"Goldfish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... use of the blow-gun is not confined to the Dyaks. They are also used by fish! That is to say, by a certain species of fish. This fish, which is remarkable neither in size nor color, seldom being larger than our domestic goldfish, is known to the natives as ikan sumpit (literally "fish with a sumpitan") and to science as Toxodes jaculator. But it is unique among the finny tribe in possessing the curious power, on corning to the surface, of being able to squirt from its mouth a tiny ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... one of the nice little trout on his plate, and, by way of experiment, touched its tail with his finger. To his horror, it was immediately changed from an admirably-fried brook-trout into a gold fish, though not one of those goldfish which people often keep in glass globes, as ornaments for the parlor. No; but it was really a metallic fish, and looked as if it had been very cunningly made by the nicest goldsmith in the world. Its little bones were now golden wires; its fins and tail were thin plates of gold; and there ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... by sharp zigzags, the Tokaido suddenly dips into the little valley of the Yasose-gawa. At the foot of the hill is a curious shrine cave, containing several rude idols, a trough with tame goldfish, and one of the crudest Buddhas I ever saw. The aim of the ambitious sculptor of Buddhas is to produce a personification of "great tranquillity." The figure in the Valley of Yasose-gawa is certainly something ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... The goldfish sing a winding song Below her pale and waxen face, The water-nymph is dancing by Lifting smooth arms with mournful grace, A stainless white dream she floats on While ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... revelation to me. There seemed to be no end to the enemy's fighting resources. He kept on producing fresh batches of Reserve Divisions and Extra-Reserve Divisions, like a conjurer who produces huge glass bowls full of goldfish out of his waistcoat pocket. He seemed to be doing it on purpose—one felt quite angry with the man. But it was made plain to me that we were up against a tougher proposition than I had imagined. The Field-Marshal must have been, or at all events ought to have been, perfectly well aware of ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... the circus, this being the center of a thriving farming community. Joe, going into a drug store to get an ice cream soda, saw in the window of an establishment next door a large aquarium, in which goldfish were swimming about amid long, waving, green ...
— Joe Strong, the Boy Fish - or Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank • Vance Barnum
... into sight on the pedestal a transparent dome the size of a small goldfish bowl. It was lighted by ultra-violet from the bottom. In the center of the dome a small golden ball hung by a platinum wire, and on the ball was a tiny butterfly—Netse the Jovian. Netse's wings moved slowly as he walked ...
— The Wealth of Echindul • Noel Miller Loomis
... were beds of beautiful sea flowers, many being in full bloom, and these were laid out with great care in artistic designs. Goldfish and silverfish darted here and there among the foliage, and the whole scene was so pretty and peaceful that Trot began to doubt there was any danger lurking in ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... at the little doors; the red fringes take the oxygen out of the water, and it goes into the fish's blood. The water is the fishes' atmosphere, and it is only from it that they can get air to breathe; so that if the glass globe were broken, and the pretty goldfish were let fall upon the carpet, unless they were quickly put back into water they would gasp and die from want of air; just as you would, if someone held your ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... him to make him so, and was sure that it could only be a rich and pretty wife. This happiness then she determined to procure for him, an easy enough task, as her set contained a large selection of "goldfish." ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... Schlichten in Sid Harrington's old chair, and in getting a chair for Paula Quinton. After a while, the jumbled colors on the big screen resolved themselves into an image of Hideyoshi O'Leary, grinning like a pussy-cat beside an empty goldfish-bowl. ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... eyes were fixed upon an open letter, which she instinctively knew to be Deryck's, and he did not look up at once. When he did look up, she saw his unmistakable start of surprise. He opened his mouth to speak, and Jane was irresistibly reminded of a tame goldfish at Overdene, which used to rise to the surface when the duchess dropped crumbs. He closed it without uttering a word, and turned again to Deryck's letter; and Jane felt herself to be the crumb, or rather the camel, which he was finding it ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... singing in the patio garden, where, also, she desisted long enough to quarrel with her Airedale and scold the collie pup unholily attracted by the red-orange, divers-finned, and many-tailed Japanese goldfish ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... been watching for years. It had been auctioned, forfeited by the purchaser, it had figured in a lawsuit, and now at last it was in the possession of the delighted Davenports. And the move—with the baby carrying his puppy, and Pip the goldfish, and the girls wheeling the old baby-carriage full of their treasures, and Linda whitening her hands with a cut lemon, as she walked the seven short blocks—! Harriet made them see it all, and Richard laughed ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... silver and white, of glittering plate and sparkling cut-glass, faced a rustic stage which occupied one end of the room; occupying the inner arc of the half-circle was a wide but shallow stone fountain, upon the surface of which floated large-leaved Egyptian pond-lilies. Fat-bellied goldfish with filmy fins, and tails like iridescent wedding trains, propelled themselves indolently about. Two dimpled cupids strained at a marble cornucopia, out of which trickled a stream of water, its whisper drowned now by the noisy admiration ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... of my mother's to drink tea and eat rusk and fresh butter and confiture (of field strawberries—delicious!) and—of all things—broiled bacon, because Roger was devotedly fond of it and never got it at school. How many June half-holidays have we hung over that old carved basin, teasing the goldfish, stopping up the tiny fountain till it spouted all over us, sailing beetles across it on linden leaves, or lolling full-fed and lazy, smoking contraband cigarettes of caporal! I knew well how pleased he would be when he saw that battered dolphin that threw ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... entered the land of the sunset and she could see him no longer. She went home, but she could scarcely wait until the morning. Very early the next day her swiftest goldfish carried her to ...
— Nature Myths and Stories for Little Children • Flora J. Cooke
... little pet alligator was a sort of tank, in the bottom of which was some water, and in this were little pebbles, like those in some goldfish bowls. The tank stood near a window in the barn where the sun shone in, for Mr. Martin had told the Curlytops that their pets who lived in warm, or tropical, countries must be kept where it was warm and sunny. That ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... was laughing at till the boss, who chanced to pause on the outskirts of the gathering on his way back from lunch, was good enough to tell me. Nothing that I could say would convince him that I was not being intentionally humorous. I was sorry to lose the job, though it did make me feel like a goldfish. But talking of being fired brings ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... cattle-paths. The track, which I chanced to follow, led me to a crystal spring, with a border of grass, as freshly green as on May morning, and overshadowed by the limb of a great oak. One solitary sunbeam found its way down, and played like a goldfish in the water. ...
— The Vision of the Fountain (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... which surrounds the sanctuary is entered through a large gate of red sandstone. In a long pool goldfish dart about under floating lotus blossoms, and all around is luxuriant verdure, the dwelling-place of countless singing birds; the air is filled with the odour of jasmine and roses, and tall, slender cypresses point ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... he was accidentally fallen upon by the giant whom he was engaged in undermining, and lost all appetite for adventure thereby. Indeed, in his latter years he was alarmed by anything larger than a goldfish, and lived a ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... he would say, "were erected by the Turks, to commemorate a victory. Here is where Byron swam the sea from Europe to Asia; and over there is where King Midas lived, whose touch turned piastres to napoleons, and flounders to goldfish. Here, to the left, on that hill, stood ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... that it was nothing at all. He merely found that old plant-sprayer and discovered that by unscrewing the nozzle it made a fine squirt gun. To be sure, she had asked him not to use the water from the goldfish globe; but he just would. Also he'd insisted on locking all the servants downstairs, and when she tried to amuse him in other ways he'd tied her to ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... in the corner; Bird, beast, and goldfish are sepulchred there Bid the black kitten march as chief mourner, Waving her tail like a plume in ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... aquarium, a recent acquisition that delights my soul. The aquarium is simply an oblong glass box mounted on a teak stand, with a tracery of teak carving outlining the box, which is the home of the most gorgeous fan-tailed goldfish. There are water plants in the box, too, and funny little Chinese temples and dwarf trees. I love to house my little people happily—my dogs and my birds and my fish. Wee Toi, my little Chinese dog, has a little house all his own, an old Chinese lacquer box with a canopy top and little ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... house. A few steps of straight path led them through its stiff ranks of larkspurs, carnations, and the like, to a bower of honeysuckle enclosing two rough wooden benches that faced each other across a six-by-nine goldfish pool. There they had hardly taken seats when Cupid reappeared bearing to the visitor, on a silver ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... his collection, will sell his stud of tame mice, two goldfish and several obsolete silkworms, or would exchange ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... a fit and belts me with four fists. "Dummkopf!" it says, and then I really get scared as he has got a lop of hair falling down over one eye and has a black mustache the size of a Venutian four centra stamp over his mouth which is like that of a pouting goldfish. ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald
... in seating von Schlichten in Sid Harrington's old chair, and in getting a chair for Paula Quinton. After awhile, the jumbled colors on the big screen resolved themselves into an image of Hideyoshi O'Leary, grinning like a pussycat beside an empty goldfish-bowl, licking its chops. ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... in a white and gold salon, so vast, that she felt like a goldfish out of water. The place looked as if Joseph Urban had designed it after he had died and gone to Golconda. Whatever wasn't white was gold, and the other way round. The gold piano had only white keys, and the draperies were cloth of gold with bullion fringe. ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... content with a bowl of goldfish. Something a little more responsive is demanded where the peace and quiet of nature press so close. A cat to drowse on the hearth or catch an occasional mouse; a dog to accompany one on walks and greet the head ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... a magnificent stud; Erasmus Belt, the famous author, whose novel "Bitten: A Romance" went into two editions; Sir Septimus Root, the inventor of the fire-proof spat; Captain the Honourable Alfred Nibbs, the popular breeder of blood-goldfish—the whole world and his wife were present. And towering above them all stood Lord Beltravers of ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... get forward, and can't get through, and the rest come still crowding on behind and above and below, till a multitude of them are jammed so tight against each other that they can't open their gills; and even if they could, there would not be air enough for them. You've seen the goldfish in the swan-basin, my lady, how they open and shut their gills constantly: that's their way of getting air out of the water by some wonderful contrivance nobody understands, for they need breath just ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... one, I can recommend no fish more highly than the king-carp. It is a much bolder-feeding and gamer fish than the common carp, and is just as easy to introduce. While dealing with carp I may mention that the goldfish, when introduced into a suitable pond, grows to a very large size. I have caught them over ...
— Amateur Fish Culture • Charles Edward Walker
... up my muff, I followed Bettina down the steps and into the street to the corner, on which was the little shop wherein were sold goldfish and canary-birds, and fox-terriers and white rabbits; and from there we turned in the direction which led to Mrs. Gibbons's. The day was cold and clear, but the ground was slippery with sleet, and, holding on to my arm, Bettina ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... was without brains, a senseless thing of paint and powder. I said, "We will form her, we will make of her a wise woman in good time. She replied with bitterness, "Rotten wood cannot be carved nor walls of dirt be plastered." I could not answer, but I sent Li-ti to pass the day with Chih-peh at the Goldfish Temple, and when she returned the time was ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... but we have been to the store where we get our lizards, and tadpoles, and goldfish, and the man who keeps it has promised to see if he can hear of one. If he is fortunate enough to find such a mouse he is to let us know, and if you send us your address we will tell you how much he wants for it, and where ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, April 22, 1897, Vol. 1, No. 24 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... where we should have glass windows the Japanese have white paper screens. But draw back, if you choose, one of these screens, and you will see a little landscape garden, a little lake, a little bridge, a tiny rockery, a few goldfish, a cluster of irises, a bed of lotus, and, above and beyond, the great woods. These are royal apartments; but all the cost, it will be seen, is lavished on the work of art. The principle is the ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... brightened at the suggestion, which confirmed the impression Mr. Caryll had formed that all was far from well with his lordship. Leduc brimmed a glass, and handed it to my lord, who emptied it at a draught. Mr. Caryll waved an impatient hand. "Away with you, Leduc. Go watch the goldfish in the pond. I'll call you if ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... whether we'd better wish - Hullo! you've done it now, my boy!' And, in a flash of glass and pink baby-paws, the bowl of golden carp in the middle of the table rolled on its side, and poured a flood of mixed water and goldfish into the Baby's lap and into ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... to the light, tapping a bowl of goldfish with the tip of a polished finger-nail; the room was very cool. She held a letter out. "Your uncle is not coming ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... him belonged Pippa and Sancie, Melot and Vicky. "My girls," or "My rascals," he used to call them to Tom Peters or Jack Summers, and bring them home jerky little tin pedestrians from the city, or emus pulling little carts; or (later on) bowls of goldfish or violet nosegays from Covent Garden. If he had a nearer passion, it was to stand well with all the world. That's two passions, however, to his score; and the struggle between them, in Sanchia's case, had taken him as near tragedy ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... have heard the words that sound my doom. I saw Dr. Owen this morning. It is all true—my dream, and what I saw myself do in the bowl of goldfish. True! I did those incredible things. I wore my red dress and my black hat. I went to Captain Herrick's studio. I lay down on the divan—everything is true. Oh, God, this is too horrible! How can I ever face Christopher again? I ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... the Princess were feeding the goldfish in the courtyard fountains with crumbs of the Princess's eighteenth birthday cake, when the King came into the courtyard, looking as black as thunder, with his black raven hopping after him. He shook his fist at his family, as indeed he generally did whenever he met them, for he was not a King ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... ripe peaches behind a net As fine as her veil, and fat Goldfish a-gape, who lazily met For her crumbs—I grudged them that! A squirrel, some rabbits with long lop ears, And guinea-pigs, tortoise-shell—wee; And I told her that eloquent truth inheres In all ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... it almost surely was, then there was only one way in which he could have escaped from the planet and that was by the single spacecraft that had left, destination Avalon. He was not on the planet, that was definite Ronny felt. A stranger on New Delos was as conspicuous as a walrus in a goldfish bowl. ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... cadaveric putrescence. All is good to his senses, feathered game or furry, provided that the burden do not exceed his strength. He exploits the batrachian or the reptile with no less animation. He accepts without hesitation extraordinary finds, probably unknown to his race, as witness a certain Goldfish, a red Chinese Carp, whose body, placed in one of my cages, was forthwith considered an excellent tit-bit and buried according to the rules. Nor is butcher's meat despised. A mutton-cutlet, a strip ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... at La Rochelle is the equal of the Hotel de France at Niort, and has the added attraction of a glass-covered courtyard, where you may take your coffee and watch the household cats amusing themselves with the goldfish in the pool of the fountain which plays ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... cloud in the east looked like a goldfish close to the horizon. I began to build a snow-house with the children, and ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... with grapes, a large bottle labelled "Two table-spoonfuls every half hour," and a medicine-glass were placed conspicuously on a small table; and, most remarkable feature of all, Mr Bunker's bath filled with water and alive with goldfish stood by the side of the bed. A couple of canaries sang in a cage by the window, the half-drawn curtains only permitted the most delicate light to steal into the room, and in short the whole arrangement reflected the utmost credit ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... other, Dr. Bell tells the Geographic society; a statement which no one will doubt who has ever seen a pair of goldfish in earnest conversation. ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... muttering and smiling to himself and shaking his trembling head as he went rocking on unsteady legs out into the sunshine, where the nursemaids and children flocked along the lake shore throwing peanuts to the waterfowl and satiated goldfish. ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... Their counter-attacks, gallantly delivered, but under the circumstances giving very little prospect of success, failed, and for a time the situation was critical. The 16th Infantry Brigade was moved up to the area about Goldfish Chateau (half-mile north-west of Ypres) as a precautionary measure, and was at one time in danger of being thrown in to make a hasty counter-attack. Fortunately this proved unnecessary, and on the 31st July the Corps Commander decided to relieve the whole Division, ...
— A Short History of the 6th Division - Aug. 1914-March 1919 • Thomas Owen Marden
... to her, murmuring: "It is done—it is done! Don't cry, my little Jesus, my little goldfish...." But his intermittent outcry continues. It is as though this wretched, unformed, and unconscious mass had a presentiment of a whole life of sorrow awaiting, him, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... Beauty laughed. "You dear, foolish thing!" she replied. "Bored? The idea! I'm perfectly happy. Of course, there are times . . ." She broke off and meditated, and actually sighed. "Come, we'll go and look at the goldfish," she added briskly. ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... mother died when she was a child) the poor man had an accident, and was drowned. There wasn't much money saved up for Anna Maria, so the barge was sold, and she had to live on dry land, and learn how to be a dressmaker. She was as miserable as a goldfish would be if you took it out of its bowl and laid it on the table. In a few months she'd fallen into a decline, and though, just at that time, she met a dashing young chauffeur, who took a fancy to her pretty, pale face, even love wasn't strong enough ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... to mess. Already the men were assembled around the long table and were helping themselves to "goldfish" and hot biscuits. ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... her darkened room in the hospital, and the neighbors were inexorably shut out of her apartment. All their offers of help, all their proffers of advice were politely refused by Morris, all their questions and visits politely dodged. And every morning Miss Bailey handed her Monitor of the Goldfish Bowl his princely stipend, adding to it from time to time some fruit or other uncontaminated food, for Morris was religiously the strictest of the strict, and could have given cards and spades to many a minor rabbi[82-1] on the ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... brass-handled bell at a garden-gate, surmounted by a holly-bush with the top cut into the shape of a fox, announced their arrival to the inhabitants of "Rosalinda Castle," and on entering they discovered young Nosey in the act of bobbing for goldfish, in a pond about the size of a soup-basin; while Nosey senior, a fat, stupid-looking fellow, with a large corporation and a bottle nose, attired in a single-breasted green cloth coat, buff waistcoat, with drab shorts and continuations, was reposing, sub tegmine fagi, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... said proudly. "There! The perfect pets for the sickroom. When you said Jenny Lind was too disturbing I remembered that Mr. Jerry's Aunt Mary had these two little goldfish. Wasn't it lucky? She was glad to loan them to you and hopes you'll find them pleasant friends. They won't be any care at all. I'll come up every day and feed them if you don't feel well enough. I'd like to. Aren't they beautiful? ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... longer, and asked Cesar to have it put away. "Si, Senor," he said deferentially, and a few tears ran suddenly down his withered cheeks. The English flowers had been trampled down; an unclean hat floated on the basin, now here, now there, frightening the goldfish from one side to ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... a cat, fifteen or twenty rabbits, a rat, about a dozen canaries, and two dozen goldfish, I don't know how many pigeons, a few bantams, a guinea pig, and—well, I don't think there ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... what he required. The living-room opened wide to the sun. One stepped out from its French windows into the garden, where a little pebbly path led one wandering amongst oleanders and dwarf oranges and flaming cannas, to a corner where a tiny fountain made a home for lazy goldfish floating in placid contentment under the hot sun. Here there was an arbour wreathed in gentle wisteria, where Riviere took breakfast and the mid-day meal. At nightfall a chill snapped down with the suddenness of ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... puppy dog from far-away Japan, I saw you in a shop to-day where lonesomely you sat Upon a velvet cushion that was colored gold and purple, Between a bowl of goldfish, ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... discover that you are not alone in the world. Brotherly love began with Cain and Abel, and socialism is best exemplified by a parlour aquarium. Nothing happens to disturb the serene existence of the goldfish until somebody forgets to feed them, and then they begin ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... said the little alderman. "He has no place for thim. Cages he has, an' globes for goldfish, an' birrd cages, but th' size of th' shop l'aves no room for an aquarium, Casey. He has no tank for the preservation of water goats. Hippopotamuses an' alligators an' crocodiles an' dongola water goats an' sea lions he does not keep in stock, Casey, but sinds out an' catches thim whin ordered. ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler
... He that was favored to have audience with Monna Vittoria went to her as through a dream of loveliness, marvelling at the many splendid things that surrounded her: at the fountain in her court-yard, where the goldfish gambolled, and where a Triton that came from an old Roman villa spouted; at her corridors, lined with delicately tinted majolica that seemed cool and clean as ice in those summer heats; at her antechambers, that glowed with color ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... at any more cat or dog or bird shops, but passed them by, and at last they came to a shop that seemed as though it only sold creatures that did not much mind where they were—such as goldfish and white mice, and sea-anemones and other aquarium beasts, and lizards and toads, and hedgehogs and tortoises, and tame rabbits and guinea-pigs. And there they stopped for a long time, and fed the guinea-pigs ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... wheel-hoe is traveling up and down the green rows; the hotbed glasses are entirely removed by day; and the early cauliflower plants are put into the open ground at the first promise of a shower. The annuals are up in the seed beds; the pool has been cleaned and filled, the goldfish are once more swimming in it, the Cape Cod water-lily, brought from its winter quarters in the dark cellar, has begun to make a leaf, and we have begun to hope that maybe this year it will also make a blossom, for we are nothing in mid-May ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... And if the goldfish doesn't climb out of his tank and hide in the sardine tin, where the stuffed olives can't find him, I'll tell you next about ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis
... cards that isn't a pack of cards. The hat that looks like a gentleman's hat. But which, in reality, is no gentleman's hat. Only my hat; and I am not a gentleman. I am only a conjurer, and this is only a conjurer's hat. I could not take off this hat to a lady. I can take rabbits out of it, goldfish out of it, snakes out of it. Only I mustn't take my own head out of it. I suppose I'm a lower animal than a rabbit or a snake. Anyhow they can get out of the conjurer's hat; and I can't. I am a conjurer and nothing else but a conjurer. ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... they were like two goldfish in a bowl from which all the water had been drawn; they could not even swim across ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... goldsmith living—or goldfish either, if it come to that. But I should prefer to be sentimental in some other language than plain English. I could order 'Cars sposa,' or—or 'Spaghetti,' or anything like ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... of seeing even a goldfish injured or slain, shrank far more shudderingly from being injured or slain himself. The horrid wrench that physical assault was—and then, perhaps, the sharp break with life, the plunge into a blank unknown—and ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... vista about a hundred feet wide paved with white and black marble with tessellated designs, inclosed with walls of cypress boughs. In the center are a series of tanks, or marble basins, fed from fountains, and goldfish swim about in the limpid water. This vista, of course, was intended to make the first view as impressive as possible, and it is safe to say that there is no other equal to it. At the other end of the marble-paved tunnel of trees, against a cloudless sky, rises the most symmetrical, the most perfect, ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... smartened themselves up and went out and his wife retired upstairs to reflect upon the business aspects of the crystal, over a little sugar and lemon and so forth in hot water. Mr. Cave went into the shop, and stayed there until late, ostensibly to make ornamental rockeries for goldfish cases but really for a private purpose that will be better explained later. The next day Mrs. Cave found that the crystal had been removed from the window, and was lying behind some second-hand books on angling. She replaced it in a conspicuous ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... problems which are right with us every day and ask some of our friends to join the Nut Growers Association. We are all widely separated in different walks of life, and each in his own world is just apt to see things a whole lot like the goldfish in a bowl. That is, he will see it twisted and distorted. So when all is said and done, it's up to us to support these committee heads and help get ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... a few moments while the fish I had hooked darted here and there like lightning, but I had it up to the side soon after, and gazed at it with delight, for it was, as it lay panting in the boat, like a magnificent goldfish, five or six pounds weight, with bars across its side of ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... notions of heroism and self-devotion as those with which Lady Juliana stepped into the barouche that was to conduct her to Beech Park. In the society of piping bullfinches, pink canaries, gray parrots, goldfish, green squirrels, Italian greyhounds, and French poodles, she sought a refuge from despair. But even these varied charms, after a while, failed to please. The bullfinches grew hoarse; the canaries turned brown; the parrots became stupid; ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... to the street; but small as these houses are, room is nearly always found in the rear or at the side for a little flower-garden, fifteen or twenty feet square, where dwarf trees flourish amid hillocks of turf and ferns, with here and there a tub of goldfish. Azaleas, laurels, and tiny clumps of bamboos, are the most common plants to be seen in these charming little spots ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... cut out for that kind of life—home and kitchen and my own parsley in my own back yard. He knows, if he marries me, carpet slippers seven nights in the week is my speed. I never want to see a 'roof,' or a music-show, or a cabaret again to the day I die. He knows I'll fit in home like a goldfish in its bowl. Life made a mistake with me, and it's going to square itself. It's fate, Kess; ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... the choice of guests or destination I had when I drove my father's friends in our cars. I never did anything I wanted to do, and I never got any gratitude for doing what they wanted me to do. I might as well have been a goldfish, swimming round and round in the same globe, month after month, year after year. It wasn't my job! Nature hadn't made me for a fat, tame life. But young Marcel wasn't as much use as an understudy for a dutiful son as I'd once hoped. So I made up my mind to stick it while ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... at this hour the monastery was asleep. Durtal and the abbot were walking on the banks of the great pond, where the water was alive, it alone wakeful in the slumber of the woods, for the moon, which shone in a cloudless sky, sowed a myriad of goldfish, and this luminous spawn, fallen from the planet, mounted, descended, sparkled in a thousand little points of fire, of which the wind as it ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... the things he could take out of a silk hat; live rabbits, endless strips of colored paper, jars of imitation goldfish, and many other useless articles. It is true that the silk hat was his, no one in the audience having been able to produce one, when requested to do so but it was passed freely among the crowd to be examined; to convince doubters ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... due disregard, you can find signs of your great-grand-mother, or of the Crusades, or of the Mayans, upon anything that ever came from Chillicothe or from a five and ten cent store. Anything that looks like a cat and a goldfish looks like Leo and Pisces: but, by due suppressions and distortions there's nothing that can't be made to look like a cat and a goldfish. I fear me we're turning a little irritable here. To be damned by slumbering giants and interesting little harlots and clowns who rank ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... "They're like goldfish in a bowl," Billy Fairfax said. "I never saw such suppleness. You wouldn't think they had a bone ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... some tricks with cards and handkerchiefs which were so old that they were new all over again, he reached up under the tails of his dress coat and hauled out a big glass globe that was slopping full of its crystal-pure fluid contents, with a family of goldfish swimming round and round in it, as ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... Louis, where he comes from. Goodrich sets him behind them little pinto cavallos he has. Say! that son of a gun a driver! He couldn't drive nails in a snow bank." An expressive free-hand gesture told all there was to tell of the runaway. "Th' shorthorn landed headfirst in Goldfish Charlie's horse trough. Charlie fishes him out. 'How the devil, stranger,' says Charlie, 'did you come to fall in here?' 'You blamed fool,' says the shorthorn, just cryin' mad, 'I didn't come to fall in here, I come ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... Henry had become teller the family had acquired a piano—a decided luxury in those days—brought from Europe; and it was intended that Anna Adelaide, when she was old enough, should learn to play. There were a few uncommon ornaments in the room—a gas chandelier for one thing, a glass bowl with goldfish in it, some rare and highly polished shells, and a marble Cupid bearing a basket of flowers. It was summer time, the windows were open, and the trees outside, with their widely extended green branches, were pleasantly visible shading the brick sidewalk. Uncle Seneca ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... kept as pets; 'wonks,' the huang kou, or 'yellow dog,' were guards of houses and street scavengers. Aquaria with goldfish were often to be seen in the houses of the upper and middle classes, the gardens and courtyards of which usually contained rockeries and ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... any goldfish, and knew nothing about them, so with no thought save to handle them gently, she took them out of the water, and laid them on the ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... on the north, south and east by the House itself, and on the west by the cliff and the sea. There is a stone balustrade to divide the garden from space. In the middle of the square is a stone basin with becalmed water-lilies and of course goldfish. Round the basin the orderly ranks of little clipped box hedges manoeuvre. The untamed elements in the garden are the climbing things, they sing in gold and yellow and orange and red from the walls. The only official way into the garden ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... she would eat, and purr, But catnip she would eat, and purr. And goldfish she did much ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... in winter; and meanwhile we had filled it with splendid plumy ferns, taken up out of the neighboring wood. In the centre was a fountain surrounded by stones, shells, mosses, and various water-plants. We had bought three little goldfish to swim in our basin; and the spray of it, as it rose in the air and rippled back into the water, was the pleasantest possible sound of a hot day. We used to lie on the sofa in the hall, and look into the court, and fancy we saw some scene of fairy-land, and water-sprites ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... which added to the poetic character of her establishment, situated at the water's edge behind the rampart. Even in the middle of summer there was a shadow around her house, which could be recognised by a glass bowl of goldfish near a pot of mignonette at a window. Young ladies in white nightdresses, with painted cheeks and long earrings, used to tap at the panes as the students passed; and as it grew dark, their custom was to hum softly in their hoarse ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... interesting part of the whole affair. The special guard over Karuska was only lightly affected and has already recovered and is in a position to tell you exactly what happened. I got a garbled account of the affair from the warden, something about a goldfish bowl or something like that, the warden wouldn't take it seriously enough to give me details. I didn't press for them much for I knew that you would rather ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... and contained marvel after marvel that the lad longed to examine. The large tiger-skin rugs that covered the floor piqued his interest, so did the chiming clock, and a fountain that welled up and splashed into a marble pool filled with goldfish. Why, he could have entertained himself for an hour with ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... flat-dweller with the poisoned face, finally worked out the strange fate of Telfik Bey, that he sat, one morning, breakfasting late. The cool and breezy inner portico of the Cosmic Club, where small tables overlook a gracious fountain shimmering with the dart and poise of goldfish, was deserted save for himself, a summer-engagement star actor, a specialist in carbo-hydrates, and a famous adjuster of labor troubles; the four men being fairly typical of the club's catholicity of membership. Contrary ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... mother said she thought perhaps We'd wait another year, 'It's such a lovely place to play, We ought to keep it clear.' So there's nothing but a goldfish Who has to be a Hun, I don't suppose he likes it, But ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... marble and decorated at each end with light Moorish peristyles. It is called the court of the Alberca. In the center was an immense basin, or fish-pool, a hundred and thirty feet in length by thirty in breadth, stocked with goldfish, and bordered by hedges of roses. At the upper end of this court rose the great tower ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Egypt. She and her husband had visited Cairo once upon a time, so she felt herself as familiar with the whole Nile basin as with the goldfish tank in the hotel lounge. To Galusha Egypt was an enchanted land, a sort of paradise to which fortunate explorers might eventually be permitted to go if they were very, very good. To have this sacrilegious female patting the Sphinx on the head was ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... have to work again. He would be a rich man for life, with a house of his own, a wife, and children growing up to venerate him. Yes, and back of the house he would have a small garden, a place of meditation and repose, with goldfish in a tiny lakelet, and wind bells tinkling in the several trees, and there would be a high wall all around so that his meditation and repose ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... garden. How I wish you could see their garden! There are all sorts of wonderful places in it! It isn't very large, but it has in it a little bit of a toy mountain, and a tiny lake with little weeny goldfish in it, and a little stream of water, like a baby river, that runs into the lake. And, best of all, there is a curved bridge, painted red, just big enough for the Twins to walk over, if they are very careful and don't bounce! The Twins' Grandfather made this garden for ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... others in a voice rather cracked from embarrassment. They looked back at me curiously, and Alice began to twit me, standing in the rain, while Tristan desired to know whether we thought we were a pair of goldfish; in his estimation, we might belong to the piscine tribe all right, but not to that decorative branch thereof. To be frank, he used the term "suckers." Feeling exceptionally foolish, I planted myself doggedly in the soaking grass as Alice turned to ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... the hook came out of the water. On it something wriggled. The thing fell plop into Hepzebiah's lap. She screamed while it flopped there. It was a little bigger than the Toyman's hand and round and flat and shiny red and gold. No, it was not a goldfish. It was a sunfish. ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... the cat, And scared the goldfish into fits; He butted through my newest hat, And tore my ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Meredith's valet stowed Samuel's clothing in the best bureau and asked, on departing, "hif there was hanything helse, Master Samuel?" Gilly cried out that the faculty had played him false. He felt like an irate frog in whose bowl has been put goldfish. ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... into my mind a game I used to play as a youngster: What-Would-You-Rather-Be-Eaten-Up-By! We boys would pompously answer lions, puffing ourselves out bravely and pretending we didn't care, but I remembered one little girl who aroused our contemptuous laughter by answering "goldfish." And now, after all these years, for the first time I found myself marveling at her sagacity. Indeed, she was off and on in my thoughts until I had clothed myself in dry garments and partaken of a grown man's breakfast; after which I dropped into a state of ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... and would do himself the honour of arranging my household in a truly ducal style. Just as I got rid of him, came a man with a future history of the landed gentry in quest of my coat of arms and genealogy, also three wine merchants, a landscape gardener, and a woman with a pitcher of goldfish. Emma is so soft she thinks everybody is a gentleman. I am trying to get the good old man-servant we had in our old home to come and defend me; not that he is old, for he was a boy whom Joe trained. ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... take the trouble to go into the Rosery you will find Nevil lying by the fountain catching goldfish with Max. I do not think ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... Tirrell has sent me an angel miniature Jap garden, with a tiny pergola & real dwarf trees & a bridge that you expect an Alfred Noyes lantern on, & Oh Carl, an issa goldfish in a pool! ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... for internal use; and a green extract. He gave an account of the chemistry of the juice, from which it appeared that it was not a member of the tannin series; and also described its physiological effect in causing a tendency to stasia in the capillaries of the tail of a goldfish, examined with a microscopic power of 400 X. He regarded its styptic power as partly mechanical and partly physiological. The juice, in large doses, he had found useful in internal hemorrhages. The knowledge ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... smothered a yawn, a deliberate yawn—not the kind you can't repress because the air is close and you feel like a goldfish when the water in the bowl has not been changed and you must gape for breath. The fat boy had been dancing attendance on her for the last hour and she was wearied with his witty sallies. Jeff and Willis Truman, a former classmate, had ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... this year." Everything that he turned his mind to in Strawberry Hill he regarded in the same spirit of comic delight. He stood outside himself, like a spectator, and nothing gave him more pleasure than to figure himself as a master of the ceremonies among the bantams, and the squirrels and the goldfish. In one of his letters he describes himself and Bentley fishing in the pond for goldfish with "nothing but a pail and a basin and a tea-strainer, which I persuade my neighbours is the Chinese method." This was in order to capture some of the fish for Bentley, ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd |
