"Haystack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Hallowe'en strange things may happen to one. Zschokke tells a story of a Walpurgis Night dream that is more a vision than a dream. Led to be unfaithful to his wife, a man murders the husband of a former sweetheart; to escape capture he fires a haystack, from which a whole village is kindled. In his flight he enters an empty carriage, and drives away madly, crushing the owner under the wheels. He finds that the dead man is his own brother. Faced by the person whom ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... for six months, and have had no opportunity as yet for showing any special adaptability. Now I propose to test your powers with something really difficult. Are you up to it, Sweetwater? Do you know the city well enough to attempt to find a needle in this very big haystack?" ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... Brandon Hills shimmered in a pale gray mirage. Over the trees which sheltered the Stopping-House a flock of black crows circled in the blue air, croaking and complaining that the harvest was going to be late. On the wire-fence that circled the haystack sat a row of red-winged blackbirds like a string of jet beads, patiently waiting for the oats to ripen and indulging in low-spoken but pleasant gossip about all the other ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... Looks like a regular haystack," grunted Stuart, as he dropped from the train and stood in the fairway, one hand held out in front of him, and a ponderous finger ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... find out where Hugh Davidson was likely to be found, if alive. Dr. Hunter felt as though he were beginning to search for the proverbial needle in a haystack; but by Mrs. Forester's advice he entrusted the matter to his lawyers, and in an incredibly short space of time he heard from them that the man he wanted was now the manager of the A1 Shipping and Transportation Company at Skaguay, Alaska, the ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... came to a city where a dreadful elephant came daily to make a meal off the inhabitants. Many mighty warriors had gone against it, but none had returned. On hearing this the valiant little weaver thought to himself, 'Now is my chance! A great haystack of an elephant will be a fine mark to a man who has shot a mosquito with a shuttle!' So he went to the King, and announced that he proposed single-handed to meet and slay the elephant. At first the King thought the little man was mad, but as he persisted in ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... gone tell I didn't know whe'er I 'uz rolled up in a haystack er stretched out in a feather-bed. I reckon ef you'd 'a' listened right clost you'd 'a' heern me sno'. I thes laid back an' howled at the rafters, an' once-t er twice-t I wuz afeard I mought ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... all the way for this, To part at last without a kiss? Yea, had she borne the dirt and rain That her own eyes might see him slain Beside the haystack in ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... his French amours and his treasons? Have you any notion that he will be the more or the less likely to do so when he learns that there's a French gentleman of your make in the country-side, and a friend of Doom's, too, which means a Jacobite? A daft errand, if I may say it; seeking a needle in a haystack was ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... I crawled into a haystack to sleep one night, because it was warmer, and along comes a village constable and arrests me for being a tramp. At first they thought I was a runaway, and telegraphed my description all over. I told them I did n't have any people, but they ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... his chums were every one of them entered for several events; indeed, it would have been like looking for a needle in a haystack to try and find a single Scranton boy above the age of ten, and sound of wind, who had not taken advantage of the generous invitation to place his name on the records, and go in for training along a certain line. Those ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... Cricket exclaimed. "Now I know! You're going to live in the haystack. A haystack is cozy and warm; it's wind-proof; it sheds water; ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug • Arthur Scott Bailey
... fact that he was so immediately active, that he did not wait until daylight, when conditions would be best, but began the search in the face of apparent impossibility, brought her immediate confidence. She liked a man who would, without quoting the old saw, hunt for a needle in a haystack. ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... last turned his back upon Walkherd Lodge, and went the way he came. The road he trotted along, with his feet on good Rutlandshire soil, but his head still somewhat in the clouds, got gradually more and more narrow, till it ended at a broad ditch, with, a dungheap on the one side and a haystack on the other. It was now that John perceived for the first time that he had lost his way. While walking along with Martha Turner, he no more thought of marking the road than of solving riddles in algebra, and, besides a faint consciousness ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... Chad springing from a bed in a haystack—ten miles from Lexington. By dusk that day, he was on the edge of the Bluegrass and that night he stayed at a farm-house, going in boldly, for he had learned now that the wayfarer was as welcome in a Bluegrass farm-house as in a log-cabin in the mountains. ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... portly man, i' faith: and had a villa and a steam launch at Surbiton: and was versed in the esoteric humours of the House. Who could have thought that the Hunter lay hid in him? Yet, after many weeks, they found him in a wild nook of Hampshire. Ragged, sun-burnt, the nocturnal haystack calling aloud from his frayed and weather-stained duds, his trousers tucked, he was tickling trout with godless native urchins; and when they would have won him to himself with honied whispers of American Rails, he answered but with babble of green fields. He is back in his wonted corner now: ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... unthinkable, so don't you even hint at such a thing." He glared awfully, but his tone softened. "There's some milk yet about that moustache of yours, my boy. You don't know what a man like me is capable of. I would hide behind a haystack if . . . Don't grin at me, sir! How dare you? If this were not a private conversation I would . . . Look here! I am responsible for the proper expenditure of lives under my command for the glory of our country and the honour of the regiment. Do you understand that? ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... good horse in his stable, and never a bad one. He kept his horses in old barns and farm-stables, turning them out on to the chalk Downs in all seasons of the year with little shelter but the lee of a haystack or an ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... what can be wrong with my vision, I can see as clear and as far as the best of you, and I'm not bad, you'll allow, at following up a trail over hard ground; but when it comes to squinting along the barrel of a gun I'm worse than useless. It's my belief that if I took aim at a haystack at thirty yards I'd miss it. No, Vic, I must give up the idea ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... guy, Tex. If you was lookin' for a needle in a haystack you'd find it in yore mouth when you picked up a straw ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... at the appointed time I was behind the haystack awaiting my adversary, who did not fail to appear. "We may be surprised," he said; "be quick." We laid aside our uniforms, drew our swords from the scabbards, when Ignatius, followed by five pensioners, came out from behind a haystack. ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... haystack—below it a rattlesnake—and it told me where to begin to talk ranch-life in Carson Valley. The second one told me where to begin the talk about a strange and violent wind that used to burst upon Carson City from the Sierra Nevadas ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Frere. "Pretty fellows you are, all of you! I suppose you couldn't hit a haystack at twenty yards? Why, the man wasn't three feet from the end ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... and it seemed to him to be a region three or four miles square, a network of crests, ridges, cups, and narrow valleys like ravines. He resolved that for the present, at least, he would make no attempt to break from it and pass the Indian lines. He would be for a day or two the needle in the haystack. One might move from cover to cover and evade pursuit for a long time in a tumbled and tangled mass of country fifteen or sixteen miles square, covered moreover with ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... than a needle, but so long as the haystack stays thick enough I guess we needn't worry!" remarked Captain Candage, cocking his ear to listen to ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... their prey; and if you are murderously inclined you may take a shot with your revolver at these great birds, for they are ignorantly brave, and will sometimes allow you to approach within twenty or thirty yards. At last you perceive—most pleasant sight of all—a group of haystack-shaped tents in the distance; and you hurry on to enjoy the grateful shade, and quench your thirst with "deep, deep ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... with his own. "True son of Lilamani! But I fear he may have joined some secret society; and India is a large haystack in which to ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... for him. But his fingers picking out the bars of a familiar tune set him to smiling, and, whipping his bow across the strings, he forgot all about his wife's resolutions and his own hardships. Trouble always slid off his back like "punkins off a haystack" anyway. ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... week in December Dorian went into action in search of Carlia Duke. He acknowledged to himself that it was like searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack, but inaction ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... close in her lap for a while, watching his enemies within. Then she started on a long detour, with the new haystack as her destination. He kept close to her heels, snarling wearily. A few days before she had made a cave in the stack, which stood between the barn and the chicken-house. The cave was on the side nearest the coop, and she decided to conceal him in it and fasten ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... the price of a little book, The Tale of a Tub, which he spied in a bookseller's window. He bought it, took it into a field near Kew Gardens, and sat down to read; read on till it was dark, tumbled to sleep under a haystack, and woke to ask the head gardener for work. He was given work, but the gardener persuaded him to return home. Ten years later he ran away from Farnham again, and for the last time. He was out on the road to meet some friends on the way to Guildford ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... the devil after cruising about, but that he had accompanied them from the first, and that she had seen him dimly in the distance, rolling himself before them over the great waves, in shape and size not unlike a huge haystack. They met with a foreign ship richly laden with wines and other good things, which they boarded, and sunk after they had drunk all the wine and ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... a mere tramp, clearly a man of no importance to you or me or anyone else in the world. The evening was warm, the place secluded and remote, and, other things being equal, he climbed over the hedge, chose a comfortable position against a haystack, pulled from his pocket a fragment of a newspaper and a fragment of a pipe ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... which way, in a few years, and there's nothing to it. Grant's a good son, and a good brother, and a good friend and neighbor, but"—the Doctor pounds his chair arm vehemently, "there are bats, my dear, bats in his belfry just the same. Don't get excited when you see Grant mount his haystack to jump into the crack o' doom for the ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... little stream. Late in the evening, we went to the river and worked till after midnight to make or find a crossing. The water was deep and cold, and, failing to accomplish our purpose, we turned back to a haystack, and, covering ourselves with hay, rested until the first light of ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... graceful in his unconscious and direct employments: the poise of a fisherman, for instance, the play of his arm, the cast of his line or net,—these take the eye as do the stealthy movements of the hunter, the fine attitudes of the wood-chopper, the grasp of the sailor on the helm. A haystack and a boat are always picturesque objects, and so are the men who are at work to build or use them. So is yonder stake-net, glistening in the noonday light,—the innumerable meshes drooping in soft arches from the high stakes, and the line of floats stretching shoreward, like tiny stepping-stones; ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... commenced; this, 4000 feet almost gradual in forty miles, is not fatiguing; and thus, although we found the path through a wood about three miles long, very deep, and the air oppressive, we all arrived together without distress at the "half-way house," by 1 P.M. Suppose a haystack hollowed out, and some holes cut for doors and windows, and you have a picture of the "half-way house," and the ordinary dwellings of the natives of these islands; it is kept by a respectable person, chiefly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... do exactly as we do. I've got this fellow under my thumb. He knows he'll get a good long term for smuggling, but I can get some of it taken off if he pilots us out, and I've promised him to do my best for him. It'll be as hard as finding a needle in a haystack to get a pilot and we have him, so what's the use ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... beautiful and abundant hair done up in a queue, Mr. Binkus laughed and said they looked "terrible pert." He told the virile and profane Captain Lee of Howe's staff, that the first thing to do was to "make a haystack o' their hair ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... can they ever find it? Seems to me it'll be like hunting for the proverbial needle in a haystack, only more so!" ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... Robespierre, Danton, Tinville, Merlin, and the whole of the demmed murderous crowd, will be busy looking after me—a needle in a haystack. They'll put the abortive attempt down to me, and you may—ma foi! I only suggest that you may escape safely out of France—in the Daydream, and with the help ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... myself more than I could have hoped on board our floating menagerie; stallions and monkeys and matches made our cargo; and the vast continent of the incongruities rolled the while like a haystack; and the stallions stood hypnotized by the motion, looking through the port at our dinner table, and winnied when the crockery was broken; and the little monkeys stared at one another in their cages ... and the big monkey, Jacko scoured about the ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... along the fields without any misgivings as to the prudence of his choice. He arrived at his first leap—there was the hedge, its summit just discernible in the dim light. On the other side, to the right was a haystack, and close by this haystack seemed the most eligible place for clearing the obstacle. Now since the banker had visited this place, a deep ditch, that served as a drain, had been dug at the opposite base of the hedge, of which neither horse ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... awfully, but his voice became gentle. "There's some milk yet about that moustache of yours, my boy. You don't know what a man like me is capable of. I would hide behind a haystack if... Don't grin at me, sir. How dare you? If this were not a private conversation, I would... Look here. I am responsible for the proper expenditure of lives under my command for the glory of our country and the honour of the regiment. Do you understand that? Well, then, what the ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... Packingtown the fertilizer is pure, instead of being a flavoring, and instead of a ton or so spread out on several acres under the open sky, there are hundreds and thousands of tons of it in one building, heaped here and there in haystack piles, covering the floor several inches deep, and filling the air with a choking dust that becomes a blinding sandstorm when the ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... to my mother's interest. She can never see a haystack, therefore she is always so surprised and excited. Of course Dona Rita was not a woman about whom the newspapers insert little paragraphs. But Allegre was the sort of man. A lot came out in print about ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... A variant of the usual form, which is kaupaku, the ridgepole of a house, its apex. The pa-ti when, worn takes the shape of a grass house, which has the form of a haystack.] ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... seen them, we might wander over those desolate plains for a month without coming across the stove-pipe, which was the only external sign of their subterranean habitation. It would be far worse than the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack. ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... stood, dark and shadowy against the north. Another loomed dimly beyond it; a haystack rose ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... company of the Seventy-First, N.Y., and a squad of the Third Pennsylvania Cavalry awaiting us. Reporting to the General we took the right of the Seventy-First, and with the cavalry in advance moved out on the Hagerstown road across a stone bridge to a point designated on the diagram by a haystack, at which point, by direction of the General, the reserve was stationed. After giving me instructions as to the direction in which he wished the line of pickets extended, and orders to hold the point to the latest possible ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... have to check up the road distances from Denver, Cole. Your job's like lookin' for a needle in a haystack. I'll put a detective agency on James. He might take a notion to run out to the cache any fine evenin'. He likely will, to make sure Esther ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... ran round the haystack, Oh, ho! said the fox, you are very fat; You'll grease my beard and ride on my back From this into yonder ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... having laid one round of eggs, off they go to erect, or rather to excavate, another dwelling. You have scarcely learned the way to their nook above the great beam when it is abandoned, and they betake themselves to a hole at the very bottom of the haystack. I wish I could tell you a story about a Hebrew prophet crawling under a barn after hen's eggs, and crawling out again from the musty darkness into sweet light with his clothes full of cobwebs, his eyes full of dust, his hands full of eggs, to find himself ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... see him. Yet he was willing to sell food at any time for cash; hay, too, as long as there was still some remaining in his lofts. He would also sell hay against promises of lambs, especially wethers, once it was certain that the cold of winter was past. But his old haystack he ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... after landing. And yet I quite despised myself for imagining (as I did) that the next white face I saw would surely be his. India is a big place—a dreadfully big place—and the chances of finding any one particular person there are about as great as of discovering a needle in a haystack. He might have left India long ago; he might have fallen in the massacres of the past few months; he might be somewhere right across the continent. And so, though I could not get rid of a vague sort of expectation, ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... to San Francisco, where he interviewed presidents of banks and other magnates. All and sundry were civil to Uncle Jap, but they refused to look for a needle in a haystack. Uncle Jap confessed, later, that he was beginning to get "cold feet," as he expressed it, when he happened to meet an out-of-elbows individual who claimed positively that he could discover water, gold, or oil, with no tools or instruments other than ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... from the woods a short distance to our right and stood in line of battle most needlessly exposed. In less than five minutes a shell burst among them, killing and wounding eleven men. This over, we moved to a haystack nearby, where our horses had more than one refreshing feed during lulls in the battle. It seemed, also, an attractive place for General Jackson, as he was seldom far from it till the close of the battle ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... Blue, come, blow your horn! The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn. Where's the little boy that looks after the sheep? Under the haystack, fast asleep! ...
— The Real Mother Goose • (Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright)
... address. That would be useless. My decision is unalterable. It is futile to come after or try to find me. In a large city I will immediately become a needle in a haystack and that is what I want and need for my work. Do not worry. You know very well I can take excellent care of myself, and in case of unforeseen accident I will always be identified by your name and address on me. So by my very silence you are to know I am well and happy. Some ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... summoning up a new supply of oratorical energy, and an official gravity beneath which his legs trembeled. "Name shis town's London. Shame name's big town 'cross ocean. Lots history c'nected wish name. Shtacks an' cords of it. Old times when King went out t'meet him, wish shtyle pile on bigger'n a haystack. Fact. Clothes finer'n a peacock. Tendered him keys, freed'm city. All shat short shing. Ver' impreshive shpectacle. Everybody felt better'n for improvin' sight. Undershtand? We'll be Lord Mayor and train for shis London. We can rig out right ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... took my wife's ruby, took your daughter's sapphires. It needed a clever mind to conceive such a coup. Three other carriages were entered, with more or less success. In a dense fog; a needle in a haystack. And ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... now, the new hats are mine.) She has told me a splendid story about a thing he did in Bengal: saved twelve people's lives in a house that was on fire in the middle of the night—the kind of house which blazes like a haystack. And, according to her, he thinks no more of rescuing drowning persons who jump off ships in seas swarming with sharks than we think of fishing a fly out of our bath. Now, is it possible for a man like that to be treacherous to women, and to accept bribes for being guardian to their children? ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... like looking for a needle in a haystack," was the comment of the senator's son, after a full hour had been ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... and often I must needs arise at night to run forth to the fold when there was an alarm of wolves. Day after day my head grew heavier from want of sleep, until at last I could keep my eyes open no longer. I stole under the haystack to snatch a few extra winks, and when I was discovered my shame and disgrace were heralded forth to all the world." And again the poor child ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... after the escaping man, but in that heavy undergrowth he knew it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. After a time he gave it up and returned to ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... a haystack three years ago, and never spoke no more. We have always kept off the parish, ma'am. This bit of a cottage was my poor wife's, and she do want to leave it to the boy; but she be but frail, poor maid, and if she gave in, there'd be nothing for it but to give up the place and go to the ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... successive Sabbath nights on his manse wall to catch him smoking (and got him). Old wives grumbled by their hearths when he did not look in to despair of their salvation. He told the maidens of his congregation not to make an idol of him. His session saw him (from behind a haystack) in conversation with a strange woman, and asked grimly if he remembered that he had a wife. Twenty were his years when he came to Thrums, and on the very first Sabbath he knocked a board out of the pulpit. Before beginning his trial sermon he handed down the big Bible to ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... though, more often, they loved to spread the simple food they purchased by the way under some thick, tree, or beside a stream through whose limpid waters they could watch the trout glide and play. And they often preferred the chance shelter of a haystack, or a shed, to the less romantic repose offered by the small inns they alone dared to enter. They went in this much by the face and voice of the host or hostess. Once only Philip had entered a town, on the second day of their ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... his horse. I had now a chance of escape; but I was weary, wounded, and overcome with vexation. It happened, as I took my last view of my keeper outside, nodding on his horse's neck, that I glanced on a huge haystack in the stable-yard. The thought struck me, that helpless as I was, I might contrive to give an alarm to some of the British videttes or patroles, if your gallant countrymen should condescend to employ such things. I stole down ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... friends inquire about you. Bill Johnston told me he was sorry he had to have you arrested for overturning his hay stack; that he did not believe you was to blame, the boys with you led you into oversetting the haystack to catch the rabbit. ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... by as she was wrapping it up in paper, and Hugh, pointing to his purchase with a melancholy air, said, in an aggrieved tone: "It's a terrible quantity they're about givin' me—yards and yards—enough to rope round a haystack; and it's an ojis colour. Troth, now, if she takes the notion to be stickin' the whole of it on top of the little black head of her, it's an objec' she'll make of herself, she will so. It's a pity. I'd liefer there hadn't been ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... straight-backed chairs, and the sofa were beautiful red mahogany wood, and the seats shining haircloth. If no one happened to be looking, you could sit on a sofa arm, stick your feet out and shoot off like riding down a haystack; the landing was much better. On the sofa you bounced two feet high the first time; one, the second; and a little way the third. On the haystack, maybe you hit a soft spot, and maybe you struck ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... football match drew Mick irresistibly from his labours. He was off to every bit of 'divarsion' in the country, and when there were big races at a distance Mick generally took the road a day beforehand, sleeping out in the soft spring night if it was dry weather, trusting to a convenient haystack or barn if it wasn't. He was known so widely that at every farmhouse along the road he was sure of a bite. And on the race-course every one was his friend; and the various parties picnicking were greeted by Mick with uproarious shouts and a flinging of his caubeen ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... when Ping! Ping! again from our rear came the messages from a sniper hidden there. In glancing back over my shoulder I noticed in the pitchy blackness the flash of a rifle simultaneously with the report, and it seemed to come from a haystack about ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... I remonstrated. "No more of that; if you want to knock the brains out of that haystack on the back of your head, why, knock away; but spare my bones, if ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... For it is evident that if a camel were small enough to pass through the eye of a needle, there would be comparatively little trouble in swallowing him. And, speaking of needles, it has been a constant regret that my collection is still without a needle found in a haystack." ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... Powell held watch and ward on the heights of Heath and George Hall on the lofty meadow in Rowe. Each drew his pay from the treasury of the colony; and each had a magnificent lookout from his solitary sentry-box. Monadnock is in plain sight to the east, and Haystack to the north from the site of Fort Shirley and the Hoosacs to the west and Greylock overtopping them greeted the roving gaze of George Hall from the picketed enclosure of ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... a campaign in a country more difficult than the interior of Samar. The traditional needle in the haystack would be easy to find compared with an outlaw, or band of outlaws, ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... especially; and it is fortunate that these are on both sides of the road, because as it is now, I never fall off twice in succession on the same side. If I fell on the same side always, it would get to be monotonous after a while. This creature has scared at every thing he has seen to-day, except a haystack. He walked up to that with an intrepidity and a recklessness that were astonishing. And it would fill any one with admiration to see how he preserves his self-possession in the presence of a barley sack. This dare-devil bravery will be the death ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... beard gave him a most venerable aspect. The note of welcome in his cheery voice was unmistakable and soon the maid who had spoken from the balcony had shown the way up a winding circular staircase to a welcome exchange to the shelter of a haystack which I had begun to fear would be my only resting-place for ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... was consequently given to our guns, which were firing on this particular section of ground. The German battery commanders at once took advantage of the lull in the action to climb up their observation ladders and on to a haystack to locate our guns, which soon afterward came under a far more accurate fire than any to which they had been subjected up ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... his youthful heart, akin to the wondrous sympathy of women, had been touched. Like a shock of fire it came home to him. He, too, might lose his dearest possession thus, and be unable to climb trees, jump ditches, risk his neck along the edge of the haystack or the roof. 'That might happen to me too!' was the terrible thing he realised, and ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... round his neck and kissed him till they were both out of breath. From that moment the eternal story of love began between them. They plagued one another in corners; they met in the moonlight beside the haystack and gave each other bruises on the legs, under the table, with their heavy nailed boots. By degrees, however, Jacques seemed to grow tired of her; he avoided her, scarcely spoke to her, and did not try any longer to meet her ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... advice, for identification in case of its being stolen. And he left several duplicate copies with me. I gave one to Keightley. But the man could give me no information in return. The missing woman seemed lost in London. And the proverbial little needle in the haystack might be as easily found," said ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... vociferously at the hail bouncing off Dad. Once Dad staggered—a hail-boulder had struck him behind the ear—and he looked like dropping. Paddy hit himself on the leg, and vehemently invited Dave to "Look, LOOK at him!" But Dad battled along to the haystack, buried his head in it, and stayed there till the storm was over—wriggling and moving his feet as though he ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... saying, "You are under my orders here, and my instructions are to send you all directly back to the ford and across the river; and then the army is already on the march, and you might as well attempt to find a needle in a haystack as undertake to find your regiment in these woods in this darkness." If his first reason had not been sufficient, the latter one was quite convincing. I realized at once the utter madness of any attempt to reach the regiment, at the same time that in this night tramp back ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... drilled by an officer. Horses were picketed in a long line up the main street; they were mostly very poor cart-stock, ill-provided, as I learned afterwards, with harness. Men were bringing hay to them from whatever haystack was nearest. From time to time, there came a loud booming of guns, above the ringing of the church bells. Three ships in the bay, one of them La Reina, were firing salutes as they hoisted their colours. It was all like a very noisy fair or coronation day. It had ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... continued Wessex, leading up the lane; "but at the corner by the big haystack they join up with the tracks of a motor-car! I ask for nothing clearer! There was rain that afternoon, but there's ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... growing on the dry ground lying between the marshes," said Ned, "and I suppose that the Mexicans cut it for the Vera Cruz market. Maybe we can find something like a haystack or a windrow. Dry grass makes a ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and the fangs and the flowers, The raving and ravenous rage Of a poet as pinion'd in powers As a condor confined in a cage! My heart in a haystack I've hidden, As loving and longing I lie, Kiss open thine eyelids unbidden— ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... deliberations of Joel Strides on a battle. The Indian leaders, however, gave some of their ordinary signals, to bring their 'young men' more under command and, sending messengers with orders in different directions, they left the haystack, compelling Joel ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... and wounded, and once had staggered white-lipped to the mortuary-shed to identify a Jane Harris, and found her—oh, with what unutterable relief!—to be a coloured lady who had married a Rifleman. After that he had perked up, and continued his quest for the beloved needle lost in the haystack of Gueldersdorp with renewed belief in the ultimate possibility of finding it. Then, in the middle of one awful night, the darkness of his mental state had been luridly illuminated by the conviction that she ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the milk-pail. Old Annersley came running. But Young Pete, the lust of the chase spurring him on, had disappeared around the corner of the cabin after the hen. He routed her out from behind the haystack, herded her swiftly across the clearing to the lean-to stable, and corralled her, so to speak, in a manger. Just as Annersley caught up with him, Pete leveled and fired—at close range. What was left of the hen—which was chiefly feathers, he gathered up and held by the remaining leg. ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the country were extended farther. They were panic-stricken by the shadow of a haystack, or by the forms of branches. On one occasion the entire National Guard turned and ran. In the moonlight they had observed, under an apple tree, a man with a gun, taking aim at them. At another time, on a dark night, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... slender twigs, leaving the ends of these to project in a similar manner. The "social grosbeak" fabricates a republic of nests in one clump, and all under one roof. The entrances are in the under-surface of this mass, which, occupying the whole top of a tree, has the appearance of a haystack, or a dense ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... This clodhopper, see now, whom I picked up off his haystack—and to rule alone in his soul is apparently quite beyond ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... garden, and we had to drive up the pigs, whose stye was threatened with submersion. The scene was truly one of desolation as we looked beyond our own homestead; trunks of trees and palings, and now and then a haystack, and barns, and parts of houses, and occasionally whole dwellings came floating by, showing what ravages the flood must have committed above us. Malcolm and I agreed that it was fortunate we had repaired our canoe. As the waters extended, the current in the river ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... on the outside. There is another house, and also a mosque built in the same style, but much smaller. Of the rest of the habitations, a few are stone sheds, but the greater part are huts made of the dry stalks of the fine herb called bou rekabah, in the form of a conical English haystack, and are very snug, impervious alike to rain and sun. There are not more than one hundred and fifty of these huts and sheds, scattered over a considerable space, without any order; some are placed two or three together within a small enclosure, which serves as ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... had was on Sunday evening, after work. That was the only chance we got. We used to go away off from the house and play in the haystack. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... a person to shoot if he mayn't shoot in his own woods? Not that the Duke cares about the shooting for himself. He could not hit a pheasant sitting on a haystack, and wouldn't know one if he saw it. And he'd rather that there wasn't such a thing as a pheasant in the world. He cares for nothing but farthings. But what is a man to do? Or, rather, what is a woman to do?—for he tells me that ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... enormous," Remarks old Pakhom, "Why, the folk must be giants." The two brothers Goobin 30 Are smiling at something: For some time they've noticed A very tall peasant Who stands with a pitcher On top of a haystack; He drinks, and a woman Below, with a hay-fork, Is looking at him With her head leaning back. The peasants walk on 40 Till they come to the haystack; The man is still drinking; They pass it quite slowly, Go fifty steps ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... will tell you something like it. Do you remember the big, black cat in Hinneryd's parish house? She was dissatisfied because they always took the new-born kittens from her, and drowned them. Just once did she succeed in keeping them concealed, and that was when she had laid them in a haystack, out doors. She was pretty well pleased with those young kittens, but I believe that I got more pleasure out of ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... hundred and seventy-five blanks. Once I almost saw a big grain-elevator burn in a Western town. That is, I would have seen it, if I had looked out of my hotel window. But I'd run two miles to see a burning haystack in the afternoon, and I was so dead tired that I slept right through the performance that night. And once I did see a row of stores burn, back in Homeburg—at the distance of a mile. I was in school, and the teacher wouldn't dismiss us. By stretching my neck several ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... sequel which is as good as, or, thanks to the two heroines, Catriona and Barbara Grant, is even better than, the original. To think of it is to wish to take it from the shelf and read it again. It is all excellent, from the scenes where Alan is hiding under a haystack (suggested by an adventure of the Chevalier Johnstone after Culloden), and the first meeting with that good daughter of Clan Alpine and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a look, and ran away; but he was a fixture. He says he always does so,—goes off somewhere and 'finds an Ararat,' and there drifts up and sticks fast. In the winter he's in New York; but that's a needle in a haystack. I never heard of him till I found him at Catskill. He's an English-man, and they say had more to his name once. It was Wharnecliffe, or Wharneleigh, or something, and there's a baronetcy in the family. I don't doubt, myself, that it's his, and ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... today," said George modestly. "Sometimes I slice as if I were cutting bread and can't putt to hit a haystack." ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... HAYSTACK.—A player is required to make a pile of chairs as high as his head, and then take off his shoes and jump over them. (Jump over ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... asked, and I said that as he was walking for amusement he would probably only stay a few hours. "We can't treat him like that; tell him to stay a week and send for his gun. For the matter of that he can have one of mine. I don't expect he will be able to hit a haystack," was his reply. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... a spectacle that inspired Pan as never before. The wagons were lined up near the lake, their big white canvas tops shining in the afternoon sun, and higher on a bench stood the "hoodelum" or bed wagon, so stocked with bedrolls that it resembled a haystack. Beyond the margin of the lake, four hundred fine saddle horses grazed and kicked and bit at one another. Beyond the saddle horses grazed the day herd of cattle. And over on the other side dinned the melee over the main herd, the incessant riding, ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... events more as they really were, she looked upon them with incredulous horror, as things in which she could hardly have had any part or lot. Then returned her wanderings and homeless miseries, when often a haystack or a heap of straw in a shed was her only joy—whisky always excepted. Last of all came the dread perils, the hairbreadth escapes of her too adventurous voyage on the brander;—and after all these things, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... first settlers being of that illustrious nation,) a distance of two miles from where we then lived. Our house was a good one. We did not like to leave it. Selling was out of the question: so we e'en resolved to take it with us, wishing, as the Highland robber did of the haystack, that it had legs to walk. A substitute for this was found in the universal resource of New Brunswickers for all their wants, from the cradle to the coffin, "the tree, the bonny greenwood tree," that gives the young life-blood of its sweet sap for sugar—and even when consumed ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... fun playing about the High Haystack. Here they all gathered after a snow storm, for the snow soon ...
— Little Jack Rabbit's Adventures • David Cory
... what I have told you, and what you have told me. Then I will point out the futility of looking for a needle in a haystack. He may be inclined to let the case drop. He ought to be weary of it by ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... about as easy as the needle in the haystack, and the crews of a hundred Peep o' Days, and all the warriors of Fale a Lupo besides, couldn't have tracked and cornered him up the mountain. I thought Coe was acting like a hot-headed crazy fool to try, for they were bound to see him first, and could always hide if we got too close, or fight ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... second week in May I saw a pair of Ospreys coming and going to and fro from the nest. I hoped the birds might return another season, as the nest looked as if it might have been used for two or three years, and was as lop-sided as a poorly made haystack. The great August storm of the same year broke the tree, and the nest fell, making quite a heap upon the ground. Among the debris were sticks of various sizes, dried reeds, two bits of bamboo fishing rod, seaweeds, some old blue mosquito netting, and some rags ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... Head of the Police. "He was sharp enough to find the needles in the haystack, and he's smart enough and strong enough to take care of ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... moaned. "The Laird doesn't know where she is, and neither do I. I induced her to go away, and she's lost somewhere in the world. To find her now would be like searching a haystack for a needle." ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne |
