"Rook" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be reduced to the ranks; the animal is spoiled by sheer drink. Having been drunk every day in Khartoum, and now being separated from his liquor, he is plunged into a black melancholy. He sits upon the luggage like a sick rook, doing minstrelsy, playing the rababa (guitar), and smoking the whole day, unless asleep, which is half that time: he is sighing after the merissa (beer) pots of Egypt. This man is an illustration of missionary success. He was brought up from ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... openly avowed, that friendship must not interfere with business; which being paraphrased, means simply that a consideration of money goes before any consideration of affection known to this cold-blooded gang, that they have not even the honour of thieves, and will rook their nearest and dearest as readily as a stranger? I hope I would go as far as most to serve a friend; but I declare openly I would not put on my hat to do a pleasure to society. I may starve my appetites and control my temper for the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... itself into many little cataracts; and saw ye ever such a fairy one as that flowing through below an ivied bridge into a circular basin overshadowed by the uncertain twilight of many checkering branches, and washing the rook-base of a Hermitage, in which a sin-sickened or pleasure-palled man might, before his hairs were grey, forget all the gratifications and all the guilt of the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... evidently a wedding; and I was just in time to see it, for the procession was passing at that moment. First came a splendid cock-a-doodle, all in black and gold, like a herald, blowing his trumpet, and marching with a very dignified step. Then came a rook, in black, like a minister, with spectacles and white cravat. A lark and bullfinch followed,—friends, I suppose; and then the bride and bridegroom. Miss Wren was evidently a Quakeress; for she wore a sober dress, and a little white veil, through ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... on 'em belonged to a man as I once knowed; leastways I remember him as a young chap. He was underkeeper at the Hall. The young woman he wanted to marry wouldn't 'ave 'im, so he shot hisself wi' a rook gun. I knowed it was 'im by the 'ole in 'is 'ead, no bigger nor a pea. Just think o' that! No bigger nor a big pea, I tell yer, and as round as if it had been done wi' a punch. I told my missis about it when I went 'ome to my tea. I says, 'Do yer remember 'Arry Pole, the ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... to bigger birds—ducks and puffins. Puffins have beaks like poll parrots, and are about the size of a rook; they have neat white shirt-fronts, and their beaks are red and yellow and blue, but they have silly faces, as if they thought of nothing but their own fine clothes. They live near water on cliffs, and sometimes use an old rabbit burrow for a nest, in which they lay one pure white ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... sergeant, "my own idea of it is that K. O. was trying you out on purpose. And I'll wager the K. O. was glad to find a rook sentry so thoroughly alive to his job. Though I doubt if you'll get commended in orders for just being awake. But that reminds me of something that happened to me, in the Philippines," laughed Brimmer. "I was sergeant of the guard ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... over!' cried Miss Betsey. 'David Copperfield from head to foot! Calls a house a rookery when there's not a rook near it, and takes the birds on trust, because he ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... going to hit a rook that was flying athwart me,—it was queer with what projectile silence that jumped upon me out of nothingness, and I yelled helplessly, "Get out of the way!" The bird doubled itself up like a partly inverted V, flapped, went up to the right abruptly and vanished ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... uniform width of 28 feet between the parapets, with an inclination of only 1 in 22 in the steepest place. A bridge was thrown over the deep chasm forming the channel of the Ogwen, the embankment being carried forward from the rook cutting, protected by high breastworks. From Capel-Curig to near the great waterfall over the river Lugwy, about a mile of new road was cut; and a still greater length from Bettws across the river Conway ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... and are admitted to the list of North American species because of the fact that during the years a few stragglers from other parts of the world have been found on our continent. Thus the Scarlet Ibis from South America, and the Kestrel and Rook from western Europe, are known to come to our shores only as rare wanderers who had lost their way, or were blown hither by storms. Eighty-five species of the birds now listed for North America are of this extra-limital class. Among those naturally inhabiting ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... Engineer Serko, Captain Spade, and several of their companions took up position on the exterior base of the island. What would I not give to be able follow to them, and in the friendly shelter of a rook ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... up roun' the hill, an' look All down the thickly-timber'd nook, Out where the squier's house do show His grey-wall'd peaks up drough the row O' sheaedy elems, where the rook Do build her nest; an' where the brook Do creep along the meaeds, an' lie To catch the brightness o' the sky; An' cows, in water to their knees, Do stan' a-whisken off ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... the Island, neither on land nor in the water, in field or forest, was there a woman to be found. Vain things were plenty—there was the turkey, and the swan, and the blue jay, and the wood-duck, and the wakon bird; and noisy, chattering, singing creatures, such as the daw, and the thrush, and the rook, and the prairie-dog, abounded—indeed there were more of each than was pleasing to the ear—but of women, vain, noisy, laughing, chattering women, there were none. It was, indeed, quite a still world ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... old chapel of the castle, the people of the country thought it was a judgment of Heaven upon him. In his rage for improvement the fellow dared anything. Without my orders he cut down an old rookery which was sacred in the country, and had a prophecy regarding it, stating, 'When the rook-wood shall fall, down goes Hackton Hall.' The rooks went over and colonised Tiptoff Woods, which lay near us (and be hanged to them!), and Cornichon built a temple to Venus and two lovely fountains on their site. Venuses ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... * lark, * yellowhammer, * robin, *wren, * golden-crested wren, * goldfinch, * chaffinch, * *greenfinch, pied wagtail, sparrow, * dunnock (hedge, accentor), missel thrush, starling, rook, jackdaw, *blackcap, * garden warbler, * willow warbler, * chiffchaff, * wood warbler, tree-creeper, * reed bunting, * sedge warbler, coot, water hen, little grebe (dabchick), tufted duck, wood pigeon, stock dove, * turtle dove, peewit, tit (? coal-tit), * cuckoo, * nightjar, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... of the Mackenzies will take A white rook out of the wood, And will take a wife from a music-house With his people against him. And the heir will be great In deeds, and as an orator, When the Pope in Rome Will be cast off his throne, Over opposite Creagh-a'-chon Will dwell a little lean ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... surely we should see much more positive signs of this ambition; and surely too, with his great powers, he would already have risen high, instead of being a mere ensign, short of money, and playing Captain Rook to Roderigo's Mr. Pigeon. Taking all the facts, one must conclude that his desires were comparatively moderate and his ambition weak; that he probably enjoyed war keenly, but, if he had money enough, did not exert himself greatly to acquire reputation ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... The Elm is its favorite, on which it usually builds; but such is its attachment to locality that since the incident alluded to in the following Poem took place the Rooks have, many of them, built in fir trees at a little distance from their former habitation. The habits of the Rook are well worthy the attention of all who delight in the ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... cold and rook delighting Heaven That seemed as though ice burned and was but the more ice, And thereupon imagination and heart were driven So wild, that every casual thought of that and this Vanished, and left but memories, that should be out of season ...
— The Green Helmet and Other Poems • William Butler Yeats
... even slightly staggering continuity of thought. The Rooks may be properly supposed to have taught men to dispute, but not to write. The Swallow teaches building, literally, and the Owl moping, literally; but the Rook does not teach pamphleteering literally. And the 'of old' is redundant, for rhyme's sake, since Rooks hold parliaments now as ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... blew his horn, To let the neighbors know, This was Robin's wedding-day, And they might see the show. And first came parson Rook, With his spectacles and band, And one of Mother Hubbard's books He ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... learn the ebb of time, From yon dull steeple's drowsy chime, Or mark it as the sunbeams crawl, 675 Inch after inch, along the wall. The lark was wont my matins ring, The sable rook my vespers sing; These towers, although a king's they be, Have not a hall ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... standing by the table with a small rook-rifle in her hands. The breech was open. She looked down the barrel, holding up the weapon so that the light might shine ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... time that an unforeseen reply takes your Queen. No chess-player sleeps well. After the painful strategy of the day one fights one's battles over again. You see with more than daylight clearness that it was the Rook you should have moved, and not the Knight. No! it is impossible! no common sinner innocent of chess knows these lower deeps of remorse. Vast desert boards lie for the chess-player beyond the gates of horn. Stalwart Rooks ram headlong ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... rook has been observed at Boston Road, Brentford, and a local ornithologist writes to say that the bird is probably an accidental straggler from King's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various
... Sciences at Paris, in which he aptly compared it, in its uses, to the trunk of an elephant. In its manners it is gentle and familiar, and when approached raises a cry which may be compared to a hoarse croaking. In its gait it resembles the rook, and walks much better than most of the ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... from the churchyard, embracing the vicarage-house, a comfortable residence, surrounded by a large walled-in garden, well stocked with fruit-trees, and sheltered by a fine grove of rook-haunted timber, extended on the one hand over the village, and on the other over the Abbey, and was bounded by the towering and well-wooded heights of Whalley Nab. On the side of the Abbey, the most conspicuous objects were the great north-eastern gateway, with the ruined conventual church. Ever ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... drawn bills on you in favour of Messrs. Van Cash and Co. as per margin. I have taken up your note to Col. Piquet, and discharged your debts to my Lord Lurcher and Sir Harry Rook. I herewith enclose you copies of the bills, which I have no doubt will be immediately honoured. On failure, I shall empower some lawyer in your ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... county. Thus Leonora had accepted Maisie Maidan almost with resignation—almost with a sigh of relief. She really liked the poor child—she had to like somebody. And, at any rate, she felt she could trust Maisie—she could trust her not to rook Edward for several thousands a week, for Maisie had refused to accept so much as a trinket ring from him. It is true that Edward gurgled and raved about the girl in a way that she had never yet experienced. But that, too, was almost a relief. I think she would really ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... fruitfulness of wood and wold, Of flowery upland, and of orchard-lawn, Lit by the lingering evening's softened gold, Or flushed with rose-hued radiance of the dawn; Bird-music beautiful; the robin's trill, Or the rook's drowsy clangour; flats that run From sky to sky, dusk woods that drape the hill, Still lakes that draw the sun; All, all are mirror'd in his verse, and there Familiar beauties ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... that a rook by wearing a pied feather, The cable hat-band, or the three-piled ruff, A yard of shoe-tie, or the Switzers knot On his French garters, should affect a humour! O, it is ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... Last year at Rook's Rough, just as Ben put 'em in, 'Twas Fan found the rogue who was curled in the whin; She pounced at his brush with a drive and a snap, "Yip-Yap, boys," she told 'em, "I've found him, Yip-Yap;" And they put down their noses and sung to ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... as fond of walnuts as we are,'" read Miss Harson, "'and rob the trees without any mercy. Not only the little titmouse, but the grave and solemn rook'—a kind of crow, you remember—'is not above paying a visit to the walnut tree and stealing all he can find. There is a walnut tree growing in a garden the owner of which may be said to have planted it for the benefit of the rooks. Not that he had any such ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... more for his stately mother than for the dairy-woman! How could such a bewitching creature so lack refinement! The more he thought, the more inexplicable and self-contradictory her conduct appeared. Such a jewelled-humming-bird to make friends with a grubbing rook! The smell of the leather, not to mention the paste and glue, would be enough for any properly sensitive girl! Universally fascinating, why did she not correspond all through? Brought out in London, she would be the belle of the season! If he did not ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... I'd shoot a fly off yer nose; an' wid that I looked round for a mark, an' I seen in a three foreninst me a lump o' a crow sittin' annoyin' me. 'Will ye quit yer dhrimandhru?' says I, to the botherin' ould rook. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... thy priests, Al Kahlminar, then would I confront them and thee with the two elephants which my brother sent me lately from Geestan, on each of which I can place a rook with a slave cunning with the javelin, before which thy priests will flee; for the animals see no difference between priests and other mortals;—the elephant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... 16-49. I may remind the reader that the O. Egyptian "Rokh," or "Rukh," by some written "Rekhit," whose ideograph is a monstrous bird with one claw raised, also denotes pure wise Spirits, the Magi, &c. I know a man who derives from it our "rook" beak ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... canal. When his feet slipped and he fell in, his fishing-line somehow became twisted about his arms and legs, else most likely he would have scrambled out, as it was not very deep. This was the end; nor was he even remembered. Does any one sorrow for the rook, shot, and hung up as a scarecrow? The boy had been talked to, and held up as a scarecrow all his life: he was dead, and that is all. As for granny, she felt no twinge: she had done ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... winning nothing but hunger And a few scraps of scrip for its masses of gold; When the fat man goes further and takes to religion, A rascal in hymn-books and Bibles disguised, "It's a case," says Sir Henry, "of rook versus pigeon, And the pigeon gets left—well, I'm ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... of garrison duty, even could I have got back my commission, which was not very likely. So I put soldiering out of the question; and yet, when I had done so, I was infernally puzzled to think of any thing better. I had no fancy to turn rook, and rove from place to place in search of pigeons—no uncommon resource with younger brothers of an idle turn and exhausted means. I had fallen in with a few birds of that breed, and had come to the conclusion that to save themselves work and trouble, they had adopted by far ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... to hold the attention of the royalists, and, besides that depletion, had to suffer the loss of many of his plainsmen who refused to accompany him across the Andes. But Colonel Rook, the head of the British Legion, assured Bolvar that he would follow him "beyond Cape Horn, if necessary." After spending a month painfully wading through the flooded plains, he ascended the Andes and crossed ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... and two Bishops. The eight men in front are called Pawns. At the beginning of the game the queen always stands upon a square of her own colour. The board is so set that each player has a white square at the right hand end of the row nearest to him. The rook, knight and bishop on the right of the king are known as King's rook, King's knight, and King's bishop; the other three as Queen's rook, Queen's ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... have been more thoroughly honest in its intention: the frigid rhetoric at the end was as sincere as the bark of a dog, or the cawing of an amorous rook. Would it not be rash to conclude that there was no passion behind those sonnets to Delia which strike us as the thin music of ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... minutely the trim gardens, the picturesque domains, the rook-haunted groves, the gloomy chambers and gloomier galleries of an ancient hall with which I was acquainted, I resolved to attempt a story in the bygone style of Mrs. Radcliffe, substituting an old English squire, an old ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... irritation, and excitement, around chin and mouth. The quartermaster frowned, looking at the soldiers as if threatening to punish them. Cadet Mironov ducked every time a ball flew past. Rostov on the left flank, mounted on his Rook—a handsome horse despite its game leg—had the happy air of a schoolboy called up before a large audience for an examination in which he feels sure he will distinguish himself. He was glancing at everyone with a clear, bright expression, as if asking them to notice ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... great door-way and were soon treading the walls that had once sustained the cannon and the sentinel, but were now covered with weeds and wild flowers. The drum and fife had once been heard within these walls—the only music now is the cawing of the rook and daw. We paid a hasty visit to the various apartments, remaining longest in those of most interest. The room in which Martin the Regicide was imprisoned nearly twenty years, was pointed out to us. The Castle of ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... he is as stupid as a rook, that crittur, it's no use to tell him a story, and now I think of it, I will go and smoke them black imps ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... that affirmation and denial stand for distinctions of fact that cannot be got rid of by manipulation of words. Whether granite sinks in water, or not; whether the rook lives a hundred years, or not; whether a man has a hundred dollars in his pocket, or not; whether human bones have ever been found in Pliocene strata, or not; such alternatives require distinct ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... to make a deeper stillness all about him. When the wind was rumbling in the chimney, and sometimes crooning, sometimes howling, in the house. When the old trees outside were so shaken and beaten, that one querulous old rook, unable to sleep, protested now and then, in a feeble, dozy, high-up "Caw!" When, at intervals, the window trembled, the rusty vane upon the turret-top complained, the clock beneath it recorded that another quarter of an hour was gone, or ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... abated their hostility, Sir James spared no pains to win their good will. He gave the Terror a rook-rifle and Erebus boxes of chocolate. If he chanced on them when motoring in the afternoon he would carry them off, bicycles and all, in his car and regale them with sumptuous teas at the Grange; and at Colet House he entertained them with ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... into riot in a short time, though even then his early impressions do not altogether fade. But if we lay hold of him, bring him to our Homes, surround him with Christian influences, by God's help we make a man of him, and the raw recruit, the 'rook' as they call him, not only develops into a veteran ready to go anywhere and do anything for Queen and country, but into a Soldier of the Cross, ready to do ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... something of. I made an attempt, though almost against my inclination, and after several efforts, having learned the march, my progress was so rapid, that before the end of the first sitting I gave him the rook, which in the beginning he had given me. Nothing more was necessary; behold me fascinated with chess! I buy a board, with the rest of the apparatus, and shutting myself up in my chamber, pass whole days and nights in studying all the varieties of the game, being determined by ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... crows, keep well his comb, For the fox and the fulmart they are false both. When the raven and the rook have rounded together, And the kid in his cliff shall accord to the same. Then shall they be bold, and soon to battle thereafter. Then the birds of the raven rugs and reives, And the leal men of Lothian, are louping on their horse; Then shall the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... elbow hug; A maid that comes to a look; A boy to carry a rimy log From over the frozen brook— And, a fig for the cawing rook, Or ghosts in the ruddy gloam! For the kettle sings on the blackened hook, And hey! for the ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... one stiff, and speaking by rote, or talking politics. How glad I used to be to get on horseback again! But to see these—why, it is like the shepherd's glimpse at the pixies!—as one reads a new book, or watches what one only half understands—a rook's parliament, or a gathering of sea-fowl on the ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a stranger, the little bushy-tailed animal rose from its place under the tree and came to him, and the rook, cawing once, flew down from its branch and ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Dennis would argue. "How could you go rook-shooting? You know you scream when a gun goes off; and besides, you're afraid of ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... shows that they help comrades in distress. If a Wolf or a Rook be ill or injured, we are told that it is driven away or even killed by its comrades. Not so with Ants. For instance, in one of my nests an unfortunate Ant, in emerging from the chrysalis skin, injured her legs so much that she ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... "Summer," I transcribe his sentiments on his former literary friends in Scotland—he is writing to Mallet: "Far from defending these two lines, I damn them to the lowest depth of the poetical Tophet, prepared of old for Mitchell, Morrice, Rook, Cook, Beckingham, and a long &c. Wherever I have evidence, or think I have evidence, which is the same thing, I'll be as obstinate as all the mules in Persia." This poet of warm affections felt so irritably the perverse criticisms ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... that familiar and illustrious face, how vulgar all of a sudden did Major Loder appear to her, and how that odious Captain Rook did smell of tobacco! In one instant she reassumed her fine-ladyship and tried to look and feel as if she were in May Fair once more. "That woman looks stupid and ill-humoured," she thought; "I am sure she can't amuse him. No, he must be bored by her—he never was by me." A hundred such ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... before that I had been looking on a map of the Rhine, and remarked to myself that this small island, little more than a mere rook in the stream, was so situated as to command the bridge between Eslar and the German bank, and I could not help wondering that the Austrians had never taken the precaution to strengthen it, or at least place a gun there, to enfilade the bridge. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... the coming monarch, careless of food, flooding the fresh air with song. Steadily plodding rooks labour along below us, and lively starlings rush by on the look-out for the early worm; lark and swallow, rook and starling, each on his appointed round. The sun arises, and they get them to it; he is up now, and these breezy uplands over which we hang are swimming in the light of horizontal rays, though the shadows and mists still lie on the wooded ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... to fry and tails to butter; and he does not recollect that a ploughman's mind wants to lie fallow a little, and can't give a crop every year. It is hard to make rope when your hemp is all used up, or pancakes without batter, or rook pie without the birds; and so I found it hard to write more when I had said just about all I knew. Giving much to the poor doth increase a man's store, but it is not the same with writing; at least, I am such a poor scribe that I don't find it come because ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... came, how kind they all were! indeed, though it was a busy season with every bird, each anxious to finish its work, yet I heard an old Rook one day ask little Jenny Wren 'if he should help her,' as he met her trying to drag a large wisp of straw ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... clamour of the people soundeth in my ears already. If Shibli Bagarag fail in one stroke, where be we? 'Tis certain I knew not the might in Shagpat when I strove with him, and he's powerful beyond the measure of man's subtlety; and yonder flies a rook without fellow—an omen; and all's ominous, and ominous of ill: and I marked among the troop of slaves that preceded Baba Mustapha one that squinted, and that's an omen; and, O my daughter, I counsel that thou by thy magic ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his eyes a little. "What! the millionaire?... Good biz! We'll rook him at poker and bridge and shooting, and a few other things. It isn't right for him to have all that money. It would even things up a little if we could transfer some of it to poor, ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... by no precocious rook, who Haunts the high hall garden calling "Maud;" Mine's no "blithe newcomer" like the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... (to use the words of the prospectus) with "the various world centres." The reading-room was well supplied with "commercial organs." The talk was that of Wall Street; and the pupils (from fifty to a hundred lads) were principally engaged in rooking or trying to rook one another for nominal sums in what was called "college paper." We had class hours, indeed, in the morning, when we studied German, French, book-keeping, and the like goodly matters; but the bulk of our day and the gist of the education centred in the exchange, where ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... life,—to live in a sleepy country side, to have a garden to work in, to have a wife and children, to chatter quietly every evening over the details of existence. We must have the azaleas out to-morrow and thoroughly cleansed, they are devoured by insects; the tame rook has flown away; mother lost her prayer-book coming from church, she thinks it was stolen. A good, honest, well-to-do peasant, who knows nothing of politics, must be very nearly happy;—and to think there are people who would educate, who would draw these people out of the calm satisfaction ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... strip, sweep, gut, forage, levy blackmail, pirate, pickeer^, maraud, lift cattle, poach; smuggle, run; badger [Slang]; bail up, hold up, stick up; bunco, bunko, filibuster. swindle, peculate, embezzle; sponge, mulct, rook, bilk, pluck, pigeon, fleece; defraud &c 545; obtain under false pretenses; live by one's wits. rob Peter to pay Paul, borrow of Peter to pay Paul; set a thief to catch a thief. disregard the distinction between meum and tuum [Lat.]