"Nest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod, Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God: I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies: By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod I will heartily lay me a-hold ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... reach them if you did, Chicken Little. See, you'd have to go clear out on the ends of the branches. Perhaps if we'd go up on the hill above—it's pretty steep here—we could reach some. It will be hard to get through—there's a perfect rat's nest ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... his feet. He saw her coming, and in the moment of her leap sprung dexterously off the slide on the rough ice, steadying himself by the shoulder of the next in the file, which unlucky follower, thus unexpectedly checked in his career, fell plump backwards, knocking down the rest of the line like a nest of card-houses. There is no harm done; but there they lie, roaring, kicking, sprawling, in every attitude of comic distress, whilst Jack Rapley and Mayflower, sole authors of this calamity, stand apart ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... not see nor hear. She had gone forward with a boy on either side of her, and Susan walking backwards in front, all telling the story of a cuckoo,—or gowk, as Sara called it in Purday's language,—which they had found in a water-wagtail's nest in a heap of stones; how it sat up, constantly gaping with its huge mouth, while the poor little foster-parents toiled to their utmost to keep it supplied with caterpillars, and the last time it was seen, when full-fledged, were trying to lure it to come ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to be carried home in her and handed over to the Governor of Rochelle to be sent back to Paris. Those are Monsieur de Denonville's orders, and if they be not carried out to the letter, then we shall have the whole hornet's nest about our ears." ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Sir Walter Manny found the king inexorable. The strict laws of war in those days justified the barbarous practise of putting to death the garrison of a town captured under such circumstances. Calais had been for many years a nest of pirates, and vessels issuing from its port had been a scourge to the commerce of England and Flanders, and the king was fully determined to punish it severely. Sir Walter Manny interceded long and boldly, and represented to the ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... that I did the unjust injunction lay, You should have loved me more than to obey. I know you did this mutiny design; But I'll your love-plot quickly countermine. Let my crown go; he never shall return; I, like a phoenix, in my nest will burn. ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... which he is more cast down or occupied than by the affairs or sorrows of any other person. While Mrs. Pendennis is disquieting herself about losing her son, and that anxious hold she has had of him, as long as he has remained in the mother's nest, whence he is about to take flight into the great world beyond—while the Major's great soul chafes and frets, inwardly vexed as he thinks what great parties are going on in London, and that he might be sunning himself in the glances of Dukes and Duchesses, but for those cursed ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tent-maker had come down from town to build a canvas hall, draped red and white; and a local man had fitted the marquee with gas and floor complete for a supper-room. Tempting refreshments were provided, and a nurseryman had contrived a natural garden here and there, not forgetting to make a cosy nest for the band. The officers of the two regiments meant to do the thing well, cost what it might, and the invitations had been looked upon as prizes for ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... (Apis dorsata), which build huge honeycombs, suspended in the open air from the underside of the lofty branches of the highest trees. These are of a semicircular form, and often three or four feet in diameter. I once saw the natives take a bees' nest, and a very interesting sight it was. In the valley where I used to collect insects, I one day saw three or four Timorese men and boys under a high tree, and, looking up, saw on a very lofty horizontal branch three large bees' combs. The tree was straight and smooth-barked ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... its arabesque pilasters, its richly mullioned windows, its basso-reliefs, its beautiful tracery, and its forest of snow-white pinnacles soaring in the sunlight, so calm and moveless, and yet so airy and light, that you fear the nest breeze will scatter them. You can compare it only to some Alpine group, whose flashing peaks shoot up by hundreds ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... had been warned against it, would possibly win her from his friend, who, unconsciously perhaps, had often crossed his path, watching him jealously lest he should look too often and too long upon the fragile Rose, blooming so sweetly in her bird's-nest of a home among the tall old trees ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... "Don't you hear its mother calling to it? There she is on that branch, flapping her wings and calling. She wants it in the nest again but she does not know how to get it there. Why don't you put it in the nest ...
— The Grasshopper Stories • Elizabeth Davis Leavitt
... present conception of the world, and were therefore quite rubbed out of her mind, or, rather, lay somewhere buried and untouched, closed up and plastered over so that they should not escape, as when bees, in order to protect the result of their labour, will sometimes plaster a nest of worms. Therefore, the present Nekhludoff was not the man she had once loved with a pure love, but only a rich gentleman whom she could, and must, make use of, and with whom she could only have the same relations as ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... fine evening to Dullstroom Church, to ascertain if the Steenkamps would agree to surrender and fight under the British flag. They arrived there about 9 p.m., and finding that the inmates had all gone to sleep, loudly knocked at the door. This was opened by a certain youthful Mr. Van der Nest, who was staying in the church for the night with his brother. J. Viljoen, alias "Cooper," and acting as interpreter between the pseudo-English and the renegade Boers, addressed the young man ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... to think if we had money our troubles would be over, but—Lord, that's when they begin! You see, if I was bright an' knew what slick people is up to, I'd be all right; but—Why, I'm like a settin' hen. I can feel the eggs under me, but how am I goin' to keep the skunks away when they smell the nest? I'm 'most tempted to turn everything I got over to some honest man an' let him han'le it. Some feller that had ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... breast; and there were other women, helpless and homeless, who had sought shelter within the walls. Therefore, resistance being quite hopeless, our chief offered to surrender. But the English leader replied, 'Give no quarter; they are wild beasts, not men. Burn up the wasps' nest, maggots and all!' They did it; faggots were piled round the building and set on fire, and those who attempted to escape were received on the English spears and tossed back into the flames. The eldest son was away with ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... go," Bud decided and his cousins were not at all averse to this, for it was no fun for one member of the trio to lose even a few hours' sleep while waiting to call his relief to take the nest trick. ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... swept on with the battle line. Alas! that battle line and others also were driven back with terrible slaughter before the day closed. Captain Nichol was left in the ditch where he had been placed, and poor Sam Wetherby lay on his back, staring with eyes that saw not at a shattered bird's nest in the bushes above his head. The letter in his ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... of adynamia and repose." This motor activity is of the essence of the impulse of detumescence, because without it the sperm cells could not be brought into the neighborhood of the germ cell and be propelled into the organic nest which is assigned for their conjunction ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the bushes Speeds startled away; The hoarse little jackdaw Flies off to the top Of a birch-tree, and raises A harsh, grating shriek, A most horrible clamour. A weak little peewit Falls headlong in terror 170 From out of its nest, And the mother comes flying In search of her fledgeling. She twitters in anguish. Alas! she can't find it. The crusty old cuckoo Awakes and bethinks him To call to a neighbour: Ten times he commences And gets out of tune, 180 But ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... stories about this bird. As the natives of Guinea used to cut off their legs, and dry them, and sell them, of course they reached Europe without feet. So the people there got up a report that the bird lived always in the air, floated by, its light feathers; that it used its shoulders for its nest; that it rested only by hanging from a branch by its tail-filaments; that its food was morning dew; with other reports as droll as these. There are several kinds of Birds of Paradise, but the one in the cut is the most common, and is that of ...
— Charley's Museum - A Story for Young People • Unknown
... some superb plants of the glossy tropical-looking bird's- nest fern, or Asplenium Nidus, which makes its home on the stems and branches of trees, and brightens the forest with its great shining fronds. I got a specimen from a koa tree. The plant had nine fronds, each ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... among the cottonwoods which grew along the river on their land. Across the stream, which was fordable there, a young man and his younger wife, with the saddle-marks of the city on them, had their white nest. Agnes could hear the bride singing early in the morning, when the sun came up and poured its melted gold over that hopeful scene, with never a cloud ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... melancholy he named the odes he wrote there Tristia. Why did Virgil make the ghost of Anchises appear to Eneas? Because he came from Mantua. Do you know Mantua? A marsh, a frog-pond, a regular manufactory of rheumatism, an atmosphere of vapors, and consequently a nest ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... my attic-room. Sit down, my friend; My swallow's-nest is high and hard to gain; The stairs are long and steep, but at the end The rest repays ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... walked in Alabama my morning walk, I have seen where the she-bird, the mocking-bird, sat on her nest in the briars, hatching her brood. I have seen the he-bird also; I have paused to hear him, near at hand, inflating his throat, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... was not so large as I supposed, nor yet so convenient, and, standing where it did, it is difficult to suppose that it was healthful. Yet a large family of stalwart sons and tall daughters was housed and reared, and came to man and woman-hood, in that nest of little chambers; so that the face of the earth was peppered with the children of the manse, and letters with outlandish stamps became familiar to the local postman, and the walls of the little chambers brightened with the wonders of the East. The dullest ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... did not speak, he gave voice to the sullen rage within him—"I took his cattle and his ploughs as I take his birds. They ain't his to give; they're mine to take—the birds are. I guess when God set the first hen partridge on her nest in Sagamore woods he wasn't thinking particularly about breeding ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... O, hold me up a little, I shall go away in the jest else. He has got on his whole nest of night-caps, and lock'd himself up in the top of the house, as high as ever he can climb from the noise. I peep'd in at a cranny, and saw him sitting over a cross-beam of the roof, like him on the sadler's horse in Fleet-street, upright: and he ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... made a desperate venture upon the turf, a grand coup that would have set him on his legs for some time, but the venture turned out the wrong way, and Sir Francis was a defaulter. He began then to think there was nothing for it but to drop into some nice government nest, where, as I have told you, there would be plenty to get and nothing to do. Any place with much to do would not suit him, or he it; he was too empty-headed for work requiring talent; you may have remarked that a man given to Sir Francis ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... answered Carter. "The master says it's it very likely spot in which to find a pirate's nest—just a group of some five- and-twenty rocks, they are not much larger, and one island about ten miles long and six wide, with reefs and shoals all round. Did you ever smell ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... of Pennsylvania. And within the wide range of his American domains, the English King could point to one spot or another and say: "Here the Spaniards have built a chaste and beautiful mission; here the French have founded a noble city; here my stubborn Roundheads have planted a whole nest of commonwealths; here my Dutch neighbors thought they stole a march on me, but I forestalled them; this valley is filled with Germans, and that plateau is covered with Scotch-Irish, while the Swedes have taken possession ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... idea that he was able to go to sleep after that. Even three months' school—the period he gave Mrs. Dellogg for her acutest grief—would do. Tide them over. Give them room to turn round in. It was a great solution. He took off his spectacles, snuggled down into his rosy nest, and fell asleep with the instantaneousness of one whose mind is ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... hope of clear weather, we set out from Lizard Island to return to the ship, and in our way landed upon the low sandy island with trees upon it, which we had remarked in our going out. Upon this island we saw an incredible number of birds, chiefly sea-fowl: We found also the nest of an eagle with young ones, which we killed; and the nest of some other bird, we knew not what, of a most enormous size; it was built with sticks upon the ground, and was no less than six-and-twenty feet in circumference, and two ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... nest, for thy love and thy rest And though little troubled with sloth Drunken lark! thou would'st be loth To be such a traveller as I. Happy, happy liver! With a soul as strong as a mountain river Pouring out praise to th' Almighty giver, Joy ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... which arose from a prodigious depth; and they were extended along the sharp narrow ridge of the rock down to the very bottom of the valley. It was a long flight of jagged precipitous steps descending from the wolf's den, or rather eagle's nest, down to ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... humble worshippers to whom it was the gate of heaven. On one side of the garden was a stream, which turned a quaint mill-wheel, and an island in the stream, connected with the banks by a bridge, made a pleasant resort. A little nest of beauty, such as Etrun was, in the midst of the war, most restful to the soul, especially after a visit to the line. Of course, we had to be careful about screening all lights, for a shell landed one night in a hut opposite mine. Luckily the shell was ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... sounded his robber whistle. The hero's heart quailed not, but when he was within ten versts the Nightingale whistled so loud that Iliya's steed fell down upon his knees. Then Iliya of Murom went straight up to the nest, which was built upon twelve oaks, and the Robber Nightingale looked forth upon the Russian hero, whistled with all his might, and tried to slay him. But Iliya took his strong bow, and laying an arrow upon it, shot straight into the nest ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... mother alive who perpetually fanned her face and wore a ball-dress and a wreath; things that I remembered of my mother. The ladies observed that it was clear I was a romantic child. I noticed that the old gentleman said 'Humph,' very often, and his eyebrows were like a rook's nest in a tree when I spoke of my father walking away with Shylock's descendant and not since returning to me. A big book was fetched out of his library, in which he read my grandfather's name. I heard him mention it aloud. I had been placed on a stool beside a tea-tray near the fire, and there ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... far side of the beaver-meadow, where was a great, grassy dome. The mother had made a note of this dome some time before. It takes a number of such domes to raise a brood of partridges. For this was an ant's nest. The old one stepped on top, looked about a moment, then gave half a dozen vigorous rakes with her claws. The friable ant-hilt was broken open, and the earthen galleries scattered in ruins down the slope. The ants swarmed out ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... on like demons, smashing a pill box here, routing out a machine gun nest there, until the second line was carried. Then the conquerors paused ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... only succeed in listening for the sound of her voice. He kept no more hold on the conversation than was sufficient to allow him to put in a word now and then to cover his preoccupation. The instinct of simulation asserted itself as it springs in a bird which flies away to decoy the hunter from its nest. He feigned to be interested, to be as usual, but all his blood was trembling and tumbling with this new delirium; and all struggles to forget his ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... the fun was fast and furious. Mulvaney, on the floor in a nest of papers, was wrestling with a vast bone, Mrs. Farrington was admiring a bit of Hope's dainty handiwork, and Hubert was trying hard to realize that at last he was the proud owner of a watch. Everyone was happy, and Hope and Theodora congratulated themselves upon ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... 'Hans'—probably because he is so friendly and helpful. Everybody likes him except that Shellfish Valley crowd, and they feel, I suppose, that I put him down here to keep tab on them, which is the fact. They're a nest of bad ones—a lot of hold-overs from the past—and would have frozen him out long ago ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... settled, Smart resumed his burden, warning his young master to be more quiet in his next announcement, if he had nothing better to encounter than a nest of parrots. We found grapes in every direction. Benjie also showed us the Banana tree, gave us a perfect volume of his discovering yams, and danced with glee before a small plantation of sugar canes. Yet all this time we saw no living ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... very sick for home, Sick for the home that my love haunts! Far from that foreign country, As the bird far from its nest, I am ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... balm-drops hung All night upon his branches. Yet let none Of woman born, presume to build his hopes On the worn cliff of brief prosperity, Or from the present promise, predicate The future joy. The exulting bird that sings Mid the green curtains of its leafy nest His tuneful trust untroubled there to live, And there to die, may meet the archer's shaft When next it spreads the wing. The tempest folds O'er the smooth forehead of the summer noon Its undiscover'd purpose, to emerge Resistless from its armory, and whelm In floods ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... said Dorothy, anxious to defend her management. "The old hen stole her nest, and she left them the day before the rain. She's making herself comfortable ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... room; the clear walls frescoed with graceful wreaths of floating figures. In the eastern window, through which the earliest sunbeams loved to fall, stood an alabaster altar; on it a chain of faded dandelions. The bed was a lovely nest, the lines flowing in long curves,—a barge of Venus for lovers to voyage to heaven in. On a table near at hand lay some embroidered work at which Gnulemah's magic needle had been busy of late. Balder glanced at ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... The nest of the she-bear is a wonderful illustration of instinct, and a proof of the fact that a thick wall of snow is an excellent protection against cold. Toward the month of December the bear selects a spot at the foot of some cliff, where she burrows in the snow, and, remaining quiet, allows ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... never had the enthusiasm of the other two, but I rather liked the idea. And I did restrain them. It was my suggestion, for instance, that we wear sandals without stockings, instead of going in our bare feet, which was a good thing, for the first day out Aggie stepped into a hornet's nest. And I ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... made, with some boards, an open nest, For a roof took the lid of a box; Then quietly laid herself down to rest, And thought she was safe from ...
— The Fox and the Geese; and The Wonderful History of Henny-Penny • Anonymous
... see a thrush's nest," explained Alene. Her face glowed with animation beneath Nettie's pink lined bonnet; her lips and fingers were stained with berries and Laura asked herself if this could be the white-cheeked, forlorn, little Peggy-Alone she had seen standing beside ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... attached by elastic threads to the common receptacle. Ultimately the secondary receptacles are hollow, and spores are produced in the interior, borne on spicules.[H] The appearance in some genera as of a little bird's-nest containing eggs has furnished the ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... became so enthusiastic in these numerous proclamations that I wrote on the bias, and zigzagged over the page with fine abandon. But no teacher ever even hinted to me that the knowledge I acquired from my contest with a nest of belligerent bumblebees had the slightest connection with power. When I groped my way home with both eyes swollen shut I was never lionized. Indeed, no! Anything but that! I couldn't milk the cows that evening, and couldn't study my lesson, and therefore, my ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... and instincts, and feelings of a household become changed as the young birds begin to flutter with feathered wings, and have half-formed thoughts of leaving the parental nest! A few months back, Frank had reigned almost autocratic over the lesser subjects of the kingdom of Greshamsbury. The servants, for instance, always obeyed him, and his sisters never dreamed of telling anything which he directed should not be ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... "subjects" in the splendid ceilings—medallions of purple and brown, of brave old melancholy colour, medals as of old reddened gold, embossed and beribboned, all toned with time and all flourished and scolloped and gilded about, set in their great moulded and figured concavity (a nest of white cherubs, friendly creatures of the air) and appreciated by the aid of that second tier of smaller lights, straight openings to the front, which did everything, even with the Baedekers and photographs ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... thousand engaging approaches. West himself warmed to the idea. He had drunk freely of the pleasures of single blessedness, under the most favorable conditions; was now becoming somewhat jaded with them; and looked with approval upon the prospect of a little nest, or indeed one not so little, duly equipped with the usual faithful helpmeet who should share his sorrows, joys, etc. The nest he could feather decently enough himself; the sole problem, a critical one in its way, was to decide upon the helpmeet. West was neither college boy nor sailor. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... to weep because men keep not His law, to cry more about His interests than its own. It is willing for its own house to lie desolate, if that will promote the spread of God's kingdom. It is willing for the sparrow to find a nest on its own altar, if by that it can replenish and ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... credit of nature, is seldom seen in any parts but these—muddy, foggy, wet, dark, cold, and unutterably wretched in every possible respect. Now, C—— has enormous whiskers, which straggle all down his throat in such weather, and stick out in front of him, like a partially unravelled bird's-nest; so that he looks queer enough at the best, but when he is very wet, and in a state between jollity (he is always very jolly with me) and the deepest gravity (going to a funeral, you know), it is utterly impossible to resist him; ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... bringing up a family, or speculate upon the delights of domestic affection. I only say that as a fact she behaves in a way which is at once injurious to her own chances of individual survival, and absolutely necessary to the survival of the species. The abnormal bird who deserts her nest escapes many dangers; but if all birds were devoid of the instinct, the birds would ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... ought to,' said the Parson getting quite 'arnest. 'What else be they good for? You just bring out the eggs, now, and put 'em in the nest, and I'll ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... already shown him great sailing qualities: the log was hove at sundown and gave eleven knots; so that with a good breeze abaft, few fore-and-aft rigged pirates could overhaul her. And this wind carried her swiftly past one nest of them, at all events: the Ladrone isles. At nine P.M., all the lights were ordered out. Mrs. Beresford had brought a novel on board, and refused to comply; the master-at-arms insisted; she threatened him with the vengeance of the Company, the premier, and the nobility and gentry of ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... up. "Done got into nest ob snakes," he declared, "reckon I killed fifty of 'em, but more and more kept coming so I had to run. Golly, I 'spect thar was mighty nigh a hundred chased me most to camp. Dat's ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... misfortunes as the raid of the little pigs among the young corn; the more or less serious peccadilloes of the childlike Samoan servants; and that crowning catastrophe, so comically described by Mr Stevenson, when the carpenter's horse put its foot into a nest of fourteen eggs, and 'made an ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... took about ten minutes for the first of them to reach the dirt road, where our autos stood hub-deep in mud, and by that time we had shoved and pulley-hauled them into movement, our engines making as much row as a nest of machine-guns as they struggled against the strain. We didn't want to be swamped ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... Cabinet, chief among them being Mr Foster and Sir Hibbert Tupper, had revolted against their leader. The revolters urged the supreme need of forming the strongest possible administration in the crisis, and to that end demanded the resignation of the prime minister. Bowell bitterly denounced the 'nest of traitors,' and sought to form a Cabinet without their aid, but the strikers picketed every possible candidate. Finally a compromise was reached by which the bolters were to return under Bowell's leadership for the session and Sir Charles Tupper was ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... known our power, Saxon and Celt have bowed bare-headed to us, and with her it ends. In this stronghold many times her fathers have found refuge from their foes and gained breathing-time after battles by sea and land. From this nest, like eagles, they have swooped down, carrying all before them, and here, at last, when betrayed and hunted, they found refuge. Here no foreign king could rule over them; here they learnt the lesson that Christ is the only king, and that all ...
— Elsket - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... excitement!" said the Snowy Owl. "You must come in and be bandaged this minute, Peggy! Come right along to the Nest; I have bandages ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... freely, and whenever a bird was found in building, or a squirrel's hole was discovered, the finder tacked his name on the tree and thereby confirmed his ownership, as he did if he placed a box in which a nest was built. The ticket must not blow off, and the right at first lasted only one season. In the rabbit-land every trap that was set preempted ground for a fixed number of yards about it. Some grasping boys soon made many ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... summertime they used to go out and mow corn in the fields, and one summer when they had laid their little lad by the side of a sheaf, an eagle swooped down, caught up the child, carried him into a forest, and laid him in its nest. Now in this forest three bandits chanced to be wandering at the same time. They heard the child crying in the eagle's nest: "Oo-oo! oo-oo! oo-oo!" so they went up to the oak on which was the nest and said one to another, "Let us hew down ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... wood of Cuan find no rest or no sleep in their dwelling-place; the little wren cannot find shelter in her nest ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... wind swept the sand and straw from the stubble-fields, the road was a broad causeway without ditches or hedges, the horses had to wade alternately through puddles and deep sand. Yellow sand gleamed through the scanty herbage in all directions wherever a field-mouse had made her way to her nest or an active mole had done what he could to diversify the unbroken plain. Wherever the ground sank, stagnant water lodged, and there hollow willow-trees stretched their crippled arms in the air, their boughs flapping ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... a half an hour, I whoops now and then; at last I hears the answer a long ways off, and tries to follow it, but I couldn't do it, and directly I judged I'd got into a nest of towheads, for I had little dim glimpses of them on both sides of me—sometimes just a narrow channel between, and some that I couldn't see I knowed was there because I'd hear the wash of the current against the old dead brush and trash that hung over the banks. Well, I warn't long loosing the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... I preferred the icy wind to the stinking cattle-stalls and insect-infested straw below. We were packed in like sardines. Men were retching and groaning, cussing and growling. At last I found a coil of rope. It was a huge coil with a hole in the centre—something like a large bird's nest. I got into this hole and curled up like a dormouse. Here I did not feel the cold so much, and lying down I didn't feel sick. The moon glittered on the great gray billows. The cattle-boat heaved up and slid down the mountains. She pitched and rolled and slithered ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... for what he was, finite and not final, a being of compromises and adaptations. I had traced his lungs, for example, from a swimming bladder, step by step, with scalpel and probe, through a dozen types or more, I had seen the ancestral caecum shrink to that disease nest, the appendix of to-day, I had watched the gill slit patched slowly to the purposes of the ear and the reptile jaw suspension utilised to eke out the needs of a sense organ taken from its native and natural water. I had worked out the development of those extraordinarily ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... exist imperfectly developed male and female Termites, with wings much shorter than those of queen and king, which serve to continue the species if a fully developed king and queen do not after swarming (which no doubt is for an occasional cross) enter [the] nest. Curiously like cleistogamic flowers.") The manner in which you refer to to my chapter on crossing is one of the most elegant compliments which I have ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... fight at Frying-Pan; arousing the hornets' nest there, and the feat performed by Colonel Surry, in carrying off through the fire of the sharp-shooters, on the pommel of his saddle, a beautiful girl who declared that she was "not at ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... halted under the courthouse, in the middle of the village, and surprised Cornwallis and the whole British army by a resistance so bloody and stubborn as to prove the right of that place to the name of "Hornet's Nest," which Cornwallis bestowed ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... church, as usual,—I didn't hear the sermon," he replied. "And I never could make head or tail of theology—I always told you that. What I deplore, Hodder, is that you've contrived to make a hornets' nest out of the most peaceful and contented congregation in America. Couldn't you have managed to stick to religion instead of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... cashier came out with the chief clerk. It was no use trying to say a word to him when he was with the chief clerk. The man felt that his position was bad enough. He had been obliged to offer an abject apology to Mr. Alleyne for his impertinence but he knew what a hornet's nest the office would be for him. He could remember the way in which Mr. Alleyne had hounded little Peake out of the office in order to make room for his own nephew. He felt savage and thirsty and revengeful, annoyed with himself and with everyone else. ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... the guttering dip burns low, the passionate need which then comes upon one to wreak justice, to revolt, as from a sense of duty, in order that one may save wife and children from consumption, in order that they also may have a warm nest where life shall be a possibility! Ah! the want that shivers with the bitter cold—therein lies the excess of social injustice, the most terrible of schools, where the poor learn to realise their sufferings, where they are roused to indignation, and swear to make those sufferings cease, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Tappington did NOT give her away. That saintly prodigal passed his period of probation with exemplary rectitude, but, either from a dread of old temptation, or some unexplained reason, he preferred to remain in Portland, and his fastidious nest on Telegraph Hill knew him no more. The key of the little door on the side street passed, naturally, into the keeping of ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... which was merely a seat covered overhead and on the sides, open in front, and neatly paved with pebbles. This little bower was perched, like a hawk's nest, almost upon the edge of a projecting crag, the highest point of the line of rock which we have noticed; and had been selected by poor Clara, on account of the prospect which it commanded down the valley. One of her gloves lay on the small rustic table ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Her companions crowded round her to hear again the story of her adventure on the Eagle's Crag. Gertrude never knew how she had been betrayed by Wendot's brothers. She believed that they had been accidentally hindered from coming to her rescue by the difficulties of the climb after the eagle's nest. There was a faint, uncomfortable misgiving in her mind with regard to the black-browed twins, but it did not amount to actual suspicion, far less to any certainty of their enmity; and although Eleanor had heard the ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... linking gold, are avenues of sleep: But see how gable ends and parapets In gradual beauty and significance Emerge! And did you hear That little twitter-and-cheep, Breaking inordinately loud and clear On this still, spectral, exquisite atmosphere? 'Tis a first nest at matins! And behold A rakehell cat—how furtive and acold! A spent witch homing from some infamous dance— Obscene, quick-trotting, see her tip and fade Through shadowy railings into a pit of shade! And lo! a little wind and shy, The smell of ships (that earnest of romance), A sense of space ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... Luke, you know. A close corporation of four—that's enough to know it. Can't trust the rest. We'll let 'em keep their old political hen sitting on their china egg. We'll hatch the good egg in our own nest. Then for a glorious old cackle! Vard Waymouth will be the next Governor ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... chirped a voice. "That leaf belonged to me. It was for my nest, and the wind blew it ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... promoting free and fair trade to open up new markets for America's entrepreneurs and manufacturers and farmers — to create jobs for American workers. Younger workers should have the opportunity to build a nest egg by saving part of their Social Security taxes in a personal retirement account. (Applause.) We should make the Social Security system a source of ownership for the American people. (Applause.) And we should limit the burden of government ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... her, She's akneelin' with the rest, She, thet ough' to ha' clung ferever In her grand old eagle-nest; She thet ough' to stand so fearless W'ile the wracks are round her hurled, Holdin' up a beacon peerless To the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... knows what's in the will," he said to himself. "He knows how to feather his own nest. I hope he's ...
— Making His Way - Frank Courtney's Struggle Upward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the road beside us throng the peoples sad and broken, weeping women, children hungry, homeless like little birds cast out of their nest. With their hearts aflame, untamed, glorying in martyrdom they hail us passing quickly, "Halt not, O Comrades, yonder glimmers the star of our hope, the red-centered dawn in the East! Halt not, lest you perish ere you reach the Land of ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... meeting" in the town-hall, over which Boone presided, one thrilling orator hinted that fire, if not the law, could "relieve a loyal community of the Copperhead's nest!" "It was an insult, as well as a menace, to have the patrician palace of disloyalty flaunting its grandeurs among a people loyal and devoted, whose sons and brothers were battling for the Union. Every rebel ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... and triumph, true communion with God is bound to no mechanical order, and may begin with gazing on God, and realizing the mysteries of beauty in His secret place, ere it drops to earth. The lark sings as it descends from the "privacy of glorious light" to its nest in the stony furrows as sweetly, though more plaintively, than whilst it circles upwards to the sky. It is perhaps a nobler effect of faith to begin with God and hymn the victory as if already won, than to begin with trouble and to call ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... that grand melodrama in which Juliet Araminta played the part of the Bandit's Child, her efforts to decoy pursuit from the lair of the persecuted Mime were likened to the arts of the skylark to lure eye and hand from the nest of his young. More appropriate that illustration now to the parent-bird than then to the fledgling. Farther and farther from the nest in which all his love was centred fled the old man. What if Jasper did discover him now; that very discovery would mislead the pursuit from Sophy. Most improbable ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... observers that an attack upon the slave-dealing and slave-hunting establishments of Egypt by a foreigner—an Englishman—would be equal to a raid upon a hornets' nest, that all efforts to suppress the old-established traffic in negro slaves would be encountered with a determined opposition, and that the prime agent and leader of such an expedition must be regarded ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... break Kees of his natural vices, and that, unless I chained him up every morning, I should never get an egg, I endeavoured to accomplish my purpose in another manner: I trained one of my dogs, as soon as the hen cackled, to run to the nest, and bring me the egg without breaking it. In a few days the dog had learned his lesson; but Kees, as soon as he heard the hen cackle, ran with him to the nest. A contest now took place between them, who should have the egg; often the dog was foiled, although ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... this had passed, we looked, and lo! this maiden whom we have brought hither stood by the dead corpse. And when she saw that it lay bare as before, she sent up an exceeding bitter cry, even as a bird whose young ones have been taken from the nest. Then she cursed them that had done this deed, and brought dust and sprinkled it upon the dead man, and poured water upon him three times. Then we ran and laid hold upon her and accused her that she had ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... doe noe vile or paynfull office, soe as she hath little to doe but read and pray for y^e poor souls, and feed 'em with savourie messes, and they are alle so harmonious and full of cheer, as to be like birds in a nest. Mercy deserves theire blessings more than I. Were I a free agent, she s^d not be alone now, and I hope ne'er to be withheld ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... pleased smirk said that he, too, was about to put something over on the notorious Free Traders. Jellico studied him for a couple of long seconds during which the hum of Salariki voices was the threatening buzz of a disturbed wasps' nest. There was no way out of this—to refuse conflict was to lose all they had won with the clansmen. And they did not doubt that Kallee had, in some way, triggered ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... at that cot, these two handsome, happy young people, and at myself, my disordered hair and clothes, my boots covered with mud, gloomy thoughts in my mind, and I felt like an owl in a nest of nightingales. ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... learned of schools, Of the wild bee's morning chase, Of the wild-flower's time and place, Flight of fowl and habitude Of the tenants of the wood; How the tortoise bears his shell, How the woodchuck digs his cell, And the ground-mole sinks his well; How the robin feeds her young, How the oriole's nest is hung; Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow, Where the ground-nut trails its vine, Where the wood-grape's clusters shine; Of the black wasp's cunning way, Mason of his walls of clay, And the architectural plans Of gray hornet artisans!— For, eschewing books and tasks, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... him back long years agone, when, as a happy child, He wandered, too, amid the woods, on summer mornings mild; Aye, back to his home and mother; back to his old home nest, To the blessed scenes of childhood; back into peace ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... Mr. Lloyd will take you," Abby said, decisively. "Thank you, Mr. Lloyd; she isn't fit to be out." She urged her sister towards the sleigh, and Robert assisted her into the fur-lined nest. ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Otto; "we must first of all escape out of this hornets' nest, to which I led you. My honour is engaged. I said but now we were as poor as Job; and behold! not many miles from here I have a house of my own to which I will conduct you. Otto the Prince being down, we must try what luck remains to Otto the Hunter. Come, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Ulf the Red; Like a wolf's was his shaggy head, His teeth as large and white; His beard, of gray and russet blended, Round as a swallow's nest descended; As standard-bearer he defended Olaf's ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... of the bloody butchery at Wyoming had aroused his iron nerve to its utmost tension against tories, and in this condition he was ordered with his regiment to Robinson's Farms, N. J. Here he breaks up a "nest" of tories, who were supplying the English with hay, grain and other things necessary for their army. An anecdote of this bloodless battle was related to the writer by one of Col. Bigelow's men, who was present at the time. The English had ...
— Reminiscences of the Military Life and Sufferings of Col. Timothy Bigelow, Commander of the Fifteenth Regiment of the Massachusetts Line in the Continental Army, during the War of the Revolution • Charles Hersey
... and impotent complaints at Constantinople, or endeavoured to negotiate directly with Algiers, as in the case of the negotiations of Sanson Napollon during the ministry of Richelieu. More rarely their patience became exhausted, and ships were sent to bombard this nest of pirates. Two naval demonstrations were made by France during the reign of Louis XIV., one by Abraham Duquesne in 1682, and the other by Marshal Jean d'Estrees in 1688, but these repressive measures were too intermittent to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... at the nest there was only one bee, And only one berry to pick, And only one drink in the jug at the tree: But that boy was ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... number of yearly appointments should be doubled or quadrupled. In this cold ague of economy with which the nation is attacked just now, and which leaves old army officers unpaid for a disagreeably long time, the chances of any addition to the flock in the nest are exceedingly small. In fact, while the average American in war time recognized the utility of a trained band of tacticians, he is apt to grumble at their drain upon his pocket in piping times of peace. Only ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... wits. And as well or as poorly as he cared. He's the sort of man everyone instinctively asks advice of—me, you, his valet, the farmer who meets him at a boundary fence, the fellow who sits nest him in ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... nest," she sighed, "and thinking one's self secure in it for life! Oh! it is worse and more changeable in this latter century than in any other! Does ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge |
