"Duck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Of course. He had recognized their voices, and already knew the topic they discussed. Looking like the small end of a guillotined man, with his chin on a level with the top of the pew, so that he might duck down immediately in case of either of them turning round, he listened. Listened with such concentrated eagerness, that his very hair and shirt-collar stood bristling ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... realize, it is difficult for those in the same house to realize, where things were tending. Henrietta's temper became less violent; there are fewer occasions for losing a temper when one is grown up, but she took to nagging like a duck to water. ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... labyrinthine passages, hide the boatman from the sight of the world and form innumerable nooks of quiet which have a class of scenery and inhabitants altogether their own. As the chaloupe glides around some unsuspected corner, the crane rises heavily at the splash of a paddle, wild duck fly off low and swiftly, the plover circle away in bright handsome flocks, the gorgeous kingfisher leaves his little tree. In the water different spots have their special finny denizens. In one place a broad deep arm of the river—which ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... before his face. He saw what was going on well enough, and understood it all perfectly well. Of course the schoolmaster had been trying to make Elsie jealous, and had succeeded. The little school-girl was a decoy-duck,—that was all. Estates like the Dudley property were not to be had every day, and no doubt the Yankee usher was willing to take some pains to make sure of Elsie. Doesn't Elsie look savage? Dick involuntarily ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... of snowballs flew through the air and Reddy barely had time to duck his head as they ...
— Christmas Holidays at Merryvale - The Merryvale Boys • Alice Hale Burnett
... is the colour of smeared charcoal. We haven't been in the trenches long enough to evolve web feet, so mine are resting on a duck board spread over a quagmire of pea soup. The Heinies are right here, soaking in another ditch beyond a barbed wire fence, about the distance of second base from the home plate. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the truth, Bob, I'm all wrong. I'm on the stool of repentance; to wit, on this easy chair, doing penance, as you perceive, in a pair of duck trousers. Last night I was half seas over, and tolerably happy; this morning, I am high and dry, and intolerably miserable. Carried more sail than ballast last night, and lost my head; this morning I've found it again, with a pig of ballast in it I believe. ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... of goose and duck left over from dinner," said Henry, "so I'm thinking, Jim, that you'd better not light the ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and returned with the clothes and linen. There were eight pair of trousers, nine shirts, besides the one I had torn up to bandage his wounds with, two pair of blue trousers, and two jackets, four white duck frocks, some shoes, and stockings. Jackson felt them one by one with his hands, and told me what they were, ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... squirrels in these woods; at least I expect so, for they abound in all the forests. We must knock some of them over if we can. I believe they are not bad eating, though I never tried one. Then by the streams we ought to be able to pick up some wild duck, though of course at this time of year the greater portion of them are far north. Still I have great hopes we shall be able to keep ourselves in food with the assistance of what we may be able to buy occasionally. ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... "She waddles like a duck," he thought. The movement suggested a plebeian excitement and curiosity that displeased him. He recalled her face. Her extraordinary face. "Quite enough," he thought, "to put all that into my ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... of pounds; and still matters were at a stand when, one day, Mr. Tomlinson reported a boat under our quarter demanding speech with us. I went to the side and saw a tall lank-haired man, in a suit of white duck, standing in the stern-sheets with ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... lake, and decked with the hues of gorgeous flowers—the prairie rose, fragrant, tender, elusive, and fragile as the English primrose; the blood-red tiger-lily; the brown windflower with its corn-tassel; the heavy wax cups of the sedgy water-lily, growing where wild duck flackered unafraid. Game was superabundant. Prairie chickens nestled along the single-file trail. Deer bounded from the poplar thickets and shy coyotes barked all night in the offing. Night in June on the northern prairie is but the shadowy twilight between two long days. The sun sets ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... left, loomed the Washington monument, glittering like a shaft of opals. Some orderlies dashed by on handsome bays. How splendid they looked, with their blue trousers and broad yellow stripes! This was before the Army adopted the comfortable but shabby brown duck. How he longed to throw a leg over the back of a good horse and gallop away into the ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... Mr. Rolles opened the case, and drew a long breath of almost horrified astonishment; for there lay before him, in a cradle of green velvet, a diamond of prodigious magnitude and of the finest water. It was of the bigness of a duck's egg; beautifully shaped, and without a flaw; and as the sun shone upon it, it gave forth a lustre like that of electricity, and seemed to burn in his hand ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... very place I'm heading for," thought the boy, "and he must be doing that at the request of Ronald Mason. In that case he's sure to meet the man. What a good decoy duck he will make! By Jove, I've only got to shadow him and he will lead me right to the very place where his employer is concealed. Then we'll be enabled to arrest ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... a grass ground of many thousand acres, where fifty years ago the Indians had pastured, but where now the farmers laboriously saved their hay when the floods allowed, and in spring launched their punts and went duck-shooting with long guns and wading-boots. For in winter one sheet of water—or of ice, as it might happen—covered the meadows and made the great river one with the many brooks that threaded their way to her. But at this season they ran low ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... constantly strikes. He is obsessed by the psychology of moral problems; but for him there are no universal ethical laws—"the golden rule is that there is no golden rule"—thus while in the Pillars of Society he advocates candid confession and honest revelation of the truth of things; in the "Wild Duck" he attacks the pig-headed meddler, who comes "dunning us with claims of the Ideal." Ultimately, though absorbed in "matters of conscience," it is as an artist rather than as a philosopher that he ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... wild duck is the precisely timed 18 minutes in a quick oven! And celery salad, which goes with all game, need not ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... his room, and sat at the window. At this height it was unlikely that any stray bullet would come near him. But he could not see any one. He could hear the wild-fowl crying in the Park ... distinctly, in the pause of the firing, he could hear a duck's quack-quack.... ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... this interval that, one night about ten o'clock, a negro presented himself at the hotel, inquiring for me; and upon my making my appearance in the entrance-hall, the fellow—a full-blooded African, dressed very neatly in a white shirt and white duck trousers, both scrupulously clean, for a wonder—approached me, and, ducking his ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... guess they do," was the laughing answer, for Freddie and Flossie had a pet duck which they took about with them almost as faithfully as they did Snoop. "How is Downy, anyhow?" ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope
... are too pretty, that's all's the matter with you. But just wait. Hush! There's that crowd of nifty-nice, preachy, snippy scout girls. Duck, or they'll be on our trail," and she dragged her companion around the corner of the high fence, where, in the shadow of its bill-posted height they crouched, until the laughing, happy girls of True Tred Troop, just out from their early evening meeting at Sunset Hall, over ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... risk incident to an open assault, a favourite mode of attack is, when concealed by a table, to assail the ankles through the meshes of the stocking, or the knees which are ineffectually protected by a fold of Russian duck. When you are reading, a mosquito will rarely settle on that portion of your hand which is within range of your eyes, but cunningly stealing by the underside of the book fastens on the wrist or little finger, and noiselessly inserts ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... when you hear my little silver drum, And when I blow my little gold trompette-a, You must drop your work and come, You must leave your pride at home, And duck your heads before ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... considerable as it is, I shall relate the following incident, which, though mentioned to have happened so many years ago, was strictly matter of fact: — As some people were shooting in the parish of Trotton, in the county of Sussex, they killed a duck in that dreadful winter 1708-9, with a silver collar about its neck,* on which were engraven the arms of the king of Denmark. This anecdote the rector of Trotton at that time has often told to a near relation of mine; and, to the best of my remembrance, the collar was in ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... Ford," shouted Dab. "Take an oar! We'll both row. He can swim like a duck, but he might split ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... the Smuggler, was dressed nearly like European sailors. He wore jacket and trousers of white duck, a broad red sash, and a very low-crowned straw hat. His face was brown, with strongly-marked features, and, though forty years of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... found useless, and held aloof from what others found good. She had powers which had ever been the admiration of Guidon Hill. Birds and animals were her friends—she called them her kinsmen. A peculiar sympathy joined them; so that when, at last, she tamed a white wild duck, and made it do the duties of a carrier-pigeon, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... singing his ballad, there had walked, or rather reeled, into the room, a gentleman in a military frock-coat and duck trousers of dubious hue, with whose name and person some of my readers are perhaps already acquainted. In fact it was my friend Captain Costigan, in his usual condition at this hour ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... constellation of American geniuses, in whose blaze I was almost consumed.... Rev. Mr. Abercrombie was impatient of every conversation that did not relate to Dr. Johnson, of whom he could detail every anecdote from the time he trod on a duck till he purchased an oak-stick to ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... times. Gulls kept with us the first two days and then disappeared, their places being taken by boobies. The gull is a pretty and graceful bird, somewhat resembling the pigeon in shape and agility. The booby has a little resemblance to the duck, but his bill is sharp pointed and curved like a hawk's. Beechey and one or two others speak of encountering the Albatross in the North Pacific, but their statements are disputed by mariners of the present ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... waving his hand towards some branches that drooped to the water's edge. And suddenly I remembered and told them of another French exile, the epicurean St. Evremond, whose needs were relieved by Charles II. appointing him governor of yonder Duck Island at a salary of three hundred ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... a dive downward, duck fashion. Holding his breath, he went below, his eyes wide open, seeking ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... change my look slid off the self-conceited face, like rain off a particularly slippery duck's back. He ought to have known then, if he hadn't before, that I considered him a mere It, but I can just imagine his saying to himself: "This is Paris, and I've paid five pounds for a return ticket. Must have something ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... lost." At this moment he saw a couple of young ducks which were on a pond come swimming towards him. "You come just at the right moment," said he, and laid hold of one of them and was about to wring its neck. On this an old duck which was hidden among the reeds, began to scream loudly, and swam to him with open beak, and begged him urgently to spare her dear children. "Canst thou not imagine," said she, "how thy mother would mourn if any one wanted to carry thee off, ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... dear?" said she. "Is that a face to bring in to your little Duchess? I will not be your Duchess any more, monsieur, no more than I will be your 'little duck,' you old monster." ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... for us with his knife, with an especial knack for willow whistles. He showed us the colors that lay upon the world when we looked at it through one of the glass pendants of the parlor chandelier. He sat by us when we played duck-on-the-rock. He helped us with our kites and gave a superintendence to our toys. It is true that he was superficial with tin-tags and did not know the difference in value between a Steam Engine tag—the rarest of them all—and a common ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... hit, except that you've left out the scent of honeysuckle and Old Mister Moon climbing up over the trees. Well, you're quite right. I'm all for the simple and domestic myself. If I could find the right man, and he didn't see me coming and duck, I'd become one of the Mendelssohn's March Daughters right away. Are you going, George? There's a rehearsal at two-thirty ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Despond; Pliable struggles and gets out. Christian, owing to the burden he carries on his back, flounders about and is fast sinking when Help appears and asks: "What doest thou there?" Jake answered: "Noting." Palmer hissed: "Roll over! Roll over! Hold your head under the canvas; duck, you son of a gun, duck!" Palmer answered with the speech Jake was supposed to deliver, as Jake rolled over and over: "Sir, I was bid by a man named Evangelist, who directed me to yonder gate that I might escape the wrath to come ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... Crumpetty Tree Came the Stork, the Duck, and the Owl; The Snail and the Bumblebee, The Frog and the Fimble Fowl (The Fimble Fowl, with a corkscrew leg); And all of them said, "We humbly beg We may build our homes on your lovely Hat,— Mr. Quangle Wangle, grant us that! Mr. ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... was in a small, but well lighted stateroom, plainly yet comfortably furnished. A grave looking, middle aged man was feeling his pulse, while a sailor, neatly dressed in a blue jacket and white duck trousers, stood behind with a towel over his arm and a bowl of broth ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... we bit our tongues as the buck-board leapt over the tussocks of grass. Once we managed to call back, "You won't feel the journey in a buck-board." Then an overhanging bough threatening to wipe us out of our seats, Mac shouted, "Duck!" and as we "ducked" the buck-board skimmed between two trees, with barely an ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... yit! Lawd A'mighty! who wouldn't drutheh hunt than plough, ef he could hev his druthehs? But the game ain't what it wuz, not ev'm in this-yeh 'Azoo country an' not ev'm o' the feathe'd kind. Oh, wile turkey, o' co'se, they here yit, by thousan's, an' wile goose, an' duck, an' teal, by hund'eds o' thousan's, an' wile pigeon, clouds of 'em, 'at dahkened the noonday sun. Reckon you see' 'em do that, ain't you? I see' it this ve'y season. But, now, take the pelikin! if game is a fah' name fo' him—aw heh, as the ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... faded from the sky and lustreless blue changed to leaden gray a commotion was visible on the ship's deck, and they made out a group of officers clad in white duck, gathered near the rail. They had field-glasses in their hands and were ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of going himself had been born the previous day—when he found a larger grating in the floor near the rocket and realized if he was very careful he could climb out of the sewer and duck into the rocket when nobody was looking. Once inside he was pretty sure he'd find a ...
— Zero Hour • Alexander Blade
... mildly. He soon picked himself up, for he is a dapper little chap, and became very blustering and abusive. But I kept my temper, and said civilly, 'Little gentleman, hard words break no bones; but if ever you molest Mrs. Somers again, I will carry you into her orchard, souse you into the duck-pond there, and call all the villagers to see you scramble out of it again; and I will do it now if you are not off. I dare say you have heard of my name: I am Tom Bowles.' Upon that his face, which was before very red, grew very ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "What a queer fellow. He entered the kitchen and noticed me standing beside Marfa, and immediately he began to invent different stories. 'What?' he says, 'you have been kissing each other!' He was drunk, so he must have been dreaming. And I,' I said, 'I would rather kiss a duck than kiss Marfa. And I have a wife,' said I, 'you fool.' ...
— The Slanderer - 1901 • Anton Chekhov
... black, and from its breast-pocket appeared a handkerchief dotted with spots, not dissimilar to black peppermint-drops on a white paper. In consequence of the extreme heat of the season, I wore waistcoat and trousers of white duck; but they, too, were qualified with sombre ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... built about 1738, is so called from a public-house. In Carrington Street (1738) was the residence of Kitty Fisher and of Samuel Carte, the antiquary. Here also was the Dog and Duck tavern, behind which was a pond 200 feet square, where the sport of duck-hunting was pursued in the eighteenth century. The site is now marked by Ducking Pond Mews. In Carrington Mews are the Curzon Schools in connection with Christ Church, Down Street; they were built about 1826, and provide ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... year, and which are snapped at by the fishes so ravenously that many of these die of repletion; the conical heaps of small stones on the river-shallows, one of which heaps will sometimes overfill a cart,—these heaps the huge nests of small fishes; the birds which frequent the stream, heron, duck, sheldrake, loon, osprey; the snake, muskrat, otter, woodchuck, and fox, on the banks; the turtle, frog, hyla, and cricket, which make the banks vocal,—were all known to him, and, as it were, townsmen and fellow-creatures; so that he felt an absurdity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... follow it far enough, will take us back into water. See how the rat—I mean our common, omnivorous, scavenging, thieving, poaching brown rat—when it lives near a pond or stream, learns to swim and dive as naturally as a duck. Next comes the vole, or water-rat, which will not live away from water. Then there are water shrews, the beaver, otter, duck-billed platypus, and a host of others, not related, just as, among birds, there are water ousels, moorhens, ducks, divers, etc., which have permanently made the ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... a duck!" replied the butler, who in his moments of relaxation was addicted to homely expletives of the lower London type. "If you don't call it pampering, what do you call pampering? He ain't allowed to touch nothing that ain't been—it's slipped my memory what they ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... pegs, giving Elise's a little womanly caress for their prettiness. She brought in exchange a costume which made us helpless from laughter, until we were painfully sobered by the thought of the spectators outside. A pair of white duck trousers that might have been made of pasteboard, so stiff were they and so defined the crease ironed at their sides, came first. Our measures were not taken. The attendant accommodatingly turned them up about ten inches ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... readily digest, and willingly entertain such meats we love most, and are pleasing to us, abhors on the other side such as we distaste." Which Hippocrates confirms, Aphoris. 2. 38. Some cannot endure cheese, out of a secret antipathy; or to see a roasted duck, which to others ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... wanderer's eye could barely view The summer heaven's delicious blue; So wondrous wild, the whole might seem The scenery of a fairy dream. Onward, amid the copse 'gan peep A narrow inlet still and deep, Affording scarce such breadth of brim, As served the wild duck's brood to swim; Lost for a space, through thickets veering, But broader when again appearing, Tall rocks and tufted knolls their face Could on the dark blue mirror trace; And farther as the hunter stray'd, ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... The duck houses are simply long, low sheds—with the exception of the one where the breeding stock is wintered, which is inclosed—placed on the slope a few rods back from the water. They were built of refuse lumber, and the cost was comparatively trifling. Connected with the house for ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... unanswered, for just then a piece of pork that Bill had picked up from the deck whizzed past the orator's face, and, in the quick and undignified duck he made, Teddy lost ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... cried. "I want nothing of the kind. I'm a peculiar sort of duck—don't care about being rich at all. I just want to be sure I'll have a good living for myself and the wife and kids, and have a few friends, and be able to look every man in town straight in the eye. I'd rather work ...
— The Brand of Silence - A Detective Story • Harrington Strong
... said: "I thought so when I arrived two days ago. When I came in sight of the place a lot of girls waved from the window and yelled at me. I no sooner got inside than a queer looking duck whom I took to be a nut came rushing up to me and cried: 'Too late for soup!'—This is Campe de Triage de la Ferte Mace, Orne, France, and all these fine people were arrested as spies. Only two or three of them can speak a word of French, and ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... constant stream, thinking his comparatively clumsy, bloated bulk easy prey, and then be gone. He snapped shut his face-plate under their assault. Sometimes there came different, more powerful wings, and he would duck in mechanical reaction, sensing the wings sweep past, often feeling them as, with sharp pecks and quick thudding blows, they sought to stun him. But the suit was stout; the repulsed attackers could only follow a little, ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... drove alongside, the stocky, stout lad of a farmer in his brown duck coat lined with sheep's wool, came up from between the wheels. His cap was awry, his trousers were muddy at the knees where he had knelt in the moist road, and his face was ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... my own breakfast—the only meal I have at home. Look, here's the kitchen, queer old place. And here's the dining-room. Cupboards everywhere, you see; we boast of our cupboards. The green paint is de rigueur; duck's egg colour; I've got to like it. That door leads into the bedroom. Well, after breakfast, about eleven o'clock that's to say, I light up—look at my pipe-rack—and read newspapers. Then, if it's fine, I walk about the streets, and see what ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... rully! Deah me! Deah me! If I'd only knew that this morning. As a gen'ral thing I wear white duck complete down t' work, but I'm savin' my last ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... Adam about the green sitting room in various uniforms, and these cheered her moment of sorrow. They weren't altogether satisfactory. His hard size didn't show in single poses. He looked merely beautiful. Mrs. Egg sniffled happily, patting the view of Adam in white duck. The enlarged snapshot portrayed him sitting astride a turret gun. It was the best of the lot, although he looked taller in wrestling tights, but that picture worried her. She had always been afraid that he might kill someone in a wrestling match. She took the white-duck ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... of a smile, and the swiftest of reproachful glances, lit up the dark face of the baron as he bowed low in the introduction. Thankful dropped the courtesy of the period,—i. e., a duck, with semicircular sweep of the right foot forward. But the right foot was so pretty, and the grace of the little figure so perfect, that the baron raised his eyes from the foot to the face in serious admiration. In the one rapid feminine glance ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... "Yes my duck," replied the outlaw, pouring the last of the egg-nog into his goblet, drinking it at a draught and chuckling as he set ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... also found that Government, in consequence of the representations of Governor Phillip, had directed a strong substantial Russia duck to be substituted for the slight unserviceable Osnaburgs with which the convicts had ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... Edward Millington's place of business was 'at the Pelican in Duck Lane' in 1670; from Michaelmas, 1671, it was 'at the Bible in Little Britain' (see Arber's Term Catalogues, vol. i, pp. 31, 93). It was about 1680 that he turned auctioneer of books, though he did not wholly abandon publishing. 'There was usually as much Comedy in his "Once, Twice, Thrice", ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... and ready adaptability to the society or circumstances by which he might be surrounded. "Chaff" was a very cheap order of wit, and the serenity of his disposition enabled him to shake off its effect as readily as water is scattered from the plumage of the duck. ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... imposing when together, yet individually they have by no means a military air or appearance. Their uniform is extremely mean and unbecoming: it consists of a fez cap, worn slouching over the eyes and ears; an ill-made jacket of coarse blue cloth, faced and turned up with red; coarse white Russia duck trousers, always exceedingly dirty; Wellington boots in the same condition, into one of which the right leg of the pantaloon is generally stuffed, while the left hangs in the ordinary fashion, or is turned up over the ankle; the bayonet ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... by Triest Where a day or two we harboured: A sunset was in the West, When, looking over the vessel's side, One of our company espied A sudden speck to larboard. And as a sea-duck flies and swims At once, so came the light craft up, 220 With its sole lateen sail that trims And turns (the water round its rims Dancing, as round a sinking cup) And by us like a fish it curled, And drew itself up close beside, Its great sail on the instant furled, ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... "the stylishest"; but this girl was different, somehow, in a way the critics were puzzled to discover—different, from the sparkle of her eyes and the crown of her trim sailor hat, to the edge of her snowy duck skirt. ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... inquire me out contracted bachelors, such as have been asked twice on the banns; such a commodity of warm slaves, as had as life hear the devil as a drum; such as fear the report of a culverin worse than a struck deer or a hurt wild duck. I pressed me none but such toasts in butter, with hearts in their breasts no bigger than pins' heads; and they bought out their services; and now my whole charge consists of slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the glutton's dogs licked ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... table where the two newcomers sat down were astounded to see the following menu ordered and practically consumed by one man, since Werdet, being on diet, took only a soup and a little chicken: A hundred oysters; twelve chops; a young duck; a pair of roast partridges; a sole; hors d'oeuvre; sweets; fruit (more than a dozen pears being swallowed); choice wines; coffee; liqueurs. Never since Rabelais' or perhaps Louis XIV.'s time, had such a Gargantuan appetite been witnessed. ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... what has always been to me the most beautiful poem in the world, possibly because it was the first I read for myself, or else because it is so intimately associated with those happy days. Under an engraving of a wild duck (after Bewick, I believe) were quoted W.C. Bryant's lines "To a Water-fowl." They charmed me then and charm me now as nothing else has quite charmed me; I become a child again as I think of them, with a child's virgin subtlety ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... papers, pieces of old armour, swords, dirks, helmets, and Highland targets. Behind Mr. Oldbuck's seat (which was an ancient leathern-covered easy-chair, worn smooth by constant use) was a huge oaken cabinet, decorated at each corner with Dutch cherubs, having their little duck-wings displayed, and great jolter-headed visages placed between them. The top of this cabinet was covered with busts, and Roman lamps and paterae, intermingled with one or two bronze figures. The walls of ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... help in prayer, as Falstaff said—even the human germ or embryo passes through a stage at which it shows the outlines of gills on the throat just like a fish. It is the same with the dog, the horse, the kangaroo, the duck mole, the bird, the crocodile, the turtle, the lizard. They all ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... excitement and general enthusiasm a passenger train can put into a small town for a few minutes. Just imagine yourself in Homeburg on a cold winter afternoon. It's four o'clock. The sun has stood the climate as long as it can and is getting ready to duck for shelter behind the dreary fields to the west. If you ran an automobile a mile a minute down the walk on Main Street you wouldn't have to toot for a soul. Now and then a farmer comes out of a store, takes ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... a dollar down on the counter, took a .32, and aimed at the row of ducks sailing across the gallery pool. Each duck went down as it appeared. He picked up a second rifle and knocked over seven or eight mice as they scampered across the target screen. With a third gun he snuffed the flaming eye from the right to the left side of the face that grinned at him, then with ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... you get into this scrape?" said Nancy; "this was none of my doings, anyhow. It'll never be dry weather, Ellen, where you are. I won't put on my Sunday go-to-meeting clothes when I go a-walking with you. You had ought to ha' been a duck or a goose, or something like that. What's that for, Mr. ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... a sight to see Billy eat. He spread his legs apart to steady himself, and gobbled at his food like a duck. When he finished he always looked up for more, and Miss Laura would shake her head and say: "No, Billy: better longing than loathing. I believe that a great many little dogs are ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... I stumbled upon a very young sheep. The youngster lay low, like a wounded duck. Several times I walked within a few feet of him, coming closer each time until at length he sprang up and fled in terror. He took refuge by climbing an almost perpendicular cliff wall. Camera in hand, I followed as best I could. Fifty feet up, he came to a point where even ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... the road in the direction of the stockade, Lo bounding before her. But another surprise awaited her. There was the clutter of short wings under the branches, and the sunlight flashed upon the iris throat of a wood-duck as it swung out of sight past her. But in this single glance Peggy recognized one of the latest and most precious of her acquisitions. There was no mistake now! With a despairing little cry to Lo, "The menagerie's broke loose!" she ran like the wind towards it. She cared no longer for the mandate ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... the heat, the dust, and the smells, sauntered on, asseverated that Amy Waring was an odd sort of girl; and finally went in to the Washington Hotel, where each lolled back in an armchair, with the white duck legs reposing in another—excepting Mr. Dinks, who poised his boots upon the window-sill that commanded Broadway; and so, comforted with a cigar in the mouth, and a glass of iced port-wine sangaree in the hand, the three young gentlemen labored through the ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... meantime, running endlessly with Jerry over the ranch, he learned all the ways of it and all the life of it from the chickenyards and the duck-ponds to the highest pitch of Sonoma Mountain. He learned where the wild deer, in their season, were to be found; when they raided the prune-orchard, the vineyards, and the apple-trees; when they sought the deepest canyons and most secret coverts; and when they stamped out in open glades ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... till I come back, Mary.—I see, my man, when you take a bribe, you are scrupulous enough to do your work for it; for which, I hope, somebody may duck you with one hand, and rub you dry with the other. Kindness and honesty, for kindness and honesty's sake, is the true coin; but many a one, like you, is content to be a passable Birmingham halfpenny. [Exeunt JOB THORNBERRY ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... sure about that," said Oscar, smiling. "If I have a talent for writing, it hasn't developed itself yet. But my friend here takes to it as naturally as a duck takes to water." ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... a cloud as it closed down upon the line of a distant ridge, like an upper upon a lower eyelid, shutting in the gaze of the evening sun. She was about to return before dusk came on, when she heard a commotion in the air immediately behind and above her head. The saunterer looked up and saw a wild-duck flying along with the greatest violence, just in its rear being another large bird, which a countryman would have pronounced to be one of the biggest duck-hawks that he had ever beheld. The hawk neared its intended victim, and the ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... herself, by watching and listening, that Peyton was safe in the parlor, she had stolen quietly down-stairs to the dining-room, where she had met her aunt, with whom the steward now found her sitting. She told him to get the duck-gun, make sure it was loaded and primed, and to wait with Sam on the settle in the hall. She then requested her aunt to remain in the dining-room, silently returned to the hall, and took station by the door leading from the parlor,—the ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... intently, despite the stir of the elements, to something that he was saying in a low, serious tone of voice. None of them, strangely enough, wore a uniform, although they were all loyal Union soldiers belonging to the division of troops commanded by General O. M. Mitchell, then encamped on the banks of Duck River, only a couple of miles away. For the country was now engaged in the life-and-death struggle of the Civil War, when Northerner fought against Southerner—sometimes brother against brother—and no one could ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... with an owl's. What use does the duck make of its broad flat bill? The owl, of its ...
— Home Geography For Primary Grades • C. C. Long
... he would not even think of it again, and then he stumbled upon a remark about the fishing in Lake Algonquin, and the duck-shooting, two things, he recollected afterwards, in which she could not possibly be interested, and finally he made his escape. He leaned over the bow, watching the channel opening out its green arms to the Inverness, and tried to recall all that ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... lot of time down on the crick flat looking for a mu, which is the same as a sneeze-duck, except for the parallel stripes. It has but one foot webbed; so it swims in a circle and can be easy shot by the sportsman, who first baits it with snuff that it will go miles to get. Another wild beast they had him hunting was ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... Duck could o'er the Queen prevail, The proverb says, "no fence against a flail." From threshing corn he turns to thresh his brains, For which her Majesty allows him gains. Though 'tis confest, that those who ever saw His poems, think them all not worth a straw! Thrice ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... cubby-holes and "rooms," and they "visited" their dolls back and forth all around the pile. And as they played they talked very fast about all sorts of things, being little girls and not boys who just yelled and howled inarticulately as they played ball or duck-on-a-rock or prisoner's goal, racing and running and wrestling noisily all around ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... he was scarcely listening; he was so accustomed to Howard's cynical diatribes that more often than not they made no more impression on him than water on a duck's back. Besides, he was thinking of Ida Heron, the girl whose strange history he had ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... after tying up the boat, Lucile came upon Marian picking the feathers from a duck ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... possibility of his resources with Phoebe, and fought the inclement weather for his early lambs. Such light as came into life at Newtake was furnished by little Will, who danced merrily through ice and snow, like a scarlet flower in his brilliant coat. The cold pleased him; he trod the slippery duck pond in triumph, his bread-and-milk never failed. To Phoebe her maternal right in the infant seemed recompense sufficient for all those tribulations existence just now brought with it; from which conviction resulted her steady courage and cheerfulness. Her husband's nebulous ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... woolen goods is extensively carried on in Fitchburg. The Fitchburg Cotton Mill is a fine brick building at the upper end of Main street; carpet warps, batting and twine are here manufactured. The Fitchburg Duck Mills in South Fitchburg produce cotton duck. The Parkhill Manufacturing Company (John Parkhill, President, and Arthur H. Lowe, Treasurer), occupies what was formerly Davis' chair shop, situated on Circle street, and manufactures gingham. The building has been ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... first meet her, an adventuress of international reputation, or lack of it. Then Robin rescues, marries and educates her. It was the last process that started the trouble. Madeline took to education more readily than a duck to water; and the worst of it was that she was by no means willing to keep the results and her conclusions therefrom to herself; indeed she developed the lecturing habit to an extent that almost (but not quite) ruined her charm. Mr. WEIGALL is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... and often you hit the nail on the head! You rank Phillips's book higher than I do, or than Lyell does, who thinks it fearfully retrograde. I amused myself by parodying Phillips's argument as applied to domestic variation; and you might thus prove that the duck or pigeon has not varied because the goose has not, though more anciently domesticated, and no good reason can be assigned why it has ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... Shut up with him were ten or twelve peasants, his servants, all of them poachers or refugees, who like himself had some interest in "retiring from the world" (his own expression), and in finding a place of safety behind good stout walls. An enormous pile of hunting weapons, duck-guns, carbines, blunderbusses, spears, and cutlasses, were raised on the platform, and the porter received orders never to let more than two persons at a time approach within range of ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... man was a French Canadian of good constitution, robust and healthy, and was employed as a voyageur by the American Fur Company. On June 16, 1822, when about eighteen years of age, he was accidentally wounded by a discharge from a musket. The contents of the weapon, consisting of powder and duck-shot, entered his left side from a distance of not more than a yard off. The charge was directed obliquely forward and inward, literally blowing off the integument and muscles for a space about the size of a man's hand, carrying away the anterior half ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Osprey you mean.' 'Take any one,' says the defendant's counsel, reminding me of the defence of a man charged with stealing a duck, and having given seven different accounts as to how he became possessed of it, his counsel was at last asked which he relied on. 'Oh, never mind which,' he answered; 'I shall be much obliged if the jury will adopt ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... of the Solomons is a distant cousin to the brush turkey of Australia. No larger than a large pigeon, it lays an egg the size of a domestic duck's. The megapode, with no sense of fear, is so silly that it would have been annihilated hundreds of centuries before had it not been preserved by the taboos of the chiefs and priests. As it was, the chiefs were compelled to keep ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... I am, and with a wild duck waiting for me at good Mistress Odam's, I saw that there was nothing for it but to yield to these good people, and prove me a man of Somerset, by eating a dinner at their expense. As for the churchyard, none would hear of it; and I grieved ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... of which he could take no notice. In early days this had shown itself by a shyness 'remarkable,' says Taylor, beyond all 'shyness that you could imagine in anyone whose soul had not been pre-existent in a wild duck.'[43] His extreme sensibility showed itself too in other ways. He was the least sanguine of mankind. He had, as he said in a letter, 'a morbidly vivid perception of possible evils and remote dangers.' A sensitive nature dreads ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... expressed it emphatically, with a blow on his chest, it was sorrow drove him to it. So one day his mistress had a conversation about him with her head steward, Gavrila, a man whom, judging solely from his little yellow eyes and nose like a duck's beak, fate itself, it seemed, had marked out as a person in authority. The lady expressed her regret at the corruption of the morals of Kapiton, who had, only the evening before, been picked ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... lady, unsatisfied with this genuine specimen of Cockney philosophy, is vowing that if she once gets safe on shore, she will never again set foot in a half-penny boat, we are already at Waterloo Bridge. Duck goes the funnel, and we dart under the noble arch, and catch a passing view of Somerset House. The handsome structure runs away in our rear; the Chinese Junk, with its tawdry flags, scuttles after it; we catch a momentary glimpse ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... know I hit a man then with that right oar. I felt it smash him. There! we're on him now! Bail, you moke! No stopping, or I throw you in! Stop that bailing and catch that duck there! Got ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... (on the 2d) and some odd days, I am approaching your country. The day of our arrival you will see by the outside date of my letter. At present, we are becalmed comfortably, close to Brest Harbour;—I have never been so near it since I left Duck Puddle. [1] We left Malta thirty-four days ago, and have had a tedious passage of it. You will either see or hear from or of me, soon after the receipt of this, as I pass through town to repair my irreparable affairs; and thence I want to go to Notts. and ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... somewhat remarkable for design, answered the purpose well enough. Jones' coat was somewhere along the canyon rim, his shoes were full of holes, his shirt in strips, and his trousers in rags. Jim looked like a scarecrow. My clothes, being of heavy waterproofed duck, had stood the hard usage in a manner to bring forth the unanimous ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... killed. It still clung to the time-honored belief that the only good Indian was a dead one. Mr. Cassidy voiced his elation and then rubbed an empty stomach in vain regret,—when a bullet shrilled past his head, so unexpectedly as to cause him to duck instinctively and then glance apologetically at his red-haired friend; and both spurred their mounts to greater speed. Next Mr. Connors grabbed frantically at his perforated sombrero and grew petulant ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... eucalyptus and the acacia the most characteristic, grains, fruits, and edible roots being all imported; the fauna is no less peculiar, including, in the absence of many animals of other countries, the kangaroo, the dingo, and the duck-bill, the useful animals being likewise all imported; of birds, the cassowary and the emu, and smaller ones of great beauty, but songless; minerals abound, both the precious and the useful; the natives are ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... schools was established, the evidence goes to show that they were of the dame school order, remembered best in after years, not by the amount of erudition acquired, but by some of the elder boys who went little errands over the way to the "Fox and Duck" (now the house occupied by Mr. H. Clark, Market Hill), and from the facts that the article they returned with having, by special injunction, to be placed behind the door, that the worthy dame soon afterwards repaired to that corner of the room, the more knowing of the scholars were apt to draw ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... some one taking a grape the other evening—a sort of green grape. Sylvia has been sending bouquets to the gosling who was her escort on the evening of her Commencement—him of the duck trousers and webbed feet. On one occasion I have observed her walking along the borders of my garden in his company and have overheard her telling him that he could come in and get flowers whenever he wished. I wish I ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... nature in the case of those aquatic animals which are generated on land, such as crocodiles, river-tortoises, and a certain kind of serpents, which seek the water as soon as they are able to drag themselves along. We frequently put duck-eggs under hens, by which, as by their true mothers, the ducklings are at first hatched and nourished; but when they see the water, they forsake them and run to it, as to their natural abode: so strong is the impression of nature in ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... that they are the greatest gluttons on earth, with veritably voracious appetites, and that the best isn't good enough for them. To be sure, at a pinch, they will demolish a score of potatoes, if there be nothing else; but offer them caviare, canvas-back duck, quail, and nesselrode pudding, and they will look askance at food that is plain and wholesome. The "plain and wholesome" liver is a snare and a delusion, like the "bluff and genial" visitor whose geniality veils all sorts of satire ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... Incisa, we saw the Arno, already a considerable river, rushing between deep banks, with the greenish line of a duck-pond diffused through its water. Nevertheless, though the first impression was not altogether agreeable, we soon became reconciled to this line, and ceased to think it an indication of impurity; for, in spite of it, the river is still ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... answered La Salle, kindly, "we shall come back soon, and I hope next fall to be spending the moonlight nights with you on Shepherd's Creek, and the duck-haunted reed-ponds of Battery Marsh. Good by;" and going on board, the two friends went ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... only roamed upon the hills enjoying the fair prospect of the sea and the sister isles, and went back to his inn about two o'clock. There he feasted again upon the luxurious provision that the spinsters had been making for the appetite that the new air had given him. He ate roast duck, stuffed with a paste of large island mushrooms, preserved since their season, and tarts of bake-apple berries, and cranberries, and the small dark mokok berry—three kinds of tart he ate, with fresh cream upon them, and the spinster innkeepers applauded his feat. They stood around and ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... and turkey are easily digested, but goose and duck are indigestible, because of the fat ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education
... something like this: 'My heart's dearest, my sun, my Nile duck—the hours are days without thee, the days an aeon. The gods be thanked that this separation is not for long. For apart from thee I have no life. That thing that I have to do is about done. May the gods guard thee and ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... either the Reds or the Blues; but which? He must go and see. Altering his course a point or two, in a few minutes he was running down the line of warships, which were steaming line ahead, apparently in the direction of Bear Haven. At a glance he recognized the Thunderbolt, notoriously the lame duck of the Reds, lagging three or four miles behind the rest. Smith slowed down to quarter speed as he passed the leading ships, and a few blank shots were fired at him for form's sake, for the guns were incapable of an inclination that would be dangerous to him at ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... awakened by one of the officials clearing the ground, we learnt that two men had been put out leg-before-wicket for a combined score of 19 runs; four men were caught for a combined score or 17 runs; one man was run out for a duck's egg; and the others were all bowled for 3 runs each. There were no extras. We were not told which of the men was the captain, but he made exactly 15 more than the average of his team. What was ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... interrupted Jacques, energetically; "your wits are always jumpin'. By crosin' over to Duck River, we can start at a point five or six miles above the lower fall, an' as it's thereabouts he must cross, we'll be time enough to catch him. If he tries the lake, the other party'll fix him there; and he'll be soon poked up if he tries ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne |
