"Downy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Christmas," twittered Snow Bunting. "And you're going to give a Christmas party," chirped the Robin. "And you want us all to come!" said Downy Woodpecker. "Hurrah! Three cheers for ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... awoke, as was her custom,—when the very faintest hue of dawn streaked the horizon. A hen who has seen a hawk balancing his wings and cawing in mid-air over her downy family could not have awakened with her feathers, metaphorically speaking, in a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... we had better dispense with your company as soon as we have eaten a bite, and retire to it. On second thought, we will eat in it. Carnes, we will go to our downy couches at once and leave our substitutes in possession of the cabin. I trust, gentlemen, that things come out all right and that you are in ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... light o' heaven fa' on her bonnie brow, An' glitter on the honey-blabs upon her cherry mou'; I saw the lily moonbeams steal the redness o' the rose, An' sleep upon her downy cheek in beautiful repose. The moon rose high, the stream gaed by, but aye she smiled on me, An' what she wadna breathe in words she tauld ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... foot which walked along over the ground, and pressed the downy seed into the earth. When the foot was withdrawn, the earth fell, and filled the little ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... of the wood thrush sounded; the white crowned sparrow's sweet, wavering whistle rang from the spruce crested slopes; from the telephone poles down by the railroad station the king birds were loudly disputing with the indigo buntings for full possession of the wires; flickers and downy woodpeckers called loudly or gave vent to their morning enthusiasm by beating a lively tattoo upon the dead pine stubs; while the ringing reveille of the cardinal must have awakened the sleepiest denizen of ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... years since it was laid, In her own gentle way, On tangled curls of brown and jet Above the downy coverlet 'Neath ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... be found in greatest profusion; what change occurs in the structure of the flowers as they grow older; how long a time usually elapses between the first appearance of the flowers and this change; what the white, downy part of the flower constitutes; what eventually ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... brings a fair share of the straw and mortar for the building of the nest and the midges for the young brood? No, he does nothing; perhaps alleging the excuse of his relative weakness. But this is a poor excuse; for to cut out little circles from a leaf, to rake a little cotton from a downy plant, or to gather a little mortar from a muddy spot, would hardly be a task beyond his powers. He might very well collaborate, at least as labourer; he could at least gather together the materials for the more intelligent mother to place in position. The true ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... appeared, he determined to escape. But how? This question had not yet presented itself. Escape from the jail!—from death!—himself,—more than himself, his wife! Stone walls lost their appalling firmness, and were no more than downy masses, which ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... Downy impatiently, 'it's no good your denying that you were in the mine on Sunday night. You came home covered with slurry, marked with blood, and very frightened. Your mother admits that, and we have found your footprints ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... morning, just at dawn, there was a heavy snow squall for an hour. It left about four inches of downy snow upon the hard-packed and slippery surface ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... to sleep at night, and on the approach of rain. These plants are used in Europe to give an acid flavor to soup." Here also flourishes the Linnea Borealis, roseate bells, hanging like twins from one stalk, downy and aromatic all round. In the middle of June, the Ragwort, a composite flower with yellow heads, and about one-half to two feet high, abounds in wet places by the side of running streams. Also, the Anemone, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... The thick downy clothing of some vegetables seems designed to protect them from the injuries of cold, like the wool of animals. Those bodies, which are bad conductors of electricity, are also bad conductors of heat, as glass, wax, air. Hence either of the two former of these may ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... little pattering feet were resting. Three rosy faces pressed the downy pillow, and Susie's evening task ...
— Edna's Sacrifice and Other Stories - Edna's Sacrifice; Who Was the Thief?; The Ghost; The Two Brothers; and What He Left • Frances Henshaw Baden
... respectable-looking coat of my own—a padded gray coat, of a most comfortable warmth, and which buttoned straight up from the knee to the neck. I thought Turkey would appreciate the favor, and abate his rashness and obstreperousness of afternoons. But no; I verily believe that buttoning himself up in so downy and blanket-like a coat had a pernicious effect upon him—upon the same principle that too much oats are bad for horses. In fact, precisely as a rash, restive horse is said to feel his oats, so Turkey felt his coat. It made him insolent. ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... at once by the classic shape of his head and bright curly hair,—the man whom he had seen that very day on the Pincio,—Aubrey Leigh. With a jealous tightening at his heart, Fontenelle saw that Leigh held the soft plume of downy feathers which served Sylvie for a fan, and that he was lightly waving it to and fro as he talked to her in the musical, all-potent voice which had charmed thousands, and would surely not be without its fascination for ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... being in no danger of losing their share; though even among these tiny things there were contentions for a single grain, which perhaps three or four would strive after. As Mabel stood watching and admiring the little downy creatures, the desire came strongly over her, as it had done before, to take one up ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... the field Old Biddy Brown has four wee chickens, little soft downy balls, scarcely bigger than the eggs they came from just ...
— The Nursery, Volume 17, No. 101, May, 1875 • Various
... flakes eddying soundlessly earthward in an atmosphere uncannily still. For two days and a night this ballet of the snowflakes continued, until valley and slope and the high ridges were two feet deep in the downy white. ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... like diamond pendants from roof and balcony, and still the snow-flakes like downy feathers were falling lazily, as if they knew not whether to pause, or ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... along a field of snow, 15 Whose outline is as fair as marble clothed In light of some sublimest mind, decay? Nor putrefaction's breath Leave aught of this pure spectacle But loathsomeness and ruin?— 20 Spare aught but a dark theme, On which the lightest heart might moralize? Or is it but that downy-winged slumbers Have charmed their nurse coy Silence near her lids To watch their own repose? 25 Will they, when morning's beam Flows through those wells of light, Seek far from noise and day some western cave, Where woods and streams with soft and pausing winds A lulling murmur weave?— 30 Ianthe ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... gorgeous of all flowering trees, as distinguished from creepers, is the sea-loving pohutu kawa. When the wind is tossing its branches the contrast is startling between its blood-red flowers and the dark upper side and white, downy ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... stock of winter provisions by a free use of my gun. The eider ducks, or dunter geese, as we call them in Orkney, are always plentiful in the winter time, and valuable not only for their flesh, but also for their rich downy feathers, and I managed to procure a good number of these. Over at the fresh-water loch of Harray, too, several teals and sheldrakes were taken. And then, when my sport was over, I hung up my gun in its place in the warm byre, believing that I was ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... tiny toes. To find your breathing-place, And touch the downy horn that grows Each ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... ears. Had they been still in the Seaton, one or other of the travelling ripples of talk must have found them; but Duncan had come and gone between his cottage and Malcolm's bedside, without a single downy feather from the still widening flap of the wings of Fame ever dropping on him; and the only persons who visited Malcolm besides were the Doctor—too discreet in his office to mix himself up with gossip; Mr Graham, to whom nobody, except it had been Miss ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... about on the deck, under an awning rigged to give us some shade, when Peter started up, exclaiming, "There comes the breeze." Some downy feathers, fastened by a silk thread to the after backstay, had, he thought, moved for a moment though the vane quickly dropped again. We were speedily on foot, but the first glance at the glowing, tranquil ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston
... water, or figures. But as soon as you have drawn trees carefully a little while, you will be impressed, and impressed more strongly the better you draw them, with the idea of their softness of surface. A distant tree is not a flat and even piece of color, but a more or less globular mass of a downy or bloomy texture, partly passing into a misty vagueness. I find, practically, this lovely softness of far-away trees the most difficult of all characters to reach, because it cannot be got by mere scratching or roughening the surface, but is always associated with such delicate ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... bluebird, robin, cherry-bird, king-bird, and many more, came with haste and built their nests and warbled in its boughs, and so became orchard-birds, and multiplied more than ever. It was an era in the history of their race. The downy woodpecker found such a savory morsel under its bark, that he perforated it in a ring quite round the tree before he left it,—a thing which he had never done before, to my knowledge. It did not take the partridge long to find ...
— Wild Apples • Henry David Thoreau
... fifteen-year: my son And that dead woman were too strong for me: They turned me false to my nature; broke me in Like a flea in harness, that draws a nutshell-coach. Till then I'd jumped, and bit, at my own sweet will. Oh! amn't I the wiseacre, the downy owl, Fancying myself as knowing as a signpost? And yet, there's always some new twist to learn. Life's an old thimblerigger; and, it seems, Can still get on the silly side of me, Can still bamboozle me with his hanky-panky: He always kens a ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... find," says Solomon Don Dunce, "Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet. Through all the flimsy things we see at once As easily as through a Naples bonnet— Trash of all trash! how can a lady don it? 5 Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff, Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff Twirls into trunk-paper the while you con it." And, veritably, Sol is right enough. The general tuckermanities are arrant 10 Bubbles, ephemeral and so transparent; But this is, ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... of wonders; no place so beautiful; and wondering how even the land of the kara ghuz kiz, the material paradise of the Mohammedans, can possibly be more lovely. The contemplative young man is tall and slender, has large, dreamy, black eyes, a downy upper lip, a melancholy cast of countenance, and wears a long print wrapper of neat dotted pattern, gathered at the waist with a ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... go and see Curly, and spent a pleasant afternoon with him, recalling the old times, and the old stories, and the old companions; for the youth with the downy chin has a past as ancient as that of the man with the gray beard. And Curly told him the story of his encounter with young Bruce on the bank of the Wan Water. And over and over again Annie's name came up, but Curly ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... I first began To be that curious creature—man, To travel thro' this life's short span, By fate's decree, Till ah fulfill great Nature's plan, An' cease ta be. When worn wi' labour, or wi' pain, Hah of'en ah am glad an' fain To seek thi downy rest again. Yet heaves mi' breast For wretches in the pelting ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... the first month of that genial season, when the young grass covers the downy hills with verdure, and the glowing branches of the trees bud with an infant foliage, the sun smiles in the heavens, and the pellucid streams reflect his glorious rays, the day was fixed by Sir Robert Somerset, and approved by the beloved objects of his then peculiar solicitude, in ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... with terror. Oh, now he would clasp those big white arms round her, which were all covered with downy hairs, those arms into which her mother had delivered her whilst she was still young and harmless, and had only thought of the dear saints, and had felt no desire for any man. Now she was no longer young and harmless, ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... with at least a certain sense of physical satisfaction. The grass was soft and warm, scented with the aromatic odours of wild peppermint, and it yielded like a downy cushion beneath her limbs. Still, she was just a little uneasy in mind, for she fancied she had seen a sudden sign of tension in the man's face when he had for a moment held her on the edge of the waggon. Unobtrusively she flashed a glance at him, and was reassured. He was ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... bird free born to fly Aloof on two wee, downy wings, My canopy would be the sky When rosy morn its ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... most exquisite pattern; curtains of richest lace; lambrequins of costly texture; richly-embroidered and velvet-covered sleepy-hollows and lounging chairs; nothing stiff, nothing that did not betoken abandonment to ease and pleasure; downy cushions; rarest pictures; loveliest statuettes; finest bronzes; delicate vases; magnificent, full length mirrors, a bookcase, itself a rare work of art, containing the best works of the best authors, all in the richest of bindings—nothing here that the ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... dandelion, Downy, yellow face, Peeping up among the grass With such gentle grace; Minding not the April wind Blowing rude and cold; Brave little dandelion, ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... You seemed to behold him in pure white raiment, ready to appear before his heavenly judge. Obrazetz was the chief of the party in years, in grave majestic dignity, and patriarchal air. Crossing his arms upon his staff, he covered them with his beard, downy as the soft fleece of a lamb; the glow of health, deepened by the cup of strong mead, blushed through the snow-white hair with which his cheeks were thickly clothed; he listened with singular attention and delight to the story-teller. This pleasure was painted on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... delicious melody, sweet and clear and strong, overflowing all bounds, then suddenly he would soar higher again and again, ever higher and higher, soaring and singing until lost to sight even on perfectly clear days, and oftentimes in cloudy weather "far in the downy cloud," ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... easiest in whom to make not merely a provisional, but a final, diagnosis. They cannot yet talk with their tongues and their lips, but they speak a living language in every line, every curve, every tint of their tiny, translucent bodies, from their little pink toes to the soft spot on the top of their downy heads. Not only have they all the muscle-signs about the face-dial, of pain or of comfort, but, also, these are absolutely uncomplicated by any cross-currents of what their elders ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... "On downy bed the world seeks rest; Sleep flies the guilty eye; But he who leans on the Father's breast, May sleep when ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... the Chicadees in their foraging excursions, we often see two Speckled Woodpeckers, differing apparently only in size, each having a sort of red crest. The smaller of the two (Picus pubescens) is the Downy Woodpecker. The birds of this species are called "Sap-Suckers," from their habit of making perforations in the sound branches of trees through the bark without penetrating the wood, as if they designed only to obtain the sap. These ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... looked up. It was eleven of the clock. "I must have fallen asleep," I thought, and threw off the folds of a shawl which I surely left on the sofa over there when I seated myself in this chair. My head was upon a pillow, downy and white, instead of the green vale of chair in which I had laid it down. I sprang up. There was little of lamp-light in the room. I saw something that looked marvellously like somebody, near the sofa. It was Katie, my good little friend Katie. She was sitting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... the threshold of the room with something in her arms—something almost indistinguishable amid the downy, fleecy froth of whiteness ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... 5 to 7 inches broad, fleshy, compact, convex, saucer-shaped, the margin for a long time sloping downward, with short, downy hairs (pubescent), dry, zoneless. Stem 2 to 3 inches long, 1 to 1 1/2 inch thick, stout, solid, equal, covered with innate, thin pubescence. Gills arcuate, adnato-decurrent, rather thick, acute at the edge, somewhat distant, rather broad, connected by branches, pallid, ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... the same meaning in the following words. They are, however, too simple to need defining; in fact, there are no simpler words on which to base definitions: airy, balky, bony, briny, chunky, downy, dusty, healthy, hearty, miry, musty, rusty, scaly, ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... the large space forming the palace yard, prepared as a tilting-ground, where the new-made knights were to prove their skill. The storm had given place to a soft breezy morning, the cool freshness of which appearing peculiarly grateful from the oppressiveness of the night; light downy clouds sailed over the blue expanse of heaven, tempering without clouding the brilliant rays of the sun. Every face was clothed with smiles, and the loud shouts which hailed the youthful candidates for knighthood, as they severally entered, ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... too dirty." He put out a hand, and softly touched her dress. "Is it pink?" he asked, "or does it only look so in this light? It feels awfully downy ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... she is powerless now; and I suppose the next will be like unto her. Raguet would never look at any thing feminine that hadn't white eyes and pink hair (yellow, I mean, of course)—his style, you know, being dark and stern, he likes the downy, waxy kind. All this is shockingly egotistical; but the question is, who that has a spark of individuality is otherwise? Good-night, again, and may all sweet dreams attend you; for my part, I never dream, being past the dreaming age, and realities fortunately disappear with ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... the glad joyous spring, returned. The leaf-buds, wrapped within their gummy and downy cases, began to unfold; the dark green pines, spruce, and balsams began to shoot out fresh spiny leaves, like tassels, from the ends of every bough, giving out the most refreshing fragrance; the crimson buds ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... witches [63] dance at the midnight hour. She leaped the brook and she swam the river; Her course through the forest Wiwst wist By the star that gleamed through the glimmering mist That fell from the dim moon's downy quiver. In her heart she spoke to her spirit-mother: "Look down from your teepee, O starry spirit. The cry of Wiwst, O mother, hear it; And touch the heart of my cruel father. He hearkened not to a virgin's words; He listened not to a daughter's wail. O give me the wings of the thunder-birds, ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... when the father's fond inquiry came, Cautious, she still concealed his birth and name, And feign'd a daughter born, the evil fraught With misery to avert—but vain the thought; Not many years had passed, with downy flight, Ere he, Tahmineh's wonder and delight, With glistening eye, and youthful ardour warm, Filled her foreboding bosom with alarm. "O now relieve my heart!" he said, "declare, From whom I sprang and breathe the vital air. Since, from ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... downy plumes, nor under shade Of canopy reposing, Fame is won: Without which, whosoe'er consumes his days, Leaveth such vestige of himself on earth As smoke in air, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... towards him always the sunniest aspects and gentlest semblances of your character. If he is capricious, humor him; if suspicious, act with all promptness in removing suspicion to the extent of your power. Make soft the links of the chain that binds you together, with downy coverings. Truth, honor, duty, religion, ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... after he had capered stark naked, for a love penance, among the rocks in the Sierra Morena, in humble imitation of his favourite hero, Amadis de Gaul. You look as if you had not slept at all last night, and had been lying upon hard sticks, rods, or clubs, instead of in a soft, downy bed, such as were given to the rest of us in the fine chateau yonder. Tell us, I pray you, did not Morpheus once visit ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... as you see, and I will report it to the other lovely Maria, and 'twill be pretty to see the rapiers flash between the two. 'Tis not only the men carry dress swords, child. But I thought Miss Maria a downy nestling, with never a thought of repartee, till now. 'Tis born in us, child. It begins with our first word and is our last ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... there the sea rocked in drowsy rest; ships and clumsy, broad-nosed prams ploughed graves in its bluish surface, and scattered rays to the right and left, and glided on, whilst the smoke rolled up in downy masses from the chimney-stacks, and the stroke of the engine pistons pierced the clammy air with a dull sound. There was no sun and no wind; the trees behind me were almost wet, and the seat upon which I sat was cold ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... was Doctor Abbot. Aunt Margaret's interest was not sufficient to drag her from her downy couch thus early, but, with truly womanly logic, she saw no reason why the doctor should not glean for her the information she required. Therefore the doctor rose and shivered under the lightness of his summer apparel in the ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... upon the marge We found ourselves, and there, behold, In hosts the lilies, white and large, Lay close, with hearts of downy gold! ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... the steaming rain-washed slopes, Now satisfied with sunshine, and behold Those lustrous clouds, as glorious as our hopes, Softened with feathery fleece of downy gold, In all fantastic, huddled shapes uprolled, Floating like dreams, and melting silently, In the blue upper regions of ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... Can any of you tell us what is honour? He drinks his wine, he feeds on beeves and capons; His table groans beneath a load of meats; His hounds, his hawks, are fed like Christian men! He sleeps in a downy couch, o'erhung with purple; And these, all these are honourable doings! He talks of liberty! Is it, then, liberty to be cooped up Within these prison walls, to starve from want, That we may have the liberty—mark it, my friends!— The wondrous liberty to call him Governor? ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... nothing to be seen on the nest-bog. I feared that something had heard their whistling and put an untimely end to the young Hukweems while mother bird was away. But when she came back, after a more fearful survey than usual of the old bark canoe, two downy little fellows came bobbing to meet her out of the grass, where she had hidden them and told them to stay ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... the Oregon or downy squirrel, is found in the Territory from which it takes its name, and also northward in British America. In size it resembles the chipmuck, and its color is light red above, pure white beneath, and silver grey ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... fellow they had noticed before, the funny little fellow with a longer bill than the rest, and the odd-looking feet. His soft downy back was turning black. And he was starting for that pretty water shining in ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... smooth, smoothen^; plane; file; mow, shave; level, roll; macadamize; polish, burnish, calender^, glaze; iron, hot-press, mangle; lubricate &c (oil) 332. Adj. smooth; polished &c v.; leiodermatous^, slick, velutinous^; even; level &c 213; plane &c (flat) 251; sleek, glossy; silken, silky; lanate^, downy, velvety; glabrous, slippery, glassy, lubricous, oily, soft, unwrinkled^; smooth as glass, smooth as ice, smooth as monumental alabaster, smooth as velvet, smooth as oil; slippery as an eel; woolly &c (feathery) 256. Phr. smooth as silk; slippery as coonshit on a pump handle; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... log huts and hasty, mud-built houses in the Western States of America, life, its daily habits, its passing accommodations, seemed to assume an importance, under these aspects, which it had not worn before; those deep downy beds, those antique chairs, the heavy carpet, the tester and curtains, the stateliness of the old room,—they had a charm as compared with the thin preparation of a forester's bedchamber, such as Redclyffe had chiefly known them, in the ruder parts ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his words and the others halted with me. We were in a deep glen by this time; and all the surrounding woodland was shut from our sight. Great trees spread their branches like a canopy above us; the grass was soft and downy to the feet; the bewitching violet light gave unnatural yet wonderful colours to the flowery bushes about us. No fairy glen could have showed a heart more wonderful; and yet, I say, we four stood on the borders of it, with white faces and blinking ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... and in the very immovability of his limbs personified the utmost freedom of movement. His eyes beamed with clear decision; his velvet brows curved in a bold arch; his sunburnt cheeks glowed with all the ardour of youthful fire; and his downy ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... No, Mr. Trewillian, I didn't tell him nothing. I don't often tell folks much till the time comes. But I thought it better, and I did have a word or two with the gent,—just a word or two. He's not so very downy, isn't the Colonel;—for one that's been at it so long, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... in diameter, with a slight depression on the upper surface, which was everywhere thinly coated with sheep's wool and the fine white silky hair of some animal. The nest is usually a shapeless mass of downy fur, cattle-hair, and even feathers and wool, but when on a branch is strengthened exteriorly with moss. Even when in holes, they sometimes round the nest into a more or less regular though shallow cup, and use a good deal of ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... joy, but then he glanced about and his joy died out like a spark which is stepped upon. Almost instantly an earthen, deathly blue, without first changing into pallor, showed through the color of his cheeks. He clutched his downy hair, tore their roots painfully with his fingers, whose tips had turned white. But the joy of life and spring was stronger, and a few minutes later his frank young face was again yearning toward the spring sky. The young, pale girl, known only by the name of Musya, was also looking in the same ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... in which a white man would be miserable. They are satisfied and content with food, on which the better portion of the white race can hardly subsist. Nor would soft beds and fine houses conduce to their comfort. There are many of them, who, if they were provided with downy beds, would prefer to repose on the hearth or the floor. They are by nature a happier people than the Anglo-Saxon race, and of course, less will suffice for their happiness and comfort. All that I contend for is, that the health, ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... along the up-and-downy piece of road below Poplarton plantations, Mr. Jogglebury keeping a sharp eye upon the underwood for sticks. After passing these, they commenced the gradual ascent of Roundington Hill, when a sudden sweep of the road brought them in view of the panorama ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... saddened the eye; no stunted, ruined nursling of Nature yet spoke unsuccess; no canker-bitten bud marked the cold finger of failure; for in that first rush of life all the earthborn host had set forth, if not equal, at least together. The primroses twinkled true on downy coral stems and the stars of anemone, celandine, and daisy opened perfect. Countless consummate, lustrous things were leaping, mingling, and uncurling, aloft and below, in the mazes of the wood, at the margins of the water. Verdant spears and blades expanded; fair fans opened and tendrils ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... Lottie. "I'm not fit to counsel a downy chicken. I wish you didn't take this matter so to heart You look as if ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... nine lives, and Tabby's used to being chucked over the wall. I've done it several times, and it seems to agree with her, for she comes back to kill my chicks as bold as brass. See that!" and the old gentleman held up a downy dead chicken, as proof of ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... hair, just then; and a close observer might often have detected them in the act of furtively feeling their upper lips with anxious forefinger in the vain hope of discovering the appearance—if ever so slight—of a downy growth thereupon. For they, as well as he, were making sheep's eyes at those wonderful visions in golden locks and jetty locks, with brown eyes and blue eyes, with fluttering ribbons and snowy pinafores, known as "Miss ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... winged; six wings he wore to shade His lineaments divine; the pair that clad Each shoulder broad came mantling o'er his breast, With regal ornament; the middle pair Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round Skirted his loins and thighs with downy gold And colours dipped in Heav'n; the third his feet Shadowed from either heel with feathered mail, Sky-tinctured grain. Like Maia's son he stood And shook his plumes, that Heavenly fragrance filled The ...
— The Spirit of Christmas • Henry Van Dyke
... scarcely hearing and straightway forgetting, goes about his affairs; but, lying awake at night in the silence of his chamber, recalls the unheeded words and perceives their full significance. My sojourn with this people—angelic women and mild-eyed men with downy, unrazored lips, so mild in manner yet in their arts "laying broad bases for eternity"—above all the invalid hours spent daily in the Mother's Room, had taught me how unlovely a creature I had been. It would have been strange indeed ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... golden-faced, downy-headed boy ... almost an albino.... I had seen him run ... he ran low to the ground, in flashes, like ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... Jefferson, it glittered—I saw it glitter!" Suddenly Rebecca Mary stooped and gathered Thomas Jefferson into her arms. She held him with a passionate clasp against her flat little calico breast. He was HERS. He was all the intimate friend she had ever had. He had been her little downy baby and slept in her hand. She had fed him and watched him grow and been proud of him. He ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... his elbows all that day, Veterans of the Peninsula, Sunburnt and bearded, charged away; And striplings, downy of lip and chin,— Clerks that the Home Guard mustered in,— Glanced, as they passed, at the hat he wore, Then at the rifle his right hand bore, And hailed him, from out their youthful lore, With ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... perfect contrast to his interrogator, who had just designated him by the name of Aramis. He was a stout man, of about two- or three-and-twenty, with an open, ingenuous countenance, a black, mild eye, and cheeks rosy and downy as an autumn peach. His delicate mustache marked a perfectly straight line upon his upper lip; he appeared to dread to lower his hands lest their veins should swell, and he pinched the tips of his ears from time to time to preserve their delicate pink transparency. Habitually he spoke ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to have a nearer view, Closer and closer still, he drew, And hears her softly purring; "Ah me!" he cries, "what dulcet note, What music from that downy throat; I'm sure she is ...
— Surprising Stories about the Mouse and Her Sons, and the Funny Pigs. - With Laughable Colored Engravings • Unknown
... must have been astonished that night at the shouts of the revelers, as they hurried past them, and the birds must have taken their sleepy heads from under their downy wings, and wondered if the morning had come some ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... downy sleep, death's counterfeit, And look on death itself!—up, up, and see The ...
— Abraham Lincoln. - An Horatian Ode. • Richard Henry Stoddard
... shall not in detail describe, but I will refer you to the interesting and complete work of Dr. Bowman, On the Structure of the Cotton Fibre. Suffice it to say that in certain plants and trees the seeds or fruit are surrounded, in the pods in which they develop, with a downy substance, and that the cotton shrub belongs to this class of plants. A fibre picked out from the mass of the downy substance referred to, and examined under the microscope, is found to be a spirally twisted band; or better, an irregular, ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... and perfecting of that green until the whole earth is hidden away; then the soft, juicy look of the young blades nodding and waving at each other in the wind, that seems almost tender of them, and at last the fleecy, downy ears all ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... large yellow wild rose, only scentless. It is not a rose at all, I may remark. The ground, where there is any basin made by the rocks, grows a great sedum, with a grand head of whity-pink flower, also a tall herb, with soft downy leaves silver grey in colour, and having a very pleasant aromatic scent, and here and there patches of good honest parsley. Bright blue, flannelly-looking flowers stud the grass in sheltered places and a very pretty large green orchid is plentiful. Above ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... all; and the late rain that had washed them seemed to have added to the fragrance and brilliancy. Millions of butterflies flew over them, or rested in their soft cups, not less brilliant than the flowers themselves. Some of these were of vast dimensions, their downy wings speckled and striped with varied and gorgeous tints. There were other insects of gay colours and glancing wings. The giant spider-fly flew around, now poised on whirring wing, and now darting off like a thread of lightning to some other part of the boundless garden. There were ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... traveller in this country sleeps are various and strange. Sometimes he reposes on a pile of branches of the pine-tree; sometimes on soft downy moss; occasionally on a pebbly beach or a flat rock; and not unfrequently on rough gravel and sand. Of these the moss bed is the most agreeable, and the ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... yet, although it seems ten years agone, since I blew the downy globe to learn the time of day, or set beneath my chin the veinings of the varnished buttercup, or fired the fox-glove cannonade, or made a captive of myself with dandelion fetters; for then I had not very much to trouble me in earnest, but went about, romancing gravely, playing ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... provide their seed with downy wings, by which the wind carries them afar to other fields. Other seeds have a faculty of tumbling and rolling along the ground to great distances, owing to their peculiar shape and formation. The maple ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... advanced a few steps, and fell on her knees at her richly covered bed. Amid furniture, finished in yellow damask, on a downy bed, covered with cambric and lace, she raised her clasped hands, and said, ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... dotted the creeping vine, half transparent in their tempting lusciousness; the red cherries seemed, in the distance, like the burning brilliancy of a summer sunset struggling through the branches and tangled leaves that intervened; and the downy peach peered provokingly from amongst the sheltering green, where, all the summer long, it had stolen the first blush of saffron-vested Aurora, when seraph hands unbar the gates of morning, and the last ray of golden light that paused at the flame-wrought portals ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... his approaching stupor, Hal Hastings allowed himself to be coaxed to stretch himself at full length in the downy berth. ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... back to the Fourth of July. When Benton returned with the French clothes Fitzhugh Williams rose from his downy couch and bathed in cold water. He was even an eager bather in France, rejoicing in the feeling of superiority and stoicism which accompanied the pang and pain of it. But in England, where everybody bathed—or ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... strong and spreading. The buds, conspicuous for their size, are protected by a coat of a glutinous substance, which is impervious to water; in spring this melts, and the bud-scales are then cast off. The leaves are composed of seven radiating leaflets (long-wedge-shaped); when young they are downy and drooping. From the early date of its leafing year by year, a horse-chestnut in the Tuileries is known as the "Marronnier du 20 mars." The flowers of the horse-chestnut, which are white dashed with red ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... life has retouched her cheeks with a just-sufficient stain of red roses; her lips are scarlet, as if she had been mincing fresh-blown bloom of pomegranates; her eyes are clear as a crooning baby's; her neck is downy—round as a white dove's; in her movements afoot, she reminds me of the swaying of a lily-stalk brushed softly by butterflies and humming-birds, attracted to its open cup of paradisean wax. Oh, if I could but tell her ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... counted among the interminable nights which have dragged their slow length across the couch of sleeplessness. To Sheila, lying in the four-poster—a downy couch, indeed, for a quiet conscience—the space of time after she blew out her lamp and until the dawn passed like the sluggish coils of some Midgard ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... and the storm in his eyes and the curiously downy back of his neck where the last of ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... lay their eggs on the bare rocks, and think these quite soft enough for the young gull babies. But they all agreed that this would never do for the little stranger. So they pulled the downy feathers from their breasts till they had a great pile; and of this they made the softest bed in which they laid the baby. ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... had been delightful, this was so thrilling Peggy wanted to dance and shout with joy—for her own dearly beloved Henrietta Cox was sitting on a dozen eggs, and one day some downy, fluffy chickens were hatched out. Yes, actually, these tiny creatures—living, moving, breathing creatures, all of them Peggy's very own—were chipping their shells, and making their entrance into this wonderful world. Alice took the chickens more ...
— Peggy in Her Blue Frock • Eliza Orne White
... like the world, his ready visit pays, Where fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes; Swift on his downy pinion flies from woe, And lights on ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... foretold, she was made a wife under the stars, Senhouse came back to her bedside and put a little flower into her hand. It woke her out of her dreams; glozed and dewy from them she looked at it, and smiled at him through it. In grey- green leafage, dewy and downy, lay a little blossom of delicate pink, chalice-shaped, with a lip of flushed white. Watching him, she laid it to her lips. "My flower, our flower," she said, and watching him still put it deep within her bosom. "My dear one, we have ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... accompanied by a "bristling up," or "creepy" feeling along the spine. The organs registering the presence of a strange or alien creature consist of certain delicate nerves of the surface of the skin, generally connected with the roots of the downy hair of the body—or resting where the hair roots would naturally be, in the case of a hairless skin. These seem to report directly to the solar-plexus, which then acts quickly by reflex action on the other parts of the body, ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... neighbor at the left sat with his back squarely to the door. Over his shoulder, Willa could see his cards as he picked them up; an ace, king, ten, jack, and another king. He refused to open, but the downy-mustached boy on his left, whose voice Willa had first heard, performed that service. The other two strangers stayed out, Vernon trailed and Willa eyed the slim, dark youth whose hand she could see ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... A downy or woolly substance, enclosed in the pod, or seed-vessel, of the cotton-plant. The commercial classification of cotton is determined—1, by cleanliness or freedom from sand, dry leaf, and other impurities; 2, by absence ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... dreamed many happy dreams over the little downy head, and planned a splendid future for the baby, as all mothers and grandmothers will do. But even their dreams never touched the golden reality, for they did not know that he was to be the grandfather of King David, that in this same little town of Bethlehem there was to be born ...
— The Babe in the Bulrushes • Amy Steedman
... he slipped the money into his pocket. 'Now, this was your pore dear auntie's business-room.' She opened a low door. 'Oh, I forgot about Mr. Sidney! There he is.' An enormous old man with rheumy red eyes that blinked under downy white eyebrows sat in an Empire chair, his cap in his hands. Rhoda withdrew sniffing. The man looked Midmore over in silence, then jerked a thumb towards the door. 'I reckon she told you who I be,' he began. ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... from the cliff as far As ever peasant pitched a bar!' 'Thanks, champion, thanks' the Maniac cried, And pressed her to Fitz-James's side. 'See the gray pennons I prepare, To seek my true love through the air! I will not lend that savage groom, To break his fall, one downy plume! No!—deep amid disjointed stones, The wolves shall batten on his bones, And then shall his detested plaid, By bush and brier in mid-air stayed, Wave forth a banner fail and free, Meet ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... unresponsive hand and mutter a broken sentence or two of gratitude and sympathy. But Jack scarcely grasped his meaning, and his answer sounded chillingly calm; so that the boy, wincing under the cold stare of the Captain and the seeming indifference of the prisoner, turned away with downy chin a-tremble and in his eyes the look of horrified awe which sometimes comes to a youth who has seen death hesitate just over his head, pass him by, and choose another. In the doorway he stopped and looked back bewildered. Jack had said that he loved life and would ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... to-day. Yesterday was a dotard. To-day is a sage: between them stands the night which brings wisdom, the night which gives light. I ought to go, I ought to do it, I promised I would—I am weak, I know. But how can I resist the downy creases of my bed? My feet feel flaccid, I think I must be sick, I am too happy just here. I long to see the ethereal horizon of my dreams again, those women without claws, those winged beings and their obliging ways. In short, I have found the grain of salt to put upon ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Lord would come and meet, My soul would stretch her wings in haste. Fly fearless through death's iron gate, Nor feel the terrors as she passed. Jesus can make a dying bed Feel soft as downy pillows are, While on His breast I lean my head And breathe my life ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... three species are found, but generally four different kinds of birds make up the small company that road the woods together. These four are the white-breasted nuthatch, tufted titmouse, downy woodpecker, and the merry little chickadee. What a happy, contented quartet ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... amber-coloured eatable gum), formed groves and thickets within it. A Capparis, a small stunted tree, was in fruit: this fruit is about one inch long and three-quarters of an inch broad, pear-shaped and smooth, with some irregular prominent lines. Capparis Mitchelii has a downy fruit, and is common in the scrubs. A small trailing Capparis, also with oblong eatable fruit, was first observed on a hill near Ruined Castle Creek, in lat. 25 degrees 10 minutes: we met with it frequently afterwards. We were encamped in the shade of a fine Erythrina; and the Corypha-palm, ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... paddling across the inlet. Three savages were in one, six in the other, ten in the third. They came slowly over the water, singing some song of welcome, beating time with their paddles, {186} scattering downy white feathers on the air, at intervals standing up to harangue a welcome to the newcomers. Soon thirty canoes were around the ships with some ten warriors in each. Still they came, shoals of them, like fish, with savages almost naked, the harbor smooth as glass, the grand tyee, ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut |
