"Bird's-nest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... takes both bets,' says Boggs, 'an' deems 'em easy. Which both is like robbin' a bird's-nest. Yere's the circ'latin' medium. Thar; cover it an' file it away with the barkeep to wait results.' So Tutt an' Boggs makes their bets mighty eager, an' the barkeep ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... way. The one that spoke first is a redhead. The one who seems to be the leader is a big blonde in a real short skirt and hair piled up high in a bird's nest. Maybe that's what started Nick bird-watching. The third girl is sort of quiet-looking, ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville
... economic development—on Chinese lines of the highest merit. They take the utmost care of our Gothic cathedrals for us. They put our dearest racial possessions into museums and admire them very much indeed. They teach our young men to fly kites and eat bird's nest soup. They do all that a well-bred people can do to conceal their habit and persuasion of a racial superiority. But they keep up their "prestige." ... You know, we shouldn't love them. It really isn't a ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... poke your finger into a bird's nest," observed Elsie, with a sapient shake of the head. "The eggs always addle if you do, or the young birds refuse to hatch out; and of course in the case of turtle-doves it would be all the more so. 'Lay low, Bre'r ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... in search of, so we directed our course to some trees which appeared in the south, in order to get a bed and a view of the adjacent locality. Having shot a leche, and made a glorious fire, we got a good cup of tea and had a comfortable night. While collecting wood that evening, I found a bird's nest consisting of live leaves sewn together with threads of the spider's web. Nothing could exceed the airiness of this pretty contrivance; the threads had been pushed through small punctures and thickened to resemble a knot. I unfortunately lost it. This was ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... print of Christ at prayer; a few treasures, 'with a meaning' (her sister explains), picked up here and there as mementoes of her furloughs; a small French bronze of Jesus carrying His cross; a petrified bird's nest, which has served as an object lesson in ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... some fledged bird's nest may know, At first sight, if the bird be flown; But what fair dell or grove he sings in now, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... said Nick-uts, "it's old Mother Mo-lo's. The nasty old wretch laid it in there while we were away from home. She's always sneaking around, the lazy old thing, to lay her eggs in some other bird's nest. She's cowardly too. She always picks out the nest of one smaller than herself. I wish I were big enough to give her ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... Green, starting forward, and bending down he flung the wretched boy over on to his back so as to extricate the bird's nest. ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... at myself if it were so. Have we not been all in all to one another from the time when we first peeped into the bird's nest, waded in the brook, ran after the butterflies, and prattled to each other that we would marry fine gentlemen, and played at being ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... bank are particularly exposed to violent gusts of wind, and while I have been sitting in the canoe and looking on, I have seen the slender branch of the tree which held the humming-bird's nest so violently shaken that the bottom of the inside of the nest has appeared, and had there been nothing at the rim to stop the eggs they must inevitably have been jerked out into the water. I suspect the humming-bird never lays more than two eggs. I never ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... ter feelin' knocky about yer mount, er yer won't hev no confidence in him, an' will lose. I want ter say ter yer right now that this hoss what looks like ther last rose o' summer, ther last run o' shad, an' ther breakin' up o' a hard winter in a last year's bird's nest, is all right, an' he can't lose this race. Ride him true, an' don't give him ther gad none. All yer got ter do is ter encourage him by a word now an' then, an' pilot ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... he pointed, but see nothing, until at last they discovered something gray, like a mass of stones fallen from the summit. It was a little village, a hamlet of granite hanging there, fastened on like a veritable bird's nest and almost invisible on ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... 357. Bird's Nest Pudding.— Peel 6 good sized greening apples, remove the cores with an apple corer without breaking the fruit, put them in a long, shallow tin pan, pour over 2 cups boiling water, cover with a pan of same size and let them boil on top of ...
— Desserts and Salads • Gesine Lemcke
... the little brook before the door, and then started out, evidently after something to eat; and he went nosing about on the ground with a thoroughness to make a bird-lover shudder, for what ground bird's nest could escape him! ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... be sixty different varieties, each sufficiently individualized in size and other peculiarities to be easily identified by ornithologists. Some of these birds are actually no larger in body than butterflies, and with not so large a spread of wing. A humming-bird's nest, composed of cotton interlaced with horse-hair, was shown the author at Buena Esperanza, a plantation near Guines. It was about twice the size of a lady's thimble, and contained two eggs, no larger than common peas. The nest was a marvel of perfection, the cotton being bound cunningly ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... in the meadow, plucking the sweet wild grasses—and often and often they clambered up the mountain side, knee deep in the heather, searching for frechans and wild honey, and sometimes they found a bird's nest—but they only peeped into it, they never touched the eggs or allowed their breath to fall upon them, for next to their little mother they loved the mountain, and next to the mountain they loved the wild birds who made the spring and summer ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... her father, "might as well climb back and finish your dinner. You can't find a bird's nest after dark—and you can see that it's almost dark now. You wait till morning and I'll show ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson
... professed to have been down there. Her object had been to visit her brother, who had recently died. To do this she perfumed herself with water in which a dead rat had been steeped, so as to give herself a death-like smell. She then pulled up a bird's nest and descended through the hole thus made. Her brother, whom of course she found, cautioned her to eat nothing, and by taking his advice she was able to return. A similar tale is told of a New Zealand woman of ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... he hunted as he had hunted with his ape people in the past, as Kala had taught him to hunt, turning over rotted logs to find some toothsome vermin, running high into the trees to rob a bird's nest, or pouncing upon a tiny rodent with the quickness of a cat. There were other things that he ate, too, but the less detailed the account of an ape's diet, the better—and Tarzan was again an ape, the same fierce, brutal anthropoid that Kala ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... say, they only eat grain, worms, caterpillars, and dead animals; and there are others who lead a regular bandit's life, who throw themselves upon baby-hares and small birds, and plunder every single bird's nest ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... the honest, and learned Captain; yet I take it very ill of him that he should so utterly ignore that case-bottle, seeing what a faithful friend and comforter it must have been, while with mittened fingers and hooded head he was studying the mathematics aloft there in that bird's nest within three or four perches of the pole. But if we Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed aloft as Captain Sleet and his Greenland-men were; yet that disadvantage is greatly counterbalanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those seductive seas in which ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... height, and mention a name; Jeanne and Julien would look, at first seeing nothing, but at last discovering the summit of the mountain. It was a village, a little granite hamlet, hanging and clinging like a bird's nest to the vast mountain. Jeanne got tired of going at a walking ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... commanding myself to the Saints, and especially thanking Madame St. Catherine, I began to climb, hauling myself up by the rope, whereon I had made knots to this end; nor was the climbing more difficult than to scale a branchless beech trunk for a bird's nest, which, like other boys, I had often done. So behold me, at last, with my legs hanging in free air, seated on the sill of the casement. Happily, of the three iron stanchions, though together they ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... loose; it was dark, and finer than the finest spun silk, and fell all over her shoulders and down her back to the stone she sat on. He let his fingers stray in and out among it; and it felt like the soft, warm down that lines a little bird's nest to his skin. Finally, he touched her neck and allowed his hand to rest there, it was such a soft, warm neck. At length, but reluctantly, for his little rebellious heart was not yet wholly subdued, he raised his eyes to her face. Oh, how beautiful she was! Her love and eager desire ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... one another the suppressed sobs which were bursting from our hearts. We long watched abstractedly the green and slimy water as it was slowly swept beneath the narrow arch of the bridge. It carried along on its surface sometimes the white petals of the lily, and sometimes an empty and downy bird's nest which the wind had blown from a tree. We soon saw the body of a poor little swallow, turned on its back, and with extended wings, floating down. It had, doubtless, been drowned when skimming over the water ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the keeper's daughter, asleep in the churchyard of Feldkirche. Suddenly, on turning the corner of an ancient, gloomy church, his attention was arrested by a little chapel in an angle of the wall. It was only a small thatched roof, like a bird's nest; under which stood a rude wooden image of the Saviour on the Cross. A real crown of thorns was upon his head, which was bowed downward, as if in the death agony; and drops of blood were falling down his cheeks, and from his hands and feet and side. The face was haggard and ghastly beyond ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... what sort of a proposition they had tackled. Sneaking, underhanded scoundrels! taking advantage of a mere boy. Meet those notes? You bet he would; and then he'd go down there and boost those stocks until M. & D. looked like a last year's bird's nest. He thrust the letter in his pocket and walked buoyantly ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... man, like the Finnish Ilmarinen in Pohjola, subdued the mighty fish, and went back triumphant. The third adventure, as in 'Nicht Nought Nothing,' was to climb a tree of extraordinary height in search of a bird's nest. Here, again, the youth succeeded, and finally conspired with the daughters to slay the old magician. Lastly the boy turned the magician into a sycamore tree, and won his daughter. The other daughter was given to the brother who had no share in the ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... it had once been a large barn, but being grown old, the wood was kept there. My sister and I used to peep about among the faggots to find the eggs the hens sometimes left there. Birds' nests we might not look for. Grandmamma was very angry once, when Will Tasker brought home a bird's nest, full of pretty speckled eggs, for me. She sent him back to the hedge with it again. She said, the little birds would not sing any more, if their eggs were ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... thrill of pleasure, a sudden emotion, that gave a moment's happiness. The delight caused by the discovery of a fine argol may be compared to that of a sportsman finding the trace of his game—of a child contemplating the long sought for bird's nest—of an angler, who sees a fish quivering at the end of his line; or, if we may be allowed to liken great things to small, we would compare it to the enthusiasm of a Leverrier finding a planet at ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... him acquainted. Even as it was, they did not escape his silent notice. It was pleasant for him, from whose life the early dew had been dried away by a well-risen sun, to recall its former freshness by glimpses of this pair of young beginners. It was like having a bird's nest under ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... sides are of a slate color, but the under part of its body, and its legs and feet, are white. It is sometimes called the white-footed mouse, or wood-mouse. It builds a round nest in trees, that looks like a bird's nest, and it lives upon ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... I detected a boy (apparently about twelve years of age) climbing one of the willow trees in our old Schmittheimer place. I crept up on him unawares and speedily became satisfied that he was after the eggs in a bird's nest that nestled cozily in a crotch of the limbs. I shouted lustily at the young scapegrace, and his confusion convinced me that my suspicions were correct. I kept him in his uncomfortable position in the tree until I had ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... of the table looked on in dumb amazement, and he was still speechless when, after dinner, five children set upon him and dragged him out to see the bird's nest behind the barn. ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... Beechnut left them. They met with no special adventures by the way, except that when they reached the great pine-tree, Phonny proposed to climb up, for the purpose of examining a small bunch which he saw upon one of the branches, which he thought was a bird's nest. It was the same pine-tree that marked the place at which a road branched off into the woods, where Mary Bell had lost her way, several years before. Malleville was very unwilling to have Phonny climb up upon such a high tree, but Phonny himself was very desirous ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... Swallows.—Within thirty-five miles of Caltura, on the western coast, are inland caves, the resort of the Esculent Swift[1], which there builds the "edible bird's nest," so highly prized in China. Near the spot a few Chinese immigrants have established themselves, who rent the royalty from the government, and make an annual export of their produce. But the Swifts are not confined to this district, and caves containing them ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... how to live in sympathy with the animal world; how to understand the languages of the creatures that we have long been accustomed to call "dumb," and the sign language of the lower orders of these dependent beings. The church owes it to her mission to preach and to teach the enforcement of the "bird's nest commandment;" the principle recognized by Moses in the Hebrew world, and echoed by Cowper in English poetry, and Burns in the "Meadow Mouse," and by our own Longfellow in songs of ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... This bird's nest, as well as his song, is unlike that of our wood-pewee. Instead of a delicate, lichen-covered saucer set lightly upon a horizontal crotch of a dead branch,—our bird's chosen home,—it is a deeper cup, fastened tightly upon a large living branch, and, at least in a cottonwood grove, decorated on ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... the Apostle says (1 Cor. 9:9) that God does not "take care for oxen," and, therefore, neither of other irrational animals. Therefore without reason is it commanded (Deut. 22:6): "If thou find, as thou walkest by the way, a bird's nest in a tree . . . thou shalt not take the dam with her young"; and (Deut. 25:4): "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out thy corn"; and (Lev. 19:19): "Thou shalt not make thy cattle to gender with beasts of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... can I let you go?" Says sweet Greane, weeping "Who will climb with me The rocks to find the bird's nest? who will play At arms, forgetting that I am a girl, And helping ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask
... Crescenti; and the afternoon after their first meeting he had repaired to the librarian's dwelling. Crescenti was the priest of an ancient parish lying near the fortress; and his tiny house was wedged in an angle of the city walls, like a bird's nest in the mouth of a disused canon. A long flight of steps led up to his study, which on the farther side opened level with a vine-shaded patch of herbs and damask roses in the projection of a ruined bastion. This interior, the home of studious ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... came to the first milestone he found the mossy spring was frozen over. At the second he saw the leafless apple tree, with a deserted bird's nest upon it; and at the third he discerned something that looked like the little magician; but he believed it was only a snow wreath: at any rate, it did not stop the way, and on he rode, exulting, ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... a boy he would cry at a beautiful view in Nature, at a tale of heroism, or at any sentimental ditty sung excruciatingly in the streets. Seeing a bird's nest that had been robbed of its eggs he burst into tears; but when he came upon the bleeding, broken shells in the path, the tears turned to fierce wrath and mad rage, and he snatched up a gun out of his father's room and went out to take the life ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... where we remarked impressively, "A lie, children, is the very worst thing in the world!" whereupon Billy interrogated, with wide eyes and awed voice, "IS IT WORSE THAN A RAILROAD CROSSING?" And there is a sentence in the story of the "Bird's Nest" sacred to the memory of Tommy's tear!—Tommy of the callous conscience and the marble heart. Tommy's dull eye washed for one brief moment by the salutary tear! Truly the humble Story-Teller has not lived in vain. Sing, ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... wild flowers, seven various specimens of fungi, nine different sorts of berries, twelve species of birds noticed, also rabbits and squirrel, one bird's nest and one perfect fossil—not a bad record for an autumn foray!" said ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... related to a young boy who one day, taking his little brother with him for company, went to look for birds' nests. On reaching the cove they rambled to the top of the cliff, where the elder boy saw a bird's nest, to which he went while his little brother waited for him at a distance, watching him taking the eggs. All at once he saw him stoop down to gather some flowers to bring to him, and then disappear. He waited some time expecting his brother to return, but as ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... lowering his tone. "I tell you the boy has gone back home and the hut is as empty as a last year's bird's nest. I'll stake my oath on it. The place is shut and locked tight as a drum. ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... dwelling is carpeted in the warmest and softest manner. Even in the same region there is great diversity in the style, neatness, and finish of the nests, as well as in the materials used. Skeins of silk and hanks of thread have frequently been found in the Baltimore Bird's nest, so woven up and entangled that they could not be withdrawn. As such materials could not be obtained before the introduction of Europeans, it is evident that this bird, with the sagacity of a good architect, knows how to ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... some fledg'd bird's nest may know At first sight if the bird be flown; But what fair Dell or Grove he sings in now, That is ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... the branches, golden flowers had sprung to life on the ends of the twigs, a lovely jewel-like lantern crowned the whole, and as to sweets, everybody- servants and all—had some delightful devices containing them, whether drum, bird, or bird's nest. ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pleasure. So, as Hamlet observes, "Breke, Breke my heart, for I must hold my tongue!" The Earth Girl first sees the light, such as it is, in a cavern, and is brought up on raw eggs fresh from the sea-bird's nest, uncooked herbs, and raw fish. No tea, coffee, milk, or liquors of any description, were within reach of this unhappy family of three, consisting of Pa, Ma, and the Infant Phenomenon. How they slaked their thirst is not clearly stated, unless a sort of aquarium, in which some ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... elderberry tree they found the grey cat-bird's nest. He was a funny bird, always crying like a lost pussy. And his ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... find that an engine made after any old and well-known pattern is now made with much more consciousness of design than we can suppose a bird's nest to be built with. The greater number of the parts of any such engine, are made by the gross as it were like screw and nuts, which are turned out by machinery and in respect of which the labour of design is now no more felt than ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... shoulder was a robin's nest, while another chose the center of an officer's hat for her domicile. Looking into the mouth of the twenty-four pounder presented by J. Watts de Peyster to the monument association, we discovered a blue bird's nest containing four eggs. This gun was at one time a part of the armament of a British vessel. The vessel becoming disabled, the gun was then mounted on wheels and placed on a bluff at Ticonderoga, where ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... leafy dell we found, When early Summer wove her crown, A bird's nest on the mossy ground, ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... BIRD'S NEST. A round top at a mast-head for a look-out station. A smaller crow's nest. Chiefly used in whalers, where a constant look-out is kept for whales. (See ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... life suffered from those doubts and fears as to her social position which spoil the manners of most middling people. She is tall, slender, and strong; has dark hair, dressed so as to look like hair and not like a bird's nest or a pantaloon's wig (fashion wavering just then between these two models); has unexpectedly narrow, subtle, dark-fringed eyes that alter her expression disturbingly when she is excited and flashes them wide open; is softly impetuous in her ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... confusion of spider bridges, ladders and balconies were laced like a metal network. The turret in which Dr. Frank and I now stood was perched here. Fifty feet away, like a bird's nest, Snap's instrument room stood clinging to the metal bridge. The dome-roof, with the glassite windows rolled back now, rose in a mound-peak to cover this highest middle portion ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... my way to the town, after observing, to my great annoyance, that the castle could have been as easily taken as a bird's nest; and seeing a beer-glass painted on a sign-board, I guessed that here was the inn. Truth to say, my heart wanted strengthening sorely, and I entered. There was a pretty wench washing crabs in the kitchen, and as I made up to her, after my manner, to ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... some part of the prospect by intervening between it and the observer's position. As an act of persons, to conceal is always intentional; one may hide his face in anger, grief, or abstraction; he conceals his face when he fears recognition. A house is hidden by foliage; the bird's nest is artfully concealed. Secrete is a stronger word than conceal, and is used chiefly of such material objects as may be separated from the person, or from their ordinary surroundings, and put in unlooked-for places; a man conceals a scar on his face, but does not secrete it; a thief ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... dusk when the train reached the lovely little village of Lee, nestling like a bird's nest amid ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... Apple and Lady Finger Pudding Apple Slump Apple Snow Apple Tapioca Pudding Auflauf Bird's Nest Pudding Black Bread Pudding Blanc Mange Bohemian Cream Boiled Custard Bread Pudding Brown Betty Caramel Custard Cherry Pudding Chestnut Pudding Chocolate Cornstarch Pudding Chocolate Custard Corn Pudding Cornmeal Pudding Cup Custard for Six Dessert with Whipped Cream Dimpes Dampes Farina Pudding ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... happen to him, for I love him," said the child gravely. "He showed me a humming-bird's nest, the first ever I ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to himself, he is weighed down by years. He lifts the cares of the whole world on a "loaded branch" for which a bird's nest were a "superfluous burthen." Yet this strong man cries to him for life: and he alone has the power to grant it. How easy to reprieve! How hard to deny to this trembling sinner the moment's respite which may save his soul. He wants precedent for such a deed; and he seeks it in the records of the ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... thoughts! Your theme lies lowly as the ground-bird's nest; Why seek, with wings so feeble and unused, To soar above the clouds and front the stars? Descend from your high venture, and to scenes Of the heart's common history ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... often run away to the woods and subsist on their own hunting; but these are not to be taken for the real wild cat. The female of the latter is the smaller of the two, and retires into the fissures of rocks, or takes possession of some large bird's nest, when she is about to have young ones. They are found all through Germany, Russia, Hungary, and the North of Asia, where their fur is much more valued than it is here, probably on account of the length and ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... out the easiest way to go. Oh, no! He chose the very steepest places to slide down. And as he went slipping down the steepest cliff of all he came upon something that gave him a great surprise. For he saw, built right in the crack of a ledge, a big bird's nest made of sticks. It was the biggest bird's nest Cuffy had ever seen; and in it were two great white eggs. They were the greatest white eggs Cuffy had ...
— The Tale of Cuffy Bear • Arthur Scott Bailey
... views here advocated are correct, as to the various influences that have determined the specialities of every bird's nest, and the general colouration of female birds, with their action and reaction on each other, we can hardly expect to find evidence more complete than that here set forth. Nature is such a tangled ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... 1268. It is a year which makes no great stir in the history books, but it will serve us well. In those days, as in our own, Venice lay upon her lagoons, a city (as Cassiodurus long ago saw her[B]) like a sea-bird's nest afloat on the shallow waves, a city like a ship, moored to the land but only at home upon the seas, the proudest city in all the Western world. For only consider her position. Lying at the head of the Adriatic, half-way between East and West, on the one great sea thoroughfare of medieval ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... of the Rhine, and Clara. Lewis, the Little Emigrant. The Easter Eggs, and Forget-me-not. The Cakes, and the Old Castle. The Hop Blossoms. Christmas Eve. The Carrier Pigeon, the Bird's Nest, etc. The Jewels, and the Redbreast. The Copper Coins and Gold Coins, etc. The Cray-Fish, the Melon, the Nightingale. The Fire, and the Best Inheritance. Henry of Eichenfels; or, the Kidnapped Boy. Godfrey, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... divided equally among the sons, the eldest perhaps getting a little more than the others. The girls divide the old beads, cloth, bead-boxes, and various trifles. The male slaves go to the sons, the female slaves to the daughters. Bird's nest caves and bee trees might be divided or shared ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... me encouragingly, as though offering to help me down. But its top was many feet from the wall. There was an abandoned bird's nest in it; a little below that was a dead limb with a woodpecker's incision at its base. By leaning out I could see, a hundred feet or more below the bottom of ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... tree in the forest yonder; she could squirm through the underbrush with the agility of a rabbit. She loved every crawling, hateful thing, such as all honest people despised, and she once fought with the son of an uphill farmer for robbing a bird's nest, making him give up the eggs and restoring them herself to the top of a pine tree in the fodder lot of ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... to lay their eggs in other birds' nests. Now let us suppose that the ancient progenitor of our European cuckoo had the habits of the American cuckoo; but that occasionally she laid an egg in another bird's nest. If the old bird profited by this occasional habit, or if the young were made more vigorous by advantage having been taken of the mistaken maternal instinct of another bird, than by their own mother's care, encumbered as she can ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... is certain, that a bitch in pup, a mare roaming in a meadow with a foal at its side, a bird's nest full of young ones, squeaking, with their open mouths and enormous heads, made her quiver with the most ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... chicken and duck and pigeon and veal and pigeon eggs and soup and fish and little oysters that grow in the ground (very delicious and delicate) and nice little vegetables and bamboo sprouts mixed in with the others, and we had shrimps cooked, and shark's fin and bird's nest (this has no taste at all and is a sort of very delicate soup, but costs a fortune and that is its real reason for being). It is gelatine which almost all dissolves in the cooking. We had many more things than these, and the boy in a dirty white ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... in a vertical plane. Concentrating observation on one rotating flower, it became a 'rotating haze,' as the rapid motion rendered the flower totally indistinct. The 'haze' now shaped itself into a circle of moss with a deep funnel-like cavity. This was suggestive of a bird's nest. It became lined with hair, but the nest was a deep, pointed cavity. A nest was suggestive of eggs. Hence a series appeared (4); the two rows meeting in one at the apex appears to have arisen from the perspective ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... Hunting.—A thoughtful person will, of course, be careful in approaching a wild bird's nest, otherwise much mischief may be done in a very short time. I have known "dainty eggs" and "darling baby-birds" to be literally visited to death by well-meaning people, with the best of intentions. The parents become ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... tender me the advice you did. This makes it evident that I have laboured under a mistaken idea! Had I not made this discovery the other day, I wouldn't be speaking like this to your very face to-day. You told me a few minutes back to take bird's nest congee; but birds' nests are, I admit, easily procured; yet all on account of my sickly constitution and of the relapses I have every year of this complaint of mine, which amounts to nothing, doctors have had to be sent for, medicines, with ginseng and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... boy! How dare you rob a bird's nest? God will punish you for that!" Her eyes blazed with wrath at the ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... to take up the old life with a clear conscience. But almost the first letters from the rancho demanded her! Little Rafael had painfully written to know where he could find this poem and that to which she had introduced him. Marty had sent her a bird's nest, running over with ants when it was opened in Cornelia's breakfast-room, but he never knew that. Jose had written for advice as to seeds for Manzanita's garden. And Austin had written he missed her, it was "rotten" not to find mater ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... dressed in the scarlet jacket she fancied in those days, one of them, Cyprian Eveleth had given it a name which became current among the young people, and indeed furnished to Gifted Hopkins the subject of one of his earliest poems, to wit, "The Fire-hang-bird's Nest." ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... day rushes recently torn up were seen floating near the vessels. A plank hewn by an axe, a carved stick, a bough of hawthorn in blossom, and lastly a bird's nest built on a branch which the wind had broken, and full of eggs on which the parent-bird was sitting, were seen swimming past on the waters. The sailors brought on board these living witnesses of their approach to land. They were like a message from the shore, ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... daughter, little Mercy and poor Robin. The boat is there as bright as ever, scarlet within and white outside; but the name is painted off, because the little dears are in their graves. Two nicer children were never seen, clever, and sprightly, and good to learn; they never even took a common bird's nest, I have heard, but loved all the little things the Lord has made, as if with a foreknowledge of going early home to Him. Their father came back very tired one morning, and went up the hill to his breakfast, and the children ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... round the laurel path and to the walk where the ivy grew so thickly. Dickon followed her with a queer, almost pitying, look on his face. He felt as if he were being led to look at some strange bird's nest and must move softly. When she stepped to the wall and lifted the hanging ivy he started. There was a door and Mary pushed it slowly open and they passed in together, and then Mary stood and waved ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... believe that it is all a vulgar error about the cuckoo sucking little birds' eggs. Doubtless cuckoos have been shot with eggs in their mouths, perhaps broken in the fall, but I think the eggs they carried were their own, which, after laying, they were on their way to put in some other bird's nest to be hatched, as it is an established fact they do; and because they are very small eggs people think they are those of some other bird ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... ejaculations, and looks up to heaven, some thrilling incidents which occurred about the period when the hero was breeched, Laura began another equally interesting, and equally ornamented with tears, and told how heroically he had a tooth out or wouldn't have it out, or how daringly he robbed a bird's nest, or how magnanimously he spared it; or how he gave a shilling to the old woman on the common, or went without his bread and butter for the beggar-boy who came into the yard—and so on. One to another the sobbing women sang laments ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Temple continued, "the testimony of Tom Slade himself that Hervey Willetts climbed a tree and in a daring manner saved a bird and its nest from the ruthless assault of an eagle. That bird's nest, with its little occupant, hangs now in the elm tree at the corner of ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Ridgeley is a lonely, desolate place to me," said Mrs. Sutton, one early spring morning to her niece and crony, Mrs. William Sutton. "A house without children is worse than a last year's bird's nest. It is a riddle to me how Clara Aylett contrives ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... humane, but I owed this entirely to the instruction and example of my sisters. I doubt indeed whether humanity is a natural or innate quality. I was very fond of collecting eggs, but I never took more than a single egg out of a bird's nest, except on one single occasion, when I took all, not for their value, but from ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... Moth Butterflies Bird's Nest Crow's Foot Chimney Swallows Cockscomb Dove in the Window Duck and Ducklings Four Little Birds Goose Tracks Goose in the Pond Honeycomb Honeycomb Patch Hen and Chickens King's Crows Peacocks and Flowers Spider's Den Shoo Fly Spider's ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... that I love the best, A little brown house like a ground-bird's nest, Hid among grasses, and vines, and trees, Summer retreat of the birds ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... him, "Hi! stop!" The prince looked round, and saw a tall man hastening after him. "Stop and take me with you, and take me into your service, and you won't regret it!" "Who are you," said the prince, "and what can you do?" "My name is Long, and I can extend myself. Do you see a bird's nest in that pine yonder? I will bring you the nest down without having to ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... cap! Annie Bouman is there, too. Even Janzoon Kolp's sister has been admitted; but Janzoon himself has been voted out by the directors, because he killed the stork, and only last summer, was caught in the act of robbing a bird's nest,—a legal offence in Holland. ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... were to examine the boys were perched up in a high pulpit so profusely trimmed with evergreen that it looked like a bird's nest; they were remarkably pleasant-looking men, and their eyes twinkled merrily under their Christmas wreaths. Father Anselmus was a little the taller of the two, and Father Ambrose was a little the broader; and that was about all the ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... was already back at the glass, working with feverish haste, made no reply. The bell rang again, and a third time, Rosa finally answering it in a coiffure that looked like a hastily constructed bird's nest. ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... bird's nest, I should suppose," said Catherine, "considering the champion whom they ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... the government the burden of caring for an additional income of 100,000 pounds a year. And the same little word, if published in its connection, would render Bessemer's perforation device of far less value than a last year's bird's nest. He felt proud of the young woman's ingenuity, and promptly suggested the improvement ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... transgression of a schoolboy; who, being overjoy'd with finding a bird's nest shows it his companion, ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... bade the children look out of the window at a bird's nest, which was snuggled into one corner of the piazza-roof, so high up that nobody could reach it ...
— Captain Horace • Sophie May
... which the gods prepare, They drink the viewless tonic of the air, Sweet with the breath of startled antelopes Which speed before them over swelling slopes. Now like a serpent writhing o'er the moor, The column curves and makes a slight detour, As Custer leads a thousand men away To save a ground bird's nest which ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... element must have felt these angry vibrations: they ceased from singing, and together we climbed out of the wood, to see Schlingen below us, tucked in a circle of hills, the white houses shining in the sunlight, "for all the world like eggs in a bird's nest", as Herr Erchardt declared. We descended upon Schlingen and demanded sour milk with fresh cream and bread at the Inn of the Golden Stag, a most friendly place, with tables in a rose-garden where hens and chickens ran riot—even flopping upon the disused tables and pecking at the red checks on ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... early affection for birds and animals revived. He had favourite dogs, and cows, and horses; and again he began to keep rabbits, and to pride himself on the beauty of his breed. There was not a bird's nest upon the grounds that he did not know of; and from day to day he went round watching the progress which the birds made with their building, carefully guarding them from injury. No one was more minutely acquainted with ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... all ascended to the little projecting chamber, through the window of which her scarlet jacket caught the eyes of the boys paddling about on the river in those early days when Cyprian Eveleth gave it the name of the Fire-hang-bird's Nest. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... with every distinction of shape and size and color sharply present, and accurately to portray it in the absence of the original. If one should ask him, "What's the shape of the milkweed butterfly's wing, and the color of the spice-bush swallowtail, Peter Champneys? What does the humming-bird's nest look like? What's the color of the rainbow-snake and of the cotton-mouth moccasin? What's the difference between the ironweed and the aster?"—Ask Peter things like that, and lend him a bit of paper and a pencil, and he literally had ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler |
