"Plumage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the long, white tables were laid beneath the apple boughs. And as they moved, a bluebird, swinging far above them in the sunlight, caroled forth a joyous marriage hymn. And down below, the little blue silk gown, of the same shade as his dazzling plumage, covered ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... that remained were cousins, and all were of the same brilliant plumage and in size about as large as eagles. When Trot questioned them she found they were quite young, having only abandoned their nests a few weeks before. They were strong young birds, with clear, brave eyes, and the little girl decided they were the most beautiful of all the feathered ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... cockatoos and the sombre, nocturnal, solitary owls. Yet the New Zealand owl-parrot is, to put it plainly, a lory which has assumed all the outer appearance and habits of an owl. A lurker in the twilight or under the shades of night, burrowing for its nest in holes in the ground, it has dingy brown plumage like the owls, with an undertone of green to bespeak its parrot origin: while its face is entirely made up of two great disks, surrounding the eyes, which succeed in giving it a most marked and ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... "A good thing the old fellow wasn't there to see," observed Ben Zoof; "he would have screamed like a peacock. What a misfortune it is," he added, speaking to himself, "to have a peacock's voice, without its plumage!" ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... number of six or eight. The young have quite the look of the young of the dove in many respects. When nearly grown they are covered with long blue pin-feathers as long as darning needles, without a bit of plumage on them. They part on the back and hang down on each side by their own weight. With its curious feathers and misshapen body the young bird is anything but handsome. They never open their mouths when approached, as many young birds do, but sit perfectly still, hardly ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... now and then, some straggling broken-winged thinker has cast an owl's glance into this obscure region, the most have soared over it altogether heedless; regarding Clothes as a property, not an accident, as quite natural and spontaneous, like the leaves of trees, like the plumage of birds. In all speculations they have tacitly figured man as a Clothed Animal; whereas he is by nature a Naked Animal; and only in certain circumstances, by purpose and device, masks himself in Clothes. Shakespeare ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... before us on the public pillory. Many a man might read this and assent to it, who cages in his own bosom a carrion-bird that he never knows for what it is, because there are points of difference in its plumage from that of the bird he calls ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... supposed it was the owner of my borrowed plumage come to claim her own, angry perhaps because I had not returned it to her. I wondered whether she would scratch my eyes out because I had lost the cap—whether I could find it if I went to look with a light. None too eagerly I descended ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... beginning from dowager lady Chia and those who enjoyed any official status, appeared in full gala dress, according to their respective ranks. In the garden, the curtains were, by this time, flapping like dragons, the portieres flying about like phoenixes with variegated plumage. Gold and silver glistened with splendour. Pearls and precious gems shed out their brilliant lustre. The tripod censers burnt the Pai-ho incense. In the vases were placed evergreens. Silence and stillness prevailed, and not a man ventured so ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... still the weak control; Be Man the wit and tyrant of the whole: 50 Nature that tyrant checks; he only knows, And helps, another creature's wants and woes. Say, will the falcon, stooping from above, Smit with her varying plumage, spare the dove? Admires the jay the insect's gilded wings? Or hears the hawk when Philomela sings? Man cares for all: to birds he gives his woods, To beasts his pastures, and to fish his floods; ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... boyish idea that quick reconciliation would perhaps throw her into his arms. But now it seemed to him that an age had passed since those days. His love had certainly not faded. There had never been a moment when that had been on the wing. But now the azure plumage of his love had become grey as the wings of a dove, and the gorgeousness of his dreams had sobered into hopes and fears which were a constant burden to his heart. There was time enough, still time enough for happiness if she would yield;—and ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... and throughout life the traces of this early community of sex remain. The hen fowl retains in a rudimentary form the spurs which are so large and formidable in her lord, and sometimes she develops a capacity to crow, or puts on male plumage. Among mammals the male possesses useless nipples, which occasionally even develop into breasts, and the female possesses a clitoris, which is merely a rudimentary penis, and may also develop. The sexually inverted person does not usually possess any gross exaggeration of these ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... to have it done to him. And I do believe they would eat from her hand things unnatural to them, lest she should be grieved and hurt by not knowing what to do for them. One of them was a noble bird, such as I never had seen before, of very fine bright plumage, and larger than a missel-thrush. He was the hardest of all to please: and yet he tried to do his best. I have heard since then, from a man who knows all about birds, and beasts, and fishes, that he must have been a Norwegian bird, called in this country a Roller, who never ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... gardening; but the elaborately arranged paths, beds, and parterres, with their white statues and fountains, lost their effectiveness closed in as they were by high walls of vine-covered brick. It was rumored that once a stately peacock had here once flaunted his gorgeous plumage, giving his name to the inn itself—but this legend rested ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... his head. "No native intelligence on a hunting world, Gentlehomo. That is assured before the planet is listed for a safari. However, a bird or flying thing, perhaps with metallic plumage or scales to catch the sunlight, might under the right circumstances seem a flash of light. That has ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... SNOW-BIRD. The Larus eburneus of Arctic seas. It has a yellowish beak, jet black legs, and plumage ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Assyrian monuments is an oxide of copper, sometimes containing also a trace of lead. Besides occurring in combination with red in the cases already mentioned, it was employed to color the foliage of trees, the plumage of birds, the heads of arrows, and sometimes ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... traveller depends. It is as a primeval forest in the hour before the dawn. When the sun of France penetrates pacifically to all its hidden places, the forest will wake to a new life. Strange birds of bright plumage, called in Europe gens d'armes, will displace the storks upon the battlements of its ancient towns, the commis voyageur will appear where wild boar and hyaena now travel in comparative peace, the wild cat (felis Throgmortonensis) will ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... tropical plumage, and norland sweetness of song —was born in Cheapside, London, in 1591. His father, was an eminent goldsmith. Herrick was sent to Cambridge; and having entered into holy orders, and being patronised by the Earl of Exeter, he was, in 1629, presented by Charles I. to the vicarage of Dean Prior, in ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... to its landing-place by the shark god and the god of the winds. In darkness he entered the inner chamber of the temple. An unknown voice, speaking from the holy of holies, bade him send his people to the woods next day for plumage of birds, with which to decorate the statue, when he should get it, and thereby atone for the neglect and contempt of the gods that had done so much to bring him ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... (Anas boschas).—The mallard is splendid in plumage, and in shape is far more graceful than his domesticated brother. In early winter the wild ducks fly overhead in a wedge-shaped phalanx, and by and by they pair, and if disturbed start up with a sudden quack, quack from the copse-wood pond. Broods of downy wild ducks have been brought ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... from the wings of night, was sharp with the fragrance of heather and the sea. One fancied how it would surge through the dim aisles of cathedral-like forests, ruffling the plumage of drowsy birds, stirring the surface of some dark pool, where the trout still slept, and making sibilant music among ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... impatient to seize his prey, came immediately to the point from his country house, and sending for the nacodah of the proa, ordered him to land me and all my goods instantly. An invitation now came for me to go on shore and amuse myself with shooting, and look at some rare birds of beautiful plumage which the rajah would give me if I would accept of them; but knowing what were his intentions, and being well aware that I should be supported by all the Bugis' proas from Coti, I feigned sickness, and requested that the birds might be sent on board. Upon this Agi Bota, who could no longer restrain ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... he were entertaining a bird of brilliant tropical plumage in his cabin, as if it had flown thither from glowing southern lands and brought with it sensuous memories of color and fragrance, ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... more regretful dirges than when they sang of Tulan, the cradle of their race, where once it dwelt in peaceful indolent happiness, whose groves were filled with birds of sweet voices and gay plumage, whose generous soil brought forth spontaneously maize, cocoa, aromatic gums, and fragrant flowers. "Land of riches and plenty, where the gourds grow an arm's length across, where an ear of corn is a load for ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... not—for it is the record of the Church—I would ask, what is? and where shall we find the history of Christianity for the fifteen centuries before Luther's time? and where, to-day? Their predecessors plucked the plumage from the dying bird of mythology, as they, themselves, have robbed the liberal orchard of all its choicest fruits and palmed them off as of their own growth. Protestants would not, I dare say, now countenance the persecutions of the past, but yet, I would tell ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... since we find that characters consist often of weapons such as horns, antlers, and spurs, used in sexual combat, of copulatory or clasping organs such as the pads on a frog's forefeet, of ornamental plumage like the peacock's tail serving to charm the female, or of special pouches as in species of pipe-fish and frog for holding the eggs or young. Darwin attempted to explain sexual adaptation by sexual selection. The selective process in this case was supposed to be, not the survival of individuals ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... dexterity, represented an overgrown but very beautiful Parrot. He chattered with a great deal of spirit; and his shoulders, covered with green feathers, performed admirably the part of wings. He drew the attention of the Empress; a ring was formed; he was quite happy; fluttered his plumage; made fine speeches in Russ, French and tolerable English; the ladies were exceedingly diverted; everybody laughed except Prince Henri, who stood beside the Empress, and was so grave and so solemn, that ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... party of us were out shooting, and a red-leg was shot. The keeper, seeing the new and handsome-looking bird, was very proud of it, and though he had never yet tasted one, he loudly proclaimed, in his ignorance, that it would be as good in the eating as fine in the plumage. A day or two after we were out shooting again. Luncheon time came, and we lay stretched on the sward under a spreading tree, on a hot day in September, where the ladies joined us, bringing the refreshment. Cold partridges were among the fare, and instructions had been given beforehand ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... souls means having to bear with the weak, for the strong are able to go on by themselves in their progress towards what is good. Our holy Bishop explained this by two beautiful similitudes: "The plumage of birds is heavy, and yet without this load they could neither raise themselves from the ground nor hover in the air. The burden borne by holy souls is like a load of cinnamon, which, by its perfume invigorates him who carries ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... Kenelm, gravely, "that your change of dress betokens the neighbourhood of those pretty girls of whom you spoke in an earlier meeting. According to the Darwinian doctrine of selection, fine plumage goes far in deciding the preference of Jenny Wren and her sex, only we are told that fine-feathered birds are very seldom songsters as well. It is rather unfair to rivals when you unite ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a hemistich from 'Alcaeus.'—The informer is dissatisfied at only seeing birds of sombre plumage and poor appearance. He would have preferred to ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... ancient and honorable desire! The love of pretty clothes,—however it may seem to be motivated and however it may be complicated by other motives,-draws its energy, fundamentally, from the same need that provides the gay plumage and limpid song of the bird or the ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... was a party of students returning to the University of Kazan. They exhibited all degrees of shabbiness, but this was only the modest plumage of the nightingale, apparently. For hours they sang songs, all beautiful, all strange to us, and we listened entranced until tea, cigarettes, and songs came to an end in time to permit them a few hours of sleep before we reached their landing. The third-class passengers, who were also lodged ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... thunderstorm. This storm was not really overhead at all, and scarcely deserves mention except as the precursor of a severe one of which our valley got the full benefit. It was quite curious to see the numbers of dead butterflies on the garden-paths after that second storm. Their beautiful plumage was not dimmed or smirched nor their wings broken: they would have been in perfect order for a naturalist's collection; yet they were quite dead and stiff. The natives declare it is the lightning ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... Trading Company's office, the urbane Robert Wade, now shining out again in full plumage, explained to the occasional disgruntled stockholder that the Fidelity Company had paid in their fifty thousand dollars; that many of the largest cheques had been stopped, and that the Worthington Estate had nobly offered to recoup the company for the ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... peacocks coming to be fed," interrupted Bab, as the handsome birds appeared with their splendid plumage glittering ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... shapes and hues; butterflies of enormous size and the most gorgeous colours flitted here and there; bees hovered over the multitudinous blossoms, busily engaged in collecting their store of honey; many birds were seen, some of then of marvellously beautiful plumage; while, as to fruit, wild strawberries and raspberries flourished in profusion even upon the headland on which I was standing, and which boasted no other vegetation than grass and low bushes. The shores of the basin offered an absolutely ideal site for a town, although the ground there might perhaps ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... we found a most welcome and delightful change of temperature among those gigantic leaves of banyan-trees, and the broad expanse of water-plants, floating on lakes, and spacious aviaries, where birds of brilliant plumage sported and sang amid such foliage as they knew at home. Howbeit, the atmosphere was a little faint and sickish, perhaps owing to the odor of the half-tepid water. The most remarkable object here was the trunk of a tree, huge beyond imagination, —a pine-tree ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... up in the temples of the gods, and for a few others. These passed immediately to the house of the sun, their chief god, whom they accompanied for a term of years, with songs, dances, and revelry, in his circuit around the sky. Then, animating the forms of birds of gay plumage, they lived as beautiful songsters among the flowers, now on earth, now in heaven, at their pleasure.16 It was the Mexican custom to dress the dead man in the garb appropriated to the guardian deity of his craft or condition ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the cat out of the bag, when I might, according to the usual way of the world, have sported for awhile in borrowed plumage, and rejoiced in the reputation of being in more prosperous circumstances without fear of detection, I determined to pursue the same course, and make use of the little insight I had obtained into the ways of the land-jobbers of Canada, to procure a cleared ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... he professed to be, surely he must recognise her borrowed plumage as his sister's property. True, that did not of necessity follow; men have so little understanding of women's clothing; it pleases them or it displeases, if thrust upon their attention, but once withdrawn it ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... upon my finger, and eat his sugar and water out of a teaspoon with most Christian-like decorum. He has but one weakness,—he will occasionally jump into the spoon and sit in his sugar and water, and then appear to wonder where it goes to. His plumage is in rather a drabbled state, owing to these performances. I have sketched him as he sat to-day on a bit of Spiraea which I brought in for him. When absorbed in reflection, he sits with his bill straight up in the air, as I have drawn him. Mr. A—— reads Macaulay to ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... the palace, which was formed of a single agate. The gate swung open to let him through, and he next passed successively three courts, surrounded by deep ditches filled with running water, with birds of brilliant plumage flying about the banks. Everything around was rare and beautiful, but the Prince scarcely raised his eyes to all these wonders. He thought only of the Princess and where he should find her, but in vain he opened every door and searched in every corner; he neither saw Rosalie nor anyone ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... current. She had taken off her hat and was leaning back against the oak under which she sat, watching with parted lips and a gaze of the purest delight and wonder the movements of a nut-hatch overhead, a creature of the woodpecker kind, with delicate purple gray plumage, who was tapping the branch above her for insects with his large disproportionate bill, and then skimming along to a sand-bank a little distance off, where he disappeared with his prey into ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he sat up, he took from his pocket Diana's letter, and read it again, passing his hand now and then nervously through his hair, until it stood up like the ruffled plumage ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... is full five yards in length, and of the kind called pinnate—that is divided into numerous leaflets, each of which is itself more than a foot and a half long, shaped like the blade of a rapier. Under the shadow of this graceful plumage the fruit is produced, just below the point where the leaves radiate from the stem. The fruit is a nut, about the size of a pigeon's egg, but of a regular oval form, and growing in large clusters, ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... and some in herds, make toward the water. The telescope distinguishes the vast herds of hogs busy in upturning the soil in search of roots, and the ungainly buffaloes, some in herds and others single bulls, all gathering at the hour of sunset toward the water. Peacocks spread their gaudy plumage to the cool evening air as they strut over the green plain; the giant crane stands statue-like among the shallows; the pelican floats like a ball of snow upon the dark water; and ducks and waterfowl of all kinds splash, and dive, and scream ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... people of your principality, Friday! I must really go there as a missionary to teach them the arts of civilized life. Ah! in good time. Here comes his serene highness. Let us smooth our ruffled plumage, else he may be asking inconvenient questions," whispered the colonel, as Abel Force smilingly ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... thoughts: a pair of blue-birds kept with me, for two or three miles at least, fluttering and twittering along the fences by my side, with the prettiest sociability—sometimes ahead, sometimes behind—never more than a dozen yards off; their brilliant plumage shot through the twilight like jets of sapphire flame: I felt absurdly sorry when they disappeared at last into the deepening blackness. I had been warned of the probability of encountering a cavalry picket somewhere on my road: so I was not greatly ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... recalled the paw of Sheeta's mate across Sheeta's face—no incongruity there. He thought of little Manu hugging his she, and how the one seemed to belong to the other. Even the proud male bird, with his gay plumage, bore a close resemblance to his quieter spouse, while Numa, but for his shaggy mane, was almost a counterpart of Sabor, the lioness. The males and the females differed, it was true; but not with such differences as existed between ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... is common to the coral and the plumage of birds, and to how large a part of animate and inanimate nature. The same independence of law on matter is observable in many other instances, as in the natural rhymes, when some animal form, color, or odor, has its counterpart in some vegetable. As, indeed, all rhymes imply an eternal melody, ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... with an impetuous velocity whose cause is not explained in the narrative of Arthur Pym. In the midst of this frightful darkness a flock of gigantic birds, of livid white plumage, swept by, uttering their eternal tekeli-li, and then the savage, in the supreme throes of terror, gave ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... roosting-place, or fly out of the cavern, as it liked. I had seen a few parrots of the same kind, outside in my garden, had heard them chattering and shrieking amidst the foliage, and had always been very much amused with their odd ways, and pleased with the brilliance and the glitter of their splendid plumage. But I never tried or cared to capture the gorgeous, noisy birds, or any other of the creatures that were always to be seen around me. Indeed, from the very first, the living things in this lovely valley appeared to be uncommonly tame; and ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... of the train, just in time to prevent herself from being carried on to the next stopping—place. She smoothed her ruffled plumage and looked about her. She found the station much smaller than she had believed it to be; she hardly remembered any of its features, till the scent of the stocks planted in the station-master's garden ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... years psychologists have paid great attention to secondary sex characteristics of the mind, and doubtless many qualities of the thought and feeling of men and women owe their origin to the same source as brilliant plumage, antlers, combs and wattles. Thus the shy, retiring, reticent, self-effacing, languishing, adoring excesses of maidenhood and the peculiar psychological manifestations of the late forties must probably ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... in the wrong place. Or, if they do not laugh, they will let fall some utterly stupid remark—so stupid that one wonders occasionally if nature by mistake has given them a bird's brain without giving them at the same time a bird's beautiful plumage. And the worst of it is one is up against this inane percentage in every walk of life—this unimaginative army of men and women who can perceive nothing which does not absolutely concern themselves and their ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... or eagle-wood. Both names are misleading, for the thing has nought to do either with aloes or eagles; though good Bishop Pallegoix derives the latter name from the wood being speckled like an eagle's plumage. It is in fact through Aquila, Agila, from Aguru, one of the Sanskrit names of the article, whilst that is possibly from the Malay Kayu (wood)-gahru, though the course of the etymology is more likely to be the other way; and [Greek: Aloae] is perhaps a corruption ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... interesting spectacle. Approaching was the dignitary referred to, lance in hand, and apparelled in official robes. The latter consisted of a blanket thrown gracefully around him, and a magnificent head-dress of black plumage covering his head and shoulders, and hanging down his back in a streamer, nearly to the ground. His pace was slow, his eyes cast downward, and his whole demeanour expressive of formal solemnity. Upon his right hand was the interpreter, upon his left a boy acting as page, and following ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... my melancholy state, a red grosbeak, with his bright red plumage, alighted on a tree a few feet from my window. His eyes sparkled as he gazed at me with interest. He turned his head now this way and now that, apparently studying me intently, and then he gave a cheery call and hopped as near to me as he could get and repeated his cries over and over. Somehow ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... any self-respecting young cock bird or male insect go and pay his addresses in a dusty, dirty, faded coat? Of course, it wasn't to be thought of. The other chap, who waited, would get all the running. But to-morrow there would be no further need to wait at all. Plumage and coats would be spring-cleaned, and expectations for the coming summer of the highest. Well-filled storehouses, leaf-cosy nests, glorious hunting-grounds. Never mind these boisterous winds and the ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... any public dinner A Pennsylvanian, but my fingers itch To pluck his borrowed plumage from the sinner, And with the spoil the company enrich. His pocket-handkerchief I would bestow On the poor orphan; and his worsted socks Should to the widow in requital go For having sunk her all in Yankee stocks; To John the footman I would give his hat, Which only cost six shillings ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... habited in rich clothes and jewels and gold, possessed of great treasures, a large city, and a gold-mine. Neither were found; but the voyagers were delighted with the balmy air, the beautiful scenery, the graceful trees, the vast flocks of parrots and other birds of gorgeous plumage, and the fish, which rivalled them in the brilliancy of their colours. No animals were seen, with the exception of a dog which never barked, a species of rabbit, and numerous lizards ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... most important variants have naturally appropriated that majestic form to the heroine, and have thus given a name to the whole group of stories. In Sweden, for example, we are told of a young hunter who beheld three swans descend on the seashore and lay their plumage aside before they plunged into the water. When he looked at the robes so laid aside they appeared like linen, and the forms that were swimming in the waves were damsels of dazzling whiteness. Advised by his foster-mother, he secures the linen of the youngest and fairest. She, therefore, could ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... count"—it would be too obviously a sign from Heaven. He finally changed the wager to, "If I see birds in the field I'll see Phoebe to-day:" to such considerations does a man turn after contemplation of his soul. On seeing a couple of magpies, the white and black of their plumage showing silver and iridescent green in the sun as they swooped over the field, he took steps to justify the omen by setting off across the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... think it was never a handicap with him, but rather the plumage of flight. Sometimes, when just the right word did not come, he would turn his head a little at different angles, as if looking about him for the precise term. He would find it directly, and it was invariably the word needed. Most writers employ, now ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... plumage bright On a bough that was bending low, Displaying skin more gleaming white Than the white of ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... must remember, she had suffered nothing beyond the indignities of the days of October at Versailles. But did not the protracted agonies of a nation deserve the tribute of a tear? As Paine asked, were men to weep over the plumage, and forget the dying bird? The bulk of the people must labour, Burke told them, "to obtain what by labour can be obtained; and when they find, as they commonly do, the success disproportioned to the ...
— Burke • John Morley
... quadrupeds to be found. Indeed, in no other country that I have ever visited do birds so abound. Even the virgin forests of America cannot, in my belief, boast of such numerous feathered denizens. . . . The birds of this country possess, in many instances, an excessively beautiful plumage, and he alone who has traversed these wild and romantic regions, who has beheld a flock of many-coloured parrakeets sweeping like a moving rainbow through the air, can form any adequate idea of the scenes that then burst on the eye of the wondering naturalist. As to ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... my aged friend had often himself seen, in his own boyish days, sweeping round the cliffs and over the broad expanse of the Susquehanna. They were easily distinguished, he said, by the residents of that district, by their peculiar size and plumage, being of a breed not known to our native ornithology, and both being males. For many years, it was affirmed,—long after the outlaw had vanished from the scene,—these gallant old rovers of the river still pursued their accustomed game, a solitary pair, without kindred or acquaintance ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... had a plumage of silver-gray feathers, with a brilliant scarlet tail. Her eyes were a bright yellow, with black pupils, and around them a circle of small white feathers. Her beak was large and strong, hooked at the ...
— Minnie's Pet Parrot • Madeline Leslie
... arm away from her father's grasp, and stood up, with a convulsive flutter of her white plumage like a bird. She flung back her curls and disclosed her beautiful pale face, all strained to terrified resolve, and her dilated blue eyes "I will not!" she cried out, addressing her father alone, "I will not, father. I have made up my mind that ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... gorgeous bird cannot always be flying. A snake can sometimes creep under her perch, and glare, and keep hissing, till she shudders and droops and lays her plumage ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... Seth. "She is fit fo' any palace, she is so beautiful. And when the Wise Men come out of the East we will build it fo' her. It shall have gold do'knobs and jewelled ornaments and rare birds of gay plumage to sing and keep her company, and painted ceilings and little cupids carved in mahble, and theah shall be graven images set on onyx pedestals and some curious Hindoo gods squatting, and a Turkish room of red lights dimmed by little carved lanterns and rich, ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... crash of doom to the cautious old tenants of the Hanover aviary. If there were any drops of false or questionable doctrine in the silver shower of eloquence under which they had been sitting, the plumage of orthodoxy glistened with unctuous repellents, and a shake or two on coming out of church left the sturdy old dogmatists as dry ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... use of this last word—the same little mirthless laugh that she had uttered before—Jacqueline went away, followed by the admiring glances of the other girls, who from behind the bars of their cage noted the brilliant plumage of this bird who was at liberty. She crossed the courtyard, and, followed by Modeste, entered the chapel, where she sank upon her knees. The mystic half-light of the place, tinged purple by its passage through the stained windows, seemed to enlarge the little chancel, parted in two by a double ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... warning voice: Winged at thy word, the distant troops rejoice, From every quarter scour the fields of air, And to the general rendezvous repair; Each from the mingled rout disporting turns, And with the love of kindred plumage burns. Thy potent will instinctive bosoms feel, And here arranging semilunar, wheel; Or marshalled here the painted rhomb display Or point the wedge that cleaves th' aerial way: Uplifted on thy wafting breath they rise; Thou pav'st the regions of the ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... pretty miracle had been going on, common enough, but always new. Ruffle above ruffle, the soft, shapeless mass of white had shaken itself into its proper lines and contours, lightly, like a bird's plumage settling itself, and with it the change that comes when a woman with the inborn, unteachable trick of wearing clothes puts on a perfect gown, had come to her slight girl's figure. It looked softer, rounder, and more lightly poised. Her throat looked whiter above the encircling folds of white. ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... the house of the trader, Mr. Keane. Overhead, the cocos join in a continuous and lofty roof; blackbirds are heard lustily singing; the island cock springs his jubilant rattle and airs his golden plumage; cow-bells sound far and near in the grove; and when you sit in the broad verandah, lulled by this symphony, you may say to yourself, if you are able: 'Better fifty years of Europe . . .' Farther on, the floor of the valley is flat and green, and dotted here and there with stripling coco-palms. ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... native of the northern countries of Europe, occurring in Italy and other southern parts only as a winter visitor. White and black varieties are occasionally met with; the latter are often produced by feeding the bullfinch exclusively on hempseed, when its plumage gradually changes to black. It rarely breeds in confinement, and hybrids between it and the canary have been produced on but ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... I said, and then sit down and see what they will do. "Papa," said May, "is not the kingfisher a very beautiful bird, and the most brightly coloured of all British birds?" Yes, it is; its splendid colours remind one of the gorgeous plumage of tropical birds, and we have no other British bird with such brilliant colours. There, did you see that? one of the birds darted off the rail into the water. I have no doubt he has caught a small fish; and now he ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... when I remonstrated against this, her reply was, "The little things like it so much!" There was no use in telling her that the fifth comfit weighed a quarter of an ounce, and made every sale into a loss to her pocket. So I remembered the green tea, and winged my shaft with a feather out of her own plumage. I told her how unwholesome almond-comfits were, and how ill excess in them might make the little children. This argument produced some effect; for, henceforward, instead of the fifth comfit, she always told them to hold out their tiny palms, into which she ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a story, may it please you, in which jackdaws will wear peacocks' feathers, and awaken the just ridicule of the peacocks; in which, while every justice is done to the peacocks themselves, the splendour of their plumage, the gorgeousness of their dazzling necks, and the magnificence of their tails, exception will yet be taken to the absurdity of their rickety strut, and the foolish discord of their pert squeaking; in which lions ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... like an overgrown schoolboy with his face newly washed, stretching himself up in a corner; the painted robins and partridges on the wall, now in full feather, strutting and flying about in all the glory of an unfading plumage; and at the rear of all the huge back-log on the hearth glowed and rolled in his place as happy as an alderman at a city feast. The Peabodys too, partook of the new illumination, and were there in their best looks, scattered about the room in cheerful ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... fire escape. Cornie's long skirt nearly tripped her, and it was no easy matter to cling to the rounds of the iron ladder, with a muff in one hand and her skirts constantly wrapping around her. Luckily she had only one flight to descend. Stopping a moment to smooth her ruffled plumage and get her breath, she walked around to the front of the house, climbed the steps, and boldly lifted ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... heavens, in the centre whereof rose a flame that assumed a form singularly beautiful. It might have been compared to a crest of gigantic feathers, the diadem of the mountain, high arched, and drooping downward, with the hues delicately shaded off, and the whole shifting and tremulous as the plumage on a warrior's helm. The glare of the flame spread, luminous and crimson, over the dark and rugged ground on which they stood, and drew an innumerable variety of shadows from crag and hollow. An oppressive ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the bird that it was covered with beautiful white plumage; and every warrior as he advanced plucked a plume from this singular bird, and with it adorned his crown. And forever after the braves of the confederate nations made choice of the plumes of the white herons as ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... secures a very scraggy fowl, while another arms himself with a hatchet of such formidable dimensions as to recall in the beholder all sorts of unpleasant reminiscences about Lady Jane Grey, Mauger, and other historic characters. The struggling bird is then beheaded, and stripped of his plumage almost before his pulses have ceased to beat. The first occasion on which I saw one of these executions, I could not help thinking of a certain cicerone at Rome, who, albeit that he spoke very good French and Italian, always broke out in English when he saw a picture ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... like a ship from Tarshish, gorgeous in velvet or rustling silk, done up in all the accompaniments of fans, ear-rings, and finger-rings, falling sleeves, scent-bottle, embroidered bag, hoop, and train; managing all this seemingly heavy rigging with as much ease as a full-blown swan does its plumage. She would take possession of the centre of a large sofa, and at the same moment, without the slightest visible exertion, cover the whole of it with her bravery, the graceful folds seeming to lay themselves over it, like summer waves. The ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... forehead, her eyes roved past him, searching the littered room for the twentieth time in the hour, looking, seeking—and suddenly they fell on something—a crushed and rumpled hat of her own, a milliner's masterpiece, laden with florid plumage, lying almost behind him on a couch end where some prying detective had dropped it, with a big, round black button shining dully from the midst of its damaged tulle crown. She knew that button well. It was the imitation-jet head of a hatpin—a steel hatpin—that was ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... Ajax spread and exulted in glittering plumage, and screamed viciously. He was sending a wireless plea to the forests of Ceylon for a gray mate to come and share the ridge pole with him, and help him wage red war on the sickening love making of the white ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... had come birds of gorgeous plumage. On the breath of a sweet-scented breeze they were wafted far to southward—to the summer land. And those earth children who followed the beautiful birds still live easily in the ...
— Stories of Birds • Lenore Elizabeth Mulets
... grass clinging to their rocky surfaces, and keeping its green in the eternal shadow of their pines and cedars. In the warm morning light they gathered or dispersed before the advancing vessel, which some of them almost touched with the plumage of their evergreens; and where none of them were large, some were so small that it would not have been too bold to figure them as a vaster race of water-birds assembling and separating in her course. It is curiously affecting to find them so unclaimed ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the little Prince of Wales was garlanded with Tom's fluttering odds and ends, and the little Prince of Pauperdom was tricked out in the gaudy plumage of royalty. The two went and stood side by side before a great mirror, and lo, a miracle: there did not seem to have been any change made! They stared at each other, then at the glass, then at each other again. At last the puzzled ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... which pheasant chicks, only just out of the egg, run about and forage for themselves, is astonishing to those unused to it. Another interesting feature about pheasants is the extraordinary difference in plumage between the sexes, a gap equalled only between the blackcock and greyhen and quite unknown in the partridge, quail and grouse. Yet every now and again, as if resentful of this inequality of wardrobe, an old hen pheasant will assume male plumage, and this epicene raiment indicates barrenness. ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... eyes. They seldom roused up, unless I brought them fish, of which they had a supply four times a day, and then they would stand on their legs and open their beaks far apart, each waiting for its share. They were a great happiness to me, and I watched their gradual increase of plumage and of size, which was very rapid. I gave them all names out of my Natural History book. One was Lion, then Tiger, Panther, Bear, Horse, and Jackass (at the time that I named them, the last would have been very appropriate to them all); and as I always called them by ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... days are coming, The glorious summer hours, When Nature decks her gorgeous robe With sunbeams and with flowers; And gathers all her choristers In plumage bright and gay, Till every vale is echoing with Their joyous roundelay. No more shall frosty winter Hold in its cold embrace The water; but the river Shall join again the race; And down the mountain's valley, ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... over somehow, and they got en route again, the road winding through woods golden in the setting sun. Occasionally a raccoon, playing about the trunks of trees, beguiled the loneliness of the way; or a strange bird, with harsh note, but gay plumage, flashed across their track. Colonel Rolleston, however, was not so much entranced as his children at discovering that the road stopped at the hotel on the lake, not coming within half-a-mile of his new property, and that they must embark and cross over in boats to Lyndon's ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... the north of England; and as a number of people were collected on the banks of the Tyne, whose waters had risen to an unusual height, a swan was seen swimming across the flood. On its back was a black spot, visible among its white plumage. As the swan came nearer, this was found to be a live rat. No sooner had the swan, after bravely breasting the foaming torrent, reached the shore, than the rat leaped off and scampered away. Probably it had been carried into the water, and, unable to swim ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... the day waxed with its waning. It was nearly six o'clock when the door slowly opened and Aholibah entered. She was alone. Her scarlet plumage was wet, and she was painted like a Peruvian war-god. She did not appear so brilliant a bird of paradise—or elsewhere—as at the aviary across the water. Yet her gaze was as forthright as ever. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... one," said Mrs. Lessingham, gratified, and rustling her plumage a little as a lady does when she is about to speak in confidence of something that pleases her. "Of course, I very soon understood that the ordinary surveillance and restrictions and moral theories ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... most gorgeous plumage, which darted down, attracted by the flies, were seized hold of and dragged within the ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston |
