"Speckled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... turned itself into ashes sprang out of the little brown basket so suddenly that it scattered ashes all over the little white hen. From that day she was always speckled where the ashes fell upon her. The chickens of the little white hen (who was now a little speckled hen) were all speckled too. So were their chickens and their chickens and their chickens' chickens, even down to this very day. Whenever you see a speckled hen you ...
— Fairy Tales from Brazil - How and Why Tales from Brazilian Folk-Lore • Elsie Spicer Eells
... article they could carry off. The river presented a most extraordinary scene. Lighted by the red and fierce reflection of the fire, and covered with boats, filled with families who had just quitted their habitations either on the bridge or in some other street adjoining it, its whole surface was speckled with pieces of furniture, or goods, that had been cast into it, and which were now floating up with the tide. Great crowds were collected on the Southwark shore to watch the conflagration, while on the opposite side the wharves and quays were thronged with persons removing their ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... nowhere and go nowhere, save over white stones and past watercress; of thin ribbed ferns and of scarlet bunchberries. He told her of a stream he knew, where, if you lie very quiet in the moss, you see speckled trout dart over white pebbles into the darker water beneath the lichened rocks. He told her of the shallows, and pools, and falls you find if you keep to its banks for the miles it sings by the grave trees. He told her of mountain tops where he had lain near the stars and watched the ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... in the delightful home furnished interest enough to make resort to fiction unnecessary as an entertainment. In 1879 the death of Mr. Wilson ended the idyllic home life and she returned to her desk, writing "The Speckled Bird" and "Devota," with a pen that had lost much of its charm in the days ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... nest before they are able to fly—hiding at the slightest sign of danger. The Meadow Lark does not migrate beyond the United States. It is a native bird, and is only accidental in England. The eggs are spotted, blotched, and speckled with shades of brown, purple and lavender. A curious incident is told of a Meadow Lark trying to alight on the top mast of a schooner several miles at sea. It was evidently very tired but would not venture ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... hands Are busy gathering spars of quartz, and streams 25 Of stagshorn deg. for their hats; anon, with screams deg.26 Of mad delight they drop their spoils, and bound Among the holly-clumps and broken ground, Racing full speed, and startling in their rush The fell-fares and the speckled missel-thrush 30 Out of their glossy coverts;—but when now Their cheeks were flush'd, and over each hot brow, Under the feather'd hats of the sweet pair, In blinding masses shower'd the golden hair— Then Iseult call'd them to her, and the three ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... "call it by a name that means 'winter bird,' or 'winterer'—I suppose, because it is one of the few that stay in these parts all the year round, and is therefore often noticed by them in winter time. The traders sometimes call it the 'speckled partridge-hawk,' for there are some of them more ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... well-thumbed volume of the wisdom of the inspired pagan Slave, Epictetus, in the hand, and the eyes fixed, not on any printed page, but on a spray of warmly- blushing almond blossom, where a well-fed thrush, ruffling its softly speckled breast, was singing a wild strophe concerning its mate, which, could human skill have languaged its meaning, might have given ideas to a nation's laureate. Yet John Walden found unalloyed happiness in this apparently vague and vacant way. There was an acute sense of joy for him in the repeated ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... Swimming parallel with the boat, he was plainly visible from his wide-opened mouth—the hook and fly protruding from his lower jaw—to the red, quivering flanges of the tail. His sides were faintly speckled, his belly white as chalk. He was almost as ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... water in long glistening sheets; and how they too swept after them, down the flat valley, rounding crag and headland, which opened one after another in interminable vista, along the narrow strip of sand and rushes, speckled with stunted, moss-bearded, heather-bedded hawthorns, between the great grim lifeless mountain walls? Did he feel no pleasant creeping of the flesh that day at the sound of his own horse-hoofs, as they swept ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... as he writes the most revealing and tragic satires on the population of the tavern in the world's literature. What more horrible portrait exists in poetry than that of "la belle Heaulmiere" grown old, as she contemplates her beauty turned to hideousness—her once fair limbs become "speckled like sausages"? "La Grosse Margot" alone is more horrible, and her bully utters his and her doom in the last three awful lines of the ballade which ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... a will and soon had a big hole chopped out of the hollow log, and behold! there were the bank-notes and the newspaper, forming a cozy nest for some little speckled native cats calling for their breakfast, while farther in were seen two bright balls of fire, the mother cat's eyes. The mother cat had run off with Bob's money to make a ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... disease began when she was between twelve and eighteen months old, without any premonitory symptom. The disease occupied the parts habitually uncovered in childhood. The whole of these areas was more or less densely speckled with pigmented, freckle-like spots, varying in tint from a light, raw umber to a deep sepia, and in size from a pin's head to a bean, and of a roundish and irregular shape. Interspersed among the pigment-spots, but not so numerous, were white atrophic spots, which in some parts ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... still firmer. Scarce the ascent Began, when, lo! a panther, nimble, light, And cover'd with a speckled skin, appear'd, Nor, when it saw me, vanish'd, rather strove To check my onward going; that ofttimes With purpose to retrace ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... we spied Two serpents, rank'd abreast, the seas divide, And smoothly sweep along the swelling tide. Their flaming crests above the waves they show; Their bellies seem to burn the seas below; Their speckled tails advance to steer their course, And on the sounding shore the flying billows force. And now the strand, and now the plain they held; Their ardent eyes with bloody streaks were fill'd; Their nimble tongues they brandish'd as they came, And lick'd their hissing jaws, that ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... snake on his way to a sunny spot where he can bask and sleep. Very slender brown speckled snakes, or blind-worms, are quite harmless, and so are the large grass-snakes, which are something like a mackerel in lines and markings. The adder, however, which is yellowish brown in color with brown markings and a "V" on his head, is ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... Snow Hill that greets me back To this old loamy cul-de-sac? Spread on the level river shore, Beneath the bending willow-trees And speckled trunks of sycamore, All moist with airs of rival seas? Are these old men who gravely bow, As if a stranger all awoke, The same who heard my parents vow, —Ah well! in simpler days than now— To love and ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... growing below, is quite above, "never formed below an elevation of at least 15,000 feet, are motionless, multitudinous lines of delicate vapour, with which the blue of the open sky is commonly streaked or speckled after several days of fine weather. They are more commonly known as 'mare's tails.'" Having found this "mare's nest," he delights in it. It is the glory of modern masters. He becomes inflated, and lifts himself 15,000 feet above the level of the understanding ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... however, once he and Suraj were absorbed into the human kaleidoscope of the vast main street, paved with wide strips of hewn stone; one half of it sun-flooded; one half in shadow. The colour and movement; the vista of pink-washed houses speckled with white florets; the gay muslins, the small turbans and inimitable swagger of the Rajput-Sun-descended, re-awakened in him those gleams of ancestral memory that had so vividly beset him at Chitor. Sights and sounds and smells—the pungent mingling of spices and ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... Brookes, but continued at the hunting until they had brought down two wild boars and also an animal fashioned like unto nothing I had ever seen before. It was something after the manner of a serpent, but speckled on the stomach as is a toad, and Captain Smith believed the true name of it to be Iguana, the like of which he says that he has often seen in other countries and that its flesh makes ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis
... was instantly made to congratulate him, and to say, with appropriate action on the part of a very limp arm and a speckled fist: 'Three ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... and fetch the age of gold, And speckled Vanity Would sicken soon and die, And leprous Sin would melt from earthly mould; Yea, Hell itself would pass away, And leave its dolorous ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... hoisted the sails—the red sail, the black sail and the speckled sail, He gave her prow to the sea and her stern to the land, The blue sea was flashing, The green sea was lashing, But on they went with a breeze that he himself would have chosen, And the little creatures of the sea sat up on their tails to watch ...
— The Boy Who Knew What The Birds Said • Padraic Colum
... searches for them; and they are very difficult to find, unless the bird is actually seen to run from the nest, or rather from the eggs, for, as a rule, nest there is none, the eggs being only placed on the sand, with which they get half buried, when they may easily be mistaken for a small bit of speckled granite and passed by. In the summer of 1866, a friend and myself had a long search for the eggs of a pair we saw and were certain had eggs, as they practised all the usual devices to decoy us from them, till my friend, actually thinking one of the birds to be badly wounded, ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... and hissing of the flames, while my eyes were dazzled by the glare of the red, fierce light: now and then I turned them for relief to other features of the picture, to the black shadowy masses of the landscape stretched beneath us, and speckled with shining lights, which showed how many were up and watching that night; and often to the calm vaulted sky above our heads, where thousands of stars (not twinkling as through our hazy or frosty atmosphere, but shining out of "heaven's profoundest azure," with that soft steady ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... symbolical visions. For instance, when Jeremiah has the vision of the seething pot with its mouth to the north, you know that this which he sees is not a real thing; but merely a significant dream. Also, when Zechariah sees the speckled horses among the myrtle trees in the bottom, you still may suppose the vision symbolical;—you do not think of them as real spirits, like Pegasus, seen in the form of horses. But when you are told of the four riders in the Apocalypse, a distinct sense of personality begins to force ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... know that artist fellow better," was the thought upon which he returned at length to the things of practical life. "I wonder if Sophia would mind him for a bit—?" He rose with the sound of the gong, brushing the ashes from his speckled waistcoat. He pulled the waistcoat down. He was slim and spare in figure, active in his movements. In the dim light, but for that silvery moustache, he might easily have passed for a man of forty. "I'll suggest it to her anyhow," he decided on his way upstairs ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... two gray eyes rayed with green lines starting from the pupils, and speckled with brown spots,—two implacable eyes, full of resolution, rectitude, and shrewd calculation. Graslin's nose was short and turned up; he had a mouth with thick lips, a prominent forehead, and high cheek-bones, coarse ears with large edges ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... army. Although 100,000 men were engaged in this battle, the ground permitted no massed movements. For miles the saddle of Oregione, the snow-clad sides of Paralba, and every smaller peak and ravine extending to Monte Croce and Freikofel were speckled with fighting men. After the two sides came to grips, the big guns held their fire, and it was man to man and bayonet against bayonet. At one point only did the Austrian thrust reach Italian soil. For a short time the Austrians were ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... the crown he won When proud Fidenae fell. Woe to the maid whose lover Shall cross his path to-day! False Sextus saw, and trembled, And turned, and fled away. As turns, as flies, the woodman In the Calabrian brake, When through the reeds gleams the round eye Of that fell speckled snake; So turned, so fled, false Sextus, And hid him in the rear, Behind the dark Lavinian ranks, Bristling with crest ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... win' gaed ravin aboot, And the winnocks war speckled wi' faem, Frae room to room she strayt in and oot, And she spied ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... at the word 'prank,' just like he'd never had one single advantage of foreign travel. 'He does indeed—one of those Hammersmith twin louts was with him—the speckled devil with the lisp, I gather—and praise God his bones, at least, are broke in ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... silvers whitely to the moon, one sees them whisking to and fro on innumerable errands of seed gathering, but the chief witnesses of their presence near the spring are the elf owls. Those burrow-haunting, speckled fluffs of greediness begin a twilight flitting toward the spring, feeding as they go on grasshoppers, lizards, and small, swift creatures, diving into burrows to catch field mice asleep, battling with chipmunks at their own doors, and ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... twilight. It was a cavern, with its vaulted roof removed, laying it gently open to the light of day, without its glare. The wood-pigeon amidst the boughs mingled his plaintive notes with the murmur of the falling water, and the speckled trout sported in the pool—now displaying his glistening scales at the surface, then suddenly and coyly hiding in some deep and ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... up his hand for silence. "I've just composed a tune called 'The Speckled Alligator.' It's in patch-time, which is much superior to rag-time, and I've composed it in honor of the Patchwork Girl, who ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... meadows, below the beech-wood to the west of the village; which bears a superb white flower at the top of a slightly twisted stem, having an oval leaf about its middle"; the purple digitalis, "whose long spindles of great red flowers, speckled with white inside, and shaped like the fingers of a glove," border a certain road; all the ferns that grow on the wastes, "amid which it is often no easy task to recollect one's whereabouts," and on the arid hills all the heathers, pink, white, and bluish, with different foliage, "of ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... come to that refinement of egg-eating which Mrs. Stowe found at the mansion of the Duke of Sutherland, where she was honored with lunch. Her sylvan spirit was somewhat startled, when a servant brought five little speckled plover eggs, all lying in the nest just as taken from the tree. How they were cooked is unknown; but one would certainly need a recipe to eat ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... and some Snails creeping one way and some other; then take all manner of Comfits, both rough and smooth, both great and small, and colour many of them, some of one colour and some of another, let some be white and some speckled, then when you have coloured them, and that they are dry, mix them together and throw them into the Clefts, but not too many in one place, for that will hide the shape of your work, then throw in some Chips of all sorts of Fruit Candied, as Orange, Limon, Citron, Quince, ...
— The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet • Hannah Wolley
... it not been for the strength of the curl, his hair would have stood upright. For, following Bruce, led in fact by a string, came an awful apparition—Juno herself, a pitiable mass of caninity—looking like the resuscitated corpse of a dog that had been nine days buried, crowded with lumps, and speckled with cuts, going on three legs, and having her head and throat swollen to a size ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... certain mossy corners of England; but it looks away to a prospect of more than English loveliness—a broad green plain where the summer yields a double crop of grain, and a circle of bright blue mountains speckled with high-hung convents and profiled castles and nestling villas, and traversed by valleys of a deeper and duskier blue. In one of the deepest and shadiest of these recesses one of the most "sympathetic" of small watering-places is hidden away yet ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... you've panned the speckled sand and seen the bonny dust, Its peerless brightness blinds you like a spell; It's little else you care about; you go because you must, And you feel that you could follow it to hell. You'd follow it in hunger, and you'd follow it in cold; You'd ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... at twilight they came into Richmond by the Broad Street Road. Lights gleamed from the wet houses; high overhead grey clouds were parting, and in the west was a line of red. The wind was high, and the sycamores with which the town abounded rocked their speckled arms. The river was swollen and rolled hoarsely over the rocks beneath the red west. Rand had taken a house on Shockoe Hill, not far from the Chief Justice's, and to this he and Jacqueline came through the wet and windy freshness of ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... spring his tramp mother, too shiftless to build a home for herself, had come peeping and spying about the fuzzy nest of some yellow warblers that had built in an elder-bush by the river; and finding the birds away, had laid a big white egg speckled with brown in the midst of four dainty pale-blue ones that were wreathed with tiny dots. Then she had slipped away as quickly as possible, abandoning her own to the more tender mercies of the little ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... chain of the nets; they were for the most part beautiful phyctallines, belonging to the actinidian family, and among other species the phyctalis protexta, peculiar to that part of the ocean, with a little cylindrical trunk, ornamented With vertical lines, speckled with red dots, crowning a marvellous blossoming of tentacles. As to the molluscs, they consisted of some I had already observed—turritellas, olive porphyras, with regular lines intercrossed, with red spots standing out ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... irrigating ditches traverse this partially cultivable area, and in them are an abundance of fish. In one ditch I catch sight of a splendid specimen of the speckled trout, that must have been three feet long. Travelling leisurely next morning, we arrive at Ghalakua in the middle of the forenoon; quarters are assigned us by Aminulah Khan, the Chief of the Ghalakua villages and tributary territory. In appearance ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... warriors, rose here and there, while poplars and chenart-trees, assembled in groups and surrounded by underwood, looked like children ready to wander away to the mountains, to escape the summer heats. Sportive flocks of sheep—their fleeces speckled with rose-colour; buffaloes wallowing in the mud of the fountains, or for hours together lazily butting each other with their horns; here and there on the mountains noble steeds, which moved (their manes floating on the breeze) with a haughty trot along the hills—such is the frame that encloses ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... remember that big Christmas puddin, That puddin mooast famous ov all in a year; When each lad at th' table mud stuff all he could in, An ne'er have a word ov refusal to fear. Ha its raand speckled face, craand wi' sprigs o' green holly Seem'd sweeatin wi' juices ov currans an plums; An its fat cheeks made ivvery one laff an feel jolly, For it seem'd like a meetin ov long parted chums, That big Christmas pudding,—That ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... female is quite different from that of the male Grouse. Her general color is brown, with a tinge of orange, barred with black and speckled with the same hue, the spots and bars being larger on the breast, back, and wings, and the feathers on the breast more or less edged with white. The total length of the adult male is about twenty-two inches, and that of the female from ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various
... gone into the thicket, bobbing his head to avoid the prickly, wreath-like branches, he would have found on the other side only one person, little Lota Bird, playing all alone with her dolls. "Lady Bird" Nursey called Lota, because when, six years before, Papa fetched her home from China, she wore a speckled frock of orange-red and black, very much the color of those other tiny frocks in which the real lady-birds fly about in summer-time. The speckled frock was outgrown long ago, but the name still clung to Lota, and every one called her by it except ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... reminded. So that is your name—not Eve—but Clodagh, who was a Poisoner, you see? She poisoned a poor man who trusted her: and that is your name now—not Eve, but Clodagh—to remind me, you most dangerous little speckled viper! And in order that I may no more see your foolish little pretty face, I decree that, for the future, you wear a yashmak to cover up your lips, which, I can see, were meant to be seductive, though dirty; ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... stood with pines about Upon the hill, and ever A creek, where hid the speckled trout, Ran past ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... are united in strength. Their female companion is Rodas[i] (lightning, from the same root as rudra, the 'red'). They are like wild boars, and (like the sun) they have metallic jaws. On their chariots are speckled hides; like birds they spread their wings; they strive in flight with each other. Before them the earth sways like a ship. They dance upon their path. Upon their chests for beauty's sake they bind gold armor. From the heavenly udder they milk down rain. "Through whose wisdom, through ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... three at Romsey. Then I sat in front for a little while to talk to my Malachi. When I looked back, Shend was solidly asleep, and stayed so for the next two hours, while Leggatt chased Attley's fat Daimler along the green-speckled hedges. He woke up when we said good-bye at Mittleham, with promises to meet ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... there always and been content, for he had many pleasures. Other cows, also, brought their calves up to the same place, and he had numerous playmates in his gambols on the hillsides. Among the other calves was a speckled heifer, whose dam was a great crony of his own mother. These two cows were almost inseparable during the entire summer, and it was as natural as the falling of a mesquite bean that he should form a warm attachment for ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... the water here is of a dirty yellow; it was imagined at first to be caused by the tide stirring up the mud; but on examination we found that it arose entirely from the reflection of the bottom, which is a brown and yellow speckled sand. Although this change of the bottom was favourable to the importance of the opening before us, yet it rendered our difficulties greater, and increased the dangers, from its offering less secure anchorage, and being ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... must be it," said he: "the lubber! to take it for a man's head. Why, it is nothing but a thundering old bladder, speckled white." ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... pursued the smaller, greenish globe of its companion across a cloudless sky in which the stars made a speckled pattern like the scales of a huge serpent coiled around a black bowl. Ras Hume paused at the border of scented spike-flowers on the top terrace of the Pleasure House to wonder why he thought of serpents. He understood. Mankind's age-old hatred, brought from his native planet to ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... and his daughter filled the bowl brimming again and he passed it to me. As I took it I saw that it was of light polished wood curiously speckled, with a band of silver round it, on which was cut the legend, "In the name of the Trinity fill the cup and drink to me." And before I drank, it came upon me to say, "To-morrow, and the ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... that the firewood is not unusually speckled or dirty, as the child that is to come might be lacking in due comeliness. I have seen many a husband assiduously peeling off the ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... intention was to provide a light dome, presumably similar to that built a little later to crown the mausoleum of Itimad-ud-daula. Finch, the traveller, who was at Agra about 1611, was informed that the cenotaph was 'to be inarched over with the most curious white and speckled marble, and to be seeled all within with pure sheet gold, richly inwrought.' The reason for omitting ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... be well to the north of the speckled bottom before it was safe to head for the shore, and away we went again. In about an hour Burroughs quietly asked for another sounding. Again she was gently stopped, and this time ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... chimney; immediately under which is an excavation in the floor, burned away by a large fire of turf, loosely heaped together. This is surrounded by a circle of urchins, sitting on the bare earth, stones, and hassocks, and exhibiting a series of speckled shins, all radiating towards the fire, like sausages on a Poloni dish. There they are—wedged as close as they can sit; one with half a thigh off his breeches—another with half an arm off his tattered coat—a third without breeches at all, wearing, as a substitute, a piece of his mother's ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... his fosterbrothers at their game, and turned his chariot and his charioteer until he was in Dublin. There he saw great, white-speckled birds, of unusual size and colour and beauty. He pursues then until his horses were tired. The birds would go a spearcast before him, and would not go any further. He alighted, and takes his sling for them out of the chariot. He goes after them until ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... balmy January evening, following what had been the hottest day the castaways had experienced since coming to Trigger Island, a group of men and women sat upon the Governor's porch. There was no moon, but the sky was speckled ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... want you to listen. Have you noticed anything different about me lately, Kent?" She tilted her head, while she passed judgment upon a cluster of speckled blossoms, ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... garden things," he said darkly, more to himself than to the others. He gazed down into the hole he had been digging. The moist earth glistened in the sunlight. He sniffed the sweet, rich odour of it, and scratched his head in the same spot as before—just beneath the peak of his speckled cap. His nose wrinkled up. Then he looked again into the faces, turning his single eye slowly upon each in turn. The Tramp's remark had reached ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... Naples. Nevertheless the theory of tarantella and tarantismo has been gravely discussed by old Italian writers, and a certain learned prelate of the fifteenth century, Niccolo Perotto, Archbishop of Siponto, alludes to the malignant cause of this dance-cure as "a species of speckled spider, dwelling in rents of the ground caused by excessive heat. It was not known in the time of our fore-fathers, but now it is very common in Apulia ... and is generally called Tarantula. Its bite ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... Catalina with baskets of abalone and fish, and with ollas all speckled, and strings of money. He is near the top of the grade now. Upon hearing the good news the lad darted away at a great pace, his sisters following as fast as they could. Sholoc and his party had stopped to rearrange their loads, so ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... in an ulster, a maud over the ulster, and a high hat on the top of all. It could not have been there very long, because it was only speckled with snow. Mr. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... offended by some unsavoury odour; and he looked as if he wanted to shrink within himself from the impertinence of society. He wore a black periwig as straight as the pinions of a raven, and this was covered with a hat flapped, and fastened to his head by a speckled handkerchief tied under his chin. He was wrapped in a greatcoat of brown frieze, under which he seemed to conceal a small bundle. His name was Ferret, and his character distinguished by three peculiarities. ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... They do not seem to mind the smell, and they love the slime, and they had played there for several days in great peace before the unfortunate accident of the June baby's falling in and being brought back looking like a green and speckled frog herself, revealed where it was they had persuaded Seraphine to let them spend their mornings. Then there was woe and lamentation, for I was sure they would all have typhoid fever, and I put them mercilessly to bed, and dosed them, as a ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... other members {56} of the seraglio and, going to some broom-sedge field or open place in the woods, constructs her nest on the ground beneath some slight, convenient shelter. Day after day she absents herself for a short time, and the speckled treasures grow in number until from twelve to fifteen have been deposited. All this time her movements are characterized by absolute secrecy, for if the gobbler by any chance comes upon the nest he immediately breaks every egg. He is perhaps wise enough to know that when his ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... an irresistible desire to hop, and he was very thirsty. There was a rivulet near, and instead of walking to it he leaped, and stooping to drink, he saw himself reflected in its smooth surface. No longer did he see Arthur; no longer was he a mortal boy. Instead of this, a frog—a green speckled frog, with great bulging eyes and a fishy mouth—looked up at him. He tried to call, to shout, but in vain; he could only croak, and this in the most dismal manner. What was he to do? Sit and stare about him, try to catch flies, plunge down into the mud—charming ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... not a brook or speckled trout, for it has no speckles, and it's not a relative of the late William Basse, for it isn't deep enough in the body, nor a perch, for it's too big and has no stripes. It's either a salmon trout or ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... note the bird flung itself upon its enemy. A blur of brown feathers and a glimpse of a twisting, bluish body were all that the boy could see. A moment, and the snake writhed out from the nest. The thrush lay on the ground, blood crimsoning the speckled white of its breast. Its wings fluttered slightly, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... glance round, and I had out the key. To draw back now was to write myself craven all my life; and with a shaking hand I thrust the wards into the lock, turned them, and in another moment stood on the other side of the door in a neat garden, speckled with sunshine and shade, and where ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... more than a hundred splendid trout, weighing from one to three pounds apiece! They worked with incredible rapidity. Scarcely did the fly touch the water when the line was drawn, the light rod dipped with graceful curve, and the revolving reel drew in the speckled beauty to the shore. Each of these anglers had two hooks upon his line, and both of them once had two trout hooked at the same time, and landed them; while we poor eastern visitors at first looked on in dumb amazement, and then ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... stagshorn for their hats; anon, with screams Of mad delight they drop their spoils, and bound Among the holly-clumps and broken ground, Racing full speed, and startling in their rush The fell-fares and the speckled missel-thrush Out of their glossy coverts;—but when now Their cheeks were flush'd, and over each hot brow, Under the feather'd hats of the sweet pair, In blinding masses shower'd the golden hair— Then Iseult call'd them to her, and the three Cluster'd ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... water discharges itself into what was the original channel of the river Bain, {228} which, between Horncastle and here, has been more than once utilised to replenish the canal. Not far off, down this small stream, are some favourite haunts of the speckled trout; and beneath overhanging willows fine chub may be seen poising themselves in the water sleepily. We now leave the towing path and enter the main street, with church and castle close at hand to our left, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... a toy from his hand and placed it upon the sand. It was a dog of tin, painted white and speckled with black spots. Great patches of paint had worn away and left the metal clear, and that was why the toy shone in the sun as if ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... gardens, and as their centre, one of the great old coaching inns of past days, now chiefly farmhouse, though a sign, bearing a golden bugle-horn upon a blue ground, stood aloft in front of it, over the heads of the speckled mass of tan, black, and white, pervaded with curved tails, over which the scarlet-coated whips kept guard, while shining horses, bearing red coats and black coats, boys, and a few ladies, were moving about, and carriages drew up from ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Big Little Man. I love you. My name Maiden's Heart. You much pious. You buy beans. Pay good. Me wants one speckled shirt. Crowded Owl want one speckled shirt, too. You send two speckled shirts. You good Big Little Man. You ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... lover Shall cross his path to-day! 290 False Sextus saw, and trembled, And turned, and fled away. As turns, as flies, the woodman In the Calabrian[44] brake, When through the reeds gleams the round eye 295 Of that fell speckled snake; So turned, so fled, false Sextus, And hid him in the rear, Behind the dark Lavinian ranks, Bristling ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... consisting of a densely woven mass of spruce twigs, soft vegetable down, rootlets, and fine shreds of bark. The lining is often intermixed with horse hairs and feathers. Four eggs of greenish-white or very pale bluish-green, speckled or spotted, have usually been found in ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... strong much beyond the average in its individual members, but weak to powerlessness in the diversity of its composition. Burke, in a memorable passage of a memorable speech, has described this "chequered and speckled" administration with great humour, speaking of it as "indeed a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch and unsure to stand on." Pitt chose for himself the office of lord privy seal, which necessitated his removal to the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... peculiar call. Instantly there came tumbling into the hut, until it nearly overflowed, a strange medley of creatures,—hares, mice, birds, kittens, squirrels. Last of all peered into the doorway a deer and her little speckled fawn. ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... a stream. Purple and blue flags waded in the water; In among them hopped the speckled frogs; The wind slid through them, rustling. The Poet lifted his cane, And the iris heads fell into the water. They floated away, torn and drowning. "Wretched flowers," said the ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... head and cock of her eye, as she pries into one and another nook, croaking all the while, evidently with the idea that the egg in question is the most important thing that has been brought to pass since the world began. A speckled black and white and tufted hen of ours does it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... lose the olive tree after getting to a certain height, and find it again on the other side at the village of Breglio. Here we come to the river Roia, which, after receiving the branch on which is Sospello, leads to the sea at Ventimiglia. The Roia is about twelve yards wide, and abounds with speckled trout. Were a road made from Breglio, along the side of the Roia to Ventimiglia, it might turn the commerce of Turin to this last place instead of Nice; because it would avoid the mountains of Braus and Brois, leaving only that of Tende; that is ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the sleeping, quiet world, Painted in tender grays and whites subdued— The speckled stream with flakes of ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... old house of stuccoed brick, with a square front porch and green shutters which were sagging on loosened hinges. On the walls where the stucco had peeled away, the red brick showed in splotches, and the pillars of the porch, which had been white, were now speckled with yellow stains. Over the whole place, with its air of fallen respectability, there hung the depressing smell of mingled dust, stale cooking, and bad tobacco. A number of imposing and well-preserved houses stood on the block, for ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... going Home. He left the Service, and is now raising speckled cattle inside green painted fences somewhere at Home. I believe he does this very judiciously. He would have come to extreme grief ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... up and pawed them, dropping on all fours, again reared up at them with mute bearish fawning. Unheeded he kept by them as they came towards the drier sand, a rag of wolf's tongue redpanting from his jaws. His speckled body ambled ahead of them and then loped off at a calf's gallop. The carcass lay on his path. He stopped, sniffed, stalked round it, brother, nosing closer, went round it, sniffling rapidly like a dog all over the dead dog's bedraggled fell. Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes on the ground, moves to one ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... evening, but the elder Mr. Weller was attired, notwithstanding, in a most capacious greatcoat, and his chin enveloped in a large speckled shawl, such as is usually worn by stage coachmen on active service. He looked very rosy and very stout, especially about the legs, which appeared to have been compressed into his top-boots with some ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... had grown Impatient longer to abide A prisoner, greatly mortified To see completely overthrown His plans for angling in the brook, And, leaning o'er the bridge of stone, To watch the speckled trout glide by, And float through the inverted sky, Still round and round the baited hook— Now paced the room with rapid stride, And, pausing at the Poet's side, Looked forth, and saw the wretched steed, And said: "Alas for human greed, That with cold hand ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... twenty-four, cream colour; one hundred and twenty-nine, light yellow; one hundred and thirty-four, amber colour; one hundred and thirty-eight, brown; one hundred and fifty-two, high brown; one hundred and fifty-seven, brown, inclining to black; one hundred and sixty-two, high brown speckled with black; one hundred and seventy-one, colour of burned coffee; one hundred and seventy-six, black. This account not only shows us how to judge of the dryness of malt by its colour; but also, when grist is composed ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... Serpent-forms incumbent on the main, 340 Lashing the white waves with redundant train, Arch'd their blue necks, and (hook their towering crests, And plough'd their foamy way with speckled breasts; Then darting fierce amid the affrighted throngs, Roll'd their red eyes, and shot their forked tongues,— 345 —Two daring Youths to guard the hoary fire Thwart their dread progress, and provoke their ire. Round sire and ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... Peter—a speckled, drab-coloured, prick-eared creation, a few sizes larger than a fox-terrier—could be kept in order with a little discretion, and by keeping hands off Happy Dick; but all the discretion in the Territory, and a unanimous keeping off of hands, failed to keep order ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... pattridge nest, sure's you live!" said Ted, diving down among the leaves; and after a minute's eager search they were found—two, four, six, eight, nine speckled eggs in the cozy nest. "We'll leave one for the poor pattridge to come back to, won't we Kit?" said Ted, swiftly ...
— Harper's Young People, September 21, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... gathering wild nuts and blackberries. By-and-by, I came upon a great common, with a picturesque mill standing high against the sky. All around and about stretched a vast prospect of woodland and tufted heath, bounded far off by a range of chalk-hills speckled with farm-houses and villages, and melting towards the west into a distance faint and far, and mystic as ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... charming. Bibury is indeed a pretty village. As you walk along the main street which runs parallel with the river, an angler is busy "swishing" his rod violently in the air to "dry" the fly, ere he essays to drop it over the nose of one of the speckled fario which abound; so be careful to step down off the path which runs alongside the stream, in case you should put the fish "down" and spoil the sport. And now on our left, beyond the green, may be seen a line of gabled cottages called "Arlington Row," a picture of which by G. Leslie was hung ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... canal, which flows through the forest from the marshes to the sea; it is alive with frogs and newts and snakes. You may see these serpents basking on the surface among thickets of the flowering rush, or coiled about the lily leaves and flowers—lithe monsters, slippery and speckled, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... to her shoulder, glanced for a brief instant along the barrel, and the white mark at the end of the gallery was speckled like a currant dumpling, while the ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... Like all empty-headed people, she was quick to lose her temper. "Spots indeed! I'd have you know that I haven't any spots. I'm a speckled beauty—that's what I am. And if you don't believe it you can ...
— The Tale of Miss Kitty Cat - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... had passed away and the sun began to shine again, he left the tree to look at the fish which Kali had brought. The negro had caught about twenty upon a line of thin wire. Most of them were small, but there were three about a foot long, silver speckled and surprisingly light. Mea, who was bred upon the banks of the Blue Nile, was conversant with these fishes; she said that they were good to eat and towards evening they leap very high above the water. ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... spavin. Spavit, spavined. Spean, to wean. Speat, a flood. Speel, to climb. Speer, spier, to ask. Speet, to spit. Spence, the parlor. Spier. v. speer. Spleuchan, pouch. Splore, a frolic; a carousal. Sprachl'd, clambered. Sprattle, scramble. Spreckled, speckled. Spring, a quick tune; a dance. Sprittie, full of roots or sprouts (a kind of rush). Sprush, spruce. Spunk, a match; a spark; fire, spirit. Spunkie, full of spirit. Spunkie, liquor, spirits. Spunkies, jack-o'-lanterns, will-o'-wisps. Spurtle-blade, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Sumptuary Laws have fallen into such a state of desuetude as was never before seen. Our fashionable coat is an amphibium between barn-sack and drayman's doublet. The cloth of it is studiously coarse; the colour a speckled soot-black or rust-brown gray; the nearest approach to a Peasant's. And for shape,—thou shouldst see it! The last consummation of the year now passing over us is definable as Three Bags; a big bag for the body, two small bags for the arms, and ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... the skin of the bony scaled pike was taken for part of a sea-serpent's hide. A speckled mother duck, with a numerous brood of young ones swimming after her in a line on Lake Ontario, was described as the sea-serpent itself. And from such occurrences as these, perhaps, mingled with careless observation of the motions and appearances of porpuses, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... fall, do commonly clothe it all the winter; the roots growing very deep and stragling. The author of Britannia Baconica, speaks of an oak in Lanhadron-Park in Cornwall, which bears constantly leaves speckled with white; and of another call'd the painted oak; others have since been found at Fridwood, near Sittingbourn in Kent; as also sycamore and elms, in other places mentioned by the learned Dr. Plot in his Nat. Hist. of Oxfordshire: Which I only mention here, that the variety may be compar'd ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... limbs encircling it, his two hands locked upon it, trusting to it, just trusting to it. It bent low in a great sweeping curve, the nest swayed and swung from the movement of the swing downward, a little olive-colored, speckled head peeking cautiously out as if to see what all the ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... was speckled," she asserted. "I wouldn't be surprised if it's measles. Has he been ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... almost concealed in the thick green texture of the carpet. It was a trinket like a bar brooch, with gold clasps. The bar was of transparent stone, clear as glass, with a faint sea-green tinge, and speckled in the interior with small black spots. Caldew had never seen a stone like it. The frail gold of the setting suggested that it was not of much intrinsic value, but it was a pretty little trinket, such as ladies sometimes wear as a mascot. Caldew reflected that if it were a mascot it ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... tiny shell, A feather by wild bird cast, Gay flowers gathered in forest dell, Already withering fast, Four speckled eggs in a soft brown nest, Thy last and thy greatest prize, Such the things that fill with joy thy breast, ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... like a snug farm-house, with its stables and other outhouses, with its garden and fields, and horses and cattle! The distance was too great for us to distinguish what sort of cattle they were, but there appeared to be many kinds, both red, and black, and speckled. We could see several figures of men and boys—four of them in all—moving about the enclosures, and there was a woman near the door of the house. It was impossible in the distance to tell whether they were white people, but we never imagined for a moment they could ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Tewe we saw low mountains for the first time, and here the river becomes narrower and deeper, though even at the last-named place it is 350 metres wide. The water assumed a deeper reddish colour and was speckled with foam, indicating a certain amount of flood caused by rains higher up the river. We passed a family of wild pigs grubbing up the muddy beach in search of roots. There was a large dark one and a huge ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... a new topee to charge against one or other of the Viceroys or Government—General Pretyman hardly looked his name—and during the rest of the function of the return from the Bundar of Lord Minto and his retainers, you could tell by his grey speckled side what position in the preceding function a spectator had occupied. A Parsi, in neat black frock-coat and Brunswick black hat, and dark face, remarked to me with a smile, "You see the advantage of a little colour,"—bit of a ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... a little too general, led him into measures that were greatly mischievous to himself; and for that reason, among others, perhaps fatal to his country; measures, the effects of which, I am afraid, are for ever incurable. He made an administration, so checkered and speckled; he put together a piece of joinery, so crossly indented and whimsically dove-tailed; a cabinet so variously inlaid; such a piece of diversified mosaic; such a tesselated pavement without cement; here a bit of black stone, and there a bit of white; patriots ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... a protective habit, of course, acquired through precisely the same causes that had given to animals their protective coloration—the stripes, say, of the zebra and tiger that blend so cunningly with the barred and speckled shadowings of bush and jungle, the twig and leaflike shapes and hues of certain insects; in fact, all that natural camouflage which was the basis of the art of concealment so astonishingly developed in the ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... seed only of the "monkey plant" had been thrown, and taking root had flourished and flourished until the stream now was hidden beneath a mass of lush green leaves and stems crowned by tawny golden blossoms speckled and splashed with a deep ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... myself thought we would visit Lady Washington, and as she was said to be so grand a lady, we thought we must put on our best bibbs and bands. So we dressed ourselfes in our most elegant ruffles and silks, and were introduced to her ladyship. And don't you think we found her knitting and with a speckled (check) apron on! She received us very graciously, and easily, but after the compliments were over, she resumed her knitting. There we were without a stitch of work, and sitting in State, but General Washington's lady with her own hands was knitting ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... no lack of material for the structure extensive as it was. Asia furnished its quota, and Christian towns and churches on the Bosphorus were remorselessly levelled for the stones in them; wherefore the outer faces of the curtains and towers are yet speckled with marbles ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... Smothe, vapor. Snaw, snow. Snell, bitter. Snooded, bound up with a fillet. Snool, cringe. Solan, gannet. Soote, sweet. Souter, cobbler. Spak, spoke. Spean, wean. Speel, climb. Spier, ask, inquire. Spraing, stripe. Sprattle, scramble. Spreckled, speckled. Spryte, spirit. Squattle, squat. Stacher, stagger, totter. Stane, stone. Steer, stir. Steyned, stained. Stibble, stubble. Still, ever. Stirk, young steer. Stole, robe. Stonen, stony. Stote, stout. Stoure, dust, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... firmly planted above, like the ruins of Palmyra above contemporary meanness. Moving up the streets, in dust and mud-puddle, you see shabbily ambitious churches, with wooden towers; hotels, the curbs whereof are speckled with human blemishes, sustaining like hip-shotten caryatides the sandstone-wooden columns. Within there is a pandemonium of legs in the air, and an agglomeration of saliva, ending with an impertinent clerk and two crescents of ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... cast your fly. I should think there must be some speckled fellows there. What glory, Daisy, ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... feet tall, and when full grown is eight or ten feet around. It rises as straight as an elm, with high branching limbs and long, smooth oval leaves. Sprays of pale flowers blossom upon it in August, followed in a few months by pods containing three speckled seeds which look like smooth, slightly flattened nutmegs. When the seeds are ready to drop the outer covering of the pod bursts with a loud report, the ...
— The Romance of Rubber • United States Rubber Company
... that's a bad thing—and particularly at his time of life. I lost a beautiful hen only yesterday from rheumatism in the legs; one of the best sitters I ever had. You remember her?—the speckled one that I got from Tetleigh, four years ago come Michaelmas. But that's the way in this world; the most missed are ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... centre of the yard was a mountain of manure and straw, with a puce-coloured pond beside it. On the summit of the mountain a handsome ruddy cock, with a splendid dark-green arched tail, clucked, chuckled, and scratched for his speckled, rose-crowned hens, a green-headed, curly-tailed drake "steered forth his fleet upon the lake" of brown ducks and their yellow progeny, and pigs of the plum-pudding order rooted in the intermediate regions. The road which led to the ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... passions begets the strongest imagination (saith [1607]Wierus), and so likewise love, sorrow, joy, &c. Some die suddenly, as she that saw her son come from the battle at Cannae, &c. Jacob the patriarch, by force of imagination, made speckled lambs, laying speckled rods before his sheep. Persina, that Ethiopian queen in Heliodorus, by seeing the picture of Persius and Andromeda, instead of a blackamoor, was brought to bed of a fair white child. In imitation of whom belike, a hard-favoured fellow ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... day whipping a trout stream without a rise or even a ripple to reward him, while a ragged urchin, with a willow wand, and a bent pin, not ten yards distant, is covering the greensward with myriads of speckled and scaly backs, from one pound weight to four; so it is in every thing—"the race is not to the swift;" the elements of success in life, whatever be the object of pursuit, are very, very different from what we think them at first sight, and so it was with Mr. O'Leary, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... merrily in the fountain jet in front of that building. We think of the merry mercators of the Whitehall Club sitting at lunch on the cool summit of that great edifice. We think of the view as seen from there, the olive-coloured gleam of the water, the ships and tugs speckled about the harbour. And, looking down, we can see a peaceful gentleman sitting on a bench in St. Paul's graveyard, reading a book. We think seriously of writing a note, "What are you reading?" and weighting it with an inkwell and hurling it down to him. This ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... righteousness pleaseth God: but I answer no, not thine, with respect to justification from the curse of the law, unless it be as perfect as the justice it is yielded to, and as the law that doth command it. But thine is not such a righteousness: no, thine is speckled, thine is spotted, thine makes thee to look like a ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... surprise, the girls found a cleft between two great rocks with a quiet pool resting at the base. The current passed, rushing onward to the Falls, but the water circulating in the nook scarcely rippled. Even as the two girls watched, a flash of a speckled back flounced up in ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... usurp all my feeling. The purple peaks to the westward and farther inland, had a beauty of their own, and in the gentle curves with which they leaned towards each other, there was a promise of the flowery meadows of Enna. The smooth blue water was speckled with fishing-boats. We hailed one, inquiring when the festa was to commence; but, mistaking our question, they answered: "Anchovies." Thereupon, a waggish Maltese informed them that Maestro Paolo thanked them heartily. All the other boats were ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... large place the sea is," said Sammy. He had gone quite a distance before he realized that the occasion for hurry was now over, and then he rose gracefully to the surface and looked about him. Overhead stretched the blue sky speckled with fleecy, white clouds, and off in the distance a long line of white sand showed the shore line, against which the incoming tide sent its undulating billows. Near the shore circled a flock of sea-gulls, and ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater |
