"Homing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... child's work to pick out the moccasin track across the meadow. When the steps reached the beach they were harder to follow. I lost them for a while, though there were scattered pebbles that would have led me straight as a homing pigeon, had I been cool enough in mind to have my eyes and wits as sharp as usual. As it was, I doubled, and squandered time, until the sun began to loom red near the horizon. And all the time I was saying to myself, "It is not ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... that through her humbled Triumph-Arch Was doomed to see you tread your fathers' tracks— Paris, your goal, now lies a six days' march Behind your homing backs. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... the day had brought me yet. With less strain on the attention, however, there was more upon the mind. No longer forced to exert some muscle twice or thrice a minute, I had time to feel very faint, and yet time to think. My soul flew homing to its proper prison. I was no longer any unit at unequal strife with the elements; instincts common to my kind were no longer my only stimulus. I was my poor self again; it was my own little life, and no other, that I wanted to go on living; ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... pleased every one. Homing to his nest in the Borgo, he caught his little Bellaroba in his arms with a rapture none the less because it had been earned at a stretch. It was long before he could find time and breath to lead her into the garden and have the story out. Olimpia, coming ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... swells that cut into the murky sky. His eyes studied every rod of soil as he retraced his way up that great wind-swept slope, noting every change in vegetation or settlement. Five years before he had crept like a lizard; now he was rushing straight on like the homing eagle who sees his home crag gleam ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... said the second swallow. "First, we feel it stirring within us, a sweet unrest; then back come the recollections one by one, like homing pigeons. They flutter through our dreams at night, they fly with us in our wheelings and circlings by day. We hunger to inquire of each other, to compare notes and assure ourselves that it was all really true, ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... a yellow line Down the splashy, gleaming street, And the rain is heard now loud now blurred By the tread of homing feet. ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale
... he saw the mirage of his own fireside. Perhaps for the moment his homing spirit rested there, and it was only the body from which the soul had fled that was in the saddle here before us riding through a hostile land. Perhaps more powerfully than the fulminations of any ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... than a head-waiter—for a German riding-master, a leader of a Hungarian band, a manager of a Ritz hotel. But he was not above his station. He even assisted the porter in carrying the coats and golf bags of the gentlemen from the car to the coffee-room where, with the intuition of the homing pigeon, the three strangers had, unaided, found their way. As Carl Schultz followed, carrying the dust-coats, a road map fell from the pocket of one of them to the floor. Carl Schultz picked it up, and was about to replace it, when his eyes were ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... quickly away and disappeared. And Ginger, beaming happily, swooped on Sally's table like a homing pigeon. ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... up on a stepladder laboriously painting the R on THUNDER when old Sudden drove into the yard with half the Rolling R boys packed into the big car. They had heard the strident humming of the plane when Johnny made his homing flight, and craning necks backward, had seen him winging away to the Rolling R. They had guessed very close to the truth, and for them the search ended right there. So, after signalling the other searchers, many of the boys had ridden back ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... of the Currency Lass had thus ended in a stroke of fortune almost beyond hope. She had brought two thousand pounds' worth of trade, straight as a homing pigeon, to the place where it was most required. And Captain Wicks (or, rather, Captain Kirkup) showed himself the man to make the best of his advantage. For hard upon two days he walked a verandah with Topelius, for hard upon two days his partners watched from the neighbouring ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... sundown, I see a pair of wild pigeons homing toward the crest of Apo. "Limocons," the Bogobos call them—"leem-o-sahns": the word falls limpid from their lips, unaccented. They say the limocon never was heard to sing in the lowlands, and tell a strange legend that it is an oracle of the Hill People, its ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... hoping she might sight some homing fishing-boat which she could hail, but no welcome red or brown sail broke the monotonous grey waste of water, and in hopes of warming herself a little she began to walk briskly up and down the little beach still keeping a sharp look-out at sea for ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... corner. He was the kind of man who lends himself to being robbed; the real wonder was that it had not been done already. But, mingled with her contempt for his helplessness, Miss Gregory felt a certain softening. His homing instinct, as blind as that of a domestic animal, his rejoicing in his return, his childish plan for taking his mother by surprise, even his loyalty to the tramcars and all the busy littleness of Clapham Junction—these touched something ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... and walked the train most of the way. He dropped from the cars at the water tank and struck across country, and again he ran. But this time it was no headlong flight. Straight as a homing bird went Dannie with all speed, toward the foot of ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... of course.' The light died out in his eyes, and the man collapsed, watching every motion of Dirkovitch with terror. A flight from Siberia may fix a few elementary facts in the mind, but it does not seem to lead to continuity of thought. The man could not explain how, like a homing pigeon, he had found his way to his own old mess again. Of what he had suffered or seen he knew nothing. He cringed before Dirkovitch as instinctively as he had pressed the spring of the candlestick, sought the picture of the drum-horse, and answered to the toast of the Queen. The rest ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... lantern was soon lost in this smothering medium, in which even his sense of direction, and the bay's homing instinct, finally ceased to serve us. Two or three times some ghostly landmark sprang up to warn us that we were astray, and then was sucked back into the mist; and when we finally regained our road the old horse began to show signs of exhaustion. I felt myself to blame for having accepted ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... April, when the first young leaves are beginning to frame the finished nests, and the boisterous winds of last month no longer drown the babble of the tree-top parliament at the still hour when farm labourers are homing from the fields, that the rooks peculiarly strike their own note in the country scene. There is no good reason to confuse these curious and interesting fowl with any other of the crow family. Collectively they may be recognised ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... When the Skyrocket finally circled about Lost Island and settled down over the narrow landing field as easily as a homing pigeon, to come to a stop with hardly a jar, it was bringing news to Mr. Fulton that was bound to soften the ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... is to be explained the phenomenon of migration and also the many other peculiarities in the behaviour of birds whereby approaching changes in the weather may be foretold. Probably, also, this fact has much to do with the extraordinary homing instinct of pigeons. But, of course, in the days when meteorological science had yet to be born, no such explanation as this could be known. The ancients observed that birds by their migrations or by other peculiarities ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... they are commonly called, carriers, are not bred for special markings like fancy pigeons but because of their power and speed in flight. A carrier has the "homing" instinct more fully developed than any other animal. In some homing pigeon races, the birds have made speed records of over a mile a minute for many hours and have flown over a thousand miles. If ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... consciously reasoned that the best way to forget the present was in the revival of memories. Or I may have been driven by a mere homing instinct. Anyhow, it was in the direction of my old College that I went. Midnight was tolling as I floated in through the shut grim gate at which I had so ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... through those ancient trees, The sunlit lichens burning on the byre, The lark descending, and the homing bees, Proclaim the sweet relief all ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... even flatter myself that my—going is going to inconvenience Cornelia in the slightest; because I can't see that my coming has made even the remotest perceptible difference in her daily routine. Anyway—" he finished more lightly, "when you come right down to 'mating', or 'homing', or 'belonging', or whatever you choose to call it, it seems to be written in the stars that plans or no plans, preferences or no preferences, initiatives or no initiatives, we belong to those—and to those only, hang it all!—who happen ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... Josh. Why, we can count about enough noses for a full patrol right among ourselves. There's Tom Chesney to begin with; George Cooper here, who ought to make a pretty fair scout even if he is always finding fault; Carl Oskamp, also present, if we can only tear him away from his hobby of raising homing pigeons long enough to study up what scouts have to know; yourself, Josh Kingsley; and a fellow by the name of Felix Robbins, which happens ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... considerations withheld him: Mickey's manners were a trifle too casual; at times they irritated Douglas, and if he took the boy into his life as he hoped to, he would come into constant contact with Leslie and her friends, who were cultured people of homing instincts. Mickey's manners must be polished, and the way to do it was not to drop to his level, but to improve Mickey. And again, the day before, he had told Mickey to sit down and wait until an order was given him. To invite him to "get in the game" now, was good alliteration; it pleased the ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... whose toil brought them in means For every waste of life. At length I spoke, Insulting both my inarticulate soul And her with acted anger: "Lazy wretch, Is it for eyes like yours to watch the sea As though you waited for a homing ship? My father might with reason spend his hours Scanning the far horizon; for his Swan Whose outward lading was full half a vintage Is now months overdue." She turned on me Her languor knit and, through its homespun wrap, Her muscular frame gave hints of rebel will, While those great ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... bodies of the sleeping watchmen, out into the dusty road under the palms, down to the waterside, to the Nile—the path leading homewards. She must go down the Nile, hiding by day, travelling by night—the homing bird with a broken wing-back to the but where she had lived so long with Wassef the camel-driver; back where she could lie in the dusk of her windowless home, shutting out the world from her solitude. There she could bear the agony ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... one of Anatole's impulsive Provencal temperament. These Gauls, I should have remembered, can't take it. Their tendency to fly off the handle at the slightest provocation is well known. No doubt the man had put his whole soul into those nonnettes de poulet, and to see them come homing back to him must have gashed ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... befallen me to be privately busy in a backwater when the main stream was spuming and ramping with the great bore of a general election. I have been able to hear the swallows twitter at sunrise in serene unconsciousness of the crisis, to watch the rooks homing at twilight, as though the course of Nature were still the same, and to see the moonlight rippling over the sombre water at midnight in unaffected tranquillity. Myself was scarcely better informed of the tidal ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... Win had bathed and laid herself carefully down in the narrow bed which shook and groaned as if suffering from palsy, it seemed more impossible than ever to go to sleep. Each new train that rumbled by was a giant, homing bee, her brain the hive for which it aimed. Her hot head was crowded with thoughts, disturbing, fighting, struggling thoughts, yet the giant bee pushed the throng ruthlessly aside and darted in. Each time it seemed impossible to ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... sunset gold. They had taken boat beneath the Keg of Butter Battery, and were sailing for Saaron with a light breeze on their quarter. Evening and Sabbath calm held the sky from its pale yellow verges up to the zenith across which a few stray gulls were homing. From Garland Town, from St. Ann's, from Brefar ahead of them, came wafted the sound of bells, far and faint, ringing to church, and the murmuring water in the boat's wake seemed to take up Vashti's laugh and echo it reproachfully, as she checked herself with a glance at ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... traveller, homing to England by the Ostend-Dover packet in the April of some five years ago, relished the vagaries of a curious couple who arrived by a later train, and proved to be both of his acquaintance. He had happened to be early ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... was on the hour of evening drinks) one of the boats was still unaccounted for. No one talked of her. They rather discussed motor-cars and Admiralty constructors, but—it felt like that queer twilight watch at the front when the homing aeroplanes drop in. Presently a signaller entered. "V 42 outside, sir; wants to know which channel she shall use." "Oh, thank you. Tell her to take so-and-so." ... Mine, remember, was vermouth and bitters, and later on V 42 himself found a soft chair and joined the committee of instruction. ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... homing to the bedding-ground, brought reflections of a different hue. Since the raid on his flock Mackenzie had given up his bunk in the wagon for a bed under a bush on the hillside nearer the sheep. Night after night he lay with the rifle at his hand, waiting ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... studious work, and prices ridiculously low. The little stratagem worked admirably. The address which Tim gave young Surface was the address of Mrs. Paynter's, where Surface Senior had lived for nearly three years. And so the young man had gone to his father, straight as a homing pigeon. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... has a strong homing instinct, aiming to provide "a home away from home." In the dugouts behind the trenches, in the deserts of Egypt, or in the jungles of Africa, it has been forced to make a home in every kind of shelter. It was significant that its first three successive dwelling places seventy ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... folk say and they say That the homing hill-shepherd, benighted, has heard A song in the reeds, 'twixt the dawn and the day, That was never the song of a breeze or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... landmarks leaped past, and save for an occasional word of encouragement MacNair let the dogs set their own pace. For, consumed as he was by anxiety for what might lie at the end of the trail, he knew that the homing instinct of the wolf-dogs would carry them more miles and in better heart than the sting of his ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... better developed than those of man. Hounds can trace footsteps over flat rocks, even though a shower has fallen in the interval; cats can see in the dark; rabbits hear sounds that men never hear; horses detect an impurity in water that a chemical analysis does not reveal, and homing pigeons would gain nothing by carrying a compass. And so I feel safe in saying that if any man were so good and perfect an animal that he had the hound's sense of smell, the cat's eyesight, the rabbit's sense of hearing, the horse's sense of taste, and the homing pigeon's "locality," ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... communicate with all her creatures. He knew where the rabbits burrowed, where the partridges nested, and where the wild bees stored their honey. He could foretell storms by a thousand signs, possessed the homing instinct of the pigeons, knew where the first violets were to be found, and where the last golden-rod would bloom. The squirrels crept down the trunks of trees to nibble the crumbs which he scattered for ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... from Sunset Ranch walked slowly up into the main building of the Grand Central Terminal with the crowd. There was chattering all about her—young voices, old voices, laughter, squeals of delight and surprise—all the hubbub of a homing crowd meeting a crowd ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... day was falling when the homing Andre-Louis approached Gavrillac. Realizing fully what a hue and cry there would presently be for the apostle of revolution who had summoned the people of Nantes to arms, he desired as far as possible to conceal the fact that he had been in that maritime city. Therefore ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... Mr Warden, who shot in at the casino door like a homing rabbit, and walked on in silence, which lasted till Ruth, suddenly becoming aware that her companion's eyes were fixed on her face, turned her head, to meet a gaze of complete, not to say loving, admiration. She flushed. ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... truth we may say that man is a religious animal. The impulse that causes him to worship, to trust, to pray, is as much a part of his constitution as is the homing instinct of the pigeon. This natural instinct is, however, reinforced by the operation of his reason. Feeling is deeper than thought; we are moved by many impulses before we frame any theories. But the normal human being sooner or later begins to try to explain things; his reason begins to work ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... he went. Because of the tremendous trees he could not see the sun; yet with the instinct of the woodsman, an instinct as infallible as that of a homing pigeon, he was not puzzled as to direction. Within two hours his long, tireless stride brought him out into a clearing in the valley where his own logging-camp stood. He went directly to the log-landing, where in a listless and half-hearted manner the loading ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... threatened that if they destroyed any more jails they would be rigorously released. Sinn Fein, which refused to fight Germany, had already begun to play at a new sort of war. Australia was preparing to welcome the homing transports sped with messages of Godspeed from ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... to it through the tortuous cuts and passes was a marvel of homing instinct—the heart that homed to its object. It had seemed to her all along this strange, tense journey, that she had had no will of her own, that she had held her breath and shut her eyes, as it were, and gone forward in obedience to some strange thing ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... trade journal the latest fashion in umbrellas is a pigeon's head carved on the handle. This, we understand, is the first step towards a really reliable homing umbrella. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... held her tight, teeth set, as one who would keep his own perforce from that grim fate which would snatch his love from him. She shivered to me half-swooning, pale and of wondrous beauty, nesting in my arms as a weary homing-bird. A poignant grief o'erflowed ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... Ekstrohm tighter than he gripped the handlebars of his scooter. He was only vaguely aware of the passing scenery. He knew he should switch on the homing beacon and ride in on automatic, but it seemed like too much of an effort to flick his finger. As the tension rose, the capillaries of his eyes swelled, and things began to white out for him. The rush of ...
— The Planet with No Nightmare • Jim Harmon
... roaring on, his machine seemingly feeling like a homing pigeon. He felt a fierce love for that noble hunter. He felt he could almost talk to it and tell it how proud he was of having been able to put it through its paces. Never had there been such ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... looking at the knight and his lady lying so peacefully side by side upon their marble couch. She gathered them into her gladness—they somehow sympathized, she felt, in her present sweet and poignant joy. Her soul had known best, had been right in its homing—since ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... a line the quintette swept along, heading straight as homing pigeons for the Harrowbrook Country Club, where a big delegation of enthusiasts awaited to watch the contestants alight, drink the prescribed cup of coffee, take ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... coast of the same great county, at more than ninety miles of distance for a homing pigeon, and some hundred and twenty for a carriage from the Hall of Yordas, there was in those days, and there still may be found, a property of no vast size—snug, however, and of good repute—and called universally "Anerley Farm." How long it has ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Daily Chronicle suggests that cats, with their marvellous homing instincts, might be used for the carriage of messages in the same way as pigeons. Not quite in the same way, perhaps; though cases of flying cats have occurred. We know one, for instance, that flew at a dog only ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various
... they become bruised and battered wrecks, drifting down from the spawning-beds. When the call of nature is answered and the spawn is laid they die. They never seek the salt sea again, but carpet the rivers with their bones. When they feel the homing impulse they come from the remotest depths, heading unerringly for the particular parent stream whence they originated. If sand-bars should block their course in dry seasons or obstacles intercept them, they will hurl themselves out of the water ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... on these Plains of York Swift sped away as speeds the homing hawk, And soon 'twas his to wake that watchman's cry That woke all Nations and shall ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... between these frail walls; twice a day, with the return of the ebb, the mighty surplusage of water must struggle to escape. The hour in which the Farallone came there was the hour of flood. The sea turned (as with the instinct of the homing pigeon) for the vast receptacle, swept eddying through the gates, was transmuted, as it did so, into a wonder of watery and silken hues, and brimmed into the inland sea beyond. The schooner looked up close-hauled, ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... stubble before him waving a friendly crop, "Pip" Vibart the A.P.M. homing to H.Q. "Evening, boy!" he holloaed; "come up and Bridge to-morrow night," and swept on over the hillside. A flight of aeroplanes, like flies in the amber of sunset, droned overhead en route for Hunland. The Babe waved his official cap at them: ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... act in any complicated way with reference to an end. It is evident, however, that they make a very good classification of the world about them. They have, for the limited field over which they roam, a keen topographic sense; they never are lost, and this in connection with their sympathetic homing instinct prevents them from wandering from their accustomed places to take up again with a ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... of shadows impended vaguely over all the illuminated world, and now and again a flicker of wings through the upper atmosphere betokened the flight of homing birds. Crann gazed about him absently while he permitted the statement he had made to sink deep into the jealous, shrinking heart of the young mountaineer, and he ...
— A Chilhowee Lily - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... wire-enclosed cote attached to the house just outside this window. Homing pigeons, Mr. Headland. George bought them for me. We had an even half dozen each. We used to send messages to each other that way. He would bring his over to me, and take mine away with him at night when he went home, so we could correspond at any moment without ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... you've got to be homing, Though I grant it's unwise to continue your roaming, But the evening's to spare ere you drop me astern, So come up to my room and ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... band practised in the tiny square before an enthusiastic audience of gamins. Late every afternoon the aerodrome was certain to be crowded by inquisitive Tommies, whose peculiar joy it was to watch a homing party land and examine the machines for bullet marks. The officers made overtures on the subject of joy-rides, or discussed transfers to the Flying Corps. Interchange of mess courtesies took place, attended by a brisk business ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... belonging to a nation with the strongest patriotism! the most inveterate homing instinct in the world! and you pretend you'd rather go anywhere than back to Ireland. You don't suppose I believe you, do ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... they were in the dank, humid air above. They could distinguish one type of mud from another deep beneath the surface, and could carry a dredge-tube down to a lode of the blue-gray muck with the unfailing accuracy of a homing pigeon. ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse
... and right through the Lay Reader's face, to the face of the Master of the House, Flame's glance went homing with ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... Straight as a homing pigeon, and following a blind and unreasoned instinct, McTeague had returned to the Big Dipper mine. Within a week's time it seemed to him as though he had never been away. He picked up his life again exactly where he had left it the day when his mother had sent him away with the ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... down from their perch, they would refuse to return until the sun was removed; and when it chanced to be the one on the porch and was switched off, they were unable to return because their endowment of optic nerve was small and their homing instinct, so strong in bees and eagles, smaller. There was created, accordingly, an impasse, but Mr. Sprig, who knew his hens, circumvented it. He lit a bedside candle which merely troubled ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... a little yellow dog, with hanging red tongue and eyes bulging in terror. From side to side of the red clay road the creature doubled for a moment in its anguish, and then with a spring, straight as the flight of a homing bird, fled to the shelter of Maria's skirts. Quick as a heart-beat the girl's personal fears had vanished, and as an almost savage instinct of battle awoke in her, she stooped with a protecting movement and, picking the small dog from the ground, held him high above her head ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... fierce strenuousness, such virile activity, as unending as elemental processes, it seemed a very terrible drop to disability, to the utilizing of every atom of remaining strength to return to the temporary home nest—that instinct which drives so many creatures to the same homing, at ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... the great horn that hung by the door, and wound the homing call that brings all within its hearing back to the hall, and its hoarse echoes went across the silent woods until it was answered by the other horns that passed on the message until the last sounds came but faintly to us. I heard men cheering also, for they ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... arms as straight as a homing pigeon to its nest. "Oh, Aunt Francesca," she sobbed, "will you take me and make a lady out ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... finally got those things working." Alan smiled slightly. "Guess that means I owe Pete a bourbon-and-soda for sure. Anybody who can build a robot that hunts by homing in on animals' mind impulses ..." He stepped forward just as a roar of blue flame dissolved the branches of a tree, barely ...
— Survival Tactics • Al Sevcik
... invitations, saying that Mr. Davies was to hasten thither the moment the graduating exercises were over, and now to think of the triumph and malicious delight of the other girls was intolerable. Her lover should fly to her like homing-pigeon the instant he was released from prison. It was tantamount to treason that he should purpose anything else. Almira fretted herself into a fever. She wrote one long letter to the recreant Parson, and her sister Beaytrice, as they called her, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... The homing instinct in birds and animals is one of their most remarkable traits: their strong local attachments and their skill in finding their way back when removed to a distance. It seems at times as if they possessed some ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... changed by her subtle enchantment into a child of the city. He is never free thereafter. The metropolis may send him forth like a carrier-pigeon, and he may think he is well rid of his mistress, but the homing instinct inevitably draws him back. "All other pleasures," as Emerson said of love, "are not worth its pains." Myra thought that she hated New York—the great nervous sea of life, whose noise and stress ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... they gather round me, and I tell them of my roaming In the Country of the Crepuscule beside the Frozen Sea, Where the musk-ox runs unchallenged, and the cariboo goes homing; And they sit like little children, just as quiet as can be: Men of every crime and colour, ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... gone—though he died for it, he would not let himself be beaten in this by Fate. Every ounce of the dogged sullen strength of him gathered itself to meet the demands of his stubborn will. And always, whether he walked in reason or in delirium, his course held eastward, straight as a homing pigeon for its loft. ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... thousands of nutmeg pigeons—a blending of thousands of simultaneous "coo-hoos" with the rustling and beating of wings upon the thin, slack strings of casuarinas. The swaying and switching of the slender-branched and ever-sighing trees with the courageous notes of homing birds had created the curious melody with which my reading ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... cloud on cloud, Came that silent flock of his: Thronging whiteness, in a crowd, After homing twos and threes; With the thronging memories Of all white things ...
— The Singing Man • Josephine Preston Peabody
... traveller who passed through the village. So they went to the rest-house to inquire if any one was there. There they found the uncle and nephew, and they married their little girl to the latter that very evening when the cows were homing. They drew on the wall a picture of Shiva and Parwati, and they put the children to bed beneath it. Parwati appeared to the little girl in her sleep. The goddess said, "My child, a snake will come to bite your husband: give it milk to drink. Then put near it a new earthen jar. When the snake ...
— Deccan Nursery Tales - or, Fairy Tales from the South • Charles Augustus Kincaid
... the country, necessitating the upkeep of a horse for the sake of his pastoral work, but that was only an advantage. Also to be sure, the Methodists in Mount Mark were in a minority, and an inferiority,—Mount Mark being a Presbyterian stronghold due to the homing there of the trim and orderly little college. But what of that? The salary was six hundred and fifty dollars and the parsonage was adorable! The parsonage family could see nothing at all wrong with the world that day, ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... been fond of her big, blunt cousin, as he of her; and in her present trouble her thoughts flew to him as straight as a homing aeroplane to the landing-stage. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... little twitter-and-cheep, Breaking inordinately loud and clear On this still, spectral, exquisite atmosphere? 'Tis a first nest at matins! And behold A rakehell cat—how furtive and acold! A spent witch homing from some infamous dance— Obscene, quick-trotting, see her tip and fade Through shadowy railings into a pit of shade! And lo! a little wind and shy, The smell of ships (that earnest of romance), A sense ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... ambitions, ruthless intents—by how strong a current, here crystal clear, there thick and denied, were they swept towards their appointed haven! In cruelty and lust, in the faith of little children and the courage of old demi-gods, they went like homing pigeons; and not a soul, from him who gave command to him who, far aloft, looked out upon the deep, recked or cared that another age would call him pirate or corsair, raising brow and shoulder over the ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... though so slim His muscle is of steel—no fear for him; He is the breed which conquers; he is nerved To fight and fight again. Too long he served, Man of a subject race! His fierce, blue eye Roams like a homing eagle o'er the sky, So limitless, so deep! for such as he Life has no higher bliss than ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... under the stern of the launch. In it, lazily wielding the polished paddle, sat young Mrs. Haltren, bareheaded, barearmed, singing as sweetly as the little cardinal, who paused in sheer surprise at the loveliness of song and singer. Like a homing pigeon the canoe circled to take its bearings once, then glided ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... thousand flags were flaming where the sky and city meet; A thousand bells were thundering the joy. There was music, mirth and sunshine; but some eyes shone with regret: And while we stun with cheers our homing braves, O God, in Thy great mercy, let us nevermore forget The graves they ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... heard when homing) That her roving spouse was dead; Why she had danced in the gloaming ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... bent forward as the air-speed indicator rolled up to just under four hundred miles per hour. There was no more boost and he longed for the dual supercharger. The FW's dropped in behind, unable to head him off, but the Me's came on like falcons trapping a homing pigeon. Stan felt a good deal like a pigeon. He was unarmed and he was carrying a vital message that had to get through. He dived down close to the water and ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery
... called blue. Against this the silhouetted outlines of slag-heaps and pits and houses, now ruined, now whole. By the roadside little huts some three feet square built by their owners, who gathered around little blazing fires now that their day's work was done. The low drone of homing planes filled the air as one by one they swooped down to earth, or rose on some perilous mission, while bursting shrapnel added golden balls of fire to the firmament of heaven, now a deep, deep ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... we learn to be satisfied with something nearer than the moon. The horizon of our hopes and ambitions narrows, but the sky above is not less deep, and we make the wonderful discovery that the things that matter are very near to us. It is the homing of the spirit. We have been avid of the "topless grandeurs" of life, and we return to find that the spiritual satisfactions we sought were all the time within very easy reach. And in cultivating those ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... of Jesus If we should ask Him to tell Of the last great goal of the homing soul, Where each of us hopes to dwell. Oh, I think it is this He would tell: 'The soul is the builder—then wake it; The mind is the kingdom—then take it; And thought upon thought let Eden be wrought, For heaven will ...
— Poems of Optimism • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... it is not so bad, If you are feeling a little down, or sad, To walk along Fifth Avenue to the Park, When the day thinks perhaps of getting dark, And meet that mighty flood of vehicles Laden with all the different kinds of swells, Homing to dinner, in their carriages— Victorias, landaus, chariots, coupes— There's nothing like it to lift up the heart And make you realize yourself a part, Sure, of the greatest ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... drift and toss Swift your homing transports churn; Soon for you the Southron Cross High above your bows shall burn; Soon beyond the rolling Bight Gleam the Leeuwin's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... up our recovery missile," Tom explained. "Looks like a slim hope, though, from the way that third blip is homing on target. This other control has just caused every instrument on this ship, and all the others in the task force, to make permanent records on magnetic tape ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... dry. Now in the storm-gloom of the woods lit up by the infernal glare of lightning he detached the long scroll of thin paper covered by microscopical writing and, taking off the rubber bands which confined one of the homing pigeons, ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... this cold, bleak northern land, I fear its snow-flecked harborless strand— I fly to the south as a homing dove, Back to the land of corn I love. And never again shall I set my feet Where the snow and the sea and ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... opened wide his arms and she went to him—swiftly, unerringly, like a homing bird—and, as he folded her close against his breast and laid his lips to hers, all the hunger and the longing of the empty past was in his kiss. For the moment, pain and bitterness and regret were swept away ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... the homing instinct," he observed; then, abruptly, "Wait a moment; I'm going to call them back." He paused, as usual, before his favourite confidant, the window. "The larger consciousness, the Universal Togetherness," ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... valley lies, Elaine, hast thou forgotten? Where swift the homing swallow flies And in the sunset daylight dies— But hush! Where is Elaine? Elaine, ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... spiritual ignition in her pupils, for she herself lacks the divine fire of appreciation. If she only possessed this quality no words would be needed to reveal its presence to the boy; he would know it even as the homing-pigeon knows its course. When the spirits of teacher and pupils become merged as they must become in all true teaching, the boy will find himself in possession of this spiritual quality. He knows that he has it, the teacher knows ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... field, with a half dozen curious French peasants for an audience, and laid a straight course for Le Bourget. No more acrobatics and no more hedge hopping. To an observer below they would have resembled two homing pigeons flying rather close together and maintaining their positions with a singleness ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... lies upon the inner edge of Lincolnshire, in an undulating countryside amongst great old trees, where of an evening the sun throws bars of light across the levels of turf, where homing rooks fly in scattered lines against a gleaming sky, the air breathes coolness and peace, and the scene lays that ineffable spell upon the heart of which only the exile can ever know the full ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... With joy again; Some, who come homing By stealth at gloaming, Had better have stopped Till death, and dropped By strange hands propped, Than come so ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... quite sure, after all. He wavered. Something seemed to be wrong. It didn't feel right. Some homing instinct told him that the tickle rocks did not lie in the direction in which the bow of the punt pointed. In fact, the whole thing was queer—very queer! But he had not pulled too far to the southeast; ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... heard of this wonderful instinct of direction, the homing instinct of the pigeon, which some Indians, Africans, Australian black boys and a few white men still possess; I say still possess because it is evident that it was once our common heritage, a sort of sixth ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... to, an inner bit, aye the innermost bit, the inner heart of the heart. They are the bit pulled, and pulled more, and pulled harder, till the strings grew. Man was born in the warm heart of God. Was there ever such a womb! Was there ever such another borning, homing place! ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... rotten right now," says he; "Hanged if the devil himself could see. Priscilla, it's up to you and me To show 'em what we can do." Seemed that Priscilla just took the word; Up with a leap like a horse that's spurred, On with the joy of a homing bird, Swift as the wind ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... minutes the unequal fight continued. It could not last much longer. Despair pulled at the German's heartstrings as he saw his observer topple for a moment in his seat, then pitch forward into space. The biplane tipped dangerously, righted itself and sped like a homing pigeon in the direction of the German lines. There was nothing left but to fly for it. The German dared not look behind; only by the mercy of God were the Frenchman's shots going wild. It could not last; he must get the range. ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... hands dropped straight at her sides, and the rusty shawl hung free. A second time she turned, the Boy thought to him again; but as he glanced up, wondering, he saw that the fixed yet serene look went past him like a homing-dove. A neglected, slighted feeling came over him. She wasn't thinking of him the least in the world, nor even of the milk he was at such pains to carry for her. What was she staring at? He turned his head over his right shoulder. ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... Lo, every dream new-homing from far ways On silent wing or spirit wave of air, Came circling o'er his head in hovering maze, Seen not, nor heard, albeit I knew them there; But as each passed before his lifted face, They gleamed to sight, and grace so mounted grace My eyes seemed there anointed, ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... occasional notes in a sonata. Out of doors were all the pleasant sights and sounds of the peaceful evening coming on after the labors of the busy day. The birds were calling to each other in the woods before nesting for the night; the homing rooks flew round and round their trees, cawing loudly; the village dogs barked their welcome to their masters as they came off the fields and the day's work; and the setting sun dyed the autumn leaves a brighter gold, a deeper crimson, a richer russet. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... southwest had been frequently swept by expectant eyes, but supper was served and eaten, and the purple shadows of night began softly to drape the glaring desert and still there came no sign of the homing aeroplane. ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... their burden of intoxication, they knew the ground by instinct and from long association. They gained on him. Across the way a window-sash went up with a bang, and a woman screamed. Through the only other entrance to the mews a belated cab was homing; its driver, getting wind of the unusual, pulled up, blocking the way, and added ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... distance, and grows and veers and swings, Like any homing swallow with nightfall in her wings. The wind's white sources glimmer with shining gusts of rain; And in the Ardise country the spring comes back again. It is the brooding April, haunted and sad and dear, When vanished ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... considerable distance it could plainly be seen that he was behaving with remarkable agility for one so heavy. Repeatedly his pursuers headed him off, but he rushed past them, seemingly possessed by the blind sense of direction that guides the homing pigeon or the salmon in its springtime run. He was headed toward ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... at in the street, or stabbed in the back as you are homing through the dusk are, to be sure, not everybody's amusements, and in an ordinary way they were not those of Mr. Manvers. But he found that his life gained a zest by being threatened with deprivation, and so long as that zest lasted he was willing ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... they went, not one among them swerved, But eyes went homing swiftly to the West, Where, faint and very few, The windows of the town called out to them Yet held them nerved And ready for the test. Young every one, they brought life at its best. In the taut stillness, not a ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... courted without loss of time," Those who remained behind, sacrificing allegiance to their old flag for the sake of allegiance to the soil, were indeed far happier than the irreconcilables who had elected to return to the motherland, bereft of all but their movable property. And among these homing Frenchmen were some whose reception caused them a very reasonable anxiety. Vaudreuil, Bigot, Pean, Cadet, Varin, Penisseault, and several others who had held offices in Canada, were cast into the Bastille, charged with the corruptions which had sapped the life-blood of New France. ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... she neared the herd, for twilight was coming down and the meadow blades had taken up the same soft warnings that she had heard in the corn. Above her, homing birds called to each other, and bullfrogs croaked from the sloughs at her horse's feet. There flashed into her mind the night-and-day horror of the Indian's face and hand, and she began to whistle ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... console me for all the evils of life. With a little more determination you will obtain all that my ambition or vanity fondly imagines." In this strain was the father wont to appeal to the daughter, by letter. His thoughts, like carrier pigeons, were always homing to her. Hounded by obloquy, accused of murder, when he fled from Richmond Hill after the duel at Weehauken, he sought security and absolution in the sanctuary of la Sainte Alston's house in Charleston. "You and your boy will control my fate," he had exclaimed. And ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... together,—that is, you have a long beak wherever you have long feet. There are differences also in the periods of the acquirement of the perfect plumage,—the size and shape of the eggs,—the nature of flight, and the powers of flight,—so-called "homing" birds having enormous flying powers;* ([Footnote] *The "Carrier," I learn from Mr. Tegetmeier, does not 'carry'; a high-bred bird of this breed being but a poor flier. The birds which fly long distances, and come home,—"homing" birds,—and are consequently used as carriers, are ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... the prize they are going to award; if they are favourable to us, we will load them with benefits far greater than those Paris(4) received. Firstly, the owls of Laurium,(5) which every judge desires above all things, shall never be wanting to you; you shall see them homing with you, building their nests in your money-bags and laying coins. Besides, you shall be housed like the gods, for we shall erect gables(6) over your dwellings; if you hold some public post and want to do a little ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... brought upon himself, and from the world tumult outside, the work of crazy politicians and incompetent diplomats. But if there was any season when the long crowded room was more attractive than at any other, it was in these autumn evenings when firelight and twilight mingled, and the natural 'homing' instinct of the Northerner, accustomed through long ages to spend long winters mostly indoors, stirred in ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to sleep, Winging to sleep, Singing to sleep, Your wonder-black eyes that so wide open keep, Shielding their sleep, Unyielding to sleep, The heron is homing, the plover is still, The night-owl calls from his haunt on the hill, Afar the fox barks, afar the stars peep,— Little brown baby of mine, ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... for him, needed neither to be visible. It was this outward self which was now driven by circumstances to resume command—the command which for "three minutes" by his reckoning he had relinquished. Both of us, no doubt, had been much longer there had we not been interrupted. A woodman, homing from his work, came heavily up the path, and like a guilty detected rogue I turned to run and took my incorruptible with me. Not until I had passed the man did I think to look back. The partner of my secret was not then to be seen. Out of sight out of mind is the way of children. Out ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... compatriot, inspired doubtless by the morning’s experiment, confided to me that he had hit on “a great scheme,” which he intends to develop on arriving. His idea is to domesticate families of porpoises at Havre and New York, as that fish passes for having (like the pigeon) the homing instinct. Ships provided with the parent fish can free one every twenty-four hours, charged with the morning’s mail. The inventor of this luminous idea has already designed the letter-boxes that are to be strapped on the ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory |
