"Ostrich" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... forgot that dance. Miss Regan danced with amazing sprightliness, performing wonderful steps. Her ostrich plumes seemed to whirl round and round him, he had a painful feeling that every one was grinning, and a mad desire to rush out of the house and make straight ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... word that might be interpreted as that of a lover. As far as Lady Auriol Dayne knew, as far as anyone on this earth knew, his feelings towards her were nothing more than those of a devoted and grateful friend. So does the well-intentioned ostrich, you may say, bury its head and imagine itself invisible. But the ostrich is desperately sincere—and so ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... opportunities for privacy by night or day, for neither the double washstand, nor the thus far unimagined bathroom, nor even indeed the humble and serviceable screen, had been realized, in these dark ages of which I write. Accordingly, like the irrational ostrich, which defends itself by the simple process of not looking at its pursuers, Emma Jane had kept her Latin letter in her closed hand, in her pocket, or in her open book, flattering herself that no one had noticed her pleased bewilderment ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... high-heeled shoes, embroidered with silver, and a light-blue sash with silver and tassel, tied at the left side. My watch was suspended at the right, and my hair was in its natural curls. Surmounting all was a small white hat and white ostrich feather, confined ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... mounted in silver and made into a cup, perhaps a century or more ago, is by no means to be despised. Some are beautifully polished and ornamented with incised work. Contemporary with the earlier specimens are pots made of ostrich eggs, mounted in silver, regarded of great value in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Some of the university colleges possess fine examples, and there are many in the hands of London silversmiths. ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... the grape region is an area peculiarly adapted for the cultivation of tobacco; and east of the tobacco district, north of the coastal belt of wheat in a region of sandy scrub, the bush country, are the ostrich farms, in the hands mainly of men of considerable capital, who supply nearly all the feathers derived from the domesticated ostrich. The plumes are sometimes worth as much as $200 a pound, the ordinary feathers bringing from $5 to $7 a pound. Natal is ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... and sober information about foreign countries, their ways, their physical conformation, and their strange birds and beasts. These stories were in the main true. For instance, Petachiah tells of a flying camel, which runs fifteen times as fast as the fleetest horse. He must have seen an ostrich, which is still called the flying camel by Arabs. But we cannot linger over this matter. Suffice it to say that, as soon as Sabbath was over, the traveller's narrative would be written out by the local scribe, and treasured ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... prong through his ear; in reducing the buffalo to subjection, they did not feel the slightest compunction in thrusting a pin through the cartilage of his nose; then, in order to give elasticity to the legs of the ostrich, they yoked him to two or three other animals, and, willing or unwilling, he was compelled ultimately to yield obedience to the lords of creation. But whether the creature before them was a lower order of negro or a higher order of ape, there was too great a resemblance between the captured and ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... protected by an armour of heavy bony plates. But, in others, the hind limbs elongate and the fore limbs shorten, until their relative proportions approach those which are observed in the short-winged, flightless, ostrich ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... into the yard. No one had seen him. But there were some carriages waiting, and as soon as Pierre stepped out of the gate the coachmen and the yard porter noticed him and raised their caps to him. When he felt he was being looked at he behaved like an ostrich which hides its head in a bush in order not to be seen: he hung his head and quickening his pace went ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... hangers-on round the white man but have not yet adopted his ways. Most of the men were at work cutting wood for the tannery. The women and children were in camp. Some individuals of both sexes were naked to the waist. One little girl had a young ostrich as a pet. ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... earthly life, but was reserved for the worthy. All the dead belonged to Osiris and were brought before him for judgment. The protest of being innocent of the forty-two sins was made, and then the heart was weighed against truth, symbolised by the ostrich feather, the emblem of the goddess of truth. From this feather, the emblem of lightness, being placed against the heart in weighing, it seems that sins were considered to weigh down the heart, and its lightness required to be proved. Th[o]th, the god ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... loophole of escape. Mr Roberts could only reply that he entertained a similar hope. But whatever his hopes might be, his expectations on that score were not extensive. Mr Roberts had the nature of the ostrich, and imagined that if he shut his eyes to the thing he wished to avoid seeing, he thereby annihilated its existence. Deep down in his heart he held considerable doubts as concerned more than one member of his family; but the doubts were uncomfortable: so ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... great intellect of this man. I had told nobody, and yet he knew all about it. Yes, I was in love with Lady Mary, and he was as well informed of it as if he had had spies to watch my dreams. And I saw that in many cases a lover was a kind of an ostrich, the bird which buries its head in the sands and thinks it is secure from detection. I wished that my father had told me more about love, for I have no doubt he knew everything of it, he had lived so many years in Paris. Father Donovan, of course, could ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... heel went through a white object half hidden in the long grass—a thing like an ostrich's egg. He stooped—and his strong, bronzed face was twisted with mingled sorrow and anger, as, looking into the face of his younger friend, he gritted out between his clenched teeth, "The ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... says he will act with us. He says he can do anything if it is a leading part. He has got black velvet knickerbockers and scarlet stockings, and he can have the tunic and cloak I wore last year, and the flap hat; and you must lend him your white ostrich feather. Make him some kind of a grandee. If you can't, he must be the Prince, and Charles can do some of the Travellers. We are going out on the marsh this morning, but I shall be with you after luncheon, ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... has abolished these wings in spite of the opposition of use-inheritance, it must clearly be fully competent to reduce wings without its aid. In considering the rudimentary wings of the apteryx, or of the moa, emu, ostrich, &c., we must not forget the frequent or occasional occurrence of hard seasons, and times of drought and famine, when Nature eliminates redundant, wasteful, and ill-adapted organisms in so severe and wholesale ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... while it really weighed upon his mind, and disturbed his quiet, that he was getting bald. But now he has quite reconciled himself to his lot; and with a head smooth and sheeny as the egg of the ostrich, Smith goes on through life, and feels no pang at the remembrance of the ambrosial curls of his youth. Most young people, I dare say, think it will be a dreadful thing to grow old: a girl of eighteen thinks it must be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... Oepyornis, but only fragments of its bones have been obtained, and a few eggs, mostly broken. It is reckoned, however, that, the average egg of the Oepyornis must have been a foot long, and about two feet round, six times as big as that of the ostrich. There was a fine bird, yet not equal to these giants, named the Great Auk, which used to be found at the North of Scotland, and elsewhere. It was a good swimmer ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... continued he; 'if a wench wants a good gown, do not give her a fine smelling-bottle, because that is more delicate: as I once knew a lady lend the key of her library to a poor scribbling dependant, as if she took the woman for an ostrich that could digest iron.'" This lady was ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... modifications of the fore-limb which ended in its becoming an organ of flight may very well have been due to adapting it as an organ for increased rapidity of locomotion of other kinds—whether on land as in the case of its now degenerated form in the ostrich, or in water as in the case of the expanded fins of fish. Indeed, we may see the actual process of transition from the one function to the other in the case of "flying-fish." Here the progressive expansion of the pectoral fins must certainly ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... Thither came the buffalo and the bison, the white bull of Northumberland and Galloway, the unicorn from the regions of Nepaul or Thibet, the rhinoceros and the river-horse from Senegal, with the elephant of Ceylon or Siam. The ostrich and the cameleopard, the wild ass and the zebra, the chamois and the ibex of Angora,—all brought their tributes of beauty or deformity to these vast aceldamas of Rome: their savage voices ascended in tumultuous uproar to the chambers of the capitol: ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... wondering what in the world is the matter with the men to-day, and why they don't come along with the buns and sugar. Once within the zareba, once you have pushed your way between the giraffes and got their noses out of your jacket-pockets, you have really only to be wary of the ostrich. He, mincing delicately around you with his little wicked red eye blinking like a camera shutter, may try with an ill-assumed air of indifference to slip up unnoticed close behind you. If he succeeds he will land you ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... a seal brown silk suit, trimmed with ermine, a large brown beaver flat with ostrich feathers; the wee white mouse face almost hidden, the sharp little pink eyes—for pink they looked—the rims red as usual, and a cold in the head giving them a swollen appearance. She had not forgotten her golden loves, for, from ears, throat, and wrists, dangled many yellow dollars. ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... red plush, polished mahogany, and alabaster vases; while terrible though genuine curios from Mr. Killigrew's foreign agents decorated the least likely places. You were quite likely to be greeted, on opening your wardrobe, by a bland ostrich egg, which Mrs. Killigrew, the vaguest of dear women, would have thrust there and forgotten. She had a deeply-rooted conviction that there was something indecent about an ostrich egg—probably its size, emphasising that nakedness which nothing ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... level of a mountain's head, (I knew not where, but 'twas some fairy place) Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails outspread, Two lovely children run an endless race, A sister and a brother! That far outstripped the other; Yet ever runs she with reverted face, And looks and listens for the boy behind; For he, alas! is blind! O'er rough and smooth with even ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... respect paid to Royalty that there was in my young days. My word! When Queen Victoria was in her prime, with all her young family around her,—their little Royal Highnesses that were princes in their Highland kilts and the princesses in their crinolines and hats with drooping ostrich feathers and broad satin streamers—the people just went wild when she went to a place ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... lives. Every schoolboy knows that many of the most valuable discoveries in science and art were accidental, or a kind of necessity, and sprang from causes that had no place in the forethought of the discoverer. The ostrich lays its eggs in the sand, and the sun hatches them; so man puts forth an effort and higher powers second him, and he finds himself the source of events that he had never conceived or meditated. Things are so intimately ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... a strong man like me. Fancy, gentlemen, Monsieur le Vicomte de Gerfaut, a native of Gascony, a roue by profession, a star of the first magnitude in literature, is afflicted by nature with a stomach which has nothing in common with that of an ostrich; he has need to use the greatest care. So we have him drink seltzer-water principally, and feed him on the white meat of the chicken. Besides, we keep this precious phenomenon rolled up between two wool blankets and over a kettle of boiling water. He is a great ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... word, those gentlemen, Gascons indeed, so bewildered him with fine words, and he is so flattered by his rapidly established intimacy with the French marshals, and so dazzled by the sight of Murat's mantle and ostrich plumes, qu'il n'y voit que du feu, et oublie celui qu'il devait faire faire sur l'ennemi!" *(2) In spite of the animation of his speech, Bilibin did not forget to pause after this mot to give time for its due appreciation. "The French battalion ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... in colour, offer him perpetual incense. Rich worshippers of the Prophet and the Prophet's priests send him presents from afar; camels laden with barley, donkeys staggering beneath sacks of grain, ostrich plumes, silver ornaments, perfumes, red-eyed doves, gazelles whose tiny hoofs are decorated with gold-leaf or painted in bright colours. The tributes laid before the tomb of Cheikh Sidi El Hadj Ali ben Sidi El Hadj Aissa are, doubtless, his perquisites as guardian of ...
— Halima And The Scorpions - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... in money value as all the national banks in the country have on deposit, and this wholesale destruction might largely be prevented if every woman and girl took (and kept) a pledge not to use wings, breasts, or birds on her hats. There is no objection to the use of ostrich feathers, which are carefully plucked from the live birds. The feathers grow again, just as the wool grows on sheep that have been sheared. Neither is there any objection to using the feathers of the barn-yard fowls which ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... monkeys and no animals that chew the cud, but there is a wonderful variety of birds. Among them is the emeu, a kind of ostrich that practically is wingless. Another, the platypus, or duck-bill, has the bill and webbed feet of a duck and the body and tail of a beaver. Stranger still, the female duck-bill lays eggs, but nurses her young ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... settlements, and learn something more of the customs of a civilised people than could be gathered from occasional hunters and traders. These young men were furnished by their friends with an outfit of oxen, and some merchandise in the shape of leopard skins, ostrich-feathers, and ivory. They were instructed by Macora to render all the assistance they could to his friend Willem and ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... behindhand in the deadly onset; and yet this king was old and blind! His was chivalry in another form! He would have his stroke in the battle, and he plunged into it with his horse tied by its reins to one of his knights on either side. A plume of three ostrich feathers waved from his helmet, and the chroniclers say he laid about him well. After the battle, he and his two companions were found dead, with their ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... the servant came to help me, I took the bottle from his hands to look at the label; for there is a difference in the fluid, and Roederer and Roederer is not always alike. There are certain symbolical marks on the bottles, well known to connoisseurs. On some is a bee, on others an ostrich or an elephant. On this particular bottle was a fly, and I threw the bottle to the wall with such force that it broke into shivers, and the foaming contents went splashing into the faces of the company. The reverend Father had just risen, glass in hand, to drink a toast ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... Godmother," began the Queen, as she sank on an ivory and cloth-of-gold settee in her private Cabinet, and cooled her somewhat heated face with a jewelled ostrich-feathered fan, "I had better tell you frankly that I think both you and that designing little adventuress have behaved in a very underhand way in this business—a way that I naturally resent. Mirliflor, as you very well know, came here on darling Edna's account, and you ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... altitudes of mountains; now the temperature of its springs and the air; now contemplating the animal, now inquiring into the vegetable tribes. I hastened from the equator to the pole, from one world to the other, comparing facts with facts. The eggs of the African ostrich or the northern sea-fowl, and fruits, especially of the tropical palms and bananas, were even my ordinary food. In lieu of happiness I had tobacco, and of human society and the ties of love, one faithful poodle, which guarded my cave ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... The brain and nerves, too, we shall find are made up of fibres, and these queer-looking things that are called ganglionic corpuscles. If we take a slice of the bone and examine it, we shall find that it is very like this diagram of a section of the bone of on ostrich, though differing, of course, in some details; and if we take any part whatsoever of the tissue, and examine it, we shall find it all has a minute structure, visible only under the microscope. All these parts constitute microscopic anatomy ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... is the victim of instinct; he obeys the unconquerable instinct to return to his stall—he cannot reason as the man can that a home that is burning is not a proper place to seek safety in. When an ostrich fears danger he buries his head in the sand, under the impression that if his head is out of sight he is safe from danger. This is his instinctive plan of procedure in the presence of danger, and it is the plan of every ostrich, everywhere, always. A little reasoning ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... supply the wants of the people and their cattle. To the south of this variegated region lies a desert plateau, 2000 ft. above sea-level, destitute of water, and tenanted only by the wild ox, the ostrich and the giraffe. Still farther south is the fairly fertile district of Damerghu, of which Zinder is the chief town. Little of the soil is under cultivation except in the neighbourhood of the villages. Millet, dates, indigo and senna are the principal ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... accident, and as she hesitated for a single smiling minute in the doorway, she appeared more at home in her surroundings than either of the two women who stood, in silence, awaiting her advance. With her ermine, her ostrich feathers, her smile, and her scented powder, she impressed Laura less as extinguishing her by the splendour of a presence than as smothering her in the softness of an effect. For it was at Laura that, after ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... The pictorial hieroglyphic is the simple picture of the thing signified. Symbolical hieroglyphics are, among others, a crescent for a month, the maternal vulture for maternity, the filial vulpanser for son, the bee for a people obedient to their king, the bull for strength, the ostrich feather with its equal filaments for truth, the lotus for Upper and the papyrus for Lower Egypt. To these we may add the bird, which denotes a cycle of time (in Coptic phanech), and about which such wild fables were received by the credulity ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... would sometimes pull off and eat raw; and when we threw away the guts of beasts and sheep we bought from them, they would eat them half raw and all bloody, in a most beastly and disgusting manner. They had bracelets about their arms of copper or ivory, and were decorated with many ostrich feathers and shells. The women were habited like the men, and were at first very shy; but when here on our return voyage, they became quite familiar, even lifting their rat-skins: But they are very loathsome objects, their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... assurance of the twenty-two-year-old Ponsonby girl, who came dashing up all of a fume last Saturday morning, when I was comfortably seated on the old tea tray, transplanting a flat of my best ostrich plume asters, and begging me, her mother being away, to chaperon her to a ball game, in a town not far off up the railroad, with harmless, pink-eyed Teddy Tice, one of her brother's college mates. It seems that if she could ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... could you be? It is so funny how you put on these clothes, like the ostrich, and think no one will guess who you are. If you wore his suit of feathers you would still look like British officers ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... and] locked behind them four-and-twenty doors and made them fast with bolts; and when he came to Mariyeh, he found her as she were the setting sun, cast down upon a rug of Taifi leather,[FN111] among cushions stuffed with ostrich down, and not a limb of her quivered. When her maid saw her in this plight, she offered to cry out; but El Abbas said to her, "Do it not, but have patience till we discover her affair; and if God the Most High have decreed the ending of her days, wait till thou have ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... was that night! No air that stirred; the black smoke from the funnels of the mail steamer Zanzibar lay low over the surface of the sea like vast, floating ostrich plumes that vanished one by one in the starlight. Benita Beatrix Clifford, for that was her full name, who had been christened Benita after her mother and Beatrix after her father's only sister, leaning idly over the bulwark rail, thought to herself ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... which, I had that canvass new-painted, him with a bag of money in his hand, a presentin it to George the Fourth, and a lady in Ostrich Feathers fallin in love with him in a ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... with A.; saw a black ostrich with long pink legs, who pranced and looked so like an opera dancer that we sat on the ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... extension of ingenious fancies; and that if they could be so explained, it would be still impossible to exculpate the men who need such explanations from the charge of perpetuating the grossest frauds! Yet this logical ostrich, who am digest all these stones, presumptuously declares a miracle an impossibility and the very notion of it a contradiction.* ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... sir; there's cold grouse, sir; there's cold pheasant, sir; there's cold peacock, sir; cold swan, sir; cold ostrich, sir,' &c. &c. (as the ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... face, A beauty able to undo the race Of easy man? I look but here, and straight I am inform'd, the lovely counterfeit Was but a smoother clay. That famish'd slave Beggar'd by wealth, who starves that he may save, Brings hither but his sheet; nay, th' ostrich-man That feeds on steel and bullet, he that can Outswear his lordship, and reply as tough To a kind word, as if his tongue were buff, Is chap-fall'n here: worms without wit or fear Defy him now; Death hath ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... that his eyes must remain fixed in that upward stare forever; he wanted to bring them down, but could not face the glare of the world. So the fugitive ostrich is said to bury his head in the sand; he does it, not believing himself thereby hidden but trying to banish from his own cognizance terrible facts which his unsheltered eyes have seemed to reveal. So, too, do nervous children seek to bury their eyes under pillows, ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... said Cornelia shortly. "A sixty-dollar hat. I wish I'd kept it now, and then she wouldn't have dared. It had two beautiful willow ostrich plumes on it, but mother didn't think it was becoming. She wanted some color about it instead of all black. I left it in my room, and charged Norah to see that the man got it when he called, and now the man comes and says he wants the hat, and it is gone! Norah insists that when she last ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... pillars on either side and red light filtering through hangings behind. White uniformed brown-faced officers follow in attendance with glitter of gold and waving white and red feathers. Lady Minto wears a very big wide hat, blue and white ostrich feathers under the brim—her daughters are in bright summery colours; the three drive off in an open carriage with ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... of the Colosaeum, ornamented with all the spoils that the wealth of a world can give; I saw in the arena below animals of the most extraordinary kind, and which have rarely been seen living in modern Europe—the giraffe, the zebra, the rhinoceros, and the ostrich from the deserts of Africa beyond the Niger, the hippopotamus from the Upper Nile, and the royal tiger and the gnu from the banks of the Ganges. Looking over Rome, which, in its majesty of palaces and temples, and in its colossal aqueducts bringing water even from the snows ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... curious incidents, a funeral started from Canterville Chase at about eleven o'clock at night. The hearse was drawn by eight black horses, each of which carried on its head a great tuft of nodding ostrich-plumes, and the leaden coffin was covered by a rich purple pall, on which was embroidered in gold the Canterville coat-of-arms. By the side of the hearse and the coaches walked the servants with lighted torches, and the whole procession was wonderfully impressive. Lord Canterville was ...
— The Canterville Ghost • Oscar Wilde
... gaiter boots of chocolate cachmere; trowsers and undersleeves of white embroidered cambric; frock of plaided cachmere; paletot of purple velvet; hat of a round shape, of white satin, the low crown adorned with a long white ostrich feather. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... continual adjustment, often needed when the hands would be better employed with the reins and whip. It should shade from the sun, and if used in hunting protect the nape of the neck from rain. The recent fashions of wearing the plumes or feathers of the ostrich, the cock, the capercailzie, the pheasant, the peacock, and the kingfisher, in the riding-hats of young ladies, in my humble opinion, are highly to ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... holds first place in our affection. It is somewhat declined from its former estate, for the upper floors, where the violent orchestra was and the smiling little dandruffian used to sing solos when the evening grew glorious, are now rented to a feather and ostrich plume factory. But the old basement is still there, much the same in essentials, by which we mean the pickled beet appetizers, the minestrone soup, the delicious soft bread with its brittle crust, and the thick slices of rather pale roast beef swimming in thin, ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... bit," saith Ned; "I am not in port yet by a thousand knots. Then in this hat was a white curled ostrich feather, six shillings. Below, a gown of tawny velvet, wherein were six yards, London measure, of four-and-twenty shillings the yard: and guarded with some make of fur (I forgat to ask him the name of that), two dozen skins, eight pence each: cost of this goodly gown, six pound, ten shillings, ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... their severe repulse at Al-Kasr-Al-Kabu, the Portuguese began to creep down the west coast in quest of trade. They reached the River of Gold in 1441, and their story is that their leader seized certain free Moors and the next year exchanged them for ten black slaves, a target of hide, ostrich eggs, and some gold dust. The trade was easily justified on the ground that the Moors were Mohammedans and refused to be converted to Christianity, while heathen Negroes would be better subjects for conversion and ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... helpless whenever a big man walked that way, shaking the ground with his heavy step and making a dark shadow as he came. Then, oh, then, Larie was a baby, and hid near a tuft of grass or between two stones, tucking his head out of sight, and keeping quite still as an ostrich does, or,—yes,—as perhaps a shy young human does, who hides his head in the folds of his mother's skirt when a stranger ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... had not understood. She thought Beatrice had gone mad, and knowing that with madness, reasoning is in vain, she shut herself up in her room, pulled down the blinds, and believed by this ostrich-like proceeding that she could keep off the inevitable moment when they would have to be pulled up again and the ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... the Duchesse de Gesvres, separated from a husband who had been the scourge of his family, and had dissipated millions of her fortune. She was a sort of witch, tall and lean, who walked like an ostrich. She sometimes came to Court, with the odd look and famished expression to which her husband had brought her. Virtue, wit, and dignity distinguished her. I remember that one summer the King took to going very often in the evening to Trianon, and that ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... had the unpleasant feeling that his ostrich method of shunning the sight of a disagreeable fact, must ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... Parisian simplicity. To me, when it broke upon me in reading La Mode Parisienne, it came as a kind of inspiration. I took away the stuffy black ribbon with its stupidly elaborate knot from my Canadian Christie hat and wound a single black ostrich feather about it fastened with just the plainest silver aigrette. When I had put that on and pinned a piece of old lace to the tail of my coat with just one safety pin, I walked the street with the quiet dignity of a person whose one idea is not to ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... vessels to receive the distilling juice, which is very sweet, but in a few days grows strong, yet will not keep long, for in fifteen days it grows sour. One tree will yield near a gallon in twenty-four hours. The commodities of this country are gold, ostrich feathers, amber, gums, civit ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... seen; but they are so shy, and run so swiftly, that only one has yet been killed. That bird was shot near the camp, while Governor Phillip was absent on his first expedition to Broken Bay, and was thought by him to differ materially both from the ostrich and cassowary; the skin was sent over, but at the time when this sheet was printed off, had not been stuffed, or put into form. Should it, on examination, exhibit any remarkable peculiarities, we shall endeavour to obtain a description of it, to subjoin ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... never wasted by riot and debauch. His short purple manteline, trimmed with ermine, was embroidered with his grandfather's favourite device, "the silver swan;" he wore on his breast the badge of St. George; and the single ostrich plume, which made his cognizance as Prince of Wales, waved over a fair and ample forehead, on which were even then traced the lines of musing thought and high design; his chestnut hair curled close to his noble head; his ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... would, even in these sober days, rouse London from her cold propriety. Having thrown aside his academic robe, each masquer had donned a fantastic dress of silver cloth embroidered with gold lace, gold plate, and ostrich plumes. He wore across his breast a gold baldrick, round his neck a ruff of white feathers brightened with pearls and silver lace, and on his head a coronal of snowy plumes. Before each mounted masquer ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... a tall arch, through which the artist had painted the most beautiful effect of evening sky—the evening sky when sunset is fading into blue-green and the first stars are twinkling. And around this arch was chalked a kind of heavy festoon of drooping ostrich feathers. The picture when finished was certainly very beautiful, and I have it in my possession at the present moment. But it conveyed absolutely nothing to me, and certainly brought back no recollection to my memory ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... been knocked flat by a blow of the smallest, cheapest ostrich feather in the hands of any street-merchant. For he came. Anthony came! Not to look meekly up from the pavement below the railing, but to ascend the steps of the terrace, and advance with grave dignity toward our table. Within a yard of us he stopped, giving to me, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... everything delightful to say. Like all women of forty, Isabelle liked the night, tempered lights and becoming settings, and the dignity of formal entertaining. Last but not least, she had a new toy to-night, a great black fan of uncurled wild ostrich plumes whose tumbled beauty she waved about her slowly as Harriet came in, watching the effect in the mirror with ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... owners shall please. To these things are added in time, if the brother be worthy, the power of glib speech that neither man nor woman can resist when a meal or a bed is in question, the eye of a horse-cope, the skill of a cook, the constitution of a bullock, the digestion of an ostrich, and an infinite adaptability to all circumstances. But many die before they attain to this degree, and the past-masters in the craft appear for the most part in dress-clothes when they are in England, and thus their glory ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... Sogrange muttered, "ignore what lies behind. Some of them, I think, are paid to do it. As for the rest, our Press had always an ostrich-like tendency. The Frenchman of the cafe does not buy his journal ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of ostrich fury is common enough among the regular drumbeaters of the Irish agitation. But it is not creditable to a "Canadian priest." Still less creditable is his direct arraignment of M. de Mandat Grancey's good faith and veracity upon the strength ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... nearly as big as he could ever expect to be, and he was a beautiful creature to look at—all black except his white mittens, boots, nose and shirt-front, as a Persian cat ought to be; and he had a cunning tassel in each ear, and a great plumy tail like an ostrich feather, ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37. No. 16., April 19, 1914 • Various
... rich habit of dark blue summer-cloth, fastened with small gold buttons, fine, tiny white linen cuffs and collar, dark blue gloves, dark blue velvet hat with a short, white ostrich plume secured by a small gold butterfly, and she carried in her hand a slender ivory-handled riding-whip, set with a sapphire. Her dress was neat, elegant, and appropriate; and her face was for the moment radiant and ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... in the middle with one sinewy hand on each horse's mane; and such was his muscular power, that he often relieved his feet by lifting himself clean into the air, and the rest of the time his toe but touched the ground, and he sailed like an ostrich and grinned and ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... mixed with flies on the top of your rations. The white ants eat away the flaps of the tents, and the men wake up covered with dust, like children in a hayfield. Even mules die of it in convulsions. It was in this land that the ostrich developed its world-renowned digestive powers; ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... a great measure, incomprehensible. It indicates nothing but Mr. Jefferson's extreme terror and apprehension lest he should be disappointed in his anticipated elevation to the presidency. It displays the tact of the ostrich, and the sincerity of a refined Jesuit. What does Mr. Jefferson mean by the declaration that he had formed a cabinet, of which Mr. Burr was to be a member? What when he says—"I lose you from the list?' Can ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... and a short petticoat of leopard's skin about his loins. He was armed with a sheaf of light javelins or assegais, he carried in his left hand a long narrow shield of rhinoceros hide decorated with ostrich plumes, and he was mounted on a superb black horse (which he rode bare-backed and managed with the skill of a finished equestrian). His followers, numbering about five hundred, were also fully armed and excellently mounted, they being, indeed, with the exception of a few court officials, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... she would have to live on stuffed ostrich (ostrich stuffed with iron filings, that the books tell of), or fried hippopotamus, or boiled rhinoceros. But she met with none of these, and day after day was rejoiced to find her native turkey appearing on the table, with ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... whose ponderous footfall on the wooden drawbridge echoed loudly from the gloomy arch which spanned it. Sir Nigel was still in his velvet dress of peace, with flat velvet cap of maintenance, and curling ostrich feather clasped in a golden brooch. To his three squires riding behind him it looked as though he bore the bird's egg as well as its feather, for the back of his bald pate shone like a globe of ivory. He bore no arms save the long and heavy sword which hung at his saddle-bow; ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... real Englishman . . . . And look at me! My father was merchant of ostrich feathers in Brussels. If I had been content to go in his business, I would 'ave been rich. But I was born to roll—"rolling stone"to voyage is stronger than myself. Luck! . . And you, Ma'moiselle, shall I tell your fortune? [He looks in her face.] You were born for 'la joie de vivre'—to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... generally suspecting all who have not openly declared themselves in favour of the continuance of Spanish rule, no serious endeavour has been made to discover the identity of the conspirators. The fact is, that the Spanish Government is acting precisely like the fabled ostrich; it is burying its head in the sand and refusing to see the coming trouble. Even now, although two armed risings have very recently taken place, one in the province of Santiago and the other in that of Mantanzas—the latter, by the way, having been promptly suppressed—the ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... over the parapet and away, followed by his Company. In that long, steadily-advancing line were many of our friends. Mucklewame was there, panting heavily, and cannily commending his soul to Providence. Messrs. Ogg and Hogg were there, shoulder to shoulder. M'Ostrich, the Ulster visionary, was there, six paces ahead of any other man, crooning some Ironside canticle to himself. Next behind him came the reformed ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... the aisle as the others had done. This was an extremely pretty girl of perhaps eighteen, with dark hair and dark bright eyes, and a very fresh bright colour. Her gown was plain but beautifully fitting, and her wide hat was crowned with a single long ostrich plume. She peered ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... everything she could find, and continued her researches till Archie caught her sucking his carved ivory chessmen to see if they were not barley sugar. Rice paper pictures were also discovered crumpled up in her tiny pocket, and she nearly smashed Will's ostrich egg by trying ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... focused upon her, Libbie crawled from under the seat where she had dived, following an ostrich-like impulse to hide her head from coming danger. Her confusion was increased by the tactless comment of the operator who, seeing her "full view" for ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... widening gulf between monarchy and French constitutionalism was now manifest to almost any thoughtful Prussian, but, like the ostrich, our timid William continued to hide his head under the sand and ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... rest of the time. Well, he is, so you need n't laugh, for we 've made all our plans," said Maud with comical dignity as she tried the effect of an old white bonnet, wondering if farmers' wives could wear ostrich feathers when ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... country are the miserablest people in the world. The Hodmadods of Monomatapa, though a nasty people yet for wealth are gentlemen to these, who have no houses and skin garments, sheep, poultry, and fruits of the earth, ostrich eggs etc. as the Hodmadods have; and setting aside their human shape, they differ but little from brutes. They are tall, straight-bodied and thin, with small long limbs. They have great heads, round foreheads and great brows. Their eyelids are always ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... of different birds vary much in size and colour. Those of the ostrich are the largest: one laid in the menagerie in Paris weighed 2 lbs. 14 oz., held a pint, and was six inches deep: this is about the usual size of those brought from Africa. Travellers describe ostrich eggs as of an agreeable taste: they keep longer than ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... ocean round. The dingy dreariness of the picture-place, Turned very nearly bright, Takes on a certain dismal grace, And shows not all a scandal to the ground. The very blind man pottering on the kerb, Among the posies and the ostrich feathers And the rude voices touched with all the weathers Of all the varying year, Shares in the universal alms of light. The windows, with their fleeting, flickering fires, The height and spread of frontage shining sheer, The glistering signs, the rejoicing roofs and ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... There was just time for Marsham to notice an extravagant hat, smothered in ostrich feathers, a large-featured, rather handsome face, framed in a tangled mass of black hair, a pair of sharp eyes that seemed to take in hungrily all they saw—the old hall, the butler, and himself, as he stood in the shadow. ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... water and fuel on board, the "ship" can go on for a fortnight, or even a month, absolutely without eating or drinking, while things that other creatures—unless, perhaps, it be some bird of the ostrich tribe—would never dream of touching, will furnish forth a sumptuous meal for a camel. Off a handful of thorns and briers he can make an excellent breakfast, and I believe he will not disdain anything apparently so untempting as a bit ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and bury them again in the hot-beds towards evening. Several intermediate steps may also be found between this early stage of communal nesting by proxy and the true hatching instinct; a good one is supplied by the ostrich, which partially buries its eggs in hot sand, but sits on them at intervals, both father and mother birds taking shares by turn in ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... the hair of my head, and if you dare lay your mitts on my new marcel wave I will report you to your Commissioner, and if a certain friend of mine don't stand strong enough with him to have you broke, I'll eat my ostrich plume! ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... procession in Madrid is something to be remembered, if it be only for the wealth of magnificent embroideries and fabrics displayed. The royal carriages are drawn by eight horses, having immense plumes of ostrich feathers, of the royal colours, yellow and red, on their heads, and gorgeous hangings of velvet, with massive gold embroideries reaching almost to the ground; the whole of the harness and trappings glitter with gold and silk. The grooms, leading each horse, ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... his trunk opened with a sudden pony, and out there came three ostrich feathers in a gold crown, surrounding a beautiful shining steel helmet, a cuirass, a pair of spurs, finally a complete suit ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... conversation respecting their daughter's prospects and future arrangements. Miss Teresa went to bed, considering whether, in the event of her marrying a title, she could conscientiously encourage the visits of her present associates; and dreamed, all night, of disguised noblemen, large routs, ostrich plumes, bridal favours, and ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... last August of the Cape Commercial Bank there has been much depression in South Africa. Ostrich farming, in common with other enterprises, has suffered. Before the crisis a pair of breeding ostriches have been sold for 350 l., now they would ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... Terrific Bravo of Venice, and Rinaldo Rinaldini Captain of Robbers. How he has blistered Thaddeus of Warsaw with his tears, and drawn him in his Polish cap, and tights, and Hessians! William Wallace, the Hero of Scotland, how nobly he has depicted him! With what whiskers and bushy ostrich plumes!—in a tight kilt, and with what magnificent calves to his legs, laying about him with his battle-axe, and bestriding the bodies of King Edward's prostrate cavaliers! At this time Mr. Honeyman comes to lodge in Walpole Street, and ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it is possible that some means might have been found to avert the calamity that was coming towards them with swift feet. But among the uneducated—the partially educated—nay, even the weakly educated—the feeling exists which prompted the futile experiment of the well-known ostrich. They imagine that, by closing their own eyes to apprehended evil, they avert it. The expression of fear is supposed to accelerate the coming of its cause. Yet, on the other hand, they shrink from acknowledging the long continuance of any blessing, in the idea that ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... lecture on dress, for they were splendidly attired in velvet, silk, and furs. The two younger of the trio (fine girls of sixteen and seventeen) had grey beaver hats, then in fashion, shaded with ostrich plumes, and from under the brim of this graceful head-dress fell a profusion of light tresses, elaborately curled; the elder lady was enveloped in a costly velvet shawl, trimmed with ermine, and she wore a false front ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... essence of deep and insidious conduct. I would advise your lordship to bring even your own name into question, as little as possible. My lord Chesterfield compares a statesman, who has been celebrated for influence during the greatest part of the present reign, to the ostrich. The brain of an ostrich, your lordship will please to observe, though he be the largest of birds, may very easily be included in the compass of a nut-shell. When pursued by the hunters, he is said to bury his head in the sand, and having done this, to imagine ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... the great difficulty of the readjustment of European affairs. If our Ministers had manifested their real feelings about Napoleon's presidency of the Italian Republic, war would certainly have broken forth. But, as has been seen, they preferred to assume the attitude of the ostrich, the worst possible device both for the welfare of Europe and the interests of Great Britain; for it convinced Napoleon that he could safely venture on other interventions; and this he proceeded to do in the affairs of Italy, Holland, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... ambiguity about the stereotyped phrase "ahead of one's time." Rightly apprehended, great geniuses do live for the future rather than the present, but where the public have the vastness of appetite and scantness of taste peculiar to the ostrich, there it is impossible for a composer to be ahead of his time. It is only where the public are advanced to the stage of intelligent discrimination that a Ninth Symphony and a ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... The wily ostrich, bustard, and florikan affect all open places. The guinea-fowl is the most numerous of all game-birds. Partridges come next, but do not afford good sport; and quails are rare. Ducks and snipe appear to love Africa less than any other country; and geese and storks are only found where ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... their interpretation of them is infallible, they have affected to ignore all the findings of science, and to treat them, in their bearing on Biblical interpretation, as profane intermeddling with divine things. They seem to imagine that their safety consists in not seeing danger, like the ostrich hiding its head in the sand, and supposing that thereby its whole body is protected. In other instances, while professing a willingness to hear—to seek truth—to not be afraid of the light—to boast of science ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... put the difference between himself and the early evolutionists clearly before his readers at the cost of seeing his own system come tumbling down like a pack of cards; this was more than he could stand, so he buried his face, ostrich-like, in the sand. I know no more pitiable figure in either literature ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... gleaming helmet Three ostrich plumes, snow white— From the Paynim's brow he tore them In some Jabluna fight. All scarred with Carpathian arrows, His heart with Honor flames: "Advance!" he cries, "and fight for ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... bend inclining down to the right ear, over which were suspended two or more black feathers. Eagle's or hawk's feathers were usually worn by the gentlemen, in the Highlands, while the bonnets of the common people were ornamented with a bunch of the distinguishing mark of the clan or district. The ostrich feathers in the bonnets of the soldiers were a modern addition of ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... fitted together at the rim, so that one was inverted as a sort of cover on top of the other when they were not in use. Drinking cups were sometimes made out of cocoanuts, mounted in silver, and often of ostrich eggs, similarly treated, and less frequently of horns hollowed out and set on feet. Mediaeval loving cups were usually named, and frequently for some estates that belonged to the owner. Cups have been ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... settled districts. However, in the north emus may be found in plenty; and I do not think there is the slightest fear of their becoming extinct, as some writers suggest. All my readers must have seen this bird at the Zoological Gardens, and remarked its likeness to the ostrich, both in form and habits; but the prisoner portrays but poorly the free majestic gait of the wild inhabitant of the plains. The colour of the adult bird is a greyish brown, the feathers are very loose and hairy, whilst the height of a fine male is often nearly seven feet. The usual mode of ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... and went on with the bike to the pros' boarding-house and the theater. Lily, assisted by Glass-Eye, fixed herself up for the week: her dresses on the pegs, her linen safe under lock and key in the hamper. Then she made a special parcel of things for the stage: paper flowers, ostrich feathers, white ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... Martha looks waving over his back like an ostrich feather!" said Cricket, in reply, making a dive for her pet with her one free hand, and nearly meeting with an accident, for George W. preferred walking on his own four legs just then, and ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... scene of the fights in which my brothers had played such a noble part, I had another reception, and another fantasia was performed (but this time it was on foot), by the Coulouglis and the Beni Mzab, wearing great hats with ostrich feathers in them. Then came a grotesque imitation of the fantasia, performed by the colonial militia, all drunk, who fired their pistols off under my nose and blackened my face with powder. General Marey, commanding at Medeah, ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... footprints hitherto discovered in the Connecticut sandstones are 22 inches long and 12 inches wide, with a proportionate length of stride. These measurements indicate a foot four times as large as that of the African Ostrich; and the animal which produced them—whether a Bird or a Deinosaur—must have been ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... had the fashion of our province to believe that she belonged to the Governor's set there; and she spoke in terms of easy familiarity of the first families of her native city, deceiving no one save herself, poor lady. How fondly do we believe, with the ostrich, that our body is hidden when our head is tucked under our wing! Not a visitor in Philadelphia but knew Terence Flaven, Mrs. Grafton Carvel's father, who not many years since sold tea and spices and soap ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and knew no better advice to give their Representatives than to be silent, to avoid the burning point. If their Representatives did not speak, so argued they, Bonaparte would not act. They desired an ostrich Parliament that would hide its head, in order not to be seen. Another part of the bourgeoisie preferred that Bonaparte, being once in the Presidential chair, be left in the Presidential chair, in order that everything might continue to run in the old ruts. They felt indignant that ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... plants, birds, pieces of antelope, and vases of liquors. Acephalous figures of Justice brought souls before Osiris, whose arms were set in inflexible contour, and who was assisted by the forty-two judges of Amenti, seated in two rows and bearing an ostrich-plume on their heads, the forms of which were borrowed ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... was short and broad and, in the evening, always wore curled ostrich plumes on tightly filled gray puffs. She reminded Linda of a wadded chair. Mrs. Randall, after the ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... widely asserted. The character of the Lights is as varied as it is possible to imagine. Faint, cloudy, indefinite luminous appearances—brilliant stars which move or hover among the sitters—globes or balls of light, like illuminated ostrich eggs, or spheres of mother-of-pearl lit up from within—pillars of light—are some of the many forms which this manifestation takes. But anything approaching to scientific evidence of the reality of the phenomenon is singularly scarce. And I am not aware that anything has ever ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... "and exceedingly tiresome! I've been able to eat like an ostrich all my life." Adrian smiled covertly at the simile, but his uncle was unaware that it was because in Adrian's mind the simile applied to his uncle's conscience, ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... a Plynck at rest is a beautiful sight; but it is nothing to the charm and wonder of a Plynck in motion. (The same, as we shall see in a moment, is true in a lesser degree of a Snoodle.) Its long, rosy plumes, like those of an ostrich, only four times as long, went waving through the air with an indescribably dreamy grace; and now Sara could actually see the perfume, which before she had only smelled. It rained down through the air, as the Plynck circled slowly round and round the fountain, and looked rather ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... shone like mirrors; andirons, with their accompanying shovel and tongs, glistened from their covert of asparagus tops; mock oranges and conch shells decorated the mantelpiece; strings of various-colored birds' eggs were suspended above it; a great ostrich egg was hung from the centre of the room, and a corner cupboard, knowingly left open, displayed immense treasures of old silver ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... not yet in the room. Mrs. Phillips, in apple-green with an ostrich feather in her hair, greeted her effusively, and introduced her to her fellow guests. Mr. Airlie was a slight, elegant gentleman of uncertain age, with sandy hair and beard cut Vandyke fashion. He asked Joan's ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... relative to the habits of the ostrich, and the various modes of taking it, we are indebted to a gentleman who spent many years in Northern Africa, and collected these details from native sportsmen, his principal informant being Abd-el-Kader-Mohammed-ben-Kaddour, a Nimrod of renown throughout ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... glittering with gold; over his shoulders hung a velvet mantle decorated with a princely crown; and his head, covered with dark ringlets, was adorned with a cap embroidered with gold, from which a long white ostrich-feather drooped to his shoulder. His oval face presented the full type of aristocratic beauty; his cheeks were of a clear, transparent paleness; about his slightly pouting mouth played a smile, half contemptuous and half languid; the high, arched ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... purpose. But on his left rode a gigantic guardsman in full panoply, while Elliot came on the right (but with his horse half a length behind) in gorgeous array, though more for show than for service. In his silver helmet fluttered a lissom ostrich plume, his shining cuirass was damascened with gold, which metal also glittered on the hilt of his sword. The tops of his buff boots and gauntlets were fringed with costly Brussels point. As they approached the crushed and alarmed ladies, a militia officer rushing ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... me! Don't eat me!" Joyce scrambled up on a high chest of drawers, and from there to the top of the wardrobe, where she sat panting and looking down at the bear, who seemed surprised at his reception. After one frightened scream, Betty buried her head in a sofa pillow like a little ostrich, and made no attempt to escape. She seemed glued to ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... CHORUS. Oh! sovereign ostrich, Cybel, the mother of Cleocritus,[282] grant health and safety to the Nephelococcygians as well as to the dwellers ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... the situation of which clearly shows its character, may vary in size from that of a hen's egg to that of an ostrich's egg. If pressed upon with the hand, especially if the animal is placed on its back, the rupture will disappear, to return, however, when the pressure is removed. If it be composed of intestines it will be soft and elastic when the bowels are empty, but ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... The ostrich runneth faster than the fastest horse, but it also thrusteth its head heavily into the heavy earth: thus is it with the man ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... and without guard; large amaranth-colored pantaloons embroidered in gold on the seams, and nankeen boots; a large hat embroidered in gold with a border of white feathers, above which floated four large ostrich plumes with an exquisite heron aigrette in the midst; and finally the king's horse, always selected from the strongest and handsomest that could be found, was covered with an elegantly embroidered sky-blue ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... country are the miserablest people in the world. The Hodmadods of Monomatapa, though a nasty people, yet for wealth are gentlemen to these; who have no houses, and skin garments, sheep, poultry, and fruits of the earth, ostrich eggs, etc., as the Hodmadods have: and setting aside their human shape, they differ but little from brutes. They are tall, straight-bodied, and thin, with small, long limbs. They have great heads, round foreheads, and great brows. Their eye-lids are ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... so fully accords with my own experience, that it is but fair to conclude he was correct in his identification. I would add, however, with reference to his remarks, that the nest above alluded to was more elliptical than spherical, being about the size and shape of an Ostrich's egg, that it was constructed throughout of the largest and coarsest blades of various kinds of dry grass, the egg-cavity being lined with grass-bents of a finer quality, and that it was domed over, having a lateral entrance about the middle of the nest. The whole structure was ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... for a fierce struggle with his pride, but he forced himself to think the problem out in all its bearings, and the folly of adopting the legendary policy of the chased ostrich became manifest. What, then, should he do? He thought, at first, of invoking the aid of a barrister friend, who could watch the ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... Mr. Director!" called one of the pillars of the theater, Majkowska, a handsome actress dressed in a light gown, a silken wrap, and a white hat with a big ostrich feather. She was all rosy from a good night's sleep and from an invisible layer of rouge. She had large, dark-blue eyes, full and carmined lips, classical features, and a proud bearing. ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... to sail away to the countries where grapes grew wild, and monkeys and parrots were to be had for the catching. Just as he was wishing himself the little Prince of Wales, to drive about in a goat-carriage, and wondering if he should not feel very shy with the three great ostrich-feathers always niddle-noddling on his head, for people to know him by, his mother came from washing up the dishes, and saw him deep in the reveries little boys and girls are apt to fall into when they are the ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... in grey cloth, high-heeled grey boots, with black tips and gaiters, a preposterous little hat perched on one side of a broad white forehead, across which the hair was parted like a boy's, and an ostrich plume on the top of the hat, which nodded and fluttered so extravagantly that the face beneath almost escaped the spectator's notice. Yet it was on the whole a handsome face, audacious, like its owner's costume, and with evident ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the Crow The Ass in the Lion's Skin The Horse and the Oyster The Monkey and the Ass The Merchant and the Fool The Wolf and the Sheep The Ambitious Hippopotamus The Man and the Serpent The Appreciative Man On the Not-Altogether-Credible Habits of the Ostrich The Idol and the Ass The Bee and Jupiter The Lion and the Boar The Tiger and the Deer The Old Man, His Son and the Ass The ...
— Fables For The Times • H. W. Phillips
... the courses. He looked at her critically. She was very handsomely dressed in a walking costume of dove-coloured grey. The ostrich feathers which drooped from her large hat were almost priceless. She had the undeniable air of being a person of breeding. But she was paler even than usual, her hair, notwithstanding its careful arrangement, gave signs of being a little thin ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that you really care for. For instance, you can't resist the turquoises. If you go home from Egypt without buying any you will be sorry all the rest of your lives. Nor ought you to hold yourself back from your natural leaning toward crude ostrich feathers from the ostrich farms, and to bottle up your emotion at seeing uncut amber in pieces the size of a lump of chalk is to render yourself explosive and dangerous to your friends. Shirt studs, long chains for your vinaigrette or your fan, cuff buttons, ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... must have been born and bred among them; and even then the harder, fiercer instinct, which dwells in northern blood, may deceive the student and lead him far astray. The Italian is an exceedingly simple creature, and is apt to share the opinion of the ostrich, who ducks his head and believes his whole body is hidden. Foreigners use strong language concerning the Italian lie; but this only proves how extremely transparent the deception is. It is indeed a singular fact, but one which may often be observed, that two Italians who lie systematically ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... table-cloth—not the mere list of dishes, but pictures drawn with the needle of the dishes themselves. And presently, after the little jest in glass had been enjoyed, you were served with camel's heels; combs torn from living cocks; platters of nightingale tongues; ostrich brains, prepared with that garum sauce which the Sybarites invented, and of which the secret is lost; therewith were peas and grains of gold; beans and amber peppered with pearl dust; lentils and rubies; spiders in jelly; lion's dung, ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... the blinding type that I won years and years ago, by learning verses, is with me still. Yes, and as I often wonder to discover, some of those very verses that I gobbled down as heedlessly as any ostrich are ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood |
