"Loon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... South hev one int'rest, it 's plain to a glance; No'thern men, like us patriarchs, don't sell their childrin, But they du sell themselves, ef they git a good chance," Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;— Sez Atherton here, "This is gittin' severe, I wish I could dive like a loon," ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... "Silly loon," said the queen, "I tell you I cannot! Choose something else, John; and I conjure you, dear John, give ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... of that night; you had a strong taste of them yourself. About daybreak I was flung like a spent ball on to a sandy beach. I had just strength to crawl a few yards further up, and then collapsed. It seems some Indians carried me away, and nursed me back to health, but for weeks I was wild as a loon. They searched the coast, but found nothing, and I concluded you were at the bottom of the sea. Then I got a passage to Pisco in a coasting brig, and from there made my ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... is in fact very green indeed. Then a crazy person pushes his way forward and wants me to cure him of his mental infirmity; at all events I cannot imagine what else he wants; the man is crazy as a loon, he cannot even give utterance to his own mother-tongue, but tries to express himself in a series of disjointed grunts beside which the soul-harrowing efforts of a broken-winded donkey are quite melodious. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... wandering round crazy as a loon, seeing three big lions with eyes like coals of fire stalking him night and day, and him always trying to dodge 'em. He says at last they came nearer and nearer until he stumbled and fell, and then he felt their hot breath on his cheek, and he knew nothing more until he ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... coming along at a pretty good jog, when we heard some body hallooing after us, and we held up. Looking around, we saw a man running down from the house standing upon the side-hill, a little away from the road. May be you remember the house up there? Well, he was hallooing like a loon, and we waited till he came up. Soon as he got near ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... back toward the house, and I laughed at my momentary confusion as I rode on through the deepening shadow, for though it is strangely mournful the loon's shrill call was nothing unusual in that land. Still, mere coincidence as it was, remembering Grace's shiver it troubled me, and I should have been more uneasy had I known how we were to ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... with his skinny hand, 'There was a ship,' quoth he. 10 'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!' Eftsoons ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... him a home here along with that first woman of Brother Tench's. The crazy loon has been bothering me all week to give him ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... dancing, William, Dance up and doon, Set to your partners, William, We'll play the tune! What! Wad ye stop the pipers? Nay, 'tis ower-soon! Dance, since ye're dancing, William, Dance, ye puir loon! Dance till ye're dizzy, William, Dance till ye swoon! Dance till ye're dead, my laddie! We ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... And now the tide rolled south over shelving, sandy shores, past countless islands yellowing to the touch of September frosts, and silent as death but for the cries of gull, tern, bittern, the hooting piebald loon, match-legged phalaropes, and geese and ducks of every hue, collected for the autumnal flight south. It was a yellowish sea under a sky blue as turquoise; and it may be that Hudson recalled sailor yarns of China's seas, lying yellow ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... Cruttendon. I'm with you there. Shakespeare had more guts than all these damned frogs put together. 'Hang there like fruit my soul,'" he began quoting, in a musical rhetorical voice, flourishing his wine-glass. "The devil damn you black, you cream-faced loon!" he exclaimed as the wine washed ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... Loon Lake the great saurians were basking themselves in the hot sun, and the appearance of the boys among them made a slight disturbance along the edges ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... lips, Lips like the flower that the honey-bee sips, The birds in the grove were mute, The bittern forgot his toot, And the owl forbore his hoot, And the king-bird set his wing, And the woodpecker ceas'd his tap On the hollow beech, And the son of the loon on the neighbouring strand Gave over his idle screech, And fell to ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... ye onmannerly loon," said he, foaming with passion, his pale complexion becoming paler, which made the freckles stand out prominently, ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... moment and they might have become curious about the stranger sitting at the hearth, when the woman hastily turned round, and struck him on the shoulder with the huge spoon she held in her hand. 'Lazy loon!' she cried. 'Have you no work to do? Off with you at once and see to your threshing.' The Danes only saw before them a common Swedish servant bullied by his mistress, and it never entered their heads to ask any questions; so ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... his face down in his hands for a minute; then he went on: "I started out this morning and gave each of the fellows his money back. They didn't want to take it,—they think me a crazy loon; but I insisted. I've got beyond caring for their opinion. And now, Fee, the rest of my life belongs to you; you've paid an awful price for it, old fellow,—I'm not worth it. Think of your college course—your profession—all the things we ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... animal, as a bear, lion, tiger, eagle, or the bird they call cuntur (condor), or some other bird of prey." (2) According to Lewis Morgan, the North American Indians of various tribes had for totems the wolf, bear, beaver, turtle, deer, snipe, heron, hawk, crane, loon, turkey, muskrat; pike, catfish, carp; buffalo, elk, reindeer, eagle, hare, rabbit, snake; reed-grass, ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... here, before the leddies," said he, "wasting the precious hours, and bringing your father's grey hairs wi' sorrow to the grave; and John Broom yonder shaming ye, and you not so much as thinking to fetch the perch for him, ye lazy loon. Away wi' ye and get it, before I lay ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... been marred by the axe of civilization. Here as the sun sinks to repose amid these purple mountains, and the last rays of light on their waters seem like sheets of fluid gold, and the lonely cry of the loon breaks the solitude, you too will feel that you do not need to go to Europe for natural mountain beauty when such glorious scenes lie spread out ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... loon flew over the hut, and, seeing the poor blind boy at the door, resolved to restore his eyesight. The bird perched on the roof and kept calling, "Quee moo! Quee moo!" which sounded to the lad like "Come here! ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... head of Tangier Harbor, on the northeast branch of the Tangier River,—shown on McKinley's excellent map of Nova Scotia as about fifty-eight miles east from Halifax. Subsequent discoveries at Wine Harbor, Sherbrooke, Ovens, Oldham, Waverley, Hammond's Plains, and at Lake Loon,—a small lake only five miles distant from Halifax,—have fully determined the auriferous character of particular and defined localities throughout the district already described, and abundantly justify the early opinion of Lord Mulgrave, that "there is now little or no ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... it, for he's the best fisherman in the woods—and yet you never see a smile cross his face, nor does he ever speak of it behind your back—not even to me. Hank walks across Moose Hillock to find old Jonathan Gordon to tell him he has some big trout in Loon Pond, so that the old man can have the fun of catching them and selling them afterward to the new hotel in the Notch. He has walked twenty-four miles when he gets back. Do these things make Hank a gentleman, ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... counts with you just now," said the doctor. "You come with me at once, or I'll throw up the case. 'You're as loony as a loon." ...
— Options • O. Henry
... was not abroad himself, we inquired of a porter, and by his direction went to an alehouse, where after a cup or two we parted. I went towards London, and in my way went in to see Crowly, who was now grown a very great loon and very tame. Thence to Mr. Steven's with a pair of silver snuffers, and bought a pair of shears to cut silver, and so homeward again. From home I went to see Mrs. Jem, who was in bed, and now granted to have the small-pox. Back again, and went to the Coffee-house, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... with a pan of hot charcoal, and the irons for cautery. He was a dexterous fallow that Derrick. This man Gregory is not fit to jipper a joint with him; it might be worth your lordship's while to have the loon sent to a barber-surgeon's, to learn some needful scantling of anatomy—it may be for the benefit of yourself and other unhappy sufferers, and also ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... your jests, you ill-favoured loon: I want no man's labour for nothing—there are some broad pieces to stop your mouth; and now, when saw ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... felt a strong, rough hand pass gently over his curls. "When she comes Ah'll send ye word by yon loon o' a weaver. It'll give him somethin' to do, an' the buddie's jist fair in ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... came to pass, The Lion hunted with the Ass, Whom hiding in the thickest shade He there proposed should lend him aid, By trumpeting so strange a bray, That all the beasts he should dismay, And drive them o'er the desert heath Into the lurking Lion's teeth. Proud of the task, the long-ear'd loon Struck up such an outrageous tune, That 'twas a miracle to hear— The beasts forsake their haunts with fear, And in the Lion's fangs expired: Who, being now with slaughter tired, Call'd out the Ass, whose noise he ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... paddled to Arkansas City without leaving the water, a distance of one hundred and sixty miles in thirty one hours, which was the longest continuous run he ever made up to that time. That night on the lonesome stretches of the river, he frequently started a loon from its resting place and it would fly off into the darkness with a wild, unearthly shriek, so ghostly in its echoing cadences that with a nervous start, Paul would glance around for that ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... must start at Le Pas as the last outpost of civilization and strike northward through the long Pelican Lake waterways to Reindeer Lake. Nearly forty miles up the east shore of the lake, the adventurer will come to the mouth of the Gray Loon—narrow and silent stream that winds under overhanging forests—and after that a two-hours' journey in a canoe will bring one to ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... John got away for an hour or two to-day, and were lost; they went to the right where we thought the channel ran, but it didn't go there. Everybody much scared. The last portage is on ahead, six hundred yards from Summit Lake to Loon Lake. Everybody seems to forget these other little lakes, which are confusing. We see signs of old ax-work, so think we must be on the trail. The Hudson's Bay people have used this in the past as well as the Klondike outfits. These ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... across the valley, and the ranges answer back; His brushwood smoke at evening lifts a column to the moon; And dim beyond the distance, where the Kootenai winds black, He hears the silence shattered by the laughter of the loon. ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... run after this big man with the streaming white hair and the tattered cloak, calling him names or tapping their brown little foreheads with their dirty fingers to show that even they knew that he was "as crazy as a loon." ...
— The True Story of Christopher Columbus • Elbridge S. Brooks
... to be cheated by a swindling loon, and then made game of by a flunkie; and, in my desperation, I determined to ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... holds him with his skinny hand: 'There was a ship,' quoth he. 'Hold off! unhand me, graybeard loon!' Eftsoons his hand ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... foreign soldier should bear himself modestly and decorously towards the people of the country if you would not have the whole dogs of the town at your heels? However, if you must have a bargain [a quarrel, videlicet. S.], I would rather it were with that loon of a Provost than any one else; and I blame you less for this onslaught than for other frays that you have made, Ludovic, for it was but natural and kind-like to help your young kinsman. This simple bairn must come to no skaith [same as scathe] neither; so give me the ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... loon, Allan," asked a quiet voice near him; and turning, the Maine boy saw the acting scout-master poking his head out from under the canvas of the ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... there was nothing of which to repent, even if he had been so minded; and probably Eugene himself was unaware that any disapproval had recently been expressed. George snorted. What sort of a dreamy loon did they take ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... the grey rocks of the grim old mountains that so stubbornly held their secret of what lay beyond, we had a good supper of trout and were happy, though through the gulch the creek roared defiance at us, and off in the night somewhere a loon would break out at intervals in derisive laughter. At the base of the mountains the narrow lake reflected a million stars, and in their kindly light the snow and ice patches on the slopes above us gleamed ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... hadn't the least idea of where I was. I still supposed that I wasn't far from the lumber camp and expected any moment to see a search party descend on the hut. I soon found that I couldn't expect any help from my host. He was crazy as a loon and besides he had a fixed idea that I was a son of his who had evidently been supposed to be dead for several years and had now come to life again in the woods. I tried once to explain to him that ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... unfortunately for the peace of our neighbourhood that this young lord had an old cunning rogue, or, as the Scots call it, a false loon of a grandfather, that one might justly call a Jack-of-all-Trades.* Sometimes you would see him behind his counter selling broadcloth, sometimes measuring linen; next day he would be dealing in merceryware. ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... say to her by way of courtship or marriage. She squinted very much; her face was long and thin, her nose excessively large and humped, her teeth crooked and projecting, her chin almost as sharp as the bill of a loon, and her ears as large as those of a deer. Altogether she was a very odd and strangely formed woman, and wherever she went she never failed to excite much laughter and derision among those who thought that ugliness and deformity were fit subjects ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... interrupted by wild, strange sounds from the middle of the Great River. It sounded like crazy laughter. Peter jumped at the sound, but Honker merely chuckled. "It's Dippy the Loon," said he. "He spent the summer in the Far North not far from us. He started south just before ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... the loon that did it, Sworn I have as well as said it, Though a' the warld should forbid it, I wad gie his neck a thra': I never met wi' sic a turn As this sin' ever I was born, My Ewie, wi' the crookit horn, Silly Ewie, stown awa'; My Ewie wi' the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... pedigree from Wodin, and that a son should, as natural, succeed his father, were old rules: but the barons would, as all history shews, make little of crowning a younger son instead of an elder, if the younger were a hero, and the elder an 'arga'—a lazy loon; and little, also, would they make of setting aside the whole royal family, and crowning the man who would do their business best. The king was, as this preface and these laws shew, the commander in chief ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... Well, I should smile!" answered the camp captain. "You were making as much noise as a loon, and that's the noisiest thing I know. Go to sleep again, young one, and don't have any ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... learned from her brother, a soldier of the Eighteenth Ohio, that she was married. Strong, healthy, good-looking fellow that he was, this intelligence prostrated him completely, and made him crazy as a loon. He imagined that he was in hell, thought Dr. Seyes the devil, and so violent did he become that ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... bleating of far flocks, The mud-hen's whistle from the marsh at morn; To skirt with deafened ears and brain o'erborne Some foam-filled rapid charging down its rocks With iron roar of waters; far away Across wide-reeded meres, pensive with noon, To hear the querulous outcry of the loon; To lie among deep rocks, and watch all day On liquid heights the snowy clouds melt by; Or hear from wood-capped mountain-brows the jay Pierce the bright morning with his ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... for the Cardinal, I grant He was a man we weill culd want, And we'll forget him sune; But yet I think the sooth to say, Although the loon is weill away, The ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... you loon!" cried Steve. "Call that a big drop? Why, I declare the ground ain't more'n six inches down below your feet! Shucks; did ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... us! she's crazy as a loon. Run for the doctor, quick!" exclaimed Mrs. Aldergrass, and without boot or shoe, Jerry ran off in his stocking-feet, alarming the physician, who immediately hastened to the inn, pronouncing 'Lena's disease to be brain fever, as he had ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... doog-win Nin dinaindoon—" "Loon's wing I thought it was In the distance shining. But it was my lover's paddle ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... is dead she keeps that room shet up and locked, some say. I was at the funeral, and Grey, who was a boy, took on awful, and hung over the coffin ever so long. He was sick with fever after it, and everybody thought he'd die. He was crazy as a loon. I watched with him one night and he talked every thing you could think of, about a grave hid away somewhere—under his bed, he seemed to think—and made me go down on all fours to look for it. I suppose he was thinking ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... him with his skinny hand, "There was a ship," quoth he. "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard, loon!" Eftsoons his hand ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... tell you," cried the little girl, in a husky whisper, darting to her brother's side. "Oh, why did you make me get him here? Everybody says he's crazy as a loon, and—" ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... ninnyhammer^; chowderhead^, chucklehead^; dolt, booby, Tom Noddy, looby^, hoddy-doddy^, noddy, nonny, noodle, nizy^, owl; goose, goosecap^; imbecile; gaby^; radoteur^, nincompoop, badaud^, zany; trifler, babbler; pretty fellow; natural, niais^. child, baby, infant, innocent, milksop, sop. oaf, lout, loon, lown^, dullard, doodle, calf, colt, buzzard, block, put, stick, stock, numps^, tony. bull head, dunderhead, addlehead^, blockhead, dullhead^, loggerhead, jolthead^, jolterhead^, beetlehead^, beetlebrain, grosshead^, muttonhead, noodlehead, giddyhead^; numbskull, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... carle shall listen While I lash him with abuse, Loon at whom our stomachs sicken. Soon shall hear these words of scorn; Far too nice for such base fellows Is the name my bounty gives, Een my muse her help refuses, ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... the whole mistake they had both of them fallen into. But the Englishman continued indignant: "Thou hast been selling, hast thou? Ay, ay—thou is a cunning lad for kenning the hours of bargaining. Go to the devil with thyself, for I will ne'er see thy fause loon's visage again—thou should be ashamed to look ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... long it seems since that mild April night, When, leaning from the window, you and I Heard, clearly ringing from the shadowy bight, The loon's unearthly cry! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... them to him, In the moorlands and the fen-lands, In the melancholy marshes; Chetowaik, the plover, sang them, Mahng, the loon, the wild-goose, Wawa, The blue heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, And the ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... see him. Ye meet a frind on th' sthreet an' he says: 'Come on over an see Harrigan jump off.' So whin th' la-ad is r-ready f'r to go out ivry body gathers in his room. 'Tis a fash'nable ivint, like th' Horse Show. Among those prisint is his mother. She's a frivolous ol' loon, this Marie Louisa, that was Napolyon's sicond wife, though between you an' me, Father Kelly has niver reconized her as such, th' Impror havin' a wife livin' that was as tough as they make thim. But annyhow she was there. She hadn't done much ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... Mr. Van Loon, from Poughkeepsie, addressed the people on the Sabbath; and also, on the same evening, a large concourse at the Court House. The day following, there were not less than ten thousand people assembled on the beautiful grounds, belonging ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... Margaret, and his arms were wrapped about his coat, and the body of him shivered against the damp, cold shirt, which would come open in front because there was a button gone. The fog came in thicker and colder, and night with her strange noises moved slower and slower. There was an old loon out on the river, who would suddenly throw back his head and laugh for no reason at all. And once a great strange bird went rushing past, squeaking like a mouse; and once two bright eyes came, flashing out of the night and swung this way and that ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... rolling eyes and foolish ways and words. I know what they all think; but I'll none of him! He had better try for Kezzie, who would jump down his throat as soon as look at him. She fair rails on me for not treating him well. Let her take him herself, the loutish loon!" ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... know yo' war dar!" gasped Jethro, dropping like a loon beneath the surface just in time to ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... goodness? A stupid heart gone sour with jealousy, To feel its blood too dull and thick for sinning.— Yes, Huff would figure a wicked thought, but had No notion how, and flung the clay aside.— O they were gaudy colours both! But now Fear has bleacht their swagger and left them blank, Fear of a loon that cried, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... adores that Pilgrim flock, The same that split old Plymouth rock, Their "Bay Psalm" when they tried to sing. Devoid of metre, sense, and tune, Who but a Puritanic loon Could have devised ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... exception to the rule of philosophic sedateness in newly caught birds is the loon, or great northern diver. That bird is so exceedingly nervous and foolish, and so persistent in its evil ways, that never once have we succeeded in inducing a loon to settle down on exhibition and be good. When ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... extinction are the golden plover, American woodcock, pied-billed grebe, red-throated loon, sooty shearwater, gadwall, ruddy duck, black-crowned night heron, Hudsonian godwit, kildeer, northern pileated woodpecker, chimney swift, yellow-bellied flycatcher, red-winged blackbird, pine finch, magnolia ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... the Quarry-holes, and the Gusedub, ye fause loon!" answered Master George, speaking Scotch with a strong and natural emphasis; "it is such land-loupers as you, that, with your falset and fair fashions, bring reproach on our ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... house were rid of his grim pranks, Moaning from banks Of pine trees in the moon, Startling the silence like a demoniac loon At dead of noon, ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... a' thing—the ill-natured loon! Were it ever sae rightly, he 'll no let it be; And I rubbit at my e'en, and I thought I would swoon, How the carle had come roun' about our ain Bessie Lee! The wee laughing lassie was a gudewife ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... friend solemnly protesting, long after they were reduced to mere specks in the air, that he could still distinguish the white hat of Mr. Green. The gardens disgorged their multitudes, boys ran up and down screaming 'bal-loon;' and in all the crowded thoroughfares people rushed out of their shops into the middle of the road, and having stared up in the air at two little black objects till they almost dislocated their necks, walked ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... this aboot Francie?' 'Ow naething, father, worth mentionin! The daft loon wud hae bed me promise ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... discharged a third sarcasm at a person very gaily dressed, who had risen from small beginnings, and made a considerable fortune at play. — Filling his glass, and calling him by name, 'Lang life (said he), to the wylie loon that gangs a-field with a toom poke at his lunzie, and comes hame with a sackful of siller.' — All these toasts being received with loud bursts of applause, Mr Fraser called for pint glasses, and filled his own to the brim: then standing ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... bare back weel eneuch for a fisher loon," said Malcolm; "but I never was upon a saiddle i' ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... sir," returned the keeper; "there's Ian Anderson an' Tonal' from Cove, an' Mister Archie an' Eddie, an' Roderick—that's five. Oo, ay, I forgot, there's that queer English loon, Robin Tips— he's no' o' much use, but he can mak' a noise—besides ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... let us not like snarling tykes, In wrangling be divided; Till slap comes in an uncoo loon And with a rung decide it. Be Britain still to Britain true, Among oursels united; For never but by British hands Maun ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... line. "I can stand the carriages that are to be driv' standin' up, and the lovely imps and the nose pinchin' and the caps for the ears, but when it comes to goin' out every mornin' to milk the cucumbers, I don't feel called on to set and listen to it. The man what wrote that piece was as crazy as a loon, and if five million people read his paper every week, four million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand and nine hundred and ninety-nine of 'em know it. I ain't sayin' who's the one ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... him with his skinny hand, "There was a ship," quoth he. "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!" Eftsoons his ...
— The Rime of the Ancient Mariner • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... little lamb! as if it hadn't enough, with no father nor mother in the world.' 'I don't care,' says Liza, crazy as ever; 'I can't stand it. I've got all I can stand now, with a feeble-minded boy and two so old they can't feed themselves. That Polly is as crazy as a loon, and the rest is so shif'less it loosens all my j'ints to look at 'em. I won't stand no more, for Dr. Brown nor anybody else.' And she set her hands on her hips and stared at me as if she'd like to eat me, sun-bonnet and ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... not his indignation a moment after he could vent it with safety. "Would not any one think," he said to Jasper, an old ploughman, who, in coming to his assistance, had heard Christie's imperious injunctions, "that this loon, this Christie of the Clinthill, was laird or lord at least of him? No such thing, man! I remember him a little dirty turnspit boy in the house of Avenel, that every body in a frosty morning like this warmed his fingers by kicking or cuffing! and now he is a gentleman, and swears, d—n ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... fixedly at him, "thou art a sly loon—thou hast ever been too cunning for me, and too cunning for most folks. Have a care thou provena too cunning for thysell—two faces under one hood is no true heraldry. And since we talk of heraldry, I'll ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... trunks that loomed vaguely out of the surrounding gloom as the red glare leaped up, and wisps of acrid smoke drifted about the camp. There was a lake up the hollow, and now and then the wild and mournful cry of a loon rang out. The men were tired and somewhat dejected as they sat about the blaze with their damp blankets round them. A silence had fallen upon them; but ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... a losel and idle, mither, nor a thief that steals; I do but hunt God's cattle, upon God's ain hills; For no man buys and sells the deer, and the bonnie fells are free To a belted knight with hawk on hand, and a gangrel loon ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... young White Father. The ways of the Great Spirit are many as the fluttering leaves; they are strange and secret as the flight of a loon; White Eyes believes the redman's happy hunting grounds need not be forgotten to love the palefaces' God. As a young brave pants and puzzles over his first trail, so the grown warrior feels in his understanding of his God. He gropes blindly through ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... our fight with Big Bear and his flight from Frenchman's Butte, where he had a strong and well-fortified position, Major Steele, with his mounted detachment, had made a rush to Loon Lake, where, in a rattling encounter during which Sergeant Fury was severely wounded, he completed the defeat of Big Bear. Two days or so afterwards our scouts crossed Gold Lake in birch canoes and secured the release ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... from strange lands. She said: 'Go and slay my enemies.' Tarhe went forth in his war paint and killed the braves who named her Smiling Moon. He came again to her and she said: 'Run swifter than the deer, be more cunning than the beaver, dive deeper than the loon.' ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... blood and wrote rapidly. He had hardly touched the paper with the point of his twig when a low, wild peal of laughter broke out at a measureless distance away, and growing ever louder, seemed approaching ever nearer; a soulless, heartless, and unjoyous laugh, like that of the loon, solitary by the lakeside at midnight; a laugh which culminated in an unearthly shout close at hand, then died away by slow gradations, as if the accursed being that uttered it had withdrawn over the verge of the world whence ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... knave, who could execute very well any commission which jumped with his own humour, and made his folly a plea for avoiding every other. 'He has made an interest with us,' continued the Baron, 'by saving Rose from a great danger with his own proper peril; and the roguish loon must therefore eat of our bread and drink of our cup, and do what he can, or what he will, which, if the suspicions of Saunderson and the Bailie are well founded, may perchance in ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... these strange speeches till she heard Nancy say to Mrs. Hunter, "Crazy as a loon, ain't she? I'm afraid it's ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... the river, joined with fatigue and long exposure to the sun and air, caused her at length to fall asleep. The last rosy light of the setting sun was dyeing the waters with a glowing tint when she awoke; a soft blue haze hung upon the trees; the kingfisher and dragon-fly, and a solitary loon, were the only busy things abroad on the river; the first darting up and down from an upturned root near the water's edge, feeding its youngings; the dragon-fly hawking with rapid whirring sound for insects, ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... "you'd better go right over to Tim Bolton's. He's in an awful stew—says he'll skin you alive if you don't come to the s'loon ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... pointing with his arrows at the blue, Clos'd wigwam curtains of the sleeping moon, Laugh'd with the noise of arching cataracts, And with the dove-like cooing of the woods, And with the shrill cry of the diving loon And with the wash of saltless, rounded seas, And mock'd the white moon of the Falling Leaves. "Esa! esa! shame upon you, Pale Face! "Shame upon you, moon of evil witches! "Have you kill'd the happy, laughing Summer? "Have you slain ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... absolutely silent. The sun climbed higher but the lady slept on, and the gentleman gazed as if fascinated. The only sound that broke the beautiful early morning silence was the occasional weird laugh of the loon. It came twice and then a third time. The ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... I thought was looming, A loon, I thought was looming: Why! it is he, my lover, Why! it is he, my lover; His paddle, in the waters gleaming, His paddle in the ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... inmate, jail bird, ticket of leave man; multiple offender. blackguard, polisson[obs3], loafer, sneak; rapscallion, rascallion[obs3]; cullion[obs3], mean wretch, varlet, kern[obs3], ame-de- boue[Fr], drole[obs3]; cur, dog, hound|!, whelp|!, mongrel|!; lown|!, loon, runnion[obs3], outcast, vagabond; rogue &c. (knave) 941; ronian[obs3]; scum of the earth, riffraff; Arcades ambo[obs3]. Int. sirrah[obs3]! Phr. Acherontis ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... ever true to thee, nor run from thee whiles thou standest up.' Asdis bade them farewell, warning Grettir against sorcery; yet well she knew that she would never see either of her sons again. They left Biarg, going north towards Drangey; and on the way met with a big ill-clad loon called Thorbiorn Noise, a man too lazy to work, and a great swaggerer; but they allowed him to ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... Edinburgh worthy who on 23rd July 1637 immortalised herself by throwing her stool at the head of Laud's bishop as he proceeded from the desk of St. Giles's in the city to read the Collect for the day, exclaiming as she did so, "Deil colic the wame o' thee, fause loon, would you say Mass at my lug," which was followed by great uproar, and a shout, "A Pape, a Pape; stane him"; "a daring feat, and a great," thinks Carlyle, "the first act of an audacity which ended with the beheading ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the scout; "the lake is as smooth as if the winds had never blown, and I can see along its sheet for miles; there is not so much as the black head of a loon dotting the water." ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... bicolor) skim over it, and the peetweets (Totanus macularius) "teter" along its stony shores all summer. I have sometimes disturbed a fishhawk sitting on a white-pine over the water; but I doubt if it is ever profaned by the wing of a gull, like Fair-Haven. At most, it tolerates one annual loon. These are all the animals of ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... her eyes as she heard the patter of footsteps upon the shore, but did not exhibit any alarm when she saw the two young men. The ordinary young woman of the Shell People did not worry when away from land. She could swim like an otter and dive like a loon, and of wild beasts she had no fear when she was thus safely bestowed away from the death-harboring forest. The maiden on the rock ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... that Sam isn't such a loon as to get off the road on to Appleby's land just by mistake, or because ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... you know what that is yet?" Said Uncle Andy with a superior air. "That's old Dagger Bill, the big black-and-white loon. Sounds as if he was terribly amused, doesn't he? But he's only calling to his big black-and-white mate, or the two little Dagger Bills they ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of watery gray were driven before the wind; and broad curves of silver bullets danced before them as they swept over the surface. All around the homeless shores the evergreen trees seemed to hunch their backs and crowd closer together in patient misery. Not a bird had the heart to sing; only the loon—storm-lover—laughed his crazy challenge to the elements, and mocked us with his ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... a heave in the crowd. "Pitch oot the drunken loon!" cried a voice. The next moment I heard my cousin bawling for a clear passage. With the tail of my eye I caught a glimpse of his plethoric perspiring face as he came charging past the barrels of the hydrogen-apparatus; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... best. It is made o' rum, And I stirs in sugar, too. And a hogshead vast will hardly last A merry evenin' through. And I fills the cups till mornin' comes, And the Duke, he talks like a loon. Me Darlin', me life, will yer be me wife, And elope by the light o' ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... strike the highway at different points. Seymour, as the fast racer, was given the northmost route; Rolf took the middle. Their signals were arranged—in the woods the barred-owl cry, by the water the loon; ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... blending of two circles of the sun. A kildee timidly chirped good-night; the full, rich throat of a robin proclaimed good-morrow. From an island on the breast of the Yukon a colony of wild fowl voiced its interminable wrongs, while a loon laughed mockingly back across a still stretch ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... coming sweet and cool and fresh from the distant lake, laden with the odors of the woods and the fields. The stillness was intense, broken only by the plaintive cry of the whippoorwill, America's one-phrased nightingale, or the still more weird and eerie note of a distant loon. ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... Patinus in his Commentary "In Antiquum Monumentum Marcellinae"; Polletus in his "Historia Fori Romani"; Aegyptius in his "De Bacchanalibus Explicatio"; Gisbert Cuper in his "Monumenta Antiqua Inedita"; Octavius Ferrarius in his "Dissertatio de Gladiatoribus"; William a Loon in his "Eleutheria"; Schaeffer in his "De Re Vehiculari"; Johannes Jacobus Claudius in his "Diatribe de Nutricibus et Paedagogis"; Antonius Bombardinus in his "De Carcere Tractatus"; Gutherlethus in his work on the "Salii," ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... wish that dwells therein, * And cut that short which threatens thee with sore risk oversoon: An to such talk thou dare return, I bid thee to expect * Fro' me such awful penalty as suiteth froward loon: I swear by Him who moulded man from gout of clotted blood,[FN34] * Who lit the Sun to shine by day and lit for night the moon, An thou return to mention that thou spakest in thy pride, * Upon a cross of tree for boon I'll ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... here last night; and I only had a bed and a breakfast at the twa Blue Pillars' house, for which they extortioned me three shillings and sax-pence, as I sit here. And then there was the chambermaid hussy and waiter loon axed me to remember them, and wanted more siller; but I told them as I told the guard and coachman, that I ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... write; we may observe how longingly he looks at the telephone, as if tempted to go to it, and tell it what is in his breast. There it sits, all shiny and metallic; and by conjuring it with a number and a word, he could have her with him. Yet he does not take it up; because—the crazy loon thinks in the soul of him, that what he writes, some way, in the great unknown system of receivers and recorders and transmitters of thought that range through this universe, is pouring into her heart, and so he writes and smiles, and smiles and writes—no ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... like magic. "Jock, ye villain," exclaimed the voice from the interior, "are ye lying routing there, and a. young gentleman seeking the way to the Place? Get up, ye fause loon, [*Young fellow] and show him the way down the muckle loaning. —He'll show you the way, sir, and I'se warrant ye'll be weel put up; for they never turn awa naebody frae the door; and ye'll be come in the canny ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... concern, and give his dying messages with the composure of an every day occurrence; while others, if the tip of the finger is touched, or his shin-bone grazed, will "yell like a hyena or holler like a loon," and raise such a rumpus as to alarm the whole army. I saw a man running out of battle once (an officer) at such a gait as only fright could give, and when I asked him if he was wounded, he replied, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... Loon never stopped to figure out that the only way to keep a Girl sitting up and interested is to stay away once in a while and give ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... an' geese, an' all sorts o' pirds. Moreover, Tougall, she got into a bog after wan o' the peasts, an' I thought I wass goin' to lose him altogither. 'Shames Tougall,' says I, 'don't you go anither step till I come to you, or you're a lost man,' but Shames went on—he was always an obstinate loon—" ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... this won't get us anywhere, and the Fortuna is rolling like a loon. Let's see if Arnold can find bottom in the bilges yet and then we'll connect up the spare tank ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Taheia, death! For to-morrow the priest shall awake, And the names be named of the victims to bleed for the nation's sake; And first of the numbered many that shall be slain ere noon, Rua the child of the dirt, Rua the kinless loon. For him shall the drum be beat, for him be raised the song, For him to the sacred High-place the chanting people throng, For him the oven smoke as for a speechless beast, And the sire of my Taheia come greedy to the feast." "Rua, be silent, spare me. Taheia closes her ears. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... S.—The loon is found in all the Northern States. It is a very awkward bird on land, but a graceful and rapid swimmer. It is a remarkable diver, and it is thought that no other feathered creature can dive so far beneath the surface or remain so ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the wild Find food and shelter in your tenantless rocks, The eagle on whose wings the dawn hath smiled, The loon, the wild-cat, and the bright-eyed fox; For far away indeed Are all the ominous noises of mankind, The slaughterer's malice and the trader's greed: Your rugged haunts endure no slavery: No treacherous hand is there to crush or bind, But ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... thrilling stillness of the night; in fierce storms in the woods, when his half-breed guides bent their heads to meet the wind and rain, and did not speak for hours; in the long, adventurous journey on the river by the day, in the cry of the plaintive loon at night; in the scant food for every meal. Yet what the pleasure would be he felt in the joyous air, the exquisite sunshine, the flocks of wild-fowl flying north, honking on their course; in the song of the half-breeds as ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... the consumption of the place. No portion of the supplies for the market is produced on the Island: the whole is brought from the innumerable creek and river-banks in the neighbourhood. It is to be hoped that this state of things will, before long, be altered, since, as matters now stand, the Cow Loon Authorities could, at any time, deprive the inhabitants of Hong Kong of ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... piped his morning song for him; The wild crab there exhaled its rathe perfume; The loon laughed loud and by the river's brim The water ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... blankets had not been disturbed. Then for a few moments he sat very still, listening, and wondering if the cry had been real. As he sat tense and still in the half daze of the sleep it came again. It was the shrill laughing carnival of a loon out on the lake. More than once he had laughed at comrades who had shivered at that sound and cowered until its echoes had died away in moaning wails. He understood now. He knew why the Indians called it moakwa—"the mad thing." He thought of MacTavish, and threw the ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood |
