"Speckled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spring, But hunts-up to the morn the feather'd sylvans sing: And in the lower grove, as on the rising knoll, Upon the highest spray of every mounting pole, Those choristers are perch'd with many a speckled breast. Then from her burnish'd gate the goodly glitt'ring east Gilds every lofty top, which late the humorous night Bespangled had with pearl, to please the morning's sight: On which the mirthful choirs, with their clear open throats, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... scratched in the earth, and thereupon began to crow merrily, in order to make it known that he had something nice to invite to, and as two neat grey-speckled hens sprang towards him, he let first one grain of corn and then another fall out of his beak, of which, agreeably to a clever hen-instinct, they availed themselves without ceremony or compliments. How ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... before the combat should begin, so ceremonious was their attitude. Then there would come a simultaneous onslaught of feathered fury. Again and again they flew at one another, while the volatile audience called out excitedly in Spanish, "The black wins—No, the speckled one's ahead. Holy Virgin, give strength to the black!" In a very few moments one cock is either dead, or perhaps turned coward before the cruel gaff of his opponent, and victor and vanquished leave the arena to new combatants, ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... be feared; and foremost among these is the Malmignatte, the terror of the Corsican peasantry. I have seen her settle in the furrows, lay out her web and rush boldly at insects larger than herself; I have admired her garb of black velvet speckled with carmine-red; above all, I have heard most disquieting stories told about her. Around Ajaccio and Bonifacio, her bite is reputed very dangerous, sometimes mortal. The countryman declares this for a fact and the doctor ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... and tragic satires on the population of the tavern in the world's literature. What more horrible portrait exists in poetry than that of "la belle Heaulmiere" grown old, as she contemplates her beauty turned to hideousness—her once fair limbs become "speckled like sausages"? "La Grosse Margot" alone is more horrible, and her bully utters his and her doom in the last three awful lines of the ballade which links her name ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... most remarkable of the different species of snake that infest the western wilds. It is of the small speckled kind, and about eight inches long. When any thing approaches, it flattens itself in a moment, and its spots, which are of various dyes, become visibly brighter through rage; at the same time it blows from ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... be after dinner, on a verandah draped in motionless foliage and crowned with flowers, in the deep dusk speckled by fiery cigar-ends. The elongated bulk of each cane-chair harboured a silent listener. Now and then a small red glow would move abruptly, and expanding light up the fingers of a languid hand, part of a face in profound ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... water, in which were abundance of fishes and some molluscs. Some of these cavities also contained sea-snakes from four to five feet long, which were described as having the head "hooded like the cobra de capello, and of a light grey colour, slightly speckled. They coiled themselves like serpents on land, and darted at poles thrust in among them. The Singhalese who accompanied the party, said that they not only bit venomously, but crushed the limb of any intruder in ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... again on the other side at the village of Breglio. Here we come to the river Roia, which, after receiving the branch on which is Sospello, leads to the sea at Ventimiglia. The Roia is about twelve yards wide, and abounds with speckled trout. Were a road made from Breglio, along the side of the Roia to Ventimiglia, it might turn the commerce of Turin to this last place instead of Nice; because it would avoid the mountains of Braus ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... being a rich cinnamon color. It is almost exclusively a fresh water species and is very rarely found around a salt water marsh. Its nest is built on the ground, in a tuft of grass and weeds woven about the upright stalks. They lay from five to twelve eggs having a cream colored ground, sparingly speckled with brown and lilac. Size 1.60 x 1.20. Data.—Clark County, Missouri, June 6, 1893. 10 eggs. Nest composed of reed stalks; a slightly concave mass 8 inches across, and only two inches above the water, in a clump of reeds. Collector, Ed. ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... village and the hill hundreds of Dervishes on horse and on foot were hurrying to man their defences, and others scrambled up the rocks to see for themselves the numbers of the enemy. Scores of little puffs of smoke already speckled the black rocks of the ridge and the brown ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... and mellow in the evening light. The leaded windows were bright and speckless, and the door-stone was as clean as a white boulder at ebb tide. On the door-stone stood a clean old woman, in a dark-striped linen gown, a red kerchief, and a linen cap, talking to some speckled fowls which appeared to have been drawn towards her by an illusory expectation of cold potatoes or barley. The old woman's sight seemed to be dim, for she did not recognize Adam till he said, "Here's the key, Dolly; lay it down for me in the house, ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... got a yellow puppy, And I've got a speckled hen, I've got a lot of little Spotted piggies in a pen. I've got a gun that used to shoot, Another one that squirts, I've got some horehound candy And a pair of woolen shirts. I've got a little rubber ball They use ...
— The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes • Leroy F. Jackson
... labours kill me? Am I the mighty son of Jupiter, And shall this poison'd linen thus consume me? Shall I be burnt? Villains, fly up to heaven, Bid Iris muster up a troop of clouds, And shower down cataracts of rain to cool me; Or else I'll break her speckled bow in pieces. Will she not? no, she hates me like her mistress. Why then descend, you rogues, to the vile deep. Fetch Neptune hither: charge him bring the sea To quench these flames, or else the world's fair frame Will be in greater danger to be burnt, Than ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... entered the thorny enclosure, which was almost a rude teepee, and, tucked away in the furthermost corner, lay something with a trout-like, speckled, tawny coat. She bent over it. The fawn was apparently sleeping. Presently its eyes moved a bit, and a shiver passed ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... to most of them. The cock is Peter, of course. A much-speckled hen is Dolly Varden. A slim, trim thing that dogs Peter's heels she calls Cleopatra. Another hen—the mellowest-voiced one of all—she addresses as Bernhardt. One thing I have noted: whenever she and the steward have passed death sentence on a non-laying ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... between white enamelled walls of speckless small arms, and since that Royal Marine Light infantryman was visibly suffocating from curiosity, I winked at him. We entered the chintz-adorned, photo-speckled, brass- fendered, tile-stoved main cabin. Moorshed, with a ruler, was demonstrating before ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... presented a most extraordinary scene. Lighted by the red and fierce reflection of the fire, and covered with boats, filled with families who had just quitted their habitations either on the bridge or in some other street adjoining it, its whole surface was speckled with pieces of furniture, or goods, that had been cast into it, and which were now floating up with the tide. Great crowds were collected on the Southwark shore to watch the conflagration, while on the opposite side the wharves and quays were thronged with persons removing their goods, and ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... her Fawns, and taught them to do homage to the Great Light. In the creeks, where the water was still and clear, and where throughout the day, like a delicate damaskeen, the shadows of leaves that overhang would lie, the Speckled Trout broke the surface of the pool in his gladness of the coming day. Pine-squirrels chattered gayly, and loudly proclaimed what the wind had told; and all the shadows were preparing for a great journey to the Sand ...
— Indian Why Stories • Frank Bird Linderman
... past the gardens of the cottages, from which at one time a root or maybe a seed only of the "monkey plant" had been thrown, and taking root had flourished and flourished until the stream now was hidden beneath a mass of lush green leaves and stems crowned by tawny golden blossoms speckled and splashed ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... if you studied your history, has been tried many times and always with disaster. The bomb-torn soil of that black land is speckled white with the bones of World armies who were sent on landing invasions before you or I was born. But it was only heroic folly, one gun popping out of a tunnel mouth can slay a thousand men. To pursue ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... eight series of small black dots, one dot on the centre of each scale; cheeks black speckled; sides ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... was wrong when I commenced. I only know now that it is a little more wrong. Why should I give up my fun on that account? I might as well die for an old black sheep as a speckled lamb." ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... pebble, a tiny shell, A feather by wild bird cast, Gay flowers gathered in forest dell, Already withering fast, Four speckled eggs in a soft brown nest, Thy last and thy greatest prize, Such the things that fill with joy thy breast, With laughing light ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... clasped in both hands between her knees, gazed with preoccupied eyes out across the water. On the sandy shore, a pair of speckled tip-ups ran busily about, dipping and bobbing, or spread their white, striped wings to sheer the still surface of the pond, swing shoreward with bowed wings again, and resume their formal, ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... evening. The rain had ceased, and the moon rose full and pale with a halo about it. In the distance clouds were gathering, and the waters under the mill were speckled ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... yard sae green, Speckled wi' mony a mossy stane? A few short weeks o' pain shall fly, An' asleep in that bed shall thy ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... my window, which overhung the great square, I found the scene, within and without, a rough epitome of every pleasure and every impression I had formerly gathered from Italy: the balcony and the Venetian-blind, the cool floor of speckled concrete, the lavish delusions of frescoed wall and ceiling, the broad divan framed for the noonday siesta, the massive medieval Castello in mid-piazza, with its shabby rear and its pompous Palladian front, the brick campaniles ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... not a brook or speckled trout, for it has no speckles, and it's not a relative of the late William Basse, for it isn't deep enough in the body, nor a perch, for it's too big and has no stripes. It's either a salmon trout or a ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... returning. As usual the islet was covered with seabirds, only two species, however, of which were breeding. The Brown Booby (Sula fusca) and a large tern (Thalasseus pelecanoides) existed in about equal numbers; the latter, in one great colony, had laid their solitary large speckled eggs in a slight excavation in the sand, the former were scattered all over the island, and had regular nests of weed, containing either two eggs, or a single young bird covered with white down. Well does the booby deserve its name. The grotesque and stupid look of ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... sabbath drives, in fair June mornin's, through the old lane alder and willow fringed, with the brook runnin' along on one side of it; where the speckled trout broke the Sunday quiet by dancin' up through the brown and gold shadows of the cool water, and the odor of the pine woods jest beyend comin' ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... he was naturally a very stately bird himself in appearance, and had a splendid blackish-green tail and a golden speckled hackle, which shone and glistened in the sun. He had also won many sharp battles with certain young cocks in the neighbourhood, whom curiosity about the tufted foreigners had attracted to the yard. The consequence of these triumphs ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... wuz glad to hang on to the tails o' their hosses, when the knights would let 'em. Wouldn't I look grand, chargin' through the forest on my war hoss, six feet high, me in my best Sunday brass suit, speckled with gold scales, with my silver spear twenty feet long, an' my great two-handed, gold-hilted sword beside me, an' Long Jim tied to the tail o' my hoss, so he wouldn't git tired an' fall behind, when I wuz chargin' the hull ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... feels when he lies beside the water-course and waits for the big game. It was very long, though—almost as long, Watson, as when you and I waited in that deadly room when we looked into the little problem of the Speckled Band. There was a church-clock down at Woking which struck the quarters, and I thought more than once that it had stopped. At last however about two in the morning, I suddenly heard the gentle sound of a bolt being pushed back and the creaking of a key. A moment later ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... exactly like a snug farm-house, with its stables and other outhouses, with its garden and fields, and horses and cattle! The distance was too great for us to distinguish what sort of cattle they were, but there appeared to be many kinds, both red, and black, and speckled. We could see several figures of men and boys—four of them in all—moving about the enclosures, and there was a woman near the door of the house. It was impossible in the distance to tell whether they were ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... towards him he beheld a maiden, small but beautiful, with black curling hair and a circlet of gold upon her forehead; and she was of high rank, for she wore a dress of yellow satin, and on her feet were shoes of speckled leather. ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... patients remembered that he had an invalid wife, and fruit and flowers and all sorts of delicacies found their way to the doctor's house, for the Lamberts were much respected in Cliffe, and even the poor people would step up with a couple of new-laid eggs from a speckled hen, or a pot of blackberry-jam, or a bottle of elderberry wine for ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... singularly clear was the water, that where it was only twenty or thirty feet deep the bottom was so perfectly distinct that the boat seemed floating in the air! Yes, where it was even eighty feet deep. Every little pebble was distinct, every speckled trout, every hand's-breadth of sand. Often, as we lay on our faces, a granite bowlder, as large as a village church, would start out of the bottom apparently, and seem climbing up rapidly to the surface, ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... Goose remembered quite well the year that Jackanapes began to walk, for it was the year that the speckled hen for the first time in all her motherly life got out of patience when she was sitting. She had been rather proud of the eggs—they are unusually large—but she never felt quite comfortable on them; and whether it was because she used to get cramp, ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... about the top of his broad flat desk, and the floor beside the waste-basket was flaked with the remains of various futile lines and epigrams. The ash-pan was littered with burnt matches, ends of cigars and pipe tobacco, while the ash-crumbs speckled all dark objects, not excepting the green rug under his feet. Warrington smoked incessantly while at work, now a cigarette, now a cigar, now a pipe. Specialists declare with cold authoritative positiveness that ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... or four gnarled, little green-skinned, sour, speckled apples, poorly flavored. He called attention to them very carefully, and then because an apple was a treat, however poor it might be, he asked them to notice the flavor as they ate. Then he produced three or four magnificent specimens of apple-hood, crimson and yellow, with polished skin ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... with a square front porch and green shutters which were sagging on loosened hinges. On the walls where the stucco had peeled away, the red brick showed in splotches, and the pillars of the porch, which had been white, were now speckled with yellow stains. Over the whole place, with its air of fallen respectability, there hung the depressing smell of mingled dust, stale cooking, and bad tobacco. A number of imposing and well-preserved houses stood on the block, for ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... that! A little child—a little boy—could go out in the garden, and there would be a tree laden with blossoms, and this little fellow would lean up against the tree, and there would be a bird singing and swinging, and thinking about four little speckled eggs, warmed by the breast of its mate—singing and swinging, and the music coming rippling out of its throat, and the flowers blossoming and the air full of perfume, and the great white clouds floating in the sky; ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... mercurial compotators had been amusing themselves by throwing at each other—lay scattered about the table and on the floor; two or three shivered wine glasses had been shoved into the centre of the table, the fragments glittering upon a pile of glorious Woodvilles, all speckled over, like Jacob's sheep; each man had one of the weeds stuck rakishly in the corner of his mouth, and was knocking off the ashes upon his deviled biscuits; and, to the right of the president's chair, a long straggling regiment of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... came the self-complacent cackling of hens, celebrating their latest additions to their nests, and the exultant call of a cock to his feathered harem to come, admire and partake of some especially fat worm, which he had just unearthed. Farther away speckled Guinea chickens were clamoring their satisfaction at the improvement in the weather. Still farther, gentle tinklings ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... To test his lamp's supernal powers. We reached the barn with merry din, And roused the prisoned brutes within. The old horse thrust his long head out, And grave with wonder gazed about; The cock his lusty greeting said, And forth his speckled harem led; The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked, And mild reproach of hunger looked; The horned patriarch of the sheep, Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep, Shook his sage head with gesture mute, And emphasized with stamp ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... women rise, whom he knew directly from their wands to be fairies. One wore a crown of holly leaves mixed with red berries, and diamond ear-rings resembling acorns in their cups; she was dressed in a robe of olive green, over which a speckled skin was knotted like a scarf across the right shoulder—this was the Fairy of the Woods. As to the Fairy of the Waters, she wore a garland of reeds on her head, with a white robe trimmed with the feathers of aquatic birds, and a blue scarf, which now and ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... Turnbull sat at the head of a table laden with silver and crystal and flowers. There were individual pepper mills—he detested adulterated or stale spices— carved goblets for water, cocktail glasses with enameled roosters, ruby goblets like blown flowers and little gilt-speckled liqueur glasses; there were knives with steel blades, knives all of silver, and gold fruit knives; there were slim oyster forks, entree forks of solid design, and forks of filigree; a bank of spoons by a plate that would be presently removed, ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... whan the win' gaed ravin aboot, And the winnocks war speckled wi' faem, Frae room to room she strayt in and oot, And she spied ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... and speckled teals; Ye fisher herons, watching eels; Ye duck and drake, wi' airy wheels Circling the lake; Ye bitterns, till the quagmire reels, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... Nimble, kept close beside her. Slowly as his mother moved, he found the traveling none too easy. And he was glad when she stopped in a pocket-like clearing. There she spoke to a proud speckled bird who was sitting on a log and amusing himself by spreading his tail feathers into ...
— The Tale of Nimble Deer - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... the night air, and sat up. The bridge rocked under him; against the star-speckled sky he could see the Woolworth Building bending and jazzing like a poplar tree in a ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... seen any elephant but a tame one, unless it's a pink or speckled one with a brass tail climbing up the wall of his room when he's got D.T's. He never went out shooting in the jungle in his life. But you ask Payne or Reynolds or any of the chaps on the other gardens who know anything of ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... sunny green sea-water speckled with yachts shooting and bounding, and sending me the sharp sense of life there is in dashed-up fountains of silvery salt-spray, would have quickened my blood sooner but for this hot-bed of fruitless adventure, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fell. He saw they were gesticulating to him wildly, running back towards him. A great shouting came from across the ways. Then it seemed as though the whole face of the darkened building opposite was lined and speckled with red-clad men. And they were pointing over to him and shouting. "The Sleeper! Save the Sleeper!" shouted a ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... with the scarcely moving current, and gaze upon the leafy groves of the sub-aqueous wilderness lit up by the rays of the sun, and watch the fish moving singly or in shoals at various depths—the bearded barbel, the spotted trout, the shimmering bream, and the bronzen tench. Watch, too, the speckled water-snakes gliding upon the gravel or lurking like the ancient serpent in mimic gardens of Eden. Mark all the varied life and wondrous beauty of nature there. Above all, do not hurry, for little is seen by ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... summer day whipping a trout stream without a rise or even a ripple to reward him, while a ragged urchin, with a willow wand, and a bent pin, not ten yards distant, is covering the greensward with myriads of speckled and scaly backs, from one pound weight to four; so it is in every thing—"the race is not to the swift;" the elements of success in life, whatever be the object of pursuit, are very, very different from what we think them at first sight, and so it was with Mr. O'Leary, and I have more than once ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... trees, there were six or seven thrushes, all declaring that they were the best singers, and had the most speckled necks; and up in the sky the swallows were saying that they had the ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... not usurp all my feeling. The purple peaks to the westward and farther inland, had a beauty of their own, and in the gentle curves with which they leaned towards each other, there was a promise of the flowery meadows of Enna. The smooth blue water was speckled with fishing-boats. We hailed one, inquiring when the festa was to commence; but, mistaking our question, they answered: "Anchovies." Thereupon, a waggish Maltese informed them that Maestro Paolo thanked them heartily. All the other ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... them on the list of experiments. It will probably be some time before you come to that refinement of egg-eating which Mrs. Stowe found at the mansion of the Duke of Sutherland, where she was honored with lunch. Her sylvan spirit was somewhat startled, when a servant brought five little speckled plover eggs, all lying in the nest just as taken from the tree. How they were cooked is unknown; but one would certainly need a recipe to eat ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... powder explosion; but he certainly was a sporter! Me and him got along fine. My! My! what a randy old feller he was! The men used to sit around him with their mouths open waitin' to laugh. Grimy Caswell they called him, along of his speckled face—great ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... visions. For instance, when Jeremiah has the vision of the seething pot with its mouth to the north, you know that this which he sees is not a real thing; but merely a significant dream. Also, when Zachariah sees the speckled horses among the myrtle trees in the bottom, you still may suppose the vision symbolical;—you do not think of them as real spirits, like Pegasus, seen in the form of horses. But when you are told of the four riders in the Apocalypse, a distinct sense of personality ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... game was ended and another begun. And as they were beginning the first move of the game, they beheld at a small distance from them a tent speckled yellow, the largest ever seen, and the figure of an eagle of gold upon it, and a precious stone on the eagle's head. And coming out of the tent, they saw a youth with thick yellow hair upon his head, fair and comely, and a scarf of blue satin upon him, and a brooch of gold in ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... weekly newspaper published at Para, called "The Japim"; the name being chosen, I suppose, on account of the babbling propensities of the bird. Its eggs are nearly round, and of a bluish-white colour, speckled ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... seemed to rest upon the other side of the rocky gorge fifty yards away. And there now, close to our feet, so close that we could have lain down and drunk had we been so disposed, rushed on towards the great fall the glassy gold-speckled water. ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... at the lieutenant, immaculate except where the slush had speckled his shiny boots, and then at his own ragged attire. "I think I will not go up ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... drinking-bowl turned out of some kind of wood, by preference of maple, and especially the spotted or speckled variety called "bird's-eye maple" (see W. H. St. John Hope's paper, "On the English Mediaeval Drinking-bowls called Mazers," "Archaeologia," vol. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... nacreous, pearly, shot, gorge de pigeon, chatoyant^; irisated^, pavonine^. pied, piebald; motley; mottled, marbled; pepper and salt, paned, dappled, clouded, cymophanous^. mosaic, tesselated, plaid; tortoise shell &c n.. spotted, spotty; punctated^, powdered; speckled &c v.; freckled, flea-bitten, studded; flecked, fleckered^; striated, barred, veined; brinded^, brindled; tabby; watered; grizzled; listed; embroidered &c v.; daedal^; naevose^, stipiform^; strigose^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... bright maid, thou rat'st exteriour grace: Not always do the fairest flow'rs diffuse The richest odours, nor the speckled shells Conceal the gem; let female arrogance Observe the feather'd wand'rers of the sky; With purple varied, and bedrop'd with gold, They prune the wing, and spread the glossy plumes, Ordain'd, like you, to flutter and to shine, And cheer ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... we steamed on, the sea-surface appeared to become suddenly speckled with queer craft previously invisible—light, long fishing- boats, with immense square sails of a beautiful yellow colour. I could not help remarking to my comrade how pretty those sails were; he laughed, and told me they were made of old tatami. [5] I examined them through a telescope, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... they came to the Phasis; there they fought with dark-faced Kolchians even in the presence of Aietes. And there the queen of keenest darts, the Cyprus-born, first brought to men from Olympus the frenzied bird, the speckled wry-neck[15], binding it to a four-spoked wheel without deliverance, and taught the son of Aison to be wise in prayers and charms, that he might make Medea take no thought to honour her parents, and longing for Hellas might drive her by persuasion's ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... at one crib shall meet, And harmless serpents lick the pilgrim's feet. The smiling infant in his hand shall take, The crested basilisk and speckled snake. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... dull wonder. Could it be possible that the tragedy of his death was enacting in that peaceful, secluded nook? Could Nature be so indifferent or so unconscious if it were true that he was soon to lie there DEAD? He saw the speckled trout lying motionless at the bottom of the pool, the gray squirrels sporting in the boughs over his head. The sunlight shimmered and glinted through the leaves, flecking with light his prostrate form. He dipped his hand in ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... sunlighted scene, like an expanding circle in the water. Their streaming hair and fluttering skirts, the elastic grass beneath their feet, the boughs that rustled in the morning air—the flushing leaves, their speckled shadows on the soft green ground—the balmy wind that swept along the landscape, glad to turn the distant windmill, cheerily—everything between the two girls, and the man and team at plough upon the ridge of land, ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... life at a call from her—had come to bring her ease. He talked at random of brooks that start nowhere and go nowhere, save over white stones and past watercress; of thin ribbed ferns and of scarlet bunchberries. He told her of a stream he knew, where, if you lie very quiet in the moss, you see speckled trout dart over white pebbles into the darker water beneath the lichened rocks. He told her of the shallows, and pools, and falls you find if you keep to its banks for the miles it sings by the grave trees. He told ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... are almost as different from each other as are the birds themselves. The robin lays four or five blue eggs. The dove lays two white eggs. The sparrow lays six or eight speckled eggs. If we should find a nest with four blue eggs in it, we could be pretty sure that it was the nest of a............. rather than of ...
— Stanford Achievement Test, Ed. 1922 - Advanced Examination, Form A, for Grades 4-8 • Truman L. Kelley
... had suddenly deserted. Right close to the swaying nest the boy hung, his limbs encircling it, his two hands locked upon it, trusting to it, just trusting to it. It bent low in a great sweeping curve, the nest swayed and swung from the movement of the swing downward, a little olive-colored, speckled head peeking cautiously out as if to see what ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... A "speckled bear," without any spectacles. A "nelephant" like a great hill of stone, and a baby "nelephant," with ears ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... do hold your tongue; as though indeed the difference was so trifling. A young man was brought to our house to-day, whom, really, Phaedria, you would have liked to look upon. This is a withered, antiquated, lethargic, old fellow, with a speckled complexion.[91] ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... way through strangling rushes Where the glossy kingfisher Flutters when noon-heats are near, Glad the shelving banks to shun, Red and steaming in the sun, Where the shrew-mouse with pale throat Burrows, and the speckled stoat; Where the quick sandpipers flit In and out the marl and grit That seems to breed them, brown as they: Nought disturbs its quiet way, Save some lazy stork that springs, Trailing it with legs ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... symbolical visions. For instance, when Jeremiah has the vision of the seething pot with its mouth to the north, you know that this which he sees is not a real thing; but merely a significant dream. Also, when Zechariah sees the speckled horses among the myrtle trees in the bottom, you still may suppose the vision symbolical;—you do not think of them as real spirits, like Pegasus, seen in the form of horses. But when you are told of the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... about a year old—had been seized and swallowed by a Mugger. Although convinced that aid was now impossible, we took our guns and hastened to the spot where the accident happened; but all was still there, not a wavelet disturbed the surface of the stream. A small speckled kingfisher was hovering overhead, as if balanced in the air, with its beak bent down on its breast, watching the fish beneath; presently it darted like an arrow into the water; returned with an empty bill, and then went off, with its clear, sharp, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating house and a pastry cook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered—flushed, but smiling proudly—with the pudding like a speckled cannon ball, so hard and firm, smoking hot, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... sleek and well dressed. He spoke pleasantly enough, if I addressed him; otherwise he attended strictly to business. Every day he was there, morning and afternoon. He, I think, had better fortune than any of the others. Once I saw him land a large and handsome "speckled trout," to the unmistakable envy of his brother anglers. Still a third was a younger man, with a broad-brimmed straw hat and a taciturn habit; no less persevering than Number Two, perhaps, but far less successful. I marveled ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... her slim fingers into the thick mane of her mother's coiled hair, glossy brown hair through which only a few threads of white were speckled. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered—flushed, but smiling proudly—with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... Here we go!" cried the jolly Clown. He was a gaily dressed fellow, and his calico suit was of many colors. One leg was red and another yellow, and his shirt was spotted and speckled and striped. ...
— The Story of a Lamb on Wheels • Laura Lee Hope
... these Wood-peckers, is a black and white speckled, or mottled; the finest I ever saw. The Cock has a red Crown; he is not near so big as the others; his Food is Grubs, Corn, and other creeping Insects. He is not very wild, but will let one come up to him, then shifts on the other side the Tree, from your sight; and so dodges ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... Valiant-for-Truth, on the one hand, as against By-ends, Sir Having Greedy, and the Lord Old-man on the other, are in these drawings as simply distinguished by their costume. Good people, when not armed cap-a-pie, wear a speckled tunic girt about the waist, and low hats, apparently of straw. Bad people swagger in tail-coats and chimney-pots, a few with knee-breeches, but the large majority in trousers, and for all the world like guests at a garden-party. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been very busy," continued Frank, pointing to the buoys, that speckled the waters. I am afraid the ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... a bad thing—and particularly at his time of life. I lost a beautiful hen only yesterday from rheumatism in the legs; one of the best sitters I ever had. You remember her?—the speckled one that I got from Tetleigh, four years ago come Michaelmas. But that's the way in this world; the most ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... day advances, the scene, though slightly changed, is still most beautiful. The increasing heat, dispelling the mists, reveals in all its beauty the deep blue sky speckled with thin fleecy clouds, and, imparting a genial warmth to the body, creates a sympathetic glow in the soul. Flocks of snow-white gulls sail in graceful evolutions round the boats, dipping lightly ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... the smaller, greenish globe of its companion across a cloudless sky in which the stars made a speckled pattern like the scales of a huge serpent coiled around a black bowl. Ras Hume paused at the border of scented spike-flowers on the top terrace of the Pleasure House to wonder why he thought of serpents. He understood. Mankind's age-old hatred, brought from his native planet to the distant stars, ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... species are elegantly and compactly made, consisting of a densely woven mass of spruce twigs, soft vegetable down, rootlets, and fine shreds of bark. The lining is often intermixed with horse hairs and feathers. Four eggs of greenish-white or very pale bluish-green, speckled or spotted, have usually been ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... pensive blue, pregnant with promises, soft and almond-shaped, like the divine eyes of the Italian Cenci. Supple as the young and slender branches of willow, are these divinities, fresh as new opened tulips, and brisk and gay as the golden-speckled trout in the sparkling current. In their charms is found a terrestrial paradise, a compound of delicious qualities which intoxicate the senses, hook the heart, and like the bite of the Sicilian tarantella, steep ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... go out into the garden, and there would be a tree laden with blossoms, and the little fellow would lean against it, and there would be a bird on one of the boughs, singing and swinging, and thinking, about four little speckled eggs, warmed by the breast of its mate,—singing and swinging, and the music in happy waves rippling out of its tiny throat, and the flowers blossoming, the air filled with perfume and the great white clouds floating in the sky, and the ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... we must be well to the north of the speckled bottom before it was safe to head for the shore, and away we went again. In about an hour Burroughs quietly asked for another sounding. Again she was gently stopped, and this time ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... every impression. While we disposed of the plain but appetizing fare, whose crown was the speckled trout which his skill had lured from home, he submitted me to the kindliest of cross-examinations concerning my past, my scholarship, my evangelical positions, my household, and much else that nestled among them all. Throughout, I felt the charm and the power of his gentleness, and under ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... forming a government entirely on his own conditions. The result was a cabinet, strong much beyond the average in its individual members, but weak to powerlessness in the diversity of its composition. Burke, in a memorable passage of a memorable speech, has described this "chequered and speckled" administration with great humour, speaking of it as "indeed a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch and unsure to stand on." Pitt chose for himself the office of lord privy seal, which necessitated his removal to the House of Lords; and in August he became earl ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... unlined save for a wad of human hair, on which the eggs, two in number, lay; these I found hard-set (on the 13th March); in colour they were a pale greenish blue, boldly blotched, spotted, and speckled with brown." ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... Ben, I take my pen To tell you where, And how, and when, I found the nest Of our speckled hen. She would never lay, In a sensible way, Like other hens, In the barn ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... be careful that the firewood is not unusually speckled or dirty, as the child that is to come might be lacking in due comeliness. I have seen many a husband assiduously peeling off the bark from ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... garden seeks its food Pick out for a commending word Each one his own peculiar bird; Hail the plump tit, or fitly sing The finch's crest and flashing wing; Exalt the rook's black satin dress-coat, The thrush's speckled fancy waistcoat; Or praise the robin, meek, but sly, For breast and tail and friendly eye— These have their place within my heart; The sparrow owns the larger part, And, for no virtues, rules in it, My reckless cheerful ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... were unavailing. The speckled chicken surreptitiously introduced under the yellow hen's hovering wings, enjoyed the briefest possible period of maternal protection. Before Peggy could get back into the house, the yellow hen was ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... transatlantic liner raised anchor. The Spaniard, leaning over the rail, saw the black mountain and the huge Rock, its base speckled with rows of lights, grow small as if sinking into the horizon. Its obscure ridge was silhouetted against the sky like a crouching monster toying with a swarm ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... are described, along with their corresponding privileges, in the Book of Rights. Some of the geasa of the king of Connaught were not to go to an assembly of women at Leaghair, not to sit in autumn on the sepulchral mound of the wife of Maine, not to go in a grey-speckled garment on a grey-speckled horse to the heath of Cruachan, and the like.[883] The meaning of these is obscure, but other examples are more obvious and show that all alike corresponded to the tabus applying ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... "you fellers don't act like there was anybody dyin' around here. An' by chaowder! this smell is jest ther same ez I struck when I crawled under dad's old barn to find where the speckled hen was layin', an' crunched up some aigs that hed bin there two or three months. Ef that Dutchman loaded his pistol with a ripe aig an' shot me in the neck, I'll paound the stuffin' ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... moors or other waste lands. It builds a shallow nest composed of twigs lined with fibrous roots, on low trees or thick underwood, only a few feet from the ground, and lays four or five eggs of a bluish-white colour speckled and streaked with purple. The young remain with their parents during autumn and winter, and pair in spring, not building their nests, however, till May. In spring and summer they feed on the buds of trees and bushes, choosing, it is said, such only as contain the incipient blossom, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... must cast your fly. I should think there must be some speckled fellows there. What glory, Daisy, if ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... is a native of Sicily. It is a hardy annual, and resembles the foregoing species in its general character. The flowers are yellow; the pods are about two inches long, hairy, flattened, and enclose four or five large, roundish, speckled seeds. It blossoms and ripens at the same time with the White, and is planted and cultivated in the ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... white. One boy was riding on a ram, and as he came by, strum-strumming on a little silver-stringed banjo, he sang a very curious song, which made Martin prick up his ears to listen. It was about a speckled snake that lived far away on a piece of waste ground; how day after day he sought for his lost playmate—the little boy that had left him; how he glided this way and that on his smooth, bright belly, winding in and out among the tall wild sunflowers; ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... seemed more on edge than the old warrior, Caliente, and tossed the foam from his bit, until his dark coat was speckled with it. ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... projecting bank it would form a small deep basin, where, beneath the far-cast shadow of an overhanging oak, or under its huge twisted and denuded roots, the angler might be sure of finding the speckled trout, the dainty greyling, or their mutual enemy, the voracious jack. The ravine was well wooded throughout, and in many parts singularly beautiful, from the disposition of the timber on its banks, as well as from ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... fifteenth century, and who is reputed to have been prioress of the Nunnery of Sopwell,—long since in ruins,—near St. Albans, and close to the little river Ver, which still conceals in its quiet pools the speckled trout. If this attribution be correct, Dame Berners was the first woman to write a book in English. Although the question of the authorship is by no means settled, yet it is clear that the printer believed the treatise on hunting to have been written by this ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner |
