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More "Flea" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... then he will thump the white vellum with gloves covered with all kinds of dust, and with his finger clad in long-used leather will hunt line by line through the page; then at the sting of the biting flea the sacred book is flung aside, and is hardly shut for another month, until it is so full of the dust that has found its way within, that it resists the effort to ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... which used to suck on the lowest joint of its forefinger; and, when they (inquiring where) pointed to other places, it told them not there but here, pointing on the lowest joint of the forefinger, where they observed a deep red spot about the bigness of a flea-bite. They asked it who gave it that snake, whether the black man gave it: the child said no, its mother gave it. I heard this ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... boteleto. Flat plata. Flat (music) duontono sube. Flatten platigi. Flatter flati. Flatterer flatulo. Flattering flatema. Flavour gusto. Flaw difekto. Flax lino. Flay senhauxtigi. Flea pulo. Flee flugi. Fleece sxaflano. Fleecy laneca. Fleet (quick) rapida. Fleet sxiparo. Flesh (meat) viando. Flesh karno. Flexibility fleksebleco. Flexible fleksebla. Flexion flekso. Flicker lumsxanceli. Flight forkuro. Flight ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... have named to you. But pray you note, my dear brother, there are those who hold John Law, and his studies, not so light as doth his own brother. For myself, the matter furnishes no surprise at all. As for you, you had never confidence in me, nor in yourself. Gad! Will, hadst but the courage of a flea, what days we two might have together here ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... moste of suche handkerchers, is compted the valeauntest manne. There are many also that sowe together these skinnes of menne, as other doe the skinnes of beastes, and weare theim for their clothyng. Some of them flea the right hand of their enemies beyng slaine, so that the nailes also remain vpon the fingres, and make couers of theim for ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... then we took him out and got him to lay down on his stummick, because he was all muddy anyway, where he fell down the cellar; and how could it matter to anybody that had any sense at all? Well, then we had the rixual, and—and—why, the teeny little paddlin' he got wouldn't hurt a flea! It was that little coloured boy lives in the alley did it—he isn't anyways near HALF Georgie's size but Georgie got mad and said he didn't want any ole nigger to paddle him. That's what he said, and it was his own foolishness, because Verman won't let ANYBODY call him 'nigger', ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... wert bitten by the flea of adventure, and must needs rush about the world to deaden the itching. Suppose that I had rather have thee remain at home, being but a plain maid, who would find contentment as a ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... sun was still sleeping an Elf came up from below, tickling an oak-tree's foot, skipping like a flea, and ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... thought and then to express it in as quaint a manner as possible became the chief aim of English poets during the first three-quarters of the seventeenth century. Donne had encountered trouble in obtaining his wife from her father. Finding one morning a flea that had feasted during the night on his wife and himself, he was overcome by its poetic possibilities, ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... in the little coffee-house. In one circle of yellow light two bearded Sheiks were playing dominoes with imperturbable gravity; the other lamp flickered over an empty table beneath which the thin, flea-bitten legs of a ragged urchin were showing in the oblivion of his tired sleep. In the shadow beyond sat a young American with a keen, impatient face, and a one-eyed Arab ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... day I'm goin' to git tired o' hearin' you cuss my proxy," Mr. Gibney bawled after him, "an' when that fatal time arrives I'll scatter a can o' Kill-Flea over you an' the shippin' world'll know ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... assured me that he would give me a written character of the very best description, whenever I chose to apply for it. "You're honest," he said; "you're willing, though lazy; you would pull, if you had the strength of a flea; and, though a monstrous coward, you don't run away." My own demurs to these harsh judgments were not many. The idiocy I confessed; because, though positive that I was not uniformly an idiot, I felt inclined to think that, in a majority of cases, I really was; and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... Jean. "Let me tell you, laird, that a man or woman as got in here unbeknownst to Donald and me would go out again pretty quick with a flea in the ear." ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... spans in height, and some much less[37]. They have small shrill voices like women, and are of very dark complexions, some blacker than the rest. Their only food is the flesh of goats. They are all circumcised and follow the Jewish law, and when any Mahometan falls into their hands they flea him alive. We found a hole at the foot of the mountain out of which there flowed an abundant source of water, at which we laded 16,000 camels, giving great offence to the Jews. These people wander about their mountain like so many goats or deer, not ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... our rulers, we know, Had been trying their talent for many a day; Till Farnham, when all had been tried, came to show, Like the German flea-catcher, "anoder ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... death in hell. It don't rile me a thing to be told the things he guesses my mother was. Maybe that's a matter of opinion, and, anyway, she's mixin' with a crop of angels who don't figger to have no truck with Scotch machine bosses. I guess a sight of his flea-bitten features 'ud set 'em seein' things so they wouldn't rec'nise their harps from frypans, and they'd moult feathers till you wouldn't know it from a snowfall on Labrador. But when he mixes his notions of my ma with 'lazy'! Lazy! Lazy! Gee! Why, if I signed in a half hour ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... bosom against this cruel disappointment. "He would go," he said, "to Canada to his kinsfolk, where they had named a Transatlantic valley after the glen of their fathers. Janet," he said, "should kilt her coats like a leaguer lady; d—n the distance! it was a flea's leap to the voyages and marches he had made on a ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... observed her husband; 'monsieur in his travels has doubtless already encountered a flea or two.' ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... to tell Helen when she comes back home," he announced. "Cal'late I'll put a flea in her ear. 'Helen,' I'll say, 'don't feel too bad now, don't cry and get your handkerchief all soakin', or nothin' like that. I just feel it's my duty to tell ye that your little Albert is sparkin' up ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... said Mike Flannery, "ye would not say that same, for to the flea professor th' flea is as big as a house. He studies him throo a telescope, Mrs. Muldoon, that magnifies th' flea a million times. Th' flea professor will take a dog with a flea on him, mam, and look at th' same with his telescope, and th' flea will ...
— Mike Flannery On Duty and Off • Ellis Parker Butler
... important of these is the jigger-flea or chigoe (Dermatophilus penetrans, Fig. 33). Various other names such as chigger-flea, sand-flea, jigger, chigger are also applied to this insect as well as to a minute red mite that burrows into the skin in much the same way as the ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... north coast of Hispaniola at the place where the colony was once founded. The remainder of the island along the west coast forms the province of Guaccaiarima, thus called because it is the extremity of the island. The word Iarima means a flea. Guaccaiarima means, therefore, the flea of the island; Gua being the article in their language. There are very few of their names, particularly those of kings which do not begin with this article gua., such as Guarionex and Guaccanarillus; and the same ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... insects just before going to bed, and I have no doubt that the exercise assisted to keep me in good health. I used to remove my clothing, which I turned inside out and shook very carefully. Then I bathed from head to foot in some villainous brandy that no respectable flea would or could endure; after this ablution was ended, I donned my garments, wrapped in my blanket, and proceeded to dream that I was a hen with thirteen chickens, and doomed to tear up an acre ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... city, without folding wing; merely stopping a moment to torment a miserly old landlord, who, the day before, had turned a poor widow, with two little children, out of his tenement house, because she was not quite ready with the rent. I put a great fly on his nose, and a great flea in his ear, and ordered them to stay there, and buzz, and bite him, till ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... and everybody loves her. I love her," exclaimed the consul cheerfully; "the President loves her, the sisters in the hospital, the chain-gang in the street, the washerwomen in the river, the palace guard, everybody in this flea-bitten, God-forsaken country loves Monica Ward—and when you meet her ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... here! He sha'n't see her, if I don't, 'foregad—Curse me, but he shall go away with a flea in ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... earthquakes were over; and if the worst comes first there are plenty after—and, somehow, harder to bear. Perhaps to Concha that terrible time was a God-send, for she thought no more of Rezanov for a while. If the earthquake does not swallow your body it swallows your little self. You are a flea. Just ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... in a woolly blanket, than a leg-bail monk in this wilderness of mountains, forests, and precipices! But the flea may be caught, and so shall the monk. I have said it. He is well spotted, with his silver crown and his uncropped ears. The rascally heretic! But his vows shall keep him, though he won't keep his vows. The whining, blubbering idiot! Gave his plaything, and wants it back!—I wonder ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... maliciously upon her arm like a child that sleeps; but in making her preparations she opened fond eyes, that smiled and winked in advance of the little secret thrills, sneezes, squints, and trances of the page who was about to lie at her feet, separated from her by the jump of an old flea; and in fact she advanced so much and so near the square of velvet where the poor child should kneel, whose life and soul she trifled with, that had he been a saint of stone, his glance would have been constrained to follow the ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... Rob?" exclaimed Merritt, pretending to be horrified. "If ever there was a case where eyes were bigger than a stomach, it's right here. Millions of them, Tubby wants now; seven is only a flea-bite to him." ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... art, and if it is successful art of no mean order, Ronsard's method of admitting us, as it were, to his conversation with himself is definitely his own. His interruptions of a verse with 'Ha' or 'He'; his 'Mon Dieu, que j'aime!' or 'He, que ne suis-je puce?' (the difference between Ronsard's flea and Donne's would be worth examination) have in them an element of irresistible bonhomie. We feel that he is making us his confidant. He does not have to tear agonies out of himself, so that what he confides has no chance of making explicit any secrets of our own. There ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... popular person—is especially so with insects; and if there is a flea or a mosquito anywhere within range it immediately ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... even possible in some cases, the water flea, for example, for the female to produce young without the necessity of fertilization by the male. In order to perform the necessary work to insure food supplies for the winter other insects have developed highly ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... to the memory of "Dooley" to rename the bench-legged fyce "Sooner" and locate the scene of his "chronic repose" in St. Jo rather than under the flea-proof tree of Mrs. Emerson in Amherst. But who regrets the ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... distracted her, and for about a quarter of an hour she sat perfectly still, doing nothing. At last she pushed the spoilt paper aside, took afresh piece, and was beginning to write, "On May the 14th, 1842," when there was a crunch on the gravel, and a furious voice said, "I am sorry for Flea Thompson." ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... one if I paid for it, but it could be only a covered cart. "Very well," said I, "any port in a storm." We were now informed it was time to go to rest. This was no punishment; and notwithstanding being bug- and flea-bitten, I slept well and forgot all my sorrows. At six I was roused by the men at arms, had a tolerable good breakfast, and stepped into my travelling machine with two of my officers, the top of the cart being so low we were obliged to lie down, and if it had not been for its ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... outrage anyone's vanity, but I am obliged to ask that important men make an observation here. Taking the size of a man to be about five feet, the figure we strike on Earth is like that struck by an animal of about six hundred thousandths[2] the height of a flea on a ball five feet around. Imagine something that can hold the Earth in its hands, and which has organs in proportion to ours—and it may very well be that there are such things—conceive, I beg of you, what these things would think of the battles that allow ...
— Romans — Volume 3: Micromegas • Voltaire
... myself was This queer stranger. Solitary I had on this rocky island Sung this song of my dear Schwarzwald. I went as a wand'ring scholar To far countries, to Italia; With much art became acquainted, Also with bad vetturinos, And with many burning flea-bites; But the sweet fruit of the lotus, Which doth banish love of country And the longing to return there, I have never found ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... me restless, and restlessness made me want exercise. It was no good walking about the city. The weather had become foul again, and I was sick of the smells and the squalor and the flea-bitten crowds. So Blenkiron and I got horses, Turkish cavalry mounts with heads like trees, and went out through the suburbs into the ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... "but also your very humble servant. My Court is a small one, and you are as important and welcome an addition to it as is your distinguished father to my army. Swounds, Colonel," turning to him with a merry smile, "I shall put a flea in his lordship's ear when I see him at Derby. He never so much as mentioned your daughter. Man, one might as well talk of stars ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... stabbers in the same place. If you see a man reach his finger under his collar to scratch his neck, the chances are his fingers touch the handle of his dagger, and if he hitches up his pants, his dagger is there, and if he pulls up his trousers leg to scratch for a flea, you can bet your life his knife is right handy, and if you have any trouble you don't know where the knife is coming from, as you do about an American revolver, when one of our citizens reaches for his pistol pocket. Spaniards are nervous people, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... shoulder. I imagined an ant had bitten me through my shirt. In a moment or so afterward I received, this time on my breast, another bite that left no room for imagination. There was some kind of an animal inside my shirt, and one that made a mosquito, black-fly, or flea seem tame. ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... other's appearance and the bulging saddle-bags. But he did not stop. Neither did he return. The young man with the old horse looked to him like a fighter—and even if the saddle-bags were stuffed with gold they would prove but a flea bite to the stake which he had ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... remarks on the chigo, or sand-flea (Pulex penetrans). It is very minute, not exceeding one twenty-fifth of an inch in length. It burrows between the cuticle and true skin, and there lays its eggs—producing a swelling containing a bluish white sac, about the tenth ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... the only member of the party who from habit insisted on leggings and boots. Their horses were steady, flea-bitten little beasts, not unlike mustangs, and mounts had been provided for the gun-bearers, to the huge delight of all three. Gholab Singh also demanded a horse, which he obtained, as ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... hideousness. The California Indian not the Indian of the Leatherstocking tales. A stop at the Buckeye Rancho. Start for Pleasant Valley Rancho. The trail again lost. Camping out for the night. Growling bears. Arrive at Pleasant Valley Rancho. Flea-haunted shanty. Beauty of the wilderness. Quail and deer. The chaparrals, and their difficulty of penetration by the mules. Escape from a rattlesnake. Descending precipitous hill on muleback. Saddle-girth breaks. Harmless fall from the saddle. Triumphant entry into Rich Bar. Tribute to ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... about his absurd drill, Tregellis, and I had other things to think of, as you may suppose. I had no difficulty in taking my right place on parade, for there was a trooper with a red nose on a flea-bitten grey, and I had observed that my post was always immediately in front of him. This saved a great deal of trouble. The other day, however, when I came on parade, I galloped up one line and down the other, but the deuce ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... teazing sand-flea, which penetrates and breeds under the skin of the feet, but particularly at the toes. It must be removed, or it occasions dreadful sores. The operation is effected by a needle; but the sac which contains the brood must not be broken, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... charmed with the splendid accommodations of your fancy ship?" whispered the mischievous Jim. "There is not room for a flea to hop, without giving him the cramp ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... slobbery rest, Nor our mirth be stirred at his solemn looks, As wise, and as dull, as divinity books. Our old friend's dead, but we all well know He's gone to the Kennels where the good dogs go, Where the cooks be not, but the beef-bones be, And his old head never need turn for a flea. ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... turned around, Hilda, there was the maestro himself, standing and listening. Well! you can't go through the floor and all that sort of thing, as they do in the fairy-books, but I did wish I was a mouse, or a flea, or anything smaller that there is. He stood still a minute. Perhaps he was afraid I would behave like some asses the other day—they weren't Americans, I am happy to say— who met him, and went down on their ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... of the chief thunder-god, fell violently in love with the same Aino woman. Said one of them to the other, in a joking way: "I will become a flea, so as to be able to hop into her bosom." Said the other: "I will become a louse, so as to be able to ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... your pluck, my lad, and can, perhaps, give you a lift. Skip shall have a flea in his ear before the whistle sounds again; but, of course, it's none of my business what happens after ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... through the gate, but the boy was half way through the yard. It was this flea-like alertness that always saved Mr. ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... (Haltica cucumeris, Harris.) This nimble minute beetle (Fig. 13) belongs to the flea-beetles, (Haltica family,) the same sub-group of the leaf-beetles (Phytophaga) to which also appertains the notorious steel-blue flea-beetle (Haltica chalybea, Illiger) that is such a pest to the vineyardist. Like all the rest of ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... his master's, the French King's, subjects, in that region, from seeing them on the river in small boats—a piece of reasoning which was rather ingenious than ingenuous. It had its effect in sending away the Briton with "a flea in his ear." "English Turn," the name given to a great bend in the stream some miles below New Orleans, keeps alive the memory of that piece of shrewdness. Not far distant, by the way, is the field where, in 1815, the British regulars, under Sir Edward Pakenham, received a ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... a boy, but with plenty of science in him. These were the three favorites. Day Star ran them close, the property of Durham Vavassour, of the Scots Greys, and to be ridden by his owner; a handsome, flea-bitten, gray sixteen-hander, with ragged hips, and action that looked a trifle string-halty, but noble shoulders, and great force in the loins and withers; the rest of the field, though unusually excellent, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... quite another sort of creature—an agile, pretty atom, one of which I have indicated in flight, its upper wings being often brilliantly colored, and re-enforced by a pair of hind feet which emulate those of the flea in their powers of jumping, which agility has won the insect the popular name of "froghopper." They abound in the late summer meadow, and hundreds of them may be captured by a few sweeps of a butterfly-net ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... women, might have looked a little shy upon him, had he not himself especially shunned appearing intrusive, and indeed rather avoided the society of men than courted it; so that after he had fought a duel with a baronet (the son of a shoemaker), who called him one Clifford, and had exhibited a flea-bitten horse, allowed to be the finest in Bath, he rose insensibly into a certain degree of respect with the one sex as well as popularity with the other. But what always attracted and kept alive suspicion, was his intimacy with so peculiar and dashing ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Tim; he was small, very small—not in stature, for he was a six-footer, but small in mind and small in heart; his soul was no bigger than a flea's. "Zeb, my boy," says he to me one day, "always be neuter in elections. You can't get nothing by them but ill-will. Dear, dear! I wish I had never voted. I never did but oncest, and, dear, dear! I wish I had let that alone. There was an army doctor oncest, Zeb, lived right opposite to me to Digby: ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... the third floor of the flea-bag. Part of the place was only two stories high. The door at the end of my corridor opened out onto the roof. When I had calmed down, I stepped through the door into the ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... as I had done; but in coming back to tell them. They bade me ride on at once to Egmont, before I was arrested for cutting the lady's harness. As for their own plans, whatever they were, my action altered them. I do not know what they did. I know that I turned away with a flea in my ear from the Duke's reproof. I remember not very much of my ride to Egmont, except that I seemed to ride most of the time among sand-dunes. I glanced back anxiously to see if I was being pursued; but no one followed. I rode on at the steady lope, losing sight of the carriage, ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... mountain was Santiago, the port in which the flea-like squadron of Admiral Cervera was bottled up, and there was a deadly fear in our hearts that the wily Spaniard would sally forth to battle before we could join ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... shame, St. Ronan's, that the game laws, whilk are the very best protection that is left to country gentlemen against the encroachment of their inferiors, rin sae short a course of prescription—a poacher may just jink ye back and forward like a flea in a blanket, (wi' pardon)—hap ye out of ae county and into anither at their pleasure, like pyots—and unless ye get your thum-nail on them in the very nick o' time, ye may dine on a dish of prescription, and ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... furnish you scientific names, yet he will tell you at once that red snow is caused by the snow flea. The snow flea is very small. It would require about fifty of them to equal their larger brother of the East ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... your honour, to drive with him. He is such a queer fellow; he's cracked, you know, and his nickname is the Flea. I don't know how you ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... spiders in general; and if it be meant that all true spiders spin, it is no doubt correct; but the Gossamer which "A Young Inquirer" asks about is the production of a small black spider about the size of a flea, which was a true aeronaut long before Montgolfier or Lunardi, and if "A Young Inquirer" has access to either the "Linnean Transactions" or the first series of Loudon's "Magazine of Natural History," he will find particulars in the latter, ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... the bottom of the bowl appeared a little brown spot, no bigger than a tiny seed. However, it was moving. It was a flea! First there were cries of astonishment and then shouts of laughter. A flea! Well, that was a good joke, a mighty good one! Caniveau was slapping his thigh, Cesaire Horlaville snapped his whip, the priest laughed like ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... to which the epithet of cunning may be best ascribed, is, I think, the flea. If you doubt this, try to catch one. What double backsprings he will turn, what fancy dodges he will execute, and how, at last, you will have to give up the game and acknowledge yourself beaten by this ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... pound of fresh lime to each pound of the arsenical should be added; or, better yet, Bordeaux mixture should be employed as a diluent instead of water. This mixture has some insecticidal value, is a most valuable fungicide, and is also a powerful deterrent of flea-beetle attack, acting to a less degree against other insects which are apt to be found on the tomato. In applying any spray a sprayer costing not less than ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... had made good progress; but when the tremendous size of that two hundred mile canyon was taken into consideration, with its myriad of side "washes," and minor canyons, the distance that they had covered was, as Bob aptly declared, but a "flea-bite" compared with the whole. ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... Flowers is an old soldier; and, in marshalling the forces for a bull or a badger-bait, displays all the tactics of an experienced general officer. Caleb Baldwin would no more bear comparison with Jem than a flea does to ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... who fancies that a lie that kills has more point in it than an alliteration or an antithesis; who thinks a fatal experiment on the peace of a family a better thing than watching the palpitations in the heart of a flea in a microscope; who plots the ruin of his friends as an exercise for his ingenuity, and stabs men in the dark to prevent ennui. His gaiety, such as it is, arises from the success of his treachery; his ease from the torture he has inflicted on others. He is an amateur ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... sons to this curious race of vagabond students, when she herself was without any university to satisfy the cravings of her thoughtful and intellectual people. 'No country without a Scot or a flea' was an uncomplimentary proverb due to the numerous young clerks, equally fierce for frays and for lectures, who flocked to the seats of learning on the Continent, and sometimes became naturalized there, sometimes came home again, to fight ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... GRAHAMS and the STANLEYS. There is also that immortal Parliamentary metaphor, emanating from the same mysterious source,—"The feature upon which the question hinges!" The only man who could have properly painted this was the enthusiastic BLAKE, who so successfully limned the ghost of a flea! These matters, however, are to be considered as merely supplementary ornaments to great themes. The grand subjects are to be sought for in Hansard's Reports, in petitions against returns of members, in the evidence that comes out ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... 'by authority' in 1645, state that 'their said Familiar hath some big or little Teat upon their body, wher he sucketh them: and besides their sucking, the Devil leaveth other markes upon their bodies, sometimes like a Blew-spot, or Red-spot like a flea-biting'. Sir George Mackenzie, the famous Scotch lawyer, describing in 1699 what did and did not ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... "If you love your son give him plenty of the rod; if you hate him cram him with dainties." "He is my teacher who tells me my faults, he my enemy who speaks my virtues." Having a wholesome dread of litigation, they say of one who goes to law, "He sues a flea to catch a bite." Their equivalent for our "coming out at the little end of the horn" is, "The farther the rat creeps up (or into) the cow's horn, the narrower it grows." The truth of their saying that "The fame of good deeds does not leave ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... put a flea into the ear of the hotel clerk, too. But the thing is, what do you suppose your father will want ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... has dwindled so that one can hardly find it. It's smaller than a flea, and as hard and black.' They smiled ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... wife, a pretty and coquettish barberess. M. Gillenormand admired his own discernment in all things, and declared that he was extremely sagacious; here is one of his sayings: "I have, in truth, some penetration; I am able to say when a flea bites me, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... exterminated, as they are sometimes responsible for such diseases as Rocky Mountain spotted fever, African tick fever, and other infections. The bedbug is also by no means the harmless creature which it is generally regarded. To its credit are placed such maladies as relapsing fever. The flea has been responsible for such terrible diseases as the plague. It often operates by means of rats as its carrier to the human being. The louse is one of the direst offenders in the insect line, as it must take the responsibility not only ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... Their heelmarks will stamp the Brusselette carpet you bought at Wren's auction. In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find the buck flea in her breeches they will deface the little statue you carried home in the rain for art for art' sake. They will violate the secrets of your bottom drawer. Pages will be torn from your handbook of astronomy to make them pipespills. And they will spit ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... with old planks and huge tubs and barrels of stagnant water. There was only room for one chair and in that sat a tall Negro woman clad in burlap bags and in her lap she held a small white flea-bitten dog ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... a flea Has smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller still to bite 'em. And so proceed ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... Devers if he only had him under his command, yet the very men so confident they could bring him to time were not infrequently the ones who subsequently found him too adroit for their straightforward methods. Black Bill told Tintop that Devers was as bad as the Irishman's flea,—put your thumb on him and he isn't there. "I'll cinch him," said Tintop in reply, "if he tries any of his damned nonsense on me." But with every intention of doing his level best, "Topsy" little knew the infinite ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... exhibition. The man who couldn't eat eggs did throw up once, but he couldn't do it a second time. Many people have threatened to break out with hives after strawberries. One woman triumphantly brought me what looked like a nice eruption, but which proved to be the after-results of a hungry flea! After that she ate strawberries,—without the ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... appearance and duration of which were found to fit exactly with those of a primary lesion. There had also been some enlargement of the femoral glands. He had never thought of the sore in this connection, but remembered most distinctly that it followed a flea-bite in an omnibus, and had been caused, as he supposed, by his scratching the place, though he could not understand why it lasted so long. Mr. Hutchinson concludes that all the evidence tends to show that the disease had probably been communicated from the blood of an infected person through the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... William he, snug as a flea, Lay all this time a snoring, Nor dream'd of harm, as he lay warm, While all without ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... hunt a flea in a woolly blanket, than a leg-bail monk in this wilderness of mountains, forests, and precipices! But the flea may be caught, and so shall the monk. I have said it. He is well spotted, with his silver crown ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... "That's a flea in his ear," said Bunce chuckling, as Sir Francis went one way, Philip the other. "What do you think ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... in the garden or courtyard to air, beating them with little rods, shaking them in the breeze, taking out spots and stains with one or other of the master's tried recipes, pouncing with lynx eyes upon the moth or sprightly flea. ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... Presently he rose and strolled round to the corral. Wishful's three saddle-animals were lazying in the heat. Bartley was not unfamiliar with the good points of a horse. He rejected the sorrel with the Roman nose, as stubborn and foolish. The flea-bitten gray was all horse, but he had a white-rimmed eye. The chestnut bay was a big, hardy animal, but he appeared rather slow and deliberate. Yet he had good, solid feet, plenty of bone, deep withers, and ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... a day held his observes and admonishments in no very reverential estimation. So that, when I heard him address me in such a memorializing manner, I was inclined and tempted to set him off with a flea in his lug. However, I was enabled to bridle and rein in this prejudicial humour, and answer him in ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... God's assistance,—I will not trust in my own selfe, and Isa's health will be quite ruined by me,—it will indeed." "Isa has giving me advice, which is, that when I feal Satan beginning to tempt me, that I flea him and he would flea me." "Remorse is the worst thing to bear, and I am afraid that I will ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... of one magician who, about the year Fifteen Hundred, made a box with a glass cover that magnified the contents. This great man would catch a flea and show it to the people. Then he would place the flea in the box and show it to them, and they would see that it had grown enormously in an instant. The man could make it big or little, by just taking off and putting on the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... characteristic for those places as the forms mentioned hitherto. Among these organisms there are several species of worms, spiders, gnats, and, above all, crustaceans of the lower class. The most interesting of the latter is perhaps a variety of the sand flea (Fig. 8—Gammarus pulex). The crustacean found in the pits of mines, which is related to the sand flea, shows, according to Dr. R. Schneider, a slight degeneration of the organ of sight, which has taken place in consequence of its adaptation to the dark places, in which this variety of the Gammarus ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... the big man, in his most commanding manner. "It's life and death to you—and it doesn't matter a flea-bite to me. So, since you came to grief through me, why shouldn't I do the fair thing, and put you back ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... not!” I replied quietly. “Pickering was right on my heels, and my absence was known to his men here. And it would not be square to my grandfather, —who never harmed a flea, may his soul rest in blessed peace!—to lie about it. They might nail ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... Scaliot, blacksmith, in the 20th of Queen Elizabeth, made a lock of eleven pieces of iron, steel, and brass, with a pipe key, and golden chain of forty-three links, which were hung round the neck of a flea.—The animal, together with this burthen, weighed only ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... know. Can't keep track of HIM. Might's well try to put your finger on a flea. He's here to-day and gone yesterday, as the Scriptur' says. He ate a little mite of supper, but not much, and then off he puts. Says he's goin' to walk the fog out'n his head. I told him, s' I, 'You'll ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... her, dead as nail i' post o' door,) Then abiit—What's the Ciceronian phrase? Excessit, evasit, erupit—off slogs boy; Off like bird, avi similis—(you observed The dative? Pretty i' the Mantuan!)—Anglice Off in three flea skips. Hactenus, so far, So good, tam bene. Bene, satis, male,— Where was I with my trope 'bout one in a quag? I did once hitch the Syntax into verse Verbum personale, a verb personal, Concordat—"ay", agrees old Fatchops—cum Nominativo, with its nominative, ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... later the Cavour was grappled securely to the skin of the Valhalla like a flea riding an elephant, and Alan was climbing in through the main airlock. It felt good to be aboard the big ship once again, after ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... thing—for three whole months; had not a glimmer of consciousness of any blessed thing. It was touch and go to that degree that they couldn't come near him, they couldn't feed him, they could scarcely look at him. Then one day he had opened his eyes—as fit as a flea! ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... nicht and they slept by day; I wot they rade by an unkenned track; "The Bishop was licht as a flea," said Sim, "Or ever we ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... state of affairs, it is not strange that Washington should have shared in the general misrepresentation. Like Franklin's, his writings, too, were altered by villainous editors. In his letters, for example, such a natural phrase as "one hundred thousand dollars will be but a flea-bite" was changed to "one hundred thousand dollars will ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... last name. She comes from one of our tenant houses. It's far away. Mother sent her home with a flea in her ear, now I tell you, after she had ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... all). There are some others which, however, are not peculiar to the West; as kickshaws (quelque chose), etc. We have also many inverted words, as swap for wasp, cruds for curds, etc. Then again we call a fly a flea; and a flea a flay; and the smallest stream of water a ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... said they, "and void of genius; he does not make the flea to fly, and stars to fall, nor the sun to melt wax; he has not the true Oriental style." Zadig contented himself with having the style of reason. All the world favored him, not because he was in the right road or followed the dictates ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Reflecting on him all her hateful carriage, So old, incredible, so flat, so stale, No more to be recalled than old wife's tale; And scorned him, saw him neither high nor low, Not villain and not hero, who would go Midway 'twixt baseness and nobility, And not be fierce, if fierceness hurt a flea Before his eyes. The man loved one thing more Than all the world, and made his mind a whore To minister his heart's need, for a price. All which she loathed, yet chose not to be nice With the snug-revelling wretch, her master yet, Whose leaguer, though she scorned it, ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... or four dollars, got a glass of brandy, and was in fine spirits. The brig kept on her course, and the government officers, who had come down to forbid her sailing, went back, each with something like a flea in his ear, having depended upon extorting a little ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... is very puzzling, I confess. I remember once that my youngest brother Davie, a very little fellow then, for he could not speak plainly, came running in great distress to Kirsty, crying, "Fee, fee!" by which he meant to indicate that a flea was rendering his life miserable. Kirsty at once undressed him and entered on the pursuit. After a successful search, while she was putting on his garments again, little Davie, who had been looking very solemn and thoughtful ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... A flea, which saw many people trying to get the attention of a king and waiting long for that purpose, said: "Though I am but a little thing, I will get his attention." So he jumped up the throne until he got on the king's head. Here he received recognition from the king ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... of such little properties which are of no use to him at all. What do you say, for instance, to an estate of one hundred acres or so; it would be a mere flea-bite to him. But flea-bite or no flea-bite that's all one to me. I wish him to give it me and give it he must. I mean ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... seems Six times as jealous as I am myself. You'd not believe how far his zeal can go: He calls himself a sinner just for trifles; The merest nothing is enough to shock him; So much so, that the other day I heard him Accuse himself for having, while at prayer, In too much anger caught and killed a flea. ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... was writing that last chapter a flea appeared upon the page before me, as there once did to St. Dominic." He proceeds to say that his flea was a flea of flea-flesh, but that ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... them and Professor Sandburr's bony, spectacled face was thrust forward. "I would not have missed it for a great deal. I would like to capture a specimen of a Patagonian alive and take him home in a cage. The Patagonian dog-flea, too, I understand, ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Second Team began doing business with Bi at right guard again. The left guard on the Varsity was Bannen—"Slugger" Bannen. He didn't weigh within seven pounds of Bi, but he had springs inside of him and could get the jump on a flea. He was called "Slugger" because he looked like a prizefighter, but he was a gentle, harmless chap, and one of the Earnest Workers in the Christian Association. He could stick his fist through an oak panel same as you or I would put our ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... from the rest of the civilised world. From having been the prey of the inexpressible foreigner in his shooting season, it suddenly becomes, and remains during about five months, the happy hunting ground of the silent flea, the buzzing fly and the insinuating mosquito. The streets are, indeed, still full of people, and long lines of carriages may be seen towards sunset in the Villa Borghesa and in the narrow Corso. Rome and the Romans are not easily parted as London ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... things that appertained to a good housewife indifferently for them both, as in making cleane their Cabin, and euery other thing that appertained to his ease: for when he was seasicke, she would make him cleane, she would kill and flea the dogs for their eating, and dresse his meate. [Sidenote: The shamefastess and chastity of those Sauage captiues.] Only I think it worth the noting, the continencie of them both: for the man would neuer shift hemselfe, except he had first caused the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... his sort here," the girl remarked; "his soul would fit in a flea-track." She spied the Bronco Kid sauntering back towards her and joined him. He leaned against the wall, watching the gossamer thread of smoke twist upward from his cigarette, seemingly oblivious to the surroundings, and showing no hint of the emotion ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... tripping the doors, showing how a person's weight operated the contrivance, shutting the doors behind and simultaneously opening the doors in front; but Mr. Harnden did not draw attention to the palpable fact that a waiter would need to have the agility of a flea to escape being swatted in the rear or banged ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... we ain't deaf and dumb and blind and silly,' said the cook. 'Here's that nurse. You be off, Mr. Philip, without you want a flea in your ear.' ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... shouted father and led the way with the big bob-sled, followed by cousin Jim and our little herd of kine, while mother and the children brought up the rear in a "pung" drawn by old Josh, a flea-bit gray.—It is probable that at the moment the master ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... board, Will presently armed himself with the same, and tried to imagine that he presented an imposing appearance as the guardian of the motor-boat. Truth to tell, he would have really been far more dangerous handling his favorite camera, for he did not have it in him to harm a flea, if ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... my hope, as well as belief, that these my Labours will be no more comparable to the Productions of many other Natural Philosophers, who are now every where busie about greater things; then my little Objects are to be compar'd to the greater and more beautiful Works of Nature, A Flea, a Mite, a Gnat, to an Horse, an Elephant, or ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... you all the punch you'll want, in abaht two ticks if you don't chuck it—you blarsted edjucated flea," ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... The common little flea-beetle has often caused great injury to my recently planted beds. I once paid nearly $100 for a new, high-priced variety, and before I was aware of it every plant had been devoured. They rarely injure large, fully matured ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... the skipper; "so you ain't dead after all, eh? Well that don't change the looks of things a mite. We gotta get that man outa there an' these flea-bitten imitations of men ain't got the guts to ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... against all manner of perils. What is man that God should so unweariedly attend upon him, and visit him every moment? Is he a second God? Is he God's fellow? Is he of the highest order of the angels? or what is he? O! he is a flea, a worm, a dead dog, sinful dust and ashes; he comes up like a flower and is cut down, and what a thing is it that God should so much as open his eyes upon such a one! (1 Sam 26:20; Job 25:6, 45:2,3). But then, what ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Oh, here you are, my ducklings! Always together, like a beggar and a flea! I looked for you at lunch-time; I forget now What for; but then 'twas a matter of more weight Than laying siege to a city,—la, how time Does carry one on! An hour is like an ocean, The way it separates you from yourself!— [To Bianca and Beatrice.] ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... again they remained vague. The autopsy showed a state of things not precisely to be called peculiar to poisoning cases the intestines, which the fatal poison had not had time to burn as in the case of the d'Aubrays, were marked with reddish spots like flea-bites. In June Penautier obtained the post that had been held by ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sitting-room as well. But I won't have any more of it, not if I know it. Sh—h! Hold your tongues, you brats there, and wipe your noses, too; if you don't, I'll come and do it. I never saw the like of such people. Here they walk in out of the street, without even a penny to buy flea-powder, and begin to kick up rows in the middle of the night and quarrel with the people who own the house, I don't mean to have any more of it, do you understand that? and you can go your way, every one who doesn't belong home here. I am going to have peace in my own quarters, ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... Marster was a Catholic, but we went to the Methodist Church[7], Edenton Street Methodist Church. My marster would not allow anyone to whip his Negroes. If they were to be whipped he did it himself and the licks he gave them would not hurt a flea. He was good to all of us ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... flowers are the valerian, in masses of squashed strawberry, and the fig-wort, tall, square-stemmed, and set with small carmine knots of flower. In autumn these become brown seed crockets, and are most decorative. The fourth tall flower is the flea-bane, and the fifth the great willow-herb. The lesser plants are the small willow-herbs, whose late blossoms are almost carmine, the water-mints, with mauve-grey flowers, and the comfrey, both purple ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... how I may impart more power to the muscles in the legs of a flea, so that it may more readily escape from its enemies. The equilibrium of attack and defence has been destroyed.... It ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... death, repli'd bold Mustapha, At your command I'le clime a steepy rocke, Then headlong tumble downe into the sea, Or willingly submit me to the blocke, Disrobe my nature, and my body flea: Yet in that tyranny I'le speake my minde, And boldly like a Souldier stand deaths shocke, Concluding, lust ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... directly in line with the city ruins. Consequently, it would be natural for people viewing it from this direction to give to the ruins the name of the mountain rather than that of the lake. Yet the mountain may be named for the ruins. Piqui means "flea"; llacta means "town, city, country, district, or territory." Was this "The Territory of the Fleas" or was it "Flea Town"? And what was its name in the days of the Incas? Was the old name abandoned because it was ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... often told how they Saw Cupid bitten by a flea; And thereupon, in tears half drown'd, He cried aloud: Help, help the wound! He wept, he sobb'd, he call'd to some To bring him lint and balsamum, To make a tent, and put it in Where the stiletto pierced the skin; Which, being done, the fretful pain Assuaged, and ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... Thou liest, thou thread, Thou thimble, Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail! Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket thou! Brav'd in mine own house with a skein of thread! Away! thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant, Or I shall so be-mete thee with thy yard As thou shalt think on prating whilst thou liv'st! I tell thee, I, that thou ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... as my invention shewed me, tho not very handsome, yet they were such as were very handy and convenient for my laying things up in, or fetching things home in. For example, if I killed a goat abroad, I could hang it up in a tree, flea it, and dress it, and cut it in pieces, and bring it home in a basket, and the like by a turtle, I could cut it up, take out the eggs, and a piece or two of the flesh, which was enough for me, and bring them home in a basket, and leave the rest behind me. Also large deep baskets were my receivers ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... jump over the creek, unless he was a human flea or a Rocky Mountain goat. Come, since you won't show us where he is, we'll take the liberty of sarchin' your premises. But stay, your daughter's got the name o' bein' a religious gal. If there's any truth in that she'd be above tellin' a lie. Come now, Betty, tell us, like a good gal, ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... foal, hare, rat, toad, etc. And to these their spirits, they give names, and they meet together to christen them (as they speak).... And besides their sucking the Devil leaveth other marks upon their body, sometimes like a blue or red spot, like a flea-biting, sometimes the flesh sunk in and hollow. And these Devil's marks be insensible, and being pricked will not bleed, and be often in their secretest parts, and therefore require diligent and careful search. These first two are main points ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... to be a flea in Rosario, however—just one flea; but he is a most ubiquitous and a most insatiably blood-thirsty little person. The worst of it is that, night or day, you are never perfectly sure where he may ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... gentle, was absurd and she knew it. Margaret could go where she liked. It would all be chaste as a piano-recital. But the flea that she had been trying to put in the girl's ear seemed very ineffective. She is just as I was at her age, thought this lady, who, in ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... clay, those torments were endured by myself last night. When I rose from my blankets this morning, after a sleepless night, I do not think there was an inch square of my body that did not exhibit the inflammation consequent upon a puncture by a flea, or some other equally rabid and poisonous insect. Small-pox, erysipelas, measles, and scarlet-fever combined, could not have imparted to my skin a more inflamed and sanguineous appearance. The multitudes of these insects, however, have been generated by Indian ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... of the stuff, and put a flea in his ear to the effect that you think Carson is the guilty party. This will cause the fellow's room to be searched and the stuff will be found. You must be on hand to ...
— The Missing Tin Box - or, The Stolen Railroad Bonds • Arthur M. Winfield
... sweets of a patriot soldiery relieving a patriot town. The guns came thundering through, the horses doing well, the proud drivers, cannoneers, officers, waving caps and hats, bowing to half-sobbing hurrahs, thrown kisses, praises, blessings. Ewell's division poured through—Ewell on the flea-bitten grey, Rifle, swearing his men forward, pithily answering the happy people, all the while the church bells clanging. The town was in a clear flame of love, patriotism, martial spirit, every heart enlarged, every ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... see him. Like the flea in the American story, when you've got your finger on him is the time ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... sixteen children of her own and all of them have had their share of children and grandchildren. I know it's so because I just sold one of the great-granddaughters some hair straightener and a box of flea powder and she thought of getting some talcum powder for the new baby, but decided to use flea ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... goodness!" gasped Bea. "Well," firmly, "I shall put a flea in Edith's ear. She must call a halt. She is simply letting that crazy imagination of hers run rampant. I shall ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... abound, And torment the people full sore, With boiling water they are killed, And I, poor flea,[FN73] ...
— Apu Ollantay - A Drama of the Time of the Incas • Sir Clements R. Markham
... snow, at Orenburg, Russia, Dec. 14, 1830, of a multitude of small, black insects, said to have been gnats, but also said to have had flea-like ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... rabbit gone loco. Now, here I set like a bag of beans, tryin' to tell John Torrance why I'm quittin' this here job without makin' him think I'm glad to quit—which I am, and I ain't. It's like tryin' to split a flea's ear with a axe; it can't be did without mashin' the flea. Now, if John was here I could tell him in three jumps. The man that invented writin' must 'a' been tongue-tied or had sore throat some time when he wanted to talk awful bad. ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... shade. The jealous queen started in rage; She kick'd her crown and beat her page: "Bring me my magic wand," she cries; "Under that primrose there it lies; I'll change the silly, saucy chit, Into a flea, a louse, a nit, A worm, a grasshopper, a rat, An owl, a monkey, hedge-hog, bat. Ixion once a cloud embraced, By Jove and jealousy well placed; What sport to see proud Oberon stare, And flirt it with a pet-en Pair!" Then thrice she stamped the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... they slept by day; I wot they rade by an unkenned track; "The Bishop was licht as a flea," said Sim, "Or ever we ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... intestina, among the annulosa; the tortoises, among the reptilia; the armadillo and scaly ant-eater, pig, mouse, jerboa, and kangaroo, among quadrupeds; the waders and tenuirostres, among birds; the coleoptera, (bug, louse, flea, &c.) among insects; the gastrobranchus, among fishes; are examples which will illustrate the special characters of this type. These are smallness, particularly in the head and mouth, feebleness, ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... he said, "'twouldn't be no manner of good if it come down to a runnin' chase. Nearest depot's fifty mile' across the county line. Racin' this car ag'in' the sheriff's 'ud be like matchin' a flea ag'in' a grasshopper. Dern it, she's balked ag'in." He wrestled with the crank, conquered it and the machine shivered like a hunting dog while his aunt adjusted spark and gas. She nodded to him to start and they moved off, Miranda waving a farewell as she called ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... suddenly friendly to this man who took what he wanted regardless of cost. She thought pleasantly of the ride home in the cab, but she was pulled up with a jerk when Jonah led the way to the tram. He wore an anxious look, as if he had spent more than he could afford, and yet the money was a mere flea-bite to him. But whenever he spent money, a panic terror seized him—a survival of the street-arab's instinct, who counted his money in ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... hunt for these lively insects just before going to bed, and I have no doubt that the exercise assisted to keep me in good health. I used to remove my clothing, which I turned inside out and shook very carefully. Then I bathed from head to foot in some villainous brandy that no respectable flea would or could endure; after this ablution was ended, I donned my garments, wrapped in my blanket, and proceeded to dream that I was a hen with thirteen chickens, and doomed to tear up an acre of ground ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... one or two remarks, then, turning, walked away together. And, as they walked, Dick's hand went up his back and he scratched an imaginary flea. ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... apparatus. With his forefinger he kept tripping the doors, showing how a person's weight operated the contrivance, shutting the doors behind and simultaneously opening the doors in front; but Mr. Harnden did not draw attention to the palpable fact that a waiter would need to have the agility of a flea to escape being swatted in the rear or ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... of his present habitatory and anatomical peculiarities, it now remains to magnify him in an archaeological, fossiliferous, and antediluvian point of view. Applied to any other creature than the Leviathan—to an ant or a flea—such portly terms might justly be deemed unwarrantably grandiloquent. But when Leviathan is the text, the case is altered. Fain am I to stagger to this emprise under the weightiest words of the dictionary. And here be it said, that whenever ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... devouring passion for Leandro. I protest I have no reason to think she cares a button for anything but her own art. I never tried; but it's my impression that if I had ever whispered a word in her ear I should have got a flea in my ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... looked up quickly. As a matter of fact, he had but a moment before found a flea in the wool he was examining, and the wool was indeed a wisp of dog hair. The party Mr. Gubb had been engaged to find was a dog, and Mr. Gubb was—by the inductive method of detecting—trying to reason out the location of the dog. By the aid of the microscope, Mr. Gubb ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... whispered, "what you want to startle anybody like that for? Don't you know that the wicked flea pursueth every man, but the righteous shall ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... out of Pigdom. This creature would not have passed muster at a county fair; no Suffolk blood compacted and rounded him; he belonged to the "racers," and skipped about his pen with the alacrity of a large flea, wiggling his curly tail as expressively as a dog's, and "all but speakin'," as Israel said. He was always glad to see Miss Lucinda, and established a firm friendship with her dog Fun, a pretty, sentimental, German spaniel. Besides, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... reply would lead one to infer that Gossamer proceeded from spiders in general; and if it be meant that all true spiders spin, it is no doubt correct; but the Gossamer which "A Young Inquirer" asks about is the production of a small black spider about the size of a flea, which was a true aeronaut long before Montgolfier or Lunardi, and if "A Young Inquirer" has access to either the "Linnean Transactions" or the first series of Loudon's "Magazine of Natural History," he will find particulars in the latter, showing that a violent controversy raged through the ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... killed on the northern side of the Altar, and flea'd, cut in pieces and salted in the northern gate of the Temple; and therefore the building or exhedra on the eastern side of this gate, was for the Priests who had the oversight of the charge of the Altar, and Daily Service: ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... wave; I mean artistic individualism, which is so much crueller, so much blinder and so much more irrational even than commercial individualism. The decay of society was praised by artists as the decay of a corpse is praised by worms. The aesthete was all receptiveness, like the flea. His only affair in this world was to feed on its facts and colours, like a parasite upon blood. The ego was the all; and the praise of it was enunciated in madder and madder rhythms by poets whose Helicon was absinthe and ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... began doing business with Bi at right guard again. The left guard on the Varsity was Bannen—"Slugger" Bannen. He didn't weigh within seven pounds of Bi, but he had springs inside of him and could get the jump on a flea. He was called "Slugger" because he looked like a prizefighter, but he was a gentle, harmless chap, and one of the Earnest Workers in the Christian Association. He could stick his fist through an oak panel same as you or I would put our fingers through a sheet of ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... there are those who hold John Law, and his studies, not so light as doth his own brother. For myself, the matter furnishes no surprise at all. As for you, you had never confidence in me, nor in yourself. Gad! Will, hadst but the courage of a flea, what days we two might have together here ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... a benign and almost paternal glance. "You're tremendously sweet to put that flea in my ear, Kay. It's a wonderful prescription, but it lacks one small ingredient—the wealthy, courageous and self-sacrificing friend who will consent to run the sandy on your astute parent, as a favor ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... could have made them laugh, like to see Socrates presented, that example of all good life, honesty, and virtue, to have him hoisted up with a pulley, and there play the philosopher in a basket; measure how many foot a flea could skip geometrically, by a just scale, and edify the people from the engine. This was theatrical wit, right stage jesting, and relishing a playhouse, invented for scorn and laughter; whereas, if it had savoured of equity, truth, perspicuity, and candour, to have tasten a wise or a learned palate,—spit ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... proudlier on the bit: My master with good managing Brought her first unto the ring;[230] He likewise taught her to corvet, To run, and suddenly to set; She's cunning in the wild-goose race, Nay, she's apt to every pace; And to prove her colour good, A flea, enamour'd of her blood, Digg'd for channels in her neck, And there made many a crimson speck: I think there's none that use to ride But can her pleasant trot abide; She goes so even upon the way, She will not stumble in a day; And when ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... mother looked at each other. 'Do you hear that?' whispered he. 'He talks of a flea. I broke ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... young fellow—what had they nicknamed him—'The Buccaneer?' looked precious hangdog there behind her; had got a flea in his ear, he shouldn't wonder. Serve him right, taking her down all that way to look at the house! The proper place to look at a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... what you're talking about, sir," answered the voice, which seemed to be that of his housekeeper; "but you can't see Joe; he's gone out with a flea in his ear. The idea of his letting you get your feet ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... attracted by the respectability of the other's appearance and the bulging saddle-bags. But he did not stop. Neither did he return. The young man with the old horse looked to him like a fighter—and even if the saddle-bags were stuffed with gold they would prove but a flea bite to the stake which he ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... some people recommend me to sleep in a bag drawn tightly round the throat, others to sprinkle my bedding freely with insect powder, others to smear the skin all over with carbolic oil, and some to make a plentiful use of dried and powdered flea-bane. All admit, however, that these are but feeble palliatives. Hammocks unfortunately cannot be used in ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... flea Has smaller that upon them prey And these have smaller still to bite 'em And ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... inspected it and talked about it at leisure. A small bird of the canary species had to be stirred up with the butt-end of the whip before it would move, and then it moved only a couple of feet. It is said that even the suspicious flea is tame and sociable in Bermuda, and will allow himself to be caught and caressed without misgivings. This should be taken with allowance, for doubtless there is more or less brag about it. In San Francisco they used to claim that their native flea ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the officer. "We can't be bothered with a single prisoner. What is one flea on a blanket? Another time, if we come across you again with enough of your comrades to make the game worth while, why then, perhaps we may give ourselves the pain of keeping you. You've seen that we have enough food to feed your whole trench, and ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... them pain. The superfluous flesh was often cut out, which caused them to eject much blood through the mouth. Afterwards, a violent pain seized their arms and legs, which remained swollen and very hard, all spotted as if with flea-bites; and they could not walk on account of the contraction of the muscles, so that they were almost without strength, and suffered intolerable pains. They experienced pain also in the loins, stomach, and bowels, had a very bad cough, and short breath. In a word, they were ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... day twice as long as it is, a man might find it diverting to probe down into that unsatisfactory fellow-creature and try to reach some common root of feeling other than those physiological needs which we share with every beast of earth. Diverting; hardly profitable. It would be like looking for a flea in a haystack, or a joke in the Bible. They can perhaps be found; at the expense of ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... moved from place to place with wonderful agility. Johnson sat in great impatience till the gentleman had finished his tedious narrative, and then burst out (playfully however,) 'It is a pity, Sir, that you have not seen a lion; for a flea has taken you such a time, that a lion must have ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... sort of things never come singly, it seems. I had another request for your hand, my dear, only this afternoon, from that scoundrel Frank Muller, of all men in the world," and his face darkened as he said the name. "I sent him off with a flea in his ear, I can tell you. Had I known then what I know now, I should have referred him to John. There, there! He is a bad man, and a dangerous man, but let him be. He is taking plenty of rope, and he will hang himself one of ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... arrogance! Thou liest, thou thread, thou thimble, Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail, Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter cricket thou; Braved in my own house by a skein of thread! Away, thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant!" (Taming of the Shrew, Act ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... below notice; but, morally, he assured me that he would give me a written character of the very best description, whenever I chose to apply for it. "You're honest," he said; "you're willing, though lazy; you would pull, if you had the strength of a flea; and, though a monstrous coward, you don't run away." My own demurs to these harsh judgments were not so many as they might have been. The idiocy I confessed; because, though positive that I was not uniformly ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... a few things which he wishes he had left behind. The Hessian fly, the wire-worm, the flea, and grubs and scale insects thrive mischievously. The black and grey rats have driven the native rat into the recesses of the forest. A score of weeds have come, mixed with badly-screened grass-seed, or in any of a hundred ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... know, that Mr. Jonathan, our butler, is a very grave good sort of old man, with his hair as white as silver! and an honest worthy man he is. I was hurrying out with a flea in my ear, as the saying is, and going down stairs into the parlour, met him. He took hold of my hand (in a gentler manner, though, than my master) with both his; and he said, Ah! sweet, sweet Mrs. Pamela! what is it I heard but just now!—I am sorry at my heart; but I am ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... across Europe by a powerful autumn gale, blowing steadily in one direction. In physiological language, they belong to the sporadic, not to the endemic class, of which a remarkable instance is afforded in the flea-bane (Erigeron canadensis), a plant which, having found its way to this side the Atlantic only since the discovery of America, is now a common weed on the continent of Europe. Running streams and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... me. Curse the cold, say I. It robs a man of all spirit. To grapple with this rigour one should have fed all one's life on blubber. I defy a man to be brave when he is half-frozen. I feel a match for any three men now; but on the heights a flea would have ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... something, as if, in fact, he were resenting the man's words, but it might have only been that he was being troubled by the flea which he had several times that morning tried to scratch out ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... the secret of its popularitee, Nor get a ounce of pleasure from the Rule of Three,— I was bad right through; sweared 'hully gee,' And worse sometimes, like 'jiminee;' Scrawled with a pencil on my jographee, Stole birds' eggs in the huckleberry tree,— Oh, I was bad; tried to learn a flea How to keep his balance on a rolling pea,— Oh, regular bad; and my ma, said she, 'If you don't be better than what you be, I'll put you in the cupboard and turn the key.' But I wouldn't and I ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... idea without which the fact is barren, M. Delbeuf repeats certain statements with which readers of modern zoological science are tolerably familiar, such as the following: A flea can jump two hundred times its length; therefore a horse, were its strength proportioned to its weight, could leap the Rocky Mountains, and a whale could spring two hundred leagues in height. An Amazon ant walks about eight feet per minute, but if the progress of a human Amazon were proportioned ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... he said. 'The understanding of a flea, a hopping flea with a proboscis. Why should you crawl abject before the understanding of ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... deportment are allowed to brush and comb him, while three other good boys may serve him with food and drink. But every Saturday morning the climax of the week is reached, when three superlatively good boys give him a nice lathery bath with hot water and flea soap. The privilege of serving as Singapore's valet is going to be the only incentive I shall need ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... Gillenormand on account of his wife, a pretty and coquettish barberess. M. Gillenormand admired his own discernment in all things, and declared that he was extremely sagacious; here is one of his sayings: "I have, in truth, some penetration; I am able to say when a flea bites me, from ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... chapels, plastered and nicely warmed, and comfortably seated, could have dropped in upon us and spent an hour. Of course, they would have had the back-ache and cold feet, and, perhaps, carried away a flea or two, even in March, but they would have gone home saying, "If people can meet in such a place, some refined, intelligent ladies even, and continue to go night after night, I ought to be very, very ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 39, No. 07, July, 1885 • Various
... of the Saints. London, 1874), using probably a version of the legend reading pulicem, instead of pollicem suum, has clapped a flea into ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... proverb of the ancients, Wickedness proceedeth from the wicked: but mine hand shall not be upon thee. 14. After whom is the king of Israel come out? after whom dost thou pursue? after a dead dog, after a flea. 15. The Lord therefore be judge, and judge between me and thee, and see, and plead my cause, and deliver me out of thine hand. 16. And it came to pass, when David had made an end of speaking these words unto Saul, that Saul said, Is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... jigger, chigoe, or nigua (Pulex penetrans of science) is a microscopic flea, that buries itself under the skin and lays a myriad eggs; the result is a painful tumor. Jiggers are ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... attacking these plants are: the flea- beetle, the cabbage-worm, the cabbage-maggot (root) and "club-root"; directions for fighting all of which will be found in the ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... exhausted. Let me fight this day." When the warriors caught sight of Judah's lion face and his lion teeth, and heard his lion voice, they were greatly afraid. Judah hopped and jumped over the army like a flea, from one warrior to the next, raining blows down upon them incessantly, and by evening he had slain eighty thousand and ninety-six men, armed with swords and bows. But fatigue overcame him, and Zebulon took up ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... working. I can but enumerate their names, and I take this opportunity of saying that this is the last time I shall put on record the names of competitors who give no sort of clue to the process by which their answers were obtained. In guessing a conundrum, or in catching a flea, we do not expect the breathless victor to give us afterwards, in cold blood, a history of the mental or muscular efforts by which he achieved success; but a mathematical calculation is another thing. The names ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... his wages. Suspicions were excited; but again they remained vague. The autopsy showed a state of things not precisely to be called peculiar to poisoning cases the intestines, which the fatal poison had not had time to burn as in the case of the d'Aubrays, were marked with reddish spots like flea-bites. In June Penautier obtained the post that had been held by ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... to break the wind. The fleas bit the sheep, and the sheep bit the ground, and the sore had spread to this extent. It is astonishing what a great sore a little scratch breedeth. Who knows but Sahara, where caravans and cities are buried, began with the bite of an African flea? This poor globe, how it must itch in many places! Will no god be kind enough to spread a salve of birches over its sores? Here too we noticed where the Indians had gathered a heap of stones, perhaps for their council-fire, which, by their weight having prevented the sand under ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... that big bands were in the immediate neighborhood. It has been a long, hard summer's work for the troops, and the Indians have been, to all commands that boasted strength or swiftness, elusive as the Irishman's flea of tradition. Only to those whose numbers were weak or whose movements were hampered have they appeared in fighting-trim. But combinations have been too much for them, and at last they have been "herded" down to the Elk, have crossed, ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... before every young gentleman in Great Britain; and to judge by the mental stamina it affords him in most cases, what a waste of good food it is! The dishes are so numerous and so quickly changed, that he has no time to decide on which he likes best. Like an industrious flea, rather than a bee, he hops from flower to flower in the educational garden, without one penny-worth of honey to show for it. And then—though I feel how degrading it is to allude to so vulgar a matter—how high is the price of admission to the feast in question! Its purveyors ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... heaved a thumping stone At a lean hen that ran cluck clucking by, (And hit her, dead as nail i' post o' door,) Then abiit—what's the Ciceronian phrase? - Excessit, evasit, erupit—off slogs boy; Off like bird, avi similis—(you observed The dative? Pretty i' the Mantuan!)—Anglice Off in three flea skips. Hactenus, so far, So good, tam bene. Bene, satis, male -, Where was I with my trope 'bout one in a quag? I did once hitch the syntax into verse: Verbum personale, a verb personal, Concordat—ay, "agrees," old Fatchaps—cum Nominativo, with its nominative, ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... I knew I could do as much in proportion with five million dollars as with five dollars. And the result, I was perfectly aware, would be to those achieved by John as the elephant in his normal strength compares with the elephant whose strength is to his size as the flea's strength to his size. John could take the flea's leap with five dollars, but was satisfied with the elephant's leap with five ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... and Path Finder, striding alone, Then the good horse, Red Ember, the flea-bitten roan. Then the little Gavotte bearing less than ten stone. Then a crowd of all colours with Peterkinooks Going strong as a whale goes, ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... wounds your selfe, and fill them up with gall: Yea you can see me sound, and faint for want of breath, And gaspe and grone for life, and struggle still with death, What can you now do more, sweare by your maydenhead, The for to flea me quicke, or strip me ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... made him the instrument of his own death, but only his excessiveness of wisdom? whereby, while he was searching into the nature of clouds, while he was plodding and contemplating upon ideas, while he was exercising his geometry upon the measure of a flea, and diving into the recesses of nature, for an account how little insects, when they were so small, could make so great a buzz and hum; while he was intent upon these fooleries he minded nothing of the world, or its ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... is an old soldier; and, in marshalling the forces for a bull or a badger-bait, displays all the tactics of an experienced general officer. Caleb Baldwin would no more bear comparison with Jem than a flea does ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... A Flea, a Grasshopper, and a Toy-goose once wanted to see which of them could jump highest, and so they invited the whole world and everybody else who would like to come, to see the frolic. When the three met together in the room, everyone thought ...
— Stories to Read or Tell from Fairy Tales and Folklore • Laure Claire Foucher
... faithfully the provisions of the clause providing for the perpetual care and maintenance of my tomb. If they don't care and maintain," he said, giving me a hard look, "that million and a half is to go to the Home for Flea-Bitten Dogs." ...
— Solander's Radio Tomb • Ellis Parker Butler
... dulcinea, incensed at the opprobrious term; "such a b— as your mother, you dog! D— you, I've a good mind to box your jaws instead of your comepiss. I'll let you know, as how I am meat for your master, you saucy blackguard. You are worse than a dog, you old flinty-faced, flea-bitten scrub. A dog wears his own coat, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... night. When I rose from my blankets this morning, after a sleepless night, I do not think there was an inch square of my body that did not exhibit the inflammation consequent upon a puncture by a flea, or some other equally rabid and poisonous insect. Small-pox, erysipelas, measles, and scarlet-fever combined, could not have imparted to my skin a more inflamed and sanguineous appearance. The multitudes of these insects, however, have been generated by Indian filthiness. They ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... is my hope, as well as belief, that these my Labours will be no more comparable to the Productions of many other Natural Philosophers, who are now every where busie about greater things; then my little Objects are to be compar'd to the greater and more beautiful Works of Nature, A Flea, a Mite, a Gnat, to an Horse, an ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... the natural variety of aristocratic humanity. He has the good taste to refuse condescension sufficient to allow him to eat at table with a Frederick Douglass, a Samuel R. Ward, or a Dr. Pennington. Poor light little soul! It can borrow a pair of flea's legs, and, hopping up to the magnificent lights of public opinion, sit looking down upon the whole colored race in ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... wall of the Catskills stands out clear and strong, while in the south the mountains of the Highlands bound the view. The day is warm and the bees are very busy there in that neglected corner of the field, rich in asters, flea-bane, and golden-rod. The corn has been cut, and upon a stout, but a few rods from the woods, which here drop quickly down from the precipitous heights, we set up our bee-box, touched again with the pungent oil. In a few moments a bee has found it; she comes up to leeward, ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... lingering hope remained—that the Captain had pushed ahead into the woods, and that, as yet, Mr. Jack Rogers (whose good nature I might almost count upon) had alone detected me and would pack me home to the ship with nothing worse than a flea in my ear. ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... deeds? For one useless life a thousand lives saved from decay and death. One death, and a hundred beings restored to existence! There's a calculation for you. What in proportion is the life of this miserable old woman? No more than the life of a flea, a beetle, nay, not even that, for she is pernicious. She preys on other lives. She lately bit Elizabeth's finger, in a fit of passion, ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward, it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the flea!—incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage. Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Tousseau had plunged into all the fun of the fair. They had gambled in the most lucrative lottery in Europe, presided over by a man who excelled in dubious witticisms. They had seen the fattest goose in the world, and the celebrated flea, "Bismarch," who could drive six horses. Furthermore, they had purchased gingerbread, shot at a target for clay pipes and soft-boiled eggs, and finally had danced a waltz in ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... the man. "I know the guy, and how to handle him. You just watch him like he's watching you, Mr. Mershone, and if anything happens you skip as lively as a flea. I can use that two hundred in ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... face, light up my hair, My garments touch, dart everywhere; And if I try to catch them They're quicker than the wicked flea— And then I wonder how 'twould be To have a ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... same time it is a mistake to regard each wild bird or quadruped as a sacred thing, which under no circumstances may be utilized by man. We are not fanatical Hindus of the castes which religiously avoid the "taking of life" of any kind, and gently push aside the flea, the centipede and the scorpion. The reasoning powers of such people are strictly limited, the same as those of people who are opposed to the removal by death of the bandits and murderers of ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... wall. He is not a very beautiful dog, and the light shows numerous old wounds where the hair will not grow. He is afraid of nothing on the face of the earth or under it. He will tackle a bullock as readily as he will tackle a flea. He hates all other dogs—except kangaroo-dogs—and has a marked dislike to friends or relations of the family. They seldom call, however. He sometimes makes friends with strangers. He hates snakes and has killed many, but he will be bitten some day and die; most ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... the like Gesture; and he offering himself to him, he made a Shew of taking something off his Garment, which he presently threw away. But when the King was urgent upon him, seeming unwilling to tell what it was, mimicking Abundance of Modesty, he at last told him it was a Flea; the King perceiving the Fraud, says to him, What do you make a Dog of me? and orders him to be taken away, and instead of 40 Crowns orders ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... the civilised world. From having been the prey of the inexpressible foreigner in his shooting season, it suddenly becomes, and remains during about five months, the happy hunting ground of the silent flea, the buzzing fly and the insinuating mosquito. The streets are, indeed, still full of people, and long lines of carriages may be seen towards sunset in the Villa Borghesa and in the narrow Corso. Rome and the ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... James Gollop was as sedate as a monkey and twice as ebullient. The Judge suffered from a prodigious sense of responsibility and dignity, whilst his double was given to frivolities, a distressing sense of the ridiculous and was as irresponsible and happy as a flea hurdling from one boarding house to ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... forsooth, they have discovered in me something to be made the most of, as a variety of food seldom coming within their province. But the complaining moans of "Ali-Akbar" from "The Aged," the guttural grunts of disapproval from the mirza and the mudbake, and the impatient growls of "kek" (flea) from the khan, tell of their being at least partial companions in misery; but, being thicker-skinned, and withal well seasoned to this sort of thing, their sufferings are less ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the air of Subiaco is thin, the water is light, and, for a house, mine is of the better ones. One knows that we are country people, but we are clean people; there are neither chickens nor children. If you find a flea, I will have him set in gold. You shall say, 'This is the flea that was found in Stefanone's house.' In that way every one will know. I do not speak of the beds. The pope could sleep in the one in the large room at the head of the staircase, the pope with all his cardinals. They ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... horizon, waiting for the outcome of the search, got a start. Yonder, far away on the other side of the river, between a little wood and the Staria Derevnia, a light boat drew to the shore, and a little black spot jumped from it like a flea. Koupriane recognized the little black spot as Kathanna. She was safe. Now he could not reach her. It would be useless to search the maze of the Bohemian quarter, where her country-people lived in full control, with customs and privileges that ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... inhabitants of the moon (for we now found we were in Madam Luna) fly about on these birds. The king, we found, was engaged in a war with the sun, and he offered me a commission, but I declined the honour his majesty intended me. Everything in this world is of extraordinary magnitude! a common flea being much larger than one of our sheep: in making war, their principal weapons are radishes, which are used as darts: those who are wounded by them die immediately. Their shields are made of mushrooms, and their darts (when radishes are out of season) of the ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... am Pride. I disdain to have any parents. I am like to Ovid's flea; I can creep into every corner of a wench; sometimes, like a perriwig, I sit upon her brow; next, like a necklace, I hang about her neck; then, like a fan of feathers, I kiss her lips; [81] and then, turning myself to a wrought smock, do what I list. But, fie, what a smell is here! I'll ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... to give greater power to the leg-muscles of the flea, that he may more easily escape from his enemies. The balance of attack and defence is broken.... ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... without God's assistance,—I will not trust in my own selfe, and Isa's health will be quite ruined by me,—it will indeed." "Isa has giving me advice, which is, that when I feal Satan beginning to tempt me, that I flea him and he would flea me." "Remorse is the worst thing to bear, and I am afraid that I will fall a ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... picture of shame. In his perplexity, he always finds relief in endeavoring with his paw to scrape a supposititious fly from the side of his nose. He then deals with what I suppose to be an equally imaginary flea; after he has thus gained a few seconds for readjustment, he welcomes me joyously. All this is so thoroughly human-like, that even the naturalist, the professional doubter, is forced to believe that the dog's mind works substantially ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... about, tip him a bob for me and be civil to him, because he was decent enough to me. Auntie Eva said something about your bringing a gentleman home with you. I hope he's a jolly sort of chap. Rosalind's temper is all anyhow. When I told her a visitor was coming, she shut me up with a regular flea in my ear. Never mind, she's been a brick to old Roger and Auntie Eva, so we must make allowances. Old Hodder calls up nearly every day to ask after us all. He's grown quite young since he was left alone in his cottage, and Armstrong came down like a sack of coals on that ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... seeing me in such inhospitable quarters, with fleas in hundreds invading my blankets, urged me to return with him to his island domain, where he might have an opportunity to make me comfortable. The kind gentleman little knew how hardened I had become to such annoyances as hard floors and the active flea. Such inconveniences had been robbed of their discomforts by the kind voices of welcome which, with few exceptions, came from every southern gentleman whose territory had been invaded by the ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... than if they had been beggars askin' you for a shillin'. Now, stop your snivellin' there, I tell you. You are like your poor sainted father,—God bless him where he lies,—he too used to cry, likely enough, if a flea bit him." ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... just the one thing she would fall for in a rank outsider—superlative manners. His being poor is rather in his favor. I'll put a flea in her ear—" ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... live. But that is no reason why a man should indulge in fretful complaints, and, like Beresford,[1] pull a long face over the Miseries of Human Life,—and not a single hour is free from them; or still less, call upon the Deity at every flea-bite—in pulicis morsu Deum invocare. Our aim should be to look well about us, to ward off misfortune by going to meet it, to attain such perfection and refinement in averting the disagreeable things of life,—whether they come from our fellow-men or from the physical world,—that, ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... more clearly the interdependence of the sciences than the reciprocal impulse given to new researches in pathology and entomology by the discovery of the part played by insects in the transmission of disease. The flea, the louse, the bedbug, the house fly, the mosquito, the tick, have all within a few years taken their places as important transmitters of disease. The fly population may be taken as the sanitary index of a place. The discovery, too, that insects are porters ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... refuses to see him; or having seen him,—for a man may force his way in anywhere with a little trouble,—if she sends him away with a flea in his ear, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... of procedure," continued Mr. Tutt, brushing the flea aside, "which was adhered to with the utmost technical accuracy. You could try an individual animal, either in person or by proxy, or you could try a whole family, swarm or herd. If a town was infested by rats, for example, they first assigned counsel—an advocate, he was ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... remedy for the potato bug is Paris green, 2 pounds or more of poison to 150 to 200 gallons of water, with a little lime. For the blight, spray with bordeaux mixture, and spray thoroughly. Bordeaux mixture will also keep away the flea ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... of the room with a flea in his ear. "How dare you speak in that way of your betters? Mr. Puffle, the lady's father, has for many years been my friend. I am not saying anything of the lady, nor saying that she has done right. Of course, down-stairs, in ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... go," he said, "to Canada to his kinsfolk, where they had named a Transatlantic valley after the glen of their fathers. Janet," he said, "should kilt her coats like a leaguer lady; d—n the distance! it was a flea's leap to the voyages and marches he had made on a ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... agitated. And, of course, when one of my hind legs scratched one of Potts' ears or one of his shoulders, I was perfectly satisfied—first, because that sort of thing was good for the whole dog; and, second, because the thing would get about even when Potts' head would reach around and bite a flea off my hind legs or snap ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... are you not charmed with the splendid accommodations of your fancy ship?" whispered the mischievous Jim. "There is not room for a flea to hop, without giving him ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... Sawney?" he cried. "You're setting up as a pedlar, and trying to cut in on our trade. Od twist me, but we'll put an end to that, my bully-boy. D'you think the King, God bless him, made the laws for a red-haired, flea-bitten Sawney to diddle true-born Englishmen? What'll the King's Bench say ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... blockhead land-men submitted. 'None of your coquette airs, therefore, with me, madam,' said he, 'for I am resolved to have you this night. No struggling nor squalling, for both will be impertinent. The first man who offers to come in here, I will have his skin flea'd off at the gangway.' He then attempted to pull me violently towards his bed. I threw myself on my knees, and with tears and entreaties besought his compassion; but this was, I found, to no purpose: I then had recourse to threats, ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... in her own. Nor write, nor speak you more of sacred writ, But what shall force up your arrested wit. Be chast; religion and her priests your scorn, Whilst the vain fanes of idiots you adorn. It is a mortal errour, you must know, Of any to speak good, if he be so. Rayl, till your edged breath flea your raw throat, And burn remarks on all of gen'rous note; Each verse be an indictment, be not free Sanctity 't self from thy scurrility. Libel your father, and your dam buffoon, The noblest matrons of the isle lampoon, Whilst Aretine and 's bodies you ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... stummick, because he was all muddy anyway, where he fell down the cellar; and how could it matter to anybody that had any sense at all? Well, then we had the rixual, and—and—why, the teeny little paddlin' he got wouldn't hurt a flea! It was that little coloured boy lives in the alley did it—he isn't anyways near HALF Georgie's size but Georgie got mad and said he didn't want any ole nigger to paddle him. That's what he said, and it was his own foolishness, because Verman won't let ANYBODY call him ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... said the executioner, with half a shrug and half a shiver; 'they are dust—they are nothing—the possession of Georgia by the Russians is to Persia what a flea which has got into my shirt is to me: it teazes me now and then, but if I gave myself the least trouble, I would hunt it out in a minute. The Russians are nothing.' Then, as if he were anxious to waive the subject, he turned to me, and said: 'Well, I agree to take you into the ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... flop in the tank as a raho rose to the surface, an occasional outburst from the ducks, an angry clamour from the water-hens and blue-fowl. My dogs were lying round me blinking and winking, and making an occasional futile snap at an imaginary fly or flea. It was a drowsy and peaceful scene. I was nearly dropping off to sleep, from the heat and the monotonous drone of the putwarrie, who was intoning nasally some formidable document about fishery ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... Professor Sandburr's bony, spectacled face was thrust forward. "I would not have missed it for a great deal. I would like to capture a specimen of a Patagonian alive and take him home in a cage. The Patagonian dog-flea, too, I understand, ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... however gentle, was absurd and she knew it. Margaret could go where she liked. It would all be chaste as a piano-recital. But the flea that she had been trying to put in the girl's ear seemed very ineffective. She is just as I was at her age, thought this lady, who, in so thinking, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... land any good," Samson answered. "What it needs is manure and plenty of it. You can't raise anything here but fleas. It isn't decent to expect God to help run a flea farm. He knows too much for that, and if you keep it up He'll lose all respect for ye. If you were to buy another farm and bring it here and put it down on top o' this one, you could probably make a living. I ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... a luxurious and time-wasting method of expressing amazement, and Mr. Phinney could not afford luxuries just then. For the rest of that day he was a busy man. As Bailey Stitt expressed it, he "flew round like a sand flea in a mitten," hiring laborers, engaging masons, and getting his materials ready. That very afternoon the masons began tearing down the chimneys of the little Berry house. Before the close of the following day it was on the rollers. By two of the day after ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... man, will you? That last fellow you had ought to have been tied up himself. His flogging wouldn't have killed a flea." ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... the bare shoulder and spoke him burning words. "Canalla," he cried him, "horrible flea! Thou makest the air to reek—impossible to breathe. Fly, thou gnat of the midden, or I crack thee on ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... back and get your things now, or shall we bring them over to-morrow? We've taken every care of them." He sighed. "When I think," he added, "that, but for my good offices, Nobby would have sent that treacherous drawlatch away, not only empty, but with the modern equivalent of a flea in his ear, I could writhe. When I reflect that it was I who supported the swine's predilection for hard cash, I could scream. But when I remember that ever since our purchase of the shawl, my wife has never once stopped enumerating and/or indicating the many superiorities which distinguish it ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... this room only." She spread her hands abroad, as if warning the air around to secrecy, and lowered her voice to an awestruck whisper. "I've ben here a week now, Mis' Penny. Every night the death-watch has ticked in Mel'dy's room the endurin' night. I don't sleep, you know, fit to support a flea. I hear every hour strike right straight along, and I know things that's hid from others, Mis' Penny, though I do say it. Last night as ever was I heard a sobbin' and a sighin' goin' round the house, as plain as I hear you this minute. Some might ha' said't was the wind, but there's other ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... kitchen just like a mouse in a trap, while she was baking cakes?" "O yes," said the hero; "and I suppose she roared, and made up a bed among the boxes of peas, and for aught I know she may be sleeping there still, unless a flea has woke her up." "Have you stolen Sarvik's good sword?" asked Tuehi again. "Perhaps I may have taken the weapon too, dear brother," answered the hero. "Who can separate a man and his sword? One is worth nothing without the other." Then Tuehi asked if he had taken the hat. "I ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... and twenty-two steps which lead to their apartment, and have dined frequently with them in their chilly Roman dining-room. This room is only warmed by the little apparatus which in Rome passes for a stove. It has a thin leg that sticks out of a hole in the side of the house and could warm a flea at ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... married a Lenox and got sleeked up. And Jeb ain't near so close as some. That's a lot in a husband." And in a kind of hysteria, bred of fear of silence just then, she rattled on, telling how this man lay awake o' nights thinking how to skin a flea for its hide and tallow, how that one had said only a fool would pay over a quarter for a new ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... both Maimoune and Danhasch. Maimoune then changed herself into a flea, and leaping on the prince's neck, stung him so smartly, that he awoke, and put up his hand to the place; but Maimoune skipped away, and resumed her pristine form, which, like those of the two genies, was invisible, the better to observe what ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... than the whole world!" And Falstaff, cracking a kindred joke on Bardolph's carbuncled nose, avows his opinion that it will serve as a flaming beacon to light lost souls the way to purgatory! Again, seeing a flea on the same flaming proboscis, the doughty knight affirmed it was "a black soul burning in hell fire." In this element of mediaval life, this feature of mediaval literature, a terrible belief lay under the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... I play a trick on you? Come, sir, and you will see her presently, all dressed up and decked with jewels. Her damsels and she are all covered with diamonds, and rubies, and cloth of gold. And what is more, they are riding three flea-bitten gambling hags, the like of which won't ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... and contempt did they not look down upon the wretched little scribbler, the man of mere letters and jargon, half-clothed in untanned hides, his only weapon an inkhorn at his belt, his pennon the feather of a goosequill! How they laughed at him, calling him an atom or a flea, good for nothing! 'He does nothing, he cannot even collect our taxes, or look after our estates, whilst we bold riders, armed to the teeth, sword in hand and lance on thigh, we fight, and we are the finest fellows in the land!' So they ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... we've got a space drive—flea sized. Now the question before the board becomes, just what are we going to do with it? Turn ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... the dog in the face with an inquiring expression to see if he be angry. The dog, however, seems rather to enjoy the operation, and, showing no symptoms of displeasure, the monkey continues her search; and when she sees a flea, catches it in the most active manner, looks at it for a moment, and then eats it with great relish. Having exhausted the game on the poodle, she jumps on the back of the blood-hound, and having looked into her face to see how ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... descendants of the monsters of mythology and geology, for nothing could be a more terrible or ferocious antagonist than many of our well-known insects, if sufficiently enlarged. No animal now alive has more than a small fraction of the strength, in proportion to its size, of the minutest spider or flea. It may be that through lack of food, difficulties imposed by changing climate, and the necessity of burrowing in winter, or through some other conditions changed from what they were accustomed to, their size has been ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... the person spoken to. ern, the sea-eagle. die, to expire. yew (yu), a kind of tree. dye, to color. eye, the organ of sight. draught (draft), drawing I, myself. ay, yes. draft, a bill of exchange. aye, an affirmative vote. dun, a dark color. flee, to run away. done, performed. flea, an insect. fate, destiny. flew (flu) , did fly. fete, a festival. flue, a passage ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... Nights are pointless enough, rien moins qu'amusants; but in the best specimens, such as the Wolf and the Fox[FN243] (the wicked man and the wily man), both characters are carefully kept distinct and neither action nor dialogue ever flags. Again The Flea and the Mouse (iii. 151), of a type familiar to students of the Pilpay cycle, must strike the home-reader ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... Varsity was formed and the Second Team began doing business with Bi at right guard again. The left guard on the Varsity was Bannen—"Slugger" Bannen. He didn't weigh within seven pounds of Bi, but he had springs inside of him and could get the jump on a flea. He was called "Slugger" because he looked like a prizefighter, but he was a gentle, harmless chap, and one of the Earnest Workers in the Christian Association. He could stick his fist through an oak panel same as you or I would put our fingers through a sheet of paper. And he did pretty ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... hill. A chill mist hung over the Fair, but the lamps still burned, the streets were thronged, and the Don Cossacks kept patient guard at every corner. The night went by like one unconscious minute, in beds unmolested by bug or flea; and when I arose, thoroughly refreshed, I involuntarily called to mind a frightful chapter in De Custine's "Russia," describing the prevalence of an insect which he calls the persica, on the banks of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... drag net out. All the roads, all the railroads, all the airports are guarded. The river and the water front, every wharf in New York and New Jersey is taken care of. You would think a flea couldn't get through. They've picked up ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... belief, that these my Labours will be no more comparable to the Productions of many other Natural Philosophers, who are now every where busie about greater things; then my little Objects are to be compar'd to the greater and more beautiful Works of Nature, A Flea, a Mite, a Gnat, to an Horse, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... in the current and drowned," he said. "Let the flea-bitten old devil go, she's brought ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... his father, and he had to go out with a flea in his ear; and when, two days later, Miss Virginia said something about the house opposite looking so miserable, and that it was a pity there were no bills up to say it was to let, Sir John flew out at her, and that was the only ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... wind. The fleas bit the sheep, and the sheep bit the ground, and the sore had spread to this extent. It is astonishing what a great sore a little scratch breedeth. Who knows but Sahara, where caravans and cities are buried, began with the bite of an African flea? This poor globe, how it must itch in many places! Will no god be kind enough to spread a salve of birches over its sores? Here too we noticed where the Indians had gathered a heap of stones, perhaps ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... idea of going somewhere else; and the chances of the stranger within their gates approached those of an icicle in Hades, as our friends across the water would say. Finally, in despair, Draycott rushed into the road and seized a venerable flea-bitten grey that was ambling along with Monsieur, Madame, and all the little olive-branches sitting solemnly inside the cab. He embraced Madame, he embraced the olive-branches; finally—in despair—I believe he embraced Monsieur. He wept, he entreated, he implored them to take him ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... be found on coral reefs, a poor thing, and much browsed upon by parrot fish; and Doris and Tethys and Cydippe are sea slugs. It's worse than Heine's vision of the gods grown old. They can't be content with the departed gods merely. Evadne is a water flea—they'll make something out of Mrs. Sarah Grand next; and Autolycus, my Autolycus! is a polymorphic worm, whatever subtlety of insult "polymorphic ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... sax or seeven year syne. It is a great shame, St. Ronan's, that the game laws, whilk are the very best protection that is left to country gentlemen against the encroachment of their inferiors, rin sae short a course of prescription—a poacher may just jink ye back and forward like a flea in a blanket, (wi' pardon)—hap ye out of ae county and into anither at their pleasure, like pyots—and unless ye get your thum-nail on them in the very nick o' time, ye may dine on a dish of prescription, and sup upon ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... have broken through the soil, an enemy awaits them in the small black insect commonly known as the cabbage or turnip fly, beetle, or flea. This insect, though so small as to appear to the eye as a black dot, is very voracious and surprisingly active. He apparently feeds on the juice of the young plant, perforating it with small holes the size of a ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... dear as gold, and sent them to Rome; you'll think I desir'd to have it so: All my ships founder'd at sea; 'tis a great truth, no story; Neptune swallowed me in one day three hundred thousand sesterties. Do ye think I broke upon 't, (so help me Hercules) no; the loss was but a flea-bite: For, as if there had been no such thing, I built others, larger, better, and more fortunate than the former; so that every one called me a man of courage. As you know a great ship carries a great deal of force, I loaded them again with wine, bacon, beans, ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... our costly galaxy,' he said; and, having reduced me by one glance to the proportions of a performing flea, rather poorly trained, he gave his attention indulgently to ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... in India, and among them are the wealthiest, most highly cultured and most charitable of all people. They carry their love of life to extremes. A true believer will not harm an insect, not even a mosquito or a flea. All Hindus are kind to animals, except when they ill treat them through ignorance, as is often the case. The Brahmins represent that murder, robbery, deception and every other form of crime and vice may be ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... character, to convey the idea of a man that speaks with a squeaking voice through his nose, to express a timid and weak fellow, who is always thrashed by the other actors, and always boasts of victory after they are gone."—Tolondron, p. 324. In Italian, Policinello is a little flea, active and biting and skipping; and his mask puce-colour, the nose imitating in shape the flea's proboscis. This grotesque etymology was added by Mrs. Thrale. I cannot decide between "the hen-chicken" of the scholar and "the skipping flea" ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... (lightning) fulmo. Flash (of wit) spritajxo. Flask boteleto. Flat plata. Flat (music) duontono sube. Flatten platigi. Flatter flati. Flatterer flatulo. Flattering flatema. Flavour gusto. Flaw difekto. Flax lino. Flay senhauxtigi. Flea pulo. Flee flugi. Fleece sxaflano. Fleecy laneca. Fleet (quick) rapida. Fleet sxiparo. Flesh (meat) viando. Flesh karno. Flexibility fleksebleco. Flexible fleksebla. Flexion flekso. Flicker lumsxanceli. Flight forkuro. Flight (birds) flugado. Fling jxeti. Flint (mineral) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... plies[53]; 50 Loude dynns[54] the arrowe ynn the wolfynn's eare; Hee ryseth battent[55] roares, he panctes, hee dyes. Forslagenn att thie feete lett wolvynns bee, Lett thie floes drenche theyre blodde, bott do ne bredrenn flea. ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... remained vague. The autopsy showed a state of things not precisely to be called peculiar to poisoning cases the intestines, which the fatal poison had not had time to burn as in the case of the d'Aubrays, were marked with reddish spots like flea-bites. In June Penautier obtained the post that had been held ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Enniskillens, to be ridden by "Baby Grafton," of the same corps, a feather-weight, and quite a boy, but with plenty of science in him. These were the three favourites; Day Star ran them close, the property of Durham Vavassour, of the Scots Greys, and to be ridden by his owner; a handsome, flea-bitten, grey sixteen-hander, with ragged hips, and action that looked a trifle string-halty, but noble shoulders, and great force in the loins and withers; the rest of the field, though unusually excellent, did not find so many "sweet voices" for them, and ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... Cavour was grappled securely to the skin of the Valhalla like a flea riding an elephant, and Alan was climbing in through the main airlock. It felt good to be aboard the big ship once ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... knaw I be gwaine to have it out this night. Mother sez I be right, but that Miller will send me packing wi' a flea in my ear; Chris sez I be wrong to ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... magician who, about the year Fifteen Hundred, made a box with a glass cover that magnified the contents. This great man would catch a flea and show it to the people. Then he would place the flea in the box and show it to them, and they would see that it had grown enormously in an instant. The man could make it big or little, by just taking off and putting on ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... observe, a flea Has smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller still to bite 'em; And so proceed ad infinitum. Poetry: a Rhapsody. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... and as the fallen angels, and the spirits of damned men that are now shut up in the prison of hell, and bear it. But certainly it is the chief and highest of all kind of curses. To be cursed in the basket and in the store, in the womb and in the barn, in my cattle and in my body, are but flea-bitings to this, though they are also insupportable in themselves; only in general it may be described thus. But to touch upon this curse, it lieth in deprivation of all good, and in a being swallowed up of all the most fearful miseries that a holy, and just, and eternal God can ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... few things which he wishes he had left behind. The Hessian fly, the wire-worm, the flea, and grubs and scale insects thrive mischievously. The black and grey rats have driven the native rat into the recesses of the forest. A score of weeds have come, mixed with badly-screened grass-seed, or in any of a hundred other ways. The Scotch thistle seemed likely ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... "Give it to me, and I will cherish it as a kind of birthday card! What a rag it is! 'Thord's Rabble' eh! Sergius, what have you been doing that this little flea of an editor should jump out of his ink-pot and bite ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... As wise, and as dull, as divinity books. Our old friend's dead, but we all well know He's gone to the Kennels where the good dogs go, Where the cooks be not, but the beef-bones be, And his old head never need turn for a flea. ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... first, with good quarterstaves, in Bideford Market, till all heads are broken; and the head which is not broken, let the back belonging to it pay the penalty of the noble member's cowardice. After which grand tournament, to which that of Tottenham shall be but a flea-bite and a batrachomyomachy—" ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... antics and eternal persistence, even though he was a pest. Johnny saw more in him than his companions could find, and had quite a little sport with him: he made fine practice for roping, for he was about as elusive as a grasshopper and uncertain as a flea. Johnny was in the same general class and he could sympathize with the irrepressible nuisance in its efforts to stir up a little life and excitement in so dull a crowd; Johnny hoped to be as successful in his mischievous deviltry when he reached ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... possible in some cases, the water flea, for example, for the female to produce young without the necessity of fertilization by the male. In order to perform the necessary work to insure food supplies for the winter other insects have developed highly specialized workers, especially fitted to do ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... but mine hand shall not be upon thee. As saith the proverb of the ancients, Wickedness proceedeth from the wicked: but mine hand shall not be upon thee. After whom is the king of Israel come out? after whom dost thou pursue? after a dead dog, after a flea. The Lord therefore be judge, and judge between me and thee, and see, and plead my cause, and deliver me out ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... thinks it's sinful to kill critters. All the things in the woods likes him. Once he got into a holler log to sleep, and some squirrels warned him to move out, they settled there first; and he done it. I don't allow he'd pick a flea off his own hide for fear he'd break its legs so it couldn't hop around and ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Saduko!" he said in a deep, rumbling voice. "Why are you back here so soon, and why do you bring this flea of a white man ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... of mind. He became converted at a Methodist camp-meeting, and as he became a kind of preacher among his own people, he staid converted. He had one fault, to speak not of others. He was irascible to a great degree; a mosquito or a flea would drive him into a passion. But throughout his long career as guardian of his master, he had been never known to lose patience with him. Even mothers become vexed exceedingly with undutiful children; but this care of Mat for his worthless ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... summer outdoor amusements? (You may inform them that there is plenty of bathing, boating, fishing, and an abundance of shade trees. Also, excellent mountain-climbing to be had in the vicinity. You need not mention the pastimes of "Hunt the Flea" or ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... Maryage, MS. play Father-in-law Feare no colours Feeres Felt locks Feltham's Resolves Fend ( make shift with) Fins (a very doubtful correction for sins) Fisguigge Flat cap Flea ( flay) Fletcher, John, MS. copy of his Elder Brother; his share in the authorship of Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt Flewd Fly boat (see Addenda to vol. i.) Fool (play on the words fool and fowl) Fooles paradysse For I did but kisse her (See Appendix) Fortune ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... will you? That last fellow you had ought to have been tied up himself. His flogging wouldn't have killed a flea." ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... de Monpavon, who laughingly calls him Fleur-de-Mazas, whenever he comes here, and M. de Bois-l'Hery of the Trompettes Club, who is as vulgar in his language as a groom, and always says to him by way of adieu: "To your wooden bed, flea!" From those two down to our cashier, whom I have heard say to him a hundred times, tapping his ledger: "There's enough in here to send you to the galleys whenever I choose." And yet, for all that, my simple observation produced a most extraordinary effect upon him. The circles ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... found as regularly and are not as characteristic for those places as the forms mentioned hitherto. Among these organisms there are several species of worms, spiders, gnats, and, above all, crustaceans of the lower class. The most interesting of the latter is perhaps a variety of the sand flea (Fig. 8—Gammarus pulex). The crustacean found in the pits of mines, which is related to the sand flea, shows, according to Dr. R. Schneider, a slight degeneration of the organ of sight, which has taken place in consequence of its adaptation to the dark places, in which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... With this flea in his ear, the faithful Joseph went off, chuckling, and obtained an advance from the manager, and then proceeded to the principal gaming-table, and, after waiting some time, secured a chair, which ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... replied, that his father had much to occupy him. But the little man—who, to do him justice, cared no more (in his own phrase) for imminent danger or death, than he did for the puncture of a flea's proboscis—did not so easily renounce the secret object of his ambition, which was to acquire the notice of the large and lofty Sir Geoffrey Peveril, who, being at least three inches taller than his son, was in so far possessed of that superior excellence, which the poor dwarf, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... no-no-no! You doggone little rascal, I'd rather herd a flea on a hot plate! I've a plumb good notion to hog-tie yuh for awhile. Can't trust yuh a minute nowhere. Now look what you got to ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... ask that important men make an observation here. Taking the size of a man to be about five feet, the figure we strike on Earth is like that struck by an animal of about six hundred thousandths[2] the height of a flea on a ball five feet around. Imagine something that can hold the Earth in its hands, and which has organs in proportion to ours—and it may very well be that there are such things—conceive, I beg of you, what these things ...
— Romans — Volume 3: Micromegas • Voltaire
... her niece about him this morning,—and the poor girl has been making quite a fool of herself over him, you may have observed. Mrs. Spofford owns quite a block of stock in our institution, so I considered it my duty to put a flea in her ear, if you see what ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... a lean hen that ran cluck-clucking by, (And hit her, dead as nail i' post o' door,) Then abiit—What's the Ciceronian phrase? Excessit, evasit, erupit—off slogs boy; Off like bird, avi similis—(you observed The dative? Pretty i' the Mantuan!)—Anglice Off in three flea skips. Hactenus, so far, So good, tam bene. Bene, satis, male,— Where was I with my trope 'bout one in a quag? I did once hitch the Syntax into verse Verbum personale, a verb personal, Concordat—"ay", agrees old Fatchops—cum Nominativo, with its nominative, Genere, ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... the introduction of the eggs of the sand-flea (Pulex penetrans) into the tissues. It occurs in tropical Africa, South America, and the West Indies. The impregnated female flea remains attached to the part till the eggs mature, when by their irritation they cause localised inflammation with pustules or vesicles on the surface. Children ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... wasp in 8 minutes; a small ant in 5 minutes; a large butterfly resisted the effects for over an hour, and apparently recovered, but died the next day; a house-fly became helpless in 10 minutes; a mosquito in 15; and a flea in 3 minutes. In experimenting on beetles, an insect was secured as nearly the size of the carpet beetle as could be found. It was easily affected, and became helpless in ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... mountain with dark pines and sun He stood between the armies, and his shout Rolled from the empyrean above the host: "Bid any little flea ye have come forth, And wince at death upon my finger-nail!" He turned his large-boned face; and all his steel Tossed into beams the lustre of the noon; And all the shaggy horror of his locks Rustled like locusts in a field of corn. ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... behind the stockman a black boy on a young colt, leading a sturdy flea-bitten grey, laden with a pack bag on either side. He jumped off as lightly as Moongarr Bill and hitched his horses also to the veranda posts. Except that he was black as a coal, save for the whites of his eyes and his gleaming ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... joint of its forefinger; and, when they (inquiring where) pointed to other places, it told them not there but here, pointing on the lowest joint of the forefinger, where they observed a deep red spot about the bigness of a flea-bite. They asked it who gave it that snake, whether the black man gave it: the child said no, its mother gave it. I heard this child examined by ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... him to the postern-gate and stood by his side after he had opened it. Several of the animals, grazing in different parts of the park, pricked up their ears at the sound. An old mare came hobbling towards him; a flea-bitten grey came trotting down the field, his head ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... certainly stark mad; he cannot make a flea, and yet he will be making gods by dozens." So wrote honest Montaigne, the first great sceptic in modern history, who was so far in advance of his age that he surprised the world by venturing to doubt whether it was after all a just and sensible thing to burn a man alive for ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... monarchy attributed to the late king, or, it may be, to the aventures galantes of a financier with a ballet girl. M. Blaizot was never tired of listening to him. This M. Blaizot was a little old man, dry and neat, in flea-coloured coat and breeches and grey woollen stockings. I admired him very much, and could not think of anything more glorious than, like him, to sell books at the Image ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... metaphysicians, and the like. The thing she loved of all else was to chaff them and drench them in holiday impertinence, exhibit them treading on air and arguing with the clouds, or measuring the jump of a flea, as a type of their ethereal refinements. But Dialogue continued his deep speculations upon Nature and Virtue, till, as the musicians say, the interval between them was two full octaves, from the highest to the lowest note. This ill-assorted pair ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... the stony slopes about two miles from the water. Next came a rather herring-gutted, lanky bay horse, which having been bought at the Peake, I called Peveril; he was generally poor, but always able, if not willing, for his work. Then came a big bay cob, and an old flea-bitten gray called Buggs, that got bogged in the Stemodia viscosa Creek, and a nuggetty-black harness-horse called Darkie, always very fat. These last three carried 200 pounds each at starting. Then ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... joke, an' cracks her crack, As spunkie as a growin' flea; An' there she sits upon my back A livin' perpetuity. She hurkles by her ingle side, An' toasts an' tans her wrinkled hide; Lord kens how lang she yet may bide To ca' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... black horse is spirited; but that is not a fault," Rhoda said. "He looks all right to me. But that little flea-bitten grey is a tricky one. You can tell that. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... fairy that addressed Orpheus, in the infernal regions, and offered him for food a roasted ant, a flea's thigh, butterflies' brains, some sucking mites, a rainbow tart etc., to be washed down with dew-drops and beer made from seven barleycorns—a very heady ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... the 20th of Queen Elizabeth, made a lock of eleven pieces of iron, steel, and brass, with a pipe key, and golden chain of forty-three links, which were hung round the neck of a flea.—The animal, together with this burthen, weighed only one grain and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... order to silence them, and thereupon pull the wool quietly over their eyes. But it is true, the nations really are like babies; they do not become reasonable and wise, and the accursed word 'liberty,' which Bonaparte puts as a flea into their ears, maddens them still as though a tarantula had bitten them. They have seen in Italy and France what sort of liberty Napoleon brings to them, and what a yoke he intends to lay on their necks while telling them that he wishes to make freemen of them. But they do not become wise, ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... disease-producing organism is introduced into the body of the healthy person, and beginning to multiply, brings about the symptoms of the disease. Malaria is transmitted in this way by the anopheles mosquito; typhus fever by lice, and plague by the rat flea. These are all diseases greatly to be dreaded ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... it?' he said. 'The understanding of a flea, a hopping flea with a proboscis. Why should you crawl abject before the understanding ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... smiling, as he turned to Fitz; "I don't think we shall let them do that, Mr Burnett. My lads will be only too glad to receive the gunboat's crew on equal terms and send them back with a flea ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... have made a dozen programmes of what is to happen, and this is but a specimen. Who can tell? I may be heir of Crompton yet, or I may come back to you to-morrow like a bad penny, and with what the vulgar describe as a flea ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... with his head resting on his paws, and watches the wall. He is not a very beautiful dog, and the light shows numerous old wounds where the hair will not grow. He is afraid of nothing on the face of the earth or under it. He will tackle a bullock as readily as he will tackle a flea. He hates all other dogs—except kangaroo-dogs—and has a marked dislike to friends or relations of the family. They seldom call, however. He sometimes makes friends with strangers. He hates snakes and has ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... at one by the bare shoulder and spoke him burning words. "Canalla," he cried him, "horrible flea! Thou makest the air to reek—impossible to breathe. Fly, thou gnat of the midden, or I crack ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... judge and assign him his place, Our reviewer would crawl all about it and round it, And reporting each circumstance just as he found it, Without the least malice—his record would be Profoundly aesthetic as that of a flea, Which, supping on Wordsworth, should print, for our sakes, Recollections of nights with the Bard of the Lakes, Or, borne by an Arab guide, venture to render a General view of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... I was writing that last chapter a flea appeared upon the page before me, as there once did to St. Dominic." He proceeds to say that his flea was a flea of flea-flesh, but that St. Dominic's ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... responsible for such diseases as Rocky Mountain spotted fever, African tick fever, and other infections. The bedbug is also by no means the harmless creature which it is generally regarded. To its credit are placed such maladies as relapsing fever. The flea has been responsible for such terrible diseases as the plague. It often operates by means of rats as its carrier to the human being. The louse is one of the direst offenders in the insect line, as it must take the responsibility not ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... a Christian fellow to a dog, or a cat, a mouse, or a rat! no, no, sir; if you turn me into any thing, let it be in the likeness of a little pretty frisking flea, that I may be here and there and every where: O, I'll tickle the pretty wenches' plackets! I'll be ...
— The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... ride on at once to Egmont, before I was arrested for cutting the lady's harness. As for their own plans, whatever they were, my action altered them. I do not know what they did. I know that I turned away with a flea in my ear from the Duke's reproof. I remember not very much of my ride to Egmont, except that I seemed to ride most of the time among sand-dunes. I glanced back anxiously to see if I was being pursued; but no one followed. I rode on at the ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... that the flea is their marriage-temple, and bids her forbear to kill it lest she thereby commit murder, suicide, and sacrilege all in one. Donne's figures are scholastic and smell of the lamp. He ransacked cosmography, astrology, alchemy, optics, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... badger and de bah, En de funny lil hah, En de active lil flea, En de lil armadillah Dat sleeps widouter pillah, An dey all ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... shape of your carriage, if she prescribes it. Is the livery of your postilion plain? You must make it of as many colours as she dictates. If you yourself wear corbeau or raven colour to-day, you must change it, if she orders you, to that of puce, or the flea, to-morrow. But it is not only, in your equipage and your dress, that she will put you under her control. She will make you obedient to her in your address and manners. She will force upon you rules for your intercourse with others. She will point out to you her amusements, and make you follow them. ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... so won. And all proverbs were on his side. "None but the brave deserve the fair," said his cousin. "I shall stick to it," said Tom Spooner. "Labor omnia vincit," said his cousin. But what should be his next step? Gerard Maule had been sent away with a flea in his ear,—so, at least, Mr. Spooner asserted, and expressed an undoubting opinion that this imperative dismissal had come from the fact that Gerard Maule, when "put through his facings" about income was ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... well! let her dance and practise; I won't hinder her. How nimbly she bounds! one might think her a flea ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... dies; and you sendin' them both off with worse grace than if they had been beggars askin' you for a shillin'. Now, stop your snivellin' there, I tell you. You are like your poor sainted father,—God bless him where he lies,—he too used to cry, likely enough, if a flea bit him." ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... with you; and if she turns nasty we'll put a flea in her ear about those mud-baths. Come, let's have our fun, anyway." And she put her hand on the ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... from being rational, our notions on cleanliness are in the highest degree superficial. We make a great fuss over a flea; hardly mention it in polite company; but we tolerate the dirty housefly on all our food. We eat high game which our cook's more natural taste calls muck. We are only just beginning to realise the indescribable filthiness of carious teeth, than which anything more ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... but it was a flea-bite to the deeper nature, and more forecasting mind of her husband, still doomed to pace that miserable yard, like a hyena, chafing, seeking, longing for the patient ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... arranged satisfactorily, but the knight, who had a flea in his ear, as soon as he rose, went to his companion, to whom he related the adventure at full length, and demanded from him two promises; the first was that he should strictly promise to say ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... ills in life. It was beneath the dignity of his soul to stoop to observe them. Cold and heat, hunger and thirst, such things did not exist for the gentleman. The armor of his soul was so complete that it was proof not only against the great ills of life but even against the small ones; so the flea-bitten Nigel lay grimly still while Aylward writhed ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her own. She had quite overlooked the small fact that she was not qualified to fill it, and never would be. If she had proposed such an arrangement, Miss Starbrow would have laughed heartily, and sent the impudent minx away with a flea in her ear; but she had not yet ventured to broach ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... mamma!" whirl out again! Turmoil and flurry may be characteristic of the manners of to-day; both are far from the ideal of beautiful manners which should be as assured, as smooth, as controlled as the running of a high-grade automobile. Flea-like motions are no better suited to manners ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... is one not wholly unknown in other parts of the world. It is the nimble flea. St. Patrick is not to blame for leaving this reptile here. He is not indigenous. He was unknown to the Maoris until the coming of the Pakeha; but he has naturalized himself most thoroughly now. The "little stranger," as the natives playfully term him, is to be found in abundance ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... when one of my hind legs scratched one of Potts' ears or one of his shoulders, I was perfectly satisfied—first, because that sort of thing was good for the whole dog; and, second, because the thing would get about even when Potts' head would reach around and bite a flea off my hind legs or snap ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... me that he would give me a written character of the very best description, whenever I chose to apply for it. "You're honest," he said; "you're willing, though lazy; you would pull, if you had the strength of a flea; and, though a monstrous coward, you don't run away." My own demurs to these harsh judgments were not many. The idiocy I confessed; because, though positive that I was not uniformly an idiot, I felt inclined to think that, in a majority of cases, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... among the annulosa; the tortoises, among the reptilia; the armadillo and scaly ant-eater, pig, mouse, jerboa, and kangaroo, among quadrupeds; the waders and tenuirostres, among birds; the coleoptera, (bug, louse, flea, &c.) among insects; the gastrobranchus, among fishes; are examples which will illustrate the special characters of this type. These are smallness, particularly in the head and mouth, feebleness, and want of offensive protection, defect of organs of mastication, considerable powers of swift movement, ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... civilised world. From having been the prey of the inexpressible foreigner in his shooting season, it suddenly becomes, and remains during about five months, the happy hunting ground of the silent flea, the buzzing fly and the insinuating mosquito. The streets are, indeed, still full of people, and long lines of carriages may be seen towards sunset in the Villa Borghesa and in the narrow Corso. ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... very teazing sand-flea, which penetrates and breeds under the skin of the feet, but particularly at the toes. It must be removed, or it occasions dreadful sores. The operation is effected by a needle; but the sac which contains the brood must not be broken, or the whole foot would ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... if I can catch her I'll pinch her and scratch her And send her away with a flea in ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... capturing something—whether it be an idea, a flea, or the itch. Let's hear what ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... shame, ne shed no teare at all, You make my wounds your selfe, and fill them up with gall: Yea you can see me sound, and faint for want of breath, And gaspe and grone for life, and struggle still with death, What can you now do more, sweare by your maydenhead, The for to flea me quicke, ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... sixpence in the pound. As we find it a hard matter to live, he is not likely to make you an allowance of thirty pounds, or thirty pence a year, or to trouble himself by going to the Admiralty with the certainty of being sent away with a flea in his ear; so you see, Tom, you must just grin and bear it. If you don't get killed, I would advise you—should you ever wish to come home—to make your appearance with your pockets full of the prize-money you talk of, and you will then perhaps receive a welcome, and be well ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... their handsome countenances. Judging from their well-proportioned frames, each one looked powerful enough to battle single handed with an elephant. Judging from their faces not one of them would have hurt a flea. Each man appeared to be buried in the depth of thought—serious thought— notwithstanding every physiognomy plainly showed that the utmost happiness and contentment existed within each, and good will between all of them. The skin of their faces, hands and feet ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... to me! Who sent you here? It wasn't your father—he hasn't the smeddum of a flea—but he wouldn't send you to do what he dassn't do himself. I suppose it was some of them confounded old maids at the ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Britain; and to judge by the mental stamina it affords him in most cases, what a waste of good food it is! The dishes are so numerous and so quickly changed, that he has no time to decide on which he likes best. Like an industrious flea, rather than a bee, he hops from flower to flower in the educational garden, without one penny-worth of honey to show for it. And then—though I feel how degrading it is to allude to so vulgar a matter—how ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... somehow floral, but this Daphne was equipped with one eye and several pairs of legs, and practised abrupt jumpy flights through the water. In short, she was a branchiopod, to be vulgarly precise, a water-flea. The succulence of Daphne led to experiments on Cyclops—Cyclops is her first cousin—and the taste, once acquired, ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... I feel a girl a-sleep, Underneath her frock I peep, There to sport, and there I play; Then I bite her like a flea, And about ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... misfortune is that the more just his satire, the more perishable is its interest; and if we regard the 'Dunciad' simply as an assault upon the vermin who then infested literature, we must consider him as a man who should use a steam-hammer to crack a flea. Unluckily for ourselves, however, it cannot be admitted so easily that Curll and Dennis and the rest had a merely temporary interest. Regarded as types of literary nuisances—and Pope does not condescend in his poetry, though the want is partly supplied in ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... man!' cried my lady in wrath. He had come near to oversetting her plate. 'What flea has bitten ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... rich one. He then told me that it was a custom among the Romans for a man to give his slaves their liberty when he lay upon his death-bed. I could not imagine what this meant, until, after having a little composed himself, he ordered me to bring him a flea which he had kept for several months in a chain, with a design, as he said, to give it its manumission. This was done accordingly. He then made the will, which I have since seen printed in your works word for word. Only I must take notice that you have omitted the codicil, in which he left a ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... the others have manufactured. The wolf hunts, fights, and tears its victim in pieces; and then, by means of that interior labor which I have spent so much time in describing, transforms it into nourishing liquid: and when all this is accomplished, the little flea, who lives hidden among his hairs, coolly draws out for his own use the valuable blood obtained with so much effort. There are many parasites in the world, my dear child—yourself, for instance, to begin with—who ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... Caschcasch's pleased both Maimoune and Danhasch. Maimoune then changed herself into a flea, and leaping on the prince's neck, stung him so smartly, that he awoke, and put up his hand to the place; but Maimoune skipped away, and resumed her pristine form, which, like those of the two genies, was invisible, the better to observe what ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... have shared in the general misrepresentation. Like Franklin's, his writings, too, were altered by villainous editors. In his letters, for example, such a natural phrase as "one hundred thousand dollars will be but a flea-bite" was changed to "one hundred thousand dollars ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... for? Night nurses? Think we're taking shifts keeping Mollie snuggled up warm o' nights? Go away and change yeer dhrinks. What's the hullabaloo anyway? Short o' tobacco? Or has the newest tenderfoot discovered the one lone flea in ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... without its causing them pain. The superfluous flesh was often cut out, which caused them to eject much blood through the mouth. Afterwards, a violent pain seized their arms and legs, which remained swollen and very hard, all spotted as if with flea-bites; and they could not walk on account of the contraction of the muscles, so that they were almost without strength, and suffered intolerable pains. They experienced pain also in the loins, stomach, and bowels, had a very ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... That's the flee that fled, not the flea who refuses to flee," went on Tom. And at this sally, ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... fifteen cents," she directed. "He's about as popular with her as a flea with a dog; but he goes with the furniture. He was wished on ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... said to him—"you moon-baying, rabbit-pointing, egg-stealing old beagle, can't you see that I don't want to leave you? Can't you see that we're both Pups in the Wood and the missis is the cruel uncle after you with the dish towel and me with the flea liniment and a pink bow to tie on my tail. Why not cut that all out ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... the men—books, pictures, a piece of music, a bright cushion, and a pile of picture magazines. It made a big bundle when she had them together, and she was dubious if she ought to try to carry them all; but Bud, whom she consulted on the subject, said, loftily, it "wasn't a flea-bite for the Kid; he could carry anything on ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... past, some with prehensile- footed negroes perched upon them, others driven by turban-crowned Hindoos. A fleet of dilapidated surreys and coaches, each equipped with a musical chime and drawn by a flea-bitten, ratlike horse, thronged the square. Kirk noticed with amusement that the steeds were of stronger mentality than the drivers, judging from the way they dominated the place, kicking, biting squealing, ramming one another, locking wheels and blocking traffic, the while their futile ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... he becomes the picture of shame. In his perplexity, he always finds relief in endeavoring with his paw to scrape a supposititious fly from the side of his nose. He then deals with what I suppose to be an equally imaginary flea; after he has thus gained a few seconds for readjustment, he welcomes me joyously. All this is so thoroughly human-like, that even the naturalist, the professional doubter, is forced to believe that the dog's mind works substantially as his own, and that the feelings connected with the ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... looked vaguely out upon the horizon, waiting for the outcome of the search, got a start. Yonder, far away on the other side of the river, between a little wood and the Staria Derevnia, a light boat drew to the shore, and a little black spot jumped from it like a flea. Koupriane recognized the little black spot as Kathanna. She was safe. Now he could not reach her. It would be useless to search the maze of the Bohemian quarter, where her country-people lived in full control, ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... glimpsin' that flea-bitten cayouse at Tramperos. But the mules can't think or talk of nothin' else. It arouses their religious enthoosiasm to highest pitch; even the cynic Jerry gets half-way keyed up over it. I looks for trouble that night; an' partic'lar I pegs out Jerry plenty deep ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... their plan of getting it done, and at the same time getting rid of the body? Great heavens! was I to be devoured piecemeal by a rapacious horde of the wild beasts that are said to infest the Russian beds! And utterly helpless, too, without the power to grapple with as much as a single flea—the least formidable, perhaps, of the entire gang! It was absolutely fearful to contemplate such an act of premeditated barbarity; yet what could I do, unable to speak a word or ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... track of HIM. Might's well try to put your finger on a flea. He's here to-day and gone yesterday, as the Scriptur' says. He ate a little mite of supper, but not much, and then off he puts. Says he's goin' to walk the fog out'n his head. I told him, s' I, 'You'll walk a plaguey sight more in than you do out, THIS night,' but he went just the ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... dirt, raise the smells to the Nth degree, and set half the populace to singing. We establish in every second doorway a mother with her offspring tucked between her knees and forcibly held there while the mother searches the child's head for a flea; anyhow, it is more charitable to say it is a flea; and we add a special touch of ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... be tilled, and men and women to be talked to. They were all real and true—solidly planted upon the feet—perfectly comprehensible—clay of his clay, neither more nor less. He shook himself like a dog with a flea in his ear, and rambled out of the gate. Said the Sahiba, to whom watchful eyes reported this move: 'Let him go. I have done my share. Mother Earth must do the rest. When the Holy One comes back ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... eight-and-forty hours from the occurrence of the rigor (in the majority of cases), the eruption comes out; and shows itself first on the face and neck in minute flea-bite spots. In the course of the next four-and-twenty hours in some cases, and in others not until the expiration of two or three days, it completely covers the body; not being confined exclusively to the skin, but frequently extending ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... trust me, then; and by all means stir on the youth to an answer. I think oxen and wain-ropes cannot hale them together. For Andrew, if he were open'd, and you find so much blood in his liver as will clog the foot of a flea, I'll eat the ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... go behind to dress, and I appeared first in the natural state of the ourang outang, with a suit of buffalo robe stuff that looked exactly like a big monkey. I bowed and the audience cheered, and I stood on my hands and scratched at an imaginary flea, and pa, who was leaning against the platform, whispered to me that I was making the hit ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... don't beat the Dutch!" exclaimed Mr. Hennage disgustedly. "If that young feller ain't one fool of a bridegroom, a- runnin' away from his bride like this! For quick moves that feller's got the California flea faded to a whisper. Two weeks ago he was a- practicin' law in Sacramento, a-puttin' through a deal in lieu lands; then he jumps to Stockton an' wires me for fifty dollars; then he hops to Bakersfield an' gits married, ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... Wade viewed the discouraged-looking, flea-bitten gray horse dubiously. "Are you sure?" he asked. "Have you ever driven that horse eight miles in ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... wasn't for you, old girl," he told her one afternoon, "I'd go crazy with the flea bitings of the Enemy. But you, bless your wicked soul, are an honest part of the game. I was bred from the beginning to fight floods. You attack in the open, like an honest vixen. Wait till I get my ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... said Mir Jan to Suleiman, 'should this rat-flea escape, thy soul and thy body shall pay, for I will put out thine eyes with glowing charcoal and hang thee in the skin of a pig, if I have to follow thee to Cabul to do it—yea, to Balkh or Bokhara. See to it.' And Suleiman put his head upon my brother's feet, ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... him kid you," said the section chief, "I haven't had to read mine yet. The doctor fixed up the baths in town and yesterday he passed around those flea charms. Have ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... a thousand yet," rejoined the organist; "and when he does, I'll send him away with a flea ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... well-sweep. A water-mill being set up ten miles off, on Anderson's Creek, that was superseded, as improvement marched, by a horse-power one. To this Lincoln, as a lad of sixteen or seventeen, would carry the corn in a bag upon an old flea-bitten gray mare. One day, on unhitching the animal and loading it, and running his arm through the head-gear loop to lead, he had no sooner struck it and cried "Get up, you de——," when the beast whirled around, and, lashing ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... Artillery had tried hard to destroy the mortar, but it apparently had a small railway to itself, and moved away as soon as we opened fire. For retaliation we had nothing except rifle grenades, which were like flea-bites to an elephant, or the Howitzers, who had to be called on the telephone, all of which ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... deny that he made Mrs. Mitchell too. It is very puzzling, I confess. I remember once that my youngest brother Davie, a very little fellow then, for he could not speak plainly, came running in great distress to Kirsty, crying, "Fee, fee!" by which he meant to indicate that a flea was rendering his life miserable. Kirsty at once undressed him and entered on the pursuit. After a successful search, while she was putting on his garments again, little Davie, who had been looking very solemn and thoughtful for ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... recourse to this device. 'Pray, Sir, (said he,) whether do you reckon Derrick or Smart[604] the best poet?' Johnson at once felt himself roused; and answered, 'Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... being jealous of M. Gillenormand on account of his wife, a pretty and coquettish barberess. M. Gillenormand admired his own discernment in all things, and declared that he was extremely sagacious; here is one of his sayings: "I have, in truth, some penetration; I am able to say when a flea bites me, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... ocean winds, could he have been rapt into the uttermost quarters of the earth, how should he escape the ruin that he carried? We have heard of living men who have been fettered to the dead; the grievance, soberly considered, is no more than sentimental; the case is but a flea-bite to that of him who should be linked, like poor ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... with a steamer or two, which took travellers farther to the south, to Wadi Haifa and Khartoum. About the place itself there was little of interest; it was a one-horse show with a few Arabs, Bedouins and Sudanese, many flea-bitten mongrels and clouds of flies. But this island-studded expanse of water was the great Assuan Dam. The gates had been closed at this season for about a month, and the rising tide had just reached the floor of the beautiful Temple of Isis, which stood, half a mile away, ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... said the Professor. "This particular kind of bath is not adapted for a flea. Let us suppose," he continued, folding his table-napkin into a graceful festoon, "that this represents what is perhaps the necessity of this Age—the Active Tourist's Portable Bath. You may describe it briefly, if you like," looking at the ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... inconvenient, painful and annoying is another little pest called the chegoe. It looks exactly like a very small flea, and a stranger would take it for one. However, in about four and twenty hours he would have several broad hints that he had made a mistake in his ideas of the animal. It attacks different parts of the body, but chiefly the feet, betwixt the toe-nails and the ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
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