"Droppings" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... found 'a star'. It was a damp white deposit on the grass, clammy and quivering, cold to the touch, very sticky, with long tenacious filaments. Ellenbog had never seen anything like it, but he found out that the peasants and the shepherds believed such things to be droppings from shooting stars,[18] if not actually fallen stars, and that they were thought to be a cure for cancer. His letter describing it is to ask the opinion of a friend who was a doctor, that is to say, the scientist of ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... king and Bishop Mellitus arrived next day, Edric told his story, and pointed out the marks of the twelve crosses on the church, the walls within and without moistened with holy water, the letters of the Greek alphabet written twice over distinctly on the sand, the traces of the oil, and even the droppings of the angelic candles. The bishop could not presume to add ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... when the insulators are covered with wet dust than during heavy rains when the insulators are thoroughly washed by the action of the water. In like manner a heavy rain-storm cleaned the tracks from the accumulations due chiefly to the droppings of the horses, which otherwise served largely to increase the conductivity. Of course, in dry weather the loss of current was practically nothing, and, under ordinary conditions, Edison held, his system ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... gold-embroidered robes, and the priests and choristers in their black robes and white surplices richly satisfied it; and if some of the clerics were a little frayed and some of the acolytes were spotted with the droppings of the candles, these were details which one remembered afterward and that did not matter at ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... sufficient to give our four camels a drink; there remained only a bucket or two of slush rather than water in the whole camp. It appeared, however, as though fortune were about to favour us, for the light droppings of rain continued, and before night we were compelled to seek the shelter of our tents. I was indeed thankful to Heaven for paying even a part of so longstanding a debt, although it owes me a good many showers yet; but being a patient creditor, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... crooked, indifferent to elegance. The negroes' heads grew pale with dust and grease. The wrinkles of the face were blackened and puckered; the skin became parchment. The nails, neglected, were often seen, alas! with a black velvet edging. The waistcoat was tracked and stained with droppings which spread upon its surface like autumn leaves. The cotton in the ears was seldom changed. Sadness reigned upon that brow, and slipped its yellowing tints into the depths of each furrow. In short, the ruins, hitherto so cleverly hidden, now showed through the cracks and crevices of that ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... manure to pasture-land is attended with certain dangers. To maintain good pasture it is desirable to effect a proper balance between the different kinds of grasses. For this reason permanent pasture may be said to be, of all crops, the least commonly manured. As a rule it is only manured by the droppings of the cattle and ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... acquaintances, gained the mastership of a provincial school. Rodolphe, who was the child of prodigality, always spent his allowance in four days; and, not choosing to abandon his holy but not very profitable profession of elegiac poet, lived for the rest of the month on the rare droppings from the basket of Providence. This long Lent had no terrors for him; he passed through it gaily, thanks to his stoical temperament and to the imaginary treasures which he expended every day while waiting for the first of the month, that Easter which terminated his fast. He lived at ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... admitted, and in the daytime the spot is fully illuminated. The air within is free from all moisture caused by dropping, and is quite pure, owing to the compactness of the rock, which diverts all the wet and droppings to the spring. ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... thy conscious soul to fright, Make signs, and beckon thee my ghost to follow To sadder groves, and churchyards, where we'll hollo To darker caves and solitary woods, To fatal whirlpools and consuming floods; I'll tempt thee to pass by the unlucky ewe, Blasted with cursed droppings of mildew; Under an oak, that ne'er bore leaf, my moans Shall there be told thee by the mandrake's groans; The winds shall sighing tell thy cruelty, And how thy want of love did murder me; And when the cock shall crow, and day ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... about the size of a lead pencil or larger, which may be found in horses almost anywhere in the United States. It occurs in the intestine and probably occasions little damage as a rule, except when present in large numbers, in which case it will probably be found in the droppings. The symptoms occasioned by it are rather obscure and are such as might arise from a number of other causes, namely, colicky pains, depraved appetite, diarrhea or constipation, and general unthriftiness. In a general way, the presence of parasites may be suspected when an animal ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... pensioner who wore a white cap, drew her money from the Court, and expended it here, and a feeble, gouty old sailor who had bidden the sea farewell. Out in the street, on the sharp-edged cobble-stones, the sparrows were clamoring loudly, lying there with puffed-out feathers, feasting among the horse-droppings, tugging at them and scattering them about to the accompaniment of a ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Richard, who had come upon them unobserved, and stood before the father and daughter; looking down upon them with a face as glowing as the iron on which his stout sledge-hammer daily rung. A handsome, well-made, powerful youngster he was; with eyes that sparkled like the red-hot droppings from a furnace fire; black hair that curled about his swarthy temples rarely; and a smile—a smile that bore out Meg's eulogium on ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... peeled off his outer clothes and lay on the floor in front of the range. It threw out a violent heat, but not too much for him; he luxuriated, basked in it, delighting in the rosy patches that grew on the stove's rusty surface, the bright droppings from its grate. Holding his stiff feet out to it, he cooked himself, stretching and turning like a cat. Finally, he lay quiet, his hands clasped behind his head, his eyes touching points that the red light played upon, and listened to the rain. The building shook ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... summer-house? She hastily threw up a window, thrust forth her turbaned head and the half of her gaunt figure, and searched the whole garden through, as completely as her dim vision would allow. She could see the interior of the summer-house, and its circular seat, kept moist by the droppings of the roof. It had no occupant. Clifford was not thereabouts; unless, indeed, he had crept for concealment (as, for a moment, Hepzibah fancied might be the case) into a great, wet mass of tangled ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a fetid thickness to this air only a few feet away from the outer world. The odor of clak-clak droppings and refuse from their nests was strong, but there was an added staleness, as if no breeze ever scooped out the old atmosphere to replace it with new. Fragile bones crunched under Shann's boots, but as he drew away from the entrance, the pale glow of the crystal increased ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... the discouraged little candle end, with its long black wick, the two charred splinters of pine wood and the eccentric trail of tallow droppings. Then he ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... and she-asses, which they compassed by binding a cow's hide upon the latter:" it would be worth inquiring if this was ever attempted, and it might add to our traditions about the "Jumart." And the tale of the elephant-hunters deceiving the animals by anointing themselves with their droppings deserves investigation. Wounds of poisoned arrows are healed by that which produced them. A woman's milk cures the venomous foam which cobras spit into the eyes. A snake as big as a beam kills ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... caves of fire The mate of her who nursed Desire Moulded the glowing steel to form Arrows for Cupid thrilling warm; While Venus every barb imbues With droppings of her honeyed dews; And Love (alas the victim heart) Tinges with gall the ...
— Correggio - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... three inches high for an hour. Then we all go out naked and dig trenches to get it out of the way. It is very rough living. I have to confess that I never knew how well off I was until I got to smoking Durham tobacco and I've only half a bag of that left. The enlisted men are smoking dried horse droppings, grass, roots and tea. Some of them can't sleep they are so nervous for the want of it, but to-day a lot came up and all will be well for them. I've had a steady ration of coffee, bacon and hard tack for a week and one mango, to night we had beans. Of ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... hell-fire." So the merchant said to the Bedouin, "O chief of the Arabs, this girl is none of thine affair; so do thou sell her to me for what thou wilt." "Take her," said the Bedouin, "and pay me down her price, or I will carry her back to the camp and set her to feed the camels and gather their droppings."[FN28] Quoth the merchant, "I will give thee fifty thousand dinars for her." "God will open,"[FN29] replied the Bedouin. "Seventy thousand," said the merchant. "God will open," repeated the other; "she hath cost me more than that, for ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... of petty sins that make up a worldly life. It is their custom to ask alms, and perhaps to measure the duration of their penance by the time requisite to accumulate a sum of money out of the little droppings of individual charity. The avails are devoted to some beneficent or religious purpose; so that the benefit accruing to their own souls is, in a manner, linked with a good done, or intended, to their fellow-men. These figures have a ghastly and ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
