"Mice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was the heat of summer. The birds had drawn new valentines. A cock chaffinch, gayest of suitors, danced round his demure hen in the roadway, careless of any pedestrian in that deep country; wrens crept like mice among the stubs of the hedge; the grass by the roadside and the ditch was lighted with primroses. A narrow copse of cut hazel, bordering the road on the Sussex boundary, was a carpet of primroses, anemones, milkmaids, and dog violets; spires of purple orchids ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... different colour from those I have seen in Tunis; being white all over the lower part of the body and neck, straw-coloured on the top of the head and along the back; whilst those in Tunis are nearly of the same colour as ordinary mice. This species is also small, three inches and a-half long, and the tail is double the length of the body. The hind legs are nearly as long as the body, and the fore legs not half an inch. Near the tip of the tail there is an inch of black. Many young jerboahs were caught, ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... up and down, and cross the lane, and rising suddenly almost to the tops of the oaks swoop down again in bold sweeping curves. The broad, deep ditch between the lane and the mound of the wood is dry, but there are no short rustling sounds of mice. ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... the storm had now increased, I looked so miserably, as Col afterwards informed me, that what Shakspeare has made the Frenchman say of the English soldiers, when scantily dieted, 'Piteous they will look, like drowned mice!' might, I believe, have been well applied to me. There was in the harbour, before us, a Campbelltown vessel, the Betty, Kenneth Morison master, taking in kelp, and bound for Ireland. We sent our boat to beg beds for two gentlemen, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... great timid eyes strained through the glass upon the garden without, and her skirts gathered up, in fear of the field-mice which sometimes came there. Every moment she dreaded to hear footsteps which she ought by law to have longed for, and a voice that should have been as music to her soul. But Edmond Willowes came not that way. The nights were getting short at this season, and soon the dawn ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... sleep The merry lambs and the complacent kine, The flies below the leaves and the young mice In the tree roots, and all the sacred flocks Of red flamingo; and my love Vijaya, And may no restless fay, with fidget finger Trouble his sleeping; give him ...
— Sleep-Book - Some of the Poetry of Slumber • Various
... a center piece is a large pumpkin Jack-o'-lantern, the top cut in large points with small chocolate mice in the notches and scampering down the sides of the pumpkin (held in place by long pins or a little glue) and ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... vanished; no sound but the drone of dull, falling tones, that multiply like the spirits of the sorcerer apprentice, in large form and small, with the big rumbling in a quick patter as of scurrying mice. ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... "is it not delightful? The two tyrants, the king and the monk, will soon be gone. I wish the Evil One would fly off with them both, and when the cat is away will not the mice play? I have made all the arrangements; we shall have such a night at the ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... capital dinner yesterday," said an aged female mouse to one who had not been at the feast. "I sat only twenty-one from the old King of the Mice: that was not being badly placed. Shall I tell you what we had for dinner? It was all very well arranged. We had mouldy bread, the skin of bacon, tallow candles, and sausages. Twice we returned to the charge: it was as good as if we had had two ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... poets have celebrated in the "Pied Piper of Hamelin," whose music drew like the power of gravitation,—drew soldiers and priests, traders and feasters, women and boys, rats and mice; or that of the minstrel of Meudon, who made the pallbearers dance around the bier. This is a power of many degrees, and requiring in the orator a great range of faculty and experience, requiring a large composite man, such as Nature rarely organizes, so that, in our experience, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... good-fortune: certain others of threatened ill-luck. Among the former may be mentioned triangles, stars, trefoil or clover-leaves, anchors, trees, garlands and flowers, bridges or arches, and crowns. Among the latter, coffins, clouds, crosses, serpents, rats and mice and some wild beasts, hour-glasses, umbrellas, church-steeples, swords and guns, ravens, owls, and monkeys are all ...
— Tea-Cup Reading, and the Art of Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves • 'A Highland Seer'
... broad stream the moonlight came through the windows and drove the shadows of the table and chairs slowly and noiselessly through the room. Little mice darted out of the crevices and around in the light and the shadow under the table, looking for crumbs; their coats glistened often like soft silk, and their little eyes gleamed like black diamonds. They scampered helter-skelter, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... the nineteenth century looks to us. Most of the mountains are in labour with ridiculous mice, but the spheres are shaken by storms in intellectual teacups. The Pre-Raffaelites call in question the whole tradition of the Classical Renaissance, and add a few more names to the heavy roll of notoriously bad painters. The French Impressionists ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... martyred sage who suffered and died at the hands of Christians,—'he who makes out of Christians human beings'. Toward the end he is apostrophized as the 'Great Endurer, and bidden to leap joyously into Charon's boat and go tell the spirits about this 'dream of the war of frogs and mice, the hand-organ doodle-doodle ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... consideration. If these same pupae had been as conspicuously placed as on the fence, on any EDIBLE GROWTH, in the same location as the fence, and then left to the mercy of playing children, grazing stock, field mice, snakes, bats, birds, insects and parasites, the story of what happened to them would have been different. I doubt very seriously if it would have proved the point those lepidopterists started out to make in these conditions, which are the ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... obliquely down the slope. Over fallen steeds and heaps of the dead she leaped with a motion as airy as that of the flying fox when, fresh and unjaded, he leads away from the hounds, whose sudden cry has broken him off from hunting mice amid the bogs of the meadow. So this riderless horse came vaulting along. Now from my earliest boyhood I have had what horsemen call a 'weakness' for horses. Only give me a colt of wild, irregular temper and fierce blood to tame, ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... opportunity of creating a new and delightful atmosphere, in which his wit, his fancy, his humour, and his observation could play at their ease. His animals—whatever injudicious enthusiasts may have said—are not real animals; we are no wiser as to the true nature of cats and mice, foxes and lions, after we have read the Fables than before. Nor, on the other hand, are they the mere pegs for human attributes which they were in the hands of AEsop. La Fontaine's creatures partake both of the nature of real animals and of ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... sisters did not come? Corette felt badly, for she had never told that the sisters had been condensed, and the Condensed Pirate, who had insisted on her secrecy, felt worse. That night he lay in his great bed, really afraid to go to sleep on account of rats and mice. ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... consist of the two epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, of twenty-four books each, the Batrachomyomachia, or "Battle of the Frogs and Mice," a humorous, mock-heroic poem, and somewhat of a parody on the Iliad; the Margites, a satirical, personal satire, and about thirty Hymns. All of these but the two great epics are ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... woman mouse-trap-maker in London, has retired from the business. It is said that a number of mice hope ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... the tortuous passages from his few days' experience in measuring them with Somerset, he came to the butler's pantry. Dare knocked, and nobody answering he entered, took down a key which hung behind the door, and rejoined Havill. 'It is all right,' he said. 'The cat's away; and the mice are at play ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... range of upstanding sheaves. The women, bright in those frail blues, clear pinks, and lilacs, knelt serving their meal. She of the black bodice stood apart, her hands upon her hips, looking towards the bridge and its solitary occupant. The tan-and-white, spotted dog ran to and fro chasing field-mice and yapped. The baby children staggered after it, uttering excited squeakings and cries. The lower cloud had parted in the west, disclosing an upper stratum of pale gold, which widened upward and outward as the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... that supplied by the London companies being analysed every month by a government official; but the adulteration chiefly rests with the consumer or householder, in not keeping the cisterns clean, dust, soot, and even dead mice, cockroaches, &c., being allowed to contaminate the water; also by permitting the overflow pipe to be connected with the soil pipe, or drain, whence the water absorbs poisonous gases. The overflow pipes should in all ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... man of to-day. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its own soul; it is to live in a nutshell and to count yourself the king of infinite space." "To the last he [Shelley] was the enchanted child.... He is still at play, ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... enough to take Brown's boat past Waris's camp. "You will have to be quiet," he said as an afterthought, "for in one place we pass close behind his camp. Very close. They are camped ashore with their boats hauled up." "Oh, we know how to be as quiet as mice; never fear," said Brown. Cornelius stipulated that in case he were to pilot Brown out, his canoe should be towed. "I'll have to get ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... of the old dragon, all were still as mice, so that you might have heard the flies buzz about the inkstand. I then stood up, wretched as I was, and stretched out my arms over my amazed and faint-hearted people and spake, "Can ye thus crucify me together ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... against Catholic petitions, Protestant petitions, all redress, all that reason, humanity, policy, justice, and common sense, can urge against the delusions of their absurd delirium. These are the persons who reverse the fable of the mountain that brought forth a mouse; they are the mice who conceive themselves in labour ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... low; a boat, for instance, may be hired for half a dollar (2s.) a-day, and on this income, a whole family of from six to eight persons will often exist. It is true, the Chinese are not too particular in their food; they eat dogs, cats, mice, and rats, the intestines of birds, and the blood of every animal, and I was even assured that caterpillars and worms formed part of their diet. Their principal dish, however, is rice, which is not only employed ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... her finger to her lips to impress silence, and the man nodded; they sat as still as mice whilst the ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... PROPERTY COST L550 IN 1913. Never been repaired since. Damp guaranteed to come through every wall. Mice can run under the doors but there is not sufficient space for cats to follow them. The Kitchen Range is unusable. All hope of baths abandon ye who enter here. One half of the windows won't open—the others won't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... abandoned channels of the glaciers; flowers bloomed around the feet of the great burnished domes,—while with quick fertility mellow beds of soil, settling and warming, offered food to multitudes of Nature's waiting children, great and small, animals as well as plants; mice, squirrels, marmots, deer, bears, elephants, etc. The ground burst into bloom with magical rapidity, and the young forests into bird-song: life in every form warming and sweetening and growing richer as the years passed away over the ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... over Mount Bobar not far beyond, lifting up its somnolent and massive head into the Eastern sky. "League-long rollers" came in as steady as columns of infantry, with white streamers flying along the line, and hovering a moment, split, and ran on the shore in a crumbling foam, like myriads of white mice hurrying ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... down—then came the great elephants, lions, tigers, and bears, marching up the plank two and two into the ark—and after them all the rest of the animals in the world, getting smaller and smaller, until little wee monkeys, and kittens, and mice, and robins, and grasshoppers, and blind beetles, and big spiders, and tumble-bugs, ran and hopped, and skipped, and crawled up the plank in such quantities, that it was quite a wonder they were not all suffocated in such a crowd. But didn't ...
— The Little Nightcap Letters. • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... slowly, more than once wheeling about to make sure that his eyes had missed nothing. But at these times he saw no human beings, nothing but the wild animals of the forest, huge pigs being diminished to the size of rabbits, and dingoes to the size of mice. These scurried away when they heard the noise of the engine, and Smith hovered around for a time to see if the flight of the animals attracted the attention of ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... said is true she heard the noise but knew not the cause till Mr. Goodyeare came; and being asked why she went downe staires after she was gon up to bed, she said to light a candell to looke for two grapes she had lost in the flore and feared the mice would play wth them in the night and disturbe ye family, wch reason in the Courts apprehension renders her ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... all of which, however, he had shipped for Havre before I met him, with the exception of two or three of the least disreputable kinds, which he meant to keep about him as pets. The most valued of these treasures were a small animal called a Mangouste, and a cage containing a family of white mice. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... think of some of the birds in the first group. Birds of Prey are those which hunt for their food, and eat the flesh of other birds, or of small animals, such as rats, and mice, or of snakes. All these birds—vultures, hawks, owls—have sharp hooked beaks, and long claws, also very sharp; they fly quickly, and soon overtake their prey, whether they hunt by day or ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... hours at a time, the perversity of tradesmen and servants, or make an estimate of what was being stolen from him each month, each week, every day, every minute; Madame Fromont might enumerate her grievances against the mice, the maggots, dust and dampness, all desperately bent upon destroying her property, and engaged in a conspiracy against her wardrobes; not a word of their foolish talk remained in Claire's mind. A run around the lawn, an hour's reading on the river-bank, restored the ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... always begging. He is most affectionate and intelligent, but when there is a bear or lynx at bay he joins in the fight with all the fury of a bull dog, though I do not think he is much more effective than one of your Japanese mice would be. I should like to bring him home for Archie or Quentin. He would go everywhere with them and would ride Betsy ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... did with the collaboration of Fenton and Broome, the former writing four and the latter six books. The volumes appeared successively in 1725-6, and there was an appendix containing the Batrachomiomachia, or Battle of the Frogs and Mice, translated by Parnell. For this work Pope received the lion's share of profits, his co-laborers being paid ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... that witnessed the deed did not permit its vengeance to sleep. A strange and unheard of death was preparing to loose its terrors upon the sacrilegious prelate. For behold, there arose out of the yet warm ashes of the dead an innumerable throng of mice which were seen to approach the Bishop, and to follow him whithersoever he went. At length he flew into one of his steepest and highest towers, but the mice climbed over the walls. He closed every door and window, yet after him they came, piercing their way through ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... muskrat, coon, are examples. Those that do not actually live by the water seek these places because of their sheltered character and because their prey lives there; of this class are the lynx, fox, fisher, and marten that feed on rabbits and mice. Therefore a line of traps is usually along some valley and over the divide and down some other valley back to the ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... meaning survives in Shakespeare's "Rats and mice and such small deer," King Lear, III, ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... ripe they tell me it is beautiful to see the golden grain bursting from its silvery sheath; but that it is a crop liable to injury from frost, and has many enemies, such as bears, racoons, squirrels, mice, ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... was our loss. Probably we should have remembered if things had gone well with us: but perhaps you know that my father (whose money used to seem unlimited to me) lost it all, and we were mixed up in the smash. We've been poorer than any church mice since, and trying to make ends meet has occupied our attention from that day ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... money, and to spare, and with it a hard-headed, Northern horse-sense. The Brownleys were poor as church mice, but they had the brilliant, virile blood of the old Southern oligarchy and the romantic, "salaam-to-no-one" Dixie-land pride of before-the-war days, when Southern prodigality and hospitality were found wherever women were fair and men's mirrors in the ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... "I declare, I wish Cousin Solomon hadn't eaten those two mice and those three frogs and those four spiders and those five grasshoppers to-night. When he's well fed he's always good-natured. If he had been hungry he'd have been in a terrible temper. And he'd have fought this Turkey bird ...
— The Tale of Turkey Proudfoot - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... kindly relieved me of my knapsack and overcoat, and advised me to come back at eight or nine at night—there might be a room then. Meanwhile I should continue seeking. So the Cracowsky was tried, and the Lipsky, once Leipzig, and the Adlon and the Pretoria, and many another haunt of mice and men. Then I returned to the Imperial for the second time. No, there was no room. It had been a lovely day, only too hot, and the evening was warm. I thought pleasantly of the Saxon ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... the patient solving of tremendous problems he had toiled up the mountain-side of success—scaling its topmost peak and obtaining a view of the boundless prospect. But, alas! "The best laid plans o' mice and men gang aft agley." The discovery of great deposits of rich Bessemer ore in the Mesaba range of mountains in Minnesota a year or two previous to the completion of his work had been followed by the opening up of those deposits and the marketing of the ore. It was of such ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... Johnnie. "How the mice do love Mrs. Kukor's bread!" And he could not blame them. It ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... complete collapse, even crying at one time at home in his bathtub. Mr. Abner Sengstack wrote that also, and had Mr. Stener sign it. And Mr. Mollenhauer's comment on that, before it was sent, was that he thought it was "all right." It was a time when all the little rats and mice were scurrying to cover because of the presence of a great, fiery-eyed public cat somewhere in the dark, and only the older and wiser rats were able ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... the Wise and Good Are seen, far off, and rarely understood. The world's a father to a Dunce unknown, And much he thrives, for Dulness! he's thy own. No hackney brethren e'er condemn him twice; He fears no enemies, but dust and mice. ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... yes! All those dandies are very pleasant, and can talk agreeably enough, but most of them are as poor as church mice; and it is much better for you to marry an old husband, who gives you plenty of money. I fully acknowledge that the senses somewhat clash with the end I propose, and that there are certain little inconveniences to be endured with such a husband; ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... their divinity under the form of a particular species of snake called daboa, which is not sufficiently large to be terrible to man, and is otherwise tameable and inoffensive. These daboas arc taken care of in the most pious manner, and well fed on rats, mice, or birds, in their fetish houses or temples, where the people attend to pay their adoration, and where those also who are sick or lame apply ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... bony cage under the uniform of a British aviator. Mice gnaw the shed antlers of deer. And ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... strutting fowl that had appeared around the corner, cocking a surprised eye at them. William regarded her thoughtfully. "When a man's alone, there ain't much he can do for folks," he said slowly, "except feed Juno night and mornin',—and she catches so many mice it ain't really wuth while. Now a hen needs to ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... them. The interest on your money belongs to you. That five hundred and sixty dollars a month belongs in your pockets. But it will go into the bosses' pockets as long as you are willing to be robbed. You have rights, but they trample on them when you will not fight for your rights. Are you mice or men?" ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... the Rev'd Henry Anstruther, who now has a church in Seattle, have announced their engagement. Stanley Haggage has gone to Alabama to marry Leonora Bright, who moved from here a year ago. They are both as poor as church mice, & I think marriage in such a case an unwise step for anyone. It brings cares & anxieties enough any way, without starting out with poverty to increase and ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... us from their lair among the rocks or brushwood? I knew little of prehistoric life, but I had a clear remembrance of one book which I had read in which it spoke of creatures who would live upon our lions and tigers as a cat lives upon mice. What if these also were to be found in the woods of ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... whether it was necessary that thought and scholarship should thus maltreat their bodies, and should thus elevate their minds to a very high tower from which the human race appeared to them like rats and mice squirming ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... a dwelling that served to cover his head, but was without pleasant or painful associations—a place in which rats raced and mice squeaked; a place in which money might be made and hoarded, but on which little had been spent. It was a place he had known from childhood as the habitation of his parents, and which now was his own. His childhood had been one of drudgery without cheerfulness, and was not looked back on with regret. ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... cruel things that live in the holes and corners of the kingdom, should take advantage of his condition, and run quite wild, playing him, king as he was, all sorts of tricks; crowding about his throne, climbing up the steps, and actually scrambling and quarrelling like mice about his ears and eyes, so that he could see and think of nothing else. But I am not going to tell anything more about this part of his adventures just at present. By strong and sustained efforts, he succeeded, after much trouble and suffering, in reducing his rebellious subjects to order. ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... mice on the pantry floor, Seeking for bread crumbs or something more; Five little mice on the shelf up high, Feasting so daintily on a pie— But the big round eyes of the wise old cat See what the five little mice are at. Quickly she jumps! but the mice run away. And hide in their snug little ...
— Finger plays for nursery and kindergarten • Emilie Poulsson
... back; "we will be still as little mice, won't we, Monty? Good night, Sylvanus!" The boy added, "Good night, Sylvy!" and the sentinel returned the salutation, and muttered to himself: "Pore souls, the sight on ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... certain ease and neglect in a vessel that has an indifferent first-lieutenant. Every one feels at liberty to do more as he pleases, than has been his wont; and where there is a divided responsibility of this nature, few perform more duty than they can help. When "the cat is away, the mice ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... water,' apparently a dingy hue of the kitchen, and is strictly aristocratic in appearance and conduct. Tom, surnamed 'The Nipper,' from the manner in which he slaughters our enemies, the rats and the mice, is admired for his gravity and sobriety, as well as for his strict attention to the pursuits of his race. They both feel your absence sorely. Traveller and Custis are both well, and pursue their usual dignified gait and habits, and are not led away by the frivolous entertainments ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... a bonny lass putting herself about for ye, or ye might have been listening to mice cheeping instead o' the waves ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... useful distance for the seed, although more space may be given for the robust-growing maincrop and late varieties. It is wise policy, however, to sow liberally in case of losses through climatic conditions, birds or mice; and if necessary superfluous plants can always be withdrawn. The depth for the seed may vary from two to three inches: the minimum for heavy ground and ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... great trouble, and were in many parts almost unintelligible, in others almost effaced by damp, in others again gnawed by rats and mice. But he was interested in his labours and in his subject, and after several years of work on them, he was able to make out a consecutive history of the Valdedera, and he was satisfied that the peasant of the Terra Vergine had been directly descended from the feudal-lords of Ruscino. That pittance ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... loved him, or, for that matter, any other man. It was his humanity that won their hearts, and this he had partly from his mother, partly from his training. Through a kind providence and his mother's countryness, he had been brought up among animals—birds, mice, dormice, guinea-pigs, rabbits, dogs, cattle, horses, till he knew all their ways, and loved God's creatures as did St. Francis d'Assisi, to whom every creature of God was dear, from Sister Swallow to Brother Wolf. So he learned, as he grew older, to love ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... with my companion in knighthood, apropos of a plume detached from my hat. We quitted the knees of the King, and all was finished. The King, having had some trouble in removing his gloves to take my hands in his, had said to me, laughing, 'A gloved cat catches no mice.' It was thought that he had spoken to me for a long time, and the rumor spread of my nascent favor. It is likely that Charles X., thinking that the Archbishop had told me of his favorable sentiments, expected a word of thanks and that he was ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... called Hare's-ear, I come from Curiosity Valley, and if I lay my ear on the ground, without moving from the spot, I can hear everything that goes on in the world, the plots and intrigues of court and cottage, and all the plans of mice and men.' ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... for the children to play in?—with piles of hay, and ladders reaching up to the roof; and old Dobbin nibbling and munching oats in his stall; and Brindle, and her little two-day old, red and white calf cuddled down in a straw bed in the corner; and the little field mice darting over the barn floor; and the swallows twittering overhead among the beams and rafters; and the old grindstone that the children liked to turn; and the scythe and pitchfork that Grandpa charged ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... I dare say I'll be rich before very long, then Eddie and Agnes shall have Riversdale; but I think I'll be a merchant always, and perhaps be Lord Mayor of London some day, like Whittington, though instead of having a favourite cat I've only white mice!" ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... mouse, and thus was set free. Shortly afterwards the Bat again fell to the ground and was caught by another Weasel, whom he likewise entreated not to eat him. The Weasel said that he had a special hostility to mice. The Bat assured him that he was not a mouse, but a bat, and thus a ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... syl.), one of the frog champions. The word means "mud-wader." In the battle he flings a heap of mud against Psycarpax, the Hector of the mice, and half blinds him; but the warrior mouse heaves a stone "whose bulk would need ten degenerate mice of modern days to lift," and the mass, falling on the "mud-wader," breaks his leg.—Parnell, Battle of the Frogs and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... like some busy brown field-mice, Unwearying chase the furtive fat wood-lice, Then round the oak-tree's bole they slyly peep And tell you what you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... to be timid like a mice," Seaton returned as the Skylark dropped rapidly toward a lagoon near the edge ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... them? fish that swim Scale rubbing scale where light is dim By a broad water-lily leaf; Or mice in the one wheaten sheaf Forgotten at the threshing place; Or birds lost in the one clear space Of morning light in a dim sky; Or it may be, the eyelids of one eye Or the door pillars of one house, Or two sweet blossoming apple boughs That have one shadow on the ground; Or ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats
... and to her audience there was nothing amusing about this prescription. Stranger remedies than that had been ordered by the wise doctors of the day: a broth of beetle's legs, crab's eyes, the heads of mice, bruised flies to cure the sting ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips
... quote a prescription from the diary:—"To cure the hoopingcough:—get 3 field mice, flaw them, draw them, and roast one of them, and let the party afflicted eat it; dry the other two in the oven until they crumble to a powder, and put a little of this powder in what the patient drinks at night and in the morning." Mice played, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... spirit of picturesqueness, of adventure, that they are trying to keep up. The "Mouse Trap," except for the trap hanging outside and a mouse scrawled in chalk on the wall of the entry, carries out no particular suggestion either of traps or mice. But take a look at the proprietress (Rita they call her), with her gorgeous Titian hair and delft-blue apron; at her son Sidney, fair, limp, slim, English-voiced, with a deft way of pouring after-dinner coffee, and hair the colour of ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... be taken from him. He is permitted to set at one corner of the table, and has lately acquired a fondness for meat. The old cat goes staggering about from debility, although Fannie often gives him her share. We see neither rats nor mice about the premises now. This is famine. Even the pigeons watch the crusts in the hands of the children, and follow them in the yard. And, still, there are ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... think the mice'll git at them pies up in the blue chist, do ye?" inquired old Mis' Meade, fatuous in a desperate seeking to ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... boldness. You see his path down the heavens, straight as a line; if near, you hear the rush of his wings; his shadow hurtles across the fields, and in an instant you see him quietly perched upon some low tree or decayed stub in a swamp or meadow, with reminiscences of frogs and mice ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... accuracy of the definition. "Man is an animal that walks," or "that has hands," or "that talks," are all faulty; because bears walk, monkeys have hands, and parrots talk. Supposing the following definitions were given: "A cat is an animal that catches rats and mice;" "A rose is a flower that bears thorns;" "Gold is a metal that is heavy;" all would be faulty because the differentia in each is faulty. Notice, too, the definitions of "dog" and "canine" already given. ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... slopes were covered with a variety of that knee-high bamboo with a creeping root, which is so troublesome to farmers when they break up new ground. One variety is said to blossom and fruit once in sixty years and then die. An ingenious professor has traced mice plagues to this habit. In the year in which the bamboo fruits the mice increase and multiply exceedingly. Suddenly their food supply gives out and they descend to the plains ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... the first example of this kind, but that the same has been oft done by many considerable authors. For thus several ages since, Homer wrote of no more weighty a subject than of a war between the frogs and mice, Virgil of a gnat and a pudding-cake, and Ovid of a nut Poly-crates commended the cruelty of Busiris; and Isocrates, that corrects him for this, did as much for the injustice of Glaucus. Favorinus extolled Thersites, and wrote in praise ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... to be cheered and scolded myself the moment I've got things a little to rights here. I think imps get into the shelves and drawers, if they're kept long locked, and must be caught like mice. The boys have been very good, and left everything untouched; but the imps; and to hear people say there aren't any! How happy you and I should always be if it weren't ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... to it, resenting the priests' opposition, and almost converting the thing into an omen. And, truly, many other prodigies also affrighted him; some temples had been struck with lightning, and in Jupiter's temple mice had gnawed the gold; it was reported also, that an ox had spoke, and that a boy had been born with a head like an elephant's. All which prodigies had indeed been attended to, but due reconciliation had not been obtained from the gods. The aruspices ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the inquiring stranger the tale, had the rights of it. There were town characters aplenty he might have described. A long-settled community with traditions behind it and a reasonable antiquity seems to breed curious types of men and women as a musty closet breeds mice and moths. This town of ours had its town mysteries and its town eccentrics—its freaks, if one wished to put the matter bluntly; and it had its champion story-teller and its champion liar and its champion guesser of the weight ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... house-newt, one is tolerably free from crawling insects. Newts are quite harmless to persons, and are rather encouraged than otherwise. If one attempts to catch a newt by its tail it shakes it off and runs away, leaving it behind. Rats and mice are numerous. There are myriads of cockroaches; but happily fleas, house-flies, and bugs are scarce. In the wet-season evenings the croaking of frogs in the pools and ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... neither rats nor mice, but the weasel is so frequent, that he is heard in houses rattling behind chests or beds, as rats in England. They probably owe to his predominance that they have no other vermin; for since the great rat took possession of this part of the ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... mice, three blind mice, See how they run! They all run after the farmer's wife, And she cut off their tails with a carving knife, Did you ever see such a thing in your life ...
— Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes • Beatrix Potter
... Mammals, the Miocene rocks have yielded remains of Rabbits, Porcupines (such as the Hystrix primigenius of Greece), Beavers, Mice, Jerboas, Squirrels, and Marmots. All the principal living groups of this order were therefore differentiated in Middle ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... bare boards of the lower bunk. While he slept small furry noses appeared in the openings in the broken floor, to be followed by little bodies that moved cautiously out into the open. He roused once and peered over the edge of the bunk. Several field mice were basking in front of the dying embers of the fire, and two were sitting on his boots. He grinned at them and lay back again, but he found himself fully awake and very uncomfortable. He lay there, contemplating his own folly, and demanding of himself ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... pillow; fortunately the climate is too hot to require any covering; we therefore lay down without removing our nether garments; sleep was, however, quite out of the question, for so soon as the lights were out, the rats and mice came in, and assisted by myriads of cockroaches and ants, contrived to keep us constantly employed driving them away from our bodies, until we were in so feverish and exhausted a state that we anxiously longed for ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... suggesting two mice being introduced to a party of friendly kittens, standing, clinging to one another, ...
— Fanny and the Servant Problem • Jerome K. Jerome
... should fall through space In a hissing, headlong flight, Shriveling from off its face, As it falls into the sun, In an instant every trace Of the little crawling things— Ants, philosophers, and lice, Cattle, cockroaches, and kings, Beggars, millionaires, and mice, Men and maggots—all as one As it falls into the sun— Who can say but at the same Instant, from some planet far, A child may watch us and exclaim, "See the ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... of Doko, both men and women, are said to be no taller than boys nine or ten years old. They never exceed that height even in the most advanced age. They go quite naked; their principal foods are ants, snakes, mice, and other things which commonly are not used as food.... They also climb trees with great skill to fetch down the fruits, and in doing this they stretch their hands downwards and their legs upwards.... They live ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... matches layin' all about the house," he commanded; "mice'll get at 'em, and set us afire. You can make up some lamplighters out of old letters and things; there's a lot o' stuff that might be used up. Seems to me lamplighters is gone out o' fashion; they come in ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... small girl in the world introduced me to the dearest big girl in the world. I thought also of the little partner who wrote a certain letter and of many other things—I didn't even forget the baby mice, Chicken Little! Alice says she would like to have your name on her diploma along with the president's because—well, you know why. And they tell us you are Chicken Big now. Thirteen going on, is a frightful ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... newspapers, weeklies, and monthly periodicals, offering a handsome reward for any suggestion which might result in ridding me of the cockney ghost. The inventive mind of man has been able to cope successfully with rats and mice and other household pests. Why, then, should there not be somewhere in the world a person of sufficient ingenuity to cope with an obnoxious spirit? If rat -dynamite and rough on June-bugs were possible, why was it not likely that some as yet ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... So Gringo Jack followed fast and far, for the place was a mile away, and reaching the curious log cavern, he halted and sniffed. There were hunters' smells; yes, but, above all, that smell of joy. He walked around to be sure, and knew it was inside; then cautiously he entered. Some wood-mice scurried by. He sniffed the bait, licked it, mumbled it, slobbered it, reveled in it, tugged to increase the flow, when "bang!" went the great door behind and Jack was caught. He backed up with a rush, bumped into the door, and had a sense, at least, of peril. He turned over with an effort ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... warm and bright. It seemed wonderful to be having so much fine weather in Labrador, and not a fly or mosquito as yet. The one nuisance we had met was mice or lemmings. They had been busy with my hat in the night, and when I came to put it on that morning I found there was a hole eaten in the crown and a meal or two taken out of the brim. There seemed to be thousands of them, and they ran squealing about everywhere, great fat fellows, ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... the boards creaking so loudly in the corridor that I was convinced there were people in the house. So certain was I of this, that I had descended the stairs, gun in hand, only to find the doors and windows securely fastened, and the mice and black-beetles in sole possession of the floor. This was certainly not sufficient to account for ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... there were only three or four, I think, beside Mr. Glennie and Ratsey and the half-dozen of us boys, who crossed the swampy meadows strewn with drowned shrew-mice and moles. Even my aunt was not at church, being prevented by a migraine, but a surprise waited those who did go, for there in a pew by himself sat Elzevir Block. The people stared at him as they came in, for no one had ever known ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... seemed to be nothing in it suitable for an occasion such as ours, and besides, the language used in the "Letter-Writer" was so very fine and unlike our former efforts that we were afraid aunt Lindsay would, as Phil vulgarly puts it, "smell a mice." So that had to be given up, and finally, after many and great struggles, with the help of the whole family, we would manage to write something that Miss Marston allowed us to send. On the principle that brevity is wit, some ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... anywhere, decently; and they all freeze in their houses, during winter, like a lot of mice in a cellar. At all events, I've had a good Russian cry over this poor fellow," she added, pointing to the prince, who had not recognized her in the slightest degree. "So enough of this nonsense; it's time we ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... stones by holding on to the branches of a plant which grows from a ledge above him. While he thus holds on, with death behind him and before, he feels the branches quivering, and sees above, out of reach, two mice, one black and one white, which are nibbling at the stems he holds and will soon sever them. He waits despairingly, and while he does so, he sees that there are drops of honey on the leaves which he holds; he puts his lips to them, licks them off, and finds ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the stages of whose pilgrimage were marked by acts of spoliation and mischief, and who were qualified in the country- side as "fair pests." But in the house, if "faither was in," they were quiet as mice. In short, Hob moved through life in a great peace - the reward of any one who shall have killed his man, with any formidable and figurative circumstance, in the midst of a country gagged and ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spinster requested that the boy be removed from her school—all this according to the earnest biographer. The facts are that the boy had so much energy and restless ambition; was so full of brimming curiosity, mischief and imagination—introducing turtles, bats and mice on various occasions—that he led the whole school a merry chase and wore the nerves of the ancient ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... and Martyn were assisting at the turn out of an isolated barn at Hillside, where Frank Fordyce declared, all the burnt-out rats and mice had taken refuge, the young ladies went out to cater for house decorations for Christmas under Clarence's escort. Nobody but the clerk ever thought of touching the church, where there were holes in all the pews to ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... addition the master has to give him three times per day his rice, etc., estimated to cost six to eight cents more. The workmen are fed by the employer, and allowed to sleep in and about the premises somewhere or somehow. We saw freely exposed for sale dogs, rats, and mice, all nicely dressed and hanging upon spits to tempt the hungry passers-by, while above a large pot from which the steam was issuing was a card, which, being translated by our guide, read, "A big black cat within; ready soon." The dogs which are eaten are ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... And then he returned to the hawk and the little bird, and wondered how many more the cruel hawk had eaten for his supper; and, finally, wished God would take care of the little birds, and let the hawk live on mice like the old white owl in the barn. The child's prattle was not heeded as much as sometimes, and Mary's answers were not so satisfactory as usual. He was like his Aunt Lucy, tired, and scarcely as much pleased with his day as he had expected to be; and, finally, his mother carried ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... three blind mice, See how they run! They all run after the farmer's wife, And she cut off their tails with a carving knife, Did you ever see such a thing in your ...
— Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes • Beatrix Potter
... make of it; he had been puzzled with mouse before, and found he was wrong, so he thought it was possible 'mice' might be the ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... needles Through their gowns of heavy wool. And as one hand, then the other, They tried to warm in their laps, The bitter weather froze their breath Like fur about their caps. And so, as they sat at their milking, They grew as still as mice, Save when the stiff shoes on their feet Rattled ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... small, but nearly a third of those who make any report on this at all, say such losses are rather heavy. In the extreme north, there seem to be no squirrels to bother. Several report thefts, particularly of filberts, by chipmunks, while one complains about both mice and jaybirds as ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... certain amount of provisions, a box of matches from Godfrey's store, and a large skin to wrap himself in at night. Sometimes, as Godfrey found, the track had to be followed a long distance before they came up to the animal, which always travelled in zigzag courses hunting about for white mice and other prey. Sometimes it was found to have taken to a hole, and then a trap was set to catch it when it came out. The animals were principally ermine; but one or two sable, which are considerably larger, with much more valuable skins, and ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... thou art no thy lane, In proving foresight may be vain: The best laid schemes o' mice an' men, Gang aft a-gley, An' lea'e us nought but grief and ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... which they put into great casks made of the bark of trees and placed in the middle of their encampment. They have pieces of wood suspended, on which they put their clothes, provisions, and other things, for fear of the mice, of which there are great numbers. In one of these cabins there may be twelve fires, and twenty-four families. It smokes excessively, from which it follows that many receive serious injury to the eyes, so that they lose their sight towards ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... very pleasant companion, but admires herself a little more than is considered modest, and she positively refuses to catch mice," explained Margolotte. "My husband made the cat some pink brains, but they proved to be too high-bred and particular for a cat, so she thinks it is undignified in her to catch mice. Also she has a pretty ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... tail in a knot, hang you over the clothes line and then throw stones at you!" went on the cruel boy. "That will teach you to keep away from our place. We don't like mice." ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... the summer season, the crops were grievously ravaged in divers places by the mice, which ate the corn while it was still growing up and when it was in the blade. Our Lay Brothers, therefore, dug ditches and put in the ground jars filled with water, and such was the craft with which they did this that a vast number of the mice were drowned in these jars, and they slew in divers ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... in conjunction with O. Israel, has carried out very thorough researches on these particular points. As the subject for observation he chose the blood of embryonic mice. He was able in the first place, like Rindfleisch, to produce the exit of the nuclei from the cells by the addition of "physiological" salt solution to fresh blood, and is of the opinion that the exit of the nucleus from the ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... was the one who had come by the burn, and his boots were cheeping like a field of mice. He gave the word "Stroke," and the three then looked at each other firmly. The lights of the town were not visible from the Cuttle Well, owing to an arm of cliff that is outstretched between, but the bell could be distinctly heard, and occasionally ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... show, plays on the stage, flocks of sheep, herds, exercises with spears, a bone cast to little dogs, a bit of bread in fishponds, labourings of ants, and burden-carrying runnings about of frightened little mice, puppets pulled by strings—this is what life resembles. It is thy duty then in the midst of such things to show good humour, and not a proud air; to understand however that every man is worth just so much as the things are worth about which ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar |
