"Wild duck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... meadow floods the wild duck clamours, Now the wood pigeon wings a rapid flight, Now the homeward rookery follows up its vanguard, And the valley mists are curling ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... there was a herd of goats—some of them old and with big tough horns—which McKeith had started in his bachelor days to provide milk when, as sometimes happened, the milch cows failed; also to furnish savoury messes of kid's flesh—a pleasant change from the eternal salt beef varied with wild duck. Occasionally it happened, especially in mustering times, that nobody remembered to pen the goats in their yard by the lagoon, and on these occasions they would get under the house, and the noise of their horns knocking against the floor of her bedroom would so ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... taste from the wild duck, either wash it in vinegar before cooking or scald it in ...
— The Italian Cook Book - The Art of Eating Well • Maria Gentile
... and Ungava petrol-tanks punted down leisurely out of the north, like strings of unfrightened wild duck. It does not pay to "fly" minerals and oil a mile farther than is necessary; but the risks of transhipping to submersibles in the ice pack off Nain or Hebron are so great that these heavy freighters fly down to Halifax direct, and scent the air as they go. They are the biggest tramps aloft except ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... boschas. Other names: "Green-head," "Wild Duck." Adult male, in fall, winter, and spring, beautifully colored; summer, ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography [July 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... in the first race, he fairly whistled through the air like a wild duck in the second. Before he had run the length of the platform he had gained on the train, his nose almost even with the brass railing over which the girl leaned, the handkerchief in her hand. Midway between the platform and the cattle guard they saw the Duke lean ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... described, which were brought for sale, were never met with alive; but we saw a single small one, about the size of a canary-bird, of a deep crimson colour; a large owl; two large brown hawks, or kites; and a wild duck. The natives mentioned the names of several other birds; amongst which we knew the otoo, or blueish heron; and the torata, a sort of whimbrel, which are known by the same names at Otaheite; and it is probable, that there are a great many sorts, judging by the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... the bitter cold, whistled, took some steps of an odd dance along the road, and went on talking to the donkey as if he were making pleasant conversation to a companion. The only sign of life to be seen on earth or air was a thin line of wild duck high up in the sky, one group making wide circles over a vivid ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... aluminum pontoons under the body of the contrivance also told him that for the first time in his life he was looking at a hydro-aeroplane, capable of alighting on the water and starting up again, after the manner of a wild duck. ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... streamers waved and danced, The wanderer's eye could barely view The summer heaven's delicious blue; So wondrous wild, the whole might seem The scenery of a fairy dream. Onward, amid the copse 'gan peep A narrow inlet still and deep, Affording scarce such breadth of brim, As served the wild duck's brood to swim; Lost for a space, through thickets veering, But broader when again appearing, Tall rocks and tufted knolls their face Could on the dark blue mirror trace; And farther as the hunter stray'd, ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... table supplies being more varied. In summer, excepting during the round-ups, we never had butcher meat, and in my camp butter, eggs and milk were not known; but in winter I always had lots of good beef, potatoes, butter and some eggs from the Mormons, but still no milk. This was varied, too, by wild duck, teal and snipe shot along ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... see every stone-pebble or shell at the bottom. Here and there an opening in the forest reveals some tributary stream, working its way beneath the gigantic trees that meet above it. The silence of the scene is unbroken but by the sudden rush of the wild duck, disturbed from its retreat among the shrubby willows, that in some parts fringe the left bank, or the shrill cry of the kingfisher, as it darts across the water. The steam-boat put in for a supply ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... remembrance the confident young gentleman she had run away from without so much as a knowledge of his name. She cried, and the afternoon came, a blush of fire and flowing gold upon the hills, the purple of the steeps behind her darkened; upon Big Fox behind, some wild duck floated ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... rushes crowding upwards in the mere Where, gold and white, the wild duck preens himself Safe hidden till the sun-drawn, lingering mists melt. I know the secret den where bruin dwelt. I see him now sun-basking on a shelf Of windy rock. He looks down on the deer, Who flit like flowing light from rock to tree And stand with ears alert before they ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... The wild duck is a shy bird, apt to spread his wings and change his quarters when a noble sportsman is seen approaching his habitation with a fowling piece. You have heard of the ass who put on a lion's skin, and wandered ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... Linnaeus. French, "Canard sauvage."—-The Wild Duck is an occasional autumn and winter visitant. I have never shot one myself in the Islands, but I have several times seen Guernsey-killed ones in the market. Though a visitant to all the Islands, I do not believe the Wild Duck breeds, at all events at present, in any of them; Mr. MacCulloch, ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... extras: its profession is rat-catching and mousing, and only those who have a very intimate personal acquaintance with it know how peculiarly its equipment and methods are adapted to this work. The falcon gives open chase to the wild duck, keeping above it if possible until near enough for a last spurt; then it comes down at a speed which is terrific, and, striking the duck from above, dashes it to the ground. The sparrow hawk plunges unexpectedly into a ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... any drops which may spill from the pitcher. We will merely indicate five choices for the piece de resistance of the formal luncheon, 1. Fillets of Beef, with Raisin Sauce, Parisian Potatoes (ball-shaped) and French Peas. 2. Broiled Wild Duck, Curried Vegetables, and Currant Jelly Sauce. 3. Fried Chicken with Tomato Mayonnaise, Steamed New Potatoes and Boiled Green Corn. 4. Squab Breasts larded around hot ripe Olives, with Brown Sauce, and Potato Croquettes with Peas. ...
— Prepare and Serve a Meal and Interior Decoration • Lillian B. Lansdown
... Bird flew high, with a steady air current behind which gave the plane more speed than Johnny had hoped for, and brought them close to Yuma before the gas gauge began to worry him. They descended cautiously, circled over the town like a wild duck over a pond, choosing their landing. They alighted without mishap and Johnny hired a decent-looking Mexican to watch the plane and protect it from curious meddlers while he and Bland went into town and ate their fill, and bought gas and oil to be delivered immediately. ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... and lake, and decked with the hues of gorgeous flowers—the prairie rose, fragrant, tender, elusive, and fragile as the English primrose; the blood-red tiger-lily; the brown windflower with its corn-tassel; the heavy wax cups of the sedgy water-lily, growing where wild duck flackered unafraid. Game was superabundant. Prairie chickens nestled along the single-file trail. Deer bounded from the poplar thickets and shy coyotes barked all night in the offing. Night in June on the northern prairie is but the shadowy twilight ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... leagues from Boulogne. Here is a venerable abbey of Benedictines, well endowed, with large agreeable gardens prettily laid out. The monks are well lodged, and well entertained. Tho' restricted from flesh meals by the rules of their order, they are allowed to eat wild duck and teal, as a species of fish; and when they long for a good bouillon, or a partridge, or pullet, they have nothing to do but to say they are out of order. In that case the appetite of the patient is indulged in his own apartment. Their church ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... life for me. Maybe it's stupid to cry, but I can't help it—it's the mean way he met his death. If he had been struck down by illness, and the Lord had had a finger in it—'twould be quite another thing! But that he was strong and well—'twas his uncle wanted him to go out shooting wild duck. I tried to stop him, but the boy would go, and there was no peace until he did. 'But, Mother,' he said, 'you know I can handle a gun; why, I shoot every day.' Then they went out in the boat with two guns, and not ten minutes afterwards he was back again, ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... animals the increased use or disuse of parts has had a more marked influence; thus I find in the domestic duck that the bones of the wing weigh less and the bones of the leg more, in proportion to the whole skeleton, than do the same bones in the wild duck; and this change may be safely attributed to the domestic duck flying much less, and walking more, than its wild parents. The great and inherited development of the udders in cows and goats in countries where they are habitually ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... was standing, shading his eyes as though staring at the smell. The dawn was at his back, and across the dawn a flight of wild duck was making in from ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... closed Union Bay, and which had received the name of Cape South Mandible. Nothing could be seen there but sand and shells, mingled with debris of lava. A few sea-birds frequented this desolate coast, gulls, great albatrosses, as well as wild duck, for which Pencroft had a great fancy. He tried to knock some over with an arrow, but without result, for they seldom perched, and he could not hit them ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... with eyes untaught to care for beauty, but with a certain love of the home scenes, tempered by youth's impatience for something new. The nightingales sang, the thrushes flew out before them, the wild duck and moorhen glanced on the pools. Here and there they came on the furrows left by the snout of the wild swine, and in the open tracts rose the graceful heads of the deer, but of inhabitants or travellers they scarce saw any, save when they halted at the little hamlet of Minestead, where a ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... related to him the whole affair, whereat, however, he only shook his head. On my asking him whether he would not see my child that same day, he answered, "Nay"; he would rather first study the acta. And after he had eaten of some wild duck-which my old Ilse had roasted for him, he would tarry no longer, but straightway went up to the castle, whence he did not return till the following afternoon. His manner was not more friendly now than at his first coming, and I followed ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... light and life; he could not forget he was in London for a moment. Her mighty machinery with its million wheels throbbed perpetually in his ears; and yet between the beats would come the quack of a wild duck near at hand, the splash of a leaping fish, the plaintive whistle of water-fowl: altogether such a chorus of incongruities as was not lost upon our very impressionable young vagabond. The booming strokes of eleven recalled him ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... more than ever his sufficing world. He knew a thousand small things concerning it—secrets of the soil, of the tides, of the sand drift—voices of the wind, varying colours of the sea, and what weather they foretold—where this moss grew, that bird nested—in what week the wild duck arrived, on what wind the geese might be looked for, and what feeling in the spring air announced that the guillemots were due. He had learnt these things unconsciously, and was quite unaware of his knowledge, having never an occasion to review it or put ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... gentle ripple crossed the surface of the lake, for almost no air at all was stirring. Out of a near-by cove a flock of young wild geese, scarcely able to fly, started off, honking in excitement; and here and there a wild duck broke the surface into a series of ripples; or again a fish sprang into the air, as it went about its own breakfast operations for the day. It was an inspiring scene for all, and for the time the Young Alaskans paused, ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... open, and tropical mosses and orchids hang from the trees. Outside on the breezy downs one may drink in pure ozone from the Atlantic, and revel in an atmosphere untainted by microbes or bacilli. Wild duck, woodcock, and plover, resting in their migratory flight, crowd the marshes, ponds, and lagoons, and the sea is alive with fish." Such was the Tresco that Mr. Augustus Smith made his home; such it is still in the hands of Mr. Dorrien-Smith. It is certain that when ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... more easy and its results more abundant. The water-birds returned in large numbers. They often brought down a kind of wild duck which made excellent food. The hunters had no other deprivation to deplore than that of two dogs, which they lost in an expedition to reconnoitre the state of the icefields, twenty-five ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... carried out as he describes it; or rather, if it were carried out on some exceptionally large and well-equipped stage, the feat of the mechanician would eclipse the invention of the poet. On the other hand, the abode of the Wild Duck in the play of that name is a conception entirely consonant with the optics of the theatre; for no detail at all need be, or ought to be, visible, and a vague effect of light is all that is required. Only in his last melancholy effort ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... It is a proverb, 'He who seeks a wolf at Candlemas, a peasant on Shrove Tuesday, and a parson in Lent, is a man of pluck.' . . . Thirdly, their savageness depends on their having young. When the wolves have young, they are more savage than when they have not. You see it so in all beasts. A wild duck, when it has young poults, you see what an uproar it makes. A cat fights for its young ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... wear the cap of rushes, And shall hear that day All the wild duck and the heron And the curlew say. You shall taste the wild bees' honey That since life began They have hidden for their master— For the ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... or is it not, sadder than the catastrophe of "Ghosts"? Certainly to "Ghosts" it owes something, and to "The Wild Duck" more than something. A quality as of Ibsen pervades the play, and it has, too, back of it a background of nature and of thought that is beautiful in the way the background of nature and of thought is beautiful and compensating ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... down the valley. It was far ahead, but Arnaux overtook and passed it, as the flying wild Duck passes the swimming Muskrat. High in the valleys he went, low over the hills of Chenango, where the ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... side to Claire and falling on his knees to her]. Pardon him, pardon him, little cherub! little wild duck! little star! little glory! little jewel in ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... for that big 'gator we scared off the bank a while back," warned Jack, wickedly, "he might think it was a wild duck splashing, and try to pot it ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... upright, his hand on his hip, waiting to be poured out. In the centre, the grandfather of watermelons, half-hidden by peaches and pomegranates, the whole heaped over by a confusion of ruby cherries (oh, for Lance to paint it!) Are you hungry, though? If so, here is a mould of potted-head and a cold wild duck, while, on the sideboard, I see a bottle of pale ale. My brother, let us breakfast in Scotland, lunch in Australia, and dine in France, till our ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... them as a shelter both from the sun and the rain, and the surgeon was sent to superintend their conduct, and give his advice if it should be wanted. It happened that walking out with his gun, after he had seen the sick properly disposed of in the tent, a wild duck flew over his head, which he shot, and it fell dead among some of the natives who were on the other side of the river. This threw them into a panic, and they all ran away; when they got to some distance they stopped, and he made signs to them to bring the duck over: This one of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... think, abhors blatant uxoriousness. So do I. And I fear the Most Wonderful Man on Earth is blatantly uxorious. I honour him for a certain sadness in his voice when he speaks of unrequited love. But his constant reference to Ibsen's motif in the "Wild Duck," though it fails in its primary object of convincing me that he is familiar with Ibsen's plays, does in truth tell me that some fair ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... extremity, the carpenter's bench of which I have spoken, elongated at both ends, and covered with a white table cloth, was piled high with eatables; indicating that a time of 'great refreshment' was at hand. The bounteous supply of ham, chicken, wild duck, roast pig, fish, hoecake, wheat bread, tea, coffee, milk, and pumpkin and sweet-potato pies under which the bench groaned, showed that some liberal hand had catered ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... deer in these woods, and perhaps wolves and boars? There must be wild duck on the firth, and buzzards in the rocks. Instead of challenging the barbarians to a foolish trial of strength, why not make them your companions, and learn ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... Although wild duck offers no special attraction for a genuine sportsman, still, through lack of other game at the time (it was the beginning of September; snipe were not on the wing yet, and I was tired of running across the fields after partridges), I ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... East will soon be red, The wild duck westward fly, And make above my anxious head, Triangles in ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... shot at them," he said. "There's nothing better than a wild duck cooked as Jim Hart ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... vocation of which my body is the symbol. Guess, to begin with, at my destiny from my shape, and see how, curved like a sort of living hunting-horn, I am as much formed for sound to turn and gain volume within me, as the wild duck is formed to swim!—Wait!—Mark the fact that, impatient and proud, scratching up the earth with my claws, I appear always to be ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... and grouse is also up. Grice—why not? plural of mouse, mice—grice, we say, are growing more absent, and therefore dearer. Black game is not so darkly hued as it is painted, and a few transactions in wild duck are reported. Lard is hardening, as usual in frosty weather. Hares are not so mad as in March, still, on the approach of a passer-by, they go off rapidly. Rabbits, especially Welsh ones, are now excellent. As Christmas recedes, geese have stopped ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various
... a wild duck roasting in the hub of coals—from the burning spokes came the smell of cedar. The Indian girl majestically broke a segment of koonti bread and proffered it to her companion. With faultless courtesy Diane accepted ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... The wild duck's nest is usually placed on the ground in some sheltered spot close to still or running water, and the ducklings swim like corks, soon learning the proper use of their flat little bills in gobbling up floating ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... your letter. It is good news that you are going to bring out a new edition of your Poultry book (237/1. "The Poultry Book," 1872.), and you are quite at liberty to use all my materials. Thanks for the curious case of the wild duck variation: I have heard of other instances of a tendency to vary in one out of a large litter or family. I have too many things in hand at present to profit by your offer of the loan ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... and, going to the thick bushes at the edge of a creek, he has taken out his hidden canoe. He has been in it some time, and with mighty sweeps of the paddle, that he knows so well how to use, it flies like a wild duck over the water. Now he passes from the creek into a river flowing eastward, and swollen by the floods to a vast width. The rain has poured upon him, but he does not mind it. The powerful exercise with the paddles dries his body, and sends the pleasant warmth through ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... smilingly remark, "is called 'bird gold'. This is woven of the down of peacocks, caught in Russia, twisted into thread. The other day, I presented that one with the wild duck down to your young female cousin, so I now give ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... seasoning of cloves, mace, and pepper. Fill the belly of the goose with this stuffing, and tie it close at the neck and vent. Boil and serve it on slices of bread, dipped in any kind of broth, with cauliflowers, cabbage, turnips, and barberries. Pour melted butter over it. A Wild Duck, being first drawn and trussed, must be parboiled, and then half roasted. Having carved it, put the gravy into a pipkin with plenty of onion and parsley, sliced ginger, mace, some washed currants, barberries, and a quart of claret. Boil ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... young archer swung the magic bird to the foot of the throne before the Tzar; and the Tzar was glad, because since the beginning of the world no Tzar had seen the fire-bird flung before him like a wild duck caught in a snare. ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... creek seldom if ever flowed, except in a very wet season. It was a permanent waterhole—Murwidgee, fed by springs, and the white cockatoos and screaming corellas came there and bathed in its waters, and the black swans, and the wild duck, and teal rested there on their way south, when summer had laid his iron hand on ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... great red sunset burning over the blue river and kindling the far forests till they glowed like jewels. The frogs were croaking among the reeds, and the wild duck squattered in the dusk. I passed an Indian, the first I had seen, with cock's feathers on his head, and a curiously tattooed chest, moving as light as a sleep-walker. One or two townsfolk took the air, smoking their long pipes, ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... to go a sort of bustle among the bulrushes; a wild duck flew up with a quack, another followed, and soon over the whole surface of the marsh a great cloud of birds hung screaming and circling in the air. I judged at once that some of my shipmates must be drawing near along the borders of the fen. Nor ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... forest when the men with huge appetites came to sup. Juicy venison steak was there, so was the wild duck and the pheasant in plenty. To the full they ate as did the few men at arms that ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... current plays round a stone, reed, or other obstacle. Take the greatest pains to get the curves of these lines true; the whole value of your careful drawing of the reflections may be lost by your admitting a single false curve of ripple from a wild duck's breast. And (as in other subjects) if you are dissatisfied with your result, always try for more unity and delicacy: if your reflections are only soft and gradated enough, they are nearly sure to give you a pleasant effect. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... asceticism; and that all the living interest which was still supposed necessary to the scene, might be supplied by a traveller in a slouched hat, a beggar in a scarlet cloak, or, in default of these, even by a heron or a wild duck. ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... seen. The reef Helen had discovered off the northwest coast they called "White Water Island," because of the breakers. Then came "Seal Bay," "Palm-tree Point," "Mount Lookout" (this was the hill due south of where they lived). They called the cane-brake "Wild Duck Swamp," and the spot where they lunched "Cochineal Clearing." The ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... calm delight Stamps but the fearful silence of the night, Save when is heard between each dreary rest, Discordant from her solitary nest, The owl, dull screaming to the wandering moon; Now riding, cloud-wrapp'd, near her highest noon: Or when the wild duck, southering, hither rides, And plunges, sullen in the ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... high poop and forecastle left but short waist-room; her waist-ribs limited the height of her "between decks;" while the "perked up" lines of her bow and stern produced the resemblance noted, to the croup and neck of the wild duck. That she was low "between decks" is demonstrated by the fact that it was necessary to "cut down" the Pilgrims' shallop—an open sloop, of certainly not over 30 feet in length, some 10 tons burden, and not very high ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... the road he found it was very broad, and banked on either side, and went straight as the flight of a wild duck right across the moor, and never swerved by the hills or pools, but went over everything in its way. And as he stood marvelling what mighty men had builded it, he heard a strange rattling sound behind him, and, turning, ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... women gleaners under the bright sun. It was excessive and terrible; it stung your nostrils like an unstoppered bottle of alkali; it seized you, irritating your mucous membrane with a rough odor which had in it something of the relish of wild duck cooked with olives and the sharp odor of the shallot. On the whole, it was not a vile or repugnant emanation; it united, as an anticipated thing, with the formidable odors of the landscape; it was the pure note, completing with the human animals' cry of heat the odorous melody ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... home, Nymph of Torridge, proud I come; Leaving fen and furzy brake, Haunt of eft and spotted snake, Where to fill mine urns I use, Daily with Atlantic dews; While beside the reedy flood Wild duck leads her paddling brood. For this morn, as Phoebus gay Chased through heaven the night mist gray, Close beside me, prankt in pride, Sister Tamar rose, and cried, 'Sluggard, up! 'Tis holiday, In the lowlands far away. Hark! how jocund Plymouth bells, Wandering up through mazy ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... the Snowy Owl family, being bigger, even, than Solomon Owl. And what with his hooked beak and his strong talons he was a dangerous fellow to meet. Although Grumpy Weasel could easily handle a rabbit or a wild duck a dozen times his own size, because they were unarmed, he would have had no chance at all ...
— The Tale of Grumpy Weasel - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... him an eagle that summer, and so took to hunting the great bird diligently. But hunting was of little use, except to teach me many of his ways and habits; for he seemed to have eyes and ears all over him; and whether I crept like a snake through the woods, or floated like a wild duck in my canoe over the water, he always saw or heard me, and was off before I could get within ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... "and that is that it will cost more than I can afford to spend; and you know, Bob, we have no time for digging ditches ourselves—in fact, it seems to me it was a great mistake to drain the pond at all—the water at least covered the bad-smelling bottom, and we could shoot an occasional wild duck there." ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... latter volume I would often declaim for her benefit what has always been to me the most beautiful poem in the world, possibly because it was the first I read for myself, or else because it is so intimately associated with those happy days. Under an engraving of a wild duck (after Bewick, I believe) were quoted W.C. Bryant's lines "To a Water-fowl." They charmed me then and charm me now as nothing else has quite charmed me; I become a child again as I think of them, with a child's virgin subtlety ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... retreated crab-wise. I soused my clipped head in the tub, took a spatter-bath like a wild duck in a hurry, clothed me in my gay forest-dress, making no noise lest I wake Elsin, and ran down the rough wooden stairs to the coffee-room, plump into a crowd of strange officers, all blue and ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... each of them was pricked with shame, but he most who was the cause of the loss; wherefore he started and cried out, "Thou art caught." But little it availed, for wings could not outstrip fear. The one went under, and the other, flying, turned his breast upward. Not otherwise the wild duck on a sudden dives when the falcon comes close, and he returns up vexed and baffled. Calcabrina, enraged at the flout, kept flying behind him, desirous that the sinner should escape, that he might have a ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... The resultant liquid is seasoned with salt, pepper, lemon and paprika, and poured hot over the meat. This method of roasting insures the maximum tenderness and flavor in the bird. The longer the wild duck is roasted, the dryer and ...
— The Suffrage Cook Book • L. O. Kleber
... steamer splashed on the banks, covered with flocks of wild duck, who flew away uttering deafening cries. A little farther, on the dry fields, bordered with willows, and aspens, were scattered a few cows, sheep, and herds of pigs. Fields, sown with thin buckwheat ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... more properly the surviving Indian fired at random and ran, doing no injury. "Now" said the old heroine to her undaunted daughter "we must leave." Accordingly with the rifle and the axe, they went to the river, took the canoe, and without a mouthful of provision except one wild duck and two black birds which the mother shot, and which were eaten raw, did these two courageous hearts in six days arrive among the old French settlers at St. Louis. A party of about a dozen men crossed over into Illinois—and after an unsuccessful search returned without finding either ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... as I am, and with a wild duck waiting for me at good Mistress Odam's, I saw that there was nothing for it but to yield to these good people, and prove me a man of Somerset, by eating a dinner at their expense. As for the churchyard, none would hear of ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... web than he could have reckoned upon before and waxed fat on the produce of the added superficies of enmeshed and immolated flies. So things went on almost till New Year's Eve. The flats of the Upper Thames, where the floods get out up the ditches and tributaries, and the wild duck gather on the shallow "splashes" and are stalked with the stalking-horse as of old, were as dry as Richmond Park, and sounded hollow to the foot, instead of wheezing like a sponge. The herons could not find a meal on a hundred acres of meadow, ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... had been thinking of the pleasure coming at night. She picked the finest tomatoes in her garden—favorite dish of little Crispin; from her neighbor, Tasio, she got a fillet of wild boar and a wild duck's thigh for Basilio, and she chose and cooked the whitest rice ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... lake inside the Viceregal grounds. My two elder brothers were certain that they had seen wild duck on this lake in the early morning, so getting up in the dusk of a December morning, they crept down to the lake with their guns. With the first gleam of dawn, they saw that there were plenty of wild fowl on the water, and they succeeded in shooting three or ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... must have been a little too sharp, because he raised one eyebrow. "The analogy," I went on in a quieter tone, "isn't good because it gives a distorted picture. Look, Your Grace, you know what's done to keep a captive wild duck from flying away?" ...
— Nor Iron Bars a Cage.... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... sane. Ibsen does not profess to know how virtue and happiness are brought about, in the sense that he professes to know how our modern sexual tragedies are brought about. Falsehood works ruin in THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY, but truth works equal ruin in THE WILD DUCK. There are no cardinal virtues of Ibsenism. There is no ideal man of Ibsen. All this is not only admitted, but vaunted in the most valuable and thoughtful of all the eulogies upon Ibsen, Mr. Bernard Shaw's QUINTESSENCE OF IBSENISM. ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... sense of shame that never yet My foot on that old shore was set, Though prodigal in wandering, Arose; and with a tingled cheek, Like some late wild duck on the wing, I started down the Chesapeake. The morning sunlight, silvery calm, From basking shores of woodland broke, And capes and inlets breathing balm, And lovely islands clothed in palm, Closed round ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... succulent.—And in this last connection, as he reflected, much was to be said for the geographical position of Marychurch; since if river mists and white dullness of sea fog, drifting in from the Channel, were to hand, so, also, in their season, were fresh run salmon, snipe, wood-cock, flocks of wild duck, of plover ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the Governor shall not withhold his consent—and there are bear and deer—quail, wild duck—your excellency will enjoy that beautiful wild country as I have done." Arguello was enchanted at the prospect of fresh adventure in the company of this fascinating stranger. "But we are once more at our poor abode, senor. I beg you to remember ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... the Whale, condescendingly. "It's a canvas-back-duck waistcoat. The front of it is made of wild duck, you see, and the back of it out of the fore-top-sail of a brig. I've heard they always have watches on board of ships, but I couldn't find any on this one, so I had to satisfy myself with a bit of chain cable ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... some are a quarter of a mile long and half as wide. They are built up of things that the hunters and fishermen threw away: oyster and mussel and periwinkle shells; bones of the wolf, the hyena, the dog; of wild duck, swan, and grouse; of cod, herring, flounder, and other deep-sea fish. Many of the bones had been split open for the purpose of extracting the marrow. Besides bones, there are also pieces of burnt wood; and there is sea plant, which may have ...
— The Cave Boy of the Age of Stone • Margaret A. McIntyre
... the skeleton arms of the winter woods remained unclad. But wild duck and geese were on the wing, sweeping up from the south in search of the melting sloughs and flooded hollows, pastures laid open to them by the rapid thaw. The birth of the new season was accomplished, and the labor of mother earth ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... all properly tinted—of choir boys in robes, with beautiful eyes; pensive young girls in pink gowns, with flowing yellow hair, drooping over golden harps; a coloured reproduction of "Rouget de Lisle, Singing the Marseillaise," and two "pieces" of wood carving, representing a quail and a wild duck, hung by one leg in the midst of game bags and powder horns,—quite ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... a hillock, in the midst of this entrancing valley, and surrounded by the peons' grass houses, was the owner's home. Here the flyers partook of an excellent repast, garnished with the best the island could afford, including tender wild duck from the surrounding lagoons and savory turtle soup. Then followed songs by their host, and jolly college melodies by themselves, accompanied by the sweet strains of a guitar in the hands ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... of closed and curtained windows, musings by the fireside, books, friends, conversation, and the long, meditative evenings. To the farmer, it brought surcease of toil,—to the scholar, that sweet delirium of the brain which changes toil to pleasure. It brought the wild duck back to the reedy marshes of the south; it brought the wild song back to the fervid brain of the poet. Without, the village street was paved with gold; the river ran red with the reflection of the leaves. Within, the faces of friends brightened ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... mountain springs were loosed in muddy torrents, and the river roared, swollen and turbid, past the "holt" under the trailing alder-twigs. The moorhens came back from the ponds where they had nested in April and May; the wild duck and the teal flew south from oversea, and in the night descended circling to the pool; a dabchick from the wild gorge down-river took up ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... face down. Somebody else, seeing him do that, might have thought he had the idea to tear into Dudley Stackpole with his bare hands, but I had done enough shooting at wild game in my time to know that he was acting like a partridge sometimes does, or a wild duck when it is shot through the heart or in the head; only in such a case a bird flies straight up in the air. Towering is what you call it when done by a partridge. I do not know what you would call it ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... man's house and left him to his long silence, the black wings of night were lifted, the storm was past, and a rose-red dawn veiled in silver bedecked the sky. The hills were tender with pearl and azure. The earth smelled sweet and freshly washed. A flock of wild duck rose from the dam and went streaking across the horizon like in a Japanese etching. All the land was full of dew and dreams. It was almost impossible to despair in such an hour. Christine felt the wings of hope beating in her breast, and an ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... the "local" division, thus acting an ornithological lie, and leading the unlearned to believe that it is a very rare bird, peculiar only to Leicestershire. These examples might be repeated ad nauseam. The sparrow, the swallow, the kingfisher, the heron, the wild duck, the wood-pigeon, the pheasant, the coot, the woodcock, the terns, the gulls, etc, are some common ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is but another name for tameness. It is the uncivilized free and wild thinking in "Hamlet" and the "Iliad," in all the Scriptures and Mythologies, not learned in the schools, that delights us. As the wild duck is more swift and beautiful than the tame, so is the wild—the mallard—thought, which 'mid falling dews wings its way above the fens. A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... The sun's aflare Behind the breathing grass: And creaking through the young bamboo The warning whispers pass. By day made strange, the woods we range With blinking eyes we scan; While down the skies the wild duck cries: 'The Day—the Day ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... brave fellow, for know that I have been enchanted these many years under the form of a wild duck, because of the enmity of three malicious demons. You can restore me permanently to my human shape if you choose to show only ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... blouse turned the spit and basted the browning fowls from a long, deep trough which caught all of the drippings. And so it happened that the turkeys borrowed delicacy from the pigeons; and the chickens, flavor from the wild duck, etc. And the gravy: Oh that gravy! All the perfumes of Araby could not equal it. The Browns were carried away by their discovery of this wonderful place. They immediately purchased a fine fat hen and monsieur, the proprietor, ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... The little "Wild Duck," for that was the name Paul Trefusis had given his boat, continued her course, flying before the fast increasing gale close inshore, to avoid the strong tide which swept away to the southward, till, rounding ...
— Michael Penguyne - Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast • William H. G. Kingston
... since from the moment he's clear, from the moment he's 'amusing,' it's on the footing of a thesis as simple and superficial as that of 'A Doll's House'—while from the moment he's by apparent intention comprehensive and searching it's on the footing of an effect as confused and obscure as 'The Wild Duck.' From which you easily see ALL the conditions can't be met. The dramatist has to choose but those he's most capable of, and by ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... this, like many another resolution of our life, has been broken; and here is Nick, the Newfoundland, lying sprawled on the mat. He has a jaw set with strength; an eye mild, but indicative of the fact that he does not want too many familiarities from strangers; a nostril large enough to snuff a wild duck across the meadows; knows how to shake hands, and can talk with head, and ear, and tail; and, save an unreasonable antipathy to cats, is perfect, and always goes with me on ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... illustration of the effect of habit, Darwin[5] cites the domestic duck, of which he says, "I find that the bones of the wing weigh less, and the bones of the leg more, in proportion to the whole skeleton, than do the same bones in the wild duck; and I presume that this change may be safely attributed to the domestic duck flying much less and walking more than its wild parent." And again, "not a single domestic animal can be named which has not in some country drooping ears, and the view suggested by some authors, ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... you are a friend of Monsieur le Cure!" he exclaimed. "You would not be Monsieur le Cure's friend if you were not a good shot. Sapristi!" He paused, ran his hand over his rough jowls, and resumed bluntly: "It is something to kill the wild duck; another ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith |
