"Downy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... understood that these eyes belonged to a face, and that face the fairest that ever looked on a summer day. First, as my gaze dropped before that vision of radiant beauty, it saw only an exquisite figure draped in a dress of some white and filmy stuff, and swathed around the shoulders with a downy shawl, white also, across which fell one ravishing lock of waving brown, shining golden in the kiss of the now drooping sun. Then the gaze fell lower, lighted upon a little foot thrust slightly forward for steadiness on the bank's verge, ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... midges for the young brood? No, he does nothing; perhaps alleging the excuse of his relative weakness. But this is a poor excuse; for to cut out little circles from a leaf, to rake a little cotton from a downy plant, or to gather a little mortar from a muddy spot, would hardly be a task beyond his powers. He might very well collaborate, at least as labourer; he could at least gather together the materials for the more ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... purpose; for it would behold the morning radiance of its own spirit beaming over the very same spots of withered grass and barren sand whence most of us had seen it vanish. We had very young people with us, it is true,—downy lads, rosy girls in their first teens, and children of all heights above one's knee; but these had chiefly been sent hither for education, which it was one of the objects and methods of our institution to ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... mamma, taking the little yellow, downy ball from her daughter's hand, "a darling little goslin; but it is crying 'peep, peep,' because it wants to be back with its mother. Where are ...
— Berties Home - or, the Way to be Happy • Madeline Leslie
... a perfect contrast to his interrogator, who had just designated him by the name of Aramis. He was a stout man, of about two- or three-and-twenty, with an open, ingenuous countenance, a black, mild eye, and cheeks rosy and downy as an autumn peach. His delicate mustache marked a perfectly straight line upon his upper lip; he appeared to dread to lower his hands lest their veins should swell, and he pinched the tips of his ears from time to time to preserve their ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... came, Eelan was happier still. All the roughness and darkness of the earth was lost in a downy ocean of snow. Where the waterfall had been there was a fairy palace of icicles glancing in the sun, and smooth white roads were made across the frozen lake. Eelan never drew back dazzled from the glittering landscape; she was a child of the winter, and she loved its light. ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... as easily seen in categorical judgment as we can discern flies in a milkpot, the world's four oxen had not been so eaten up with rats, nor had so many ears upon the earth been nibbled away so scurvily. For although all that my adversary hath spoken be of a very soft and downy truth, in so much as concerns the letter and history of the factum, yet nevertheless the crafty slights, cunning subtleties, sly cozenages, and little troubling entanglements are hid under the rosepot, the common cloak and cover of ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... figures. But as soon as you have drawn trees carefully a little while, you will be impressed, and impressed more strongly the better you draw them, with the idea of their softness of surface. A distant tree is not a flat and even piece of color, but a more or less globular mass of a downy or bloomy texture, partly passing into a misty vagueness. I find, practically, this lovely softness of far-away trees the most difficult of all characters to reach, because it cannot be got by mere scratching or roughening the surface, but is always associated with such delicate expressions of ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... are all deserted now, but do not be too sure of the woodpeckers' holes. The little downy and his larger cousin, the hairy woodpecker, often spend the winter nights snug within deep cavities which they have hollowed out, each bird for itself. I have never known a pair to ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... go and see Curly, and spent a pleasant afternoon with him, recalling the old times, and the old stories, and the old companions; for the youth with the downy chin has a past as ancient as that of the man with the gray beard. And Curly told him the story of his encounter with young Bruce on the bank of the Wan Water. And over and over again Annie's name came up, but Curly never hinted ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... mountains beyond. Snowy white, and fragrant with the leaves of rose and geranium which had been pressed within their folds, were the sheets which covered the bed, the last Rose Lincoln would ever rest upon. Soft and downy were the pillows, and the patchwork quilt, Rose's particular aversion, was removed, and its place supplied by one ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... disappeared and unknown fields lay about her. Crude rail fences divided acres of rustling corn from orchards whose trees were laden with red apples or downy peaches. Occasionally flocks of startled birds rose from fields freshly plowed for the fall sowing of wheat. Huge red barns and spacious open tobacco sheds, hung with drying tobacco, gave evidence of the prosperity of the farmers of that section. Little schoolhouses ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... or downy seed-vessels, mingling quaint brown punctuation, and dusty tremors of dancing grain, with the bloom of the nearer fields; and casting a gossamered grayness and softness of plumy mist along their surfaces far away; mysterious evermore, not only with dew in the morning, or mirage at noon, but ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... a cygnet on the broad Pactolus, stemming the waters with its downy breast; and anon, it would rise upon the wing, and soar to other skies; so, taking down that snow-white sail, it seeks for a moment to rest its foot on shore, and thence take flight: alas, poor bird! thou art sinking in those golden sands, the heavy morsels clog thy flapping wing—in ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the latter, which cannot on any occasion or by any display add a feather to the weight or importance expected to be excited by the appearance of the former, the inventory is limited to one, and sometimes two beds, serving for the repose of the whole family! However downy these may be to limbs impatient for rest, their coverings appear to be very slight, and the whole of the apartment created reflections of a very painful nature. Under such privations, with a wet mud floor and a roof in tatters, how idle ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... of species and varieties of grapes. Thus, species differ widely in resistance to phylloxera, the grape-louse, to the grape leaf-hopper, the flea-beetle, berry-moth, root-worm, powdery-mildew, downy-mildew, anthracnose and other insect and fungous troubles ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... without a fear, As she walk'd through the dank-moss'd dells; She breathed on their downy citadels, And whisper'd the young in their ivory shells: "Awaken! for ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... principally differs from our native species in its smaller size, the lesser leaves with downy petioles, and the green, much-lacerated bractlets. It is a native of the south of Europe, whence it extends to the Caucasus, and probably also to China; the Carpinus Turczaninovi of Hance scarcely seems to differ, in any ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... each commanded one of the runways indicated. How light it was, though the sun was hidden! Every branch and twig beamed in the sun like a lamp. A downy woodpecker below me kept up a great fuss and clatter,—all for my benefit, I suspected. All about me were great, soft mounds, where the rocks lay buried. It was a cemetery of drift boulders. There! that is the hound. Does his voice come across the ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... mingled with its gorgeous dyes The milky baldric of the skies, And striped its pure celestial white With streakings of the morning light; Then, from his mansion in the sun, She called her eagle bearer downy And gave into his mighty hand The symbol of ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... bosoms My deep grave is made; And from conflagration Death has me affrayed. No one e'er can find me In the dungeon glooms; I have no abiding, Save where freedom blooms. My morning sun ariseth, Light o'er mind to fling; O'er love's throbbing bosom Rests my downy wing! Like our Lord in heaven, I am ever there And like him of children Have I daily care. What though I may sever From thee now and then, I forget thee never—— I come back again! In the morning's brightness, Dear one, if thou ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... Miss L—— came home from one of her rides, with a large basket closely covered; and what do you think it contained? Why, a great anxious mother-hen, all tawny-colored and white, with thirteen downy little chickens, who were frightened enough, and wondering where in the wide world they were. We made a house for them in the green meadow, of a barrel turned upside down; and they all crept under their mother's wing, and went to sleep. But, lo! a great storm came in the night, such a pouring ...
— Gems Gathered in Haste - A New Year's Gift for Sunday Schools • Anonymous
... comfortable warmth, and which buttoned straight up from the knee to the neck. I thought Turkey would appreciate the favor, and abate his rashness and obstreperousness of afternoons. But no; I verily believe that buttoning himself up in so downy and blanket-like a coat had a pernicious effect upon him—upon the same principle that too much oats are bad for horses. In fact, precisely as a rash, restive horse is said to feel his oats, so Turkey felt his coat. It made him insolent. He was a ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... soft, a downy bed, 'Tis fair as breath of even; A couch for weary mortals spread, Where they may rest the aching head, And ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... with maternal pride. "He is always so good with me; indeed, I never knew such a good baby," which was not wonderful, considering her experience had been confined to Catharine's baby at the lodge. And if the nurse humored her, Fay would cover the little downy head with noiseless kisses, and tell him not to cry, for father was coming home to love them and ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... kept up a perpetual squawking, and ran wildly about, while the downy chicks huddled in fear under the huge leaves of a burdock plant, and uttered little frightened peeps that, however, were unheard in the din that Gyp and the ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... a new suit of the white clothes of his calling, and on his round chin grew a few dark downy hairs, which he fingered every other moment. He was waiting excitedly until the old man had finished, so that he might drink ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... situations, that threatened the fortitude and endurance of the strongest—and have yet to hear the first word of complaint from her lips. She smilingly 'bunked' upon two seats laid together—compared to which, for softness, the penitente's slab of stone would be as 'downy beds of ease'—and encouraged her companions to do the same. Hunger and thirst would also have been our portion, had it not been for a Salvation Army Corps encamped in the vicinity, and the Relief Train of the Philadelphia North American, stranded like ourselves. ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... inches in length, or height; having the Latin name of the plant at top, and the French name at the bottom. Probably these titles were introduced by a later hand. It is really impossible to describe many of them in terms of adequate praise. The downy plum is almost bursting with ripeness: the butterfly's wings seem to be in tremulous motion, while they dazzle you by their varied lustre: the hairy insect puts every muscle and fibre into action, as he insinuates himself within the curling of the crisped leaves; while these leaves are ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... distasteful to both) go on to the conclusion of the ceremony, he could not comprehend. There were, however, so many things in the world that he could not comprehend, and he had grown so accustomed, after an effort to master a difficulty, to lean his head back upon downy ignorance, that he treated this significant letter of Edward's like a tough lesson, and quietly put it by, together with every recommendation it contained. For all that was practical in it, it might just as well not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... day came for Audrey to be admitted to that quiet room, and she saw Geraldine looking lovelier than ever in her weakness, with a dark, downy head nestled against her arm, a great rush of tenderness filled her heart, and she felt as though she had never ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... forget me?" said she, in a low voice, that sank into my very heart. "You will not forget me?" As she spoke, her hand dropped heavily upon my shoulder, and her rich luxuriant hair fell upon my cheek. What a devil of a thing is proximity to a downy cheek and a black eyelash, more especially when they belong to one whom you are disposed to believe not indifferent to you! What I did at this precise moment there is no necessity for recording, even had not an adage interdicted such confessions, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... city guests, even though I have nothing in particular to record concerning them. The Wilson thrush and the red-bellied nuthatch I have seen once or twice each. The chewink is more constant in his visits, as is also the golden-winged woodpecker. Our familiar little downy woodpecker, on the other hand, has thus far kept out of my catalogue. No other bird's absence has surprised me so much; and it is the more remarkable because the comparatively rare yellow-bellied species is to be met with nearly every season. ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... children first, asleep in their downy nests, tucked in by the skilled hands of the staff of trained nurses, and as he gazed on his offspring, his little tucked and quilted Petticoats, he named them Guelph and Ghibelline, after two of his illustrious ancestors and ran off at once to put up their ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... 2 mi. S Americanos "on a large grassy playa traversed by rows of creosote (Larrea tridentata)." No. 31432 was taken from a nest containing four partly-incubated eggs. Van Hoose (loc. cit.) also reported that four eggs in a second nest contained well-developed, downy young. ...
— Birds from Coahuila, Mexico • Emil K. Urban
... various grades of princes when money was plentiful, and starved when Fortune frowned. There were men amongst them who had never felt the softer side of life, and men who had been ruthlessly kicked from that downy couch. There were good men and scoundrels, workers and loafers; there were men who had few scruples, and certainly no morals whatever. But they had met on a common ground with the common purpose of spinning fortune's wheel, and the sight of a woman's ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... a peasant boy, little Petter Nord. He was short and round; he was brown-eyed and smiling. His hair was paler than birch leaves in the autumn; his cheeks were red and downy. And he was from Vaermland. No one, seeing him, could imagine that he was from any other place. His native land had equipped him with its excellent qualities. He was quick at his work, nimble with his fingers, ready with his tongue, clear in his thoughts. And, moreover, full of fun, good-natured ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... small central depression) and coalescing into broad convex vertical ribs: spine bearing areolae obsolete: flowers borne at the summit of nascent tubercles: ovary naked (that is free from scales, but often downy): ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter
... rest of thy days scrubbing floors and stewing onions in an iron pot? Or is thy wish to dwell in the marble halls of Dea Flavia's house, where the air is filled with the perfume of roses and violets and tame songbirds make their nests in the oleander bushes? Wouldst like to recline on soft downy cushions, allowing thy golden hair to fall over thy shoulders the while I, mallet or chisel in hand, would make thy face immortal by carving it in marble? The praefect saith thine is a case for pity, then do I have pity upon thee, and give thee the choice of what thy ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... thou not seen the summer breeze, The eddying leaves, and downy feather, Whirl round a while beneath the trees, Then bear aloft to heaven together? With just such motion, gliding light, These ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... stared. He quelled the tumult of his thoughts, struggled with his outbreaking feelings, and triumphed; yet not without a tear, which forced its way down a face not formed for grief, and quivered upon his fair and downy cheek. Sir Lucius Grafton was well aware of the magic of his beauty, and used his charms to betray, as if he ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... this downy sleep, death's counterfeit, And look on death itself!"—Shakspeare, Macbeth, Act II. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various
... only seen it as downy whiteness and perfume in Louisa's arms or in its carriage. It had been a singularly vivid and brilliant-eyed baby at whom people looked as ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... raiment To wrap her shiv'ring bosom from the weather? When she was mine, no care came ever nigh her; I thought the gentlest breeze that wakes the spring Too rough to breathe upon her; cheerfulness Danc'd all the day before her, and at night Soft slumbers waited on her downy pillow—. Now, sad and shelterless, perhaps she lies, Where piercing winds blow sharp, and the chill rain Drops from some pent-house on her wretched head, Drenches her locks, and kills her with the cold. It is too much.——Hence with her past offences, They are aton'd at full.——Why ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... the great old fire-place had burnt low. The flames, which seemed to Shocky to be angels, had disappeared, and now the bright coals, which had played the part of men and women and houses in Shocky's fancy, had taken on a white and downy covering of ashes, and the great half-burnt back-log lay there smouldering like a giant asleep in a snow-drift. Shocky longed to wake ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... is the sweet repose Of the sons of toil when the labors close; Better than gold is the poor man's sleep, And the balm that drops on his slumbers deep. Bring sleeping draughts to the downy bed, Where luxury pillows its aching head, The toiler simple opiate deems A shorter route to ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... and bandbox, and reinstated herself quietly, and all old Betty's endeavours to irritate her only elicited a calm cunning smile, with a depression of her downy eyelashes. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... western horned owl I do not know. Other rather rare birds are the beautiful lazuli bunting and the western warbling vireo. Among the wood-peckers I have also noted the bristle-bellied wood-pecker, or Lewis's wood-pecker, Harris's wood-pecker, and the downy wood-pecker. ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... kind of a fairy, for we didn't mention kittens, but we wanted one, and here are two darlings," cried Polly, almost purring with delight as the downy bunches unrolled and gaped till their bits of ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... y has the same meaning in the following words. They are, however, too simple to need defining; in fact, there are no simpler words on which to base definitions: airy, balky, bony, briny, chunky, downy, dusty, healthy, hearty, miry, musty, rusty, scaly, ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... his girdle the downy feather of an eagle, stepped outside to the edge of the mesa and with a breath sent it beyond him into space. A current of air caught it and whirled it upwards in token that the prayer was accepted by ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... of that genial season, when the young grass covers the downy hills with verdure, and the glowing branches of the trees bud with an infant foliage, the sun smiles in the heavens, and the pellucid streams reflect his glorious rays, the day was fixed by Sir Robert Somerset, and approved by the beloved objects of his then peculiar solicitude, in which ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... 'summer racket' there once. The excursion boats, the farmers' races, the Casino balls, the Military games, and the whole lay. I think I can cook up a plan. You don't show up just yet. I am to do the 'downy cove.'" ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... said, hoarsely; "I'm too dirty." He put out a hand, and softly touched her dress. "Is it pink?" he asked, "or does it only look so in this light? It feels awfully downy ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... together, as a rule, and stretching them out, resting its chin on the tips of its feet. It spreads its ears out over the shoulder-blades, and so shelters the tender parts of its body; its hair serves as a protection, (21) being thick and of a downy texture. When awake it keeps on blinking its eyelids, (22) but when asleep the eyelids remain wide open and motionless, and the eyes rigidly fixed; during sleep it moves its nostrils frequently, if awake ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... now, behold! the bed or couch That ne'er knew bride's or bridegroom's touch, Feels in itself a fire; And, tickled with desire, Pants with a downy breast, As with a heart possesst, Shrugging as it did move Ev'n with the soul of love. And, oh! had it but a tongue, Doves, 'twould ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... I, a mountain boy, A lover of green fields and flowers,— One, who with laughing rills could toy, And hold companionship for hours, With leaves that whispered low at night, Or fountains bubbling from their springs, Or summer winds, whose downy flight, Seemed but the sweep of angel wings:— 'Twas strange that I should love the clash Of ocean in its maddest hour, And joy to see the billows dash O'er the rent cliff with fearful power. 'Twas strange,—but I was nature's own, Unchecked, ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... having been already laid down by Mr. Watt and his men on a former visit, was merely soaked with the sprays; but the joisting-beams which supported it had, in the course of the winter, been covered with a fine downy conferva produced by the range of the sea. They were also a good deal whitened with the mute of the cormorant and other sea-fowls, which had roosted upon the beacon in winter. Upon ascending to the apartments, it was found that the motion of the sea had thrown open the door ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... warm. A breeze heavy with perfume lifted the hair from his brow. He heard the low breathing of the cattle as they dozed in the fields on either side, and the soft whirr of downy plumage as the great owl which had built its nest among the eaves of the new barn flew past him. Suddenly a warm nose was thrust against his shoulder and, with the assurance of a spoilt beauty, the cow laid her head upon his ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... the loud and dusty road The soft gray cup in safety swings, To brim ere August with its load Of downy breasts and throbbing wings, O'er which the friendly elm-tree heaves An ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... past the mineral baths and then strikes uphill, at first through lanes cut deep in the black lava. The trees met almost overhead. It is like Devonshire, except that one half hopes to see tropical foxgloves with violet bells and downy leaves sprouting among the lush grasses and sweet-scented ferns upon those gloomy, damp, warm walls. After this we skirted a thicket of arbutus, and came upon the long volcanic ridge, with divinest outlook over Procida and Miseno toward Vesuvius. Then once more we had to ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... that distilled from the pointed leaves of the Guelder roses, Fra Mino wandered long in the forest, till he came upon a spring over which the wild tamarisks gently swayed their light foliage and the downy clusters of their pink berries. Lower down amid the willows, where the water formed a wider pool, herons stood motionless, while the smaller birds sang sweetly in the branching myrtles. The scent of mint rose moist and fragrant from the ground, and the grass was spangled with the ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... mayor flitting through the evening fogs, Traverses alleys, streets, courts, lanes, and bogs, Seeking some love-bewilder'd maid by gin oppress'd, Alights—and sits upon her downy breast." ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... twigs, standing upright, and loaded with leaves. The graceful cup itself, to judge by its looks, might be made of white floss silk,—I have no curiosity to know the actual material,—and is cushioned inside with downy fibres from the cottonwood-tree. It is dainty enough for ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... as his companion, but giving promise that he will excel him in due time. In the matter of hair, his head exhibited locks if possible more curly and redundant, while the chin and lip are not yet clothed with young manhood's downy shadow. ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... may have pleasant travel, And no stone hurt his royal toe, Her Majesty spreads all over the earth, A carpet of downy snow. ...
— King Winter • Anonymous
... sugar mania is at its height, the bustle and activity is marvellous. Streets are piled in every direction with mounds of cotton, which rise as high as the roofs; storehouses are bursting with bales; steam and hydraulic presses hiss in your ear at every tenth step, and beneath their power the downy fibre is compressed into a substance as hard as Aberdeen granite, which semi-nude negroes bind, roll, and wheel in all directions, the exertion keeping them in perpetual self-supplying animal steam-baths. Gigantic mules arrive incessantly, dragging fresh freight for pressure; while others ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... going to have gardens and Helen is going to write for seed catalogues this very night before she seeks her downy couch—she has vowed ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... do thou befriend me, Downy sleep, the curtain draw; Spirits kind, again attend me, Talk of him ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... hatched, but one egg broke, and one tiny birdling died, but out of five eggs I have three fine young birds. Their names are Ganarra, Goldie, and Downy. They are hopping around on the perches now. The mother bird behaved so badly that I took her out of the cage, and now the father takes care of the little ones. Is such an action common on the father's part, or is my Neddy the sweetest, dearest ...
— Harper's Young People, July 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the miller at Bex, as he placed a large basket on the floor and took off the covering. Two yellow eyes, with black circles around them, fiery and wild, looked out as if they wished to set on fire, or to kill those around them. The short beak yawned ready to bite and the neck was red and downy. ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... seem'd with haste to meet their ruin: There another draws the unwilling prey, that he had betray'd on the hook, with an inviting bait: When looking up, we saw sea-birds sitting on the sail-yard, about which, one skill'd in that art having plac'd lime-twigs, made 'em his booty. Their downy feathers, the air whirl'd about: The other, the sea vainly tost too ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... a long oblivion. He floated through cool space away from the imps of torment; his bed was of downy clouds, and on these clouds he drifted with a great shining river under him; and at last the cloud he was in began to shape itself into walls and on these walls were pictures, and a window through which ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... softness with smaller branches and twigs. A similar but lighter platform overhead made him a roof that was anything but waterproof, and a few bushy branches served for walls. Such as it was, it was at least the beginning of a home. He loved it; and in defense of the little hairy brown mate and downy brown baby who shared it with him he would have fought both Dinosaur and Dinoceras ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... little pepper and grains, the one in surgery and the other in cooking. There is a singular fruit, growing six or eight together in a bunch, each as long and thick as one's finger, the skin being of a brownish yellow colour, and somewhat downy, and within the rind is a pulp of a pleasant taste; but I know not if ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... dropped some of the mixture in the middle of the box, tapping lightly with the spoon to call the attention of the chicks to its presence. The chickens pecked hungrily, and there was a satisfied note in the twitterings of the downy little group as Mrs. Chamberlain turned to the ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... welcome you as a neighbor—as a neighbor. Arthur Bimby, humbly at your service—Arthur Bimby, once a man of parts though now brought low by abstractions, gentlemen, forces not apparent to the human optic, sirs. Still, in my day, I have been known about town as a downy bird, a smooth file, and ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... and weighty ... that I question if Van Huysum or De Heem ever sat down to such a model for the exercise of their unrivalled pencils. The juice of this bunch was as copious and delicious as the exterior was downy and inviting. We learnt, however, that these little acts of depredation were not always to be committed with impunity; for that, in the middle of extensive fields, when the grape was ripe enough to be gathered, watch-boxes ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... and Federals, respectively, we reached Leesburg, the county-seat, by a march of thirty miles due north into Loudoun County, and a mile or two east of this attractive town went into bivouac about sunset in a beautiful grassy meadow which afforded what seemed to us a downy couch, and to the horses luxuriant pasturage, recalling former and better days. Next morning, while lying sound asleep wrapped in my blanket, I became painfully conscious of a crushing weight on my foot. Opening ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... the Mayflower, and owned by the Hawthorne family]; and whenever I look up, two stars beneath a brow of serene white radiate love and sympathy upon me. Can you think of a happier life, with its rich intellectual feasts? That downy bloom of happiness, which unfaithful and ignoble poets have persisted in declaring always vanished at the touch and wear of life, is delicate and fresh as ever, and must remain so if we remain unprofane. The sacredness, the loftiness, the ethereal delicacy of such a ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... call her "the downy she"? She is no more artful than other people. She is my maid, Elspeth Mackay,' answered Miss Macrae, puzzled. They were alone, separated from the others by the breadth of ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... not one tiny feather ruffled,—all the intense life of the tropics condensed into this one live jewel,—the glance of the sun on emeralds and rubies. Is it soft downy feathers that take this rich metallic glow, changing their hue with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... overtaken the unfortunate in the cruel past. She sat down upon the grimy wooden bench, which was the only provision made for rest or comfort, and the thought of spending a lonely night in such a place was overpowering. Not that she could hope for sleep, even if there were downy pillows instead of this unredeemed couch of plank on which some beastly inebriate may have slept off his stupor the night before, but she felt weak and faint, and her overtaxed physical nature ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... and heavy leggings and a leathern apron took the place of the costly clothing which he had worn in his father's dwelling. On his feet were awkward wooden sandals, and his head was covered with a wolfskin cap. The dainty bed, with its downy pillows, wherein every night his mother had been wont, with gentle care, to see him safely covered, was given up for a rude heap of straw in a corner of the smithy. And the rich food to which he had been used gave place to the coarsest ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... delightful volume tells in picture and verse how Dick and his friend the Hare sailed to the Downy Isle, the adventures they met with in that strange country, their encounter with the Dragon, and their remarkable voyage home. Mr. Orr exhibits in these designs a rare combination of humorous invention with brilliant draughtsmanship and command of colour, and the author supports ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... on the threshold of the room with something in her arms—something almost indistinguishable amid the downy, fleecy froth of ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... shop had a narrow gate; The elves attack with spears of BARLEY, But he drives them off, oh! rarely, Then they shoot him with an ARROW, From bow-strings greased with ear-wigs' marrow, The feathers, moth-wings downy VELVET, The bow-strings, of the spider's net: Thousands come, armed in this PATTERN, Which proves their mistress is no slattern; Some wear the legs and hoof of PAN, And some are in the form of man; But the knight is armed, for in his POCKET He has a ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... next. In the numerous vacant lots rank jungles of weeds languished in the dry heat, and long blue-tailed lizards, veritable heat-sprites, emerged to frolic and doze on deserted sidewalks. The leaves of the cottonwoods hung limp, and the white downy tufts that carried their seeds everywhere drifted and swam in the shimmering air. The river had shrunk to a string of shallow pools in a sandy plain, the irrigation ditches were empty, and in Old Town ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... was anything needed to make it seem more homelike than it already was, I found it when we started out to explore the back premises. A fussy old hen, with her feathers all fluffed out importantly, was clucking and scratching for a brood of downy yellow chickens, just out of the shell. Old Mom Beck had sent them over as a wedding present, ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the sweetness within them intensifies, till they resemble dried figs in everything, except that they retain the fresh fruit-flavor; rich, luscious, yet not palling. We have had pears, too, some of them very tolerable; and peaches, which look magnificently, as regards size and downy blush, but, have seldom much more taste than a cucumber. A succession of fruits has followed us, ever since our arrival in Florence:—first, and for a long time, abundance of cherries; then apricots, which lasted many weeks, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... its own to live in, whatever the real materials, or it could no more exist than any of us could without the sense of touch, brings Mr. Goodchild to reason: the rather, because the thing soon drops its downy chin upon its scarf, and slobbers ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... fruit, which colours the thickets;[237] the styrax, famous for yielding the gum storax of commerce, grows towards the east end of Carmel, and is a very large bush branching from the ground, but never assuming the form of a tree; it has small downy leaves, white flowers like orange blossoms, and round yellow fruit, pendulous from slender stalks, like cherries.[238] Travellers in Phoenicia do not often mention the caper plant, but it was seen by Canon Tristram hanging from ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... mass of her wavy hair was gathered behind into what was called a Greek cap, composed of brown network strewn with gold beads. Here and there very small, thin dark curls strayed from under it, like the tendrils of a delicate vine; and nestling close to each ear was a little dark, downy crescent, which papa called her whisker when he was playfully inclined to excite ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... pale, thin little face. Every one loved the boy, most of all the dogs, cats, horses, cows of the little farms, the birds and animals of forest and brookside. He knew them all, and they knew, loved, and trusted him. The tinier creatures, such as butterflies, bees, ants, beetles, even caterpillars, downy or smooth, were his friends, or seemed so. He knew them, watched them, studied their habits, and was the little naturalist of Greenhills village, consulted by all, even by older ...
— Story-Tell Lib • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... forth into the groves with the bird, it suddenly flew from her side, and perched in a bough; and throwing back its white downy throat, there gushed from its bill a clear warbling jet, like a little fountain in air. Now the song ceased; when up and away toward the head of the vale, flew the bird. "Lil! Lil! come back, leave me not, blest souls ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the care of their hands, and the precise parting of their hair, just then; and a close observer might often have detected them in the act of furtively feeling their upper lips with anxious forefinger in the vain hope of discovering the appearance—if ever so slight—of a downy growth thereupon. For they, as well as he, were making sheep's eyes at those wonderful visions in golden locks and jetty locks, with brown eyes and blue eyes, with fluttering ribbons and snowy pinafores, known as "Miss Jane ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... away with a rush of mocking laughter; he tried to reach out and grasp the walls but his hands were bound! Then he felt that he was drawing near the end; he had fallen miles!—and now his speed was slackening, and he was falling so softly, so lightly, till at last, like a downy feather he floated on the air, as a spirit from another world. He had reached the centre ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... and the team belonging to Iphicrates. Some few backed Marcus and his Arabs, but for smaller sums; and when they compared the tall but narrow-shouldered figure of the young Christian with the heroic breadth of Hippias' frame, and his delicate features, dreamy blue eyes and downy black moustache with the powerful Hermes-head of his rival, they were anxious about their money. If his brother now, the farmer Demetrius—who was standing by the horses' heads—or some well-known agitator had held the reins, it ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... you, boys, to go up into the garret, and under the sky-light you will see a large box. Open this box, and you will find it filled with feathers. Select from these feathers three or four which are the most downy and soft about the stem, and bring them down ...
— Rollo's Philosophy. [Air] • Jacob Abbott
... natural protection of the forests by waging constant warfare on the wood-boring insects and ants beneath the bark where no other birds can reach them. They are equally useful in an orchard except that here man may only at great trouble and expense partly hold them in check. Downy woodpeckers are also great eaters of scales, and the fruit grower need not begrudge the red-headed woodpecker a meal of cherries or apples, especially as it will usually be found that it is the wormy fruit that ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... years and years since it was laid, In her own gentle way, On tangled curls of brown and jet Above the downy coverlet 'Neath which the ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... under its first coverlet of snow, the trees were draped in their winter mantles, their very bed had its downy quilt of snowflakes that had sifted through the ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... dancing-master, and a hundred characters beside are here brought before you, moving, acting, playing, plotting, and gossiping! You are never wearied by an inventory of wardrobes, as in short English descriptive fictions; yet you see how every one is dressed; you hear the honey brogue of the maiden, and the downy voice of the child, the managed accents of flattery or traffic, the shrill tones of woman's fretting, and the troubled gush of man's anger. The moory upland and the corn slopes, the glen where the ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... the palace On a white and downy bed, And some are in the garret With a clout beneath their head, And some are on the cold hard earth, Whose mothers have ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... a bar of ivory, impatient for a breach to be opened for his advance to the assault of her tender virginity. Nervously my fingers pulled at the impeding linen, till they found a small opening and could touch the downy furniture of her mount, and finding the entrance to Love's Palace of Pleasure, slowly parted the velvety lips of her maiden slit. Then gently tickling the sensitive clitty, that source of every girl's delight, made her sigh out: "Ah, oh! how ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... and shouted and ran and laughed, while the long, pale-golden spring afternoon stood still, until Mother held up her finger and stopped the game. "The baby's awake!" she said, and Father went bounding off. When he came back with the downy pink morsel, everybody gathered around to see it and exclaim over the tiny fat hands and hungry little rosebud mouth. "He's starved!" said Mother. "He wants his supper, poor little Buddy! He doesn't want a lot of people staring at him, do you, Buddy-baby?" She snatched ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... drawers with cedar, serves tea carefully drawn, at a certain hour, banishes dust, nails the carpets to the floors in every corner of the house, brushes the cellar walls, polishes the knocker of the front door, oils the springs of the carriage,—in short, makes matter a nutritive and downy pulp, clean and shining, in the midst of which the soul expires of enjoyment and the frightful monotony of comfort in a life without contrasts, deprived of spontaneity, and which, to sum all in one word, makes a ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... feel a bed of softest down under the spreading purple top. A little gentle pushing will set the down all astir, and I can show you how the children are about to take leave of the home where they were born and brought up. Each seed child has a downy wing with which it can fly, and also cling, as you will see, if we set them loose, and the wind blows them on to your woollen frock. They are hardy children, and not afraid of any thing; they venture out into the world ...
— The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children • Jane Andrews
... haunted rooms, but it looked cheerful enough when I entered from the gloom and darkness outside; and a dainty little dinner sent up by my kind friends below, and eaten when snugly tucked in between the sheets and resting on soft downy pillows, was enough to drive all thoughts of ghostly ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... Scott, I've a deal to do before I get to my downy; and I don't like those doctored tipples. Good night, Mr. Scott. I wishes you good night, sir;' and making another slight reference to his hat, which had not been removed from his head during the whole interview, Mr. Manylodes took ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... homes" which appeal especially to the child's mind are the hen and chickens, the downy eider ducks, the family of red foxes, and the home of the muskrat. "Color in nature" is effectively illustrated by grouping together certain tropical fishes, minerals, shells, insects, and birds in such a manner as to bring out vivid red, yellow, ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... creeping into her heart sung to her beautiful songs of the future which might be were Hester's baby a lady. And Hagar, listening to that song, fell asleep, dreaming that the deed was done by other agency than hers—that the little face resting on the downy pillow, and shaded by the costly lace, was lowly born; while the child wrapped in the coarser blanket came of nobler blood, even that of the Conways, who boasted more than one lordly title. With a nervous start she awoke at last, ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... tumbling on the table, and while they were all looking it opened its leaves, and out of the middle of it stepped a beautiful little fairy woman, no taller than your finger. She had a white robe on, a little crown on her long yellow hair; there were two wings on her shoulders, just like the downy brown wings of a butterfly, and in her hand she had a little sceptre sparkling ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... bust of Louis XIV., represented with a Roman helmet and a peruke interlaced with laurel-leaves. Behind this bust was a round window, which looked upon the staircase; and just in front of the pedestal was the downy cushion that served as a bed for Moumouth, who would certainly have been crushed if the bust had taken it into its head ...
— The Story of a Cat • mile Gigault de La Bdollire
... his utter surprise, saw that the stables were thatched with downy bird feathers, ...
— Stories to Read or Tell from Fairy Tales and Folklore • Laure Claire Foucher
... our wire-springed, downy cots (there is positively no virtue in sleeping on hard beds, and Bart considers it an absolute vice), there is a delicious period before sleep comes. Bats flit about the rafters, and an occasional swallow twitters and shifts among the beams as the particular ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... breath, and poisoning her blood. I see her frantic with a fearful thought That haunts and horrifies her shrinking soul, And bursts in sighs and sobs and feverish prayers; And now, at last, the awful struggle ends, A sweet smile sits upon her angel face, And peace, with downy bosom, nestles close Where her worn heart throbs faintly; closer still As the death shadows gather; closer still, As, on white wings, the outward-going soul Flies to a home it never would have sought, Had a great evil failed to point the way. I see a youth whom God has crowned with power, And cursed ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... shower, blazed once more in the sky, on the trees, on the wall of the hut, and on the still wet tiles of the roof, which had a chicken perching upon its ridge. The wind pulled out sideways the wild grass that grew in the wall, and the chicken's downy feathers, both of which things let themselves float upon the wind's breath to their full extent, with the unresisting submissiveness of light and lifeless matter. The tiled roof cast upon the pond, whose reflections were now clear again in ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... came off in Mr. Latham's hand, disclosing a bed of white cotton. He removed the downy upper layer, and there—there, nestling against the snowy background, blazed a single splendid diamond, of six, perhaps seven, carats. Myriad colors played in its blue-white depths, sparkling, flashing, dazzling in the subdued light. Mr. Latham ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... immense extent, and which now forms a park of extraordinary size, and of singular beauty. The hand of man seems to have done but little to improve that beauty: the house stands as if by chance in the midst of a wilderness of downy hills and grassy valleys, of hawthorn groves, and wild commons, of remnants of forests, and miles of underwood. I was so engrossed by the strange character of this, to me, perfectly novel scenery, that I thought little ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton |
