"Moth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Like a little moth attracted by a flame, Dick wandered down the stair in the direction of the light. The candle was standing on the table in a bedroom,—a pretty room, Dickie thought, though it did not seem as if anybody could have lived in it lately. He didn't know why this idea came into his mind, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... Robin Hood. They are in dire peril; yet we may not break Our vows of silence. Many a time Has Robin Hood by kindly words and deeds Done in his human world, sent a new breath Of life and joy like Spring to fairyland; And at the moth-hour of this very dew-fall, He saved a fairy, whom he thought, poor soul, Only a may-fly in a spider's web, He saved her from the clutches of that Wizard, That Cruel Thing, that dark old Mystery, Whom ye ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... as black as tar, and to-day was clothed in a yellow homespun frock. Her hair was twisted and bound into two upright tags that projected above her temples. Altogether, she was not unlike a gigantic black-and-tan moth, a resemblance heightened by the aforementioned antennae, albeit lessened by the baby she always carried on some portion of her wiry frame. She was the toughest, most supple, and most versatile creature I ever saw, of any color or clime. The baby was disposed decorously across her knees on ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... with litters of mice and pierced with the gnawings of the worms, and who were once clothed in purple and fine linen, now lying in sackcloth and ashes, given up to oblivion, seemed to have become habitations of the moth. Natheless among these, seizing the opportunity, we would sit down with more delight than a fastidious physician among his stores of gums and spices, and there we found the object and the stimulus ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... moth and rust corrupt, Or thieves break through and steal, or they Make themselves wings and fly away. One man made merry as he supped, Nor guessed how when that night grew dim, His soul would ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... Duke's criticisms, making some specially good remarks on those which refer to orchids. He shows how, by a "beautiful self-acting adjustment," the nectary of the orchid Angraecum (from 10 to 14 inches in length), and the proboscis of a moth sufficiently long to reach the nectar, might be developed by natural selection. He goes on to point out that on any other theory we must suppose that the flower was created with an enormously long nectary, and that then by a special act, an insect ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... whose connivance at vice and crime is disregarded by the law, rise and take position in society-not only entering into more respectable business-but joining in that phalanx who are seeking the life-blood of the old Southerner, and like a silent moth, working upon his decay. There is a deep significance in the answer so frequently given in Charleston to the interrogatory, "Who lives in that splendid dwelling-it seems to have been the mansion of a ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... the end of a light stick four or five feet long. Sew the net on the wire. The net must be a bag whose depth is not quite the length of your arm—so deep that when you hold the wire in one hand you can easily reach the bottom with the bottle (to be described) in the other hand. Never touch wing of moth or butterfly with your fingers. The colors are in the dusty down (as you call it), which comes off at a touch. Get a glass bottle or vial, with large, open mouth, and cork which you can easily put in and take out. The bottles in which druggists ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... of us have seen their minute eggs. Many are quite visible to the unaided eye; others are extremely minute. A gives the egg of the small white butterfly;[4] B, that of the small tortoiseshell; C, that of the waved umber moth; D, that of the thorn moth; E, that of the shark moth; at F we have the delicate egg of the small emerald butterfly, and at G an American skipper; and finally, at H, the egg of a moth known as mania maura. In all this you see a delicacy of symmetry, structure, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... to the other end. It opened into a large room of the same size as the kitchen, evidently a dining-room, for a long table stood in the middle, and a solitary, moth-eaten stag's head, with antlers broken, ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... she was like a moth herself, fragile and impalpable in the gloom, a moth motionless on a flower, and when he saw her smile he thought the moth was making ready ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... And that was probably a giant female eel, as dangerous a foe as any swimmer of his size—though he ate eels—might care to face. Then there was the marsh-harrier—and the same might have been a kind of owl if it wasn't a sort of hawk—who flapped up like some gigantic moth, and dogged his steps, only waiting—he felt sure of it—for the polecat to slip, or meet a foe, or have an accident, or something, before breaking its own avine neutrality. Then, too, there was the stoat, or, rather, not the stoat only, but the stoat and his wife, who ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... O heauen: that there were but a moth in yours, A graine, a dust, a gnat, a wandering haire, Any annoyance in that precious sense: Then feeling what small things are boysterous there, Your vilde intent must ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... be any missed faces or any letter writing to do, for that matter. David and Reddy can run the business of the colony and see that we aren't cheated when we trade glass beads and other little trinkets with the savages. Of course there will be a few moth-eaten old cannibals. Tom can classify the trees of the forest and make the obstreperous beasts and reptiles behave. I will represent the law. I will settle all disputes and administer justice. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... out the moth-eaten clothes and threw them behind her upon the floor, and seized the books, opening them desperately one after the other. In each there was the name, 'Angus Dalrymple,' in her father's firm young handwriting of twenty years ago. She threw ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... man caught in the pangs of removing, unattached to either home; and I bent from my windows over the throngs of festal promenaders, taciturn and uneasy. I fancied that wings were sprouting from my brown dressing-robe, and that they were the volatile wings of the moth or dragon-fly. But to establish myself at Marly before the baron, would not that be a breach of compact? Would he not make it a casus belli? Luckily, we were getting through April: to-morrow it would be ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... Needless to say I caught them with a butterfly net, and never touched one. Only five species were known before, and I found fifteen or more—at any rate I have fifteen for certain. Others helped me to catch them, of course. Another interesting item to science is the fact that I caught a moth hitherto unknown to exist on the island, also various flies, ants, etc. Altogether it was a most successful day. Wilson got dozens of birds, and Lillie plants, etc. On our return to the landing-place we found to our ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... Furs, Feathers, and Woollens require the constant care of the waiting-maid. Furs and feathers not in constant use should be wrapped up in linen washed in lye. From May to September they are subject to being made the depositary of the moth-eggs. They should be looked too, and shaken and beaten, from time to time, in case some of the eggs should have been lodged in them, in spite of every precaution; laying them up again, or rather folding them up as before, wrapping them in brown ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... coming after her and laying siege to her ladyship, than she can keep the sun from shining or the rain from falling. For that matter, I believe the poor fellow cannot help himself; it is the case of the moth and the candle." ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... live here in Chicago. No, sir! It takes a small town mother to have the time and patience for that kind of work. She's the kind whose kitchen smells of ginger cookies on Saturday mornings. And I'll bet if she ever found a moth in the attic she'd call the fire department. He's her only son. And he's come to the city to work. And his name—his ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... breathing altogether. He wheeled about and suddenly brought his thumb and forefinger together on the candle flame, pinching it out as one might pinch the life out of a moth. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... these creatures because they were before his eyes and were his enemies or his associates; they live still because their creator's genius was Promethean, and endowed them with immortality. Bardolph, Moth, Slender, Abhorson, Don Armado, Mercutio, etc., are portraits, as everyone knows and feels who is conversant with the manners of the Elizabethan times as handed down in ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... faint sweetness from some old Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud Which breaks to dust when once unroll'd; Or shredded perfume, like a cloud From closet long to quiet vow'd, With moth'd and dropping arras hung, Mouldering her lute and books among, As when a queen, long ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... some of Emerson's pages it seems as if another Arcadia, or the new Atlantis, had emerged as the fortunate island of Great Britain, or that he had reached a heaven on earth where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal,—or if they do, never think of denying that they have done it. But this was a generation ago, when the noun "shoddy," and the verb "to scamp," had not grown such familiar terms to English ears as they are ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Of Peas are fewer in number than might be expected in the case of so nutritive a plant. Against the weevil, the moth, and the fly, we are comparatively powerless, and perhaps the safest course is occasionally to dust the plants with lime or soot, in which case the work must be carefully done, or the leaf growth will ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... the distance. The light of the hour, in its subdued but golden tone, fell with singular clearness upon all nature, giving to it that tranquil beauty which makes every thing the eye rests upon glide with quiet rapture into the heart. The moth butterflies were fluttering over the meadows, and from the low stretches of softer green rose the thickly-growing grass-stalks, laying their slender ear's bent with the mellow burthen of wild honey—the ambrosial feast for the lips of ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... managed to gradually steer the conversation around to the subject of bug collection. He told of a friend he once had who was "daffy" along that line, and would rather capture some queer looking old night-flying hairy moth, with a death's-head sign on his front, than enjoy the finest supper, or listen to ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... brother's pop-gun; and then a sort of barge, not unlike the blossom of a sweet pea in shape, was manned from the largest of the fleet, and, when it touched the bright sparkling sand, out leaped a little prince of a fellow, with a bunch of white feathers in his hat, plucked from the moth-miller, a sword like the finest cambric-needle belted about his waist, and ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... love with her cruelty, if only I had her near me Men who believe that there is a virtue in imprecations Not men of brains, but the men of aptitudes Not the indignant and the frozen, but the genially indifferent One is a fish to her hook; another a moth to her light One night, and her character's gone Passion added to a bowl of reason makes a sophist's mess Policy seems to petrify their minds Rage of a conceited schemer tricked Respect one another's affectations To time and a wife it is no disgrace for a man to bend Uncommon ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... is completed, and the skin dry, it is ready for packing, and should be folded, with the fur or hair inside, and placed in a sound box or case well protected against the visits of ants, beetles, or moth. ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... we had killed was shedding its hair and presented a most dilapidated, moth-eaten appearance; moreover, it had just been feeding on the carcass of a dead camel, which subsequently we discovered a mile away. When we reached camp I directed the two taxidermists to prepare the skeleton of the wolf, but to keep ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... Lethe, neither twist Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine; Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine; Make not your rosary of yew-berries, Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl A partner in your sorrow's mysteries; For shade to shade will come too drowsily, And drown the wakeful anguish of ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... a disembodied spirit, and no longer subject to the petty annoyances that belong to the flesh?" cried he, fretfully. "My knowledge, too, is a moth,—only vexing me by a sense of the limitations of my condition. If I could grasp Nature,—if I could handle the stars,—if I could wake the thunder,—if I could summon the cloud! That would be worth something,—to send the comets on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... first time in five winters of war, they lighted their lamps with open shutters, and from many windows there streamed out bright beams which lured one like a moth to candle light because of its sign of peace. There were bright stars and a crescent moon in the sky, silvering the Flemish gables and frontages between black shadows and making patterns of laces in the Place d'Armes below the trees with their ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... lure for many creatures of land and sea and sky. The moth and the bat whirl about a flame; the sea bird dashes its body against the bright glass of the lonely tower; wild deer come to see what has disturbed the dark 15 of the forest; and fish of different kinds leap at a torch. Red Chicken put a match to ours when we were all in readiness. ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... abandon, a sans souci of unspeakable indifference, and this moment will never be taken from us; time cannot rob us of it but, as far as we are concerned, it will last for ever and ever without flying. So that, even for the most wretched and most guilty, there is a heaven at last where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt and where thieves do not break through nor steal. To himself every one is an immortal: he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... around her the terrible silence of a still night. All those small sounds lost in the hum of midday life now came into relief—a ticking in the wainscot, a crack now and then in the joining of the furniture, and occasionally the tap of a moth against the window pane from outside, sounds sharp and odd, which made her wish the stillness of the night ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... admiration on the richness and taste displayed in all the details of this the scholar's sanctum. The very atmosphere of the chamber, filled with the perfume of the cedar wood employed as a specific against the ravages of the moth and bookworm, seemed to the young man redolent of midnight learning; and the superb front of the presiding god, calm in the grandeur of its ineffable benignity, who appeared to his excited fancy to smile serene protection on the pursuits ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... several insects and spiders. The following list completes, I believe, the terrestrial fauna: a fly (Olfersia) living on the booby, and a tick which must have come here as a parasite on the birds; a small brown moth, belonging to a genus that feeds on feathers; a beetle (Quedius) and a woodlouse from beneath the dung; and lastly, numerous spiders, which I suppose prey on these small attendants and scavengers of the waterfowl. The often-repeated description of the stately palm ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... throats. But his method of keeping himself upright, together with certain spasmodic contractions of his fingers and the nervous "uh-ah, uh-ah" which punctuated his insecure phrases like uncertain commas, combined to offer the suggestion of a rooster; a rather moth-eaten rooster, which took itself tremendously seriously and was showing off to an imaginary group of admiring hens situated somewhere in the background ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... we throw a rhyme to God, Singing His praise when other songs are done. But thou, who knewest paths Teresa trod, Losing thyself, what is it thou hast won? O bleeding feet, with peace and glory shod! O happy moth, that flew ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer
... vivacious man, successful and keen: why isn't he the head of a school of other keen, witty writers? He has provided an attractive form—the play with an essay as preface. He has provided stock characters, such as the handsome-hero male-moth, who protests so indignantly at the fatal attraction of candles. He has developed above all that useful formula which has served many a dramatist—the comic confrontation of reason and instinct in man. Yet this whole apparatus ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... crushing defeat grind you into the dust, then you may arise, forgetting time and space and self, and take refuge in mansions not made with hands; and find a certain sad, sweet satisfaction in the contemplation of treasures stored up where moth and rust do not corrupt, and where thieves do not break ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... another race, immortal, separate; one has no wish to look at them with love, only with a sort of lowly adoration, physical, but wanting what is the soul of all love, whether admitted to oneself or not, hope; in a word "the desire of the moth for the star." O great white stars of eternal marble, O shapely, colossal women, and yet not women. It is not love that we seek from them, we do not desire to see their great eyes troubled with our passions, or the great impassive members contorted by any hope ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was more in character: "Bridget threatens to leave. She does not work well under Anne. The children are not manageable under her, either. Little Judith is sallow and fretful. I suspect Anne gives her sweets between meals. I saw a moth flying ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... Then came a huge moth, and almost simultaneously a bat, to whirr round and round over the bed and along the ceiling, while from off the dark waters of the fen came from time to time strange splashings and uncouth cries, which would have startled a wakeful stranger to these parts. Now and then a peculiar moan ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... that of the precious things brought forth by the sun of righteousness, the hope of immortality is its most precious jewel. This makes every thing valuable. Hence we may lay up our treasures where neither moth nor rust can corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal. Here God's bright favour will never grow dim, nor will our love and gratitude ever decay. Do you see this celestial form leaning on her anchor, and while the raging waves of a restless sea ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... Apollo's homing steeds, the day died in the lagoons and in the shadowed banana groves and in the mangrove swamps, where the great blue crabs were beginning to crawl to land for their nightly ramble. And it died, at last, upon the highest peaks. Then the brief twilight, ephemeral as the flight of a moth, came and went; the Southern Cross peeped with its topmost eye above a row of palms, and the fire-flies heralded with their torches ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... splendour had turned to mould—where form had become effaced and colour dimmed; where only the shadowy film of texture still remained, and where even that was slowly yielding—under the attacks of Time's relentless mercenaries, moth ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... noises of the earth Come with softest rustle; The shy, sweet feet of life; The silky mutter of moth-wings Against my restraining palm; The strident beat of insect-wings, The silvery trickle of water; Little breezes busy in the summer grass; The music of crisp, whisking, scurrying leaves, The swirling, wind-swept, frost-tinted leaves; The ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... Spontaneous groves with richer burdens bend. Anana's stalk its shaggy honors yields, Acassia's flowers perfume a thousand fields, Their cluster'd dates the mast-like palms unfold, The spreading orange waves a load of gold, Connubial vines o'ertop the larch they climb, The long-lived olive mocks the moth of time, Pomona's pride, that old Grenada claims, Here smiles and reddens in diviner flames; Pimento, citron scent the sky serene, White woolly clusters fringe the cotton's green, The sturdy fig, the frail deciduous cane And foodful cocoa fan the ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... that's flown into a room of its own accord. I dash against the walls, dash against the windows, flop against the ceiling, do everything on God's earth, in fact, except fly out again. And all the while I'm thinking, like that moth, or that butterfly, or whatever it is, 'The shortness of life! The shortness of life!' I've only one night or one day, and there's this vast dangerous garden, waiting ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... identified with the vernacular riddles of the famous Exeter Song Book, that the reader may be glad of a specimen from each author. It should be premised that in each collection the subject stands as a title at the head of each piece. The subject of the sixteenth in Symphosius is the book-moth:— ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... been recently observed by the Rev. A. E. Eaton with respect to insects inhabiting Kerguelen Island. All the species which he found on the island—viz. a moth, several flies, and numerous beetles—he found to be incapable of flight; and therefore, as Wallace observes, "as these insects could hardly have reached the islands in a wingless state, even if ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... some country beau, a beaver-skin—and beavers were growing scarce and dear in that peninsula—had him an elegant cap made of it for the cold weather now coming; but he only kissed her and put it on the rack, and there it tempted the moth. ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... up once more to the top of the ridge, and looking down saw her again as I had seen her at first, only dimmer, swiftly, lightly moving or flitting moth-like or ghost-like over the low flat salting, still gathering samphire in the cold wind, and the thought that came to me was that I was looking at and had been interviewing a being that was very like a ghost, or in any case a soul, ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... spends her whole time helping others. She represents the composite beauty, sweetness, and nobility of all those who scorn self for the sake of love and her handmaiden duty—of all those who seek the brightness of truth not as the moth to be destroyed thereby, but as the lark who soars and sings to the great sun. She is of those who have so much to give they want no time to take, and their name is legion. She is as full of beautiful possibilities as a perfect harp, and ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... cottage door, and lighting his pipe, sat down on the little rustic seat which was just outside. There was hardly a sound—nothing but the night wind sweeping through the valley, the far-off plash of water, the purring noise of a big moth as it flew past and then hovered a second, attracted by the gleam of ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... so marked with tender sympathy, while the memory of her words, and even more of the look which accompanied them, had so remained with me in encouragement that I longed to encounter her again. God knows what I hoped for, for I knew well it must all inevitably end in despair, yet like the moth I must continue to singe my wings until the flame devoured me. Now, however, as we actually drew near to where I supposed she might be, I felt my earlier courage fast deserting me. Nor was I furnished with even the slightest excuse for pressing on; my orders did not positively ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... provision; then it is that their reasoning powers are called into action. I will explain this by stating a fact relative to the bee, one of the animals upon which instinct is most powerful in its action. There is a certain large moth, called the Death's-head moth, which is very fond of honey. It sometimes contrives to force its way through the aperture of the hive, and gain an entrance. The bees immediately attack it, and it is soon destroyed by their stings; but the carcass is ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... petal and much more local in habitat. So concealed were the stalks by the ferns that the flowers appeared to grow on their fronds. On the mounds grew corn marigolds, so brilliantly yellow that they seemed to shine in the sunlight, and on a wall moth-mullein ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... was hump-backed; but on looking more closely, I saw, through the tatters of her frock—do not laugh at me—a bunch on each shoulder, of the most gorgeous colours. Looking yet more closely, I saw that they were of the shape of folded wings, and were made of all kinds of butterfly-wings and moth-wings, crowded together like the feathers on the individual butterfly pinion; but, like them, most beautifully arranged, and producing a perfect harmony of colour and shade. I could now more easily believe the rest of her story; especially ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... then half of the surface of the Feather which is open and visibly pervious; which conjecture will yet seem more probable from the texture of the brushie wings of the Tinea argentea, or white Feather wing'd moth, which I shall anone describe. But Nature, that knows best its own laws, and the several properties of bodies, knows also best how to adapt and fit them to her designed ends, and whoso would know ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... put upon him, and seen the sympathy of eye and hand that welcomed him to the blessed company, has not felt that for this poor, despised race there are riches laid up in that kingdom 'where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal'? Who that has stood in a Southern forest on some Sunday afternoon, in the early Southern spring, when the woods are resonant with the songs of birds, and heard a negro congregation of believers ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... years her heart was hidden where Nor moth, nor rust, nor craft of man could harm; The blue eyes, seldom lifted, save in prayer, Beamed with her wished-for ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... entomology. Guenee, Hubner, and Fabricius were unknown names; but he could have told these worthies many new things. Did they know just at what hour the trout ceased leaping at dark fly or moth, and could see only in the dim light the ghostly white miller? Did they know the comparative merits, as a tempting bait, of grasshopper, cricket, spider, or wasp; and could they, with bits of wool, tinsel, and feather, copy the real dipterous, hymenopterous, or orthopterous insect? ...
— Fishin' Jimmy • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... common; it is occasionally caught in plantain gardens, as it resorts to the leaves of that tree for shelter during the night, and may sometimes be discovered in the folds of a leaf. As Jerdon remarks, it looks more like a butterfly or a moth when disturbed during the day time. Dr. Dobson pertinently observes that the colours of this bat appear to be the result of the "protective mimicry" which we see so often in insects, the Mantidea and other ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... as an example; read books of that sort—books that are kin to the Bible and Shakespeare. There is no excuse for your poisoning your time with idle books or low books or transient books—moth volumes that flutter an instant in the light and in an instant die. For the great books are entertaining. If you want excitement, Plutarch's Lives furnish you thrilling-narrative fiction cannot ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... Moth, with her plumage of down, And the Hornet, with jacket of yellow and brown, Who with him the Wasp, his companion, did bring— They promised that evening to lay ...
— The Butterfly's Ball - The Grasshopper's Feast • R.M. Ballantyne
... for a while, and finally flung back to me as lies—lies all! The finely spun web of any fancy,—the delicate interwoven intricacies of thought,—these were torn to shreds with as little compunction as idle children feel when destroying for their own cruel sport the velvety wonder of a moth's wing, or the radiant rose and emerald pinions of a dragon-fly. I was a fool—so I was told with many a languid sneer and stale jest—to talk of hidden mysteries in the whisper of the wind and the dash ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... or moth collection is very simple and inexpensive. We shall need an insect net to capture our specimens. This can be made at home from a piece of stiff wire bent into the shape of a flattened circle about a foot across. ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... peace? Nowise; one look of his angry countenance would have looked us into nothing,—"Thou lookest upon me, and I am not; one rebuke of his for iniquity, would have made our beauty consume as the moth, far more the stroke of his hand had consumed us," Psalm xxxix. 11. But that is the wonder indeed,—while we were yet "enemies;" and weak too, neither able to help ourselves, nor hurt him in the least, and so could ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... once, and manifested a certain curiosity in the study of the law. He read Blackstone, and could give a fair account of his impressions of English law to his father. He had quite outlived the period of entomological research, and he presented his collections of insects (somewhat moth-eaten) to his nephew, on whom he also bestowed his postage-stamp album; Mary Kenton accepted them in trust, the nephew being of yet too tender years for their care. In the preoccupations of his immediate family with Ellen's engagement, Boyne became rather close friends ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... there could be no doubt about his distinguishing marks. It was amazing to us how many grown-up and (presumably) educated men and women did not know that a butterfly had knobs on the end of his antennae, and that the moth had none. Where had they been all these years to be so ignorant? Well-meaning but misguided aunts, with mysterious promises of a new butterfly for our collection, would produce some common Yellow Underwing from an envelope, innocent (for which they may be forgiven) that only ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... a moth-eaten bowler started warbling to a certain extent with me. It was all very trying for a man of culture. He was a man who had, I should say, discovered that alcohol was a food long before the doctors found it out. ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... But doth not their thus living, abiding, and retaining a being(or what you will call it), demonstrate the greatness and might of the soul? Alas! heaven and earth are short of this greatness, for these, though under less judgment by far, do fade and wax old like a moth-eaten garment, and, in their time, will vanish away to nothing ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... quarters. When the door was shut it was black dark, save for a thin crack of light from the wood fire and torches of the hall. The crack made on the earthen floor a line like a golden river. Biorn, cuddled up on a bench in his little bear-skin, was drawn like a moth to that stream of light. With his heart beating fast he would creep to it and stand for a moment with his small body bathed in the radiance. The game was not to come back at once, but to foray into the farther darkness before returning to the sanctuary ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... collection of a closet's shelves upon the blind groper after some particular package thereon, gives convincing proof that absence of light means presence of confusion; while it also invites the elusive moth to come in and make himself at ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... with gloomy despair, and here are the phantom-like thoughts which tap, with wings of a bat, the beak of a vulture, the body of a death's-head moth, upon the walls of the palace in which, enkindled by desire, glows your brain like a lamp ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... about the trees of the square, as though Night, like a great downy moth, had brushed them with her wings. The lamps were still alight, all pale, but not a soul stirred—no ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... down behind the copse, through which his beams came aslant, chequered and mellow. The stream ran dimpling by him, sleepily swaying the masses of weed, under the surface and on the surface; and the trout rose under the banks, as some moth or gnat or gleaming beetle fell into the stream; here and there one more frolicsome than his brethren would throw himself joyously into the air. The swifts rushed close by him, in companies of five or six, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... the gravel-walk She went while her robe's edge brushed the box; 10 And here she paused in her gracious talk To point me a moth on the milk-white phlox. Roses, ranged in valiant row, I will never think that she passed you by! She loves you, noble roses, I know; 15 But yonder, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... the place, occupying their spare time with hiding the more valuable things, and was calling around the corner to Miss Drexel the news of the capture of Vera Cruz, when Davies returned with the information that the horses consisted of a pair of moth-eaten skates that could be depended upon to lie down and die in ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... capital picture of the ease and perfection with which the clownish chrysalis may be metamorphosed into the scarlet moth of war. Catch the animal young, and you may turn him into any shape you please. He will learn to wear silk stockings, scarlet plush breeches, collarless coats, with silver buttons; and swing open a gate with a grace, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... night, even as the Purple Emperor said, if you will stand on the bridge across the freightyard, looking down upon the four-track way, at 2:30 A. M., neither before nor after, when the White Moth, that takes the overflow from the Purple Emperor, tears south with her seven vestibuled cream-white cars, you will hear, as the yard-clock makes the half-hour, a far-away sound like the bass of a violoncello, and then, a hundred feet to ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... flowers are all at the top; each flower is set in the cup by a curve at the lesser end, like a crook; the leaves and stalk are slightly rough, and have an aromatic bitter perfume when crushed. On the flower of a great thistle a moth has alighted, and hidden under its broad wing is a humble-bee, the two happy together and neither interfering with the other. Sometimes a bee will visit the white rose ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... opinions. His devout Discipleship seemed nothing more than a mean Spanielship, in the general eye. His mighty "constellation," or sun, round whom he, as satellite, observantly gyrated, was, for the mass of men, but a huge, ill-snuffed tallow-light, and he a weak night-moth, circling foolishly, dangerously about it, not knowing what he wanted. If he enjoyed Highland dinners and toasts, as henchman to a new sort of chieftain, Henry Erskine, in the domestic "Outer-House," could hand him a shilling "for the sight of his Bear." Doubtless ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... ancient nobility, which had the right to impose its crowns on you. All the chairs, tables, sideboards, and things on the walls were made out of the horns of stags and other animals the Count had shot. Sometimes the chairs were covered with the skin of the same, minus the hair, which was missing and moth-eaten in spots. ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... everything, some day like him. He wearied his brain in recalling a chance expression of her eyes that could not have been unfriendly; an inflection of her voice that might have carried a hope, if only their paths had been less crossed: and his pride, despite rebuffs, sought her as a moth seeks a flame. It drew him to her and kept him from her, for he lacked for the first time in his life the boldness to stake everything on the turn of a card, and ask Kate ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... were heard 'mid fire and smoke, And twice ten hundred voices spoke - "The playhouse is in flames!" And, lo! where Catherine Street extends, A fiery tail its lustre lends To every window-pane; Blushes each spout in Martlet Court, And Barbican, moth-eaten fort, And Covent Garden kennels sport A bright ensanguined drain; Meux's new brewhouse shows the light, Rowland Hill's Chapel, and the height Where Patent Shot they sell; The Tennis Court, so fair and tall, Partakes the ray, with Surgeons' Hall, The Ticket-Porters' ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... of the waving searchlights strayed in their direction, and down its white beam for the space of a hundred yards slid a ghostly white moth. It dipped suddenly and fell out of the light and in its wake, but above, burst three little green balls of fire—Tam's ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... that, whereas the mud clerk, at his desk below, was utterly love-bemired, his, the cub's, liking for her was solely for her countless questions, of which he said that "you never could tell where the next one would hit." No singed moth he! To prove it he offered Hugh a very blase query: "What do women ever do with all the answers we men give ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... we please. My cousin, Noctilia Glow-worm, who is out late o' nights on the grass-bank in poor company—the Katydids, who board for the season with the widow Poplar—a two-sided, deceitful woman—she does not care where I go, and never shrieks out, 'A burnt moth dreads the lamp chimney.' If she sees me wingless, she coughs, and throws out a green light, but says nothing. Don't mind ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... his distraction till the table round was scattered with little broken leaves. He wanted to keep out of that atmosphere of emotion which surrounded Elinor at the piano. But it attracted him, all the same, as the light attracts a moth. To get away from that, to make the severance which so soon must be a perfect severance, was the only true policy he knew; for what was he to her, and what could she be to him? He had already said everything which ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... on the motley contents. Stray joints of clumsy fishing-rods; artificial baits; a pair of worn-out top-boots, in which one of the urchins, whooping and shouting, buried himself up to the middle; moth-eaten, stained, and ragged, the collegian's gown-relic of the dead man's palmy time; a bag of carpenter's tools, chiefly broken; a cricket-bat; an odd boxing-glove; a fencing-foil, snapped in the middle; and, more than all, some ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... impressed with the fact that he had a head, as utterly to forget the probability of his having a heart. With a strange perversity, L'Isle was at once flattered and annoyed at the use she made of him. It was an unequal game he was playing, like a moth fluttering round a candle. His temper began to be worn threadbare, and oftener than ever he repeated to himself, ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... unnecessary and strangely timed, had been made and ended. Nothing, in short, remained that indicated wealth; all the signs were those of recent wastefulness and present desolation. The black cloth hangings, which, on the late mournful occasion, replaced the tattered moth-eaten tapestries, had been partly pulled down, and, dangling from the wall in irregular festoons, disclosed the rough stonework of the building, unsmoothed either by plaster or the chisel. The seats thrown ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... then they sealed it up in a coffin or sarcophagus, which they laid in a chamber hewn in the bowels of the mountain. All these things were done to protect the physical body against damp, dry rot and decay, and against the attacks of moth, beetles, worms and wild animals. But these were not the only enemies of the dead against which precautions had to be taken, for both the mummified body and the spiritual elements which had inhabited it upon earth had to be protected from a multitude of devils and fiends, and from the ...
— The Book of the Dead • E. A. Wallis Budge
... climbs with pain O'er the smooth plantain-leaf, a spacious plain! Thence higher still, by countless steps convey'd, He gains the summit of a shiv'ring blade, And flirts his filmy wings, and looks around, Exulting in his distance from the ground. The tender speckled moth here dancing seen, The vaulting grasshopper of glossy green, And all prolific Summer's sporting train, Their little lives by various pow'rs sustain. But what can unassisted vision do? What, but recoil where most it would pursue; His patient gaze ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... endeavour to make everything out of something else, and to rummage out a store of old rubbish, as the first step towards manufacturing a new garment! The treasures which were to contribute towards Esther's trousseau consisted of a moth-eaten Paisley shawl, a checked silk skirt of unbelievable hideousness, a muslin scarf; yellow with age, a broken ivory fan, and a pair of mittens. A vision of Esther figuring as a bride in this old- world costume, rose before ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... self-deprecatory references to his "weake wit" and "inferiour stile." Fully aware of his limitations, Page, like Barksted and many another unexceptional talent of his age, was nevertheless drawn to the composition of poetry like a moth to the flame. ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... the Dutch fired his vessel in the Thames, sent his men ashore, but was burned along with her himself rather than desert his post without orders. Just then, perhaps the Merry Monarch was chasing a moth round the supper-table with the ladies of his court. When Raleigh sailed into Cadiz, and all the forts and ships opened fire on him at once, he scorned to shoot a gun, and made answer with a flourish of insulting trumpets. I like this bravado ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... proved, on closer inspection, to be the remnant of an army mule with a moth-eaten mane and a polished tail bare of hair—worn off, no doubt, in a lifelong struggle with the Fairfax County fly. The major was without the luxury of a saddle, some one having borrowed the only one the owner of the mule ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... me four are composed externally of little bits of green moss, cotton, and seed-down, and the silk of the wild mulberry-moth torn from the cocoons, with which last material, however, the others appear to be bound together within. The lining of two is of the long hairs of the yak's tail, two of which died on the estate where these nests were found, and a third is ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... Assistant of treachery against himself, he could not forgive the treatment of the girl. He did not doubt her word, and yet desired to hear the Assistant's excuse, if he had any. He shrunk from the subject, and yet was drawn to it, like a moth ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... time this trick was worn out, other waggish gentlemen had introduced the practice of dropping wax matches on the floor and treading on them, and of hunting an imaginary moth—an irresistibly humorous proceeding, in which the participators rushed about brandishing books and magazines, ever and anon crying, "There he is!" and smiting on the head some quiet, unoffending reader. Some evil-minded young miscreant went so far as to put bits of ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... hollyhocks, now brown and in seed. Through July, Antonia said, the house was buried in them; the Bohemians, I remembered, always planted hollyhocks. The front yard was enclosed by a thorny locust hedge, and at the gate grew two silvery, moth-like trees of the mimosa family. From here one looked down over the cattle yards, with their two long ponds, and over a wide stretch of stubble which they told me was ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... denied this right to synthesize and to interpret, and nevertheless Nature offers even to the most unphilosophical her endless profusion of objects that awaken delight. She does not insist that the lyric poet should generalize unless he pleases. Moth and snail and skylark, daisy and field-mouse and water-fowl, seized by an eye that is quick to their poetic values, their interest to men, furnish material enough for lyric feeling. The fondness of Romantic poets for isolating a single object has been matched in our day by ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... Pawkins, whose health had been bad for some time, published some work upon the "mesoblast" of the Death's Head Moth. What the mesoblast of the Death's Head Moth may be does not matter a rap in this story. But the work was far below his usual standard, and gave Hapley an opening he had coveted for years. He must have worked night and day to make ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... was in full bloom; it had pretty little blue flowers as delicate as the wings of a moth, or even more so. The sun shone, and the showers watered it; and this was just as good for the flax as it is for little children to be washed and then kissed by their mother. They look much prettier for it, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... it was large and handsome, but being shabby and worn out, had that very month only been put to servants' use. Round it were old red valances hanging to the floor, things not given to servants. No sooner was I under the bed, than I saw there were little openings at the seams, and some moth-holes, which permitted me to see through them. At one spot near to my shoulder as I lay crouching and doubled up, was a long slit where the valance had been torn down. By raising myself on my elbow, and squeezing my head against the ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... thou hast provided?" Like the rich man to whom God said the words, he had gathered much goods for many years—hundreds and hundreds of things, every one of which he knew, and every one of which he loved. A new scratch on the bright steel of one of his suits of armor was a scratch on his heart; the moth and the rust troubled him sore, for he could not keep them away; and where his treasure was, there was his heart, devoured by the same moth, consumed by the same rust. He had much suffering from his possessions—was more exposed to misery than the miser of gold, for the hoarded coin of the latter ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... lighted candle holds for a moth is too well known to require further elucidation here. In yielding one day to a desire to visit the Valley of the Giants, Shirley told herself that she was going there to gather wild blackberries. She had been ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... hope folks will quit handing all the credit to a lot of moth-eaten, mildewed, out-of-date, old, European dumps, and give proper credit to the famous Zenith spirit, that clean fighting determination to win Success that has made the little old Zip City celebrated in every land and clime, wherever condensed ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... climbed over the rail, who looks like an early patriarch, but his dignity is impaired by the moth-eaten high silk hat which surmounts his white hair. The people regard him with apparent deference, due either to the hat or his inherent character. Looking at his fine old face, one is inclined to believe it ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... have seen a junior Rinehart start out with a boat, a rod, six large cakes of chocolate, and four dollars' worth of flies, and return a few hours later with one fish, one Professor, one Doctor, and one Black Moth minus the hook. And the ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... mind resembled in its workings the manoeuvres of a moth distracted by the glory of several bright lights. It dashed at one, got slightly singed, and forgetting all about that turned its attention to the second, and the third, taking headers into each in turn, without deciding which, on the whole, was the ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... tragic than the desire of the moth for the star; and it is a curious fact that the spectacle of a star almost invariably fills the most sensible moth with thoughts above his station. No doubt, if Ramsden Waters had stuck around and waited long ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... old, for a period wherein few lived to old age; she had long outlived her husband, and had seen the funerals of nearly all her children. The greater part even of her earthly treasures were already safe where moth and rust corrupt not, and her own feeling of earnest longing to rejoin them grew daily stronger. It was for the daughter's sake alone that she cared to live now; the daughter to whom men had left only God and that mother. A new lesson was now to be taught to Constance—to ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... been much annoyed by the insects which were attracted to his electric lights found a solution in the pneumatic moth trap described in a recent issue of Popular Mechanics. He fixed a funnel to the end of the intake tube of a vacuum cleaner and hung it under a globe. The insects came to the light, circled over the funnel and disappeared. He captured several pounds in a few hours. ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... the sheets of manuscript were printed, eighteen months later, almost without change—he caught a sudden fever of entomology: hunted daily for specimens, but preserved, eventually, only six of his captures: a moth, silver and green; a butterfly of steely, iridescent blue; a solemn, black-coated cricket; a bee bound round with the five golden rings of Italy; a tiny, rainbow-hued humming-bird, found dead in a fast-shut ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... moth flew busily past the open window and vanished into the night. He thought of his own books; for writers, painters, preachers, musicians, these were trying to say it too. "If I could describe that moth exactly," he murmured to himself, "give the sensation ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... taken up to the box-room and made as comfortable as possible in a snug nook between an old nursery fender and the wreck of a big four-poster. They gave him a big rag-bag to sit on, and an old, moth-eaten fur coat off the nail on the door to keep him warm. And when they had had their own tea they took him some. He did not like the tea at all, but he liked the bread and butter, and cake that went with it. They took it in turns to sit with him during the evening, and left him fairly ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... where there are more spiders volumes than authors, and looks with great admiration on the antique work of cobwebs. Printed books he contemns, as a novelty of this latter age, but a manuscript he pores on everlastingly, especially if the cover be all moth-eaten, and the dust make a parenthesis between every syllable. He would give all the books in his study (which are rarities all,) for one of the old Roman binding, or six lines of Tully in his own hand. His chamber is hung commonly with strange beasts skins, and is a kind of charnel-house ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... not what men call love; But wilt thou accept not The worship the heart lifts above And the Heavens reject not: The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar From the ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... I with"—O'er his branches just then something flew; It seemed like moth, large and grayish of hue. But it was a Fairy. Her voice soft did sound, "Be the tree that bears ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... "peent, peent" all the afternoon. If you can catch sight of him before the light fades too much you will see the white bar which crosses each wing beneath and looks exactly like a hole, as if the bird had transparencies in his pinions as has the polyphemus moth. Many a summer afternoon I have seen nighthawks circling erratically above Boston Common, and there their cry has sounded like a plaint. No doubt these birds fly there by choice and bring up their young on the tops of Back ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... the most enticing field of natural history is that in which common flowers and common insects work out their unending co-partnery. A blossom by its scent, its beauty of tint, allures a moth or bee and thus, in effect, is able to take flight and find a mate across a county so as to perpetuate its race a hundred miles from home. Our volume closes with a sketch of the singular ties which thus bind together the fortunes of blossom and insect, so that at last the very form of a flower ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... two of the stalks of the baobab-tree, in a perpendicular position, by lines the thickness of coarse thread. The fibres of which it was composed radiated from a central point, where the creature was lying in wait for its prey, when it found the tip of my nose instead of an unwary moth or butterfly. The web was about a yard in diameter, so that it completely enveloped my face and head. Though very disagreeable to me, the occurrence, I really believe, did Natty good. It was pleasant to hear even a faint ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... the last two years some marvellous 'finds' have been made at this wonderful fortress from time to time. It is intended to continue excavation work for a moth." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... rapidly in and out of their nests—for there are always two or three birds' nests in the thick tapestry of cherry-trees, honey-suckles, and China roses, which cover our walls—now tracing the gay gambols of the common butterflies as they sport around the dahlias; now watching that rarer moth, which the country people, fertile in pretty names, call the bee-bird;[1] that bird-like insect, which flutters in the hottest days over the sweetest flowers, inserting its long proboscis into the small tube of the jessamine, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... for girls, tense and startling in its unusual turns. Every reader interested in aviation will be thrilled to follow the strange adventures of Ruth Darrow in her racing monoplane, the Silver Moth. Aided by her chum, Jean Harrington, and her loyal friend, Sandy Morland, Ruth takes part in an exciting air race and ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... charming picture in her imagination. It consisted of three small bedchambers, which were more like what she had been used to call closets; a parlour, the walls of which were, in many places, stained with damp; and a kitchen which smoked. The scanty, moth-eaten furniture of the rooms was very different from the luxury and elegance to which Angelina had been accustomed in the apartments of Lady Diana Chillingworth. Coarse and ill-dressed was the food which Betty Williams with great bustle and awkwardness served up to her ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... transparent wings; but parts, including two peculiarly curved "wing-cases"—if one may borrow a figure from the flying beetles—remained expanded stiffly. In the middle was a long rounded body like the body of a moth, and on this Mr. Butteridge could be seen sitting astride, much as a man bestrides a horse. The wasp-like resemblance was increased by the fact that the apparatus flew with a deep booming hum, exactly the sound made by a wasp ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... deadly antidote; but only the best should be used. If the moth be held over the bottle for ten minutes it will show signs of collapse ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... the scene with admiring eye, albeit her own sweet sober attire, a pearly grey, seemed little in keeping; for the ladies and lords were most richly attired, and the damask and satin cloaks, crimson velvet gowns, silk hoods, and jewelled swords and daggers made a brave show. She was like some moth in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... extra work to pay for it. I ain't beholden to nobody. Elmira swept and dusted the settin'-room and the spare chamber, and washed the breakfast an' dinner dishes, and I guess she paid for that old dress ample. It had been laid up with camphor in a cedar chest, but it had some moth holes in it. It wa'n't worth such ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... circled the pool and searched at the erythrina. Here my footstep roused her; like a gray moth she fled to the bamboo alley, and through the nocturnal vault farther and farther away. I could not overtake her; and when we were once more in the bright moonlight, I sank exhausted by my mad hurry, and in ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... they do nothing. This contempt, which, when it is not caused by idleness, contributes greatly to the elevation of the soul, inspired Jesus with some charming apologues: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth," said he, "where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.[1] No man can serve ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... of this habit when they imagine themselves in danger. For instance, the "fever worm," the larva of one of our common moths,—the Isabella tiger-moth,—is a noted death-feigner, and will "pretend dead" on the slightest provocation. Touch this grub with the toe of your boot, or with the tip of your finger, or with a stick, and it will at once curl up, to all appearances absolutely ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... No, Lorton, 'pon honah; didn't see 'em, I asshaw you. Was it Baby Blake and her moth-ah, now, ah?" and he smiled complacently, as if he had given me a ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... beyond. Man is a grub; his dead clay, as he lies coffined in his grave, is the left-off cocoon he has spun for himself during his earthly life, to burst open and soar from with all his memories about him, even his lost ones. Like the dragon-fly, the butterfly, the moth ... and when they die it is the same, and the same with a blade of grass. We are all, tous tant que nous sommes, little bags of remembrance that never dies; that's what we're for. But we can only bring with us to the common stock what we've got. As Pere Francois used to say, 'La plus belle ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... that I could see the crumbs on the folds of his waistcoat, like food stored on cupboard shelves. I took such a dislike to him that I felt inclined to bounce out as quickly as I had bounced in, but the door had banged mechanically behind me, as if to stop the bell at any cost. The shop smelt of moth powder, old leather, musty paper, and ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... last of May, or the first of June, the little millers, which lay moth-eggs begin to appear. Therefore brush all your woollens, and pack them away in a dark place covered with linen. Pepper, red-cedar chips, tobacco,—indeed, almost any strong spicy smell,—is good to keep moths out of your chests and drawers. But nothing is so good ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... insects around the orchid, and think how the orchid has to select its own particular species of insect and cater for that, and the insect among all the flowers has to select the particular species of orchid; and how the insect, whether butterfly or bee or moth or gnat or ant, or any other of the numerous kinds of insect, and the orchid have to adapt themselves to each other—we see how marvellous the mutual adaptation of flower to insect and insect to flower must have been. We see how the particular species of orchid must have chosen ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... and credit of killing it. The 'Jumping Frog' was the first piece of writing of mine that spread itself through the newspapers and brought me into public notice. Consequently, the 'Saturday Press' was a cocoon and I the worm in it; also, I was the gay-coloured literary moth which its death set free. This simile ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... proprietors of five-legged kittens, mangy lynxes, moth-eaten coyotes, and dancing bears I returned courteous but uncompromising refusals—of course, first submitting all such letters, together with my replies, ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... seven wise men of Greece, born at Priene, in Ionia; lived in the 6th century B.C.; many wise sayings are ascribed to him; was distinguished for his indifference to possessions, which moth and rust can corrupt, and thieves break ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... room grew ruddy from the setting sun. An inn servant entered and busied himself about the place. After him came an aged woman, half gipsy, it seemed. She approached the seat by the window. Her worn mantle, her wide sleeve, seemed to touch the deep stone sill. She was gone like a moth. Glenfernie's eye discovered a folded paper lying in the window. It had not been there five minutes earlier. Now it lay before him like a sudden outgrowth from the stone. He put out a hand and took it up. The woman was gone, the serving-man was gone. Outside flowed the river. Alexander unfolded ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... an ancient inheritance hath proved like a moth fretting a garment, and secretly consumed both: or like the eagle that stole a coal from the altar, and thereby set her nest on fire, which consumed both her young eagles and herself ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... article of food, and equally abundant at a particular season of the year, in the eastern portion of the continent, is a species of moth which the natives procure from the cavities and hollows of the mountains in certain localities. This, when roasted, has something of the appearance and flavour of an almond badly peeled. It is called in the dialect of ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... strange letter! (Reads.) 'And so the moth has come too near the candle at last, and has been singed into—shall I say Respectability? I congratulate him, and hope he will be as happy as he deserves to be.' What does that mean? Is she congratulating you about ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... wake easily. She is a sound sleeper and she's getting a little hard of hearing"; and lifting the candlestick to light her way, Miss Amelia turned back up the stairs, while the flame flitted like a golden moth into the dimness. ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... beauty, or the potion of love, which is beauty's handmaiden. There were remedies plus remedies; the same skin-food was warranted to create double-chins or destroy them; the same tonic killed superfluous hair or made it grow on bald spots. A freckle to eradicate, a wrinkle to remove, a moth-patch to bleach, a grey hair to dye; nothing was impossible here, not even credulity. It was but meet that the mistress should steal past the servant, that the servant should dodge the mistress. Every woman craves beauty, but she does not ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... Schree warriors followed us into the cavern, and last of all came the two hopping Jivros. The intense attraction of the statue drew me, but I remembered how I had avoided it before, and kept my eyes averted. Like light on a moth's eyes, the power of it seemed to strike into the will only when the eyes were ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... restored to their natural state by the hand or a soft brush, or re-curled with a blunt knife, dipped in very hot water. Furs and feathers not in constant use should be wrapped up in linen washed in lye. From May to September they are subject to being made the depository of moth-eggs. ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... as their own worst enemies. They know nothing of the luxury of doing good, and when they are called to make up their last account, they will mourn that they have no investments in those funds that never fluctuate—in that bank "where moth and rust doth not corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal." Let such remember, moreover, that as they brought nothing into world, so they can carry nothing out of it. And let it also be remembered, in the language of another, that were there as many worlds as there ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... Rabbit often passed. He never had paid particular attention to it. One morning he stopped to rest under it. Happening to look up, he saw a most astonishing thing. Fastened on the sharp thorns of one of the branches were three big grasshoppers, a big moth, two big caterpillars, a lizard, a small mouse and a young English Sparrow. Do you wonder that Peter thought he must be dreaming? He couldn't imagine how those creatures could have become fastened on those ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess |
