"Bumble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lashed and swore at them, the animals would not budge an inch until she permitted them to go. Here are a few of the common superstitions current in Berkshire. If a corpse be kept over a Sunday another death will occur before the week is out; should a big bumble-bee enter the window, a guest may be expected; and when the woodpecker, commonly called the yaffle, laughs, they say the rain is coming. When the thick mist lies in the valley, the people say it is the White Lady, a belief closely ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... large "bumble," with a sting as pitiless as the finger of scorn, just then climbed up the inside of Mr. Middlerib's nightshirt, until it got squarely between his shoulders, and then it felt for his ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... All for me the bumble-bee Drones his song in the perfect weather; And, just on purpose to sing to me, Thrush and blue-bird came North together. Just for me, in red and white, Bloom and blossom the fields of clover; And all for me and my delight The wild Wind ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... in the world do you want with bees? Isn't it bad enough around the farm already with yellow-jackets and bumble-bees, without bringing any more here? I should think you would get stung enough by the wild bees without wanting to bring a lot of honey bees ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... fierceness. We were all out on the piazza—as the coolest place we could find—my wife, my sister-in-law and I. The only sounds that broke the Sabbath stillness were the hum of an occasional vagrant bumble-bee, or the fragmentary song of a mocking-bird in a neighboring elm, who lazily trolled a stave of melody, now and then, as a sample of what he could do in the cool of the morning, or after a light shower, when the conditions ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... the hands of the mistress of the poorhouse, who was named Mrs. Bumble. It contained the dead mother's wedding-ring, and, as Mrs. Bumble was a dishonest woman, she hid both locket and ring, intending ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... drive in two flies? and mud-turkles? and bumble-bees? and muskeeters? Say, uncle Josiah, did ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... freely and his game was the apotheosis of bumble-puppy. Archibald, his partner, was ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... the door-posts, and waiting to see if anything would happen! As a rule, nothing did happen, but there was no knowing what joyful day might bring a new sensation. Sometimes there was a dog-fight. Once—thrilling recollection!—Ozias Brisket's horse had run away ("Think 't 's likely a bumble-bee must ha' stung him; couldn't nothin' else ha' stirred him out of a walk, haw! haw!") and had scattered the joints of ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... clearing stood young firs and pines, as shiny as metal, and so motionless that the drops which still hung here and there on their needles seemed frozen. Everything was motionless under this yellow light, the grass-blades, the moss-blossoms, and the little blue butterflies, and a bumble-bee crawled into the bell of a bennet and hung there as if enchanted. In the thicket a fox drew near, his head lowered to sniff the ground, and suddenly he too stood still without stirring a muscle and stared into space, his eyes transparent as green glass, spell-bound by the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... did, and ran us in up the wind with a steady hand till the roadstead opened before us. But it was empty. Torode was off after plunder, and we turned and ran for Peter Port. We found John Ozanne as busy as a big bumble-bee, but he made time to greet my grandfather very jovially, and showed him all over his little ship with much pride. He was in high spirits and anxious to be off, especially since he had heard of ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... Even the chinless curate, whose voice without consonants gave the effect of an intoning bumble-bee, never took advantage of her suggestions (frequently repeated) that he should drop ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... awhile. A timid animal world had come to life for the season. Little tadpoles and efts began to bubble up through the water, and to race along beneath it; toads made noises like very young ducks, and advanced to the margin in twos and threes; overhead, bumble-bees flew hither and thither in the thickening light, their drone coming and going like the sound of ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... looking for them. So he just ambled along as if he had all the time in the world, as indeed he had. He was feeling very good-natured, was Jimmy Skunk. And why shouldn't he? There was everything to make him feel good-natured. Summer had arrived to stay. On every side he heard glad voices. Bumble the Bee was humming a song. Best of all, Jimmy had found three beetles that very morning, and he knew that there were more if he could find them. So why shouldn't he ...
— The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad • Thornton W. Burgess
... she knelt, her prayer book open upon the carved margin of the tomb, the slender crossed legs and paws of the alert little marble dog serving as so often before for bookrest. Canon Horniblow boomed and droned, like some unctuous giant bumble-bee, from the reading-desk. The choir intoned responses from the gallery with liberal diversity of pitch. And presently, alas! Damaris' thoughts began to wander, making flitting excursions right and left. For half-way ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... gave up the riddle, and began, in his pleasant holiday idleness, to look about at other things in the unfrequented wilderness through which the river ran. To trace the raven by following it home seemed too difficult, but it was easy to follow a great bumble-bee, which went blundering by, alighting upon a block of stone, took flight again, and landed upon a slope covered with moss, entering at last a hole which went ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... bewild'rin'!— Last night, and night before, and night before that, Seemed like I saw the march o' regiments o' children, Marching to the robin's fife and cricket's rat-ta-tat! Lily-banners overhead, with the dew upon 'em, On flashed the little army, as with sword and flame; Like the buzz o' bumble-wings, with the honey on 'em, Came an eerie, cheery chant, chiming ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley
... and long lines of yellow shocks; and in the corners of the meadow fence stand clumps of flower-stalks,—joe-pye-weed, boneset, goldenrod,—bare and already bleaching; and deep within their matted shade, where the brook bends about an elder bush, a single amber pendant of the jewel-weed, to which a bumble-bee comes droning on wings so loud that a little hyla near us stops his ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... play of Nature which repeats, in families widely different, organs of similar form, though perhaps of by no means similar use; nay, sometimes (as in those beautiful clear-wing hawk-moths which you, as they hover round the rhododendrons, mistake for bumble-bees) repeats the outward form of a whole animal, for no conceivable reason save her - shall we not say honestly His? - own ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... have Comic Histories, Comic Geographies, and Comic Grammars, but a Comic Bible would horrify us. At sight of such blasphemy Bumble would stand aghast, and Mrs. Grundy would scream with terror. But Bumble and Mrs. Grundy are less important personages in France, and so the country of Rabelais and Voltaire produces what we are unable to tolerate ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... a few lines in the press of business to tell you I am well, but very lonely, with a view out over the green, in this dull, rainy weather, while the bumble-bees hum and the sparrows twitter. Grand audience tomorrow. It's vexatious that I have to buy linen, towels, table-cloths, and sheets. * * * Farewell. Hearty love, and write! ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... bumble-bee?] voice of the crowd below the windows watching Volney Sprague's bulletin suddenly lifted in a lion roar. Elation in that quarter was ominous, and Shelby drew a curtain. It appeared that a minor revolt ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... intrepid striplings, who Made all your school-fellows feel humble, Are mulcted of your honours due By an officious Cambrian Bumble. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various
... underrated it. He gave, in subsequent writings, so much more perfect form and fullness to everything it contained, that he did not care to credit himself with the marvel of having yet so early anticipated so much. But the first sprightly runnings of his genius are undoubtedly here. Mr. Bumble is in the parish sketches, and Mr. Dawkins the dodger in the Old Bailey scenes. There is laughter and fun to excess, never misapplied; there are the minute points and shades of character, with all the discrimination and nicety of ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... the great features of the place. Here, on the summit, where the stillness was absolute, unbroken by any sound, and the solitude complete, we thought ourselves beyond the region of animated life; but while we were sitting on the rock, a solitary bee (bromus, the bumble bee) came winging his flight from the eastern valley, and lit on the knee of one ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... face since Dakota Milt chuckled, "The Teal is a grand car for mountains. Aside from overheating, bum lights, thin upholstery, faulty ignition, tissue-paper brake-bands, and this-here special aviation engine, specially built for a bumble-bee, it's what the ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... found in growing clover. This was accounted for by the fact that there were no old maids in that polygamous country. Old maids naturally were not allowed! And there being none, there were of course no cats to kill the mice that eat the bumble-bees' nests; thus, no bumble-bees to fertilize it, therefore no clover. Old maids have ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... to the immense rabble of Bumble engines and the Bashi-Bazouks of private establishments, the small complement of men and material of the Fire Brigade. It consists of twenty-seven large horse-engines, capable of throwing 88 gallons a minute to a height of from 50 to 70 feet, and nine smaller ones drawn by hand. To ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon.
... you tell what "phen-dubs" means? I can. Can you say all off by heart The "onery twoery ickery ann," Or tell "alleys" and "commons" apart? Can you fling a top, I would like to know, Till it hums like a bumble-bee? Can you make a kite yourself that will go 'Most as high as the eye can see, Till it sails and soars like a hawk on the wing, And the little birds come and light on ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... instances of what was expected of him; and his thick voice drowsed in the still air like the obstinate droning of an enormous bumble-bee. Captain Whalley did not know what was the force or the weakness that prevented him from saying good-night and walking away. It was as though he had been too tired to make the effort. How queer. More queer than any of Ned's instances. Or was it ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... got a number of his pieces in my book, and I'm fond of 'em. But this man makes things so kind of true and natural I feel at home with HIM. And this one I've longed to read, though I guess I can't understand much of it. His 'Bumble Bee' was just lovely; with the grass and columbines and the yellow breeches of the bee. I'm never tired of that;" and Becky's face woke up into something like beauty as she glanced hungrily at the Emerson while she dusted the delicate cover that ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... establishment, and found every thing as they had left it the night before. Rollo felt quite confident of the success of his experiment. The only thing that gave him any uneasiness was the want of a queen bee. He and Henry were just speculating upon the expediency of sending in a bumble-bee instead, for a king, when their attention was arrested by hearing Jonas calling Rollo. They looked up, and saw him standing at the ...
— Rollo's Experiments • Jacob Abbott
... a mere code address, and I use it here symbolically. I have seen commerce pretty close. I know what it is worth, and I have no particular regard for commercial magnates, but one must protest against these Bumble-like proceedings. Is it indignation at the loss of so many lives which is at work here? Well, the American railroads kill very many people during one single year, I dare say. Then why don't these dignitaries come ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... shaggy heads, and gather as of old the flaming Cock's Comb by the little path. I hear the honeybees droning in the Crab Apple tree by the back gate, and watch the robins crowding the branches of the Mountain Ash, where the bright red berries cluster. I see the terrible bumble-bee bear down the Poppy on its slender stem and go ...
— The Long Ago • Jacob William Wright
... wounded but lost none of our soldiers. This engagement we called the capture of fort "Hell." For some time thereafter we made regular raids into the surrounding country in quest of an enemy. We were eventually successful in our quest, as in quick order we ran across and captured a company of bumble bees. This we called the "Battle of the Wilderness." Victory over a nest of hornets we called the capture of "Fort Sumter." A large nest of wasps gave us perhaps the hardest fight of our campaigning. This we ran across ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... fiddling out of a barn. With a pair of bag-pipes under her arm: She could sing nothing but fiddle cum fee, The mouse has married the bumble-bee; Pipe, cat—dance, mouse, We'll have a ...
— The Little Mother Goose • Anonymous
... purpose he chooses a bush with thorns, perhaps a hawthorn, and then when he catches any small creature he sticks it on the thorns and leaves it there spiked until it is wanted. Look at this one's larder. He has a wretched little dead sparrow hanging by its neck from a big thorn, and two or three bumble-bees spiked too. We can imagine the mamma saying to the little ones: 'No, dears, you mustn't have any sparrow to-night just before you go to bed; it would give you indigestion and make you dream. Papa will have some of that for his supper, but if you'll be good children ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... wrong, or to put Mrs. Wing down. Every one twittered and chirped, and made a great noise; but no one would give up, and all went to roost in a great state of uncertainty. But, the next day, it became evident that Mrs. Wing was right; for Major Bumble-bee came buzzing in to tell them that old Daddy Winter's hut was empty, and his white head had been seen in the sunny porch of the ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... by or before this time; the bumble-bee, hornet, and wasp. But here only royalty escapes; the queen-mother alone foresees the night of winter coming and the morning of spring beyond. The rest of the tribe try gypsying for a while, but perish ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... memory in Regent Circus records that he was "an example to his order," and yet better than this stately panegyric is the happy accident, if it be one, that the poor flower girls of London have pitched their camp upon the steps, and have successfully defied all the efforts of Mr. Bumble ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... bunched his thick lips together like the stem-end of a tomato and shot a bumble-bee dead that had lit on a weed seven feet away. One after another the several chewers expressed a charge of tobacco juice and delivered it at the deceased with steady, aim and ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... stung his cheeks like sparks of fire. Not only did he see and feel, he could even hear it now: his ears were filled with a humming sound, growing louder and louder every minute, like the noise made by a large colony of bumble-bees when a person carelessly treads on their nest, and they are angered and thrown into a great commotion and swarm out to defend their home. Very soon out of this confused murmur louder, clearer sounds began to rise; and these could be distinguished ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... with difficulty resisted a strong desire to catch and kiss the pretty baby, she scandalized her neighbours by laughing outright the next minute. A particularly portly, pious-looking priest, who was marching with superb dignity, and chanting like a devout bumble-bee, suddenly mislaid his temper, and injured the effect by boxing a charity boy's ears with his gilded missal, and then capped the climax by taking a pinch of snuff with a sonorous ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... the most joyful season of the year? It is then that the spring bonnet of the workaday world crosses the earth's orbit and makes the bank account of the husband and father look fatigued. The low shoe and the low hum of the bumble-bee are again with us. The little striped hornet heats his nose with a spirit lamp and goes forth searching for the man with the linen pantaloons. All nature is full of life and activity. So is the man with the linen ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... prefer bumble-bees to humble-bees, and even to honey-bees, notwithstanding the dictionaries, and never lie down in the long rich grass, with a great-coat under me; and am not afraid of catching cold though I may sit upon damp roses, or tread upon ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... certain time- honoured conventions and principles. Ajax said with reason that Johnnie Kapus, the nephew of our neighbour, old man Kapus, played the game of life in such a sorry, blundering fashion that he marvelled why his uncle gave him house-room. Ajax christened Johnnie—Bumble-puppy. ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... his chin on his chest and the bowl of his pipe drooping down over his comfortably bulging, unbuttoned waistcoat. The lazy day was in his blood and even the whine of the sawmills on the river-bank, a mile or more to the south, tempered as it was by the distance to the drone of a surly bumble-bee, still vaguely annoyed him. Tiny dots of men in flannel shirts of brilliant hue, flashing from time to time out across the log-choked space between the booms, caught his eye whenever he lifted his head, ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... bother work, work don't bother me. I'se fo' times as happy as a bumble bee. Us eats when us kin git it, sleeps mos' all ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... instant (we had purposely dropped back to bring up the rear of the procession after Salem, letting even the lumbering Hippopotamus bumble on ahead) we beheld all our family of cars drawn up under some skyscraping elms, in front of the most delectable tea-house you ever met in your life. The Hippo was in front of a very fine old white ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... are! (Of course women are all alike!) While Osborne, like a good-natured bumble-bee, was buzzing noisily about, as though all the world were his clover-blossom; and Allen, so far as I know, was doing nothing; M. Godin, alert and keen despite his gentleness and a modesty which kept him for the most ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... into this folly was a bumble of the utmost beauty. The bars of his coat "burned" as "brightly" as those of the tiger in Wombwell's menagerie, and his fur was softer than my mother's black velvet mantle. I knew, for I had kissed him lightly as he sat on the ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... a Bumble Bee," he comforted her. "It came between us for a bit, its shadow fell upon you, nothing more! Such things will happen; we must be prepared for them. It was nothing in myself ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... certainly have most outspoken cousins! They don't seem to hesitate to tell me what to bring and what not to bring them. But I'm sure of one thing! Bumble Barlow won't be so fussy particular; she'll take whatever I bring ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... hive, especially the stings. Indeed, some schemes of labor and Poor Law reform recently advanced by distinguished Socialists, amount to little more than putting the largest number of people in the despotic power of Mr. Bumble. Apparently, progress means ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... impelled by some strange motive, he took the path over the Ridge again. It had been a long day and a wearing one. He had tried Hannibal once more; but his pupils cared less for Hannibal than for the bumble-bees droning in the window-frame. For some reason the dull routine of lessons had been duller than usual. The scholars had never been so stupid. Again and again the face that he had seen rest on his arm the day before came between him and his page, and when ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... goings and comings of an ant or the capricious flight of a bumble-bee; then with his eyes lost in space, immersed in the ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... there had been great rejoicing over the discomfiture of the constables. No sooner had they departed down the flagged path than back flitted the bevy of girls again into the study, until the small room was full to overflowing. It was like seeing a company of fat bumble-bees, their portly bodies resplendent in black and gold, buzz heavily out of a room, and a gay flight of pale-blue and lemon butterflies flit back in their places. All the daughters fell upon their father, Margaret, Bridget, Isabel, Sarah, Mary, and Susanna; there they all were! tugging ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... mysteriously affected by her indignation the absurd Fyne dog began to bark in the porch. It might have been at a trespassing bumble-bee however. That animal was capable of any eccentricity. Fyne got up quickly and went out to him. I think he was glad to leave us alone to discuss that matter of his journey to London. A sort of anti-sentimental journey. He, too, apparently, had confidence in my sagacity. It was touching, ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... it while there was enough to catch even a bumble-bee. The birds are back. They came directly I'd gone a ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... few birds. One sort, called pardelas by the Spaniards, burrow in the ground like rabbits, and are said to be good eating. There are also humming-birds, not much larger than bumble bees, their bills no thicker than a pin, their legs proportional to their bodies, and their minute feathers of most beautiful colours. These are seldom taken or seen but in the evenings, when they fly about, and they flew sometimes at night into our fire. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... reformation, which originated in the cell of an obscure cloister, had already germinated in the mind of Waldo; how the rich merchant of Lyons, in search of the treasures of the age, was suddenly changed into a bumble disciple, voluntarily poor; and what were the principal traits of his ministry, his voyages, his relations, his life, his death! Concerning such men, we cannot regret too deeply the almost utter silence of this historian of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... birthed another promotional bumble, Roger. I can see it in your eyes. I only hope it's not as big a one as when you put the Martian ambassador on 3D and he thanked you profusely for the gross of Puffyloaves, assuring you that he'd never slept on a softer mattress in all his life ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... dropped on hands and toes and ran along like a dog, thus far untouched by bullets, though they were thick as a nest of liberated bumble bees about his head. ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... The Bumble-bee brushed off the pollen from his legs; and the humbler Honey-bee, after allowing his children to suck his paws, to get the honey sticking to them, spruced up and listened attentively to the orders read to him by the train-leader, Sir Locust, who prided himself ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... Indeed what can? What is there like it? Has a church-bell any tone approximating it even? Has a violin? Has a hautboy? Has a French horn? Has a jew's-harp? Ay, that's the thing! A Jew's-harp has something like it; and so—so has a bumble-bee. A thought strikes me! It is possible that Zounds and Sounds are—Yes,' said I, rising and shouting with the excitement, 'Zounds and Sounds are bumble-bees!—bumble-bees curiously prepared; gathered in some warm ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... Buzz! A great bumble-bee, with a band of red gold across his back, flew up, and hovered near, wavering to and fro in the air as he stayed ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... hedge-bank. A dozen times she vanished into a hole, and, after a minute or so, came out again with the air of one dissatisfied. Half-a-dozen times she came out tail first, buzzing warnings and very angry, at the invitation of a bumble-bee queen, a big, hook-jawed, carnivorous beetle in shining mail, and so forth, but she never lost ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... Even now there is room for plenty of improvement in our counterfeit presentment; but in those days the body was made with yellow mohair, ribbed with red silk and gold twist, and as thick as a fertile bumble-bee. John Pike perceived that to offer such a thing to Crocker's trout would probably consign him—even if his great stamina should over-get the horror—to an uneatable death, through just and natural indignation. On the other hand, while the May-fly ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... leaf and flower, Has found a roof, knowing how true thou art; The bumble-bee, within the last half-hour, Has ceased to hug the honey to its heart; While in the barnyard, under shed and cart, Brood-hens have housed.—But I, who scorned thy power, Barometer of the birds,—like August there,— Beneath a beech, dripping from foot to hair, Like ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... who has been stung by a bumble-bee; she places herself once more, and of her own accord, upon the griddle of suspicion, and begins her struggle with the unknown all ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... people who "have gone where money was" and have fallen honestly and rapturously into love, but you have got to be very sure that money in such a case is not the motive. If it is the penalty never fails to follow. Mr. Bumble married Mrs. Corney for "six teaspoons, a pair of sugar tongs, and a milk-pot, with a small quantity of secondhand furniture and twenty pounds in money." And in two months he regretted his bargain and admitted that he had gone "dirt cheap." "Only ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... to the Crumpetty Tree Came the Stork, the Duck, and the Owl; The Snail and the Bumble-Bee, The Frog and the Fimble Fowl (The Fimble Fowl, with a Corkscrew leg); And all of them said, "We humbly beg We may build our homes on your lovely Hat,— Mr. Quangle Wangle, grant us ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... This is an excellent method on her part, because of the variety of the game that comes her way. I see her accepting with equal readiness whatever chance may send her: Butterflies and Dragon-flies, Flies and Wasps, small Dung-beetles and Locusts. If I offer her a Mantis, a Bumble-bee, an Anoxia—the equivalent of the common Cockchafer—and other dishes probably unknown to her race, she accepts all and any, large and small, thin-skinned and horny-skinned, that which goes afoot and that which takes winged flight. She is omnivorous, she preys on everything, down to ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... gongs, they always fill me with despair!' cried Bess. 'I am never ready when ours begins to buzz through the house, like a gigantic, melancholy-mad bumble bee. Of course I must change, dear; firstly, because I am smothered with dust, and sixthly, as Dogberry says, because I have brought a pretty gown to do honour ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... hand he was pulling along at a snail's pace a green leaf, on which a dead bumble-bee lay in state. With the other he was keeping in order a funeral procession of caterpillars. It was a motley crowd of mourners that the energetic forefinger urged along the line of march. He had evidently collected them from many quarters,—little green worms that spun down from ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... the works of Persius Flaccus, Silius Italicus, and Claudianus. He also reprinted the Caltha Poetarum, or the Bumble Bee, of T. Cutwode, from the edition of 1599, for the Roxburghe Club, and assisted in the preparation of the third edition of Ellis's Specimens of ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... an excellent player. With the smallest luck, he and Fossell ought to be more than a match for a pair of whom, if one (Miss Gabriel) was wily, the other played a game not usually distinguishable from bumble-puppy. ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Roses, and lilies fair, Birds in the trees, and the big bumble-bees, Shall welcome our little ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... interfere with transit, is accountable for much disheartening bungling. Instead of taking a clear line from the outset, and denouncing these glorified vestries as useless, impossible and entirely unscientific organs, too many Socialists tried to claim Bumble as their friend and use him as their tool. And Bumble turned out to be a very bad friend and ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... hens cackling and calling to their chickens. I thought I heard our dog bark; but all was so warm, and still, and sleepy, that I felt as if I should go to sleep too if I kept my eyes shut much longer. I heard the birds though, and a great bumble-bee that flew by ...
— Woodside - or, Look, Listen, and Learn. • Caroline Hadley
... thought," says Preyer, "that the abundance and beauty of the pansy and of the clover were dependent upon the number of cats and owls But so it is. The clover and the pansy cannot exist without the bumble-bee, which, in search of his vegetable nectar, transports unconciously the pollen from the masculine to the feminine flower, a service which other insects perform only partially for these plants. Their existence therefore depends upon that of the bumble-bee. The mice ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... made of straw and bright worsted, hangs from the middle of the low ceiling; and hung against the wall, between two glaring woodcuts representing "Lady Caroline" in red and "Highland Mary" in blue, is a deep frame filled with worsted flowers, to which a butterfly and a bumble-bee have been pinned. Paper lacework depends from their kitchen-shelves, and common eggshells, artificially colored, decorate the lilac-bushes in the side yard. They are always making new mats or piecing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... literature, I may remark, is accounts of mountaineering exploits, though I have never seen a glacier or a permanent snow mountain in my life. I do not care a row of pins how badly they may be written, and what form of bumble-puppy grammar and composition is employed, as long as the writer will walk along the edge of a precipice with a sheer fall of thousands of feet on one side and a sheer wall on the other; or better still crawl ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the scythe drop and he picked up the chunk, And sneaked up as soft as a breeze, And poked at the noise in that rotten rail's bunk Till out came a bumble of bees. ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... nicely so far without one. Did I have one on the Miele? And yet I was the only woman on board. There are only three things I am afraid of—bumble-bees, scarlet fever, and chaperones. Ugh! the clucking, evil-minded monsters, finding wrong in everything, seeing sin in the most innocent actions, and suggesting sin—yes, causing ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... danger they abandoned the wild notion, Finding it easy for a Frog to jog On with a kind King Log. But in the fulness of the time, there came A would-be monarch—Legion his fit name; A Plebs-appointed Autocrat, Stork-throated, Goggle-eyed, Paul-Pry-coated; A poking, peering, pompous, petty creature, A Bumble-King, with beak for its chief feature. This new King Stork, With a fierce, fussy appetite for work; Not satisfied with fixing like a vice Authority on Town and Country Mice, Tried to extend his sway to pools and bogs, And rule the Frogs! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... of the situation, and he directed ten thousand bees under General Bumble, and another ten thousand wasps under Colonel Hornet, to fall on the robber and cruel Sigli and sting them to death. But this was hardly necessary, as the wriggling of their bodies so fixed them to the figure that ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... "But, bumble-bee, Your gauzy wings, It seems to me, Are flimsy things; Should they get drenched, 'twould spoil them quite, And you'd be ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... when there is nothing doing, he is still happy; waiting cheerfully upon events until they arrange themselves for his amusement. He will sit for twenty minutes opposite the garden bank, watching for a bumble-bee to come out of its hole. "I saw him go in," he says to himself, "so he's bound to come out. Extraordinarily interesting world." But to his inferiors (such as the gardener) he pretends that it is not pleasure but duty which keeps ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... it. "You have muscle power and brain power," she said; "you must utilize them, or be content to remain forever the inferior race. Get land, every one that can, and as fast as you ean. A landless people must be dependent upon the landed people. A few acres to till for food and a roof, however bumble, over your head, are the castle of your independence, and when you have it you are fortified to act and vote independently whenever your interests are at stake." That part of her lecture (and there was much of it) that dwelt on the moral duties and domestic relations of the colored ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... are some parties in this place who employ very queer legal advisers; and in shaking hands, a file or a gimlet, and a bit of tobacco, are as likely to pass as not. That warder can see every thing, my dear young Sir; but he can no more hear what we say than he can understand what a couple of bumble-bees are murmuring about who are barred up in a double window. We can therefore converse with one another as much without reserve as we please, or rather"—and here the little man's eyes twinkled significantly—"as you please. What I hear from a client ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... appointment on the first ridge of Bore Hill. A sunny summer morning smiled fresh after the rain. Bumble-bees bustled busily about the closed lips of the red-rattle, and ripe gorse pods burst with little elastic explosions in ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... Where the dandelions dipped In crimson foam of clover-bloom, And dripped and dripped and dripped; And they clinched the bumble-stings, Gauming honey on their wings, And bundling them in lily-bells, ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... into the pine-wood. The earth there was covered like a bee's body with black and gold stripes; there was the blue sea below, and white, sleepy clouds, and bumble-bees booming above the heather; it was all softness, a summer's day in Devon. Suddenly I came on Pearse standing at the edge of the cliff with Pasiance sitting in a little hollow below, looking up at him. I heard ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... smooth curve of broad, level road that skirted the ledges from the upper village pranced four splendid bays; and after them rollicked and swayed, with a perfect delirium of wheels and springs, the great black and yellow bodied vehicle, like a huge bumble-bee buzzing back with its spoil of a June day to the hive. The June sunset was golden and rosy upon the hills and cliffs, and Giant's Cairn stood burnished against the eastern blue. Gay companies, scattered about piazzas and greenswards, stopped in their talk, or their promenades, ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... lovely and quiet and restful are the silent, scented, spreading fields! How soothing to a spirit tired of the city's din is this solitude, broken only by the singing of the birds and the drowsy droning of the bee, erroneously termed 'bumble'! The green fields, the shady trees, the sweet freshness of the summer air, untainted by city smoke, and over all the eternal serenity of the blue unclouded sky—how can human spite and human passion exist in such a paradise? Does it all not make ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... was down when the explosion came. Branches and pieces of tree trunk were whirled upward, and the air became populated with deadly bumble bees and humming birds, for such is the sound that the shell splinters make. When I essayed our shell hole afterward, I couldn't fathom how five of us had managed to accommodate ourselves in it, but in the rush of necessity, ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... As you see, he started with a fly, as they say, and now it's grown to a bumble-bee. It was a fly then, and now—it's a bumble-bee.... And he still loves her. Look at him, he loves her! I expect he's walking now to the town to get a glimpse of her with one eye.... He'll get a glimpse of ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... Dean of Hawthornedene, Slough, England. The Beadle took first prize at the cat show held in Chicago in 1896. He also had honorable mention at two cat shows in England when a kitten, under the name of Bumble Bee. Lord Gwynne is a noble specimen, a long-haired white cat with wonderful blue eyes. He was bred from Champion Bundle, and his mother was out of The Masher, No. 1027, winner of many championships. His former owner was Mrs. Davies, of Upper Cattesham. Mrs. ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... in writing a story, he had removed but one-eighth of his mind for the consideration of mundane affairs, and that, as any one knows, is insufficient to judge fairly whether the winged thing I was reaching out for was a fly or a bumble bee. In the morning, the story being finished and the other seven-eights of brain at liberty to dwell upon the same question, he decided to follow me, with the result that in the afternoon ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... clear the doubt, They got old GOVERNOR HANCOCK out. The Governor came, with his Light-horse Troop And his mounted truckmen, all cock-a-hoop; Halberds glittered and colors flew, French horns whinnied and trumpets blew, The yellow fifes whistled between their teeth And the bumble-bee bass-drums boomed beneath; So he rode with all his band, Till the President met him, cap in hand. - The Governor "hefted" the crowns, and said, - "A will is a will, and the Parson's dead." The Governor hefted the crowns. Said he, - "There is your p'int. And here's my fee. These ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... went straight down to that dress-maker's house, and handed the square paper cousin had written on to a lady who was fluttering round among a lot of girls, all hard at work sewing, like bumble-bees in a rose-bush. ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... sing nothing But fiddle cum fee, The mouse has married The bumble-bee; Pipe, cat; dance, mouse: We'll have a ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... not what I started to say. I wanted to tell you how the least thing distracts me nowadays from my duty to the Sadhana. In my last letter[1] I told you of the bumble-bees which hover round me in some fruitless quest, to the tune of a meaningless humming, ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... chattered in the old walnut trees far away on the lawn; thrushes sang their deep-throated bugle-calls; finches twittered. A light breeze creeping up the avenue rustled the full foliage languorously. Ursula Winwood closed her eyes. A bumble-bee droned between visits to foxglove bells near by. She loved bumble-bees. They reminded her of a summer long ago when she sat, not on this seat—as a matter of fact it was in the old walled garden a quarter of a mile away—with a gallant ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... plans for refurnishing and redecorating, she was busy as a bumble-bee. As the mistress of a big garden and a real kitchen she invited all her Chicago friends to come and share her good fortune. She was filled with the spirit of ownership and exulted over the four-acre patch as if it were a noble ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... gold, Sat perched on a red-clover top, When a grasshopper, wiry and old, Came along with a skip and a hop. "Good-morrow!" cried he, "Mr. Bumble-Bee! You seem to have come ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... it from a girl," said Sally; "and many a time, when the door's been shut, I did not know if it was you in the parlour, or a big bumble-bee in the kitchen, as was making that drumbling noise. I heard you at ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... only thinking how happy they are,' she said quietly; and withdrawing her eyes from the tender pair, she turned and followed him, not knowing that the seeming sound of a passing bumble-bee was ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... matches, sealing-wax, and all scrupulously neat and orderly. There are magnificent specimens of Newfoundland dogs on the grounds, such animals as Landseer would love to paint. One of these, named Bumble, seems to be a ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... Sikes, whose ruffianism has an almost epic grandeur; and black-hearted Fagin, the Jew, receiver of stolen goods and trainer of youth in the way they should not go; and Master Dawkins, the Artful Dodger. Such, too, is Mr. Bumble, greatest and ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... fell right down, all of a heap, and oh, I nearly died of fright, and I ran and ran all the way to Wenmere Woods, and I meant never to come back again—never! And it was all Mrs. Henderson's fault that I did come—at least Mrs. Henderson's and Bumble's, and," drawing herself up with great dignity, "I am never going to speak to either of them again. When I had had my tea—she gave me cream and jam, but not any ham—and when I had played about for a little while, she told me she thought I had better be ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... place was heavy with mingled odours—one might almost have called them perfumes, were it not for a certain smack of rankness and pungency in them—and alive with birds, varying in size from that of a bumble bee up to that of a carrion crow, a few specimens of which could be seen perched here and there on the topmost branches of the tallest trees. Several of the birds were of the humming bird or sunbird species, ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... a homely name has a complimentary meaning. Mr. Wegg did not like the name Boffin, but its oldest form is bon-fin, good and fine. In 1273 Mr. Bumble's name was spelt bon-bel, good and beautiful. With these we may group Bunker, of which the oldest form is bon-quer (bon coeur), and Boffey, which corresponds to the common French name Bonnefoy, good faith; while the much more assertive Beaufoy means simply fine beech ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... glass. It grew dusky, and the lady began to feel chill, and went in, leaving the boy in the summer-house. He sat there gazing out at a bed of tulips, which, although they had closed for the night, could not go quite asleep for the wind that kept waving them about. All at once he saw a great bumble-bee fly out of one of ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... pair of Mice had eight Mouse babies in their nest. The babies were no larger than Bumble Bees at first and very pink. This was not because their fur was pink, but only because it was so very short that through it and their thin skin one saw the glow of the ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... life-history of the flies which dwell as unbidden guests or social parasites in the nests and hives of wild honey-bees. These burglarious flies are belted and bearded in the very self-same pattern as the bumble-bees themselves; but their larvae live upon the young grubs of the hive, and repay the unconscious hospitality of the busy workers by devouring the future hope of their unwilling hosts. Obviously, any fly which entered a bee-hive could only escape detection and extermination ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... went down behind the forest the Golm, which lay to the west, was bathed in red light, and the metal ball on its tall pillar looked down, like a sphere of gold, upon the village and the skittle-garden. Myriads of mosquitoes hung in the air, and the bumble bees flew back and forth between the ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... the driver was alone until he began to back the team to rush the hill once more. Then he heard angry exclamations coming from the rear of the wagon—exclamations which sounded not unlike the buzzing of an enraged bumble-bee. He stretched his neck and saw that which suggested an overgrown hoop-snake rolling down the hill. At the bottom a little mud-coated man stood up. The part of his face that was visible above his beard was pale with anger. His brown ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... familiar with the songs and habits of all the common birds, and with field mice and the frogs, toads, lizards, and snakes. Also with the wild bees and wasps. One season I made a collection of bumblebee honey, studying the habits of five or six different kinds and rifling their nests. I kept my store of bumble-bee honey in the attic where I had a small box full of the comb and a large phial filled with the honey. How well I came to know the different dispositions of the various kinds—the small red-vested that made its nest in a hole ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... not alone in puns and conundrums that the social life of Brook Farm was rich. It was rich in cheerful buzz. The bumble-bees had no more melodious hum than the Brook Farmers. They had thrown aside the forms that bind outside humanity. They were sailing on a voyage of discovery, seeking a modern El Dorado, but they did not carry with them the lust for gold. ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... bush, and when the child-larks had settled beside him he uttered a peculiar, shrill whistle. The humming sound grew louder, then, and presently hundreds of great bees rose above the flower tops and hovered in the air. But none of them approached the bush except one monstrous bumble-bee that had a body striped with black and gold, and this one sailed slowly toward the visitors and alighted gracefully upon a branch in front ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... rendered sober-minded by any such thing. In the midst of Gerald's instructive account of the holy abbot's endeavors to purify the monastic orders from the stain of simony, her hand clutched his, and doing a delicate cake-walk she compelled him along with her, announcing, "The Hornet and the Bumble-bee went walking hand in hand!" Fancying this prank not to have been without success, she next performed an improvised pas seul illustrative of the text, "The mountains shall ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... Dalmossie dell I sought a nook Beneath a thick and widely-spreading tree, And there I sat to con my little book, My book of old black-letter grammarie. All stillness in that deep and lonely dell Save hum of bumble-bee on nimble wing, Or zephyr sporting round the wild blue bell, While fancy ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... away To the pleasant Land of Play; To the fairy land afar Where the Little People are; Where the clover-tops are trees, And the rain-pools are the seas, And the leaves like little ships Sail about on tiny trips; And above the daisy tree Through the grasses, High o'erhead the Bumble Bee Hums and passes. In that forest to and fro I can wander, I can go; See the spider and the fly, And the ants go marching by Carrying parcels with their feet Down the green and grassy street I can in the sorrel sit Where the ladybird alit. I can climb the jointed ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... radishes swarmed on the angry air Around with the bumble bees, While the brussels-sprouts were pulling the snouts Of all ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... have directed, And likewise have as many more dissected, And I never met a gravedigger who to me objected. If a man gets nineteen bees in his bonnet, I'll cast twenty of 'em out. I've got in my pocket crutches for lame ducks, spectacles for blind bumble-bees, pack-saddles and panniers for grasshoppers, and many other needful things. Surely I can cure this poor man. Here, Slasher, take a little out of my bottle, and let it run down thy throttle; and if thou beest not quite slain, rise, man, ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... we have one supreme and devastating study of the illiterate minor official in Bumble. That one figure lit up and still lights the whole problem of Poor Law administration for the English reading community. It was a translation of well-meant regulations and pseudo-scientific conceptions of social order into blundering, arrogant, ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... "Troth, Nippi-Bumble, he's about right," added Briant coaxingly. "Come now, avic, wot's the raisin ye won't go? Sure we ain't blackguards enough to ax ye to come for to be sold; it's all fair and above ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... novel he wrote, excepting "Hard Times" and "Great Expectations." But the description of the workhouse, its inmates and governors, is done in Dickens's best style, and was a frontal attack on the Poor Law administration of the time. Bumble, indeed, has passed into common use as the typical workhouse official of the least satisfactory sort. No less powerful than the picture of Oliver's wretched childhood is the description of the thieves' kitchen, presided over by Fagin. Bill Sikes and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... out to the Bumble Bee Inn for tea. You needn't be a prig about it! Lots of really nice people go, and what's the harm?" She picked up her gloves and trailed to the door. "I suppose you'll ask who I was with next, and I sha'n't tell you, my dear. I'm bored ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... your animals,—there's a whole Natural History full over there, all painted with splendid daubs of colors; the children did that, I know, when they were children. Come; we'll have everything in, from an elephant to a bumble-bee!" ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... feet below snow-level. And why? Because it's too cold for them? Oh, dear, no: on sunny days in early English spring, when the thermometer doesn't rise above freezing in the shade, you will see both the honey-bees and the great black bumble as busy as their conventional character demands of them among the golden cups of the first timid crocuses. Give the bee sunshine, indeed, with a temperature just about freezing-point, and he'll flit ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... Bellairs not to make a fool of himself about the disputed right of way across his property where it joined Wentworth's own land. Colonel Bellairs always bungled into business matters of the simplest nature as a bumble bee bungles into a spider's web. For Colonel Bellairs to touch business of any kind was immediately to become hopelessly and inextricably involved in it, with much furious buzzing. His mere presence entangled the plainest matter into a confused cocoon, with himself struggling ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... 21st, Plover, two hawks, and a butterfly. April 22nd, Gulls, white waveys, robins. April 28th, White cranes. April 30th, Frogs, most of snow gone. May 2nd, Dark butterfly, four purple crocuses. May 4th, Frogs noisy, bumble bees. May 5th, Nearly clear of ice. May 8th, Water from Peace River flowing into lake. An Eagle. May 10th, Sand martins. Ice drifting in channel in front of fort. May 20th, Swans passing north. May 21st, Trees bursting into leaf. July 11th, Strawberries and raspberries. August ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... or two there'd come a glare that lit up the white-caps for a half a mile around, and you'd see the islands looking dusty through the rain, and the trees thrashing around in the wind; then comes a H-WHACK!—bum! bum! bumble-umble-um-bum-bum-bum-bum—and the thunder would go rumbling and grumbling away, and quit—and then RIP comes another flash and another sockdolager. The waves most washed me off the raft sometimes, but I hadn't any clothes on, and didn't mind. We didn't have no trouble about snags; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... For whom, perhaps with some old instinct of his race, the gentle Jew had spread a carpet. Seated on it, against no more romantic object than a blackened chimney-stack over which some bumble creeper had been trained, they both pored over one book; both with attentive faces; Jenny with the sharper; Lizzie with the more perplexed. Another little book or two were lying near, and a common basket of common fruit, and another basket full of strings of beads and tinsel ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... wise fish. It was of no use to angle for them by day any more. They knew all the flies in my book; could tell the new Jenny Lind from the old Bumble Bee before it struck the water; and seemed to know perfectly, both by instinct and experience, that they were all frauds, which might as well be called Jenny Bee and Bumble Lind for any sweet reasonableness that was in them. Besides all ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... Sudden Remedy, grandma got roots, herbs, barks, twigs, leaves, mints, moss, and tree gum. These were scraped, grated, or pounded; sifted, weighed, measured, stewed, and stirred; and the juice simmered down with the oil of juniper, and bumble-bees' wax, and various smarty, peppery, slippery things whose names must be kept private for a particular reason. The Sudden Remedy cured her instantly; and as meal was wanted, and no other person could be spared from the place, she offered to go ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... in the hole of the bumble-bee. Weary with culling sweets from the lime-trees, the heather-bloom, the apple-blossom and the ivy-flower be had sought his humble couch. Suddenly great claws tear away his roof-tree. Red Head is at work. Bees and honey make his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... and ceiling; to watch the fitfulness of its streams was a sufficient occupation. A hen laid an egg outside and began to cackle—it was an event of magnitude; a peasant sharpening his scythe, a blacksmith hammering at his anvil, the clack of a wooden shoe upon the pavement, the boom of a bumble-bee, the dripping of the fountain, all these things, with such concert as they kept, invited the dewy-feathered sleep that visited him, and held him for the best part ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... should not stop with the name of a plant. That is a mere beginning. Even slight attention will uncover many fascinating things in the lives of plants. Why cannot a farmer raise a good crop of clover-seed without the bumble-bees? What devices are there among the Orchids to bring about cross-pollination? (See "Our Native Orchids," by William Hamilton Gibson). Examine the flower of the wild Blue Flag, and see whether you can determine how the bumble-bee cross-pollinates this plant. Do the Hummingbirds cross-pollinate ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... am; I have a large stock yet in reserve, and I think, papa, that I'll ask Bob and Bumble to visit ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... you'll forget that I wouldn't let you kiss me, won't you?" he answered as he drew back from the table and lit a cigarette after passing me the case. "Everybody calls me Buzz the Bumble Bee because of a historic encounter of mine with a whole nest of bumblebees right out here in the General's garden. It is a title of heroism and I'd like to have you use it as if we'd been kids together as we were slated to have been. Gee, I bet you could have beat the bees down some. ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a hen cackling in the barn, and a big bumble-bee buzzing and bumbling around in a consequential way among the roses under the window, and I could hear the voices of the children in the front ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... is quite a girl and very beautiful—and is starting on a tour round the world or something—she'll get most of his millions, I believe. By the way, who do you think have fixed it up. Dear old Bumble and Diana Lytham. Heaven be good to him. Your turn next, old boy! Well she'll be darned lucky who gets you, see how well I trained ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... day the squirrels brought a present of wild honey; it was so sweet and sticky that they licked their fingers as they put it down upon the stone. They had stolen it out of a bumble BEES' nest on the ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... With yellow feathers instead of hair, And bumble bees crocheted in the trees— And bumble bees crocheted in the trees— And all the birds ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... to these. In their millions they have perished; but somewhere, coiled up, as it were, and sealed under the snow, there must have been the mothers and germs of the equally vast crowds that will fill the atmosphere this year. The great bumble-bee that shall be mother of hundreds, the yellow wasp that shall be mother of thousands, were hidden there somewhere. The food of the migrant birds that are coming from over sea was there dormant under the snow. Many nations have a tradition of a former ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... no lover lent His aid; and yet with glee At dusk she sought her home, content, That beauteous Bumble Bee. ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... merely includes his own circle. At the same time, however, we admit that militant Atheism is still, as of old, an offence to the superfine sceptics who desire to stand well with the great firm of Bumble and Grundy, as well as to the vast army of priests and preachers who have a professional interest in keeping heresy "dark," and to the ruling and privileged classes, who feel that militant Atheism is a great disturber of the peace which ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... astonishment, Benassis beheld Genestas pacing to and fro in the salon, like a bumble-bee in quest of an exit from the room ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... of this arbor, stretched a wide field with a fringe of woods at its distant edge, gay with the colors of autumn. The sky was bright and blue, and fair white clouds moved slowly over its surface; the air was sunny and warm, with bumble-bees humming about some late-flowering shrubs; and, high in the air, floated two great turkey-buzzards, with a beauty of motion surpassed by no other flying thing, with never a movement of their wide-spread wings, except to give them the necessary ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... is quickly influenced by the example of those around them. Mrs. Howard led the traveller to speak of what he had seen in different countries—of natural history—of the beaver, and the moose-deer, and the humming-bird, that is scarcely larger than a bumble bee; and the mocking-bird, that can imitate the notes of all other birds. Charles niched himself into a corner of the sofa upon which the gentlemen were sitting, and grew very attentive. He was rather surprised to perceive that his tutor was as much entertained ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... bedecks him with a bunch of white ribbons, and jogs jovially to church arm in arm with the pretty cause of all this beneficent disturbance. And the spectacle is mighty taking and commendable; but you'll excuse me for holding that it is not Love. It bears about the same relation to Love that Bumble-puppy bears to good whist. Among the eccentricities that make up the Average Man I find none more diverting than his complacent belief that he is, or has been, or will certainly some day be, in love. As a matter of fact, the ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... making use of its venomous sting, except when it is seized and handled. Many other Hymenoptera, honey-gatherers or hunters, are quite as spiritless; and I can assert to-day, after a long experience, that only the Social Hymenoptera, the Hive-bees, the Common Wasps and the Bumble-bees, know how to devise a common defence; and only they dare fall singly upon the aggressor, to wreak an ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... Shakespeare. By the margin of the pond the yellow iris hangs out its golden banners over which the dragon fly skims. The hedgerows are gay with the full-blown dog-roses, the bells of the bilberries droop down along the wood-side, and the red-hipped bumble bees hum over them. Out of the woodland and up Snaperake Lane I rise to the moorland, and then the sea coast comes in sight, and the longing to know what ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... as a [54] capital astringent, these containing much tannin; also for its fruit, which is supplied with malic and citric acids, pectin, and albumen. Blackberries go often by the name of "bumblekites," from "bumble," the cry of the bittern, and kyte, a Scotch word for belly; the name bumblekite being applied, says Dr. Prior, "from the rumbling and bumbling caused in the bellies of children who eat the fruit too greedily." "Rubus" is from ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... and turned in with his brains in the air, dashing here and there like a dragon-fly, skimming after the fashion of a swallow, flying steadily, bumble-bee-fashion, and flopping faintly as the butterfly did whose wings were so much out of proportion to the size of its body. Either way would do, he thought, or better still, if he could fly by a wide-spread membrane stretched ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... children, and some of the idlest or most good-natured of Mrs. Alwynn's friends, were even then assembling, and where Mrs. Alwynn herself was already dashing from point to point, buzzing like a large "bumble" bee. ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... bluffly, "it's a cursed shame! I'm hanged if it isn't! If we weren't so solemn, my boy, I should quote Bumble about the law. Of course it's the grossest absurdity, and as far as I'm concerned——. By Jove, Piers!" he cried, with sudden change of subject, "if you knew the hard times Biddy and I have been going through! Eh, but she's a ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... Dundreary's lady-love, they are "so delicate," unless caught in the pantry hastily devouring onions and beefsteak. To be hungry is so vulgar! One should live by nothing grosser than inhalation, and should never have an appetite greater than that of a healthy bumble-bee. But, thanks to the robust, latter-day theory, that the best saints have the best bodies, this puerile class is diminishing. For who can doubt that the senses are entitled to their full blossom? Gustation was meant to be delightful; and cooking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various |
