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Bantam   /bˈæntəm/   Listen
Bantam

noun
1.
Any of various small breeds of fowl.






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"Bantam" Quotes from Famous Books



... could I do otherwise? It will be valuable training for Cedric; the discipline and self-denial that it entails will be the making of him. Of course his head is rather turned at present, and he is crowing like a bantam cock who wants to challenge the world, but he ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... "Come, Bantam, don't crow so loud," interrupted the big Ohioan; "nobody's going to fight you on that statement; it's a shame, and no mistake. But what about ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson

... him, was seen mizzling along Oxford Street, wending his way to the West. Not that there was anything unusual in Sponge being seen in Oxford Street, for when in town his daily perambulations consist of a circuit, commencing from the Bantam Hotel in Bond Street into Piccadilly, through Leicester Square, and so on to Aldridge's, in St. Martin's Lane, thence by Moore's sporting-print shop, and on through some of those ambiguous and tortuous streets that, appearing to lead all ways at once and ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... animal such sorrows, hopes or secret history as the audience has got to know. This has the additional advantage of putting the audience immediately in sympathy with your hero. "How sweet of him," all the ladies say, "to tell his little bantam about it!" ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne

... care to approach him at present. God! This is an awful beginning. The whole army is ready to dig its own grave. The only person of the lot who has any heart in him to-day is little Burr. He's like to burst with importance because he leads and we follow. He's a brave little chap, but such a bantam one must laugh. Well, I hate to leave you here, the very last man to be made a target of. You won't be rash?" ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... JAVA. At Bantam, and in other parts of the island, fathers betroth their children at a very early age, lest they should be taken from them to supply the harems of kings, or be sold for slaves on the death of the fathers by the monarch, who is heir of all his ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox

... Strait of Sunda, N. by the Java sea, E. by the residencies of Batavia and Preanger, and S. by the Indian Ocean. It also includes Princes Island and Dwars-in-den-weg ("right-in-the-way") Island in Sunda Strait, as well as several smaller islands along the coasts. Bantam had a population in 1897 of 709,339, including 302 Europeans, 1959 Chinese and 89 Arabs and other Asiatic foreigners. The natives are Sundanese, except in the northern or Serang division, where they are Javanese. The coast is low-lying and frequently marshy. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... his hand to the bell. It was answered in an instant by little Lucy, who received orders to fetch in a dependent at Belthorpe going by the name of the Bantam, and made her exit as she had entered, with her eyes on the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... tail. Picture to yourself a "black-breasted red" gamecock and you have him in all his glory except that his tail is drooping and he is more pheasant-like in his general bearing. The female was a trim little bird with a lilac sheen to her brown feathers and looked much like a well-kept game bantam hen. ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews

... apprehend that in the particular of the peculiar cry the Ceylon jungle fowl differs from that of the Dekkan, where I am told that it crows like a bantam cock.] ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... to be exempt From pride, they treat a Phantom As something quite beneath contempt - Just as no Turkey ever dreamt Of noticing a Bantam." ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll

... 12. A young Bantam hen, who was standing by, said to Betty, "Where can you have come from, and what sort of egg did you creep out of, not to have seen a duck ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various

... you, yes. All were black-haired except one, who was brown— the first brown-haired child in the history of the house. 'Bantam' they used to call him when they were girls and ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... of thunder Warrant Officer McKenny's voice jarred the boys out of their silence. He stepped forward like a bantam rooster and faced the startled ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell

... a political feast, And strut like a peacock, and crow like a bantam, Yet feel at one's back, like a blast from the east, A be-robed and be-wigged and blood-curdling law phantom. Stentorian cheers, and uproarious hear-hears, Though welcome, won't banish the sense of "wet-blanket" (That's INGOLDSBY'S rhyme), when Petition-bred fears ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 24, 1892 • Various

... the girls coming, and her plump hands were both extended to greet them. They went to the dairy to see the creaking cheese-presses, ate of the fresh curd, saw the golden stores of butter;—thence to the barn, where they clambered upon the hay-mow, found the nest of a bantam, took some of the little eggs in their pockets;—then coming into the yard, they patted the calves' heads, scattered oats for the doves, that, with pink feet and pearly blue necks, crowded around them to be fed, and next began to chase a fine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... early, Marblehead, Adams, Vermont, Minnesota, and Early Corey are favorites. A most excellent extra early yellow sweet corn, with kernels looking like small field corn, is Golden Bantam; the ears are small and would probably not attract the market buyer, but for home use the variety is unexcelled (Plate XXIV). For later crop, Crosby, Hickox, Shoe Peg, and Stowell ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... of this unexpected property. During the narrative a brood of adolescent chickens had come near to where we stood listening on the green plot, and eyed us with expectant looks, as if accustomed to be fed or noticed. The elder brother indulged the foremost among the poultry group—a white bantam cock of courageous character—by giving him his foot to assault. Valiantly the little fellow flew at, and spurred, and pecked the boot and trousers; again and again he returned to the charge, while the blue-gray eyes beamed smilingly down from beneath the steeple-crowned ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... wings—the kiwi. The species is one of many similar kinds that lived in Australia and New Zealand ages ago. Their remains are found in abundance, but the kiwi is the last species now living. It has a long, sharp bill and hair-like feathers. A full-grown bird is about the size of a bantam fowl. One of the more beautiful birds is a dull green parrot, the kea. But the kea is also a wretched pest, for it has learned how to kill sheep since the sheep-herders came to New Zealand. The kea darts out of the air, fastens its talons in the side of ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson

... the length of the Emperor of China's foot; have kissed the Great Mogul's slippers, and rid a-hunting upon an elephant with a Cham of Tartary. Body o' me, I have made a cuckold of a king, and the present majesty of Bantam is the issue of ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve

... other mishaps followed, and the nest was soon empty. A characteristic attitude of the male during this season is a slight drooping of the wings, and tail a little elevated, which gives him a very smart, bantam-like appearance. His song is fine and hurried, and not much of itself, but has its place in ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs

... distinct weights—one, the great bahar, used for weighing cloves, other spices, etc.; and the small bahar, about 150 kilos or 400 pounds avoirdupois, used for weighing quicksilver, various metals, certain drugs, etc. John Saris, writing of the commerce of Bantam, says: "A sacke is called a Timbang, and two Timbanges is one Peecull, three Peeculls is a small bahar, and foure Peeculls and an halfe a great Bahar, which is foure hundred fortie ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various

... but with laughter? "You are a leopard, and a lamb, and a bantam cock all in one," I jeered at him. "No wonder that I feel you need a priest to shrive you;" and I laughed again, and would not notice the hurt shining of his eyes as ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... for it, sir," said the skipper, bridling like a bantam. "Didn't I try to save my cargo, off Savannah, and didn't I lose my sloop to boot? Didn't I now, sir?—Poor old girl, mebby she's our chaser out 'ere ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... Quaker not only in dress and speech but in belief and character, yet with his quietness and quaint simplicity was blended no severity nor gloom. He had a great love of fun, which alone can account for his mischievous habit of teasing, and for his keeping such pets as the little bantam rooster that aroused the household each morning with its crowing, and the parrot "Charlie" that swore when excited, stopped the horses in the street with its cries of "whoa," and nipped the ankles of unwary visitors. Then, too, he ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... we saw a great crowd collected in the square before the principal pulperia, and riding up, found that all these people—men, women, and children—had been drawn together by a couple of bantam cocks. The cocks were in full tilt, springing into one another, and the people were as eager, laughing and shouting, as though the combatants had been men. There had been a disappointment about the bull; he had broken his bail, and taken himself off, and it was too late to get another; ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... visitors tell us nothing of the two Hindu kingdoms, Pajajaran and Majapahit, so celebrated in the chronicles. They speak only of Sunda and its port Bantam; and they mention a certain prince, Fatelehan, as completing the Mohammedan conquest in 1524. Raffles, however, following the chronicles, focusses the overthrow of the Hindu supremacy in the capture of the city of Majapahit in 1478 A.D. In spite of the traditions which speak of a long period ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold

... Dutch, already an enterprising and warlike nation, sweeping every sea with their commercial or military ambition,—so much have times been changed with them, too,—also fixed on Java, and formed a vigorous and thriving settlement at Bantam. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, the English, making a first and feeble attempt at eastern commerce, to the south of India, formed a factory at Bantam. But the Dutch, indignant at even the shadow of rivalry, broke down alike the decaying influence of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... had scarcely finished his breakfast next morning when Mr. Dowler brought in no less a person than his friend, Angelo Cyrus Bantam, Esquire, to introduce to him, and to administer his stock greeting, "Welcome to Ba-ath, sir. This is, indeed, an acquisition. Most welcome ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz

... aptly suit The two extremes of Bantam and of Brute, Compound grotesque of sullenness and show, The chattering magpie, and ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... stood to the N.E. between Thwart-the-way-Island and the Cap, sounding from eighteen to twenty-eight fathom: We had but little wind all night, and having a strong current against us, we got no further by eight in the morning than Bantam Point. At this time the wind came to the N.E., and obliged us to anchor in two-and-twenty fathom, at about the distance of two miles from the shore; the point bore N.E. by E., distant one league, and here we found a strong ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... and citation omitted). Indeed, "precision of regulation must be the touchstone in an area so closely touching our most precious freedoms." Keyishian v. Bd. of Regents of the Univ. of the State of N.Y., 385 U.S. 589, 603 (1967) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); see also Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58, 66 (1963) ("The separation of legitimate from illegitimate speech calls for sensitive tools.") (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Where the government draws content-based restrictions on ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

... visit the activity diminished. But on June 19th it was noticed at Anjer that the height of the dust and vapor-column, and likewise the explosions were again increasing. On the 24th a second column was seen rising. At length, Captain Ferzenaar, chief of the Topographical Survey of Bantam, visited Krakatoa island on August 11th. He found its forests destroyed, and the mantle of dust near the shores was twenty inches thick. Three large vapor-columns were noted, one marking the position of the crater of Perborwatan, while the ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... conclusions are unassailable. And nine times out of ten our reasons for reaching those conclusions are absurdly illogical, totally inadequate, or grossly mistaken. Everybody remembers the fable of the bantam cock who assured the admiring farmyard that the sun rose every morning because of its anxiety to hear him crow! The fact was indisputable; the sun did certainly rise every morning. It was only at the attempt to ascribe a specific ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham

... took the baby in his lap, and began poking his face into its little body, laughing and singing all the while, so that the baby crowed like a little bantam. And what he sang was something like this—such nonsense to those that couldn't understand it! but not to the baby, who got all the good in the world out of it:— baby's a-sleeping wake up baby for all the swallows are the merriest fellows and have the yellowest children who would go sleeping and ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald

... thereafter, there being no one to oppose him. He led a very peaceful life until our next door neighbor bought a large Shanghai rooster. I forgot now what particular breed our rooster was, {330} but he was small, not much larger than a bantam. The Shanghai rooster, which was a huge monster, had the most provoking crow, large, loud and aggressive. An alley intervened between the yard where he held forth and our yard. One day we came home from school and looked for our chicken. He ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... of him, it continually changed its lodgings; whilst others have lustily sworn that the soul was a vagrant, with no claim to any place of settlement whatever. Nevertheless, a vulgar notion has obtained that the soul dwelt on a little knob of the brain; and that there, like a vainglorious bantam-cock on a dunghill, it now claps its wings and crows all sorts of triumph—and now, silent and scratching, it thinks of nought but wheat and barley. The first step to knowledge is to confess to a late ignorance. We avow, then, our late benighted condition. We were of the number ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... a bantam biddy, very small, white as snow, and very pretty. She had been left an orphan chick, and for a while kept in the house, near the kitchen fire. She had been Bertie's especial charge, and he fed ...
— Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper and Other Stories • Anonymous

... become chronic. He stood up and worshipped his creator aloud, after a manner which seemed to say in every tone: "Behold I am he that worshippeth Thee! How mighty art Thou!" Then he read the Bible in a quarrelsome sort of way, as if he were a bantam, and every verse were a crow of defiance to the sinner. Then they sang a hymn in a fashion which brought dear old Scotland to Hugh's mind, which has the sweetest songs in its cottages, and the worst singing in its ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... of anticipations of the meeting with the family and household, down to the very cat and dog, and of the joy they were to give their little sisters by the presents with which their pockets were crammed; but the meeting to which they seemed to look forward with the greatest impatience was with Bantam, which I found to be a pony." When he had heard what a remarkable animal this pony was said to be, Irving gave his attention to other things until he heard a shout from the little travelers. Let him tell ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various

... speedily bring a question to a mere dispute about trifles, leaving the real matter, whose elements may appeal to the godlike in every man, out in the cold. Such a man, having gained his paltry point, will crow like the bantam he is, while the other, who may be the greater, perhaps the better man, although in the wrong, is embittered by his smallness, and turns away with increased prejudice. Human nature can hardly be blamed for its readiness to impute to the case the shallowness of its pleader. Few men do more harm ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... from the Dutch ovens. Toasts to this and that were flung back and forth, and jests and gibes, and the butt of many of these was that poor Federal government which (as one gentleman avowed) was like a bantam hen trying to cover a nestful of turkey's eggs, and clucking with importance all the time. This picture ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... the personal magnetism of a circus trainer or a leopard-tamer. Schoolgirls are irreverent beings, and though to her face her pupils showed her all respect, behind her back they spoke of her familiarly as "The Bantam," in allusion to her small size but plucky disposition, or sometimes, in reference to her sarcastic powers, as "The Sark," which by general custom became "The Snark." On the whole Miss Strong's pithy, racy, humorous style of teaching ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... Boise in delight. "You belong out West! Well, Johnny, I'm afraid you'll have to have it as a matter of sentiment, and partly on the charming young lady's account, whether you like it or not. Now what have you to say about it, you young bantam?" ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester

... soon revived, and hearing of an outward-bound East Indiaman about to sail for Bantam in Java, knowing that at all events he should be warm enough there, he shipped on board of ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith

... in the cabin was a minister, an Independent, who had formerly been in the East Indies, at Bantam on the island of Java. He had been visiting his friends in New England, but undoubtedly could not obtain any situation among them, and was returning to England in order to sail if he could in the first ships ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts

... in fact, was already a popular boy with his fellows. He had a select band of admirers among the youth of the Second-Form, who cackled round him like hens round a bantam. Together they groaned over their Latin exercises and wrestled with their decimals; together they heard the dreaded summons to the master's desk; and side by side, I am sorry to say, they held out their open palms to receive his ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed

... Ward,"—[L. P. Ward; well known as an athlete in San Francisco. He lost his mind and fatally shot himself in 1903.]—they called him—often went with them for these refreshments. Ward and Gillis were both bantam game-cocks, and sometimes would stir up trouble for the very joy of combat. Clemens never cared for that sort of thing and discouraged it, but Ward and Gillis were for war. "They never assisted each other. If one had offered to assist the other against some overgrown person, it would have ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... the brown egg; "my name is Coutchie-Coulou, and the Black Bantam laid me about an ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum

... traitors, till they yelled no more, but lifelessly hung their heads sideways, as the two crucified thieves are drawn. "My wrist is sprained with ye!" he cried, at last; "but there is still rope enough left for you, my fine bantam, that wouldn't give up. Take that gag from his mouth, and let us hear what he can say for himself." For a moment the exhausted mutineer made a tremulous motion of his cramped jaws, and then painfully twisting ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... man towards a child. Had he quarrelled outright with me, I could have stomached it; at least I should have known what part to take; but to be humored and treated as a child in the presence of my mistress, when I felt all the bantam spirit of a little man swelling within ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... Bantam. This ground lies off Seguin 6 miles E. by N. It has a bottom of rocky broken ground. There is a buoy in the center over a reef that is said to break at low water. Elsewhere depths range from 14 to 20 fathoms. The shoal ...
— Fishing Grounds of the Gulf of Maine • Walter H. Rich

... brave young bantam," he answered laughingly. "And though all the rest may hang or walk the plank, we will save you to afford us sport; so set your mind at rest ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... but, as the little girl said of her pet bantam, they only lay about doing nothing. And when guests desired some of my fine fresh eggs boiled for breakfast, I used to go secretly to a neighbor and buy a dozen, but never gave away ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn

... all her cards again before sending Mary up to Doran's room to say that she wished to speak with him. She felt sure she would win. He was a serious young man, not rakish or loud-voiced like the others. If it had been Mr. Sheridan or Mr. Meade or Bantam Lyons her task would have been much harder. She did not think he would face publicity. All the lodgers in the house knew something of the affair; details had been invented by some. Besides, he had been employed ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce

... part, and numerous additions, of different heights, jutting forth in every direction without any seeming plan, but looking as if they might have crept together some cold winter's day for mutual warmth, or as if the middle house was a bantam trying to shield an overgrown brood, a solitary tower having the effect of a chicken on the mother ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various

... he was right. Davis fumed and blustered, but though Frank was small, he was as game as a bantam rooster, and he gave Davis to understand that there had been a vast change in their relative positions; that the one, while still the same insolent swaggerer, had not regiments of infantry or batteries of artillery to emphasize his insolence, and the other was no longer ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... Geography are vague. A most interesting account of Bantam, the capital of Java, may be seen in Vol. v. of Hakluyt's 'Collection of early Voyages,' ed. 1812. It occurs in the Description of a Voyage made by certain Ships of Holland to the East Indies &c. ... Translated out of Dutch into English by W.P. London. 1589. 'The towne,' we are told, 'is ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various

... prize at the Slocum-Pogis poultry show, mysteriously disappeared. Jim, the gardener's boy, and I hunted everywhere without finding any trace till we sighted Beauty. The beast was seated on my verbena bed, with fearfully distended stomach, waving my poor little bantam's tail feathers from between his teeth. Had I been an ancient Egyptian high priest, and Beauty at the top of the tree of holy cats, his diabolical godship should have been made into a mummy instanter. As things were, he had to be ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various

... have seen me, when papa Brought me your gift, an hour ago; I almost hopped out of my shoes, And raised a mighty bantam crow! ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood

... bantam cock," said Raffles, savagely, "I only 'opes as this 'ere bill won't spoil yours. And let me tell you, young shaver, I ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson

... lady, really wished for the advances she feared. Sukey Yates, who was only fourteen, had "company" every Sunday evening, and went to all the social frolics for miles around. Polly Kaster, not sixteen, was soon to be married to Bantam Rhodes. Many young men had looked longingly upon Rita, who was the most beautiful girl on Blue; but the Chief Justice, with her daughter's hearty approval, drove all suitors away. The girl was wholly satisfied with Dic, who was "less than kin," but very much "more than kind." He came to see the ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major

... was not for sometime to come: in the meanwhile she was like a dear little bantam hen with one chick; while Ben himself was content to shelter under her wing, until it grew upon him that, loving her as he did, loving his mother—realising what it meant to be a mother, in thinking of Jenny ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various

... wicked liar!" said Cissy, clinching her little fists at her side and edging towards him with a sidelong bantam-like movement as she advanced her freckled cheek close to his with an effrontery so like her absconding father that he recoiled before it. "And a mean, double-faced hypocrite, too! Didn't you always praise him? Didn't you call him a Napoleon, ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte

... that peak you'd plant 'em, Your claws, bold Bantam, But I spy a phantom Which you may not see, Which may scare you slightly, Should you grip too tightly The unpleasant ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various

... Dimp, 'Never mind, Dimp; you aint to blame. Your dad's an old skinflint. I'll lend you six to start off with.' Then I made Billy Burns sweep the floor, while Sam went down to the chicken yard and caught my bantam rooster, Tooley. Then I sent Dimp after some chalk, and an empty peach basket, and a piece of cord. Then we was ready ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott

... year, perhaps; and if it should be the consecrated season with you, I don't see how you can keep it. You have no turkeys; you would not desecrate the festival by offering up a withered Chinese bantam, instead of the savoury grand Norfolcian holocaust, that smokes all around my nostrils at this moment from a thousand firesides. Then what puddings have you? Where will you get holly to stick in your ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... by me several Papers, which during my Voyage homeward from Bantam at leisure times I writ concerning the King and the Countrey, and concerning the English there, and of my Escape; which Papers I forthwith set my self to Peruse and draw into a Method, and to add what more might occur to my Thoughts of those Matters, which at length I have finished, contriving what ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox

... of November 1605, the Dutch yacht, the Duyfhen, was dispatched from Bantam to explore the islands of New Guinea; and that she sailed along, what was thought to be, the west side of that country, to 133/4 deg. of south latitude. "This extensive country was found, for the greatest part, desert; but, ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders

... hour of danger. To the profound astonishment of the Portuguese admiral the Dutchman with his five little trading ships made an attack on the pompous armada, intending to avert chastisement from the king of Bantam. It was not possible for Wolfert to cope at close quarters with his immensely superior adversary, but his skill and nautical experience enabled him to play at what was then considered long bowls with extraordinary effect. The greater lightness and mobility of his vessels made them more than a match, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... enticement, the fowls and ducks were called together and numbered, and the various beauties of both enumerated. This speckled hen had been such a good mother, and a good handful of grain was tossed to her;—then the beautiful little bantam had been nursed in a stocking, and was so tame that it would come and eat out of the hand;—then there was the fine old cock that crowed so loud he might be heard all over the parish, and a handful was ...
— Christmas, A Happy Time - A Tale, Calculated for the Amusement and Instruction of Young Persons • Miss Mant

... made from only golden wheat, and served with honey from the wild bees' combs. There were eggs that a tiny bantam hen had laid, made into an omelette with very rare herbs from the castle kitchen garden. There were tarts filled with wild strawberries or black cherries, which every one knows are the nicest strawberries ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

... indeed, if of the very vociferous and shrill-tongued kind, burst out into such a noisy demonstration that you are glad to escape from her, no matter what spoils you leave on her hands; just as a mastiff will slink away from a bantam hen all heckled feathers and screeching cackle, and tremendous assumption of doing something terrible if he does not look out. Any way the little woman is unconquerable; and a tiny fragment of humanity at a public ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... Then all the Muses in one ruin be, And rhyme began to enervate poetry. 50 Thus, in a stupid military state, The pen and pencil find an equal fate. Flat faces, such as would disgrace a screen, Such as in Bantam's embassy were seen, Unraised, unrounded, were the rude delight Of brutal nations ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... gave the Algerine pirates, who preyed on the Dutch, a reception in his harbors, and liberty to dispose of their prizes. He revived some complaints of the East India Company with regard to the affair of Bantam,[*] He required the six British regiments in the Dutch service to be sent over. He began to put his navy in a formidable condition. And from all his movements, the Hollanders entertained apprehensions that he sought ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume

... up the path from the stables, and he raced for the end of the melon-patch near the wall. There, in the warm litter about the melons, very cunningly hidden, he found twenty-five eggs, about the size of a bantam's eggs, but with ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... contrast between his voice and appearance, and that of the spare, squeaking old man, who sits at the same table, and who, elevating a little cracked bantam sort of voice to its highest pitch, invokes damnation upon his own eyes or somebody else's at the commencement of every sentence he utters. 'The Captain,' as they call him, is a very old frequenter of Bellamy's; much addicted to stopping 'after the House is up' (an inexpiable crime in Jane's ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... elephant and picked up his fowling-piece. Frank hurriedly substituted a shot cartridge for the one loaded with ball in his gun. He heard a pattering on the dry leaves under the trees and into a fairly open space before them stalked a pretty little bantam cock with red comb and wattles and curving green tail-feathers, followed by four or five sober brown hens, so like in every respect to domestic fowl that Wargrave hesitated to shoot. But suddenly the birds ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly

... "Hooray fer ther bantam!" shouted a big cow-puncher, slapping Jack on the back. "Say, I hear them say you're from Bosting. I'm goin' ter buy a hundred-pound sack o' beans myself ter-morrer an' begin trainin'. If beans'll do that fer you, a sack o' them will make me fit ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor

... Anderson's coat and the contents of its pockets, that there was one bird above all others which made him think of Linda; but he could not at the moment feather Katherine O'Donovan. And then he further reflected as he climbed the hill that if it had to be done the best he could do would be a bantam ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... young chap—eight stone seven, and he's got to get down to eight stone four, for a bantam weight match—at an inn up the river here. I daresay you know it, sir. Or any one would tell you where it is. The 'Blue Boar,' it's called. You come there any time you like to name, sir, ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse

... fault in talking in his times, gives a letter which he says was written in King Charles the Second's reign by the "ambassador of Bantam to his royal master a little after his arrival in England." The following is a copy, which will show how in those days the double-tongued talked, and how the writer, a stranger in this ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... north, which included the whole north part of the island. The kingdom of Sukadana (from suka, happiness, and dunia, the world, or earthly paradise), extending from Tanjong Dato to Tanjong Sambar, which belonged to the King of Bantam (when or how acquired I have not learned): and the remainder of the island from Tanjong Sambar to Kanukungan Point aforesaid, to the kingdom of Benjarmasing (from bendar, a port of trade, and masing, usual, or the ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... having in his possession a couple of bantam hens, which laid very small eggs, suddenly hit on a plan. Going the next morning to the fowl-run, Johnnie's father was surprised to find an ostrich egg tied to one of the beams, and above it a card, with ...
— Good Stories from The Ladies Home Journal • Various

... solitary man; he'd no wife nor bairn, and he lived by his lane, save for a dog and a bantam cock. Them he loved dearly and nought was too good for them. The dog, I'm thinkin', he had odd uses for; Andy was no above seekin' a hare now and then that was no his by rights. And he'd be out before ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder

... good taste. Then an orderly and submissive mind, that can consent to act in accordance with the laws of Art. Circumstances, too, must have been reasonably favorable. That well-known skeptic, the King of tropical Bantam, could not skate, because he had never seen ice and doubted even the existence of solid water. Widdrington, after the Battle of Chevy Chace, could not have skated, because he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... Trevalyon, "is, on your return to England, to retire to the cool shades of oblivion and try the 'Bantam' system: that is if Owen Cunliffe does not send you there, for having while in Paris been attentive to the fair sex instead of to the ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... breeds of dogs that I have come across personally, I know of none more faithful than the little fox-terrier is to his first devotion. He is a perfect little bantam-cock to fight, and never so happy as when he is in a row. 'The most unredeemed thing in nature,' was a true remark I once heard made of one; and yet there is no dog more devoted to his master, or more gentle to the children ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... Edwards, who has published four or five. The poor man, who is grown very old and devout, begs God to take from him the love of natural philosophy; and having observed some heterodox proceedings among bantam cocks, he proposes that all schools of girls and boys should be promiscuous, lest, if separated, they should learn wayward passions. But what struck me most were his dedications, the last was to God; this is to Lord Bute, as if he was determined to make his fortune ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... They censured the bantam for strutting and crowing, In those vile pantaloons that he fancied looked knowing; And a want of decorum caused many demurs Against the game chicken for coming in spurs. The ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... died of grief; and then it was that his father, in a moment of dejection, fled from Bantam in order to endeavor to get labor ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... back out of the darkness, and I knew that I was safe. 'The devil take thee for a hot-blooded young bantam to shoot thy best friend with powder and ball, that he was fool enough to give thee'; and by this time I had guessed 'twas Master Ratsey, and recognized his voice. 'I would have let thee hear soon enough that 'twas I, if I had known I was so near thy lair; but 'tis more than a man's ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... fortunately discovered them, and drove them away with shot, when they left their praw behind, which the Dutch took, to serve instead of their own boat, which they had lost at the Philippines. Seeing no hope of any profitable trade at this place, they now left it, intending for Bantam, not much pleased either with the country or the people. The day after leaving Borneo, they met a junk from Japan bound for Manilla, which informed them of a great Dutch ship being forced by tempests into Japan, all her company having died by sickness and famine except ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... the air-lock and shove them out naked one at a time," he ordered curtly. "That's the way they would have treated us. Save the young bantam for the last. Now, where is this Evan Winford? I have an old score to ...
— The Space Rover • Edwin K. Sloat

... "You bantam! He was only a bit of a boy, and couldn't do anything. Sit down and hear the rest of it," commanded Tilly, with a pat on the yellow head, and a private resolve that Seth should have the largest piece of pie at dinner next day, as ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... a division of a Dutch squadron on its way to Bantam, rediscovered what was then called the island of Cerne; and a boat's crew having been sent ashore to reconnoitre, returned with nine great birds, a number of smaller ones, and the welcome intelligence of a secure ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various

... Greenock, the ferry to cross the water, and the legs to run three miles. I do so! I arrive!—behold, I arrive in time!" He laughed wildly. "And so you would try to kill him—my clock!" he yelled, and with that, like a furious bantam, ignoring the pistol, he flew at Bullard, tore away the mask and tossed it ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell

... what their thoughts are. They are so unintelligent in some regions, so subtly wise in others. We cannot share our thoughts with them; we cannot explain anything to them. We can sympathise with them in their troubles, but cannot convey our sympathy to them. There is a little bantam hen here, a great pet, who comes up to the front door with the other bantams to be fed. She has been suffering for some time from an obscure illness. She arrives with the others, full of excitement, and begins to pick at the grain thrown them; but the effort soon exhausts her; she goes sadly apart, ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... years. He left school at ten years of age, and from that time until his execution seems to have had a continuous career of thieving. He tells us that before he was eleven years old he had stolen a bantam cock from a woman belonging to the New Town of Edinburgh. He went with another boy to Currie, six miles from Edinburgh, and there stole a pony, but this was afterwards returned. When but twelve years of age he attended Leith races, and it was ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... blossoms drifted over it. When Thea opened the gate, old Mrs. Kohler was just coming in from the chicken yard, with five fresh eggs in her apron and a pair of old top-boots on her feet. She called Thea to come and look at a bantam egg, which she held up proudly. Her bantam hens were remiss in zeal, and she was always delighted when they accomplished anything. She took Thea into the sitting-room, very warm and smelling of food, ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... very good of you, squire, but while you're about it if I were you I'd just say a word or two to them two bantam-cock-like boys of officers of yours, who keep on sneering like at my men and setting their backs up. You don't mean it, of course, being ready to do what's right. So you give 'em a good talking to when you ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... over a compliment—doesn't that sound vain?—that I am going to sit right down and share it with you. I should like to get up on a fence like that little bantam rooster of Darts' and crow it to all the world. Mrs. Martin, our principal, told me this morning I had done wonders in three months! And I was so stupid at first—French and Geometry seemed absolutely impossible. I used to put myself to sleep saying those awful French ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... that had taken place seemed to have quite turned his head for the time. He jumped on Kate Brown's back—the hired girl—when she was carrying two pails of milk to the dairy, and the contents of both pails were spilt and wasted; he shut up a fighting bantam cock and the stable cat into a barn, and left them fighting furiously; he locked one of the farm-labourers in a hayloft, and pulled away the ladder, so that he was not released for hours, and he proved such an imp of mischief in the house that even his mother meditated handing him over ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre

... there rowed a scute called a Prawen harde vnder the lande by vs, wee called him, but not against his will, and shewed him siluer, and other wares that liked him well, he bad vs make towards the strand, and told vs of Bantam, saying that there we should haue al kinds of Marchandise. Then we made signs vnto him that if he wold bring vs to Bantam, we wold pay him for his labor, he asked vs 5. rialles of 8. and a redcap, which we graunted vnto, and so one of the men in the scute ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt

... indeed!" returned Coutchie-Coulou. "I saw her go by a little while ago, and she 's much bigger than the Black Bantam." ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum

... Miss Heptonstall, fill up!" cried Ted, energetically; "eh, if you dunnot gi' it no more nor that, Victoria met jest as well be a bantam. He'll noan as mich as wet that great yaller beak ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)

... crooked, and loose horns; and these in succeeding years occasionally become attached to the skull. White and black bantams, both of which generally breed true, sometimes assume as they grow old a saffron or red plumage. For instance, a first-rate black bantam has been described, which during three seasons was perfectly black, but then annually became more and more red; and it deserves notice that this tendency to change, whenever it occurs in a bantam, "is almost certain to prove hereditary."[90] The cuckoo or blue-mottled Dorking cock, when old, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... from Barbary; the pony called a 'galloway' from the county of Galloway in Scotland; the 'tarantula' is a poisonous spider, common in the neighbourhood of Tarentum. The 'pheasant' reached us from the banks of the Phasis; the 'bantam' from a Dutch settlement in Java so called; the 'canary' bird and wine, both from the island so named; the 'peach' (persica) declares itself a Persian fruit; 'currants' derived their name from Corinth, whence they were mostly shipped; the 'damson' is the 'damascene' or plum ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... Colonel Bunnion at so wilful a loose end that I could not find it in my heart to refuse him an introduction to Lola. He manifested his delight by lifting the skirt of his dinner-jacket with his hands and rising on his spurs like a bantam cock. I left her to him for a moment and went over to say a civil word to the Misses Bostock of South Shields. I regret to say I noticed a certain frigidity in their demeanour. The well-conducted man in South Shields ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... sir? And that you'll make her royal with the stone, An empress; and yourself, King of Bantam. ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson

... and decayed vegetable matter, revealing the pebbly bottom, fresh and bright, with one or two fish suspended over the centre of it, keeping watch and ward. If an intruder approached, they would dart at him spitefully. These fish have the air of bantam cocks, and, with their sharp, prickly fins and spines and scaly sides, must be ugly customers in a hand-to-hand encounter with other finny warriors. To a hungry man they look about as unpromising as hemlock slivers, so thorny and thin are they; ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... northern provinces of the Netherlands had renounced allegiance to Spain. Consequently they were free to attack not alone Spanish vessels and colonies, but also those previously belonging to Portugal. As early as 1596 Cornelius Houtman rounded the Cape and visited Sumatra and Bantam, and within fifty, years the Dutch had replaced the Portuguese in many of their Eastern possessions. In 1614 they took Malacca, and with it the command of the Spice Islands; by 1658 they had secured full ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs

... and he came for me like a bantam,' said the other, still rubbing his knee. 'I got my old left-right in, and he went over as if he had been pole-axed. It wasn't my fault, mounseer. I told you you'd get pepper if you ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... away at the other end, startling in its suddenness and impetuosity, was a trisyllabic crow, so brief, piercing, and emphatic, that it could only have proceeded from that peppery uppish little bird, the bantam. And of the three syllables, the last, which should be the longest, was the shortest, "short and sharp like the shrill swallow's cry," or perhaps even more like the shrieky bark of an enraged little cur; ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... stringing together of the good old traditional copy-book phrases, their occasional gushes of sentiment, the profound estimates of the world, sounding to the old folks that read them as the experience of a bantam-pullet's last-hatched young one with the chips of its shell on its head would sound to a Mother Cary's chicken, who knew the great ocean with all its typhoons and tornadoes? Yet every now and then one is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... search, From realm to realm, o'er land and water, Of Fate's fantastic, fickle daughter! Ah! slaves sincere of flying phantom! Just as their goddess they would clasp, The jilt divine eludes their grasp, And flits away to Bantam! Poor fellows! I bewail their lot. And here's the comfort of my ditty; For fools the mark of wrath are not So much, I'm sure, as pity. 'That man,' say they, and feed their hope, 'Raised cabbages—and now he's pope. Don't we deserve as rich a prize?' ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... Christian, could do. The reader will remember the case of the British envoy to Geneva, who being ordered in great wrath to "quit the territories of the republic in twenty-four hours," replied, "By all means: in ten minutes." And here was a little bantam kingdom, not much bigger than the irate republic, having its separate sultan, with full-mounted establishment of peacock's feathers, white elephants, Moorish eunuchs, armies, cymbals, dulcimers, and all kinds of music, tormentors, and executioners; whilst his majesty crowed defiance across ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... up with much that is both doubtful and hazardous. We now, however, reach the period which may be regarded as the beginning of the authentic history of the discovery of New Holland. In 1606 the yacht DUYFHEN sailed from Bantam, and, coasting along the south-west shore of New Guinea, her commander unknowingly crossed the entrance of Torres Straits, and continued his voyage along the eastern side of the Gulf of Carpentaria, ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... voyage James Lancaster had established factories at Achin and Bantam. In the second voyage Sir Henry Middleton was instructed to endeavor to found a factory on the island of Banda. He carried on some trade, but neither he nor his successor in the third voyage, Captain Keeling, was able to override ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various



Words linked to "Bantam" :   domestic fowl, fowl, petite, little, small, poultry, lilliputian



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