"Bat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... possession of the watch, and slips away with it.—The whole party finally assembles at supper, where Eisenstein becomes very jovial, and tells how he once attended a masquerade ball with his friend Falck, who was disguised as a bat. Eisenstein, it appears, induced his friend to drink so heavily, that he fell asleep in the street, where Eisenstein left him. Falck did not wake up till morning, when he had to go home amid the jeers of a street crowd, by whom he was nicknamed "Dr. Fledermaus".—Eisenstein's ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... 5. Though it was hard upon old Ben, yet Felton, it must be confessed, was in the right in considering the Fly, Tipto, Bat Burst, &c., of this play mere dotages. Such a scene as this was enough to damn a new play; and Nick Stuff is ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... and being gone, he is 'himself again'. Macbeth resolves to get rid of Macduff, that 'he may sleep in spite of thunder'; and cheers his wife on the doubtful intelligence of Banquo's taking-off with the encouragement—'Then be thou jocund: ere the bat has flown his cloistered flight; ere to black Hecate's summons the shard-born beetle has rung night's yawning peal, there shall be done—a deed of dreadful note.' In Lady Macbeth's speech, 'Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done't,' there is murder and filial piety together, and ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... A bat fluttered zig-zag about the place brushing her cheek, but Alexander was not the sort of woman to ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... I'm not a ghost!" shouted Gay, but the only response came in an hysterical babble of moans from the negro quarters somewhere in the rear and in the soft whir in his face of a leatherwing bat as it wheeled low in the twilight. There was no smoke in the chimneys, and the square old house, with its hooded roof and its vacant windows, assumed a sinister and inhospitable look against the background of oaks. His mother and his aunt, he concluded, ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... Silence! Deep silence! Save for the chortle of the night-jar, the tap of the snipe's beak against the tree-trunks, the snores of a weary game-keeper, the chirp of the burying-beetle, the croak of the bat, the wild laughter of the owl and the boom, boom of the frog, deep silence reigned. The crescent moon stole silently above the horizon. Wonderful, significant is that silent, stealthy approach of the moon. Red Head lumbered from his lair and crouched beside the shimmering fire of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... towards midnight, a bat flew into the apartment where the Court was; the King immediately cried out, "Where is General Crillon?" (He had just left the room.) "He is the General to command against the bats." This set everybody calling out, "Ou etais-tu, Crillon?" M. de Crillon soon after came in, and was told where the ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... I'm not a man who does much with the bat, but my bowling is rather out of the common. I have a natural leg-break which baffles fellows frightfully. Why, there was a question raised once about playing ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... :WOMBAT: /wom'bat/ /adj./ [acronym: Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time] Applied to problems which are both profoundly {uninteresting} in themselves and unlikely to benefit anyone interesting even if solved. Often used in fanciful constructions such as 'wrestling with a wombat'. See ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... began his poetic career in 1840 by a Hebrew adaptation of the second book of Virgil's Aeneid [2] but soon turned to Jewish motifs. In the musical rhymes of the "Songs of the Daughter of Zion" (Shire bat Zion, Vilna, 1851), the author poured forth the anguish of his suffering soul, which was torn between faith and science, weighed down by the oppression from without and stirred to its depth by the tragedy of his homeless nation. [3] A cruel disease cut short ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... themselves with observing the manner in which the flying-fish endeavours to escape from its enemies, the albicores and bonitoes. The flying-fish are not larger than a herring, and raise themselves into the air by means of two long fins, one on each side, not much unlike the wings of a bat in strength and texture. They are considered as good eating, and the sailors are always well pleased when they are met with in plenty. The bonito is about two feet long, of a greyish colour, finely streaked from head to tail; but the flesh is hard, dry, and disagreeably tasted. The albicore ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... mole," said Hawker; "good night, old bat, old parchment skin, old sixty per cent. Ha, ha! If a wench brings a brat to thee, old lad, chuck it out o' window, and her after it. Thou can only get hung for it, man. They can only hang thee once, and that is better than to keep it and foster it, and have it turn against thee ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... sister would you let her come here to us?' He sat silent for awhile, thinking, and she waited patiently for his answer. Bat she spoke again before he answered her. 'I am well aware that you know all ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... marry her, I dare say, even if she were blind as a bat," he said; "but then he is able to support her," and reminded by this of an unanswered letter from his cousin, who was still in New Orleans, he sat down and wrote, telling him of Maude's total blindness, and then, ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... majesty of full-grown doghood, you would have experienced a vague sort of surprise had we told you—as we now repeat—that the dog Crusoe was once a pup—a soft, round, sprawling, squeaking pup, as fat as a tallow candle, and as blind as a bat. ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... "Each to his or her own opinions. We're here in pursuit of facts, not fancies. Rick, you're first at bat." ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... pushed towards the house by the panting and dishevelled Claude and Wilfrid, whose task was rendered even more arduous by the incessant, if not very effectual, attacks of the captured maidens' small brother. The governess, fives-bat in hand, sat negligently on the stone balustrade, presiding over the scene with the cold impartiality of a Goddess of Battles. A furious and repeated chorus of "I'll tell muvver" rose from the lodge-children, but the lodge-mother, who was hard of hearing, was for the moment immersed in ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... dappling these gloomy shades with her pure light and as I sped, staring fearfully about me, I espied divers of these great serpents twisted among the boughs overhead, and monstrous bat-like shapes that flitted hither and thither so that I ran in sweating panic until the leafage, above and around me, thinning out, showed me the full splendour of this tropic moon and a single great tree that soared mightily aloft to thrust ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... crown the issue with a last reward! A good time, was it not, my kingly days? And had you not grown restless . . . but I know— 'T is done and past; 't was right, my instinct said, Too live the life grew, golden and not gray, And I'm the weak-eyed bat no sun should tempt Out of the grange whose four walls make his world. 170 How could it end in any other way? You called me, and I came home to your heart. The triumph was—to reach and stay there; since I reached ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... into the swell of the sea other extraordinary shapes appear, rising from great depths. Komori, 'The Bat,' a ragged silhouette against the horizon, has a great hole worn through it, which glares like an eye. Farther out two bulks, curved and pointed, and almost joined at the top, bear a grotesque resemblance ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... the great rocks which have caused this part of the river to be called the Gorge of Hell. Here human beings in perpetual terror of their own kind cut themselves holes in the face of the precipice, and lived where now the jackdaw, the hawk, the owl, and the bat are the only inhabitants. In the Middle Ages the English companies turned the side of the rock into a stronghold which was the terror ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... give me my own of that Which sweeps and circles like the bat Around me as I walk in ether, O fair Divine, at whose ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... dog by his empty bed, And the flute he used to play, And his favourite bat . . . but Dick he's dead, Somewhere in France, they say: Dick with his rapture of song and sun, Dick of the yellow hair, Dicky whose life had but begun, ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... which the house was built. The boat glided through it into cover, and the arrow of light at the prow pierced ebon blackness, while the plash of the oars made a curious sound, full of sudden desolation and weariness. A bat flitted over the arrow of light and vanished, and the head of a swimming rat was visible for a moment, pursued by a wrinkle ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... seas were like waves of ice, which froze every living thing they touched. The interior of the immense vault of stone in which they were was even more bitterly chill than the snow-covered plains without. Now and then a bat moved in the shadows; now and then a gleam of light came on the ranks of carven figures. Under the Rubens they lay together quite still, and soothed almost into a dreaming slumber by the numbing narcotic of the cold. Together they dreamed ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... evolve modes of defense equal to the modes of attack possessed by their enemies. Many, unable to evolve the acute senses and the fleet limbs necessary for the combat on the ground, shrank from the fray and acquired more negative and passive means of defense. Some, like the bat, escaped into the air. Others, such as the squirrel and the ape, took refuge in ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... paddles, wings, legs, and arms. "No comparative anatomist has the slightest hesitation in admitting that the pectoral fin of a fish, the wing of a bird, the paddle of the dolphin, the fore-leg of a deer, the wing of a bat, and the arm of a man, are the same organs, notwithstanding that their forms are so varied, and the uses to which they are applied so unlike each other."[270] All these are homologous in structure—they are formed ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Gower's list, e.g. Watte (Chapter I), Thomme, Symme, Geffe (Chapter VI), Wille, Jakke, are easily recognized. Bette is for Bat, Bartholomew, a name, which has given Batty, Batten, Bates, Bartle (cf. Bartlemas), Bartlett, Badcock, Batcock. But this group of names belongs also to the Bert- or -bent, which is so common in Teutonic names, such as ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... Portugese, loose like an emptie gut, And his hose broken high above the heeling, And his shooes beaten out with traveling. But neither sword nor dagger he did beare; 215 Seemes that no foes revengement he did feare; In stead of them a handsome bat he held, [Bat, stick.] On which he leaned, as one farre in elde. [Elde, age.] Shame light on him, that through so false illusion Doth turne the name of souldiers to abusion, 220 And that which is the noblest mysterie [Mysterie, profession.] Brings to reproach ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... whatsoever, they differ utterly from the genuine cactus, and closely resemble all their spurge relations. Adaptive likenesses of this sort, due to mere stress of local conditions, have no more weight as indications of real relationship than the wings of the bat or the nippers of the seal, which don't make the one into a skylark, or ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... a watch out to sea if any light shows. I've been up it before. I found the way two years ago. No, I won't fall asleep and tumble off. I slept most of the afternoon on the top of Sgurr Vhiconnich, and I'm as wakeful as a bat now.' ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... be the least objection to my availing myself of your assistance in getting up the river," he said, blinking behind his spectacles like an old bat who has unexpectedly emerged into the sunlight. "I have only two canoes and as I carry my own attendant I shall be ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... such a spiteful diatribe! The suicide of Dr. Bouthoin at San Francisco was the finishing stroke to the chances of success of the Serial;—although we are promised splendid evolutions on the part of Mr. Semhians; who, after brilliant achievements with bat and ball, abandons those weapons of Old England's modern renown, for a determined wrestle with our English pronunciation of words, and rescue of the spelling of them from the printer. His headache over the present treatment of the verb 'To bid,' was a quaint beginning ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... clever batting of one boy, who has got well to work, and who, full of confidence, sets at defiance the best efforts in every change of bowler, the score is lifted right up to the winning-point, and he comes back to the tent with the bat over his shoulder, amidst the ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... Jesu Christi Test. Syriac. cum versione Latina, curra et studio Joh. Leusden et Caroli Schaaf. Secunda editio a mendis purgata. Lugduni. Bat. Typ. Jo. Mulleri. John. fil. apud Vid. et fil. Cornel. Boutesteyn, Samuelem Luchtmans, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various
... that live in Roxbury and Dorchester are ever moved to tears or filled with silent awe as they look upon the rocks and fragments of "puddingstone" abounding in those localities. I have my suspicions that those boys "heave a stone" or "fire a brick-bat," composed of the conglomerate just mentioned, without any more tearful or philosophical contemplations than boys of less favored regions expend on the same performance. Yet a lump of puddingstone is a thing to look ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... omen of lasting evil. Had they not seen for themselves that, even in the worst of worlds, righteousness and justice and truth had been something more than names. Doom had fallen; for more than a twelvemonth the ruins had smouldered, and to-day they were but the harmless haunt of bat and badger. And the world relieved of that intolerable incubus, and recovered of its purging and cleansing sickness, had started once more upon its appointed path—slowly, indeed, at the first, but ever onward ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... carried a lantern, but he held it so low that its light did not fall upon his burden. Leonard, however, did not require to see the body to know whose it was. The moon was at its full, and shed a ghastly light over the group, and a large bat wheeled in narrow circles round ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Vuh, "the chief god of the Cakchiquels was Chamalcan, and his image was a bat."[40-1] Brasseur endeavored to trace this to a Nahuatl etymology,[40-2] but there is little doubt it refers, as do so many of the Cakchiquel proper names, to their calendar. Can is the fifth day of their week, ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... in the face of a poisoning of the ether? There is not a greater difference in quality between a brick-bat and a gas than there is between oxygen and ether. They are different planes of matter. They cannot impinge upon one another. Come, Challenger, you could not ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... think Thou wilt be kinder to me than my lover, And so dispatch the messengers at once, Harry the lazy steeds of lingering day, And let the night, thy sister, come instead, And drape the world in mourning; let the owl, Who is thy minister, scream from his tower And wake the toad with hooting, and the bat, That is the slave of dim Persephone, Wheel through the sombre air on wandering wing! Tear up the shrieking mandrakes from the earth And bid them make us music, and tell the mole To dig deep down thy cold and narrow bed, For I shall lie ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... there suck I; In a cowslip's bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly, After ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... fur a year. Harms or some of his gang used to own him, 'n' believe me, he can ramble some if everythin' 's done to suit him. He's a funny hoss, 'n' has notions. If a jock'll set still 'n' not make a move on him, Friendless runs a grand race. But if a boy takes holt of him or hits him with the bat, ole Friendless says, 'Nothin' doin' to-day!' 'n' sulks all the way. He'd have made a great stake hoss only he's dead wise to how much weight he's packin'. He'll romp with anythin' up to a hundred 'n' ten, but not a pound over that can you slip him. Looks like he ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... They are like the punning riddles which are asked at feasts or the children's puzzle about the eunuch aiming at the bat, with what he hit him, as they say in the puzzle, and upon what the bat was sitting. The individual objects of which I am speaking are also a riddle, and have a double sense: nor can you fix them in your mind, either as being or not-being, ...
— The Republic • Plato
... extinguished. Then I remembered with a shudder that I should have to pass through the whole vast length of the building in order to gain an exit. It was an all but hopeless task in the profound darkness to thread my way through the labyrinth of halls and corridors, of tumble-down stairs, of bat-haunted vaults, of purposeless angles and involutions; but I proceeded with something of a blind obstinacy, groping my way with arms held out before me. In this manner I had wandered on for perhaps a quarter of an hour, ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... or another to balance the scales. But she wouldn't take so much as a cup of Canal water at their expense, let alone the credits they tried to push on her. Bub Nelson was the only one who got around her refusal. It was he who brought her Bat. ...
— All Cats Are Gray • Andre Alice Norton
... river. And then, in the light, creation continued. That which came from a vision ended in being embodied. For at first she only perceived that a dim shadow was moving under the moonlight. What was it, then? A branch moved to and fro by the wind? Or was it a large bat in constant motion? There were moments when everything disappeared, and the field slept in so deathly a stillness that she thought her eyes had deceived her. Soon there was no longer any doubt possible, for a dark object had certainly just crossed the ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... good many times since I was a boy, and once or twice I have seen the man go. There are more men lost in that way than passengers on ocean steamers ever learn of. I have stood looking over the rail on a dark night, when there was a step beside me, and something flew past my head like a big black bat—and then there was a splash! Stokers often go like that. They go mad with the heat, and they slip up on deck and are gone before anybody can stop them, often without being seen or heard. Now and then a passenger will do it, but he generally has what he thinks a pretty good reason. I have ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... Bat hanging head downward, taking his daytime nap. "Oh, friend Bat, do you know where the Tongue-Cut ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... top of our big car, all in my best toggery. Hot as pepper, but good fun looking in at the upper windows and hearing the women scream when the old thing waggled round and I made believe I was going to tumble off," said Ben, leaning on his bat with the air of a man who had seen the world and felt some natural regret at descending from so lofty ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... the air and all but blundered into Turkey Proudfoot. Missing him by the breadth of a wing, Benjamin Bat hung head downward from a near-by limb and stared at the sleeping form. "Hello!" he squeaked. "Here's a newcomer in these woods. I should think he'd cling to that limb upside down. He'd find it a much safer ...
— The Tale of Turkey Proudfoot - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... am guiltless of that whereof thou suspectest me.' So he sent for the Imam Abou Yousuf and told him the case. The Imam raised his eyes to the roof and seeing a crack therein, said to the Khalif, 'O Commander of the Faithful, the bat hath semen like that of a man, and this is bats' semen.' Then he called for a lance and thrust it into the crack, whereupon down fell the bat. In this manner the Khalif's suspicions were dispelled and Zubeideh's innocence was made manifest; whereat ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... my right leg down once to prevent my moving it, and she's most severe on a crooked bat," ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... Fair and Foul! Thy mate, the Ghoul, Beats, bat-like, at thy golden gate! Around the graves the night-winds howl: "Arise!" they cry, "thy feast doth wait!" Dainty fingers thine, and nice, With ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... France! L'empereur fut surpris de ce ton d'assurance. Il regarda celui qui s'avancait, et vit, Comme le roi Sauel lorsque apparut David, Une espece d'enfant au teint rose, aux mains blanches, Que d'abord les soudards dont l'estoc bat les hanches Prirent pour une fille habillee en garcon, Doux, frele, confiant, serein, sans ecusson Et sans panache, ayant, sous ses habits de serge, L'air grave d'un gendarme et l'air froid ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... last scene of the Hippolytus. The presence of a dead body would be a pollution to Apollo, though that of Thanatos (Death) himself seems not to be so. It is rather Thanatos who is dazzled and blinded by Apollo, like an owl or bat in the sunlight. ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... ocean in the area where the creature had been seen had gone suddenly dark; and in the translucent depths above nearly all of the party discerned a gigantic shadow moving along. It looked for all the world like an immense pancake with bat-like wings. These wings were fluttering queerly, and from the action of the fish Mr. Choate said he was sure it was devouring prey which it had just killed. He now asked Paul if he would like to try a cast. The boy assented eagerly. Bracing his feet ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... discussion once took place between the lion, king of the land-animals, and the bat, king of the air-animals, over the relative strength of each. The lion claimed to be more powerful than the bat, while the bat claimed to be more powerful than the lion. The final outcome was a declaration of war. The lion then called a general meeting ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... is, now you put the case, surprising; more especially as the genus of bats in New Zealand is very peculiar, and therefore has probably been long introduced, and they now speak of Cretacean fossils there. But the first necessary step has to be shown, namely, of a bat taking to feed on the ground, or anyhow, and anywhere, except in the air. I am bound to confess I do know one single such fact, viz. of an Indian species killing frogs. Observe, that in my wretched Polar Bear case, I do show the first step by ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... wearing the Jacobin habit, one of those preaching friars who had been fevering the blood of Paris. The crowd behind the men-at-arms knew him, for even in its absorption it sent up shouts of greeting. He flitted like a bat towards Gaspard and Champernoun and peered up at them. His face was lean and wolfish, ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... sorry he was a bat, for I've always been fond of bats, they are such soft, grey, velvet things; and I should have liked to tell him that he was much more like a chicken hawk, only that would have been vulgar; and, besides, I didn't intend to pose as chicken to his hawk. By way ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Grouse came there, And the Pobble who has no toes, And the small Olympian bear, And the Dong with a luminous nose. And the Blue Baboon who played the flute, And the Orient Calf from the Land of Tute, And the Attery Squash, and the Bisky Bat,— All came and built on the lovely Hat ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... morning nap to listen to a minstrel in a jacket; none but a maid awakes to songs of love. Not only was this woman a maid, but she was an old maid. When she had opened her blinds with the furtive motion of the bat, she looked in all directions, but saw nothing, and only heard, faintly, the flying footfalls of the lad. Can there be anything more dreadful than the matutinal apparition of an ugly old maid at her window? Of all the grotesque sights which amuse the eyes of travellers in country ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... steps and listened to the shrill katydids or watched the devious lanterns of the fireflies. A bat darted over the head of Rivers, who ducked as it went ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... laugh silently, so that his large eyebrows went up and down like the wings of a bat, upon the deep lines of his yellow forehead. "No one," ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... bludgeon, truncheon, bat, mace, staff, shillalah, waddy, bandy, knobkerry; society, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Mr. Falkirk, blind bat that he was (for a sharp-sighted man), was not discontented with his winter. He had Wych Hazel to himself, and she gave him no more trouble than he liked by the force of old associations. He watched the play in which she was so prominent and so pretty ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... they said, it had been made safe for the profiteers. This was plain Bolshevism, and in its most dangerous form, because these fellows had learned to use guns, and couldn't very well be expected to become pacifists right off the bat. ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... mean that she is dangerous to human life, but it seems to me horrible to have any one about us who would be looking at our muscles, and thinking about our bones, and wondering if they worked together properly, and if they would come apart easily. Ugh! It's like having a bat ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... "The Wom-bat (or, as it is called by the natives of Port Jackson, the Womback,) is a squat, thick, short-legged, and rather inactive quadruped, with great appearance of stumpy strength, and somewhat bigger than a large ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... him, and men declare He mowed in the branches as ape and bear, And last as a sloth, ere his body failed, And he hung as a bat in the forks, and wailed, And sleep the cord of his hands untied, And he fell, and was caught on the points ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... die," Henley answered, grimly. "I cursed man and God. That gal was my life. I was as blind as a bat in daytime." ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... was so unexpected. And I turned to look. There on one of the benches sat Kitty Wilson. If I hadn't been blind as a bat and full of trouble—oh, it thickens your wits, does trouble, and blinds your eyes and muffles your ears!—I'd have suspected something at the mere sight of her. For there sat Kitty Wilson enthroned, a hatless, lank little creature about twelve, and ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... haven, which is by the long bridge, as I gesse some forty yards over; yet he made nothing of it, but my hart aked when my eares heard the ise crack all the way. When he was come unto me," continues Armin, "I was amazed, and tooke up a brick-bat, which lay there by, and threw it, which no sooner fell upon the ise but it burst. Was not this strange that a foole of thirty yeeres was borne of that ise which would not endure the fall of a brick-bat?"! ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... strenuously opposed an argument by Sir Joshua, that virtue was preferable to vice, considering this life only; and that a man would be virtuous were it only to preserve his character: and that he expressed much wonder at the curious formation of the bat, a mouse with wings; saying, that 'it was almost as strange a thing in physiology, as if the fabulous ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... dagger. I bought it since the fellow settled here, on purpose for him" (and that he might be believed he drew the sharp blade out of his sword-stick). "There it is! The first time we meet alone, I will stick it into him and nail him to the wall like a bat. And ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... none, but all who enter, To daylight strangers, and of joy unknown, Within her sunless gates restrained must stay. And there the only food vouchsafed is dust, For slime they live on, who on earth have died. Day's golden beam greets none and darkness reigns Where hurtling bat-like forms of feathered men Or human-fashioned birds imprisoned flit. Close and with dust o'erstrewn, the dungeon doors Are held by bolts with gathering mould o'ersealed. By love distracted, though the queen of love, Pale Ishtar downward ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... answered in absent-minded fashion. "That cat of Miss Charity's just walked away with one of those feathered things yo' bat 'round." ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... seen as I dit. Gin yu koud sen mi owr be ony o yur Innesness skeps, ony ting te mi, an it war as muckle clays as mak a quelt it wad, mey pi, gar mi meistir tink te mere o mi. It's tru I ket clays eneu fe him bat out ting fe yu wad luck weel an pony, an ant plese Got gin I life, I sal pey yu pack agen. Lofen fater, de man dat wryts dis letir for mi is van Shames Macheyne, hi lifes shust a myl fe mi, hi hes pin unko kyn te mi sin efer I kam te de quintrie. Hi wes porn en Petic ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... whereabouts of a certain rascal or rascals, trading or masquerading, knowingly or unknowingly, to the best of my knowledge and belief, as the——" He stopped and frowned. "Now, what the dickens was the name of that bird?" he said. "Pheasant, partridge, ostrich, bat, flying fish, sparrow—it's something to do with eggs. What ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... into the light, all mildewed and cob-webbed as they were; whereupon an army of spiders rushed out in every direction, a bat rose up, shrieking, and whirled in blind circles overhead. In a corner of the pagoda we found an empty bird's-nest. The table was small, and could be got out without much difficulty; so I helped the workman to carry it down the ladder, ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... being a natural man, he chose deliberately to drink when and how he pleased. Others had noticed this peculiar habit of his, but not so Dowsett and Letton; and Daylight's secret thought was: "They sure wouldn't bat an eye if I called for a glass of ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... of all creatures,—bird, reptile, or mammal; insect or fish,—represented only different results of Karma: the ghostly life in each was one and the same; and, in even the lowest, some spark of the divine existed. The frog or the serpent, the bird or the bat, the ox or the horse,—all had had, at some past time, the privilege of human (perhaps even superhuman) shape: their present conditions represented only the consequence of ancient faults. Any human being also, by reason ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... of gloom the church-spire rose, And not a star lit any side of heaven; In glades not far the damp reeds coldly touched Their sides, like soldiers dead before they fall; There in the belfry clung the sleeping bat,— Most abject creature, hanging like a leaf Down from the bell-tongue, silent as the speech The dead have lost ere they ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... sleeping on barroom floors. There is a red bruise on his forehead over one of his eyes, another over one cheekbone, his knuckles are skinned and raw—plain evidence of the fighting he has been through on his "bat." His eyes are bloodshot and heavy-lidded, his face has a bloated look. But beyond these appearances—the results of heavy drinking—there is an expression in his eyes of wild mental turmoil, of impotent animal rage baffled by its own ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill
... at 8.30 and found no supper nor fire to cook it with, the cook's life having been frightened out of him he forgot the necessity for bodily sustenance for the rest of us. I noticed the cook at one time flourishing a spade like a cricket bat, and on asking him what this was for he declared, "You can easy see the bloody thing comin'". He intended to let fly at the first shell that came his way. Creighton in his usual energetic way buckled to, and prepared an excellent supper of fried onions on toast, with a little ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... creatures of the night came out—the owls, and the bats, and the night moths—and looked with wonder at the queer little pair lying prone amongst the green clover. Thousands of wonderful night noises also began to awaken in all directions—the merry chirp of the cricket, the whir of the bat on its circling flight, the hum of the moths—but the children heard nothing, although the creatures of the night were curious about these strange little beings who, by good rights, ought not ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... rapids. Neewa and Miki were too absorbed to hear him. Miki's four paws were paddling the air again, but this time his sharp teeth were firmly fixed in the loose hide under Neewa's neck, and with his paws he continued to kick and bat in a way that promised effectively to pummel the wind out of Neewa had not the thing happened which Challoner feared. Still in a clinch they rolled off the prow of the canoe into the swirling current ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... For the rest, your news of the alliance of Louis of Hungary with your Tribune makes it necessary for the friend of Louis to withdraw from all feud with Rome. Ere the week expire, the owl and the bat may seek ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... ungrateful, fickle, vain. Then let me, sequestered fair, To your sibyl grot repair; On yon hanging cliff it stands, Scooped by nature's salvage hands, Bosomed in the gloomy shade Of cypress not with age decayed. Where the owl still-hooting sits, Where the bat incessant flits, There in loftier strains I'll sing Whence the changing seasons spring, Tell how storms deform the skies, Whence the waves subside and rise, Trace the comet's blazing tail, Weigh the planets in a scale; Bend, great God, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... through the summer months there was always something to be seen in the lane—a squirrel, a stoat; always a song-bird to listen to, a flower or fern to gather. By night the goatsucker visited it, and the bat, and the white owl gliding down the slope. In winter when the clouds hung low the darkness in the hollow between the high banks, where the light was shut out by the fir trees, was like that of ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... Raymond was exceedingly hard to pitch to. He was always edging over the plate, trying to get hit. If anybody touched him in practice he would roar like a mad bull, but in a game he would cheerfully have stopped cannon-balls. He got in front of Salisbury's third pitch, and, dropping his bat, started for first base. The umpire called him back. Thereupon Raymond fouled balls and went through contortions at the plate till ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... too. One kind of call comes from out de sky, a big howlin' noise, loud like singin'—a regular tune. De other kind goes 'hummmmmmm' like somebody moanin'. I was settin' down and de bull bat come in de house. Me and de chillun done all we could to git him out de house. A woman nex' door was name Rachel. I say: 'Rachel! Dere's a bull bat in here and we can't get him out.' You know what she done? She turn her pocket inside out ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... Dead right. But, ye see, de barber o' dis growin' city only works on Saturday and me friend Buck's bat' tub has a leak. Anyhow, de ladies hereabouts is scarce and few. Think wot a swell I'll be when ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... tree grows by the tower foot, (Flotsam and jetsam from over the sea, Can the dead feel joy or pain?) And the owls in the ivy blink and hoot, And the sea-waves bubble around its root, Where kelp and tangle and sea-shells be, When the bat in the dark flies silently. (Hark to the wind ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... and it would never be safe to catch a batted fly. For there is no air on the moon, and therefore nothing would slow the ball down until it hit something; and it would be going as hard and fast when it struck the hand of the one who caught it as when it left your hand or the bat. ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... river of the wrath of God, roaring down into the gulf where the world has melted with its fervent heat, choked with the ruins of nations, and the limbs of its corpses tossed out of its whirling, like water-wheels. Bat-like, out of the holes and caverns and shadows of the earth, the bones gather, and the clay heaps heave, rattling and adhering into half-kneaded anatomies, that crawl, and startle, and struggle up among the putrid weeds, with the clay clinging to their clotted hair, and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the wilderness to him whose only home it is. And even as a lad, and for the sport of it, have I followed and found by its scent alone the great night-butterfly, marked brown and crimson, and larger than a little bat, whose head bears tiny ferns, and whose wings are painted with the four quarters of the moon. Like crushed sumac is the odour of it, and in winter it hides in ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... moved me. I said to myself 'I see it's off his own bat, and he's there, by the way, and the day's over and I haven't said twenty words to him.' It occurred to me that you'd probably be in the smoking-room and that it wouldn't be too late to repair my omission. I wanted to do something civil to you, so I put on ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... 'll come when she hears it crying, In the shape of an owl or bat, And she'll bring us our darling Anna In place of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... in my enjoyment was the failure of the pretty boy David Willis, who, injudiciously put in first, and playing for the first time in a match amongst men and strangers, was seized with such a fit of shamefaced shyness that he could scarcely hold his bat, and was bowled out without a stroke, from actual nervousness. Our other modest lad, John Strong, did very well; his length told in the field, and he got good fame. William Grey made a hit which actually lost the cricket-ball. We think she lodged in a hedge a quarter of a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... trader's favorite tricks was to catch Mauki's kinky locks and bat his head against the wall. Another trick was to catch Mauki unawares and thrust the live end of a cigar against his flesh. This Bunster called vaccination, and Mauki was vaccinated a number of times a week. Once, in a rage, Bunster ripped the cup handle from Mauki's nose, tearing ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... to it; and soon felt a frank comfort in being able to nestle freely against him—to cling to him like a bat to a warm wall. For cling sometimes she must. He was driving a sorrel fresh from pasture, with long, ragged hoofs, burrs in mane and tail, and a wild desire to get home to her foal; so that she fled across the country—bridges, ditches, everything, frantic with maternal passion. ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... difference consisting chiefly in the degrees of elongation of the stomach and the sharpness of the distal curvature. In other cases the cardiac portion may be prolonged into a caecal sac, a condition most highly differentiated in the blood-sucking bat, Desmodeus, where it is longer than the entire length of the body. There are two cardiac extensions in the hippopotamus and in the peccary. In many other mammals one, two or three protrusions of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... one miserable shag by our revolvers, we faced damper and "Lot's wife" about sundown, returning to camp through a dense Leichardt pine forest, where we found myriads of bat-like creatures, inches long, perhaps a foot, hanging head downwards from almost every branch of every tree. "Flying foxes," Dan called them, and Sambo helped himself to a few, finding "Lot's wife" unsatisfying; but the white folk "drew the line ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... struck him; and his evil soul fled forth, and went down to Hades squeaking, like a bat into the darkness ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... them in. Still, I admit, it was a job. Why, that same Seldom Helward I ironed and ran up on the fall of a main-buntline. We were rolling before a stiff breeze and sea, and he would swing six feet over each rail and bat against the mast in transit; but the dog stood it eight hours before he stopped cursing us. Then he was unconscious. When he came to in the forecastle, he was ready to begin again; but they stopped him. They're keeping a log, I learn, ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... 'just-break-the-news-to mother' expression of yours, and paying no more heed to my cheerful brand of conversation than if I had been a measly four-flusher. You don't eat more than a sick sparrow, and often you don't bat an eye all night. You're looking worse than the devil in a gale of wind. You've lost your grip, my boy. You don't care whether school keeps or not. In fact, if it wasn't for your folks, you'd as lief take a short cut ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... Bully-Bat fly mighty close ter de groun', My honey, my love! Mister Fox, he coax 'er, Do come ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... Jane got to me. She might have left me there doing little things like making speeches before the United States Senate and running for Governor of Tennessee, after I had, single-handed, remade the archaic constitution of that proud and bat-blind old State of my birth; but such ease was not ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... come on and whoop?" demanded Billy. "Don't you know how? You are great Indians! You got to whoop before you go on the warpath. You ought to kill a bat, too, and see if the wind is right. But maybe the engine won't run if we wait to do that. You can whoop, ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... Kate's unhappy love came over him more bitterly from the contrast with the feelings excited by the landscape. He went rapidly over the possible remedies. To remonstrate with Katy seemed out of the question. If she had any power of reason, he might argue. Bat one can not reason with feeling. It was so hard that a soul so sweet, so free from the all but universal human taint of egoism, a soul so loving, self-sacrificing, and self-consecrating, should throw ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... added greatly to its value. His classification, though superior to any that had preceded it, was in some respects astonishing, as when he put the hippopotamus among aquatic animals with fish, and the bat among birds. Occasionally he describes a purely mythical animal like "the monkey-fox." It is difficult to see what criterion of truth would have been adequate for the scholar at that time. A monkey-fox is no more improbable than a rhinoceros, and ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... small scale, as saying to a criminal, "It's five in the morning, the ceremony will be performed at half-past seven"? Such sleep is troubled by an idea dressed in grey and furnished with wings, which comes and flaps, like a bat, upon the windows of ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... le' me alone!' gasped Ted, struggling and writhing with all his power; but the flailing went on, bat—bat—bat—with blows that might have disturbed an elephant. Ted's feelings became too strong for words; he started to howl, and the night re-echoed with the cries of the outraged bushranger. The rest of the gang stood mute, staring at this shocking ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... who has never read nor wished to read. For the Poet is indeed a Maker: above the world of sense, trodden by hidebound humanity, he builds that world of his own whereto is summoned the unfettered spirit. Why does it delight me to see the bat flitting at dusk before my window, or to hear the hoot of the owl when all the ways are dark? I might regard the bat with disgust, and the owl either with vague superstition or not heed it at all. But these have ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... an eagerness to try their mettle, to do something "off their own bat." At the end of each day the Ten Hundred swung in a long swaying column behind their band along the pave roads homewards. Company after company sending up defiant echoes with the marching rallies peculiar to the Normans, they splashed noisily through the almost interconnected line of puddles. ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... not be any more wrong to hit a ball from the end of a stick—as in billiards—than it is to hit it from a mallet in croquet; or from a stretched tendon, as in tennis; or from a bat, as in baseball—we do not feel that we have to argue the point, when we remind the reader that billiards and pool, especially in the public parlors, do assemble questionable companions, who use questionable ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... bomb burst and blossomed out into a small cloud. The boat then turned east again, but now in front of her, on both sides, everywhere, shells burst and sputtered fire. The scouting hydroplane dashed over the submarine like a bat; two pale faces looked down and disappeared. Then right above the stern of the Kate a grenade exploded and one of the sailors dropped his rifle, clutched his face, toppled over the railing, and ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... appeared, immoderately dusty; and no wonder, for the organist had employed them to climb, sweep fashion, into the biggest organ-pipe to investigate the cause of a bronchial affection of long standing,—which turned out to be a dead bat caught ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cried, waving her hand as if to wave away a bat. "If no bird ever flew away from the nest there would be a pretty swarm in it. Look at my kids there—as long as they need their mother they run about after her, but as soon as they can find their food alone they seek it wherever ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... dingy book-stall wakens him from his reverie. His lace ruffles are soiled in a moment with the learned dust of ancient volumes. Perhaps he picks up the only work out of all his library that is known to exist,—un ravissant petit Elzevir, 'De Imperio Magni Mogolis' (Lugd. Bat. 1651). On the title-page of this tiny volume, one of the minute series of 'Republics' which the Elzevirs published, the poet has written his rare signature, "J. B. P. Moliere," with the price the book cost him, "1 livre, 10 sols." "Il n'est pas de bouquin ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... little trouble Banks discovered this to have been a large bat (flying fox). Of the insect life seen, he was particularly struck by the white ants and their nests, and formed a very respectful opinion ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... crouched a small Kikuyu savage, in blanket ear ornaments and all the fixings, armed with a long lashed whip and raucous voice. At any given moment he was likely to hop out over the moving wheel, run forward, bat the off leading mule, and hop back again, all with the most extraordinary agility. He likewise hurled what sounded like very opprobrious epithets at such natives as did not get out the way quickly enough to suit him. The expression of his face, which was that ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... down the rut-rifted lane Where the wild roses hang and the woodbines entwine, And the shrill squeaking bat makes his circles again Round the side of the tavern close by the sign. The sun is gone down like a wearisome queen, In curtains the richest ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... imagination he moved with a gay, eager crowd through the gateway leading into the great city ball ground. He could hear the game called; watch the first swirl of the ball as it curved from the pitcher's hand; catch the sharp click of the bat against it; and join in the roar of applause as the swift-footed runner ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... regiments were formed for the service of William. The exiles established themselves as silk workers in Spitalfields, cotton spinners at Bideford, tapestry weavers at Exeter, wool carders at Taunton, kersey makers at Norwich, weavers at Canterbury, bat makers at Wandsworth, sailcloth makers at Ipswich, workers in calico in Bromley, glass in Sussex, paper at Laverstock, ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... began talking again. "Dinah will miss me very much tonight, I should think!" (Dinah was the cat.) "I hope they'll remember her saucer of milk at tea-time! Oh, dear Dinah, I wish I had you here! There are no mice in the air, I'm afraid, but you might catch a bat, and that's very like a mouse, you know, my dear. But do cats eat bats, I wonder?" And here Alice began to get rather sleepy, and kept on saying to herself, in a dreamy sort of way "do cats eat bats? do cats eat bats?" and sometimes, "do ...
— Alice's Adventures Under Ground • Lewis Carroll
... Gagool behind us, as she flitted about like a vampire bat. "There are the bright stones ye love, white men, as many as ye will; take them, run them through your fingers, eat of them, hee! hee! drink of ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... on Gungadhura? What does he take me for? One of his stool-pigeons? If it's a question of percentage, I'd prefer one from the maharajah than from him. If I ever stumble on it, Gungadhura shall know first go off the bat, and I'll see the British Government in hell before I'll ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy |
