"Flea" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... troublesome enemies attacking these plants are: the flea- beetle, the cabbage-worm, the cabbage-maggot (root) and "club-root"; directions for fighting all of which will be found in ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... Catskills stands out clear and strong, while in the south the mountains of the Highlands bound the view. The day is warm and the bees are very busy there in that neglected corner of the field, rich in asters, flea-bane, and golden-rod. The corn has been cut, and upon a stout, but a few rods from the woods, which here drop quickly down from the precipitous heights, we set up our bee-box, touched again with the pungent ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... public bark, which was just then getting under way, it was already packed to the gunwale with Jews, pedlars and such vermin, and the captain swore by the three thousand relics of Saint Justina that he had no room on board for so much as a hungry flea. ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... the world judge whether, under such circumstances, there was majesty in the roar. The spectacle of Hugo, prancing on the ramparts and hurling bad names at the German armies, recalls the persistent but painful manoeuvres of a lion with a flea. Both are terribly in earnest—neither ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... when I grow crouse, I gie their wames a random pouse, Is that enough for you to souse Your servant sae? Gae mind your seam, ye prick-the-louse, An' jag-the-flea! ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... when the summer sun was still sleeping an Elf came up from below, tickling an oak-tree's foot, skipping like a flea, and whispering ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... and quite a boy, but with plenty of science in him. These were the three favourites; Day Star ran them close, the property of Durham Vavassour, of the Scots Greys, and to be ridden by his owner; a handsome, flea-bitten, grey sixteen-hander, with ragged hips, and action that looked a trifle string-halty, but noble shoulders, and great force in the loins and withers; the rest of the field, though unusually excellent, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... if they are unkind make a surgical demonstration with these lethal implements, and if they are smitten with a mania of amiability, hand you over, for superintendence of your repose, to an army of satellites of whom you are only too glad to call the flea brother? I trow not. Personally, I dislike mountains. They were made for goats and cascades and lunatics and other irresponsible phenomena of nature. They have their uses, I admit, as windscreens and water-sheds; and beheld from the ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... glad to get back to the mosquitoes," said a young hand-grenadier from Dallas, Tex., as he dumped his "other clothes" in the flea-soup cauldron. "These babies chew you to death day and night. A mosquito's a ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... me and be civil to him, because he was decent enough to me. Auntie Eva said something about your bringing a gentleman home with you. I hope he's a jolly sort of chap. Rosalind's temper is all anyhow. When I told her a visitor was coming, she shut me up with a regular flea in my ear. Never mind, she's been a brick to old Roger and Auntie Eva, so we must make allowances. Old Hodder calls up nearly every day to ask after us all. He's grown quite young since he was ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... lead one to infer that Gossamer proceeded from spiders in general; and if it be meant that all true spiders spin, it is no doubt correct; but the Gossamer which "A Young Inquirer" asks about is the production of a small black spider about the size of a flea, which was a true aeronaut long before Montgolfier or Lunardi, and if "A Young Inquirer" has access to either the "Linnean Transactions" or the first series of Loudon's "Magazine of Natural History," he will find particulars in the latter, showing that a violent ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... now gave two performances each evening—and he always had some audience. So that Alvina had opportunity to come into contact with all the odd people of the inferior stage. She found they were very much of a type: a little frowsy, a little flea-bitten as a rule, indifferent to ordinary morality, and philosophical even if irritable. They were often very irritable. And they had always a certain fund of callous philosophy. Alvina did not like them—you were not supposed, really, to get deeply emotional over them. But she found it ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... named to you. But pray you note, my dear brother, there are those who hold John Law, and his studies, not so light as doth his own brother. For myself, the matter furnishes no surprise at all. As for you, you had never confidence in me, nor in yourself. Gad! Will, hadst but the courage of a flea, what days we two might have together here ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... must be, to be running on in such a fashion about a lad that's not only a wellnigh helpless cripple, but I'm afeared is going bad ways. 'Twas nearer midnight nor sundown before he came in frae t' street last night, and I sent him to bed wi' a flea in his ear." ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... that he would give me a written character of the very best description, whenever I chose to apply for it. "You're honest," he said; "you're willing, though lazy; you would pull, if you had the strength of a flea; and, though a monstrous coward, you don't run away." My own demurs to these harsh judgments were not so many as they might have been. The idiocy I confessed; because, though positive that I was not uniformly an idiot, I felt inclined to think that, in a majority ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... jump over the creek, unless he was a human flea or a Rocky Mountain goat. Come, since you won't show us where he is, we'll take the liberty of sarchin' your premises. But stay, your daughter's got the name o' bein' a religious gal. If there's any truth in that she'd be above tellin' a lie. Come now, Betty, ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... looked for a lady that had never been talked about, Caesar might have searched London for a wife in vain. Good Mr. Lumley professed a great affection for me, and would occasionally favour me with long and technical dissertations on the interior economy of the flea, for example; and once in the fullness of his heart confided to his wife that "Miss Coventry was really a dear girl; it's my belief, Madge, that if she'd been a man she'd have been a naturalist." ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... they had been beggars askin' you for a shillin'. Now, stop your snivellin' there, I tell you. You are like your poor sainted father,—God bless him where he lies,—he too used to cry, likely enough, if a flea bit him." ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... exclaimed this modern dulcinea, incensed at the opprobrious term; "such a b— as your mother, you dog! D— you, I've a good mind to box your jaws instead of your comepiss. I'll let you know, as how I am meat for your master, you saucy blackguard. You are worse than a dog, you old flinty-faced, flea-bitten scrub. A dog wears his own coat, but you wear ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... When I look over the little Prose Dialogue, I see lots that might be weeded. I wonder at one word which is already crossed—'Emergency.' 'An Emergency!' I think Blake could have made a Picture of it as he did of the Flea. Something of the same disgusting Shape too. . . . Blake seems to me to have fine things: but as by random, like those of a Child, or a Madman, of Genius. Is there one good whole Piece, of ever so few ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... accident though that brought us to this shore," said a voice behind them and Professor Sandburr's bony, spectacled face was thrust forward. "I would not have missed it for a great deal. I would like to capture a specimen of a Patagonian alive and take him home in a cage. The Patagonian dog-flea, too, I understand, ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Peacocks; the feet of Flies; and other Insects; the Wings and Head of a Fly; the Teeth of a Snail; the Eggs of Silk-worms; the Blue Fly; a water Insect; the Tufted Gnat; a White Moth; the Shepheards-spider; the Hunting Spider, the Ant; the wandring Mite; the Crab-like insect, the Book-worm, the Flea, the Louse, Mites, Vine mites. He concludeth with taking occasion to discourse of two or three very considerable subjects, viz. The inflexion of the Rays of Lights in the Air; the ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... and Mrs. Thomas. The gypsy, in her usual careless, almost masculine attire, stood in the door of her cabin gazing out at the mountains in all their mellow and triumphant glory, the evanescent glory of late autumn. A pick and fishing rod lay across the door sill and a lean, flea-bitten dog dozed at her feet. Her arms were akimbo and a pipe ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... California Indian not the Indian of the Leatherstocking tales. A stop at the Buckeye Rancho. Start for Pleasant Valley Rancho. The trail again lost. Camping out for the night. Growling bears. Arrive at Pleasant Valley Rancho. Flea-haunted shanty. Beauty of the wilderness. Quail and deer. The chaparrals, and their difficulty of penetration by the mules. Escape from a rattlesnake. Descending precipitous hill on muleback. Saddle-girth breaks. Harmless fall from the saddle. ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... door,) Then abiit—What's the Ciceronian phrase? Excessit, evasit, erupit—off slogs boy; Off like bird, avi similis—(you observed The dative? Pretty i' the Mantuan!)—Anglice Off in three flea skips. Hactenus, so far, So good, tam bene. Bene, satis, male,— Where was I with my trope 'bout one in a quag? I did once hitch the Syntax into verse Verbum personale, a verb personal, Concordat—"ay", ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... was arranged satisfactorily, but the knight, who had a flea in his ear, as soon as he rose, went to his companion, to whom he related the adventure at full length, and demanded from him two promises; the first was that he should strictly promise to say nothing of the matter, and the second that ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... fairy that addressed Orpheus, in the infernal regions, and offered him for food a roasted ant, a flea's thigh, butterflies' brains, some sucking mites, a rainbow tart etc., to be washed down with dew-drops and beer made from seven barleycorns—a very heady liquor.—King, Orpheus and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... joint of its forefinger; and, when they (inquiring where) pointed to other places, it told them not there but here, pointing on the lowest joint of the forefinger, where they observed a deep red spot about the bigness of a flea-bite. They asked it who gave it that snake, whether the black man gave it: the child said no, its mother gave it. I heard this child ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... shall not be upon thee. As saith the proverb of the ancients, Wickedness proceedeth from the wicked: but mine hand shall not be upon thee. After whom is the king of Israel come out? after whom dost thou pursue? after a dead dog, after a flea. The Lord therefore be judge, and judge between me and thee, and see, and plead my cause, and deliver me out ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... Zouche; "Give it to me, and I will cherish it as a kind of birthday card! What a rag it is! 'Thord's Rabble' eh! Sergius, what have you been doing that this little flea of an editor should jump out of his ink-pot and bite you? Does he ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... as flea-bane and wolf's-bane, refer to the reputed property of the plant to keep off or injure the animal named,[5] and there is a long list of plants which derived their names from their real or imaginary medicinal virtues, many of which illustrate the old ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... Finder, striding alone, Then the good horse, Red Ember, the flea-bitten roan. Then the little Gavotte bearing less than ten stone. Then a crowd of all colours with Peterkinooks Going strong as a whale goes, ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... the fallen angels, and the spirits of damned men that are now shut up in the prison of hell, and bear it. But certainly it is the chief and highest of all kind of curses. To be cursed in the basket and in the store, in the womb and in the barn, in my cattle and in my body, are but flea-bitings to this, though they are also insupportable in themselves; only in general it may be described thus. But to touch upon this curse, it lieth in deprivation of all good, and in a being swallowed up of all the most fearful miseries that a holy, and just, and eternal God can righteously inflict, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Children, given me by your honourd Lady would else cry out on me. There's a Spanish shirt, richly lacd & seemd, her guift too; & whosoever layes a foul hand upon her linnen in scorne of her bounty, were as good flea[54] the ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... that it certainly was not the case. All had the same start, many had similar environments. Yet witness the motly products of evolution: Man, ape, elephant, skunk, scorpion, lizard, lark, toad, lobster, louse, flea, amoeba, hookworm, and countless microscopic animals; also, the palm, lily, melon, maize, mushroom, thistle, cactus, microscopic bacilli, etc. All developed from one germ, all in some way related. Mark well the difference in size between the elephant, louse, and microscopic ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... were endured by myself last night. When I rose from my blankets this morning, after a sleepless night, I do not think there was an inch square of my body that did not exhibit the inflammation consequent upon a puncture by a flea, or some other equally rabid and poisonous insect. Small-pox, erysipelas, measles, and scarlet-fever combined, could not have imparted to my skin a more inflamed and sanguineous appearance. The multitudes of these insects, however, have ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... "Will and I lay and scratched, while you rested, with proper flea-food for protection! Don't worry, we'll find you ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... "The Zoo." There were two or three paddocks of deer, of different North American species—for the society was inclined to specialize on the wild kindreds of native origin. There were moose, caribou, a couple of bears, raccoons, foxes, porcupines, two splendid pumas, a rather flea-bitten and toothless tiger, and the Gray ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... no rain, no wind, no flea, no fly; there is no Enoch nor any Elias to be sure; but there are women with nothing pedantic about them, who are as loving as they ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... well- cared-for beds. The most serious are: (1) the rust or blight, for which there is no cure but carefully pulling and burning the plants as fast as infested; (2) the blackberry-bush borer, for which burn infested canes; and (3) the recently introduced bramble flea-louse, which resembles the green plant-louse or aphis except that it is a brisk jumper, like the flea-beetle. The leaves twist and curl up in summer and do not drop off in the fall. On cold early mornings, or wet weather, while the insects ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... Curse the cold, say I. It robs a man of all spirit. To grapple with this rigour one should have fed all one's life on blubber. I defy a man to be brave when he is half-frozen. I feel a match for any three men now; but on the heights a flea would ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... is the French tout-saine (heal all). There are some others which, however, are not peculiar to the West; as kickshaws (quelque chose), etc. We have also many inverted words, as swap for wasp, cruds for curds, etc. Then again we call a fly a flea; and a flea a flay; and the smallest stream of ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... mere bite from a flea!... The plaintiff has fallen into hystericals from disappointed avariciousness.... There is some idle talk about costs following the event, and certifying for a special jury—a luxury for which it seems I am not to fork out. The case ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... bowels. Having already described him in most of his present habitatory and anatomical peculiarities, it now remains to magnify him in an archaeological, fossiliferous, and antediluvian point of view. Applied to any other creature than the Leviathan—to an ant or a flea—such portly terms might justly be deemed unwarrantably grandiloquent. But when Leviathan is the text, the case is altered. Fain am I to stagger to this emprise under the weightiest words of the dictionary. And here be ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... [461] were killed on the northern side of the Altar, and flea'd, cut in pieces and salted in the northern gate of the Temple; and therefore the building or exhedra on the eastern side of this gate, was for the Priests who had the oversight of the charge of the Altar, and Daily Service: and these Officers were, He that received money of the People ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... he said, "but also your very humble servant. My Court is a small one, and you are as important and welcome an addition to it as is your distinguished father to my army. Swounds, Colonel," turning to him with a merry smile, "I shall put a flea in his lordship's ear when I see him at Derby. He never so much as mentioned your daughter. Man, one might as well talk ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... and sinewy soul (a psyche of the size, muscular force, and agility of a flea) had been seized, oppressed, and in a manner smashed by the hideous sublimity of this wilderness of ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... good for, and little she makes at it. The other's the Port of Amsterdam, owned by Gunderman. She's the ship they'd use; she's got steam winches and derricks 'nough to discharge the Ark, and stowage room to hold the cargo down to the last flea, but she's no good for more than eight knots; she steams like as if she'd a drogue behind her, because why?—she's got beam engines—she's that old, she's got beam engines in her. I'm not denyin' there's somethin' ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... could contemplate their beauty while he shaved. He knew now quite positively that there had been no painting of landscape before Monet; and he felt a real thrill when he stood in front of Rembrandt's Disciples at Emmaus or Velasquez' Lady with the Flea-bitten Nose. That was not her real name, but by that she was distinguished at Gravier's to emphasise the picture's beauty notwithstanding the somewhat revolting peculiarity of the sitter's appearance. With Ruskin, Burne-Jones, and Watts, he had put ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... wave; I mean artistic individualism, which is so much crueller, so much blinder and so much more irrational even than commercial individualism. The decay of society was praised by artists as the decay of a corpse is praised by worms. The aesthete was all receptiveness, like the flea. His only affair in this world was to feed on its facts and colours, like a parasite upon blood. The ego was the all; and the praise of it was enunciated in madder and madder rhythms by poets whose Helicon was absinthe and whose Pegasus was the nightmare. This diseased pride was not even ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... is nothing!" he cried. "A flea bite in the ocean. It will right itself as the public realize how they are being taken in by these American and German impostors. The Cure can't fail. And let me tell you, Dennymede, my son, the Cure is going to flourish as it has never flourished before. I've got a scheme that ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... observed her husband; 'monsieur in his travels has doubtless already encountered a flea or two.' ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... around, Hilda, there was the maestro himself, standing and listening. Well! you can't go through the floor and all that sort of thing, as they do in the fairy-books, but I did wish I was a mouse, or a flea, or anything smaller that there is. He stood still a minute. Perhaps he was afraid I would behave like some asses the other day—they weren't Americans, I am happy to say— who met him, and went down on their knees in the hotel entry, and took bits of mud from his shoes for a keepsake; they ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... The jigger, chigoe, or nigua (Pulex penetrans of science) is a microscopic flea, that buries itself under the skin and lays a myriad eggs; the result is a painful tumor. Jiggers are ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... they have broken through the soil, an enemy awaits them in the small black insect commonly known as the cabbage or turnip fly, beetle, or flea. This insect, though so small as to appear to the eye as a black dot, is very voracious and surprisingly active. He apparently feeds on the juice of the young plant, perforating it with small holes the size of a pin point. He is so active when ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... shall end up. I am heading up-stream. It may be that I shall find myself going west and southwest into the country of the Ilongotes, who are enemies of the ones I am now with. I have to go much lighter than what I am now to keep up with the little black Negrito. He is like a flea; here to-day, there to-morrow, and ever on the move when food is gone, and at rest, when he has a supply, long enough to consume it. He is at outs with the particular people I am with ...
— The Negrito and Allied Types in the Philippines and The Ilongot or Ibilao of Luzon • David P. Barrows
... been rapt into the uttermost quarters of the earth, how should he escape the ruin that he carried? We have heard of living men who have been fettered to the dead; the grievance, soberly considered, is no more than sentimental; the case is but a flea-bite to that of him who should be linked, like poor M'Guire, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have often told how they Saw Cupid bitten by a flea; And thereupon, in tears half drown'd, He cried aloud: Help, help the wound! He wept, he sobb'd, he call'd to some To bring him lint and balsamum, To make a tent, and put it in Where the stiletto pierced the skin; Which, being done, the fretful ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... to contribute to the dilution of human tea and the greasing of human bread. The tiger who springs out on me unawares has the excuse of being hungry at the time, to say nothing of the further justification of being a total stranger to me. The very flea who surprises me in my sleep may defend his act of assassination on the ground that I, in my turn, am always ready to murder him when I am awake. I defy the whole body of Natural Historians to move me, logically, off the ground that I have taken in regard to the horse. ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... flared in the little coffee-house. In one circle of yellow light two bearded Sheiks were playing dominoes with imperturbable gravity; the other lamp flickered over an empty table beneath which the thin, flea-bitten legs of a ragged urchin were showing in the oblivion of his tired sleep. In the shadow beyond sat a young American with a keen, impatient face, and a one-eyed Arab shrouded in a ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... reassured him, and we were admitted to the society of more fleas than I had considered possible at that time of the year. I had, however, provided myself with an ample supply of the Dalmatian product known as "flea powder," the triturated leaves of the red camomile which grows in great perfection all over the mountains of Dalmatia and Montenegro, as if nature had foreseen that it would be especially needed there, and I slept in comparative immunity, though my prior ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... universal monarchy attributed to the late king, or, it may be, to the aventures galantes of a financier with a ballet girl. M. Blaizot was never tired of listening to him. This M. Blaizot was a little old man, dry and neat, in flea-coloured coat and breeches and grey woollen stockings. I admired him very much, and could not think of anything more glorious than, like him, to sell books at ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... however gentle, was absurd and she knew it. Margaret could go where she liked. It would all be chaste as a piano-recital. But the flea that she had been trying to put in the girl's ear seemed very ineffective. She is just as I was at her age, thought this lady, who, in ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... us for? Night nurses? Think we're taking shifts keeping Mollie snuggled up warm o' nights? Go away and change yeer dhrinks. What's the hullabaloo anyway? Short o' tobacco? Or has the newest tenderfoot discovered the one lone flea in all ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... spray a pound of fresh lime to each pound of the arsenical should be added; or, better yet, Bordeaux mixture should be employed as a diluent instead of water. This mixture has some insecticidal value, is a most valuable fungicide, and is also a powerful deterrent of flea-beetle attack, acting to a less degree against other insects which are apt to be found on the tomato. In applying any spray a sprayer costing not less than $7 ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... my official capacity as justice of the peace, and not postmaster. He wanted a warrant for the arrest of Chester Randel, and I made out one. The next thing is to arrest that good-for-nothing lad, but he's like a flea, I never can catch him when I want him. I've got another warrant ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... tell Helen when she comes back home," he announced. "Cal'late I'll put a flea in her ear. 'Helen,' I'll say, 'don't feel too bad now, don't cry and get your handkerchief all soakin', or nothin' like that. I just feel it's my duty to tell ye that your little Albert is sparkin' up to somebody else. ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... guns came thundering through, the horses doing well, the proud drivers, cannoneers, officers, waving caps and hats, bowing to half-sobbing hurrahs, thrown kisses, praises, blessings. Ewell's division poured through—Ewell on the flea-bitten grey, Rifle, swearing his men forward, pithily answering the happy people, all the while the church bells clanging. The town was in a clear flame of love, patriotism, martial spirit, every heart enlarged, every house thrown open to the wounded ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... flesh was often cut out, which caused them to eject much blood through the mouth. Afterwards, a violent pain seized their arms and legs, which remained swollen and very hard, all spotted as if with flea-bites; and they could not walk on account of the contraction of the muscles, so that they were almost without strength, and suffered intolerable pains. They experienced pain also in the loins, stomach, and bowels, had a very bad cough, and short breath. In a word, they were in ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... something, as if, in fact, he were resenting the man's words, but it might have only been that he was being troubled by the flea which he had several times that morning tried to scratch out of ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... vilify him, would be highly pleasing to her; who, as she hated the boy, must love all those who did him any hurt. In this Thwackum had the advantage; for while Square could only scarify the poor lad's reputation, he could flea his skin; and, indeed, he considered every lash he gave him as a compliment paid to his mistress; so that he could, with the utmost propriety, repeat this old flogging line, "Castigo te non quod odio habeam, sed quod AMEM. I chastise thee not out of hatred, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... out and got him to lay down on his stummick, because he was all muddy anyway, where he fell down the cellar; and how could it matter to anybody that had any sense at all? Well, then we had the rixual, and—and—why, the teeny little paddlin' he got wouldn't hurt a flea! It was that little coloured boy lives in the alley did it—he isn't anyways near HALF Georgie's size but Georgie got mad and said he didn't want any ole nigger to paddle him. That's what he said, and it was his own foolishness, because Verman won't let ANYBODY call him 'nigger', and ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... insect to which the epithet of cunning may be best ascribed, is, I think, the flea. If you doubt this, try to catch one. What double backsprings he will turn, what fancy dodges he will execute, and how, at last, you will have to give up the game and acknowledge yourself beaten ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... the Perfitie Platforme of a Hoppe Garden refers to "a little black flye," now called "the flea" (Worcestershire plural "flen"), really a beetle like the "turnip fly," and it is the first pest that ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... me, then; and by all means stir on the youth to an answer. I think oxen and wain-ropes cannot hale them together. For Andrew, if he were open'd, and you find so much blood in his liver as will clog the foot of a flea, I'll eat ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... of his force to salute him in the darkness was his next in command, Barry Whalen. They had been together in the old Rand Rifles, and had, in the words of the Kaffir, been as near as the flea to the blanket, since the day when Rudyard discovered that Barry Whalen was on the same ship bound for the seat of war. They were not youngsters, either of them; but they had the spring of youth in them, and a deep basis of strength and force; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... war yersel': I hae frichtit the deid afore noo. Sae gang yer wa's to Mistress Coorthoup, wi' a flech (flea) i' yer lug (ear). I wuss ye luck—sic luck as I ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... injurious insects a few may be mentioned: the House Fly or Filth Fly, which may carry disease germs on its feet to the food that we eat; the mosquitoes, which transmit yellow fever and malaria, the rat flea, which carries bubonic plague; the weevils, which destroy rice, beans, chestnuts, etc., and the plant lice, or aphids, which, by sucking the juices from ornamental and food plants, are among the most destructive ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... pictures of the Plum-pudding flea, and the Moppsikon Floppsikon Bear, and state by whom waterproof tubs were ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... that I cannot be good without God's assistance,—I will not trust in my own selfe, and Isa's health will be quite ruined by me,—it will indeed." "Isa has giving me advice, which is, that when I feal Satan beginning to tempt me, that I flea him and he would flea me." "Remorse is the worst thing to bear, and I am afraid that I will fall a marter ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... "personalities," or by whatever name we may prefer to be called, are but the CONSENSUS and full flowing stream of countless sensations and impulses on the part of our tributary souls or "selves," who probably know no more that we exist, and that they exist as part of us, than a microscopic water-flea knows the results of spectrum analysis, or than an agricultural labourer knows the working of the British constitution: and of whom we know no more, until some misconduct on our part, or some confusion of ideas on theirs, ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... was a flea-bite! and I said, 'Gott in Himmel, Milly, dost thou want to swear my eyes away? My enemies shall have such a flea-bite.' And because Red Rivkah was in the room, Milly said I was shedding her blood in public, and she began to cry as if I had committed a crime against her ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Enemies to that People, that they never give a Spaniard Quarter; but generally, when they take any Prisoners, (if the English be not near to prevent it) sculp them, that is, to take their Hair and Skin of their Heads, which they often flea away, whilst the Wretch is alive. Notwithstanding the English have us'd all their Endeavours, yet they could never bring them to leave this Barbarity to the Spaniards; who, as they alledge, use to murder them and their Relations, and make ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... members of Congress which looked as if excitability were not limited to women. It is said that 'the legal male mind' is the only mind fit for suffrage." Miss Shaw then made her wit play around the legal male mind like chain lightning. "It is said that women are illogical, and jump to their conclusions, flea-like. I shall not try to prove that women are logical, for I know they are not, but it is beyond me how men ever got it into their heads that they are. When we read the arguments against woman suffrage, we see that flea-like jumping is by no ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... of the healthy person, and beginning to multiply, brings about the symptoms of the disease. Malaria is transmitted in this way by the anopheles mosquito; typhus fever by lice, and plague by the rat flea. These are all diseases greatly to be dreaded ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... them. Burns may make merry over a louse crawling in a lady's hair, but few of us can regard its kind with equanimity even on the backs of swine. Men of science deny that the louse is actually engendered by dirt, but it undoubtedly thrives on it. Our anger against the flea also arises from the fact that we associate it with dirt. Donne once wrote a poem to a lady who had been bitten by the same flea as himself, arguing that this was a good reason why she should allow him to make love to her. It is, and was bound to be, a dirty poem. Love, even of the wandering ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... knows much more about men than I do about horses, and no doubt he describes me professionally to his colleagues as a "flea-bitten fellow standing about eighteen hoofs"; but when he is not being technical I like to think that he sums me up to himself as a nice man. At any rate I am not allowed to wear spurs, and that must weigh with ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... a care, there was no doubt of that. Imogene, whom he liked and who liked him, declared that "that young one had more jump in him than a sand flea." The very afternoon of his arrival he frightened the hens into shrieking hysterics, poked the fat and somnolent Patrick Henry, the pig, with a sharp stick to see if he was alive and not "gone dead" like the kitten, and barked his shins ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of the depth required. Applications of guano, ashes, dilutions of oil-soap, and plaster of Paris, applied while the plants are wet, will be found of greater or less efficacy in their protection. The pungent smell of guano is said to prevent the depredation of the flea-beetle, which, in many localities, seriously injures the plants early in the season, through its attacks ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... end to end. On this plank-bridge sat the Christ, His legs hidden in this tomb, holding a cross. His face was haggard and hollow, He was crowned with green thorns, and His emaciated body was spotted all over by the ends of the scourges as if the wounds were flea-bites. Over Him, in the air, floated the instruments of the Passion: the nails, the sponge, a hammer and a spear; to the left, on a very small scale, were the busts of Jesus and of Judas, near a pedestal on which lay three rows of ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... sold in the East, is really efficacious. It is the powdered "Pire oti" (or flea-bane), mentioned in Curzon's 'Armenia' as growing in that country; it has since become an important article of export. A correspondent writes to me, "I have often found a light cotton or linen bag a great safeguard against the attacks of fleas. I used to creep into it, ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... their delectation and amusement. No band of enthusiastic pilgrims ever started in such high feather to see a dramatic and terpsichorean feast as did we. There was an expression of mystery and expectancy on every face. Mary Garden and all she does would be a mere flea bite to what we should see of pure and simple naughtiness. But alack and alas for our blasted hopes and the human weakness that had been worked on by the adroit press agent! The show was a "fake:" there was ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... is a great shame, St. Ronan's, that the game laws, whilk are the very best protection that is left to country gentlemen against the encroachment of their inferiors, rin sae short a course of prescription—a poacher may just jink ye back and forward like a flea in a blanket, (wi' pardon)—hap ye out of ae county and into anither at their pleasure, like pyots—and unless ye get your thum-nail on them in the very nick o' time, ye may dine on a dish of prescription, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... the sixpence in his pocket; "I'll explain to you. You must first catch the flea, hold him so tight between the forefinger and thumb as to force him to open his mouth; when his mouth is open you must put a very little of this powder into it, and it ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... drag net out. All the roads, all the railroads, all the airports are guarded. The river and the water front, every wharf in New York and New Jersey is taken care of. You would think a flea couldn't get through. They've picked ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... confounding velocity, delighting to deceive as to their position, and in their deception being for the most part eminently successful. There is a passage in the Scriptures that mentions that "the king of Israel is come out to seek a flea as when one doth hunt a partridge in the mountain," and this quotation on the approach of our weighty military machine, the Boers, ever Biblical, must have been inclined to remember and ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... and no sooner was his presence discovered, than he was simultaneously attacked by the draymen, and narrowly escaped with his life. He got small sympathy from Punch, who, in vol. xix., presented Leech's Sketch of a Most Remarkable Flea found in General Haynau's Ear. "Who's Dat Knocking at de Door?" is a question put by Johnny Russell to old Joe (Hume), who once in every session in those days stood knocking at the door with his banjo labelled, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... vague. The autopsy showed a state of things not precisely to be called peculiar to poisoning cases the intestines, which the fatal poison had not had time to burn as in the case of the d'Aubrays, were marked with reddish spots like flea-bites. In June Penautier obtained the post that had been held by the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... dollar was their only love, And that they loved fu' dearly, O! They dinna care a flea for men, Let them ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... ponderous vases, And beaux' in snuff-boxes and tweezer-cases. There broken vows, and death-bed alms are found, And lovers' hearts with ends of ribbon bound, The courtier's promises, and sick man's prayers, The smiles of harlots, and the tears of heirs, 120 Cages for gnats, and chains to yoke a flea, Dried ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... vaguely out upon the horizon, waiting for the outcome of the search, got a start. Yonder, far away on the other side of the river, between a little wood and the Staria Derevnia, a light boat drew to the shore, and a little black spot jumped from it like a flea. Koupriane recognized the little black spot as Kathanna. She was safe. Now he could not reach her. It would be useless to search the maze of the Bohemian quarter, where her country-people lived in full control, with customs and privileges that had never been infringed. The ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... convinced on't. I'm completely disgusted wit him—and I let him know it to-night. I gin him a piece o' my mind 't I guess he'll be apt to remember for a spell. I ruther think he went off with a flea in his ear. Why, Cappen—did ye ever hear of such a piece of audacity in all yer born days? for him—Tim Crane—to durst to expire to my hand—the widder o' Deacon Bedott, jest as if I'd condescen' to look at him—the old numbskull! He don't know B from a broomstick; but if he'd ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... His wife had some money; but, you bet, she has it yet. She was a Hunter; they're as tight as the bark to the tree, every one of them—they'd skin a flea for the hide and tallow. Well, I'll just tell you, she lent him forty dollars to buy a cow with the first year they were in this country, with the understandin' he'd pay her back in the fall. Well, the crop didn't turn out well and he couldn't ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... the critic of the critic's critic, and a daily paper favors us with some critical remarks on the performance of the writer in the Weekly, who has criticised the critical notice in the Monthly of the critical essay in the Quarterly on the critical work we started with. And thus we see that as each flea "has smaller fleas that on him prey," even the critic himself cannot escape the common lot of being bitten. Whether all this is a blessing or a curse, like that one which made Pharaoh and all his household run to their toilet-tables, is a question ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... flea-beetle inflicts much damage on the potato, tomato, eggplant, and other garden plants. The accompanying figure shows the common striped flea-beetle which lives on the tomato. The larva of this beetle lives inside of the leaves, mining ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... his full stature, see-sawed a bit on the tips of his toes, and looked down on Herr Carovius as one might look down upon a flea that one had caught and was just in the act of crushing between two finger nails. "Oh, ho," he said, "how interesting! Upon my word, brother Carovius, you are an interesting individual. But if some one were to offer me all the money in the world, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... possessed, That parents both could get not rest, So much she made the settle shake. This is not strange. A longing girl, With thoughts of sweetheart in her head, In bed all night will sleepless twirl. A flea is in her ear, 'tis said. The morning broke. Of fleas and heat Kitty complained. "Let me entreat, "O mother, I may put my bed "Out in the gallery," she said, "'Tis cooler there, and Philomel "Who warbles in the neigh'bring dell "Will solace me." Ready consent The simple mother gave, and went To ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... of his sort here," the girl remarked; "his soul would fit in a flea-track." She spied the Bronco Kid sauntering back towards her and joined him. He leaned against the wall, watching the gossamer thread of smoke twist upward from his cigarette, seemingly oblivious ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... caution and attempt to nail it down there. Instead, I find it in Minnesota with a strong Norwegian accent running through the course of study. Worse than that, I often find it in two or three places at once. It is harder to corner than a flea. I never saw ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... reproached herself, now that it was too late, with her mistrust of his powers of retaining a secret. See how keenly alive he was to the need of keeping Sally's parentage in the dark! And that was what the whole thing turned on. Gerry's continued ignorance might be desirable, but was a mere flea-bite by comparison. In her strained, sleepless, overwrought state the wish that "the Major" should know of her happiness while they could still speak of it together grew from a passing thought of how nice it might have been, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... a moment, and then finding that in her excitement she took no notice of us, I beckoned to one of the servants, and bade him tell his mistress that a gentleman would speak with her. The man went with the message; but she sent him off with a flea in his ear, and screamed at him so violently that for a moment I thought she was mad. Then it appeared that the object of her attention was a door at that side of the hall; for, stopping suddenly in her walk, she went up to it, and struck on it ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... fancies that a lie that kills has more point in it than an alliteration or an antithesis; who thinks a fatal experiment on the peace of a family a better thing than watching the palpitations in the heart of a flea in a microscope; who plots the ruin of his friends as an exercise for his ingenuity, and stabs men in the dark to prevent ennui. His gaiety, such as it is, arises from the success of his treachery; his ease from the torture he has inflicted on others. He is an amateur ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... would interrupt him!—a chorus of agreement. Then would follow a description of that terrible flea-bitten mare, and of Johnnie's bravery; of the fierce kick, and the boy's quiet bearing of his agony, all closing with a word about the ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... relations who could assist me won't do any more, for such was uncle's last intimation. Never mind; he can't take his money and comfort with him, and in all probability will find himself in the same boat as myself. He never enquires whether I am starving or not. 3—a mere flea-bite to him—would have put us straight, and with his security and good interest might have obtained me a good situation long ago. I can face poverty and degradation no longer, and would sooner die than go to the workhouse, whatever may be the awful consequences ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... whatever is affecting, ludicrous, vicious, or otherwise noteworthy in the conversation, actions, and manners of society. But the shadowy nature of the observer fails to give to the necessarily disconnected incidents even the slight unity possible in the adventures of a lap-dog, a cat, a mouse, a flea, or a guinea. The contents of a single section of "The Invisible Spy" is enough to show how little thought the author expended upon the ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... would be something like that," said Crawley coolly. "It is a flea-bite to me. You take my tip and find another way of keeping her quiet. A clever fellow like you, who knows more about dope than any other man I have met, ought to be able to do the trick without any assistance from me. Why, didn't you tell ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... we came in, he was standing over you with a look in his eyes as if he were about to murder you, and couldn't quite make up his mind as to the simplest way of doing it. Then the look changed to his usual cast-iron smile in the flirt of a flea's hind leg—at some joke you ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... into neglect: a moral sentiment which applies out of Pigdom. This creature would not have passed muster at a county fair; no Suffolk blood compacted and rounded him; he belonged to the "racers," and skipped about his pen with the alacrity of a large flea, wiggling his curly tail as expressively as a dog's, and "all but speakin'," as Israel said. He was always glad to see Miss Lucinda, and established a firm friendship with her dog Fun, a pretty, sentimental, German spaniel. Besides, he kept tolerably clean by dint of Israel's care, and thrust ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... Thou liest, thou thread, thou thimble, Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail, Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket, thou:— Brav'd in mine own house with a skein of thread! Away, thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant; Or I shall so be-mete thee with thy yard, As thou shalt think on prating whilst thou liv'st." SHAK.: ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... sure o' fair play. Ye are a bonny lass, too, an ye wad busk up your cockernony a bit; and a bonny lass will find favour wi' judge and jury, when they would strap up a grewsome carle like me for the fifteenth part of a flea's hide and ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... flea in Rosario, however—just one flea; but he is a most ubiquitous and a most insatiably blood-thirsty little person. The worst of it is that, night or day, you are never perfectly sure where he may be. It is no use killing him either—that is simply labour thrown away, for he ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... quaint a manner as possible became the chief aim of English poets during the first three-quarters of the seventeenth century. Donne had encountered trouble in obtaining his wife from her father. Finding one morning a flea that had feasted during the night on his wife and himself, he was overcome by its poetic possibilities, ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... with five million dollars as with five dollars. And the result, I was perfectly aware, would be to those achieved by John as the elephant in his normal strength compares with the elephant whose strength is to his size as the flea's strength to his size. John could take the flea's leap with five dollars, but was satisfied with the elephant's ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various |
