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More "Bird" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one subject on which they were in accord, and that was the canary bird. In the course of years they had possessed many, and every time the cat took one they protested that never again would they expose themselves ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... faced them, with an awkward take-off from the bank of a ditch. Killaloe crashed through; Brunette came like a bird in his tracks, Norah's arm across her face to ward off the loose branches. She got through with a tear in her coat, landing on stiff plough through which Mrs. Ainslie's grey was struggling painfully. Brunette's light burden was all in her favour ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... of the pigeon express man is not distinctly known; but he is supposed to have given up the bird business, and gone into the manufacture of woolly horses ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... were looking for something in the root of the hedge, you wouldn't want to scour the road in a high-speed automobile. And still less would you want to get a bird's-eye view in an aeroplane. That parable about fits my case. I have been in the clouds and I've been scorching on the pikes, but what I was wanting was in the ditch all the time, and I naturally missed it ... I had the wrong stunt, Major. I was too high up and refined. I've ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... of hazard the godfather played over his shoulder. In matters of choice he chose for him. And when the lad began to work on his father's farm the farmer began to get rich. For no bird or field-mouse touched a seed that his son had sown, and every plant he planted throve when Good Luck ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... than anything you ever saw. When he arose, he was no longer mangy and haggard, but strong and handsome. And the damsel sought out for him the finest robe she could find, with which she clothed him when he arose. And he was glad to put it on, quicker than a bird in flight. He kissed and embraced the maid, and then said to her graciously: "My dear, I have only God and you to thank for being restored to health again. Since I owe my liberty to you, you may take ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... have never known. Guilty? Of course she was guilty; and I only wish we could try her again and hang her yet! Now don't pretend you sympathize with a woman like that," he said to Rachel, with a look like a nudge; "you haven't been married long enough; and for Heaven's sake don't refuse that bird! It's the best that can be got this time of year, though that's not saying much; but wait till the grouse season, Mrs. Steel! I have a moor here in the dales, keep a cellar full of them, and eat 'em as ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... was borne over them. Then his captor did that which proved beyond doubt to Bradley that he was in the hands of human beings who had devised an almost perfect scheme of duplicating, mechanically, the wings of a bird—the thing spoke to its companion and in a language that Bradley partially understood, since he recognized words that he had learned from the savage races of Caspak. From this he judged that they were human, and being human, he knew that they could have ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the influence of Callimachus quite discomfited the young poet. A war of epigrams began, and while Apollonius called Callimachus a 'blockhead' (so finished was his invective), the veteran compared his rival to the Ibis, the scavenger-bird. Other singers satirised each others' legs, and one, the Aretino of the time, mocked at king Ptolemy and scourged his failings in verse. The literary quarrels (to which Theocritus seems to allude in Idyl ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... you be too sure of that," Miss Vernon replied. "Take my advice, and when you speak of Rashleigh, get up to the top of Otterscope-hill, where you can see for twenty miles round you in every direction—stand on the very peak, and speak in whispers; and, after all, don't be too sure that the bird of the air will not carry the matter, Rashleigh has been my tutor for four years; we are mutually tired of each other, and we shall heartily rejoice ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... brutish, and short". To live like an animal is to rely upon one's own quite naked equipment and efforts, and not to mind getting wet or cold or scratching one's bare legs in the underbrush. One would have to eat his roots and seeds quite raw, and gnaw a bird as a cat does. To get the feel of uncivilized life, let us recall how savages with the comparatively advanced degree of culture reached by our native Indian tribes may fall to when really hungry. In the journal of the Lewis and Clark expedition there is an account ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... aught of Mabon the son of Modron, who was taken when three nights old from between his mother and the wall." And the Ousel answered, "When I first came here, there was a smith's anvil in this place, and I was then a young bird; and from that time no work has been done upon it, save the pecking of my beak every evening, and now there is not so much as the size of a nut remaining thereof; yet the vengeance of Heaven be upon me, if during ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... of the United States, was there, as ever the most simply attired personage in the Union. His beautiful wife, however, beaming and gracious, but no less rigid than "Lady Washington," in her social statutes, looked like a bird of paradise beside a graven image, so gorgeous was her raiment. Baron Steuben was in the regalia of war and a breastplate of orders. Kitty Livingston, now Mrs. Matthew Ridley, had also received a fine new gown of Mrs. Church's selection, for the two women still were friends, despite the ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... in Rome are more entertaining to the eye than to measure the long plumb-line which drops from the inhabited windows of the palace, with their little over-peeping balconies, their muslin curtains and their bird-cages, down to the rugged constructional work of the Republic. In the Forum proper the sublime is eclipsed again, though the late extension of the excavations gives a chance ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... little white hands more tightly in his own, and whispered sweet words to her that brought a bright flush to her face and a love light to her eyes. She drooped her head with the coy, pretty shyness of a bird, listening to words that seemed to her all poetry ...
— Marion Arleigh's Penance - Everyday Life Library No. 5 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... the Ebenezer of a few believers in the "Bird- of-Freedom" school, with a spice of breezy religious courage in their composition, was raised at the bottom of Cannon-street, in Preston; and to this day it abideth there. Why it was elevated at that particular period of the world's history we cannot say. Neither does it signify. ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... spotted me, CHARLIE,—him being left out in the cold,— And to see him sit down on his topper, and turn off as yaller as gold, Wos as good as a pantermime. Oh! if there's one thing more nicer than pie, It's to soar like a bird in the sight of the flats as can't git on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... has cost him a pretty penny, madame. His singing-bird has cost him more than a hundred thousand francs in these two years. Ah, ha! you have not seen the end ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... goin' to do to-day, Triny?" he asked, briskly. "When you goin' over to see the Deerings' parrot? There ain't another such bird in America. You go over there this morning and see that parrot. Don't loll about the house. Don't be lazy!" Whereupon, with less profanity, but as much of autocracy as was ever displayed by an Irish boss whipping into shape the lowliest of his Italian gang, Mr. McBride replaced his pipe ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... among the waggons. At the same moment, I loosed mine. So did Doolittle. Quick as thought, but silently, we led them out all three where the laager was broken. I clutched my mare's mane, and sprang to the stirrup to pursue our enemy. My sorrel bounded off like a bird. The fugitive had a good two minutes start of us; but our horses were fresh, while his had probably been ridden all day. I patted my pony's neck; she responded with a ringing neigh of joy. We tore after the outlaw, all three of us abreast. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... square were two or three officials, and two men holding the two contesting birds. A man at a table outside held the stakes and presumably kept track of the bettors, odds, etc. Instead of the weapons provided by nature each bird had securely fastened to his left leg, in place of the spur that had been cut off, a villainously sharp steel spur, slightly curved and about three inches long. A well directed thrust from this steel weapon may kill the victim almost instantly, and one victim ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... been a work of vast ability in the somniferous school of literature. The profound depth of the minister's repose was the more remarkable, inasmuch as he was one of those persons whose sleep ordinarily is as light as fitful, and as easily scared away, as a small bird hopping on a twig. To such an unwonted remoteness, however, had his spirit now withdrawn into itself that he stirred not in his chair when old Roger Chillingworth, without any extraordinary precaution, came into the room. The physician advanced directly ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the nests in the field, there was a mother bird and three young birds. The little mother bird, there in the quiet clover field, had never heard such a loud ...
— Bobby of Cloverfield Farm • Helen Fuller Orton
... divided diagonally from upper hoist-side corner; the upper triangle is red with a soaring yellow bird of paradise centered; the lower triangle is black with five, white, five-pointed stars of the Southern ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... a difference in Dotty's attitude. She walked as quickly as before but she was not quite so alert. Also, she kept turning her head suddenly from side to side with a gesture of an inquisitive bird, a little uncertain which way ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... on the Place Saint Pierre, he took me up in it. I found the experience a novel but not a pleasing one, for all my life I have had a tendency to vertigo when ascending to any unusual height. I remember that it was a clear day, and that we had a fine bird's-eye view of Paris on the one hand and of the plain of Saint Denis on the other, but I confess that I felt out of-my element, and was glad to set foot on terra firma ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... "The bird's flown!" were his first words, addressed to Rolfe. "I've hunted high and low, but I cannot find a sign of him. It beats me how he's managed it. He couldn't have gone out the front way without my seeing him go past the door, and the ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... waves rushing up to my feet, I felt, all at once, as though an unseen power was impelling me to look up. I raised my head and gazed out over the water, and there I saw, far away, a great white object that looked like an immense bird. I knew, as I know all things that occur in my visions, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... young ducks in the course of the day—an easy matter, for the old birds made such a fuss in attempting to decoy us away from them—pretending to be badly hurt as they say the plover does—that we could always find them by going about in the opposite direction to the old bird till we heard the young ones crying: then we ran them down, for they could not fly though they were nearly full grown. Chowbok plucked them a little and singed them a good deal. Then we cut them up and boiled them in another pannikin, and ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... bad," said Barby eying her. "Why there ain't much particular, Fleda; nobody's had any heart to eat lately; I thought I might a'most as well save myself the fuss of getting victuals. Hugh lives like a bird, and Mis' Rossitur ain't much better, and I think all of 'em have been keeping their appetites till you came back; 'cept Philetus and me; we keep it up pretty well. Why you're come ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... tell you about this gattling gun expert. When they landed us off of them boats down on the coast, the battalion commander turned us all loose for a swim in the bay, and this here bird almost drowned. He went down three times before we could ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... Contemplation, And the mute Silence hist along, 'Less Philomel will daign a Song, In her sweetest, saddest plight, Smoothing the rugged brow of night, While Cynthia checks her Dragon yoke, Gently o're th'accustom'd Oke; 60 Sweet Bird that shunn'st the noise of folly Most musical!, most melancholy! Thee Chauntress oft the Woods among I woo to hear thy eeven-Song; And missing thee, I walk unseen On the dry smooth-shaven Green, To ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... telling you of, and kept the best house in county Clare—well, he was coming down on the Limerick coach, and met a deuced pleasant, good-looking, talkative sort of a fellow a-top of it. They dined and got a tumbler of punch together at Roscrea; and when French got down at Bird Hill, he told his acquaintance that if he ever found himself anywhere near Ennis, he'd be glad to see him at Glare Abbey. He was a hospitable sort of a fellow, and had got into a kind of way of saying the same thing to everybody, ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... to say that this form of advertisement is worth columns of the daily papers; and if Mr. Courtland had only shown himself appreciative of his best interests and had changed the title of his book to "The Land of the New Guinea Pig," instead of "The Quest of the Meteor-Bird," they would have gone to press with ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... heart most eased When that we are y-flatter'd and y-praised. He *went full nigh the sooth,* I will not lie; *came very near A man shall win us best with flattery; the truth* And with attendance, and with business Be we y-limed,* bothe more and less. *caught with bird-lime And some men said that we do love the best For to be free, and do *right as us lest,* *whatever we please* And that no man reprove us of our vice, But say that we are wise, and nothing nice,* *foolish For truly there is ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... not be accomplished, O Kesava! How can a person like me live, having failed to accomplish his vow? O hero, the non-accomplishment is evident of this (my vow which to me is a) source of great grief. (At this season of the year), I tell thee that the sun setteth quickly." The bird-bannered Krishna hearing this cause of Partha's grief, touched water and sat with face turned to the east. And then that hero, of eyes like lotus leaves, and possessed of great energy, said these words for the benefit of Pandu's ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... glass in the hall that would cost him four dollars. Did they think he was made of argent. If so, they never made a bigger mistake in their vie. The meal closed with general expressions of good-feeling. A little bird has whispered to us that there will be no more parties at the De Smythes' ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... your bluff, it wouldn't be safe, would it? Of course, I'm a sure-enough bad man—and all that. But you must be a bird of my feather, or you wouldn't flock ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... who had charge of this young Scotchman. As he could not be found, the fellow's cell was broken open, and there was the warder, bound and gagged. The bird had flown, and parties of horse were sent off by all the roads leading to Bohemia and Silesia, but no signs of the man have, as far as we have heard, ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... looked "lovingly" on the well-fed joints above his head. The gutters before his door literally ran with blood: pass by whenever you would, there the crimson current constantly flowed; and the smell the passenger inhaled was not that of "Araby." A "Whitechapel bird" and a "Whitechapel butcher" were once synonymous phrases, used to denote a character the very reverse of a gentleman; but, says a writer of the fifties, "in the manners of the latter we believe there ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... followed the path he had taken. The thickly grown wood was alive with spirit of spring. Small animals scampered underfoot, and overhead a bird breathed forth its soul in incomparable song. She stopped for a minute to listen to the latter—clear-throated as an English nightingale—singing away as though winter and the stark desolation had never been. A slight ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... do as a fairy small? I cannot tell all; But I would do much with a right good will: To all things good, and to nothing ill. And I'd laugh and skip, like a bird on wing, Twitter and sing, And make boys and girls, and birds and flowers, All say, "What a lovely world ...
— The Nursery, No. 165. September, 1880, Vol. 28 - A Monthly Magazine For Youngest Readers • Various
... born in 1636, died in 1695, chose the feathered tribe for his subjects. He has been called 'the Raphael of bird painters.' He painted especially poultry, peacocks, turkeys, and pigeons, which he usually represented alive, and treated with great truthfulness and picturesque feeling. Among his best pictures are 'The Floating Feather,' a feather given with singular ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... after putting away my things, nurse opened the nursery door and beckoned me in: "Miss Nannie," she said impressively, "I'm kinder worried 'bout your pa. He's never had no appetite to brag of; but for a week past he's been eatin' like a bird. Mornin' after mornin' he ain't touched nothin' but his tea, an' I'm afraid something's wrong. I don't want to frighten you, my dear, but I thought by tellin' you, maybe you could find out if anything ails him, and get him to send for the doctor. I think he looks kinder bad, ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... sooner—and I wonder you did not think of it—we might both of us have had lots of allocations. These are not the times to conceal hereditary distinctions. But now comes the serious work. We must have one or two men of known wealth upon the list. The chaff is nothing without a decoy-bird. Now, can't you help me with ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... wherever it recurs, is the enemy of life itself. As I write, my eye falls upon a Japanese sword-guard. I have seen it a thousand times, but I never fail to feel the same thrill. Out of the disc of blued steel the artisan has worked the soaring form of a bird with upraised wings. It is indicated in skeleton fashion by bars extraordinarily energetic, yet suavely modulated. There must have been feeling and intelligence in every touch of the chisel and file that wrought it. Could that same object seen occasionally in a museum showcase afford me any comparable ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... straight before him, apparently at a bluebird balanced on a twig, but it was not the bird he was ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... first page of a Chinese almanack for the current year, we have a curious woodcut representing a fly, a spider, a bird, a sportsman, a tiger, and a well. Underneath this strange medley is a legend couched in the following terms:—"Predestination in all things!" The letterpress accompanying the picture explains that the spider had ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... to the superior quality of his dandelion; for she came to his side, and he at once flew to a neighboring bush and burst into song. It was a pretty little ditty, or rather a musical rattle on one note, resembling the song of the indigo bird, ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... were transmitted into the ivory mouth-piece beside her. At the moment when the day was most threatened it had shown a new and most promising development. Over the grey dress Mrs. Grove wore a cloak with a subdued gold shimmer, her hat was hardly more than the spread wing of a bird across the pallor of her face, and the deep folds of the gloves on her wrists emphasized the slender charm of her arms. No young—younger woman, he decided, could compete with her in the worldly, the sophisticated, attractiveness she commanded: on the ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... boys came to a halt and looked about them searchingly. On one side of the road lay a tilled field, on the other were rocks and trees and bushes. They listened intently, but only the occasional cry of a night bird broke the stillness. ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... were the Mollies; for which bird the North Sea men have as great an affection and veneration as sailors round the Cape of Good Hope have for Mother Carey's chickens or the superb albatross: They have an idea that the spirits of the brave old Greenland skippers, the successors of the fierce sea-kings, ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... bird from a neighbouring bush. 'I thought I should only be in the way if I kept close to you. But I longed to lend a claw in such good work. Can I ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... the mention of him, in mellow mirth, by England's greatest spirit. "What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl?" Whereto replies the much-offended Malvolio: "That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird." He of the crossed garters disdains such fantasy. "I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... garlands that I weave for thee, Unchanging as the belt Orion wears, Bright as the jewels of the seven-starred Crown, The spangled stream of Berenice's hair!" And so she twines the fetters with the flowers Around my yielding limbs, and the fierce bird Stoops to his quarry,—then to feed his rage Of ravening hunger I must drain my blood And let the dew-drenched, poison-breeding night Steal all the freshness from my fading cheek, And leave its shadows round my caverned eyes. All ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... once started to find out what had become of the fellow, and all agreed that nothing should be decided until he reported. He was not long in getting trace of him and when he came in after dinner it was to tell the bird had flown. Fearing arrest, his face bandaged, he had been lifted into a long sleigh, and lying in it as a bed, had been driven westward. 'He will get to Hamilton this afternoon,' said Jabez, 'and is likely by sunset to be ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... utter was frozen in her throat. She saw the ice ahead and below them. Like a great bird—or a huge batfish leaping from the sea—the ice boat shot out on a long curve from the ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... other. Who,[64] dragging out my fair-haired tresses, will choose me as his spoil despite my tears, while my country is perishing? Through thee [forsooth,] the offspring of the long-necked swan, if indeed the report is true, that Leda met with[65] a winged bird, when the body of Jove was transformed, and then in the tablets of the muses fables spread these reports among men, inopportunely, and ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... in bright mail, with skirts of silk and cloth of gold, and long white mantles, each with the scarlet cross upon the shoulder; and on their heads they wore light caps of steel ornamented with chiselled gold and silver, and here and there with a metal crest or a bird's wing, beaten out of thin ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... both wearing a good deal of jewellery. The younger man, incredibly, had round his pudgy wrist a bangle set with turquoises! On the other side of this hilarious party was a large, sober-faced Englishman who looked like a stockbroker, Roger said, and with him a little humming-bird of a girl, starry-eyed, infantile—belonging to musical comedy, no ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... She was not tall, even for her age, and just a little too plump for the immediate suggestion of grace. Yet every motion of the child would have been graceful, except for the fact that impulse was always predominant, giving a certain jerkiness, like the hopping of a bird, instead of the gliding of one motion into another, such as you might see in the same bird on ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... population note: there is a small military garrison on South Georgia, and the British Antarctic Survey has a biological station on Bird Island; the South Sandwich Islands ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the troubled critics say to Tennyson's orchestra consisting of a flute, violin, and bassoon? Or to Coleridge's "loud bassoon," which made the wedding-guest to beat his breast? Or to Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe's pianist who played "with an airy and bird-like touch?" Or to our own clever painter-novelist who, in "Snubbin' through Jersey," has Brushes bring out his violoncello and play "the symphonies of Beethoven" to entertain his fellow canal-boat passengers? The tendency toward realism, or "veritism," as it is called, ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Honourable Charles's soreness was not at all soothed thereby. Since the abode, obviously in Mr. Boult's eyes, left so much to be desired, it was no compliment to be told it was suitable. "A very nice little cage, Gibbon. Where is the bird?" ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... down through leaves at a man—wink, they go, and wink, wink, till, watching 'em, a man forgets his troubles awhile and knows something o' content. Aha, many's the time o' star-time they have winked me and my troubles asleep. Then there's wakings o' bird-time, wi' the sun up, dew a-sparkle and life calling within ye and without, and the birds—O the birds, Martin—a-filling the world wi' brave songs o' hope new-born like the day! Ah, many's the morn the birds ha' waked me and I as merry as any grig—Lord ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... the commonplaces of conversation were interchanged, he could not but notice the floral appearance of the room. The ample white lace curtains were surmounted by festoons of artificial roses, caught up by a bird of paradise. On the ceiling was an exquisitely painted garland, from the centre of which hung a tasteful basket of natural flowers, with delicate vine-tresses drooping over its edge. The walls were papered with bright arabesques of flowers, interspersed with birds and butterflies. In one corner ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... hasn't compelled Agent Quhayne to purchase a larger-sized hat? And Whether it isn't a fact that, though they are press-agented at the same figure, Prince Otto is getting fifty a week more than Grand Duke Vodkakoff? And If it is not so, why a little bird has assured us that the Prince is being paid five hundred a week and the Grand Duke only four hundred and fifty? And, In any case, whether the Prince isn't worth fifty a week more ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... or a slip, could step in that way upon stones some of which are as slippery as ice with gelatinous weed and slime, while others are as sharp as razors. To walk like that the eye must be my darling's, that is to say, an eye as sure as a bird's the ball of the foot must be the ball of a certain little foot I have often had in my hand wet with sea-water and gritty with sand. For such work a mountaineer or a cragsman, or Winifred, is needed.' ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... by the sight, a mite of a blue-bird with a golden head sat on the edge of the hammock close to the little mouth, and looked in. Evidently it was a bird of an inquiring disposition, for, having gazed for a considerable time with one eye, it turned its head, and gazed a longer time with the other. Quashy lay ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... and lightning; and though they do not behold the actions of the Gods, yet they cannot entertain a thought of a Deity doing nothing. The Egyptians (so much ridiculed) held no beasts to be sacred, except on account of some advantage which they had received from them. The ibis, a very large bird, with strong legs and a horny long beak, destroys a great number of serpents. These birds keep Egypt from pestilential diseases by killing and devouring the flying serpents brought from the deserts of Lybia by the south-west wind, which ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... first in front, then behind upon the other side, and at last allowed her eyes to move, without hurry, in the direction of the Hermiston pew. For a moment, they were riveted. Next she had plucked her gaze home again like a tame bird who should have meditated flight. Possibilities crowded on her; she hung over the future and grew dizzy; the image of this young man, slim, graceful, dark, with the inscrutable half-smile, attracted and repelled her like a chasm. "I wonder, will I have met my fate?" ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... House was a pleasure which seemed a long way off last night," observed the Dago Duke without embarrassment. "You heard the imprisoned bird singing for his liberty? Music to soothe the savage breast of your sheriff. When I am myself I can converse in five languages; when I am drunk it is my misfortune to be able only to sing or holler. Your jail is a disgrace to Crowheart; I've never been in a worse one. The mattress ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... say—Why, here! It's like her; photograph couldn't get it any better; but it makes me think-well, of a bird that you've come on sudden, and it stoops as if it was goin' ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a flood of commonness, and June on the roads would hardly be beautiful were it not for the roses that settle, delicate and fleeting as butterflies, on the long and crooked briers. Perhaps one has not the right to say of any flower or any bird that it is not beautiful Even elder-flowers, seen at a distance, can give cheerfulness to a roadside. But, if we have to pick and choose among flowers, there are many who will give the lowest prize to the flowers that have been compared to umbrellas—elder-flowers, ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... the shoal off the entrance of the harbour[5], and who had seen half his companions drowned, and half eaten by the Indians, had contrived to conciliate the natives. He had saved a musket and some powder from the wreck, and having taken an opportunity of shooting a bird in the presence of the inhabitants, they called him Caramuru, or the man of fire; and, as he accompanied them on an expedition against their enemies the Tapuyas, he became a favourite, married at least one Indian wife, and fixed his residence at the spot ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... subject: * * * the consciousness is completely empty: an idea is suggested, and reigns supreme over the slumbering consciousness, * * * The second is psychic hyperexcitability, the cause of the aptitude for suggestion." "For example, we say to a patient: 'Look, you have a bird in your apron,' and no sooner are these simple words pronounced than she sees the bird, feels it with her fingers, and sometimes even hears it sing." "Again, in place of speech we engage the attention of the patient, and when her gaze has become settled and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... is a rare occurrence; and the water is so calm that it resembles a stream. Very frequently I used to start up from my desk, thinking that I was in some diminutive room ashore; and my mistake was the more natural, as we had three horses, a dog, several pigs, hens, geese, and a canary bird on board, all respectively neighing, barking, grunting, cackling, and singing, as if they ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... Blare, and he could be seen. Then it began to seem as if others were living in Michigan, for we could see them. The light of civilization began to dawn upon us. We had cleared up what was a few years before, the lair of the wolf and the hunting ground of the red man. The Michigan bird of the night had no more chance to make his nest in hollow trees or live there, but had to go back to the woods. There we could hear him almost any evening hallooing. "Whoo! whoo! whoo!" His nearest neighbor ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... San Bernardino is an absolute desert. For over one hundred miles the track is one hundred feet, or more, below the level of the sea, and the country is absolutely naked of bird or grass. At San Bernardino we entered California proper, and there found a beautiful country, with nothing to obstruct the view, the California mountains being on the right all the way into Los Angeles. Upon my arrival in this city I was pleasantly surprised. I had been there thirteen ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... "Some kind of night-bird," I thought. But the next moment I felt quite startled, for the sound was repeated, and I knew now that it was some one whispering. Then, as I stood quite still in the darkness, with the glow coming from the cabin-windows ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... was a gentleman. This disreputable old man, whose grey hairs, far from making him venerable, but emphasised his sodden degradation; this tipsy, filthy, obscene old man; this gaol-bird, this doer of dirty work, this pandar, beggar, outcast, who bore without offence such a title of contempt as Bibi Ragout, was a fallen gentleman, the wreck of something that ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... institutions and traditions, the leaden weight of which will, apparently, not let him soar through space to ever greater heights. Apparently, because it sometimes occurs that an individual rises above the average, and waves his colors over the heads of the common herd. His life is that of the storm bird, anxiously making for distant shores. The efforts of the deepest, truest and freest spirits of our day tend toward the conscious formation of life, toward that life which will make the blind raging of the elements impossible; a life which will show man his sovereignity ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... it is only right that the reader should be able to judge, as much as is possible, from a description. She was very slight and rather tall, with a great deal of the Contessa's grace, moving lightly as if she scarcely touched the ground, but like a bird rather than a cat. There was nothing in her of the feline grace of which we hear so much. Her movements were all direct and rapid; her feet seemed to skim, not to tread, the ground with an airy poise, which even when she stood still implied movement, always light, untiring, full of energy ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... His trick had been too good a one for him to take any chances. He did not wish to scare his bird off ere he had him bagged. He walked away and waited for Tom to appear. The man, however, for some reason or other remained in his rooms, and our hero ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... our eyes open for them, never mind, and if we see them coming, we will hide. I wonder what is in that big cage over there? I see something flying from one side to the other but it doesn't look like a bird. Let's ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery
... tigers, wolves, elephants, horses, squirrels or rabbits. Instead there were found animals that are found nowhere else, and which seem to belong to a different and so-called extinct geologic age, such as the kangaroo, wombats, the platypus—which the sailors used to tell us was neither bird not beast, and yet was both. In birds, Australia has also very strange specimens, such as the ostrich which can not fly, but can outrun a horse and kills its prey by kicking forward like a man. Australia also has immense mound-making turkeys, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... on his accession to the throne of the Czars, as has before been noted, was too generous a captor to hold in cage so sweet a singing bird and so noble a lion; and he gave them liberty, appending to the act, dearest to a free-born heart, an imperial donation to Kosciusko that might have furnished him with a golden argosy all over the world. But the wounded son of Poland declined it in a manner ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... after dinner as we sat with French windows opened wide to the warm evening air of late spring, puffing idly at our cigars, a most beautiful bird song burst upon our ears—a song that made us stare at one another in amazement; we had never heard its like before. It might be described as a bird fantasia—the notes covered a wide range of sounds and the effect was beautiful. Captain Ellis ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... bowers. Bid the shepherds and their swains See the beauty of their plains; And command them with their flocks To do reverence on the rocks; Where they may so happy be As her shadow but to see: Bid the birds in every bush Not a bird to be at hush: But to sit, and chirp, and sing To the beauty of the Spring: Call the sylvan nymphs together, Bid them bring their musicks hither. Trees their barky silence break, Crack yet, though they cannot speak Bid the purest, whitest swan Of her feathers make her fan; ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... wolf weep!" returned Eben Dudley, raising his large frame so as to stand erect on the shaft, where he commanded a bird's-eye view of most of the desolation of the valley. "Evil though it be, we may not say that forewarning signs have been withheld. But what is the cunningest man, when mortal wisdom is weighed in the scale against the craft of devils? Come forth! Belial ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... danger of bringing the butyric vibrios into contact with air? It may be possible that LIFE WITHOUT AIR results from habit, whilst DEATH THROUGH AIR may be brought about by a sudden change in the conditions of the existence of the vibrios. The following remarkable experiment is well-known: A bird is placed in a glass jar of one or two litres (60 to 120 cubic inches) in capacity which is then closed. After a time the creature shows every sign of intense uneasiness and asphyxia long before it dies; a similar bird of the same size is ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... find the little steamer Cygnet at her wharf, looking as neat and trim as the graceful bird after which she is named. Newly painted, she was about to start on the ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... owned by a lady at Ipswich is said to make "poll scratchers" for herself out of small pieces of soft wood. In justice to the bird it must be stated that she has frequently expressed a desire to be allowed to do war-work, but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... that held the sphere hovering in the air above the game sanctuary on the northern tip of Manhattan Island. In the screen, he had an aerial view of the grassy, rocky mounds where the earth hid the shattered and partially melted ruins of long-collapsed buildings. In the center of the screen was a bird's-eye view of a man holding a rifle. He was walking slowly, picking his way carefully along the bottom of the shallow gully that had once ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... up to a pretty soft spot in the thicket, and there found a little pigeon enjoying the last crumbs of Cleo's cake. Although the approach meant some more crackling of leaves and sticks, the bird seemed not the least disturbed, in fact, as the scouts looked down he looked up with a perky twist ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... hook of iron let into a piece of bone, and secured by thongs to a staff, the hook being sharply pointed, but not barbed. While we were on the island (to which I had applied the name of Observation Island), it happened that a small bird flew near us, when one of the Esquimaux made a sign of shooting it with a bow and arrow in a manner which could not be misunderstood. It is remarkable, therefore, that we could not find about their tents any of these weapons, except a little one of five or six inches long, the bow being made ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... mention, a similar phenomenon. This stuff, which could be had for nothing, was excellent for rifle-stoppers and for the stuffing of birds, so I took a great quantity of it with me. This time the bird-hunting went ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... and gravelly banks protruded, the ice appeared to be peeled off, for in those spots the sun's rays had melted it, though only at mid-day and on the south. All streams and waterfalls slumbered in silence under the snowy blanket. A chill silence reigned over the whole valley. Not a bird was to be seen, not even a snow bunting, only two ravens which kept flying from farmhouse to farmhouse, and even their ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... birds and flowers, both of which a Beet Sugar Farm in the Connecticut Valley made possible. A family of swallows made their nest in her woodshed, husband and wife dividing the labors of construction, nursing, and even of incubation, though the male bird did not have the same skill and grace as the lady, in placing his feet and wings. Mrs. Child gives a pretty account of this incident in a letter to one of her little friends, and says, "It seems as if I could watch them ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... moving mass and bright, Young ladies in a vasty curve, To strike imagination serve. 'Tis there that arrant fops display Their insolence and waistcoats white And glasses unemployed all night; Thither hussars on leave will stray To clank the spur, delight the fair— And vanish like a bird in air. ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... which chance raises and destroys; like a gigantic waterspout, which advances on the ocean, threatening to annihilate everything, but which is dispersed by a stone thrown from the hand of a sailor; or an avalanche, which threatens to swallow towns, and fill up valleys, because a bird in its flight has detached a flake of snow on the ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... was waiting in the library, sipping a brandy and pretending to scan a Congressional Record in the viewer-box. He looked up, bird-like, as Dan Fowler strode in. "Well, Nate. Sit down, sit down. I see you're into my private stock already, so I won't offer you any. What's ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... curses—not a policemen was assaulted. It was amusing, sometimes, to see what strange articles the poor wretches had stowed away in their dirty cellars. There was everything from barrels of sugar and starch to tobacco and bird-seed. Said a morning paper: "Mahogany and rosewood chairs with brocade upholstering, marble-top tables and stands, costly paintings, and hundreds of delicate and valuable mantel ornaments, are daily found in low hovels ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... mountain, And bleak blew the wind on the wild stormy sea; The cauld frost had lock'd up each riv'let and fountain, As I took the dreich road that leads north to Dundee. Though a' round was dreary, my heart was fu' cheerie, And cantie I sung as the bird on the tree; For when the heart 's light, the feet winna soon weary, Though ane should gang further ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... that helps to keep it sustein'd, there is the Congruity of the bodies that are contiguous. This is yet more evident in Tenacious and Glutinous bodies; such as Gummous Liquors, Syrups, Pitch, and Rosin melted, &c. Tar, Turpentine, Balsom, Bird-lime, &c. for there it is evident, that the Parts of the tenacious body, as I may so call it, do stick and adhere so closely together, that though drawn out into long and very slender Cylinders, yet they will not easily relinquish one another; and this, though the bodies ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... shall at length die and leave their misery? And what shall we say of those coming, and yet to come and pass—evermore issuing from the fountain of life, daily born into evil things? Will the consolation that they will soon die, suffice for the heart of the child who laments over his dead bird or rabbit, and would fain love that father in heaven who keeps on making the creatures? Alas, they are crowding in; they cannot help themselves; their misery is awaiting them! Would those Christians have me believe in a God who differentiates creatures from himself, ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... head with the dainty alertness of a beautiful bird. She had a gift denied to most Englishwomen—the genius for wearing clothes. No one had ever seen her dress dusty or crushed, her hat crooked. No uncomfortable accidents ever happened to her. Blacks never settled on her face, ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... Major, "the golden-bug, or lady-bird; also Bishop-Barney: which see. This pretty little, and very useful insect, is tenderly regarded by our children. One settling on a child is always sent ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 4, Saturday, November 24, 1849 • Various
... fledged, standing up as if to guard the nest, the second hissing and snapping, as if a naughty boy, and two downy infants who died. One brown owl was kept tame, and lived 14 years. The village people call this bird Screech Owl, and after a sudden death always ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... Now the Duke, who was too much inclined to credit his assertions, encouraged the fellow to speak thus, and thought in his own heart that things would go as he had prophesied, because that envious creature Bandinello never ceased insinuating malice. On one occasion it happened that the gallows bird Bernardone, the broker, was present at these conversations, and in support of Bandinello's calumnies, he said to the Duke: "You must remember, prince, that statues on a large scale are quite a different dish of ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... as all know, has been traced back to reptiles. It is in this matter that the famous Archaeopteryx plays an important part. Unfortunately, however, grave difficulties are again encountered in this connection. This primitive form is a real bird according to Zittel; and according to the same investigator as also according to Marsh, Dames, Vetter, Parker, Tuerbringen, Parlow and Mehnert, it is inadmissible to connect birds with a definite class of reptiles. Haeckel finds his way out of the difficulty ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... thus thinking, his wife awoke and asked him what was the matter. He told her, and she said, "That is a strange dream. If I were you, I'd ask the old parrot about it; he is a wise bird, and perhaps he knows." This parrot of which she spoke was the most wise of all the thousand wooden parrots. The Rajah took his wife's advice, and when all the birds came home that evening, he called the old parrot and told him his dream, saying, "Can this be true?" To which the ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... under His wings shalt thou trust.' That grates, one gets away from the metaphor too quickly; but if we preserve the literal meaning, and read, 'under His wings shalt thou flee for refuge,' we have the picture of the chicken flying to the mother-bird when kites are in the sky, and huddling close to the warm breast and the soft downy feathers, and so with the spread of the great wing being sheltered from all possibility of harm. This psalm is ascribed ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... you mean," said Bill. "He is awfully dark, and has squinty black eyes and coal black hair. He has been transferred to our quarters now. He is splendid—does everything for mother: brings her flowers and all that, and a young mocking bird in ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... time, if only the Borgia could be fed elsewhere. At the thought of that hearty eater stalled in the Vatican, he felt that he might indeed thank God for his lovely Molly. With her for decoy even that game-bird might be lured. Lying on the poop of the Santa Fina, his dark eyes questing over her face, her hands among his curls, he seemed to Molly the wonder of the world. So of her world he was; but he meant to be that of his ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... infested. The region where the Lucius of the book wandered, either as man, or after his own curiosity into mysterious things had converted him into an ass (whereas he had wished to become a beautiful bird)—the region recalls some wild picture of Salvator Rosa's. We are surrounded by gloomy shades, sepulchral caverns, and trees writhing in storm, nor are cut-throat bandits ever far away. Violence and murder threaten at every turn. Through the narrow ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... pilgrims of the sky, true to the kindred points of heaven and home; their joy essentially the sky-lark's, in light, in purity; but, with their human eyes, looking for the glorious appearing of something in the sky, which the bird cannot. ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... been awarded to any one else, but, as it was, it came rather as a matter of course. The doctor was greatly pleased, and said he should drive round by Abbotstoke to tell the news there, and then laughed beyond measure to hear that Meta had been in the plot, saying he should accuse the little humming-bird of ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... the little craft rose a great, long-winged hawk that cried and hovered over it for a little, as if loth to leave it; and one man said, shrinking and pale, that it was the wizard's familiar spirit. But the wind caught the bird's long wings and drove it from the boat, and swiftly wheeling it must needs make for us, speeding down the wind ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... wings in the air, which was golden with sunshine and quivering with heat, soaring above the smoke and fire, this way and that. But it soon took flight, away from the furnace beneath. I shouted with delight, and cried to my father: 'Look at the bird! Where is he flying?' And he eagerly answered: 'Well done! If you desire to preserve the power I have conquered for you always undiminished, you must keep your eyes open. Let no sign pass unnoticed, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... good Beltran,' said he, 'you have actually hunted this bird, whose height is gigantic, whose cry at a distance resembles the lion's, and which is to be found in parched and desolate tracts, deserted even by antelopes and beasts ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... small boy of civilisation; and one of these pests of society slew the goose with a stone. The widowed gander consoled himself by contracting family ties with the common domestic goose of the parish, and all his progeny, in other particulars indistinguishable from that familiar bird, bear the black marks ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... good God, man! Four of us have been on this peak for nearly ten months. We've never seen a Boche, never heard a shot. Seasons come and go, rain falls, snow falls, the winds blow from the Alps, but nothing else comes to us except a half-frozen bird or two." ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... Sim'org, a bird "which hath seen the world thrice destroyed." It is found in K[^a]f, but as Hafiz says, "searching for the simorg is like searching for the philosopher's stone." This does not agree with Beckford's account. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... instinct with fight. The wind faintly stirred the thin foliage of the mesquites, making a mournful sigh. From far up in the foothills, barely distinguishable, came the scream of an eagle. The bray of a burro brought a brief, discordant break. Then a brown bird darted down from an unseen perch and made a swift, irregular flight after a fluttering winged insect. Madeline heard the sharp snapping of a merciless beak. Indeed, there was more than life in ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... rancheros. A military force appealing below would frustrate their design. That, however, was kept in readiness, but its continued presence near the rancho, thought Vizcarra and his captain, would only frighten the bird, and prevent it from returning to its nest. There was good logic ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... subtleties of social ostentation, the minute distinctions between the newly-rich and the anciently-rich, the solemn certainties of the latter and the quivering anxieties of the former—all those were things which Sylvia knew as a bird knows the way of the wind. To see the details of them analysed in learned, scientific fashion, explained with great mouthfuls of words which one had to look up in the dictionary—that was surely a new discovery in the ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... time that the "School of Instructions" was written, the French and ourselves had both progressed very greatly in the Art of Cookery and in the development of the menu. DelaHay Street, Westminster, near Bird-Cage Walk, suggests a time when a hedge ran along the western side of it towards the Park, in lieu of brick or stone walls; but the fact is that we have here a curious association with the office, just quoted from Rose, of ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... truth, it was like looking for a bird in a forest, considering the number of strangers who had attended the fair; besides, the police, you know, at that time, were too busy dogging and hunting down Liberals to care for tracking only thieves. That, however, is no business ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... pelicans; but they were so shy that we could not get within gun-shot of them. Upon the shore we saw a species of the bustard, one of which we shot; it was as large as a turkey, and weighed seventeen pounds and a half. We all agreed that this was the best bird we had eaten since we left England; and in honour of it we called this inlet Bustard Bay. It lies in latitude 24 deg. 4', longitude 208 deg. 18'. The sea seemed to abound with fish; but unhappily, we tore our seine all to pieces at the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... ornamental purpose, in a piece of cambric. An operation which, taken in connexion with the bushy eyebrows and the Roman nose, suggested with some liveliness the idea of a hawk engaged upon the eyes of a tough little bird. She was so steadfastly occupied, that many minutes elapsed before she looked up from her work; when she did so Mr. Bounderby bespoke her attention with a hitch of ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... Clendenning calls "hustle." I went at his side for the three days which intervened between the news of the arrival of that Lieutenant, Count de Bourdon, and that actual arrival, in what seemed to me to be the pace of a very fleet horse or even as the flight of a bird. And as fast as we went from the arrangement of one detail of entertainment to another, the beautiful Madam Whitworth went with us, with her eyes of the flower blue very bright with a great excitement. I was glad that in all matters it was necessary that my fine Buzz also consult with her ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... one young woman who walked with a pet monkey on her shoulder while she carried a bird in a golden cage. Old men, who remembered 1870, gave their arms to old ladies to whom they had made love when the Prussians were at the ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... just finished—Wednesday evening—a course of lectures which I ambitiously baptized "Human Culture," and read once a week to the curious in Boston. I could write nothing else the while, for weariness of the week's stated scribbling. Now I am free as a wood-bird, and can take up the pen without fretting or fear. Your letter should, and nearly did, make me jump for joy,—fine things about our poor speech at Cambridge,— fine things from CARLYLE. Scarcely could we maintain a decorous gravity ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... back to the Mistress and laid gently at her feet the baby robin he had found. His keen teeth had not so much as ruffled its pinfeather plumage. Having done his share toward settling the bird's dilemma, Laddie stood back and watched in grave interest while the Mistress lifted the fluttering infant and put it back in the ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... screaming, Olof, but you seem to be more fond of a night bird that does scream. Tell me, what is the meaning of the owl that appears on your ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... the affair, makes for the moors, spurs his amorous mare, relying upon her rapid pace, and indeed, the good mare understands, obeys, and flies—flies like a bird, but a bowshot off follows the blessed horse, thundering along the road like a blacksmith beating iron, and at full speed, his mane flying in the wind, replying to the sound of the mare's swift gallop with his terrible pat-a-pan! pat-a-pan! Then the good farmer, feeling death following him in the ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... contented itself in insisting on plucking out the heart of the journalistic mystery. All attempts at evasion and humor were vain—here was the ruthless reality of war. It was the mailed Prussian eagle against the bluff American bird of the same species, and the unequal contest was soon ended when Major Nikolai, Chief of Division III. of the Great General Staff, stood up very straight and dignified and said: "I am a German officer. What German violated his duty? I ask you as a man ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... dark and plain. She paused for a moment under the live-oak trees. The prairies were somewhat dim, and the moonlight was pale orange, diluted with particles of an impalpable, flying mist. But the mock-bird whistled on every bough of vantage; leagues of flowers scented the air; and a kindergarten of little shadowy rabbits leaped and played in an open space near by. Santa turned her face to the southeast and threw three kisses thitherward; for there was ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... ground, trying to hide under a green bush of the jungle. In his paw he held the empty cocoanut shell with which he was going to play a trick on Bumpo or Jacko. The tiger was creeping, slowly, slowly along, on his soft, padded feet, just as your cat creeps after a bird. Mappo ...
— Mappo, the Merry Monkey • Richard Barnum
... "There is a bird that restores and reproduces itself; the Assyrians call it the Phoenix. It feeds on no common food, but on the choicest of gums and spices; and after a life of secular length (i.e., a hundred years) it builds in a high tree with cassia, spikenard, cinnamon, and myrrh, and ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... befalls; uncover thy brow from thy locks; Neither to me nor to thee was option imparted; Neither endurance nor truth belongs to the laugh of the rose. The loving nightingale mourns;—cause enow for mourning;— Why envies the bird the streaming verses of Hafiz? Know that a god bestowed on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... were seen about the Soorkhab river; the latter, with metallic blue on the back of the head, crown of head tawny, tail short, two exterior feathers elongated into beautiful almost setaceous bodies, exceeding the length of the bird. This swallow, or one with a similar tail, was seen by Sanders on the ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... bidding of the goddess I turned to the spring wherein he used to temper his golden darts fresh forged with fiercest fire. Its silver waters, gushing of themselves from the earth and shaded along the margin by a growth of myrtle and dogwood, were neither violated in their purity by the approach of bird or beast, nor suffered aught from the sun's distemperature, and as I leaned forward to catch the reflection of my own figure I could discern the clear bottom free from every trace of mud[56]. The goddess, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... But Polly kept a cold shoulder toward him, running up and down in a merry song till a little bird outside the window trilled away as hard as he could, to keep ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... DISproof, as against herself, and has appealed to me, so extraordinarily, to side against her. It's really magnificent, when you come to think of it, the spirit of her appeal. If I'll but cover them up brazenly enough, the others, so as to show, round and about them, as happy as a bird, she on her side will do what she can. If I'll keep them quiet, in a word, it will enable her to gain time—time as against any idea of her father's—and so, somehow, come out. If I'll take care of Charlotte, in particular, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... a little grinning negro Lord Peterborow gave her, with a bird of Paradise in his turbant, and a collar with his ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the maidens proving obdurate, another proud, and the third fickle. The lovers make complaint to Cupid, who consents at their request to transform the disdainful fair ones into a rock, a rose, and a bird respectively. Hereupon Ceres in her turn complains to the God of Love, who promises that the three shall regain their proper shapes if Ceres will undertake that they shall thereupon consent to the love of the swains. She does so, and her nymphs are duly ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... by a universal bustle; fifty men flew out on the dizzy heights of the different spars, while broad sheets of canvas rose as suddenly along the masts as if some mighty bird were spreading its wings. The Englishman instantly perceived his mistake, and he answered the artifice by a roar of artillery. Griffith watched the effects of the broadside with an absorbing interest, ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of a saint. The eggs and milk they brought him at first he refused with horror. Know ye not the hermit's rule is bread, or herbs, and water? Eggs, they are birds in disguise; for when the bird dieth, then the egg rotteth. As for milk, it is little better than white blood. And when they brought him too much bread he refused it. Then they used to press it on him. "Nay, holy father; give the ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... gleam luridly from out the shadowy recesses of the garden, and an unearthly cry of "Hoo-oo-t," fall on the ear, enough to give one the "creeps for a hour," as Mary, the housemaid, said. But Joe loved Cyclops, or rather "Cloppy," as he called him; and the bird hopped after Joe about the garden, as if he quite ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... the door, at which half a dozen domestics were by this time gathered. They, too, saw the glitter, and made way. I followed close, ready to fell the first who offered to lay hands on her. But she walked through them unmenaced, and, once clear, sped like a bird into the recesses of the old house. One fellow started to follow. I tripped him up. I was collared by another. The same instant he lay by his companion, and I followed Alice. She knew the route well enough, and I overtook ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... for we had travelled hard and long. But sleep was never further from my eyes. As I sat there, listening to the rising wind in the trees, and the rush of the river below, with now and again the wail of a sea-bird crying out seaward, I grew to hate the darkness. Despite the fair innocents who slumbered within and the sturdy rogues who slept without, the loneliness of the place took hold upon me, and made me uneasy and anxious. Once I ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... head bent, but her deep, lovely gray eyes looking quietly before her and seeming to take in at once the whole school-room with an expression of keen intelligence. She was highly cultivated, and had read widely in many languages; but she wore her learning as gracefully as a bird does its lovely plumage. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... lips of the dead Stands poising her wings for flight, A bird scarce quit of her prison, But fair without form or flesh, So stands over each man's head A splendour of imminent light, A glory of fame rearisen, Of day rearisen afresh ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... ordinary journeys the consultation of the omen bird is of primary importance, yet before a war expedition it acquires a solemnity that is not customary on ordinary occasions. This ceremony is the last of all those that are made preparatory ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... to be refused till all the prophets of evil are refuted, Ireland must go without Home Rule for ever. "If the sky fall, we shall catch larks." But he would be a foolish bird-catcher who waited for that contingency. And not less foolish is the statesman who sits still till every conceivable objection to his policy has been mathematically refuted in advance, and every wild prediction falsified by the event; for that ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... any. If I begin suspecting different persons I may miss the real individual. As matters stand, I know where, sooner or later, I shall meet him under conditions which will identify him as the man I want. The trap is set and the bird will be caught. That is all I ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... asked himself. But that would mean beginning over again the old life which he cursed. And the man who seeks salvation in change of place like a migrating bird would find nothing anywhere, for all the world is alike to him. Seek salvation in men? In whom and how? Samoylenko's kindness and generosity could no more save him than the deacon's laughter or Von Koren's hatred. He must look for salvation in himself alone, and if there were no finding it, why waste ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... than William could spare, and had arranged with him to accept the sum that the boy offered. And of all the gifts that Flo Dearmore received from others but the man of her choice, that parrot pleased her most, "For," said she, "he is the slangiest bird imaginable, and sometimes he uses swear words—just ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... heard a nightingale singing in the woods. Did ever a bird sing like that? He listened. There was a witchery in the song. He rose and went into the woods. The song filled the air like a shower of golden notes. He followed it. It retreated. He went on. But the song, more and more enchanting and alluring, floated into the shadowy distance. He found ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... entitled "Familiar Dialogues," the fun grows fast and furious. Let us accompany our mad wag upon "The walk." "You hear the bird's gurgling?" he enquires, and then rapturously exclaims "Which pleasure! which charm! The field has by me a thousand charms"; after this, to the question "Are you hunter? Will you go to the hunting in one day this week?" he responds "Willingly; I have not a most pleasure in the ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... nothing to do with it—nothing. Between my niece and me—tout est fini." She darted from him, swerving again like a bird on the wing. "I don't know you. You come here with what may be no more than a cock-and-bull story, to get ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... morning, however, he was more successful, having risen before daylight in order that he might catch his bird on his first appearance in the open air. At six o'clock the bell rang as usual for the hands to turn to, and a few minutes afterwards the whole place was astir. Lance walked down to the landing-place ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... of all these minds, so different and yet so united,—meeting in a common adoration, and offering up, each according to his degree and means of approaching the Divine centre, his acknowledgment of praise and worship, each singing (to recur to the bird simile) his ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... all the trouble, I'll take the responsibility that she shan't get lost. I'll bind her fast with a silken chain. Really, children, my heart is set on your coming. My house is full of things that make a noise—a canary, a paroquet, a mocking-bird, a harp, a ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... of the name of Birdcage Walk has been disputed. It has been derived from "boccage," meaning avenue; another account says it was from the bird-cages of the King's aviary, which were hung in the trees. ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... equal horizontal bands of green, yellow, red, black, red, yellow, and green with a white equilateral triangle edged in black based on the hoist side; a yellow Zimbabwe bird is superimposed on a red five-pointed star in the center ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the recollection of their former rank comes over them like a qualm, which they dispel with brandy, and then humorously rally one another on their mutual degeneracy. She often stops me in the walk, and, pointing to the captain, says, 'My husband, though he is become a blackguard jail-bird, must be allowed to be a handsome fellow still.'—On the other hand, he will frequently desire me to take notice of his rib, as she chances to pass.—'Mind that draggle-tailed drunken drab,' he will say; 'what an antidote it is—yet, for all that, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... Like a dingy London bird among the birds at roost in these pleasant fields, where the sheep are all made into parchment, the goats into wigs, and the pasture into chaff, the lawyer, smoke-dried and faded, dwelling among mankind but not consorting with them, aged without experience of genial youth, and so long used to make ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... word Touching Telephus, a bird Ranking far too high above you; (And the loafer doesn't ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... Bertha, "you have not preserved the bird in your bosom safer than I have; at home or abroad, in servitude or in freedom, amidst sorrow or joy, plenty or want, my thought was always on the troth I had plighted to Hereward at the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. He prayeth best who loveth best All things, both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us He ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... "Short Shrift Island" lay a few miles to the northwest of Andros Island. Now Andros is a great haunt of wild duck, not to speak of that more august bird, the flamingo. Attraction number one for the good Charlie. Then, though it is some hundred and fifty miles long and some fifty miles broad at its broadest, it has never yet, it is ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... very day of departure a happy omen greeted Fabius Valens and the army under his command. As the column advanced, an eagle flew steadily ahead and seemed to lead the way. Loudly though the soldiers cheered, hour after hour the bird flew undismayed, and was taken for ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... sponge; and this is often all that is seen on the surface of the water as the huge brute swims about waiting for his prey. These nakars, or long-nosed specimens, never attack human beings—at least such cases are very very rare—but live almost entirely on fish. I remember seeing one catch a paddy-bird on one occasion near the junction of the Koosee with the Ganges. My boat was fastened to the shore near a slimy creek, that came oozing into the river from some dense jungle near. I was washing my hands and face on the bank, and the boatmen were fishing with a small hand-net, for ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... urged Irene's horse on at great speed, and while it flew along like a bird, the most stormy feelings raged in ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... raised from nothing! Begone, begone, begone, go, go; that I took from washing of old gauze and weaving of dead hair, with a bleak blue nose, over a chafing-dish of starved embers, and dining behind a traver's rag, in a shop no bigger than a bird-cage. Go, go, starve ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... burning soil, 140 And watch the billowy Lavas, as they boil; Where, in basaltic caves imprison'd deep, Reluctant fires in dread suspension sleep; Or sphere on sphere in widening waves expand, And glad with genial warmth the incumbent land. 145 So when the Mother-bird selects their food With curious bill, and feeds her callow brood; Warmth from her tender heart eternal springs, And pleased she clasps them with ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... a flight of birds crossing the blue, and every bird carried a few crumbs of bread in its beak. Then she ran and called to her villains, 'Follow the birds, and they will take you to where the little wizard is; for they are carrying bread to feed him, and they are all heading for the tarn-stones ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... thoughts? There are few, who have not been forced to drink of the cup of misfortune; there are few, who have not desired their end. Finally, it did not depend upon us to exist or not to exist. Should the bird then be very grateful to the fowler for taking him in his net and confining him in his cage for ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... crisp and lovely, and just as she was beginning to rise and go in to the summoning dishes, a small striped squirrel trotted across the grass and requested scraps with impudent wavings of his two small front paws. So she really had to stay and feed him. And after that there was a bird that actually seemed as if it was going to walk up to her, almost as the squirrel had done. He flew away just at the most exciting moment, but Marjorie didn't hold it against him. And then—why, then, she felt suddenly sleepy and lay down with her cloak ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... therefore never be shortened. Phillips says: 'Cherries bear the knife worse than any other sort of fruit-trees, and we would therefore impress on the pruner, that though the fruit was won by the sword, it may be lost by the knife!' The other species of cherry is the bird-cherry (Cerasus padus), a pretty little smooth-branched tree, with doubly-serrate, acute leaves, and beautiful white blossoms, which grow in long-shaped racemes, hanging in pendulous clusters, and forming an elegant ornament to the hedges and woods ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... lifetime, during part of which he was indistinguishable from an embryonic dog, and had neither a skull nor a backbone. When he at last acquired these articles, he was for some time doubtful whether he was a bird or a fish. He had to compress untold centuries of development into nine months before he was human enough to break loose as an independent being. And even then he was still so incomplete that his parents might well have exclaimed 'Good Heavens! have you learnt nothing ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... of discomfort. Over all the dismal landscape a canopy of low, lead-colored clouds hung like a visible curse. In all this there were a menace and a portent—a hint of evil, an intimation of doom. Bird, beast, or insect there was none. The wind sighed in the bare branches of the dead trees and the gray grass bent to whisper its dread secret to the earth; but no other sound nor motion broke the awful repose ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... crewels by one of the young ladies—work of art which would have made Washington hesitate about crossing, if he could have foreseen what advantage was going to be taken of it. Piano—kettle in disguise— with music, bound and unbound, piled on it, and on a stand near by: Battle of Prague; Bird Waltz; Arkansas Traveler; Rosin the Bow; Marseilles Hymn; On a Lone Barren Isle (St. Helena); The Last Link is Broken; She wore a Wreath of Roses the Night when last we met; Go, forget me, Why should Sorrow o'er that Brow a Shadow fling; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... one in Timothy's Quest, by KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN. The little volume is apparently an importation, having been printed for the Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass. It is published in London by GAY AND BIRD, a firm whose name, though it sounds lively, is as unfamiliar as the Author's. Probably from this combination of circumstances, Timothy's Quest has, as far as my Baronite's quest goes, escaped the notice ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various
... contented himself with sending Livingstone and his dragoons after Dundee, while he turned his attention to Gordon, who was still maintaining some show of resistance in the castle. But Livingstone was too late. He found the nest warm, but the bird had flown. Dundee had gone northwards over the Grampians into the Gordons' country, where the Earl of Dunfermline, the Duke's brother-in-law, at once joined him with a most welcome addition to his little band of troopers. Mackay foresaw that the Highlands were to be the real scene ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... dry land appear; and it was so." The manifestation of the primordial energy was supposed to have been akin to that which is shown in organic reproduction. The myths of the primeval egg from which life proceeded, of the mighty bird typical of the Holy Spirit which "brooded" upon the waters, of Love developing the Kosmos from the Chaos, of the bull bringing the world from the waters, of Protogonus, the "egg-born," the "multispermed," and countless ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... shoulders; but his whole figure rose lightly into the air and Perseus followed. By the time they had ascended a few hundred feet the young man began to feel what a delightful thing it was to leave the dull earth so far beneath him and to be able to flit about like a bird. ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... keen on it as the two Irishmen were, who went hunting for the first time," broke in Bobby. "When they sighted a bird sitting on a bush Meehan took very careful aim and prepared to fire. Said his friend, ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... of "Bird Stories" is written both for the children who already know our common birds, and for those who may ...
— Stories of Birds • Lenore Elizabeth Mulets
... them of 140 years. The first spoke still of the actual queen of the world, of the secular empire subdued and inherited by the spiritual. The feathers of Leo's eagle shone to him with celestial light; the talons of the royal bird traversed the earth not to raven, but to feed a conquered world with Christian doctrine. St. Gregory speaks of the eagle as bald; but we shall see that he who day by day guarded the gates of defenceless Rome against the Lombard spoiler, barbarian ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... a pleasant time! Flowers o' every color— The sweet bird builds her nest, And I lang for my lover. Aye wakin', oh! Wakin' aye and wearie; Sleep I can get nane, For thinkin' o' ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... trousers, very likely, the glass bottle-tops have left their cruel scars. And so with servants. "Who ate up the three pigeons which went down in the pigeon-pie at breakfast this morning?" "O dear me! sir, it was John, who went away last month!"—or, "I think it was Miss Mary's canary-bird, which got out of the cage, and is so fond of pigeons, it never can have enough of them." Yes, it WAS the canary-bird; and Eliza saw it; and Eliza is ready to vow she did. These statements are not true; but please ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... most perilous part of his flight. Tomorrow would take care of itself. The possibility that thirty minutes from now he might be dead in a flaming pyre did not cross his mind, the chance that an hour from now he could be told that his bird was off-course and his fate starvation if it obtained an untrue orbit or abrupt destruction if it didn't orbit ...
— Instinct • George Oliver Smith
... exception of the sun at noonday, and the stars and moon at night. At the head of the walk was a sundial, and at the further end a fountain. Not a great, noisy, conspicuous construction, suggestive of the rush and turmoil of life, drowning in its splash all the sweet sounds of bird and bee, and the marvelous music of nature, but a pure, gentle, dainty little fountain, the sound of whose crystal drops, so full of soothing and tenderness, fell upon the ear like the voice of the one we love. Near the fountain was a rustic seat from which one might ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... November was on the wane. He babbled to the chickens, who pecked about him with as much indifference as if he were made of wood. His two teeth came glittering out whenever the rooster crowed, and his gleeful laugh—he rejoiced so in this handsomely endowed bird—could be heard to the barn. The dogs seemed never to have known that he was a Kittredge, and wagged their tails at the very sound of his voice, and seized surreptitious opportunities to lick his face. Of all his underfoot world only the gobbler awed him into gravity and silence; he would gaze ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... the very beginning—the hatching out of the eggs. Frogs' eggs and birds' eggs are really not so unlike as they seem at first sight, for though the frog's eggs have no shell, yet, just as in the bird's egg, there are two essential parts to be distinguished—the formative material out of which the young frog grows and the yolk on which the growing animal feeds. By the untrained eye nothing more can be seen in the frog's egg than a small black ball enclosed within ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... kiss her ma agen, she shall do it," declared Mr. Tisbett; and throwing down the reins, he sprang to the ground, seized Phronsie, and swung her lightly over the window edge. "There you be— went through just like a bird." And there she was, sure enough, ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... Denver we had our first glimpse of the Rockies, and although they were then only in the blue distance we were quite excited about them; and at Greely Station (much impressed on our minds by having read Miss Bird's book just before coming here), we came in full view of Long's Peak,—almost wishing "Mountain Jim" might still be alive to ascend it with us,—and the whole of the gorgeous range; and quite one of the loveliest ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... breaths, when she feels quite like a bird, but she does not know that it is freedom. She hardly misses Mr. Grandon, who seems to be up at the factory or down to the city nearly all the time. The piano stands open, daring innovation, and she plays for ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Dangle, taking his straw hat from the shade over the stuffed bird on the chiffonier and turning towards the ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... lightnin' broncho out in the herd That could split the air like a flyin' bird, An' I hinted round in an off-hand way, That, providin' the enterprize would pay, I thought as I might jes' happen to light On a hoss that would leave him out er sight. In less'n a second we seen him yank A roll o' greenbacks out o' his flank, An' he said if we ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... memoranda in my drawer; they are the history of my early youth, but uneventful as that was, it has had its effect upon my whole life. It will tell you that the world has been sad, very sad for me, and that I am as glad as an escaped bird to leave it." ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... rises and the sky above grows pink and purple, it, too, changes its color from pink to purple, copying the sky from zone to zone, from blue to deeper blue, until, at late evening the young nestlings may look up and say, in their bird language: ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... here, for sure, yesterday mornin'," Mike asserted; "I'd take me oath o' that. An' if he wasn't here, how could he see me givin' ye a light from me pipe? Answer me that! He says it's a little bird told him; but that's not it, I'm thinkin'. Not but that they have clocks with birds into 'em, that come out and tell the time o' day, 'Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!' An' if that big clock he broke last week had a bird in it that could tell time that way, I'd ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... pay his fly, while the spring rain pattered on his wide-awake, he produced an impression as of some delicate, draggled thing, which would certainly have gone to the heart of his adoring wife could she have beheld it. The Dean's ways were not sybaritic. He pecked at food and drink like a bird; his clothes never caused him a moment's thought; and it seemed to him a waste of the night to use it for sleeping. But none the less did he go through life finely looked after. Mrs. Winston dressed him, took his tickets and paid his cabs, and without her it was an arduous matter ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sensible; and mother's bird'll set along with you as good as a kitten. Toast her tootsies wal, for she's croupy, and I have to be extra choice ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... avail myself of the present when all you girls are alive, to pass away. And could I get you to shed such profuse tears for me as to swell out into a stream large enough to raise my corpse and carry it to some secluded place, whither no bird even has ever wended its flight, and could I become invisible like the wind, and nevermore from this time, come into existence as a human being, I shall then have died at ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... "Oh, bird of ill omen, why croak you forth such dire intelligence?" I asked, as he threw off his snow-covered coat, and prepared to join me in my meal with a look which made me fear there were not many more such ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... trickled down his nose. Scattered boulders seemed to move gently. He closed his eyes for an instant. When he opened them he thought he saw a movement in the brush below. The heat burned into his back, and he shrugged his shoulders. A tiny bird flitted past and perched on the dry, dead stalk of a yucca. Again Waring thought he saw a movement ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... this, with their synthetic bird's-eye view, the mind sometimes sees more clearly than in hours of careful reflection and analysis. And the first thing he saw now was Minks, his friendly, ridiculous little confidential secretary. From all the crowds of men and women he knew, respected, and enjoyed in London, as from the vast deluge ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... the much desired food, The eagle towards the sky spreads out his wings And warns of his approach both bird and beast, The third flight bringing him upon the prey. And the fierce lion roaring from his lair Spreads horror all around and mortal fear; And all wild beasts, admonished and forewarned, Fly to the caves and cheat his cruel ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... of her the less I understand her. If your nature draws near hers, it retreats. If you pursue, it flies—a little frightened perhaps. If then you keep still and look perfectly safe, she will return, but remain at a fixed distance, like a bird that will stay in your yard, but not enter your house. It is hardly shyness, for she is not shy, but more like some strain of wild nature in her that refuses to be domesticated. One's faith is strained to accept Sylvia's estimate that Georgiana is deep—she is so light, ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... come down, my bonny bird, "And eat bread aff my hand! "Your cage shall be of wiry goud, "Whar now its but ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... fine, and the hills quite clear. The ascent out of Hawes is dull; the little branch dale is simple and monotonous, and so are the hills about the great dale which are in sight. The only thing which interested us was the sort of bird's-eye view of Hardraw dell, which appeared a most petty and insignificant opening in the great hill side. But when we got to the top of the pass there was a magnificent view of Ingleborough. The dale which was most nearly in front of us is ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... wing, and then above the stomach. After that, drawing out the guts, she laid the liver a short time on the fire, and eat it almost raw. She then cleaned the gizzard, which she eat quite raw, as she did the body of the bird. Her children eat in the same manner, one being a girl of four years of age, and the other a boy, who, though only six months old, had most of his teeth, and could walk alone.[90] The woman looked grave and serious at her meal, though the seamen laughed heartily at her strange figure, and unusual ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... than when a kite, tremendous bird, is beheld by the feathered generation soaring aloft, and hovering over their heads, the amorous dove, and every innocent little bird, spread wide the alarm, and fly trembling to their hiding-places. He proudly beats the air, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... sounds; for they stir up in them fierce feelings, and a desire for blood," returned the Pathfinder, totally unmoved. "I thought them rather frightful when a mere youngster; but they have become like the whistle of the whippoorwill or the song of the cat-bird in my ear now. All the screeching reptyles that could stand between the falls and the garrison would have no effect on my narves at this time of day. I say it not in boasting, Jasper; for the man that lets in cowardice through the ears must have but a weak heart at the best; sounds and outcries ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... railways, and the formation of pens or enclaves into which the attenuated roving bands of Boers were to be herded and dealt with severally and severely. The work of extension was taken in hand in July, 1901. The Boers in the veld watched it with the detachment and unconcern of a wild bird on the branches looking down upon the fowler laying his snares in the ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... H. D. Bird, general superintendent of the railroad, writes from Petersburg that the movements of cars with ammunition, etc. are thrown into confusion by the neglect of telegraph agents in giving timely notice. This is an unfortunate time for confusion. I sent the letter to the Secretary, and know that it ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... amounts of ammonia. Not only will this filter-bed, or spongy mat of bacteria, burn up and remove all traces of vegetable decay, but if the rain happens to have soaked through the decaying body of a bird or animal or insect, the bacteria will just as eagerly feed upon these animal substances and change them into ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... universal friend of man, a philanthropist on the largest scale, yet is so selfish that he would willingly see the world perish, if he could but secure paradise to himself. Indeed he can think of no other being; and his child, his canary bird, his cook-maid, or his cat, are the most extraordinary of God's creatures. This is the only consistent trait in his character. In the same sentence, he frequently joins the most fulsome flattery and some ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... towns—Geneva, Fribourg, Basle, Thun, Baden and Schaffhausen, to which in 1858 he added Rheinfelden and Bellinzona. He intended to illustrate the work with pictures of the places described. He began with his drawing of Thun, a large bird's-eye view of the town with its river and bridges, roofs and towers, all exquisitely defined with the pen, and broadly coloured in fluctuating tints that seem to melt always into the same aerial blue; the blue, high up the picture, beyond ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... France, in particular Brittany, during the French Revolution, and even for a time under the Empire, when their head-quarters were in London; so named from their muster by night at the sound of the chat-huant, the screech-owl, a nocturnal bird of prey which ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... his life for his love at the hands of that eminent theologian, Fulke de Breaute. The beautiful tower of Merton was still almost fresh, and the spires of St. Mary's, of old All Saints, of St. Frideswyde, and the strong tower of New College on the city wall, were the most prominent features in a bird's-eye view of the town. But though part of Merton, certainly the chapel tower as we have seen, the odd muniment- room with the steep stone roof, and, perhaps, the Library, existed; though New was built; and though Balliol and University owned some halls, on, or near, the ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... is warranted for work and wind," said Ned. "She crossed the continent in a rush and spied on us through British Columbia and on down the Columbia river, not long ago, and I can recommend her as a very desirable bird of the air." ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... were crossing and flying on the night the King of Ireland's Son and Fedelma whom he had brought from the Land of Mist stayed in the house of the Little Sage of the Mountain. On that night the Little Sage told them from what bird had come the wing that thatched his house. That was a wonderful story. And he told them too about the next place they should go to—the Spae-woman's house. There, he said he would find people that they knew—Flann, ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... producing healthy children. If he does not destroy his health by premature indulgence, he may destroy his happiness by witnessing his children a prey to debility and deformity. An old German proverb says, 'Give a boy a wife, and a child a bird, and death will soon knock at the door.' Even an author so old as Aristotle warns young men against early marriage, under penalty of disease ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... is now in the limited, but choice and curious, collection of my old and very worthy friend Mr. Joseph Haslewood. The handle of the stick is decorated by a bird's head, in ivory, which I conjectured to be that of an Eagle; but my friend insisted upon it that it was the head of an Hawk. I knew what this meant—and what it would end in: especially when he grasped ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... own judgment. Only then shall I return to Edward Carpenter, to give a resume of his position, and to point out how far and why I agree with him, and at what stage I part company with him and for what reasons. Then I shall attempt to present a bird's-eye view of the steps in human advancement towards civilization as the best anthropologists have traced them. Thus, we shall be able to see our historic social order in right relation to that ideal humanity which our own ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... annihilation by fire, and the whisper, whisper of their voices had only emphasized the quiet. And, with every moment that went by, the lit-up tower had seemed more like a symbol to Dion. Then at last the cuckoo-clock had chimed and the wooden bird, with trembling tail, had made its ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Verona, least of all Vanna herself, suspected him of any affection for his young wife. Mostly he was silent; thus she became silent too whenever he was in the house. This was against nature, for by ordinary her little songs bubbled from her like a bird's. But to see him so glum and staring within doors awed her: she set a finger to her lips as she felt the tune on her tongue, and went about her business mute. Baldassare would go abroad, stooping under his pack: she took her seat at the shop-door, threaded her needle, her fingers ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... them. They, too, have their national ambitions and interests, and, of course, if these clashed with ours, they would go off on their own. I blame them not at all. It is as well, however, to be prepared for contingencies. For example, four or five sparrows will combine to attack a larger bird which has a piece of bread. As soon as they get the bread the sparrows themselves begin to squabble for its possession; and perhaps two or three will set on the one that has hold of it and force him to give it up. Such is Nature—a theatre of vast, unceasing conflict. ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... world where brute and fish Converse with man and bird, Where dungeons open at a wish, And seas dry at ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... a malevolent look at the bird, and then, his cigar tip-tilted and the corner of his mouth sarcastically askew, suggested with an air as though the idea were the limit ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... fairly bounding over the water. I never knew that canoes could be paddled so rapidly. They were almost upon the schooner when the first rocket went off with a terrible sputter. It shot like a bird of fire right into the leading canoe, and then another, and another, shot off until the air between the schooner and the canoes seemed filled with ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... went to church every Sunday. We would go to the white folks church in the morning and to our church in the evening. Bill McWilliams, old Master's oldest boy, didn't take much stock in church. He owned a nigger named Bird, who preached for us. Bill said, "Bird, you can't preach, you can't read, how on earth can you get a text out of the Bible when you can't even read? How'n hell can a man preach that don't know nothing?" Bird told him the Lord had called him to preach and he'd put the things in ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... at Manassas, Saturday noon,—the very day that Patterson ascertains that "the bird has flown,"—after assuming command, by virtue of seniority, he proceeds to examine Beauregard's position. This he finds "too extensive, and the ground too densely wooded and intricate," to be learned quickly, and hence he is impelled to rely largely ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... let us get behind the branch on which it is singing; let us manoeuvre so as to avoid the five centres of vision, and then let us speak, whistle, clap the hands, beat two stones together. For far less a bird which could not see you would stop its song and fly away terrified. The Cigale imperturbably continues to sing as ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... imagined dear old Joe looking so unlike himself or so like some extraordinary bird; standing as he did speechless, with his tuft of feathers ruffled, and his mouth open as if ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... thirty-nine degrees of latitude, however, we could already perceive how much further the South pole extends its unfavourable influence than the North. The sky was no longer clear, the wind became changeable and violent, the air much colder, and the frequent sight of the whale, and of a giant bird called the albatross, warned us that we were approaching the stormy region. We afterwards shot one of these birds on the coast of Chili, which measured ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... teaching was based upon the doctrine of the unity of all sentient existence. Buddhism explained the whole visible world by its doctrine of Karma,—simplifying that doctrine so as to adapt it to popular comprehension. The forms of all creatures,—bird, reptile, or mammal; insect or fish,—represented only different results of Karma: the ghostly life in each was one and the same; and, in even the lowest, some spark of the divine existed. The frog or the serpent, the bird or the bat, the ox or the ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... of September 14, 1834] that we can no longer see each other and exchange our opinions! I have got so much to tell you. I should like also to thank you for the present, which is doubly precious to me. I wish I were a bird, so that I might visit you in your Olympian dwelling, which the Parisians take for a swallow's nest. Farewell, love me, as I do you, for I shall always remain ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... very thankful for its light, and happy in watching beneath it the flow and the glittering of the classical river, when I noticed a well-dressed boy, apparently just out of some orderly Sunday-school, leaning far over the parapet; watching, as I conjectured, some bird or insect on the bridge-buttress. I went up to him to see what he was looking at; but just as I got close to him, he started over to the opposite parapet, and put himself there into the same position, his object ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... &c.] The American Indians call a great bird they have, with a white head, a penguin, which signifies the same thing in the British tongue: from whence (with other words of the same kind) some authors have endeavoured to prove, that the Americans are originally ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... he mocked me. "What's the use praising it when you eat it like a bird? What's the matter with you? Are you bashful? Fire away, old man!" Then to his wife: "Why do you keep quiet, Dvorah? Why don't you tell him to eat like a man and not ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... a sheykh in our neighbourhood had asked me to lend him my gun for a few days, since I never used it. There was nothing really which I cared to shoot. The village people rushed out in pursuit of every little bird whose tweet was heard, however distant, in the olive groves or up the mountain side. Jackals there were besides, and an occasional hyaena; and, in the higher mountains, tigers, so the people still persisted in declaring, meaning leopards, I suppose, or lynxes; ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... dictionaries of all sizes and weights, that it has become to many a most impersonal term, and we may almost expect in a few generations to find the word "Webster" defined in some revised edition of the Unabridged as the colloquial word for a Dictionary. The bright-eyed, bird-like looking gentleman who faces the title-page of his Dictionary may be undergoing some metempsychosis, but the student of American literature will at any time have little difficulty in rescuing his personality from unseemly transmigration, and, by the aid of historical ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... down a turkey's crop, and it has got rubbed up in the gravel with which the ingenious bird assists the process of digestion. A man who could swallow that gem is ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 13, 1892 • Various
... Stenographers, as I have said, have a somewhat similar task. Nevertheless, you would sometimes be in uncertainty as to the words. Suppose you have the three consonants brd, how would you know whether the word was bard, or bird, or bread, or board, or brad, or broad, or bride, or braid, or brood, or breed? It might be any one of them. You could usually tell what it was by a glance at the connection, but you could not tell infallibly, for there might be sentences in which more than one ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... river it's so smooth. And look up into the leaves; how pretty they are! and every one of them is trembling a little; not one of them is still, Nora. How beautiful the green is, with the sun shining through! Wouldn't you like to be a bird up there?" ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... I don't know why we're so severe with women when they seem to take the initiative. It's merely, after all, the call of the maiden bird, and there's nothing lovelier or more ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... self-sufficing soul, a pool in trance, Un-stirred by all the spirit-winds that blow From o'er the gulfs of change, content, ere yet On its own crags, which rough peaked limpets fret The last rich colours glance, Content to mirror the sea-bird's wings of snow, Or feel in some small creek, ere sunset fails, A tiny Nautilus hoist its lovely ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... seven equal horizontal bands of green, yellow, red, black, red, yellow, and green with a white isosceles triangle edged in black with its base on the hoist side; a yellow Zimbabwe bird representing the long history of the country is superimposed on a red five-pointed star in the center of the triangle, which symbolizes peace; green symbolizes agriculture, yellow - mineral wealth, red - blood shed to achieve independence, ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the truth, that being so sad, and so utterly alone, and in such great need of sympathy, her thoughts sometimes recurred to the sculptor. Had she met him now, her heart, indeed, might not have been won, but her confidence would have flown to him like a bird to its nest. One summer afternoon, especially, Hilda leaned upon the battlements of her tower, and looked over Rome towards the distant mountains, whither Kenyon had told her that he ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he tried to regain his natural manner. "I kem down hyar," he remarked, in an off-hand way, "ter git a drink o' water." He glanced furtively at the girl, then looked quickly away at the gallant red-bird, still gayly parading ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... another basin close to us; it trickles in silver threads through the leaves at its edge, and falls tinkling and splashing (though in considerable body) into the pool, stirring its quiet surface, at which a bird is stooping to drink, with concentric and curdling ripples which divide round the stone at its farthest border, and descend in sparkling foam over the lip of the basin. Thus we find, in every case, the system of Turner's truth entirely unbroken, each phase and ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... This bird house was designed and built to make a home for the American martin. The house will accommodate 20 families. All the holes are arranged so they will not be open to the cold winds from the north which often kill the birds which come in the early spring. Around each opening ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... our joint debates. I have now encountered the 'Eagle Orator' upon every stump in the State, and come out of the contest with no flesh of mine in his claws—no blood of mine upon his beak." To which Henry instantly replied: "The eagle—the proud bird of ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... of an itinerant Methodist evangelist, who wound up a burst of rhapsodical patriotism with this, climax: 'If this glorious Union is dissolved, what will become of the American Eagle, that splendid bird with 'E Pluribus Unum' in his bill, the shafts of Peace in his talons, and 'Yankee Doodle' ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... five this bright August day we are on the deck of the little steamer, to find a scene of indescribable liveliness and bustle. All kinds of merchandise were being stowed away—bedding, fruit, bicycles, bird-cages, passengers' luggage, cases, and packages ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... less, dependent on civil law. But it must be felt particularly in that connection, which of all others is the most forced and arbitrary—the connection between master and slave. Liberty is a natural instinct. The caged bird is not surer to fly through the parted wires than the slave, in his ordinary condition, from the broken chain—and the chain must be broken when the civil law, which alone gives it strength, passes away. There are men who ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a quick glance to his companion, who, however, had handed his gun to the keeper a short time before, and shook his head deprecatingly. Brian lifted his gun. It seemed to him that something was moving amongst the branches beyond the bird, and for a moment he hesitated—then pulled the trigger. And just as he touched it, Archie sprang forward with ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... be exacting about words with me, never say that I said so and so, or so and so. Shall I tell you more about birds? There is a wicked bird that is called a rat-hawk: as you may know by its name, it lives on rats. But as it is an evil bird it has hard work to catch the rats. Because it can say only one single word, and that a noise such as a cat makes when it says "miau." Now when the rat-hawk says ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... lilacs in the garden is wafted in with delicious, heavy, unwholesome sweetness. And she herself, caught by an eddy of her feigned passion, is swept into a wave of sensual recollection. She is in the Rothenwald again on a spring morning—overhead a bird sings a ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... He attends to all the necessities of these strange favourites himself, and he has taught the creatures to be surprisingly fond of him and familiar with him. The cockatoo, a most vicious and treacherous bird towards every one else, absolutely seems to love him. When he lets it out of its cage, it hops on to his knee, and claws its way up his great big body, and rubs its top-knot against his sallow double chin in the ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... jolly well please," said Bob wrathfully. "Who's she, I'd like to know, to tell us what to say? And she kept you there all the afternoon, when she knew you were due to meet me!—my hat, she is a venomous old bird! And now it's half-past four, and what time ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... carry dry-goods, groceries, boots and shoes and drugs, paints and oils,—and certainly the ravens have been bringing those things to the Wards for eight years now, and they're all paid for,—the blessed bird can hump itself a little and bring some furniture, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... 'carried off his poultry,' and Tom had already reaped a harvest of dimes from the whiskey drinking. 'Why, bless ye,' he said to me, 'I should be broke, clean done up, if it warn't fur the drinks; I haint got more'n a bit, or three fips, fur nary a fowl; the fust shot allers brings down the bird; they're all cocksure on the trigger—ary man on 'em kin hit a turkey's eye at a hundred paces.' This was true; and in such schools were trained the unerring marksmen who are now 'bringing down' the bravest youth of our country, like fowls at a ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... birds, however monstrous, will have profound relations with the true. He may be an ignorant man, and little acquainted with the laws of nature; he is certainly a busy man, and has not much time to watch nature; but he never saw a serpent cross his path, nor a bird flit across the sky, nor a lizard bask upon a stone, without learning so much of the sublimity and inner nature of each as will not suffer him thenceforth to conceive them coldly. He may not be able to carve plumes ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... some persuasion before she ventured in, the wheels crunching on the gravel, her fetlocks splashing the slow-moving, chocolate-coloured water. On the opposite bank we reached a sort of plateau, seen vaguely in the light. I "let a bawl out of me." It was like the cry of some lonely, lost bird on the wing. The Friar shook with laughter. I could feel the little rock of his body on the springs of the car. A figure came suddenly out of the darkness and silently took the mare by the head. The car moved on across the vague back meadow. Patch Keetly was piloting us to a light ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... at home and in the field, men of natural taste and real cultivation, of broad and sane outlook, of warm heart and deep sympathies. There was Virgil, whom he calls the half of his own being. There was Plotius, and there was Varius, bird of Maeonian song, whom he ranks with the singer of the Aeneid himself as the most luminously pure of souls on earth. There was Quintilius, whose death was bewailed by many good men;—when would incorruptible Faith and Truth find his equal? There ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... to say something very generous of Frederick Armstrong were wont to observe, that he was not such a fool as he looked. Nor, in the ordinary attributes of a country gentleman, was the master of Hale Castle behind his compeers. He rode like Assheton Smith, never missed his bird in the open, and had a manly scorn of battues; was great in agriculture, and as good a judge of a horse as any man in Yorkshire. His literary attainments were, perhaps, limited to a comprehensive knowledge of the science of farriery, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... continual motion. I bathed frequently in the R. du Rempart, walked out every fine day, and in a few weeks my former health was in a great measure recovered. Those who can receive gratification from opening the door to an imprisoned bird, and remarking the joy with which it hops from spray to spray, tastes of every seed and sips from every rill, will readily conceive the sensations of a man during the first days of ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... rewarded him, and their walk was so uneventful that they saw nothing more than another rattlesnake, the valley being so solitary and deserted that, with the exception of a large hawk, they did not even see a bird. ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... givin' us orders to that effect, we began to creep about an' whisper. Things got stiller and stiller, till they was as still as—mushrooms! Then the bugler let off the 'Dead March' from the upper bridge. He done it to cover the remarks of a cock-bird bein' killed forrard, but it came out paralysin' in its tout ensemble. You never heard the 'Dead March' on a bugle? Then the pipes went twitterin' for both watches to attend public execution, an' we came up like so many ghosts, the 'ole ship's company. Why, ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... night. And in the morning he arose, and when he went forth, behold, a shower of snow had fallen the night before, and a hawk had killed a wild-fowl in front of the cell. And the noise of the horse scared the hawk away, and a raven alighted upon the bird. And Peredur stood and compared the blackness of the raven, and the whiteness of the snow, and the redness of the blood, to the hair of the lady whom best he loved, which was blacker than the raven, and to her skin, which was whiter than the snow, ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... time together in the middle of the boat, getting out of snarls. And at last, drifting away down to the outlet, they seemed to have given up fishing for the more interesting occupation. The clouds drifted on; the fish leaped; the butcher-bird called from the shore; the sun was purpling Lafayette. There were kinks in the leader that would not come out, the lines were inextricably tangled. The cook made the signals for dinner, and sent his voice echoing over the lake time and again before these devoted anglers ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... home to Viterbo, ask the old Gentleman pardon, and be receiv'd to Grace again, you to the Embraces of the amiable Octavio, and I to St. Teresa's, to whistle through a Grate like a Bird in a Cage,—for I shall have little heart to sing.—But come, let's leave This sad talk, here's Men—let's walk and gain new Conquest, I love it dearly— [Walk ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... gasped Gerty, already moving in the direction of her bedroom, "I dine at Ninety-first Street, and I must get into a gown that laces in the back." She darted out with a bird-like flutter; and running quickly down the staircase, he hurried from the house and into a passing cab. During the short drive to his rooms his thoughts were exclusively engrossed with the necessity of making a rapid change and framing a suitable apology for his hostess. The annoyance ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... a whole lot of birds that thinks they are wise and always trying to pull off something on somebody but once in a wile they pick out the wrong bird to pull it on and then the laugh is on the ...
— The Real Dope • Ring Lardner
... present state one of frequent red-faced forays down into a packing-case. But there was that in her eyes which witchingly bespoke the conquered, but not the conqueror. Hers was actually the titillating wonder of a bird which, captured, closes its wings, that surrender can ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... enjoyable time I have spent in the earth. For rousing, tingling, rapturous pleasure there is no holiday trip that approaches the bird-flight down the Himalayas in a handcar. It has no fault, no blemish, no lack, except that there are only thirty- five miles of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... in the sun in the still morning hours. Willibald had chosen for himself a shady place upon the bank, and gave himself up, with as much perseverance as comfort, to the delights of angling, while the impatient Hartmut wandered here and there, now scaring a bird, now breaking off a branch for the blossoms, and at last, after a series of gymnastic performances, seating himself on the trunk of an old tree which lay half in the water. "Can you never be quiet in any place? You frighten the fish away every time," ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... his wide realms the slow-subsiding flood Left the rich treasures of organic mud; While with quick growth young Vegetation yields Her blushing orchards, and her waving fields; Pomona's hand replenish'd Plenty's horn, And Ceres laugh'd amid her seas of corn.— Bird, beast, and reptile, spring from sudden birth, Raise their new forms, half-animal, half-earth; 410 The roaring lion shakes his tawny mane, His struggling limbs still rooted in the plain; With flapping wings assurgent eagles toil To rend their talons from the adhesive soil; The ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... oval-shaped islands,—all slumbering in the evening calm. He was looking for the weak point in the ramparts, the place where he might make a breach and put up his scaling ladders. For his plan was to take Orleans by assault. William Glasdale said to him, "My Lord, look well at your city. You have a good bird's-eye ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... minutes the scene struck Phoebe as pretty and amusing; but this impression was quickly followed by a sensation of sadness. A number of rational and immortal beings were gathered together, and all they could find to do was to look pretty and be amusing. Why, a bird, a dog, or a monkey, could have done ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... the kid, and he was on the same train. Mrs. Conyers had been living with her brother, and they'd watched the boy always, as her husband had tried to steal him before. I judge that man was worse than a street railway promoter. It seems he had spent her money and slugged her and killed her canary bird, and told it around that she ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... playmates, Waking them up from all corners before it is morning. We call them in bird songs, Beckon them in nodding branches. We spread our spell for them in the ...
— The Cycle of Spring • Rabindranath Tagore
... she drew her mantle closer, and, moving to the wayside, ascended the hill. The silver and green of the olives closed around her, and with them the branching dates. Above, a star left by the morning glimmered feebly. In a myrtle a bird began to sing, and a lizard that had come out to intercept the sun scurried as she passed. Upward and onward still she went, and, the summit reached, for a moment she ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... as she watched the flight of the bird. How free of the cares and responsibilities of the world the winged creatures seemed. She turned to the bench once more and was in the act of picking up her basket, when her attention was suddenly arrested by the sound of footsteps close at hand, and wheeling around, she came face ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... with innumerable flowers, and the breeze which blew from it was laden with the most delightful perfume, Evidently it was all a howling wilderness, for we could not detect the slightest vestige of human dwellings or cultivation. We did not even observe any signs of bird or beast. A profound stillness brooded over the solitude, and was scarcely broken by the drowsy murmur of ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... south as the river Tungabhadra, "the vicinity of the fortress of Adoni." Ala-ud-din died at the age of sixty-seven on Sunday, February 2, A.D. 1358,[39] and was succeeded by Muhammad Shah. The Raya of Vijayanagar had presented Ala-ud-din with a ruby of inestimable price, and this, set in a bird of paradise composed of precious stones, the Sultan placed in the canopy over his throne; but some say that this was done by Muhammad, and that the ruby was placed above his umbrella ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... use of Walrave's Plate; usually had Walrave, Nussler, and other principal figures to dinner. Walrave's Plate, every piece of it, was carefully marked with a RAVEN on the rim,—that being his crest ["Wall-raven" his name]: Old Dessauer, at sight of so many images of that bird, threw out the observation, loud enough, from the top of the table, 'Hah, Walrave, I see you are making yourself acquainted with the RAVENS in time, that they may not be strange to you at last,'"—when they come to eat you on the gibbet! (not a soft tongue, the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... in whenever we want, but it took time to get everything set up this way. Now we can follow the Nipe wherever he goes, so long as he stays in those tunnels. If he went out through the one open-air exit up in the northern part of the island, we could have him followed by bird-robots. But"—he shrugged wryly—"I'm afraid the underwater problem still has us stumped. We can't get the carrier wave for the remote-control impulses to go very ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... winter wind, the North wind, My snow-bird, where art thou gone? O, O, the wailing wind the night wind, The cold nest; I am ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the pair were driving along country lanes in the very midst of all the burgeoning beauty of the season, and Georgiana was like a captive bird let loose. Her companion as well responded to the call of Nature at her loveliest, and the tireless worker of the study seemed changed at a word to a bright-eyed idler of the most carefree sort. The two gave themselves ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... but Poll was sent to a bird shop. Little Dot's mother stayed in the city with Dot's father and the cat family to keep them ...
— Five Little Friends • Sherred Willcox Adams
... days later he wrote to the Department, "I had presumed that the enemy would confide in the strength of his position and venture an action, by which an opportunity would be afforded to cut off his retreat."[52] This guileless expectation, that the net may be spread not in vain before the eyes of any bird, provoked beyond control such measure of equanimity as Armstrong possessed. Probably suspecting already that his correct design upon Kingston had been thwarted by false information, he retorted: "I cannot disguise from you the surprise ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... on their devious ways through the hilly land of youth. There were bird-songs and flowers; there were bright paths, and dark ones; there were sunny by-paths, which ended in dreamy forests; there were pitfalls in unexpected places; there was often sorrow where they looked for joy, and failure where they expected success. And the one listened oft to the ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen
... selections for the present month include some of them. The most beautiful specimen of all, which is as rich in color and "sun-sparkle" as the most polished gem to which he owes his name, the Ruby-throated Humming Bird, cannot sing at all, uttering only a shrill mouse-like squeak. The humming sound made by his wings is far more agreeable than his voice, for "when the mild gold stars flower out" it ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... the day before; in consequence of this irregular motion the brain is disturbed, it only represents to itself confused ideas that want connection. When in a dream, he believes he sees a Sphinx, a being supposed by the poets to have a head and face like a woman, a body like a dog, wings like a bird, and claws like a lion, who put forth riddles and killed those who could not expound them; either, he has seen the representation of one when he was awake, or else the disorderly motion of the brain is such that it causes it to ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... and of a species Talbot had never before laid eyes on. The bird stood on the crumbling rim of the mining shaft and regarded him with golden eyes. Its body was as large as that of a buzzard, and its head had a flat, reptilian look, unpleasant to see. Nor was that the only odd thing. The feathers ...
— The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds • Francis Flagg
... merry with the claim that the tariff had been reduced, by reading to his friend Mr. Hennessy the "necessities of life" which had been placed on the free-list and which included curling stones, teeth, sea-moss, newspapers, nuts, nux vomica, Pulu, canary bird seed, divy divy ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... certainly has fire in his belly, yes and brains in his head, too! Think of it! He thought it all out up there in the raw all-day mists, thought it all out, and he works towards his purpose like a pattern diplomat, like a born general, like a Scipio, like a cat after a bird! Has himself sold as a slave, bides his time, puts himself in the pink of condition, ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... poultry, which may perhaps be considered to have formed the staple of the entertainment—for there was a turkey at the top, a pair of ducks at the bottom, and two fowls in the middle—disappeared as rapidly as if every bird had had the use of its wings, and had flown in desperation down a human throat. The oysters, stewed and pickled, leaped from their capacious reservoirs, and slid by scores into the mouths of the assembly. The sharpest pickles vanished, whole cucumbers at once, like sugar-plums, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... princess wept her woes, The bird of night complains; And sighing trees the tale disclose They ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... girls going on such excursions. I wish I might have gone to school to Agassiz just to get my eyes opened. If I had, I'd probably assign to my pupils such subjects as the evolution of a snowflake, the travels of a sunbeam, the mechanism of a bird's wing, the history of a dewdrop, the changes in a blade of grass, and the evolution of a grain of sand. If I could only take them away from books for a month or so, they'd probably be able to read the books to better advantage when they ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... his face aroused him with a start and a cry of agony. The great bird of carrion, startled in its inspection, flew clumsily off and settled fearlessly on ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... movements, as the cat watches the mouse. In the first place her reefs were shaken out, as the ship's bows fell off far enough to get the sea on the right side of them, and her top-sails appeared to me to be mast-headed by instinct, or as the bird extends its wings. The fore and main-top-gallant sails were fluttering in the breeze at this very moment,—it blew rather too fresh for the mizen,—and then their bosoms were distended, and their bow-lines hauled. How the ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... stood, apparently listening with profound attention and sympathy, but the movement of her fan almost gave her away, for it grew rapid now and again, and when Lord Turfleigh came up beside her, his hawklike eyes glancing sharply, like those of a bird of prey, from their fat rims, she shot an angry and ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... although many are of much larger size. They are seldom found on the lower, or recent river terrace, but are common on the upper terrace, and are often built upon the high bluffs bordering the streams, where a wide stretch of country is exposed to view. Black-bird, an Omaha chief, who died about the year 1800, desired to be buried on a high bluff overlooking the Missouri, so that he might see the boats passing up and down the river. Perhaps from a similar superstitious wish the Mound Builders sometimes chose the ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... their cruel scars. And so with servants. "Who ate up the three pigeons which went down in the pigeon-pie at breakfast this morning?" "O dear me! sir, it was John, who went away last month!"—or, "I think it was Miss Mary's canary-bird, which got out of the cage, and is so fond of pigeons, it never can have enough of them." Yes, it WAS the canary-bird; and Eliza saw it; and Eliza is ready to vow she did. These statements are not true; but please don't call them lies. This is not lying; this is voting with your ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the two-horned rhinoceros, hitherto unknown, the gnu—an animal in form something between the horse and the ox—the gazelle, the baboon, and the hippopotamus, the habits of which were previously imperfectly known, Sparrman describes a curious bird, of great service to the natives, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Isabella, would rival in public acceptance her Juliet, Viola, or Rosalind, was not to be expected: it was too much a passive condition—delicate and elusive—and too little an active effort. She woke into life the sleeping spirit of a rather repellant drama, and was "alone the Arabian bird." ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... liquid sky; A two-form'd bard, no more to bide Within the range of envy's eye 'Mid haunts of men. I, all ungraced By gentle blood, I, whom you call Your friend, Maecenas, shall not taste Of death, nor chafe in Lethe's thrall. E'en now a rougher skin expands Along my legs: above I change To a white bird; and o'er my hands And shoulders grows a plumage strange: Fleeter than Icarus, see me float O'er Bosporus, singing as I go, And o'er Gastulian sands remote, And Hyperborean fields of snow; By Dacian horde, that masks its fear Of Marsic steel, shall I be known, And furthest ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... one long sweeping ascent, passing through drifting clouds till the machine soared like a bird above the blue sea. ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... opposite a visitor, who was requested to carve the dainty. He did so, and sent a portion of it to his host. The reverend gentleman looked at the plateful sent him attentively, and then said with a sigh, "I will trouble you to exchange this for part of the other bird. This was a peculiar favorite, and I always fed it myself. I put a mark on the breast after it was picked, for I could not bear to eat the ...
— Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it • Miss Coulton
... fierce passions, and uncontrollable daring, expend healthily that energy which threatened daily to plunge him into recklessness, if not into sin, upon hunting out and collecting, through rock and bog, snow and tempest, every bird and egg of the neighbouring forest. I have seen the cultivated man, craving for travel and for success in life, pent up in the drudgery of London work, and yet keeping his spirit calm, and perhaps his morals all the more righteous, ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... around) Seems funny to think of a bird here. But she must have had one, or why would she have a cage? I ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... plain education at a Quaker school at Ackworth, and grew up a genuine country lad, scouring the lanes on his famous grey pony, Peter Scroggins, the acknowledged leader of the village lads in bird-nesting and rat-hunting expeditions, and taking his full share of the work on his father's little farm. Long afterwards he used to say that every scene in and about Heanor was photographed with absolute distinctness on his brain, and he loved to recall the long days that he ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... there can scarcely be a doubt that Sarracenia and Darlingtonia may be added to this class, though the fact can hardly be considered as yet fully proved. There is a third class of plants which feed, as is now generally admitted, on the products of the decay of vegetable matter, such as the bird's-nest orchis (Neottia), &c. Lastly, there is the well-known fourth class of parasites (such as the mistletoe), which are nourished by the juices of living plants. Most, however, of the plants belonging to these four classes obtain part of their ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... and her other guests were forced to do the talking, for Bertha had not only warned Mart against reminiscence, but had determined to keep a tight hold on her own tongue; and though she listened with the alertness of a bird, she answered only in curt phrase, making "yes" and "no" do their full duty. She perceived that the people round her were of intellectual companionship to the Crego and Congdon circles, and these young men, so easy and graceful of manner, reminded ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... blood in his body mounting to his face, manifestly to the great detriment of his legs, which, deprived of their usual portion, trembled beneath him. When they stopped to gather a hedge flower, or listen to a bird, Nathaniel Pipkin stopped too, and pretended to be absorbed in meditation, as indeed he really was; for he was thinking what on earth he should ever do, when they turned back, as they inevitably must in time, and meet him face to face. But though he was afraid to make up to them, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Greip and Gialp rushed out and kept hold of the falcon. As the Giant held him in his hands and looked him over he knew that this was no bird-creature. The eyes showed him to be of Alfheim or Asgard. The Giant took him and shut him in a ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... speaking a bird flew on his right hand—an eagle with a great white goose in its talons which it had carried off from the farm yard—and all the men and women were running after it and shouting. It came quite close up to them and flew away on their right hands in front of the horses. When they saw it ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... Dakin to back him up. Then the six would fight, hate with a fury of hatred, and flee home in terror. Paul never forgot, after one of these fierce internecine fights, seeing a big red moon lift itself up, slowly, between the waste road over the hilltop, steadily, like a great bird. And he thought of the Bible, that the moon should be turned to blood. And the next day he made haste to be friends with Billy Pillins. And then the wild, intense games went on again under the lamp-post, surrounded by so much darkness. Mrs. Morel, going into her parlour, ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... side view of herself which gave a sort of lawyer's comment to her words. The chevalier, who, you must know, was a sly old bird, lowered his right eye on the grisette, still holding the razor at his ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... both much too small for him; so that his large red hands and wrists swollen with chilblains hang listlessly far below the end of his sleeves; and his long, thin ankles, and large unshapely feet are so far below the end of his trowsers, as to give the appearance of the legs and feet of a bird. He is whistling a sort of jig tune, and beating time with one of his heels. Poor boy!—I dare say he would be very glad to work if he had an opportunity. A girl, of about twelve, stands on one side of him. She is so scantily clad as to be scarcely decent. Her shoulder-blades ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... they both were his 'Twas my Son's Bird; and neat and trim He kept it: many voyages This Singing-bird hath gone with him; When last he sailed he left the Bird behind; As it might be, perhaps, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... decision is but slow; and so numerous were the meetings, the canvassings, the debates, the discussions, the harangues, and the variety of objections raised by the grandees of the country, that at the age of eighteen the beauteous bird of paradise, still unmated, warbled her virgin strain in the loneliness ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... disappeared. A little cloud of dust rose in the hollow toward Turkey Run. It was undoubtedly big Jack Whittlesey, the sheriff. The idea of one man hunting another was repugnant to Phil to-day, in this bright, wakened world of green fields, cheery bird song and laughing waters. She ran down the hill to escape from the very thought of sheriffs and prisons, and set off for the creek, following the Montgomery-Holton fence toward the Holton barn, whither the music had ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... Fluttering bird! oh how sweet tastes the ripe fruit to thy bill! Noise there is none to disturb thee, still less ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... eyes that indescribable expression seen in the eyes of a bird placed in a cobra's den—met the Chinaman's gaze. This gaze was no different from that which habitually he directed upon the people of the catacombs. His yellow face was set in the same mirthless smile, and his eyebrows were raised interrogatively. ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... like a startled deer. She dropped the pan of feed to the ground and fairly flew to meet them, and then before Kit could even detach herself from these clinging arms, the big front door swung open, and there in the lamplight was the Mother Bird and Helen. ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... is to say that all witnesses would have seen them like any other event. A man rising into the air would be an objective miracle if it were admitted that this levitation was as real as the flight of a bird, and very strong evidence would be necessary to make us believe that such a movement had really been executed. But the case is different if we are dealing with the conviction of an enthusiast that he rose aloft or even with the conviction of his disciples, that they, being in an ecstasy, ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... was otherwise declared to have died of small-pox; of this disease there was not the least sign; but as some mineral poisons tend to render bodies adipocere, here was some evidence in support of the former allegation. I made particular inquiries at the time of Mr. Bird, churchwarden, a respectable and judicious man; and he gave me good assurance that this coffin had always been looked upon as the one containing the Cock Lane woman. Since that time the vault has been set in order, and the above-mentioned coffin, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... loved a lady, and pursued her with a great deal of under-age protestation, whom some three or four gallants that have enjoyed would with all their hearts have been glad to have been rid of. 'Tis just like a summer bird-cage in a garden: the birds that are without despair to get in, and the birds that are within despair and are in a consumption for fear they shall never get out. Away, away, my lord. [Exit Brachiano as ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... power. In dreams, through camp and court, he bore The trophies of a conqueror; In dreams his song of triumph heard; Then wore his monarch's signet-ring, Then pressed that monarch's throne—a king; As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing, As Eden's garden bird. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... great storm arose, and when the hermit saw that his hut was unsafe, his mute friend seemed to beckon him to come up among the branches. Gathering a few crusts, he went up into the tree where, with hundreds of bird companions, his life was saved, though his hut was destroyed. Just as he thought he should die of hunger, Mary, the vine-dresser's daughter, came to see her old friend and took him to her home. Then ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... meanwhile in the nursery at Atherstone. Vic, the much-beloved, the stoat pursuer, the would-be church-goer, Vic was dead, and Molly's soul refused comfort. In vain nurse conveyed a palpitating guinea-pig into the nursery in a bird-cage, on the narrow door of which remains of fur showed an unwilling entrance; Molly could ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... that is something of an oversight. But you hardly thought that I was so simple as to catch a bird without having a ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... is admirable. However the men may long to return, they accept none the less heroically the vicissitudes of the situation. Their courage, infinitely less 'literary' than mine, is so much the more practical and adaptable; but each bird has its cry, and mine has never been a war-cry. I am happy to have felt myself responsive to all these blows, and my hope lies in the thought that they will have forged my soul. Also I place confidence in God and whatever He holds in ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... subject, madam," he said calmly; "I spoke too thoughtlessly. See that lovely humming-bird around the honeysuckle, ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... trailing shrublet, sometimes seen on high mountains in New England, and known to botanists as Andromeda of the heathworts. It had pretty blue-purple flowers, and was growing quite plentifully in sheltered nooks. Not a bird nor an animal was to be seen. Half an hour's climbing took us to the brown, weather-beaten summit of the peak. From this point eleven small islands were in sight, none of them more than a few miles in extent; and, at a distance of seven or eight leagues, the high mountains of the ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... of John's slumbers being dreamless. A child can afford to sleep without dreaming, he has plenty of dreams without sleeping. No need to tell what days, weeks, months, of sunlit, forest-shaded, bird-serenaded, wide-awake dreaming passed over this one's wind-tossed locks between the ages of eight ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... cliffs is washed by the frigid tide, but there is scarcely a sound, for the pebbles cannot be moved by the weightless waves, and an occasional murmur is all that is heard. Great rocks of ice reflect the light of the grey moons, and never a leaf falls or a bird sings. With the exception of the mournful ripples, the planet is silent as the grave. The animal and plant kingdoms do not exist; only the mineral and spiritual worlds. I say spiritual, because there are ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... day he brought his bride home to it the island became more than ever his sufficing world. He knew a thousand small things concerning it—secrets of the soil, of the tides, of the sand drift—voices of the wind, varying colours of the sea, and what weather they foretold—where this moss grew, that bird nested—in what week the wild duck arrived, on what wind the geese might be looked for, and what feeling in the spring air announced that the guillemots were due. He had learnt these things unconsciously, and was quite unaware of his knowledge, having never an occasion ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... a single room, with bare floor and mud wall; and little Geordie grew up in his own unkempt fashion without any schooling whatever, not even knowing A from B when he was a big lad of seventeen. At an age when he ought to have been learning his letters, he was bird's-nesting in the fields or running errands to the Wylam shops; and as soon as he was old enough to earn a few pence by light work, he was set to tend cows at the magnificent wages of twopence a day, in the village of Dewley Burn, close by, to which ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... period of gestation.... and the Seceding States have now constituted themselves a nation[105] ..." At the other end of the scale in newspaper "tone," the London Press jeered at the Northern American eagle as having "had his tail pulled out and his wings clipped—yet the meek bird now holds out his claws to be pared, with a resignation that would be degrading in the most henpecked of domestic fowls[106]." Having now veered about to expressions of confidence in the permanency of the Southern Confederacy the ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... treasure of nuts and ripe blackberries—a wild dessert which it was her morning's pleasure to collect in a little basket, and cover with green leaves and fresh blossoms, and her afternoon's delight to administer to Moore, berry by berry, and nut by nut, like a bird feeding ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... sounds of busy urgent life that were filling the warm sweet air, he heard the new and unaccustomed song of a bird. At least not new and not unaccustomed, but new and unaccustomed there, in this sylvan retreat. The notes poured out, now shrill, now mellow, now bubbling like musical water, but always rich with the joy of life, the fulness of happiness. Where had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... Lily, placing her hand on his arm, and drawing him towards what she thought the best light for the picture; "it is Blanche's first sight of a bird. Look well at her face; don't you see a sudden surprise,—half joy, half fear? She ceases to play with the reel. Her intellect—or, as Mr. Braefield would say, 'her instinct'—is for the first time aroused. From that moment Blanche ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and the effect upon Helen was peculiar. From the pugnacious attitude of an outraged canary, ready to do battle, she was transformed into the sweetest, meekest love-bird imaginable. A veritable little preening, posing, oh-do-admire-me creature, and at Polly's last words she jumped from the box and clasping ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... in their assembly of three and a bird, whose leg Dawtie had put in splints, what became of the creatures when they died. They concluded that the sparrow that God cared for must be worth caring for; and they could not believe He had made it to last only such a little while ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... proclaim the duty, and the motives, of the perilous enterprise. Fear is the first principle of a despotic government; and his menaces were expressed in the Oriental style, that the fugitives and deserters, had they the wings of a bird, [53] should not escape from his inexorable justice. The greatest part of his bashaws and Janizaries were the offspring of Christian parents: but the glories of the Turkish name were perpetuated by successive adoption; and in the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... did not want to hurt the bird, she was really speaking in fun. But all the same she aimed at it, and—oh, sad and strange to say—she hit it! a quiver of the little wings, and the tiny head dropped, and then—in a moment it had fallen to the foot of the high wall on which it had perched so happily ...
— The Thirteen Little Black Pigs - and Other Stories • Mrs. (Mary Louisa) Molesworth
... and he was shut in by the gray concrete walls where the guards looked down from the towers. He could not trust himself now outside of the yard, his nerve was gone and he would head for Pinal like a homing bird to its mate. And then it came, quicker than he had ever thought or hoped for, though he had offered the Silver Treasure in return for it—a full pardon from the Governor, with his citizenship restored and a letter expressing confidence in his innocence. ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... we'll come up and take a look-see [stick up the periscope], and if we see the bird, and we're in a good position to send him a fish [torpedo], we'll let him have one. If there is something there, and we're not in a good position, we'll manoeuvre till we get into one, and then let him have it. If there isn't anything to be seen, we'll ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... leave one to feel a strange sense both of deprivation and loneliness. But he who will fly as an eagle does into the higher levels where cloudless day abides, and live in the sunshine of God, must consent to live a comparatively lonely life. No bird is so solitary as the eagle. Eagles never fly in flocks: one, or at most two, and the two, mates, being ever seen at once. But the life that is lived unto God, however it forfeits human companionship, knows divine fellowship, and the child ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... Thus the song's returned again— Coo! Coo! Coo! Through the shady glen; But there I wandered lone and sad, While every bird around was glad. Coo! Coo! Coo! Thus so fondly murmured they, Coo! Coo! Coo! While my love was away. And yet the song to lovers, Though sad, is sweet to hear, From birds within the covers, In the spring-time ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... with delight; she, who is always so melancholy, was singing like a bird. Besides, your highness knows how much she detests going out, and also that her character has a spice of wildness ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... was once a man, can imagine himself a bird, or a fish, or an animal—or even an insensate graven stone—at their command. When he is no more fit to be studied he will imagine himself to be a mugger, and will hurry into the tank with the other reptiles, and that will be the end of ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... nations of seafaring men. The whole day long the tumult followed us, and seemed to culminate at last in the screams of a parrot, who thought it fine to cry, "Piove! piove! piove!"—"It rains! it rains! it rains!"—and had, no doubt, a secret interest in some umbrella-shop. This unprincipled bird dwelt somewhere in the neighborhood of the street where you see the awful tablet in the wall devoting to infamy the citizens of the old republic that were false to their country. The sight of that pitiless stone recalls with a thrill the picturesque, unhappy past, with all the wandering, half-benighted ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... over to the far bank, and sat on the stern seat, side by side under the trees where the water was stained deep green by the high woods. If they talked, it was but a word of love now and then, or to draw each other's attention to a fish, a bird, a dragon-fly. What use making plans—for lovers the chief theme? Longing paralysed their brains. They could do nothing but press close to each other, their hands enlaced, their lips meeting now and then. On Noel's face was a strange fixed stillness, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... everything was still—the very air was motionless, not a leaf stirred. The silence was weird, oppressive, and awe-inspiring; and when, at more or less lengthened intervals, a dry twig snapped, a withered leaf crackled, when the soft wafting of the wings of some nocturnal bird was heard among the branches overhead, or the sudden, brief rustling which betrayed the presence of some wild creature smote upon the ear, the effect upon the nerves was startling in the extreme. Through these alternate stretches of gloom and brief illuminated spaces the ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... fervent prayer that God would crown it with honor, protect it from treason, and send it down to our children, with all the blessings of civilization, liberty and religion. Terrible in battle, may it be beneficent in peace. Happily, no bird or beast of prey has been inscribed upon it. The stars that redeem the night from darkness, and the beams of red light that beautify the morning, have been united upon its folds. As long as the sun endures, or the stars, ...
— The Flag Replaced on Sumter - A Personal Narrative • William A. Spicer
... canto of "Gierusalemme Liberata." In the "Shah-Nameh," also, Zal, the father of the Persian hero Rustan, being born with white hair, is exposed by his father Sam on the mountain of Elborz, where he is preserved and brought up by the giant-bird Simorgh.] ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... them books done it," Aunt Haicey said. "Thick books, and no pictures in them. I knew it'd make trouble." She plucked at the faded hand-embroidered shawl over her thin shoulders, a tiny bird-like woman with bright ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... duty to keep a strict watch over the woman who had come to Guernsey to find Olivia. If possible I must decoy her away from the lowly nest where my helpless bird was sheltered. She had not sent for me again, but I called upon her the next morning professionally, and stayed some time talking with her. But nothing resulted from the visit beyond the assurance that she had not yet made any progress toward the discovery of my secret. ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... say the Early Bird the Worm shall taste. Then rise, O Kitten! Wherefore, sleeping, waste The Fruits of Virtue? Quick! the Early Bird Will soon be on the Flutter—O ...
— The Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten • Oliver Herford
... old yellow letter. It was one Father had taken from a drawer in the bookcase which he had cleaned out the night before. We patched the kite up with the letter, a sheet on each side, and dried it by the fire. Then we started out, and up went the kite like a bird. The wind was glorious, and it soared and strained like something alive. All at once—snap! And there was Claude, standing with a bit of cord in his hand, looking as foolish as a flatfish, and our kite sailing along at a fearful rate of speed over ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... permit within its limits factories to make bird skins or bird feathers into articles of ornament or wearing apparel. Ordinary birds, and especially song birds, should be rigidly protected. Game birds should never be shot to a greater extent than will ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... a pretty little bird that lives on honey. The saccharine dainty is there found in the hollows of trees and under the bark, where what is known as the carpenter bee bores and deposits his extract from the buds and ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... all birds ought to be so treated. He soon managed to get into the yard, where his mistress kept a few pet bantam fowls, and, after eating their eggs, he secured one of the hens, and began plucking it. The noise of the poor bird called some of the servants to the rescue, when they found the half-plucked creature in such a pitiable condition that they killed it at once. After this, Mr. Monkey was chained ...
— Minnie's Pet Monkey • Madeline Leslie
... Melantas. The two women had begun again to visit each other and to eat together; but though they had thus far relaxed their former habits of jealousy and variance, still, out of fear and as a matter of caution, they always ate of the same dishes and of the same parts of them. Now there is a small Persian bird, in the inside of which no excrement is found, only a mass of fat, so that they suppose the little creature lives upon air and dew. It is called rhyntaces. Ctesias affirms, that Parysatis, cutting a bird of this kind into two pieces with a knife, one side of which had been smeared ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... transient gleam Of Liberty, though 'twas but in a dream, They would no more in bondage bend their knee, But, once made freemen, would be always free. The Muse, if she one moment freedom gains, Can nevermore submit to sing in chains. Bred in a cage, far from the feather'd throng, The bird repays his keeper with his song; 490 But if some playful child sets wide the door, Abroad he flies, and thinks of home no more, With love of liberty begins to burn, And rather starves than to his cage return. Hail, Independence!—by true reason taught, How ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... not; but really when I look around among my acquaintance, I tremble. Selina has entirely given up music—never touches the instrument—though she played sweetly. And the same may be said of Mrs. Jeffereys—Clara Partridge, that was—and of the two Milmans, now Mrs. Bird and Mrs. James Cooper; and of more than I can enumerate. Upon my word it is enough to put one in a fright. I used to be quite angry with Selina; but really I begin now to comprehend that a married woman has many things to call her attention. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... is! Strange as if a precious bird long waited for in the night were to suddenly fly down and peck at my ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... good grey horse, Within the wood he'll take his pleasure; His dreams from out his head he'll force By listening to the wild bird's measure. ...
— Axel Thordson and Fair Valborg - a ballad • Thomas J. Wise
... stirred my heart. But we must not think of old times as sad times, or regard them as anything but the fathers and mothers of the present. We must all climb steadily up the mountain after the talking bird, the singing tree, and the yellow water, and must all bear in mind that the previous climbers who were scared into looking back ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... barter our good time with a friend, who gives us in exchange his own. Herein is the distinction between the genuine guest and the visitant. This latter takes your good time, and gives you his bad in exchange. The guest is domestic to you as your good cat, or household bird; the visitant is your fly, that flaps in at your window, and out again, leaving nothing but a sense of disturbance, and victuals spoiled. The inferior functions of life begin to move heavily. We ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... all—to "feather" them, to "season" bows, to chop trees, to burn, hollow, fashion and "man" a dugout canoe, to use the paddle, to gauge the wind and current of that treacherous Grand River, to learn wild cries to decoy bird and beast for food. Oh, little pagan We-hro had his life filled to overflowing with much that the civilized white boy would gave all his ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... the bosun. "They didn't 'ave no 'and in the plannin' of it. But to land that feller, Ichi—swiggle me stiff, if I 'ad my way, I land that blighter in the air, below the tops'l yardarm, with a bloomin' noose around 'is neck! Why, 'e was the ruddy bird wot started the business!" ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... delight, deep response, and then—the inevitable. Clear as a bell upon the midnight air was that call from soul to kindred soul. Assurance and longing and demand possessed her beyond all power to stay. The work she stood before now called to her as naturally and inevitably as the bird to its mate, as undeniably as the sea to the river, as potently as spring calls upon earth for its own, as autumn calls to summer for ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... at once that it must be a parrot, but the surprise had been so great that she stood shaking in the middle of the room, not daring to move for fear of stepping on the uncanny bird. She remembered that once when she was a very little girl she had confidingly held out her finger to a parrot and that the unfriendly creature had immediately taken a bite out of it. She wished that the light would come; it made her nervous to be in a dark room with only ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... day came, it was to shine upon the same broken and unsightly quarter of the world. Mile upon mile, and not a tree, a bird, or a river. Only down the long, sterile canyons, the train shot hooting, and awoke the resting echo. That train was the one piece of life in all the deadly land; it was the one actor, the one spectacle fit to be observed in this paralysis of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is but the glad rebound of the freed bird! I am so glad to have escaped from that dark prison of the Hidden House and to be here with you. But tell me, mamma, is ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... pleased when she saw what a fine bird Jack had bought; and the Gander showed more joy than I can describe. And then they all lived very happily for a long time. But Jack would often leave off work to dream of the lovely young lady whom he had rescued in the forest, and soon began to sigh all day long. He neglected the garden, ...
— My First Picture Book - With Thirty-six Pages of Pictures Printed in Colours by Kronheim • Joseph Martin Kronheim
... exclaimed, in an almost sepulchral voice, "What's up now?" The old man stared comically at the unexpected speaker, and then said, as he brushed the dust off his knees, "What's up now? why, you stupid old bird, there's a great deal that's up now. I'm up now, though I was down a minute ago. And Miss Julia as was and Master Walter's up now, for they're up on the landing a-laughing at me. And the dear old missus is up now; she's up in her room with master, and we don't want her to be down in spirits no ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... every living creature. She was devoted to Mrs. Smith, to Mr. Smith, to their dogs, cats, canaries; and as to Mrs. Smith's grey parrot, its peculiarities exercised upon her a positive fascination. Nevertheless, when that outlandish bird, attacked by the cat, shrieked for help in human accents, she ran out into the yard stopping her ears, and did not prevent the crime. For Mrs. Smith this was another evidence of her stupidity; on the other hand, her want of charm, in view of Smith's well-known ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... that we call a blue bird, You blend in a silver strain The sound of the laughing waters, The patter of spring's sweet rain, The voice of the wind, the sunshine, And fragrance of blossoming things, Ah! you are a poem of April That God endowed with wings. E. ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... incidents as the death of Jemmy Dawson's sweetheart at the moment of his execution, later the subject of Shenstone's ballad. The vaporizings of the parrot were also largely inspired by the trials of the rebels, but the sagacious bird frequently drew upon such stock subjects as the follies of the gay world, the character of women, the unreliability of venal praise and interested personal satire, and the advantages of making one's will—the latter illustrated by a story. Somewhat more unusual was a letter from ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... 1800. William Bound, Joseph Bird, Churchwardens. For the better accommodation of the neighbourhood, this pump was removed to the spot where it now stands. The spring by which it is supplied is situated four feet eastward, and round it, as history informs us, the Parish Clerks of London in remote ages commonly ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... own most trusted advisers, and with the most profound statesmen of Europe, as to the opening campaign within a fortnight of a vast and general war, he was secretly plotting with his father-confessor to effect what he avowed to be the only purpose of that war, by Jesuitical bird-lime to be applied to the chief of his antagonists. Certainly Barneveld and his colleagues were justified in their distrust. To move one step in advance of their potent but slippery ally might be ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fingers she made him the sign of birds flying home. And with the whimsy in his soul uppermost, Peter reflected, as he turned back for a microscopic examination of Henry 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
... was wandering by the side of the river, and he saw a large bird of prey rise from the earth, and give chase to a hawk that had not yet gained the full strength of its wings. From his youth the solitary Morven had loved to watch, in the great forests and by the banks of the mighty stream, ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... of ice and snow at the top, but in the bottom we found the early spring flowers blooming, and a settler at what is called the Indian Gardens was planting his garden. Here I heard the song of the canon wren, a new and very pleasing bird-song to me. I think our dreams were somewhat disturbed that night by the impressions of the day, but our day-dreams since that time have at least been sweeter and more comforting, and I am sure that the remainder of our lives will be the richer ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... quickly and fired. The huge bird sank as though hit, curved downward, and with one flap of his ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... and intention, as they imagined, to despatch the grant of their sought and wished-for indulgence. But before he would enter into any chat or communing with them, he commanded the casket to be brought unto him. It was done so accordingly; but, by your leave, the bird was no more there. Then was it that the pope did represent to their maternities how hard a matter and difficult it was for them to keep secrets revealed to them in confession unmanifested to the ears of others, seeing for the space of four-and-twenty hours they were not able to lay up in secret ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... "She's a bird, ain't she?" he grinned over his shoulder, his mind reverting to Lucy Lily. "Did she have on her ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... that the four corners should also be darkened, but the sage explained that it was desired to obstruct no more light than was absolutely necessary, and he said, anticipating Lord Dundreary, "A single pane can no more be in a line with itself than one bird can go into a corner and flock in solitude. The Abbot's condition was that no diagonal lines should contain an ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... come up from the House, where no one had spoken to him. Though grievously frightened during the last fortnight, he had not dared to be on the wing as yet. And, indeed, to what clime could such a bird as he fly in safety? He had not only heard,—but also knew very much, and was not prepared to enjoy the feast. Since they had been in the hall Miles had spoken dreadful words to his father. 'You've heard about it; haven't you?' whispered Miles. Lord Alfred, remembering his sister's ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... not in action. Now, his activity is all of the domestic order and all his thought goes to proving that nothing matters except that birth shall continue and woman shall rock in the nest of this globe like a bird who covers her eggs in some tall tree. Man is the fetcher, the carrier, the sacrifice, the crucified, ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... himself, a person. But though, in the animistic stage, all powers are conceived by man as being persons, they are not all conceived as having human form: they may be animals, and have animal forms; or birds, and have bird-form; they may be trees, clouds, streams, the wind, the earthquake or the fire. In some, or rather in all, of these, man has at some time found the being or the power, greater than man, of whom he has ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... natural history, but he knew bird, beast, insect, and tree, with a friendly hearty intimacy, such as Cockney writers ascribe to peasants, but which they never have. While he used the homeliest names, a dish-washer for a wagtail, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... escaped from the steward's stores and was triumphantly disporting himself in the green water. The steward had offered a reward of half a dozen empty soda-water bottles to the person who would recapture the bird, and two boats were in hot pursuit, whilst little brown Arab boys kept diving in to try to swim down the agile duck, who, however, succeeded in dodging them all with a neatness and sense of humour that evoked much applause from the on-lookers. Marjorie heard afterwards ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... as he watched, and he knew that from that moment on, they were invisible from below—invisible to human eyes at least—that they were sweeping on through the darkness like some gargantuan night bird pursuing ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... employment of figures so homely—nay, almost so repulsive—that the man of lower powers who ventured on their use would find them effective in but lowering his subject, and ruining his cause. I need but refer, in illustration, to the well-known figure of the disembowelled bird, which occurs in the indignant denial that the character of the revolutionary French in aught resembled that of the English. "We have not," says the orator, "been drawn and trussed, in order that we ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... together in a river that he was about to cross. To kill oshidori is not good; but Sonjo happened to be very hungry, and he shot at the pair. His arrow pierced the male: the female escaped into the rushes of the further shore, and disappeared. Sonjo took the dead bird home, and cooked it. ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... sewed industriously for weeks on quilts and coverings for the strikers. Some small children in a Wisconsin village were to have had a goose for their Christmas dinner, but hearing of little children who might have no dinner, sent the price of the bird, one dollar and sixty-five cents, ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... they always thrive; for the German, above all others, loves to try his luck. There were streets of shanties, where various things were offered for sale besides cheese and sausages. There was a long line of booths, where images could be shot at with bird-guns; and when the shots were successful, the images went through astonishing revolutions. There was a circus, in front of which some of the spangled performers always stood beating drums and posturing, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... anything accessible is but faintly to express the nature and scope of its military activity: the universe was its antagonist; its methods that of a projectile. It fought like the angels and devils, in mid-air, cleaving the atmosphere like a bird, describing a parabolic curve and descending upon its victim at just the exact angle of incidence to make the most of its velocity and weight. Its momentum, calculated in foot-tons, was something incredible. It had been seen to destroy a four year ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... Sugar Camp in peace we dwell And none is boastful of himself; None plots to gain with shot and shell His neighbor's bit of land or pelf. The roar of cannon isn't heard, There stilled is money's tempting voice; Someone detects a new-come bird And ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... hostility to God's will. "It did work at that rate for wickedness as it never did before." "The Canaanites would dwell in the land." "His heart hankered after every foolish vanity, and hung back both to and in every duty, as a clog on the leg of a bird to hinder her from flying." He thought that he was growing "worse and worse," and was "further from conversion than ever before." Though he longed to let Christ into his heart, "his unbelief would, as it were, set its shoulder to the door to ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... his lower whistle taking the tune while the E string crooned an obligato; he passed the house, went down the street to the Mortons' and came back and went home again, still trilling his heart out like a bird. As the chirping faded into the night sounds, the ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... object or reason for its guide, but just a regular downright pig-headed sort of stupidity, that nobody could account for. He had a mouth like a bull, and would walk clean through a gate sometimes rather than be at the trouble of rising to leap it; at other times he would hop over it like a bird. He could not beat Mr. Buckram's men, because they were always on the look-out for objects of contention with sharp spur rowels, ready to let into his sides the moment he began to stop; but a weak or a timid ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... arranged straight branches. Leaves stellate, long, narrow, linear, 4-grooved. They have been compared to the tail of a horse and the tail of a certain bird—the casobar. Staminate and pistillate flowers greenish, on different parts of the same stalk. Staminate, in small aments. Pistillate on small globose aments; calyx proper of the floweret, a coarse scale; corolla none; ovary conical; styles ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... cellar, will get very white in the stems, and will bear no fruit. Be sure of this, that a religion which is dumb will very soon tend to lose its possession of the truth, and that if you carry that great gift hid away in your heart it will be like locking up some singing-bird in a box. When you come to open it, the bird will be dead. There are, I have no doubt, many whom I am now addressing whose religion has all but, if not entirely, ebbed away from them, mainly because they have all their days been dumb Christians. That ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... fowl nor a finer, nor a better cooked one couldn't be," he said, as he laid down his knife and fork. "Not a bit o' dryness in the bird: juicy all through and as sweet as ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... be infected by Haemosporidia, and its blood show the presence of halteridia. This bird may also be the subject of a bacterial infection known as pigeon diphtheria; while the fowl may be subject to scabies and ringworm, or suffer from fowl cholera or fowl septicaemia—infections due to members of the haemorrhagic ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... Alexis. "Of course I am not afraid. But"—he eyed the large aeroplane dubiously—"but a man was not made to fly about in the air like a bird, particularly a man of my weight. Besides, I do not like great height. If I stand upon a precipice, I am immediately struck with the notion that I must jump off. If I jumped from an aeroplane I ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... of us would give much for you," said Henderson contemptuously. "Little fools, indeed! You know very well that you daren't lay a finger on the least of us, whether we're beneath your notice or no. An ostrich is a big bird, but its white feathers are chiefly of use in helping it to run away." He went to Eden's bedside, for the child was still sobbing with pain, and was evidently in a great state of ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... time Mary had not spoken, though the hand which William had taken in his trembled like an imprisoned bird; but when he came to speak of loving another, she involuntarily raised his hand to her lips, exclaiming, "It's ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... hard fact its force? A gleeful chuckle followed by a discordant crow dissipated doubt-the stone had been dislodged by an industrious scrub fowl raking on the brink of the ravine. A sense of fellowship with the harsh-voiced bird manifested itself. A transient sensation of relief—I had not been conscious of the least mental depression—followed the thought that in and about the ravine there were other living things besides myself and snakes. The death ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... aimed. There was a puff of smoke. The bird fell shot at the savages' feet, and the ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... and the two soldiers nodded. The position lay before them like a bird's-eye view; and Concepcion, in whom Spain had perhaps lost a guerilla general, had only set eyes on the spot once ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... over fifty-five. He had spent all those forty years watching for his opportunity—aye, getting ready for it. When it came, his beak was sharpened, his talons keen as needles and strong as steel, and he swooped down upon that opportunity like a bird of prey. ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... up her head with a gallant air. "I will heed your advice in this matter. I will not trouble myself another moment; and I will love Brattahlid as a bird loves the cliff that hides it! And Thorhild? What if her nature is such that she is cross? She is no coward. She would defend those she loved, though she died for it. I should like to see Eric bid ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... passion. In no other way can I account for the life he led, lingering forever around the palace gates, where now and then he might get a glimpse of her who had been the light of his soul, the one bright bird which had cheered his exile's home. That home he wished no longer to see, and day after day he took his old station at the gates of Shushan, and looked upon the magnificent walls that divided him from all that had made life desirable. It seems also ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... said. "I want something to do." Just then he heard a robin singing in the rain. He tried to sing with the bird, as he had hummed with the machine, and was ...
— Dew Drops - Volume 37, No. 18, May 3, 1914 • Various
... a very little the next day. He painted still more the next, and yet more again the day following. He was like a bird let out of a cage, so joyously alive was he. The old sparkle came back to his eye, the old gay smile to his lips. Now that they had come back Billy realized what she had not been conscious of before: that for several weeks past they had not been there; and she wondered which hurt ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... the general theory and progress of evolution that the phenomenal stands to the noumenal, the actual to the ideal, as cause to effect. These two groups of experiences are alternate and coincident; and, as to priority, it is only the old question in a new form, as to which was first, the bird that laid the egg, or the egg that hatched ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... about it. We were to drive to Montmorency Falls, a place which is the chief attraction among the environs of Quebec. I had not been there since that memorable day when I rode there with the doctor to find my bird flown. ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... and guided by knowledge; and it only appears to be weaker because the relation between it and other faculties has changed. The imagination of the savage seems powerful because his other faculties are weak. In the absence of knowledge it cuts the most astonishing capers, just as a bird would if it were suddenly deprived of sight. Now the savage is a mental child, and the ignorant and thoughtless are mental savages. They credit the absurdest stories, and indulge in the most ridiculous speculations. When religion ministers to their weakness, as it always ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... one shot as they were all sitting in a row on a rail. They were so frightened of me, it made 'em quail!! Wonderful transformation, wasn't it? But fact, all the same. Four-and-twenty quail All on a rail. Killed eighty "Koran," a Mahomedan bird, very scarce, and therefore bring in a considerable Mahomet, or, (ahem) profit? See? Shot a "Tittup"—so called on account of its peculiar action after drinking; also three early German Beerbirds, or, as the Dutchmen call them, "Spring-boks." There is another origin for this name, which is also ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... arrive, bringing with him in the back pocket of his coat some book that had just come out, and for a long time would not make up his mind to read, but would keep stretching his neck out on one side, like a bird, looking about him as though inquiring, 'could he?' At last he would establish himself in a corner (he always liked sitting in corners), would pull out a book and set to reading, at first in a whisper, then louder and louder, ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... climb the richly decorated campanile that rises two hundred and twenty-five feet, which commands an unrivalled bird's-eye view of lower New York, the bay, Brooklyn, Long Island, and the mountains of New Jersey. All hoped to catch a glimpse of the "Majestic," but she was down the Narrows ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... And, continually, Thy life is changed and sweetened happily, Having no more than rose-leaf shade of gloom, O bird ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... gave it to Witig, saying: "For the sake of the brotherhood in arms which we swore when we met upon the journey, I give thee here thy sword Mimung. Take it and defend thyself like a knight". Then was Witig joyous as a bird at daybreak. He kissed the golden-hilted sword and said: "May God forgive me for the reproach which I hurled at my father, Wieland. See! Theodoric, noble hero! see! here is Mimung. Now am I joyous for the fight with thee as a ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... rolling in from the westward. He held the sheet in his hand, for there was now as much wind as the boat could look up to, and a sudden blast might at any moment send her over. That, too, Michael knew right well. On she flew like a sea-bird amid the foaming waves, now lifted to the summit of one, now dropping down into the hollow, each sea as it came hissing up threatening to break on board; now he kept away to receive its force on his quarter; now ...
— Michael Penguyne - Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast • William H. G. Kingston
... road; Arm with sharp thorns the Sweet-brier's tender wood, And dash the Cynips from her damask bud; Steep in ambrosial dews the Woodbine's bells, 500 And drive the Night-moth from her honey'd cells. So where the Humming-bird in Chili's bowers On murmuring pinions robs the pendent flowers; Seeks, where fine pores their dulcet balm distill, And sucks the treasure with proboscis-bill; 505 Fair CYPREPEDIA with successful guile Knits ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... possibility of existence, except when helped by charity,—is an obsequious devotee at the altar of Mammon. The chattel-mortgage shark, who watches all the necessities of the poor as anxiously as ever a hawk watched over a helpless or crippled bird, and the liquor-seller, who fills his coffers by a traffic which injures and destroys the health, the intelligence, and the morality of all the people whom he can draw into his net, investing all his cunning in methods to entrap the unwary, and gloating over the increasing appetite ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... start, in particular, take care that you do not tire your horses or yourselves. For yourselves, very likely ten miles will be enough for the first day. It is not distance you are after, it is the enjoyment of every blade of grass, of every flying bird, of every whiff of air, of every cloud that hangs upon ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... "If I lie on my back and see a bird fly in the uniformly blue heaven, I recognize the movement although I have no object with which to compare it. This can not be explained by the variety of points on the retina which are affected, for ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... the poet touched the bird, It swelled to stature regal; And when her cloud-wide wings she stirred, A whisper as of doom was ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... circumstances which hem it around cast over the surface of that young life an abiding gloom. A melancholy child! What an anomaly among the harmonies of the universe; something as incongruous as a bird drooping in a cage, or a flower in a sepulchre. The musical laughter muffled and broken; the spontaneous smile transformed to a sad suspicion; and the austerities of mature life, the fearful speculation, and forecast of evil, fixed ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... commonplace that men are all agreed in using symbols, and all differ about the meaning of the symbols. It is obvious that a Russian republican might come to identify the eagle as a bird of empire and therefore a bird of prey. But when he ultimately escaped to the land of the free, he might find the same bird on the American coinage figuring as a bird of freedom. Doubtless, he might find many other things to surprise him in the land of the ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... own breasts. St. Gregory relates, that while St. Bennet was employed in divine contemplation, the fiend endeavored to withdraw his mind from heavenly objects, by appearing in the shape of a little black-bird; but that, upon his making the sign of the cross, the phantom vanished. After this, by the artifices of this restless enemy, the remembrance of a woman whom the saint had formerly seen at Rome, occurred to his mind, and so strongly affected his imagination, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... the tip of the wing of a bird, and inserted upon that part which represents the hand ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... of an express train, Mr. Schwab saw the white front of Claremont, and beyond it the broad sweep of the Hudson. And, then, without decreasing its speed, the car like a great bird, swept down a hill, shot under a bridge, and into a partly paved street. Mr. Schwab already was two miles from his own bailiwick. His surroundings were unfamiliar. On the one hand were newly erected, untenanted flat houses with the paint still on the window panes, and on the ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... suddenly started up, rubbed his eyes, and sprang upon deck like a man alarmed. He had heard, or fancied he had heard, a cry. A voice once well known and listened to, seemed to call him in the very portals of his ear. At first he had listened to its words in wonder, entranced like the bird by the snake, the tones recalling scenes and persons that had once possessed a strong control over his rude feelings. Presently the voice became harsher in ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... breeze of April, Breathing soft as May draws near, While, through nights of tranquil beauty, Songs of gladness meet the ear: Every bird his well-known language Uttering in the morning's pride. Reveling in joy and gladness By ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... dear!" sighed Mrs. Peckover, "I wish I'd seen her then! She was as happy, I dare say, as the bird on the tree. But there's one thing I can't exactly make out yet," she added—"how did you first come to know all ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... yielded, submitted. In another moment she would have made full confession, when suddenly the harsh cry of a frightened bird near at hand broke up the sleepy harmonies and scattered the compelling charm. Leam started, flung back her head, opened her eyes wide and fixed them full on her inquisitor. Then she stiffened herself as if for a personal resistance, passed her hands ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... pike: "Tell your king," said he, "in what occupation you left me engaged."[*] He had conceived great affection and esteem for the brave Sir Walter Raleigh. It was his saying, "Sure no king but my father would keep such a bird ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... since at the altar's foot, Whose crannies are searched by the nightshade's root, Nor sound of service is ever heard, Except from throat of the unclean bird, Hooting to unassoiled shapes as they pass In midnights unholy his witches' mass, Or shouting "Ho! ho!" from the belfry high As the Devil's sabbath-train whirls by; But once a year, on the eve of All-Souls, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... had been dry for some time, I could not pick any worms, so I thought of killing some bird or other small animal, whose flesh would answer for bait. Not falling in with any birds, I determined to seek for a rabbit or a frog. To save time, I lighted a fire, put my water to boil, spread my hide and blanket, arranged my saddle for a pillow, and then went in search of bait, ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... horrible at all, only very thin, with full lips and large eyes and a thin proud nose like the jutting beak of a bird. And no radiation welts or scars marred the skin, olive in the tempered moonlight. It looked, in fact, just as it had when she had seen ...
— The Moon is Green • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... put in a private room; this ward is so full already, and there'll be more coming right along. A boy who wears velvet and feathers must belong to some rich family, who'll gladly pay for every attention. Poor, little, bedraggled bird of paradise!" ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... the hands of the Juge d'Instruction. It is much the same, isn't it, if one has secrets to keep? Would you like to know, if some magical bird could tell you, what questions were put to Mr. Dundas, and what ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... qualm, which they dispel with brandy, and then humorously rally one another on their mutual degeneracy. She often stops me in the walk, and, pointing to the captain, says, 'My husband, though he is become a blackguard jail-bird, must be allowed to be a handsome fellow still.'—On the other hand, he will frequently desire me to take notice of his rib, as she chances to pass.—'Mind that draggle-tailed drunken drab,' he will ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... the other was in a moment, and clasped hands in greeting, as well as they could with the one, and the other receiving bird-cages, handbags, umbrellas, and rugs from Agatha, whom, however, Lance relieved of them with a courteous, "Miss Prescott! You have come in for the arrival of my Australian sister! What luggage have you?" Wherewith all was absorbed in the recognition of boxes, and therewith a word ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... which she sat was close to the edge of the water. Overhead the spreading boughs of an elm protected her from the sun; a little bird, hidden among the leaves, gave out a clear note now and then. Elsie, feeling a sense of comfort stealing into her heart unawares, began to listen to the bird. The bunch of carnations ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... us, mounted on another donkey this time—'borrowed,' as he put it—which showed he was a person of resource. 'By Allah, I can shoe a horse and cook a fowl; I can mend garments with a thread and shoot a bird upon the wing,' he told me. 'I would take care of the stable and the house. I would do everything your Honour wanted. My nickname is Rashid the Fair; my garrison is Karameyn, just two days' journey from the city. Come in a day or two and buy me out. No matter for the ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... swallows, skim the main, And bear my spirit back again Over the earth, and through the air, A wild bird ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... the shape of a great bird, which the West Highlanders called the Boobrie, who has a long neck, great webbed feet with tremendous claws, a powerful bill hooked like an eagle's, and a voice like the roar of an angry bull. The lochs, according to popular fancy, are ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... light—at first a dim, spectral shadow, scarcely to be recognized; then, almost as suddenly, revealed in all its details—a boat of size, flying toward us under a lug sail, standing out hard as a board, keeling well over, and topping the sea swells like a bird on wing. 'Twas a beautiful sight as the craft came sweeping on before the full weight of the wind, out from that background of gloom into the yellow glare of the torch, circling widely so as to more safely approach ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... is for the forbidden quarry; but this is one of many libellous accusations. The cat, though she has little sympathy with our vapid sentiment, can be taught that a canary is a privileged nuisance, immune from molestation. The bird's shrill notes jar her sensitive nerves. She abhors noise, and a canary's pipe is the most piercing and persistent of noises, welcome to that large majority of mankind which prefers sound of any kind to ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... was scalded or blistered and when at length the great bronzed bird was borne from the oven a procession of exultant children followed in the wake of the huge platter, every one of them shouting for ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... novelty of the scene had vanished, I descended from my perch to explore this sleepy hollow: the barn door hung suspended on a single hinge, like a bird with but one unbroken wing to soar upon. The swallows twittered their love-songs under the eaves; chipmunks scolded my intrusion and threw nuts at my head from the beams; a lone, lorn hen proclaimed her triumph over a new laid egg, ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... sticks on Sunday, and then scoffing about it, and he has been there ever since. But Mother made us a new fairy tale about the nightingale in Mary's Meadow being the naughty woodcutter's only child, who was turned into a little brown bird that lives on in the woods, and sits on a tree on summer nights, and sings to its father up in ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... water they have none. No genial fount, no graceful tree, rise with their pleasant company. Never a beast or bird is there, in that hoary desert bare. Nothing breaks the almighty stillness. Even the jackal's felon cry might seem a soothing melody. A grey wild cat, with snowy whiskers, out of a withered bramble stealing, with a youthful snake in its ivory teeth, in the moonlight ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... disappointed at this last revelation. Miss Tancred was independent. Up till now he could not bring himself to believe in her flight; he did not want to believe in it; it would have been a relief to him to know that the strange bird's wings ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... prophetic, for at that moment Mrs. Ames hurried into the room, a wiry, spare old woman with a small hooked nose and a jaw like a nut-cracker. The skin of her face was yellow and deeply wrinkled, her eyes were those of a fierce, untamed bird, and she was gowned—swathed is the more suitable word—in rusty black with a quantity of dangling ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... colour of the bird was white, with a slight pinkish flush; but the neck, breast, and hind part of the tail were deeply stained with crimson. Its most remarkable feature, however, was its beautiful crest, which it ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... last of glasses, and I find him still the same ingenuous man that ever he was, and do among other fine things tell me that by his microscope of his owne making he do discover that the wings of a moth is made just as the feathers of the wing of a bird, and that most plainly and certainly. While we were talking came by several poor creatures carried by, by constables, for being at a conventicle. They go like lambs, without any resistance. I would to God they would ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... trembled thro' the trees, Nor sparkling quiver'd on the inconstant seas; Nor yet the moon illumed the solemn scene: The fields were silent, and the heavens serene. The sheep had sought the fold; nor yet arose Night's listless bird from her dull day's repose. When in a vale with shadowy firs replete, Whose broad boughs rustled thro' the dark retreat, Beneath a pine that sunk to slow decay, Unseen, Gustavus pass'd the hours away. From earliest ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
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