"Hornet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 'em come! like to see 'em takin' our powder an' shot 'thout askin'! Guess they'll hear thunder, ef they stick their heads inter a hornet's nest." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... melted. Ato sent his swirling bombs toward the enemy. The scythe-blades dripped as they cut swaths through massed rows of human flesh. But from far down the street a swarm of red sparks came rushing at the bombs like hornets. They swirled about them, humming angrily. And then the bombs and the hornet-sparks were gone. ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... dark clusters round the guns at quarters. Several of the American skippers were forward amongst us, and they were of opinion that the chase was a man—of—war, although our own people seemed to doubt this. One of the skippers insisted that she was the Hornet, from the unusual shortness of her lower masts, and the immense squareness of her yards. But the puzzle was, if it were the Hornet, why she did not shorten sail. Still this might be accounted for, by her either wishing to make out what we were before ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... stod utanfr p vakt. Han vaktade med allvar, gav ock p mjdet akt. En sed den gamle hade: han jmt i botten drack, och intet ord han sade, blott hornet in ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... of the first Instant, it appears that Captain Morgan, of the Hornet Sloop of War, concerted a bloody riotous Plan, to impress Seamen, at Norfolk, for which Purpose, his Tender was equipped with Guns and Men, and under Cover of the Night said Morgan landed at a public Wharff, having first made proper Dispositions either for an Attack or Retreat, then went to ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... the flap, and down fell a quantity of fine, dry mud with young grubs in it which would soon have hatched into wasps, and revealed their rather strange nesting-place. I have in my collection a very interesting hornet's nest, which was being constructed in the hollow of an old tree. I happened to notice a hornet fly into the opening, and, looking in, there was a small beginning of a nest. It hung from a kind of stalk and consisted of only eight cells, ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... to the First President of the Cour des Monnoies, "be grateful for the King's liberality; but it is enough that I was chargeable to you, while I resided in France. I have never done you any service, though I made you an offer of myself. But it would not be proper that I should now live, like an hornet, on the goods of other men. I shall not, however, forget the kindness of so great a king, and the good ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... by nature never saw a hornet's nest until she had put her head into it, was seriously alarmed. She came and slipped her arm through his. Not convinced that he was right, and she herself wrong, because that was not natural to her, she was yet profoundly impressed by the obvious fact ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... things quietly, as we did when we were boys? I expect I had a rather comfortable time of it then, though I did get whipped for tearing my clothes, and killing flies, which I used to do worse than any bald hornet. ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... themselves on the enormous couch and Robina looked at her brother. "Jason, Ah'm real sorry. Ah went an' stirred up a hornet's nest of trouble for ...
— The Premiere • Richard Sabia
... A bicycle race with an unfriendly dog. 2. An unpleasant experience. 3. A story told by the school clock. 4. Disturbing a hornet's nest. 5. The fate of an Easter bonnet. 6. ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... fire; half a gunshot away was the Bashaw's castle, the mole and crown batteries, while within range were ten other batteries, mounting, all told, a hundred and fifteen guns. Between the Philadelphia and the shore lay a number of Tripolitan cruisers, galleys and gunboats. Into this hornet's nest, Decatur steered his little vessel of sixty tons, carrying four small guns, and having a crew of ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... good will thereto; and they shall show us the way to Silver-dale by blind paths, so that we may fall upon these felons while they dwell there tormenting the poor people of the land, and thus may we destroy them as lads a hornet's nest. Or else the days shall ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... that I wasn't living up to worth mentioning. He yelled to the postmaster to grab me, and the fellow tried it. I backed into a corner and held old King in front of me as a bulwark, warranted bullet proof, and wondered what kind of a hornet's-nest I'd got into. The waiter and the postmaster were both looking for an opening, and I remembered that I was on old King's territory, and that they were after ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... home in her and handed over to the Governor of Rochelle to be sent back to Paris. Those are Monsieur de Denonville's orders, and if they be not carried out to the letter, then we shall have the whole hornet's ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... can only say that I am laying close siege; that my lines of circumvallation do not proceed quite so rapidly as my desires; but that I have just blown up the main bastion; or, in other words, have prevailed on Sir Arthur to send this hornet, this Frank Henley, back to England. The fellow's aspiring insolence is not to be endured. His merit is said to be uncommon. 'Tis certain he strains after the sublime; and in fact is too deep a thinker, nay I suspect too deep a plotter, not ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... at him, and he at table, bibbed like a babe, mad as a hornet, hammering on the cloth with a great silver spoon and bellowing that they meant to ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... around with the idea of barging in on the main office of the company but I figured that might be too much like poking my head into a hornet's nest. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... voice, "we had better look out for ourselves! We have got into a very hornet's nest! If this is the place where the Martians come to dig gold, and if this is the height of their season, as you say, they are not likely to leave us here ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... been clever enough to conceal his white feathers, and he could talk in a modest, purposeful way, just like a genuine hero. He was to be shot, not because he was himself, but because he was Juan's brother. The Spaniards feared the whole family as a man fears a hornet's nest in the eaves and, because one hornet has stung him, wages exterminating war upon all hornets. In Manuel's case, however, there was a trial, short and unpleasant. The man was on his knees half the time, blubbering, abjuring, perspiring, ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... Chester, where she was prepared for a long and distant cruise directed against British commerce, the suggestion of which Porter believed came first from himself. By this a squadron consisting of the Constitution, Essex, and Hornet sloop-of-war, under the command of Commodore Bainbridge in the first-named frigate, were to proceed across the Atlantic to the Cape Verde Islands, thence to the South Atlantic in the neighborhood of Brazil, and finally to the Pacific, to destroy the British whale-fishery ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... Apiformis) is a very interesting moth, and it was common at Aldington; the larva feeds on the wood of the black poplar. The colouring of the moth so resembles the hornet, that at first sight it is easily mistaken for the latter. It is an excellent example of "mimicry," whereby a harmless insect acquires the distinctive appearance of a harmful one, and so secures immunity from the attacks of its ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... answered simply; "but I'll get myself into a hornet's nest. These young people don't like to be told what's good for them," he added with a laugh, rising from his seat. "And after that you'll permit me to slip away without telling anybody, won't you? My last minute has come," and ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... return. But House People are very blind about some things, and often act as if they had only one eye apiece, like the Cyclopes. We see one of these darling birds take a little fruit; we see more fruit with holes in it, and think that birds have done the damage, though a wasp or hornet may be the guilty party; and then we often say, 'What a nuisance those ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... thought of the high-coloured young lady in the bar. His conscience was not at ease regarding his admiration for her; and he dreaded lest the officious Cargrim should talk about her to the bishop. Altogether the chaplain, like a hornet, had annoyed both Dr Pendle and his son; and the bishop in London and Gabriel in Beorminster were anything but well disposed towards this clerical busybody, who minded everyone's business instead of his own. It is such people who stir up ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... a war in France; Everywhere men bang and blunder, Sweat and swear and worship Chance, Creep and blink through cannon thunder. Rifles crack and bullets flick, Sing and hum like hornet-swarms. Bones are smashed and buried quick. Yet, through stunning battle storms. All the while I watch the spark Lit to guide me; for I know Dreams will triumph, though the dark Scowls above me where I go. ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... prevent the water from slopping over. We used to wonder by what magic this strange principle worked, and who first invented the crosses, and whether he got a peerage for it. But indeed the well was a centre of mystery, for a hornet's nest was somewhere hard by, and the very thought was fearsome. Wasps we knew well and disdained, storming them in their fastnesses. But these great Beasts, vestured in angry orange, three stings from which—so 't was averred—would kill a horse, these were of a different kidney, ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... The old man's been as mad as a hornet since he found you had quit without leave. He was ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... with an odd expression. They were aground on Sirene VIII, on which no human ship had ever landed before them, and they had stirred up a hornet's nest on Sirene IV, which had orbital eighty-gee rocket missiles in orbit around it with bust bomb heads and all the other advantages of civilization. The Aldeb was on the way with a fifteen-man crew. And seventeen men, altogether, must pit themselves against an embattled ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... boys in blue that are buried will find it mighty lonesome when we take the living soldiers away. No, boy, it will not take two hundred years to subdue the Filipinos. That is, we will not be working at the job that long, because we are not built that way. If we find we have got into a hornet's nest, and that the hornets don't have any honey, anyway, and that we don't need hornets in our regular business, somebody in authority will be apt to know when we have got enough, and we will probably ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... the women were below, and he knew, too, that unless he used extreme caution, he would find himself in a veritable hornet's nest. The care with which he placed his moccasins on the rounds, and gradually came down, proved this, but the hearing of the women was attuned to so fine an edge that they traced his descent step by step until he ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... and down Wishbone Valley, calling upon them to stop, and declaring that if turkey should ever be put upon the table again he would eat nothing but the stuffing. When Donald found that the wishbones were sticking into his neck like so many hornet stings, he made up his mind that he would run for the house. Finally the wishbone tattoo stopped, and when he looked around, the gobbler, who was twenty feet away, said: "When a Thanksgiving turkey dies, his ghost comes ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... slowly overspread Ole Ericsen's broad face. It was only too true. We had a hornet's nest on our hands, and to stop at Collinsville would be to have ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... he had stirred up quite as active a hornet's nest as he had anticipated. Letters by the hundred poured in attacking and reviling him. In nearly every case the writers fell back upon personal abuse, ignoring his arguments altogether. He became the subject of ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... on this old globule. Football is only the smallest thing you learn. You learn how to be patient when what you want to do is to chew somebody up and spit him into the gutter. You learn to control your temper when it is on the high speed, with the throttle jerked wide open and buzzing like a hornet convention. You learn, by having it told you, just how small and foolish and insignificant you are, and how well this earth could stagger along without you if some one were to take a fly-killer and ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... of the hornet lies in the conclusion. If this quadriliteral man had done so much for them, (though really, we think, 6s. 8d. might have settled his claim,) what, says Fire, setting her arms a-kimbo, would they do for him? Slaughter replies, rather crustily, that, as far as a good ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... liberality: but it is enough to have been chargeable to you when in France. I have never done you any service, though I made an offer of myself. But it would not be proper that I should now live like a hornet on the goods of other men. I shall never forget, however, the kindness of so great a King, and the good offices of ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... plumb fierce, an' her face, which is stern an' heroic, carries a capac'ty for trouble lurkin' 'round in it, same as one of them bald hornet's nests on a beech limb. Nacherally my grandfather's gaze gets riveted on this lady a whole lot, his pipe hangin' forgetful from his lips. The lady's eyes all at once comes down on my grandfather, partic'lar an' personal, like a milk-crock ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... came the Beetle, so blind and so black, Who carried the Emmet, his friend, on his back, And there was the Gnat and the Dragonfly too, With all their Relations, green, orange and blue. And there came the Moth, with his plumage of down, And the Hornet in jacket of yellow and brown; Who with him the Wasp, his companion, did bring, But they promised that evening to lay by their sting. And the sly little Dormouse crept out of his hole, And brought to the Feast his blind Brother, the Mole; ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... her own headstrong creation of an anomalous social position, that Gwen could not decide, nominally omnipotent as she was in her parents' absence, on telling the servants to serve her dinner in the room Mrs. Picture occupied. Had it not been for her suspicion of a hornet's nest at hand, she might have dared to ordain that Mrs. Picture should be her sole guest in her own section of the Towers, or at least that she herself should become the table-guest of the old lady in Francis Quarles; ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... his face wearing that heavy, dreamy look when in repose. Facing about, he turned upon the President and opposed the attack. "Mr. President," he said, "at this time, it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountains to ocean, and legions, now quiet, will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal." He clung to the idea expressed in his dispatches to the commissioners, that "So long as the United States neither declares war ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... helpless object, for he took the hat off, spat into it, and kicked it into shapeless pulp. Then he came back to the house and grimly asked his wife if she had anything handy to take the poison out of hornet stings. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... word of the arrival at Sanpahoe, on the island of Hawaii, of an open boat containing fifteen starving wretches, who on short, ten-day rations had been buffeting a stormy sea for forty-three days! A vessel, the Hornet, from New York, had taken fire and burned "on the line," and since early in May, on that meager sustenance, they had been battling with hundreds of leagues of adverse ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... authority of his influential and patriotic family at home, and screened by the profound ignorance of Congress concerning men and affairs abroad, Lee was able for a long time to run his mischievous career without discovery or interruption. He buzzed about Europe like an angry hornet, thrusting his venomous sting into every respectable and useful servant of his country, and irritating exceedingly the foreigners whom it was of the first importance to conciliate. Incredible as it seems, it is undoubtedly true that he did not hesitate to express in Paris his deep ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... were wounded, though he was not, as usual, for all his seven feet of perpendicular target. But "the Doc," of Benton, was, of course. Getting wounded was the greatest trouble with Doc. If he attacked a hornet's nest, he would contrive some way to get a leg shot off. But with him such things had become to be a matter of course, so now he crated himself together enough to move around and attend to the others. Driscoll was most innumerably barked, with a ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... speed: it has taken six years to come up with those whom chiefly it concerned. Some dozen of us, Blackwood-men and others, are stung furiously in that book during the early part of 1838; and yet none of us had ever perceived the nuisance or was aware of the hornet until the wheat-fields of 1844 were white for the sickle. In August ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... face of a rapt saint as he told this story, but my contemplation of his countenance was suddenly arrested by Toddie, who, disapproving of the unexciting nature of his brother's recital, had strayed into the garden, investigated a hornet's nest, been stung, and set up a piercing shriek. He ran in to me, and as I hastily picked ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... venomous fashion. He pointed out that we Gentiles had brought all this trouble upon Mur, since before we came the Abati, although threatened, had lived in peace and glory—he actually used the word glory!—for generations. But now we had stung the Fung, as a hornet stings a bull, and made them mad, so that they wished to toss the Abati. He proposed, therefore, that we should at once be ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... nest of revolutionists—and quite a hornet's nest it would seem. Well, you won't abide here ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... am delighted to see you, Fleetwood. From the accounts we received we thought it was all up with you; and I came more with the hope of avenging you, than of seeing you alive; but now you shall have that satisfaction yourself. By Jove! we must blow up the hornet's nest without delay. When did you ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... letters. "God knows," said he to Perez, "that I always speak of them with respect, which is more than they do of me. But God forgive them all. In times like these, one must hold one's tongue. One must keep still, in order not to stir up a hornet's nest." ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... I, "take the whole and let's be going," for I was sure the bolted door must have seemed suspicious and would bring the whole hornet's nest about our ears, though how thankful I was that I had bolted it, none could tell who had never met ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... high-pitched, keen tone and pronounced accent of the typical "South-Westerner." In truth he was a border Mexican; a type of man closely allied to the "greaser." He was a perfect scoundrel, who had doubtless departed from his native land for the benefit of that fair but swarming hornet's nest. ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... convent was from thenceforth like a bee-hive into which a hornet had entered. Our lesson hours were curtailed, so that we might have time to make festoons of roses and lilies. The wide, tall arm-chair of carved wood was uncushioned, so that it might be varnished and polished. We made lamp-shades covered with crystalline. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... scarcely had I laid me down, When comes a voice: "Is that you, Joe? I'm calling you from Williamstown! Knock once for 'yes,' and twice for 'no.'" Then, hornet-mad, I knocked back two— The table shook, I banged it so— "Not Joe!" they said, "Then tell ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... Cowan answered. "Came a few minutes after you took off, but when I refused him a ship he got mad as a hornet, bawled out the light crew and—and me, and then jumped back in his car and rode ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... vivacity of its wriggles will attract the bite. If the worm could but make the angler respect, or even fear it, the barb would find some other bait. Few anglers would impale an estimable silkworm, and still fewer the anglers who would finger into service a formidable hornet. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... been back to San Antonio yesterday," he exclaimed. "But I was delayed in Denison. I suppose Perry Watson will be as mad as a hornet when I get back because I didn't make it as quick as he expected. He expects an awful lot from ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... here!" yells Jabez, hot as a hornet, "I'm a man an' you ain't, an' that makes a heap o' difference. I had to give up cussin' on your account, but I don't intend to go to wearin' dresses complete, just to ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... like a hornet! And what a scene there, through the door! The forest behind and the garden before, And midway an old man of threescore, With a wife and children that caress him. Let me try still further to cheer and adorn it With a merry, ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... all the members of the same committee.—Here, however, is one case, where, owing to the lucky accident of an examination given in detail, one can observe in one nest, every variety of the species and of its appetites, the dozen or fifteen types of the Jacobin hornet, each abstracting what suits him from whatever he lights on, each indulging in his favorite sort of rapine.—At Nantes, "Pinard, the great purveyor of the Committee,[33142] orders everything that each member needs for his daily use to be carried to his house."—"Gallou ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... recalled to the House by his agitated colleague, recognised that his old Parliamentary hand had got into a hornet's nest, and promptly withdrew it. To the best of my recollection this is the first time on record that a Government measure has perished before its first reading. Conceived in secrecy and delivered in pain, its epitaph will be that of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 3, 1916 • Various
... It is little pleasure that comes into her life. An orphan—barely twenty-two—with the entire responsibility of her uncle's ranch upon her shoulders. Living in a very hornet's ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... the nose. Mada, Skins, with which they are clothed. Wamb-aur, Scars, raised for ornament, or distinction, on their bodies. Gum-iil, Girdles worn round the body. Un-elenar, One night. Gow, Woman. Mar-o-gu-la, Another tribe. Mem-aa, A native man. Wam-aa, A kind of hornet's-nest, which they eat. Warenur, Fire. Curr-eli, Timber, or trees. Galu-nur, Thistles, the roots of which they eat. Gulura, The moon. Yandu, Sleep. Galen-gar,) ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... Mecklenberg claims to have issued the first declaration of independence, and, at the centennial celebration of this event in May, 1875, proudly accepted for itself the derisive name given this region by Tarleton's officers, "The Hornet's Nest of America." This name—first bestowed by British officers upon Mrs. Brevard's mansion, then Tarleton's headquarters, where that lady's fiery patriotism and stinging wit discomfited this General in many a sally—was at last held to include the whole county. In 1778, only two years ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and the men of Ghent are typical in their greed for empire, in their readiness to strike a blow for their own profit whenever war is in the land. If the seigneurs of such cities gave cause for dissatisfaction, they found that they had brought a hornet's nest about their ears. In the struggle for liberties the popular party displayed a high courage which rose superior to defeat, though in the hour of triumph it was too often sullied by ferocious acts of vengeance. They threw themselves with intelligence ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... what a mutt I was not to get myself jabbed for typhoid before I came here! It would have been worth the money. Today my arm feels like a hornet's nest, with roots up into my shoulder and down my ribs. And my head is light and wavy—that's fever. I saw one guy keel over stiff when the doctor stuck him, and the poor corp of our squad says he'd swap ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... and fair. i was all sweled up with hornet bites but they dident hurt enny, i looked jest like Beany when he had the mumps. everyone laffed ...
— The Real Diary of a Real Boy • Henry A. Shute
... image!—It planted a thorn in a till then insensible heart, and sent a new kind of a knight-errant into the world. But even this was nothing to the catastrophe, and the circumstance on which it hung, the hornet settling on the sleeping lover's face. What a heart-rending accident! She planted, in imitation of those susceptible souls, a rose bush; but there was not a lover to weep in concert with her, when she watered it ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... in ancient sages, Have been like cobwebs in all ages: Cobwebs for little flies are spread, And laws for little folks are made; But if an insect of renown, Hornet or beetle, wasp or drone, Be caught in quest of sport or plunder, The flimsy fetter flies in sunder. Your simile perhaps may please one With whom wit holds the place of reason: 10 But can you prove that this in fact is Agreeable to life and practice? Then hear, what in his simple way Old AEsop ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... plunged the pin into his wrist. It stung like a hornet; and with a gasp of pain, Craig leaped back out of ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... Charing Cross. The farmers crowded round it, women drew near it, children crept under and into it. The machine was painted in bright hues of green, yellow, and red, and it resembled as a whole a compound of hornet, grasshopper, and shrimp, magnified enormously. Or it might have been likened to an upright musical instrument with the front gone. That was how it struck Lucetta. "Why, it is a sort of agricultural piano," ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... as they had, in spite of the mishaps which usually occur on such expeditions! Of course Tommy came to grief, tumbled upon a hornet's nest and got stung; but being used to woe, he bore the smart manfully, till Dan suggested the application of damp earth, which much assuaged the pain. Daisy saw a snake, and flying from it lost half ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... ain't horrid!" Fern Dillon bounced off the grass like an angry hornet, then collapsed beside the baby brother, who evidently was not given much to talking, for he had not said a word, but simply stared in round-eyed surprise at the pretty stranger child. "Oh, dear, everybody ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... he cried, as his eyes followed the insect where it alighted on the ceiling. "That's no hornet! That's a honeybee—and an ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... then at David, its glance curious but without understanding. Paralyzed with fear, David remained on his knees as the Scientist reached an open place and threw the gun up to his shoulder. The bullet went whining by with an ugly hornet-noise, and the report of the ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... the citadel at Perugia you can guess what a hornet's nest that grey stronghold of the Baglioni must have been. It commands the great plain and bars the way to Rome. Westward, on a spur of rock, stands Magione and a lonely tower: this was their outpost ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... "Oh, you little mountain hornet! Well, you are telling me news now. And it's the kind to make any old bachelor like me weep for envy. Lucky boy, Zeke! I guess he knows it, too, for he's got eyes in his head. About the money—why, you've a right to it. If Dan Hodges and his gang ain't ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... Just as I thought that I had finished, and was only too glad that I had laid this question to sleep, and was reflecting how fortunate I was in your acceptance of what I then said, you ask me to begin again at the very foundation, ignorant of what a hornet's nest of words you are stirring. Now I foresaw this ...
— The Republic • Plato
... signal shots," agreed Marshall. "But," he added, "I shall need to be very hard pressed indeed to fire my pistols. For shots at night-time anywhere near a battery would be certain to put everybody on the alert, and probably bring a bigger hornet's nest about my ears than you and all hands could beat off. Still, if I want help very badly I shall know what to do. And now, I'll be off. Keep a sharp lookout, and don't allow yourself to be surprised. Good night!" As Dick murmured an answering ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... with milk and honey. Do you believe that God Almighty ever went into partnership with hornets? Is it necessary unto salvation? God said to the Jews "I will send hornets before you, to drive out the Canaanites." How would a hornet know a Canaanite? Is it possible that God inspired the hornets—that he granted letters of marque and reprisal to hornets? I am willing to admit that nothing in the world would be better calculated to make a man leave his native country than a few ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... on her part; but it had the desired effect. Erma screamed in terror; Emma's eyes grew big; Mame scolded her soundly for expressing such a wish. For a while she had a hornet's ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... hornet, who is said to leave his sting in the wound, and afterwards to languish away, Pope felt so greatly exhausted by the efforts connected with the Dunciad, (which are far greater, in fact, than all his Homeric ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... rehearsing here the long-drawn struggle through which he made his way to party leadership. In Parliament and out, he was a hornet—a good thing to let alone, and an ugly customer to stir up. Whether he lined up with the Government or Opposition it mattered little. Lloyd George has always been an insurgent ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... Where the freshest berries grow, Where the ground-nut trails its vine, Where the wood-grape's clusters shine; Of the black wasp's cunning way, Mason of his walls of clay, And the architectural plans Of gray hornet artisans! For, eschewing books and tasks, Nature answers all he asks, Hand in hand with her he walks, Face to face with her he talks, Part and parcel of her joy,— Blessings on ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... from every direction for the courting, some in groups, humming to the accompaniment of clucking and a sort of whinnying, others alone, blowing on the bimbau, an instrument made of small sheets of iron, which buzzed like a hornet, serving to lull them into forgetfulness of the fatigue of the journey. They came from far away. Some walked three hours, and must travel as many back again, crossing from one end of the island to the other on the courting days which were Thursdays and Saturdays, for the sake of talking ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... act; for there is not a sin at any time committed by man, but there is some circumstance or other attends it that makes it, when charged home by God's law, bigger and sharper and more venomous and poisonous to the soul, than if it could be committed without them; and this is the sting of the hornet, the great sting. I sinned without a cause, to please a base lust, to gratify the devil: here is the sting. Again, I preferred sin before holiness, death before life, hell before heaven, the devil before God, and damnation before a Saviour: here is the sting. ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... dark figures he had passed on Clay street where the killing had taken place. Perchance if he had stopped as he was minded, the tragedy might have been averted. Nobody seemed to know just how it came about. The thing was most unfortunate politically. King would stir up a hornet's nest of public opinion. Broderick reached his lodgings and at once retired. His sleep was fitful. He dreamed that Alice Windham and Sheriff Scannell ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... of Count Buol stirred up a hornet's nest of indignation. The people of England and France became incensed as they saw that Austria showed no inclination to fight. Prussia flatly refused to assist Austria in any warlike undertaking. Victor Emmanuel of Sardinia took advantage of the situation to join ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... and shaken, and mad as a hornet. I think perhaps I'll get him quieted down and sleepy in a few minutes, if you and Mrs. Maynard will be content to let him stay with me. I can talk ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... redeeming feature of this troublesome disease, and that is the comparatively small permanent effects which it produces upon the joints in the way of crippling, or even stiffening. To gaze upon a rheumatic knee-joint, for instance, in the height of the attack,—swollen to the size of a hornet's nest, hot, red, throbbing with agony, and looking as if it were on the point of bursting,—one would almost despair of saving the joint, and the best one would feel entitled to expect would be a roughening of its surfaces and a ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... hearty!' replied the young leader; 'but we must be moving—the blue jackets will be after us; that shot of yours will bring the whole hornet's nest about our ears.' ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... this of the misfortune that pursues the Government. Little did OLD MORALITY think, when in moment of weakness he showed this important document to HANBURY, what a hornet's nest it would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various
... Dagonet clapt his hands and shrilled, 'Ay, ay, my brother fool, the king of fools! Conceits himself as God that he can make Figs out of thistles, silk from bristles, milk From burning spurge, honey from hornet-combs, And men from beasts—Long ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... so foolish, Thomas. As if a man what's been stung by a wasp would care to sit himself down on a hornet's nest. ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... occasion I incurred Madame V.'s serious displeasure. A hornet's nest had been discovered, and, as it was voted a great curiosity, was placed by Madame's orders among the other specimens of Natural history in the library. Warmed into life by the heat of the room, some of the hornets began to show signs of activity. The prospect was ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... incurred some ridicule by his readiness in proposing constitutions. His antagonist, like a hornet, instantly fixed his sting upon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... might as well say to the crab, Fly. The crab says, Give me wings; I say, Give me back my health and my youth. If I write calmly against Luther I shall be called lukewarm; if I write as he does, I shall stir a hornet's nest. People think he can be put down by force. The more force you try, the stronger he will grow. Such disorders cannot be cured in that way. The Wickliffites in England were put down, but ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... a Fat man of his little clam-bake, and it would be full as pleasant as settin' down onto a Hornet's nest, when the Hornet family were all ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... her sinless mind Is pure as the angel forms above, Gentle and meek, and chaste and kind, Such as a spirit well might love; Fairy! had she spot or taint, Bitter had been thy punishment. Tied to the hornet's shardy wings; Tossed on the pricks of nettles' stings; Or seven long ages doomed to dwell With the lazy worm in the walnut-shell; Or every night to writhe and bleed Beneath the tread of the centipede; Or bound in a cobweb dungeon dim, Your jailer a spider huge and grim, Amid the carrion bodies ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... a hornet. But she'll cool off. We've been walloped all right, though. Could tell by her voice. What a blessed provision of nature our ears can't catch the things people say about us. I hope our ears will never be Marconi-ized. No two human beings would be on speaking terms ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... calling to mind how often she had heard Blanchefleur speak of a youth in Spain of form and face resembling her own, bethought her that this May-Day offering might be the Spanish love of Blanchefleur; so with a laugh she dismissed the maidens who were her fellows, saying that a hornet springing out from amid the flowers had frighted her. Reader, picture to yourself the terror of Fleur on finding he was discovered! But fortune was kind, for Clarissa, the captive daughter of a Duke of Alemannia, was the bosom friend of lovely Blanchefleur, and often had the two together ...
— Fleur and Blanchefleur • Mrs. Leighton
... it's the reason or not; but somethin' happened jes' as he had his leg up to climb in, might a' made him change his mind! Th' squaw come ridin' all bareheaded, an' mad as a hornet out o' th' cottonwoods wavin' her hands roarin' crazy! Minit he seen her, he quit goin' down: said he'd give me a hand at the hoist! I seen what made him change his mind al' right! She waz ravin' mad, come rampin' out, ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... remark on the subject: no work of which D'Alembert[460] was co-editor would have been started on any such plan. For, first, he was a real sceptic: that is, doubtful, with a mind not made up. Next, he valued his quiet more than anything; and would as soon have gone to sleep over an hornet's nest as have contemplated a systematic attack upon either religion or government. As to Diderot[461]—of whose varied career of thought it is difficult to fix the character of any one moment, but who is very frequently taken among us for a pure ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... the prettiest, softest sound you ever heard—she was mad as a hornet, too." The General's swift chuckle caught him. "'Hyer,' she said it," he repeated. "'Hyer.'" He liked to say it, evidently. "I stood holding my cap in my hand, so tame by this time you could have put me on ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... the answer. "They have, I doubt not, as many flags on board as there are months in the year. She looks at this distance just like a craft of that sort—a regular hornet; I hope we ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... finish what he was going to say. Instead he jumped back as though he had been stung by a hornet, ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... in Silver Street—the regiments was out, They called us "Delhi Rebels", an' we answered "Threes about!" That drew them like a hornet's nest—we met them good an' large, The English at the double an' ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... fascination there is about that old fort at Annapolis!—"the hornet's nest", as it was called in the olden time; the stronghold which withstood so many sieges, and was the subject of constant contentions in ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... there is a garrison of seven men. It is getting dusk and mosquitoes are coming out by hundreds, they have not annoyed me before, but I think I must use my net to-night. I lie on my bed after dinner smoking with a lighted candle by my side. A hornet flies in and settles on my hand, then a large beetle comes with a buzz and a thud against me, making me start. Sundry moths, small flies, and beetles, are playing innocently round the flame. In half an hour I shall be able to make a fair entomological collection but as I neither (Ha! ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... subdivide into the actions of national vessels, and the raids of the privateers. The first gave to the United States the most brilliant successes of the war. When it began two small squadrons were getting ready for sea at New York; the frigate "President" (44) and sloop "Hornet" (18), under Commodore John Rodgers, who had also the general command; and the frigates "United States" (44) and "Congress" (38), with the brig "Argus" (16) to which two guns were afterwards added, under Captain ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the one knife and fork and spoon. And Jessie got so rattled that she just about forgot to use the stuff too. And finally old Mrs. Vingie, that Jessie asked just to have the news spread, got up mad as a hornet and marched out, saying she was too old ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... the cook reclining in the arms of one of the crew and moaning: "Je mart, je mort." After a rapid examination, however, I could find nothing at all the matter. At length we discover the truth. His canoe had run into a large hornet's nest hanging from the branch of a tree and he had been stung in the head. To avoid further damage, he and the whole of the crew not only jumped into the water themselves but threw all the live stock overboard as well, ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... as she needed fitting up. Yet Captain Barry was not permitted to be idle. On May 8th, Robert Morris, for the Marine Committee of Congress, directed him to go down the Delaware River in the sloop "Hornet," commanded by Captain Hallock, and to take the officers and men of the "Lexington" to supply the Provincial armed ship, commanded by Captain Read, the Floating Battery and the "Reprisal," under Captain Wickes, with men sufficient to have these vessels "fit for immediate action," and to give ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... horse and is equally as troublesome. the silkworm is also found here. a great variety of beatles common to the Atlantic states are found here likewise. except from this order the large cow beatle and the black beatle usually alled the tumble bug which are not found here. the hornet, the wasp and yellow wasp or yellow jacket as they are frequently called are not met with in this quarter. there is an insect which much resembles the latter only a vast deel larger which are very numerous particularly ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... and at the same time took the very particular pleasure of introducing the Captain to several of the young bloods, as he called them, while they walked to and from the boxes. At length the Captain found himself in a perfect hornet's nest, surrounded by vicious young secessionists, so perfectly nullified in the growth that they were all ready to shoulder muskets, pitchforks, and daggers, and to fire pistols at poor old Uncle Sam, if he should ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... gaining a foothold within the city, all who were liable to the press immediately deserted it—"as they do every town where there is a gang"—and went "to reside at Parkgate." Parkgate in this way became a resort of sea-faring men without parallel in the kingdom—a "nest" whose hornet bands were long, and with good reason, notorious for their ferocity and aggressiveness. [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 1446—Capt. Ayscough, 17 Nov. 1780.] An attempt to establish a rendezvous here in 1804 proved a failure. The seamen fled, no "business" could be done, and officer ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... returned Bill. "The fourth time I went for that ridge, I fetched her to the top, for I was madder than a hornet." ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... done with her," replied Peters grimly, and then he laughed. "I guessed from what she said this morning that she was a little frightened at the hornet's nest she had raised. I imagine she won't be sorry to run away for a while and let things settle down. She can ease off gently in the meantime and give Egypt as ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... acquainted; and as his great work partially covers the same period to which Taine has recently devoted himself, I ventured to mention his name in this connection. But I might as well have stirred up a hornet's nest. "Von Sybel," said Taine, "wrote his book to prove that Prussia was perfectly right in taking part in the partition of Poland, and some other things of like nature." He seemed to think this assertion (admitting its truth) settled Von Sybel's place in literature as definitely as if ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... dismounted, a condition which always appeals to a cavalryman's strongest sympathies; they might at any moment, he feared, be attacked by overwhelming forces, for he did not know what was upon the other side, or how large a swarm Hines had stirred up in the hornet's nest. He himself might be attacked, if delayed too long, by the enemy that he well knew must be following his track. Independently of all considerations of immediate danger, he was impatient at delay and ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke |
