"Wasp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they know just at what hour the trout ceased leaping at dark fly or moth, and could see only in the dim light the ghostly white miller? Did they know the comparative merits, as a tempting bait, of grasshopper, cricket, spider, or wasp; and could they, with bits of wool, tinsel, and feather, copy the real dipterous, hymenopterous, or orthopterous insect? And the birds: he knew them as do few ornithologists, by sight, by sound, by little ...
— Fishin' Jimmy • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... but in the case of the terns—sea-frequenting and sea-loving—which had not the wit to lay their eggs beyond the reach of spring tides, the reasoning is the merest intrusion. Yet an instance of what seems to be the reasoned act of a wasp may be cited. The insect had selected a dead log of soft wood as a site for its egg-shaft. It was at a spot to which the occupations of the season took me daily, so that the boring operations were watched from beginning to end. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... was somewhat sudden; to a wasp or two that had come foraging on Daisy's window-sill. But Dr. Sandford was at home there; and so explained the wasp's work and manner of life, with his structure and fitness for what he had to do, that Daisy was ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... truly, and I like your remark, 'Such fellows ought not to claim a moment's attention from me. I should brush them away, like flies from my forehead, when they presume to tease or settle themselves upon me.' I have taken your advice, and fly-slapped the wasp that was more willing than able ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... stumps of the king's beard, and another of the same materials, but fixed into a paring of her Majesty's thumb-nail, which served for the back. There was a collection of needles and pins, from a foot to half a yard long; four wasp stings, like joiners' tacks; some combings of the queen's hair; a gold ring which one day she made me a present of, in a most obliging manner, taking it from her little finger and throwing it over my head like a collar. I desired the captain would please ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... the nesting-ground of the migratory birds. Here vast numbers of ducks, geese, swans and pelicans resort every year. Cranes, partridges and varieties of singing birds abound. The eagle, hawk, owl and crow are plentiful. Mosquitoes and flies are everywhere, and the wasp and wild bee also. In the rivers and lakes pike, pickerel, white fish and sturgeon supply food for the natives, and the brook trout is found in the small mountain streams. The turtle and frog ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to sting Adolphe at all hours, but this privilege of letting a wasp off now and then upon one's consort (the legal term), is exclusively reserved to the wife. Adolphe is a monster if he starts off a single fly at Caroline. On her part, it is a delicious joke, a new jest to enliven their married life, and one dictated by the purest intentions; while ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... at the present moment rusticating at Malvern Wells. We are on the side of a great hill (which you would call small in America), and our intercourse is only with the flowers and bees and swallows of the season. Sometimes we encounter a wasp, which I suppose comes ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... they dinna nip you, for haein' a wid leg," says Sandy, as raised as a wasp. "Awa' oot o' that, an' ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... commander in charge of the gunboats on Lake Champlain. They further reveal the fact that on the 27th of September of this same year he was granted a furlough to make a European voyage. This project for some reason was given up, as on the 13th of November, 1809, he was ordered to the Wasp, then under the command of Lawrence, who afterwards fell in the engagement between the Shannon and the Chesapeake. To this officer, like himself a native of Burlington, he was very warmly attached. The next notice of him contained in the official ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... on 't!" cried Johnnie. He drew himself up to his full height and stretched out a brawny arm. "I ought to have crushed him 'twixt finger and thumb as I would a wasp. A lean, ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... them. They peeped down into the dark holes of the kivas, and Bess gleefully dropped a stone and waited for the long-coming hollow sound to rise. They peeped into the little globular houses, like mud-wasp nests, and wondered if these had been store-places for grain, or baby cribs, or what; and they crawled into the larger houses and laughed when they bumped their heads on the low roofs, and they dug in the dust of the floors. And they brought from dust and darkness armloads of treasure which ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... savage peoples to fight. It is the spirit which enables them to combine—the great common object before which all personal or tribal disputes become insignificant. What the horn is to the rhinoceros, what the sting is to the wasp, the Mohammedan faith was to the Arabs of the Soudan—a faculty of ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... escape for that which others die, Mercy to those, to these is cruelty. A fine and slender net the spider weaves, Which little and light animals receives; And if she catch a common bee or fly, They with a piteous groan and murmur die; But if a wasp or hornet she entrap, They tear her cords like Samson, and escape; So like a fly the poor offender dies, But like the wasp, the rich escapes and flies. 110 Do not, if one but lightly thee offend, The punishment beyond the crime extend; ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... only a little more mysterious than those of the chipmunks in the old wall or the Cingalia catenaria that is again flitting forth in the chill of gray dusk to seek what honey the coleuses and the coppers, the vanessas and the wasp have left behind. ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... of a tree, and immediately springing up, brushing the seat of his pants vigorously. Examination showed that he had set down on a nest of little brown scorpions. Something like a crawfish in shape, with tails turned up over their backs, with a sting like a wasp's in the end of the tail. The laugh of ...
— A History of Lumsden's Battery, C.S.A. • George Little
... kept in place by bands of brownish linen, and is further covered by a mask of wood and cartonnage, painted to match the exterior of the coffin. Long garlands of faded flowers deck the mummy from head to foot. A wasp, attracted by their scent, must have settled upon them at the moment of burial, and become imprisoned by the lid; the insect has been completely preserved from corruption by the balsams of the embalmer, and its gauzy wings have passed un-crumpled ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... their work and wrapped themselves round Umbelazi's army as the nippers of a wasp close about a fly (why did not Umbelazi cut off those horns, I wondered), the Usutu bull began his charge. Twenty or thirty thousand strong, regiment after regiment, Cetewayo's men rushed up the slope, and there, near the crest of it, were met by Umbelazi's ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... favorites is the "wasp dance," allied to the Tarantella. Although less pleasing in motive than that described, the wasp dance gives opportunity for movements of even superior significance—or, as one may say, suggestures. The girl stands in ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... there were at one time insidious suggestions to the contrary, it has appeared that he conformed to his instructions, promoted the public interest, and gave entire satisfaction to the government. In 1811, he was transferred to the command of the sloop-of-war Wasp, mounting eighteen twenty-four pound carronades, and dispatched, in the spring of 1812, with communications to the courts of St. Cloud and St. James. Before he returned, war had been declared against Great Britain. He refitted his ship with all possible dispatch, ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... high-explosive sting, with a dum dum point. We hurt all over; and the worst of it was, we hadn't really been stung yet and didn't know where it was going to hit us. Did you ever wait perfectly helpless while a large, taciturn wasp with a red-hot tail was looking ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... 6. WASP WAISTS.—Marrying small waists is attended with consequences scarcely less disastrous than marrying {183} rich and fashionable girls. An amply developed chest is a sure indication of a naturally vigorous constitution and a strong hold on life; while ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... Fox), attacked the former for eternal invectives. Oh! since the last philippic of Billingsgate memory you never heard such an invective as Pitt returned-Hume Campbell was annihilated! Pitt, like an angry wasp, seems to have left his sting in the wound, and has since assumed a style of delicate ridicule and repartee. But think how charming a ridicule must that be that lasts and rises, flash after flash, for an hour and a half! Some day or other, perhaps you ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... cover; too suddenly for clumsy-fingered Hillmen to reload, the reformed troops charged wedgewise into rallying detachments. In an hour, or less, there were prisoners being herded like cattle in the valley bottom, and a sting had been drawn from the border wasp that would not grow again for a year ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... without knowledge. What man that ever had read, or assented to the gospel, but would have spoken, yet kept within the bounds of truth, more honourably of Christ, than you have done? His sacrifice must be stept over, as the spider straddleth over the wasp, his intercession is needless to be enlarged upon. But when it falleth in your way to talk of your human nature, of the dictates, of the first principles of morals within you, and of your generous mind to follow it: oh what ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the sting of a wasp, but I could not resist them, and when some days later Martin called to take me to the Geographical Society, where his commander, Lieutenant —— was to give an account of their expedition, I could not find it in my heart to ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... thorax and body densely hairy like the bee, and the legs are tufted in a manner most unusual in the order Coleoptera. Another Longicorn, Odontocera odyneroides, has the abdomen banded with yellow, and constricted at the base, and is altogether so exactly like a small common wasp of the genus Odynerus, that Mr. Bates informs us he was afraid to take it out of his net with his fingers for fear of being stung. Had Mr. Bates's taste for insects been less omnivorous than it was, the beetle's disguise might have saved it from his pin, as it had no doubt often done from the beak ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... their fore-paws resting on an altar (?), their heads, oddly enough, combined into one. The column which figures in the relief above the gate is absent from the gem, but is found on another specimen from Mycenae, where the animals, however, are winged griffins. Fig. 41 has only a standing man, of the wasp-waisted figure and wearing the girdle with which other representations have ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... days in these months good sport may be had with the wet fly; and in September a yellow dun, or a fly that imitates the wasp, will kill, if only you can keep out of sight, and place a well-dried fly right on ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... found himself involved in an animated discussion with Dr. Rolph. Nearly all the prominent members of the House erelong became participants, and the situation became critical. Hard words were freely bandied about, amid the greatest confusion and disorder. An eye-witness compares the scene to a wasp's nest disturbed.[267] The Speaker finally put a stop to the ebullitions of temper, and brought the scene to a close by announcing that the time had arrived for waiting on the Lieutenant-Governor with certain addresses. There was ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... Mr Gresham, taking up a revolver and box of cartridges he had brought on deck with him, and going towards the after gangway, abreast of which the steam pinnace was lying, buzzing away like a little wasp alongside; the intimation on the part of our captain that he would 'like' a thing being done being quite equivalent to a command to do it! "You mean, sir, that queer-shaped headland some twenty ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... the declaration of the great poet Pope, and a glance across the world's literature will show that the mandate was unneeded. For ages before the birth of the celebrated "wasp of Twickenham," mankind had been at study on the subject. "The burden of history" says George Finlayson, "is what man has been; of law, what he does; of physiology, what he is; of ethics, what he ought to be; of revelation, ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... can effect a compromise. The lawsuit will be ugly, and probably ruinous. He has a right to claim six years' arrears—that is above L100,000. Make yourself his father-in-law, and me his uncle-in-law; and, since we can't kill the wasp, we may at least soften ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... at once left the cottage. The latter was let into the secret, and prevailed on to form one of the crew of the Wasp, as the little cutter was named. In the course of the afternoon everything was in readiness. Gascoyne waited till the dusk of evening, and then embarked along with Ole Thorwald; that stout individual having insisted on being one of the party, despite the remonstrances of Mr. Mason, who did not ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... his work is known." A piece of honey-comb, one day, Discovered as a waif and stray, The Hornets treated as their own. Their title did the Bees dispute, And brought before a Wasp the suit. The judge was puzzled to decide, For nothing could be testified Save that around this honey-comb There had been seen, as if at home, Some longish, brownish, buzzing creatures, Much like the Bees in wings and features. But what of that? for marks ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... obstinately went through his five years of married life, trying to recollect every detail month by month, day by day, and every disquieting circumstance that he remembered stung him to the quick like a wasp's sting. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... everywhere, especially in forests. Recognized generally at sight by its color and fasciculate habit. The peridium shows a tendency, often, to circumscissile dehiscence, and persists long after the contents have been dissipated, in this condition suggesting the name applied by Batsch, vesparium, wasp-nest. The capillitium is remarkably spinescent, the branching of the threads, rare. Rostafinski describes the spores as smooth; they seem to be uniformly distinctly warted. The plasmodium is deep red, and a plasmodiocarpous fructification ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... duty, owing to a plug of terra-cotta-coloured clay. Upon the spout being probed the gush of gas expelled a quantity of clay and thirty-five small spiders, representative of about six different species. The spout had been converted into a nursery and larder by a carnivorous wasp, for in addition to the moribund spiders stored for the sustenance of future grubs were several unhatched eggs. Such wasps are exceedingly common, some building "nests" as large as a tea-cup, the ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... her roamings right up the wall of the summer-house and along a joist bare of all save dust, and—well, the spider walked straight on, moving with little jerks as if by intermittent clockwork, and she seemed to stroll right on top of the wasp lying curled up on her side. Only when one of the latter's delicate feelers shifted round towards her, as though in some uncanny way conscious of her approach, did she leap back as if she had touched ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... race of Tories. Once within the embracing solitude of Roselawn, the discordant jangling of common people worrying about their long hours of work or the right to give their offspring a decent chance in the world became a distant murmur, no more unpleasant or menacing than the whang of a wasp outside ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... adjourned to the drawing-room, Captain and Mrs. Ray, the Strachys, Rutherfords, &c. We had a scientific experiment with the shadow of the moon. Mr. Ray told a curious story of a wasp. He saw it advance slowly to a great spider, which the wasp apparently completely mesmerised, and then the wasp carried him off to a little house he had made, and deposited the spider next an egg, then another egg, and again another spider, till ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... glittering dragon-fly, A winged flash, goes by; And tawny wasp and hornet Seem gleams that drone; The beetle, like a garnet, Slips from the stone; And butterflies float there, Spangling ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... ground-mole sinks his well; How the robin feeds her young, How the oriole's nest is hung; Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow, Where the ground-nut trails its vine, Where the wood-grape's clusters shine; Of the black wasp's cunning way, Mason of his walls of clay, And the architectural plans Of gray hornet artisans!— For, eschewing books and tasks, Nature answers all he asks; Hand in hand with her he walks, Face to face ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... high with expectation. The company was both numerous and brilliant. Olimpia was richly and tastefully dressed. One could not but admire her figure and the regular beauty of her features. The striking inward curve of her back, as well as the wasp-like smallness of her waist, appeared to be the result of too-tight lacing. There was something stiff and measured in her gait and bearing that made an unfavourable impression upon many; it was ascribed to ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... A Cat The Unknown Song She dotes For These March the Third The New House March The Cuckoo Over the Hills Home The Hollow Wood Wind and Mist The Unknown Bird The Lofty Sky After Rain Digging But these things also April The Barn The Barn and the Down The Child on the Cliffs Good-night The Wasp Trap July A Tale Parting Lovers That Girl's Clear Eyes The Child in the Orchard The Source The Mountain Chapel First known when lost The Word These things that Poets said Home Aspens An Old Song There was a Time Ambition No one cares less than I Roads This is no case of ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... day, "waps" is considered a vulgar way of pronouncing the word; but it was correct English at the time of which I am writing. "Wasp" is really the corrupt pronunciation. In the same way, they said "claps" where ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... abundant pith lends itself to easy work; and the top offers a weak spot which makes it possible for the insect to reach the vein of least resistance at once, without cutting away through the hard ligneous wall. To many, therefore, of the Bee and Wasp tribe, whether honey-gatherers or hunters, one of these dry stalks is a valuable discovery when its diameter matches the size of its would-be inhabitants; and it is also an interesting subject of study ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... well-known City caterer, are acquiring bigger appetites. We somehow suspected that the demand for a return of the wasp waist had influential ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... opens out a new box of theological thunders and fills the air full of the sullen roar of sulphurous waves, licking the shores of eternity and swallowing up the great multitudes of the eternally lost; but when one little wasp, with a red-hot revelation, goes gently up the leg of that same man's pantaloons, leaving large, hot tracks whenever he stopped and sat down to think it over, you will see a sudden awakening and a revival that will ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... to me of a wasp's nest! Bosekop! You shall hear of me there enough to satisfy your appetite for news. Bosekop! In the days when my race ruled the land, such people as they that dwell there would have been put to sharpen my sword on the grindstone, or to wait, hungry ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... George, he was always seen there so long as the sun was in the heavens. Many times the hearts of the two women stood still when they saw him climb to the highest point of the scaffolding in order to direct the work from there. Fate had only to make his foot slip one little inch or decree that a wasp should sting him on the finger to put an end to his existence. The poor mother was doubly anxious because he seemed so unconscious of the risk he ran up there and looked about him even more ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... launched its tender. It came darting down like a wasp. A moment more, and Georg and Maida were taken aboard it. The volan fluttered to the forest unguided and was lost in the black treetops, now no more ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... that day my captain ordered me to take six troopers and occupy the village of Porterin, where there had been five fights in three weeks, and to hold it all night. There were not twenty houses left standing, nay, not a dozen, in that wasp's nest. So I took ten troopers, and set out at about four o'clock; at five o'clock, while it was still pitch dark, we reached the first houses of Porterin. I halted and ordered Marchas—you know Pierre de Marchas, who afterward married little Martel-Auvelin, the daughter of the Marquis de Martel-Auvelin—to ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... they have had ever since, and as the wasps and hornets claimed to be their cousins Wakonda was good-natured enough to give them the same sort of weapons. Some people, especially boys, think this was a, great mistake, and would be very glad if Wakonda had refused to give stings to the yellow wasp and the ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... be purely reflex. Natural selection, not mind, deserves the credit of that action. But I am sure that the cat fears the dog, or the dog the cat, as the case may be. I have little or no doubt that the bird fears the cat. I am inclined to believe that the insect fears the bird and the spider the wasp. But does the highest worm fear? I do not know. I do not see how there can have been any fear until there was a nerve-centre highly enough developed to remember past experiences of danger and fair sense-organs to report ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... thus occupied, a wasp came buzzing along, and, delighted at finding so many flowers without the trouble of searching for them, he began to drink up their honey very voraciously. Little Red Riding Hood knew well the difference of a wasp ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous
... had "grabbed" the English baronet, and left her only the Austrian count, who looked younger than any man could really be, and had a wasp-waist which, when he bowed—as he did irritatingly often—seemed liable to snap in two. It was if anything more slender than her own, and she disliked him for it. Lady Dauntrey had Mrs. Collis on her hands, and looked sombrely ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of it we said to anybody before Felix was gone, or else somebody 'ud ha' been safe to ha' tould him, for there's plinty of people couldn't be goin' about widout tellin' everythin' they hear any more than a wasp could fly widout buzzin' its wings. And then we got the docther to her, but he couldn't do e'er a hand's turn. Sure what could anybody do agin the lightnin', that's a sort of miracle, you may say, unless ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... wasps; she brings the material, forms the cell, and when nearly finished lays her egg at the bottom and provides these half-killed caterpillars as food for the young grub when it is hatched, and by the time they are eaten the grub becomes a pupa and then hatches into a young wasp to begin life on its own account. One day I saw a bee go into a hole in the brickwork of the house, and getting my net I waited to capture it; after about five minutes the bee came out and flew into the net. It proved to be a solitary mason bee, and was doubtless forming a place to lay its ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... in Emporia the other day and they are still talking over the time I and the two guys in the automobile pulled off. The minister sprung a long sermon on the effects of strong drink on the young and the Emporia Wasp—you know they did call it the Bee, but the guy that bought it from the Bee people renamed it the Wasp, because he got stung worse than any bee could sting—the Emporia Wasp came out with a long editorial about the profligate rich and the Attic Debating Society ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... in black holaku—as the dress is called—with a long necklace, or le, of bright scarlet or brilliant yellow flowers, bare and untrammeled feet, and flowing hair, surmounted often by a low-crowned felt hat, compares very favorably with a high-heeled, wasp-waisted, ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... roomy decks, her guns of mighty strength, Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves, Deep in her draught, and warlike in her length, She seems a sea wasp flying ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Devotion have not escaped the lash of wanton criticism. They have excited the pious horror of some modern Pharisees because they contain a table of sins for the use of those preparing for confession. The same flower that furnishes honey to the bee supplies poison to the wasp; and, in like manner, the same book that gives only the honey of consolation to the devout reader has nothing but moral poison for those that search its pages for ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... some part of the house that he may call his very own. Here he can keep his specimens, his aquarium, his herbarium and what not. Around the wall he can hang the twigs with their cocoons, oak galls, last year's wasp and bird nests and other treasures. He should also have a work table that a little glue or ink will not injure and a carpet that has no further use in the household. Usually one corner of the attic or cellar ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... discoveries which we owe to science. But any fool can make a discovery. Every baby has to discover more in the first years of its life than Roger Bacon ever discovered in his laboratory. When I was seven years old I discovered the sting of the wasp. But I do not ask you to worship me on that account. I assure you, madam, the merest mediocrities can discover the most surprising facts about the physical universe as soon as they are civilized enough to have time to study these things, ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... orioles, slightly crested, of two different species were found along the river; they nest in colonies, and often we passed such colonies, the long pendulous nests hanging from the boughs of trees directly over the water. Cherrie told us of finding such a colony built round a big wasp-nest, several feet in diameter. These wasps are venomous and irritable, and few foes would dare venture near bird's- nests that were under such formidable shelter; but the birds themselves were entirely unafraid, ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... who have cleaned these pests from the potato or tomato vines will often have noticed one of them covered with what look almost like grains of rice. This appearance reveals an interesting story. Some time earlier an insect that looked very much like a dainty wasp with a rather long sting in its tail hovered over the caterpillar. This is the ichneumon fly. Eventually lighting upon the caterpillar's back, it punctured the skin with its sting, and deposited eggs within the caterpillar's body. These eggs soon hatched and the little grubs worked their way through ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... restless and irritable men, who are inclined to meddle and tyrannize, who have a great idea of domestic domination, who openly express their low ideas of women and who know no more about life than herrings about natural history. When these men marry, their homes have the appearance of a wasp whose head a schoolboy has cut off, and who dances here and there on a window pane. For this sort of predestined the present work is a sealed book. We do not write any more for those imbeciles, walking effigies, who are ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... circling its prey. The man turned continually to face her. Several times she swooped toward him, and as swiftly avoided his blow. From every side she threatened. The man stood now bewildered, striking wild in a frenzy, as one strikes at a darting wasp. At last, with an agonized cry, he turned and ran. Instantly she dropped upon him; there was a flash of her white arm; the man's body crumpled and lay ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... books of account, and began to piece figures together on backs of envelopes, using a shorthand of accounts such as a principal will use when he is impatient and not particular to a few pounds. A little wasp of curiosity was teasing Edwin, and to quicken it a comparison was necessary between the result of the first six months of that year and the first six months of the previous year. True, June had not quite expired, but most of the quarterly accounts were ready, and he ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... me like a vicious wasp, as it left the side of the ship with a rapid throbbing of its engine and twirling ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... Louvre, because we scamped it. The fact is, there was a little unpleasantness with one of the fellows, owing to Jim's cane happening to scratch one of the pictures by a chap named Rubens. It was quite an accident, as we were only trying to spike a wasp on the frame, and Jim missed his shot. The fellow there made a mule of himself, and lost his temper. So we didn't see the ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... As that wasp will soon sadly perceive, Who has feasted awhile on a plum; And, his thirst thinking now to relieve, For a sweet liquid ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... you ask!" said Father Payne. "It's one of my weaknesses; if I begin a book, I can put it down if it is moderately good; but if it is either very good or very bad, I can't get out of it—I feel like a wasp in a honey-pot. I make faint sticky motions of flight—but on ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... at the caterpillar, and then there was a cry of pain. "Oh, begorra, begorra, I'm stung by a wasp, I am! Ow!" But she still kept tight hold of the caterpillar as she ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... the Fossorial group contain many of great beauty and rarity. A new species belonging to the tribe of Solitary Wasps, Odynerus clavicornis, is perhaps the most interesting insect in the collection; this Wasp has clavate antennae, the flagellum being broadly dilated towards the apex, convex above and concave beneath. I am not acquainted with any other insect belonging to the Vespidious group which exhibits such ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... most abundant species are Favosites Gothlandica and F. Hemispherica, both here figured, which form masses sometimes not less than two or three feet in diameter. Whilst Favosites has acquired a popular name by its honey-combed appearance, the resemblance of Michelinia to a fossilised wasp's nest with the comb exposed is hardly less striking, and has earned for it a similar recognition from the non-scientific public. In addition to these, there are numerous branching or plant-like Tabulate Corals, often of the most graceful form, ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... cord; the philosopher dropped; but presently came to. 'Adzooks! I'll bend or break you! Up, up, and I'll run you home for this.' But wonderful to tell, his legs refused to budge; all sensation had left them. But a huge wasp happening to sting his foot, not him, for he felt it not, the leg incontinently sprang into the air, and of itself, cut all manner of capers. Be still! Down with you!' But the leg refused. 'My arms are still loyal,' ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... frigates, like other frigates, could safely fight only their inferiors in force. What applied to the Guerriere and Macedonian against the Constitution and United States, where the British force was inferior, applied equally to the Frolic against the Wasp, where no inferiority could be shown. The British newspapers thenceforward admitted what America wished to prove, that, ship for ship, British were no more than ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... observe, as distinguished from normal evil, just as the venom of rabies or cholera differs from that of a wasp or a viper. The life of the insect and serpent deserves, or at least permits, our thoughts; not so, the stages of agony in the fury-driven hound. There is some excuse, indeed, for the pathologic labour ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... lay in me, From me by strong assault it is bereft. My honey lost, and I, a drone-like bee, Have no perfection of my summer left, But robb'd and ransack'd by injurious theft: In thy weak hive a wandering wasp hath crept, And suck'd the honey which thy ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... abruptly stands on his forelegs and thrusts his hind legs skyward. He withdraws them from the sky long enough to make one wild jump ahead, and then returns them to their index position. It is nothing. His thick hide has merely been punctured by a flaming lance of wasp virility. Then a second and a third stallion, and all the stallions, begin to cavort on their forelegs over the precipitous landscape. Swat! A white-hot poniard penetrates my cheek. Swat again!! I am stabbed in the ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... a Smoker; what he suffered in consequence of the habit; how he reformed and the happy results. The Wasp Waist—its metaphysics and physiology. Application—the necessity for ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... am able: But, Sir, it is my Misfortune to be married to a Drone, who lives upon what I get, without bringing any thing into the common Stock. Now, Sir, as on the one hand I take care not to behave myself towards him like a Wasp, so likewise I would not have him look upon me as an Humble-Bee; for which Reason I do all I can to put him upon laying up Provisions for a bad Day, and frequently represent to him the fatal Effects [his [4]] Sloth and Negligence may bring ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... involved for calm scientific contemplation. As if a Martian should suddenly become visible to an astronomer, I found that one of the egg planets was inhabited. Perched upon the summit—quite near the north pole—was an insect, a wasp, much smaller than the egg itself. And as I looked, I saw it at the climax of its diminutive life; for it reared up, resting on the tips of two legs and the iridescent wings, and sunk its ovipositor ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... just so many animals stuck down on a Mappin terrace, with this difference in our disfavour, that the animals are there to be looked at, while nobody wants to look at us. As a matter of fact there would be nothing to look at. We get colds in winter and hay fever in summer, and if a wasp happens to sting one of us, well, that is the wasp's initiative, not ours; all we do is to wait for the swelling to go down. Whenever we do climb into local fame and notice, it is by indirect methods; if it happens to be a good flowering year for magnolias ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... themselves a reputation for good-nature or thrift. They have never learned to store up honey, and every winter many of them freeze to death in their elegant paper houses. It is considered wise not to handle a wasp, lest his feelings, which are easily ruffled, get the better of him. But there is room to admire his good looks, his skill in house-building, and his sturdy pluck ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... To the Teacher.—Please explain to the class that the sect called Jains do not hurt the smallest creature, and will suffer the sting of a wasp rather than ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle - Book One • Prince Sarath Ghosh
... to be snugly wrapped by the scales, and the next day to be again left open, if the weather be fine. After each flower in turn has been allowed to see the light, and after all have been crawled over by bee and wasp to distribute the yellow pollen that seeds may be produced, there is nothing else to do but patiently wait for a week or two while receiving food from the mother plant to perfect each little fruit and seed. During all this period of maturing, day and night, rain or shine, ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... and a passage in your letter, call to my mind the wicked wasp of Twickenham; his lies affect me now no more; they will be all as much despised as the story of the seraglio and the handkerchief, of which I am persuaded he was the only inventor. That man has a malignant and ungenerous ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... veritable Tibet, and a legend was spread abroad that if any foreigner ventured there he would be surely murdered by Turkish brigands; meanwhile it was full of Viennese ladies giving picnics and dances and tennis parties to the wasp-waisted officers of the Austrian garrison. Bosnia and Hercegovina, on the other hand, became the model touring provinces of Austria-Hungary, and no one can deny that their great natural beauties were made more enjoyable by the construction of railways, ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... pair, and not near the end, and it is not so active as the other species. It is also rather scarce; but when it does occur, it occupies the whole tree, to the exclusion of the other. The glands on the acacia are also frequented by a small species of wasp. I sowed the seeds of the acacia in my garden, and reared some young plants. Ants of many kinds were numerous; but none of them took to the thorns for shelter, nor the glands and fruit-like bodies for food; for, as I have already mentioned, the species that attend ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... some vast yellow body and the unfortunate spider. Then the spider, suddenly as immobile as a lump of stone, was drawn up into the heavens by the roaring yellow thing, and disappeared. A wasp had struck, and ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... your knife; don't put out my eyes in your ardour against that wretched wasp. Wat Greenwood may well say "there is a terrible sight ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... been dismal and dolorous throughout the storm. The night before last, William Allen was stung by a wasp on the eyelid; whereupon the whole side of his face swelled to an enormous magnitude, so that, at the breakfast-table, one half of him looked like a blind giant (the eye being closed), and the other half had such a sorrowful and ludicrous aspect that I was constrained ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this day that hogs can see the wind and that all animals talk like men on Christmas morning at a certain time. Children wore moles feet and pearl buttons around their necks to insure easy teething and had their legs bathed in a concoction of wasp nest and vinegar if they were slow about learning to walk. This was supposed to strengthen the weak limbs. It was a common occurence to see a child of two or three years still nursing at the mother's breast. Their masters encouraged ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... stars, and flies aloft, and falls in a swamp; like a fruit that is too well loved of the sun, and so, over-soon ripe, is dropped from the tree and forgot on the grasses, dead to all joys of the dawn and the noon and the summer, but still alive to the sting of the wasp, to the fret of the aphis, to the burn of the drought, to the theft of ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... informs us, "was badly stung by a wasp last week." At this time of year these insects are apt to sting badly, but in the summer they do ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... a wasp called Zengi-mizi. Zengi-mizi was not an ordinary wasp, for the spirit of the father of Gopani-Kufa had entered it, so that it was exceedingly wise. In times of doubt Gopani-Kufa always consulted the wasp as to what had better ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... some persons thought she would marry, is reported to have said, when he first looked upon her "Horse Fair," "It surpasses me, though it's a little hard to be beaten by a woman." On her return to France she brought a skye-terrier, named "Wasp," of which she is very fond, and for which she has learned several English phrases. When she speaks to him in English, he wags his ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... (for the past), And will be on my guard against future calamity. I will have nothing to do with a wasp, To seek for myself its painful sting. At first indeed ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... as asteroids go, but about it clung a silvery mist of atmosphere. Deeper flashes through the mist betokened water, and green patches hinted of rich vegetation. The space-patroller circled the little world knowledgeably, like a wasp buzzing around an apple. In the control room, by the forward ports, the Martian ...
— The Devil's Asteroid • Manly Wade Wellman
... circumstance, the introduction of the other sex. In each we should observe a somewhat similar tension of manner, and somewhat similar points of honour. In each the larger animal keeps a contemptuous good humour; in each the smaller annoys him with wasp-like impudence, certain of practical immunity; in each we shall find a double life producing double characters, and an excursive and noisy heroism combined with a fair amount of practical timidity. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... if stung by a wasp. The dance ceased for her, and she hastened to a seat. "De Pean," said she, "you promised to bring Le Gardeur forthwith back to the city; will you ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... do for her, or become dependent upon charity, or worse. The day of Elsie Dinsmores has gone. In her place we have strong, capable, broad-minded women. Seldom do we hear of a woman fainting today, yet look back sixty years and recall the Lydia Languish females with long ringlets and wasp waists, who invariably carried smelling salts. I'm proud to belong to the women of today—healthy, strong, athletic, and brave—women who do and are not ashamed of it. Look at Aunt Susan. There's a woman ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... those goddesses became, O king, in this world of men, the wives of Vasudeva. And a portion of Sri herself became incarnate on earth, for the gratification of Narayana, in the line of Bhishmaka. And she was by name the chaste Rukmini. And the faultless Draupadi, slender-waisted like the wasp, was born of a portion of Sachi (the queen of the celestials), in the line of Drupada. And she was neither low nor tall in stature. And she was of the fragrance of the blue lotus, of eyes large as lotus-petals, of thighs ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the blow given by Pinckney, she saw Silas step back and the knife which he always carried, as the wasp carries its sting, suddenly ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... seen. Behind them were the trenches filled with soldiers—some happy and gay even in the presence of death, others disheartened and downcast. There, too, they were leaving the great cannon with their roaring, screaming shells, the vicious crack of rifles and the wasp-like ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... of half-measures, which irritates without crushing its victims, which flaps an exasperated wasp-nest with a silk pocket-handkerchief, instead of blowing it up with a match and train, is rarely successful; and after three or four other and much guiltier victims than Lenny had been incarcerated in the stocks, the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... this town might be, I could not surmise; nor did I perceive any way out of this wasp's nest where I was now landed, except to retrace my trail. And that I dared ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... I had come again to our own house and was swallowed in the usual thousand home-activities. But underneath all that, quite steadily my mind continued to work on the story as a wasp in a barn keeps on silently plastering up the cells of his nest in the midst of the noisy activities of farm-life. I said to one of the children, "Yes, dear, wasn't it fun!" and to myself, "To be typical of our tradition-ridden valley-people, the opposition ought to come from the dead hand of the ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... rock garden, chicken coops, and whiskey advertisements. The station-master, who appeared also to act as emergency porter, took Yeovil's ticket with the gesture of a kind-hearted person brushing away a troublesome wasp, and returned to a study of the Poultry Chronicle, which was giving its readers sage counsel concerning the ailments of belated July chickens. Yeovil called to mind the station-master of a tiny railway ...
— When William Came • Saki
... friend, and cautioned him to look to himself. Warnings came from all quarters that mischief was in the wind. Still it was impossible to believe the peril to be a real one. Cicero, to whom Rome owed its existence, to be struck at by a Clodius! It could not be. As little could a wasp hurt ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... Fly—dubbed with brown fur of a badger, warped with red silk, wings from dark grey feather of mallard, with a head made of red silk. 2. The Wasp Fly—dubbed with brown bear or cow's hair, ribbed with yellow silk, and the wings of the inside of starling's wing. 3. The Black Palmer—dubbed with black copper coloured peacock's harl, and a black cock's hackle over that, wings, blackbird. 4. The July Dun—dubbed ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... as a very foolish proceeding; but country people skilled in simples and herb remedies might tell some of these ultra scientific surgeons that the application of a quid of tobacco or of a leaf of tobacco to the sting of a wasp or the bite of a spider, or even the sting of a scorpion, is nearly always attended by beneficial results. In fact, when Jones was stung there was a surgeon, a medical officer, who turned up even before Jones was treated with the ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... want you to go, silly child." Aline tried to withdraw sharpness from her voice, but it was there, like the sting of a wasp in a wound. "Even if I didn't think it wise for some reasons, it isn't my car, you know, but Mr. Somerled's, and he has a perfect right to invite any guests he likes. Don't imagine that I'm going to talk to him about ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... proposed the world to tell, Higher as the Deluge flow'd, How the frog and how the toad, With the lizard and the eft, All their holes and coverts left, And assembled on the height; Soon I ween appeared in sight All that's wings beneath the sky, Bat and swallow, wasp and fly, Gnat and sparrow, and behind Comes the crow of carrion kind; Dove and pigeon are descried, And the raven fiery-eyed, With the beetle and the crane Flying on the hurricane: See they find no resting-place, For the world's terrestrial ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... A Wasp's Nest.—A nest having been discovered, the pupils note how it is suspended and how it is situated with regard to concealment or to protection from rain, its colour, the material of the nest, and the position of the entrance. Is the ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... our feet, I persuaded Robert to go to the Baths of Lucca, only to see them. We were to proceed afterwards to San Marcello, or some safer wilderness. We had both of us, but he chiefly, the strongest prejudice against the Baths of Lucca; taking them for a sort of wasp's nest of scandal and gaming, and expecting to find everything trodden flat by the continental English—yet, I wanted to see the place, because it is a place to see, after all. So we came, and were so charmed by the exquisite beauty of the scenery, by the coolness of ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... weeks, Mr. Cutter set sail in the schooner Wasp for Sandusky, where there was a natural harbor, and from thence in the Fire Fly, for Detroit. But his thoughts reverted to Cleveland, and forming a partnership with Messrs. Mack & Conant, of Detroit, the firm purchased twenty thousand dollars worth of dry goods, groceries, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... kindly care have found, The horned bull, tremendous, spurns the ground; The lordly lion has enough and more, The forest trembles at his very roar; Thou giv'st the ass his hide, the snail his shell, The puny wasp, victorious, guards his cell. Thy minions, kings defend, controul devour, In all th' omnipotence of rule and power: Foxes and statesmen subtle wiles ensure; The cit and polecat stink, and are secure: Toads with their poison, doctors with their drug, The ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... iv. 760 et seq.) Autolycus threatens that the clown's son 'shall be flayed alive; then 'nointed over with honey, set on the head of a wasp's nest,' &c. In Boccaccio's story the villain Ambrogiuolo (Shakespeare's Iachimo), after 'being bounden to the stake and anointed with honey,' was 'to his exceeding torment not only slain but devoured of the flies and wasps and gadflies wherewith ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... Committee the success of the expedition. On the 11th the Committee congratulated the "gallant commander, brave officers and men concerned in it throughout the whole cruise." He was informed that the "Alert" would be purchased for a cruiser, her name changed to the "Wasp," of which he was to take command or bestow it on some brave, active and prudent officer on a cruise on the coast and off Cape Henlopen, so as "to descry the enemies' vessels coming and going." Barry's "well-known bravery and good conduct" were commended. The British "frigates and ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... Warden continued with his air of weary brilliancy: 'It's all a question of wrong calculation. The moth flies into the candle because he doesn't happen to know that the game is not worth the candle. The wasp gets into the jam in hearty and hopeful efforts to get the jam into him. IN the same way the vulgar people want to enjoy life just as they want to enjoy gin—because they are too stupid to see that they ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... before us. Well, scarcely was her husband dead when Christiana began to accuse herself of having killed him. To take her own bitter words for it, the most agonising and remorseful thoughts about her conduct to her husband stung her heart like so many wasps. Ah yes! A wasp's sting is but a blade of innocent grass compared with the thoughts that have stung us all as we recalled what we said and did to those who are now no more. There are graves in the churchyard we dare not go near. "I have sinned away your father!" ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... with Coleridge's on Shakespeare and Carlyle's on Heroes. To my astonishment Oscar would not admit the superlative quality of Whistler's talk; he thought the message paradoxical and the ridicule of the professors too bitter. "Whistler's like a wasp," he cried, "and carries about with him a poisoned sting." Oscar's kindly sweet nature revolted against the disdainful aggressiveness of Whistler's attitude. Besides, in essence, Whistler's lecture was an attack on the academic theory taught in the universities, and defended naturally by a ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... his brother's legacy came into his head like the sting of a wasp; but he drove it out indignantly, not choosing to allow himself to slip down that descent ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... hands swelling from the sting of the wasp you found in the stolen fruit, or stained with crime; or your shoes wet through with the mire of the by-ways in which you have been straying, and what will she do? She will sit you down in front of the glowing fire of her love, warm ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... on their shores and smoking at their summits, where kinky-haired little animal-men made monkey-wailings in the jungle, planted their forest run-ways with thorns and stake-pits, and blew poisoned splinters into us from out the twilight jungle bush. And whatsoever man of us was wasp-stung by such a splinter died horribly and howling. And we encountered other men, fiercer, bigger, who faced us on the beaches in open fight, showering us with spears and arrows, while the great tree drums ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... enter into very minute descriptions of the honeycomb, as all my readers are doubtless perfectly familiar with its appearance. Each cell, like that made by the wasp, is hexagonal, and the cells are put together in a manner which secures the greatest strength for the least possible material. Kirby and Spence state that "Maraldi found that the great angles were ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... smugglers, and all other types of law-breakers would ultimately be brought to justice. And if these but knew of the presence of this boy in his tower room, some dark night that tower would be rocked by an exploding bomb and the boy in his room would be shaken to earth like a young mud-wasp in his nest. ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... With this rare difference, outlaw—for whereas her tongue (honoured relict!) is tipped with gall, wormwood, henbane, hemlock, bitter-aloes and verjuice, and stingeth like the adder, the asp, the toad, the newt, the wasp, and snaky-haired head ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... Butt, M.P. still remained at large. Roger had sold his cottage in the country and was now in London, performing his exercises with regularity, concentrating daily upon the words "wardrobe," "dough-nut," and "wasp," and living ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... afternoon on which they were to open fire a large turn out of F.O.O.'s collected in the O.P.'s to watch the enemy get a surprise. They did considerable damage, but, at the same time, were largely responsible for stirring up a veritable wasp's nest of hostile heavies which had been lying dormant for ages, and consequently our front again ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... sorrows rightly. The effect of sorrow devoutly borne, in bringing God closer to us, belongs to it, whether it be great or small; whether it be, according to the metaphor of an earlier portion of this psalm, 'a lion or an adder'; or whether it be a buzzing wasp or a mosquito. As long as anything troubles me, I may make it a means of bringing God closer ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was a South Carolinian, and won renown by a remarkable cruise in the Wasp. The Wasp was a stout and speedy sloop, carrying twenty-two guns and a crew of one hundred and seventy men, and in 1814 she sailed from the United States, and headed for the English Channel, to carry the war into the enemy's country, after the fashion of Paul Jones. The Channel, ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... a wasp that had been hovering near alighted on Dot's furry head and rested there for an instant. It would not have harmed him, had not the beetle become alarmed at a sudden spat from Dab, and blundered hurriedly away in another direction. This ...
— The Book of the Cat • Mabel Humphrey and Elizabeth Fearne Bonsall
... using a private scandal against me. They did. I think Handitch had filled up the measure of their bitterness, for I had not only abandoned them, but I was succeeding beyond even their power of misrepresentation. Always I had been a wasp in their spider's web, difficult to claim as a tool, uncritical, antagonistic. I admired their work and devotion enormously, but I had never concealed my contempt for a certain childish vanity they displayed, and for the frequent puerility of their political ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... long time no word was spoken. I watched my life run redly through the wasp waist of the transparent glass, then suddenly the sand ceased to flow, half in the upper bulb, half ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... birth dies in infancy, and our infancy dies in youth, and youth and the rest die in age, and age also dies and determines all. Nor do all these, youth out of infancy, or age out of youth, arise so, as the phoenix out of the ashes of another phoenix formerly dead, but as a wasp or a serpent out of a carrion, or as a snake out of dung. Our youth is worse than our infancy, and our age worse than our youth. Our youth is hungry and thirsty after those sins which our infancy knew not; and our age is sorry ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... a fly or a wasp.—Its body was of a dirty hue; its flat, hard wings were of the same colour; it had extended, shaggy claws and a big, angular head, like that of a dragon-fly; and that head and the claws were ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... This report was adopted, and the same committee was ordered to go ahead and prepare the vessels for sea, which was accordingly done, and the following vessels were made ready for service: Alfred, Dorea, Columbus, Lexington, Fly, Hornet, Wasp, Cabot, Randolph, Franklin, Providence, Dolphin ...
— The True Story of the American Flag • John H. Fow
... all the world fell about him, it seemed, for a gun cracked from the trees beyond him and a wasp ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... that I do not much busy myself in lay schemes; when I do, the object must be great. Now, Montagu, I have of late narrowly and keenly watched that spidery web which ye call a court, and I see that the spider will devour the wasp, unless the wasp boldly break the web,—for woman-craft I call the spider, and soldier-pride I style the wasp. To speak plainly, these Woodvilles must be bravely breasted and determinately abashed. I do not mean that we can deal with the king's ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... more might he added to the list), during the summer months. Our own brief naval history is pregnant with instances of the calamities that befall ships. No man can say when, or how, the Insurgente, the Pickering, the Wasp, the Epervier, the Lynx, and the Hornet disappeared. We know that they are gone; and of all the brave spirits they held, not one has been left to relate the histories of the different disasters. We have some plausible conjectures concerning the ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... General'— was to tie down the accused in some painful or at least uneasy posture for twenty-four hours, during which time relays of watchers sat round. It was supposed that an imp would come and suck the witch's blood; so any fly, moth, wasp or insect seen in the room was a familiar in that shape, and the poor wretch was accordingly convicted of the charge. Numerous confessions are recorded to have been extracted in this manner from ailing and ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... expression and so copious a language as common poultry. Take a chicken of four or five days old, and hold it up to a window where there are flies, and it will immediately seize its prey, with little twitterings of complacency; but if you tender it a wasp or a bee, at once its note becomes harsh, and expressive of disapprobation and a sense of danger. When a pullet is ready to lay she intimates the event by a joyous and easy soft note. Of all the occurrences of their ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... wasp. I've seen ye do ut. I say there's nothin' better than the bay'nit, wid a long reach, a double twist av ye can, an' ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... round chuckin' me under the chin before the lights come on. Gee! There goes the bell again! I'll bet my switch it's that scraggy old hen in forty-four, wantin' me to run out and buy her some hair pins, or to hook her up so she'll look like a prize winner at a wasp show. She makes me sick, she does! But I'll—Yes Ma'am! Coming right away," she answered in a honeyed voice, as the lady guest was heard calling her name through a transom somewhere ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... some thirteen hundred miles southeast of Great New York. I could do a good normal three-ninety in this fleet little Wasp, especially if I kept in the rarer air-pressures over the zero-height. The thousand-foot lane had a southward drift, this night. I was making now well over four hundred; I would reach Nareda soon ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... seemed to lie upon it—and coming in one afternoon in September, along the red gravel walk, to look for a basket of yellow crab-apples left in the cool, old parlour, he remembered it the more, and how the colours struck upon him, because a wasp on one bitten apple stung him, and he felt the passion of [189] sudden, severe pain. For this too brought its curious reflexions; and, in relief from it, he would wonder over it—how it had then been with ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... by instinct, but when they are quite young they will follow with equal readiness any moving object remotely resembling their mother, or even a human being (James, "Psychology," ii, 396). Bergson, quoting Fabre, has made play with the supposed extraordinary accuracy of the solitary wasp Ammophila, which lays its eggs in a caterpillar. On this subject I will quote from Drever's "Instinct in Man," ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... this fear had haunted him. Like a wasp, it had buzzed constantly about his ears, threatening to sting him at any moment. It had become a veritable obsession, a mean, ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge |
