"Roost" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... went on, Irving took a delight in this cottage that can hardly be expressed. At first he called it "Wolfert's Roost"; afterward the name was changed to "Sunnyside," the name by which it is still known. Little by little he bought more land, he planted trees, and cultivated flowers and vegetables. At one time he boasts that he ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... lilies lie in my lady's bower, (Oh! weary mother, drive the cows to roost;) They faintly droop for a little hour; My lady's head ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... and I was not long in making acquaintance with it. I awoke to find, by the light of the lantern swung from the roost overhead, the dozen men in the loft awake and pulling on their boots. They had lain in their sodden clothes all night: but of their boots, I found, they were as careful as dandies, and to grease ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that the aboriginal parent must have been a species which roosted and built its nest on rocks; and I may add that it must have been a social bird. For all the domestic races are highly social, and none are known to build or habitually to roost on trees. The awkward manner in which some pigeons, kept by me in a summer-house near an old walnut-tree, occasionally alighted on the barer branches, was evident. (6/2. I have heard through Sir C. Lyell from Miss Buckley, that some half-bred Carriers ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... against her in the street; has constantly occasion to pass under her window, or to talk to some one opposite to it. He, of course, looks up; Pompilia looks down; the neighbours say, 'What of that?' The Count is uncomfortable, but he is only laughed at for his pains; the fox prowls round the hen-roost undisturbed. He wakes one morning, after a drugged sleep, to find the house ransacked, and Pompilia gone, and everyone able to inform him that she has gone with Caponsacchi, and to Rome. He pursues them, and overtakes them where they have spent ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... things, the farmer raised turkeys for the market and, although the season was late, there were a few birds left for seed. I went out to the barn with a lantern and picked the plumpest gobbler I could find off the roost, and an hour later had him in the oven. This was at eight o'clock in the evening. While he was baking I canvassed the old farmer's wardrobe. I'd grown like a mushroom those last years and, though I was only sixteen, ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... the Church, and a far nobler realization of its responsibilities by the Press, can the ancient spirit of England make itself felt in the sordid lists of Westminster. Till then he who crows loudest will rule the roost. ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... have I got to do before you'll come alive? You've been living on your rep as a bad man to monkey with, and pushing out your wishbone over it for quite a spell, now—why don't yuh get busy and collect another bunch uh admiration from these fellows? I ain't no lightning-shot man! Papa Death don't roost on the end uh my six-gun—or I never suspicioned before that he did; but from the save-me-quick look on yuh, I believe yuh'd faint plumb away if I let yuh take a look at the end uh my gun, with the ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... and hideous birds of prey we should shudder indeed. Whether the Parsees shudder I cannot say, but they give no sign of it. They build their palaces in full view of these terrible Towers, pass, on their way to dinner parties, luxuriously in Rolls-Royces beside the trees where the vultures roost, and generally behave themselves as if this were the best possible of worlds and the only one. And I think ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... years at one church, and then move off to some new circuit, where old sermons come in, at times, conveniently for new hearers. The various churches are ruled by "leaders"—men of a deaconly frame of mind, invested with power sufficient to enable them to rule the roost in ministerial matters, to say who shall preach and who shall not, and to work sundry other wonders in the high atmosphere of church government. The "members" support their churches, financially, in accordance with their means. ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... not sent for me," answered the other. "Come, let us have the knaves in. I suppose they have been robbing some one's hen-roost, and want to lay the ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... weeks will be entirely too small even for half that number after they begin to grow. As soon as they can get along without artificial heat, the chickens should be moved to a colony house and given free range. They will soon learn to roost and to find their way in and out of their new home, especially if we move away the old one where they cannot ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... the valley are formed by steep basaltic precipices, the condor reappears. From these facts it seems that the condors require perpendicular cliffs. In Chile, they haunt, during the greater part of the year, the lower country near the shores of the Pacific, and at night several roost together in one tree; but in the early part of summer, they retire to the most inaccessible parts of the inner Cordillera, there to breed ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Love, Unto thy Hinde, thy Mullet and thy Dove, Who neither joys in pasture, house nor streams, The substance gone, O me, these are but dreams, Together at one Tree, O let us brouse, And like two Turtles roost within one house. And like the Mullets in one River glide, Let's still remain one till death divide. Thy loving Love and Dearest Dear, At home, abroad ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... Church were then carried away with errors in that time, specially when neither the Bishop of Rome, who then only ruled the roost, nor almost any other, either did his duty, or once understood what was his duty? for it is hard to be believed, while they were idle and fast asleep, that the devil also all that while either fell asleep or else continually lay idle. For how they were occupied ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... persevering benevolence was not to be baulked in this way. At the tea-table that evening, Helen happening to be absent from the room for the moment, looking for Pen who had gone to roost, old Pendennis returned to the charge and rated Warrington for refusing to join in their excursion. "Isn't it ungallant, Miss Bell?" he said, turning to that young lady. "Isn't it unfriendly? Here we have been the happiest party in the world, and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... directions to his friend. "Duck back into the restaurant, Bob. Get a pocketful of dry rice from the Chink. Trail those birds to their nest and find where they roost. Then stick around like a burr. Scatter rice behind you, and I'll drift along later. First off, I got to stay and talk with Miss Joyce. And, say, take along a rope. Might ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... considerable distance from our track. Some indeed there are marked in Spanish charts, but the frequency of the birds seems to evince that there are many more than have been hitherto discovered, for the greatest part of the birds, we observed, were such as are known to roost on shore, and the manner of their appearance sufficiently made out that they came from some distant haunt every morning, and returned thither again in the evening, for we never saw them early or late, ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... the way of a rabbit without setting a wire,' he said. 'But I have managed to get these by knowing where they roost.' ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... had to stop for breath; and her neighbors all looked at one another, feeling undecided whether to own they were wrong, or to put Mrs. Wing down. Every one twittered and chirped, and made a great noise; but no one would give up, and all went to roost in a great state of uncertainty. But, the next day, it became evident that Mrs. Wing was right; for Major Bumble-bee came buzzing in to tell them that old Daddy Winter's hut was empty, and his white head had been seen in the sunny ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... my preachment, and here follows the reason and purpose of it. I want you to run over here, roost over the machine a week and satisfy yourself, and then go to John P. Jones or to whom you please, and sell me a hundred thousand dollars' worth of this property and take ten per cent in cash or the "property" for your trouble—the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of the soldiers with him. I am sorry, for he always thought well of us; but he thrust himself into the danger. One reason of my coming here now is to say that this plantation and Arabie will be attacked to-night, and Bayou had better roost ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... there a better behaved, or more thoroughly trained set of children. If a hawk, or even a big robin, went sailing over head, how quickly they scampered, and hid themselves at their mother's note of warning! and how meekly they all trotted roost-ward at the first sound of her brooding-call! I wish all little folks were as ready to go to bed at the ...
— The Nursery, March 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... in America with boundless enthusiasm. Their discipline was admirable. Their respect for the rights of property was such, that not a barn, orchard or hen-roost ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... were quite right; he had given her plenty of run and ignored her cackle, and now she had come home to roost. There is nothing like a knowledge of farming, and an acquaintance with the habits of domestic animals, to teach a man how to ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... of the year; fire, without which we could not bake a morsel of bread, and would have to eat our meat raw; fire, which lights up the night for us, and without which we should have to go to bed when the hens go to roost; fire, which subdues metals, and without which we should have neither iron, nor copper, nor silver, nor anything that is manufactured from those materials; fire, without which, in short, human industry could not rise to much higher results than ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... end of a village a Fox one day went to have a peep at a hen-roost. He had the bad luck to fall into a well, where he swam first to this side, and then to that side, but could not get out with all his pains. At last, as chance would have it, a poor Goat came to the same place to seek for some drink. ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... certain length of time, till at last the youngsters started off to forage on their own account, and the family, as a family, broke up. From habit, however, or from good will, the youngsters kept coming back to roost on the branches beside the nest, and remained on the most friendly, though easy-going, relations with their father ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... became greenish and murky, merging into a vast tent of deepest blue studded with a myriad of shining golden stars. Then the eider-ducks and swans grew silent and went to roost for the night, and the soft warm air was thrilled by the whines of bear-cubs and the cries of land-rails. It was then that the maidens assembled on the slope to sing of Lada and to dance their ancient dances, while ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... a yard or more of the mast, from its summit down—or, to be accurate, it shed a pale radiance on a youthful figure, clinging there by its legs, and upon a hand and arm reaching over the platform to rob the roost. ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... 'ere war a rum 'un, Master Roberts, sir," said Dick, solemnly. "Now, look here, sir, you being a boy like, and not wanted, if I was you, I'd just go down below, get on my perch, and tuck myself up and go to roost where I should ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... Once or twice I went by a lonely cottage with a smell of earthy turf coming from the chimney, weeds or oats sprouting on the thatch, and a broken cart before the door, with many straggling hens going to roost on the shafts. Near these cottages little bands of half-naked children, filled with the excitement of evening, were running and screaming over the bogs, where the heather was purple already, giving me the strained feeling of regret one ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... not a Catholic, and need not fear purgatory. The next time the old woman commences her reprobate conduct, tell her to hold her tongue, and mind her own business, for curses, like chickens come home to roost." ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... she had done for the good of others? Nothing had been placed in the balance to her credit. She was condemned as a selfish criminal, with no account taken of motives. Was it for herself she forged? Was it for herself she lied, when her sin came home to roost? Was it through any lack of love for Dick that she allowed the foul slander to besmirch his memory, when everybody had believed him dead? No, ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... of your untirin' industry would rot on the ground if you did not weakly consent to help him. Let 'em rot, I say! Let him call you to the stables in vain an' nevermore! Let him shake his ensnarin' oats under your nose in vain! Let the Brahmas roost in the buggy, an' the rats run riot round the reaper! Let him walk on his two hind feet till they blame well drop off! Win no more soul-destroyn' races for his pleasure! Then, an' not till then, will Man the Oppressor ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... they will not go on the time there is too much attention given to dreams. A dream is a sort of a shadow, no profit in it to anyone at all. A coach now is a real thing and a thing that will last for generations and be made use of the last, and maybe turn to be a hen-roost at ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... said a hen, and in a quarter of the town, too, where it had not taken place. "That was a terrible affair in a hen-roost. I cannot sleep alone to-night. It is a good thing that many of us sit on the roost together." And then she told a story that made the feathers on the other hens bristle up, and the cock's comb fall. There was no ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... have too black a name in the Andredsweald. We should have to answer for every peasant we have hanged or hen roost we ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... Peter had said, "and you can bet your boots no jailbird will ever roost on it if he thinks twice. And it's just that sort of thing that ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... on murd'ring errands toil'd, Lone from your savage homes exiled, The blood-stained roost, and sheep-cote spoiled My heart forgets, While pitiless the tempest ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... crime—were lashed and sent to prison for two years. One or two got off with a caution, and with instructions to preach to the locations on the heinousness of hooliganism, and of the power of Martial Law to hang "boys" for less than murder—as the next roost-robber would learn to his cost. No remarkable curiosity to be learned in the "Law" was ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... your tooth-brushes, sweeten your handkerchiefs, and soften waste paper for your occasions. This fellow Pickle was entertained for more important purposes; his turn of duty never came till all those lapwings were gone to roost; then he scaled windows, leaped over garden walls, and was let in by Mrs. Betty in the dark. Nay, the magistrates of Bath complimented him with the freedom of the corporation, merely because, through his means, the waters had gained extraordinary credit; for every female of a tolerable ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... most part, like ostrich-eggs; the giver never knows what is hatched out of them. But once in a thousand times they act as curses are said to,—come home to roost. Give them often enough, until it gets to be a mechanical business, and, some day or other, you will get caught warranting somebody's ice not to melt in any climate, or somebody's razors to be safe in the hands ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of the hour was the desire to put down by a strong hand the depredations of these lawless robber hordes. Not a house in the place but had suffered from them, not a farmer but had complaints to make of hen roost robbed or beasts driven off in the night. Others had darker tales to tell; and Will Ives clenched his fists and vowed that he would be glad indeed to see the day when he and Simon Dowsett might ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... goin' to roost on this step till mornin'," she declared. "I'm goin' inside. Ain't that a bell handle on your side of the door, Emily? Give it a pull, ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... but the position of the sequestered little world could still be distinguished by a few faint lights, winking more or less ineffectually through the leafless boughs, and the undiscerned songsters they bore, in the form of balls of feathers, at roost among them. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... the east assumed a most wonderful range of various delicate tints that made even Perk gasp with admiration. Birds started singing, mocking birds and cardinals among others, crows could be heard cawing close by as though there might be a hidden bird roost not far distant. This was corroborated later on when streams of white egrets flew past, scattering to find ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... from storms, but chiefly to keep off the sun. The men and women wear a single garment like a petticoat, made of pelican skin; the children are naked. Not far from Tiburon, which is about thirty miles long by fifteen miles wide, there is a smaller island where pelicans roost in vast numbers. The Seris go at night and with sticks knock over as many birds as ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... mused, those dissipations of his, which, after all, had touched him but lightly—these had, like chickens, come home to roost! And how these chickens had multiplied and grown! On the way home it seemed that everybody had striven to fatten them up a bit and add surreptitiously a chicken or two of his own. Oh, these meddlers, these ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... not only widowed the poor soul, but brought all her little jealousies, as you might say, home to roost. She couldn't abide Nandy, and Nandy had reached an age when boys aren't at their best. But adopt him she had to; and, what tried her worse, she was forced to look after his health with more than a mother's care. For, outside of a stockingful ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... birdmen (war correspondentese for flying officers) tire of trying to be offensive on a patrol, and by now we are varying our rubber-neck searchings with furtive glances at the time, in the hopes that the watch-hands may be in the home-to-roost position. At length the leader heads for the lines, and the lords of the air (more war correspondentese) forget their high estate and ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... Morgan thoughtfully, "I wouldn't just say you're up to the level of books. But you might rise even to books if you'd cultivate your mind and brain. Well, I think I'll fly up to roost. I've got to take an early start in the morning and clean up on this neck of the woods tomorrow. ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... resurrection-man, No. 7. Well, well, to think of that Jason's foolhardiness! But he's the worse devil of the two. Eh! what was I saying? And always give a look into my room every night before you go to roost. The place swarms with cracksmen, and one can't be too cautious. Lucky dog, you, to have nothing ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... timidly, carrying his head a little down as usual, and glancing uncomfortably about in a manner which used to make Drysdale say that he always looked as though he had just been robbing a hen-roost. Mary went forward to meet him, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... racks round the stanchions, containing muskets, cutlasses, and long, double-barrelled pistols. As I expected, there were several bee-skeps hanging from nails, or lying on the floor. I was in the smugglers' roost, perhaps in the ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... are!" sneered Mortimer. "I believe you roost on the foot-board of your bed, like a confounded turkey. Come on! You'd better begin training, you know. People in this town are not going to stand for the ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... get some boots and things to go logging in. This house will be open. You can come in and roost if you want to. If you marry Nan"—this was an audacity that occurred to him at the moment. It suddenly seemed to him a blessed comfort to think of Nan in his house—"you can come here ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... been lyin' to me two weeks, tryin' to buy that rooster that I wouldn't sell no more'n I'd sell my first husband's gravestun'. And when you couldn't git it by lyin', you stole it off'm the roost to-night. And to make sure there won't be any more lies, I've followed you right here to find out the truth. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... hear that. But if you knew all, you might. Let the curse fly where it may, it will come back to roost. So, darling, let us discuss him no more. Your ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... said Barbesieur, trying to look amiable, "pray don't be so concise. Tell me the condition of the marquis, at once: I did not come to this old owl's roost for pastime. I came to see what could be done to restore its unhappy lord to reason. That you are observing, I remember; you proved it by the good care you took of ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... down in de market reckoned it was high time fancy niggers was drov into de swamp, and I allowed that loafers and beggars had better roost high when workin' folks was around, and Marse Tom said he'd cut my ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... one; so, if you please, I'll go to roost." And thus there was nothing more said about Lucy's ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... my roost is sly; he keeps The cover warily; and, now the scent Is cold, the curs that yelp in scandal's pack Bay loud on many faults, but ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... be caught in an inconsistency!" he answered. "I've been afraid, though, that this desire to roost in one place was a sign of incipient ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... commenced, and, simultaneously, General Grant began his movement toward Richmond. In quick succession came the news of the bloody battles of the Wilderness, and those around Spottsylvania, Va.; at Buzzard Roost Gap, Snake Creek Gap, and Dalton, Ga.; Drury's Bluff, Va.; Resaca, Ga.; the battles of the North Anna, Va.; those around Dallas, and New Hope church, Ga; the crossing of Grant's forces to the South side of the James and the assault on Petersburg. While the Union Armies were thus valiantly ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... vision limited to getting a good price for the fall crop. There are times when I envy a hen. How good it must be, to be a hen! A fence around me to mark the boundaries of my world, my meals for the trouble of pecking at them, my life-work to sit hour after hour in the sun, balanced on a roost.... You laugh? Well, I've made a good start already toward becoming a hen, and the career suits me to a 't.' Every Wednesday I go to market, to buy a pullet and some eggs; and I haggle with the vendors just for the fun of it, finally giving them the price they ask for; I invite the peasant women ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... beings, and on arriving at Mangrullos, which had not been burnt and was still inhabited, it settled down at ones and never afterwards showed any disposition to go away. It was extremely tame, associating by day with the poultry, and going to roost with them at night OH a high perch, probably for the sake of companionship, for in a wild state the bird roosts on the ground. It was friendly towards all the members of the household except one, a peon, and against this person from the first the bird always displayed ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... the people in the town caught them in the way when they went home from fighting, or when they were in the river, Sayen could be a fish and hide. They fought in one town. Sayen became a chicken after fighting. He went under the house where the chickens roost. He did that many times and the people in the town noticed that Sayen could be a chicken or a fish. When he came with Kaboniyan to the town to fight the people, he went under the house to the chickens' place. The people ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... sounds of day died away, and the family and our servants gone to roost, than a pack of jackals set up that plaintive and mournful wail by which they seem to announce to the world that they are in a starving condition. They came so close to the village that all the dogs in it set up a furious barking. This woke the baby, of whose vocal powers ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... then he talked till the sun went down And the chickens went to roost; And he seized the collar of the poor young man, And never his ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... gathered when she made me take that oath. I suppose she's head girl and that's why she rules the roost? Is she decent or does she keep you petrified? I don't know whether I'm expected to say 'Bow-wow,' or to listen in respectful humility when she ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... Proud Parents had a son named James Henry Guff. On the Day of his Birth the Wind changed and blew in another Direction, Apples fell off the Trees, Chickens went to Roost at Mid-Day. All Nature seemed to have been given a Jolt by the Portentous Event. For James Henry Guff was born to know all the Brands of Human Greatness. Destiny had put a Green Tag on him and ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... "I hope she has put all thought of Oliver out of her mind long since. Well!—I had a letter from Lady Felton last week—dear woman that!—all the love-affairs in the county come to roost in her mind. She talks of young Roughsedge. Perhaps you don't know anything ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... reminded me of Violet's parrot and the parrot reminded me of a Plymouth Rock rooster I had that used to roost in the pigpen nights—wouldn't use the henhouse no more'n you nor I would—and that, naturally, made me think of pigs, and pigs fetched Josiah's uncle's pig to mind and there I was all ready to start on the yarn. ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... our mistakes do not come home to roost!" she thought, "but fly away and make nests elsewhere—rich ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the pampas are few in species and in numbers. This may be accounted for by the absence of trees and other elevations on which birds prefer to roost and nest; and by the scarcity of food. Insects are few in dry situations; and the large perennial grasses, which occupy most of the ground, yield a miserable yearly harvest of a few minute seeds; so that this district is a poor one both for soft and hard billed ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... Tories that her irritation rose. As the time for her wedding approached, her temper grew steadily sharper and more arbitrary. Queen Adelaide annoyed her. King Leopold, too, was "ungracious" in his correspondence; "Dear Uncle," she told Albert, "is given to believe that he must rule the roost everywhere. However," she added with asperity, "that is not a necessity." Even Albert himself was not impeccable. Engulfed in Coburgs, he failed to appreciate the complexity of English affairs. There were difficulties about his household. He had a notion that he ought not to be surrounded ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... performance! screaming notes that seemed to scream jubilant gladness to listening heaven, and notes abrupt and guttural, mingling with others more clear and soul-piercing than ever human lips drew from reed or metal. It soon ended; up sprang the vocalists like a fountain of fire and fled away to their roost among the hills, then silence reigned once more. What brilliant hues, what gay, fantastic music! Were they indeed birds, or the glad, winged inhabitants of a mystic region, resembling earth, but sweeter than earth ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... one in the lonely neighborhood of the cottage who could furnish any information as to the cause of its being thus deserted. I conjectured from the heaps of fagots which remained in the yard, from the hens and pigeons which returned of themselves to roost in the room, or on the roof, and from the stacks of hay and straw which stood untouched in the orchard, that the family had gone to gather in a late harvest in the high chalets of the mountain, and had not yet come ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... surnamed "The Scourge of God". Yet in flight lies safety. Skirmish and run To forest and fastness, Teuton and Hun, From the banks of the Rhine to the Danube's shore, And back to the banks of the Rhine once more; Retreat from the face of an armed foe, Robbing garden and hen-roost where'er you go. Let the short alliance betwixt us cease, I and my Norsemen will go in peace! I wot it never will suit with us, Such existence, tame and inglorious; I could live no worse, living single-handed, And better ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... question, and each one of them realized it. Their only safe course, indeed, was to remain hidden as they were in that cover till the night came again, when, tramp-like, they would take to the road once more, and, tramp-like, might rob some hen-roost to provide a meal for the morrow. Yet it was hard, and became harder still as the hours went by, to put up without even those scanty meals which had been ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... leads into "Organ-grinders' Roost," in the garret. To "Organ-grinders' Roost" the detective ascends. If, reader, you have ever pictured in your mind the cave of despair, peopled by beings human only in shape, you may form a faint ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... one nevertheless! There are thousands of them that roost among the hills in that quarter. I know the place thoroughly. The heights are the greatest that we have in the surrounding country. The distance from this spot is about five miles. He, no doubt, has some fish, ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... fireman, wrapped up in his cloak, keeping watch against fires. He looked unpleasantly like a Bulgarian atrocity or a Burmese 'deviation from the laws of humanity,' being very still and all huddled up in his roost. That was a superb picture and it arranged itself to admiration. Now, disregarding these things and others—wonders and miracles all—men are content to sit in studios and, by light that is not light, ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... as sorry as anybody. I climbed down from my cormorant roost, and picked my way between the alleys of aromatic piled lumber in order to avoid the press, and cursed the little gods heartily for undue partiality in the wrong direction. In this manner I happened on Jimmy ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... the track towards the river, and at the junction left word at Lowe's—one of the old land-grant families. The dogs woke an old handy man (who had been "sent out" in past ages for "knocking a donkey off a hen-roost"-as most of them were) and Ben told ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... to-day; one had dropped from the roost and frozen; it was cracked, but it will do for ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... is now known that the battle was only skirmish. The rebels attacked a hen-roost in search ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... the little things quiet by pecking them on the head if they cried. The kittens and chickens grew to be great friends. They would eat out of the same dish, and when night came they would all go to the chicken-coop together. The kittens slept in the nest, and the chickens on the roost. Were they ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the same day; in consequence of which, the heart, which ought properly to be soaring in the clouds, or, at all events, in a castle half way up, is more generally to be found grovelling about a hen-roost, in the vain hope, that, if it cannot get hold of the hen herself, it may at least hit upon an egg; and such, I remember, was the state of my feelings on this occasion, in consequence of my having dined the three preceding days on ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... had finished, they put out the light, and each one looked out for a suitable and comfortable sleeping-place. The donkey lay down on the dunghill, the dog behind the door, the cat on the hearth near the warm ashes, and the cock set himself on the hen-roost; and, as they were all tired with their long journey, they soon went to sleep. Soon after midnight, as the robbers in the distance could see that no more lights were burning in the house, and as all seemed quiet, the captain said, "We ought not to have let ourselves ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... earliest birds of the hostelry roost were about the big house at that hour. The new arrivals dodged scrub-women and sweepers in the office and on the stairs, and went to their rooms. The Duke, leaving his grandson at his bedroom door, suggested ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... the delightful retreats of woods and groves. This leads us to the October economy of birds. "Swallows are generally seen for the last time this month, the house-martin the latest. The rooks return to the roost trees, and the tortoise begins to bury himself for the winter. Woodcocks begin to arrive, and keep dropping in from the Baltic singly or in pairs till December. The snipe also comes now;" and with the month, by a kind of savage charter, commences the destruction of the pheasant, to swell ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... her reward was pilfering, and a crown put into her hand, gave her less pleasure than a halfpenny which she had stolen. Neither was it any use to dream of ruling her as the sole male, or as the proud master of the hen roost, for which of them, no matter how broad shouldered he was, would have been capable of it? Some had tried to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... beyond a paved square at the back. Half intelligible words floated to him as he approached, and from an old pear-tree near the door there was a flutter of wings where a brood of white turkeys settled to roost. Beyond the bole of the tree a small negro in short skirts was "shooin'" a large rooster into the henhouse, but at the muffled fall of Gay's horse's hoofs on the dead leaves, she turned with a choking sound, and fled to the shelter of the kitchen at ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... whistling, past Dr. Gardner's house, past the deanery; they and the cathedral tower, rising above them, looked grey in the moonlight. He picked up a stone and sent it right into one of the elm trees; some of the birds, disturbed from their roost, flew out, croaking, over his head. In the old days of superstition it might have been looked upon as an evil omen, coupled with what was to follow. Ah, Charley! if you could only foresee what is before you! If Mrs. Channing, from her far-off sojourn, could but know ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Ye shall have gay holyday times, and holyday fare, and anything the old man can do, and anything the old man can give to make you merry, he will do, and he will give, because you have come back gallantly, and have not brought dishonour to the roost where ye were hatched—but more than this I will not agree to. Ye would not abide at home, as I desired, and this therefore is no longer a home for you; ye would not be content to be forgers of weapons, but ye must e'en use them too, and ye have had your way. Now, lads, ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... trivial, for he is alive to small objects, not because his mind is narrow, but because his glance is clear and his heart is large. Instead of trying to edify us by supercilious allusions to the "brutes" and the "stalls," he interests us in that tragedy of the hen-roost when the thief has ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... threw him a wave of her hand. "Good-bye, Mr. M.M.!" she called, and was gone among the rose-trees. She looked at her wrist-watch and the windows of the house. It struck her as curiously uninhabited. Past six! The pigeons were just gathering to roost, and sunlight slanted on the dovecot, on their snowy feathers, and beyond in a shower on the top boughs of the woods. The click of billiard-balls came from the ingle-nook—Jack Cardigan, no doubt; a faint rustling, too, from an eucalyptus-tree, startling Southerner in this old English garden. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... near the buffalo carcase; this had been killed, probably, by the cub; the fact showed that the buffalo had been attacked that morning during daylight, and not during the preceding night, when the vultures would have been at roost. ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... an' I a fem'ly ready-made, (The youngest on 'em's 'most growed up,) rugged an' spry ez weazles, So's 't ther' 's no resk o' doctors' bills fer hoopin'-cough an' measles. Our farm's at Turkey-Buzzard Roost, Little Big Boosy River, Wal located in all respex,—fer 't ain't the chills 'n' fever Thet makes my writin' seem to squirm; a Southuner'd allow I'd Some call to shake, for I've jest hed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... was past thirty he played merely an incidental part in the tribal war that had raged up and down Yellow Banks Creek and its principal tributary, the Pigeon Roost, since long before the Big War. He was getting out timber to be floated down the river on the spring rise when word came to him of an ambuscade that made him the head of his immediate clan and the upholder of his ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... by habit," he began after a long gaze upwards at the rooks now settling to roost and making a mighty pother of it. "But I'm afraid there's no getting round the fact that this afternoon I acted a lie. And yet, on the whole, my conscience ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... he came upon he gave a wide berth except at night, and then he only approached them stealthily for such provender as he might filch. Before the week was up he had become an expert chicken thief, being able to rob a roost as quietly as the most finished carpetbagger on the sunny side of Mason ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to keep dem away, and you can't go near kaise it be's so nasty; but dem buzzards don't waste nothing. Little young buzzards looks like down till dey gits over three days old. You can go to a buzzard roost and see for yourself, but you sho better stay out'n de way of de old buzzard's puke. Dey sets around de little ones and ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... whole time; half reclining, with his arm wound about a dry branch, he gazed immovably after the departing man, as he glided through the thickly wooded path with the long cautious steps characteristic of his profession, as noiseless as a lynx climbing into the hen-roost. Here and there a branch sank behind him; the outlines of his body became fainter and fainter. Then there was one final flash through the foliage; it was a steel button on his hunting jacket; and now he was gone. During this gradual disappearance ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... sounds of daily life died away into silence; the children's voices were no more heard; the poultry were all gone to roost; the beasts of burden to their stables; and travellers were housed. Then Thekla came in softly and quietly, and took up her appointed place, after she had done all in her power for my comfort. I felt that I was in no state to be left all those weary hours which intervened between sunset and sunrise; ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... father did, and the brindle calf was glad that she had not gone away from the farmyard when she saw her mother come in from the clover lot. The chickens went to roost, and the horses were fed; but no brown colt came in sight, although Dick and Fleet went down the lane to look, a ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... eagles for a roost In Rimini! The air is black with them. When go they hence? Wherever yon bird builds, The nest remains for ages. Have an eye, Or Malatesta's elephant may feel The ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... summer the shadows on some vine-covered porch swallowed the lovers, in winter the stairs were generally the trysting-place—and the top step the one most sought—because there was nobody behind to see. This was the roost for which Kate and Harry scampered, and there they intended to sit until the ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... for one thing, boys," remarked Farmer Trotter's wife, who had apparently hailed the decision of the seven bold scouts to guard her fowl-roost with undeniable joy. ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... child, Muster Barton,' she exclaimed, further manifesting her maternal instincts by applying her apron to her offspring's nose. 'He's al'ys a-findin' faut wi' him, and a-poundin' him for nothin'. Let him goo an' eat his roost goose as is a-smellin' up in our noses while we're a-swallering them greasy broth, an' let my ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... sailor ever repaired of his own free will, for early in the century of pressing the chickens of the most notorious kidnapping city in England began to come home to roost. The mantle of the Bristol mayor whom Jeffreys tried for a "kidnapping knave" fell upon a succession of regulating captains whose doings put their civic prototype to open shame, and more petitions and protests against the lawlessness of ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... this clearly. I have a great mind to send Blacas over to Stowe. I can trust to him to look to the crates and coops, and to see that the pheasants have enough of air and water, and that the Governor of Calais finds a commodious place for them to roost in, forbidding the drums to beat and disturb them, evening or morning. The next night, according to my calculation, they repose at Montreuil. I must look at them before they are let loose. I cannot well imagine why the public men employed by England are ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... ever, had intercourse, and respectable persons seldom crossed their thresholds. The principal man among the Hillers was known as Bill Powell. He was a giant in strength and stature, and used to boast that he could visit "any hen-roost in the village every night in the week, and carry off a dozen chickens each time, without being nabbed." He was very fond of liquor, too indolent to work, and spent most of his time, when out of jail, on the river, fishing, or roaming through the ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... his cradle," growl'd another; "and times enough I've told 'n: 'Cap'n,' says I, 'there's no sense o' proportions about ye.' A master mind, sirs, but 'a 'll be hang'd for a hen-roost, so sure as my name's ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... the curtain covering his lost Idea. He felt sure he should grasp it soon and enter into its daylight: a muffled voice within him said, that he was kept waiting to do so by the inexplicable tardiness of a certain one to rise ascending to her spiritual roost. She was now harmless to strike: Themison, Carling, Jarniman, even the Rev. Groseman Buttermore, had been won to the cause of humanity. Her ascent, considering her inability to do further harm below, was most mysteriously delayed. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... day is done, and darkness From the wing of night is loosed, As a feather is wafted downward, From a chicken going to roost. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... visible about the same cock-crowing season, is the parliamentary reporter, shuffling to roost, and a more slovenly-looking operative from sunrise to sunset is rarely to be seen. There has probably been a double debate, and between three and five o'clock he has written "a column bould." No one can well mistake him. The features are often Irish, the gait jaunty or resolutely ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... bed was too short for her, and there was no ease in it, even had her mind and heart been at rest. All the fantasies she had beguiled from the boy's brain had come to roost in her own, with a hundred other vivid and painful impressions. The night, too, was fuller than usual of disquietude. The wind, which had been rising steadily, now tore at the shutters and rushed shrieking through the trees. ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... brown complexion, and its capacity both for kicking and for smoking, all prove that a gun is in reality a sentient being of a very high order of intelligence. You may be quite certain that if you abuse your gun, even when you may imagine it to be far out of earshot, comfortably cleaned and put to roost on its rack, your gun will resent it. Why are most sportsmen so silent, so distraits at breakfast? Why do they dally with a scrap of fish, and linger over the consumption of a small kidney, and drink great draughts of tea to restore their equilibrium? If you ask them, they will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various |
