"Hen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to escape from a face to which it has been sentenced for life, a pair of large, handsome moustaches will provide a proper entourage—a nest, so to speak, on which the nose rests contentedly, almost like a setting hen; if my nose retreats backward into my face, the aesthetic solution is obviously galways. A stout gentleman can do wonders with his appearance by adopting a pointed beard, and a suit of clothes, shirt, necktie, and stockings ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... four-dimensional space-warp in which he was trapped, Rogue Rogan stormed at his terrified followers. "By all the devils of the Coal Sack," he shouted, "the man doesn't live who can take me alive! You'll fight and die like men, you hen-hearted cowards...." ...
— Runaway • William Morrison
... told us that the sea-clam, or hen, was not easily obtained; it was raked up, but never on the Atlantic side, only cast ashore there in small quantities in storms. The fisherman sometimes wades in water several feet deep, and thrusts a pointed stick into the sand before him. When this enters between ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... seconds. Do you know, I was reading such a funny thing the other day about giving cats medicine. They hate it, and one can scarcely force it into their mouths on account of their sharp teeth. The way is, to smear it on their sides, and they lick it off. A good idea, isn't it? Here we are at the hen douse, or rather one of the ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... bad memory seemed to be that kitten's chief blessing. A horror of any kind was no sooner past than it was straightway forgotten, and the facetious animal would advance with arched back and glaring eyes in defiance of an incursive hen, or twirl in mad hopeless career after its ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... opened her drooping lids to their widest, and declared she "was dest as wide awake as a hen," but papa, who had re-entered, caught her ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... down to a tailor's bodkin. Therefore, the gloom is to be charged to my bad luck. Then, as to the noise, never did I sleep at that enormous Hen and Chickens [2] to which usually my destiny brought me, but I had reason to complain that the discreet hen did not gather her vagrant flock to roost at less variable hours. Till two or three, I was kept waking by those who were retiring; and about three commenced the morning functions of the porter, or of "boots," or of "underboots," ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... and slid on the fruit-tree walls. They filed out of the garden by the snoring pig-pound and the crooning hen-house, to the shed where Middenboro the old lawn-mower pony lives. His friendly eyes showed green in the light as they set their lamps down on the chickens' drinking-trough outside, and pushed past to the hay-mow. Mr Culpeper ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... a while, and then crept out of the barn where they slept, and reconnoitered the farmhouse. He was surprised to find no sign of life about it. Doors and windows were fast shut. No dog barked at him. No cattle lowed. Not even a hen pecked or cackled in the yard. He returned to the barn and roused the rest ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... with velvet. The thick end of the club was loaded with four ounces of lead, and faced with hard bone. Altogether no weapon could have been designed better adapted for hitting a small ball with a powerful stroke. The golf ball itself was very small, not bigger than a small hen's egg. It was formed of white leather, which had been soaked in water, and stuffed full of feathers by means of a stick till it became perfectly hard. It was afterwards covered with four coats of fine white paint ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... sometimes held the chair), Joh. Hoskyns, Joh. Aubrey, Maximilian Pettie of Tetsworth in Oxfordshire, a very able man in these matters, ... Mich. Mallet, Ph. Carteret of the Isle of Guernsey, Franc. Cradock a merchant, Hen. Ford, Major Venner, ... Tho. Marriett of Warwickshire, Henry Croone a physician, Edward Bagshaw of Christ Church, and sometimes Rob. Wood of Linc. Coll., and James Arderne, then or soon afterwards a divine, with many others, besides antagonists and auditors of ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... half-broken horses bucked about among the trees. And so a cavalry escort was with us for a mile, till we got to a mighty hill strewn with moss agates, and everybody had to jump out and pant in that thin air. But how intoxicating it was! The old lady from Chicago ducked like an emancipated hen as she scuttled about the road, cramming pieces of rock into her reticule. She sent me fifty yards down to the hill-side to pick up a piece of broken bottle which she insisted ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... a leather-hided ol' hen ripe foh roastin' on Beelzebub's own griddle, it's you, you gallows ol' witch!' says Doctor, shakin' 'is fist up ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... necessary, for here, besides the tough membrane of the shell, they had four inches of earth upon them; but they do not require immediate aid for food, because they all retain a portion of yolk, equal to that of a hen's egg, in a membrane in the abdomen, as a stock of nutriment, while only beginning independent existence by catching fish. Fish is the principal food of both small and large, and they are much assisted in catching them by their broad, scaly tails. Sometimes ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... readily distinguish, even at a distance, the cock bird from the hen. The former is larger and darker-coloured, [12] and has a bigger head. The ostrich, I believe the cock, emits a singular, deep-toned, hissing note: when first I heard it, standing in the midst of some sand-hillocks, I thought it was made by some wild beast, for it is ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... the brig towards evening, bringing back the visitors to the shore; Strong had bought several dozen eider-duck's eggs, which were twice as large as hen's eggs, and of a greenish color. It was not much, but it was very refreshing for a crew accustomed to ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... on West 79th Street—she heads letters from it playfully "The Hen Coop" for there is almost always some member of her own sex doing time with the generous Mrs. Winters. Mrs. Winters is quite celebrated in St. Louis for her personally-conducted tours of New York with ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... Catty would bring in the tea-tray; the white and grey and gold tea-cups would be set out round the bulging silver tea-pot that lifted up its spout with a foolish, pompous expression, like a hen. Mamma would move about the table in her mauve silk gown, and there would be a scent of cream and strong tea. Every now and then the shimmering silk and the rich scent would come between her and the ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... asphodel (Two ducks and a good fat hen), For me a withering hollyhock (For seven and ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was last August discovered in a plot of grass, in the garden of the Reverend Mr. M'Kenzie of Knockbourn, Shropshire. It contained sixteen eggs which had been deserted by the mother. They were immediately laid under a turkey hen that was sitting, and from them were brought forth sixteen fine birds, which were in a thriving state, and were following the turkey as their mother when the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... have hit the hay, but I do not sleep so good, and presently I wake and up I look, and there is one who make faces against me through the dashed window. Is that a pretty affair? Is that convenient? If you think I like it, you jolly well mistake yourself. I am so mad as a wet hen. And why not? I am somebody, isn't it? This is a bedroom, what-what, not a house for some apes? Then for what do blighters sit on my window so cool as a ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... tell Luke, you know. A close corporation of four—that's enough to know it. Can't trust the rest. We'll let 'em keep their old political hen sitting on their china egg. We'll hatch the good egg in our own nest. Then for a glorious old cackle! Vard Waymouth will be the next Governor of this ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... his affection or caresses—a dogma which received appalling confirmation in the fate of the brindled cat, who, after having been caught by the leg in a trap intended for a less respectable robber of hen-roosts, was finished by a bull-terrier, who took advantage of her embarrassed circumstances to pay off upon her a grudge of long standing. This tragedy occurred in January of the year 1807, and produced a noticeable effect upon Master Archibald Malmaison. He neither wept nor tore his hair, ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... of chopped logwood remain all night in one gallon of vinegar. Then boil them, and put in a piece of copperas, as large as a hen's egg. Wet the articles in warm water, and put them in the dye, boiling and stirring them for fifteen minutes. Dry them, then wet them in warm water, and dip them again. Repeat the process, till the articles are black enough. Wash them in suds, and rinse them ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... hatched out a brood of sixteen, assorted black and white, that foolish bronze turkey hen just come out from under the woodpile with thirteen little pesters, Sniffer has got five pups—three spots and two solids—and Mrs. Butter has twin calves, assorted sex this time. They are spry and hungry and ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... mettle, and brother and sister wandered further than they had intended, urged on by the hope of further success. But no more game of any kind was put up, if we except one distant view they had of a sage hen. This bird was "sage" enough to take wing long before they ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... symbol of ingratitude; for when they are old enough no longer to need to be fed, they begin to fight with their father, and this struggle does not end until the young one drives the father out and takes the hen and ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... wresting some sense from such passages either by conjecture or by emendation, the following sentence appears: "But Pompey made light of these supernatural effects, and the war shrank to the compass of a battle." Boissevain (with a suggestion by Kuiper) reads: [Greek: all haege gar to daimonion hen te oligoria auto hepoihaesato chai es polin Moundan pros machaen dae chatestae]. This would mean: "But Heaven, which he had slighted, led his steps, and he took up his quarters in a city ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... not be; but, for the sake of the relatives of the persons lost, it distressed us much that it should have been said. A few minutes before the ship went down, my brother was seen talking with the first mate, with apparent cheerfulness; and he was standing on the hen-coop, which is the point from which he could overlook the whole ship, the moment she went down, dying, as he had lived, in the very place and point where his duty stationed him. I must beg your pardon for detaining you so long on this melancholy subject; and yet it is not altogether melancholy, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... silver pitchers thickly encrusted with precious stones; horse trappings and velvet hangings worked stiff with pearls, gold and silver thread, bits of coral, and jewels; three emeralds as large as small hen's eggs, forming the handle of a dirk; and in a large glass case magnificent ornaments for the turban. There must have been thousands of diamonds in these head-pieces, besides some of the largest pearls I have ever seen; a ruby three-quarters of an inch square; four emeralds ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... subject by seeming to wonder what could keep our son so long at the fair, as it was now almost nightfall. "Never mind our son," cried my wife; "depend upon it, he knows what he is about. I'll warrant we'll never see him sell his hen of a rainy day. I have seen him bring such bargains as would amaze one. I'll tell you a good story about that, that will make you split your sides with laughing. But, as I live, yonder comes Moses, without a horse, and the box on ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... sea, took care of his young friend. Jack tells in a letter that he was often awakened in the night by vermin and every morning by the crowing of cocks. Those days a part of every ship was known as "the hen coops" where ducks, geese and chickens were confined. They came in due time through the butcher shop and the galley to the cabin table. The cook was an able, swearing man whose culinary experience had been acquired on ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... little house and its yard she saw hurrying through the burdock and dog fennel toward the base of her rock a determined looking hen. Susan laughed silently, it was so obvious that the hen was on a pressing and secret business errand. But almost immediately her attention was distracted to observing the movements of a human being she could obscurely make out through one of the windows just back of the chimney. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... situation by bringing him down to his full length on the ground with the timely administration of a well-planted blow. Mr. Garth was probably too much taken by surprise to repay the obligation in kind, but he rapped out a volley of vigorous oaths that fell about his adversary as fast as a hen could peck. Then he remounted his horse, and, with such show of valorous reluctance as could still be assumed after so unequivocal an overthrow, he made ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... said that Lop-Ear was not happy. My sister was the daughter of the Chatterer, and she made Lop-Ear's life miserable for him. In no other cave was there so much squabbling and bickering. If Red-Eye was a Bluebeard, Lop-Ear was hen-pecked; and I imagine that Red-Eye was too shrewd ever to ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... complained to Mr. Dodge that somebody had evidently been robbing the hen's nests, as she was getting fewer eggs than usual. Mr. Dodge, going to investigate, met Argus coming down the path from the barn wagging his tail majestically, as was his wont when approaching his master. Mr. Dodge stopped and held out ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... lying on the smoking dung-hill; some of them were scratching with one claw in search of worms, while the cock stood up proudly among them. Every moment he selected one of them, and walked round her with a slight cluck of amorous invitation. The hen got up in a careless way as she received his attentions, and only supported herself on her legs and spread out her wings; then she shook her feathers to shake out the dust, and stretched herself out on the dung-hill again, while he crowed, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... I can tell you this. Ef you was where I come from in America, they'd say every blessed one of ye was crazy as a hen with ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... simultaneous plunge into the sea, of about sixty officers and men, each one trying to secure some frail object that had drifted from the wreck, for the purpose of sustaining himself in the awful struggle with the sea, which awaited him. Some reached a grating, some an oar, some a boat's mast, some a hen-coop, &c., but many poor fellows sprang into the sea to perish in a few minutes, not being able to find any object of support. Lieut. Parker and myself, being both swimmers, were fortunate enough to reach one of the arm-chest ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... hen with one chick. If there is a rustle in the leaves you think a hawk is going to ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... the discussion, however, the Wright bill was not considered at all. Nobody was thinking of the Wright bill - that is to say, nobody outside of those scheming for its passage. Like a mongrel duck's egg under a respectable hen, it was left to incubate undisturbed, to ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... about four o'clock, Philippe went to the rue de Sentier, where he found Giroudeau in the entresol,—caged like a wild beast in a sort of hen-coop with a sliding panel; in which was a little stove, a little table, two little chairs, and some little logs of wood. This establishment bore the magic words, SUBSCRIPTION OFFICE, painted on the door in black letters, and ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... I was sent out to clean the hen house and to burn the straw. I cleaned the hen house, pushed the straw up on a pile and set fire to it and burned the hen house down and I sure thought I was going to get whipped, but I didn't, for ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... came to this point, the gipsies, without scruple, entered upon measures of retaliation. Ellangowan's hen-roosts were plundered, his linen stolen from the lines or bleaching-ground, his fishings poached, his dogs kidnapped, his growing trees cut or barked. Much petty mischief was done, and some evidently for the mischief's sake. On the other hand, warrants went forth, without mercy, to pursue, search ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... two pet cats, Topsy and Tiger, on the steps, and ran obediently for the tool. Harold was very busy constructing a hen-coop, and he needed a great ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... and the hen? The dog bit the hen, and she was mad. My dog bit a fox on the hip. One day the fox bit the dog on the lip and ran off. Tom and I had a gun, and we set off to get the fox; but the sun was so hot we did not go far, but sat on ...
— The History Of Tom Thumb and Other Stories. • Anonymous
... in the Welsh section are, roughly speaking, arranged in chronological order. The early Welsh poets Aneurin and Llywarch Hen are represented by two singular pieces, Llywarch Hen's curious "Tercets" and Aneurin's "Ode to the Months." In both of these, nature poetry and proverbial philosophy are oddly intermingled in a manner reminiscent of the Greek Gnomic Poets. Two examples are given of the serious verse ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... don't-cher-know!" and his lordship played again with his enamelled pig—"But it's not our fault. If things will get into our way, we can't wait till they get out. We're bound to ride over them. Do you remember that old hen, Brookie?" ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... for The Animals' New Year's Eve and Nils and the Bear from the Further Adventures of Nils by Selma Lagerlooef. The Youth's Companion for Chip's Thanksgiving, The Rescue of Old Glory, The Tinker's Willow, The Three Brothers, and Molly's Easter Hen. The Thomas Y. Crowell Company for The Bird, and The Gray Hare from The Long Exile by Count Lyof N. Tolstoi. The American Book Company for The Three Little Butterfly Brothers. Little, Brown and Company for How Peter Rabbit Got His White Patch. The Pilgrim Press for ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... to give a detailed account of our march to Knoxville, for the relief of Burnside, and the return to Chattanooga. We were gone three weeks, and during that time had no change of clothing, and were compelled to obtain our food from the corn-cribs, hen-roosts, sheep-pens, and smoke-houses on the way. The incidents of this trip, through the valleys of East Tennessee, where the waters of the Hiawasse, and the Chetowa, and the Ocoee, and the Estonola ripple through corn-fields ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... reproduction of the planetary system in miniature. I was right. "But observe," said Cooper, "the details of construction. The sun is made up of infinitely small eggs, since we know that the weight of all the hen's eggs consumed by the human race since the beginning of the Christian era is equal to one-billionth the weight of the sun. The planets are fashioned in the same way. Jupiter you see is made up of little, squirming animal-like units; that is because ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... on the pantry and hen-coop, Or light, stealthy tread Of cat gossips, meeting by moonlight On ridge-pole ...
— Fun And Frolic • Various
... lie down within doors For I am sick with wrongs. T hen my neighbours come in to visit me. With them cometh my sister, She will make fun of the ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... was to start a haalf dozen mo' of them over the County, and so they called this one the Fust National. They never started a second, suh. Our people wouldn't permit it, and befo' I get through you'll find out why. They began by hirin' a buildin' and movin' in an iron safe about as big as a hen-coop. Then they sent out a circular addressed to our prominent citizens which was a model of style, and couched in the most co'teous terms, but which, suh, was nothin' mo' than a trap. I got one and I can speak by the book. It began by sayin' that eve'y accommodation ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... your yawp, and stop floppin' round like a hen with her head cut off! She ain't dead. She's fainted. Bring some camfire, or alcohol, or hartshorn, or Pond's Extract, or something for her ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... to maintain existence in adverse circumstances of its wild ancestors. As much can be said of the creolla fowl of the pampas; and some observations of mine on the habits of this variety will perhaps serve to throw light on a vexed question of Natural History—namely, the cackling of the hen after laying, an instinct which has been described as "useless" and "disadvantageous." In fowls that live unconfined, and which are allowed to lay where they like, the instinct, as we know it, is certainly detrimental, since egg-eating dogs and pigs soon learn the cause of the outcry, and ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... taking their cloth of gold to the tomb and carrying their lands upon their shoulders into the other world. And in the farce came Monsieur Cruche with his companions, who had a lantern by which all sorts of things were seen, and among others a hen feeding under a salamander, (1) and this hen carried something on her back which would suffice to kill ten men (dix hommes, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... place flows round and near my room—for here no one, man or woman, scruples to come through one's room at any moment, if it happens to be a shortcut. By day nothing much happens in the yard—except when a horse tried to eat a hen, the other afternoon. But by night, after ten, it is filled with flitting figures of girls, with wreaths of white flowers, keeping assignations.... It is all—all Papeete—like a Renaissance Italy with the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... matter how hungry the Crocodile may be, he will not touch the Hen, even if she should venture into his very jaws; at least, that is what the Black Men of the Congo River will tell you. And surely, as they are the nearest neighbors of the big reptile they ought to know if any one does. Now this is the story ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... not in the nature of things that a hen should see a new egg in her nest without cackling over it, or that a man in charge of a benevolent enterprise should have a hundred-dollar check mysteriously and unexpectedly dropped into his hat without talking about it. Such a gift smacks of special divine favor, and ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... thinking not very remotely of his own case when he wrote that jubilant semi-chorus, with the marvellous fugal succession of figures, wherein Samson, and by inference Milton himself, is compared to a smouldering fire revived, to a serpent attacking a hen-roost, to an eagle swooping on his helpless prey, and last, his enemies now silent for ever, to the phoenix, self-begotten and self-perpetuating. The Philistian nobility (or the Restoration notables) ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... Merse, no later writer than the former has adduced any evidence in favour of its Scottish domicile. The last examples of the native race were probably two killed in 1838 near Swaffham, in Norfolk, a district in which for some years previously a few hen-birds of the species, the remnant of a plentiful stock, had maintained their existence, though no cock-bird had latterly been known to bear them company. In Suffolk, where the neighbourhood of Icklingham formed its chief haunt, an [v.04 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... only the hand-saw and ax, and that he had to cut down the tree; and then to saw it into plank, it must be acknowledged that it required great patience and perseverance even to make a wheelbarrow; but Humphrey was not only persevering, but was full of invention. He had built up a hen-house with fir-poles, and made the nests for the hens to lay and hatch in, and they now had between forty and fifty chickens running about. He had also divided the pigsty, so that the sow might be kept apart from the other pigs; and they expected very soon to have a litter of young pigs. He ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... lifting the roof of a platter. "These are eggs Samuel Butler, an invention of my own, the apotheosis of hen fruit." ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... and around in the bottom of the shell there were little circus actors, boys and girls, dressed in their circus clothes, and they all looked exactly like fairies. They scarce seemed to see the fellows, as they ran alongside of their chariot, but Hen Billard and Archy Hawkins, who were always cutting up, got close enough to throw some peanuts to the circus boys, and some of the little circus girls laughed, and the driver looked around and cracked his whip at the fellows, and they all had to get ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... piece of smoked pork, and asked them to make a thin porridge of it: it was not nice, but there was nothing to be done, I had to eat it. All the evening we hunted about the village to find someone who would sell us a hen, and found no one.... But there is vodka. The Russian is a great pig. If you ask him why he doesn't eat meat and fish he justifies himself by the absence of transport, ways and communications, and so on, and yet vodka is to be found ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... grave. Believe the general sense of the mercantile world, which holds that desks are not deadly. It is the mind, good B.B., and not the limbs, that taints by long sitting. Think of the patience of taylors—think how long the Chancellor sits— think of the Brooding Hen. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... desirable that the querist should state briefly the amount of information he already possesses on the subject. For instance, had Mr. "T.H. Turner," when inquiring after beaver hats (No. 7. p. 100.), stated, that he had met with the mention of them as early as the time of Hen. III., I, of course, should not have troubled you with a notice of them in the reign of Elizabeth. Indeed, I owe Mr. Turner an apology; for if I had reflected a moment upon the extensive antiquarian information ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... the Spanish Authorities.)—It is now known that the battle was only skirmish. The rebels attacked a hen-roost in search ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... regained at least one of the characteristics of youth, much to her astonishment, for she did not know that she had been taking a medicine, and, becoming frightened, refused to continue. The experimenter then took some grain, soaked it in the tincture, and gave it to an aged hen. On the sixth day the bird began to lose its feathers, and kept on losing them till it was naked as a newborn babe; but before two weeks had passed other feathers grew, and these were more beautifully coloured than any that fortunate hen had possessed in ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... called, by every one on the plantation, the "Great House." This was occupied by Col. Lloyd and his family. They occupied it; I enjoyed it. The great house was surrounded by numerous and variously shaped out-buildings. There were kitchens, wash-houses, dairies, summer-house, green-houses, hen-houses, turkey-houses, pigeon-houses, and arbors, of many sizes and devices, all neatly painted, and altogether interspersed with grand old trees, ornamental and primitive, which afforded delightful shade in{52} summer, and imparted to the scene a high degree of stately ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... 23 Hen. III. No. 20., quoted by Nichols in his History of Leicestershire (vol. iii. part 1., under "Cotes"), occurs this unusual word. Gilbert de Segrave held the manor of Cotes in socage of the king "by paying yearly one bersethrigumnue." Will ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... settlement of Henlopen, just inside the mouth of the Delaware Bay, the story must begin as far back as 1686, when a great storm swept the Atlantic coast from end to end. During the heaviest part of the hurricane a bark went ashore on the Hen-and-Chicken Shoals, just below Cape Henlopen and at the mouth of the Delaware Bay, and Tom Chist was the only soul of all those on board the ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... both trouble, and me most. I'm not one of those clever Clarences that can keep up a bluff, making out I know things I don't know. I couldn't deceive a setting hen ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... talking on, garrulous as a guinea hen. The squire didn't heed him. Hunched back in the buggy, he harkened only to those busy inner voices filling his mind with thundering portents. Even so, his ear was first to catch above the rattle of the buggy wheels the far-away, faint tonk-tonk! They were about ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... stable door; The clock strikes four:—'tis plain The coachman sifts his grain. The swallow's laugh the still air shakes, The sun awakes; The clock strikes five:—the traveler must be gone, He puts his stockings on. The hen is clacking, The ducks are quacking; The clock strikes six:—awake, arise, Thou lazy hag; come, ope thy eyes. Quick to the baker's run; The rolls are done; The clock strikes seven:— 'Tis time the milk were in the oven. Put in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... they were industrious in laying, but if you built a model house for them and treated them according to all established rules, they did not even earn as much as would pay for their food. At Uncle Kalle's there was a hen that came into the room among all the children and laid its egg under the bed every single day all through the winter, when no other hens were laying. Then the farmer of Stone Farm bought it to make something by it. He gave twenty kroner (a guinea) for it and thought he had got ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... change of [Greek: oude hen] into [Greek: ouden][464] traces survive in many of the Fathers[465]: but [Symbol: Aleph] and D are the only Uncial MSS. which are known to retain that corrupt reading.—The uncouth sentence which follows ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... as well as his name, he seemed to expect but little from life. So, one morning before departing on his daily journey, the Mule was unobtrusively married to Caterina in the little pink stucco chapel that broods over the village of San Celoni like a hen over her chickens. And Cristofero Colon ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... his way lay through a wood he went along the tops of the trees. During his whole life, a blade of reed grass bent not beneath his feet, much less did one ever break, so lightly did he tread.) Teithi Hen the son of Gwynhan (his dominions were swallowed up by the sea, and he himself hardly escaped, and he came to Arthur; and his knife had this peculiarity, that from the time that he came there no haft would ever remain upon it, ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... as an old hen with one chicken. She put me in charge of the conductor with so many instructions, that I know he felt like a newly engaged nursemaid. The Glee Club men rode in the smoking-car, except Jermyn Hilliard, Junior, and he followed me ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... lord to appear. As soon as he heard Bennett's step in the hall a little tremor of excitement possessed him. He ran to Bennett's chair, drawing it back for him, and as soon as Bennett had seated himself circled about him with all the pride and solicitude of a motherly hen. He opened his napkin for him, delivered him his paper, and pushed his cup of coffee a half-inch nearer his hand. Throughout the duration of the meal he hardly took his eyes from Bennett's face, watching his every movement with a glow of pride, his hands gently ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... more or less veracious. I am required to believe that "bating the ass," no living beast on the five-acre farm belongs to the tenant. The turkeys belong to a neighbour, as do the geese, and there is neither hen nor egg left on the premises. "And where ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... certain Monsieur Cruche, a popular poet and playwright, was performing moralities and novelties on a platform in the Place Maubert, and among them a farce "funny enough to make half a score men die of laughter, in which the said Cruche, holding a lantern, feigned to perceive the doings of a hen and a salamander."[107] The amours of the king with the daughter of a councillor of the Parlement, named Lecoq, were only too plainly satirised. But it is ill jesting with kings. A few nights later, Monsieur Cruche was visited by eight disguised courtiers, who ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... custodian's bell, a smiling maid who let them into an ante-room, where she kept on picking over vegetables for her dinner, said the custodian was busy, and could not be seen till ten o'clock. She seemed, in her nook of the pretentious pile, as innocently unconscious of its history as any hen-sparrow who had built her nest in some coign of its architecture; and her friendly, peaceful domesticity remained a wholesome human background to the tragedies and comedies of the past, and held them in a picturesque relief in which they were ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... found that out from the porter, though the blessed old buffer can't speak anything but his French gibberish. 'Madame?' I said, bawling into his stupid old ear. 'Mossoo and Madame Hostin? comprenny?' and he says, 'Ya-ase,' and then bursts out laughing, and looks as proud as a hen that's just laid a hegg—' ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... averted as he spoke, but he felt hen arm quiver; and when at last she lifted her head, their eyes met. Neither spoke, but in an instant Loder's arms were ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... have put two thousand francs in the savings bank. Two thousand francs in eight years! What luck! Would it be better to make no profit out of M. Pons' dinner and keep him here at home? Ma'am Fontaine's hen ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... the river bottoms; the Quail, which has become very abundant all over the State, within twenty years, following, it would seem, the march of civilization and settlement; the Ruffed Grouse, abundant in the timber, but never seen on the prairie; the Pinnated Grouse, or Prairie Hen, always found on the open plains. These birds increased very much in number after the settlement of the State, owing probably to the increase of food for them, and the decrease of their natural enemies, the prairie wolves; but since the building of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... in. A swarm of bees and drones were buzzing like a whirlwind beneath the plane-trees; a frightened white hen ran cackling from her nest in the dust. No one appeared. I opened the door; still nobody was to be seen. Inside I found a passage, with rooms to right and left and a wooden staircase at the end. The house, having been kept well closed, was cool ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... into the barnyard, he called the chickens around him. He could not help observing what a nondescript lot of chickens they were —not a purebred among them; besides, he noticed many were old, and some had frozen feet and combs. No wonder, he thought, as he glanced at the poorly built hen house that faced the east instead of south—a lean-to built against the side of the barn, with only one small window, and that one on the north end, while the cracks between the upright boards, ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... to our own time, have repeated this nonsense seem to have thought, first, that the Act of Henry the Eighth "for punishment of murder and malicious bloodshed within the King's Court" (Stat 33 Hen. VIII. c. 2.) was law in Guelders; and, secondly, that, in 1674, William was a King, and his house a King's Court. They were also not aware that he did not purchase Loo till long after Dundee had left the Netherlands. See Harris's Description ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... prospector the one shining signal to be followed. Timber-line is passed till the forests below look like dank banks of moss. Cloud-line is passed till the clouds lie underneath in grey lakes and pools. A 'fool hen' or mountain grouse comes out and bobbles her head at the passing packtrain. A whistling marmot pops up from the rocks and pierces the stillness. Redwings and waxbills pick crumbs from every camp meal; and occasionally a bald-headed eagle utters a lonely raucous cry from solitary perch of dead branch ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... calf 's foot; wash the bone and place in cold water on the stove; when it begins to foam skim off the refuse which gathers on top. After rinsing off the scum with cold water put the bones into a pot with one-quarter kilo of beef or half an old hen, one-quarter liter of water, and little salt, and boil slowly for from four to five hours. Pour the jelly thus formed through a fine sieve and place overnight in a cellar. Next morning remove the fat and clarify the cold ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... had deserted his fishing, so the trapper took a rifle and went into the woods after a fool-hen. Thoughts kept him company; thoughts of love and its strangeness, of the odd decrees of Fate and the helplessness of man. How all the world had changed with its coming, this love which hail been born in an hour what ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... are abroad. The flame-blossom blazes in scarlet. The sangdieu burns in sullen vermilion. Insects fill the world with the noise of their business—spiders, butterflies, and centipedes, ants, beetles, and flies, and mysterious entities that crawl nameless under foot. A pea-hen shrieks in the grass, and a kite whistles aloft. A remote speck in the sky denotes a watchful vulture, alert for any mishap to the citizens of the woods, and a crash of twigs may mean anything from a buck to a rhinoceros. There is a hectic on ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... the dressing-table was a menu with the most enchanting dishes: breast of guinea hen De Vitresse, pommes de terre a la Russe, ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... hen, yes, that turnip-ghost has the confounded cheek to make a proposal, and so on! ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... Covington, Georgia: the simple old white house with its rose-clad porch, or "gallery," its grove of tall trees, its carriage-house, its well-house, and other minor dependencies clustering nearby like chickens about a white hen, its background the rolling cottonfields, their red soil glowing salmon-colored in the sun. For, as I was never so conscious of the brutality of winter as in that evening snowstorm at Quebec, I was never so conscious, as at the time of our visit to the Burge plantation, of the superlative ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... told dad I could drive that team as well as he can, he'd just look at me and think I was crazy," she thought resentfully and gave the broom a spiteful fling toward a presumptuous hen that had approached too closely. "If I'd asked him to let me go along he'd have made some excuse—oh, I'm beginning to know dad! He thinks a woman's place is in the house—preferably the kitchen. And here I've thought all my life that cowgirls did nothing but ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... the premises. We've found that he will be out to-night, sitting up with a sick frat., so we've planned to borrow the parsonage in his absence to give a swell dinner. Tingley and Jones will visit several hen-roosts in our behalf, and we'll roast the fowls in the parsonage stove. If you'll just set up the champagne, Jacky, my boy, we'll be 'Yours for ever, little darling,' and we'll gamble on the green of the defunct parson's study table 'till ...
— The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle • Annie Fellows Johnston
... megatherium and glyptodon lie entombed; the kangaroo and wombat, to the insulated continent that contains the bones of the extinct macropus and phalcolomys; and the New Zealand birds, including its heavy flying quails and its wingless wood-hen, to those remote islands of the Pacific in which the skeletons of Palapteryx ingens and Dinornus giganteus lie entombed. Nor will it avail aught to urge, with certain assertors of a universal deluge, that during the cataclysm, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... the range. When the moon rose, round and white and all-revealing, and threw sinister shadows from rampike and rock, he kept to the densest thickets and felt oppressed with strangeness. But when he succeeded in surprising a hen partridge hovering over her brood, with the blood warm in his mouth he began to feel at home. This fine range should be his, whoever might contest the sovereignty. Coming across a deer trail leading beneath an overhanging rock, he climbed the rock and crouched ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the door to listen, and heard 'Gene's mother cackling away like an old hen. How she would carry on, with anybody that came along! She hadn't never settled down, not a bit really, for all she had been married and was a widow and was old. It wa'n't nice to be so lively as that, at her age. But she wasn't nice, Mother Powers ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... the hen's gone, What can we do but live on sorrel and dock) And dandelion, till our ...
— The Countess Cathleen • William Butler Yeats
... useful in leading to forfeits. The company sit in a row, and one of the end players begins by saying, "A good fat hen." Each of the others in turn must then say, "A good fat hen." The first player then says, "Two ducks and a good fat hen," and the words pass down the line. Then "Three squawking wild geese, two ducks, and a good fat hen." And so on until the end is reached, in ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... close of such gatherings, a chicken-roast was generally in order, and the fowl used was usually taken from some hen-roost not far distant. On this particular occasion when the party was about to break up, John heard the ...
— How John Became a Man • Isabel C. Byrum
... Mrs. Hartopp being the chief talker; and she, having pointed out to Sophy the cows and the turkeys, the hen-coops, and the great China gander, led her by the one hand—while Sophy's other hand clung firmly to Waife's'—across the little garden, with its patent bee-hives, into the house, took off her bonnet, and kissed her. "Very like Mary Anne!—Mary Anne, dear." One of the two children ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and red-nosed, was actually shy at first, but all formality vanished as Rolf was taught the mysteries of pig-feeding, hen-feeding, calf-feeding, cow-milking, and launched by list only in a vast number of duties familiar to him from his babyhood. What a list there was. An outsider might have wondered if Aunt Prue was saving anything for herself, but Rolf was used to ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... good snipe and wild duck the other day, which Capt. D- brought home from a shooting party. I have got the moth-like wings of a golden snipe for R-'s hat, and those of a beautiful moor-hen. They got no 'boks', because of the violent south-easter which blew where they were. The game is fast decreasing, but still very abundant. I saw plenty of partridges on the road, but was not early ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... i'faith! to the letter, For open-faced robbery suits ye better. The gripe of your vulture claws you fix On all—and your wiles and rascally tricks Make the gold unhid in our coffers now, And the calf unsafe while yet in the cow— Ye take both the egg and the hen, I vow. Contenti estote—the preacher said; Which means—be content with your army bread. But how should the slaves not from duty swerve? The mischief begins with the lord they serve, Just like the members so is the head. I should like to know who ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... attraction, Arthur took his eyes off an industrious water-hen, who was building a nest in a hurried way, as though she were not quite sure of his intentions, and perceived a large raven standing on one leg on the grass, about three yards from him, and peering at him comically out of one eye. This was odd. But his glance did not stop at the raven, for ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... indefinably vague; his attributes have been worn away. But below his feet, on several slabs, chiselled cunningly, I can still distinguish the figures of the Three Apes, his messengers. And some pious soul has left before one image a humble votive offering—the picture of a black cock and a white hen, painted upon a wooden shingle. It must have been left here very long ago; the wood has become almost black, and the painting has been damaged by weather and by the droppings of birds. There are no stones piled at the feet of these images, as before ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... us lived the Chi-hen-ne (Ojo Caliente), (Hot Springs) Apaches. Our tribe never had any difficulty with them. Victoria, their chief, was always a friend to me. He always helped our tribe when we asked him for help. He lost his life in the defense of the rights of his people. He was a good man ...
— Geronimo's Story of His Life • Geronimo
... fear. She had to bury one of her children—but then she had done it three times before, and each time risen up and gone back to take up the battle for the rest. Elzbieta was one of the primitive creatures: like the angleworm, which goes on living though cut in half; like a hen, which, deprived of her chickens one by one, will mother the last that is left her. She did this because it was her nature—she asked no questions about the justice of it, nor the worth-whileness of life in which ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... yesterday—but all changed for me!—within a few short hours—by my own folly, my own madness! Every animal," thought he, as his attention was caught by the house dog, who was licking his hand, and as his eye fell upon the hen and chickens, who were feeding before the door, "every animal is happy—and innocent! But if this man die—I shall ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... don't think you're getting too much. One doctor's visit would be two dollars, and the prescription forty cents, anyhow. The children would be on the bed, and my head splitting, and Mammy as much good in keeping them quiet as a cackling hen. I feel like I'm cheating in only paying fifty cents. Each nap was worth that. I wish I could engage you by the year!" And she gave me such a squeeze I ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... as derisive wreaths of triumph over the dismantled palisade lately encircling the town-hall, disposed of the famous "Oldenbarneveld's teeth" at auction in the public square, and chased many a poor cock and hen, with their feathers completely plucked from their bodies, about the street, crying "Arme haenen, arme haenen"—Arminians or poor fowls—according to the practical witticism much esteemed at that period. Certainly the unfortunate ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and Stevens tersely reported what he had learned, concluding: "So you see, you don't need special computers on these ships any more than a hen needs teeth. You've got all the computers you need, in the observatories—all you've got to do is make them ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... water-fowl, including several varieties of duck, also shag, divers, pigmy geese, small teal, grebe, red-headed plover, spur-wing plover, curlew, sandpipers, snipe, swamp hen, water-rail, and many other birds. The red-headed plover were especially numerous, and ran about on the surface of the lake, which was covered with the water-lily leaves and a thick sort of mossy weed. ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... to wander beyond the confines of the Li Hen (divested animosities) heavens. When hungry she fed on the Pi Ch'ing (hidden love) fruit—when thirsty she drank the Kuan ch'ou (discharged sorrows,) water. Having, however, up to this time, not ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... happy movement of the people was far from acceptable to Fleuri, who seems to have seen it with the distrust of a hen that has hatched ducklings. Walpole and himself were agreed to love peace; but Walpole was obliged to reckon with the English people, and these were prompt to resent rivalry upon the sea and in trade, however obtained. Moreover, Fleuri had inherited the unfortunate ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... wind came, and being heavily surcharged with water, broke it. Fortunately the hatches were on, and only the master, mate and four men on deck. The immense body of water it contained fell with such violence that it carried away all her masts, boats, spars and hen-coops, with all the live stock, as well as washing the master and three of the men overboard. The mate and the other man were saved by jumping into the caboose which held on, although they were half-dead with fright and half-drowned with water. After we had cleared the islands ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... turned to her His eyes of roguish blue, "Oh, yes, I know," he said; "but then, Old hen goes with them, too." ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... "P. Hen. Swearest thou, ungracious boy? Henceforth ne'er look on me. Thou art violently carried away from grace. There is a devil haunts thee, in the likeness of a fat old man; a tun of man is thy companion. Why dost thou converse with that trunk of humours, that bolting ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... wood, the birth of black lambs, the entering a house left foot first, sitting at table seven or thirteen in number, giving drink with the left hand, spilling oil or salt, and leaving two rods or knife and spoon crosswise. A crowing hen means domestic misfortune—she must be killed to avoid it; and the baying of a dog or hooting of an owl at night imports the death of a neighbour. Their customs are patriarchal. The father has full authority over his sons, and their wives are merely fresh daughters of the house. Every boy ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... process and the sexual instinct. This is the case in the plant world. It is so throughout most of the animal world, and, as Professor Poulton, in referring to this often unexplained and indeed unnoticed fact, remarks, "the song or plume which excites the mating impulse in the hen is also in a high proportion of cases most pleasing to man himself. And not only this, but in their past history, so far as it has been traced (e.g., in the development of the characteristic markings of the male peacock and argus pheasant), such features have gradually become more and more ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... "The City That Will Not Repent" is only feeling over again, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,... how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" The "Old Horse in the City," "To Reformers in Despair," "The Gamblers"—it is all there: the heartaches, the struggle for existence, the ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... matters in a manner altogether its own. Furthermore, we have found these imaginations rooted in all lands, and among men whose culture might have been expected to refuse such fruitless excrescences. When classical authors counsel us to set eggs under the hen at new moon, and to root up trees only when the moon is waning and after mid-day; and when "the wisest, brightest," if not the "meanest of mankind" seriously attributes to the moon the extraction of heat, the furtherance of putrification, the increase of moisture, ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... He woke him up, told him to harness, and went into the passage. From the host's room came the sounds of a child crying, the despairing sobs of a woman, and the hoarse angry shouting of Ferapontov. The cook began running hither and thither in the passage like a frightened hen, just as Alpatych entered. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... spiritual excitement as would have crushed a normal man. Increase Mather published some one hundred and fifty books and pamphlets: Cotton Mather not less than four hundred. The Rev. John Norton, in his sketch of John Cotton, remarks that "the hen, which brings not forth without uncessant sitting night and day, is an apt emblem of students." Certainly the hen is an apt emblem of the "uncessant" sitter, the credulous scratcher, the fussy cackler who produced ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... little sigh and stepped on to the gravel path, rounded the house and crossed the garden to find John locking up the hen-house for the night. He glanced at her but did not speak, and she stood with her hands clasped before her and watched the swaying of the poplars. The leaves were spreading and soon they would begin their incessant ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... tint, such as is wont to harmonize the variegated apparel of travel-stained vagabonds. They looked slouchy, listless, torpid,—an ill-conditioned crew, at first sight, made up of such fellows as an old woman would drive away from her hen-roost with a broomstick. Yet these were estrays from the fiery army which has given our generals so much trouble,—"Secesh prisoners," as a bystander told us. A talk with them might be profitable and entertaining. But they were tabooed to the common visitor, and it was ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist) |
