"Bat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... aw ne'er wur so woven afore; My back's welly brocken, mi fingers are sore; Aw've been starin' an' rootin' amung this Shurat, Till aw'm very near getten as bloint as a bat. ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... brother, and he burst into a laugh, for the drollery of the comparison restored him to instant good humor. "If you cannot see the difference between that frumpish gown of yours, with its little bobtails and fringes, and those pretty dresses before us, I must say you are as blind as a bat, Mattie." ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... le' me alone!' gasped Ted, struggling and writhing with all his power; but the flailing went on, bat—bat—bat—with blows that might have disturbed an elephant. Ted's feelings became too strong for words; he started to howl, and the night re-echoed with the cries of the outraged bushranger. The rest ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... of the swamp a thousand strange, winged things were rising: yellowish, bat-like things with forked tails and fierce hooked beaks. And like some obscene miasma from that swamp, they rose and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... long time, lying side by side, they might have been asleep. Through the dim light on the white walls dipped and swerved the drunken shadow of a bat, who now whirled as a flake of blackness across the stars, now swooped and set the humbler flame reeling. The flutter of his leathern wings, and the plash of water in the dark, where a coolie still drenched the flags, marked the sleepy, soothing measures in a nocturne, broken at strangely regular ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... the tower foot, (Flotsam and jetsam from over the sea, Can the dead feel joy or pain?) And the owls in the ivy blink and hoot, And the sea-waves bubble around its root, Where kelp and tangle and sea-shells be, When the bat in the dark flies silently. (Hark to the wind and ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... she grat, till she wearied. At last she rase and gaed awa', she kedna whaur till. On she wandered till she came to a great hill o' glass, that she tried a' she could to climb, bat wasna able. Round the bottom o' the hill she gaed, sabbing and seeking a passage owre, till at last she came to a smith's house; and the smith promised, if she wad serve him seven years, he wad make her iron shoon, wherewi' she could climb owre the glassy hill. At seven years' end she got her iron ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... his dog by his empty bed, And the flute he used to play, And his favourite bat . . . but Dick he's dead, Somewhere in France, they say: Dick with his rapture of song and sun, Dick of the yellow hair, Dicky whose life had but ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... fine style, and almost instantly a mild voice from the crowd asked if he knew "Casey at the Bat." Not in the least distressed by this woeful commentary, Mr. Rushcroft cheerfully, obligingly tackled the tragic fizzle ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... Hundetone. The men of Northanton also came; and those of Eurowic and Bokingkeham, of Bed and Notinkeham, Lindesie and Nichole. There came also from the west all, who heard the summons; and very many were to be seen coming from Salebiere and Dorset, from Bat and from Somerset. Many came, too, from about Glocestre, and many from Wirecestre, from Wincestre, Hontesire, and Brichesire; and many more from other counties that we have not named, and cannot indeed recount. All who could bear arms, and had learnt the news of the Duke's arrival, came to defend ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... them, blown in thick gusts as the wind moved through the trees. Shrapnel now could be distinctly heard at no great distance, with its hiss, its snap of sound, and sometimes rifle-shots like the crack of a ball on a cricket bat broke through the thickets. They separated, spreading like beaters in a long line: "Soon," Trenchard told me, "I was quite alone. I could hear sometimes the breaking of a twig or a stumbling footfall but I might have been alone at the end of the world. It was obvious that the regimental sanitars ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... bat!" he said, coarsely and impatiently; and pulling out his pistol he fired thrice, and a low, melodious sound followed the reports of his weapon. When the smoke cleared away I saw that he had hit an old harpsichord which stood against a tree, facing ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... looked at each other for a full minute. "Charley," said the forester, "I've been as blind as a bat. I never liked Lumley, any more than you did, though I couldn't tell you that. But I trusted him because he had been in the department a good many years and was fairly efficient. He has betrayed my trust and attempted to rob the state by false ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... course that was beyond him; he was too old. It was beautiful to see Joan handle the foils, but the old man was a bad failure. He was afraid of the things, and skipped and dodged and scrambled around like a woman who has lost her mind on account of the arrival of a bat. He was of no good as an exhibition. But if La Hire had only come in, that would have been another matter. Those two fenced often; I saw them many times. True, Joan was easily his master, but it made a good show for all that, ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... immoderately dusty; and no wonder, for the organist had employed them to climb, sweep fashion, into the biggest organ-pipe to investigate the cause of a bronchial affection of long standing,—which turned out to be a dead bat caught in ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... into the net. Hi! Look out! If you hit it that way you'll knock it over the hotel. Let the ball drop nearer to the ground. Oh, heavens, not on the ground! Well, it's hard to do it from the serve, anyhow. I'll go over to the other court and bat ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... gourmand. "And, well, Heaven preserve him, of course—but Evgenie gets his money, don't you see? But, for all this, I'm uncomfortable, I don't know why. There's something in the air, I feel there's something nasty in the air, like a bat, and I'm by no ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... proposed three days of Christian fellowship and conference at the Galt Home are now over. Numbers were not large, the accommodation here being limited, bat several ministers, evangelists, and devoted brothers and sisters, who have true sympathy in the Master's work for the deaf children, waited on the Lord with us, and it has proved a time of great spiritual blessing, preparing ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... not quote the dreamers who watch the wheeling flight of Spallanzani's bat, and who think they have found a sixth sense in nature. Such as nature is, her mysteries are terrible enough, her powers mighty enough—that nature which creates us, mocks at us, and kills us—without our seeking to deepen the shadows that surround us. But where is the man ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... could have asked the question with the sun and the blue sky shut away from him. It only proved again what Monte had always maintained—that excesses of any kind, whether of rum or ambition or—or love—drove men stark mad. Blind as a bat from overwork, Noyes still ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... was saying, I jumped into Mounttop's boat, which, d'ye see, was gunwale and gunwale with mine, then; and snatching the first harpoon, let this old great-grandfather have it. But, Lord, look you, sir—hearts and souls alive, man—the next instant, in a jiff, I was blind as a bat—both eyes out—all befogged and bedeadened with black foam—the whale's tail looming straight up out of it, perpendicular in the air, like a marble steeple. No use sterning all, then; but as I was groping at midday, with a blinding sun, all crown-jewels; as I was groping, I say, after the second ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... grape-fashion, for a succession of food for bait. I have also caught scores, if not hundreds, on bird-lime, but this injures their plumage and is somewhat troublesome, especially to anyone not accustomed to handle it. I have also caught them in a bat fowling net at night out of thick hedges. I find a trap cage or cages best, for bullfinches generally go in small parties, and I have taken two out at once from two separate cages, while others waited round ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... half humorously. "Take us coming and going, about half of us never had the sure-enough railroad brand put onto us, nohow. But, Lord love you! this little pasear we're making down this hill ain't anything! That's the old 210 chasin' us with the passenger, and she couldn't catch Bat Williams and the '66 in a month o' Sundays if we didn't have that doggoned spavined leg under the tender. ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... on. "Cook them up for him. I can sympathize. I've seen the time myself when I could eat a dozen, straight off the bat." ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... Motioning to Miss Dale to remain where she was, he ran noiselessly to the bed, and from beneath the mattress lifted one of the iron bars upon which it rested. Grasping it at one end, he swung the bar swiftly as a man tests the weight of a baseball bat. As a weapon it seemed to satisfy him, for he smiled. Then once more he placed himself with his back to the wall. "Do you hear ...
— The Lost House • Richard Harding Davis
... eyrie, Thou hast a young dove in thy nest, Let us mate them. Though now they be but squabs, There will be but twice eight chills of the lake; And twice eight fails of the maple leaf; And twice eight bursts of the earth from frosts; The corn will ripen bat twice eight times, Tall, sweet corn; The rose will bloom but twice eight times, Beautiful rose! The vine will give but twice eight times Its rich black clusters, Sweet ripe clusters, Grapes of the land of the Ricaras, Ere thy squab ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... said the tall lawyer with a waive of his hand towards his rotund partner; "and I am Mr. Ball," he added, drawing himself into an attitude which caused him to look much more like a bat than a ball, and speaking in a surprisingly agreeable tone. Upon this there was bowing all ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... will be the only mode of working upon the feelings of men, and, therefore, the only mode suited for poetry. Shakspeare understood this well, as he understood everything that belonged to his art. Who does not sympathise with the rapture of Ariel, flying after sunset on the wings of the bat, or sucking in the cups of flowers with the bee? Who does not shudder at the caldron of Macbeth? Where is the philosopher who is not moved when he thinks of the strange connection between the infernal spirits ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that I was just tellin' ye av, but the rale, owld, black nagur av a rannychorus, widout a haporth o' rags to the back av him, an' his horns an' tail a-shtickin' out, an' his eyes as big as an oxen's an' shinin' like fire, an' great bat's wings on him, an', savin' yer prisince, the most nefairius shmell o' sulfur ye ever shmelt. But before, he looks all right, no matther phat face he has, an' it's only be the goodness o' God that the divil is bound fur to show ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... relying upon the present 'quantity of resemblance,' unless we understand this in a very particular way. For the most obvious features of an animal may have been recently acquired; which often happens with those characters that adapt an animal to its habits of life, as the wings of a bat, or the fish-like shape of a dolphin; or as in cases of 'mimicry.' Some butterflies, snakes, etc., have grown to resemble closely, in a superficial way, other butterflies and snakes, from which a stricter investigation widely separates them; and this superficial resemblance is probably a recent ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... box, she looked about her for something with which to break the glass. Spying a small boy strolling toward her, a baseball bat in his hand, she pounced upon him, seized the bat before he knew what had happened and smashed the glass with one blow. Giving the ring inside a vigorous pull, Grace shoved the bat into the hands of the astonished youngster and ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... fits—very rarely and at long intervals, you know. He may never have another." A few of the remaining onlookers backed away a little shamefacedly. Others offered condolences while inwardly scoffing at the "sun" explanation. Did not de Warrenne bowl, bat, or field, bare-headed, throughout the summer's day without thinking of the sun? Who had heard of the "fits" before? Why had they not transpired during the last dozen years or so? "Help me carry him indoors, somebody," said the miserable, horrified Lucille. ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... tossed and caught balls as children do now. They also had a game in which each side tried to secure the ball and throw it over the adversary's goal line. This game lasted on into the Middle Ages, and from it football has descended. The ancients seem never to have used a stick or bat in their ball-play. The Persians, however, began to play ball on horseback, using a long mallet for the purpose, and introduced their new sport throughout Asia. Under the Tibetan name of pulu ("ball") it found its way into Europe. When once the mallet ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... moths making such a noise on the second shelf. It is Tom, who calls out to us, from his room, to come, and help him catch a bat. ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... space officer answered. "It has a number, but we call it the ball-bat because it's shaped like a ball and goes like a bat. We were about to take off for some test runs around the space platform when we got a hurry call to come here. The Aquila has two of these. If they prove out, they'll replace the snapper-boats. More power, ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... lighted down on the pinnacle of the prison, whereupon, of his passing eagerness in the chase, he took a stone and threw it at the bird. Now the king's son was playing in the exercise-ground with the ball and the bat,[FN208] and the stone lit on his ear and cut it off, whereupon the Prince fell down in a fit. So they enquired who had thrown the stone and finding that it was Bihkard, took him and carried him before the king's son, who bade do him die. Accordingly, they cast the turband from ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Kvemo Svaneti, Samegrelo and Zemo Svaneti, Samtskhe-Javakheti, Shida Kartli cities: Chiat'ura, Gori, K'ut'aisi, P'ot'i, Rust'avi, T'bilisi, Tqibuli, Tsqaltubo, Zugdidi autonomous republics: Abkhazia or Ap'khazet'is Avtonomiuri Respublika (Sokhumi), Ajaria or Acharis Avtonomiuri Respublika (Bat'umi) note: the administrative centers of the 2 autonomous republics ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... I'm not a man who does much with the bat, but my bowling is rather out of the common. I have a natural leg-break which baffles fellows frightfully. Why, there was a question raised once about playing ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... for over a week at the Bat and Belfry Inn, as we all called it, and so, strange to say, did the duodenal couple, whom, indeed, we left there, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... consisting only of hogs, dogs, rats, and an anomalous bat which flies by day: There are few insects, except such as have been imported, and these, which consist of centipedes, scorpions, cockroaches, mosquitoes, and fleas, are happily confined to certain localities, and the two first have ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... came down Vere Street, and the cemented space between the pavements was given up to children. Several games of cricket were being played by wildly excited boys, using coats for wickets, an old tennis-ball or a bundle of rags tied together for a ball, and, generally, an old broomstick for bat. The wicket was so large and the bat so small that the man in was always getting bowled, when heated quarrels would arise, the batter absolutely refusing to go out and the bowler absolutely insisting on going in. ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... with great relief. "You are not just sure where they are. That's great! You can have a talk with Mr. Corbett, who is to design the costumes, and then hop right back home in a day or two, as soon as you are rested and we've had a little bat on Broadway, and find them for him to use in his designs. The management will pay all the expenses and ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... doghood, you would have experienced a vague sort of surprise had we told you—as we now repeat—that the dog Crusoe was once a pup—a soft, round, sprawling, squeaking pup, as fat as a tallow candle, and as blind as a bat. ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... your muscle into an oar or a cricket bat and you are a hero; put your muscle into a spade ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... neck; this made him thrust his head forward in a peering manner, like a beast of prey watching for a victim. His eyes were keen and restless. His hair was short-cut, and his ears projected from the sides of his head like those of a bat. Otherwise he was not a bad-looking man. His features were good, but his expression was unpleasant. The thin lip was curled contemptuously; and he had a trick of thrusting forth his sharp tongue to wet his lips before ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... authority were given unto them to put a half-sole and a new heel on any and all poetry that might look to them to be a little run over on one side. If they felt as I do about the lines that head this article they would have "Sunday" scratched out and "Sabbath" written in before you could bat an eye. The mere substitution of one word for another may seem a light matter to a man that has never composed anything more literary than an obituary for the Western Advocate of Sister Jane Malinda Sprague, who was born in Westmoreland ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... with her population of blue-jackets, marines, officers, captain, and the admiral who was not to return alive, passed like a phantom the meridian of the Bill. Sometimes her aspect was that of a large white bat, sometimes that of a grey one. In the course of time the watching girl saw that the ship had passed her nearest point; the breadth of her sails diminished by foreshortening, till she assumed the form of an egg on end. After this something seemed to twinkle, and Anne, who had previously ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... lingering sunset across the plain Kissed the rear-end door of an east-bound train, And shone on a passing track close by Where a ding-bat sat on ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... following this bat, looking at this manure of the birds, respiring this dust, in this obscurity among the cobwebs and scampering rats, we came to a dark corner in which, on a big wheelbarrow, I could just distinguish a long package tied with string and that looked like a piece ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... with wings not yet matured to the spreading of themselves to the winds of truth; those wings were a little maimed, and he had been tending them with precious balms, and odors, and ointments: all at once she had turned into a bat, a skin-winged creature that flies by night, and had disappeared in the darkness! Of all possible mockeries, for her to steal out at night to the embraces of a fool! a wretched, weak- headed, idle fellow, whom every clown called by his Christian name! an ass that did nothing ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... saying, that they did so, because they did not understand the meaning of the books they quoted. But it has been answered by some learned Christians, that Jesus and the apostles did not quote in the manner they did through caprice or ignorance bat according to certain methods of interpretation, which were in their times of ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... in the vicinity of the new Patent Building were alarmed by an outcry in the street, which proved to be that of a slave who had just been knocked down with a brick-bat by his pursuing master. Prostrate on the ground, with a large gash in his head, the poor slave was receiving the blows of his master on one side, and the kicks of his master's son on the other. His cries brought a few individuals ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... are limited to the rabbit, weasel, ferret, rat (brown and black), mouse and bat, in addition to domestic animals. The game includes the woodcock, red partridge (introduced in the 16th century), quail and snipe. Owing to the damage inflicted on the crops by the multitude of blackbirds, bullfinches, chaffinches and green canaries, a reward was formerly paid for the destruction ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... boy who mooned over girls in pictorial magazines had vanished, and 'Frisco Kid the sailor, strong and dominant, was on deck. He ran aft and tacked about as the jib rattled aloft in the hands of Joe, who quickly joined him. Just then the Reindeer, like a monstrous bat, passed to leeward of ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... are the conservatives. Some are to strike; they are those fond of polemics and battle. Some are to run; they are the candidates. There are four hunks—youth, manhood, old age and death. Some one takes the bat, lifts it and strikes for the prize and misses it, while the man who was behind catches it and goes in. This man takes his turn at the bat, sees the flying ball of success, takes good aim and strikes it high, amid the clapping ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... colour. And be the chaungynge of tho flawmes, men of that contree knowen, whanne it schalle be derthe or gode tyme, or cold or hoot, or moyst or drye, or in alle othere maneres, how the tyme schalle be governed. And from Itaille unto the Vulcanes nys bat 25 Myle. And men seyn, that the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... she seemed to have forgotten Alfred and Sinclair and her emotion. "Lillah runs a home for inebriate women in the Deptford Road," she continued. "She started it, managed it, did everything off her own bat, and it's now the biggest of its kind in England. You can't think what those women are like—and their homes. But she goes among them at all hours of the day and night. I've often been with her. . . . That's what's the matter with us. . . . We don't do things. ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... was governed by ghosts, and they spared no pains to change the eagle of the human intellect into a bat of darkness. To accomplish this infamous purpose, to drive the love of truth from the human heart; to prevent the advancement of mankind to shut out from the world every ray of intellectual light to pollute ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... passion and rapture of song, the last evening song of the birds, was being poured out on the still dewy air all round us. One by one the songsters grew tired and ceased as a pale star grew visible here and there in the transparent sky, and complete silence fell on the garden. Only a bat flitted across it silently now and then, and the white night-moths came and played by us. I had my arm round her waist and I drew her close to me and looked down upon her ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... we are favoured with the portrait of a young gentleman upon a half-holiday—and, equipped with cricket means, his dexter-hand grasps his favourite bat, whilst the left arm gracefully encircles a hat, in which is seductively shown a genuine "Duke." The sentiment of this picture is unparalleled, and to the young hero of any parish eleven is given a stern expression of Lord's Marylebone ground. We can already (aided by perspective and imagination) ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... cor. Spell "Calvinistic, Atticism, Gothicism, Epicurism, Jesuitism, Sabianism, Socinianism, Anglican, Anglicism, Anglicize, Vandalism, Gallicism, and Romanize."—Webster cor. "The large Ternate bat."—Id. and Bolles cor. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... 186-Had an awful time in school today. me and Cawcaw Harding set together. when we came in from resess Cawcaw reached over and hit me a bat, and i lent him one in the snoot, and he hit me back. we was jest fooling, but old Francis called Cawcaw up front to lick him. i thought if i went up and told him he wood say, noble boy go to your seat, i wont ...
— The Real Diary of a Real Boy • Henry A. Shute
... doubt, we all have troubles That arise from this and that, And we seldom make a home-run Though we're often at the bat; But the prince of all the fellows That performs the wildest breaks, Is the chap that brings the burdens Of the weather ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... absolutely dark; a bat fluttered against the broken glass of the window. He wondered if he was growing mad, for—he hesitated to acknowledge it to himself—he heard music; far, curious music, a strange and luxurious dance, very faint, very ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... polka-dots on the border and little white polka-dots in the middle. He turned toward the professor inquiringly, warned by the scrunching footsteps that some one approached. But he was blind as a bat—so he declared—without his glasses, so he finished polishing them and placed them again before his bleared, powder-burned eyes before ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... the Spanish sun in a black frock coat, tall silk bat, trousers in which narrow stripes of dark grey and lilac blend into a highly respectable color, and a black necktie tied into a bow over spotless linen. Probably therefore a man whose social position needs constant and scrupulous affirmation without regard to climate: one ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... in all structural peculiarities whatsoever, they differ utterly from the genuine cactus, and closely resemble all their spurge relations. Adaptive likenesses of this sort, due to mere stress of local conditions, have no more weight as indications of real relationship than the wings of the bat or the nippers of the seal, which don't make the one into a skylark, or the ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... was I borne, but with the rising of the sun I came to the rock of Scylla, and to dread Charybdis. Now she had sucked down her salt sea water, when I was swung up on high to the tall fig-tree whereto I clung like a bat, and could find no sure rest for my feet nor place to stand, for the roots spread far below and the branches hung aloft out of reach, long and large, and overshadowed Charybdis. Steadfast I clung till she should spew forth mast and keel again; and late ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... is rarely the case. The revolutionist runs a risk common to all who are in a hurry—he may break the object of his attention instead of moving it. When he wants to hand you a dish he hits it with a ball-bat. Taking a reasonable amount of time is better ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... the man go. There are more men lost in that way than passengers on ocean steamers ever learn of. I have stood looking over the rail on a dark night, when there was a step beside me, and something flew past my head like a big black bat—and then there was a splash! Stokers often go like that. They go mad with the heat, and they slip up on deck and are gone before anybody can stop them, often without being seen or heard. Now and then a passenger will do it, but he generally has what he thinks a pretty good reason. I have ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... somewhere—for he saw a dim glow-worm light beyond the cliff, on the dark rib of the mountain. It was invisible from below, but any roving eye from the top would be caught by it in an instant. In a second he had raced along the edge, dived in and out of the blocks, guiding his way by a sort of bat's instinct, till he reached the rocky stairway, which he descended at ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... kitty belongs. Dey all has dose collars. I guess she's one of Bat Jarvis's kitties. He's got twenty-t'ree of dem, and dey all ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... manner as though the decision rested largely with us, whether he "could see" the head of the firm. The lady who was his escort swept past him. "Oh, I am sure he will see him," she declared; "this" (with impressive awe) "is Mr. James." Had we said, No, right off the bat, so to say, like that, we believe (unchampioned) Mr. James would have ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... this be which triumphed over such a dislike? He walked to the table, bent down and saw a standing boy in flannels, bare-headed, with thick, disordered hair and bare arms, holding in his large hands a cricket bat. It was Jimmy, and his eyes looked straight ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... sight. Perhaps he was stunned by the blow and was lying beneath the gate. She could see no sign of him and her heart stood still with dread. She had been vaguely conscious of joyous shouts and cries from the field behind the house and had heard the rifle-crack of a baseball against the bat, telling that there was a game in progress. She was now made aware that the joyous shouts were growing into a noisy clamor of welcome. Above the din she could hear John's roar: "Charles Stuart on our side! I bar ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... as the contemplateur is, a dingy book-stall wakens him from his reverie. His lace ruffles are soiled in a moment with the learned dust of ancient volumes. Perhaps he picks up the only work out of all his library that is known to exist,—un ravissant petit Elzevir, 'De Imperio Magni Mogolis' (Lugd. Bat. 1651). On the title-page of this tiny volume, one of the minute series of 'Republics' which the Elzevirs published, the poet has written his rare signature, "J. B. P. Moliere," with the price the book cost him, "1 livre, 10 sols." "Il n'est pas de bouquin qui s'echappe de ses mains," says ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... which equips him to put his experience and knowledge into words, his background in racquet games is broad, longstanding and at a level sufficiently upper echelon to have garnered national championships in three separate bat ...
— Squash Tennis • Richard C. Squires
... bearing east, twelve leagues distant; but owing to calms and contrary winds, it was the 24th before we got moored in the road. We there found three ships belonging to Holland; one of which, bound for Bantam, was commanded by Peter Bat, general of thirteen sail outward-bound, but having spent his main-mast and lost company of his fleet, put in here to refresh his sick men. The other two were homeward-bound, having made train-oil of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... word. Two words rhyme if they end in the same sound. Understand?" Whether the child says he understands or not, we proceed to illustrate what a rhyme is, as follows: "Take the two words 'hat' and 'cat.' They sound alike and so they make a rhyme. 'Hat,' 'rat,' 'cat,' 'bat' all rhyme with ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... old bat-mole," said Marta, "I fink dat farm next ours purty good, but Rolf he say 'No Lake George no good.' Better he like all his folk move ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... proclaim. Bursts out, by frequent fits, the expansive flame; Snatched in tempestuous eddies, flies The surging smoke o'er all the darkened skies; The chearful face of heaven no more is seen; The bloom of morning fades to deadly pale; The bat flies transient o'er the dusky green, And Night's foul birds along the sullen ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... whirled aloft the heavy crutch. "If you hit at me again I'll let out what little brains you've got. God knows that's little enough!... Belllounds, I'm going to call you to your face—before this girl your bat-eyed old man means to give you. You're not drunk. You're only ugly—mean. You've got a chance now to lick me because I'm crippled. And you're going to make the most of it. Why, you cur, I could ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... Thou wilt be kinder to me than my lover, And so dispatch the messengers at once, Harry the lazy steeds of lingering day, And let the night, thy sister, come instead, And drape the world in mourning; let the owl, Who is thy minister, scream from his tower And wake the toad with hooting, and the bat, That is the slave of dim Persephone, Wheel through the sombre air on wandering wing! Tear up the shrieking mandrakes from the earth And bid them make us music, and tell the mole To dig deep down thy cold and narrow bed, For I shall lie ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... Sigognac replied calmly, "it did not touch me; and now, if I chose, I could pin you to the wall like a bat; but that would be repugnant to me, though you did waylay me to take my life, and besides, you have really amused me with ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... to each other. But let us ask the most ordinary observer, or the most profound observer, or the observer of any grade or shade between these two extremes, what resemblance—what relation—what analogy—can be discovered between an ordinary bull (Taurus) and a man, a monkey, or a bat (Primates); or between Taurus and the Incessores (Perching Birds)? Or between Buffaloes, whose horns are partially covered with skin (Dermaceros), and cocks and hens (Rasores)? Can any one say wherein consists the similarity between ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... by that race abhorred. No sooner had his knees the mountain touched Than through their realm vibration went; and straight His prayer detecting back they trooped in clouds And o'er him closed, blotting with bat-like wing And inky pall, the moon. Then thunder pealed Once more, nor ceased from pealing. Over all Night ruled, except when blue and forked flash Revealed the on-circling waterspout or plunge Of rain beneath the blown cloud's ravelled hem, Or, huge on high, that lion-coloured ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... right off the bat," said Eddie Rickenbacker, the ace of American aces, the day following the signing of the armistice. "But I can say I feel ninety-nine per cent better. There is a chance of living now and the gang is glad." Rickenbacker became a captain during the last phase of the war and ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, when there was not a breath of wind, and the fog hung heavily over the brown, ploughed furrows, we gathered sticks, lighted a fire, and roasted potatoes. They were sweet as peaches. After dark we would "go a bat-fowling", with lanterns, some of us on one side of the hedge and some on the other. I left school when I was between fourteen and fifteen, and then came the great event and the great blunder of my life, the mistake which ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... two cornered men, then came a flash, a sharp report, a piercing scream as the lithe Mexican girl sprang forth from behind the blanket and hurled herself on Blake, a panther-like leap of the accused man under cover of the flash and smoke, a thwack like the sound of the bat when it meets a new baseball full in the middle, and Loring's fist had landed full on Higgins' jowl and sent him like ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... afternoon siesta. There was not a bit of shade anywhere, and the heat seemed to burn through the roof until the very floor was hot to walk upon. His thoughts went back to Purvis in his tweed clothes and the bowler bat with the pugaree on it, and he wondered how he fared in the scorching heat. Probably the anaemic little man hardly knew what it was to be too hot. He used to ride over the camp when even the peons did not show their heads out of doors, and his hands were always cold and damp to the ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... bat had struck a ball to the extreme boundary of the field. The fielder at that point didn't go so fast as Jim, who was pitcher, thought satisfactory, and he called out in a ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... Cheropho, a dark, dirty, weazened, and awfully serious little man of the tribe of Buttinsky, who sat breathlessly trying to catch the pearls that fell from the ample mouth of the philosopher. Aristophanes referred to Cheropho as "Socrates' bat," a play-off on Minerva and her bird of night, the owl. There were quite a number of these "bats," and they seemed to labor under the same hallucination that catches the lady students of the Pundit Vivakenanda H. Darmapala: they think that wisdom ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... different from other folk. And just because other birds sat crosswise on a perch, Mr. Nighthawk had to sit in exactly the opposite fashion. No doubt if he could have, he would have hung underneath the limb by his heels, like Benjamin Bat. Only he would have wanted to hang by his nose instead of his heels, in order ...
— The Tale of Chirpy Cricket • Arthur Scott Bailey
... and arrows to conserve my ammunition-supply, but so quick was the little animal that I had no time to draw and fit a shaft. In fact my dinner was a hundred yards away and going like the proverbial bat when I dropped my six-shooter on it. It was a pretty shot and when coupled with a good dinner made ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Henley answered, grimly. "I cursed man and God. That gal was my life. I was as blind as a bat in daytime." ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... As his bat swished half lazily through the air, Durville "ducked" suddenly, for the upbounding ball had gone so close to his ear as to seem bent on removing some of ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... Fenn passed from Congress Street and walked with a steady purpose manifest in his clicking heels. It was not a night's bat that guided his feet, no festive orgy, but the hard, firm footfall of a man who has been drunk a long time—terribly mean drunk. And terribly mean drunk he was. His eyes were blazing, and he mumbled as he walked. Down Market Street he turned and strode to the corner where ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... hush'd, save where the weak-eyed bat With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing; 10 Or where the beetle winds His small but ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... a secret passage deep, Under roofs of spidery stairs, Where the bat-winged nightmares creep, And a sheeted phantom glares Rushed we; ah, how strange it was Where no human watcher stood; Till we reached a gate of glass Opening on a ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... trees To play above me in the breeze, And smell the thorny eglantine; For there the white owls all night long In the scented gloom divine Hear the wild, strange, tuneless song Of faerie voices, thin and high As the bat's unearthly cry, And the measure of their shoon Dancing, dancing, under the moon, Until, amid the pale of dawn The wandering stars begin to swoon. . . . Ah, leave ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... Dick retorted. "But we want to play with care, even more than with speed. The scrub nine will go to bat." ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... forth, and, above all, the moon shining down upon the silent prairie. The moon was quite faint, so that only an indistinct view of objects could be seen. Occasionally Johnny clambered up the bank and took a survey of the surrounding plains; bat seeing nothing at all suspicious, he soon grew weary of this, and confined his walks to the immediate vicinity of the camp-fire, passing back and forth between the ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... love, as do men of lofty ideals and no sense of the practical, goes off with her to a lonely island, there to fight for her possession and his own life. The stage-setting is magnificent; even a volcano lights the scene. But the clear, hard-blue sky is quite o'erspread by the black bat Melancholia, and the silence is indeed "dazzling." The villains are melodramatic enough in their behaviour, but, as portraits, they are artfully different from the conventional bad men of fiction. The thin chap, Mr. ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... same thing, on a small scale, as saying to a criminal, "It's five in the morning, the ceremony will be performed at half-past seven"? Such sleep is troubled by an idea dressed in grey and furnished with wings, which comes and flaps, like a bat, upon the ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... a stone beside, a poisonous eft 25 Peeps idly into those Gorgonian eyes; Whilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft Of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise Out of the cave this hideous light had cleft, And he comes hastening like a moth that hies 30 After a taper; and the midnight sky Flares, a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... indeed more like female inquisitors, ogres, or Witches of Endor than human beings. I never saw human nature made so uninviting, and I could fancy the terror inspired by these awful figures, with their bat-like flaps, in the tender minds of the little children entrusted to their care. It was edifying to hear these holy women discourse upon the Paris Exhibition, which it is hardly necessary to say the clerical party ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... known some unfeeling husbands, who have treated their luckless wives with unvaried and unremitting unkindness, till perhaps the arrival of their last illness, and who then became all assiduity and attention. Bat when that period approaches, their remorse, like the remorse of a murderer, is felt too late; the die is cast; and kindness or unkindness can be of little consequence to the poor victim, who only waits to have her eyes closed in the ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... him crazy. The girl is constantly annoyed by men that try to sidle up to her. I've been half expecting the old man would bat that big Italian who's always talking New York politics—shoot him with whatever he has always with him in that queer, oval case, and throw him to ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... if the Indian don't find a hidin' place where the sunlight penetrates once in awhile. I begin to feel a good deal like a bat already, an' have a big mind to slip out ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... bent on trapping these wary creatures, had listened in the stillness of the solitudes to the battering of those wonderful tails upon the mud walls of their dams and forts, and had named the little river after its most marked characteristic, the constant "chug, chug" of those cricket-bat caudals. ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... much, That once in his ninth year he had an alarming dream;—as indeed we are all somewhat given to dreaming here. Little Samson, lying uneasily in his crib at Tottington, dreamed that he saw the Arch Enemy in person, just alighted in front of some grand building, with outspread bat-wings, and stretching forth detestable clawed hands to grip him, little Samson, and fly-off with him: whereupon the little dreamer shrieked desperate to St. Edmund for help, shrieked and again shrieked; and St. Edmund, a reverend ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... warnings of the dangers of the place, Irving had his bed set up in the chamber beside this little garden. The first night was full of frightful terrors. The garden was dark and sinister. "There was a slight rustling noise overhead; a bat suddenly emerged from a broken panel of the ceiling, flitting about the room and athwart my solitary lamp; and as the fateful bird almost flouted my face with his noiseless wing, the grotesque faces carved in high relief in the cedar ceiling, whence he had emerged, seemed to ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody |
