"Swarm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... granted all, "as long as they concerned not life and limb", being "willing to be ridd of him". The Assembly finished its session, and thinking to appease the rebels, sent their laws out to be read before them. But they rose up like a swarm of bees, and swore they would have no laws.[605] Yet the legislation of this session was exceedingly liberal. The elections had been held at a time when the people were bitterly angry with the Governor and disgusted with the old regime. In several counties popular candidates, men bent ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... my own strength, that it was not capable of any great matters; and calling to mind the saying of the late Chancellor Olivier, that the French were like monkeys that swarm up a tree from branch to branch, and never stop till they come to the highest, and there shew ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... reconverted German tub, they would have cheered an irony so delightful had not orders been issued for complete silence. No one must know that this ship, secretly restored from the ravages of her former crew, entertained the slightest idea of sailing; not one of the swarm of spies in German pay, infesting New York and its environs, must suspect this midnight-to-dawn embarkation! So, while Jeb slept, tugs quietly warped her out, towed her in ghostlike fashion toward the Bay and turned her free. By daylight she was ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... on which any man may without reproach employ his meditations: the innumerable occupations, among which the thousands that swarm in the streets of London, are distributed, may furnish employment to minds of every cast, and capacities of every degree. He that contemplates the extent of this wonderful city, finds it difficult to conceive, by what method plenty is maintained ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... bloody and succulent mysteries were concocted: and the old servant who used to tell him frightful and droll stories.... At last came evening, the silent flitting of the bats, the terror of the monstrous creatures that were known to swarm in the dark depths of the old house: huge rats, enormous hairy spiders: and he would say his prayers, kneeling at the, foot of his bed, and hardly know what he was saying: the little cracked bell of the convent hard by would sound the bed-time of the nuns;—and so to bed, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... influence on his mood. Some of the occasional papers which, in the character of "The Uncommercial Traveller", he furnished to All the Year Round, have as much of the genius loci as any of his romances. Even to-day the rushing swarm of motor cars has not yet driven from the more secluded nooks of Kent all such idylls of open-air ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... and obscure as in Scandinavian poetry. Mr. Payne (ii. 314) translates "Naml" by "net." I understand the ant (swarm) creeping up the cheeks, a common simile for a young beard. The lovers are in the Laza (hell) of jealousy etc., yet feel in the Na'im (heaven) of love and robe in green, the hue of hope, each expecting to be ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... too, which rode there at anchor, so anxiously on the watch—would that swarm of, nimble, lightly-handled, but slender vessels,—which had held their own hitherto in hurried and desultory skirmishes—be able to cope with their great antagonist now that the moment had arrived for the death grapple? Would not Howard, Drake, Frobisher, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... got the spark of life kindled, how are we going to get all the myriad forms of life that swarm upon the earth? How are we going to get man with physics and chemistry alone? How are we going to get this tremendous drama of evolution out of mere protoplasm from the bottom of the old geologic seas? ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... authority which their good swords have won and are ever ready to maintain. Thus organized, the force of iron asserts and exerts itself. Duke, count, seignor and vassal, knight and squire, master and man swarm and struggle amain. A wild, chaotic, sanguinary scene. Here, bishop and baron contend, centuries long, murdering human creatures by ten thousands for an acre or two of swampy pasture; there, doughty families, hugging old musty ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... north of England. In these straits the British invited help from the Angles and Saxons, who soon engaged the northern tribesmen and defeated them. The feebleness of the Britons having become well known among the continental peoples, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes began to steadily swarm across the North Sea in powerful, armed bands. Having for a time assisted the Britons they began to seek excuses for quarrels, and gradually the Britons with brief periods of success were beaten and dispossessed of their ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... the Rue Duphot, they reached the boulevards. Venetian lanterns hanging from the houses formed wreaths of flame. Underneath, a confused swarm of people kept in constant motion. In the midst of those moving shadows could be seen, here and there, the steely glitter of bayonets. There was a great uproar. The crowd was too compact, and it was impossible ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... the blackened statues, as I passed under their blank gaze, along the unending bridge, with their ancient garments and their saintly crowns, seemed to me the real inhabitants and owners of this place, while the busy, trivial men and women, hurrying to and fro, were a swarm of ephemeral visitants infesting it for a day. It is such grim, stony beings as these, I thought, who are the fathers of ancient faded children, in those tanned time-fretted dwellings that crowd the steep before me; who ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... Hence a swarm of little school books pullulates annually, all upside down and wrong from beginning to end; and hence a worse evil afflicts us, that the English schoolboy starts with a false perspective of any given masterpiece, his pedagogue urging, obtruding lesser things upon his vision until what is really ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... love, but hate I now feel." Her fragrance, floating in the sunshine, filled his nostrils, and involuntarily he glanced over his shoulder, half expecting to find a dropped handkerchief in the road. None was there—only a scattered swarm of butterflies drifting like yellow ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... years her sister's housemate, nurse of the growing swarm. She had gone through fire, as few women have done in like manner, to leave their hearts among the ashes; but with that human heart she left regrets behind her. The soul of this young creature filled its place. It shone in her eyes and in her work, a lamp to her little ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... but few, Were worthy men; and earned renown which had Immortal roots; but most were weak and vile; And as a cloudy swarm of summer flies, With angry hum and slender lance, beset The sides of some huge animal; so did They buzz about the illustrious man, and fain With his immortal honour, down the stream Of fame would have descended; but alas! The hand ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... both frightfully ugly and ragged urchins, pursued us all over the city, incessantly whining 'Signore Padrone!' It was only on the threshold of the inn that I ventured to give them a few coppers, for I knew well that any public beneficence would raise the whole swarm of the begging population round us. Sitting later in the day upon the piazza of S. Domenico, I saw the same blind boy taken by his brother to play. The game consists, in the little creature throwing his arms about the trunk of a big tree, and running round and round it, clasping it. This seemed ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... road and sent his Minie-ball singing several yards above us, then darted back quickly, before any of us could have him. We waited a moment to see others, but they seemed to be satisfied;—and we were satisfied,—with prospect of a swarm bursting out on us from the town; so, sinking spurs into our weary animals, we made good pace back to the camp,—not without an alarm that a troop of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... cause, and God is on our side," replied the brave girl with flashing eyes. "Governor Rutledge has issued a call for all men not in service to take up arms, and the whole upper country will swarm down to meet these ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... and hers, "if ifs and ans!" But I'm none certain she'd have seen it, either. I could have had her without wedding her, And no mistake, the nickering, red-haired baggage. Though she was merry, she'd big rabbit-teeth, Might prove gey ill to live with; ay, and a swarm Of little sandy moppies like their doe, Buck-teeth and freckled noses and saucer-eyes, Gaping and squealing round the table at dinner, And calling me their dad, as likely as not: Though little her mug would matter, now I'm blind; ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... the horse in an instant, but before he could give a word of instruction to his men, there fell upon their ears a sound that appalled them,—the distant thunder of hundreds of bounding hoofs; the shrill, vengeful yells of a swarm of savage Indians; the crack! crack! of rifles; and, far down the trail along which Wells had ridden but a few moments before, they could ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... readers who could find a rhyme; Green grew the bays on every teeming head, And Cibber was enthroned, and Settle read. Sing, drooping Muse, the cause of thy decline; Why reign no more the once-triumphant Nine? Alas! new charms the wavering many gain, And rival sheets the reader's eye detain; A daily swarm, that banish every Muse, Come flying forth, and mortals call them NEWS: For these, unread, the noblest volumes lie; For these, in sheets unsoil'd, the Muses die; Unbought, unblest, the virgin copies wait In vain for fame, and sink, unseen, to fate. Since, then, the Town forsakes us for our foes, ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... They were as white as the snow upon which they ran helter-skelter after one another. Forward and backward they bounded across the trail without apparently noticing the dogs. Sometimes they passed within ten feet of us. The woodland seemed to swarm with them, and no wonder, for it was the seventh year, the year of Northland game abundance, when not only rabbits are most numerous, but also all the other dwellers of the wilderness that prey upon them. Already, however, the periodical plague had ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... men swarm up on the other side. Again the bayonets drive these new foes down the rocky cliffs. No sooner do the redcoats retire, than up comes Shelby again at the head of his men, nearer the top ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... of the redskins with 'em, and there'll be no great difficulty in finding out all about 'em. Besides, we've got Jake with us, and jest about here Jake can do better nor we can. Niggers swarm all over the country and are as ready to work for one side as the other, jest as their masters go. All Jake has got to do is to dress himself as a plantation nigger and stroll into their camp. No question will be asked him, as he will naturally be taken for a slave on some ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... his cap. He began filling it with handfuls of wheat from his pockets. In a swarm the grain-eaters arose around him as a flock of tame pigeons. They perched on his arms and the cap, and in the stress of hunger, forgetting all caution, a brilliant cock cardinal and an equally gaudy jay fought for a perching-place on ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... in the darkest hour Defend the holy soul from harm; Tho' when the vilest men have power On every side will sinners swarm. ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... reached; a thousand men leap into it, clamber up the shattered ramparts, and grapple with the foe, which yields and falls back to the rear of the fort. Our men swarm over the walls, bayoneting the desperate rebel cannoneers. ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... out, rose into the air, and started due south; another followed, then three, then a dozen; and then the hive vomited a swarm of black bees which ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... ever on the lurk, 'N' little 'earts was thumpin' warm For nippers trainin' with the swarm To swat ole Kaiser Bill, or work A toe-hold on the heathen Turk. Fair dink, I ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... many thousand Heads [takes the head] who swarm in and about London, whose times and minds are divided between the affairs of state and the affairs of a kitchen. He was anxious after venison and politics; he believed every cook to be a great genius; ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... prominent place in the profession accorded to her more talented sisters. Miss Fisher retired from the stage in 1841, and for some years was a teacher of dancing in Boston. For over thirty-seven years Miss Fisher has entertained at her home a swarm of dramatic celebrities. Here Mr. and Mrs. James W. Wallack, Charles Couldock, Peter Richings and his daughter Caroline, Mrs. John Hoey, and Fanny Morant, dined together where, in later days, Joseph Jefferson, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... now the only remaining power in England; and though supported by the vigour and abilities of Alfred, they were unable to sustain the efforts of those ravagers, who from all quarters invaded them. A new swarm of Danes came over this year under three princes, Guthrum, Oscitel, and Amund; and having first joined their countrymen at Repton, they soon found the necessity of separating, in order to provide for their subsistence. Part of them, under the command of Haldene, their chieftain [n], ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... which has been revived in our own day, it is not one of the loftiest of literary forms, and its possibilities are severely limited. It suffers to-day from the fact that in the half century and more since Poe set the pattern it has been vulgarized, debased, degraded by a swarm of imitators who lacked his certainty of touch, his instinctive tact, his intellectual individuality. In their hands it has been bereft of its distinction and despoiled ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... nothing till she woke up with her head on Veronica's shoulder, against which she had fallen, and on which she had been patiently supported for hours. "Ecco Venezia!" cried the old woman, pointing to a swarm of lights that seemed to float upon an expanse of sea. Lydia did not understand; she thought she was again on board the Aroostook, and that the lights she saw were the lights of the shipping in Boston harbor. The illusion passed, and left her heart sore. She issued from the glare of the station ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... relations, he was astounded at the translation of the Irish laborer into something else. "In my time, when I left Troy, all the work in the streets was done by 'micks,' as they called 'em. Now they're gone—whisked away as ye'd sweep away a swarm of red ants, and here's these black Dagos in their places. Where's the Irishman gone—up or down? That's what's eatin' me. Is he dead or translated to a higher speer? 'Tis a mysterious dispensation, and ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... for two seasons. He mended her fences and he cleaned her spring-well; he ground her corn and he brought back her swarm of bees; he trained a dog to chase the crows out of her field; he had the ass shod, the sheep washed and the goat spancelled. The Spae-Woman was much beholden to him for all he did for her, and one day she said to him, "Gilly of the Goat-skin you are called, ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... came with it; and once more Teddy Bear's head was in a swarm of little darting, piercing flames. But his blood was up. He held onto that chunk of bee tree. A big piece of comb, dripping with honey and crawling with bees, was sticking to it. Whimpering and pawing at his face, he crunched a great mouthful ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... same side with the Russian people who have seen the Nazi hordes swarm up to the very gates of Moscow, and who with almost superhuman will and courage have forced ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... likely to write not wisely but too much, piling up hundreds of manuscript pages only because his brain was thronging as with a myriad of fireflies, a swarm of darting, flashing ideas demanding release. As often as not he began writing with only a nebulous idea of what he proposed to do. He would start with a few characters and situations, trusting in Providence to supply material as ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... he would have descended into the fissure, and, with several of his most reliable braves, captured and secured Mickey and his companion at all hazards. But what assurance could he have that after he and his men had entered the little ravine, a whole party of Kiowas would not swarm in, overwhelm them, and make off with their horses? So the leader concluded for the time being to remain outside, where his line of retreat would be open, while he could arrange his plans for disposing of the ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... came 760 Attended: all access was throng'd, the Gates And Porches wide, but chief the spacious Hall (Though like a cover'd field, where Champions bold Wont ride in arm'd, and at the Soldans chair Defi'd the best of Panim chivalry To mortal combat or carreer with Lance) Thick swarm'd, both on the ground and in the air, Brusht with the hiss of russling wings. As Bees In spring time, when the Sun with Taurus rides, Poure forth thir populous youth about the Hive 770 In clusters; ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Corbett," came Miles' abrupt reply. "I'm hittin' rough stuff here, a swarm of meteors. See you on Titan. Be down there ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... till past midnight that I could obtain any sleep; the heat was excessive, and I was teased by the cockroaches, which appeared to swarm in the cabin to an incredible degree, and were constantly running over my face and body. I little thought then why they swarmed. I recollect that I dreamt of murder, and tossing men overboard; and then of the vessel being on fire and after that, I felt very cool and comfortable, and ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... forgives, the orders are seldom disobeyed. On the twenty-sixth of March, the appointed spot of Asomaton was covered with an active swarm of Turkish artificers; and the materials by sea and land were diligently transported from Europe and Asia. [15] The lime had been burnt in Cataphrygia; the timber was cut down in the woods of Heraclea and Nicomedia; and the stones were dug from the Anatolian quarries. Each of the thousand ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... many did not persuade themselves that they had studied sufficiently, there would not be such a Scarcity of the Best, nor such a Swarm of the Worst. These, because they can sing by Heart three or four Kyrie's[91], think they are arrived at the Non plus ultra; but if you give them a Cantata to sing, that is even easy, and fairly written, they, instead of complying as they ought, ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... the sun strikes the sail of that schooner!" exclaimed Miss Harding. "And how it glances from the brass work of those yachts at anchor! There goes an auto boat darting through a swarm of sail boats like a bird through fluttering butterflies. It is a glorious ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... in the season, the blueback and spring salmon swim in vast schools across the end of Squitty. They feed upon small fish, baby herring, tiny darting atoms of finny life that swarm in countless numbers. What these inch-long fishes feed upon no man knows, but they begin to show in the Gulf early in spring. The water is alive with them,—minute, darting streaks of silver. The ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... spring-tides, when the water is very low, small portions of it are found, just enough to keep up the excitement, and cause dozens of children from all the neighbourhood round to gather there in a swarm, to search among the seaweeds, and dig in the sands, and venture out in the sea itself as far as they dare. It is only about once in a blue moon that they do come upon treasure, but there is always the hope that any hour or day may bring them ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... swarm of black bees settled on a honey-pot. The leaders, who flew there first, are at the top, gorged and distended. Round, beneath and on them crawl thousands of others thirsting to feed on the sweet, liquid gold. The ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... the slippery ledge and got to his feet. The boat was half full of water, out of which Swarm's ghastly face protruded. By dint of great effort Lane pulled it sideways on the ledge, and turned ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... difficulties partly by audacity, partly by seriousness, partly by the enchantment of song. But the poem will never be read through except by students of English literature. It is a whole; its members are well-fitted; it is full of beauties—in parts they swarm like fire-flies; and yet it is not a good poem. It is like a well-shaped house, built of mud, and stuck full of precious stones. I do not care, in my limited space, to quote from it. Never was there a more incongruous dragon ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... sometimes 800 yards long are drilled by machinery through the solid rock beneath the Austrian strongholds, which presently disappear under the smashing influence of thirty or forty tons of dynamite. Then the Alpini swarm over the debris and capture or kill the enemy survivors and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... compartments of the roof. Beneath these, seated on the spandrils, are alternate prophets and sibyls, twelve in all, attesting to the future deliverance and judgment of the world by Christ. The intermediate spaces between these larger masses, on the roof and in the lunettes of the windows, swarm with figures, some naked and some draped—women and children, boys and young men, grouped in tranquil attitudes, or adapting themselves with freedom to their station on the curves and angles of the architecture. ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... a merry jangle of bells in the air, an all-pervading sense of jester's noise, and the flaunting vividness of royal colors; the streets swarm with humanity,—humanity in all shapes, manners, forms,—laughing, pushing, jostling, crowding, a mass of men and women and children, as varied and as assorted in their several individual peculiarities as ever a crowd that ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... twenty, and others with thirty, or even forty, ships of various sizes. Many of them had from twenty to thirty banks for rowers, with crews of 100 or 150 men. There were also great numbers of cutters with ten or fifteen banks, and from thirty to fifty men in each, besides a swarm of lesser craft, about the size of ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... the other hand, though I neither was so fond (with a few exceptions) of the persons, nor of the methods of thought, which belonged to this new school, as of the old set, though I could not trust in their firmness of purpose, for, like a swarm of flies, they might come and go, and at length be divided and dissipated, yet I had an intense sympathy in their object and in the direction in which their path lay, in spite of my old friends, in spite of my old life-long prejudices. In spite of my ingrained fears of Rome, and the decision ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... where each sea-swell Is Humans, gasping. Hope drags each cold form From hearth to hearth, to find no ember warm; Then, their eyes glitter frost, who hear hope yell As up she climbs the rocks and falls pell-mell Back from small herbs, where monsters swoop and swarm. ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... a world explored in vain, And foes triumphant show but half my pain. Dissembling friends, each early joy who gave, And fired my youth the storms of fate to brave, Swarm'd in the sunshine of my happier days, Pursued the fortune and partook the praise, Now pass my cell with smiles of sour disdain, Insult my woes ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... in this mystical India, the deities hover and swarm Like the wild bees heard in the tree-tops, or the gusts of a gathering storm; In the air men hear their voices, their feet on the rocks are seen, Yet we all say, "Whence is the message, and what ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... rattling off of another thunder-clap. That sometimes he has been seen surrounded by a crew of little imps in broad breeches and short doublets; tumbling head-over-heels in the rack and mist, and playing a thousand gambols in the air; or buzzing like a swarm of flies about Antony's Nose; and that, at such times, the hurry-scurry of the storm was always greatest. One time, a sloop, in passing by the Dunderberg, was overtaken by a thunder-gust, that came scouring round the mountain, and seemed to burst just over the vessel. Though ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... A swarm of ladies fluttered into the empty hall. A middle-aged spinster literally flung herself towards the young man, and, clasping ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... and he hurled these epithets at the timorous crowd with all the ferocity of a giant hurling stones at a swarm of pigmies.. "Babes that are frighted by a summer thunder- storm! ... Ye have let yon accursed heretic slip from my hands ere I had choked him with his own lie! O ye fools! Ye puny villains! ... I take shame to myself that I am King of such a race of weaklings! Lights! ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Lent [i.e., March 25], when the [censure for] irregular government was removed from them; but for this purpose a conference was first summoned by the archbishop. It included the bishop of Sinopolis, the superiors and masters of the religious orders—and with them crowded in all the swarm of doctors and masters of Santo Tomas, to the no little annoyance of the bishop and the religious orders. In this conference the question was asked whether the members of the cabildo were worthy of being absolved for their ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... swarm up by the cable on to the bows, but three men who were stationed there disposed of them before enough could gain a footing to be dangerous. The captain had been keeping the guns in reserve in case the proa that had dropped behind at first should come ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... this convent and sick-nurse affair with Infinite credit to himself and to the English nation in general. Everywhere in Ratisbon was his Liberality applauded; but, alas! the publicity that was given to his Donation speedily brought upon us a Plague and Swarm of Ravenous Locusts and Bloodsuckers. There were as many convents in Ratisbon as plums in a Christmas porridge; there were Nuns of all kinds of orders, many of whom, I am afraid, no better than they should be; there were Black Monks and Gray Monks and Brown Monks and White Monks, Monks of all ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... a swarm of fighis, who can copy charms and a few passages from the Koran. I procured some of the bona fide specimens of their calligraphy. There are four different hands. These fighis are all blacks of ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... bee's to get honey for his comb. He apparently did not know that the bee does not get honey nor wax directly from the flowers, but only nectar, or sweet water. The bee, as I have often said, makes the honey and the wax after she gets home to the swarm. She puts the nectar through a process of her own, adds a drop of her own secretion to it, namely, formic acid, the water evaporates, and lo! the tang ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... came into the room, beat in the early morning upon the safe in the far-off corner, then, travelling against the sun, cut at midday the big desk in two with its solid and clean-edged brilliance; with its hot brilliance in which a swarm of flies hovered in dancing flight over some dirty plate forgotten there amongst yellow papers for many a day. And towards the evening the cynical ray seemed to cling to the ragged petticoat, lingered on it ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... The flight of this swarm of various beauty recalled the conversation of last night; and breaking off unobserved a long fine tendril of the leveloo, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... swarm of civilians who had enlisted. Every class and every type was to be seen. We found out the R.A.M.C. depot and reported. A man sat at an old soapbox with a lot of papers, and we had to file past him. This was in the middle of a field with ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... them in the wine, they ate them in the sauces, they saw them moving on the bread, and had their faces and hands tickled by the countless swarm of these tiny insects. They were continually compelled to throw away the beverages, to cover the plates, and while eating to shield the ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... many parts of the world where there are pools of water. They swarm along the rivers of the sunny south and by the lakes of the far north. The life of one of these troublesome little fellows is ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... restraint was in itself a great trial; besides, being naturally shy and timid, I was afraid of strangers, and although Miss Primrose was not unkind she had an habitual frown, which even the elder girls dreaded. My future companions, who were all older than I, came round me like a swarm of bees, and asked if my father had a title, what was the name of our estate, if we kept a carriage, and other such questions, which made me first feel the difference of station. However, the girls were very kind, and often bathed my eyes to prevent our stern mistress from seeing that ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... terriers. We have added a nursery wing already to one side of the house, and have balanced it on the other by a vinery, built after the model of those which adorn the mansion of my senior. The Misses Balderby have taken what they call a 'great fancy' to my wife, and they swarm over our drawing-room carpets in blue or pink flounces very often, on what they call 'social evenings for a little music.' I find that a little music is only a synonym with the Misses Balderby for a ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... traffic of the city to the north and west. The roadway was blocked with the immense stream of commerce flowing in a double tide inward and outward, while the foot-paths were black with the hurrying swarm of pedestrians. It was difficult to realize as we looked at the line of fine shops and stately business premises that they really abutted on the other side upon the faded and stagnant square which we ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... shrieking like a creature in pain, startled animals threshing about their cages and crying their alarm. Cowboys were never slow at anything they undertook. In three minutes more the side shows were tentless, the dwarfs trying to swarm up the giant's sturdy legs to safety or to hide among the adipose wrinkles of the fat lady, and the outfit tackled ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... a full holiday on Saturday. Then the wharves were sure to swarm with the mischievous little chaps, all eager to carry out some favorite plan for amusement, in which old Ocean was sure to be engaged as a play-fellow. Poor indeed was the lad who had not a fish-hook and line with which to try his skill. The very youngest had his tiny boat to be launched, ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... never propitious to German poets. The Cossacks swarm again upon the battle-field, and again they approach the groaning warrior in the open grave; he has no longer a glittering uniform, but the Cossack takes all; the poor old mantle excites his greed—he tears it from the unresisting soldier; he opens his hands and takes out the half ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... city murmured like a swarm of wasps, and next day at dawn, so far as the eye could reach, the streets and market place were filled with tens of thousands of armed warriors. They threw themselves like a wave upon the walls of the palace of Axa, and like a wave from a rock they ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... the afternoon and tried to sleep; but her brain was inexorably alert, and she lay making inventory of all the pleasant things she was to leave for that ugly fate she had insisted on. A swarm of fancies gave every detail of the parting dramatic intensity. Amidst the poignancy of her regrets, her shame for ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... way to the King's fire, but at last it lay before her; before and below her, for it had been built in a depression of the little open. The last charred log had fallen apart, spreading a swarm of golden glow-worms over the black earth, there was still enough light to reveal a ring of muffled forms sprawling around the sloping sides of the hollow, with their feet toward the fire and their heads ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... the species were not varied. We were about a month too early for the ducks and geese, which during the winter swarm into Yuen-nan from the north, and without a dog, pheasants are difficult to get. In fact we were greatly disappointed in the game birds, for we had expected good pheasant shooting even along the road and virtually none were ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... of everyday experience that it is difficult to prevent many articles of food from becoming covered with mould; that fruit, sound enough to all appearance, often contains grubs at the core; that meat, left to itself in the air, is apt to putrefy and swarm with maggots. Even ordinary water, if allowed to stand in an open vessel, sooner or later becomes turbid and full of ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... sooth, y-wis,' quod Pandarus; 190 'For yesterday, who-so hadde with him been, He might have wondred up-on Troilus; For never yet so thikke a swarm of been Ne fleigh, as Grekes fro him gonne fleen; And thorugh the feld, in everi wightes ere, 195 Ther nas no cry but "Troilus ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... light; but I remembered that it was a moonlight night and thought no more of it. I tried to explain the visions of my dream with various natural noises about me. The imprisoned fly buzzed as loudly as a whole swarm of bees; one half of my window had blown open, and the cold night air rushed in gusts into ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... ever allow their minds to be affected by such wholly accidental occurrences as these were. One of them was this: a wolf came into their camp, from one of the forests near, and after wounding several men, made his escape again. The other was more trifling still. A swarm of bees flew into the encampment, and lighted upon a tree just over Scipio's tent. This was considered, for some reason or other, a sign that some calamity was going to befall them, and the men were accordingly intimidated and disheartened. They consequently ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... been forced out of me in a moment of weakness, between my pillow and the dark; and I was determined it should not get hold of me with its swarm of attendant tormenting thoughts. I was resolved to go into court, thinking of nothing but just that small measure of evidence which was mine to give; and to come away again, turning my back upon the whole matter, and taking up again the round of my ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... a long silence. Bors looked at the radar-screen. The mass of bright specks at the edge of the screen seemed to have sent a shining wave before it. It was actually a swarm of missiles. They were so far away that they could not be picked up as individuals on the screen. They were a glow, a shine, ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... as if he had been fixed to his seat, like Theseus. The more he reflected on his conduct, in disappearing at that critical point of time and staying away so long, the more he felt that he had been guilty of an unjustifiable, and perhaps unpardonable offence. He noticed with extreme discomposure the swarm of moths, as he called them to himself, who were fluttering in the light of her beauty: he would gladly have put them to flight; and this being out of the question, he would have been contented to take his place among them; but he dared not try ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... vegetable substance in fermentation, whether acetic or vinous. Hence it will abound about cider mills, swarm on preserves in the pantry, and in cellars or places where wine is being made or stored. The paper showed the tendency of the glucose in the over-ripe grape to the vinous ferment, and that the fly delighted in it. A singular accident showed how they loved even the very high spirits. In ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... on the edge of a precipice into whose depths no man dared look; into which Marius's hands might plunge him at will. Thoughts of Thorney, of the churned-up waters of the fords, of the camp-fires glowing through dusk, of the nervous press of men and beasts that lit upon the island like a swarm of bees, and, like a swarm, buzzed awhile and settled to brief rest, crowded upon him then. He would go back to Thorney—though never to the ivory workshop—and he would make enough to live on by telling tales to those who circled about the fires, ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... girls near him with the red wine, so that there was great wailing over spoiled collars, combined with loud laughter. Every moment Beautiful Sara was becoming more amazed by this convulsive merriment of her husband, and she was oppressed with nameless fears as she gazed on the buzzing swarm of gaily glittering guests who were comfortably enjoying themselves here and there, nibbling the thin Passover cakes, drinking wine, gossiping, or ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... slanderer, traitor, and seducer; A fawning, base, trepanning liar; The marks peculiar of his sire. Or, grant him but a drone at best; A drone can raise a hornet's nest. The Dean had felt their stings before; And must their malice ne'er give o'er? Still swarm and buzz about his nose? But Ireland's friends ne'er wanted foes. A patriot is a dangerous post, When wanted by his country most; Perversely comes in evil times, Where virtues are imputed crimes. His guilt is clear, the proofs are pregnant; A traitor to the vices regnant. What spirit, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... refectory,[22] where a battalion might have drilled; I see the long tables, the five hundred heads bent above the plates, the rapid motion of five hundred forks, of a thousand hands, and sixteen thousand teeth; the swarm of servants running here and there, called to, scolded, hurried, on every side at once; I hear the clatter of dishes, the deafening noise, the voices choked with food crying out: "Bread—bread!" and I feel once more the formidable appetite, the herculean strength of jaw, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... to this theory by the fact that in November 1872, when the earth was passing through space and had arrived at that part of its orbit which intercepted the orbit of Biela's Comet, instead of the comet being seen, the earth came into contact with a swarm of meteors, and this is accepted as evidence that Biela's Comet was condensed far away in the colder regions of interplanetary space into a more solid form of matter, known as meteors. One of the more ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... than any live eel ever was to being skinned. The time consumed was but an hour and the pecuniary swindle trifling. But though the hour was early and there were few habitations in sight, there soon gathered around us a swarm of most importunate beggars—brown, withered old women spinning on distaffs held in the hand (a process I fancied the world had outgrown), and stopping every moment to hold out a dirty claw, with ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... in a day, and the population fluctuates from place to place with a facility surprising to Europeans. It is only necessary to make a clearing in the jungle, and erect barracks for a few soldiers, and—as water rushes at once into hollows scooped in the damp sea-sand—so do the natives of India swarm into the clearing, and create a city.' To this new city of Amherst Mr. and Mrs. Boardman came in the spring of 1827, and joined Mr. and Mrs. Wade and Mr. Judson. It was bitterly painful to them to learn that the wife of the latter, that noble and beloved woman whose life had been preserved as ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... the Holothuriae (a family of Radiata) subsist on living coral; and the singular structure of bone within the anterior extremity of their bodies, certainly appears well adapted for this purpose. The number of the species of Holothuria, and of the individuals which swarm on every part of these coral-reefs, is extraordinarily great; and many shiploads are annually freighted, as is well-known, for China with the trepang, which is a species of this genus. The amount of coral yearly consumed, and ground down into the finest mud, by these several creatures, ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... to catch the details called out by Lassiter, but she saw the line of cattle lengthening. Then, like a stream of white bees pouring from a huge swarm, the steers stretched out from the main body. In a few moments, with astonishing rapidity, the whole herd got into motion. A faint roar of trampling hoofs came to Jane's ears, and gradually swelled; low, rolling clouds of dust began to ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... shake fort deir leafs, Ash maids shake out deir locks, Und singen mit de rifulets, Vitch ripplen round de rocks, Und beople swarm land-outwards, Und cities weary men, Hans Breitmann rode de Belgier mark For Spa in ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... a play previously rehearsed were being acted before the eyes of the audience, the "prominent representatives" of the city and state began to swarm out from the wings and fill the chairs. Senators, judges, millionaires, popular preachers, all sunk to the dead level of a supporting chorus, an impressive illustration of the littleness of the locally great. To all those thousands ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... quivering, a dumb hopeless look in her eyes. "They can't get through to close the doors. My man Ike is in there." She put down her head and sat weeping. The boy knew the woman. She was a neighbour who lived in an unpainted house on the hillside. In the yard in front of her house a swarm of children played among the stones. Her husband, a great hulking fellow, got drunk and when he came home kicked his wife. The boy had ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... miles south of Vera Cruz. If Ned himself had been aware of it, he might have changed his plans and ridden right in among his own friends. As it was, however, in less than three minutes he had cantered in among a swarm of angry Mexicans and glittering spear-points. Their state of discipline was witnessed to by the fact that the captain in nominal command of them had some difficulty in obtaining from them permission ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... doubt is due to the near approach and disturbing attraction of some large comet, or else it was flung above or below the ordinary plane in the catastrophe that we think befell the large planet that doubtless formerly existed where we now find this swarm. You can see that its path makes a considerable angle to the plane of the ecliptic, and that it is now about crossing the line." It soon presented the phase of a half moon, but the waviness of the straight line, as in the case of Venus and Mercury, showed that the size of the mountains ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... open spaces, all lent an air of luxurious grandeur to the panorama. A few carriages, very few at that early hour, were ascending the avenue, while a stream of bewildered, bustling people, suggesting a swarm of ants, plunged into the huge archway ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... the wheel down, Martin stopped the engine, and the Snark rounded to and the anchor rumbled down in three fathoms. Before we could catch our breaths a swarm of black Tannese was alongside and aboard—grinning, apelike creatures, with kinky hair and troubled eyes, wearing safety-pins and clay-pipes in their slitted ears: and as for the rest, wearing nothing ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... Chinese excluded because they are too docile and carry a head of their own. Then we want the Jap excluded because he is too smart for us to compete with. When we lose a few million white men fighting Japan, as we will have to do soon, as they swarm over here, dictating how they shall be treated, then the white man's burden will be pretty heavy with the colored problem, and a general house-cleaning may follow that will ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
... A swarm of ideas flared up in Lyamshin's crafty mind like a shower of fireworks. It all suddenly took a different colour, though still panic prevented ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... (most of which I am inclined to think were due to projection); to the teachings of Pythagoras and his followers, Empedocles and Apollonius; to Cicero and Tacitus; to Virgil, who frequently talks of ghosts and seers of Tyana; to Plato, the exponent of magic; and to Plutarch, whose works swarm with allusions to Occultism of all kinds—phantasms of the dead, satyrs, and numerous ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... the river-bank at a distance of a quarter of a mile or so, and he to another and another in succession, and by this living telephone the news was delivered to the chief as he sat by his fireside. A salute was then fired to welcome us, and a swarm of musket-bullets, flying scarce high enough for comfort, pinged over our heads. As soon as we reached the landing at the village, a dignified young man stepped forward and thus ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... began to suspect, what was the truth, that they were a day after the fair, and that all the electioneering rips that swarm in the purlieus of political clubs during an impending dissolution of Parliament, men who become political characters in their small circle because they have been talked of as once having an intention to stand for places for which they never ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... countenances fixed straight forward. Around the wagon is hung a multitude of household articles—pans, pails, kettles, brooms, and what not; and on a heap of beds, bedding, quilts, striped blankets, &c., is the old woman, the daughter, about eighteen, and a perfect swarm of white-headed little ones. The father, and his two stalwort sons, are busy in the forest close at hand. How merrily the echoes ring out at each blow of their axes, and how the earth groans with the shock of the falling trees. The two largest ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... Getzewicz was by no means an easy or a pleasant one: he had to contend with a swarm of official insects; which, like Canadian musquitoes when disturbed, attack the new comer from every side. However, Mr. Getzewicz stood his ground firmly. He soon discovered that the secretary of the police court who had drawn up the depositions was a convict, sentenced for life ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... the plains, and the icy-grey face of hunger stares stiffly from the northern cliffs upon laborious but unhappy human multitudes. The sea breaks upon this coast against a palisadoed fence of rocks and cliffs, around which swarm flocks of polar birds with cries and screams. Storms alternate with thick mists. The cliffs along this coast have extraordinary shapes; now ascend they upwards like towers, now resemble beasts, now present gigantic ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... who treated me as if I were dirt, and pretended not to know my name. I tell you, Ida, the Bar is a sickening profession; literature is worse; all the professions are played out, Europe is overcrowded with educated men; they swarm like aphides in a hot summer—your single fly the progenitor of a quintillion of living creatures. When I see the men in their wigs and gowns, hurrying up and down the Temple courts, swarming on all the staircases, choking up the doors of the law-courts, they ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... security. A sense of his own helplessness came on him as he saw this golden tide flowing past his door, and yet was unable to take advantage of it. Five hundred pounds! The sum kept buzzing in his head like a swarm of bees, and he threw himself down again in his chair to try and think where he could ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... hurrying off towards the store and the Mexicans began to swarm to and fro. Some reward, they knew, was to be given to Juan to compensate him for the loss of his gold. His gold and his labor and all the unpaid debt that was owing to him and his son and the rest. The streets began to clatter with flying hoofs as they rode off to summon el pueblo, and by ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... after a while when thay all becum calm, Thay gathered together like bees in a swarm, Resolved to pick up all th' fragments an' th' wood, An' splice 'em together as weel as thay cud, Hasumever thay started a putting it streight, An' wi spelking and braying thay ...
— Th' History o' Haworth Railway - fra' th' beginnin' to th' end, wi' an ackaant o' th' oppnin' serrimony • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... his sleep that he was steering a ship, and that the rudder was forced from him: that he was dragged by his wife Octavia into a prodigiously dark place; and was at one time covered over with a vast swarm of winged ants, and at another, surrounded by the national images which were set up near Pompey's theatre, and hindered from advancing farther; that a Spanish jennet he was fond of, had his hinder parts so changed, as to resemble those of an ape; and having his ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... were for barking of the dogges, And shouting of the men and women eke. They ranne so, them thought their hearts would break. They yelled as the fiendes do in hell; The duckes cried as men would them quell;* *kill, destroy The geese for feare flewen o'er the trees, Out of the hive came the swarm of bees, So hideous was the noise, ben'dicite! Certes he, Jacke Straw, and his meinie,* *followers Ne made never shoutes half so shrill When that they woulden any Fleming kill, As thilke day was made upon the fox. Of brass they broughte ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... generality carried on, with a secret undermining of reformation interests, by some, under more specious pretenses; and, further, considering the general deluge of error and heresy, that has overrun these lands, and the swarm of erroneous heretics that has overspread the same, making very impious attacks upon the most part of revealed religion, who, notwithstanding, have found such shelter under the wings of a Laodicean church, and almost boundless ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... tweed coat and corduroys. A row of bee-hives stood along his side of the party wall, and he had taken the farthest one, which was empty, off its stand, and was rubbing it on the inside with a handful of elder-flower buds, by way of preparation for a new swarm. Even from my bed-room window I remarked, as he turned his head occasionally, that he was singularly handsome. His movements were those of a lazy man in a hurry, though there seemed no reason for hurry in his task. But when it was done, ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... two others, triumphant in success, became idiots and assented. Making out a check for L5,000, Noyes started for the bank, check in hand, and entering, instantly found himself with a hot and angry swarm of hornets ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... believe in fairy stories. At first there were only a few, but in a week or two the country was simply running alive with dragons of all sizes, and in the air you could sometimes see them as thick as a swarm of bees. They all looked alike except as to size. They were green with scales, and they had four legs and a long tail and great wings like bats' wings, only the wings were a pale, half-transparent yellow, like ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... my breast were those of mingled pity and veneration. But how soon were all my feelings changed! The lips of Plato were never more worthy of a prognostic swarm of bees, than were the lips of this holy man! It was a day of the administration of the sacrament; and his subject was, of course, the passion of our Saviour. I have heard the subject handled a thousand times; I ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... across the North Sea the three Germanic tribes which were destined to form the main element in the English race were multiplying and unconsciously preparing to swarm to their new home. The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes occupied territories in the region which includes parts of the present Holland, of Germany about the mouth of the Elbe, and of Denmark. They were barbarians, living partly from piratical expeditions against the northern ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... country. Those barbarians leaving Pannonia to the Hunns, entered Italy, easily made themselves masters of Milan, under their king Alboinus, in 568; and extending their dominions, often threatened Rome itself. In the reign of Charles the Fat, the Hunns were expelled Pannonia by the Hongres, another swarm from the same northern hive, akin to the Hunns, who gave to that kingdom the name of Hungary. That the Lombards were so called, not from their long swords, as some have pretended, but from their long beards, see demonstrated ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... clamoring madly at his door was a romping swarm of youngsters eager to show Uncle Ralph the Christmas tree which, though he had helped to trim it the night before, he inspected in great surprise. And here in his chair by another Yule-log he found Roger, staring wide-eyed at the glittering tree with his thin ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... no power in that "Beware!" for our little navy, which had performed such valiant deeds, had, under the pretext of "public economy," been transformed into a swarm of gun-boats—a "mosquito fleet"—that was ridiculed at home and despised abroad. British cruisers patrolled American waters, and insulted our flag whenever they pleased. They became legalized plunderers, and no American merchant vessel leaving port was ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Hermonians, Ophitae, and wherever they settled there will be always found some reference to their antient history, and religion. As they were particularly styled Ophitae, or Hivites, many places whither they came, were said to swarm with [1168]serpents. Rhodes was under this predicament, and had the name of Ophiusa: which name was given on account of the Hivites, who there settled, and of the serpent-worship, which they introduced. But ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... "and whether they knew of my place before or came upon it by accident, they would probably think it safer to steal from me than to raid one of the ranches and thus risk bringing all the ranchmen about their ears like a swarm ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... a noble arctic wilderness; so long as the prospector strikes farther and farther into the rugged mountains; so long as quick travel over great stretches of country is necessary or desirable; so long as the salmon swarm up the rivers to furnish food for the catching; so long as the Indian moves from fishing camp to village and from village to hunting camp—so long will the dog be hitched to the sled in Alaska; so long will his joyful yelp and his plaintive ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... the old Vikings must have uttered, and it pealed out like the regular beat of a big drum. It expressed challenge and defiance, victory and revenge, and, to the ears of the red hearers on the other shores, the thickets seemed fairly to swarm with fighting men. The four added their efforts to those of Long Jim, but their cries formed merely a chorus, above which swelled the thundering note ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... did not stop to hear. He suddenly clapped his bonnet on his head and went out. He had an urgent errand on High Street, to buy grass and flower seeds and tools that would certainly be needed in April. It took him an hour or more of shrewd looking about for the best bargains, in a swarm of little barnacle and cellar shops, to spend a few of the kirk's shillings. When he found himself, to his disgust, looking at a nail studded collar for a little dog he called himself a "doited auld fule," and tramped back ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... where there are no northern forms, and scarcely any alpine. I expected the volcanoes of Hawaii would be a good case, and asked Dr. Seeman about them. It seems a man has lately published a list of Hawaiian plants, and the mountains swarm with European alpine genera and some species![68] Is not this most extraordinary and a puzzler? They are, I believe, truly oceanic islands in the absence of mammals and the extreme poverty of birds and insects, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... round and in every unbuilt on space are endless groves of date palms, with masses of yellow dates. The creeks are embanked with brick and lined with popular cafe's where incredible numbers of Arabs squat and eat or drink huggas and hacshish and the like. The creeks and river swarm with bhellums and mahilas. A bhellum is a cross between a gondola and a Canada canoe: and a mahila is a barge like the ones used by King Arthur, Elaine or the Lady of Shallott: and its course and destination ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... would give the water a good round slap, the noise of which smote sharply upon the ear, like the crack of a pistol in an alley. It was a novel sight to watch them in their play, or labor, rather; for they were feeding upon the caplin, pretty little fishes that swarm along these shores at this particular season. We could track them beneath the surface about as well as upon it. In the sunshine, and in contrast with the fog, the sea was a very dark blue or deep purple. Above the whales the water was green, a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... life before had Beasley refrained from saying anything because he had nothing to say. The Canaanites were impressed. They said, "Good! Good!" For fear of some anticlimax Bruce at once gave his signal and the people began to swarm down the hillside into Choke Gulch, defiling through the Gulch toward a great shed that stood backed up to the hillside arrogantly. Although all Canaan had watched the building and rigging day by day, in Choke Gulch, the sight of the shed made the people almost hysterical, ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... same reason, probably, a neighbouring bee-hive had swarmed, and the new colony, pitching on the window-sill, was making its way into the room when the horrified nurse shut down the sash. If that well-meaning woman had only abstained from her ill-timed interference, the swarm might have settled on my lips, and I should have been endowed with that mellifluous eloquence which, in this country, leads far more surely than worth, capacity, or honest work, to the highest places in Church and State. But the opportunity was lost, and I have been obliged ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... brave in war, &c., are the merits which entitle them to this paradise, which they, and the other American natives, figure as a delightful country, blessed with perpetual spring, whose forests abound with game, whose rivers swarm with fish, where famine is never felt, and uninterrupted plenty shall be ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... were Presidents of the United States. But to the man in the street there is something imposing about the office and title of a chief magistrate, be he emperor, king, or elected head of a republic. It sets him apart. Look at the crowds that swarm to get a glimpse of the President when he passes through, no matter whether it is ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... the whole frontier was ablaze from the borders of Elam to those of the Mushku. Sargon turned his attention to where danger was most urgent; he made a descent on the territory of the Mannai, and laid it waste "as a swarm of locusts might have done;" he burnt their capital, Izirtu, demolished the fortifications of Zibia and Armaid, and took Ullusunu captive, but, instead of condemning him to death, he restored to him his liberty and his crown on condition of his paying a regular tribute. This act of clemency, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... out of the way of the two cavalry soldiers of the Rajah's Bodyguard who galloped recklessly ahead of the car. Soon they reached the Nila Mahal, or Blue Palace, as His Highness's residence was called, with its iron-studded gates, carved doors, and countless wooden balconies. A swarm of retainers in magnificent, if soiled, gold-laced liveries filled the courtyards, and bare-footed sepoys in red coats, generally burst at the seams and lacking buttons, and old shakoes with white cotton flaps hanging down ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... quartered, and then relapses into irrelevancy; so that it is obvious English people do without the word for the delightful reason that they have not got the thing. We have it here very badly; an epidemic raging at the end of nearly every summer, when cottages and farms swarm with soldiers and horses, when all the female part of the population gets engaged to be married and will not work, when all the male part is jealous and wants to fight, and when my house is crowded with individuals so brilliant and decorative in their dazzling uniforms that ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... them; it was not often that he was tempted to sin in word or deed—such, when they came, rushed on him suddenly; but in the realm of thought and imagination and motive he would often find himself, as it were, entering a swarm of such things, that hovered round him, impeding his prayer, blinding his insight, and seeking to sting the very heart of his spiritual life. Then once more he would fight himself free by despising and rejecting them, or would emerge ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... the nations form From Dover to the fountains of the Rhine, A hundred leagues, the scarlet battle-line, And by the Vistula great armies swarm, A vaster flood; rather my breast grows warm, Seeing all peoples of the earth combine Under one standard, with one countersign, Grown ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... squire that made his domain swarm with busy hands, like a bee-hive or ant-hill, would not serve his own interest, as well as ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... met at Ballinamona, and we drew Blake's coverts without a word. We killed our fox too and then went away to Pulhaddin gorse. I'll be blest if all the county weren't there. I never saw the boys swarm about a place so thick. Pulhaddin is the best gorse in the county. Of course it was no use drawing it; but as we were going away on the road to Loughrea the crowd was so thick that there was no riding among them. Ever so many horsemen got into the fields to be ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... road agents?" suggested a bystander; "they just swarm on galloper's Ridge, and they 'held up' the ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... boulevard Haussmann a second sergent de ville roused him with a warning about careless driving. He went more sanely thereafter, but bore a heart of utter misery; his eyes still wore a dazed expression, and now and again he shook his head impatiently as though to rid it of a swarm of tormenting thoughts. ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... timely safeguard against demons, and kindle it in the entrance. Then he made others bear a light before him, and stooped his body through the narrow jaws of the cavern, where he beheld a number of iron seats among a swarm of gliding serpents. Next there met his eye a sluggish mass of water gently flowing over a sandy bottom. He crossed this, and approached a cavern which sloped somewhat more steeply. Again, after this, a foul and gloomy room was disclosed to the visitors, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... a swarm of human beings cast away on some desert island. This earth is our island, a little island in space, and it is a desert island and a badly arranged island in more ways than one. Many of us lack good dwellings, some of us lack food, all of us are worried ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... your friend that so cleverly unloaded his quarrel upon us? Hell's fires! but they were like a swarm of wasps. Who is your ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... as to darken the sky, more effectually than thickest, blackest clouds. They had watched them settle down on tree, bush, bright green meadow, and fields of waving corn. And they had trembled. For they knew that in an incredibly short time not a vestige of anything green would be left. For a swarm of locusts to visit the land they had thought one of the direst calamities that could come upon them. But now invaders as numerous and far more terrible had ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... that was on the citadel, who cried to him, "O AEneas, the glory is departed from Troy and the Greeks have the mastery in the city; for armed men are coming forth from the great horse of wood and thousands also swarm in at the gates, which Sinon hath treacherously opened." And as he spake others came up under the light of the moon, as Hypanis and Dymas and young Coroebus, who had but newly come to Troy, seeking Cassandra to be his wife. To whom AEneas spake: ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... butt, in the kitchen (i.e., the outer apartment). By, past, aside. By, beside. By himsel, beside himself. Bye attour (i.e., by and attour), beside and at a distance. Byke, a bees' nest; a hive; a swarm; a ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... him. He seems as thrifty on the wiry grama as among the most succulent grasses of the Republican. The sneaking coyote and a number of larger wolves put in an occasional appearance. Birds of the hawk and raven families are common. The waters swarm with numerous varieties of duck. It surprises us at this utmost distance from the maritime border to see flocks of Arctic gulls circling around the low sand-hills, and sickle-bill curlews wheeling high in air above their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... great stir in the grove beyond them; they started in terror as a clash of barbaric music, of cymbals and of atabals, sounded on their ears, and, in an instant, they found themselves surrounded by a swarm of swarthy Saracens. The Lady Isabelle was soon a struggling prisoner, but nimble young Renaud, swifter-footed and more wary than his companion, escaped from the grasp of his white-robed captor, tripped up the heels of a fierce-eyed Saracen with a sudden twist learned in the ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... square inch. Even in the lagoon, where certain shell-fish seem to sicken, others (it is notorious) prosper exceedingly and make the riches of these islands. Fish, too, abound; the lagoon is a closed fish-pond, such as might rejoice the fancy of an abbot; sharks swarm there, and chiefly round the passages, to feast upon this plenty, and you would suppose that man had only to prepare his angle. Alas! it is not so. Of these painted fish that came in hordes about the entering Casco, some ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with trees and shrubs, the trees, which are of large dimensions, seeming to grow literally out of the rock itself, earth surfaces being conspicuous by their absence. It is uninhabited by human beings, nor could any traces of animals be discovered, but seabirds swarm over every part of the island, and about four hundred wood pigeons were shot by the explorers while they remained there. No fruits or vegetable matter fit for consumption could, however, be found, nor the existence of any supply of fresh water, and the belief is ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... like Sparta, in its nature warlike, they had amongst them an ecclesiastical state, in its nature pacific. Where there are numerous slaves, every freeman is induced by the strongest motives to familiarise himself with the use of arms. The commonwealths of Italy did not, like those of Greece, swarm with thousands of these household enemies. Lastly, the mode in which military operations were conducted during the prosperous times of Italy was peculiarly unfavourable to the formation of an efficient ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... awoke the spirit and incited the hope of every man to whom the absence of inherited wealth supplied an impetus to labour; and the populated portions of these States became as a hive thronged with an active, money-seeking swarm, by which the idle and the inert were thrust aside before they became awake to their changed condition, or heard a murmur of the tide whose waves were encircling them about on ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... twisted one above the other in a squatting attitude, were lean and hairy, and covered with open sores which were kept open by the swarm of insects that infested him. His loin-cloth was rotting from him. His emaciated body—powdered and smeared with ashes and dust and worse—was perched bolt-up-right on a flat earth dais that had once on a time been the throne of a crossroads ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy |
