"Downy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shore by the edge of a dense palisade of bulrushes, which straightly bounded the water as if clipt by art, reminding us of the reed forts of the East-Indians, of which we had read; and now the bank slightly raised was overhung with graceful grasses and various species of brake, whose downy stems stood closely grouped and naked as in a vase, while their heads spread several feet on either side. The dead limbs of the willow were rounded and adorned by the climbing mikania, Mikania scandens, which filled every crevice in ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... catkins of the swamp-willow, first; then the long tassels of the graceful alders expand and droop, till they weep their yellow dust upon the water; then come the birch-blossoms, more tardily; then the downy leaves and white clusters of the medlar or shadbush (Amelanchier Canadensis of Gray); these dropping, the roseate chalices of the mountain-laurel open; as they fade into melancholy brown, the sweet Azalea uncloses; and before ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... that lay like foam against the soft, snow-white throat. It was a symphony of colour. A perfect harmony of perfect tones in union with the brilliant fairness of her skin. The sleeves, half open to the elbow, revealed a white, rounded, downy arm, and the thousand subtle pink-and-white tints of her flesh seemed to melt and merge themselves into a bewildering, distracting glow within that rose-hued sleeve. She made one exquisite, intoxicating vision to the senses. In those moments I can hardly say I saw her. She rather seemed to sway ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... sea rocked in drowsy rest; ships and clumsy, broad-nosed prams ploughed graves in its bluish surface, and scattered rays to the right and left, and glided on, whilst the smoke rolled up in downy masses from the chimney-stacks, and the stroke of the engine pistons pierced the clammy air with a dull sound. There was no sun and no wind; the trees behind me were almost wet, and the seat upon which I ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... but peaches, gathered where the bees, As downy, bask and boom In sunshine and in gloom of trees. But get you in, a storm is at my heels; The whirlwind whistles and wheels, Lightning flashes and thunder peals, Flying and following ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... difficult for her. Opening her eyes wide she looked at her son, and he seemed to her new, as if a stranger. His voice was different, lower, deeper, more sonorous. He pinched his thin, downy mustache, and looked oddly askance into the corner. She grew anxious for ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... hours of undisturbed consecutive repose in the downy bed at the Mehadia hotel had made up the deficiency of sleep during the foregoing week, and drowsiness overcame us. I think we must have had a couple of hours of monotonous jog-trot on the fairly level road ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... of plumage, the Cape pigeons were white and downy, with the head and wings striped with brown like butterflies, a large species of which they strongly resembled when flying away from the ship, with their ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... came out. She started to walk toward him, but presently turned to the right. Lewis followed her. At first she walked fast, but soon she began to pause beside some burst of green or tempting downy mass of pussy-willow, as though she were in two minds whether to fill her arms and rush back, carrying spring into the house or to go on. She went on slowly until she reached the barrier of rails that closed the ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... a march of thirty miles due north into Loudoun County, and a mile or two east of this attractive town went into bivouac about sunset in a beautiful grassy meadow which afforded what seemed to us a downy couch, and to the horses luxuriant pasturage, recalling former and better days. Next morning, while lying sound asleep wrapped in my blanket, I became painfully conscious of a crushing weight on my foot. Opening my eyes, there stood a horse almost over me, quietly cropping the grass, ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... And of this quality there are three remarkable instances in the Scuola. No one but Tintoretto could have evoked the fiend in his 'Temptation of Christ.' It is an indescribable hermaphroditic genius, the genius of carnal fascination, with outspread downy rose-plumed wings, and flaming bracelets on the full but sinewy arms, who kneels and lifts aloft great stones, smiling entreatingly to the sad, grey Christ seated beneath a rugged pent-house of the desert. No one again but Tintoretto could ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... downy head of the newly born baby was covered with a cap of delicatest material incrusted to hardness with needlework. The baby's caps of the period are a perfect chapter of human emotions; mother-love, emulation, pride, and declaration of family or personal ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... downy cheek and deepen'd voice Gave dignity to Edwin's blooming prime; And walks of wider circuit were his choice, And vales more wild, and mountains more sublime. One evening, as he framed the careless rhyme, It was his chance ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... sudden fear assailed Tattiana, And I, remembering Svetlana,(54) Become alarmed. So never mind! I'm not for witchcraft now inclined. So she her silken sash unlaced, Undressed herself and went to bed And soon Lel hovered o'er her head.(55) Beneath her downy pillow placed, A little virgin mirror peeps. 'Tis silent ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... ray, And oped those eyes that must eclipse the day: Now lap-dogs give themselves the rousing shake, 15 And sleepless lovers, just at twelve, awake: Thrice rung the bell, the slipper knock'd the ground, And the press'd watch return'd a silver sound. Belinda still her downy pillow prest, Her guardian SYLPH prolong'd the balmy rest: 20 'Twas He had summon'd to her silent bed The morning-dream that hover'd o'er her head; A Youth more glitt'ring than a Birth-night Beau, (That ev'n in slumber ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... feathers are marvelous. I am very glad to see them. I never had any of their downy ones before. My compliments to the bird, upon ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... cry, And all its curse and care shall die, When Age on downy couches throws His weary limbs and only knows The tender ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... seen them scores of times, and as you'll be able to if we catch one, as I hope we shall, you'll find they are very like a large pigeon, only that they have webbed feet; and they always seem plump and fat. See, their feathers are white and downy, while their heads are brown and their wings striped with the same colour, giving them the appearance, if you look down on them from a ship, of being large white and brown butterflies, with their large wings outspread. Draw in your line a bit, Jonathan, and let the ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... their drawers with cedar, serves tea carefully drawn, at a certain hour, banishes dust, nails the carpets to the floors in every corner of the house, brushes the cellar walls, polishes the knocker of the front door, oils the springs of the carriage,—in short, makes matter a nutritive and downy pulp, clean and shining, in the midst of which the soul expires of enjoyment and the frightful monotony of comfort in a life without contrasts, deprived of spontaneity, and which, to sum all in one word, makes a machine ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... through the lonely dale, And, Fancy, to thy faerie bower betake! Even now, with balmy freshness, breathes the gale, Dimpling with downy wing the stilly lake; Through the pale willows faltering whispers wake, And evening comes with locks bedropt with dew; On Desmond's moldering turrets slowly shake The trembling rye-grass and the harebell blue, And ever and anon fair ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... braces for you," and she set to work again. But, as in cutting out she kept her head bent, I noticed, on passing behind her, her soft, white neck, which she had left bare that evening by dressing her hair higher than usual. A number of little downy hairs were curling there. This kind of down made me think of those ripe peaches one bites so greedily. I drew near, the better to see, and I kissed the back of ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... or pitch, and which are known as "heroic" measures, are equally undesirable, since they are not permanent cures any more than the depilatory powders. The worst feature of these cures is that for every hair pulled out or burnt off a coarser one takes its place, and for every tiny, downy growth a fully developed hair appears. Of course, the plaster removes this soft lanuginous growth with the hardier one, and for that reason should be left severely alone. The tweezers are therefore less objectionable than the plaster, but ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... dozen "cocks of the game," [1] On the prigging lay to the flash-house came, [2] Lushing blue ruin and heavy wet [3] Till the darkey, when the downy set. [4] All toddled and begun the hunt For readers, tattlers, ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... he felt ever so slowly the hair combed back above his ears. Again. Fibres of fine fine straw. Then gently his finger felt the skin of his right cheek. Downy hair there too. Not smooth enough. The belly is the smoothest. No-one about. There he goes into Frederick street. Perhaps to Levenston's dancing academy piano. Might be ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... friendly little chap, at first, about the size of a small hen—very much like most other young birds, only bigger. His plumage was a dirty brown to begin with, with a sort of grey scab that fell off it very soon, and scarcely feathers—a kind of downy hair. I can hardly express how pleased I was to see him. I tell you, Robinson Crusoe don't make near enough of his loneliness. But here was interesting company. He looked at me and winked his eye from the front backwards, like a hen, and gave a chirp ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... gentlemen burst into a loud laugh, said I was a "rum chap"—a "downy cove," and made other remarks which I could not understand then; but the meaning of which I have since comprehended, for they took me to be a great rascal, I am sorry to say, and supposed that I had robbed the I. W. D. Association, and, in order to make my money secure, settled ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with his gavel) Two bar. Rockbottom figure and cheap at the price. Fourteen hands high. Touch and examine his points. Handle him. This downy skin, these soft muscles, this tender flesh. If I had only my gold piercer here! And quite easy to milk. Three newlaid gallons a day. A pure stockgetter, due to lay within the hour. His sire's milk record was a thousand gallons of whole ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... you fasten this up firmly, Ralph," answered Mrs. Minot, as she took from its wrappings the waxen figure of a little child. The rosy limbs were very life-like, so was the smiling face under the locks of shining hair. Both plump arms were outspread as if to scatter blessings over all, and downy wings seemed to flutter from the dimpled shoulders, making an angel of ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... days since, I climbed up to the nest of the downy woodpecker, in the decayed top of a sugar-maple. For better protection against driving rains, the hole which was rather more than an inch in diameter, was made immediately beneath a branch which stretched out almost horizontally from the ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... outward appearance, was undergoing a subtle change. Graham was the first to observe it, and at last it was apparent to all. As her mind became inert, sleeping on a downy couch of forgetfulness, closely curtained, the silent forces of physical life, in her deep tranquillity, were doing an artist's work. The hollow cheeks were gradually rounded and given the faintest possible bloom. Her form was gaining a contour ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... a peasant boy, little Petter Nord. He was short and round; he was brown-eyed and smiling. His hair was paler than birch leaves in the autumn; his cheeks were red and downy. And he was from Vaermland. No one, seeing him, could imagine that he was from any other place. His native land had equipped him with its excellent qualities. He was quick at his work, nimble with his fingers, ready with his tongue, ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... mustache and reviewing the day's wandering. When the gas was lighted he yearned over pictures in a geographical magazine for a happy hour, then yawned to himself, "Well-l-l, Willum, guess it's time to crawl into the downy." ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... than gold is the sweet repose Of the sons of toil when labors close; Better than gold is the poor man's sleep And the balm that drops on his slumbers deep. Bring sleeping draughts to the downy bed, Where luxury pillows its aching head; The toiler a simple opiate deems A shorter route to ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... you, Mr. Scott, I've a deal to do before I get to my downy; and I don't like those doctored tipples. Good night, Mr. Scott. I wishes you good night, sir;' and making another slight reference to his hat, which had not been removed from his head during the whole interview, Mr. ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... of "Mother Corn" among the Pueblos Indians: "A flawless ear of pure white corn (type of fertility and motherhood) is decked out with a downy mass of snow-white feathers, and hung with ornaments of silver, coral, and the precious ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... text, which bore the words, "I will lay me down to sleep, and take my rest, for it is thou, Lord, only who makest me dwell in safety," was painted in soft purples and grays, and among the poppies and silver lilies which wreathed it appeared a cunning little downy bird, fast asleep, with his head under his wing. The morning text, "When I awake, I am still with Thee," was in bright colors, scarlet and blue and gold, and had a frame of rose garlands and wide-awake-looking butterflies and humming-birds. ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... girls take part in a very formal little affair on the lawn of Beth's home. Each of the guests receives a present in the shape of a downy white kitten. The drive home in Beth's pony cart furnishes a few exciting moments, but Patsy bravely comes ...
— Christmas Holidays at Merryvale - The Merryvale Boys • Alice Hale Burnett
... a warm woman face, made for fireside nooks, Not a face to be bent over medical books. There was nothing aggressive in features or form; She was meant for still harbors, and not for the storm And the strife of rude waters. The swell of her breast Suggested love's sweet downy cushion of rest For the cheeks of fair children. Her plump little hands, Seemed fashioned for sewing small gussets and bands And fussing with laces and ribbons, instead Of cutting cold flesh and dissecting the dead. And yet, as a student ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Columbia Wombat in list of fur-bearers Women promote bird slaughter Wood, George E. Wood, Lieut.-Col. William Woodcock Wood-Duck eaten in seventeen States, disappearing in Louisiana, nesting in Zoological Park Woodpecker, Downy golden-winged, hairy Woodpeckers, food of Wooley-Dod, Arthur G. Wool-Growers' Association opposes game preserves World, New York Worthington, C.C. Wrens destroy boll weevil Wyoming efforts by, to feed starving elk, elk ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... miserable. They are satisfied and content with food, on which the better portion of the white race can hardly subsist. Nor would soft beds and fine houses conduce to their comfort. There are many of them, who, if they were provided with downy beds, would prefer to repose on the hearth or the floor. They are by nature a happier people than the Anglo-Saxon race, and of course, less will suffice for their happiness and comfort. All that I contend for is, that ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... give up the search, much disappointed, when he perceived something "like a slight mouldiness among the withered leaves, and, on stooping down, discovered it to be a young whip-poor-will, seemingly asleep." Wilson's description of the young is very accurate, as its downy covering does look precisely like a "slight mouldiness." Returning a few moments afterward to the spot to get a pencil he had forgotten, he could find ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... buries us up to the neck in snow, before the Thanksgiving dinner is cold. Then the seasons when Gabe's much-coveted bottle stood unclaimed on the shelf in its bravery of fine ribbons till far into the New Year, and was won then literally "by a scratch" on a road hardly downy with white, seem like a tale that is told, and we realize that latitude does not unaided make temperature. It is only in exceptional winters, after all, that we class for a brief spell with Naples. ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... guess they do," was the laughing answer, for Freddie and Flossie had a pet duck which they took about with them almost as faithfully as they did Snoop. "How is Downy, ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope
... to go and see Curly, and spent a pleasant afternoon with him, recalling the old times, and the old stories, and the old companions; for the youth with the downy chin has a past as ancient as that of the man with the gray beard. And Curly told him the story of his encounter with young Bruce on the bank of the Wan Water. And over and over again Annie's name came up, but Curly never ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... been some kind of a fairy, for we didn't mention kittens, but we wanted one, and here are two darlings," cried Polly, almost purring with delight as the downy bunches unrolled and gaped till their bits ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... skins of the guanico, sewed together into pieces about six feet long and five wide: These are wrapped round the body, and fastened with a girdle, with the hairy side inwards; some of them had also what the Spaniards have called a puncho, a square piece of cloth made of the downy hair of the guanico, through which a hole being cut for the head, the rest hangs round them about as low as the knee. The guanico is an animal that in size, make, and colour, resembles a deer, but it has a hump on its back, and no horns. These people ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... dear, precious secret of Mr. and Mrs. Quack was kept, for not even Paddy the Beaver knew just where that nest was, and in due time, early one morning, Mrs. Quack proudly led forth for their first swim ten downy, funny ducklings. ...
— The Adventures of Poor Mrs. Quack • Thornton W. Burgess
... the soft, downy cheek greedily, with the same ardour she had just been throwing into her own dreams ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was laughing and crying with his new parental emotions, and running to the side of the plain crib in which his alter egg, as he used to say, was swinging, to hang over the little heap of stirring clothes, from which looked the minute, red, downy, still, round face, with unfixed eyes and working lips,—in that unearthly gravity which has never yet been broken by a smile, and which gives to the earliest moon-year or two of an infant's life the character ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... pure spot of rest (Love's little throne!) shalt thou be torn; Time hovers o'er thy downy nest, To ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... leads past the mineral baths and then strikes uphill, at first through lanes cut deep in the black lava. The trees met almost overhead. It is like Devonshire, except that one half hopes to see tropical foxgloves with violet bells and downy leaves sprouting among the lush grasses and sweet-scented ferns upon those gloomy, damp, warm walls. After this we skirted a thicket of arbutus, and came upon the long volcanic ridge, with divinest outlook over Procida ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... boy, A lover of green fields and flowers,— One, who with laughing rills could toy, And hold companionship for hours, With leaves that whispered low at night, Or fountains bubbling from their springs, Or summer winds, whose downy flight, Seemed but the sweep of angel wings:— 'Twas strange that I should love the clash Of ocean in its maddest hour, And joy to see the billows dash O'er the rent cliff with fearful power. 'Twas strange,—but I was ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... I could hear thee still; The nightingale to thee sings out of tune, While on thy faithful breast my head reclines, The downy pillow's hard; while from thy lips I drink delicious draughts of nectar down, Falernian wines seem bitter to ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... the whole thing off. Kurt was also sitting up, a yard away from him, pink as ever, wrapped in blankets, and with an aluminium diver's helmet over his knee, staring at him with a severe expression, and rubbing his downy unshaven chin. They were both on a slanting floor of crimson padding, and above them was an opening like a long, low cellar flap that Bert by an effort perceived to be the cabin door in a half-inverted condition. The whole cabin had in ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... voice frightens it, and makes it shrink into a corner of its cage, but it will show a great deal of fight, and peck vigorously, when disturbed by a familiar finger. But either way, if it is loving or enraged, a canary is always the same dear downy little pet, and deserves the tenderest care and ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... having retrograded several miles. In the cove there is a small sandy beach, upon which the waves have drifted, and deposited a large quantity of oat-straw, and feathers shed by the millions of water-fowls which sport upon the bay. On this downy deposit furnished by nature we spread our blankets, ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... diamond that, if thrown Well in the eyes of even noble men, Will blind them to a host of flagrant faults. The moon was full, and 'twixt two silvered clouds Looked forth, like any princess from between The tasseled curtains of her downy bed. The vagrant wind came through the opened blind, And whispered of the desert; with its hand Fanning the flame that in the silver urn Mimicked a star. Beneath the rays I wrote: I should have slain you both for your intent Of murder; but I spare, you, and I go. So, take the kingdom, ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... beside a basinette that might have been lined with the breast feathers of a dove, so downy was it. An imitation-ivory clock ticked among a litter of imitation-ivory dresser fittings. On the edge of the bed, and with no thought for its lacy coverlet, she sat down heavily, her wet coat dragging it awry. An hour ticked past. The maid completed her tasks, announced her departure, and ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... fragrant isle Where Nature ever seems to smile, The cheerful gang{16}!—the negroes see Perform the task of industry: Ev'n at their labour hear them sing, 245 While time flies quick on downy wing; Finish'd the bus'ness of the day, No human beings are more gay: Of food, clothes, cleanly lodging sure, Each has his property secure; 250 Their wives and children are protected, In sickness they are not neglected; And when old age brings a release, Their ...
— No Abolition of Slavery - Or the Universal Empire of Love, A poem • James Boswell
... first birds return from their winter sojourn. The teacher and pupils may now learn to recognize the birds, because there are only a few, and these are easily seen, as the robin, blue-bird, junco, meadow-lark, goldfinch, bronzed grackle, sapsucker, blue jay, downy ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... Peter consumed the rice and stew, his bruised feet were bathed in warm water, rubbed with a soothing ointment, and wrapped in a downy bandage. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... escape. But how? This question had not yet presented itself. Escape from the jail!—from death!—himself,—more than himself, his wife! Stone walls lost their appalling firmness, and were no more than downy masses, which ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... in the sky, on the trees, on the wall of the hut, and on the still wet tiles of the roof, which had a chicken perching upon its ridge. The wind pulled out sideways the wild grass that grew in the wall, and the chicken's downy feathers, both of which things let themselves float upon the wind's breath to their full extent, with the unresisting submissiveness of light and lifeless matter. The tiled roof cast upon the pond, whose reflections were now clear again in the sunlight, a square of pink marble, the like of which ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... ten years old then clasped hands above its downy head, and in childish earnestness vowed to one another to protect, to cherish, to defend it as long as life was spared to either. Hannibal was not older than we were when he swore his famous oath at Carthage, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... to the facts of birth, I do not think we ought to find much difficulty. You can point out how the baby seed has a soft, downy place provided for it in the pod of the parent plant till it has ripened and is fit to be sown, when the pod opens and lets it fall to the earth, and it becomes a plant in its turn. You can point out that the egg in a similar way is carried in the mother bird's body till the shell has hardened ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... a cannot punish thee; Thou wert no actor of their Tragaedie. But for my beard thou canst not counterfet And bring gray haires uppon thy downy chinne; White frostes are ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... and the bright, glossy color of its beautifully tasseled fronds render it a most welcome addition to a group of ferns naturally rich in decorative plants. Its curiously and irregularly pinnate fronds are borne on slender stalks, terete toward the base, and covered with reddish brown, downy scales, instead of being produced loosely, as in most other Nephrolepises; these are densily crowded, and the outcome of closely clustered crowns. They measure from 15 inches to 18 inches long, and are terminated by very ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... sadly tried bushes, bearing a beautiful yellow flower, like a large yellow wild rose, only scentless. It is not a rose at all, I may remark. The ground, where there is any basin made by the rocks, grows a great sedum, with a grand head of whity-pink flower, also a tall herb, with soft downy leaves silver grey in colour, and having a very pleasant aromatic scent, and here and there patches of good honest parsley. Bright blue, flannelly-looking flowers stud the grass in sheltered places and a very ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Cyril," said Eva, pointing to a gorgeous peacock-butterfly which had settled amicably by a bee on the pink-and-downy coronet of a ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... sculptured back [a chair said to have come over in the Mayflower, and owned by the Hawthorne family]; and whenever I look up, two stars beneath a brow of serene white radiate love and sympathy upon me. Can you think of a happier life, with its rich intellectual feasts? That downy bloom of happiness, which unfaithful and ignoble poets have persisted in declaring always vanished at the touch and wear of life, is delicate and fresh as ever, and must remain so if we remain unprofane. The sacredness, the loftiness, the ethereal delicacy of such a soul ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... found himself between silken covers, and for a moment he gazed thoughtfully at a high arched ceiling that was entirely unfamiliar. Then, remembering, he sprang from the downy bed to his feet. The room, the furnishings, his silken robe, everything was strange. His bed, he saw, was a high one, and the frame was of the same gleaming silver as the dome under which they had been trapped. The arched ceiling glowed softly with the same rosy ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... had so nearly demolished the restraint on her friend's dimples, that she turned her back on her, and commended the finish of a solitary downy feather that lay detached ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... chair an inch or two higher than the rest, between two bundles. From the first, a huge heap of feathers and wings, she was taking the downy plumes, and pulling the others from the quills, and so filling bundle two littering the floor ankle-deep, and contributing to the general stock a stuffy little malaria, which might have played a distinguished part in a sweet room, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Straits' settlements of the East, the following are the most approved varieties:—The royal plantain, which fruits in eight months; one which bears in a year, the milk plantain, the downy plantain, and the golden plantain or banana. A species termed gindy has been lately imported from Madras, where it is in great request. It has this advantage over the other kinds, that it can be stewed down like an ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... there was not a single bone in his back. The attitude of his whole body was expressive of a certain nervous weakness; he looked, as he sat, like one of Balzac's thirty-year-old coquettes resting in her downy arm-chair after a fatiguing ball. From my first glance at his face I should not have supposed his age to be more than twenty-three, though afterwards I should have put it down as thirty. His smile had something ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... I remembered that Miss Dagget's bed wuz jest the other side of the thin board partition. I sez, "Yes, Josiah, with weariness and a easy conscience, any bed will seem soft as downy pillows are." ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... dogs," said the black-and-white Downy Woodpecker, running up a telegraph pole in search of grubs; "dogs have bones to eat and I like to ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... downy seed-vessels, mingling quaint brown punctuation, and dusty tremors of dancing grain, with the bloom of the nearer fields; and casting a gossamered grayness and softness of plumy mist along their surfaces far ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... as a tilting-ground, where the new-made knights were to prove their skill. The storm had given place to a soft breezy morning, the cool freshness of which appearing peculiarly grateful from the oppressiveness of the night; light downy clouds sailed over the blue expanse of heaven, tempering without clouding the brilliant rays of the sun. Every face was clothed with smiles, and the loud shouts which hailed the youthful candidates for knighthood, as they severally entered, told well the feeling with which ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... winter provisions by a free use of my gun. The eider ducks, or dunter geese, as we call them in Orkney, are always plentiful in the winter time, and valuable not only for their flesh, but also for their rich downy feathers, and I managed to procure a good number of these. Over at the fresh-water loch of Harray, too, several teals and sheldrakes were taken. And then, when my sport was over, I hung up my gun in its place in the warm byre, believing that I was ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... so there's an end o' thy love! But pray you, Sir Downy Daintiness, how come ye that are so gentle so ungently dight? Discourse, ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... and out of the old shop, but none came his way. As he stared across the street at his rival's shop, his face changed; it was like a hawk's, threatening and predatory, indifferent to the agony of the downy breast and fluttering wings that it ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... as you see, and I will report it to the other lovely Maria, and 'twill be pretty to see the rapiers flash between the two. 'Tis not only the men carry dress swords, child. But I thought Miss Maria a downy nestling, with never a thought of repartee, till now. 'Tis born in us, child. It begins with our first word and is ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... come," said the people in the rich house on the banks of the Nile, where the royal lord lay in the open hall on the downy cushions, covered with a leopard skin, not alive and yet not dead, but waiting and hoping for the lotos-flower from the deep moorland, in the far North. Friends and servants ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... leaves fell, the white birches showered the hill-sides with crumpled gold, the ruffed grouse put on its downy stockings, the great hare's flanks became patched with white. Cold was surely coming; somewhere behind the blue north the Great White ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... provided with terms of correct and classical criticism. One of my friends begged me to observe, the other day, that Claude was "pulpy;" another added the yet more gratifying information that he was "juicy;" and it is now happily discovered that Cuyp is "downy." Now I dare say that the sky of this first-rate Cuyp is very like an unripe nectarine: all that I have to say about it is, that it is exceedingly unlike a sky. The blue remains unchanged and ungraduated over three-fourths of it, down to the horizon; while the sun, in the left-hand corner, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... boat, he brought Sam one of the soft, light coverings peculiar to the country. The foundation was a wide-meshed net of cord, to which had been tied hundreds of the fragile, downy pelts. Sam could stick his finger anywhere through the interstices, yet it was warmer than a blanket, ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... landmarks disappeared and unknown fields lay about her. Crude rail fences divided acres of rustling corn from orchards whose trees were laden with red apples or downy peaches. Occasionally flocks of startled birds rose from fields freshly plowed for the fall sowing of wheat. Huge red barns and spacious open tobacco sheds, hung with drying tobacco, gave evidence of the prosperity of the farmers ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... thy lay and loud, Far in the downy cloud, Love gives it energy, love gave it birth. Where, on thy dewy wing, Where art thou journeying? Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... awoke, as was her custom,—when the very faintest hue of dawn streaked the horizon. A hen who has seen a hawk balancing his wings and cawing in mid-air over her downy family could not have awakened with her feathers, metaphorically speaking, in a more bristling state ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... its iron tongue remorse entered her youthful conscience. Was this obeying mamma? Mamma had said, "Go to bed:" not, "Go upstairs and meditate: upon young gentlemen." She gave an expressive shake of her fair shoulders, like a swan flapping the water off its downy wings, and so dismissed the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... mi-careme dance. . . . Besides, Suddy Gray is a bore with the martyred smile he's been cultivating. . . . As though a happy girl would dream of marrying anybody with all life before her to learn important things in! . . . And that dreadful, downy Scott Innis—trying to make me listen to him! . . . until I was ashamed to be alive! And Bradley Harmon—ugh!—and oh, that mushy widower, Percy Draymore, who got hold of my arm ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... through the leaves, checkering all the ground with gold. The wood now glowed with colour, russet and green and brown, wine-like red of the tree-trunks where the sun struck aslant on them, soft yellow greens where the young ferns uncurled their downy heads. The air was sweet, sweet, with the smell of morning; was the whole world new since ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... perfecting of that green until the whole earth is hidden away; then the soft, juicy look of the young blades nodding and waving at each other in the wind, that seems almost tender of them, and at last the fleecy, downy ears all whispering together." ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... now quit their holes and lurking sheds, Most mute and melancholy, where thro' night All nestling close to keep each other warm, In downy sleep they had forgot their hardships; But not to chant and carol in the air, Or lightly swing upon some waving bough, And merrily return each other's notes; No; silently they hop from bush to bush, Yet find no seeds to stop ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... thy lay and loud, Far in the downy cloud; Love gives it energy, love gave it birth. Where, on thy dewy wing, Where art thou journeying? Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... a more fervent word of praise of her sister, and had not the hushing response to it. She heard the soft regular breathing. Her own was in downy fellowship with it a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... from inside his jacket a little downy bird, who blinked and ruffled his feathers, looking very plump and ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... village was very still. A train thundered by, and Potter's windmill creaked and splashed,—creaked and splashed. A cow-bell clanked in the lane, and Mary Bell looked up to see the Dickeys' cow dawdle by, her nose sniffing idly at the clover, her downy great bag leaving a trail of foam on the fresh grass. From up the road came the ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... a bar of ivory, impatient for a breach to be opened for his advance to the assault of her tender virginity. Nervously my fingers pulled at the impeding linen, till they found a small opening and could touch the downy furniture of her mount, and finding the entrance to Love's Palace of Pleasure, slowly parted the velvety lips of her maiden slit. Then gently tickling the sensitive clitty, that source of every girl's delight, made her sigh out: "Ah, oh! how nice, Mr. Percy! don't hurt me, will you—there's ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... find," says Solomon Don Dunce, "Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet. Through all the flimsy things we see at once As easily as through a Naples bonnet— Trash of all trash! how can a lady don it? 5 Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff, Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff Twirls into trunk-paper the while you con it." And, veritably, Sol is right enough. The general tuckermanities are arrant 10 Bubbles, ephemeral and so transparent; But this is, now, you may depend upon it, Stable, opaque, ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... fancies,—the scene was weird, And the witches [63] dance at the midnight hour. She leaped the brook and she swam the river; Her course through the forest Wiwaste wist By the star that gleamed through the glimmering mist That fell from the dim moon's downy quiver. In her heart she spoke to her spirit-mother: "Look down from your teepee, O starry spirit. The cry of Wiwaste, O mother, hear it; And touch the heart of my cruel father. He hearkened not ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... downy cots (there is positively no virtue in sleeping on hard beds, and Bart considers it an absolute vice), there is a delicious period before sleep comes. Bats flit about the rafters, and an occasional swallow ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... and she was reclining on the soft downy pillows, the special pride of Mrs. Aldergrass, who bustled in and out, while her husband, ashamed of his stinginess, said "they should of moved her afore, only ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... warmtemperate region of the Old World. It ripens its fruit in the south of England. It is a tree of moderate size; the leaves are lanceolate, and serrated at the edges; and it flowers early in spring. The fruit is a drupe, having a downy outer coat, called the epicarp, which encloses the reticulated hard stony shell or endocarp. The seed is the kernel which is contained within these coverings. The shell-almonds of trade consist of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... satins,—that shining hair shall be made radiant with gems,—jewels shall sparkle on that fair neck, and on those taper fingers,—you shall ride in a carriage, and have servants to wait on you,—and you shall sleep on a downy bed, and live in a grand house, like this. Say, will not all these fine things be better than selling fruit in ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... peeps, and as she peeps, 'tis no more one, but three, And eye of bat, and downy wing of owl within the tree, And the bells of that sweet belfry a-pealing as before, And now it is not three she sees, and now it is ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... ordinaire of Europe: In the end it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder—not like the ordinary Egyptian adder, but like a patent adder in the office of a loan shark, which is the worst stinger of the whole adder family. If consumed with any degree of freedom it puts a downy coat on your tongue next morning that causes you to think you inadvertently swallowed the pillow in your sleep. Good domestic wine costs as much in Europe as good domestic wine costs in America—possibly more ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... is impossible for any woman to surpass this girl; she is like the cat who rubs herself against your legs; a white girl with ash-colored hair, delicate in appearance, but who must have downy threads on the third phalanx of her fingers, and all along her cheeks a white down whose line, luminous on fine days, begins at her ears and loses ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... silk-lined cap on her head, over which a downy growth of pale-brown fuzz was gradually thickening. Already it showed a tendency to form into tiny rings, which to Amy, who had always hankered for curls, was an extreme satisfaction. Strange to say, the same thing exactly had happened to ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... indeed; it is one of the most beautiful of all the birds' nests—such a nice round shape, and so firm that it does not easily fall to pieces. Inside it is lined with hair and feathers, and downy things, which make it ever so soft. Just put your finger inside, Annie, and feel it. Outside it is made of moss, fine dry grass, and wool, all matted together, and covered all over with the lichen which grows on the trunks and branches of trees. It is often very difficult ...
— Woodside - or, Look, Listen, and Learn. • Caroline Hadley
... like flaming catherine wheels, but there are certain requests which one has not the option of refusing. Tommy crept nearer, and put his lips to the round face out of which the eyes shone. Oh! it was so downy and warm, so soft, so indescribably soft. Tommy's lips sank into it, and couldn't get to the bottom. It ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... as you have drawn trees carefully a little while, you will be impressed, and impressed more strongly the better you draw them, with the idea of their softness of surface. A distant tree is not a flat and even piece of colour, but a more or less globular mass of a downy or bloomy texture, partly passing into a misty vagueness. I find, practically, this lovely softness of far-away trees the most difficult of all characters to reach, because it cannot be got by mere scratching or roughening the surface, but is always associated with such delicate ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... nature—speaks in a very interesting and autobiographical volume (2) of the extraordinary fascination exercised upon him as a boy, not only by a snake, but by certain trees, and especially by a particular flowering-plant "not more than a foot in height, with downy soft pale green leaves, and clusters of reddish blossoms, something like valerian." ... "One of my sacred flowers," he calls it, and insists on the "inexplicable attraction" which it had for him. In various ways of this kind one can perceive ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... senses like a strong drug; and when the child was awake, and she could bathe the much creased little body, and handle the soft arms, and drop passionate kisses on the satin-smooth skin, and rub her cheek on the downy head, she found herself sometimes trembling and dizzy with emotion. She felt constantly buoyed up by a deep trust and belief in life which she had not known before. The huge and steadying continuity of existence ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... taste than I, father," she said. "You have been enjoying the beauty of nature, while I was lying on a downy pillow." ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... plenteous day; When fruitful Summer loads the teeming plain, She crops the harvest, and she stores the grain. How long shall sloth usurp thy useless hours, Unnerve thy vigour, and enchain thy powers? While artful shades thy downy couch enclose, And soft solicitation courts repose, Amidst the drowsy charms of dull delight, Year chases year with unremitted flight, Till Want now following, fraudulent and slow, Shall spring to seize ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... it blends again with the other parts, and the line is perpetually changing, above, below, upon every side. In this description I have before me the idea of a dove; it agrees very well with most of the conditions of beauty. It is smooth and downy; its parts are (to use that expression) melted into one another; you are presented with no sudden protuberance through the whole, and yet the whole is continually changing. Observe that part of a beautiful woman where she is perhaps ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... with greener bays Than twine the chaplet of the minstrel's lays; Nor heed, while poring o'er each graver line, The far, faint music of a flute like mine. His was no head contentedly which press'd The downy pillow in obedient rest, Where lazy pilots, with their canvas furl'd, Let up the Gades of their mental world; His was no tongue which meanly stoop'd to wear The guise of virtue, while his heart was bare; But all he thought through ev'ry ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... good-looking; while the peculiar manner in which the blonde male peasants cut their hair is not becoming to their sunburnt skins, which are generally a brilliant red, especially about the neck where it appears below the light, fluffy, downy locks. Fat men are not uncommon; and their fatness is too frequently of a kind to make one shudder, for it resembles dropsy, and is, as a rule, the outcome of liqueur drinking, a very pernicious habit, in which many Finlanders indulge to excess. There are men in Suomi—dozens of them—so fat ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... back into the shop to talk, leaving Louie to her nursing. As soon as she was alone she laid back the flannel which lay round the child's head, and examined every inch of its downy poll and puckered face, her warm breath making the tiny lips twitch in sleep as it travelled across them. Then she lifted the little nightgown and looked at the pink feet nestling in their flannel wrapping. A glow sprang into her cheek; her great eyes ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... rose-color White Mts., rocky hills; N. E. Alum-root Greenish-purple Rocky woodlands; Conn. to Wis. Alum-root, downy Purplish-white Rich woods; Lancaster, Pa. American ipecac Rose-color Deep woods; N. Y., Pa., and West. Arrow-wood White, light blue berries Wet places. Common North. Bell-shaped sullivantia White Limestone cliffs; Ohio, Wis. Bird's-eye primrose Pale lilac Shores of Western lakes; Mt. Kineo, ...
— Harper's Young People, June 8, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... He floated through cool space away from the imps of torment; his bed was of downy clouds, and on these clouds he drifted with a great shining river under him; and at last the cloud he was in began to shape itself into walls and on these walls were pictures, and a window through which the sun was shining, and a black pennon—and he heard a soft, ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... build their nest? Robin Red Breast told me, First a wisp of yellow hay In a pretty round they lay; Then some shreds of downy floss, Feathers too, and bits of moss, Woven with a sweet, sweet song, This way, that way, and across: That's ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous
... happiness and sweet content flung open to such suitors? far from it! The poor slave, on his hard, pine plank, but scantily covered with his thin blanket, sleeps more soundly than the feverish voluptuary who reclines upon his feather bed and downy pillow. Food, to the indolent lounger, is poison, not sustenance. Lurking beneath all their dishes, are invisible spirits of evil, ready to feed the self-deluded gormandizers{87} which aches, pains, fierce temper, uncontrolled passions, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... on a couch of downy grass, With delicate blossoms strewn, And I feel the throb of Nature's heart Responsive to my own. Oh, the world is fair, and God is good, That maketh life so dear; For is not this the rare, sweet time, The blossoming time ...
— Ballads • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... sat down upon it, sinking so low in downy luxuriance that she found herself resting not far from the floor. But, looking out through the marble latticework into the blue twilight, she was somewhat reassured. Though thick foliage obscured the stars, it was not really dark, as ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... notice your white shoulders at first," said Phyllis, "but I saw at once what fine downy feathers you have. They are beautifully soft. Do they make a warm winter dress? How do you chance to be ...
— Stories of Birds • Lenore Elizabeth Mulets
... I were her earring, Ambushed in auburn ringlets sleek, (So might my shadow tremble Over her downy cheek), Hid in her hair, all day and night, Touching her ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... No-book preferred, and quite charmed at his own good fortune in receiving so agreeable an invitation, he eagerly gave his hand to the splendid new acquaintance who promised him so much pleasure and ease, and gladly proceeded in a carriage lined with velvet, stuffed with downy pillows, and drawn by milk-white swans, to that magnificent residence, Castle Needless, which was lighted by a thousand windows during the day, and by a ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... chirped in glee for the very joy of living, and the hungry crows, in great crowds, called loudly the tidings of spring. But not long could they stop to sing, for the homes must be made, and soon from every tree and bush could be seen these dainty, downy nests, and in every nest the eggs, and in every egg a wonderful secret about which all the happy birds twittered ...
— A Child's Story Garden • Compiled by Elizabeth Heber
... through a breeding-herd of camels, browsing on the short grass. The old ones are in the process of the spring moulting; their thick, matted hair is peeling off in large flakes, like fragments of a ragged, moth-eaten coat. The young ones are covered with pearl-gray wool, soft and almost downy, like gigantic goslings with four legs. (What is the word for a young camel, I wonder; is it camelet or camelot?) But young and old have a family ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... at present little known in this country. It forms a low bush with spreading wiry purplish downy branches, and loose terminal panicles of white flowers. Its peculiar spreading habit, dark green leaves, and abundant flowers render it a desirable acquisition to the shrubbery. It is quite ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... was a tall, powerful, plump and florid young man, with very curly golden hair, very light blue eyes, and the merest trace of downy, curly yellow beard. He was very handsome, with small delicate nose and mouth, a round chin and the most beautiful ears I ever saw on any man. He wore senators' boots and a tunic of pure silk, dyed a very brilliant ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... Mousehunt is given in The History of a Field-mouse by Miss Black. Should it be thought of sufficient authority to deserve a place in "N. & Q.," the coincidence which led "Little Downy" to be read to a little girl on the morning of Nov. 26 ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... to the door, when presently, in rushed Carl, breathless. In his hands, held up lovingly against his neck, was a poor little snow-white dove. Some crimson drops upon the downy breast, showed that it ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... peaches were rosy and downy, the plums ready to drop with lusciousness; ruddy-cheeked pears were crowded on the drooping branches; the apples, not so plentiful, were taking on the colors that proclaimed their near fruition; and even the knotty quinces were growing fair and golden. On the upper terrace the stately, ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... dust-like feathers the pattern of the mottling of the under surface of the wings. What finicking dilettantism—was ever such "antic, lisping, affecting fantastico?"—that rough Neptune, who in blind fury bombards the stubborn beaches with blocks of coral, should be delicately susceptible to the downy print of ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... is a fine, downy undercovering, obtained by combing the fleece of a goat native to the Kashmir Valley in India. A single animal yields scarcely more than an ounce or two, and the best product is worth about its weight in gold. It is used in the manufacture of the famous Cashmere shawls, ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... instinctive dread prompted her to turn round, and indeed there lay Jeanne, lowering upon them with deadly pale face and great inky-black eyes. The child had not made the least movement; her chin was still buried in the downy pillow, which she clasped with her little arms. She had only opened her eyes a moment ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... the broad Pactolus, stemming the waters with its downy breast; and anon, it would rise upon the wing, and soar to other skies; so, taking down that snow-white sail, it seeks for a moment to rest its foot on shore, and thence take flight: alas, poor bird! thou ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... just as three canoes, carved in bizarre shapes of birds' heads and eagle claws, came paddling across the inlet. Three savages were in one, six in the other, ten in the third. They came slowly over the water, singing some song of welcome, beating time with their paddles, {186} scattering downy white feathers on the air, at intervals standing up to harangue a welcome to the newcomers. Soon thirty canoes were around the ships with some ten warriors in each. Still they came, shoals of them, like fish, with savages almost naked, the harbor smooth as glass, the grand tyee, or great ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... day I have attended such little schools unseen and unsuspected by the mother bird. Sometimes it was the a-b-c class, wee little downy fellows, learning to hide on a lily pad, and never getting a reward of merit in the shape of a young trout till they hid so well that the teacher (somewhat over-critical, I thought) was satisfied. Sometimes it was the baccalaureates ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... years and years since it was laid, In her own gentle way, On tangled curls of brown and jet Above the downy coverlet 'Neath which the ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... streets and actual want already has its clutch on many a poor devil, society goes on giving its expensive parties and living in its little round of selfish pleasure just as if the volcano was a downy little bed of roses for it to go to sleep in whenever it wearies of the pleasure and wishes to retire to happy dreams. Oh, but the bubble will burst one of ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... moved her head and smiled at Helen Cumberly; then seemed to sink deeper into the downy billows of the bed. Dr. Cumberly stood up very slowly, and turned, ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... dream-children—strong sons and daughters yet unborn. Their eyes seemed smiling, their fingers closing on hers. Cloudlike, yet very real, they beckoned her, and in her stirred the call of motherhood—of life to be. Her heart-strings echoed to that harmony; it seemed already as though a tiny head, downy—soft, was nestling in her bosom, while eager lips ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... the feathered tribe at this time; how some rudely push before and peck the others in their anxiety to obtain the first grains that fall from the basket, and how the little children take care that the most greedy shall not get it all; their joy at seeing the young broods of tiny chicks covered with downy feathers, and the anxiety of the hens each to protect her own from danger, and teach them to scratch and pick up food for themselves; while they never forget to admire and praise the beauty of the fine old cock, as he struts about ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... villages, reconciling differences, and extending the sacred influences of the gospel, so that in a very short time he attained the appellation of Bishop Bunyan—a title much better merited by him than by the downy prelates who sent him to jail for preaching that which they ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... bed with its snowy counterpane and downy pillows roomy enough for two, but a wide cot had been placed on the other side of the neat little room for whoever chose to ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... by spiders spun; With jacket wove of thistle's down; His trowsers were of feathers done. His stockings, of apple-rind, they tie With eyelash from his mother's eye His shoes were made of mouse's skin, Tann'd with the downy hair within." ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.) |
