"Weathercock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the two corner chestnuts of several branches in its fall. This is not all. One large elm out of the two on the left-hand side as you enter what I call the elm walk, was likewise blown down; the maple bearing the weathercock was broke in two, and what I regret more than all the rest is, that all the three elms which grew in Hall's meadow, and gave such ornament to it, are gone; two were blown down, and the other so much injured that it cannot stand. I am happy to add, however, that ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... the house is completely in the old style; with stone shafted casements, a great bow-window of heavy stone work, and a portal with armorial bearings over it, carved in stone. At each corner of the building is an octagon tower, surmounted by a gilt ball and weathercock. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... exposes to public view the rottenness of his heart, in principle diametrically opposite to the simplicity of the Gospel of Christ, a glorious latitudinarian that can, as to religion, turn and twist like an eel on the angle, or rather like the weathercock that stands on the steeple;" and describes him as "contradicting the wholesome doctrine of the Church of England." He "knows him not by face much less his personal practise." He may have "kept himself clear of the ignorant ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... country road, with wide, grassy borders and footpaths close to the rail fences, while just ahead lay the silent village, with the small, brown, one-storey, one-roomed school-house on one side of the green, and the little white box of a meeting-house, with its gilt weathercock, on ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... came to the Abbey, now a Cathedral, amidst much curious pageantry, and for the first time a Bible was presented to the sovereign.... Mary's procession to the Abbey is signalised by the exploits of a Dutchman, who sat astride on the weathercock of St. Paul's five hundred feet in the air, as the Queen passed. The two Archbishops and the Bishop of London were all in the Tower, so Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, put the crown on Mary's head. On Jan. 14th, 1559, London was wild with joy, as Elizabeth passed from ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... the man consequently becomes highly amenable to his own belief. The primary question respecting men is this,—How far are they affected by the original axiomatic truths? Truths are like the winds. Near the earth's surface winds blow in variable directions, and the weathercock becomes the type of fickleness. So there is a class of little truths, dependent upon ever-variable relations, with which it is the function of cunning, shrewdness, tact, to deal, and numbers of men seldom or never lift their heads above this weathercock region. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... the sensitiveness of the apparatus, especially when the rod has to traverse several stories. Mr. Emile Richard, inspector of the Versailles waterworks, has just devised an ingenious system which, while considerably reducing the weight of the movable part, allows the weathercock to preserve all its sensitiveness. This apparatus consists of two principal parts—one fixed and the other movable. The stationary part is designated in the accompanying figure by the letters A and B and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... the man with the tent! I see Mrs. Barker doing up the lunch in a hamper and a great basket. Now Mr. Laurence is looking up at the sky and the weathercock. I wish he would go too. There's Laurie, looking like a sailor, nice boy! Oh, mercy me! Here's a carriage full of people, a tall lady, a little girl, and two dreadful boys. One is lame, poor thing, he's got a crutch. Laurie didn't tell us that. Be quick, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... death, and B the spectral appearance of the person who dies. In talking of this subject it is necessary to put out of the question all who play fast and loose with their secret convictions: these had better give us a reason, when they feel internal pressure for explanation, that there is no weathercock at Kilve; this would do for all cases. But persons of real inquiry will see that first, experience does not bear out the asserted frequency of the spectre, without the alleged coincidence of death: and secondly, that if the crowd of purely casual spectres were so great ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... topic of general interest, (since we have no choice of weather or no,) in which exact knowledge is comfortably impossible, and in which he felt himself at home from his repeated experiments in raising the wind in order to lower the due-point? (See The Weathercock, an Essay on Rotation in Office, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... nimbleness in nature, you women have, to be first inconstant; but if you had not made the more haste, the wind was veering too upon my weathercock: The best on't is, Florimel ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... whatever course I take in public affairs in this country, I conceal nothing, I take it publicly, openly, and deliberately. If I err, I am satisfied to abide the consequences; and, whenever it may suit the weathercock judgment of Lord Mayo, and his vacillating law advisers, to characterise my acts or my opinion as illegal, seditious, heretical, idolatrous, or treasonable, I must, like every other subject, be content to take my chance of their being able to find a jury sufficiently facile or sufficiently ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... is yea and nay; Autumn is a weathercock, Blown every way: Summer days for me, When every leaf is on ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... And with the rush of the desire came the thought, as though it were a whispered voice from the heart of the desert: "What are you that you should speak so to her. What have you done to make you worthy of this woman? You, a laggard, as frivolous a thing until now as a weathercock, and by no means so useful a factor in the world, your regeneration merely ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... solitary, being much overshadowed with trees. One house alone stood there, and that was about three-quarters of a mile before you came to East Lynne. It was on the left hand side, a square, ugly, red brick house with a weathercock on the top, standing some little distance from the road. A flat lawn extended before it, and close to the palings, which divided it from the road, was a grove of trees, some yards in depth. The lawn was divided by a narrow middle gravel path, to ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... death. The farm had on it a small Dutch cottage, built about a century before, and inhabited by the Van Tassels. This was enlarged, still preserving the quaint Dutch characteristics; it acquired a tower and a whimsical weathercock, the delight of the owner, and became one of the most snug and picturesque residences on the river. A slip of Melrose ivy was planted, and soon overrun the house; and there were shaded nooks and wooded retreats, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... translation, (for the benefit, I must suppose, of the new Regicide Directory,) have let down a little of these flattering hopes. We and the Directory know that the author, whatever changes his works seemed made to indicate, like a weathercock grown rusty, remains just where he was in the last week of last October. It is true, that his protest against binding him to his opinions, and his reservation of a right to whatever opinions he pleases, remain in their full force. This variability ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... account of the number of Welsh people living on that side of the town; though why the "Taffies" were honoured with a distinct little market house of their own is not made clear. This building was taken down in 1803, the 3-dial clock, weathercock, &c., being advertised for sale, October ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... by the Upper House in 1879. Sir Henry's object, like Mr. Berry's, was to strengthen the hands of the Assembly, but unfortunately for his scheme he had a very different class of electors at his back. As happened over the Land Act, his weathercock failed to point in the right direction. When the Council rejected his Bill, he indulged in threats and fulminations which would have done credit to a Berryite of the Berryites. But the country utterly refused to back him up. It would ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... the while with cold, I opened my eyes. What then did I see? My first glance was upwards at the cold fleecy clouds, which as by some optical delusion appeared to stand still, while the steeple, the weathercock, and our two selves were carried swiftly along. Far away on one side could be seen the grassy plain, while on the other lay the sea bathed in translucent light. The Sund, or Sound as we call it, could be discovered beyond the ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... measure the baleful consequences. Who that is false to his God can be expected to remain faithful to his Sovereign? When a man, as a Catholic Bishop, marries, and, under the mask of patriotism, becomes the declared tool of all work to every faction, and is the weathercock, shifting to any quarter according to the wind,—such a man can be of no real service to any party: and yet has a man of this kind been by turns the primum mobile of them all, even to the present times, and was one of ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... the weathercock look handsome, with his gilt feathers shining brightly in the rays of the morning sun as he turned to and fro with ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory
... to us also, running up to three peaks with a patch of snow on the centre peak, but not quite at the top." He closed his eyes, and added, "Yes, and there is a village at the bottom of the valley by a swift-running stream, and in it a small white church with a spire and a gilt weathercock with a bird on it. Then," he continued rapidly, "I can see the house where I am going to live, with the Pasteur Boiset, an old white house with woods above and all about it, and the beautiful lake beneath, and beyond, a great mountain. There is a tree in the garden opposite ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... did not await the conclusion of this explanation; before her father had finished speaking, she led her lover to the window, pointed to the weathercock, and said: "Look, Geronimo, the wind ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... Crofton Croker's "Traditions of the South of Ireland," Mrs. Carey's "Legends of the French Provinces," Andrew Lang's Green, Blue and Red fairy books, Laboulaye's "Last Fairy Tales," Hauff's "The Inn in the Spessart," Julia Goddard's "Golden Weathercock," Frere's "Eastern Fairy Legends," Asbjornsen's "Folk Tales," Susan Pindar's "Midsummer Fays," Nisbit Bain's "Cossack ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... the walls. There are two porches, one in the centre the other in the north tower, and the walls show indications of characteristic Saxon masonry. On the central roof is a large fleche or turret of two stages carrying a weathercock on ...
— Exeter • Sidney Heath
... do that. Indeed, I doubt whether I should take them. But if it should come to pass that she should wish to send them back, you may be sure that others will come. In such a matter she is very good as a weathercock, showing how the wind blows." In this way the dinner-party at the palace was in a degree comforting ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... marsh. One of the cemetery-paths runs along the brink of the hill; and here, on a wooden bench under a clump of red cedars, Putnam would sit for hours enjoying the listless mood of convalescence. Where the will remains passive, the mind, like an idle weathercock, turns to every puff of suggestion, and the senses, born new from sickness, have the freshness and delicacy of a child's. It soothed his eye to follow lazily the undulations of the creek, lying like the folds of a blue silk ribbon on the flat ground of the marsh below. He ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... always jutting out, a crooked gable, and a husky old dog in the recess under the steps at the door. Behind the house a wide yard with nettles, wormwood, and burdocks in the corners, outbuildings with doors that stick, doves and rooks on the thatched roofs, a little storehouse with a rusty weathercock, two or three birch-trees with rooks' nests in their bare top branches, and beyond—the road with cushions of soft dust in the ruts and a field and the long hurdles of the hemp patches, and the grey little huts of the village, and the cackle of geese in the ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... down his garden next day thinking of the contingency. The sense that the paths he was pacing, the cabbage-plots, the apple-trees, his dwelling, cider-cellar, wring-house, stables, and weathercock, were all slipping away over his head and beneath his feet, as if they were painted on a magic-lantern slide, was curious. In spite of John South's late indisposition he had not anticipated danger. To inquire concerning his health had been ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... fowl, like the more domestic weathercock, may often be seen wheeling through the air on the approach of a storm, and exhibits unmistakable signs of exultation when it is going to thunder. It is not a bird of song, but is unsurpassed as a screamer. To the common Kite, a plebeian member of the genus, has ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... accident, giddy with the attempt to look over, horrified by the danger, confused and distressed by the hair that came wildly flapping about her head and face, and by the puffs of wind at her hoop, had sunk down in the centre of the little leaden square, clinging with all her might to the staff of the weathercock, and feeling as if the whole tower were rocking with her, absolutely seeing the battlements dance. How was she ever to be safely got down the rickety ladder leading to the crumbling stone stair? Ethel knelt by her, twisted up the fluttering hair, bade her shut her ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... concentrated cunning, and remind us of the watchful, angry eyes of a gorilla, at the same time, into ridicule. I knew that he was selfish, without any affection, unreliable, full of whims, turning like a weathercock with every wind that blows, and caring for nothing in the world except ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... animal should canter, his fair rider's head will be jerked to and fro as "a vexed weathercock;" her drapery will be blown about, instead of falling gracefully around her; and her elbows rise and fall, or, as it were, flap up and down like the pinions of an awkward nestling endeavouring to fly. ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... play the part of the young enthusiast in "Excelsior," as I looked up at the weathercock which surmounts the spire. But the man who oils the weathercock-spindle has to get up to it in some way, and that way is by ladders which reach to within thirty feet of the top, where there is a small door, through which he emerges, ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the weathercock," he said, "and telegraphed to the clerk of the weather-office not to let the wind change ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... eventide, Anthony, full of solicitude and musing on the fate of his billet, was spreading himself out, like a newly-feathered peacock, in the trim garden behind his dwelling. A richly-embroidered Genoa silk waistcoat and amber-coloured velvet coat glittered in the declining sun, like the church weathercock perched just above him at a short distance from ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... invisible, As a nose on a man's face, or a weathercock on a steeple! My master sues to her; and she hath taught her suitor, He being her pupil, to become her tutor. O excellent device! Was there ever heard a better, That my master, being scribe, to ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... characteristic. The worst vices of the writer had not yet shown themselves; but the weakness which was the parent of those vices appears in every line. His levity, his inconsistency, his servility, were already what they were to the last. All his opinions, all his feelings, spin round and round like a weathercock in a whirlwind. Nay, the very impressions which he receives through his senses are not the same two days together. He sees Louis the Sixteenth, and is so much blinded by loyalty as to find his Majesty handsome. "I fixed my eyes," he says, "with a lively curiosity on his fine countenance, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... are like a balance, apt to propend each way, and to be weighed down with every wench's looks, his heart a weathercock, his affection tinder, or naphtha itself, which every fair object, sweet smile, or mistress's favour sets on fire. Guianerius tract 15. cap. 14. refers all this [4770]to "the hot temperature of ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... made improper choice of facts, and if I should be found at length most to resemble Maister Fabyan of old, who writing the life of Henry V. lays heaviest stress on a new weathercock set-up on St. Paul's steeple during that eventful reign, my book must share the fate of his, and be like that forgotten: reminding before its death perhaps a friend or two of a poor man (Macbean) living in later times, that Doctor ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... carriage-window as the train whirled rapidly through the scarcely-awakened country, and she had seen the soft and beautiful landscapes of the South lit up by the early sunlight. How the bright little villages shone, with here and there a gilt weathercock glittering on the spire of some small gray church, while as yet in many valleys a pale gray mist lay along the bed of the level streams or clung to the dense woods on the upland heights! Which was the more beautiful—the sharp, clear picture, with its brilliant colors ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... thin and faint into the parlour with the regulated temperature; and the tin shoes go equably forward over blood and rain. To be overwise is to ossify; and the scruple-monger ends by standing stockstill. Now the man who has his heart on his sleeve, and a good whirling weathercock of a brain, who reckons his life as a thing to be dashingly used and cheerfully hazarded, makes a very different acquaintance of the world, keeps all his pulses going true and fast, and gathers impetus as he runs, until, if he be running towards anything better than wildfire, he may shoot ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... great passion on receiving the letter, saying that Monsieur Porthos was a weathercock, and that she was sure it was for some woman he had ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in the steeple! There the foul blast roars and whistles! High up in the steeple, where it is free to come and go through many an airy arch and loophole, and to twist and twine itself about the giddy stair, and twirl the groaning weathercock, and make the very tower shake and shiver! High up in the steeple, where the belfry is, and iron rails are ragged with rust, and sheets of lead and copper, shrivelled by the changing weather, crackle and heave beneath the unaccustomed tread; and birds stuff shabby nests into ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... slept, so that passers-by were forced to step over them, but in spite of starvation and weariness the old indomitable spirit would assert itself. One of the poor fellows, while the column was passing by Christ Church, looked up at the weathercock and remarked to a comrade that it was the first and only instance of Wheeler's boys seeing a chicken which ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... this note is that "Janus Weathercock"—one of the pseudonyms of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright—after a long absence from its pages, had sent to the previous month's London Magazine, May, 1822, an amusing letter of criticism of that periodical, commenting on some ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... says Alan, "I am nae weathercock. Thirty guineas, if ye land me on the sea-side; and sixty, if ye put ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pitiless in the neighborhood of that bleak hill-top upon which the Castle Inn reared its rickety walls. The cruel blasts raved wildly round that frail erection. They disported themselves with the shattered pigeon-house, the broken weathercock, the loose tiles, and unshapely chimneys; they rattled at the window-panes, and whistled in the crevices; they mocked the feeble building from foundation to roof, and battered, and banged, and tormented it in their fierce gambols, until it trembled and rocked ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... the goblin, unable to endure either its spiritual potency or the worthy parson's singing, shot upward like a ball and rode off on the gale, carrying with him the nightcap of the parson's wife, which he hung on the weathercock of ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... lost all her fears of John Jay's dying. Although the promise made to George on the haymow was faithfully kept, he could no more avoid getting into mischief than a weathercock can keep from turning when ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... a sight that would spoil the finest landscape in the world, so a lady who desires to ride well should not be satisfied if she can merely stick on, like the lady in Fig. 101, but should try to ride correctly. Her head will perhaps at first be jerked to and fro like a "vexed weathercock," but practice will enable her to overcome the tendency to fix the muscles of her neck and to allow her head to follow the motion of her body. She should take care that her elbows do not flap up ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... their triumphs are a contradiction of their theories. To take a very familiar example, Wordsworth's theory of poetic diction shifted like a weathercock. In the Advertisement to the Lyrical Ballads (1798) he asserted: "The following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... the castle gate like a warder blowing his horn; but there was no warder," said the wind. "I turned the weathercock above the tower—it sounded like a watchman snoring inside the tower; but no watchman was there—it was only kept by rats and mice. Poverty presided at the table—poverty sat in the clothes' chests and in the store-rooms. The doors fell off their hinges—there came ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... direction of the arrow, as illustrated in Fig. 146, and the sail or sails abaft the mast turn the boat in the direction of the arrow A. The boat thus revolves upon the center of the mast much as a weathercock revolves upon its pivot. If there is more than one mast, all the sails carried abaft the mainmast serve to turn the boat in the direction A. The work of sailing depends greatly upon the skill in balancing these two effects ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... Spring is yea and nay, Autumn is a weathercock Blown every way: Summer days for me When every leaf ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... note that subtle change in the faces of those they passed, which Barbara Palmer knew so well—faces that changed, obedient to the weathercock of royal caprice—the countenances of courtiers who even yet had not learnt justly to weigh the influence of that imperial favourite, or to understand that she ruled their King with a power which no transient fancy for newer faces could undermine. A day or two in the sulks, frowns and ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... keen and his stick far-reaching. Moreover, no fear of man prevented him from applying the latter with effect to the heads of slumberers during divine service. By way of retaliation the youths, when opportunity occurred, would tie the cord of the "tinkler" to the weathercock, and the parish on a stormy night would be startled by the sound of ghostly, fitful ting-tangs. To Sunday blows the clerk, who was afflicted with rheumatism, added weekday anathemas as he climbed the steep ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... get gazing up at him, a pygmy flashed with sun. A weathercock or scarecrow or both things in one? As bright as a jewelled crown ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... often cried about you, for I was afraid lest you were drowned and lying at the bottom of the sea. Many a time I got up in the night and looked if the weathercock had turned; it turned often, but you did not return. I remember one day distinctly: the rain was pouring down in torrents; the dust-man had come to the house where I was in service; I went down with the dust-bin and stood ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... and Manchester, we have moved to Liverpool, Preston, and Lancaster. Another change in this weathercock of a girl. She has written no more letters to Michael Vanstone; and she has become as anxious to make money as I am myself. We are realizing large profits, and we are worked to death. I don't like this change in her: she has a purpose to answer, or she would not show such extraordinary ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... of here, Mariano; I'm tired of it, I'm dying. This life is killing me. My husband! He doesn't count. My friends! Fools that flay me as soon as I leave them. The doctor! as untrustworthy as a weathercock. All those men in my coterie, idiots. Master, have pity on me. Take me far away from here. You must know some other world; ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Peter, with an involuntary shiver, and a glance across the wall at a corroded weathercock on the top of the ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... access of air, and at the same time afford some shelter from perpendicular rain or dew. Other bell-flowers, as the hemerocallis and amaryllis, have their bells nodding only, as it were, or hanging obliquely toward the horizon; which, as their stems are slender, turn like a weathercock from the wind; and thus very effectually preserve their inclosed stamens and anthers from the rain and cold. Many of these flowers, both before and after their season of fecundation, erect their heads perpendicular ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... Africa, and will not judge the nigger hardly for any little blunder he may make in the account of his religion. But the fellow is a thorough seaman, and should know a top-gallant-sail from a weathercock. Now, look you, S'ip, for the credit of your friends, if you've no great pride on your own ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... fickle children. Neville almost wished now that Barry would give up Gerda and go out to Rome and fetch Nan back. But, to do that, Barry would have to fall out of love with Gerda and into love again with Nan; and even Barry, Neville imagined, was not such a weathercock as that. And Barry would really be happier with Gerda. With all their differences, they were both earnest citizens, both keen on social progress. Nan was a cynical flibberty-gibbet; it might not have been a happy union. Perhaps happy unions were not for such as Nan. But at the thought of Nan playing ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... he said, "I have long ceased to be surprised at anything. Poor Le Brusquet was in disgrace for a whole day for suggesting a new device for the Duke—a weathercock on a steeple." And he laughed as he added: "The Duke came back almost a week ago, with five hundred gentlemen in his train—amongst others the late rebel De Ganache, for whom he has ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... than any one in the whole house. Spite of her marvellous beauty—Katterle knew that there was nothing false about it—she would probably end by joining the nuns in the convent. But her mood changed with every breath, like the weathercock on the steeple. If she got out of bed the wrong way, or one did not guess her wishes before they were uttered, she would fly into a rage at the least trifle. Then she sometimes used very unkind words; but no one could cherish anger against her long, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... help Heaven was to send him in this matter. There was, in the lower House, a young man by the name of Harper, a lawyer from Brighton, who was sufficiently eccentric not to carry a pass. The light of fame, as the sunset gilds a weathercock on a steeple, sometimes touches such men for an instant and makes them immortal. The name of Mr. Harper is remembered, because it is linked with a greater one. But Mr. Harper was the first man over ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Richard? Are you turn'd pure? a changing weathercock! [Aside. I say its reason Henry should be king, Thou prince, I duke, as Geoffrey is ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... narrow, winding passage which led to an old court, surrounded by rubble walls, with little moss-covered galleries under the roof and a weathercock upon the peak, as in the Tanner's Lane in Strasbourg. To the right was the brewery, and in a corner a great wheel, turned by an enormous dog, which pumped the beer to every ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... represent a few of the recent improvements in the Zoological Gardens, as, the addition of the clock-house and weathercock[5] to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... interest held us all spellbound. We could see nothing but some stray glimpses of an ivy-clad wall. A weathercock, that had once been gilded, stood out black against the evening sky. The Grey Lady in the rustling silk, through whom you could see the rain drops splash on the gravel stones, was by no means on view. No green demons leaped these sullen ten-foot barricades, and no forwandered sea-serpent threw ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... khamsin^, norther, vendaval^, wuther^. windiness &c adj.; ventosity^; rough weather, dirty weather, ugly weather, stress of weather; dirty sky, mare's tail; thick squall, black squall, white squall. anemography^, aerodynamics; wind gauge, weathercock, vane, weather- vane, wind sock; anemometer, anemoscope^. sufflation^, insufflation^, perflation^, inflation, afflation^; blowing, fanning &c v.; ventilation. sneezing &c v.; errhine^; sternutative^, sternutatory^; sternutation; hiccup, hiccough; catching of the breath. Eolus, Boreas, Zephyr, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... welcomed into the city by "one Peter, a Dutchman," who placed himself on the weathercock of St. Paul's, holding "a streamer in his hand five yards long;" occasionally kneeling down on the said weathercock, "to the great marvell of the people," and balancing himself sometimes on one foot ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... has been desultory, and I am unfitted for any periodically recurring task, or any stipulated labor of body or mind. I have no command of my talents such as they are, and have to watch the varyings of my mind as I would a weathercock. Practice and training may bring me more into rule; but at present I am as useless for regular service as one of my own country Indians ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... the village clock, When he galloped into Lexington. He saw the gilded weathercock Swim in the moonlight as he passed, And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare, Gaze at him with a spectral glare, As if they already stood aghast At the bloody ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... you would have it, I could again set up the Church of God, willingly I would do it. But I see that there is not one man—save maybe some poor simple souls—that would have this done. Each man is set to save his skin and his goods—and you are such a weathercock that I should never blow you to a firm quarter. For what am I set against ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... horror of the east wind; and Tom Sheridan once kept him prisoner in the house for a fortnight by fixing the weathercock in that direction. ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... get on without us, d'you think? Like fish out of water! And yet we're reckoned as outcasts and all that. Devil take all your society women, I say. There's one I see pass by every day, a judge's wife, haughty and stuck up as a weathercock on a church spire. Think she'd look at one of us? But her husband, bless ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... Fame, who never cared a jot Whether she was admired or not, And never blush'd to show her face At any time in any place, In her own shape, without disguise, And visible to mortal eyes, On 'Change exact at seven o'clock Alighted on the weathercock, 570 Which, planted there time out of mind To note the changes of the wind, Might no improper emblem be Of her own mutability. Thrice did she sound her trump, (the same Which from the first belong'd to Fame, An old ill-favour'd instrument, With which the goddess was ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... the building. At this point of view it presented a large bay window that by a flight of four steps led into the garden. On one side rose a square, narrow turret, surmounted by a gilt dome and quaint weathercock, below the architrave of which was a sun-dial, set in the stonework; and another dial stood in the garden, with ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... shot by the quarantine establishment, with its hospital and many offices, the sun rose, without one attendant cloud, over the forest heights of Brooklyn, burnishing, as with gold, every window and weathercock opposed to its radiance. ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... corn, etc.). orienta east, eastern. ke that (conjunction). pluvo rain. kontraux against. suda south, southern. montri to show, to point out. velki to wilt, to wither. norda north, northern. vento wind. nova new. ventoflago weathercock. okcidenta ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... you are cherishing the hope that it will be different with you some day; your circumstances, you think, or your occupation, or your companionship will have changed, and so you fondly imagine that you yourself will be sure to change, as if your soul were just a weathercock that answers to every changing breeze. So perhaps you hope that some habit of self-indulgence or idleness will drop off, or some evil temper be eradicated; and whilst all this vague and mischievous dreaming goes on you yield very likely to some besetting sin, making no serious effort ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... what he called a scale-color. This animal Mr. Jones affirmed to be an admirable resemblance of a great favorite of the epicures in that country, which bore the title of lake-fish, and doubtless the assertion was true; for, although intended to answer the purposes of a weathercock, the fish was observed invariably to look with a longing eye in the direction of the beautiful sheet of water that lay imbedded in ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... pageant, meet inauguration of England's bloodiest reign. Of other pageants there was no lack; but I pass them by, as also the airy gyrations of Peter the Dutchman on the weathercock ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... calm to storm, and this changeability of climate extends to the persons. Thus, from earliest infancy, they are wont to shift with every wind. The head of a Langrois stands on his shoulders like a weathercock on the top of a church-steeple; it is never steady at one point, and, if it comes round again to that which it had left, it is not to stop there. As for me, I am of my country; only residence of the capital and constant application ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... journeys; each and all of them, old and young, healthy and sickly, would if they could take not merely the grand tour, but circulate round the two hemispheres with all the pleasure imaginable. At a certain period of the year, when the weathercock points the right way, the sun burns in the sign of the Lion, and the husbandman bends his weary form to gather in the golden corn, the legs of the rich Englishman begin to be nervously agitated, he feels a sense of suffocation, and pants for change—of ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church jumped over its own weathercock. Then, he held me by the arms, in an upright position on the top of the stone, and went on in these ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... my hand by Hadji Ali just in time to take the shoulder of the last of the herd, who had already charged headlong after his comrades and was disappearing in the jungle. Bang! went the "Baby;" round I spun like a weathercock, with the blood pouring from my nose, as the recoil had driven the sharp top of the hammer deep into the bridge. My "Baby" not only screamed, but kicked viciously. However, I knew that the elephant must be bagged, as the half-pound shell ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... we can explain changes and inconsistencies in the great organs set up to operate on public sentiment. Such a paper as the London "Times," having nothing higher than avaricious commerce and national pride to consult, in a conspicuous centre of affairs has thus become the great weathercock of the world, splendidly gilded, lifted very high in the air, but, like some other stupid chanticleers, crowing at false signals of the dawn, and well called the "Times," as in its columns nothing eternal was ever evinced. Everywhere ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... a touch of irony in his accent, himself looking a droll figure, hunched round his books and turning like a weathercock jerkily to keep the umbrella between him and the wind that strained its whalebone ribs ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... vane, a weathercock. too, also. vain, proud; empty. two, one and one. vein, a blood-vessel. trey, three at cards. waste, to consume; loss. tray, a shallow vessel. waist, part of the body. vale, a valley; a dell. ware, merchandise. veil, a cover; ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... retorted, lashing himself into ignoble rage. "By the love I once had! Say, rather, the love I have, Madame—for I am no woman-weathercock to wed the winner, and hold or not hold, stay or go, as he commands! You, it seems," he continued with a sneer, "have learned the wife's lesson well! You would practise on me now, as you practised on me the other night when you stood between him and me! I yielded then, I spared ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... nostrils. I saw in the shadow of the trees glowworms sparkling on the grass, and, in the masses of verdure lit up mysteriously by the moon, I traced strange shapes of fantastic monsters. There was, above all, a little pointed roof surmounted by a weathercock, buried in the trees at about fifty paces from my window, which greatly interested me. I could not in the obscurity make out either door or windows belonging to this singular tower. Was it an old pigeon-house, a tomb, a deserted summer-house? I could not tell, but its little pointed roof, with a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet |
