"Goldfish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little pinto cavallos he has. Say! that son of a gun a driver! He couldn't drive nails in a snow bank." An expressive free-hand gesture told all there was to tell of the runaway. "Th' shorthorn landed headfirst in Goldfish Charlie's horse trough. Charlie fishes him out. 'How the devil, stranger,' says Charlie, 'did you come to fall in here?' 'You blamed fool,' says the shorthorn, just cryin' mad, 'I didn't come to fall in here, ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... week in May the old Squire and grandmother Ruth made a trip to Portland, and when they came back, they brought, among other presents to us young folks at home, a glass jar of goldfish ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... by a gilded eagle, from whose beak was suspended a bottle of the water, and no other light was shed upon the scene than the silver and golden radiance emitted together from this bottle, as if ten thousand infinitely small goldfish floated there in liquid quicksilver. The spring itself, flowing over its ancient mound of lime, iron and clay, like the venerable beard over the Arabian prophet's yellow breast, shed another light as ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... possibly imagine, where fountains played in marble basins, and peacocks walked on the smooth lawns. On the edge of a marble basin sat a young and handsome man, who was dressed from head to foot in a suit of green armour, and was feeding the goldfish which swam ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... very irregularly, but they may be so few as to be mere notes. Avoid stagnant water, and if mosquitoes are feared introduce some goldfish. They like mosquito larvae. ...
— Making A Rock Garden • Henry Sherman Adams
... and gazed in. "These fish were given to me by my cousin, Ned Carter. They call him Buzzie. Have you met him yet?—No, of course not. He's Charlie's brother, and he collects art things—the most unbelievable things. Once, a long time ago, he took a fad for goldfish—some goldfish are very rare and beautiful, you know—one can pay twenty-five and fifty dollars apiece for them. He got all the dealers had, and when he learned that there were some they couldn't get, he took a trip to Japan and China on purpose to get them. You know ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... that was hers. And he heard her singing in the patio garden, where, also, she desisted long enough to quarrel with her Airedale and scold the collie pup unholily attracted by the red-orange, divers-finned, and many-tailed Japanese goldfish in ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... not, Casey," said the little alderman. "He has no place for thim. Cages he has, an' globes for goldfish, an' birrd cages, but th' size of th' shop l'aves no room for an aquarium, Casey. He has no tank for the preservation of water goats. Hippopotamuses an' alligators an' crocodiles an' dongola water goats an' sea lions he does not keep in stock, Casey, ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler
... noting a clay tobacco pipe on the hob, a jar on the table, and an easy-chair and spittoon by the fireplace, while flowers were in a vase on the table, and a couple of solemn looking, swollen-eyed, pompous goldfish sailed round and round their little crystal globe, as if it were their world, and nothing outside were of the least consequence, unless it might have been the fat cat, with fish-hook claws, half ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... up as mistress to foreign gold. When the River Spree is amethystine under springtime skies and the city's lights are yellow in the linden trees, I like best the Berlin that sips its beer in the peace of the little by-streets, the Berlin that laughs in the Tiergarten near the Lake of the Goldfish and on the Isle of Louisa, where watch throughout eternity the graven images of Friedrich Wilhelm the Third and of Wilhelm the First in the years of his boyhood. I like best the Berlin that sings with the students in the undiscovered, untainted wein and bier stuben of the ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... would return home—that was in the contract—and he would never have to work again. He would be a rich man for life, with a house of his own, a wife, and children growing up to venerate him. Yes, and back of the house he would have a small garden, a place of meditation and repose, with goldfish in a tiny lakelet, and wind bells tinkling in the several trees, and there would be a high wall all around so that his meditation and repose should ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... described it to me. Here is the most interesting part of the whole affair. The special guard over Karuska was only lightly affected and has already recovered and is in a position to tell you exactly what happened. I got a garbled account of the affair from the warden, something about a goldfish bowl or something like that, the warden wouldn't take it seriously enough to give me details. I didn't press for them much for I knew that you would rather ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... neat little wooden chairs, all very peculiarly uncomfortable, and amazingly full of earwigs: the whole being surrounded by a garden full of flints, burnt bricks and cinders, with some water in the middle, and a fountain in the middle of it, which won't play; accompanied by some goldfish, which won't swim; and by two or three ducks, which will splash. Now, I am excessively sorry to inform the members of any respectable English family, who are making themselves uncomfortable in one of these ingenious conceptions, under the idea that they are living in a Swiss cottage, ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... his hand in his stepmother's, he heard his father telling his story, and all the time his eyes were roaming round the room taking everything in with admiration and delight. There was a canary in a cage, a globe of goldfish, bowls of pink and white roses, pictures and books, comfortable easy-chairs, and in the corner a delicious-looking table, spread with a white cloth and shining silver, with a large dish of strawberries in the ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... dim future, but to attack those problems which are right with us every day and ask some of our friends to join the Nut Growers Association. We are all widely separated in different walks of life, and each in his own world is just apt to see things a whole lot like the goldfish in a bowl. That is, he will see it twisted and distorted. So when all is said and done, it's up to us to support these committee heads and help ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... court, with its fountain, its marble basin containing three goldfish, its roofed-in coffee-chamber, the little dining-room separated from the rest of the house, pleased them both. And Charmian took the garden, which ran rather wild, and was full of geraniums, orange trees, fig trees, ivy growing over old ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... bright evening in July, one of those long golden evenings that do not so much give way to night as admit at last, upon courtesy, the moon and a choice retinue of stars, that Nettie and I, at the pond of goldfish where the yew-bordered walks converged, made our shy beginners' vow. I remember still—something will always stir in me at that memory—the tremulous emotion of that adventure. Nettie was dressed in white, ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... chanced to follow led me to a crystal spring with a border of grass as freshly green as on May morning, and overshadowed by the limb of a great oak. One solitary sunbeam found its way down and played like a goldfish in the water. ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the handles of the cart, he set off down the drive. From the drawing-room came the sound of a chorus of delight as the conjurer produced a goldfish in a glass bowl from his head. From the kitchen came the sound of the hilarious laughter of the maids. Only in the dining-room, with its horrible expanse of empty ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... who was in a terrible state of excitement; and unable to grasp more than that the men had been foraging about, and had made some discovery, they hurried us on to what must have been a kind of summer-house in a pleasant garden with a goldfish tank, and various other proofs of the taste of the late occupants ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... other, Dr. Bell tells the Geographic society; a statement which no one will doubt who has ever seen a pair of goldfish in earnest conversation. ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... in the shallow recess, I have placed an aquarium, a recent acquisition that delights my soul. The aquarium is simply an oblong glass box mounted on a teak stand, with a tracery of teak carving outlining the box, which is the home of the most gorgeous fan-tailed goldfish. There are water plants in the box, too, and funny little Chinese temples and dwarf trees. I love to house my little people happily—my dogs and my birds and my fish. Wee Toi, my little Chinese dog, has a little house all his own, an old Chinese lacquer box with a canopy top and little gold ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... the marble-edged pool where the goldfish swam and glimmered, and where the great prehistoric beast had come down to bathe and drink. The water flashed white diamonds in the moonlight, and Gerald alone of them all saw that the scaly-plated ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... bring you into the arena with increased understanding. Hanker not too much after worldly prosperity—that corpulent cigar; if you became a millionaire you would probably go swimming around for more like a diseased goldfish. Look to it that what you are doing is not merely toddling to a competency. Perhaps that must be your fate, but fight it and then, though you fail, you may still be among the elect of whom we have spoken. Many a brave ...
— Courage • J. M. Barrie
... cards. The hat that looks like a gentleman's hat. But which, in reality, is no gentleman's hat. Only my hat; and I am not a gentleman. I am only a conjurer, and this is only a conjurer's hat. I could not take off this hat to a lady. I can take rabbits out of it, goldfish out of it, snakes out of it. Only I mustn't take my own head out of it. I suppose I'm a lower animal than a rabbit or a snake. Anyhow they can get out of the conjurer's hat; and I can't. I am a conjurer and nothing else but a conjurer. ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... up in the corner; Bird, beast, and goldfish are sepulchred there Bid the black kitten march as chief mourner, Waving her tail like a plume in ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... wish - Hullo! you've done it now, my boy!' And, in a flash of glass and pink baby-paws, the bowl of golden carp in the middle of the table rolled on its side, and poured a flood of mixed water and goldfish into the Baby's lap and into ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... also, of goldfish, in glass globes, jars of leaden rock-work, baskets of waxen fruits and flowers, crystal bottles containing rose and amber essences; but, above all, there was light—there ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... Ulric, the Duke of Highanlow, and all the rest of them. Poor Prince Ulric! In the moment of victory he was accidentally fallen upon by the giant whom he was engaged in undermining, and lost all appetite for adventure thereby. Indeed, in his latter years he was alarmed by anything larger than a goldfish, and lived a life ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... an experience to take a walk with him: He says how-de-do to the quaintest creatures. But he can't be bothered with society. Vows most of the people who come back here every winter to the villas and hotels are like a lot of goldfish going round and ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... for that kind of life—home and kitchen and my own parsley in my own back yard. He knows, if he marries me, carpet slippers seven nights in the week is my speed. I never want to see a 'roof,' or a music-show, or a cabaret again to the day I die. He knows I'll fit in home like a goldfish in its bowl. Life made a mistake with me, and it's going to square itself. It's fate, ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... would eat, and purr, But catnip she would eat, and purr. And goldfish she did much prefer— Mew, ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... not stop at any more cat or dog or bird shops, but passed them by, and at last they came to a shop that seemed as though it only sold creatures that did not much mind where they were—such as goldfish and white mice, and sea-anemones and other aquarium beasts, and lizards and toads, and hedgehogs and tortoises, and tame rabbits and guinea-pigs. And there they stopped for a long time, and fed the guinea-pigs with bits of bread through the cage-bars, and wondered ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... of my neck, calling to the others in a voice rather cracked from embarrassment. They looked back at me curiously, and Alice began to twit me, standing in the rain, while Tristan desired to know whether we thought we were a pair of goldfish; in his estimation, we might belong to the piscine tribe all right, but not to that decorative branch thereof. To be frank, he used the term "suckers." Feeling exceptionally foolish, I planted myself doggedly in the soaking grass as Alice turned to ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... and the Princess were feeding the goldfish in the courtyard fountains with crumbs of the Princess's eighteenth birthday cake, when the King came into the courtyard, looking as black as thunder, with his black raven hopping after him. He shook his fist at his family, as indeed he generally did whenever he met them, for he was not ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... swallow, who had dived, told about the pretty little goldfish, of the thick turbot, the fat brill, and the old carp. The swallow could describe all that very well, but, "Self is the man," she said. "One ought to see these things one's self." But how was the Dryad ever to see such beings? She was obliged to be satisfied ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... entirely a question of degree. We have no doubt as to the livingness of a plant, but we realize that it is something very different from the livingness of an animal. Again, what average boy would not prefer a fox-terrier to a goldfish for a pet? Or, again, why is it that the boy himself is an advance upon the dog? The plant, the fish, the dog, and the boy are all equally alive; but there is a difference in the quality of their livingness about which no one can have any doubt, and no one would hesitate to say that this difference ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... his pole back quickly and the hook came out of the water. On it something wriggled. The thing fell plop into Hepzebiah's lap. She screamed while it flopped there. It was a little bigger than the Toyman's hand and round and flat and shiny red and gold. No, it was not a goldfish. It ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... half the notions of heroism and self-devotion as those with which Lady Juliana stepped into the barouche that was to conduct her to Beech Park. In the society of piping bullfinches, pink canaries, gray parrots, goldfish, green squirrels, Italian greyhounds, and French poodles, she sought a refuge from despair. But even these varied charms, after a while, failed to please. The bullfinches grew hoarse; the canaries turned ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... little pet alligator was a sort of tank, in the bottom of which was some water, and in this were little pebbles, like those in some goldfish bowls. The tank stood near a window in the barn where the sun shone in, for Mr. Martin had told the Curlytops that their pets who lived in warm, or tropical, countries must be kept where it was warm and sunny. That was what they were used to in ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... September day when Mr. Meredith's valet stowed Samuel's clothing in the best bureau and asked, on departing, "hif there was hanything helse, Master Samuel?" Gilly cried out that the faculty had played him false. He felt like an irate frog in whose bowl has been put goldfish. ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... several miles my men bowled me into a tea-house, where they ate and smoked while I sat in the garden, which consisted of baked mud, smooth stepping-stones, a little pond with some goldfish, a deformed pine, and a stone lantern. Observe that foreigners are wrong in calling the Japanese houses of entertainment indiscriminately "tea-houses." A tea-house or chaya is a house at which you can obtain tea and other ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... the side of the room, threw his walking stick at it with all his force. But his aim was poor and the walking stick, striking the edge of the table, glanced off and hit a fish-globe, smashing it to pieces and sending the water and the goldfish flying ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... possibly some of the fancy breeds of rats and mice should be included. Among birds there are pigeons, fowls, peacocks, and guinea-fowl, and aquatic birds such as swans, geese, and ducks, whilst the only really domesticated passerine bird is the canary. Goldfish are domesticated, and the invertebrate bees and silk-moths must not be forgotten. It is not very easy to draw a line between domesticated animals and animals that are often bred in partial or complete captivity. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... out of the water, and it goes into the fish's blood. The water is the fishes' atmosphere, and it is only from it that they can get air to breathe; so that if the glass globe were broken, and the pretty goldfish were let fall upon the carpet, unless they were quickly put back into water they would gasp and die from want of air; just as you would, if someone held your head ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... family had been his. To him belonged Pippa and Sancie, Melot and Vicky. "My girls," or "My rascals," he used to call them to Tom Peters or Jack Summers, and bring them home jerky little tin pedestrians from the city, or emus pulling little carts; or (later on) bowls of goldfish or violet nosegays from Covent Garden. If he had a nearer passion, it was to stand well with all the world. That's two passions, however, to his score; and the struggle between them, in Sanchia's case, had taken ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... Harrington's old chair, and in getting a chair for Paula Quinton. After awhile, the jumbled colors on the big screen resolved themselves into an image of Hideyoshi O'Leary, grinning like a pussycat beside an empty goldfish-bowl, licking ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... four milk-boys as pets. They don't know it, but I cultivate an intimate knowledge of their habits and study them as, once, years ago, I was wont to study white mice and goldfish. I have watched their development, listened to their song, and have made ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... goldfish doesn't climb out of his tank and hide in the sardine tin, where the stuffed olives can't find him, I'll tell you next about Uncle ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis
... sapient father of the Teddy-bear, was presently able to translate her exodus into something very soothing to his own piece of mind. Jane could watch his mental processes as easily as she could watch the activities of a goldfish in a glass globe; he was concluding that it was the regular old startled fawn stuff ... he had been rushing her pretty hard ... better let her have a little time ... play around with this writing game. He'd be Asst. Cashier (that ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... beautiful place, hot and sunny like my old home, and full of palm-trees and tangled vines and brilliant flowers. The most beautiful thing in it was a great rose-tree which he called Gold of Ophir. It shook its petals into a splashing fountain where goldfish were always swimming around and around, and it was hard to tell which was the brightest, the falling rose-leaves, or the tiny goldfish ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... garden. How I wish you could see their garden! There are all sorts of wonderful places in it! It isn't very large, but it has in it a little bit of a toy mountain, and a tiny lake with little weeny goldfish in it, and a little stream of water, like a baby river, that runs into the lake. And, best of all, there is a curved bridge, painted red, just big enough for the Twins to walk over, if they are very ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... the last few minutes, and she jumped up in such a hurry that she tipped over the jury-box with the edge of her skirt, upsetting all the jurymen on to the heads of the crowd below, and there they lay sprawling about, reminding her very much of a globe of goldfish she had accidentally upset the ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll
... goldfish popped its head above the surface of the lake, not more than a foot from his eyes. A silverfish then raised its head beside that of the goldfish, and a moment later a bronzefish lifted its head beside the others. The three fish, ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... WOULD talk of Egypt. She and her husband had visited Cairo once upon a time, so she felt herself as familiar with the whole Nile basin as with the goldfish tank in the hotel lounge. To Galusha Egypt was an enchanted land, a sort of paradise to which fortunate explorers might eventually be permitted to go if they were very, very good. To have this sacrilegious female ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... moments while the fish I had hooked darted here and there like lightning, but I had it up to the side soon after, and gazed at it with delight, for it was, as it lay panting in the boat, like a magnificent goldfish, five or six pounds weight, with bars across its side of the ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... of the blow-gun is not confined to the Dyaks. They are also used by fish! That is to say, by a certain species of fish. This fish, which is remarkable neither in size nor color, seldom being larger than our domestic goldfish, is known to the natives as ikan sumpit (literally "fish with a sumpitan") and to science as Toxodes jaculator. But it is unique among the finny tribe in possessing the curious power, on corning to the surface, of being able to squirt from its mouth a tiny jet of water. This ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... seventeen and keeping house-boat for her father (the mother died when she was a child) the poor man had an accident, and was drowned. There wasn't much money saved up for Anna Maria, so the barge was sold, and she had to live on dry land, and learn how to be a dressmaker. She was as miserable as a goldfish would be if you took it out of its bowl and laid it on the table. In a few months she'd fallen into a decline, and though, just at that time, she met a dashing young chauffeur, who took a fancy to ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... used to play as a youngster: What-Would-You-Rather-Be-Eaten-Up-By! We boys would pompously answer lions, puffing ourselves out bravely and pretending we didn't care, but I remembered one little girl who aroused our contemptuous laughter by answering "goldfish." And now, after all these years, for the first time I found myself marveling at her sagacity. Indeed, she was off and on in my thoughts until I had clothed myself in dry garments and partaken of a grown man's breakfast; after which I dropped into a state ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... was there wearing a magnificent stud; Erasmus Belt, the famous author, whose novel "Bitten: A Romance" went into two editions; Sir Septimus Root, the inventor of the fire-proof spat; Captain the Honourable Alfred Nibbs, the popular breeder of blood-goldfish—the whole world and his wife were present. And towering above them all stood Lord ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... suggestion, which confirmed the impression Mr. Caryll had formed that all was far from well with his lordship. Leduc brimmed a glass, and handed it to my lord, who emptied it at a draught. Mr. Caryll waved an impatient hand. "Away with you, Leduc. Go watch the goldfish in the pond. I'll call you if ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... 'feasting and merrymaking for seventy days and seventy nights.' This one is going by so fast that it will soon be train-time. I don't suppose they care," she added, with a nod toward the bride, "for they're going to spend their honeymoon in a Gold of Ophir rose-garden, where there are goldfish in the fountains, and real orange-blossoms. It's out in California, at Mister Stuart's grandfather's. Elsie, his sister, couldn't come, so they're going out to see her, and take her a piece of every kind of ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... "There! The perfect pets for the sickroom. When you said Jenny Lind was too disturbing I remembered that Mr. Jerry's Aunt Mary had these two little goldfish. Wasn't it lucky? She was glad to loan them to you and hopes you'll find them pleasant friends. They won't be any care at all. I'll come up every day and feed them if you don't feel well enough. I'd like to. Aren't they beautiful? Do you suppose all the fish in Heaven are like ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... he could have escaped from the planet and that was by the single spacecraft that had left, destination Avalon. He was not on the planet, that was definite Ronny felt. A stranger on New Delos was as conspicuous as a walrus in a goldfish bowl. There simply were ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... ocean wave, and the architectural beauty of the island hills; but if he turns his gaze downward and looks through the glass bottom of the boat in which he is sailing, he will discover manifold phases of beauty in the life beneath the sea waves: in goldfish darting hither and thither, in umbrella-shaped jellyfish lazily swimming by, in starfish and anemones of infinite variety, in sea-urchins brilliant in color, and in an endless forest of water-weeds exquisitely delicate in their structure. Perhaps ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... The goldfish sing a winding song Below her pale and waxen face, The water-nymph is dancing by Lifting smooth arms with mournful grace, A stainless white dream she floats on While fairies ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... by sharp zigzags, the Tokaido suddenly dips into the little valley of the Yasose-gawa. At the foot of the hill is a curious shrine cave, containing several rude idols, a trough with tame goldfish, and one of the crudest Buddhas I ever saw. The aim of the ambitious sculptor of Buddhas is to produce a personification of "great tranquillity." The figure in the Valley of Yasose-gawa is certainly something of a masterpiece in this direction; nothing could well be more tranquil than an oblong ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... mullet marked with pairs of black lines, white gobies from the genus Eleotris with curved caudal fins and violet spots on the back, wonderful Japanese mackerel from the genus Scomber with blue bodies and silver heads, glittering azure goldfish whose name by itself gives their full description, several varieties of porgy or gilthead (some banded gilthead with fins variously blue and yellow, some with horizontal heraldic bars and enhanced by a black strip around their caudal area, some with ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... burning candles and fist-warmed peppermint—as he undresses the prickly boughs. Here they go into the boxes, red, green, and golden balls, tinkling glass bells, stars, paper angels, cotton-wool Santa Claus, blue birds, celluloid goldfish, mosquito netting, counterfeit stockings, nickel-plated horns, and all the comical accumulation of oddities that gathers from year to year in the box labelled CHRISTMAS TREE THINGS, FRAGILE. The box goes up to the attic, and the parent blows a faint diminuendo, achingly prolonged, ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... In the corners of the rooms are stands four or live feet high, on which they set plates of citrons, and other fragrant fruits, or branches of coral in vases of porcelain, and glass globes containing goldfish, together with a certain weed somewhat resembling fennel; on such tables as are intended for ornament only they also place little landscapes, composed of rocks, shrubs, and a kind of lily that grows among pebbles covered with water. Sometimes also, they have artificial landscapes ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... has sent me an angel miniature Jap garden, with a tiny pergola & real dwarf trees & a bridge that you expect an Alfred Noyes lantern on, & Oh Carl, an issa goldfish ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... a street, some rich men had got together and left unguarded all the gold, diamonds, and rubies of the East; but when you came near you saw that this treasure was only a gathering of goldfish in glass globes—yellow, white, and red fish, with from three to five forked tails apiece and eyes that bulged far beyond their heads. There were wooden pans full of tiny ruby fish, and little children with nets dabbled and shrieked in chase of some special beauty, and the frightened ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... house," that she and her family had been watching for years. It had been auctioned, forfeited by the purchaser, it had figured in a lawsuit, and now at last it was in the possession of the delighted Davenports. And the move—with the baby carrying his puppy, and Pip the goldfish, and the girls wheeling the old baby-carriage full of their treasures, and Linda whitening her hands with a cut lemon, as she walked the seven short blocks—! Harriet made them see it all, and Richard laughed with the children. His mother, always reminiscent, recalled a move in his own third ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... knew of any world beyond the walls of the Red House, the dooryard and the shade of the elm tree. I did not feel their confinement. There seemed to be boundless liberty, and the delusion is complete when there is no sense of limitation. The goldfish in his glass prison no doubt supposes himself swimming in an infinite sea. When the boy's growth can be still measured by his mother's yardstick his outlook is restricted correspondingly. He climbs upon a chair with difficulty ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... yawn, a deliberate yawn—not the kind you can't repress because the air is close and you feel like a goldfish when the water in the bowl has not been changed and you must gape for breath. The fat boy had been dancing attendance on her for the last hour and she was wearied with his witty sallies. Jeff and Willis Truman, a former classmate, had started a game of bridge with two ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... Miss Abbott, also in her best, sat by Philip, looking, to his irritated nerves, more like the tragedy confidante every moment. That scion of the Italian nobility, Signor Carella, sat opposite. Behind him loomed a bowl of goldfish, who swam round and round, ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... boxes such as are commonly used for aquaria cost less than a dollar per gallon capacity. Goldfish globes cost about the same. White glass round aquaria are much cheaper and those made of greenish domestic glass are the cheapest of all, a glass tank holding eight gallons costing but ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... persons believed her to be a Mohammedan, a Turk, which added to the poetic character of her establishment, situated at the water's edge behind the rampart. Even in the middle of summer there was a shadow around her house, which could be recognised by a glass bowl of goldfish near a pot of mignonette at a window. Young ladies in white nightdresses, with painted cheeks and long earrings, used to tap at the panes as the students passed; and as it grew dark, their custom was to hum softly in their hoarse voices at ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... artistically draped with art hangings; a plate filled with grapes, a large bottle labelled "Two table-spoonfuls every half hour," and a medicine-glass were placed conspicuously on a small table; and, most remarkable feature of all, Mr Bunker's bath filled with water and alive with goldfish stood by the side of the bed. A couple of canaries sang in a cage by the window, the half-drawn curtains only permitted the most delicate light to steal into the room, and in short the whole arrangement reflected the utmost credit ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... linger to say What gambol and frolic Enlivened the way; How they flirted with bubbles That danced on the wave, Or listened to mermaids That sang from the cave; Or slid with the moonbeams Down deep to the grove Of coral, where mullet And goldfish rove: How there, in long vistas Of silence and sleep, They waltzed, as if mocking The death of the deep: How, oft, where the wreck Lay scattered and torn, They peeped in the skull, All ghastly and lorn; Or deep, 'mid wild rocks, Quizzed the goggling shark, And mouthed at the sea-wolf, So ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... stepped out from its French windows into the garden, where a little pebbly path led one wandering amongst oleanders and dwarf oranges and flaming cannas, to a corner where a tiny fountain made a home for lazy goldfish floating in placid contentment under the hot sun. Here there was an arbour wreathed in gentle wisteria, where Riviere took breakfast and the mid-day meal. At nightfall a chill snapped down with the suddenness of the impetuousness Midi, ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... Strawberry Hill he regarded in the same spirit of comic delight. He stood outside himself, like a spectator, and nothing gave him more pleasure than to figure himself as a master of the ceremonies among the bantams, and the squirrels and the goldfish. In one of his letters he describes himself and Bentley fishing in the pond for goldfish with "nothing but a pail and a basin and a tea-strainer, which I persuade my neighbours is the Chinese method." This was in order to capture some of the ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... ex-hoodlums left in Flushing to echo that sentiment, even after a quarter of a century. From certain signs I knew, when I hung my curtain between two trees in the little public park down by the fountain with the goldfish, that there was going to be trouble. My patience had been pretty well worn down, and I made preparations. I hired four stout men who were spoiling for a fight, and put good hickory clubs into their hands, bidding them restrain their natural desire ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... I have heard the words that sound my doom. I saw Dr. Owen this morning. It is all true—my dream, and what I saw myself do in the bowl of goldfish. True! I did those incredible things. I wore my red dress and my black hat. I went to Captain Herrick's studio. I lay down on the divan—everything is true. Oh, God, this is too horrible! How can I ever face Christopher again? ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... bought a new flexible flyer and we expect some fine coasting. Be sure to bring your skates. Goldfish Pond is ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... was sitting, back to the light, tapping a bowl of goldfish with the tip of a polished finger-nail; the room was very cool. She held a letter out. "Your uncle is ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the far, faint step of Akron on the stair, and the still fainter murmur from the streets. The very goldfish in the fountain do not stir, and the long line of slaves against the marble wall, save for their branded foreheads, might be gaunt caryatides hewn in Egyptian wood or carved in ebony and amber. That gaudy tropic bird scarce ruffles a feather. What is the difference between life ...
— The Flutter of the Goldleaf; and Other Plays • Olive Tilford Dargan and Frederick Peterson
... the outer doorway, from time to time, with gestures of lamentation and entreaty. Upon the sidewalk, between the wagons and the gate, was a broad wet spot, vaguely circular, with a partial circumference of broken glass and extinct goldfish. ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... cut-glass, faced a rustic stage which occupied one end of the room; occupying the inner arc of the half-circle was a wide but shallow stone fountain, upon the surface of which floated large-leaved Egyptian pond-lilies. Fat-bellied goldfish with filmy fins, and tails like iridescent wedding trains, propelled themselves indolently about. Two dimpled cupids strained at a marble cornucopia, out of which trickled a stream of water, its whisper drowned now by the ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... bought cigarettes or sweets costing more than three shillings a hundred or eighteenpence a pound respectively, or to have paid more than three and sixpence (war-tax included) for a seat in any place of entertainment, will be instantly expelled. Dogs, cats, goldfish, and other superhuman companions ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... Gwent, promptly—"There must be opposition, otherwise effort would be unnecessary. My good fellow, you've got an idea that you can alter the fixed plan of things, but you can't. The cleverest of us are only like goldfish in a glass bowl—they see the light through, but they cannot get to it. The old ship of the world will sail on its appointed way to its destined port,—and the happiest creatures are those who are content to sail with it in the faith that God is at the helm!" He broke off, smiling ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... days when I consider myself below imbecility. I have still a globe of goldfish and that amuses me. They keep me company while I dine. Is it stupid to be interested in such simple things? Adieu, it is late, I have an ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... deep in nature. The peevish mouth and the fallen eye of the plaice, the helpless rotundity of the sunfish, the mournful gape and rolling glance of the goldfish, the furious and ineffective mien of the barndoor fowl, the wild grotesqueness of the babyroussa and the wart-hog, the crafty solemn eye of the parrot,—if such things as these do not testify to a sense of humour in the Creative ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... sanctuary is entered through a large gate of red sandstone. In a long pool goldfish dart about under floating lotus blossoms, and all around is luxuriant verdure, the dwelling-place of countless singing birds; the air is filled with the odour of jasmine and roses, and tall, slender ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... Straightaway from the side door, leaving the drive at a right angle, runs a short arbor of vines. Four or five steps to the left of this bower a clump of shrubbery veils the view from the street and in between shrubs and arbor lies a small pool of water flowers and goldfish. On the arbor's right, in charming privacy, masked by hollyhocks, dahlias and other tall-maidenly things, lie beds of strawberries and lettuce and all the prim ranks and orders of ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... blind, telling his beads in the corner of the cloister garden, sighed. Father Tomasso, who had brought him from his confessional in the great church to the bench where day after day he kept his sightless vigil over the pond of the goldfish, turned back at the sound, then, seeing the peace of Father Denfili's face, thought he must have fancied the sigh. For sadness came alien to the little garden of the Community of San Ambrogio on Via Paoli, a ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... it now. My silly pretty face, my woman's body, my graces, seductions, all have been so much bait for Aunty's fishing. Bait! That's what I've been; bait to catch goldfish! And she brought me down here on the greatest ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... were, in the heart of the House. A small prim square, bounded on the north, south and east by the House itself, and on the west by the cliff and the sea. There is a stone balustrade to divide the garden from space. In the middle of the square is a stone basin with becalmed water-lilies and of course goldfish. Round the basin the orderly ranks of little clipped box hedges manoeuvre. The untamed elements in the garden are the climbing things, they sing in gold and yellow and orange and red from the walls. The only official way into the garden ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... is a vista about a hundred feet wide paved with white and black marble with tessellated designs, inclosed with walls of cypress boughs. In the center are a series of tanks, or marble basins, fed from fountains, and goldfish swim about in the limpid water. This vista, of course, was intended to make the first view as impressive as possible, and it is safe to say that there is no other equal to it. At the other end of the marble-paved tunnel of trees, against a cloudless ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... team! Do you happen to know that half the house is biting itself with agony because we can't find room for all? Shields gives stump-cricket soirees in his study after prep. One every time you hit the ball, two into the bowl of goldfish, and out if you smash ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... an extended scale. As in the case of plants, man has sometimes undesignedly introduced now species of aquatic animals into countries distant from their birthplace. The accidental escape of the Chinese goldfish from ponds where they were bred as a garden ornament, has peopled some European, and it is said American streams with this species. Canals of navigation and irrigation interchange the fish of lakes and rivers widely separated by natural barriers, as well as the plants which ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... opened, and then to but a few, high in command. For across the white-blossomed hedge that encloses the grounds, armies of men toil ceaselessly molding black bullets for pale people and they work so silently that the birds keep house in the long fringed willows and the goldfish splash in the sunned spots of ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... peaches behind a net As fine as her veil, and fat Goldfish a-gape, who lazily met For her crumbs—I grudged them that! A squirrel, some rabbits with long lop ears, And guinea-pigs, tortoise-shell—wee; And I told her that eloquent truth inheres ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... said Madeline. "I'll set my Candy Rabbit up here on the goldfish stand where he can watch us, for he can't eat anything, ...
— The Story of a Candy Rabbit • Laura Lee Hope
... There seemed to be no end to the enemy's fighting resources. He kept on producing fresh batches of Reserve Divisions and Extra-Reserve Divisions, like a conjurer who produces huge glass bowls full of goldfish out of his waistcoat pocket. He seemed to be doing it on purpose—one felt quite angry with the man. But it was made plain to me that we were up against a tougher proposition than I had imagined. The Field-Marshal must have been, or at all events ought to ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... any goldfish, and knew nothing about them, so with no thought save to handle them gently, she took them out of the water, and laid them on the table ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... again! And how was Paul, the good fellow—still soaking himself in liquor, he supposed? Funny effect it has sometimes; Paul seemed to think the whole inn was an aquarium and we visitors the goldfish! "Ha, ha, ha, goldfish; I wish we were, I must say!—Well, Eilert, are we getting some fresh haddock for supper? Good!—Really, we like it here very much; we've already been here several days; we want to stay and ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... Eben, I'm so glad to see again!" she exclaimed. "And how's Aunt Sallie? And is my pony well? And are the goldfish still alive? And——" ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... was done by the Romans, who much esteemed them, and Pliny relates that they sent slaves from Ostia to Rome, who carried on their heads fish which he calls the mulus, and which, from the description, must probably be the goldfish. It was also considered a luxury to have them alive, it being an amusing sight to see them die, for, when dying, they change color three or four times, and like the rainbow when it disappears, pass through all the prismatic ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... chairs, wash-stand and bureau,—the bureau drawers falling out, spilling their contents into the dust; there were the white wool rugs of the sitting-room, the flower stand, with its pots all broken, its flowers wilting; the cracked goldfish globe, the fishes already dead; the rocking chair, the sewing machine, the great round table of yellow oak, the lamp with its deep shade of crinkly red tissue paper, the pretty tinted photographs that had hung on the ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... into sight on the pedestal a transparent dome the size of a small goldfish bowl. It was lighted by ultra-violet from the bottom. In the center of the dome a small golden ball hung by a platinum wire, and on the ball was a tiny butterfly—Netse the Jovian. Netse's wings ...
— The Wealth of Echindul • Noel Miller Loomis |
