"Feathered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... movements, as he hovered near the relics of the eminent statesman, were those of some feathered parent fluttering over a threatened nest. If he had brought his huddled brood back with him this morning it was because he had felt sure enough of closing the bargain to be able to be graceful. He kept a glittering eye on ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... trumpets, and here into the Great Place, resplendent in an open carriage, with four gorgeously- attired servitors up behind, playing horns, drums, and cymbals, rolled "the Daughter of a Physician" in massive golden chains and ear-rings, and blue-feathered hat, shaded from the admiring sun by two immense umbrellas of artificial roses, to dispense (from motives of philanthropy) that small and pleasant dose which had cured so many thousands! Toothache, earache, headache, heartache, stomach-ache, ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... back in amaze, for, desperate now, and nerving himself to meet the crisis which might mean the sacrifice of his life, Denis with a quick flick of his fingers sent the fully feathered pen flying from the gloom of the hangings where he lay far ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... the little feathered songster, which was making a queer, chirping noise. Then Jan ...
— The Curlytops on Star Island - or Camping out with Grandpa • Howard R. Garis
... to them for the last half-hour," her mother said. "Isn't everything sweet to-night, with the soft air and the elms all feathered out, and the ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the name of a genus, not of a species; the title of a race variously feathered, but having specific qualities in common. There is your military martinet, your clerical martinet, your legal martinet, and the martinet of common life, ("Gallicrista fastidiosa communis," Linnaeus would class him,) who is to the others what ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various
... flutter of swift wings and songs Together rose the feathered throngs, And singing scattered far apart; Deep peace ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... course of a few weeks, however, the preliminary stages were over. Some fowl-houses and runs were finished, and their feathered occupants arrived and took possession. A consignment of spades, rakes, and hoes was delivered by the carrier, and arranged by the students in the new tool-shed. Miss Carr announced herself ready to begin her course of instruction. ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... cockatoo," began Dick, standing in front of his red-feathered pupil, "you know 'variety is charming,' says the proverb. We may like to hear you say the same thing over nine hundred and ninety-nine times; but when a question is asked for the thousandth time, we begin to wish for a little variation. Suppose now, ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... undulating dells as o'er the billow. The eagle and the osprey had been caught there; and, indeed, a specimen of each was caged in a sort of aviary, which Grange had had constructed at the back of the lodge; while Yorke's sitting-room was literally stuffed full of these strange feathered visitants, which had fallen victims to the keeper's gun. The horse-hair sofa had a noble cover of deer-skin; the foot-stool and the fire-rug were made of furs, or skins that would have fetched their price elsewhere, and been ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... reclines, the delicate Adonis, in his raiment of purple, and around him the Loves are weeping and groaning aloud, clipping their locks for Adonis. And one upon his shafts, another on his bow, is treading, and one hath loosed the sandal of Adonis, and another hath broken his own feathered quiver, and one in a golden vessel bears water, and another laves the wound, and another, from behind him, with his wings is fanning Adonis.... Thou must again bewail him, again must weep for him another year.... He does not heed them [the Muses]; not that he is doth to hear, ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... that civilized progress and industry is beneficial to birds, and promotes their comfort and multiplication, never saw the robin and the purple grakle following the plough on a summer's morning. The ploughman is not more punctually afield than his unbidden but welcome feathered attendants. They are ahead of him, perched patiently in the trees that dot fence or hedgerow. They see the team afar off, and as the gate rattles in opening for its admission the glad tidings is sent down ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... when he is happy and gay, his song is extremely soft and agreeable, while it grows very mournful and plaintive as cold weather approaches. He is mild of temper, and a peaceable and harmless neighbor, setting a fine example of amiability to his feathered friends. In the early spring, however, he wages war against robins, wrens, swallows, and other birds whose habitations are of a kind to take his fancy. A celebrated naturalist says: "This bird seems incapable of uttering a harsh note, or of ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... the Fowler, red with feathered slaughter, The little joyous lark, unconscious, sings,— As the pink Lotus floats on azure water, Innocent of the ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... only occasionally descending to the cotton woods of low valleys. The oaks, which are scattered through the lower pine zone, supply a large share of its food. Its habit of hoarding food is well known, and these stores are the source of unending quarrels with its numerous feathered enemies. I have laid its supplies under contribution myself, when short of provisions and lost from the command on which I had been traveling, by filling my saddlebags with half-dried acorns from under the loose bark ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... such Associate to his Liberty." The next day the associators crossed over the Rappahannock to Hobb's Hole and "convinced" Tory merchant Archibald Ritchie to forego his announced intention to use stamps. A similar association in Norfolk, the Sons of Liberty, actually tarred and feathered ship captain William Smith, tied him to a pony cart and dragged him through Norfolk streets to Market House. Along the way by-standers, including Mayor Maximilian Calvert, heaved rocks and rotten eggs at the hapless captain whose final humiliation came when ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... wingless bird, the apteryx or kiwi of New Zealand, whose feathers nearly resemble hair, and whose grotesque appearance makes it as much a wonder in its own class as the puzzle-monkey and the casuarina are among forest trees. No feathered creatures so closely approach the lizard-tailed birds of the oolite or the toothed birds of the cretaceous period as do these Australian and New Zealand emus and apteryxes. Again, while many characteristic Oriental families are ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... hymns, and exhort, thereupon, your unwilling nestlings to a rival performance of the verses of Dr. Watts? You ought to be prepared to explain, also, for the benefit of any sucking Socrates, why it is that these feathered choristers have their "revival seasons," and are terrible backsliders during the moulting period. When you looked out of the nursery-window, into the poultry-yard, and heard the noisy confabulation of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... hour, having disguised himself and assumed attire unsuited to his calling, which is that of the law; wearing a Bearnese cloak,(2) a jacket of white woollen stuff underneath, all torn into strips, with a feathered cap upon his head, and having his face covered. In this wise he arrived at the said town of Argentan, accompanied by two young men, and lodged in the faubourgs at the sign of Notre Dame, and remained there clandestinely from noon till about eleven o'clock in the evening, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... the deputation. They had not anticipated any such thing; but curiosity overcame every other feeling, and before another half hour had passed they found themselves absolutely within the precincts of Whitehall, passing along corridors where fine-feathered gallants and royal lackeys and pages walked hither and thither, and where their appearance excited some mirthful curiosity, although ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... did not please them—she was a stranger and an alien—she looked like a creature from another world with her tight skirts, high-heeled shoes and huge, feathered hat. No one felt this more keenly than Andor, whose heart had warmed out—despite its pain—at sight of all his friends, their national costumes, their music, their traditions—all of which had been out of his ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... confusion of the attack, Carse knew the creature for what it was: a full-grown specimen of the giant carnivorous lemak, a seldom-seen, dying species, too clumsy, too slow, too huge to survive. His ray-gun came around, but he was caught in a feathered maelstrom and knocked too violently around to use it. Without pause the lemak's claws raked his suit. Unable to rend the tough fabric, it resorted to another method. With a strength so enormous that it could overcome the force of the gravity-plates ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... families of canaries were imprisoned by invisible nets. They were everywhere, up in the air, down below, under my chair, on the table behind me, all over the place. I tried to quiet this shrill uproar by shaking my napkin and speaking in a loud voice, but the little feathered tribe began to sing in a maddening way. The deaf man was leaning back in a rocking-chair, and I noticed that his face had lighted up. He laughed aloud in an evil, spiteful manner. Just as my own temper was getting the better of me a feeling of pity and indulgence ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... beasts of prey which inhabit them;—and that, in short, all the kingdoms of nature pay tribute to his sagacity or his power, his courage or his curiosity. This feeling is heightened, amidst the scene we have attempted to describe, by still more numerous representatives of the feathered race. Birds of the boldest wing and brightest hues—the denizens of the woods and the waters—of every variety of plumage, habit, song, and size—from the splendid macaw and toucan to the uncouth pelican and the shapeless puffin—from the gigantic ostrich to the beautiful but diminutive ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... greatest business and commotion. When I sought for Guarin he was gone. Nor was Guacanagari yet at hand. I looked at the swarming ships and ship boats, and the coming and coming upon the beach of more and more clothed men, and at the tall green palms and the feathered mountains. This host, it seemed to me, was not so artlessly amazed as had been we of the Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Nina, when first we came to lands so strange to Europe. Presently I made out that they had seen others of these islands and shores. Coming ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... him as a person half asleep sees some large object across the room and against the window-light—even if to the effect of my now asking myself why, so far from the scene of action, he was in panoply of war. I seem to see him cock-hatted and feathered too—an odd vision of dancing superior plumes which doesn't fit if he was only a captain. However, I cultivate the wavering shade merely for its value as my earliest glimpse of any circumstance of ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... Kingly and courtly company, the renowned men and the fair women of her reign, have often held festival here. Along these quiet garden walks the Queen was wont to stroll with her husband-lover; from that rustic bridge he would summon his feathered favourites around him; in yon sheet of water he swam for his life among the broken ice, the day before the christening of the Princess Royal. In the little chalet close to the house the Queen loved ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... our fifth hung himself twice to the canvas and finally to the heels of a bewildered spangle; our sixth, a stag, and a wheeling lunatic at that, gave to the Fifty-fourth a bad quarter of an hour, and then, when at the last moment our victory seemed certain, was sent flying to eternity in one last feathered whirlwind, leaving us four to split and four to go, with hopeless odds against us, and Sir Peter calmly booking side-bets ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... miserable creature as this a radical, would be to cast a greater stigma upon the word radical than all that Castlereagh, Brougham, and Canning ever sent forth against those who bear it. It is confidently asserted by those who profess to know his private concerns, that he has feathered his dirty nest well, and that, as the best means of securing his ill gotten pelf, he has lately invested it in the French funds, to the amount of ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... the sun of this alien planet. Queer mosses took form and color in the daylight, displaying colors never seen on Earth. He saw flying things dart among the tree-fern fronds, and some were scaled and some were not, but none of them were feathered. ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... good Orthodox beaux, Free and Close Baptists, Millerites and Adventists, all on her string together; she even had one Cochranite, though the sect had mostly died out. But when Reuben Granger come home, a full-feathered-out minister, he seemed to strike her fancy as he never had before, though they were always good friends from children. He had light hair and blue eyes and fair skin (his business being under cover kep' him bleached out), and he and Lovey made the prettiest couple you ever ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... branches are the resort of cockatoos, parrots and paroquets in brilliant plumage, and perhaps most beautiful of all, because most rare, sparrows, not clothed, like ours, in sombre gray, but rejoicing in vestments of green and gold. But brilliancy of plumage is the solitary charm of these feathered beauties, for their voices are harsh and their song a very burlesque ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... near the dance-house I could hear the monotonous yet rythmic beat of the drum, and get glimpses through the door-way of the feathered heads moving in time to the music. Outside there was a crowd of women, girls, and young men, the young men wrapped in white sheets under which they carry off, and make love to, the dusky maidens. This is the way a Titon "makes love." As a recent writer describes this dance, bringing before ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 7, July, 1889 • Various
... unceasing conflict to the death going on in every hedgerow. Nature is indeed cruel. I have often watched, during this winter which is now drawing to a close, the little birds feeding outside the window of my breakfast room in the morning. Like many of you, we put out a few crumbs for these feathered friends who share the same garden with ourselves, and I have always noticed that there is a battle royal fought round those crumbs. There is enough for everyone, and yet the instinct of these little creatures is to try and grab ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... blue and cinnamon-plumed pigeons. Irresistible spectacle to Shirley! She runs to the pantry for a roll, and she stands on the doorstep scattering crumbs: around her throng her eager, plump, happy, feathered vassals.... There are perhaps some little calves, some little new-yeaned lambs—it may be twins, whose mothers have rejected them: Miss Keeldar ... must permit herself the treat of feeding ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... most charming features of this mode of travelling is the joyous, vocal life of the forest at early dawn, when all the feathered tribe come forth to pay their cheerful ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... Venice differed from those at home, he was unprepared for the surprising appearance and manners of the great people his friend named to him. The gravest Senators of the Republic went in prodigious striped trousers, short cloaks and feathered hats. One nobleman wore a ruff and doctor's gown, another a black velvet tunic slashed with rose-colour; while the President of the dreaded Council of Ten was a terrible strutting fellow with a rapier-like nose, a buff leather jerkin ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... light lustrous purple, on closer view, proves to be a mass of the feathered spikes of blazing star or colic-root, first cousin of the gay-feather of the West, that sometimes grows six feet high and has been welcomed ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... Geological Record. Intercalation of newly discovered Formation of intermediate Age in the chronological Series. Reference of the St. Cassian Beds to the Triassic Periods. Discovery of new organic Types. Feathered Archaeopteryx ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... hit a mark; and as Mr Gore did not value himself upon shooting to a great distance, nor the chief upon hitting a mark, there was no trial of skill between them. Tubourai Tamaide, however, to shew us what he could do, drew his bow, and sent an arrow, none of which are feathered, two hundred and seventy-four yards, which is something more than a seventh, and something less than a sixth part of a mile. Their manner of shooting is somewhat singular; they kneel down, and the moment the arrow is discharged, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... concerning tidings in the City of the Sundering Flood, and said that the King thereof was of little account before such a man as was Sir Godrick, for though he were well enough in a fray if the sword were put in his hand and the horse were between his knees, yet was he feathered-headed, stubborn in wrong, and hard-hearted. Said Sir Alwyn, that save the said King was in all things according with the best men of the City, as the Porte and the masters of the Great Crafts, he was undone. Then he said again: "Yea, ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... is an unnatural hollowness between the shoulders, lift the mane and at one side of it where the skin is bare, make a short longitudinal incision. Through this place a little soft filling over and between the shoulders to fill out hollowness. It is not necessary to sew up this incision in a long feathered specimen. ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... order to cook it. He now thought that he should have liked a bird for supper,—a pheasant or partridge instead of a rabbit or leveret; of which he had plenty. He felt it very provoking that he had neither a net nor a gun, for securing feathered game, when there was so much on the hill; so that he must put up with four-footed game, when he had rather have had a bird. There was no bread either, or vegetables; but he minded that less, because neither of these were at hand, and he had often lived ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... They use bows which are very strong and large, and much more powerful than those used by the English. The arrows are made of reeds, the third part consisting of a point made of the hardest wood that can be found. They are not feathered. They poison the arrows with a kind of herb, which in some regions is so deadly that a man dies on the same day when he is wounded; and, no matter how small the wound is, there is no remedy, and the flesh will surely ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... to her new home a collection of rare birds in such numbers that the room over the kitchen was devoted to the cages of cockatoos, parakeets, parrots and nonpareils. Here these feathered friends in spectrum-hued plumage lived among the potted plants and charmed the little bride with their beauty and sweet tricks. Other appendages included a chimpanzee, and a small Chinese slave boy, bought by her father from one of the innumerable sampans in the harbor of Canton. "Chinese Tom" ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... But they were wonderfully gay from the beautiful paper that Billy had selected. In Granny's room, the walls imitated a flowered chintz. But in Maida's room every panel was different. And they all helped to tell the same happy story of a day's hunting in the time when men wore long feathered hats on their curls, when ladies dressed like pictures and all carried falcons on ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... and knights; at my birth I was six feet tall, and as stout as a man could compass. When I was ten years old no wild beast, no man on foot, or knight on horse, could stand before me. Now you see how I am grown: my body is sixty feet long, twelve feet between the shoulders, and a feathered shaft can lie between my eyebrows. My head is as big as a brewer's vat; my arms are twenty feet long, and I could not stand my ground against the Tsar. The Tsar is strong, and has a mighty host; sword and scimitar wound him not; fire does ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... possess, are aggregated under a single class; groups whose attributes are not identical but analogous are separated. For instance, bird differs from bird by gradation, or by excess and defect; some birds have long feathers, others short ones, but all are feathered. Bird and Fish are more remote and only agree in having analogous organs; for what in the bird is feather, in the fish is scale. Such analogies can scarcely, however, serve universally as indications ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... fair lord, do not ride forward. What chance has a man in the open against all these who lie at their ease in the underwood? If you will not think of yourself, then consider your horse, which would have a cloth-yard shaft feathered in its hide ere it ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... aurochs and the ibex, but both are extinct now in Hungary. Red-deer and the roe are still common enough. "The wild-cat, fox, badger, otter, marten, and other smaller carnivora are pretty numerous." Mr Danford[11] goes on to say that "feathered game is certainly not abundant. There are a good many capercailzie in the quiet pine-woods, pretty high up, but they are only to be got at during the pairing season. Hazel-grouse too are common in the lower woods, but are not easily found ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... serene forehead and the path that went dividing in two her rich and golden tresses," was a sprig of laurel in bud. Her observer, probably her welcome if not yet accepted lover, beheld something very significant in this attire; and a mysterious poem, in which he records a device of a black pen feathered with gold, which he wore embroidered on a gown of his own, has been supposed to allude to it. As every body is tempted to make his guess on such occasions, I take the pen to have been the black-haired poet himself, and the golden feather the tresses of the lady. Beautiful as ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... ablutions on his return from hades, it may be noted that Ovid makes Juno undergo lustration after a visit to the lower regions and that Dante is washed in Lethe when he passes out of purgatory. Nor is there any great stretch of imagination needed to detect a likeness between the feathered messenger sent from the Ark and the three envoys—the last a bird—despatched from the "plain of high heaven" to report upon the condition of disturbed Japan. This comparison is partially vitiated, however, by the fact that there is no tradition of a deluge in ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... circumstance ordained that his life should be nomadic, and it is to this I trace that philosophic indifference to place or property, which marked him out from most of his own kind. He learned early that for a black dog with long silky ears, a feathered tail, and head of great dignity, there was no home whatsoever, away from those creatures with special scents, who took liberties with his name, and alone of all created things were privileged to smack him with a slipper. He would sleep anywhere, so long as it was in their room, or so close outside ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... always provoked, and bodily languor and weariness made the walk trying; but she was thinking of Ave's need, and resolutely took down her cloak and hat. But at that moment the latch was raised, and the bright graceful figure of Cora stood among them, her feathered hat and delicate muslin looking as fresh as ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... notes of the wild birds, and imitating them patiently, till you could scarcely tell which was boy and which was bird; and if you could, the birds couldn't, for many a time he coaxed the bobolinks and thrushes to perch on the low boughs above his head, where they chirped to him as if he were a feathered brother. There was nothing about the building of nests with which he was not familiar. He could have helped in the task, if the birds had not been so shy, and if he had possessed beak and claw instead of clumsy fingers. ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... good works in the destruction of weeds and insects as well known as is their desirability for the table or for targets for the sportsmen, they would be regarded as one of the most valuable among the agriculturist's feathered friends. ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... disturbing elements of the great public thoroughfare, the river, curious cries were borne upon the wind above the tall tree-tops like the chattering calls of parrots, to which my ear had become accustomed in the tropical forests of Cuba. As the noise grew louder with the approach of a feathered flock of visitors, and the screams of the birds became more discordant, I peered through the branches of the forest to catch a glimpse of what I had searched for through many hundred miles of wilderness since my boyhood, but what had so far eluded ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... to me, Dick. Take the silver-spiked caterpillar, with a skin of black satin and a length that runs to four inches. He lives his life in the topmost boughs of an African palm—a feathered dome amid the forest—and there beneath the blue sky he browses till he descends into the warm earth to sleep in chrysalis form before he emerges as a splendid moth, with glass windows in his wide wings to ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... arrow went fairly into the center of the hat, coming out at the crown, its feathered butt tearing a great rent in the peak of the sombrero ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... the garden at the back, all was wild and rude as Nature had left it, except a small clearing I had made for the growth of maize, sweet potatoes, etc. Now this clearing had many enemies, and of many species, ranging from feathered and furred to biped. The cockatoos came down in such clouds as almost to whiten the ground, and made short work of the maize; the bandicoots and the township pigs dug up and devoured the sweet potatoes, just as they were becoming large enough for use—commend ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... them at length dropped down upon the ground within reach of the snake, and stood with open bill, as if exhausted, and unable to move farther. We were expecting to see the snake suddenly launch forth upon his feathered victim; when all at once his coils flew out, his body was thrown at full length, and he commenced retreating from the tree!' The object that caused this diversion was soon visible. 'It was an animal about the size of a ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... now, mingled with the piping chorus, Barnabas was vaguely conscious of another sound, soft and low and oft repeated, a very melodious sound that yet was unlike any note ever uttered by thrush or blackbird, or any of the feathered kind. Therefore, being yet heavy with sleep, Barnabas yawned, and presently turning, propped himself upon his elbow and was just in time to see a shapeless something vanish from the ledge of ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... earth, and hell relies, I mean the adamantine Destinies, He wounds with love, and forced them equally To dote upon deceitful Mercury. They offered him the deadly fatal knife That shears the slender threads of human life. At his fair feathered feet the engines laid Which th' earth from ugly Chaos' den upweighed. These he regarded not but did entreat That Jove, usurper of his father's seat, Might presently be banished into hell, And aged Saturn in Olympus dwell. They granted what he craved, and once again Saturn and Ops ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe
... at my terms, but in the end accepted them. He wrote the letter, and I posted it. I had no pity for the old scamp, who had feathered his nest well. Small wonder that the firm's business was not as good as it might be, when Japp was giving most of his time to buying diamonds from native thieves. The secret put him in the power of any Kaffir who traded ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... proposes to shove in a report that will smother development by outside capital. Play up the reason for his interest in the thing along that line! A hog for himself! It's easy to turn public sentiment by the right kind of talk! If I really start out to go the limit I can have him tarred and feathered as a chief conspirator, rigging a scheme to have our big industries ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... went to the river's brim, Where their feathered friends were wont to swim, And there on the turf so green and deep The ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... slender, viz., to steal myself up to Adam's lodgment under the poop and that as soon as might be. To this end I stepped forth of the cabin and so into a narrow passage-way with divers doors to right and left that opened upon other cabins, in one of which I espied a cloak and feathered hat lying where their owner had dropped them; whipping the cloak about me I clapped on the hat and, staying for no more, hasted on breathing an air acrid with drifting smoke. Reaching a broad stairway I climbed at speed and found myself out upon the lofty poop, ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... are short in proportion to the bulk of the bird; the toes, as already stated, being furnished with talons,—the middle one scaly, and notched underneath; while the legs are feathered to the feet, showing another point of affinity with predatory birds of the land. Still another may be pointed out: in the innermost toe or pollex, being turned outwards, as if intended for perching,—which the frigate-bird actually does when it visits the shore, often making its nest upon ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... on he is continually "puttering" about the estate, building a poultry-yard here, planting trees there, with the full zeal of the rural landlord. His family letters are given to accounts of little country doings: "The goose war is happily terminated: Mr. Jones' squadron has left my waters, and my feathered navy now plows the Tappan Sea in triumph. I cannot but attribute this great victory to the valor and good conduct of the enterprising little duck, who seems to enjoy great power and popularity among both geese and ganders, and absolutely to be the master of the fleet.... ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... the fore-sheet clear of its elect, and suffering the sail to fill, he stepped from one butter-tub to another, making a stepping-stone of the lap of a countryman by the way, and alighted in the stern-sheets in the midst of the party of Alderman Van Beverout, with the agility and fearlessness of a feathered Mercury. With a coolness that did infinite credit to his powers for commandirg, his next act was to dispossess the amazed schipper of the helm, taking the tiller into his own hands, with as much composure as if he were ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... sudden, splendid gleam Of one thin, golden beam Shoots from the feathered rim Of yon hill crowned with woods. Down its embowered side, As living waters slide, So the great morning ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... meet with success. And people vied with one another in encouraging the delusion in Yulia Mihailovna. The poor woman became at once the sport of conflicting influences, while fully persuaded of her own originality. Many clever people feathered their nests and took advantage of her simplicity during the brief period of her rule in the province. And what a jumble there was under this assumption of independence! She was fascinated at the same time by the aristocratic element and the system of big landed ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the most eventful year," he remarks, "in my history. I have been the occasion of many uproars, and a continual disturber of the public peace. As soon as I landed I turned the city of New York upside down. Five thousand people turned out to see me tarred and feathered, but were disappointed. There was also a small hubbub in Boston on my arrival. The excitement passed away, but invective and calumny still followed me. By dint of some industry and much persuasion, I succeeded in inducing the Abolitionists in New York to join ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... twined her limbs about his till he tripped and stumbled, reeled violently to recover footing, tripped again, and fell backward to the ground. His head struck a jutting root, and he was half-stunned and could struggle but feebly. In the fall she had heard the feathered swish of an arrow darting past, and she covered his body with hers, as with a shield, her arms holding him tightly, her face and ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... year "wasted on them," while he summed up the Nonconformists in the scornful phrase: "Exeter Hall!" He considered anthropomorphism to explain satisfactorily not only the swan maiden, and the other feathered ladies [526] of the Nights, but also angel and devil. Both Arbuthnot and Payne regarded him as a Mohammedan. Another friend described him as a "combination of an Agnostic, a Theist and an Oriental mystic." Over and over again he said to his cousin, St. George Burton, "The only real religion ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... among the lower animals, with whom you may possibly be called upon to classify the defendant, there are certain signals more or less harmonious, as the case may be. The ass brays, the horse neighs, the sheep bleats—the feathered denizens of the grove call to their mates in more musical roundelays. These are recognized facts, gentlemen, which you yourselves, as dwellers among nature in this beautiful land, are all cognizant of. They are facts that ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... all the six were armed with sassafras bows, and nicely feathered spruce arrows, with pewter heads, blunt, that they might not stick into and be lost in the trees. Their quivers were of pasteboard rolled in glue, upon a tapering form, and their arm-guards of hard thick leather, securely fastened to their left fore-arms ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... may recollect, drawn by twenty little pigs of elephants. That show I also attended, and was well repaid for going. Near the entrance of the tent was a large cage, peopled with the gayest denizens of tropic life, macaws, cockatoos, paroquets—what know I?—a feathered iridescence, that sulked prehensile or perched paradisiacal in their iron house. Two youths entered; one paused admiringly. 'Come along, Jack,' remonstrated the other, hurrying him on by the arm, 'them darned ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... when they are in bloom, or seeks a crumb at the open casement, when winter ruffles all its russet plumes, and sets his chill, white seal on all its stores; We have been often struck with the great dissimilarity between these two namesakes of the feathered kingdom; for never on these transatlantic shores have we heard what might be termed a domestic bird sing a song so sweet as that poured beneath our window in the soft blue haze of an Irish summer evening, by the genuine ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... and the reins to willow branches, the pearl-handled whip became a reed, and his steed was transformed into a rock in the water, and all the harness into seaweed. And still the old magician sang his magic spells, and Youkahainen's gaily-painted bow became a rainbow in the sky, his feathered arrows flew away as hawks and eagles, and his dog was turned to a stone at his feet. His cap turned into a curling mist, his clothing into white clouds, and his jewel-set ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... all trace of devastation disappeared from the plateau of Prospect Heights. The mill was rebuilt, and new buildings rose in the poultry-yard. It had appeared necessary to enlarge their dimensions, for the feathered population had increased considerably. The stable now contained five onagas, four of which were well broken, and allowed themselves to be either driven or ridden, and a little colt. The colony now possessed a plough, to which the onagas were yoked like ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... from the Chinamen's rifles and the Bhutanese matchlocks spattered the rocks or the face of the cliff; but the archers began to shoot almost vertically into the air from their strong bamboo bows, and several iron-tipped, four-feathered arrows dropped behind the cover, one missing Wargrave by a ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... Far away snow-peaks were visible. These rooms Aurora seldom left, but their airy spaces, the brilliant landscape and sky, the plentiful sunlight, the musical instruments, books, pictures, curiosities, with the company of Watho who made herself charming, precluded all dulness. She had venison and feathered game to eat, milk and pale sunny sparkling ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... black, as twilight brown, they spread, But feathered thick with flame that streaked and lined Their living darkness, ominous else of dread, From south to northmost verge of heaven inclined Most like some giant angel's, whose bent head Bowed earthward, as with message for mankind Of doom or benediction to be shed ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... restless seas; the tender witchery of Spring; the blazonry of autumn woods; its purple moors and the wonder of its silent mountains; its cobwebs glittering with a thousand jewels; the pageantry of starry nights. Form, colour, music! The feathered choristers of bush and brake raising their matin and their evensong, the whispering of the leaves, the singing of the waters, the voices of the winds. Beauty and grace in every living thing, but man. The leaping ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... to the other youth, just then, that if the warrior was in the vicinity and could be seen by Otto, he must be visible to him. But a sweeping survey of the field failed to bring to light the painted face and feathered crown. ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... of the earth's history we have the first bird-like forms. They were feathered creatures, with bills carrying true teeth, and with strong wings; but they were reptiles in many features, having long, pointed tails such as none of our existing birds have. They show us that the birds are the descendants of reptiles, ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... accident he met the lady and told her he had noticed a falling off in her offerings and he thought her very ungrateful after what he had done for her husband. She grunted and the next morning she brings in as a present the most forlorn, skinny, one-and-a-half-feathered chicken you ever laid eye on, and in answer to the trader's comments she said: "Massa, fo sure them der chicken no be 'ticularly good chicken, but fo sure dem der man no be 'ticularly good man. They go" ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... paused as if to count stitches. For a long time the word "coralapus" had been a prized possession of Mrs. Lukins. Like her feathered bonnet, it was used only on special occasions by way of putting her best foot forward. It was indeed a family ornament of the same general character as her husband's title. Just how she came by it nobody could tell, but of ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... of acclamation shook the house; and, looking up, I beheld a transformation that seemed supernatural. The old great-coats, clumsy sabots, and hats, were scattered to the ground; and two youthful figures, glittering in white and silver, light and graceful as "feathered Mercuries," stood, hand in hand, poised on one foot, on the tight-drawn ropes. They danced. I never realized before the music of motion. Now, they floated downwards like softly rolling clouds; then vaulted upwards like two white-winged birds, with sunbeams shining ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... and therwith so extreame a frost, as the like had not beene heard of, continuing from the beginning of the winter, almost till the middest of the spring, with the rigour whereof, trees and fruits withered awaie, and lost their liuelie shape and growth: and not onelie feathered foules, but also beasts on the land, & fishes in the sea died in great numbers. The same yeare died Ceolwulf then king of Northumberland, vnto whome Beda did dedicate his booke of [Sidenote: Moonks licenced ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... reigning sovereign; and even Trusty, the spaniel, who considered himself if not the ruler at all events the guardian of the rest of the premises, when he ventured into her domain always followed humbly at her heels, never presuming to interfere with her feathered subjects. More than once he had been known to turn tail and fly as if for his life when Phoebe, the bantam hen, with extended neck and outspread wings had run after him, as he had by chance approached nearer to her brood of fledglings than she had ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... weapon of offence, and whether ancient or modern, in the rudest form among savages or refined by art, is always a slender stick, armed at one end, and occasionally feathered at the other. The natives of Tropical Africa feather ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Virginia squatters) added, "we select the black members of a litter for raising, as they alone have a good chance of living." Hairless dogs have imperfect teeth; long-haired and coarse-haired animals are apt to have, as is asserted, long or many horns; pigeons with feathered feet have skin between their outer toes; pigeons with short beaks have small feet, and those with long beaks large feet. Hence if man goes on selecting, and thus augmenting, any peculiarity, he will almost certainly modify unintentionally other parts of the ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... ho! a little rain stills a great wind, and we must think so, seeing that the sergeant hath propounded the matter so far above my reach, that the clerks and secondaries could not with the benefit thereof lick their fingers, feathered with ganders, so orbicularly as they were wont in other things to do. And we do manifestly see that everyone acknowledgeth himself to be in the error wherewith another hath been charged, reserving only those cases whereby we are obliged to take an ocular inspection in a perspective glass of these ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... A pleasant air That intermitted never, never veer'd, Smote on my temples, gently as a wind Of softest influence, at which the sprays, Obedient all, lean'd trembling to that part Where first the holy mountain casts his shade, Yet were not so disordered, but that still Upon their top the feathered quiristers Applied their wonted art, and with full joy Welcomed those hours of prime, and warbled shrill Amid the leaves that to their jocund lays Kept tenour; even as from branch to branch Along the piny forests on the shore ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... hunters. Wild animals stopped in their pursuit of game at the command of St. Laumer. Birds ceased singing at the request of some monks until they had chanted their evening prayer, and at their word the feathered songsters resumed their music. A swan was the daily companion of St. Hugh of Lincoln, and manifested its miraculous knowledge of his approaching death by the most profound melancholy. While all the details of such stories are not to be accepted as literally true, no ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... the eye feathered songsters a long-felt want the last sad rites launched into eternity last but not least doomed to disappointment at one fell swoop sadder but wiser did justice to a dinner a goodly number budding genius beggars description a dull thud silence broken only by wended their way ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... man leans towards the open door of the pen in front of which he stands. The bell sounds! With the first stroke each one of the seventy men has sprung upon a sheep—has drawn it out—placed its head across his knee—and is working his shears as if the "last man out" was to be flogged, or tarred and feathered at the least. Four minutes—James Steadman, who learned last year, has shorn down one side of his sheep; Jack Holmes and Gundagai Bill are well down the other sides of theirs; when Billy May raises himself with a jerking sigh, and releases his sheep, perfectly ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... encouragement as this, the sport of late years has been assuming, I am told, a recognised place among the amusements of the people. Fighting-cocks go into the arena as champions of the towns in which their owners dwell; and if the feathered Achilles of Roubaix does the feathered Hector of Tourcoing to death, the spectators not unfrequently take up the quarrel, divide into two camps, and have it out handsomely on the spot. These things I note because they tend to show how difficult it is to develop an ideal civilisation ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... beauteous mane he's shorn! O! who would love a purring cat, all in her furlessness forlorn. Ah, look around my darling pig! look on all living things, From the huge unwieldy mammoth to the smallest bird that sings;— Were these not shagged or feathered all, how loudly should we jeer;— Who would warmly strive to please e'en man, were ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... up the moose and got it into good position, three whiskey jacks (Canada Jays) came, as they always seem to come at the first sign of smoke, to pay us a visit and partake of the feast. They are fluffy, heavily feathered little birds of gray, with wings and tail of darker hue, and with a white spot on their forehead. They are not unlike the blue jay in their calls and shrieks, though they have some notes of their own that are of a quieter, softer tone. They are ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... moment came and she really looked down into the nest, her relief in seeing beautiful feathered things, at least, was greater than any other feeling. It was something not to have to mother a lot of ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... Anything more aptly answering to the word hen in all its various shades of meaning than the hen itself I don't know, but it took me a full week to reason the thing out. It was not until I heard its absurd cackling over the laying of a strictly fresh egg, strutting about the barn-yard like a feathered Napoleon Bonaparte, and acting altogether as though she were the winner of a Twentieth Century Marathon race that it dawned on me that the creature was a hen, and could never be anything else than a hen. Mother wished me to ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... Koshchei is one of very frequent occurrence, the different versions maintaining a unity of idea, but varying considerably in detail. In one of them,[108] in which Koshchei's part is played by a Snake, the hero's sisters are carried off by their feathered admirers without his leave being asked—an omission for which a full apology is afterwards made; in another, the history of "Fedor Tugarin and Anastasia the Fair,"[109] the hero's three sisters ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... vessel of his shoe, drank many times, ate a few mouthfuls of biscuit, and then placed the filled receptacle where he had thrown the crumbs. As he did so he found himself wondering if the dawn would reveal his little feathered shipmate or whether it had been swept away by the violence of the rain. The early shafts of day showed him the bird on its perch; it had apparently found shelter from the heavy down-pour beneath some out-jutting timber and seemed no worse for the experience. The man's ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... occupation is gone. For the space of one year neither public nor private performance is permitted. During that time actors are outcasts upon the face of the earth, and have no regular means of getting a livelihood. The lessees of theatres have most likely feathered their own nests sufficiently well to enable them to last out the prescribed term without serious inconvenience; but with us, actors are proverbially improvident, and even in frugal China they are no ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... thought that it is a thing of the summer, and that when the winter comes it shall be no more! But perhaps George forgot one point. I will allow that the insects of a day, dying in a moment of delightful fruition, are blessed; but when the delicate Psyche, with her jewel-feathered wings, is beat about by a wind full of rain until she lies draggled in the dirt; when there are no more flowers, or if there be, the joy of her hovering is over, and yet death comes but slowly; when the mourners are going about the streets ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... I could say, for words failed me, and I, also, stood looking thoughtfully at the sparrow hopping about on the green table, with eyes that saw two small brown feathered bodies in the place where, a minute before, ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... beside me Behold a youth that trod, With feathered cap on forehead, And poised a ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman |