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... weigh eight or ten tons, is so nicely poised upon another rook, upon a high point about fifty rods west of the lake, that a gentle pressure of the hand will cause it to ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... often done on lesser occasions, she packed up a bundle of articles, crept down again, and went out of the house. She had a place of refuge in these cases of necessity, and her father knew it, and was less alarmed at seeing her depart than he might otherwise have been. This place was Rook's Gate, the house of her grandmother, who always took Margery's part when that young woman was ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... people do get hurt. Two years ago last Christmas your uncle Silas was coming up from Newrleans on the old Lally Rook, and she blowed out a cylinder-head and crippled a man. And I think he died afterwards. He was a Baptist. Your uncle Silas knowed a family in Baton Rouge that knowed his people very well. Yes, I remember now, he DID die. Mortification set in, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... ore, though," muttered Harry to himself. "I don't believe this rook holds gold enough to put a ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock
... wives for their husbands' fate, And orphans for their parents' timeless death,— Shall rue the hour that ever thou wast born. The owl shriek'd at thy birth, an evil sign; The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time; Dogs howl'd, and hideous tempest shook down trees; The raven rook'd her on the chimney's top, And chatt'ring pies in dismal discord sung. Thy mother felt more than a mother's pain, And yet brought forth less than a mother's hope, An indigested and deformed lump, Not like the fruit of such a goodly tree. Teeth hadst ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... he had rare discrimination of relative chances in the run of the cards, or the phenomenally bold hand he played disconcerted his adversaries, but his almost invariable winning began to affect injuriously his character. Indeed, he was said to be a rook of unrivalled rapacity. Colonel Duval was in the frame of mind that his wife called "bearish" one morning as his family gathered for breakfast in the limited privacy of their circle about the round table ...
— The Lost Guidon - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... less than an hour, we found the horses tethered among the bushes. House there was none, which must be inconvenient when the weather is too tempestuous for crossing the strait from Parao. We took shelter from the heat under a rook, making studies of a group of picturesque shepherds, and amusing ourselves with some luscious grapes,—baskets of which were waiting for the return of the passage-boat to La Madelena,—while a pack-horse was loaded with ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... an irregular volley that ripped out from the defenders of the camp. Half of the marksmen fired to the right of the rook, the ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... rook of Nizhni Novgorod!" the strangers' coachman shouted. Selifan tightened his reins, and the other driver did the same. The horses stepped back a little, and then came together again—this time getting a leg or two over the ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... grave, but gentle look— His silence sweet with sounds With which the simple-hearted Spring abounds: Lowing of cattle from the abbey grounds, Chirping of insect, and the building rook, Mingled like murmurs of a dreaming shell; Quaint tracery of bird and branch and brook Flitting across the pages of his book, Until the very words a freshness took— Deep in his cell, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... statement. "He's a strange mixture, is Mr. Hilton. He's a fair nailer with a revolver. I've seen him hit a penny three times straight off at twelve paces, and, when in the mind, he would bowl over running rabbits with a rook rifle. Yet he never joined the shooting parties in October. Said it made him ill to see graceful birds shattered by clumsy folk. All the same, he would ill-treat a horse something ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... that the wind being at east-south-east, I could not fetch it, wherefore I kept on to the southward, and stemmed with the body of a high island about eleven or twelve leagues long, lying to the southward of that which I before designed for. I named this island Sir George Rook's Island. ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... coffee-house in detail. The room "stinks of tobacco worse than hell of brimstone;" the coffee itself had the appearance of "Pluto's diet-drink, that witches tipple out of dead men's skulls;" and the company included "a silly fop and a worshipful justice, a griping rook and a grave citizen, a worthy lawyer and an errant pickpocket, a reverend non-conformist and a canting mountebank, all blended together to compose an oglio of impertinence." There is a delightful sketch of one named "Captain All-man-sir," ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... hardly have paid away at the club less than a thousand pounds. He had been extremely hard up before the loss of the money, and it was in his offices that the roll of banknotes had been lost. As for Probable Thief Number Two, he played rook to Number One's pigeon. He had a visible hold upon him; Number One trembled before him, and did what he was bidden to do. Number Two had plenty of money, and as shady a reputation as any man in London who was not among the known ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... in the beginning of March, coming back from a long walk on the hills, I heard the bleat of the lamb and the impatient cawing of the rook that could not put its nest together in the windy branches, and as I stopped to listen it seemed to me that something passed by in the dusk: the spring-tide itself seemed to be fleeting across the tillage towards the scant fields. As the ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... white residential street lying to the west. It stopped before a large shaded lawn, where a number of white men and women were playing a game with cards. The cards used by the lawn party were not ordinary playing-cards, but had figures on them instead of spots, and were called "rook" cards. The party of white ladies and gentlemen were playing "rook." On a table in the middle of the lawn glittered some pieces of silver plate which formed the first, second, and third prizes for ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... time Chip of the artillery was walking down Nassau Street, and a steam-boiler or something burst under the sidewalk and broke his leg? The first thing old Backbite said when he heard of it was, 'H'm! been drinking, I suppose.' Now here's Billings with a despatch. What is it, bully rook?" he hailed, as the ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... I used to stand in the stable and my coat was brushed every day till it shone like a rook's wing. It was early in May, when there came a man from Squire Gordon's, who took me away to the hall. My master said, "Good-by, Darkie; be a good horse, and always do your best." I could not say "good-by", so I put my nose into his hand; he patted me kindly, and I left my first ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... Captain Yorke," I said, "as Guest here leaves me to do all the talking, I'll tell you why we are so far up to the northward, out of our usual beat. We heard in Samoa that a big ship, named the Sarawak had run ashore and been abandoned at Rook Island, in Dampier Straits, between the west end of New Britain and the east coast of New Guinea, and both Guest and myself know her to be one of the largest ships out of Liverpool; she left Sydney for Hongkong about six months ago with a ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... perfect horror of getting to the end of it. At a distance, when our smoke-sail yard was manned; we looked like a parcel of larks spitted, with one great goose in the midst of us. "Doey, get beyond me, zur; doey, Mr Rattlin," he would say. "Ah! zur, I'd climb with any bragger in this ship for a rook's nest, where I ha' got a safe bough to stand upon; but to dance upon this here see-sawing line, and to call it a horse, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... bumping his head against a wall like a hooded rook as he was. So giddy had he become at the sight of this creature, even more enticing than a siren rising from the water. He noticed the animals carved over the door and returned to the house of the archbishop with his head full of diabolical longings ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... recall the picture of the gray old house of God rising calm before me, of a rook wheeling around the steeple, of a ruddy morning sky beyond. I remember something, too, of the green grave-mounds; and I have not forgotten, either, two figures of strangers, straying among the low hillocks, and reading the mementos graven on the few mossy ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... presently entered to give directions for their disposing. Nor was it till the hour of sunset that everything was in due order, the straps set fast, the keys duly turned in the locks—the labels—"Mr. Eustace Greyne: Passenger to Algiers: via Marseilles"—carefully written out in a full, round hand. Rook's tickets had been bought; so now everything was ready, and the last evening in England might be spent by Mr. Greyne in the drawing-room and by Darrell in the servants' hall quietly, ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... foliage. In the branches are the rooks' nests, built of small twigs apparently thrown together, and yet so firmly intertwined as to stand the swaying of the tree-tops in the rough blasts of winter. In the spring the rook builds a second nest on the floor of the old one, and this continues till five or six successive layers may be traced; and when at last some ruder tempest strews the grass with its ruin, there is enough wood to fill a ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... them in the earliest French romances, have little in common with their Celtic prototypes, as we dimly catch sight of them in Irish, Welsh, and Breton legend. Chretien belonged to a generation of French poets who rook over a great mass of Celtic folk-lore they imperfectly understood, and made of what, of course, it had never been before: the vehicle to carry a rich freight of chivalric customs and ideals. As an ideal of social conduct, the code of chivalry never touched the middle and lower classes, ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... MacCulloch, who says he is very doubtful as to the occurrence of the Jay in the Island, and adds that the local name for the Mistletoe Thrush is "Geai." Mr. Gallienne, in a note to Professor Ansted's list, confirms the scarcity of the Jay, as he says the Rook and the Jay are rarely seen here, although they are indigenous to Jersey. The local name "Geai" may perhaps have misled him as to the occasional appearance of the Jay. I have never seen a real Jay ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... her, but I wouldn't hear of it; so she's at rest, an' so is old Molly Mallone. She wint away just two minutes be the clock before the pig, and wos buried the day afther. There's no more news as I knows of in the parish, except that your old flame Mary got married to Teddy O'Rook, an' they've been fightin' tooth an' nail ever since, as I towld ye they would long ago. No man could live wid that woman. But the schoolmaster, good man, has let me off the cow. Ye see, darlin', I towld him ye wos buildin' a palace in the say, to put ships in afther they wos wrecked on the coast ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... occupants, for whom a generous patron should equip two brigantines and a fly-boat. Thither came, fast and frequent, the gamesters, in their different forms and calling. This, light, young, gay in appearance, the thoughtless youth of wit and pleasure—the pigeon rather than the rook—but at heart the same sly, shrewd, cold-blooded calculator, as yonder old hard-featured professor of the same science, whose eyes are grown dim with watching of the dice at midnight; and whose fingers are even now assisting his mental computation of chances and of odds. ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... gave a thought of any sort to me in the presence of these fascinating creatures, and so he got himself trodden on. I suggested to him we should pile the baggage, and go and have an elephant hunt. He shook his head reluctantly, saying "Kor, kor," like a depressed rook, and explained we were not strong enough; there were only three Fans—the Ajumba, and Ngouta did not count—and moreover that we had not brought sufficient ammunition owing to the baggage having ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... time, a rupture rook place in Europe between England and Spain, which turned the attention of the colony to a different object, and afforded Governor Moore an opportunity of exercising his military talents, and a new prospect of ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... the news of the town.... Never, by look or word or sign, helped to rub in what a beetle-headed idiot I'd been." She gulped. "I could have put my head down on the tablecloth and cried gallons"—she blew her nose again—"knowing 'd lost him a rook at least. For, of course, that flabby Slabberts creature counted for something in the game, or Brounckers wouldn't have wanted him. And Captain—my Captain!..." She threw a sparkling eye-dart tipped with remorseful brine at the spare, soldierly figure and the lean, purposeful ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Corbeil, on the right bank of the Seine, is one of the most charming villages in the environs of Paris, despite the infernal etymology of its name. The gay and thoughtless Parisian, who, on Sunday, wanders about the fields, more destructive than the rook, has not yet discovered this smiling country. The distressing odor of the frying from coffee-gardens does not there stifle the perfume of the honeysuckles. The refrains of bargemen, the brazen voices of boat-horns, have never awakened echoes there. ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... welcome him as a friend? Have we not walked with him in every scene of varied life? Have we not together investigated, with Mr. Pickwick, the theory of Tittlebats? Have we not ridden together to the "Markis of Granby" with old Weller on the box, and his son Samivel on the dickey? Have we not been rook-shooting with Mr. Winkle, and courting with Mr. Tupman? Have we not played cribbage with "the Marchioness," and quaffed the rosy with Dick Swiveller? Tell us not of animal magnetism! We, and thousands of our countrymen, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... Syne ran a fiend to fetch Makfadyane, Far north-wast in a neuck; Be he the coronach had done shout, Ersche men so gatherit him about, In hell great room they took. Thae tarmigants, with tag and tatter, Full loud in Ersche begoud to clatter, And roup like raven and rook. The Devil sae deaved was with their yell, That in the deepest pot of hell He smorit them ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... most beautiful one) of Goldsmith sitting looking out of window at the Temple trees, you speak of the "gray-eyed" rooks. Are you sure they are "gray-eyed"? The raven's eye is a deep lustrous black, and so, I suspect, is the rook's, except when the light shines ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... as such in the order-book of his conscience. So he set out for Rexow along the Puempelhagen road, the long tails of his clerical garment floating behind him. His progress was as slow and difficult as that of a young rook learning to fly. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... manner it is to take chess-men for "dollies," or roll them about like nine-pins—at once included in the education of "Izunsabe," which he took upon himself, a course of elemental doctrine in the one true game. And the boy fought his way up at such a pace that he jumped from odds of queen and rook to pawn and two moves in less than two years. And now he could almost give odds to his tutor, though he never presumed to offer them; and trading as he did with enlightened merchants of large Continental sea-ports, who had plenty ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... cavalryman, how is my Rook behaving?" he asked. (Rook was a young horse Telyanin had ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Jervis himself—seventy, last birthday. Next, his unmarried sister—nearly eighty. Next, his man-servant, Mr. Rook—well past sixty. And last, his man-servant's wife, who considers herself young, being only a little over forty. That is the household. Mrs. Rook is coming to-day to attend Emily on the journey to the North; and I am not at all sure that ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins |
