"Scarecrow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... scared by the sight of the staggering and tattered scarecrow, barefooted, and stained with blood and dirt, who stumbled into the camp at dusk, too weary to talk, almost too spent to eat; and to this day he is convinced that I was actually detained by the "debil-debil," whom I had overcome by some means of which wonder-working ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... a new paragraph. Long, lean and hollow cheeked, the term "gangling" fits him better than any other. Mr. Luther Barr's black suit hung on him as baggily as the garments of a cornfield scarecrow and Mr. Luther Barr's sharp features were not improved by a small growth of gray hair; of the kind known as a "goatee" that sprouted from his lower rip. For the rest of the boys noticed that Mr. Barr was gifted with a singularly gimlet-like ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... done, you old scarecrow!' He said to the Barin. 'You crazy old clown!' His jaw once unmuzzled He let enough words out To stuff the Pomyeshchick With Fathers and Grandfathers Into the bargain. The oaths of the lords Are like ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... task and the exposure which it would entail. I must, I said, give the true key to my whole life; I must show what I am, that it may be seen what I am not, and that the phantom may be extinguished which gibbers instead of me. I wish to be known as a living man, and not as a scarecrow which is dressed up in my clothes.... I will draw out, as far as may be, the history of my mind; I will state the point at which I began, in what external suggestion or accident each opinion had its rise, how far and ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... the street, and no man stands more upon't that he is the king's officer. His jurisdiction extends to the next stocks, where he has commission for the heels only, and sets the rest of the body at liberty. He is a scarecrow to that ale-house, where he drinks not his morning draught, and apprehends a drunkard for not standing in the king's name. Beggars fear him more than the justice, and as much as the whip-stock, whom he delivers over to his subordinate magistrates, the bridewell-man, and the beadle. He is a great ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... scornfully, 'is what you call governing Ireland, hanging up your law like a scarecrow in the garden till every sparrow has learnt to make a jest of it. Your Popery Acts! Well, you borrowed them from France. The French Catholics did not choose to keep the Hugonots among them, and recalled the Edict ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... the last one down near that scarecrow in the field," said Tom, pointing to a ragged figure in the middle of a patch ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... a hawk does a hen; he watched Etienne as a hawk does a scarecrow, Etienne watched Miss Adams as a weasel does a henhouse. He paid no attention ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... creature pretty enough; then he daubs and trims and pares and pulls and squeezes the thing about, draws the nose and chin out of their sheaths, knocks in the cheeks, eats ruts into the forehead, till he has turned it into a scarecrow; and then at last he gets ashamed, smashes the whole wretched concern to pieces, and shovels it over with earth that all the world may not see his disgrace. Your cheeks too, smooth and polisht as they are, will not be so like a roseleaf by ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... story tells "more about Dorothy," as well as the famous characters of the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion and something of several new creations equally delightful, including Tiktok, the machine man, the Yellow Hen, the Nome King ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... splinters with every wash of the dark tide, he could not so instantaneously decide as to whether he should make this confession or not. "What business is it of Maurice's?" he said to himself. "Does he think every one that looks at his scarecrow of a daughter—" But there he had need to acknowledge to himself his injustice to Miss Frarnie, a modest maiden who had more cause to complain of him than he of her, since he had done his best to please her, and her only fault lay in being pleased so ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... patience with Mrs. Lowme, living, as she did, on tea and broth, and looking as yellow as any crow-flower, and yet letting Pilgrim bleed and blister her and give her lowering medicine till her clothes hung on her like a scarecrow's. On the whole, perhaps, Mr. Pilgrim's reputation was at the higher pitch, and when any lady under Mr. Pratt's care was doing ill, she was half disposed to think that a little more active treatment' might suit her better. But without very definite ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... to escape the cloister after all, for to a Paris nunnery she was consigned when her Cardinal uncle had set eyes on her. "Let her have a year or two there," was his verdict, "and, who knows, she may blossom into a beauty yet. At any rate she can put on flesh and not be the scarecrow she is." And thus, while her more favoured sisters were revelling in the gaieties of Court life, Marie was sent to tell her beads and to spend Spartan days ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... gradually out of it, and become an empty semblance, a clothes'-suit, and highest king's-cloaks, mere chimeras parading under them so long, are getting unsightly to the earnest eye, unsightly, almost offensive, like a costlier kind of scarecrow's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... in the federalisation of the United Kingdom, there was every reason why Ulster should be a distinct unit in the federal system. The Archbishop dealt more fully with the Ulster question. Admitting that he had formerly believed "that this attitude of Ulster was something of a scarecrow made up out of old and outworn prejudices," he had now to acknowledge that the men of Ulster were "of all men the least likely to be 'drugged with the wine of words,' and were men who of all other men mean ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... wearing a seventeen-and-three-quarters collar, I now wear a sixteen-and-three-quarters. My waist is seven inches smaller. I even had to have a seal ring I wear cut down so it would not slip off my finger. While in the transition stage I looked like a scarecrow. My clothes ...
— The Fun of Getting Thin • Samuel G. Blythe
... it without laughing. But in this I failed; and the whole audience, Methodist preachers and all, got into such a laugh that I lost half my speech. But the books were put out of sight, and thus ended the scarecrow business. ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... creeds and dogmas, have turned back and are returning. It is that we have gone on still further, and are beyond that desolation. Never more shall we return to those who gather under the cross. By faith we disbelieved and denied. By faith we said of that stuffed scarecrow of divinity, that incoherent accumulation of antique theological notions, the Nicene deity, "This is certainly no God." And by faith we have found ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... and whiskers through which the nose could barely thrust itself, and further buried in a squalid red scarf or handkerchief. Mr Usher prided himself on having seen most of the roughest specimens in the State, but he thought he had never seen such a baboon dressed as a scarecrow as this. But, above all, he had never in all his placid scientific existence heard a man like that ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... day from one of our O.P.'s I began a sketch of the whole panorama of the battle. Desolate ragged country, torn with shell wounds; the poor scarecrow trees like arms stretched up to heaven for help. Fields that once were golden with corn now grey and scarred with white trenches that look like a network of pale ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... You fellers are enough to make a minister swear. I don't care what you do. Go ahead and write to her if you want to, only I give you fair warnin', I ain't goin' to have her if she don't suit. I ain't goin' to marry no scarecrow." ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Politique du Marechal Duc de Belleisle,' (1762) it is asserted that Charles was offered the leadership of the attack on Minorca (April 1756), and that he declined, saying, 'The English will do me justice, if they think fit, but I will no longer serve as a mere scarecrow' (epouvantail). In January 1756, however, Knyphausen, writing to Frederick from Paris, discredited the idea that France meant ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... over their faces, or upon one side, and their empty sleeves flapping in the winds that swept through the valley. But old Mr. Crow was too wise to be fooled so easily. He would scratch up the corn at the very feet of a scarecrow—and chuckle at the ...
— The Tale of Old Mr. Crow • Arthur Scott Bailey
... infected by the example. So that the best Fate which a Lady thus knowing, and singular, could expect, would be that hardly escaping Calumny, she should be in Town the Jest of the Would-be-Witts; tho wonder of Fools, and a Scarecrow to keep from her House many honest People who are to be pitty'd for having no more Wit than they have, because it is not their own Fault that they have no more. But in the Country she would, probably, fare still worse; for there her understanding ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... watch in vain. Zounds! not a soul Will pass, and do obeisance to the cap. But yesterday the place swarm'd like a fair; Now the old green looks like a desert, quite, Since yonder scarecrow hung upon the pole. ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... war dance, and congratulated B. and turned to get the meaning of a queer little gurgling gasp behind us. There was Fundi! That long-legged scarecrow, not content with running to get us and then back again, had trailed us the whole distance of our mad chase over broken ground at terrific speed in order to be in at the death. And he was just about all in at the death. He could barely gasp his ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... after some jolly tar, on his return from a long voyage, had there been performing his toilet, and, by getting rid of certain encumbrances, enabled to pursue his inland journey with less resemblance than before to a walking scarecrow. Winter is a withered old beldam, too poor to keep a cat, hurkling on her hunkers over a feeble fire of sticks, extinguished fast as it is beeted, with a fizz in the melted snow which all around that unhoused wretchedness is indurated with frost; while a blue pool close at hand is chained ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... a tin peddler come with his pack of shiny cook vessels in a shiny black oilcloth poke on his back. The fellow wore red-topped boots and a red flannel shirt, for all it was summer. His breeches had more patches than a scarecrow and his big felt hat had seen its best days too. He kept at Levicy to buy his wares but she was one that didn't favor shiny tinware. 'It rustes out,' she told the peddler. 'Nohow I've got plenty of iron cook vessels.' All the time the old peddler was trying to wheedle and coax her into ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... make a scarecrow of the law, Setting it up to fear the birds of prey; And let it keep one shape, till custom make it Their perch, and ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... the abbot bitterly. "I don't know; people don't kill here, and we don't know how it is done. Perhaps that is as it should be—to kill and then bring the murdered man to his mother's threshold. What are you gaping at, you scarecrow?" ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... garrison, despairing of being able to hold out longer, should take advantage of the negligence of our fleet to escape at once from siege and capture. It is not pestilence —by the God that lives! it is not either plague or impending danger that makes us, like birds in harvest-time, terrified by a scarecrow, abstain from the ready prey—it is base superstition—And thus the aim of the valiant is made the shuttlecock of fools; the worthy ambition of the high-souled, the plaything of these tamed hares! But yet Stamboul shall be ours! ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... given by walking backwards, with her arms crossed behind her: he had pinioned her. She cried out to Oliver to run up, and set the mill-sails agoing, to bring neighbour Gool. Stephen took this second hint. He quietly swung Oliver off the steps, sent down his scarecrow after him, and himself took his seat on the threshold of the mill. There he sat, laughing to see how Ailwin wearied herself with struggles, while Roger, by merely hanging on her arms, prevented her getting free. When, however, Oliver flew at the ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... conjuring book ne'r opened Without the reader's danger. 'Tis indeed A scarecrow set i'th world to frighten weak fools. Hast thou seen fields paved o'er with carcasses, Now to be tender-footed, not to tread On a boy's mangled quarters, ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... woman, no longer youthful, it must be remembered, was indeed badly jaded. Her face was haggard; her general get-up was in something like scarecrow disorder; she didn't even care how she looked. So fagged was she that she had once or twice dozed in the saddle and ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... spirits, until such time as he could shake himself out of the house and shake another threepennyworth into himself. But dead drunk or dead sober (he had come to such a pass that he was least alive in the latter state), it was always on the conscience of the paralytic scarecrow that he had betrayed his sharp parent for sixty threepennyworths of rum, which were all gone, and that her sharpness would infallibly detect his having done it, sooner or later. All things considered therefore, and addition made of the state of his body to ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... in a thick-set hedge. The face might be anywhere; he might move suddenly in any direction; he was prepared, as it were, to move forward, sideways, or backwards according as the wind decided or the road appeared—a sort of universal scarecrow ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... being disquieted about W. Thomson. Tell George from me not to sit upon you with his mathematics. When I threatened your tropical cooling views with the facts of the physicists, you snubbed me and the facts sweetly, over and over again; and now, because a scarecrow of xy has been raised on the selfsame facts, you boo-boo. Take another dose of Huxley's penultimate G. S. Address, and send George back to college. (383/2. Huxley's Anniversary Address to the Geological Society, 1869 ("Collected Essays," VIII., page 305). This is a criticism ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... it were deflated, and thereafter for a good long time moved in our midst wrinkled and slack all over like a half-collapsed balloon. The whimpering of our deck-boy, a skinny, impressionable little scarecrow out of a training-ship, for whom, because of the tender immaturity of his nerves, this display of German Ocean frightfulness was too much (before the year was out he developed into a sufficiently cheeky young ruffian), his desolate whimpering, I say, heard between the gusts of that ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... at intervals, but quite always, how certain man, our American man,—how he holds himself cool and unquestioned master above all pains and bloody mutilation.... This, then, what frightened us all so long! Why, it is put to flight with ignominy—a mere stuffed scarecrow of the fields. Oh, death, where is thy sting? Oh, grave, where is ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... the bird called Ve'a, and was the juvenile scarecrow of the family. "Do not make such a noise; Sina, the eye-eater, will come and pick out your eyes." The eyes of fish were sacred to this god, and never eaten by any ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... want me to look like a scarecrow, and not get asked again, I've got a dress that'll do PERFECTLY," Undine threatened, in a tone between ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... her upturned face, while her body swayed with the vehemence of her feelings. Her garb, too, lent a pathos, for it was naught but a faded calico dress that hung from her attenuated frame like the raiment of a scarecrow. It may have been the shadowy room or the mournful dirge of the nearby ocean that added an uncanny touch to her words and looks, but from the moment she arose until her utterance ceased, Albert was spell-bound. So peculiar, ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... [33] This scarecrow is probably a talisman. In the Saharah, according to Richardson, the skull of an ass averts the evil eye ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... even more acceptable than money. The new garments were not indeed very fine. But even the generals had long been out at elbows; and there were few of the common men whose habiliments would have been thought sufficient to dress a scarecrow in a more prosperous country. Now, at length, for the first time in many months, every private soldier could boast of a pair of breeches and a pair of brogues. The Lord Lieutenant had also been authorised ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... away! What do you take me for? A scarecrow, to keep people away from the house? That fine husband of yours, I'll have you know, is my husband's brother. You expect me to shut the door in his face and spit fire at him when he comes around? But, after all, what do I care?... I don't ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... and twinkling eyes. His head was cased in a woollen nightcap, over which he wore a flapped hat; he had a silk handkerchief about his neck, and his mouth was furnished with a short wooden pipe, from which he discharged wreathing clouds of tobacco-smoke." This scarecrow turned out to be an Italian marquis; and no doubt the singularity of his smoking apparatus was of a piece with the ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... Gowanus, had been selected for his trust on account of his pre-eminent goodness, which, as seems to be invariably the case, was associated with an absence of personal beauty trenching upon the scarecrow. Possibly an excess of strong and disproportionate carving in nose, mouth and chin, accompanied by weak eyes and unexpectedness of forehead, may tend to make the Evil One but languid in his desire for the capture of its human exemplar. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... Pebble Bay, Golfing or to bathe and boat— Should you see a loaded shay, In the shafts a scarecrow goat, Tell him that you hope (with me) Pan will shortly set him free, Pipe him home ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various
... languidges—the father, you see, ould Denis himself, tuck a faver whin the son was near a year in the college, an' it proved too many for him. He died; an' whin young Dinny hard of it, the divil a one of him would stay any longer in Maynewth. He came home like a scarecrow, said he lost his health in it, an' refused to go back. Faith, it was a lucky thing that his father died beforehand, for it would brake his heart. As it was, they had terrible work about it. But ould Denis is never dead while ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... said the latter to du Bruel, calling his attention to Gigonnet, "who would do in a vaudeville. I wonder if he could be bought. Such an old scarecrow is just the thing for a sign over the Two Baboons. And what a coat! I did think there was nobody but Poiret who could show the like after that after ten years' public exposure to ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... weather-beaten scarecrow flapping in the wind, you have some notion of his outward guise. No tramp you ever laid eyes on could have offered so ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... cymbals play, A scarecrow lightly flapped his rags, And a pan that hung by his shoulder rang, Rattled and thumped in a listless way, And now the wind in the chimney sang, The wind in the chimney, The wind in the chimney, ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... begged for a pennyworth of muddy ale was first of all a brilliant soldier, then a brilliant lawyer, then a brilliant historian. His doctor's degree—he was Doctor of Laws—was gained by fair hard work. Think of that, and then look at my picture of the sodden, filthy scarecrow! Yes; that man began my education, and had I only gone straight on I should not be loafing about The Chequers. You ask how he could have anything to do with my education? Well, long ago I was a little bookworm, living in a lonely ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... preacher!" said Cynthy Ann, touched with the fervor of his utterance, and inly resolved never to set up another scarecrow. ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... moment longer, Sister Nightmare," answered Scarecrow. "I thought I had a glimpse of ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... N.W. with a sort of sublime ecstasy, feeling, as Festus had observed, that his money was safe, and that the French would not personally molest an old man in such a ragged, mildewed coat as that he wore, which he had taken the precaution to borrow from a scarecrow in one of his fields for ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... so let—no—oh—ay, it's Godfrey O'Malley himself, and these are our own people." Scarcely were the words out when a tremendous cheer arose from the multitude, who, recognizing us at the same instant, sprang from their horses and ran forward to welcome us. Among the foremost was the scarecrow leader, whom I at once perceived as poor Patsey, who, escaping in the morning, had returned at full speed to O'Malley Castle, and raised the whole country to my rescue. Before I could address one word to my faithful followers I was in ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... blackened with the London mud, and his soups and wines thrown to right and left over the gowns of fine ladies and the waistcoats of fine gentlemen, by an absent, awkward scholar, who gave strange starts and uttered strange growls, who dressed like a scarecrow, and ate like a cormorant. During some time Johnson continued to call on his patron, but after being repeatedly told by the porter that his lordship was not at home, took the hint, and ceased to present himself at ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... without the pose the poet would have no garden, no fancy, no nothing—and there would be no poet. Yet I am quite willing to admit that a man might assume a pose and yet have nothing to protect; but I stoutly maintain that pose in such a one is transparent to every one as the poles that support a scarecrow, simply because ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... vegetables to any petty greengrocer in the village, who thought it worth his while to walk up to the Hall, and drive a bargain with the stingy Squire. He not only assisted in gathering the fruit, for fear he should be robbed, but often acted as scarecrow to the birds, whom he reviled as noisy, useless nuisances, vexatiously sent to destroy the ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... master, the King of France, had already hanged Count Charles in reality. Further, they said that he was no count at all, but the son of their old bishop, Heinsberg. They went so far as to suspend the effigy on a gallows and then riddled it with arrows and left it dangling like a scarecrow in sight of ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... pair of breeches, a hat which has been soaked, sat upon, stuffed a broken window, and had a brood of chickens raised in it,—these elements, duly adjusted to each other, will represent humanity so truthfully that the crows will avoid the cornfield when your scarecrow displays his personality. Do you think you can make your heroes and heroines,—nay, even your scrappy supernumeraries,—out of refuse material, as you made your scarecrow? You can't do it. You ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... altercation woke her to the world again, and she looked up to see that Thomas Bolle was bringing trouble on them. A coarse fat lout with a fiery and a knotted nose, being somewhat in liquor, had amused himself by making mock of his country looks and red hair, and asking whether they used him for a scarecrow in his ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... I was!" said Carterette. "What a wild cat I was to make you haul me up! It was bad for me with the rope round me, it must have been awful for you, my poor esmanus—poor scarecrow Ranulph." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... "That scarecrow I see coming up. I thought 'twas a gal picking up stones in that field—the one this side of the hotel. It had a sunbonnet on, and it was just as ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... and has squandered most of his money on an institution—a kind of club, school, labour-bureau, dispensary, soup-kitchen, all rolled into one—in Lambeth; and there he lives himself, perfectly happy among a hungry, grubby, scarecrow, tatterdemalion crowd. At a loss for a defining name, he has called it "Barbara's Building," after his mother. His conception of the cosmos is that sun, moon and stars revolve round Barbara's Building. How he learned that I was, so to speak, standing at street corners and ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... for an hour each day sits in a throne of glistening emeralds and listens to all the troubles of her people, which they are sure to tell her about. Around Ozma's throne, on such occasions, are grouped all the important personages of Oz, such as the Scarecrow, Jack Pumpkinhead, Tiktok the Clockwork Man, the Tin Woodman, the Wizard of Oz, the Shaggy Man and other famous fairy people. Little Dorothy usually has a seat at Ozma's feet, and crouched on either side the throne are two enormous beasts known as the Hungry Tiger and ...
— Little Wizard Stories of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... she veered from him to Mr. Jonathan the other day?" inquired William Ming, "she's the sort that would flirt with a scarecrow if thar ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... that no poet can make you feel more than he feels himself, though he cannot always make another feel as much; and that the worth of his art exists only just in so far as he can say what he feels; and then I thought of my old friend's mind as I might think of a scarecrow among lonely fields, a thing absurd, ragged, and left alone, while real men went about their business. I did not say it, but I thought it in my folly. So I told my young friend ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... full value, but not if I took tea. Then, if under this system a man gets into debt, it is more in appearance than in reality; and should that man ask money from the apparent creditor, the old account will be shaken at him as a scarecrow, and he is generally told to pay his credit and transfer his custom, and that consequently nails him to the old plan. As to the difference in the price of meal, what deceived me in that line was, that ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... price and the Scarecrow dodges swiftly into the crowd. The Farmer peruses the card and frowns in a puzzled way; then the date catches his eye and he curses and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... blooming spangled orf'cer!' shrieked Simmons; 'I'll make a scarecrow of that orf'cer!' ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... and the company began to turn away, and to mutter among themselves, in order to cover their confusion. "It's the Baron!" "No?" "Yes." "Disgraceful!" "Disgusting!" "Shocking!" "A scarecrow!" ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... forehead, high and broad, topped by a shock of red hair, gave him a kind of intellectual charity that made his whole countenance shine with kindness. Yet his clothes belied the promise of his brow. They were ill-fitting, with an air of Sunday-bestness that gave him an incongruous scarecrow effect. It was easy to see why Market Street was beginning to call him that "Mad Adams." As he lifted his glance from the floor, his eyes met Laura Van Dorn's, then flitted away quickly, and the smile she should have had for her own, he gave to his audience. He began speaking ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... Eglantine loved in his own person, but, as the perfumer said, a simple straightforward head of hair. "It seems as if it had grown there all your life, Mr. Woolsey; nobody would tell that it was not your nat'ral colour" (Mr. Woolsey blushed)—"it makes you look ten year younger; and as for that scarecrow yonder, you'll never, I think, ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sign of human life. A lean and threadbare scarecrow flapped his ragged coat-sleeves in the wind that swept across the barren garden patch farther up the slope,—this was the nearest approach to human life that came within the range of vision. And as if to invite ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... part of the afternoon in throwing stones at a scarecrow. His aim was fairly good, and he succeeded in knocking off the hat and finally prostrating the wooden framework. Followed—an exciting chase by ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... this great ocean-world. Swim who can, and whoso is too clumsy let him sink. The right is with him that prevails. Family honor? A valuable capital for him that knows how to profit by it.—Conscience? An excellent scarecrow with which to frighten sparrows from cherry-trees.—Filial love? Where is the obligation? Did my father beget me because he loved me? Did he think of me at all? Is there anything holy in his gratification of carnal appetite? Or shall I love him because he loves me? That is mere vanity, the usual ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... like a monk, with a throne for wages, Stripped like the iron-souled Hindu sages, Draped like a statue, in strings like a scarecrow, His helmet-hat an old tin pan, But worn in the love of the heart of man, More sane than the helm of Tamerlane, Hairy Ainu, wild man of Borneo, Robinson Crusoe—Johnny Appleseed; And the robin might have said, "Sowing, he goes ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... bells in the forenoon, the sea was no longer breaking over her, or even round her, the breakers now being confined to the outer fringe of the reef. But imagine, if you can, my astonishment at seeing a man—a wretched, ragged, scarecrow of a fellow he looked to be—on the poop, who, as we drew near, began to wave and signal to us with frantic energy. He appeared to be desperately afraid that we had not seen him, or that, having seen him, we should still not trouble to take him off, for he was waving a large, dark ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... Grandfather Gregory took me to a—lunch counter ... bowing to numerous friends and acquaintances on the way ... once he stepped aside to a hurried conference, leaving me standing forlorn and solitary, like a scarecrow in a field. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... taste of it in a minute,' cried Barend, springing to his feet with a white face. 'You old scarecrow, what is it you are hinting about? Do you ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... do it!" Pee-wee shouted "Do you think I'm a dunce? Do you think I'm going to march up and down Main Street with that thing on, like a—like a scarecrow—with all you fellows laughing ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... has got in store for you I cannot say. But I'll never forgive you, you most unscientific and unmathematical artist, for having given me so many shocking misfits lately, until I have looked like a scarecrow in a cornfield; even now you are smelling like a distillery. And tell me, you ruffian, what right had you to say at Mrs. Haley's public house that I was 'thauto—thauto—gogical' in my preaching? If I, with all the privileges of senility, chose to repeat myself, ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... trout knows enough to keep off the fisherman's hook; the squirrel never cracks an empty nut; the crow soon learns the harmlessness of the scarecrow. But man, though he may have twenty times wriggled off the hook, the patient angler catches him at last. He always cracks the empty shell, then cries: 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.' This cry he might ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... The time had been when now and then he read a good book and dreamed noble dreams. Even yet the stuff of which such dreams are made, fluttered in particoloured rags about his life; and colour is colour even on a scarecrow. ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... absolutely unattainable to me, for Heaven knows I didn't want the real Lisa Fitch—"real" meaning, of course, the one who was real to me. I suppose in the end Carter's Lisa Fitch was as real as the skinny scarecrow ...
— The Point of View • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... more consideration. The fat betting man and the scarecrow little butler walked aside and talked, both apparently indifferent to the impatience of a number of small customers; sometimes Joey called in his shrill cracked voice if he might lay ten half-crowns to one, or five shillings ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... leave the island with it, did he? Would he of dug it up from one place jest to bury it in another? Huh! Must of wanted to work if he did! Now my notion is that this happened to one of the guys that was burying the gold, and that the rest jest left him there for a sort of scarecrow to keep other people out of ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... my dear," she said, "so that you shall not dry up out here in the sunshine. Besides, hanging here you're like a scarecrow, you'll frighten away other nice little mortals who don't watch where they're going. And sometimes the sparrows come and rob my web.— To let you know with whom you're dealing, my name is Thekla, of the family of cross-spiders. You needn't tell me your name. ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... piece began to peel off here and another piece there, and then the nose cracked, and then an ear dropped off, and then one of the eyes began to get mushy and watery looking, and finally it was a mere smudge, a false-face, a scarecrow. My father spent a lot of money trying to fix it up, but what good did it do? By the time he had the nose cobbled the ears were loose again, and so on. In the end he gave it up ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... on two horses, the application would have been more general and less obscure. In fact, the old cry of Disunion has lost its terrors, if it ever had any, at the North. The South itself seems to have become alarmed at its own scarecrow, and speakers there are beginning to assure their hearers that the election of Mr. Lincoln will do them no harm. We entirely agree with them, for it will save them ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... triumph was checked as his glance fell upon a gibbet near him to the right, on the round point of hill which is a landmark to the wide vale of Belvoir. Pressed as he was for time, Dick immediately struck out of the road, and approached the spot where it stood. Two scarecrow objects, covered with rags and rusty links of chains, depended from the tree. A night crow screaming around the carcases added to the hideous effect of the scene. Nothing but the living highwayman and his skeleton brethren was visible upon the solitary spot. Around him was the ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... "Eh, you scarecrow!" said Yozhov, convincingly and pitifully, with a shrug of the shoulder. "Is there anything in that? Why, I am anyway half dead ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... it seems unreal, that an incident so insignificant should scatter us and send us into flight like sparrows at whom a scarecrow has been shaken! But is this the first time that students have gone to prison for the sake of liberty? Where are those who have died, those who have been shot? Would ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... sat a scarecrow, which had been there since spring and which protected the leafless branches with ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... lies the glass! There lies the slime! 'Tis but a jest; I but keep time, Thou hellish pest, To thine own chime! [While the WITCH steps back in rage and astonishment.] Dost know me! Skeleton! Vile scarecrow, thou! Thy lord and master dost thou know? What holds me, that I deal not now Thee and thine apes a stunning blow? No more respect to my red vest dost pay? Does my cock's feather no allegiance claim? Have I my visage masked today? Must I ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... scarecrow. The true Jack-o'-lent was, as we learn from Taylor, the water poet, a ragged, lean-like figure which went as a token of Lent, in olden ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... paternal valley is very empty—my father and my mother are long since dead; I should wish, of all things, to establish myself near you. Although lame, I am still good for something, if only to serve as a scarecrow to hinder the birds from eating your apples and cherries. I will forget that you are 'my lord:' I will call you 'Master James,' I will call the duchess, 'Dame James,' your children shall call me Father Polypheme; I will tell them of my battles, ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... manoeuvres of an international band of the dealers in military supplies and by their all-powerful newspapers, when it shall be thoroughly comprehended that these dealers and these newspapers have played with rumors of war as with a scarecrow, for the purpose of keeping up a general condition of disquiet favorable to their sinister operations, then, too late, alas! there will be a revulsion of public opinion to sustain finally those men, like our friends, who ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... couple of mornings later, much to our gratification, as the idea grew upon us that the castle contained other inmates besides the commandant, and we were anxious to avoid a rencontre with these so long as we retained our ragged, scarecrow appearance. ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... a poor, wretched creature, reminding Larry of the scarecrow which he had put up in their garden the summer before. He was thin beyond anything the boys had ever seen. His face was worn and old and came to a peak at the nose, which gave him the appearance of a monster rat, a resemblance emphasised by ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... shall say That at the bottom of their hearts they bear Love for our tyrant? I should like to lay They've our hate for him in their pockets! Here, But that I turned in haste and broke away, I should have kissed a corporal, stiff and tall, And like a scarecrow stuck against the wall. ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... after signing the Concordat that he much regretted having done so, that his conscience reproached him for it, and urged me earnestly to consider it as of no effect. This was owing to the fact that immediately after leaving me he had fallen into the hands of his usual advisers, who made a scarecrow out of what had just occurred. If we had been together I could easily have reassured him. I replied that what he demanded was contrary to the interests of France; and moreover, being infallible, he could not have made a mistake, and his ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... heath came a jolly knave, Like a scarecrow, all in rags: It made me crow to see his old duds All abroad in the wind, like flags;— So up he came to the timber's foot And pitch'd down ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... day Billy arrived, a thin, white scarecrow of a dog. He was sick and unhappy, and would eat nothing, and started up at the slightest sound. He was listening for the Italian's footsteps, but he never came, and one day Mr. Harry looked up from his newspaper ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... existing portrait in this very year, 1300, we may always look for the central mediaeval idea in any subject: and observe how he represents Cupid; as one of three, a terrible trinity, his companions being Satan and Death; and he himself "a lean scarecrow, with bow, quiver, and fillet, and feet ending in claws,"[155] thrust down into Hell by Penance, from the presence of Purity and Fortitude. Spenser, who has been so often noticed as furnishing the exactly intermediate type of ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... leg you stand upon. We are nothing but a merchantman, and I don't suppose you are bound by the ship's articles to fight unless you see fit, but whether we fight or not, our fate is the same; if we are such d—d fools as to let that garlic-eating scarecrow make a prize of us without firing a gun, we shall be sent to the mines for life; but if we will only stand by each other, I'll be bail that we give him something that he can't eat. Now if you are all agreeable to that, say so, and give three cheers for the honor of the Yankee flag, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... improved. His shore clothes, which, with grease, coal-dust, tar, salt-water, and the rents made by the fight with Monkey, were (as the boatswain said) "not fit for a 'spectable scarecrow to wear of a Sunday," were exchanged for a blue flannel shirt and a pair of trim white canvas trousers. A neat black silk handkerchief was knotted around his neck, and his battered "stiff-rim" replaced ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... l'Education du dauphin; OEuvres completes (1828), t. xvii. pp. 541, 545.] Bossuet had good grounds for speaking so. Louis XII. himself said, in 1511, to the ambassador of Spain, that "this pretended council was only a scarecrow which he had no idea of employing save for the purpose of bringing the pope to reason." Amidst these vain attempts at ecclesiastical influence the war was continued with passionateness on the part ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... returned, dragging by the collar a lean scarecrow even more dilapidated than himself. Apparently the poor fellow had been asleep, and had been roughly clutched and hauled across the camp, for his hair was full of leaves and grass, and he was rubbing his eyes and swearing softly under his breath, vowing vengeance ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... village of Frontenac I took a little path leading through maize-fields by the river's side. The maize was ready for the harvest, and the long leaves had lost nearly all their greenness. The lightest breath of air made each plant rustle like a paper scarecrow. The river was fringed with low, triggy willows and a multitude of herbs, rich in seeds, but poor in flowers. Among those still in bloom were the evening primrose, soapwort, and marjoram. The river was as blue ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... desires as thy mother did. It is true, I have been careful to keep thee aloof from the debasing influence of thy own sex, with their sparrow-like frivolity and their enslaving superstition, except, indeed, from that of our cousin Brigida, who may well serve as a scarecrow and a warning. And though—since I agree with the divine Petrarca, when he declares, quoting the 'Aulularia' of Plautus, who again was indebted for the truth to the supreme Greek intellect, 'Optimam foeminam nullam esse, alia licet alia pejor sit'—I cannot boast that thou art entirely ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... and one evening a forlorn, ragged, lean scarecrow of a black boy—without a hat, unshaven, without a blanket, and even destitute of a pipe, clambered over the side of the steamer, and dropped into the boat without a word. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... throw his arms and legs about as if they were timber logs. Many is the time I have said to my scholars, when I was teaching dancing-school,—great lumbering fellows, hulking through a quadrille as if they were pacing a raft in log-running,—"Don't insult your Creator by making a scarecrow of the body He has seen fit to give you. With reverence, He might have given it to one of better understanding; but since you have it, for piety's sake hold up your head, square your shoulders, and put your feet in the ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... want to make an invalid scarecrow of yourself before your time, it's not my business. Only don't come to me for sympathy, ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... about as much like the New Testament model of what he should be, as is the straw-stuffed scarecrow in the field, in the pockets of the costume of which the birds conceive it to be the latest joke to build. But I am digressing, I was beginning about the 'days of Noah' and their near future ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... known upon 'Change, with four thousand pounds in the three-and-a-half per cents, the idea of which had been a comfort to me for many a long year, ready to forfeit the whole sum in exchange for the raggedest pair of pantaloons that ever dangled from a scarecrow, and ready, too, to go down upon my bare knees to any ministering angel of an old Jew who would propose the bargain. I grinned a despairing laugh at the thought of such an absurd compact, and then groaned aloud as the conviction overcame ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... to be examined," adds the inexorable Teufelsdrockh, "in how far the SCARECROW, as a Clothed Person, is not also entitled to benefit of clergy, and English trial by jury: nay perhaps, considering his high function (for is not he too a Defender of Property, and Sovereign armed with the terrors of the Law?), to a certain ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... Polichinelle!" said a comely matron, whose robe his obtrusive and angular elbows cruelly discomposed. "But how could one expect gallantry from such a scarecrow!" ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Mr Randolph, was a gentleman in the main, and a very pleasant companion, though he had at first sight, in his everyday working suit, that scarecrow look which tall gaunt men, who have been somewhat battered by wind and weather, are apt to get. Our second mate, Ben, or rather "Benjie" Stubbs, as he was usually called, was nearly as broad as he was long, with puffed-out brown cheeks wearing an invincible smile. He was a man ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... its actions. Most birds are wary. The crow is wary, and something more. Other shy birds, for instance ducks, avoid every strange object. The crow considers whether there be anything dangerous in the strangeness. An ordinary scarecrow will not keep our crow from anything worth a little risk. He fathoms the scarecrow, compares its behavior, under various circumstances, with that of the usual wearer of its garments, and decides to take the risk. To protect his corn, the farmer takes advantage of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... heat will take all the curl out of yours and then you'll look like a scarecrow," ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was born in Crown Office Row, in his exquisite way has sketched the benchers of the Temple whom he had seen pacing the terrace in his youth. Jekyll, with the roguish eye, and Thomas Coventry, of the elephantine step, the scarecrow of inferiors, the browbeater of equals, who made a solitude of children wherever he came, who took snuff by palmfuls, diving for it under the mighty flap of his old-fashioned red waistcoat. In the gentle Samuel Salt we discover a portrait of the employer of Lamb's father. Salt was a shy ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... you will not let anybody patch because you are too proud to wear patches, and those wretched faded trousers, out at the knees, and which have been turned up and hemmed at the bottom so often that they are six inches above your shoes, and your whole scarecrow appearance, I was so ashamed of you that I could not keep the tears out of my eyes. To tell a respectable gentleman like Doctor Wicker that you were my brother was more than I could bear; and I was glad when I saw you get up and sneak out of the way. I hate to ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... art a magpie, Zaidee, always croaking. It will get us into trouble, thy talking. I have but to set my foot outside the house and thy tongue wags like the clothing of a scarecrow." ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... anyway. He thought she'd marry me as soon as he got the divorce. Well, she didn't. She married old Alvah Moon, who was the only man she ever cared for. The Lord knows how it was, but that wicked old scarecrow made all the women love him, to his dying day. I had a high regard for Mrs. Bamberger, and I suppose she was right to marry him if she liked him. Well, she married him in too much of a hurry, and the child that was born abroad ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... served only to make them the laughing-stock of their antagonists, they assumed the offensive; and, showing that the socialists understood nothing at all themselves of this organization that they held up as a scarecrow, they ended by saying that it was but a new socialistic chimera, a word without sense,—an absurdity. The latest writings of the economists are full of ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... beggarman, sir," replied Johnston, "who was on his way to my uncle's to stop there for the night. Divil a scarecrow in Europe would exchange ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... devil! I must say I was overjoyed to see him in the plight he was in on Tuesday. You never saw such a spectacle!" And I described the doctor's adventure. "He looked a regular scarecrow! Plastered with mud ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... is made the chief speaker in this burlesque, seems to think that the light of the nineteenth century is to be put out as soon as he tinkles his little cow-bell curfew. Whenever slavery is touched, he sets up his scarecrow of dissolving the Union. This may do for the North, but I should conjecture that something more than a pumpkin-lantern is required to scare manifest and irretrievable Destiny out of her path. Mr. Calhoun cannot let go the ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... The captain's honest, Sirs, and that's enough, Though his soul's bullet, and his body buff. He spits fore-right; his haughty chest before, Like battering rams, beats open every door: And with a face as red, and as awry, As Herod's hangdogs in old tapestry, Scarecrow to boys, the breeding woman's curse, Has yet a strange ambition to look worse; Confounds the civil, keeps the rude in awe, Jests like a licensed fool, commands like law. Frighted, I quit the room, but leave it so As men ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... shot the head off a scarecrow he had put up in the cherry tree when I was hiding around a corner to keep out of his sight. All the Springvale boys learned how to ride and shoot and to do both at once, although we never had any shooting to ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... days Strickland began to get up. He was nothing but skin and bone. His clothes hung upon him like rags on a scarecrow. With his untidy beard and long hair, his features, always a little larger than life, now emphasised by illness, he had an extraordinary aspect; but it was so odd that it was not quite ugly. There was something monumental in ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... apparently by the fact that there were not sufficient wagons. The whole sense of the Forest, he told me, was a strain to him, the feeling that he could not escape from it, the thought of its colour and heat and at the same time its ugliness and horror, the cholera scarecrow in it, and the deserted town and all the horrors of the recent attacks. The dead Austrians and Russians.... But I repeat, most emphatically, that he was not depressed by this. It was rather that he wished ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... value of the versions is concerned, it would be small loss if none of them were available. They form a mechanical frame-work as devoid of beauty as the skeleton scarecrow in Percy Mackaye's play, which was based on Hawthorne's "Feathertop" in "Mosses from an Old Manse." It was only when the dry bones were clothed and breathed into by the actor's personality that the dramatizations lived. One can recall no plot ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... but himself philosophical and by no means ridiculous. Even in the severe period of national struggle which preceded the Revolutionary war, and for some time after the beginning of that war itself, the scarecrow-comic Anglais was slow to make his appearance. Pigault-Lebrun himself, as was noted in the last volume, indulges in him little if at all. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Rockets, the son of a poor widow who lived near Jack's house. He was somewhat younger than myself and small for his age, but a sharp, intelligent little fellow, though amusingly ignorant of affairs in general. His chief employment was acting the part of a scarecrow by frightening birds from the cornfields, and running on errands into Bideford for any of the neighbours, by which means he enabled his mother to eke out her scanty pittance. I used to share with him my school pasty, ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... went on the scarecrow, getting more and more excited, "did it ever strike you, or anybody else, that at no time, while the tramp was in custody, while all that searching examination was being gone on with, no one ever saw Mr. Knopf and his man Robertson ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... with his spoils, the rioter with his rock, the anarchist with his bomb, the assassin thrusting out his black hand, the lyncher with his battering ram, his rope and his rifle; these are some of the outside lawless who conspire with the inside lawless to make a scarecrow of American law, making it the perch and not the terror of the birds of prey. And who knows how soon all of these lawless ones may stand up together and, with a monarch's voice cry, Havoc in the confines of ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... beneficent in its action, that thinks scorn of eyeglasses and spectacles, and leads him to denounce quadruple vision, as, indeed, all departure from the simplicities of physical perfection. A human scarecrow he abhors, and will follow such an one through six streets to express his disapprobation. Extremes of size? whether of tallness or shortness? offend him equally. Whitman was not kinder to "the average man." Nor is the small boy's influence limited to sumptuary ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... know I look a perfect scarecrow. Do you think that you can find me something? I really don't know what I should have done if I had not had my greatcoat, for I could never have ventured to walk through the street from the little inn where I put up my horse, if I could not have ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... the city Milly laughed aloud several times with amusement mingled with relief. "Who would have thought it—and with such a scarecrow!" She stopped at the Star to tell Jack the news. They had lunch together and laughed again and ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... associates: if he holds communion when a boy with Murtagh, the scarecrow of an Irish academy, he associates in after life with Francis Ardry, a rich and talented young Irish gentleman about town. If he accepts an invitation from Mr. Petulengro to his tent, he has no objection to go home with a rich genius to dinner; who ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... the man's clothes seemed simply to hang from his shoulders. His hair, of a curious rusty gray, seemed to stick out from under the faded straw hat, and his whole appearance suggested nothing so much as a scarecrow. ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... fruit with nets gives the insects a free hand. Some growers raise sweet cherries or other fruits specially to feed up the birds so that they will let the rest alone. Early rising and a plenty of cats is about the best remedy. A man, or even a woman, working on the land is the best scarecrow. ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... in his garb of a fantastic scarecrow, who was forever starting somewhere and never going there—because, as sure as he came to a place where two roads crossed, he could not make up his mind which turn to take. In his youth a girl had ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... caught sight of one of these individuals in a hotel I fled like the birds who see a scarecrow in ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... "A scarecrow, a mere fancy, a figment of some fanatic's brain;" and Ellis Whitford rejected the idea in a voice ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... only hoarse, since now (Heaven and my soul bear record of my vow) I my desires screw from thee and direct Them and my thoughts to that sublime respect And conscience unto priesthood. 'Tis not need (The scarecrow unto mankind) that doth breed Wiser conclusions in me, since I know I've more to bear my charge than way to go; Or had I not, I'd stop the spreading itch Of craving more: so in conceit be rich; But 'tis the God of nature who intends And shapes my function ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick |
