she has once decided that all the chickens are on the roost." ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... death of a farmer his poultry frequently go to roost at noon-day, instead of at the usual time. When the cock struts up to the door and sounds his clarion on the threshold, the housewife is warned that she may soon expect a stranger. In what is technically termed "setting a hen," care is taken that the nest be composed ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various
... with his benignant smile, "despot, demagogue, dictator, oligarch, lord of the roost and cock of the walk! It's a great thing to be ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... Betty enjoyed slow, luxurious swings while her sister was recovering from her tumbles. On this occasion, having indulged their respective tastes, they paused for a brief interval of conversation, sitting side by side on the gate like a pair of plump gray chickens gone to roost. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... Driver, Building Mover, Cranberry Bogs Seen to with Care and Dispatch, etc., etc.," so read the sign. The house was situated in "Phinney's Lane," the crooked little byway off "Cross Street," between the "Shore Road" at the foot of the slope and the "Hill Boulevard"—formerly "Higgins's Roost"—at the top. From the Phinney gate the view was extensive and, for the most part, wet. The hill descended sharply, past the "Shore Road," over the barren fields and knolls covered with bayberry bushes and "poverty grass," to ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... with scattered bark, scantily covered the surface of its huge foundation rock. There was no pavement, and it was the less needed that the ways were rarely used by wheels of any description. The village was but a roost, like the dwellings of the sea birds which ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... Street, and, after groping our way up one of its wet and narrow alleys, halted at the cellar-door of a dilapidated little house that seemed to have been ignominiously crammed in between two dead walls and left for an owl roost. I was never wanting in courage, as my companions in Mexico can assert, but I confess that a sort of shaky sensation came over me just then. This was observed by my companion, who hoped I would not be alarmed, since the place we had arrived at was nothing more than the celebrated locofoco 'nest ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... confirming a pleasant surprise. "Is it not strange," he said, "how genius will roost on any perch? It is true, then, that he is a person who offends your taste? That is bad. Tell ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... attempts: "Life of Columbus," "Spanish Voyages," "Conquest of Grenada," "Conquest of Spain," "Moorish Chronicles," and "Life of Mohammed." The influence of this historical research, too, you shall find in reading his romances: "Wolfert's Roost," "Legends of the Conquest of Spain," ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... nothing, they saw; And when they had fed, "Neighbor Hen," the pig said, "Won't you stay here and roost in my straw?" ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... taken away from us, and you ask me to be calm! It is not in human nature to bear such a wrong in peace. Take away the Edera! Take away the water! They had better cut our throats. What! a poor wretch who steals a few grapes off a vine, a few eggs from a hen roost, is called a thief and hounded to the galleys, and such robbery as this is to be borne in silence because the thieves wear broadcloth! It cannot be. It cannot be; I swear it shall never be whilst I have ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... which had often exceeded one hundred a month, a second or revising chamber was now to be formed on the basis of age; for it had been found that the younger the deputies the faster came forth the fluttering flocks of decrees, that often came home to roost in the guise of curses. A senatorial guillotine, it was now proposed, should thin out the fledglings before they flew abroad at all. Of the seven hundred and fifty deputies of France, the two hundred and fifty oldest men were to form the Council of Ancients, having powers to amend or reject ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... as a rule Aren't looked on as man-killers, and although I'd rather be the beast that sleeps the sleep Under it all, his door sealed up and lost, Than the man fighting it to keep above it, Yet think of the small birds at roost and not In nests. Shall I be counted less than they are? Their bulk in water would be frozen rock In no time out to-night. And yet to-morrow They will come budding boughs from tree to tree Flirting their wings and saying ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... them I took a fresh and a very impressive glimpse into a style of life that abounds among the rural population of America, and shows but feeble signs of improvement. These men, who, when they eat, only "tuck away grub," of course "go to roost" when they sleep. They call the sun "Old Yaller," naming him in honor of a favorite ox. When they undress themselves "they peel off," as if they were onions or potatoes; and when they put themselves ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... and I, after running the risk of catching cold in searching over the house, have this morning been at the expense of new fastenings to the doors and windows. The next time, however, you rise, Richard, to alarm the family, you shall in future roost with the hens ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... sword-case at which little brother Tom looks so admiringly! What a dinner that was, that last dinner, when little and grown children assembled together, and all tried to be cheerful! What a night was that last night, when the young ones were at roost for the last time together under the same roof, and the mother lay alone in her chamber counting the fatal hours as they tolled one after another, amidst her tears, her watching, her fond prayers. What a night that was, and ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination,—the moan of the whippoorwill from the hillside, the boding cry of the tree-toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech-owl, or the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fire-flies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path; and if by chance a huge blackhead ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... other night-fowls, And I tell you What I know to be true; An owl can not roost With his limbs so unloosed; No owl in this world Ever had his claws curled, Ever had his legs slanted, Ever had his bill canted, Ever had his neck screwed Into that attitude. He can't do it, because 'Tis against all bird-laws. Anatomy teaches, Ornithology preaches, An owl has a toe That ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... hawk menaces the hen-roost, in like manner, when such a danger as a voyage menaces a mother, she becomes suddenly endowed with a ferocious presence of mind, and bristling up and screaming in the front of her brood, and in the face of circumstances, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for each 25 hens. With a large flock of hens the method successfully employed by one of the large coast ranches in stamping out an epidemic of the disease was to place a sulphur smudge, to which had been added a little carbolic acid, in the poultry house after the fowls had gone to roost. This was allowed to remain till the fowls began to sneeze, when it was instantly removed. The affected fowls were also treated by dipping the heads in a solution of ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... of air was stirring. His wonder at the beautiful spectacle was so great, that he ceased moving the paddle and drifted with the current toward the snowy looking tree. When opposite, he saw it was a roost for some sort of water fowl. He shouted and a cloud of white heron rose in the air ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... pet hen. She is black, and so tame that she comes in the house every evening for me to put her to roost. Then we have lots of pigs, goats, calves, chickens, and pigeons, and each of my ...
— Harper's Young People, October 12, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... had at last raised her voice in angry protest and set up a furious cackling, which so frightened the little boy on the inside that he was panic-stricken. He caught hold of a low roost pole, swung himself up and, wholly unmindful of his blouse full of eggs, pushed his lower limbs through the hole and stuck fast. A pair of chubby, sturdy legs, down which were slowly trickling little yellow rivulets, ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... you, w'y you kin tie me ter er tree an' whup me ef you wants ter, but I got ter tell you. Not laung ergo, I stole er chicken from yo' roost. An' ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... manes, because they can cling to the hair while they suck the veins, and keep their victim quiet by flapping their wings over its head; they also fasten themselves upon the tail for the first reason, and a great loss of blood frequently ensues. Fowls are frequently killed by them as they roost upon their perches, for so noiseless and gentle are they in their flight and operations, that animals are not awakened out of their sleep by their attacks. The teeth are so disposed that they make a deep and triple ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... into the room with the old man, and Nikita drove through the gate opened for him by Petrushka, by whose advice he backed the horse under the penthouse. The ground was covered with manure and the tall bow over the horse's head caught against the beam. The hens and the cock had already settled to roost there, and clucked peevishly, clinging to the beam with their claws. The disturbed sheep shied and rushed aside trampling the frozen manure with their hooves. The dog yelped desperately with fright and anger and then burst out barking ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... great crimes; but it is only because they have not energy of mind to rise to any height of wickedness. They are not hawks or kites: they are only miserable fowls whose flight is not above their dunghill or hen-roost. But they tremble before the authors of these horrors. They admire them at a safe and respectful distance. There never was a mean and abject mind that did not admire an intrepid and dexterous villain. In the bottom of their hearts ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... reseau-work. And when I considered that what I looked down on—this, with its arteries and nodules of public traffic—was a nation; that each silent nodule held some thousands of men, each man moderately ready to die in defence of his shopboard and hen-roost; it came into my mind that my Emperor's emblem was the bee, and this Britain ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rather a disquieting apprehension that the stage had passed. But my nerves were soon quieted by the assurance from an early hunter, who was near by shooting prairie chickens while they were yet on the roost, that the stage had not yet come. So we kept on to the spacious store where the post office is kept; where I waited and waited for the stage to come which was to bring me to St. Paul. It did not arrive till eight o'clock. I thought if every one who had a part to perform ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... exactly what Hungary wants, for she will then be head state of the Empire; not number two, as she is at present. Nothing would please her more than to see Austria broken up into a number of little States and Hungary ruling the roost. Well, these are my political remarks! It is a great blessing getting out of rifle fire, even for a minute. The constant strike of the bullets whirling round, or its scream as it ricochets over one's head, is very trying. I suppose there never has been a war in ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... checkerberry-leaves as he spoke; "but I may have the fun of looking on, I suppose. But see, these fellows are kinder debating down there, and looking up, like hens when they are going to fly up on to the roost. Hadn't thee better give 'em a word of advice, before they come up, just to tell 'em handsomely they'll ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... shortcakes, and cherry-pies, and green peas, and new potatoes, and string beans, and roasting-ears, and all such garden-stuff, and the fresh eggs, broken into the skillet before Speckle gets done cackling, and the cockerels we pick off the roost Saturday evenings (you see, we're thinning 'em out; no sense in keeping all of 'em over winter)—as a result, I say, of all this good eating, and the outdoor life, and the necessity of stirring around a little lively these days we feel pretty good. ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... forgotten them, the Admiral sent for me. It was to show me, now without emotion, the two little visitors who had gone to roost in his room, perched upon a slender silken cord above his bed. They nestled closely together, two little balls of feathers, touching and almost merged one in the other, and slept without the slightest fear, sure of our pity. And those little Belgians sleeping side by ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... he'd corned over ter let 'em know how they was gittin' on in Ho'sford. He sed dat ebbery white man in de county 'cept about ten or twelve was inter it, an' dey wuz a gwine ter clean out nigger rule h'yer, shore. He sed de fust big thing they got on hand wuz ter break up dis buzzard-roost h'yer at Red Wing, an' he 'llowed dat wouldn't be no hard wuk kase dey'd got some pretty tough tings on Nimbus an" ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... fat hen slung across her shoulders. She had been down to Farmer Green's hen- house, right in the middle of the night, when Farmer Green and his family were asleep; and she had snatched one of the sleeping hens off the roost and stolen away with it without ...
— The Tale of Tommy Fox • Arthur Scott Bailey
... was past thirty he played merely an incidental part in the tribal war that had raged up and down Yellow Banks Creek and its principal tributary, the Pigeon Roost, since long before the Big War. He was getting out timber to be floated down the river on the spring rise when word came to him of an ambuscade that made him the head of his immediate clan and the upholder of his ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... fashion, by stealing. All she seemed to care about as her reward was pilfering, and a crown put into her hand, gave her less pleasure than a halfpenny which she had stolen. Neither was it any use to dream of ruling her as the sole male, or as the proud master of the hen roost, for which of them, no matter how broad shouldered he was, would have been capable of it? Some had tried to vanquish her, but ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... going on?" cried Wardour. "You knew that fellow there came prowling about Thornwick like a fox about a hen-roost? By Heaven! if I ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... child compared with Ned Blossett. Ask any of the old gang in New York, ask the blistering police if you like; and as to the rest of you, who are you? A set of whitefaced mechanics, without pluck enough to rob a hen-roost. Take ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... nuther—thet is weakmindeder then thet she air a—she hev the mine uv a female, an' nachully not able ter hannel proppity. An' I haint sayin' she aint gettin' mighty well took keer uv by Lige, nuther. The last time I war theer she war roolin' the roost. She slep' in the bes' bed, an' et offen the bes' plate, an' had the bes' corn dodger an' shote; but what I air—that is what some air thinkin' about air whence Lige onct gits the hull er thet proppity in bulk, air hit goin' ter be thet away? Mine you, I aint asten this yer question; but they ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... fine guy to tell a fellow how to live on wine, women and horses," exclaimed Douglas, "and then raise the devil when your chickens come home to roost. We all know Little Marion was born a month before ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... plan and execute little mischiefs, but are they worth the expense they cost you, or will such partial evils have any effect on the general cause? Your expedition to Egg Harbor, will be felt at a distance like an attack upon a hen-roost, and expose you in Europe, with a sort of childish frenzy. Is it worth while to keep an army to protect you in writing proclamations, or to get once a year into winter quarters? Possessing yourselves of towns is not conquest, but convenience, and in which you will one ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... minutes, and looking up from a book I was reading, I saw a whole brood of chickens and ducks squattering about the deck, not knowing where they'd come from, or what to do with themselves. The chickens, however, soon went to roost in a corner, for it was too hot to keep awake, and the ducks waddled up on deck, and were making the best of their way over the vessel's side into the element in which they delight, when we turned them into a water-butt, ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... to go out at twilight the first Sunday in April, about the time the cutworms go to roost, and take a sharp-pointed stick. We draw lines in the ground with this stick, preferably in a pleasant geometrical pattern that will confuse the birds and other observers. It is important not to do this until twilight, so that no robins ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... as sure as I am standing here, and by the looks of things, trying his best to roost in my birdhouse!" The Hermit chuckled as he looked up into the eyes of the animal, who did not ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... of your untirin' industry would rot on the ground if you did not weakly consent to help him. Let 'em rot, I say! Let him call you to the stables in vain an' nevermore! Let him shake his ensnarin' oats under your nose in vain! Let the Brahmas roost in the buggy, an' the rats run riot round the reaper! Let him walk on his two hind feet till they blame well drop off! Win no more soul-destroyn' races for his pleasure! Then, an' not till then, will Man the Oppressor know where he's at. Quit workin', ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... you want to catch that fellow, I'll tell you how to do it. He has promised to bring me some food to-night, when all the rest are at roost. He will hide and not get shut up; then, when those cross old biddies are asleep, he will cluck softly, and I am to go in and eat all I want out of the pan. You hide on the top of the hen-house; and while he talks to me, you ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... of a village a Fox one day went to have a peep at a hen-roost. He had the bad luck to fall into a well, where he swam first to this side, and then to that side, but could not get out with all his pains. At last, as chance would have it, a poor Goat came to the same place to seek for some drink. "So ho! ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... fool. C'est tousiours plus mal-aise de faire mal que bien, its easier to do a thing the right way then the wrong, as in opening a door. Il n'y a marchand qui gaigne tousjours. Nemo ubique potest foelici,[373] etc., its a good roost that drapes aye.[374] Of him that out of scarcity tauntes his neihbour wt the same scorne wt which he scorned him, the Frenchman sayes, il ne vaut rien pour prendre la bal a la seconde enleuement, at the 2d stot. He is a ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... the cabin of the indefatigable interpreter. I have seen people packed into this space like herrings in a barrel, and many merry evenings prolonged there until five bells, when the lights were ruthlessly extinguished and all must go to roost. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... consisted of nothing but unleavened bread. Perhaps the angels, who had dined heavily with Abraham on veal, butter, and milk, were afraid of bad dreams, and only wanted a light supper before going to roost. ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... was dispatched, the chief warder paid me another visit to instruct me how to roost. Under his tuition I received my first lesson in prison bed-making. A strip of thick canvas was stretched across the cell and fastened at each end by leather straps running through those mysterious rings. A coarse ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... eyn steepe, and rollyng in his heede, That stemde as a forneys of a leede;{36} His boots souple, his hors in gret estat. Now certeinly he was a fair prelat; He was not pale as a for-pyned goost. A fat swan lovede he best of eny roost. His palfrey was as broun as is a berye. A FRERE there was, a wantown and a merye, A lymytour,{37} a ful solempn man. In alle the ordres foure{38} is noon that can So moche of daliaunce and fair langage. He hadde i-mad ful many a mariage Of yong wymmen, at his ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... mysteries, things changed but little through eons on the surface of the world, where men loved and hated, bred and slew, triumphed and failed, lorded and cringed as had been the way since the beginning, when the cave man that handled the heavier knuckle-bone ruled the roost. But to the unphilosophic eye of the majority of mankind things seemed to change greatly in a very little while; and it seemed, therefore, to the superficial, that many things had happened in France and in Paris during the seventeen years ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... grumbled Saxe; "but it seems to me that it would be easier to bear the pain. I couldn't forget a thing that's always reminding you that you are sore. But there, I am glad it's to-night. I shall go to roost in good time, so as to get a fine ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... no doubt you know, To which a fox is used; A rooster that is bound to crow, A crow that's bound to roost, And whichsoever he espies He tells the most ...
— The Best Nonsense Verses • Various
... read inquiries about the best plan for building hen houses. My plan is, for 100 fowls, to build a house for them to roost in, eight or even ten feet wide and sixteen feet long, one story high with tight floor of yellow pine flooring. I prefer a tight floor because it is easily cleaned out, and every time it is cleaned out and swept the floor should be well covered with slaked ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... imagination,—the moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside, the boding cry of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech owl, or the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle came winging his blundering flight against ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... and saw the sun go down behind a yellow gullied hill. From afar up and down the valley came the lonesome "pig-oo-ee!" of the farmers, calling their hogs for the evening's feed. We heard the flutter of the chickens, flying to roost, and the night hawk heard them, too, for his eager, hungry scream pierced the still air. On a smooth old rock at the verge of the ravine the girl's brother stood, arms folded, looking out over the darkening low land, and from within the ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... were dames with their kerchiefs tied over their caps, To see if their poultry were free from mishaps; The turkeys they gobbled, the geese screamed aloud, And the hens crept to roost in a terrified crowd; There was rearing of ladders, and logs laying on, Where the thatch from the roof threatened soon ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... watertight; and this of course was very easily managed. But, simple as the work was, it was fully a month before the raft was ready for service, though when they at length got her afloat and tried her under sail the result was satisfactory, far beyond their roost sanguine anticipations. ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... But I never dreamed I'd ever pluck up the nerve to stay a night on that blooming island. Why, ever since I c'n remember I've heard the tallest yarns about it. Some say it's just a nest of crawlers; and others, that all the varmints left unshot in the big timber up beyond have a roost on that strip of land in the ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... Mrs. Shepherd's shrill voice at the back door; 'why, don't ye hear that Mrs. Barker's hen-roost has been robbed by Dick Royston and two or three ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... confess I was as sorry as anybody. I climbed down from my cormorant roost, and picked my way between the alleys of aromatic piled lumber in order to avoid the press, and cursed the little gods heartily for undue partiality in the wrong direction. In this manner I happened on Jimmy Powers himself seated dripping on a board and ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... I had started by rotting the other fellow's eggs and he finished by souring my milk. I wanted justice and I got it, but I didn't recognize it when it landed on me with all four feet. Chickens come home to roost, and my pigeons had found a nesting-place on my anatomy; and the spot they had chosen was ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... go on the time there is too much attention given to dreams. A dream is a sort of a shadow, no profit in it to anyone at all. A coach now is a real thing and a thing that will last for generations and be made use of the last, and maybe turn to be a hen-roost at its ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... the labours of the night, began to nod, I was roused with a thwack betwixt my jaw and my ear which sent me backwards to the ground. When I picked myself up, I found it was the English fellow whom Ludar had put snugly to roost on the parapet an hour or two since. He had come to in no very merry frame of mind; and, finding the castle in the hands of the besiegers, and his own life not worth an hour's purchase, was minded to hit out a bit for his Queen before giving up ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... sometimes literally act "like a bull in a China shop"? You remember, sir, that "intelligent contraband" who, when asked his opinion of an offending white brother, delicately hinted his distrust by replying: "Sar, if I was a chicken, and that man was about, I should take care to roost high." Well, all that we can say of China is, that for a long time she "roosted high"—withdrew suspiciously into her own civilization to escape the rough contact with ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... almost sure that land was not far off: the sea grew shallower, and early every morning flocks of land birds began to flutter around them, and these all left the ship in the evening, as if to roost on shore. One of the vessels had picked up a cane newly cut, and another a branch covered with fresh red berries; and the air blew softer and warmer, and the wind began ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... said Barbesieur, trying to look amiable, "pray don't be so concise. Tell me the condition of the marquis, at once: I did not come to this old owl's roost for pastime. I came to see what could be done to restore its unhappy lord to reason. That you are observing, I remember; you proved it by the good care you took of my ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... on one of his barndoor fowls. It would be absurd to suppose that, in the face of such pressure, the vigilance of the police was never eluded; and our mounted scouts were always well away from police control. As the result their saddles became sometimes like an inverted hen-roost; heads down instead of up; but they were seldom asked in what market they had made their purchases or what price they had ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... youth Death came with great celerity; Egad, that never can be said of you with any verity! The old crow that you are, the teasing boys will jeer, compelling you To roost at home. Reflect, all this is straight ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... secure the insects put up by the grazing quadrupeds. Taking advantage of the social habits of these egrets the plume-hunters issue forth early in May and betake themselves, in parties of five or six, to the villages where the birds roost. Their apparatus consists of two nets, each some eight feet long and three broad. These are laid flat on the ground in shallow water, parallel to one another, about a yard apart. The inner side of each net is securely pegged to the ground. By an ingenious ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... his feather'd dames, Now lifts his beak and snuffs the morning air, Stretches his neck and claps his heavy wings, Gives three hoarse crows, and glad his talk is done; Low, chuckling, turns himself upon the roost, Then nestles down again amongst his mates. The lab'ring hind, who on his bed of straw, Beneath his home-made coverings, coarse, but warm, Lock'd in the kindly arms of her who spun them, Dreams of the gain that next year's crop should bring; Or at some fair disposing of his wool, Or by some lucky ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... you, George, that one of the most uncomfortable things in the world must be to outlive your age? To have all the reforms of your boyish liberalism coming home to roost, just as you are settling down ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... in despair of being able to extricate myself even from my present entanglement, and to retrace my steps to the open ground below; in my exhausted condition, as it was already long past midnight, I was making up my mind to roost with the owls on the fork of a tree; and was even anticipating the possibility of becoming a permanent scarecrow there, when my very bones would be concealed in the thicket from the anxious search ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... I have a great mind to send Blacas over to Stowe. I can trust to him to look to the crates and coops, and to see that the pheasants have enough of air and water, and that the Governor of Calais finds a commodious place for them to roost in, forbidding the drums to beat and disturb them, evening or morning. The next night, according to my calculation, they repose at Montreuil. I must look at them before they are let loose. I cannot well imagine why the public men employed by England are usually, indeed constantly so inferior in ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... guide-books. For my part I have no belief in the romance of old-world life. In the modern Tell I behold a hireling, ready to barter his brawny limbs to the use of whatever tyrant; and the picturesque Mazzaroni, upon closer acquaintance, dwindles down to the standard of a hen-roost thief. Amid the crumbling walls of Athens and the ruins of Rome I encounter inhospitality and hunger. I am not a believer in the picturesqueness of poverty. I have no relish for the romance ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... successes, and all the swift changes of life, God's attempts to lead him to yield himself up, and bow his will? And was not God striving with him now, in the anxieties which gnawed at his heart, and in his dread of the morrow? Was He not trying to teach him how crime always comes home to roost, with a brood of pains running behind it? Was not the weird duel in the brooding stillness a disclosure, which would more and more possess his soul as the night passed on, of a Presence which in silence strove with him, and only desired to overcome that He might bless? The conception of a Divine ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... shallow. I wonder if any one else can see it in a picture before the eyes as I can, bright, and vivid as trees suddenly shown at night by a great flash of lightning. All the leaves and branches and the birds at roost are visible during the flash. It is barely a second; it seems much longer. Memory, like the lightning, reveals the pictures in the mind. Every curve, and shore, and shallow is as familiar now as when I followed the winding stream so often. When the mowing-grass ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... the Baron Fagoni feeds well, bekase he's the cock o' the roost; but the poor Naygurs are not overly well fed, and the critters are up to their knees in wather all day, washing di'monds; so they suffer much from rheumatiz and colds. Och, but it's murther entirely; an' I've more than wance felt inclined to fill their pockets with di'monds ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... blue-magpie in detail. It is impossible to mistake it. Even a blind man cannot fail to notice it because of its loud ringing call. East of Simla the red-billed species is by far the commoner, while to the west the yellow-billed form rules the roost. The vernacular names for the blue-magpie are Nilkhant at Mussoorie and Dig-dall ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... roof was supported by a line of wooden stanchions. There were arm racks round the stanchions, containing muskets, cutlasses, and long, double-barrelled pistols. As I expected, there were several bee-skeps hanging from nails, or lying on the floor. I was in the smugglers' roost, perhaps in the presence ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... From these facts, it seems that the condors require perpendicular cliffs. In Chile, they haunt, during the greater part of the year, the lower country near the shores of the Pacific, and at night several roost together in one tree; but in the early part of summer they retire to the most inaccessible parts of the inner Cordillera, there ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... not an extravagant theory that the cabby's singleness of purpose and concentrated view of life are the results of the hansom's peculiar construction. The cock-of-the-roost sits aloft like Jupiter on an unsharable seat, holding your fate between two thongs of inconstant leather. Helpless, ridiculous, confined, bobbing like a toy mandarin, you sit like a rat in a trap—you, before whom butlers cringe on solid land—and must ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... so," I answered. "Yet that curse, like others, came back to roost, for if Jana is dead and his people fled, where are the Child and many of its people? What will you ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... form of the church could be seen. On the other rose hazel-bushes, a few trees, and where these were absent, furze tufts—as tall as men—on stems nearly as stout as timber. The shriek of some bird was occasionally heard, as it flew terror-stricken from its first roost, to seek a new sleeping-place, where it ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... numerous, were Crows, Kites, Hawkes, Cockadores* (* Cockatoos.) of 2 Sorts, the one white, and the other brown, very beautiful Loryquets of 2 or 3 Sorts, Pidgeons, Doves, and a few other sorts of small Birds. The Sea or Water fowl are Herns, Whisling Ducks, which perch and, I believe, roost on Trees; Curlews, etc., and not many of these neither. Some of our Gentlemen who were in the Country heard and saw Wild ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... but a troop of devotees around him, shallow persons without a spark of judgment, who greet him as the founder of a brand-new musical system, and completely turn his head." To a certain degree this judgment came home to roost in Wagner's later years in Bayreuth; but he was saved by the fact that, being a great musician, he also drew genuine musicians to him. If Bayreuth was crowded by strange beings of low intelligence who bowed low before Richard and found the weirdest meanings in his simplest ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... dressed again, and stretched themselves under the cottonwood-trees and sycamores, and played games and told stories, and longed for a gun to kill the blackbirds which nested in the high tops, and at nightfall made such a clamor in getting to roost that it almost ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... two families each season. When the first brood is ready to leave the nest, Father Robin takes charge of them. Every night he leads them to a great roost or nursery where other young robins are brought by their fathers to sleep. In the daytime he returns to help Mother Robin care for ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... that is," cried Fred. "Pigeons. I've often seen them fly into the holes of the rocks. They build in these places, and roost here of ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... for the titbit with strange monkey-like motions, and nip it with their hard skeleton ringers, trying to tuck it into their mouths; and so you bring them up into blue air, sprawling and astonished, but tenacious. You can put them through their paces where they roost under water, moving the beef about, and seeing them sidle and back on their aimless, Cousin Feenix-like legs: it is a sight to bring a freckle-nosed cousin almost into hysterics. But one day a vivacious girl had committed the offence of boasting too ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... is to be charged to my bad luck. Then, as to the noise, never did I sleep at that enormous Hen and Chickens [2] to which usually my destiny brought me, but I had reason to complain that the discreet hen did not gather her vagrant flock to roost at less variable hours. Till two or three, I was kept waking by those who were retiring; and about three commenced the morning functions of the porter, or of "boots," or of "underboots," who began their rounds for collecting the several freights ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Yet it is a musical tone and a most goblin-like and eerie one. The partridge may be commonplace enough and his drumming but a strut of complacency and self-satisfaction. With patience and good luck I may see him doing it and follow him from his roost in the morning till he returns to it at night. But I cannot fathom the mystery which haunts the pasture in the genial melancholy of these sunny October days, to which his drum seems to sound ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... war at last, and I was not long in making acquaintance with it. I awoke to find, by the light of the lantern swung from the roost overhead, the dozen men in the loft awake and pulling on their boots. They had lain in their sodden clothes all night: but of their boots, I found, they were as careful as dandies, and to grease them would hoard up a lump of fat even ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Eastboro village, "I give you my word, Seth, they dummed nigh et me alive. They covered the horse all up, so that he looked for all the world like a sheep, woolly. I don't mind moskeeters in moderation, but when they roost on my eyelids and make 'em so heavy I can't open 'em, then I'm ready to swear. But I couldn't get even that relief, because every time I unbattened my mouth a million or so flew in and choked me. That's what I said—a million. Some moskeeters ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... finished, they put out the light, and each one looked out for a suitable and comfortable sleeping-place. The donkey lay down on the dunghill, the dog behind the door, the cat on the hearth near the warm ashes, and the cock set himself on the hen-roost; and, as they were all tired with their long journey, they soon went to sleep. Soon after midnight, as the robbers in the distance could see that no more lights were burning in the house, and as all seemed quiet, the captain ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... here Had he been minded Sigmund's son, The hero Helgi, Out of the halls of Odin; But the eagles roost On the high ash-boughs, All the household Falleth to dreams— Faint is my hope of ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... Well, well, I daresay it's comfortable enough; so the sun shines in mornin's, thet's the most I care for. You'll make any kind o' house pooty to look at inside, an' I reckon we needn't roost on the fences outside, a-lookin' at it, any more'n we choose to. It does look, for all the world though, like 'Bijah Jenkins's old yaller barn; 'n' thet there jog's jest the way he jined on his cow-shed. I declare it's too redicklus." And the old lady ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... decided the chosen of her heart with rude certainty. "The dreams of that land of mirages are likely to breed nightmares. You are on the right side of the border for women to stay. Our old American eagle is a pretty safe bird to roost with." ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... to find that no damage had been done to the tunnel or the railroad. From Tunnel Hill I could look into the gorge by which the railroad passed through a straight and well-defined range of mountains, presenting sharp palisade faces, and known as "Rocky Face." The gorge itself was called the "Buzzard Roost." We could plainly see the enemy in this gorge and behind it, and Mill Creek which formed the gorge, flowing toward Dalton, had been dammed up, making a sort of irregular lake, filling the road, thereby ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... chiefly to keep off the sun. The men and women wear a single garment like a petticoat, made of pelican skin; the children are naked. Not far from Tiburon, which is about thirty miles long by fifteen miles wide, there is a smaller island where pelicans roost in vast numbers. The Seris go at night and with sticks knock over as many ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... passed to a belated dinner in the dining-room, an orchestra, consisting of a lady pianist and a lady violinist, was giving the closing piece of the afternoon concert. The dining-room was painted a self-righteous olive-green; it was thoroughly netted against the flies, which used to roost in myriads on the cut-paper around the tops of the pillars, and a college-student head waiter ushered Gaites through the gloom to his place with a warning and hushing hand which made him feel as if he were being shown to a pew ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... perch, but cling to rocks and walls, one is turned backwards, and, by a cunning contrivance, the act of bending the leg draws them all automatically together. So a hen closes its toes at every step it takes, as if it grasped something, and, of course, when it settles down on its roost, they grasp that tight and hold it fast till morning. But to birds that do not perch this mechanism is only an encumbrance, so many of them, like the plovers, abolish the hind toe entirely, and the prince of all two-legged runners, the ostrich, has got rid of one of the front toes ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... instead of being my niece, is to be Mrs. Bob Brudenel. What foolish birds are turtles when they have scarce a hole to roost in! Adieu! ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... full blossom? Gustation was meant to be delightful; and cooking is certainly half as good as tasting. At times one may have longed for the old Roman custom of two meals a day, and going to bed at chicken-time, bringing the hour of roast near the hour of roost; but this was probably in families where there were three repasts, with lunch all the way between, and an incessant buying of cookies from the baker, lest the children should go hungry. After this surfeit one pardons a recoil. Or, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... accordingly led out to the further attentions of the soldiery. But during that afternoon zu Pfeiffer became conscious of a subtle air of defiance, a restlessness and exchanging of glances, so that the demon which Bakunjala had once seen so vividly came back to roost somewhere ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... Highlands of Scotland has come down to the present day, built on what I may perhaps call the fox lines, and it is a type evolved by work—hard and deadly dangerous work. It is only of late years that dogs have been bred for show. The so-called 'Scottish' Terrier, which at present rules the roost, dates from 1879 ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... a name in the Andredsweald. We should have to answer for every peasant we have hanged or hen roost we have robbed." ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... is well known, they nearly always post a sentinel in some tree top to keep watch while the rest of the flock is feeding in the field below. In the fall and winter, large numbers of them flock, and at night all roost in one piece of woods; some of the "crow roosts" are of vast extent and contain thousands of individuals. Crows nest near the tops of large trees, preferably pines, either in woods or single trees in fields. Their nests ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... happy, and now set forth the beauty and harmony of the world, seen from the loftiness of the divine roost: below all was dark, unjust, sorrowful; seen from on high, it all became clear, luminous, ordered: the world was like the works of a ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... native tongue, well adapted to such matters; and at each carrion crow or magpie, down came his crossbow, and he would go a furlong off the road to circumvent it; and indeed he did shoot one old crow with laudable neatness and despatch, and carried it to the nearest hen-roost, and there slipped in and set it upon a nest. "The good-wife will say, 'Alack, here is Beelzebub ahatching of ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... but woods, canebrakes, cotton, and negroes, and yet, in her kindness and hospitality, she displayed a refinement of feeling and good breeding. She was daughter of the celebrated Daniel Boone, a name which has acquired a reputation even in Europe. She immediately ransacked her pantry, her hen-roost, and garden, and when we returned from the cotton-mill, to which our host, in his farmer's pride, had conducted us, we found, upon an immense table, a meal which would have satisfied fifty of those voracious Bostonians whom ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... That year I had a large number of hens, and Jacko went about among them with the most perfect indifference, never looking on them to lust after them, as I could see, and never touching an egg or a feather. So excellent was his reputation that I would have trusted him in the hen-roost in the dark without counting the hens. In short, he was domesticated, and I was fond of him and very proud of him, exhibiting him to all our visitors as an example of what affectionate treatment would do in subduing the brute instincts. I preferred him to my dog, whom I had, with much ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... availed to protect a field of maize or a patch of potatoes; the traditional negro was not more skilful in looting a fowl-house;* (* Despite Lee's proclamations against indiscriminate foraging, "the hens," he said, "had to roost mighty high when the Texans were about.") he had an unerring scent for whisky or "apple-jack;" and the address he displayed in compassing the destruction of the unsuspecting porker was only equalled, when he was caught flagrante delicto, by ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... power, or failed to believe that he could himself take a high part in high affairs when his own turn came. He was biding his time, and patiently looking forward to the days when he himself would sit authoritative at some board, and talk and direct, and rule the roost, while lesser stars sat round and obeyed, as he had so ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... as the pote says." And Overland grinned. "But I got to put that little chaffer to roost somewhere." ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... some checkerberry-leaves as he spoke; "but I may have the fun of looking on, I suppose. But see, these fellows are kinder debating down there, and looking up, like hens when they are going to fly up on to the roost. Hadn't thee better give 'em a word of advice, before they come up, just to tell 'em handsomely they'll ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... had its two crows, either as guardians of the farm—for two crows implied good luck—or as if they were located by couples in various places, which places became their feeding ground and homes. This, however, is not true of rooks, which feed in flocks and roost in flocks. ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... white, even banks. Once or twice I went by a lonely cottage with a smell of earthy turf coming from the chimney, weeds or oats sprouting on the thatch, and a broken cart before the door, with many straggling hens going to roost on the shafts. Near these cottages little bands of half-naked children, filled with the excitement of evening, were running and screaming over the bogs, where the heather was purple already, giving me the strained feeling of regret one has so often in these places ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... snow-storms as a rule Aren't looked on as man-killers, and although I'd rather be the beast that sleeps the sleep Under it all, his door sealed up and lost, Than the man fighting it to keep above it, Yet think of the small birds at roost and not In nests. Shall I be counted less than they are? Their bulk in water would be frozen rock In no time out to-night. And yet to-morrow They will come budding boughs from tree to tree Flirting their wings and saying Chickadee, ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... continuous plunge of a cascade somewhere near at hand among the mountains. The air struck chill, but tasted good and vigorous in the nostrils - a fine, dry, old mountain atmosphere. I was dead sleepy, but I returned to roost with a grateful mountain ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... yet turned into their fen, because a new scheme had occurred to Marvel, relative to some reeds with which a part of this fen was covered; on these reeds myriads of starlings were accustomed to roost, who broke them down with their weight. Now Marvel knew that such reeds would be valuable for thatching, and with this view he determined to drive away the starlings; but the measures necessary ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... for the missing scalp. But to the Fox was given this honor, because he had first found the body of the Good Hunter in the forest. The Fox set out upon his search, in his foxy way. He visited every hen-roost and every bird's-nest, but no scalp did he find. "Of course not!" screamed the birds when he returned from his fruitless quest, "Of course no bird has taken the Good Hunter's scalp. You should have known better ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... in my lady's bower, (Oh! weary mother, drive the cows to roost;) They faintly droop for a little hour; My lady's head droops ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... justly surnamed "The Scourge of God". Yet in flight lies safety. Skirmish and run To forest and fastness, Teuton and Hun, From the banks of the Rhine to the Danube's shore, And back to the banks of the Rhine once more; Retreat from the face of an armed foe, Robbing garden and hen-roost where'er you go. Let the short alliance betwixt us cease, I and my Norsemen will go in peace! I wot it never will suit with us, Such existence, tame and inglorious; I could live no worse, living single-handed, And better ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... things there are, no doubt you know, To which a fox is used: A rooster that is bound to crow, A crow that's bound to roost, And whichsoever he espies He tells ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... it had got into comfortable quarters. There was just enough cold crispiness in the air to-night to make the two fat cows move faster into the stable, with smoking breath, to bring out a crow of defiance from the chickens huddling together on the roost; it spread, too, a white rime over the windows, shining red in the sinking sun. When the sun was down, the nipping northeaster grew sharper, swept about the little valley, rattled the bare-limbed trees, blew boards off the corn-crib that Doctor Blecker had built ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... pit,' he replied, 'an' earns a good wage, but whiles I tires ov it an' longs for a walk up the hedgerows, to hear the partridge call and the pheasant shoutin' as he gans up to roost, an' to say to myself, "Aha, my fine fellow, but thoo'll be i' my bag to-morrow night, an' in my kite the night after that."' He paused a moment, then asked suspiciously, 'Thoo'll not blab—thoo'll not tell ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... blood and thoughts have twin conception: Study to act deeds yet unchronicled; Cast native monsters in the moulds of men; Case vicious devils under sancted rochets; Unhasp the wicket, where all perjureds roost, And swarm this ball with treasons. Do thy worst; Thou canst not (hell-hound) cross my star[A] to-night. [A] [Old copy, steare.] Nor blind that glory, where ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... his friend. "Duck back into the restaurant, Bob. Get a pocketful of dry rice from the Chink. Trail those birds to their nest and find where they roost. Then stick around like a burr. Scatter rice behind you, and I'll drift along later. First off, I got to stay and talk with Miss Joyce. And, say, take along ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... floor; but my prompt action revealed who the intruder was, by producing a wild flutter and a frantic cackling! Before my companion could strike a light the mysterious attack was fully explained. The supposed midnight robber and possible assassin was simply a peaceable hen that had gone to roost on my arm, and, on finding her position unsteady, had dug her claws into what ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... blood-hound was chained to one of the posts of the verandah; Jezebel, the noble mastiff-bitch, lay basking before the door, perfectly contented with her situation and prospects; and little Fig was busily hunting among the shrubs, and barking at the small birds which he disturbed as they were preparing to roost. ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... one of the long perches where the fowls roost at night, the newly hatched Chicken lay shivering in the nest, and on the floor were the pieces of the wonderful shiny egg. The Dorking Hen had knocked it from the nest ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... he had originally made an honest mistake and was no longer positive of the defendant's identity, in which case when the grand jury threw out the case nobody would ever know the reason and no chickens would come home to roost on him. ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... threatened us. Though we felt quite secure in our "roost" we could not remain there long. It was by no means comfortable, straddling the naked branch of a tree; but the comfort was a small consideration. We were both used to riding such a stock-horse, and as for Brace, he could have gone to sleep with ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... sayin' that Sabriny air weak-minded, nuther—thet is weakmindeder then thet she air a—she hev the mine uv a female, an' nachully not able ter hannel proppity. An' I haint sayin' she aint gettin' mighty well took keer uv by Lige, nuther. The last time I war theer she war roolin' the roost. She slep' in the bes' bed, an' et offen the bes' plate, an' had the bes' corn dodger an' shote; but what I air—that is what some air thinkin' about air whence Lige onct gits the hull er thet proppity in bulk, air hit goin' ter be thet away? Mine you, I aint asten ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... lower, I swear to rob this chicken-grower!' Revolving such revenge within, When night had still'd the various din, And poppies seem'd to bear full sway O'er man and dog, as lock'd they lay Alike secure in slumber deep, And cocks and hens were fast asleep, Upon the populous roost he stole. By negligence,—a common sin,— The farmer left unclosed the hole, And, stooping down, the fox went in. The blood of every fowl was spill'd, The citadel with murder fill'd. The dawn disclosed sad sights, I ween, When heaps ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... turned, expecting—not to see a bear or a fox, but my fancies incorporate. The leaves were still quivering, but I saw no apparent cause for so much disturbance. I probably had startled a brace of partridges from their roost. They brought me back to the actual world, and I came home to an excellent dinner, which I found my father ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... I daresay it's comfortable enough; so the sun shines in mornin's, thet's the most I care for. You'll make any kind o' house pooty to look at inside, an' I reckon we needn't roost on the fences outside, a-lookin' at it, any more'n we choose to. It does look, for all the world though, like 'Bijah Jenkins's old yaller barn; 'n' thet there jog's jest the way he jined on his cow-shed. I declare it's too redicklus." And the old lady ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... single pairs or in little bands of four or five. In the autumn evenings, however, they assemble in considerable flocks before going to roost and make a wonderful chattering, as if comparing notes of the ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... enough to roost in the fall, I expect we'll have to gather that crop with a gun," Hiram ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... flew to their nests. The chickens went to roost. The cows came home from the pasture and stood mooing at the gate. It grew so dark that the people could not see ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... supported by a line of wooden stanchions. There were arm racks round the stanchions, containing muskets, cutlasses, and long, double-barrelled pistols. As I expected, there were several bee-skeps hanging from nails, or lying on the floor. I was in the smugglers' roost, perhaps in the presence of Captain ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... said, "you've been lyin' to me two weeks, tryin' to buy that rooster that I wouldn't sell no more'n I'd sell my first husband's gravestun'. And when you couldn't git it by lyin', you stole it off'm the roost to-night. And to make sure there won't be any more lies, I've followed you right here to find out the truth. Now what ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... yellow-gray cloud with no deeper nor shallower tints to it, rising steadily, moving swiftly, shut off the noonday glare. The shadows deepened below this strange un-cloud-like cloud, not dark, but dense. The few chickens in the settlement mistook the clock and went to roost. At every settler's house, wondering eyes watched the unheard-of phenomenon, so like, yet utterly unlike, the ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... with the Burgdalers, and they were exceeding merry; and especially the women of them, they were chattering like the stares in the autumn evening, when they gather from the fields in the tall elm-trees before they go to roost. ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... accommodation of this multitude were cities of nest houses, roost houses, and the like. Huge structures elevated on poles swarmed with doves. A duck pond even had been provided for its ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... over an' over again to insure my life," explained the stoker, "but I told 'im as I didn't 'old with laying out good money wot wouldn't never come 'ome to roost-like, until I was dead. Then Abey leans over the counter an' ketches me by the neck 'andkerchief an' says, 'Think of the worst life you know, an' 'ave a bit on that.' Naturally, talkin' o' bad lives, you're the first chap whose name comes ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... against her in the street; has constantly occasion to pass under her window, or to talk to some one opposite to it. He, of course, looks up; Pompilia looks down; the neighbours say, 'What of that?' The Count is uncomfortable, but he is only laughed at for his pains; the fox prowls round the hen-roost undisturbed. He wakes one morning, after a drugged sleep, to find the house ransacked, and Pompilia gone, and everyone able to inform him that she has gone with Caponsacchi, and to Rome. He pursues them, and overtakes them where they have spent the night together. She brazens the matter out, ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... requisition. It was their honest pride to see a well-furnished dresser, showing copper and pewter in shining splendor as if for ornament rather than for use. In all this they differed widely from the Germans, a people with whom they have been erroneously and often confounded. Roost fowls and ducks are not more different. As water draws one it repels ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... straddle. The date of her foaling went further back than Dad's, I believe; and she was shaped something like an alderman. We found her one day in about eighteen inches of mud, with both eyes picked out by the crows, and her hide bearing evidence that a feathery tribe had made a roost of her carcase. Plainly, there was no chance of breaking up the ground with her help. We had no plough, either; how then was the corn to be put in? That was ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... scared of you, Abby," relented Mrs. Black. "But I says to myself, 'I'm goin' to let Lydia Orr stand on her two own feet in this town,' I says. She can say what she likes about herself, an' there won't be no lies coming home to roost at my house. I guess you'd feel the very same way if you was ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... skirts of the Richelieu Army in Hanover or Hessen Country, had of course to take wing in that general fright before the mastiff. Soubise did not cross the Rhine with it; Soubise made off eastward; [Westphalen, i. 501 ("end of March, 1758").]—found new roost in Hanau-Frankfurt Country; and had thoughts of joining the Austrians in Bohemia next Campaign; but got new order,—such the pinches of a winged Clermont with a mastiff Ferdinand at his poor draggled tail;—and came back to the Ferdinand scene, to help there; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... Falling-sickness; The very bag you bear, and the brown dish Shall be escheated. All your daintiest Dells too I will deflower, and take your dearest Doxyes From your warm sides; and then some one cold night I'le watch you what old barn you go to roost in, And there I'le smother you ...
— Beggars Bush - From the Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... he had done for years, and behind him Camorak went. And when at last they climbed from the third valley, and stood on the hill's summit in the golden sunlight of evening, their aged eyes saw only miles of forest and the birds going to roost. ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... repose in a chair, Chickens can roost upon rails; Puppies are able to sleep in a stable, And oysters can slumber in pails. But no one supposes A poor Camel dozes— ANY PLACE does ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... above the old nests to indicate their rights; for in the rookery possession is the law, and not nine-tenths of it only. In the slow dull cold of winter even these noisy birds are quiet, and as the vast flocks pass over, night and morning, to and from the woods in which they roost, there is scarcely a sound. Through the mist their black wings advance in silence, the jackdaws with them are chilled into unwonted quiet, and unless you chance to look up the crowd may go over unnoticed. But so soon as the waters begin to make a sound in February, running in the ditches and splashing ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... have not been guilty of great crimes; but it is only because they have not energy of mind to rise to any height of wickedness. They are not hawks or kites: they are only miserable fowls whose flight is not above their dunghill or hen-roost. But they tremble before the authors of these horrors. They admire them at a safe and respectful distance. There never was a mean and abject mind that did not admire an intrepid and dexterous villain. In the bottom of their hearts they believe such hardy miscreants ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... no etiquette at these small drawing-rooms. People came and went at pleasure. The window embrasures became the roost of happy couples; at the great chimney the talkers mostly congregated, each full-charged with scandal; and down at the farther end the gamblers gambled. It was towards this point that Otto moved, not ostentatiously, but with a gentle insistence, and scattering attentions as he went. Once abreast ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... candle to me. Fenwick, with all his cunning, is a child compared with Ned Blossett. Ask any of the old gang in New York, ask the blistering police if you like; and as to the rest of you, who are you? A set of whitefaced mechanics, without pluck enough to rob a hen-roost. Take that, you cur!" ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... the road to me in the night, a crown will be ready for the messenger.' In the same spirit, he walked up and down outside the iron gate for the best part of an hour, with some solicitude; occasionally looking in between the bars, as if he had laid a dove in a high roost in a cage of lions, and had it on his mind that ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... naught amiss 'at I know. I'm but takin' roost here wi' the owls an' jackdaws a bit, maybe for ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... sir knight! Thou wilt have a plentiful lack of them ere the honeymoon be out of the comb. A pleasant roost in thy bachelor's hall, and many of them!" and the vagabond sprung upon the back of a green lizard creeping silently through the grass, and sticking his heels into his astonished charger, dragoon-fashion, disappeared down the bank of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... lived much to himself in the quiet spaces, who could not believe that grain dealers could be honest and build palatial residences in Winnipeg while his own toil in producing the grain was rewarded with a living only. It looked as if the roost was being robbed and with his newborn initiative he wanted to find out how it was done ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... to see you but two or three days in the year? I thought you would at last come and while away the remainder of life on the banks of the Thames in gaiety and old tales. I have quitted the stage, and the Clive[1] is preparing to leave it. We shall neither of us ever be grave: dowagers roost all around us, and you could never want cards or mirth. Will you end like a fat farmer, repeating annually the price of oats, and discussing stale newspapers? There have you got, I hear, into an old gallery, that has ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... had to stop for breath; and her neighbors all looked at one another, feeling undecided whether to own they were wrong, or to put Mrs. Wing down. Every one twittered and chirped, and made a great noise; but no one would give up, and all went to roost in a great state of uncertainty. But, the next day, it became evident that Mrs. Wing was right; for Major Bumble-bee came buzzing in to tell them that old Daddy Winter's hut was empty, and his white head had been seen in the sunny ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... mark without Alec's trying for it, and a heavy thud informed the scouts that the bullet was fatal! Instantly, however, there was such a commotion in the leaves, and such a Bedlam of screeching! Finally a great flock of crows swept out of the high tree and flew away to find a less dangerous roost. ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... moment writing this by the bank, I see the black, clear-cut reflection of them far below, flying through the watery looking-glass, by ones, twos, or long strings. All last night I heard the noises from their great roost in a neighboring wood. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... before it is started. A man must come into court with clean hands. I had started by rotting the other fellow's eggs and he finished by souring my milk. I wanted justice and I got it, but I didn't recognize it when it landed on me with all four feet. Chickens come home to roost, and my pigeons had found a nesting-place on my anatomy; and the spot they had chosen was right in ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... Yup, I'm puttin' back a few feathers. Old birds like to roost comf'table. You've got a fairly ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... do poor rude wolf wool chew you soon rule could foot crew to noon tool would good brew shoe whom school should hood drew prove food spool woman wood threw broad whose roof shook stood screw moon tomb broom crook pull strew goose stoop roost hook bush shrewd took full ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... St. Sylvester's day—St. Sylvester! Why, that is his birthday! Ungrateful friend, to give no thought to it! Quick! my coat, my stick, my hat, and let me run to see these two early birds before they seek their roost. ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... and near, Where the humming-bird shimmers, where the neck of the long-lived swan is curving and winding, Where the laughing-gull scoots by the shore, where she laughs her near-human laugh, Where bee-hives range on a gray bench in the garden half hid by the high weeds, Where band-neck'd partridges roost in a ring on the ground with their heads out, Where burial coaches enter the arch'd gates of a cemetery, Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled trees, Where the yellow-crown'd heron comes to ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... Wisdom, it must now be used; If we have Numbers, they must be united; If we have Strength, it must be all exerted; If we have Courage it must be inflamed, And every Art and Stratagem be practis'd: We've more to do than fright a Pigeon Roost, Or start a timorous Flock of running Deer; Yes, we've a strong, a warlike stubborn Foe, Unus'd to be repuls'd and quit the Field, Nay, flush'd with Victories and long Success, Their Numbers, Strength, and Courage all renown'd, 'Tis ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... witchery of an increasing, a thing as different as possible from the decreasing twilight, and finally mellow, distinct and luminous, as the rays of the great centre of light diffuse themselves in the atmosphere. The hymns of birds, too, have no moral counterpart in the retreat to the roost, or the flight to the nest, and these invariably accompany the advent of the day, until the appearance of ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... name is wrongly spelt in the "Origin of Species."]) experiments on seeds "in a box in the actual sea.") that my observations on the effects of sea-water have been confirmed. I still suspect that the legs of birds which roost on the ground may be an efficient means; but I was interrupted when going to make trials on this subject, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... himself with his wings, but without flying. Its cry is seldom heard and never long continued. At noon, sometimes from sixty to eighty of these birds perch themselves on the tops of the houses or on the adjoining walls, and with the heads under the wing they all go to roost. They are extremely voracious, and devour every sort of animal substance they can find, however filthy it may be. They are not in the least degree shy, for they hop about among men and cattle in the most populous places. The Turkey vulture is far more lively, and its movements are more light. It ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... them all there, or at least the young ladies; and perhaps the doctor. The baroness goes to bed early. Meantime I can show you one of our dramatis personae, and an important one too. She rules the roost." ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... daughter's mine to command; have I not brought her up to this? She shall have him. I'll rule the roost for that. I'll give her pounds and crowns, gold and silver. I'll weigh her down in pure angel gold. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... the catboat or thirty-footer to be brought in from her moorings, for Cap'n Perry to land with a load of oysters; or it is the bench you sit upon to watch the sunset glow behind the pines on the opposite headland, the pines where the blue herons roost, or to see the moon track on the dancing water. The Post Road is alive with motors now, far into the evening. You get your mail from the little post office beside it as quickly as possible—which isn't very quickly, to ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... Trail Arizona Ames Riders of Spanish Peaks The Border Legion The Desert of Wheat Stairs of Sand The Drift Fence Wanderer of the Wasteland The Light of Western Stars The U.P. Trail The Lone Star Ranger Robber's Roost The Man of the Forest The Call of the Canyon West of the Pecos The Shepherd of Guadaloupe The Trail Driver Wildfire ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... the spell, whereupon they both bounded off in different directions. This, I am told by an authority, was a case of neurasthenia, or nerve-paralysis. A not quite similar occurrence was recorded some little time ago. A farmer saw a pheasant go to roost in a tree, standing alone in the field. Presently he saw a fox approach, go to the tree, and look up at the pheasant. After pausing for a moment, regarding the bird, he proceeded to run rapidly round the tree in a narrow circle. This he did for ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... up; they had to! There! Ma Sills certinly did rule the roost, and no mistake. She'd been a widder ever since the boys were a year old, so she had to do for herself and them, and she done it. She was a master hand; ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... but he told me he had prayed already, and that he would give me the cock, whose dung he had taken, for my trouble, as it was a fine large cock, and he had nothing better to offer for my Sunday's dinner. And as the poultry was by this time gone to roost, he went up to the perch which was behind the stove, and reached down the cock, and put it under the arm of the maid, who was just come to ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... depths—on he went with hopping, lurching jerks, with whispering lips. Street after street he passed, and then at a corner he turned and went East—not far, only to the side entrance of the saloon on the corner known, to those who knew, as the "Roost." ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... O'Mara heartily. "But they've both got fine young tempers of their own, for all they're so gay and friendly. Somebody's going to learn who's rulin' the roost, when the first edge of the honeymoon's off. And it's in me mind that the under-dog won't be ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... and saueray. quinces. and peeres [1], garlek and Grapes. and fylle the gees erwith. and sowe the hole at no grece come out. and roost hem wel. and kepe the grece at fallith erof. take galytyne and grece and do in a possynet, whan the gees buth rosted ynowh; take an smyte hem on pecys. and at tat [2] is withinne and do it in a possynet and put erinne wyne if it be to thyk. do erto powdour of galyngale. ...
— The Forme of Cury • Samuel Pegge
... friends. There was Harriet, for example, dear, serious, practical Harriet. I used to be fretted by the way she was forever trying to clip my wing feathers—I suppose to keep me close to the quiet and friendly and unadventurous roost! We come by such a long, long road, sometimes, to the acceptance of our nearest friends for exactly what they are. Because we are so fond of them we try to make them over to suit some curious ideal of perfection ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... with the impalpable outbreathings of the silence. The audience listened intently to an indignant and spirited passage against the pirates, so numerous at that period, who had become cocks of the roost after long haunting the darkest corners to rob all who passed. Certainly Maranne, when he wrote those fine lines, had had nobody less in his mind than the Nabob. But the audience saw in them an allusion to him; and while a triple salvo of applause greeted the end of the tirade, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... without stinging, is nevertheless productive of no little annoyance. The tameness of the birds and lizards is as nothing when compared to the fearless confidence of this insect. He will perch upon one of your eye-lashes, and go to roost there if you do not disturb him, or force his way through your hair, or along the cavity of the nostril, till you almost fancy he is resolved to explore the very brain itself. On one occasion I was so inconsiderate ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... or the designs for the Christmas cards? Have not heard a word, pro or con. Guess no news is good news; for I notice 'rejected' work generally travels fast, to roost at home." ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination—the moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside, the boding cry of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech owl, to the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle came winging his blundering flight against him, the poor varlet ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... and all the swift changes of life, God's attempts to lead him to yield himself up, and bow his will? And was not God striving with him now, in the anxieties which gnawed at his heart, and in his dread of the morrow? Was He not trying to teach him how crime always comes home to roost, with a brood of pains running behind it? Was not the weird duel in the brooding stillness a disclosure, which would more and more possess his soul as the night passed on, of a Presence which in silence strove with him, and only desired ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... with an abstracted air, as if he had been another bird entirely. The paper got into a manzanita bush, where it remained suspended until the evening, when, being dislodged by a passing wild-cat on its way to Mulrady's hen-roost, it gave that delicately sensitive marauder such a turn that she fled into ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... wonder if any one else can see it in a picture before the eyes as I can, bright, and vivid as trees suddenly shown at night by a great flash of lightning. All the leaves and branches and the birds at roost are visible during the flash. It is barely a second; it seems much longer. Memory, like the lightning, reveals the pictures in the mind. Every curve, and shore, and shallow is as familiar now as when I ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... I tell you, w'y you kin tie me ter er tree an' whup me ef you wants ter, but I got ter tell you. Not laung ergo, I stole er chicken from yo' roost. An' now you may ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... her feet upon the low, brass fender and drawing up the edge of her dress, to toast her ankles, "this is just as good a time to tell you all about it as any other, now that the young uns are gone to roost. I hate to talk about the wickedness of the world before the young uns; they will find it out quick enough for themselves, poor things! Well, you want to know what in the name o' sense ever possessed me to marry that beat, don't you?" she ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... said Mr. Healy at an Irish political meeting, 'that there are at the present moment crystallizing in this city precedents which will some day come home to roost like a boomerang.'" ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... moorcock that craws on the brows of Ben-Connal, He kens of his bed in a sweet mossy hame; The eagle that soars o'er the cliffs of Clan-Ronald, Unawed and unhunted his eyrie can claim; The solan can sleep on the shelve of the shore, The cormorant roost on his rock of the sea, But, ah! there is one whose hard fate I deplore, Nor house, ha', nor hame in his country has he: The conflict is past, and our name is no more— There 's nought left but ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Fisherman Charlie, have I caught thee setting bait for Lorna? Now, I understand thy fishings, and the robbing of Counsellor's hen roost. May I never have good roasting, if I have it not to-night and roast thee, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... singed; yet singeing has not the effect upon them for which singeing is designed; and like chickens in a shower that have got the pip, they keep still gasping and shooting out their tongues, and walking on tip-toe with their tails down, till finally they go to roost in some obscure corner, and are no more ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... studied owls, And other night fowls, And I tell you What I know to be true: An owl cannot roost With his limbs so unloosed; No owl in this world Ever had his claws curled, Ever had his legs slanted, Ever had his bill canted, Ever had his neck screwed Into that attitude. He can't do it, because 'Tis against all bird laws. Anatomy teaches, Ornithology preaches, An owl ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... were quite right; he had given her plenty of run and ignored her cackle, and now she had come home to roost. There is nothing like a knowledge of farming, and an acquaintance with the habits of domestic animals, to teach a man how ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... house anxiously awaiting the result. After some time she heard the shotgun go off, and in a few minutes the farmer entered the house. 'What luck had you?' said she. 'I hid myself behind the woodpile,' said the old man, 'with the shot-gun pointed toward the hen-roost, and before long there appeared, not one skunk, but seven. I took aim, blazed away, and killed one—and he raised such a fearful smell I concluded it was best to let the other six alone.'" The Senators retired, and nothing more was heard from ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... Dunlap's "History of New York," and Mrs. Ellet's "Domestic History of the Revolution." For an excellent description of the border warfare on the "neutral ground," the reader should go to Irving's delightful "Chronicle of Wolfert's Roost." Cooper's novel, "The Spy," deals accurately with that subject, which is touched upon also in that good old standby, Lossing's "Pictorial Field-book of the Revolution." Philipse Manor-house has been carefully written of by Judge Atkins in a Yonkers newspaper, and less accurately by ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... but the current was not so strong, so we turned round, seeing the flood was going down, and by nightfall we had got back to where the house had stood. Every vestige of the once pretty homestead had disappeared, with sheep and cattle, though the fowls had managed to find a roost on the topmost branches of some orange trees, which alone remained to ...
— True Stories of Wonderful Deeds - Pictures and Stories for Little Folk • Anonymous
... eye, having just finished as fine a torrent of abuse of each other and of Kilquhanity as can be imagined. Kilquhanity himself, with the sorrow of death upon him, though he knew it not, had listened to the brawl, his chickens come home to roost at last. The first Mrs. Kilquhanity had sworn, with an oath that took no account of the Cure's presence, that not a stick nor a stone nor a rag nor a penny should that Irish slattern ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... shedding upon the earth's surface an illumination somewhat akin to full moonlight. Usually the planet Venus and a few stars shine out the while in the darkened heaven. Meantime around the observer animal and plant life behave as at nightfall. Birds go to roost, bats fly out, worms come to the surface of the ground, flowers close up. In the Norwegian eclipse of 1896 fish were seen rising to the surface of the water. When the total phase at length is over, and the moon in her progress across ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... call back our proud eagle of liberty from its pinion flight through the skies of national achievement, and make our national emblem the barnyard fowl that crows in the day dawn as if creating light instead of noise, and then runs for his roost ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... came upon he gave a wide berth except at night, and then he only approached them stealthily for such provender as he might filch. Before the week was up he had become an expert chicken thief, being able to rob a roost as quietly as the most finished carpetbagger on the sunny side ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... true cat-like stealthy pace," half muttered the centurion, as his sentinel descended to do such a crime as he was posted there to prevent. "This cockerel's comb must be cut, or he will become king of the roost. But let us see if his hand be as resolute as his tongue; then we will consider what turn ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the preceding evening, when the cock-partridge went to roost, there had been no suggestion of rain, but a bitter air from the northwest searching through the woods. The wise old bird, finding cold comfort on his perch, had bethought him of a trick which many a time before had served his turn. In the open, where the snow was deep, ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Highee down in de market reckoned it was high time fancy niggers was drov into de swamp, and I allowed that loafers and beggars had better roost high when workin' folks was around, and Marse Tom said he'd cut ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... in the woods somewhere he digs up an old b'gosh artist that was brought up with one of them guns in his hand, and he takes a private course. After he's used up a keg of powder shootin' at tin cans they start out to find where the deers roost. They find 'em, too. Mr. Robert is so rattled that he misses the one he aims at; but he bores a tunnel through another in ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... twenty years ago, Cal," Harris said. "But it still holds good—only I've changed my mind too. You was dead right from the first. Squatters will come to roost on every foot of ground and there'll come a day when I'll have to turn squatter myself—so I might as well start now. The way to get used to crowds, Cal, is to go where the crowds are at. I'm headed back ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... went out, taking Bully with him. He thought he would see for himself if Bully would try to take the chickens, and with this idea, went up the garden to a place overlooking the farm hen-roost. The chickens were chirping and snuggling on their perches, and he felt sure that Bully was innocent, for he did not even prick an ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... sauntering along, and found places on the "roost." One of these was a burly fellow with a pugnacious face and a bold eye. He seemed to be no favorite among the boys, though they treated him with a certain amount of respect. Well, there is never a town or a village but has its particular bully; and for several years now Nick Lang had ably ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... came the faint sounds of music. It might have been a phonograph playing in one of the summer cabins with names like Polly Ann Roost and Patches and Seventh Heaven, but to Kimmy it was the hated cry of the Father of Therns calling the dreadful Plant Men to their feast of victims borne into this Valley Dor ...
— The Hills of Home • Alfred Coppel
... not yet touched the outstretched arms of the prickly pear upon the kopje, and the early cocks and hens still strutted about stiffly after the night's roost, when Waldo stood before the wagon-house saddling the grey mare. Every now and then he glanced up at the old familiar objects: they had a new aspect that morning. Even the cocks, seen in the light of parting, ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... the matter than I have been able to give. My own paper was printed at the same time, in The Atlantic Monthly, and had been accepted by the editor before I knew of Mr. Brewster's intention to write. References to a roost in Belmont, Mass., discovered by Mr. Brewster six years before, are frequent in the ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... from his cradle," growl'd another; "and times enough I've told 'n: 'Cap'n,' says I, 'there's no sense o' proportions about ye.' A master mind, sirs, but 'a 'll be hang'd for a hen-roost, so sure as my name's ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... exclaimed, after returning from a drive to Eastboro village, "I give you my word, Seth, they dummed nigh et me alive. They covered the horse all up, so that he looked for all the world like a sheep, woolly. I don't mind moskeeters in moderation, but when they roost on my eyelids and make 'em so heavy I can't open 'em, then I'm ready to swear. But I couldn't get even that relief, because every time I unbattened my mouth a million or so flew in and choked me. That's ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... nodded Flanders, "but then it's happened the same way with others I could tell about. As long as he was winnin' Sandy was the king of any roost. The minute he lost a fight he wasn't worth so many pounds of salt pork. Take a hoss; a fine hoss is often jest the same. Long as it wins nothin' can touch some of them blooded boys. But let 'em go under the wire second, maybe jest ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... at low tide, were all swept out to sea and drowned. I observed that many horses were still turned out to pasture all summer on the islands and beaches in Wellfleet, Eastham, and Orleans, as a kind of common. He also described the killing of what he called "wild hens" here, after they had gone to roost in the woods, when he was a boy. Perhaps they were "Prairie ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... on which your Mr. Bennett comes. He has spent five dollars paying the negroes to polish up their instruments and clean up the uniforms and it cost him twenty-five to bail the cornettist out of jail for roost robbing, and it takes a whole gallon of whisky to get any spirit into the drummer. He says tell you that as this is your shindig you ought at least to pay the piper. Hurry up, he's waiting for me, and here's the kiss he told me to put ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... jackal ventures near a house, and perhaps enters a hen-roost, to steal a hen. But in such cases, he often shows himself to be as stupid as he is impudent; for even then, if he hears the yelling of his comrades chasing their game, he forgets himself, and yells as lustily as the ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... thunder, beat upon the reefs and beaches. Now louder in one place, now lower in another, like the combinations of orchestral music, the constant mass of sound was hardly varied for a moment. And loud above all this hurly-burly I could hear the changeful voices of the Roost and the intermittent roaring of the Merry Men. At that hour there flashed into my mind the reason of the name that they were called. For the noise of them seemed almost mirthful, as it out-topped the other noises ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... out the kitchen chair to Cis; and when she was seated, got the wood box and set it on its side. "Come and roost along with me," he bade Johnnie, the single eye under the wet-combed, tawny bang smiling almost tenderly ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... more sleep all night, and I, after running the risk of catching cold in searching over the house, have this morning been at the expense of new fastenings to the doors and windows. The next time, however, you rise, Richard, to alarm the family, you shall in future roost with the hens or bed in ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... body and one leg tucked up, patiently awaits his turn. At night the beautiful Brahminee geese alight, one by one, and seek total solitude; ever since having disturbed a god in his slumbers, these birds are fated to pass the night in single blessedness. The gulls and terns, again, roost in flocks, as do the wild geese and pelicans,—the latter, however, not till after making a hearty and very noisy supper. These birds congregate by the sides of pools, and beat the water with violence, so as to scare the fish, which ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... Muster Barton,' she exclaimed, further manifesting her maternal instincts by applying her apron to her offspring's nose. 'He's al'ys a-findin' faut wi' him, and a-poundin' him for nothin'. Let him goo an' eat his roost goose as is a-smellin' up in our noses while we're a-swallering them greasy broth, an' let my ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... traversed, and strikes its projector; he, having matter in his astral and mental bodies similar to that of the thought-form he generated, is thrown into respondent vibrations, and suffers the destructive effects he had intended to cause to another. Thus "curses [and blessings] come home to roost." From this arise also the very serious effects of hating or suspecting a good and highly-advanced man; the thought-forms sent against him cannot injure him, and they rebound against their projectors, shattering them mentally, morally, or ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... Buckheath darkly. "She won't have to. If Gray Stoddard marries Johnnie Consadine, you and me will just about roost in the penitentiary for the rest ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... pairs use the same mound. The eggs are deposited at a depth of from one to three feet; the heat at that depth is very great, more than the hand can bear for any length of time. I cannot say whether the young, when released from the mounds, are tended by the parents; they, however, return and roost in the mounds at night. The flesh of the 'Megapodius' is dark and flavorless, being a mass of hard muscle and sinew. birds, which may be called game, are not numerous. The brush turkey ('Talegalla'), the 'Megapodius', several species of pigeon, with ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... sure of that. Trust a woman to find a place where she can't ruin her hat. My word for it, Cecil, she's found a safe roost. I say, by Jove!" The duke was staring more intently than ever at the windows far above. "I have it! Isn't it rather odd that a house should be lighted so brilliantly ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... undisturbed, and indulge the sweets of domestic and rural life, which of all things lay nearest his heart. And these two undertakings compelled him to be diligent with his pen to the end of his life. The spot he chose for his "Roost" was a little farm on the bank of the river at Tarrytown, close to his old Sleepy Hollow haunt, one of the loveliest, if not the most picturesque, situations on the Hudson. At first he intended nothing more than a summer retreat, ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... the ground of the guide-books. For my part I have no belief in the romance of old-world life. In the modern Tell I behold a hireling, ready to barter his brawny limbs to the use of whatever tyrant; and the picturesque Mazzaroni, upon closer acquaintance, dwindles down to the standard of a hen-roost thief. Amid the crumbling walls of Athens and the ruins of Rome I encounter inhospitality and hunger. I am not a believer in the picturesqueness of poverty. I have no relish for ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... burning feeling of the hour was the desire to put down by a strong hand the depredations of these lawless robber hordes. Not a house in the place but had suffered from them, not a farmer but had complaints to make of hen roost robbed or beasts driven off in the night. Others had darker tales to tell; and Will Ives clenched his fists and vowed that he would be glad indeed to see the day when he and Simon Dowsett might meet face to face in equal combat. But it would be impossible to attack the robbers in their forest fastnesses ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... about as her reward was pilfering, and a crown put into her hand, gave her less pleasure than a halfpenny which she had stolen. Neither was it any use to dream of ruling her as the sole male, or as the proud master of the hen roost, for which of them, no matter how broad shouldered he was, would have been capable of it? Some had tried to vanquish her, but ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... was more wonderful in the country. The leaves and withering foliage assumed a most singular tint of green, changing, like that of the grass, to a brownish hue; fowls went to roost, and the animal creation must have been greatly mystified by a phenomenon such as they ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... the drawing room of her father's home about ten years later. Since the death of Matilda Hoffman, he had grown to be a very close friend of the Gratz family, never failing when in Philadelphia to visit their home where he might "roost," as he put it, in the large, comfortable guest room. He had never referred to his intimate conversation with Rebecca when she had tried to comfort him after Matilda's death; yet their mutual grief and confidence had created ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... buzzards are the shyer birds; and they are less disposed to keep together in flocks. It has even been said that these are not gregarious, as they are often seen alone in the high regions of the air. But it is certain that not only do numbers of them roost together at night, but they even associate with the black vultures at ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... was it made the place seem so different from even the most expensive hotel suites? The furniture was very plain. The decorations were soft-toned and simple. "It's—it's because the Rose Girl lives here, I guess," he soliloquized. "Now this kind of a roost would jest suit Billy, but it makes me feel like walkin' on eggs. This here grazin' is too good ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... barrel, the projecting platform on which it rested, and a yard or more of the mast, from its summit down—or, to be accurate, it shed a pale radiance on a youthful figure, clinging there by its legs, and upon a hand and arm reaching over the platform to rob the roost. ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... as I have said, above Assmannshausen, probably at night, and then cross directly over the river. The first castle with which I intend to deal is that celebrated robber's roost, Rheinstein, standing two hundred and sixty feet above the water. Disembarking about a league up the river from Rheinstein, before daybreak we will all lie concealed in the forest within sight of the Castle gates. When the sun is well risen, Captain Blumenfels ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... expostulating with her daughter, the news of Mary Virginia's unannounced engagement had sifted pretty thoroughly throughout the length and breadth of Appleboro; a town where an unfledged and callow rumor will start out of a morning and come home to roost at night with ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... imagination and enthusiasm to heights which would make an archangel dizzy; who from paroxysms of anguish at the condition of those whose burning bodies are lighting the fires of hell, will go off and commit adultery or rob a hen-roost as complacently as if to do so were a part of their religion. This is not fiction. Religion has not meant chastity, for slavery made that impossible; it has not meant justice, for injustice forged their chains; it has not meant ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., May, 1888., No. 5 • Various
... after the weather, politics, and harmless phases of local gossip had been discussed; "they are getting as poor as crows. My boys say that they are fed as well as usual. What's more, I've had them throw down for 'em a warm mixture of meal and potatoes before they go to roost, but we don't get an egg. What ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... admit to being so hanged well up on the chicken-roost proposition myself if I were you," retorted Ted impudently. "So long. I'm much obliged for your kind favors all but the moral sentiments. You can have those back. You may need ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... met their eyes—one that all the four appreciated to the full: a long, low room with a French window standing wide open to the garden just a step or two below. On the evening breeze wafted in the scent of mignonette and flowers, and the low sleepy clucking of the hens, about to go to roost. Near the window stood the table, with a silver kettle boiling merrily on its stand, and fruit and flowers and pretty china in abundance, all looking as dainty and tempting as heart could desire. There was an abundance too of more substantial fare, ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... finny race and monster brood Tranquil repose. Even the busy bee Forgets her daily toil. The silent wood No more with noisy hum of insect rings; And all the feathered tribes, by gentle sleep subdued, Roost in the glade, and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... listening heaven, and notes abrupt and guttural, mingling with others more clear and soul-piercing than ever human lips drew from reed or metal. It soon ended; up sprang the vocalists like a fountain of fire and fled away to their roost among the hills, then silence reigned once more. What brilliant hues, what gay, fantastic music! Were they indeed birds, or the glad, winged inhabitants of a mystic region, resembling earth, but sweeter than earth and never ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... Curse away And let me tell thee, Beauseant, a wise proverb The Arabs have,—"Curses are like young chickens, [Solemnly.] And still come home to roost!" ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... "That's a trick Red's got—seemin' unimportant. Red spends a heap of his time not sayin' anything, an' hangin' around lookin' like he's been misplaced. But when there's any trouble, you'll find Red like the banty rooster that's figurin' to rule the roost. ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... am calm! When Alice left me she had no child. I knew not that she bore within her the pledge of our ill-omened and erring love. Verily, the sins of my youth have arisen against me; and the curse has come home to roost!" ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IX • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... single garment like a petticoat, made of pelican skin; the children are naked. Not far from Tiburon, which is about thirty miles long by fifteen miles wide, there is a smaller island where pelicans roost in vast numbers. The Seris go at night and with sticks knock over as many ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... like the Farallones, and their large green eggs hatch out nestlings that are ugly and awkward and helpless on land. But they ride the great ocean-breakers, or dive into their clear depths easily and gracefully; and as they live upon fish or small sea-creatures, the divers only seek land to roost at night ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... Christo the cook (who was a capital fellow for speed in preparing a dinner) was enveloped in savoury steam, when the usual inmates of the hut quietly invaded us. Cocks and hens marched in, and went to roost upon some sticks within a corner; two or three dogs arrived, evidently with the intention of staying through the night; a donkey at length walked composedly through the entrance door and steered for his accustomed corner. We had caused serious inconvenience ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... There was no one in the lonely neighborhood of the cottage who could furnish any information as to the cause of its being thus deserted. I conjectured from the heaps of fagots which remained in the yard, from the hens and pigeons which returned of themselves to roost in the room, or on the roof, and from the stacks of hay and straw which stood untouched in the orchard, that the family had gone to gather in a late harvest in the high chalets of the mountain, and had not yet ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... point of confusion. She supplied untold excitement to Pine Tree and Maple Leaf, the two serving maids earning an education by service, and drove old Ishi the gardener to tearful protest. "Miss Jaygray dangerful girl. She boldly confisteal a dimension of flower house and request strange demons to roost on premises." ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... untold energy trying to make over my dearest friends. There was Harriet, for example, dear, serious, practical Harriet. I used to be fretted by the way she was forever trying to clip my wing feathers—I suppose to keep me close to the quiet and friendly and unadventurous roost! We come by such a long, long road, sometimes, to the acceptance of our nearest friends for exactly what they are. Because we are so fond of them we try to make them over to suit some curious ideal of perfection ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... He slept on a bunk built over the entrance door, and reached by means of a rude flight of steps. There he liked to roll on his straw and rags, whenever he was not busy, or felt especially lazy. On Friday evenings he climbed to his roost very early, before the family assembled for supper, and waited for his cue, which was the breaking-out of table talk after the blessing of the bread. Then Yakub began to clear his throat and kept on working at it until my father called ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... fox-hunter, rose at daylight for a run with the dogs over the new-fallen snow. Just before calling his hounds, he went to his hen-house, some distance away, to throw the chickens some corn for the day. As he reached the roost, his steps making no sound in the snow, he noticed the trail of a fox crossing the yard and entering the coop through a low opening sometimes used by the chickens. No trail came out; it flashed upon him that the fox must be inside ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... be five hens and three cocks; and they were now so tame that, having cut their wings, I let them out, when the weather favoured, at my door, where they would pick about in the wood, and get the best part of their subsistence; and having used them to roost in a corner of my ante-chamber, they all came in very regularly at night and took their places. My hens, at the usual season, laid me abundance of eggs, and hatched me a brood or two each of chickens; so that now I was at a loss to know what to ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... remaining in the house anxiously awaiting the result. After some time she heard the shotgun go off, and in a few minutes the farmer entered the house. 'What luck had you?' said she. 'I hid myself behind the woodpile,' said the old man, 'with the shot-gun pointed toward the hen-roost, and before long there appeared, not one skunk, but seven. I took aim, blazed away, and killed one—and he raised such a fearful smell I concluded it was best to let the other six alone.'" The Senators retired, and nothing more was heard from ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... up to roost on a cloud, but I didn't kick. Now they're tryin' to charge me for meals extry. Don't that twelve dollars ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... hour of the wood-pigeons coming in to roost, and several were wheeling over our heads at a ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... deserve; and which, surely, he would have forborne, had he considered how hardly the habitual influence of birth and fortune is resisted; and how frequently men, not wholly without sense of virtue, are betrayed to acts more atrocious than the robbery of a hen-roost, by a ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... this low land is under water. As I told you, we are near the mouth of the Arkansas, and for miles and miles the country ain't much better than a swamp at the best of times. You can swim to them trees, and roost up in the branches, if the fancy takes yer, and may be we may decide that's the best thing to do, when we have talked it over; but as to getting to land, you may put that notion out of your head altogether. I told you, ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... near maple. The birds did not seem to fear him now, but swept past the treetop where he sat as if to challenge him to a race, and then went their way. I have seen it stated that these birds, when suddenly surprised by a hawk, will dive beneath the snow to escape him. They doubtless roost upon the ground, as do most ground-builders, and hence must often be covered by the ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... all those that are fledged and ripe, will issue forth in such vast numbers, that they do almost darken the Sky, flying to such an height, as they go out of sight, and so keep flying till they fall down dead at last upon the Earth. The Birds that tarry up late, and are not yet gone to roost, fly among them and make good Suppers ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... for he never intermitted a muttered running-fire of the most horrible execrations that I ever listened to even in this hard-swearing country. Whether this ebullition of blasphemy comforted him at the moment I cannot say; but, if "curses come home to roost," a black brood was hatched that night, unless one whole page be blotted out from the ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... pedigree he was not thoroughly acquainted; and, truth to tell, he proved himself as great a thief as he was a genealogist among them. Many a time the unfortunate foxes from some neighboring cover were cursed and banned, when, if the truth had been known, the only fox that despoiled the roost was Raymond-na-hattha. One thing, however, was certain, that unless the cock was thoroughly game he might enjoy his liberty and ease long enough without molestation from Raymond. We had well nigh forgotten to say that he wore on the right side of his topmost hat ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... train pulled slowly into the station of the little seaport town. It was late, as always at this turning-point of the season, when the summer population was changing its roost from sea to mountain or from the north to the south shore. Falkner, glancing anxiously along the line of cars for a certain figure, said again to himself, 'If she shouldn't come—at the last moment!' and ashamed of his doubt, replied, 'She will, if humanly ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... Mr. Talmage was pottering about in the land of the erstwhile Pharaohs, examining mummified cats and drawing a fat salary for unrendered services, he evidently forgot that in his own, his native land, the people "rule the roost"; that the government is but their creature and has to dance to music of their making. If the distinguished gentleman had spent his vacation in the hayloft in close communion with a copy of the constitution of ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... they are coming to see why Manuello doesn't show up with the cows," remarked the Captain, "we don't want to stir up this hen roost as we've got other chicken to fry. So ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... the beautiful Brahminee geese alight, one by one, and seek total solitude; ever since having disturbed a god in his slumbers, these birds are fated to pass the night in single blessedness. The gulls and terns, again, roost in flocks, as do the wild geese and pelicans,—the latter, however, not till after making a hearty and very noisy supper. These birds congregate by the sides of pools, and beat the water with violence, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... his cradle," growl'd another; "and times enough I've told 'n: 'Cap'n,' says I, 'there's no sense o' proportions about ye.' A master mind, sirs, but 'a 'll be hang'd for a hen-roost, so sure as my ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... for a little they walk out of the village, without saying a word to each other, and look towards the dark streak of the forest. The whole sky above the forest is studded with moving black spots, the rooks flying home to roost. The snow, lying white here and there on the dark brown plough-land, is lightly flecked ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... rogue's-roost of dirt 'tis just now," said Will; "but a few pound spent in the right way will ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... over ter let 'em know how they was gittin' on in Ho'sford. He sed dat ebbery white man in de county 'cept about ten or twelve was inter it, an' dey wuz a gwine ter clean out nigger rule h'yer, shore. He sed de fust big thing they got on hand wuz ter break up dis buzzard-roost h'yer at Red Wing, an' he 'llowed dat wouldn't be no hard wuk kase dey'd got some pretty tough tings on Nimbus an" ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... A. A.," Peter had said, "and you can bet your boots no jailbird will ever roost on it if he thinks twice. And it's just that sort of thing that ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... Why shouldn't they?" said Nick tolerantly. "Are you getting tired, my chicken? Do you want to go home to roost?" ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... bedstead, with an enormous bed upon it. How any bedstead held such a bed was remarkable; for Phillis believed there was a virtue in feathers even in the hottest weather, and she would rather have gone to roost on the nearest tree than to have slept on any thing else. The quilt was of a domestic blue and white, her own manufacture, and the cases to the pillows were very white and smooth. A little, common trundle bedstead was underneath, and on it was the bedding which was used for the younger children ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... for a while and he'll realize what his father has done for him," he fumed. "Let him shift for himself and we'll see how soon he'll come home to roost." ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... Benjamin Franklin, though he was an author before the United States existed, was American to the marrow. The "Leather-Stocking Tales" of Cooper are the American epic. Irving's "Knickerbocker" and his "Woolfert's Roost" will long outlast his other productions. Poe's most popular tale, "The Gold-Bug," is American in its scene, and so is "The Mystery of Marie Roget," in spite of its French nomenclature; and all that he wrote ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... thought it like a fight for life with a pack of wolves. In some parts of the South there were men as ready to murder a negro who tried to get an office as to kill a fox they found prowling about a hen roost. These brave and haughty men who had governed the country for half a century, who had held the power of the United States at bay for four years, who had never doffed their hats to any prince or noble on earth, even in whose faults or vices there was nothing mean or petty, never having been ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... her house in Nanjivvey Street, where I've seen it a score of times and spelled out the writing, "C. L."—for Christian Lebow—"1768"). And concerning this Election you must know that "the Duke's interest," as they called it—that's to say, the Whigs—had ruled the roost in Ardevora for more than fifty years; mainly through the Duke's agent, old Squire Martin of Tregoose, that collected the rents, held pretty well all the public offices inside his ten fingers, and would save up a grudge for time-out-of-mind against any man that crossed him. Two members we returned ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Fagoni feeds well, bekase he's the cock o' the roost; but the poor Naygurs are not overly well fed, and the critters are up to their knees in wather all day, washing di'monds; so they suffer much from rheumatiz and colds. Och, but it's murther entirely; an' I've more than wance felt inclined to fill their pockets with di'monds and ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Authorities.)—It is now known that the battle was only skirmish. The rebels attacked a hen-roost in search ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... come among men's habitations. The two last gossips of the evening, still talking by a garden wall, directed me to the inn. The landlady was getting her chicks to bed; the fire was already out, and had, not without grumbling, to be rekindled; half an hour later, and I must have gone supperless to roost. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... along whistling, past Dr. Gardner's house, past the deanery; they and the cathedral tower, rising above them, looked grey in the moonlight. He picked up a stone and sent it right into one of the elm trees; some of the birds, disturbed from their roost, flew out, croaking, over his head. In the old days of superstition it might have been looked upon as an evil omen, coupled with what was to follow. Ah, Charley! if you could only foresee what is before you! If Mrs. Channing, from her far-off sojourn, could but know ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the bird of prey went straight to roost. At mid-day following he reappeared at the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters, in the character, not new to him, of a witness before a ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... and I was not long in making acquaintance with it. I awoke to find, by the light of the lantern swung from the roost overhead, the dozen men in the loft awake and pulling on their boots. They had lain in their sodden clothes all night: but of their boots, I found, they were as careful as dandies, and to grease them would hoard up a lump of fat even while their stomachs ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... downstairs, and slipped in among their Form mates unobserved. The school spent an agitated hour in the cellar, sitting on blankets clutched from their beds. As all appeared quiet, and no more mysterious thumps resounded on the roof, Miss Beasley, who had reconnoitred, declared it safe to return to roost, and ordered her twenty-six pupils upstairs again. Possibly she had her suspicions, for very early next morning she went out to investigate the extent of the damage, and discovered a selection of the projectiles lying ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... of the hour was the desire to put down by a strong hand the depredations of these lawless robber hordes. Not a house in the place but had suffered from them, not a farmer but had complaints to make of hen roost robbed or beasts driven off in the night. Others had darker tales to tell; and Will Ives clenched his fists and vowed that he would be glad indeed to see the day when he and Simon Dowsett might meet face to face in equal combat. But it would be impossible to attack ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... cabin of the indefatigable interpreter. I have seen people packed into this space like herrings in a barrel, and many merry evenings prolonged there until five bells, when the lights were ruthlessly extinguished and all must go to roost. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... looks," to fall back upon. I am afraid some prudes may be misjudging my character on account of the frequency of my allusions to the sex lately; but I beg them to recollect that this is Andalusia, and that woman is a very important element in the population of Cadiz. She rules the roost, and the courtly Spaniard of the south forgets that there was ever such an undutiful person as Eve. Woman played a remarkable part in the events of the couple of months after the Royal crown was punched out of ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... barbarians. Fortunately it was not so. But, as I said, Choo Hoo, retiring to the top of a lofty fir-tree, and filled with these ideas, surveyed from thence the masses of his countrymen returning to the woods to roost as the sun declined, and resolved to lose no time in endeavouring to win them to his will, and to persuade them to embark upon the extraordinary enterprise which he ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... paragraphist for nothing: the sale was a success. I paid a part of my debts, and gave notes for the rest that will keep my future poor. I started in again on the Times' city force. To board I hate: it's a chicken's life—roosting on a perch, coming down to eat and then going back to roost. So I got a little domicile in "The Patch." When the teakettle has begun to spend the evening the new cheap wallpaper, the whitewash and the soapsuds with which the floor has been ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... Comic Annual of the year. At the beginning of 1839 he paid a visit of about three weeks to his often-regretted England, staying with one of his oldest and most intimate friends, Mr. Dilke, then editor of the Athenaeum. Another of his best friends—one indeed who continued to the end roost unwearied and affectionate in his professional and other attentions, Dr. Elliot—now made a medical examination of Hood's condition. He pronounced the lungs to be organically sound; the chief seat of disease being the liver, and the heart, which was placed ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... is that she just fits into the scenery here, and I don't. You know, father, I never could wax enthusiastic over shooing the cows to roost and ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... with long ago. He lives on his pension!" Johannes laughed. "He breaks stones on the roadside now. He's as hard as ever and will rule the roost. He fights with the peasants as they pass, and swears at them because they drive on his heap ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... shudder I cannot say, but they give no sign of it. They build their palaces in full view of these terrible Towers, pass, on their way to dinner parties, luxuriously in Rolls-Royces beside the trees where the vultures roost, and generally behave themselves as if this were the best possible of worlds and the only one. And I ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... place seem so different from even the most expensive hotel suites? The furniture was very plain. The decorations were soft-toned and simple. "It's—it's because the Rose Girl lives here, I guess," he soliloquized. "Now this kind of a roost would jest suit Billy, but it makes me feel like walkin' on eggs. This here grazin' is too good ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... without the least concern, and eventually flew away with an abstracted air, as if he had been another bird entirely. The paper got into a manzanita bush, where it remained suspended until the evening, when, being dislodged by a passing wild-cat on its way to Mulrady's hen-roost, it gave that delicately sensitive marauder such a turn that she ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... about her with a contented sigh. "New York was very grand and rich, but I'm glad to be back in this queer, shabby old house. Aunt Jemima asked all about everything, Mother—whether you had left the stuffed horse's head on the wall, whether the turkeys still tried to roost on the front porch, what you had done with father's old servants, especially Mahaly—she seemed to be particularly interested in Mahaly, for some reason or other. I told her everything was just as it had been always—and ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... atter I tell you, w'y you kin tie me ter er tree an' whup me ef you wants ter, but I got ter tell you. Not laung ergo, I stole er chicken from yo' roost. An' now ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... (381/4. For Marten's read Martins' [the name is wrongly spelt in the "Origin of Species."]) experiments on seeds "in a box in the actual sea.") that my observations on the effects of sea-water have been confirmed. I still suspect that the legs of birds which roost on the ground may be an efficient means; but I was interrupted when going to make trials on this subject, and ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... father did, and the brindle calf was glad that she had not gone away from the farmyard when she saw her mother come in from the clover lot. The chickens went to roost, and the horses were fed; but no brown colt came in sight, although Dick and Fleet went down the lane to look, a ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... touched the outstretched arms of the prickly pear upon the kopje, and the early cocks and hens still strutted about stiffly after the night's roost, when Waldo stood before the wagon-house saddling the grey mare. Every now and then he glanced up at the old familiar objects: they had a new aspect that morning. Even the cocks, seen in the light of parting, had a peculiar interest, and he listened with conscious attention while one crowed clear ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... of farther imaginings do we greet the day, and how variously! Our eyes do not require a visual picture of the lone wild turkey on his cypress roost to know that he is ruffling his feathers, craning his neck inquisitively downward in all directions, before chancing to descend to earth and breakfast; nor need we see the panther skulking from his lair to know that he has stopped to lick his paw and pass it over ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... out a hand to grasp the lad's and gazing with fatherly affection and pride into the handsome young face glowing with health and happiness, "she is the earliest young bird in the family nest. However, she seeks her roost earlier than ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... darkly. "She won't have to. If Gray Stoddard marries Johnnie Consadine, you and me will just about roost in the penitentiary for the rest of ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... was the pison, Sir,—a baby like that wouldn't harm a flea. I thought maybe, until I see Dr. Thorne, that he done it out of mischieviousness, as boys will do, you know,—jest as they steal a feller's apples, and knock his turkeys of'n the roost,—but yander's not one of them kind; so he must 'a' been crazy, and I'm rael sorry he's been so bad put to about ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... slung across her shoulders. She had been down to Farmer Green's hen- house, right in the middle of the night, when Farmer Green and his family were asleep; and she had snatched one of the sleeping hens off the roost and stolen away with it ...
— The Tale of Tommy Fox • Arthur Scott Bailey
... step the curse of war came home to roost. Henry V's abler but less brilliant brother, Bedford, stemmed till his death the rising tide of English faction and French patriotism. Then the expulsion of the English from France began, and a long tale of failure discredited the government. The nation had spirit enough ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... made me take that oath. I suppose she's head girl and that's why she rules the roost? Is she decent or does she keep you petrified? I don't know whether I'm expected to say 'Bow-wow,' or to listen in respectful humility when she deigns ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... have too black a name in the Andredsweald. We should have to answer for every peasant we have hanged or hen roost we have robbed." ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... nursery grate, and had heard from it how the carpet on their own nursery floor was really the wishing carpet, which would take them anywhere they chose. The carpet had transported them to bed just at the right moment, and the Phoenix had gone to roost on the cornice supporting the ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... looked at her. It was a hard task even for that best and roost tactful of gentlemen, Mr. Brinsmade. He too had misjudged ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... dark and still as they approached it. No welcoming light in the dining-room windows, no open door, no shrill voice demanding to know where the wandering brother had been "all this everlastin' time." Even the hens had gone to roost. Abishai groaned. ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and stealing. With them the villagers rarely, if ever, had intercourse, and respectable persons seldom crossed their thresholds. The principal man among the Hillers was known as Bill Powell. He was a giant in strength and stature, and used to boast that he could visit "any hen-roost in the village every night in the week, and carry off a dozen chickens each time, without being nabbed." He was very fond of liquor, too indolent to work, and spent most of his time, when out of jail, on the river, fishing, or roaming through the ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... tossed about with a high wind. At last, when they were tired of watching his motions, and some of the boldest, now grown familiar with him and no longer chilled with fear, talked of stoning him from his roost, he cried out, pointing with his finger, "Look yonder!" They now beheld, in the direction he bade them look, far away on the foaming bosom of the Great Lake, something resembling a great, white fowl. It was ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... she murmured. "I know I'm very mean. But I had such a bad night. I thought that all the devils in hell were jeering at me because I had told you my romance was dead. Oh, Jack! it was a great big lie, and it's come home to roost. I can't get rid of it. ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... favourite expletive—it would not do to say this to her. On the Packenham side (she is a Packenham) the family can boast of some fairly good men—I mean on the direct line—but when we get on the side branches there is not a monarch upon earth who does not roost on that huge family tree. Not once, nor twice, but thrice did the Plantagenets intermarry with us, the Dukes of Brittany courted our alliance, and the Percies of Northumberland intertwined themselves with our whole illustrious record. ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... largest part of the forenoon sitting at the foot of the tall dead tree on which Ol' Mistah Buzzard likes to roost. All the time Ol' Mistah Buzzard had been sailing 'round and 'round in circles way up in the blue, blue sky, sometimes so high that to Bobby he looked like just a tiny speck. Bobby had watched him until ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Mocker • Thornton W. Burgess
... (strange as it is) of their retiring under water. A Swedish naturalist is so much persuaded of that fact, that he talks, in his calendar of Flora, as familiarly of the swallows going under water in the beginning of September, as he would of his poultry going to roost a little ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... Mrs Duggan told me in the City Arms. Husband rolling in drunk, stink of pub off him like a polecat. Have that in your nose in the dark, whiff of stale boose. Then ask in the morning: was I drunk last night? Bad policy however to fault the husband. Chickens come home to roost. They stick by one another like glue. Maybe the women's fault also. That's where Molly can knock spots off them. It's the blood of the south. Moorish. Also the form, the figure. Hands felt for the opulent. Just compare for instance those others. Wife locked up at home, skeleton in the cupboard. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Turkey Proudfoot had quite a different notion. It was so different that he didn't even dare to roost in the tree in front of the barn that night, but crowded right into the henhouse. The hens made a great fuss and ordered him out. But he simply ...
— The Tale of the The Muley Cow - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... and you bring every brooding failure carrion-crow in the Universe to roost on the top rail of your iron bedstead. Think success, look success, live success,—and success walks in at your front door, while everyone helps you along the same way with each thought he gives your apparent success, even if his thought be simply one ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... it has like power over the native-born citizen. If a State has power over the franchise of the women citizens of the United States, it also has power over the men citizens. Unjust laws, like curses, go home to roost; they can always be made to plague their enactors. When the rights of any one class of citizens are assailed, a blow is struck against the rights of all. The danger to individual liberty lies in special laws. If States are powerful enough to weaken the National constitution, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... half a dozen distinct modifications. In the fledgling male who just begins to feel the spirit of his kind, and who goes through his performance in the adolescent way, it is a cheap and often pitiful call. From the open roost in the trees, where the birds are gradually aroused by the slow-coming day, we can often hear the note of the half-awakened cock, as full of the sense of slumber as the speech of a sleeping man. As the creature gradually awakens, ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... he came upon he gave a wide berth except at night, and then he only approached them stealthily for such provender as he might filch. Before the week was up he had become an expert chicken thief, being able to rob a roost as quietly as the most finished carpetbagger on the sunny side ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... than the Cosireni. The width of the river is about 150 feet and its volume is twice that of the Cosireni. The climate is very trying. The nights are hot. Insect pests are numerous. Mr. Heller found that "the forest was filled with annoying, though sting-less, bees which persisted in attempting to roost on the countenance of any human being available." On the banks of the Comberciato he found several families of savages. All the men were keen hunters and fishermen. Their weapons consisted of powerful bows made from the wood of a small palm ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... if they cried. The kittens and chickens grew to be great friends. They would eat out of the same dish, and when night came they would all go to the chicken-coop together. The kittens slept in the nest, and the chickens on the roost. Were they not ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... tale, and one to be remembered," observed Colonel Manysnifters thoughtfully. "I never had an adventure like that, because I am awfully careful about what I eat and drink, and I roost at chicken-time. There's no telling what will happen to a man when he violates Nature's laws. Night is made for sleep, and the three hours before midnight count for ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... long awake. Roddy's bed was too short for her, and there was no ease in it, even had her mind and heart been at rest. All the fantasies she had beguiled from the boy's brain had come to roost in her own, with a hundred other vivid and painful impressions. The night, too, was fuller than usual of disquietude. The wind, which had been rising steadily, now tore at the shutters and rushed shrieking ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... exceedingly, the whole land is covered with a dense and rank vegetation. I have yet to find a square smig of it that is open ground, or one that is not the lair of some savage beast, the haunt of some venomous reptile, or the roost of some offensive bird. Crackers and Coons alike are long extinct, and ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... faster forwards he helps himself with his wings, but without flying. Its cry is seldom heard and never long continued. At noon, sometimes from sixty to eighty of these birds perch themselves on the tops of the houses or on the adjoining walls, and with the heads under the wing they all go to roost. They are extremely voracious, and devour every sort of animal substance they can find, however filthy it may be. They are not in the least degree shy, for they hop about among men and cattle in the most populous places. The Turkey vulture is far more lively, and ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... now grown tender and sweet; and so at last Greenlawn began to look very deserted all day, but it was not so of a night, for there would be a fine noise in the ivy, where all the sparrows came home to roost, for they were in such high spirits that they could not keep quiet, but kept on chatter, chatter, till it grew so dark they could not see to open their beaks. As to the starlings, they came home by scores to the warm, thick cedar, ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... you had not sent for me," answered the other. "Come, let us have the knaves in. I suppose they have been robbing some one's hen-roost, and want to lay the blame ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... a Candle with a ball, I first had an opportunity of seeing near the banks of Green River, not far from a large pigeon roost, to which I had previously made a visit. I had heard many reports of guns during the early part of a dark night, and knowing them to be rifles, I went towards the spot to ascertain the cause. On reaching the ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... those things not included in drill, and a British soldier having a good deal of the machine about him, Harry stands fast, and Chunder pulls up short, grinning rolling his eyes, and twisting his hands about, just for all the world like as if he was robbing a hen-roost, and wringing all ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... of Cambridge 'Varsity, and Godfrey Staunton is my best man. To-morrow we play Oxford. Yesterday we all came up, and we settled at Bentley's private hotel. At ten o'clock I went round and saw that all the fellows had gone to roost, for I believe in strict training and plenty of sleep to keep a team fit. I had a word or two with Godfrey before he turned in. He seemed to me to be pale and bothered. I asked him what was the matter. He said he was all right—just ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Barton,' she exclaimed, further manifesting her maternal instincts by applying her apron to her offspring's nose. 'He's al'ys a-findin' faut wi' him, and a-poundin' him for nothin'. Let him goo an' eat his roost goose as is a-smellin' up in our noses while we're a-swallering them greasy broth, ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... woodland with tales of hero and scald. Alone of our House, he had the gift of the Dane in the flow of fierce song, and for him things lifeless had being. Stately tree, from which all the birds of heaven sent their carol; where the falcon took roost, whence the mavis flew forth in its glee,—how art thou blasted and seared, bough and core!—smit by the lightning and consumed ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to help. We are your debtors, as well as Belle, and demand the privilege of paying up. Blessings, like curses, come home to roost, Fan." ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... boy! Fisherman Charlie, have I caught thee setting bait for Lorna? Now, I understand thy fishings, and the robbing of Counsellor's hen roost. May I never have good roasting, if I have it not to-night and ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... leaders? In the matter of dress also are they not slaves, abjectly following new-fangled fashions imported from Paris? In domestic circles are not many husbands hen-pecked by their wives, because they, and not the men, rule the roost? Are not many women practically governed by their husbands, whose word is their law? The eager hunger for "the almighty dollar" leads most Americans to sacrifice their time, health, and liberty in the acquisition of wealth, and, alas, when ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... before swine.—What little intercourse I had with the brute animal was by message, in which I always employed such low bred slaves and vagabonds that their evidence would not be received in a trial for robbing a hen roost." ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... to the trained coyotes, ladies an' gents," remarked Johnny in a deep, solemn voice. "Coyotes are not birds; they do not roost on roofs as a general thing; but they are some intelligent an' can be trained to do lots of foolish tricks. ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... across her shoulders. She had been down to Farmer Green's hen- house, right in the middle of the night, when Farmer Green and his family were asleep; and she had snatched one of the sleeping hens off the roost and stolen away with it without ...
— The Tale of Tommy Fox • Arthur Scott Bailey
... sorry for one thing, boys," remarked Farmer Trotter's wife, who had apparently hailed the decision of the seven bold scouts to guard her fowl-roost with undeniable joy. ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... of the hostelry roost were about the big house at that hour. The new arrivals dodged scrub-women and sweepers in the office and on the stairs, and went to their rooms. The Duke, leaving his grandson at his bedroom door, suggested a bit stiffly that he would "call around ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... grove there," replied Henry. "Having killed one turkey, he'd be on the look-out for another, and he knows that they roost in ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a conviction that for me there might still be something true and fine raced into my mind. And was followed by a whole host of gentle and unselfish and pitying thoughts, as to a tree at evening flocks of starlings come to roost. ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... and farm, Striking their inmates with sudden alarm; And they ran out like bees in a midsummer swarm. There were dames with their kerchiefs tied over their caps, To see if their poultry were free from mishaps; The turkeys, they gobbled, the geese screamed aloud, And the hens crept to roost in a terrified crowd; There was rearing of ladders, and logs laying on, Where the thatch from the roof threatened soon to be gone. But the wind had passed on, and had met in a lane With a schoolboy, who panted and struggled in vain, For it tossed him, and twirled him, then passed, and he ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... she exclaimed, further manifesting her maternal instincts by applying her apron to her offspring's nose. 'He's al'ys a-findin' faut wi' him, and a-poundin' him for nothin'. Let him goo an' eat his roost goose as is a-smellin' up in our noses while we're a-swallering them greasy broth, ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... right about face—quick! Your back's prettier than your face, and besides, I want to know whether your hip-pockets are empty. I've heard it's the habit of you gentry to pack guns in your clothes.... None? That's all right, then. Now roost on the transom, over there in the corner, Stryker, and don't move. Don't let me hear ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... reeling junks behind me and the racing seas before, I raped your richest roadstead—I plundered Singapore! I set my hand on the Hoogli; as a hooded snake she rose, And I flung your stoutest steamers to roost with the startled crows. ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... soon after she had gone back to roost in the henhouse, it seemed to Henrietta that she had scarcely fallen asleep when the ...
— The Tale of Henrietta Hen • Arthur Scott Bailey
... own devices. You ought to be grateful to me for not stopping you entirely, without asking me to give you a helping hand. Good-bye, and God bless you. I'm praying that ye get away safely, Miss Cameron. So long, Barnes. If you were a crow and wanted to roost on that big tree in front of Hart's Tavern, I dare say you'd take the shortest way there by flying as straight as a bullet from the mouth of this pit, following your ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... I am standing here, and by the looks of things, trying his best to roost in my birdhouse!" The Hermit chuckled as he looked up into the eyes of the animal, who did not ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... that hate? "Hate by water and hate by land; Hate of the head and hate of the hand." Black and bitter and bad as sin, Take you care lest it hem you in, Lest the hate you boast of be yours alone, And curses, like chickens, find roost ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... Hawkes, Cockadores* (* Cockatoos.) of 2 Sorts, the one white, and the other brown, very beautiful Loryquets of 2 or 3 Sorts, Pidgeons, Doves, and a few other sorts of small Birds. The Sea or Water fowl are Herns, Whisling Ducks, which perch and, I believe, roost on Trees; Curlews, etc., and not many of these neither. Some of our Gentlemen who were in the Country heard and saw Wild Geese ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... time comes, but as we've got the nicest sort of friends, educated and all that, who have travelled along with us, as you have, from the beginning, why should we change our habits and feathers and try to fly for a different roost?' ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... Journal:—I located a robin roost up the Trinity River, six miles from Dallas, and prevailed on six Dallas sportsmen to go with me on a torch-light bird hunt. This style of hunting was, of course, new to the Texans, but they finally consented to go, and I had the pleasure of showing ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... George," said Phineas, chewing some checkerberry-leaves as he spoke; "but I may have the fun of looking on, I suppose. But see, these fellows are kinder debating down there, and looking up, like hens when they are going to fly up on to the roost. Hadn't thee better give 'em a word of advice, before they come up, just to tell 'em handsomely they'll ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... nothing but a troop of devotees around him, shallow persons without a spark of judgment, who greet him as the founder of a brand-new musical system, and completely turn his head." To a certain degree this judgment came home to roost in Wagner's later years in Bayreuth; but he was saved by the fact that, being a great musician, he also drew genuine musicians to him. If Bayreuth was crowded by strange beings of low intelligence who bowed low before Richard and found the weirdest ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... Heigham? I suppose Angela has gone upstairs; she goes to roost very early. I hope that she has not bored you, and that old Pigott hasn't talked your head off. I told you that we were an odd lot, you know; but, if you find us odder than you bargained for, I should advise ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... get nothing more sensational than the confessions of a hen-roost robber, I suspect," said Mrs. Aylett, more wearily than was consistent with ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... Zuba," he observed, "we can't help it, as I see. What's done's done and chickens do come home to roost, don't they?" ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... shouted the startled Laura. "You're never! You can't be! Not Rollicking Rhoda from Rustlers' Roost, the wild Western adventuress we've ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... than usual. The death of the year brings gloomy thoughts, the thirty-first of December, St. Sylvester's day—St. Sylvester! Why, that is his birthday! Ungrateful friend, to give no thought to it! Quick! my coat, my stick, my hat, and let me run to see these two early birds before they seek their roost. ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... happily with their syrup-can mother, until papa declared that they were large enough to go to roost in ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37. No. 16., April 19, 1914 • Various
... ears, our nerves tensely strung with anxiety and suspense waiting to catch the first sound of that coming strife, where we knew so many of our bravest and best must fall. At last came the news of that terrible fight at Buzzard's Roost or Rocky Face Ridge, and the evening after, in came Dr. S. —— straight from the front, and said, 'The hospital-train is at the depot, wouldn't you like to see it?' 'Of course we would,' chorused Mrs. Dr. S. —— and myself, and forthwith ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... had finished, they put out the light, and each one looked out for a suitable and comfortable sleeping-place. The donkey lay down on the dunghill, the dog behind the door, the cat on the hearth near the warm ashes, and the cock set himself on the hen-roost; and, as they were all tired with their long journey, they soon went to sleep. Soon after midnight, as the robbers in the distance could see that no more lights were burning in the house, and as all seemed quiet, the captain said, "We ought not to have let ourselves be scared so easily," and ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... crowdin' me. Dem ar creeturs wuz mighty kuse—mo' speshually Brer Rabbit. W'en it come down ter dat," said Uncle Remus, lowering his voice and looking very grave, "I 'speck ef youder s'arch de country fum hen-roost to river-bank,[61] you won't fine a no mo' kuser man dan Brer Rabbit. All I knows is dat Brer Rabbit en Brer Tarrypin had a mighty laughin' spell des 'bout de time Brer Wolf hit ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... cried Mrs. Shepherd's shrill voice at the back door; 'why, don't ye hear that Mrs. Barker's hen-roost has been robbed by Dick Royston and two or three ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... very timid. In the evening, when he is put to roost in a close and dark room, he is afraid of the shadow of his perch that is cast by the light we carry in our hand; he eyes it, and utters a low cry, which stops when the candle is blown out and he cannot see the shadow any longer. He ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... trick? The proper and judicious use of spines. All of you would use spines if you could. Most of you do. Think of the bramble-thickets, think of the furze, the last resort of valiant stoat and viper, think of the holly, where the sparrows roost. ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... given to a large family of degenerates. It is not the real name of any family, but a general term applied to forty-two different names borne by those in whose veins flows the blood of one man. The word "jukes" means "to roost." It refers to the habit of fowls to have no home, no nest, no coop, preferring to fly into the trees and roost away from the places where they belong. The word has also come to mean people who are too indolent and lazy to stand up or sit up, but sprawl out anywhere. "The Jukes" ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... Jean continued, "if a fellow could but know the rights of the matter; if he could be sure that any good was to come from it all." Then turning his head and glancing at the western sky: "Anyway, I wish that blamed sun would hurry up and go to roost. Perhaps they'll ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... You've set me acrost oncet or twicet, and you've always been 'clever' to me, and I don't want to see no harm done you. You'd better look out to-night. They's some chaps from Greenbank down here, and they're in for a frolic, and somebody's hen-roost'll suffer, I guess; and they don't like you boys, and they talked about routing you ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... might vie with venison in juice and flavour; my delicious veal, fattened with nothing but the mother's milk, that fills the dish with gravy; my poultry from the barn-door, that never knew confinement, but when they were at roost; my rabbits panting from the warren; my game fresh from the moors; my trout and salmon struggling from the stream; oysters from their native banks; and herrings, with other sea fish, I can eat in four hours after they are taken — My sallads, roots, and potherbs, my own garden yields in plenty ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... to command; have I not brought her up to this? She shall have him. I'll rule the roost for that. I'll give her pounds and crowns, gold and silver. I'll weigh her down in pure angel gold. Say, man, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... part I have no belief in the romance of old-world life. In the modern Tell I behold a hireling, ready to barter his brawny limbs to the use of whatever tyrant; and the picturesque Mazzaroni, upon closer acquaintance, dwindles down to the standard of a hen-roost thief. Amid the crumbling walls of Athens and the ruins of Rome I encounter inhospitality and hunger. I am not a believer in the picturesqueness of poverty. I have no relish for the romance ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... came hither that night. The Camel, so often with burthens opprest, Was glad for a while from his labour to rest. The Sloth, when invited, got up with much pain, Just groan'd out, "Ah, No!" and then laid down again. The Fox, near the hen-roost, no longer kept watch, But hied to the feast, better viands to catch. The Monkey, so cunning, and full of his sport, [p 8] To show All his Talents came to this resort. The Dog and Grimalkin[2] from ...
— The Elephant's Ball, and Grand Fete Champetre • W. B.
... Michaelis that the chasidah of the Hebrews could not be the stork, because the latter bird does not usually roost on trees; and yet it is asserted in the hundred-and-fourth Psalm, that the fir-trees are a dwelling for the stork. But Doubdan, who had no hypothesis to maintain, relates that he saw storks resting on trees between Cana and Nazareth; and Dr. Shaw says expressly, ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... good deal of the machine about him, Harry stands fast, and Chunder pulls up short, grinning rolling his eyes, and twisting his hands about, just for all the world like as if he was robbing a hen-roost, and wringing ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... you can hold a candle to me. Fenwick, with all his cunning, is a child compared with Ned Blossett. Ask any of the old gang in New York, ask the blistering police if you like; and as to the rest of you, who are you? A set of whitefaced mechanics, without pluck enough to rob a hen-roost. Take ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... pulled slowly into the station of the little seaport town. It was late, as always at this turning-point of the season, when the summer population was changing its roost from sea to mountain or from the north to the south shore. Falkner, glancing anxiously along the line of cars for a certain figure, said again to himself, 'If she shouldn't come—at the last moment!' and ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... mother; "don't the birds go to roost on the branches, and the poultry get shelter under it from the rain? and after all your cutting, I don't see as you're likely to turn a thorn-tree into ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... where there was abundance of a large kind of partridge, or francolin, which was delicious eating; or take them to some place at the edge of the forest where he knew from experience that the harsh, metallic-voiced, speckled guinea-fowl would be coming home to roost. ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... day is done, and darkness From the wing of night is loosed, As a feather is wafted downward, From a chicken going to roost. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... spent the rest of the night curled up in the darkest corner, partly behind a box. All the time his nose was filled with the smell of fat hens. Every little while a hen who was being crowded too much on the roost would stir uneasily and protest in a sleepy voice. Just think of what Reddy suffered. Just think how you would feel to be very, very hungry and have right within reach the one thing you like best in all the world to eat and then not dare touch it. Some foolish folks in Reddy's ...
— Bowser The Hound • Thornton W. Burgess
... sworn enemies. The horse steps on it, the wheel crushes it; it falls into the cistern or the swill barrel; it is drenched by showers or stiffened by frosts, and, as the English say, it has a "rather indifferent time of it." If it survive the summer, and some chickens do, it will roost and shiver on the limb of an apple tree. Its nest will be accessible only to the mink and the rat; and, like Rachel, it will mourn for its children, which ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... the old house for the last time, sniffing the agreeable odor of aged hypo still permeating the dark room, re-covering the empty stains of skins and traces of maps on the walls, and re-filling in my mind the vacant shelves. The vampires had returned to their chosen roost, the martins still swept through the corridors, and as I went down the hill, a moriche oriole sent a silver shaft of song after me from the sentinel palm, just as he had greeted ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... subtle to be analyzed. The dinner was as good as I had a right to expect it to be. A dish on which the hostess had evidently striven to use her best art was of orange mushrooms in a sauce of verjuice; but the substantial one was a roast fowl—an unfortunate bird that was just going to roost with an easy mind, when my coming upset the arrangements of the inn and the poultry house. One fowl, at all events, had had good reason to think it was an ill wind that blew me ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... he clambered up into the loft under the high peaked roof, where lay numberless forgotten things covered with the dim dust of years. There a flock of pigeons had made their roost, and flapped noisily out into the sunlight when he pushed open the door from below. Here he hunted among the mouldering things of the past until, oh, joy of joys! in an ancient oaken chest he found a great lot of worm-eaten books, that had belonged ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... of the man who lived much to himself in the quiet spaces, who could not believe that grain dealers could be honest and build palatial residences in Winnipeg while his own toil in producing the grain was rewarded with a living only. It looked as if the roost was being robbed and with his newborn initiative he wanted to find out how it was done and who was ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... the bush, and the light thrown upon the back of it. The bush is then moderately beaten, and the birds affrighted and bewildered fly against the net, which is instantly closed. The bird is thus captured, and when a full roost can be discovered a large number may be taken in a single night. The lantern should be closed while not in actual use, and everything should be done as quietly as possible. The dark lantern in itself is useful without the net. The light often so bewilders the bird that it flies directly in the ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... was not at hand, or elsewhere employed), but he told me he had prayed already, and that he would give me the cock, whose dung he had taken, for my trouble, as it was a fine large cock, and he had nothing better to offer for my Sunday's dinner. And as the poultry was by this time gone to roost, he went up to the perch which was behind the stove, and reached down the cock, and put it under the arm of the maid, who was just come to ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... as like as not! Begone, unless you want to be put at once into the pot! Go for them, Argos! Dion, you feed them. They'll be under foot until they've had their supper, and it's time they were on the roost this minute! Daphne, your face is dirty; go wash it, while I get the fire started and see if I can't find something to eat more fitting ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins
... does. Dey pukes on folks to keep dem away, and you can't go near kaise it be's so nasty; but dem buzzards don't waste nothing. Little young buzzards looks like down till dey gits over three days old. You can go to a buzzard roost and see for yourself, but you sho better stay out'n de way of de old buzzard's puke. Dey sets around de little ones and keeps everything off ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... rob this chicken-grower!' Revolving such revenge within, When night had still'd the various din, And poppies seem'd to bear full sway O'er man and dog, as lock'd they lay Alike secure in slumber deep, And cocks and hens were fast asleep, Upon the populous roost he stole. By negligence,—a common sin,— The farmer left unclosed the hole, And, stooping down, the fox went in. The blood of every fowl was spill'd, The citadel with murder fill'd. The dawn disclosed sad sights, I ween, When ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... forest. "Claude! Ah! Claude, thou hast ruin' me! Stop, you young rascal!—thief!—robber!—brigand!" A vine caught and held him fast. "Claude! Claude!"—The echoes multiplied the sound, and scared from their dead-tree roost a flock of vultures. The dense wood was wrapping the little bayou in its premature twilight. The retreating sun, that for a while had shot its flaming arrows through the black boles and branches, had sunk now and was gone. Only a parting ruby glow shone through the tangle where far and wide the ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... doubt the pigeons roost among S. Mark's statuary and on convenient ledges in the neighbourhood; by day, when not on the pavement of the Piazza, the bulk of the flock are dotted about among the reliefs of the Atrio, facing ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... Oxford dons, Orthodox, jog-trot, book-worm Solomons! Bold Ostrogoths of ghosts no horror show. On London shop fronts no hop-blossoms grow. To crocks of gold no dodo looks for food. On soft cloth footstools no old fox doth brood. Long-storm-tost sloops forlorn work on to port. Rooks do not roost on spoons, nor woodcocks snort, Nor dog on snowdrop or on coltsfoot rolls, Nor ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... watched an eclipse of the moon: a solar eclipse is a much rarer sight, and there is something awful about it: as the darkness deepens, the stars begin to shine out, and it seems so much like night that the cocks and hens have been known to go to roost at midday. It is then, when the bright, dazzling face of the sun is hidden, that his lovely crown is seen, as a ring of soft light appearing all round the dark face of ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... sitting-room now. We shall find them all there, or at least the young ladies; and perhaps the doctor. The baroness goes to bed early. Meantime I can show you one of our dramatis personae, and an important one too. She rules the roost." ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... so hanged well up on the chicken-roost proposition myself if I were you," retorted Ted impudently. "So long. I'm much obliged for your kind favors all but the moral sentiments. You can have those back. You may need 'em to ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... And let me tell thee, Beausant, a wise proverb The Arabs have,—"Curses are like young chickens, And still come home to roost." ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... the very next night after old dog Spot had treed Fatty Coon in the big oak near the cornfield. They had finished their evening meal at Farmer Green's house. The cows were milked, the horses had been fed, the chickens had all gone to roost. And Farmer Green looked up at the moon, ...
— Sleepy-Time Tales: The Tale of Fatty Coon • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Army in Hanover or Hessen Country, had of course to take wing in that general fright before the mastiff. Soubise did not cross the Rhine with it; Soubise made off eastward; [Westphalen, i. 501 ("end of March, 1758").]—found new roost in Hanau-Frankfurt Country; and had thoughts of joining the Austrians in Bohemia next Campaign; but got new order,—such the pinches of a winged Clermont with a mastiff Ferdinand at his poor draggled tail;—and came back to the Ferdinand scene, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... upon he gave a wide berth except at night, and then he only approached them stealthily for such provender as he might filch. Before the week was up he had become an expert chicken thief, being able to rob a roost as quietly as the most finished carpetbagger on the sunny side of Mason ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... have been noticed to go on working during totality, whilst grasshoppers are stilled by the darkness, and earth-worms come to the surface. Birds of all kinds seem always upset in their habits, almost invariably going to roost as the darkness becomes intensified before totality. In 1868 "a small cock which had beforehand been actively employed in grubbing about in the sand went to sleep with his head under his wing and ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... always ready to give him a share of their game in exchange for his music, and Bob was always ready to get up a carousal, whenever there was a party returning from a hunting expedition. The present frolic was to take place at Bob Mosely's own house, which was on the Pigeon Roost Fork of the Muddy, which is a branch of Rough Creek, which is ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... man, however (if all tales be true), who determined to cure the filthy habits of his hogs by making them roost upon the branches of a tree, like birds. Night after night the pigs were hoisted up to their perch, and every morning one of them was found with its neck broken, until at last there were none left.—And quite as witless, surely, ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... directions to his friend. "Duck back into the restaurant, Bob. Get a pocketful of dry rice from the Chink. Trail those birds to their nest and find where they roost. Then stick around like a burr. Scatter rice behind you, and I'll drift along later. First off, I got to stay and talk with Miss Joyce. And, say, take along ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... Tunnel Hill I could look into the gorge by which the railroad passed through a straight and well-defined range of mountains, presenting sharp palisade faces, and known as "Rocky Face." The gorge itself was called the "Buzzard Roost." We could plainly see the enemy in this gorge and behind it, and Mill Creek which formed the gorge, flowing toward Dalton, had been dammed up, making a sort of irregular lake, filling the road, thereby obstructing it, and the enemy's batteries crowned the cliffs on either side. The position ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... nothing: the sale was a success. I paid a part of my debts, and gave notes for the rest that will keep my future poor. I started in again on the Times' city force. To board I hate: it's a chicken's life—roosting on a perch, coming down to eat and then going back to roost. So I got a little domicile in "The Patch." When the teakettle has begun to spend the evening the new cheap wallpaper, the whitewash and the soapsuds with which the floor has been scrubbed emit ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... courage to push her away, and I used to stoop down a little to let her get well up. She always wanted to ride when we went up to the dormitory. It was very hard for her to get up the stairs. She used to laugh about it herself, saying that she hopped up like an old hen going to roost. As Sister Marie-Aimee always went upstairs first, I used to wait and go up among the last girls. But sometimes Sister Marie-Aimee would turn round suddenly. Then Ismerie slipped down my body to the ground with wonderful quickness and skill. I always felt a little bit awkward when I caught ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... had burned itself out. Big Jim Ennis had lost pretty much everything he owned except what he had on. Lanier was not much better off. As to the origin of the fire, Bob merely said that he had turned the lights low in the sitting-room, and, obedient to "Shoe's" orders, had gone up to his roost, too wrathful and amazed over what had occurred even to think of sleep—to think, in fact, of anything but the colonel's words. So absorbed was he, as he slowly undressed, he never noted the sounds from below until his room of a sudden ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... about the pigeons at Pigeon Roost (Wattensaw, Arkansas). They weighted trees down till they actually broke limbs and swayed plenty of them. That was the richest land you ever seen in your life when it was cleared off. Folks couldn't rest for killing pigeons and wasted ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... consecutiveness of his historical attempts: "Life of Columbus," "Spanish Voyages," "Conquest of Grenada," "Conquest of Spain," "Moorish Chronicles," and "Life of Mohammed." The influence of this historical research, too, you shall find in reading his romances: "Wolfert's Roost," "Legends of the Conquest of Spain," "Bracebridge ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... you, Silas, I may lay my belt across your shoulders," Aylward answered, amid a general shout of laughter. "But it is time young chickens went to roost when they dare cackle against their elders. It ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... time for her wedding approached, her temper grew steadily sharper and more arbitrary. Queen Adelaide annoyed her. King Leopold, too, was "ungracious" in his correspondence; "Dear Uncle," she told Albert, "is given to believe that he must rule the roost everywhere. However," she added with asperity, "that is not a necessity." Even Albert himself was not impeccable. Engulfed in Coburgs, he failed to appreciate the complexity of English affairs. There were ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... feared and hated. A libertine in principle, and a profligate in practice, he scrupled at no means to attain his object, and a violent attack on the peaceful dwelling of a defenceless woman was as consonant with his views as robbing a hen-roost. ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... last she ran away from Screech-Owl and hid in a wood-yard for the night. Next day she was found, taken before a magistrate and sent to a reformatory as a vagrant until she was sixteen. It was a perfect paradise compared to Screech-Owl's miserable roost. But when she came out she fell into the hands of the Ogress who kept the inn they were now in. The clothes she stood in belonged to the Ogress, she owed her for board and lodgings and could not stir from her or she must be taken up as ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... very small then. There's the old barn. We use it for cows now. And do you remember when you pulled down the old granary, and built the new one in the shape of an elevator? And do you remember, Ma wouldn't speak to us for a whole day because we pulled the old hen-roost to pieces and established the hogs there? She said it was flying in the face of Providence having the smelly old things so near the house. And now we're going to leave it all. We're farmers, aren't we, Seth? But Pa ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... meal was dispatched, the chief warder paid me another visit to instruct me how to roost. Under his tuition I received my first lesson in prison bed-making. A strip of thick canvas was stretched across the cell and fastened at each end by leather straps running through those mysterious rings. ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... the conclusion that they were plotting mischief; but he could form no idea of the nature of the plot—whether it was to rob a hen-roost on shore, or capture the wooden fort that frowned upon them from the heights above. He was sorry to see John permitted to enter this conclave of mischief; but because his brother apparently acquiesced in the plan, he hoped that no serious roguery ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... famous practiser of them,—and then quietly reaching out and grasping a higher order of truths, which no one had even thought of competing for. I suppose it is not assumed for a moment that "Wolfert's Roost," the "Tales of a Traveller," the story of "Rip Van Winkle," the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," and the picturesque but evanescent tales of "The Alhambra" can be brought into discussion on the same terms with Hawthorne's romances, as works of art; and they assuredly cannot be as studies of character, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... Wellesley Chicken-coop, the Chicken-coop, the Chicken-coop. Come see the Wellesley Chicken-coop, (It isn't far from Chapel!) Come get your tickets for a roost, and give Your chicken-hearts a boost, Come see our Wellesley Chicken-roost, ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... into the room timidly, carrying his head a little down as usual, and glancing uncomfortably about in a manner which used to make Drysdale say that he always looked as though he had just been robbing a hen-roost. Mary went forward to meet him, holding out her ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... him I wouldn't face the shame; she told him I—I'd kill my own father, and that the blood would be on his hands; she told him if he'd let me go to the devil without another chance—me that had been named after him—that a curse would roost on his chest. He didn't want to give in to her—he didn't want to; but she scared him, and she's a woman and she knew how to get inside of him—she knew how. They're going to send me out to his mines, where I can start over, Renie. Out West, ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... forty feet above ground, sat a Japanese fireman, wrapped up in his cloak, keeping watch against fires. He looked unpleasantly like a Bulgarian atrocity or a Burmese 'deviation from the laws of humanity,' being very still and all huddled up in his roost. That was a superb picture and it arranged itself to admiration. Now, disregarding these things and others—wonders and miracles all—men are content to sit in studios and, by light that is not light, to fake subjects from pots and pans and rags and bricks that are called 'pieces ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... child, a little-girl, looked up from her knitting. "The hens are all quite snug, mother, Fluffy and Biddy and the rest. I peeped in just now, after they were gone to roost." ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various
... the chosen of her heart with rude certainty. "The dreams of that land of mirages are likely to breed nightmares. You are on the right side of the border for women to stay. Our old American eagle is a pretty safe bird to roost with." ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... them,) they did not have to be controlled by a master, to go and come at his command, to be sold for his debts, or whenever he wanted extra pocket-money. The preachers of a slave-trading gospel frequently told us, in their sermons, that we should be "good boys," and not break into master's hen-roost, nor steal his bacon; but they never told this to these poor white people, although they knew very well that they encouraged the slaves to steal, trafficked in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... was on one of the long perches where the fowls roost at night, the newly hatched Chicken lay shivering in the nest, and on the floor were the pieces of the wonderful shiny egg. The Dorking Hen had knocked it from the nest in ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... from outside parties that these places contained that for which they were looking. If at night, they would not disturb the old man, but while some would watch, others would be depredating upon his pig pen, chicken roost, or milk house. It was astonishing what a change in the morals of men army life occasioned. Someone has said, "A rogue in the army, a rogue at home;" but this I deny. Sometimes that same devilish, schoolboy ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... possessing plenty of loose change is mighty particular about the employment he accepts, so, although the lads hunted high and low, from early till late, they could not find suitable places, and after supper they returned to the "Golden Rule Hotel" to "roost" again in their bunks, surrounded by those occupied by the riff-raff of ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... intently fixed upon the waters of the Great Lake, which began to be tossed about with a high wind. At last, when they were tired of watching his motions, and some of the boldest, now grown familiar with him and no longer chilled with fear, talked of stoning him from his roost, he cried out, pointing with his finger, "Look yonder!" They now beheld, in the direction he bade them look, far away on the foaming bosom of the Great Lake, something resembling a great, white fowl. It was moving ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... recovering from her tumbles. On this occasion, having indulged their respective tastes, they paused for a brief interval of conversation, sitting side by side on the gate like a pair of plump gray chickens gone to roost. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... down to the beach to bathe. The trees along the shore were occupied by immense crowds of exemplary sea-fowl, whose regular and primitive habits of life had sent them to roost at this early hour. Notwithstanding their webbed feet, they managed to perch securely among the branches, many of which were so heavily freighted, that they bent almost to the ground beneath ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... Bedloe,—he'll get called in, he'll come home to roost like the rest of them," said Mr. Plimpton, cheerfully. "The people can't govern themselves,—only Bedloe doesn't know it. Some day he'll find it out." . ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 'midst his feather'd dames, Now lifts his beak and snuffs the morning air, Stretches his neck and claps his heavy wings, Gives three hoarse crows, and glad his talk is done; Low, chuckling, turns himself upon the roost, Then nestles down again amongst his mates. The lab'ring hind, who on his bed of straw, Beneath his home-made coverings, coarse, but warm, Lock'd in the kindly arms of her who spun them, Dreams of the gain that next year's crop ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... days, just because they had been accustomed to feed their nestling for a certain length of time, till at last the youngsters started off to forage on their own account, and the family, as a family, broke up. From habit, however, or from good will, the youngsters kept coming back to roost on the branches beside the nest, and remained on the most friendly, though easy-going, relations ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... rude peasant carts, policemen, and inhabitants share the middle of the road with the liveried equipages of royalty and courtiers; where the crows and pigeons assert rights equal to those of man, except that they go to roost at eight o'clock on the nightless "white nights;" and where one never knows whether one will encounter the Emperor of all the Russias or a barefooted Finn when one ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... every morning the crows flew away to collect food for her and for themselves, and every evening they returned to roost in the branches of the high tree where she sat the livelong day, crying as ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... strolled about among the saloons and gambling-dens, watched the playing, but neither drank nor gambled, and at last, tiring of looking on, went to his roost and turned in for the night, an object of curiosity to all, yet also of admiration, for a man who would volunteer to drive the coach over that trail was one to command respect ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
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