"Swarm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was alive as far as we could see, and red. It was like standing on the bank of a river, and the myriads went on through the day until dusk. I have seen swarms of locusts on the march in the voetganger stage, and a large swarm will cover a length of three miles, but never would I have believed so many living things ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... Besides, many of my Indian neighbours were engaged in an occupation which I must leave to your imagination; in fact, relieving their heads from the pressure of the colonial system, or rather, eradicating and slaughtering the colonists, who swarm there like the emigrant Irish in the United States. I was not sorry to find myself once more in the pure air after mass; and have since been told that, except on peculiar ocasions, and at certain hours, few ladies perform their devotions ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... and a pound of bacon. I took all I could get, and from the colonel downward, all my comrades were glad to get a share of my provisions. The heights of Montmartre had been riddled by the fire from Mont Valerien. Sometimes a shell from our mortars would burst in the enemy's trenches, when a swarm of human beings would rush out of their holes and run like rabbits ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... said, dismally. "I don't feel quite so frightened now. I can hang on a bit longer, especially now I know assistance is at hand. At first I began to be afraid that I was a prisoner for the night. No; don't go. If I had a rope I should have the proper confidence to swarm up again. And there is a coil of rope in the arbour close by you. Hang it straight down over that middle boulder and fasten your end round ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... great prosperity. Just as fortunate is it if a strange male cat comes to your house and manifests friendly intentions towards your family. If a she cat, it is an omen, on the contrary, of very great misfortune. If a swarm of bees alight in your garden, some very high honour ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... solidity or continuity of sensation. If you hold a cannon-ball in your hand, perception by the sense of touch tells you that it is continuous, or what is called solid and hard; but it is not so in reality except as a concept limited by our finite senses. A fair analogy would be to liken it to a swarm of bees, for we know that it is composed of an immense number of independent atoms or molecules which are darting about, and circling round each other at an enormous speed but never touching; they are also pulsating at a definite enormous rate; we can at will increase their motion ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... to their will, And whiles is it glassy and dark, and whiles is it white and dead, And whiles is it grey as the sea-mead, and whiles is it angry red; And it shimmers under the sunshine and grows black to the threat of the storm, And dusk its gold roof glimmers when the rain-clouds over it swarm, And bright in the first of the morning its flame doth it uplift, When the light clouds rend before it ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... desired between the two countries, or is it supposed that we will yield to foreign intervention without a struggle? No, the North will rise up as one man, and thousands even from the South will join them. The country will become a camp, and the ocean will swarm with our privateers. Rather than submit to dismemberment or secession, which is anarchy and ruin, we will, we must fight, until the last man has fallen. The Almighty can never prosper such a war upon us. If the views of a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... those of a barefooted man, or, I should rather say, perhaps, a man-footed bear. The Prince was just turning the corner of a projecting rock, when he saw a huge, shaggy beast standing on its hind legs, examining in a leisurely manner the inside of a hollow tree, while a swarm of bees were buzzing about its ears. It was just hauling out a handful of honey, and was smiling with a grewsome mirth, when His Royal Highness sent it a bullet right in the breast, where its heart must have been, if it had one. But, instead ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... bringer of new and strange things, wore away, before the thick and more thick coming of their greedy and pushing foes,—by their fire-water in peace and their bullets in war, till the many became few, the great small. What the bloody Church, with his swarm of picked warriors, had left after his four terrible comings with fire and slaughter, the bold Lovewell finished, on that black day when the great Paugus and all the flower of the tribe found red graves round their ancient stronghold and home,—their ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... school on Mont St. Genevieve was the origin of the Latin Quarter in Paris, but the migration to the south had probably begun before Abelard came, and was rather due to the overcrowding of the episcopal schools. Teachers and scholars began to swarm to the new quarter over the bridge where quiet, purer air and better accommodation were found. Ordinances of Bishop Gilbert, 1116, and Stephen, 1124, transcribed by Felibien, make this clear. So disturbed were the canons ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... to hear at his heels a little dog yelping, and then a swarm of gnats buzzing round his head, and altogether was so perplexed and bewildered, that when he got into his mother's cottage he escaped into bed, and pulled the blanket over his ears to shut out the noise of the dog and the gnats, which at last ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... days such books 'swarm and buzz about one:' 'flap them away,' says Chesterfield, 'they have no sting.' The earl directed the whole force of his mind to oratory, and became the finest speaker of his time. Writing to Sir Horace Mann, about the Hanoverian debate (in 1743, Dec. 15), Walpole praising the speeches of ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... his withered tongue. So, on a frosty day in late autumn, when all is lifeless and dumb in the bleached grey grass, on the bare forest edge, if the sun but come out for an instant from the fog and turn one steady glance on the frozen earth, at once the gnats swarm up on all sides; they sport in the warm rays, bustle, flutter up and down, circle round one another... The sun is hidden—the gnats fall in a feeble shower, and there is the ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... summer nights. They frequent the Bowery and those down-at-the-heels East Side streets where poor clothes and shrunken features are not singled out as curious. They are the men who are in the lodginghouse sitting-rooms during bleak and bitter weather and who swarm about the cheaper shelters which only open at six in a number of the lower East Side streets. Miserable food, ill-timed and greedily eaten, had played havoc with bone and muscle. They were all pale, flabby, sunken-eyed, ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... trees in which they were concealed; and in a few cases that were reported to me they wore under their leafy tunics double canvas jackets filled with sand and carefully quilted, as a partial protection from bullets. This swarm of tree-men formed the Spanish skirmish-line, and a most dangerous and effective line it was, for the reason that it could be neither seen, driven in, nor dislodged. The hidden marksmen used Mauser rifles with ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... Evil Forces was Out. And to me there came an awaredness that a strange unquiet stole over the Land; yet I knew it not with mine ears; but my spirit heard, and it was as though trouble and an expectation of horror did swarm about me. ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... by all the kings, then addressed Bhishma, son of Santanu, and with joined hands said these words, 'Without a commander, even a mighty army is routed in battle like a swarm of ants. The intelligence of two persons can never agree. Different commanders, again, are jealous of one another as regards their prowess. O thou of great wisdom, it is heard (by us) that (once on a time) the Brahmanas, raising a standard of Kusa grass, encountered in battle the Kshatriyas ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... volume of Percy's 'Reliques,' for a full account of this class, and of the poetry they produced.) These wanderers reached England in due time and brought with them compositions which found favour and excited emulation, or at least imitation, in our vernacular genius. Hence came a great swarm of romances, all more or less derived from the French, even when Saxon in subject and style; such as 'Sir Tristrem,' (which Sir Walter Scott tried in vain to prove to be written by the famous Thomas the Rhymer, of Ercildoun, or Earlston, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... profession accorded to her more talented sisters. Miss Fisher retired from the stage in 1841, and for some years was a teacher of dancing in Boston. For over thirty-seven years Miss Fisher has entertained at her home a swarm of dramatic celebrities. Here Mr. and Mrs. James W. Wallack, Charles Couldock, Peter Richings and his daughter Caroline, Mrs. John Hoey, and Fanny Morant, dined together where, in later days, Joseph Jefferson, George Honey (the celebrated English comedian), Ada Rehan, Annie ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... only squirmed to get away. Driscoll glanced up the street whence the two had come. At the next corner, before a cafe, he saw things more promising. A ranchero with a drawn revolver was holding off a young officer in sky-blue uniform, while around them a swarm of natives and ten or eleven sailors were circling uneasily, as if waiting for some sign to begin hostilities. The joy of battle dilated the ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... arrows hurtle down on their steel roof. Other companies rush intrepidly forward with long scaling-ladders, and strive to hook them to the top of the wall. The Saracens, with equal energy and courage, labor to cast them down. If perchance a ladder be fixed, men swarm up, undaunted by the weapons hurled at them. Scores, struck dead or wounded, loosen their hold and fall to the ground; but as many more clamber over their dead bodies and spring to their places. If a knight but ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... tied, While death's strong pangs distend his labouring side, His bulk enormous on the field displays; His heaving heart beats thick as ebbing life decays. The spear the conqueror from his body drew, And death's dim shadows swarm before his view. Next brave Deipyrus in dust was laid: King Helenus waved high the Thracian blade, And smote his temples with an arm so strong, The helm fell off, and roll'd amid the throng: There for some luckier Greek it rests a prize; For dark in death the godlike owner lies! Raging with ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... can such an almost imperceptible particle be? One might think that it could be removed or even annihilated, and yet never be missed. Of what consequence is one of those human monads, of whom more than a thousand millions swarm on the surface of this all but invisible speck, and of a million of whom scarcely one will leave a trace that he has ever existed? Of what consequence is man, his ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... administration in troubled times. The Reconstruction Act had secured the negro the right to vote. Many Southern states were thereby given over to negro rule. Seeing this, a swarm of Northern politicians called "carpetbaggers" went south, made themselves political leaders of the ignorant freedmen, and plundered and misgoverned the states. In this they were aided by a few Southerners who supported the negro cause and were called "scalawags." But most of ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... the land, and they shot at each other a long time; but upon the land Ragnfred would not venture: and so they separated. Ragnfred sailed with his fleet southwards around Stad; for he was much afraid the whole forces of the country would swarm around Hakon. Hakon, on his part, was not inclined to try again a battle, for he thought the difference between their ships in size was too great; so in harvest he went north to Throndhjem, and staid there all winter (A.D. 971). King Ragnfred consequently had all the country south of ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... the gallery; they were to be held together at the top by a corbel. No one gave rush orders any more on Calumet K, for the reason that no one ever thought of doing anything else. If Bannon sent for a man, he came on the run. So in an incredibly short time the fences were down and a swarm of men with spades, post augers, picks, and shovels had invaded the C. & S. C. right-of-way. Up and down the track a hundred yards each way from the line of the gallery Bannon had stationed men to give warning of the approach of trains. "Now," said Bannon, "we'll get this part of the job ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... hundred ships in the mouth of the channel between the island of Diu and the mainland, designing to fall back before the Portuguese attack towards the island, where he could secure the aid of shore batteries and a swarm of 300 or more foists and other small craft in the harbor. Almeida had only 19 ships and 1300 men, but against his vigorous attack the flimsy vessels of the east were of little value. The battle was fought at close quarters in the old Mediterranean ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... there united. The temple, situated in the midst of the lake, was splendidly illuminated, and the water reflected its columns of fire. A multitude of beautiful boats furrowed this lake, which seemed on fire, manned by a swarm of Cupids, who appeared to sport with each other in the rigging. Musicians concealed on board played melodious airs; and this harmony, at once gentle and mysterious, which seemed to spring from the bosom of the waves, added still more to the magic ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... as the snow upon which they ran helter-skelter after one another. Forward and backward they bounded across the trail without apparently noticing the dogs. Sometimes they passed within ten feet of us. The woodland seemed to swarm with them, and no wonder, for it was the seventh year, the year of Northland game abundance, when not only rabbits are most numerous, but also all the other dwellers of the wilderness that prey upon them. Already, however, the ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... preserve his republic were suggested to him by false notions of political economy, and by a superficial knowledge of the human heart. Accordingly, property, which this legislator wrongly confounded with wealth, reentered the city together with the swarm of evils which he was endeavoring to banish; and this ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... sleeping child and saw him toss his arms about, and knew she ought to be there to sway a green branch over him to keep the little gnats and flies from bothering him and waking him; and the bees might swarm and ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... ragged children. Those untroubled hours had fled for ever and astonishment, impotent fury, and dire mental conflict had followed, but nevertheless she had dreamed—dreamed—and been glad of her freedom from social and all other duties. Now, probably these women and many more would swarm here. ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... then he stopped still. The light was not moonlight, and its source was not a moon. It was a globular cluster of stars, hung in the sky like a swarm of fiery bees, a burning and pulsing of many colors, diamond-white and gold, green and crimson, peacock blue and smoky umber. Kieran stared, and beside him Paula murmured, "I've been on a lot of planets, but none of them ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... sparrows were still drinking; the few loungers on the benches still stared at her with dull and incurious eyes. Not a cloud stained the intense blue of the sky; and over the bright grass on the hillside the sunshine quivered like an immense swarm of bees. ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... "Jesus!"—then Rotgier retreated one more step and fell upon his back on the ground. Immediately there was a noise and buzz on the porches, as in a bee-garden in which the bees, warmed by the sun, commence to move and swarm. The knights ran down the stairs in whole throngs, the servants jumped over the snow-walls, to take a look at the corpses. Everywhere resounded the shouts: "This is God's judgment ... Jurand has an heir! Glory to ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... and strike her colors without firing a gun. The brave and sonorous language with which our commander set forth his plan of assault captured our imaginations, and we all longed for the moment when the word of command should permit us to swarm up the sides and over the rail of the ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... walks. The scent of honeysuckle did not reach here, and when they stopped presently at the beginning of Tin Pot Alley, there floated out to them the sharp acrid odour of huddled negroes. In these squalid alleys, where the lamps burned at longer distances, the more primitive forms of life appeared to swarm like distorted images under the transparent civilization of the town. The sound of banjo strumming came faintly from the dimness beyond, while at their feet the Problem of the South sprawled innocently amid tomato ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... volcanic origin of their mountains, appear in her first collection of short stories, Children of the Eifel (1897). In the Eifel is situated the Women's Village (1900), all the men of which seek their livelihood overseas, so that all the women swarm about the only man left at home, a cripple. The novel John Miller (1903) treats the tragedy of a rich man of the Eifel who goes to ruin in pride and blind presumption; The Cross in the Venn (1908) deals ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... most Devoutly shun, Those Servile Apes that swarm about the Town; Pert, Noisie Coxcombs, Self-admiring Beaux, Known by their want ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... direct the conduct and manage the business of thirty or more children, grandchildren, sons-in-law, and daughters-in-law. No one knows how much a family may grow, and when the hive is too full and the time has come to swarm, every one thinks about carrying off his honey. When I took you for my son-in-law, although my daughter was rich and you poor, I never reproached her for choosing you. I saw you were a good worker, and I knew well that the best sort of riches for country ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... a long way to the King's fire, but at last it lay before her; before and below her, for it had been built in a depression of the little open. The last charred log had fallen apart, spreading a swarm of golden glow-worms over the black earth, there was still enough light to reveal a ring of muffled forms sprawling around the sloping sides of the hollow, with their feet toward the fire and their heads lost in darkness. Pausing in the tree-shadow, the girl thrilled with sudden hope. Since ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... A swarm of minute insects that had been hovering all day round the battlements were now swept away by the freshness of a rising breeze. The two owls in the chamber beneath Donatello's uttered their soft melancholy cry,—which, with national avoidance of harsh sounds, Italian owls substitute for ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... next moment out of a hole in the tree flew a swarm of angry bees, with humming wings and large fierce eyes and tails curved down ...
— Piccaninnies • Isabel Maud Peacocke
... Thy brother-angels at thy birth Strung each his lyre, and tun'd it high, That all the people of the sky Might know a poetess was born on earth; And then, if ever, mortal ears Had heard the music of the spheres. And if no clust'ring swarm of bees On thy sweet mouth distill'd their golden dew, 'Twas that such vulgar miracles Heaven had not leisure to renew: For all the blest fraternity of love Solemniz'd there thy birth, and kept ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... ago those, whom they do not exist just to amuse, made the new road over the moor, cutting right through the home of twilight, that wood above the "Falls," where till then they had always enjoyed inviolable enchantment. They trooped forthwith in their multitudinous secrecy down into the glen, to swarm about the old road. In half a century or so they had it almost abandoned, save for occasional horsemen and harmless persons seeking beauty, for whom the fairies have never had much feeling of aversion. And ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... figure of the man whose parting words had filled her soul with honey sweetness. At last, weary with anxiety on his behalf, she threw herself, fully dressed, on her low-hung hammock, this being Mr. Fenshawe's clever device to protect European skins from the attacks of the insects that swarm in the desert wherever there is any sign of dampness. She slept a few fitful hours, and her first waking thought was a ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... person in Caxamalca on whom this arrival of the Spaniards produced a very different impression from that made on their own countrymen. This was the Inca Atahuallpa. He saw in the new- comers only a new swarm of locusts to devour his unhappy country; and he felt, that, with his enemies thus multiplying around him, the chances were diminished of recovering his freedom, or of maintaining it, if recovered. A little circumstance, insignificant in itself, but magnified ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... song is of the sparrow kind, and, in its best parts, perpetually suggested the notes of our vesper sparrow; but the wonder of it is its copiousness and sustained strength. There is no theme, no beginning, middle, or end, like most of our best birdsongs, but a perfect swarm of notes pouring out like bees from a hive, and resembling each other nearly as closely, and only ceasing as the bird nears the earth again. We have many more melodious songsters; the bobolink in the meadows for instance, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... peopled. Bax is no exaggerated specimen, got up, in these sensation days, for effect. It is a glorious fact,—proved by the hard and bare statistics furnished annually by the Board of Trade, and from other sources,—that his name is legion, and that the men of whom he is a type swarm all round our coasts, from the old Ultima Thule ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... did not see it so; and she even sent for Nicholas Snowe to bring his three daughters with him, and have ale and cake in the parlour, and advise about what the bees were doing, and when a swarm might be looked for. Being vexed about this and having to stop at home nearly half the evening, I lost good manners so much as to ask him (even in our own house!) what he meant by not mending the swing-hurdle where the Lynn stream flows from our land into his, and which he is bound to maintain. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... length broad daylight was all about her, and above the roar of the stream there was rising a hubbub of voices like the buzzing of a swarm of bees. She lay for awhile listening to it, lazily wondering why the coolies should bring their breakfast so much nearer to the tent than usually, and then, suddenly and terribly, there came a cry that seemed to transfix her, stabbing her ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... silence. One of them perched on the skeleton. This was a signal: they all precipitated themselves upon it. There was a cloud of wings, then all their feathers closed up, and the hanged man disappeared under a swarm of black blisters struggling in the obscurity. Just then the corpse moved. Was it the corpse? Was it the wind? It made a frightful bound. The hurricane, which was increasing, came to its aid. The phantom ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... her legs, on which her load was given to another slave, and she was directed to keep in front. The coffle rested near a small rivulet, and a hive of bees being discovered in a hollow tree, some negroes went in quest of the honey, when an enormous swarm flew out, and attacked the people of the coffle. Mr. Park, who first took the alarm, alone escaped with impunity. The negroes at length again collected together at some distance from the place where they were dispersed, but Nealee was missing, and many of the bundles were left behind. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... suddenly clapped his bonnet on his head and went out. He had an urgent errand on High Street, to buy grass and flower seeds and tools that would certainly be needed in April. It took him an hour or more of shrewd looking about for the best bargains, in a swarm of little barnacle and cellar shops, to spend a few of the kirk's shillings. When he found himself, to his disgust, looking at a nail studded collar for a little dog he called himself a "doited auld fule," and tramped back across ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... plague came. A grievous swarm of flies descended on Egypt, so that "the land was corrupted by reason of them. But not a single fly crossed over into the land of Goshe" where the Jews dwelt. Thereupon Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron, and told them he was willing to let their people ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... so many devils about me that an honest fellow can't pray in my company?" cried the earl. "I will pray myself, in spite of the whole swarm of them, big and little!—O God, save me! I don't want to be damned. I will be good if thou wilt make me. I don't care about it myself, but thou canst do as thou pleasest. It would be a fine thing if a rascal like me were to escape the devil ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... when I started that indoor circus effect; sentenced to be Scheherazade! Lady chariot drivers and spotted clowns and strange beasts swarm through the prim, gray farmhouse. Dan'l has stayed in bed for two days, and Uncle Robert's chirp is ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... muttering, "Damn! I'm like the young wasters that swarm up to London from Oxford and get splashed with the girls from ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... One bold greaser stepped out into the road and sent his Minie-ball singing several yards above us, then darted back quickly, before any of us could have him. We waited a moment to see others, but they seemed to be satisfied;—and we were satisfied,—with prospect of a swarm bursting out on us from the town; so, sinking spurs into our weary animals, we made good pace back to the camp,—not without an alarm that a troop of well-mounted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... lord! Low on his funeral couch he lies!{22} No pitying heart, no eye, afford A tear to grace his obsequies. Is the sable warrior{23} fled? Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead. The swarm, that in thy noontide beam were born, Gone to salute the rising morn. Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,{24} While proudly riding o'er the azure realm In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes; Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm; Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway, ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... at the foot of a staircase and near a wide opening. He saw a dim twilight above this and ascended out of the blackness into a street of moving ways again. Along this a disorderly swarm of people marched shouting. They were singing snatches of the song of the revolt, most of them out of tune. Here and there torches flared creating brief hysterical shadows. He asked his way and was twice puzzled by that same thick dialect. His third attempt won an answer he could ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... "They swarm with muddy feet through the safest, surest halls of art of all time. They do not hesitate to say that arrangement—arrangement!—is not a necessity in a work of art. They say construction is not vital. They care nothing of whether nature at the moment ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... with his timber caps and luggies; and the talk was, that meal would be half-a-crown the peck. The grief, however, of the business wasna visible till the Saturday—the wonted day for the poor to seek their meat—when the swarm of beggars that came forth was a sight truly calamitous. Many a decent auld woman that had patiently eiked out the slender thread of a weary life with her wheel, in privacy, her scant and want known only to her Maker, was seen going from door to door with the salt tear in her e'e, ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... find him to have been a zealous, though a very credulous, and ignorant man; for he believed the story of Papias just quoted, and many others equally absurd. He however furnishes this important intelligence, that in the second century, the Christian world was overrun with heresy, and a swarm of apocryphal, and spurious Books were received ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... which subdued an empire stands to the personal act of bravery which spiked a single cannon and was adequately rewarded with a medal. For in emigration the young men enter direct and by the ship-load on their heritage of work; empty continents swarm, as at the bo's'un's whistle, with industrious hands, and whole new empires are domesticated ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wore short mantles of skins, and intimated a suspicion that they were secretly armed. Mr. M'Kay urged the captain to clear the ship and get under way. He again made light of the advice; but the augmented swarm of canoes about the ship, and the numbers still putting off from shore, at length awakened his distrust, and he ordered some of the crew to weigh anchor, while some were sent aloft to ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... the Celti, in its vast size and extent, reaches from the furthest sea and the arctic regions to the lake Maeotis eastward, and to that part of Scythia which is near Pontus, and that there the nations mingle together; that they did not swarm out of their country all at once, or on a sudden, but advancing by force of arms, in the summer season, every year, in the course of time they crossed the whole continent. And thus, though each party had several appellations, yet the whole army was called by the common name of Celto-Scythians. Others ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Brian took off their hats to it. Still farther away, and out of sight lay Lens, in German possession, but practically encircled by the British. The Old Contemptible had been there, and described the town as having scarcely a roof left, but being an "ant heap" of Boches, who swarm in underground shelters bristling with machine guns. Between Lens and the road stood the celebrated Colonne de Conde, showing where the prince won his great victory over Spain; and farther on, within ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... what the woman could give them for breakfast—eggs and milk, as it turned out. In a few days, though she did not realize this, neither would be obtainable thereabout at any price; the German host would have spread over the countryside like a swarm of locusts. Perhaps it would pay for what it ate, but it would eat at all events, regardless of that, and the money it might leave in the place of the food it took would be valueless, since money can buy nothing when there ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... from a distance and quite unused to the sight, thought they were birds that were skimming so over the water." As for their size, the sailors expected much greater marvels in those parts of the world, where every map and traveller's tale made the sea swarm with monsters as ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... is a swarm of hungry relations, who quarrel over every half-penny she makes; and she is so good! But you can understand why she is anxious not to think that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... into tortures. The grasshopper becomes a burden. Touch a flayed man ever so lightly, and with ever so kindly an intention, and he is sure to wince. The skin of the man of letters is peculiarly sensitive to the bite of the critical mosquito; and he lives in a climate in which such mosquitoes swarm. He is seldom stabbed to the heart—he is ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... below"! Later, when the egg is hatched, "the filament is transformed into a tube, a place of refuge, up which the grub clambers backwards. At the least sign of danger from the mass of caterpillars the larva retreats into its sheath and ascends to the roof, where the wriggling swarm cannot reach ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... that the apparently unreasonable position of the law was assumed with a good object in view, and it is probable that the object was the protection of the court from the swarm of so-called experts which might be hatched by a laxity in the wording of the law. Few things would be easier for a dishonest person than to swear he was a competent expert, and then to swear that a document was, in his opinion, forged or genuine, ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... much speed and excitement the great net was hauled, and we started with several other trawlers to dash pell-mell for the open sea. The alarm of masts and smoke together on the horizon had been given—the sign manual of the one poor Danish gunboat which was supposed to control the whole swarm of far smarter little pirates, which lived like mosquitoes by sucking their sustenance from others. The water was as a general rule too deep outside the three-mile limit ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... broke loose again. De Yankees had been puttin' poison grease on the bullets. Dat was de reason de wound wouldn't get well. Dey feared Mars Sam goin' to die an' a short time atter dat letter come I sure knowed it was so. One night just erbout dusk dark, de screech owls, dey come in er swarm an' lit in de big trees in de front of de house. A mist of dust come up an' de owls, dey holler an' carry on so dat old mars get he gun an' shot it off to scare dem erway. Dat was a sign, Boss, dat somebody gwine to die. I just knowed it was ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... as they bow their hoary tops relate, In murm'ring sounds, the dark decrees of fate; While visions, as poetic eyes avow, Cling to each leaf, and swarm on every bough. ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... and grey and scarlet. It was really rather a striking episode from the spectacular point of view; unfortunately, however, for its devisers, the secret of their intentions had not been well kept, and their opponents let loose at the same moment a rival swarm of parrots, which screeched 'I don't think' and other hostile cries, thereby robbing the demonstration of the unanimity which alone could have made it politically impressive. In the process of recapture the birds learned a quantity of additional language which unfitted ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... Adelaide Fouque, whom her grandchildren, a whole swarm of descendants, called by the pet name of Aunt Dide, did not even turn her head at the noise. In her youth hysterical troubles had unbalanced her mind. Of an ardent and passionate nature and subject to nervous attacks, she had yet reached the great ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... distant group with the utmost care. Apaches beyond doubt, a dozen, and coming this way, and these, too, have a couple of horses. Can they have overpowered his men, ambushed and murdered them, then secured their mounts? Is the whole Chiricahua tribe, reinforced by a swarm from the Sierra Blanca, concentrating on him now? The silence about him is ominous. Not an Indian has shown along the range for half an hour, and now these fellows to the east are close to the copse. In less than twenty minutes ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... not noticed the Milky Way, the pale belt that traverses the entire firmament and is so luminous on clear evenings in the Constellations of the Swan and the Lyre? It is indeed a swarm of stars. Each is individually too small to excite our retina, but as a whole, curiously enough, they are perfectly visible. With opera-glasses we divine the starry constitution: a small telescope shows us marvels. Eighteen millions of ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... caged linnet sooth'd my pensive thought; Those muskets, cas'd with venerable rust; Those once-lov'd forms, still breathing thro' their dust, Still from the frame, in mould gigantic cast, Starting to life—all whisper of the past! As thro' the garden's desert paths I rove, What fond illusions swarm in every grove! How oft, when purple evening ting'd the west, We watch'd the emmet to her grainy nest; Welcom'd the wild-bee home on weary wing, Laden with sweets, the choicest of the spring! How oft inscrib'd, with 'Friendship's votive ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... of bees in May Is worth a load of hay, A swarm of bees in June Is worth a silver spoon. A swarm of bees in July Is not worth ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... characteristics of harmony, simplicity, individuality. It is easy to see how admirably this style of dress is adapted to furnish over ready models and inspiration for the sculptor.[*] Unconventional in its arrangement, it is also unconventional in its color. A masculine crowd is not one unmitigated swarm of black and dark grays or browns, as with the multitude of a later age. On the contrary, white is counted as theoretically the most becoming color on any common occasion for either sex;[] and on festival days even grave and elderly men will appear with chitons ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... of creeping things are eatable, and are used by the Chinese. Locusts and grasshoppers are not at all bad. To prepare them, pull off the legs and wings and roast them with a little grease in an iron dish, like coffee. Even the gnats that swarm on the Shire River are collected by the natives and ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... protected by all, old and young. He said that the swallows had all disappeared in a body, about a week previous to my visit, adding, "You don't know what a lovely spectacle it is to witness the evolutions of these birds on a summer evening, when they are teaching their young ones to fly. They swarm around the building like bees, and their music is most ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... rough rock-throne Of Freedom! warriors beating back the swarm Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years, Great Crnagora! never since thine own Black ridges drew the cloud and broke the storm Has breathed a race ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... match-making, gone fatally wrong. A hopeless separation had arisen, the angel seemed inaccessible and the beast sought his own wild paths. My thoughts would suffer no desecration of Emmy's sacredness. But the fatherly lesson had startled up in me a seething swarm of thoughts as difficult to direct or drive away as a roomful of flies. I could scarcely keep them off the one white lily in my chamber, what wonder then that the stinking carrion brought from the nocturnal London ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... the last house but one, the house with the broken shutter. They went, carrying their stretchers and the haversack of dressings, under the slanted lintel into the room. The air in there was hot and stifling and thickened with a grey powdery swarm. Their feet sank through a layer of pinkish, ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... as if the blasts of the three tearing exhausts had been the signal it was awaiting, the strike storm broke with the suddenness and fury of a tropical hurricane. From a hundred hiding-places in the car-strewn yard, men came running, some to swarm thickly upon the moving engines and cabooses, others swinging by the drawheads to cut the ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... As a substitute, therefore, for venison and buffalo meat, the travellers had to purchase a number of dogs to be shot and cooked for the supply of the camp. Fortunately, however chary the Indians might be of their horses, they were liberal of their dogs. In fact, these animals swarm about an Indian village as they do about a Turkish town. Not a family but has two or three dozen belonging to it of all sizes and colors; some, of a superior breed, are used for hunting; others, to draw the sledge, while others, of a mongrel breed, and idle ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... since the favourable reception which two or three authors have lately procured for their works of this nature from the public, will probably serve as an encouragement to many others to undertake the like. Thus a swarm of foolish novels and monstrous romances will be produced, either to the great impoverishing of booksellers, or to the great loss of time and depravation of morals in the reader; nay, often to the spreading of scandal and calumny, and to the prejudice ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... "No, no; a place of pleasure. Sometimes when the flies are very bad and the cows are brought into the yard to be milked and a fresh swarm settles on them, they are nearly frantic; and though they are the best cows in New Hampshire, they will kick a little. When they do, those that are the worst are brought in here to be milked where there are no flies. The others have big strips of cotton laid over their backs and tied under them, ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... been cut for some larger soldier. Beside them walked officers, looking foolish and fierce, and before them went little boys, turning somersaults in time with the band. The tramcar became entangled in their ranks, and moved on painfully, like a caterpillar in a swarm of ants. One of the little boys fell down, and some white bullocks came out of an archway. Indeed, if it had not been for the good advice of an old man who was selling button-hooks, the road ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... recovered from his remarkable experience. The terrible plant that had nearly eaten him alive was a mass of cut-up vegetable matter which attracted a swarm of insects. Most of them were ants, but such large ones the boys had never seen before, and the professor said they exceeded in size anything he had read about. Some of them were as large as big rats. They bit off large pieces of the fallen plant ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... the honey-bees swarm by with buzz and boom, And in the field and garden a thousand blossoms bloom. Within the farmer's meadow a brown-eyed daisy blows, And down at the edge of the hollow a red and thorny rose. But Polly!—Polly!—The cows are in ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... from the ship, the spheres attacked. He seared off their tentacles throughout what seemed to be eternities. His body was becoming a mass of bruises from the lash of their tentacles. He burned his way through the swarm on to ship ...
— The Beast of Space • F.E. Hardart
... of necessity we are so much limited, we willingly pass from the consideration of these treasure or khasne phantoms (which alone sufficiently ensure a swarm of ghostly terrors for all Oriental ruins of cities,) to the same marvellous apparitions, as they haunt other solitudes even more awful than those of ruined cities. In this world there are two mighty forms of perfect solitude—the ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... stood in the chilling fog and felt the warmth of your lovely voice at my heart. The emotions I felt my poor tongue cannot translate. They swarm in my head like a hive of puzzled bees; but perhaps they look through my eyes," and he fixed his powerful and penetrating gaze on ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... lay wide open, and was between thirty and forty yards off from the ground. The two children, coming hither and finding this passage, one, out of his childish simplicity, was for jumping down: No, (saies the other) let us rather swarm down, there being a bell rope then hanging down through that place to the clockhouse below. Now, this last they did, and a gentleman walking there beneath at that time, sees two children come with that swiftness down the rope, like arrows from a bow, who were both ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... manners a gentleman, with erect and handsome figure, but morose demeanour. One step from the outside brought us into the family living-room, the recesses of which were haunted by a huge liver-coloured bitch pointer, with a swarm of squealing puppies, and other dogs. As the bitch sneaked wolfishly to the back of my legs I attempted to caress her, an action that ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... from without some bread or a hunk of ham or a pie. Lots of chickens get lost, too, an' you find them wanderin' about in the woods, belongin' to nobody, an' there's plenty of nests that hens lay astray that the farmers never could find. If you watch the bees closely, there's nearly always some swarm that's got away an' made a nest in a dead tree. The trouble is that most people are too busy to lie still all day an' watch, an' those ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... quickly devised a promising plan within the depths of his astute brain. It was the Christmas season, and the inhabitants were engaged in the celebration of the Christmas festival, though, doubtless, sorely troubled in mind by that swarm of strange-shaped vessels in their harbor, with their stalwart crews ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... that circumstances would permit. He likewise found it necessary to cause a large pond to be dug, in which were formed three islands, artificially constructed in the likeness of a fort, a ship, and a mount, for the exhibition of fireworks and other splendid pageantries. The water was made to swarm with swimming and wading sea-gods, who blew trumpets instead of shells, and recited verses in praise of her majesty: finally, a tremendous battle was enacted between the Tritons of the pond and certain sylvan deities of the park, which was long and valiantly disputed, with ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... the growth of the republic! Now Pigback has grown so that the name has been changed to Hogback, and the President avails himself of every funeral that he can possibly feel an interest in, to leave the swarm of jobless applicants who come to pester ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... watched his flight just as far as I could see him. Going over to that point, I repeated the experiment. After doing it for about six times I saw my loaded bee rise, and make for this tree. Then, as it was a warm noon, I discovered a swarm of young bees trying their wings away up in the air, and I knew I had located the tree hive. It is an easy job, once you ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler
... could not see it; and the moment he did feel it, he caught hold of it. Starting up, he swung it about for joy, and made the little silver bell of it tingle, then set it upon his head, and—O wonderful to relate!—that instant he saw the countless and merry swarm of ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... eating his mare-steak by the star-and-fire light, "that fellow might be one of the many robbers who are said to infest the plains; and although we could no doubt have protected ourselves from him, he might have brought a swarm of ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... Central Asia. They penetrated Europe in successive hordes, who were ancestors of our Celts, Hellenes, Slavs, Teutons and Scandinavians. Sanskrit was the Aryans' mother-tongue, and it forms the basis of nearly every European language. A later swarm turned the western flank of the Himalayas, and descended on Upper India. Their rigid discipline, resulting from vigorous group-selection, gave the invaders an easy victory over the negroid hunters and fishermen who peopled India. All races ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... it, for months past, by Maggie's view, a resource and a relief to talk, with an approach to intensity, when they met, of all the people they weren't really thinking of and didn't really care about, the people with whom their existence had begun almost to swarm; and they closed in at present round the spectres of their past, as they permitted themselves to describe the three ladies, with a better imitation of enjoying their theme than they had been able to achieve, certainly, during the stay, for instance, of the Castledeans. The Castledeans ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... and as the wealth of America increases every day, so will those who possess it swarm off as fast as they can to other countries, if there is not a change in the present society, and a return to something like order and rank. Who would remain in a country where there is no freedom of thought or action, and where you cannot even spend ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... bearded Spaniard, on horseback, passed them at a smooth shuffling little trot, and gave them a sonorous buenas dias, The road mounted rapidly. Once when Keith had reined in to breathe the horse, they heard the droning crescendo hum of a new swarm of bees ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... half an hour perhaps, the steadiness of the air gave assurance that the plane was past the range of the Serra da Carioca and was headed inland. He drove on, watching his instruments and flying blind, but with a gathering confidence in an ultimate escape from the swarm of aircraft Ribiera had sent aloft in the teeth of the storm to hunt for him. The motors hummed outside the padded cabin. The girl beside him was very quiet and very still ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... time, two such lovers were a heavy burthen on Valerie. On the day when this drama reopens, Valerie, spurred by one of those incidents which have the effect in life that the ringing of a bell has in inducing a swarm of bees to settle, went up to Lisbeth's rooms to give vent to one of those comforting lamentations—a sort of cigarette blown off from the tongue—by which women alleviate the minor miseries ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... not so very far away now," Jack said, "and we ought to swarm down there and take him back with us. We ought to take the big lobster Jimmie seems to have on his mind back ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... of educated young ladies. Art galleries have sprung up everywhere, and art stores are popular resorts in our larger cities. Art societies thrive and flourish in many States, and art teachers are in demand in most of our towns. Colonies of artists swarm in stately buildings in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. The time has come when no artist of merit need starve for ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... Spain. A new and tremendous army of these had come over from Africa to reenforce their brethren, who shared the peninsula with the Spaniards. The Pope's preaching sent sixty thousand crusaders to help the Spaniards against this swarm of invaders, and the Saracens were completely defeated. The battle of Navas de Tolosa, in 1212, settled that Spain was to be ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... the ancient Red Tower, I thought, we might at least be safe enough till my good fellows of Plassenburg, with the Prince at their head, should swarm hammering ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Rebecca; and they press the besieged hard upon the outer wall; some plant ladders, some swarm like bees, and endeavor to ascend upon the shoulders of each other; down go stones, beams, and trunks of trees upon their heads, and as fast as they bear the wounded to the rear, fresh men supply their places in the assault. Great God! hast Thou ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... the barracks of the Chasseurs of the Guards, and the line of cafes all filled with uniforms. I caught a glimpse as I went by of the blue and gold of some of my comrades, amid the swarm of dark infantry coats and the light green of the Guides. There they sat, sipping their wine and smoking their cigars, little dreaming what their comrade had on hand. One of them, the chief of my squadron, caught sight of me in the lamplight, and came shouting after me into the street. I hurried ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... gone! I might have known it by the whispering, shuffling, coughing, buzzing through all the notes of the gamut. It was a true swarm of bees, leaving the old hive. Gottlieb has lighted fresh candles for me, and placed a bottle of Burgundy on the piano-forte. I can play no more, I am perfectly exhausted. My glorious old friend here on the music-stand is to blame for that. Again he has borne me away through the air, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... send out a swarm of 100,000 idle paupers[17] who, for two generations, had been fed at the public charge from the corn-bins of Rome, simply in order that a like number of honest peasants, who had been not only self-supporting but had paid a ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson
... offers the most curious instance of this; for here neither cattle, nor horses, nor dogs, have ever run wild, though they swarm southward and northward in a feral state; and Azara and Rengger have shown that this is caused by the greater number in Paraguay of a certain fly, which lays its eggs in the navels of these animals when first born. The increase of these flies, numerous as ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... this up to the cottage we had now procured, down in West Grove, N.J., where we had gone finally to escape the city, and the swarm of reporters that seemed never to cease pursuing us ... for, when we found out that they did not want propaganda, we sought to ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... the congregation, to which the human mind is everlastingly prone, caused discontent: Individuals began to sting each other, which in 1745, produced a swarm. ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... broom. Snakes rustled as I passed, and hid themselves among the stones. The cobbler had forgotten to include these with the dangers to be encountered. To my mind they were much more to be dreaded than the boars, for these stony solitudes swarm with adders, of which the most venomous kind is the red viper, or aspic. Its bite ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... Greek rule of Attalus I. (241 B.C.). It was famed for its wealth and its trade. Eumenes II. (197-159 B.C.) founded the library at Pergamon. For him parchment was improved, if not invented, the Egyptians having forbidden the exportation of papyrus. Galatia was so named from the swarm of Gallic invaders (about 279 B.C.), who, after incursions in the East, which were continued for forty years, settled there, and by degrees yielded to the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... inclined; many were holiday seekers out for the day. The gates of Novy Afon are open to all, even to the Mahometan or the Pagan. It was a beautiful cloudless morning when I arrived at this most wonderful monastery in the Russian world—a cluster of white churches on a hill, a swarm of factories and workshops, cedar avenues, orchards, vineyards, and, above all, tree-covered mountains crowned by grey towers and ancient ruins, the whole looking out on the ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... fertility of the soil. In mountainous districts, the quantity of land which can be used (and with what labor!) is wont to be relatively smaller than in low lands. Hence it is, that the former become too small for their inhabitants; who, therefore, swarm over the plains lying before them either as settlers or conquerors.(216) In the eastern hemisphere, the northern slopes of mountain regions are most unfavorably situated, although the southern slopes are frequently subjected to more trying and more sudden variations of thawing ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... with as little emotion as upon the handle of a vase, or any other form worked out of serpents, where there is no probability of serpents actually occurring. But there is a probability in Tintoret's conception. We feel that it is not impossible that there should come up a swarm of these small winged reptiles: and their horror is not diminished by their smallness: not that they have any of the grotesque terribleness of German invention; they might have been made infinitely uglier with small pains, but it is their veritableness ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... present glorious and resplendent should be eclipsed and obscured; nothing at this time being more splendid than the sovereignty of Dionysius, their arrival in Sicily should dim this glory, and extinguish this brightness. Thus Miltas, in public, descanted upon the incident. But concerning a swarm of bees which settled on the poop of Dion's ship, he privately told him and his friends, that he feared the great actions they were like to perform, though for a time they should thrive and flourish, would be of short continuance, and soon suffer a decay. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... must help them find his Majesty or they will swarm here like bees. Yet I must see my Nell again to-night. You have bewitched me, wench. Sup with me within the hour—at—Ye Blue Boar Inn. Can ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... swarm of colors, noise and screaming, Music and sights, past any dreaming, The rattle of wheels going late and early,— All draw the looker-on into the hurly-burly." ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... scoff, nor do what these poor-devil-poets do, but use words of good omen, for a great swarm of goddesses is in ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... lurching as he ran, he came to the edge of the bluff, and dived, almost without a splash, into the deep, fresh water. The cold of it stung his overheated, bleeding body like a swarm of wild bees, and it is possible that when he reached the Canoe Beach the water in his eyes was not all fresh. Here, however, smiling chiefs and warriors surrounded the stoic, and welcomed him to their number with kind words ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... had any candy. Nobody knew how to make it. But he knew where to find the wild honey. He had found some one day in a hollow tree. He learned to track a bee home to its tree. When he found a bee-tree he robbed the swarm. Sometimes the bees stung him, but he was used to ...
— The Tree-Dwellers • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... have already quoted, warns its readers not to overlook "the puzzling bees" at the back of Ferdinand's statue. "Try to count them," it adds. (I accepted the challenge and found one hundred and one.) The bees have reference to Ferdinand's emblem—a swarm of these insects, with the words "Majestate tantum". The statue, by the way, is interesting for two other reasons than its subject. First, it is that to which Browning's poem, "The Statue and the Bust," refers, and which, according to the poet, was set here at Ferdinand's command to gaze ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... the carcase of the hear, they became aware of a curious humming sound in the air. The cause was soon apparent and the mystery that had puzzled them was solved when they reached the beast. The carcase was covered with bees while close above it hummed a swarm of others watching for an exposed place to plant ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... walls of the Hotel Dieu, and farther off the tall tower of the newly-restored Cathedral, the belfry of the Recollets, and the roofs of the ancient College of the Jesuits. An avenue of old oaks and maples shaded the walk, and in the branches of the trees a swarm of birds fluttered and sang, as if in rivalry with the gay French talk and laughter of the group of officers, who waited the return of the Governor from the bastion where he stood, showing the glories of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... winter through, travel almost ceased on it except for those who could not avoid it, and whom desire or gain or urgence of business drove forth across stormy and perilous waters; with spring there came, year by year, a sort of breaking-up of the frost, and the seas were all at once covered with a swarm of shipping. From Egypt and Syria fleets bore the produce of the East westward; from the pillars of Hercules galleys came laden with the precious ores of Spain and Britain; through the Propontis streamed the long convoys of corn-ships ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... likely to attempt running through the passage without waiting for our convoy," observed the first lieutenant to Norman Foley. "Besides the French, the Bahamas still swarm with picarooning rascals, who are ever on the look-out for merchant craft, and would not scruple to lay aboard any they ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... when our blind guides tell us to follow the example of the English in their manners, and sexual conduct. Could I allow myself to particularise the conduct of the fair sex, who crowd on board every recently arrived ship, and who swarm on the shores, my readers would confess that few scenes of the kind could exceed it. The freedom of the American press will give to posterity a just picture of British morals, in the reigns of George ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... the prosaic outer world by the vast and towering masses of Skiddaw and Blencathara—a world of one's own, as it were, a world steeped in romance and poetry, dear to the souls of poets. There are many such honeymoons every summer; indeed, the mountain paths, the waterfalls and lakes swarm with happy lovers; and this land of hills and waters seems to have been made expressly for honeymoon travellers; yet never went truer lovers wandering by lake and torrent, by hill and valley, than those two whose brief honeymoon was now drawing to ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... sits on the gray stone Fast by the cave, and makes her moan, While vainly Allan's words of cheer Are poured on her unheeding ear. 'He will return—dear lady, trust!— With joy return;—he will—he must. Well was it time to seek afar Some refuge from impending war, When e'en Clan-Alpine's rugged swarm Are cowed by the approaching storm. I saw their boats with many a light, Floating the livelong yesternight, Shifting like flashes darted forth By the red streamers of the north; I marked at morn how close they ride, Thick moored by the ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... see their bodies in such ugly case. O feeble hand and idle art Which, though it could the outward limbs deface, Yet had no force to change the heart. For all the force of men given by God's arm Lies hidden in their inmost part. The poisons therefore which within them swarm More deeply pierce, and with more might, For to the body though they do no harm, Yet on the soul they ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... trail, and the little knot of men with the officers stood halted on the bank. There were nine—the two Indian police, the two lieutenants, and five long muscular boys of K troop of the First Cavalry. They remained on the bank, looking at the thick painted swarm that ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... horrible plague, the only wonder was the possibility of wild animals resisting the attack. The long tails of the giraffes are admirable fly-whippers, but they would be of little service against such a determined and blood-thirsty enemy as the seroot. They were now like a swarm of bees, and we immediately made war upon the scourge, by lighting several fires within a few feet to windward of the giraffe; when the sticks blazed briskly, we piled green grass upon the tops, and quickly produced a smoke that ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... were all lighted. The blinds were not yet drawn in the windows of the room where she nearly always caught glimpses of members of the Large Family. Frequently at this hour she could see the gentleman she called Mr. Montmorency sitting in a big chair, with a small swarm round him, talking, laughing, perching on the arms of his seat or on his knees or leaning against them. This evening the swarm was about him, but he was not seated. On the contrary, there was a good deal of excitement going on. It was evident that a journey was to be ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... he find, with his apostles, That the land is full of fossils, That the waters swarm with fishes Shaped according to his wishes, That every pool is fertile In fancy kinds of turtle, New birds around him singing, New insects, never stinging, With a million novel data About the articulata, And facts that strip off all husks From ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... three, and hope he will soon give a good account of them, as they are the most useful men in the whole settlement, and, in fact, indispensable to its existence. The river Mudiboo is deep and rapid, and said to swarm with alligators, though I have heard but of three being seen at one time, and none of those above eighteen feet long: this, however, is immaterial, as we do not use the river fluid, which is thick and dirty, but draw all our water from natural wells and tanks. Poisonous springs are rather common, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... "reckoned Jack would rather lose a dollar than walk a mile to fetch it," he had answered blandly, and without embarrassment, that "a mile was a goodish stretch on a sandy road." So he sat and dozed beneath his sturdy oaks, while his wife went ragged at the heels and his swarm of tow-headed children rolled contentedly with the ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... of the thirteenth century Italy began to swarm with individuality; the charm laid upon human personality was dissolved, and a thousand figures meet us each in its own special shape and dress.... Despotism, as we have already seen, fostered in the highest degree the individuality, not only of the tyrant or Condottiere ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... he was beset with a swarm of beggars (promptly dispersed by the beadle), to Pere-Lachaise, poor Schmucke went as criminals went in old times from the Palais de Justice to the Place de Greve. It was his own funeral that he followed, clinging to Topinard's hand, to the one living creature ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... province to another, traveling continually with the crude methods of transportation of that period, and busy night and day. Courts must be established. The compilation of the archives must be cared for. Records must be instituted to clear up the swarm of conflicts over land-titles. Scores of new duties arose, and scores of new ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... board by the ladder; Thorgils dragged the bridegroom out to the gunwale, and Cormac cut him down then and there. Then he dived into the sea with Steingerd and swam ashore; but when he was nearing the land a swarm of eels twisted round his hands and feet, so that he was dragged under. On which he ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown |
