"Homing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was far ahead, swooping above the swells that cut into the murky sky. His eyes studied every rod of soil as he retraced his way up that great wind-swept slope, noting every change in vegetation or settlement. Five years before he had crept like a lizard; now he was rushing straight on like the homing eagle who sees his home crag gleam in the ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... impended vaguely over all the illuminated world, and now and again a flicker of wings through the upper atmosphere betokened the flight of homing birds. Crann gazed about him absently while he permitted the statement he had made to sink deep into the jealous, shrinking heart of the young mountaineer, and he repeated it as ...
— A Chilhowee Lily - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Indians died away. Familiar landmarks leaped past, and save for an occasional word of encouragement MacNair let the dogs set their own pace. For, consumed as he was by anxiety for what might lie at the end of the trail, he knew that the homing instinct of the wolf-dogs would carry them more miles and in better heart than the sting ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... restaurants, even though you are going to marry a genius," said I. "There is one in Paris to which Adrian will take you straight—like a homing bird." ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... the boat went south, the shoals of porpoises tumbling in the blue water; the strange foods, the passing ships were all amazements to her and the fact that her thoughts had, for the first time, found a tangible resting-place like homing pigeons alighting at their cot, together with her absorption in Louis, all gave her a sense ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... work it alone for a while.' I asked him what he'd found, and he just gave me that funny little grin of his and said, 'Never mind what it is, it's big enough for both of us. You just keep your mouth shut, and you'll find out soon enough.' And then he wouldn't say another word until we were homing in on the shuttle ship to ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... where they had formerly lived. When this annual hegira took place in large numbers, some permanent losses were sure to ensue. The settlers at Blue Lick had experienced this disaster, and had accepted it as partly the result of their own lack of precaution during the homing fancy of the horses. But since the herders manifested so little of the suavity that graces commercial intercourse, and as some of the horses had been seen in their cow-pens, it was a happy thought to feather ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Mickey's manners were a trifle too casual; at times they irritated Douglas, and if he took the boy into his life as he hoped to, he would come into constant contact with Leslie and her friends, who were cultured people of homing instincts. Mickey's manners must be polished, and the way to do it was not to drop to his level, but to improve Mickey. And again, the day before, he had told Mickey to sit down and wait until an order was given him. ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the gravel path together without further speech, yet with thoughts more closely linked than either guessed; thoughts that flew instinctively as homing doves to the one beloved ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... speak to the judges about the prize they are going to award; if they are favourable to us, we will load them with benefits far greater than those Paris[308] received. Firstly, the owls of Laurium,[309] which every judge desires above all things, shall never be wanting to you; you shall see them homing with you, building their nests in your money-bags and laying coins. Besides, you shall be housed like the gods, for we shall erect gables[310] over your dwellings; if you hold some public post and want to do a little pilfering, we will give you the sharp claws of a hawk. Are you dining in town, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... eyes These dim battalions move along; Out of the distance memory cries Of days when life and hope were strong, When love was prompt and wit was gay; Even then, at evening, as to-day, I watched, while twilight hovered dim Over Potomac's curving rim, This selfsame flight of homing crows Blotting the sunset's fading rose, Above the roofs ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... across the stubble before him waving a friendly crop, "Pip" Vibart the A.P.M. homing to H.Q. "Evening, boy!" he holloaed; "come up and Bridge to-morrow night," and swept on over the hillside. A flight of aeroplanes, like flies in the amber of sunset, droned overhead en route for Hunland. The Babe waved his official cap at them: ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... affection than from a supreme misunderstanding of their older sister. So completely had Celestina learned to efface her personality and her inclinations that they reasoned she was utterly without preferences; that she lacked the homing instinct; and was quite as happy in one place as in another. Having thus washed their hands of her they proceeded to sell the Morton homestead and each one pocket his share of the proceeds. Very scanty this inheritance ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... Jack!" he hastened to say. "A homing pigeon in the bargain! You can tell that from the bill and the ring around ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... dream hath possessed knoweth no more of roaming; All roads and the flowing of waves and the speediest flight he knows, But wherever his feet are set, his soul is forever homing, And going, he comes, and coming he heareth a call ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... his donning of it. "The dew hangs in the air," said I, "and unless the world spin on too quick, we shall pass some hours in watching." "Ay," said he in a muse, "but it seems to me the moon-army keeps infamous bad watch. I see not one sentinel. Those wings travel sure as a homing bird; and to be driven back upon their centre would be defeat for the—lunatics. Give me but a handful of such cavalry, I would capture the Southern Cross. Magnificent! magnificent! I remember, when I was in it—" For, while he was yet deriding, from points a little distant apart, single, winged ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... Ranch walked slowly up into the main building of the Grand Central Terminal with the crowd. There was chattering all about her—young voices, old voices, laughter, squeals of delight and surprise—all the hubbub of a homing crowd meeting ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... we learn to be satisfied with something nearer than the moon. The horizon of our hopes and ambitions narrows, but the sky above is not less deep, and we make the wonderful discovery that the things that matter are very near to us. It is the homing of the spirit. We have been avid of the "topless grandeurs" of life, and we return to find that the spiritual satisfactions we sought were all the time within very easy reach. And in cultivating those satisfactions intensively we make another discovery. We find that this is the true ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... steadfastness and their clean uplifted lines compelled my adoration. Up there, the sky above and below them, part of the sky, but part of us, the great peaks made communion between that homing creeping part of me which loves vineyards and dances and a slow movement among pastures, and that other part which is only properly at home in Heaven. I say that this kind of description is useless, and that it is better ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... highest ground in this forest is the clump of firs in which the famous herons build. The most interesting time to visit the heronry is in the breeding season, for then one sees the lank birds continually homing from the Amberley Wild Brooks with fishes in their bills and long legs streaming behind. The noise is tremendous, beyond all rookeries. Mr. Knox's Ornithological Rambles, from which I have already quoted freely, has this passage: ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... console me for all the evils of life. With a little more determination you will obtain all that my ambition or vanity fondly imagines." In this strain was the father wont to appeal to the daughter, by letter. His thoughts, like carrier pigeons, were always homing to her. Hounded by obloquy, accused of murder, when he fled from Richmond Hill after the duel at Weehauken, he sought security and absolution in the sanctuary of la Sainte Alston's house in Charleston. ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... he gripped the handlebars of his scooter. He was only vaguely aware of the passing scenery. He knew he should switch on the homing beacon and ride in on automatic, but it seemed like too much of an effort to flick his finger. As the tension rose, the capillaries of his eyes swelled, and things began to white out for him. The rush of landscape became blurred streaks of light and ...
— The Planet with No Nightmare • Jim Harmon
... of her big, blunt cousin, as he of her; and in her present trouble her thoughts flew to him as straight as a homing aeroplane ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... every evening, near sundown, I see a pair of wild pigeons homing toward the crest of Apo. "Limocons," the Bogobos call them—"leem-o-sahns": the word falls limpid from their lips, unaccented. They say the limocon never was heard to sing in the lowlands, and tell a strange legend that it is an oracle of the Hill People, its song a harbinger of ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... and from the world tumult outside, the work of crazy politicians and incompetent diplomats. But if there was any season when the long crowded room was more attractive than at any other, it was in these autumn evenings when firelight and twilight mingled, and the natural 'homing' instinct of the Northerner, accustomed through long ages to spend long winters mostly indoors, stirred ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with walking they would climb into the top of some tall tree, and there swinging among the cool new leaves, Helma began telling them her World Stories again, while the children looked off over the trembling forest roof and watched for homing birds. ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... down the great horn that hung by the door, and wound the homing call that brings all within its hearing back to the hall, and its hoarse echoes went across the silent woods until it was answered by the other horns that passed on the message until the last sounds came but faintly to us. I ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... down dale he went. Because of the tremendous trees he could not see the sun; yet with the instinct of the woodsman, an instinct as infallible as that of a homing pigeon, he was not puzzled as to direction. Within two hours his long, tireless stride brought him out into a clearing in the valley where his own logging-camp stood. He went directly to the log-landing, where in a listless and half-hearted manner the ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... Free, like a homing pigeon, he headed blindly and directly for the beach and the salt sea over which had floated the Arangi, on her deck Skipper in command. Somo was largely deserted, and those that were in it were sunk in sleep. ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... to moment, homing or outgoing bees sped like bullets across her line of vision; the hives were busy now that a gleam of pale sunshine lay across the grass. One bee, leaving the hive, came humming around the Cherokee roses. The Messenger saw the little insect alight and begin to scramble about, plundering the ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... him he was engaged to report football, not to play it with the paper. But he couldn't help it. He had got, he said, the ensanguined habit. Still, I was not to imagine that he bungled things. He jolly well knew his way about. In his wildest flights there was a homing impulse; he was preparing a place for himself all the time (that it happened to be my place didn't seem to afflict him in the least). Like St. Paul, he knew how to abound and he knew how to abstain. His abstinence, in fact, gave the measure of his abundance. He held himself in for five ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... back by railway and walked the train most of the way. He dropped from the cars at the water tank and struck across country, and again he ran. But this time it was no headlong flight. Straight as a homing bird went Dannie with all speed, toward the foot of the Rainbow and ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... horizon, covering the face of the deep with a network of tracks. These solitary wayfarers were now to be found only as rare exceptions to the general rule, until the port of destination was approached. There the homing impulse overbore the bonds of regulation; and the convoys tended to the conduct noted by Nelson as a captain, "behaving as all convoys that ever I saw did, shamefully ill, parting company every day." Commodore John Rodgers has before been quoted, as observing that the British ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... the Skyrocket finally circled about Lost Island and settled down over the narrow landing field as easily as a homing pigeon, to come to a stop with hardly a jar, it was bringing news to Mr. Fulton that was bound to soften the ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... triumph down the scarlet gleaming street; The town was mad, a man was like a boy. A thousand flags were flaming where the sky and city meet; A thousand bells were thundering the joy. There was music, mirth and sunshine; but some eyes shone with regret: And while we stun with cheers our homing braves, O God, in Thy great mercy, let us nevermore forget The graves they left behind, the ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... planed off a pellet of good sound wood—it looked like a nail-scrape, the mark she made—and masticating it and moistening it with saliva, whirred back like a homing aeroplane to her city ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... next day a dark-green carriage and pair dashed up to Mrs. Dodd's door, and Dr. Short bent himself in an arc, got out, and slowly mounted the stairs. He was six feet two, wonderfully thin, livid, and gentleman-like. Fine homing head, keen eye, lantern jaws. At sight of him Mrs. Dodd rose and smiled. Julia started and sat trembling. He stepped across the room inaudibly, and after the usual civilities, glanced a! the patient's tongue, and touched ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the sky That dies from gold to gray; The homing birds that Southward fly To my heart's hailing make reply, Piping ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... tribe, and also with the birds and a number of insects. In fact, all animals appear to possess it in varying degree; they are all more or less able to find their way home. Yet, study it how we may, we are at fault when we try to account for it. In many cases, the homing instinct is apparently governed by sight; but many scientific observers entertain the idea that the sense of smell, in the majority of instances, will be found to lie at the root of the ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... as now the common-minded rich Grudged ease to those whose toil brought them in means For every waste of life. At length I spoke, Insulting both my inarticulate soul And her with acted anger: "Lazy wretch, Is it for eyes like yours to watch the sea As though you waited for a homing ship? My father might with reason spend his hours Scanning the far horizon; for his Swan Whose outward lading was full half a vintage Is now months overdue." She turned on me Her languor knit and, through its homespun wrap, Her muscular ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... in the visitors' book at the Scoglio di Frisio? With a strange abruptness, with a flight that was instinctive as that of a homing pigeon, Hermione's mind went to that book as to a book of revelation. Just before he wrote he had been feeling acutely—something. She had been aware of that at the time. He had not wanted to write. And then suddenly, almost violently, he had written ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... head-waiter—for a German riding-master, a leader of a Hungarian band, a manager of a Ritz hotel. But he was not above his station. He even assisted the porter in carrying the coats and golf bags of the gentlemen from the car to the coffee-room where, with the intuition of the homing pigeon, the three strangers had, unaided, found their way. As Carl Schultz followed, carrying the dust-coats, a road map fell from the pocket of one of them to the floor. Carl Schultz picked it up, and ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... Soapy reached one of the avenues to the east where the glitter and turmoil was but faint. He set his face down this toward Madison Square, for the homing instinct survives even when the home ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... intoxication, they knew the ground by instinct and from long association. They gained on him. Across the way a window-sash went up with a bang, and a woman screamed. Through the only other entrance to the mews a belated cab was homing; its driver, getting wind of the unusual, pulled up, blocking the way, and added his ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... Davies was to hasten thither the moment the graduating exercises were over, and now to think of the triumph and malicious delight of the other girls was intolerable. Her lover should fly to her like homing-pigeon the instant he was released from prison. It was tantamount to treason that he should purpose anything else. Almira fretted herself into a fever. She wrote one long letter to the recreant Parson, and her ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... identity can surely lay small claim to any serious intellectual value.... In our modern days we too often, Procrustes-like, make our ideas to fit the forms. We put our guest, the poetic thought, that comes to us like a homing bird from out of the mystery of the blue sky—we put this confiding stranger straightway into that iron bed: the 'sonata-form'—or perhaps even the 'third-rondo form,' for we have quite an assortment; and should the idea survive, and grow, and become too large for the bed, and if we have grown ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... waves to meet the sunset gold. They had taken boat beneath the Keg of Butter Battery, and were sailing for Saaron with a light breeze on their quarter. Evening and Sabbath calm held the sky from its pale yellow verges up to the zenith across which a few stray gulls were homing. From Garland Town, from St. Ann's, from Brefar ahead of them, came wafted the sound of bells, far and faint, ringing to church, and the murmuring water in the boat's wake seemed to take up Vashti's laugh and echo it reproachfully, as she checked ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Our homing place from our peregrinations about the army was not too far away from headquarters town to be in touch with it or too near to feel the awe of proximity to the directing authority of hundreds of thousands of men. Trench raids had lost their novelty for the public ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... sign-posts, street names, and so on to assist them. However accurately some people are directed, they appear to have the greatest difficulty in finding their way, while others, more fortunate, remember prominent features on the route, and pick out their course as accurately as does a homing pigeon. ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... Guaymas. He had very little money. The straightening up of affairs showed him to possess only about four hundred dollars to the good, but he started gallantly, shirking in his mind the meeting, but overpowered by the homing instinct, the instinct which leads ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... the inner edge of Lincolnshire, in an undulating countryside amongst great old trees, where of an evening the sun throws bars of light across the levels of turf, where homing rooks fly in scattered lines against a gleaming sky, the air breathes coolness and peace, and the scene lays that ineffable spell upon the heart of which only the exile can ever know ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... to various ports for the holidays, but they had, I reflected, no advantage over me. I, too, was bound on a definite errand, though my journey was, I imagined, less commonplace in its character than the homing flight of most of my ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... up the distance, and grows and veers and swings, Like any homing swallow with nightfall in her wings. The wind's white sources glimmer with shining gusts of rain; And in the Ardise country the spring comes back again. It is the brooding April, haunted and sad and dear, When vanished things return not with the returning year. Only, when evening purples ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... continued. It could not last much longer. Despair pulled at the German's heartstrings as he saw his observer topple for a moment in his seat, then pitch forward into space. The biplane tipped dangerously, righted itself and sped like a homing pigeon in the direction of the German lines. There was nothing left but to fly for it. The German dared not look behind; only by the mercy of God were the Frenchman's shots going wild. It could not last; he must get the range. Surely, surely ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... the following day was falling when the homing Andre-Louis approached Gavrillac. Realizing fully what a hue and cry there would presently be for the apostle of revolution who had summoned the people of Nantes to arms, he desired as far as possible to conceal ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... bottle. Long ago, when the devil brought it first upon earth, it was extremely expensive, and was sold first of all to Prester John for many millions of dollars; but it cannot be sold at all, unless sold at a loss. If you sell it for as much as you paid for it, back it comes to you again like a homing pigeon. It follows that the price has kept falling in these centuries, and the bottle is now remarkably cheap. I bought it myself from one of my great neighbours on this hill, and the price I paid was only ninety dollars. I could sell it for as high as eighty-nine dollars ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... free. He wanted that spell to grow so strong that in the end it would weave itself about her too, make love beget love. There was quickening in him again that desire to pursue, to conquer, to possess. The ego in him whispered that once for a moment Sophie had rested like a homing bird in his arms, and would, again. But he was not to be betrayed by headlong impulse. The time was not yet. Instinct warned him that in some fashion, vague, unrevealed, he had still to prove himself to Sophie Carr. He was aware intuitively ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Stan bent forward as the air-speed indicator rolled up to just under four hundred miles per hour. There was no more boost and he longed for the dual supercharger. The FW's dropped in behind, unable to head him off, but the Me's came on like falcons trapping a homing pigeon. Stan felt a good deal like a pigeon. He was unarmed and he was carrying a vital message that had to get through. He dived down close to the water ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery
... the valley lies, Elaine, hast thou forgotten? Where swift the homing swallow flies And in the sunset daylight dies— But hush! Where is Elaine? Elaine, ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... though so slim His muscle is of steel—no fear for him; He is the breed which conquers; he is nerved To fight and fight again. Too long he served, Man of a subject race! His fierce, blue eye Roams like a homing eagle o'er the sky, So limitless, so deep! for such as he Life has no higher bliss than to ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... pretty rotten right now," says he; "Hanged if the devil himself could see. Priscilla, it's up to you and me To show 'em what we can do." Seemed that Priscilla just took the word; Up with a leap like a horse that's spurred, On with the joy of a homing bird, Swift ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... story in India. She has laid her spell on certain families; and they have followed one another through the generations, as homing birds follow in line across the sunset sky. And their name becomes a legend that passes from father to son; because India does not forget. There is perhaps nothing quite like it in the tale of any other land. It makes for continuity; ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... Water, folk say and they say That the homing hill-shepherd, benighted, has heard A song in the reeds, 'twixt the dawn and the day, That was never the song of a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... ourselves. There's Tom Chesney to begin with; George Cooper here, who ought to make a pretty fair scout even if he is always finding fault; Carl Oskamp, also present, if we can only tear him away from his hobby of raising homing pigeons long enough to study up what scouts have to know; yourself, Josh Kingsley; and a fellow by the name of Felix Robbins, which ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... a stepladder laboriously painting the R on THUNDER when old Sudden drove into the yard with half the Rolling R boys packed into the big car. They had heard the strident humming of the plane when Johnny made his homing flight, and craning necks backward, had seen him winging away to the Rolling R. They had guessed very close to the truth, and for them the search ended right there. So, after signalling the other searchers, many of the boys had ridden back in the car, leaving patient, obliging little ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... deeply impressed by the little story than she cared to have her companion suspect. Her world was a world of the commonplace conventions, with New York as its starting point and homing place; and she thought she knew something of humankind. But it came to her suddenly that the men she knew best were not at all like ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... Lieutenant had threatened that if they destroyed any more jails they would be rigorously released. Sinn Fein, which refused to fight Germany, had already begun to play at a new sort of war. Australia was preparing to welcome the homing transports sped with messages of Godspeed ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... chastened pilots took off from the level field, with a half dozen curious French peasants for an audience, and laid a straight course for Le Bourget. No more acrobatics and no more hedge hopping. To an observer below they would have resembled two homing pigeons flying rather close together and maintaining their positions with a singleness ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... Habitation Enforced is inspired by the nostalgia of inveterate banishment. Some part of its perfection—it is one of the few perfect short stories in the English tongue—is due to the perfect agreement of its form with the passion that informs its writing. It is the story of a homing Englishwoman, and of her restoration to the absolute earth of her forbears. In writing of this woman Mr Kipling has only had to recall his own joyful adventure in picking up the threads of a life ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... are far better developed than those of man. Hounds can trace footsteps over flat rocks, even though a shower has fallen in the interval; cats can see in the dark; rabbits hear sounds that men never hear; horses detect an impurity in water that a chemical analysis does not reveal, and homing pigeons would gain nothing by carrying a compass. And so I feel safe in saying that if any man were so good and perfect an animal that he had the hound's sense of smell, the cat's eyesight, the rabbit's sense of hearing, the horse's sense of taste, and the homing ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... the darkness of their paper bags, the mere fact that I am moving them gives my prisoners a sense of the direction in which I am taking them. If nothing happened to disturb this first impression, the insect would be guided by it in returning. This would explain the homing of my Mason-bees carried to a distance of two or three miles amid strange surroundings. But, when the insects have been sufficiently impressed by their conveyance to the east, there comes the rapid twirl, first this way round, then that. ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... perch, they would refuse to return until the sun was removed; and when it chanced to be the one on the porch and was switched off, they were unable to return because their endowment of optic nerve was small and their homing instinct, so strong in bees and eagles, smaller. There was created, accordingly, an impasse, but Mr. Sprig, who knew his hens, circumvented it. He lit a bedside candle which merely troubled his ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... of the village town-clock striking twelve came all too soon, but homing was no task with a turkey at the end. Muggs, still wrapped in mysterious silence, knew the very spot where Christmas odors began to permeate the frosty air and redoubled the speed in his drumming arm, but when after a vigorous scrubbing his glistening eye fell upon the holly-bright ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... "Everything they have to offer reminds one of home. What do you think of home, Ban? Home, as an abstract proposition. Home as the what-d'you-call-'em of the nation; the palladium—no, the bulwark? Home as viewed by the homing pigeon? Home, Sweet Home, as sung by—Would you answer, Ban, if I stopped gibbering and gave you ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... read in a book," he said, "and that was told to me, And this I have thought that another man thought of a Prince in Muscovy." The good souls flocked like homing doves and bade him clear the path, And Peter twirled the jangling keys ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... he could communicate with all her creatures. He knew where the rabbits burrowed, where the partridges nested, and where the wild bees stored their honey. He could foretell storms by a thousand signs, possessed the homing instinct of the pigeons, knew where the first violets were to be found, and where the last golden-rod would bloom. The squirrels crept down the trunks of trees to nibble the crumbs which he scattered for them. ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... in the street, or stabbed in the back as you are homing through the dusk are, to be sure, not everybody's amusements, and in an ordinary way they were not those of Mr. Manvers. But he found that his life gained a zest by being threatened with deprivation, and so long ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... ashamed—humiliated. Their flight assumed as a certainty what after all, let Eleanor say what she would, he had never, never said to her—what she had no clear authority to believe. Where was he? What was he thinking? For a moment, her heart fluttered towards him like a homing bird. ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with the tripping, scurrying, chattering, bright-eyed, homing tide came the Girl from Sieber-Mason's. The Man from Nome looked and saw, first, that she was supremely beautiful after his own conception of beauty; and next, that she moved with exactly the steady grace ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... a portable canoe glided out from under the stern of the launch. In it, lazily wielding the polished paddle, sat young Mrs. Haltren, bareheaded, barearmed, singing as sweetly as the little cardinal, who paused in sheer surprise at the loveliness of song and singer. Like a homing pigeon the canoe circled to take its bearings once, then glided ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... got those things working." Alan smiled slightly. "Guess that means I owe Pete a bourbon-and-soda for sure. Anybody who can build a robot that hunts by homing in on animals' mind impulses ..." He stepped forward just as a roar of blue flame dissolved the branches of a tree, barely ...
— Survival Tactics • Al Sevcik
... to sleep, Winging to sleep, Singing to sleep, Your wonder-black eyes that so wide open keep, Shielding their sleep, Unyielding to sleep, The heron is homing, the plover is still, The night-owl calls from his haunt on the hill, Afar the fox barks, afar the stars peep,— Little brown baby of mine, ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... climate, soil, and production, all combine to give bird-life a development in England that it attains in no other country. In no other land is it so multitudinous and musical; in none is there such ample and varied provision for housing and homing it. Every field is a great bird's- nest. The thick, green hedge that surrounds it, and the hedge-trees arising at one or two rods' interval, afford nesting and refuge for myriads of these meadow singers. The groves and thickets are full of them and their ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... had bathed and laid herself carefully down in the narrow bed which shook and groaned as if suffering from palsy, it seemed more impossible than ever to go to sleep. Each new train that rumbled by was a giant, homing bee, her brain the hive for which it aimed. Her hot head was crowded with thoughts, disturbing, fighting, struggling thoughts, yet the giant bee pushed the throng ruthlessly aside and darted in. Each time it seemed impossible to bear it again. ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... learnt (we heard when homing) That her roving spouse was dead; Why she had danced in the gloaming We ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... the innermost bit, the inner heart of the heart. They are the bit pulled, and pulled more, and pulled harder, till the strings grew. Man was born in the warm heart of God. Was there ever such a womb! Was there ever such another borning, homing place! ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... was roaring on, his machine seemingly feeling like a homing pigeon. He felt a fierce love for that noble hunter. He felt he could almost talk to it and tell it how proud he was of having been able to put it through its paces. Never had there been such ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... been caught and hampered in the quagmire of conservatism. Yet they have the homing instinct of all winged things: they return to the soul and seek to throw off the fat and heavy flesh of social stupidity. Many great free spirits there have been who possess this orientation of the race and have ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... destroyed, torn to pieces, trampled to pulp; they had heard the thunder of the vanishing herd, and they had listened to the awful silence that followed, lying on their faces, clinging to the breast of their old, cold, cruel Mother Earth. With day, like homing pigeons, they ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... news flashes. Scarcely could he speak Measurable words, so high his wild thought whirled: "Bride, Goddess, Helen, O Wonder of the World, Shall I come for thee?" Her tender words came soft As dropping rose petals on garden croft Down from the wall's sheer height—"Come soon, come soon." And homing to the lines those ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... they went, not one among them swerved, But eyes went homing swiftly to the West, Where, faint and very few, The windows of the town called out to them Yet held them nerved And ready for the test. Young every one, they brought life at its best. In the taut stillness, not a word Was uttered, but one heard The deep slow orchestration of the night Swell ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... day had brought me yet. With less strain on the attention, however, there was more upon the mind. No longer forced to exert some muscle twice or thrice a minute, I had time to feel very faint, and yet time to think. My soul flew homing to its proper prison. I was no longer any unit at unequal strife with the elements; instincts common to my kind were no longer my only stimulus. I was my poor self again; it was my own little life, and no other, that I ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... furiously, but the heavy foliage of chestnut and walnut had kept his paper dry. Now in the storm-gloom of the woods lit up by the infernal glare of lightning he detached the long scroll of thin paper covered by microscopical writing and, taking off the rubber bands which confined one of the homing pigeons, attached ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... contrary, a development, if not a revival, of some faultless instinct, due to kinship with her, which—to take extremes—shall direct alike the animal and the inspired man, guiding the wild bee and the homing pigeon, and—the ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... the man collapsed, watching every motion of Dirkovitch with terror. A flight from Siberia may fix a few elementary facts in the mind, but it does not seem to lead to continuity of thought. The man could not explain how, like a homing pigeon, he had found his way to his own old mess again. Of what he had suffered or seen he knew nothing. He cringed before Dirkovitch as instinctively as he had pressed the spring of the candlestick, sought the picture of ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... bays was all a dream; all a dream as they drove up the long, white, wide Logan Pike under the nodding trees and the soft evening sun. Everything was peaceful—the blue sky, the waving corn-fields, the magnolia, the songs of the homing birds. The air tasted rich as with great breaths he drew it into his lungs. It gave him hope. With this air to aid him he might ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... brief uncertainty became sure knowledge at sight of an L-shaped body of water glimmering through the fire-thinned spruce. Her heart fluttered for a minute. Like a homing bird, by grace of the rude map and Limping George, she had come to the lake where the Indians had camped in the winter, and she could have gone blindfolded from the lake ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the crowd she began to run; instinct of the homing sort impelled her to hasten. She had not settled in her mind what she would say or do when she got there, but there seemed to be no other place in all the world for her right then except the big house on ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... our recovery missile," Tom explained. "Looks like a slim hope, though, from the way that third blip is homing on target. This other control has just caused every instrument on this ship, and all the others in the task force, to make permanent records on magnetic tape of all ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... brilliant rainbow and wind-blown dark rain-clouds tell the end of a passing storm. In the second Air panel, which is called "The Hunters," the air supports the arrows just shot from the bows of hunters who hide behind the last trees at the edge of a wood. It bears also flocks of homing birds and light clouds blown across ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... The little stratagem worked admirably. The address which Tim gave young Surface was the address of Mrs. Paynter's, where Surface Senior had lived for nearly three years. And so the young man had gone to his father, straight as a homing pigeon. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... considerable height before starting away in the direction of Hazenhurst. It looked just like a homing pigeon seeking an altitude, from which it could find its bearings, before starting in a bee line ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... how gable ends and parapets In gradual beauty and significance Emerge! And did you hear That little twitter-and-cheep, Breaking inordinately loud and clear On this still, spectral, exquisite atmosphere? 'Tis a first nest at matins! And behold A rakehell cat—how furtive and acold! A spent witch homing from some infamous dance— Obscene, quick-trotting, see her tip and fade Through shadowy railings into a pit of shade! And lo! a little wind and shy, The smell of ships (that earnest of romance), A sense of space ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... our modern forms, but it was because the form fitted the poem. In our modern days, we too often, Procrustes-like, make our ideas to fit the forms. We put our guest, the poetic thought, that comes to us like a homing bird from out the mystery of the blue sky—we put this confiding stranger straightway into that iron bed, the "sonata form," or perhaps even the third rondo form, for we have quite an assortment. Should the idea survive and grow too large for the bed, and if we have learned to love it too much ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... of the SS. Friesland, a Dutch-American liner, which asserts that at nine next morning, Start Point being at the time ten miles upon their starboard quarter, they were passed by something between a flying goat and a monstrous bat, which was heading at a prodigious pace south and west. If its homing instinct led it upon the right line, there can be no doubt that somewhere out in the wastes of the Atlantic the last European ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Thitherward, like homing pigeons, Vanamee's thoughts turned irresistibly. Near to that tower, just beyond, in the little hollow, hidden now from his sight, was the Seed ranch where Angele Varian had lived. Straining his eyes, peering across the intervening levels, Vanamee fancied he could almost see the line ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... was child's work to pick out the moccasin track across the meadow. When the steps reached the beach they were harder to follow. I lost them for a while, though there were scattered pebbles that would have led me straight as a homing pigeon, had I been cool enough in mind to have my eyes and wits as sharp as usual. As it was, I doubled, and squandered time, until the sun began to loom red near the horizon. And all the time I was saying to myself, "It is not true. ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... The homing instinct in birds and animals is one of their most remarkable traits: their strong local attachments and their skill in finding their way back when removed to a distance. It seems at times as if they possessed some ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... had received. This signal had been recorded and examined minutely. Angle, strength and Doppler movement were computed to find course and distance. A few minutes of flight were enough to get within range of the far weaker transmitter in the drop-capsule. Homing on this signal was so simple, a human pilot could have done it himself. The shining sphere loomed up, then vanished out of sight of the viewports as the ship rotated to bring the spacelock into line. Magnetic clamps cut ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... stillness and, as it seemed, an awe of what he saw, most peaceful, so that I almost feared to look on him. The horns went again, soft and mellow in the distance from across the evening meadows. The kine heard them, and thought them the homing call, and so lifted their lazy heads and waded ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... to it through the tortuous cuts and passes was a marvel of homing instinct—the heart that homed to its object. It had seemed to her all along this strange, tense journey, that she had had no will of her own, that she had held her breath and shut her eyes, as it were, and gone forward in obedience to some strange thing within that said, "turn here," "go ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... storage/production facilities of a rogue state. - Selectively target rogue terrorist leaders as was apparently done by the Russians in Chechnya recently when they killed the top rebel leader by detecting and homing in on his satellite phone conversation (helicopter rocket attack). - Stop, divert, capture the cash ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... Francisco was enjoying one of its rare heat waves and Madeleine had put on a frock of white lawn made with a low neck and short sleeves, and tied a soft blue sash round her waist. As the hour of her husband's reasonably prompt homing approached she seated herself at the piano. She could not trust herself to sing, and played the "Adelaide." The past three days had not been as unhappy as she had expected. She had visited Sibyl Forbes, ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... Canada, from which it may be gathered that the trial he gave to these various experiments was of the summary drum-head nature. Luke Steffink, who fulfilled the troubled role of guardian and deputy-parent to Bertie, deplored the persistent manifestation of the homing instinct on his nephew's part, and his solemn thanks earlier in the day for the blessing of reporting a united family had no reference to ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... sea Martin Eden came, homing for California with a lover's desire. His store of money exhausted, he had shipped before the mast on the treasure-hunting schooner; and the Solomon Islands, after eight months of failure to find treasure, had witnessed ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... that as the sun dipped lower, the sky toward the southwest had been frequently swept by expectant eyes, but supper was served and eaten, and the purple shadows of night began softly to drape the glaring desert and still there came no sign of the homing aeroplane. ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... finished breakfast on Sunday morning, and was out looking after a few pets he had in the way of Belgian hares and homing pigeons, when he heard his ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... trajectory of a projectile, and fell at Evreux in safety and beyond the range of the enemy's fire, though not far from their lines. This was on the 23rd of September. Two days afterwards the first practical trial was made with homing pigeons, with the idea of using them in connection with balloons for the establishment of an officially sanctioned post. MM. Maugin and Grandchamp conducted this voyage in the "Ville de Florence," and descended near Vernouillet, ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... Soames, with his rooted distaste for the washing of dirty linen in public. And when he set forth by Underground to Victoria Station he received a fresh impetus towards the renewal of his married life from the account in his evening paper of a fashionable divorce suit. The homing instinct of all true Forsytes in anxiety and trouble, the corporate tendency which kept them strong and solid, made him choose to dine at Park Lane. He neither could nor would breath a word to his people of his intention—too reticent and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Basil for being younger than she, but she could trust him not to advertise his advantage. He really was a dear! She hated herself for being jealous of him sometimes. There were things he could do, there were thoughts that came to him as easily as homing birds, which were with her only a pretence: but she pretended eagerly, sincerely, even with prayer. She really yearned to be at heart all that she tried to make Somerled and other people believe her to be. And if she tried hard to be genuine ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... yellow line Down the splashy, gleaming street, And the rain is heard now loud now blurred By the tread of homing feet. ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale
... of the Currency Lass had thus ended in a stroke of fortune almost beyond hope. She had brought two thousand pounds' worth of trade, straight as a homing pigeon, to the place where it was most required. And Captain Wicks (or, rather, Captain Kirkup) showed himself the man to make the best of his advantage. For hard upon two days he walked a verandah with Topelius, for hard upon two days his partners watched from the neighbouring public house ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... been for the sprinkling of domes, the pointing fingers of minarets with glittering tiles of bronzy green, and the groups of old Arab houses crowded in among the crudities of a new, Western civilization. Down by the wharf for which the boat aimed like a homing bird, were huddled a few of these houses, ancient dwellings turned into commercial offices where shipping business was transacted. They looked forlorn, yet beautiful, like haggard slavewomen who remembered days of greatness in a ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... ether to guide a homing soul Towards God's Eternal Haven; above the wash and roll, Across and o'er the oceans, on all the coasts they stand Tall seneschals of commerce, High Wardens of the Strand — The white lights slowly turning Their kind ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... work, and, the fear of "supper-time" in our hearts, we pushed on at extra speed toward our night's lodging at Mount Morris. The oak-trees gloomed denser on our right as we plowed along a villainously sandy road. Labourers homing from the day's work greeted us now and again in the dimness, and presently one of these, plodding up behind us, broke ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... traveller who passed through the village. So they went to the rest-house to inquire if any one was there. There they found the uncle and nephew, and they married their little girl to the latter that very evening when the cows were homing. They drew on the wall a picture of Shiva and Parwati, and they put the children to bed beneath it. Parwati appeared to the little girl in her sleep. The goddess said, "My child, a snake will come to bite your ...
— Deccan Nursery Tales - or, Fairy Tales from the South • Charles Augustus Kincaid
... of Frome's lantern was soon lost in this smothering medium, in which even his sense of direction, and the bay's homing instinct, finally ceased to serve us. Two or three times some ghostly landmark sprang up to warn us that we were astray, and then was sucked back into the mist; and when we finally regained our road the old horse began to show signs of exhaustion. I ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... Genius of the Place to batten upon itself until seven o'clock Monday morning, P. Sybarite and Mr. Bross, with at least every outward semblance of complete amity, threaded the roaring congestion in narrow-chested Frankfort Street, boldly breasted the flood tide of homing Brooklynites, won their way through City Hall Park, and were presently swinging shoulder to shoulder up the ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... the hour of evening drinks) one of the boats was still unaccounted for. No one talked of her. They rather discussed motor-cars and Admiralty constructors, but—it felt like that queer twilight watch at the front when the homing aeroplanes drop in. Presently a signaller entered. "V 42 outside, sir; wants to know which channel she shall use." "Oh, thank you. Tell her to take so-and-so." ... Mine, remember, was vermouth and bitters, and later on V 42 himself found a soft chair and joined ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... of one or more well-known varieties—pouters, fantails, homing pigeons, etc. Read stories of the training and flights of homing pigeons, from ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... in his voice, went, leaving him very quiet. "I am afraid I have not made many while in London." Her eyes lifted slightly, fell. "Call it the homing instinct!" he went on with a laugh. "The desire once more to become part and parcel of one's native land; to become a factor, however ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... Sense of Direction. Many interesting cases are on record of animals finding their way home after being taken a considerable distance. To account for this fact it has been suggested that animals possess a sense with which we are not endowed, or of which, at any rate, we possess only a trace. The homing instinct of the pigeon has also been ascribed to the same faculty. My brother Alfred, however, who has paid much attention to pigeons, informs me that they are never taken any great distance at once; but if they ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... blasted the air, then streamed out behind in hot gas like a comet of flame. Then the thunders died; the shining shape turned once slowly in air to show her blunt nose and cylindrical body before she settled softly as a homing bird to the embrace of great waiting arms of steel. And, inside the building, a ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... the tower, like some sweet flower, The bell drops petals of the hour, That says the world is homing, My heart puts off its garb of care And clothes itself in gold and vair, And hurries forth to meet her ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... twice a day, with the return of the ebb, the mighty surplusage of water must struggle to escape. The hour in which the Farallone came there was the hour of flood. The sea turned (as with the instinct of the homing pigeon) for the vast receptacle, swept eddying through the gates, was transmuted, as it did so, into a wonder of watery and silken hues, and brimmed into the inland sea beyond. The schooner looked up close-hauled, and was caught and carried away by the influx ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne |
