"Pigeon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an awkward silence. Thayor turned, seated himself promptly at his desk and began methodically filing away the forged accounts in a pigeon hole. The men moved toward the open door leading on to the veranda, muttering among themselves. Shank Dollard shot a vicious glance at the man seated at his desk. To exit thus, beaten by the truth, was not easy—a gentleman is always a ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... A wood-pigeon began in its deep and golden voice a low soliloquy recollected as a saint's, rich as a lover's. Reddin stirred disconsolately, trampling the thin leaves and delicate flowers of ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... the wit of man had yet devised, thrusting forth from behind their shoulders. From each man's girdle hung sword or axe, according to his humor, and over the right hip there jutted out the leathern quiver with its bristle of goose, pigeon, and peacock feathers. Behind the bowmen strode two trumpeters blowing upon nakirs, and two drummers in parti-colored clothes. After them came twenty-seven sumpter horses carrying tent-poles, cloth, spare arms, spurs, wedges, cooking kettles, horse-shoes, bags of nails and the ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hills, from the eastern side of the county. This gathering the Colonel appropriated as evidence of his popularity and as a spontaneous endorsement for his renomination. Obsessed with this thought, he strutted up the aisle like a pouter pigeon. ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... other hanging over the beautiful valley of Campan. Beneath me lay the town of Bagneres, and, far as the eye could reach, extended the plain of Bigorre, with the clear waters of the Adour marking their track like a silver thread. On the slope of a neighbouring mountain the wild-pigeon hunters were spreading their nets; for the Chasse aux Palombes is nowhere so successfully followed as in this part of the Pyrenees. It is a simple sport; but highly productive to those engaged in ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... now began to see a great number of birds about the ship, many of them very large, of which some were brown and white, and some black: There were among them large flocks of pintadoes, which are somewhat larger than a pigeon, and spotted with black and white. On the 4th, we saw a great quantity of rock weed, and several seals: The prevailing winds were westerly, so that being continually driven to the eastward, we foresaw that it would not be easy to get in with the coast of Patagonia. On the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... in the bowl and carried it to the merchant, to whom he delivered it, saying, "Here is the seed-thickener, and the manner of using it is this. Take of my electuary with a spoon after supping, and wash it down with a sherbet made of rose conserve; but first sup off mutton and house pigeon plentifully seasoned and hotly spiced." So the merchant bought all this and sent the meat and pigeons to his wife, saying, "Dress them deftly and lay up the seed-thickener until I want it and call for it." She did his bidding and, when she served up the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... bones were preserved in ollae, or little jars like common garden flower-pots, made of the same kind of coarse red earthenware, with a lid attached. These jars were deposited in rows of little niches sunk in the brickwork all round the walls of the tomb, resembling the nests in a pigeon-house; hence the origin of the name. One tomb was thus capable of containing the remains of a large number of persons; no less than six thousand of the freedmen of Augustus being deposited in the Columbarium which bears their name. The entrance to these sepulchral chambers was from ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... pigeon is also happy in Bombay, being fed copiously all day long; and I visited there a Hindu sanctuary, called the Pingheripole, for every kind of animal—a Home of Rest or Asylum—where even pariah dogs ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... surprised myself with the new joys I constantly found in the pigeon-toed ladies and slant-eyed warriors. Uncle needed absorption, concentration and occupation. Mine was the privilege to give ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... a woman who was delivered of a healthy male child, and everything was well until the evening of the fourth day, when intense labor-pains set in, and well-formed twins about the size of a pigeon's egg were born. In this strange case, possibly an example of superfetation, the patient made a good recovery and the first child lived. A similar case is reported by Lumby in which a woman was delivered on January 18th, by a midwife, of a full-grown and healthy female child. On ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... poets do, Would I sing a song Sadder than the pigeon's coo When the days are long? Where I found a heart in pain, I would make it glad again; And the false should be the true, Did I ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... young birds were nearly fledged. Hawks, wild ducks, pelicans, and pigeons, were also abundant, and an immense flight of white cockatoos hovered over the mangroves, and quite disturbed the air with their hideous screamings. A small black water-bird, about the size of a pigeon, with a white neck and a black ring round it, was observed, but not near enough to enable us to ascertain its species. On our course up and down the river we encountered several very large alligators, and some were noticed sleeping on ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... might, there towers a stately TAMANU tree; and, as the first faint murmur of women's voices arises from the native huts, there is a responsive twittering and cooing in the thickly-leaved branches, and further back in the forest the heavy, booming note of the red-crested pigeon sounds forth like the beat of ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... expensive, and was sold first of all to Prester John for many millions of dollars; but it cannot be sold at all, unless sold at a loss. If you sell it for as much as you paid for it, back it comes to you again like a homing pigeon. It follows that the price has kept falling in these centuries, and the bottle is now remarkably cheap. I bought it myself from one of my great neighbours on this hill, and the price I paid was only ninety dollars. I could sell it for as high as eighty-nine dollars and ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dove puts a livelier iris around his neck, and practises fantastic bows and amourous quicksteps along the verandah of the pigeon-house and on every convenient roof. The young male of the human species, less gifted in the matter of rainbows, does his best with a gay cravat, and turns the thoughts which circulate above it towards the securing or ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... the voice in the air repeated again, "Good actions never go unrewarded;" and Cherry found himself changed into a beautiful little white pigeon. He remembered with joy that white was the color of the fairy Candide, and began to hope that she was taking him ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... passed through my headquarters, I was a witness of their berating of each other. They made a terrible din, on paper, for a while, but I cannot recall anything very serious in their accusations. Halleck pigeon-holed their correspondence, but Milroy had powerful political friends, and Cluseret, learning that his appointment would not be confirmed by the Senate, anticipated their action, and terminated ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... albeit, the cookery, as an abstract fact, might have been of the simplest. We had venison-steak, pork, ham, jerked venison stew, fresh trout, broiled partridge, cold roast duck, a fricassee of wood rabbits, and broiled pigeon upon our table, coming in courses, or piled up helter-skelter on great platters of birch bark, some on tin plates, and now and then a choice bit on a chip! We had coffee, and tea, and the purest of spring water, by way of beverage, and ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... successful gambler, and some suspicions of his fair play had been noised abroad; but, as has been recently seen in the instance of a man of rank equal to Lilburne's, though, perhaps, of less acute if more cultivated intellect, it is long before the pigeon will turn round upon a falcon of breed and mettle. The rumours, indeed, were so vague as to carry with them no weight. During the middle of his career, when in the full flush of health and fortune, he had renounced the gaming-table. Of late years, as advancing age made time more heavy, he ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and the nature of his job, and the red cross on his sleeve, he had been tried by drumhead court martial and sentenced to be shot at dawn. All this he had written out, and then, that his account might be complete, he had gone on and imagined his own execution. This was written in a sort of pigeon, or perhaps you would call it black Spanish, English, and let on to be the work of the eyewitness to whom Simpkins had confided his letter. He had been the sentry over the prisoner, and for a small bribe in hand and the promise ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... want my coat and hat." Mary Cary turned to her. "I want you, too, for a little while, Celia. Get ready, please, to go out with me." She went over to the desk and took from one of its many pigeon-holes paper and pencil. "I am going ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... ordered rhythms "where more is meant than meets the ear." Our resolve collapses. Once again Palgrave is covered with dust. But vacation time returns. After a few days in green pastures and beside still waters the soul suddenly turns like a homing-pigeon to poetry. And the old, ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... archer would laugh at a target like that," he said to Cacama, "but it is nigh three years since I practiced. I have seen men who could with certainty, at this distance, hit a bird the size of a pigeon sitting on the top of that target, twenty times in succession, and think it by no means ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... won, the first to rest upon the French arms in more than sixty years. What more fitting, they asked, than that we neutrals should witness this celebration? The Vicomte de B—— busied himself with reciting the menu: entree, omelette parmentier; game, pigeon roti; plat de resistance—pommes de terre Marseillaise; Salade, tomate—not to speak of toast and tea. M. Guyot hinted darkly and mysteriously that he would attend to the wine list; we should have laughed at this had we not realized that a ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... passenger pigeon," replied the elder with a ghoul-like grin; "you will not require to find your way back this year." And the foaming, exhausted animals, relieved from the trying gallop, dropped into a feeble trot or lazy canter, whilst Amanda gazed wistfully ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... pigeon is seen sitting in a tree, or comes into the house, or from being wild suddenly becomes tame, it is a sign ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... that the Boy Scout must learn to do. He could low like a bull. He could gurgle like a wood-pigeon. He could imitate the cry of the turnip in order to deceive rabbits. He could smile and whistle simultaneously in accordance with Rule 8 (and only those who have tried this know how difficult it is). He could spoor, ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... sacred days, sacred deeds, sacred callings, religious services; all separate from the rest of life, belonging in a department, a pigeon-hole, by themselves. Whatever is not of these is of the world, worldly, secular, lacking in the peculiar aroma of sanctity that attaches to the church or the ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... quietly musing, then gave expression to his joy in an Irish ditty. His handsome suit of clothes, donned at Hagerstown, was now in tatters, which made his appearance the more ludicrous as he "cut the pigeon-wing" around the seething cauldron. He had particularly enjoined upon us, when starting out, to procure, at all hazards, some okra, which we failed to get, and, in naming aloud the various items, as each appeared on the surface ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... that they were very poor and that their loading consisted only of cotton, though the circumstances in which the barge surprised them seemed to insinuate that they were more opulent than they pretended to be, for the Gloucester's people found them at dinner upon pigeon-pie served up in silver dishes. However, the officer who commanded the barge having opened several of the jars on board to satisfy his curiosity, and finding nothing in them but cotton, he was inclined to believe the account the prisoners gave him; but the cargo being taken into ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... alias Wright, who in sir Francis Drakes West Indian voyage to S. Domingo and Carthagena, was captaine of the Hope. Captaine Boswell, M. Meruin, M. Henry Long, M. Partridge, M. Norton, M. William Mounson captaine of the Meg, and his viceadmirall, now sir William Mounson, M. Pigeon captaine of the Carauell. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... and turmoil of Manchester; so thoroughly woodland, with its ancestral trees (here and there lightning blanched); its "verdurous walls;" its grassy walks, leading far away into some glade, where you start at the rabbit rustling among the last year's fern, and where the wood-pigeon's call seems the only fitting and accordant sound. Depend upon it, this complete sylvan repose, this accessible quiet, this lapping the soul in green images of the country, forms the most complete contrast to a town's-person, and consequently ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... a prize of iron for archery—ten double-edged axes and ten with single edges: he set up a ship's mast, some way off upon the sands, and with a fine string tied a pigeon to it by the foot; this was what they were to aim at. "Whoever," he said, "can hit the pigeon shall have all the axes and take them away with him; he who hits the string without hitting the bird will have taken a worse aim and shall have the ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... years the little daughter of one of the Queen's most confidential advisers had the unexampled honour of being invited to luncheon with her Majesty. During the meal, an Illustrious Lady, negotiating a pigeon after the German fashion, took up one of its bones with her finger and thumb. The little visitor, whose sense of British propriety was stronger than her awe of Courts, regarded the proceeding with wonder-dilated ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... flight, were evidently attracted by the favourable resting-place, and in less than a quarter of an hour, the air was darkened with the hosts hovering over our heads; the sound of their wings defies description, those of my readers who remember the peculiar noise made by a single pigeon in its flight, may form a faint idea by multiplying the sound a million times. It in fact filled the air, and produced a startling effect. Thousands of the birds alighted on the trees, the branches of which snapped and crackled fearfully under the superincumbent ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... French, Portuguese, English, fever-eyed commissioners, who took them on the tour du proprietaire, among the white wooden government buildings, the palm-covered huts of the natives, and shewed them the Mission Chapels and the new Custom Houses and the pigeon-like fowls and the little dirty naked nigger children, and the exiguity of their stock of glass and china, and the yearning of their souls for the fleshpots of the respective Egypts to which they belonged. You must imagine ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... chamber, with her slaves around her—like the cubiculum which adjoined it, the room was small, but much larger than the usual apartments appropriated to sleep, which were so diminutive, that few who have not seen the bed-chambers, even in the gayest mansions, can form any notion of the petty pigeon-holes in which the citizens of Pompeii evidently thought it desirable to pass the night. But, in fact, 'bed' with the ancients was not that grave, serious, and important part of domestic mysteries ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... blew fair for us ten days, after which the look out man went aloft to see about him and cried, "Good news!" Then he came down rejoicing and said, "I have seen what seemeth to be a city as 'twere a pigeon." Hereat we rejoiced and, ere an hour of the day had passed, the buildings showed plain in the offing and we asked the Captain, "What is the name of yonder city?" and he answered By Allah I wot not, for I never saw it before and never sailed these seas in my life: but, since our ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... streets, it was the signal or a humorous uproar. His quaint sayings, witty repartee, and contagious laughter, never failed. He was as agile as a monkey, and his dancing was a marvel. For a dime he would "cut the pigeon wing," or give a "double-shuffle" or "breakdown" in a way that ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... in the visitors' book at the Scoglio di Frisio? With a strange abruptness, with a flight that was instinctive as that of a homing pigeon, Hermione's mind went to that book as to a book of revelation. Just before he wrote he had been feeling acutely—something. She had been aware of that at the time. He had not wanted to write. And then suddenly, almost violently, he had written and ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... time to come and their time to go; As long as cattle shall roam at will The green, grass meadows by Turkey Hill; As long as sheep shall look from the side Of Oldtown Hill on marishes wide, And Parker River, and salt-sea tide; As long as a wandering pigeon shall search The fields below from his white-oak perch, When the barley-harvest is ripe and shorn, And the dry husks fall from the standing corn; As long as Nature shall not grow old, Nor drop her work from her doting hold, And her care for the Indian corn forget, And ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... candles, he saw the flower of beauty, the miracle of women, the looking-glass and painted egg of Venus, the fair bait of Love—he saw a little doll, a beautiful dove, a Fata Morgana, a banner—he saw a golden trinket, a hunter, a falcon's eye, a moon in her fifteenth day, a pigeon's bill, a morsel for a king, a jewel—he saw, in short, a ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... his hand on Esther's, and making her shiver as if some serpent had wound itself round her, "the world must never know of your existence. Above all, the world must never know that a certain Mademoiselle Esther loves Lucien, and that Lucien is in love with her.—These rooms are your prison, my pigeon. If you wish to go out—and your health will require it—you must take exercise at night, at hours when you cannot be seen; for your youth and beauty, and the style you have acquired at the Convent, would at once be ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... threshold, "Women not allowed, of course, but both of you dear Odd Fellows are wanted, for Aunt Plenty begs we will have an old-fashioned contra dance, and I'm to lead off with Uncle Mac. I chose you, sir, because you do it in style, pigeon wings and all. So, please come and Phebe is waiting for you, Uncle Alec. She is rather shy you know, but will enjoy it with you ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... community. In my smaller way, again, I relieve you in turn of a portion of the plunder. I am a Robin Hood of my age; and, looking upon you as an exceptionally bad form of millionaire—as well as an exceptionally easy form of pigeon for a man of my type and talents to pluck—I have, so to speak, taken up my abode ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... tools and implements it takes to manicure a pair of hands properly. The top of her little table is full of them and she pulls open a drawer and shows you some more, ranged in rows. There are files and steel biters and pigeon-toed scissors and scrapers and polishers and things; and wads of cotton with which to staunch the blood of the wounded, and bottles of liquid and little medicinal looking jars full of red paste; and a cut glass crock with soap suds in it and a ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... has been prepared between them as gamblers prepare the cards to ruin a pigeon," thought the old notary. "Is this poor boy, whom I saw born, doomed to be plucked alive by that woman, roasted by his very love, and devoured by his wife? I, who have nursed these fine estates for years with such care, am ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... We went inside and were overwhelmed by the band, so that we could not hear one another speak. The floor was covered with sunflower seeds, and there was a strong smell of soldiers' boots and bad cigarettes and urine. We bought tickets from an old Jewess behind the pigeon-hole and then, pushing the curtain aside, stumbled into darkness. Here the smell was different, being, quite simply that of human flesh not very carefully washed. Although, as we stumbled to some seats at the back, we could feel ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... take her steps rather prettily. I have seen the woman that danced the capstone on to Bunker Hill Monument, as Orpheus moved the rocks by music, the Elssler woman,—Fanny Elssler. She would dance you a rigadoon or cut a pigeon's wing for you ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... conveniently to explore its recesses. These sacred niches are scooped out of the rock, and will give you an impression if you cannot do without one. You will feel them to be sufficiently venerable when you learn that the particular pigeon-hole of Saint Gatianus, the first Christian missionary to Gaul, dates from the third century. They have been dealt with as the Catholic Church deals with most of such places to-day; polished and furbished up, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... be beaten in this by Fate. Every ounce of the dogged sullen strength of him gathered itself to meet the demands of his stubborn will. And always, whether he walked in reason or in delirium, his course held eastward, straight as a homing pigeon for ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... faint and distant rumbling of wheels in the town behind her, and surely some strains of music, which carried her back in memory to another evening in the past! Down below the cliffs on her left she heard the mysterious whispering of the sea; in the little coppice across the road a wood-pigeon cooed her soft "good-night"; and away in the hay-fields, stretching inland, she heard the corncrakes' grating call; but no human footstep broke the silence of night. Surely Cardo would have gone to market on such a lovely day! or, who knows? perhaps ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... sport, not much favoured in this locality, and now that a cheap clay pigeon has been invented for use in this game, instead of the live birds, it is to be hoped that the disgraceful practice will be confined to the ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... home after being taken a considerable distance. To account for this fact it has been suggested that animals possess a sense with which we are not endowed, or of which, at any rate, we possess only a trace. The homing instinct of the pigeon has also been ascribed to the same faculty. My brother Alfred, however, who has paid much attention to pigeons, informs me that they are never taken any great distance at once; but if they are intended to take a ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... wind between the north and east, a gentle gale. We had for some time ceased to see any of the birds before-mentioned; and were now accompanied by albatrosses, pintadoes, sheerwaters, &c., and a small grey peterel, less than a pigeon. It has a whitish belly, and grey back, with a black stroke across from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other. These birds sometimes visited us in great flights. They are, as well as the pintadoes, southern ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... Candle with a ball, I first had an opportunity of seeing near the banks of Green River, not far from a large pigeon roost, to which I had previously made a visit. I had heard many reports of guns during the early part of a dark night, and knowing them to be rifles, I went towards the spot to ascertain the cause. On reaching the place, I was welcomed by a dozen tall, stout men, who told me they were ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... entrance, we lay to for the night; but on the next day we had stormy weather from the N.E. for which reason we stood to the S.W. till Thursday morning, in which time we sailed 37 leagues. We now opened a bay full of round islands like pigeon-houses, which we therefore named the Dove-cots. From the Bay of St. Julian to a cape which lies S. and by W. called Cape Royal, the distance is 7 leagues; and towards the W.S.W. side of that cape there is another, the lower part of which is all craggy, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... that matter, I could smell supper, when hungry, through a hundred land-yards of fog—my dear mother, who thought of me ten times for one thought about herself, gave orders to ring the great sheep-bell, which hung above the pigeon-cote, every ten minutes of the day, and the sound came through the plaits of fog, and I was vexed about it, like the letters of a copy-book. It reminded me, too, of Blundell's bell, and the grief to go ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... visited by a sort of woodcock in July and August; we have also a kind of grouse, plover, dove, and wild pigeon, snipe, wild fowl, and a wonderful variety of small birds; among which, the reed-bird [Footnote: So called from their note resembling the word reed.], or american ortolan, justly holds the first place: they visit us from the south, ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... things—if you know them well enough you will find an individual difference even in a set of machine-made chairs—and it is only because we do not possess minds of unlimited capacity, because our brain has only a limited number of pigeon-holes for our correspondence with an unlimited universe of objective uniques, that we have to delude ourselves into the belief that there is a chairishness in this species common to and ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... mounts. Singers attired as singers were never attired before crawl on, bounce on, tumble on. And M. Coini, as undisturbed as a traffic cop or a loop pigeon, commands his stage. He tells the singers where to stand while they sing, and when they don't sing to suit him he sings himself. He leads the chorus on and tells it where to dance, and when they don't dance to suit him he dances himself. ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... should eat the heart of a bird would thenceforth comprehend its language; and one modern philologist of the same nation (Masius declares) has so far studied the sounds produced by domestic fowls as to announce a Goose-Lexicon. Dupont de Nemours asserted that he understood eleven words of the Pigeon language, the same number of that of Fowls, fourteen of the Cat tongue, twenty-two of that of Cattle, thirty of that of Dogs, and the Raven language he understood completely. But the ordinary observer seldom attains farther than to comprehend some of the cries of anxiety and fear around him, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... Eyck resumed his glasses, and sat for a long time staring into a pigeon-hole of his desk ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... that I saw her for the first time—saw her pointed face, her red hair, her brilliant teeth. The next time was in her own home—a farm-house that had been rebuilt and was half a villa. At the back were wheat-stacks, a noisy thrashing-machine, a pigeon-cote, and stables whence, with jangle of harness and cries of yokels, the great farm-horses always seemed to be coming from or going to their work on the downs. In a garden planted with variegated firs she tended ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... drawers of this piece of furniture, and they were all three examined by Florine. They contained different petitions from persons in distress, and various, notes in the girl's handwriting. This was not what Florine wanted. Three cardboard boxes were placed in pigeon-holes beneath the bookcase. These also were vainly explored, and Florine, with a gesture of vexation, looked and listened anxiously; then, seeing a chest of drawers, she made therein a fresh and useless search. Near the foot of the bed was a little door, leading to a dressing-room. Florine ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... steps" it may result in bow legs, and then—pity on him when he grows up. Sometimes flat foot is the result of early urging the child to rest the weight of the body upon the undeveloped arch. A defect in the gait or a pigeon toe is hard to bear later on in life. A certain amount of pigeon-toeing is natural and normal. If the baby is heavy he will not attempt to walk at twelve months. He will very likely wait until fourteen or fifteen months. The ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... window, Benvenuto's shop being under the palace of the Cardinal, he took his gun and pointed it upon the Cardinal. The Cardinal, however, had been warned, and presently withdrew. Benvenuto, in order that his intention might escape notice, aimed at a pigeon which was brooding high up in a hole of the palace, and hit it exactly in the head-a feat one would have thought incredible. Now let your Holiness do what you think best about him; I have discharged my ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... sporting notes and letters from special correspondents, winding up with 'Sporting Notes from Home.' Cricket next has a leading article and notes, followed by descriptions of the more important matches. Yachting, rowing, coursing, pigeon-shooting, hunting, shooting, football, and lawn-tennis all come in for ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... secure of their prey, they began to level their whole train of artillery against the boasted honours of his short-lived triumph. Then the extensive manors, the ancient forests, the paternal mansions, began to tremble for their future destiny. The pigeon was marked down, and the infernal crew began in good earnest to pluck his rich plumage. The wink was given on his appearance in the room, as a signal of commencing their covert attacks. The shrug, the nod, the hem—every motion of the eyes, hands, feet—every air and gesture, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... in steam locomotives) were extraordinarily lacking in subtlety. In all this Bohemian business one looked in vain for a touch of the art of MURGER. What would one not have given for something even distantly reminiscent of the Juliet scene—"et le pigeon chantait toujours"? And it wasn't as if this was supposed to be a sham Americanised quartier of to-day. We were in the true period—under Louis PHILIPPE. Indeed I know no other reason (costumes always excepted) why the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... say There's something that appears like a white bird, A pigeon or a seagull or the like, But if you hit it with a stone or a stick It clangs as though it had been made of brass; And that if you dig down where it was scratching You'll ...
— The Countess Cathleen • William Butler Yeats
... (species of Tinamus) were not uncommon, about the size of a plump fowl, and tasting like a pheasant. There were also two species of grouse and a ground pigeon, ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... severally into the lower side of each of these chambers, and allow the water to flow evenly in all. The interior of the hull was checkered by these boxes. Huge beams and cross-ties intersected each other at right angles, forming the frame for this honeycombed interior, pigeon-holed like a merchant's desk. It was necessary to tear off the skin and penetrate from one to the other in order to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... Brown, Black, Blue, Green, White, Cherry, Gray, Hazel, Plum, Rose, and Vermilion. The animals come in for their share; for we find Alligator, Bald-Eagle, Beaver, Buck, Buffalo, Eagle, Eel, Elk, Fawn, East-Deer and West-Deer, Bird, Fox, (in Elk County,) Pigeon, Plover, Raccoon, Seal, Swan, Turbot, Wild-Cat, and Wolf. Then again, the christening seems to have been preceded by the shaking in a hat of a handful of vowels and consonants, the horrible results of which sortes appear as Alna, Cessna, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... ease, becoming a man who travelled with viscountesses, and was at home in the best company. The table had his first hungry glance. He espied roast and cold, a pair of smoking ducklings just set on, a dish of trout, a round of beef, a pigeon-pie, and hot rolls. Relieved, he heaved a ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... get the hat at the right angle. I wanted to fasten my gloves, to give you the whole effect, parasol and all. There!" Mollie strutted to and fro, turning her head from side to side like a sleek, self-satisfied pigeon. "How do you like it? Don't you think ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... these occasions it so befell that Fra Rinaldo, being come to the lady's house, where he espied none else save a very pretty and dainty little maid that waited on the lady, sent his companion away with her into the pigeon-house, there to teach her the paternoster, while he and the lady, holding her little boy by the hand, went into the bedroom, locked themselves in, got them on to a divan that was there, and began to disport them. And while thus they sped the time, it chanced that the father returned, and, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the King before he married. So the shoemaker took her to the King's castle; and then she went into the wedding-room, and because of her beauty they filled a vessel of wine for her. When she was going to drink it, there came a flame out of the glass, and out of the flame there came a silver pigeon and a golden pigeon; and just then three grains of barley fell upon the floor, and the silver pigeon ate them up. Then the golden one said, "If thou hadst mind when I cleaned the byre, thou wouldst not eat that without giving me a share." Then ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... to soothe the bass down, but they couldn't. He looked like a great pouter pigeon, strutting about the room, and then he got red, and I thought he looked like an angry turkey cock. The secretary of the society came in, and the basso attacked him ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... machines in the world, this stupendous creation staggered him. By comparison with the Handley-Page, the Caproni, the D.H.-4, the Gotha 90-120, the Sikorsky, it spread itself as an eagle spreads beside a pigeon. ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... ev'ning, w'en nice cool win' is blowin' An' up above ma head, I hear de pigeon on de roof, To bring ma chair an' sit dere, an' watch de current flowin' Of ole Riviere des Prairies as she pass de ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond
... Willemstad were in the habit of rising by candlelight, and when the sun rose it found them well advanced upon their journey. So when on the following morning Roddy again set forth to meet Inez Rojas, the few servants who knew of his early departure accepted it, and the excuse he gave of wild-pigeon shooting, as a matter ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... therefore my division did not cross the Holstein River, but was required, in order to maintain itself, to proceed to the region of the French Broad River. To this end I moved to Sevierville, and making this village my headquarters, the division was spread out over the French Broad country, between Big Pigeon and Little Pigeon rivers, where we soon had all the mills in operation, grinding out plenty of flour and meal. The whole region was rich in provender of all kinds, and as the people with rare exceptions were enthusiastically ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... against Lancelot's person by carpers was that he was something "pigeon"—or "guardsman"—chested. But Guinevere showed her love and her wit, and her "valiancy" (for so at least on this occasion we may translate vaillant) by retorting that such a chest was only big enough—and hardly big enough—for such ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... is not found in the flesh of young animals, which is said, with reason, to be, on that very account, less nutritious. It is only when they have attained the adult age that it appears in them; it is abundant in beef, mutton, kid, hare, pigeon, partridge, pheasant, woodcock, quail, duck, goose, and generally, in all animals having dark coloured flesh. Mushrooms and oysters also contain some, but in a ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... DELUSION, NO FAIRY MONEY TURNED INTO DROSS OR LEAVES"—as if it followed that the conjuror's half-crowns really did become invisible and in that state fly, because he afterwards cuts them out of a real orange; or as if the conjuror's pigeon, being after the discharge of his gun, a real live pigeon fluttering on the target, must therefore conclusively be a pigeon, fired, whole, living and unshattered, out of the gun!—not because of the exposure of any of these weaknesses, or a thousand ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... where he had plucked strength and given it to her, and he knew it wasn't from his body, or from his mind, or his spirit even, he had given it. He had, from some tremendous storehouse, got life for her, got peace, so that she fluttered like a pigeon and sighed and grew calm.... And in that moment he ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... wuz made of cream silk, made princess with pink and cream bows. I wore a pair of morocco store bought shoes. My husband was dressed in a store bought suit of clothes, the coat wuz made pigen [HW correction: pigeon] tail. He had on a velvet vest and a white collar and tie. Somebody stole ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... people of the beautiful little village of Hartford were astounded when they heard the moan and groan of one of their neighbors, Dr. William Waters, who had the misfortune of being capsized beneath a small building in the mad waters of Pigeon River. ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... for the sake of the young. This, and a most lovely little blue and orange kingfisher, are seen every where along the banks, dashing down like a shot into the water for their prey. A third, seen more rarely, is as large as a pigeon, and ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... you 'mence to feel a ticklin' in yo' toe an' in yo' heel; Ef you t'ink you got 'uligion an' you wants to keep it, too, You jes' bettah tek a hint an' git yo'self clean out o' view. Case de time is mighty temptin' when de chune is in de swing, Fu' a darky, saint or sinner man, to cut de pigeon-wing. An' you could n't he'p f'om dancin' ef yo' feet was boun' wif twine, When Angelina Johnson ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... are disallowed—gamblers with dice, usurers,(291) pigeon-breeders,(292) traders in produce of the Sabbatical year, and slaves. This is the rule: all evidence that cannot be received from a woman cannot be ...
— Hebrew Literature
... the stranger. "Are your senses playing bo-peep with the ghost of some pigeon-livered coast captain, eh? Come, take another pull at the keg, to clear your head-lights, and tell us a bit ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... regret the haunts of the savage. A luxuriant vegetation bore witness to the incomparable fruitfulness of the soil. The deep silence, which is common to the wilds of North America, was only broken by the hoarse cooing of the wood-pigeon and the tapping of the woodpecker upon the bark of trees. I was far from supposing that this spot had ever been inhabited, so completely did nature seem to be left to her own caprices; but when I reached ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... their high-heeled boots the cowpunchers ran fast. Once within the shelter of the willows they turned and opened fire. This quite altered the situation. The foremost brave faltered in his pigeon-toed stride, stopped abruptly, and dived for the shelter of a sagebush. The others veered off to the right. They disappeared into some blackberry bushes on the edge of the mesa. Whether from here they continued to the valley the punchers in ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... and the familiar landmarks of his childhood came into sight, flooded with the June sunshine—the ruined mine-shafts staring up so starkly, the glory of white cattle in the golden light, the first glimpse of the pale roofs of Cloom itself, prismatic as a wood-pigeon's plumage, all these things struck at his heart with a keener shock than did anything personal, and made thought of his mother sink away from him. Behind the cluster of grey buildings he saw the parti-coloured fields stretching away—green pasture, brown arable, pale emerald of the young corn—all ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... that time that Luke's lady, dreaming among the cowslips, heard the noise of hoofs, and his long, shrill, and peculiar whistle at the gate beneath the beech. She was certain of the time, for these reasons: first, she had seen the wood-pigeon go up into the beech just before she started out; secondly, she remembered nodding to an aged labourer who came up to the house every morning at that hour for his ale; thirdly, it would take a person walking ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... tilted eaves, and fantastic riddles written over everything. I have no idea in what direction Cha is running. I only know that the streets seem to become always narrower as we go, and that some of the houses look like great wickerwork pigeon-cages only, and that we pass over several bridges before we halt again at the foot of another hill. There is a lofty flight of steps here also, and before them a structure which I know is both a gate and a symbol, imposing, yet in no manner resembling ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... beyond the open door: bird chirpings and whistles, and the continuous burring calls of what Barney decided would be a wild pigeon. Then a swirl of wind stirred the nearer branches. He could feel the wash of the breeze in ...
— Gone Fishing • James H. Schmitz
... of the pack-ice, is short and bulky, varying from a pale yellowish-green on the under side to a dark greenish-brown on the back. Its neck is ample and bloated, and when distended in excitement reminds one of a pouter-pigeon. This rare seal appears to subsist mainly on squid ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... there is {302} anything which human history demonstrates, it is the extreme slowness with which the ordinary academic and critical mind acknowledges facts to exist which present themselves as wild facts, with no stall or pigeon-hole, or as facts which threaten to break up the accepted system. In psychology, physiology, and medicine, wherever a debate between the mystics and the scientifics has been once for all decided, it is ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... 8 feet in mean diameter. The basement was of brick, pierced by small air holes, barred with iron, at the height of about 8 feet from the ground; and the upper part was of wood, terminating in a pigeon-house. Making a short stay there to take in fire-wood, we inquired into the use of the building; but all the answer we could get was, that it was a "pigeon-house." The Baptist minister from Maine asked a negro, who was helping to bring wood on board; and from him he learned ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... blunt that there's no point in it. And the idea,—that is if the idea be that the likeness of the assassin remains on the retina of the victim's eye, and can be reproduced by photography,—is not a novelty. Perhaps this story in Lippincott comes out of one of Mr. RUDYARD KIPLING'S pigeon-holes, and was just chucked in haphazard, because Editorial Lippincott wanted something with the name of the KIPLING, "bright and merry," to it. It's not very "bright," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... as the counsel of Ahithophel," said Ponsonby. "I'll put you another problem. Is a carrier-pigeon an Army follower? Because Slingsby never has any appetite for dinner" (this was notoriously untrue), "and I have a strong suspicion that he converts—that's a legal expression for fraud, isn't it?—his carrier-pigeons into pigeon-pie. What is the penalty for fraudulent ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... the building; its wall-timbers are of oak, and are still sound; the few remaining planks are grained to resemble rosewood and mahogany; the fragments of wall-paper are of English make. In the cross-beam, just above your head, are the pigeon-holesonce devoted to different vessels, whose names are still recorded above them on faded paper,—"Ship Cleopatra," "Brig Juno," and the like. Many of these vessels measured less than two hundred tons, and it seems as if their owner had built his ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... head of the dean of the law school. His mother baking for Friday night in a blue-and-white gingham apron that enveloped her. Red curls—some one's—somewhere. The string of tiny Oriental pearls that rose and fell with the little pouter-pigeon swell of a bosom. Pretty perturbation. His cousin's sister-in-law, Ada. A small hole in a pink-silk stocking, peeping like a little rising sun above the heel of a rubbed ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... hustle them to the tower, and when a king or queen got in the tower they went out on the installment plan, and after being thrown in the gutter for the mob to recognize, and walk on the bodies, they would bring them back in the tower, and seal them up in a pigeon hole for future generations to ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... bird, and it let itself fall over backwards, dropping down head over heels like a tumbler pigeon, or an unfortunate which had been shot, and disappearing ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... Archytas of Tarentum is the earliest suggestion of true aerostation. According to Aulus Genius (Noctes Atticae) it was a "model of a dove or pigeon formed in wood and so contrived as by a certain mechanical art and power to fly: so nicely was it balanced by weights and put in motion by hidden and enclosed air.'' This "hidden and enclosed air'' may conceivably represent an anticipation of the hot-air balloon, but it is at least as probable ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... spot—how desolate, and hopeless, and objectless! It stopped as I beckoned. I entered—not now obliged to part with my whole fortune as the price of its accommodation. Once more on the road to Thornfield, I felt like the messenger-pigeon flying home. ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... enough to make you sweat," Clancy cut in brutally. "You give me the icy paw, and I'll see that the tip leaks out from the right quarters that you are a stool pigeon. That'll take care of your finish, too, won't it—good ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... very indifferent food when they are kept too long. Suppleness of the feet shows them to be young; the flesh is flaccid when they are getting bad from keeping. Tame pigeons are larger than wild pigeons, but not so large as the wood pigeon. ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... keep at his heels for company,—he was a man who hated to be left one minute alone,—when his eye fell on it. "H'm! Sheraton!" he remarked. (He had a smattering of most things, this uncle, especially the vocabularies.) Then he let down the flap, and examined the empty pigeon-holes and dusty panelling. "Fine bit of inlay," he went on: "good work, all of it. I know the sort. There's a secret drawer in there somewhere." Then, as I breathlessly drew near, he suddenly exclaimed: "By Jove, I do want to smoke!" and wheeling round he abruptly ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... breaking teams on the neighboring claims plowed noiselessly, as figures in a dream. The whistle of gophers, the faint, wailing, fluttering cry of the falling plover, the whir of the swift-winged prairie pigeon, or the quack of a lonely duck, came through the shimmering air. The lark's infrequent whistle, piercingly sweet, broke from the longer grass m the swales nearby. No other climate, sky, plain, could ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... legendary, and one of the famous stories is that after Igor, who commanded the great armies, was put to death by rebellious subjects, his widow sought out the territory where her husband had lost his life and pretending to make peace with them, requested every householder to give her a pigeon. ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... Pond. So much water had fallen in it that it was swelling up like a pouter pigeon, or like the bowl that held the Chinese Lily, when he dropped ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... window. Against the door that led into an adjoining room, stood a high-backed, uninviting sofa, with a table in front of it. Between this and the window was the writing-bureau, a flat, man-high piece of furniture, with drawers and pigeon-holes, and a broad flap that let down for writing purposes. Against the opposite wall stood the neglected piano, and, towards the door, on both sides, were huddled bed, washstand, and the iron stove. Everything was of an extreme ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... bells of the villages on the other bank of the river give answer. The sparrows foregathered in the ivy-clad wall make a deafening noise, from which three or four voices, always the same, ring out more shrilly than the others, just as in the games of a band of children. A pigeon coos at the top of a chimney. The child abandons himself to the lullaby of these sounds. He hums to himself softly, then a little more loudly, then quite loudly, then very loudly, until once more his father cries out in exasperation: "That little donkey never will be quiet! Wait a little, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... Pigeon," Thorpe went on, "as they called them in my day. That's gone out now, I'm told, since they've moved to the big buildings in Hammersmith. I did very well at school, too; came out in the first fourteen. But my father wouldn't carry ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... any limit at present determined. Given sufficient time and sufficiently careful selection, and the multitude of races which may arise from a common stock is as astonishing as are the extreme structural differences which they may present. A remarkable example of this is to be found in the rock-pigeon, which Dr. Darwin has, in our opinion, satisfactorily demonstrated to be the progenitor of all our domestic pigeons, of which there are certainly more than a hundred well-marked races. The most noteworthy ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... to amuse the gentlemen, a servant-girl threw a handful of oats before the hens. The shaft of the press appeared to them enormously big. Next they went up to the pigeon-house. The dairy especially astonished them. By turning cocks in the corners, you could get enough water to flood the flagstones, and, as you entered, a sense of grateful coolness came upon you as a surprise. Brown jars, ranged close to the barred ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... crowded with merry people who bowed and scraped to one another and danced breakdowns and cut pigeon-wings and other capers, while Buster Bumblebee flitted gaily about just above their bobbing heads, trying his best to keep time to the music and wishing that he had brought some of his friends along with ...
— The Tale of Buster Bumblebee • Arthur Scott Bailey
... them both in the air at once. In other words, if he attacked the one, possibly shooting it down, then the other would be warned, would mount a gun of its own, and it would no longer be a matter of shooting a clay pigeon. ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... with them on 'Change where I sold them well taking bonds for the value. These bonds I deposited with a Shroff, a banker, who gave me a receipt with which I returned to the Khan. Here I stayed a whole month, every morning breaking my fast with a cup of wine and making my meals on pigeon's meat, mutton and sweetmeats, till the time came when my receipts began to fall due. So, every Monday and Thursday I used to go on 'Change and sit in the shop of one or other of the merchants, whilst ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the inner yard, which was close to the scullery door. The paved little court, within its high wooden walls, was curiously fresh and clean. A cock-pigeon strutted round, puffing his gleaming breast and rooketty-cooing in the sun. Large, clear drops fell slowly from the spout of a wooden pump, and splashed upon a flat stone. The place seemed to enfold the stillness. There was a ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... cruel to drag down a handsome buck and cut his glossy throat; and see a harmless fawn spout blood, and strangle and die; and I used to shut my eyes when I bit a pigeon's neck,[1] and took little quails' heads off; but now I can do't without winkin'; and as for them infarnal bears, I'd ruther kill 'em than to eat. And you'll have to kill 'em, if you ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... have descended from one known source is far clearer than with any other anciently domesticated animal. Secondly, because many treatises in several languages, some of them old, have been written on the pigeon, so that we are enabled to trace the history of several breeds. And lastly, because, from causes which we can partly understand, the amount of variation has been extraordinarily great. The details will often be tediously minute; but no one who really wants to understand the progress of change ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... origin—the wild Indian fowl (Gallus bankiva). Even Darwin admits that all the existing kinds of horses are, in all probability, the descendants of an original stock; and it is generally agreed that the scores of varieties of pigeons own a common ancestor in the rock pigeon (Columba livia). ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... t'other night. He was after me with his dorgs, and saw me as I was crossin' the road near Franklin Schoolhouse. 'Halt, there!' he hollored; but I was not in the haltin' bizness, and I made tracks fur Pigeon Crick close by. As I run he fired off his gun; but the light was dim and I was mighty peart, and dodged in time. He called to his bloodhounds and said, 'Sic 'im, Rex; ketch 'im Bull,' but by that time I was wadin' in the crick. I run 'long till I cum to that big white oak which grows ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... literature of this unique product of the human imagination. One is bound, however, to attempt to correlate and adjust it to the rest of the poet's work, and this, it must be admitted, is a most difficult piece of business. Never was there a poem so irritating to a critic of the "pigeon-holing" variety. It simply defies him; and yet the instinct which he obeys is so excusable, because in fact so universal, that one feels guilty of something like disloyalty to the very principles of order in smiling at his disappointment. Complete and symmetrical ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... the other. Her companion walked quite straight, with a certain appearance of dignity which he neither assumed nor could have avoided, and which gave his gait the air of a march. He was not an inch taller than the woman, had broad, square shoulders, pigeon-breast, and invisible neck. He was twice her age, and they seemed father and daughter. They heard his breathing, loud with ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald |
