"Mouse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... oyster-women locked their fish up, And trudged away to cry "No Bishop": The mouse-trap men laid save-alls by, And 'gainst ev'l counsellors did cry; Botchers left old cloaths in the lurch, And fell to turn and patch the Church; Some cried the Covenant, instead Of pudding-pies and ginger-bread, And some for brooms, old boots and shoes, Bawled out to purge the Common-house: ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... time, when the Field-Mouse was out gathering wild beans for the winter, his neighbor, the Buffalo, came down to graze in the meadow. This the little Mouse did not like, for he knew that the other would mow down all the long grass with his prickly tongue, and there ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman
... together in delight as he turned to his sister, "You'd ought to have seen 'em, Betty. There was pop in his rubber boots a creepin' along—a c-r-e-e-p-i-n' along as sly as a mouse toward 'em, and there they stayed. The male bird he fluttered and' squawked, and the female she stuck to the nest till pop he got right up and he didn't even have to shoot her. He just clubbed her over the back and down she went ker-splash as dead as you please. ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... possible phases of that sort of anguish, beginning with instinctive panic, through the bewildered stage, the frozen stage and the stage of blanched apprehension, down to the instinctive prudence of extreme terror—the stillness of the mouse. But when she heard herself called the child of a cheat and a swindler, the very monstrous unexpectedness of this caused in her a revulsion towards letting herself go. She screamed out all at once "You mustn't ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... quiescence; stagnation, stagnancy; fixity, immobility, catalepsy; indisturbance[obs3]; quietism. quiet, tranquility, calm; repose &c. 687; peace; dead calm, anticyclone|!; statue-like repose; silence &c. 203; not a breath of air, not a mouse stirring; sleep &c. (inactivity) 683. pause, lull &c. (cessation) 142; stand still; standing still &c. v.; lock; dead lock, dead stop, dead stand; full stop; fix; embargo. resting place; gite[Fr]; bivouac; home &c. (abode) 189; pillow &c. (support) 215; haven &c. (refuge) 666; goal &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... her cousin, the young man who is to be groomsman, and gave him a handsome setting out in life; but when the father died there was nothing left—all his property mortgaged or something—at any rate Elizabeth never got a cent, and her cousin would have been poor as a church-mouse but for the money which had set him up in a splendid business. He wanted to make that over to ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... bogle called "Windy Wallops" who lived in the garrets and could only be repulsed with hairbrushes. "Whippetie Stoowrie," on the other hand, was a kindly creature inhabiting the nursery chimney, and given to laying small offerings such as a pistol and caps or a sugar mouse on the fender. A strange fancy once took Peter to dig graves for us all in the garden. It wasn't that he disliked us; on the contrary, he considered he was doing us an honour. My grave was suggestively near the rubbish-heap, but he pointed out that ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... for each variety of mammal is determined by the time required for embryonic development to reach the point where the young may live independently of the mother. This point is reached more quickly with small animals than with large. The mouse, for example, generally brings forth its young in three weeks, whereas the pregnancy of the elephant lasts two years. In human beings, counting from the time of conception to the time of delivery, pregnancy continues approximately 273 ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... I ran into the other evening at the De Luxe Restaurant? Why, old Freddy Durkee, that used to be a dead or-alive shipping clerk in my old place—Mr. Mouse-Man we used to laughingly call the dear fellow. One time he was so timid he was plumb scared of the Super, and never got credit for the dandy work he did. Him at the De Luxe! And if he wasn't ordering a tony feed with all the "fixings" ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... time, from whom she had formerly been inseparable, in order to follow her natural propensity to catch mice; but even when engaged in this employment, she did not forget her friend; for, as soon as she had caught a mouse, she brought it alive to him. If he showed an inclination to take her prey from her, she anticipated him, by letting it run, and waited to see whether he was able to catch it. If he did not, the ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... nice plum cake you gave me for saying my lesson well; I had put it in the cupboard, as I did not want to eat it then, and I came just now to take a little nibble at it; and when I opened the closet-door to look for it, there was an ugly brown mouse in the closet, and hardly a scrap of my cake left; that greedy thing had eaten it all but a few crumbs." And here Alfred's ...
— Little Downy - The History of A Field-Mouse • Catharine Parr Traill
... large enough to give it room to stretch itself; and as I generally make use of mice for this purpose, I have found it very convenient to use the hollow part of a tall beer-glass, d fig. 1, which contains between two and three ounce measures of air. In this vessel a mouse will live twenty minutes, or ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... character. All the songs, the melodies of some of which have been collected, were humble and lamentable to the point of evoking tears. The pegre is always the poor pegre, and he is always the hare in hiding, the fugitive mouse, the flying bird. He hardly complains, he contents himself with sighing; one of his moans has come down to us: "I do not understand how God, the father of men, can torture his children and his grandchildren ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Robert Ferguson was walking home with his niece, he, too, said, grimly: "No; it 'wasn't necessary,' as she says, poor child! She could have given it to him; just as she will give it to him, now. Well, well, to think of that mouse, ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... millions, the slighter array of the Allies, and especially the British at their ultimate outpost, saved themselves by a succession of hair's-breadth escapes and what must have seemed to the soldiers the heartrending luck of a mouse before a cat. Again and again Von Kluck's cavalry, supported by artillery and infantry, clawed round the end of the British force, which eluded it as by leaping back again and again. Sometimes the pursuer ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... communicated with each other, too, by secret means, across the lake, and with Mary in her solitary tower. It is said that George, wishing to make Mary understand that their plans for rescuing her were not abandoned, and not having the opportunity to do so directly, sent her a picture of the mouse liberating the lion from his snares, hoping that she would draw from the picture ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... But for many weeks past Gaspard Roussillon had been absent from home, looking after his trading schemes with the Indians; and Pere Beret acting on the suggestion of the proverb about the absent cat and the playing mouse, had formed an alliance offensive and defensive with Madame Roussillon, in which it was strictly stipulated that all novels and romances were to be forcibly taken and securely hidden away from Mademoiselle Alice; ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... a thirsty Mouse who had escaped the ferret, dangerous foe, set his soft muzzle to the lake's brink and revelled in the sweet water. There a loud-voiced pond-larker spied him: and uttered ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... about Spotkirk's dealings with him, and then in an off-hand manner I mentioned the matter of the stolen goods in his barn, just as if I had known all about it from the very first. At this Timothy stopped shouting, and became as meek as a mouse. He said nobody was as sorry as he was when he found the goods concealed in his barn had been stolen, and that if he had known it before the thieves took them away he should have informed the authorities; and then he went on to tell me how he got so poor and so hard up by giving ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... the companionship broke upon me. What possible comfort, I thought, could a man like the captain take in so tiny a creature? It was the lion and the mouse over again—the eagle and the tom-tit—the bear and the rabbit. He must have noticed my surprise and amusement, for he added with ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... woman, elderly nor young; the little Irish beggar that comes barefoot to my door; the mouse that steals out of the cranny in the wainscot; the bird that, in frost and snow, pecks at the window for a crumb. I know somebody to whose knee the black cat loves to climb, against whose shoulder and cheek it loves to purr. The old dog always comes out of his kennel and ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... me, Josie. Roland done it all: he got onto him." Lockwood continued to watch Duncan with the air of a cat eyeing a mouse. ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... should vanish from him, and, to make surer, Long extended himself like a strap, and wound himself round the whole room along the wall; Broad posted himself in the doorway, swelled himself up, and stopped it up so tight that not even a mouse could have slipped through; while Sharpsight placed himself against a pillar in the midst of the room on the look-out. But after a time they all began to nod, fell asleep, and slept the whole night, just as if the wizard had thrown them ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... and steward. And he must do what was best for the abbey, and also what the monks would let him do. For severe as was the discipline of a minster in time of peace, yet in time of war, when life and death were in question, monks had ere now turned valiant from very fear, like Cato's mouse, and mutinied: and so ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... put in Craig, "but with system, order and method. My experience in Congress has taught me some valuable lessons. The universal, all-embracing Trust made marionettes of us, every one. Our strength was, to them, no more than that of a mouse to a lion. Their system is perfect, their lines of supply and communication are without a flaw. The Prussian army machine of other days was but a bungling experiment by comparison with the efficiency of this new mechanism. I tell you, Gabriel, we've ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... business to preach to the shrew mouse,' said he lightly, but looking at her as if doubtful how far ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... Cancale; the horses are pawing the ground; my irons are getting hot. —Oh, I know your Madame Marneffe by heart!—Everything is ready. And there are some boluses in the rat-trap; I will tell you to-morrow morning if the mouse is poisoned. I believe she will ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... the following burlesque of this celebrated discovery as an instance. "Sir Paul Neal, a conceited virtuoso of the seventeenth century, gave out that he had discovered 'an elephant in the moon.' It turned out that a mouse had crept into his telescope, which had been mistaken for an elephant in the moon." [51] Well, we concede that an elephant and a mouse are very much alike; but surely Sir Paul was too sagacious to be deceived by resemblances. ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... more and more. There was something about this little piece of domesticity, and her becoming the servitor in her turn, that brought up things she did not wish to think of. But her neighbour liked what she did not like, for he sat as quiet as a mouse until Eleanor's trembling hand offered him the cup. She had to take a step or two for it, but he never stirred to abridge them. Eleanor sat down again, and Mr. Carlisle sipped his tea with ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... exercise his ships outside the harbor, singly or in small groups, like half-fledged birds learning to fly; or, to use Nelson's expression, "My friend Monsieur La Touche sometimes plays bo-peep in and out of Toulon, like a mouse at the edge of her hole." The only drill-ground for fleets, the open sea, being closed to him, he could do no better than these furtive excursions, to prepare for the eagle's flight Napoleon had prescribed to him. "Last week, at different times, two sail of the line put their heads out ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... after Jonesy got established was that his niece must come out during vacation and pay him a visit. 'Jee-rusalem!' thinks I, 'Jonesy's niece!' I had visions of a thin, yaller, sour little piece, with mouse-coloured hair plastered down on her head, and an unkind word for everybody. Jonesy told me about her being in college, and then I stuck a pair of them nose-grabber specks on the picture. I can stand 'most any kind ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... and clusters hanging down. Men in shady battered hats, bright sashes and braces, and white shirt sleeves, and women with handkerchiefs folded square over their heads, were cutting the grapes down, and piling them up in baskets; and a low cart drawn by two mouse-coloured oxen, with enormous wide horns and gentle-looking eyes, was waiting to be loaded with ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which was so exactly like that of a mouse that the bird curved round in its flight, came rapidly up toward the window, and hovered there with extended claws, and its great eyes staring from its ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... Bar-gaist selected for his freaks; there he held his revels, perplexing honest George Cheetham—for that was the farmer's name—scaring his maids, worrying his men, and frightening the poor children out of their seven senses, so that at last not even a mouse durst show himself indoors at the farm, as he valued his whiskers, five minutes after the clock had ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... woman said: 'I wonder what there is under that cover?' After this, their wonder increased every day, till at last they determined, by taking a little peep, to satisfy their curiosity. They accordingly lifted up the cover, when, instantly, out jumped a little mouse, and away it ran. They now saw their folly, and were sadly vexed with themselves: but it was too late to complain. They returned to their daily labour, and from their own experience learned a useful lesson, and never blamed Adam and ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... from their one determined centre. Yonder leaden Judge sits immovably upon our soul. Will he never stir again? We shall go mad unless he stirs! You may the better estimate his quietude by the fearlessness of a little mouse, which sits on its hind legs, in a streak of moonlight, close by Judge Pyncheon's foot, and seems to meditate a journey of exploration over this great black bulk. Ha! what has startled the nimble little mouse? It is the visage of grimalkin, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Sometimes they do go out a little way with their mother before this, and they go in a very funny fashion. Of course, when they are babies, they drink warm milk from her body as the children of most four-legged people do. Sometimes a young Meadow Mouse does not want to stop drinking his milk when it is time for his mother to leave the nest, so he just hangs on to her with his tiny, toothless mouth, and when she goes she drags him along on the ground ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... that he loves us," I said dryly. "He loves us as a cat loves the mouse that it plays with. If we are to start at once, sir, ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... before Christmas, and all through the house, Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In the hope that St. Nicholas soon would be there. The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads. And mamma in her kerchief, and I in my cap, Had just ...
— The Night Before Christmas and Other Popular Stories For Children • Various
... I say," said an old gray Mouse that was thought to be very wise. "Do as I say. Hang a bell to the Cat's neck. Then, when we hear it ring, we shall know that she is coming, and can scamper out of her way." "Good! good!" said all the other Mice; and one ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... saloon-keeper of a journalist's attack. "What I got to stop it with? What's the matter with you fellows anyhow? You come chasin' yourselves down here, scared out of your wits because a dinky little one cent newspaper's makin' faces at you. A man 'd think you was a young lady's Bible-class and 'd seen a mouse.... Now, that's right," he exclaims, as another assailant appears; "make it unanimous. Let all hands come and rig the ship on old Simp. Tell him your troubles and ask him to help you out. He ain't got nothing better to do. Pitch into him; give him hell; ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... meant to act like a friend. But Robert had only scowled at him. And even now, frightened as he was, he disdained all parley. The bailiff was an enemy, and when it came to a fight the Stonehouse family stood shoulder to shoulder. So he crept past the cheerful light like a hunted mouse, and up the stairs to the green-baize door, which shut off the kitchen ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... fills the quiet hall, If on her back a feline rival fall! And oh, what noises shake the tranquil house If old Self-interest cheats her of a mouse. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... towards them; the means may come to do so, therefore we do not love them. Hence we pick a fly out of a milk-jug and watch with pleasure over its recovery, for we are confident that under no conceivable circumstances will it want to borrow money from us; but we feel less sure about a mouse, so we show it no quarter. The compilers of our almanacs well know this tendency of our natures, so they tell us, not when Noah went into the ark, nor when the temple of Jerusalem was dedicated, but that Lindley Murray, grammarian, died ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... inclosed by high board fences, and coming to one of these, he leaped over and made his way to a huge pile of merchandise. Here he crouched down and kept as quiet as a mouse. ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... of a mouse in his bosom. Well, Ruby, you have one more choice left you. Shall it be John Crumb or ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... endlessly; there was a scent of geranium in the low pitched room, the solitary candle burnt dim, the cricket chirped monotonously, as though it were weary, the little clock ticked away hurriedly on the wall, a mouse scratched stealthily and gnawed at the wall-paper, and the three old women, like the Fates, swiftly and silently plied their knitting needles, the shadows raced after their hands and quivered strangely in the half darkness, and strange, half dark ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... with us like a cat playing with a mouse!" snarled somebody. "Tell us what you want. If you were Major Grim you'd have handed us over to those officers who passed just now. You're just as much irregular as we are. Hurry up and make your bargain, or the guard may ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... de Boulogne that I looked for my principal recreation. There I took my solitary walk, morning and evening; or, mounted on a little mouse-colored donkey, paced demurely along the woodland pathway. I had a favorite seat beneath the shadow of a venerable oak, one of the few hoary patriarchs of the wood which had survived the bivouacs of the allied armies. It stood upon the brink of a little glassy pool, whose tranquil bosom was ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... thine enemies no bounds: say not, They shall not pursue me to the death; have the sentence of death in thyself. For though they may but tick and toy with thee at first, their sword may reach thy heart-blood at last. The cat at play with the mouse is sometimes a fit emblem of the way of the wicked with the children of God. Wherefore, as I said, be always dying; die daily: he that is not only ready to be bound, but to die, is fit to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the darkness a clock strikes two; And there is no sound in the sad old house, But the long veranda dripping with dew, And in the wainscot a mouse. ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... no matter how unworthy. It wasn't in Tom Bingle to be mean, not even to his worst enemy. Notwithstanding the fact that the young man had just taken unto himself a wife, and was as poor as a church-mouse, the door and the cupboard in his modest little flat were opened cheerfully to the delinquent Uncle Joe, and be it said to the latter's discredit and shame—he proceeded to impose upon the generosity of his nephew in a manner that should have earned him a booting ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... the chaplain, my grandmother owned there had been a time when her grace had not handled him over-wisely. For, according to Nencia, it seems that his reverence, who seldom approached the Duchess, being buried in his library like a mouse in a cheese—well, one day he made bold to appeal to her for a sum of money, a large sum, Nencia said, to buy certain tall books, a chest full of them, that a foreign pedlar had brought him; whereupon the Duchess, who ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... up a breakfast tray himself to his wife's room, sternly removing his two small daughters Molly and Betty, whom he found tussling like kittens on her bed, and installing Eileen the eldest, who crept down like a bright-eyed mouse from the big chair by the pillow at his coming, as her mother's keeper. Eileen was his darling; a shy child, gentle but curiously determined, protective in her attitude towards Maud, reserved towards himself. Jake was wont to say ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... feline spirit in these Raturan savages. As the cat plays with the mouse before killing it, so did they amuse themselves with the pirate before putting him to the final torture which was to terminate ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... woman has any sense, she must love you! And if so, to-night she will be vexed, for all the ladies will try all sorts of coquetries on you. How handsome you will look when you read your Saint John in Patmos! If only I were a mouse, and could just slip in and see it! Come, I have put your ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... in the far end of the car. A still, small noise as of something alive that moved with the utmost wariness. A heavy, breathing body crept stealthily across the intervening space; so quietly that a mouse could have made ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... to cross Chickamauga Creek, opposite Lee and Gordon's Mill, but had been repulsed. The Union cavalry and infantry were now stretched along the bank of the stream, while the enemy was opposite, and each was watching the other as a cat watches a mouse. ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... dandiprat^; doll, puppet; Tom Thumb, Hop-o'-my-thumb^; manikin, mannikin; homunculus, dapperling^, cock-sparrow. animalcule, monad, mite, insect, emmet^, fly, midge, gnat, shrimp, minnow, worm, maggot, entozoon^; bacteria; infusoria^; microzoa [Micro.]; phytozoaria^; microbe; grub; tit, tomtit, runt, mouse, small fry; millet seed, mustard seed; barleycorn; pebble, grain of sand; molehill, button, bubble. point; atom &c (small quantity) 32; fragment &c (small part) 51; powder &c 330; point of a pin, mathematical ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... still wishing to shoot something that was alive, and, seeing the cat creeping along on the fence watching for a mouse, he concluded to try his luck with her. So he drew up, aimed, and fired. Puss was so intent on watching the mouse that she paid no attention at all to the arrow, which struck the rail a little behind her, and glanced off towards the house. Andy heard a sound like shivered glass, ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... the 23rd a start was made for the Passchendaele front line system, the route taken by the Battalion being for the greater part over the duck board walks "Mouse Trap Track," which covered ground won in the recent big push at Passchendaele. The take-over was not completed without casualties, but these were comparatively few considering the dangerous nature of the going, which was in the open over shell-pitted ground. ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... but acid, and that wood mice, roasted and not cooked too dry, were good food, but that Aggie had made us liberate the only ones we had caught, because a man she was once engaged to used to carry a pet mouse ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a Letter to you, though I do not very well know how I am to go on with it. But my Reader has been so disturbed by a Mouse in the room that I have dismissed him—9.30 p.m.—and he has been reading (so far as he could get on) Hawthorne's Notes of Italian Travel: which interest me very much indeed, as being the Notes of a Man of Genius who will think for ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... nearer, lifting the lighted candle. The thing crouched there with slanted wings. It was newly hatched, its sleek body still wet with the humors of incubation—wet as a soaked mouse. Its abdomen, too, seemed enormous, all swelled and distended with unfertilized eggs. No, there could be no question concerning the sex of the thing; this was a female, and her tumefied body was ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... string, and Morier, in a letter written in 1876, compares them to 'children telling ghost-stories to one another who have got frightened at the sound of their own voices, and mistake the rattling of a mouse behind the wainscot for the tramping of legions on ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... arrived at the end of the cultivated lands, we enter upon the dry prairies, extending up the bluffs, where we meet the small vermilion Sorrel (Rumex acetosella) and Mouse-ear, which, however, do not reside here as foreigners, but as natives, like many other plants that remind the European of his native country, as, for instance, the Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale); a kind of Rose, (Rosa lucida,) with its sweet-scented blossoms, has a great predilection ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... mentir. Qui naquit chat court apres les souris. [Good blood cannot lie. The kitten will chase the mouse.]—French. ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... uncle Joe; "but if Mr. Kingdon had meant fairly by Susan Meynell, it would have been as easy for him to marry her at Barngrave as in London. He was as poor as a church mouse, but he was his own master, and there was no one to prevent him doing just what he pleased. This is about what James Halliday thought, I suppose; for he tore off to London, as fast as post-horses could carry him, in pursuit of his wife's sister and Mr. Kingdon. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... to go,—you know you do. Poor, dear little soul! You have never been anywhere,—you have seen nothing,—you live as close and demure as a church mouse,—while this man-monster, who has nothing in the universe to do, from morning till night, but wait upon you and contribute to your gratification, keeps you at home, like a bird in a cage, just to look at and admire. It is too selfish. ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... caught at the barricades, Sergeant Bibot especially at the West Gate had a wonderful nose for scenting an aristo in the most perfect disguise. Then, of course, the fun began. Bibot would look at his prey as a cat looks upon the mouse, play with him, sometimes for quite a quarter of an hour, pretend to be hoodwinked by the disguise, by the wigs and other bits of theatrical make-up which hid the identity of a CI-DEVANT noble ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... to its feet and struck a defiant pose. "My boy," it said angrily, "you are mistaken. I refuse to be chased around any longer. Even the lowly worm turns. Am I a mouse, or am I the Phoenix? If that insufferable man wishes to pursue me further, if he cannot mind his own business, then, by Jove, we shall meet him face to face and FIGHT TO ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... landing-place in my life. Here the boat joined us. My mother and Sale continued in the canoe alone, and Belle and I and Tauilo set off on foot for Malie. Tauilo was about the size of both of us put together and a piece over; she used us like a mouse with children. I had started barefoot; Belle had soon to pull off her gala shoes and stockings; the mud was as deep as to our knees, and so slippery that (moving, as we did, in Indian file, between dense scratching tufts of sensitive) Belle and I had to take hands to support ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Bertram, "it would be like the catastrophe which is told of the Baron of Fastenough, when his last mouse was starved to death in the very pantry; and if I escape this journey without such a calamity, I shall think myself out of reach of thirst or famine for the whole of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... taken at last?" said Mr. Bloodingstone a butcher: "Well, now that's what I could never have thought—that Nicholas should let himself be taken as quietly as a lamb. Bless your hearts, on all this coast there's not a creek or a cranny big enough for a field-mouse but he knew it: and all the way from Barmouth to Carnarvon I'll be sworn there's not a man on the Preventive Service, simple or gentle, but Nicholas has had his neck under his foot at ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... more essential to our welfare than their knowledge of the world."—Id. "Indeed, there is in poetry nothing so entertaining or descriptive, but that an ingenious didactic writer may introduce it in some part of his work."—Blair cor. "Brasidas, being bit by a mouse he had catched, let it slip out of his fingers: 'No creature,' says he, 'is so contemptible but that it may provide for its own safety, if it have courage.'"—Ld. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... of her young brothers besides this. Bob and Fred were enamored of the radio. They were ingenious lads. Nell said she believed they could rig a radio set with a hair-pin and a mouse-trap. But she was going to help them obtain a fairly good set; only, because of the shortage of funds at the parsonage, Bob and Fred would be obliged themselves to make every part ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... of Italian primitives, at New Haven, which, scorned in his lifetime and actually foreclosed for a trifling debt, is now an object of pilgrimage for European amateurs and experts. One recalls the mouse-like activities of the Brothers Dutuit, unearthing here a gorgeous enamel, retrieving there a Rembrandt drawing, fetching out a Gothic ivory from a junk-shop. One sighs for those days, and declares that they are forever past. Does not the sage M. Eudel warn us that there are no ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... In what bold relief stand out the lives of all walkers of the snow! The snow is a great tell-tale, and blabs as effectually as it obliterates. I go into the woods, and know all that has happened. I cross the fields, and if only a mouse has visited his neighbor, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... are you dipping into the basin of starch?" "They're little dicky shirt-fronts belonging to Tom Tits-mouse —most terrible particular!" said Mrs. Tiddy-winkle. "Now I've finished my ironing; I'm going to ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle • Beatrix Potter
... to fly on, 'Tis like a mouse, that, work'd into a rage Daring some dreadful war to wage, Nibbles the tail of the ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... Duende, like a mouse, Hearkening behind the wall, Did now resolve he quickly would The greedy ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... of bait, like a piece of cheese in a mouse trap," remarked Ted, as he saw the goat nibbling. "Isn't ...
— The Curlytops on Star Island - or Camping out with Grandpa • Howard R. Garis
... comparative un-worth of the dog. There is even a hazy notion in most minds that he is to be classed with the horse, the cow, the sheep, and the gentle swine, that he is entitled to lift up his voice with the morn-saluting cock, or to roam with the mouse-disturbing cat, or with that patient pair, the harnessed billy- and the lactiferous nanny-goat.[A] Hence an enormous revenue is required for his support. For example, we are told that "the dogs in Iowa eat enough annually to feed a hundred thousand workmen, and cost the State nine ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... dear Sophy, that you will not call my little stories by the sublime title of "my works," I shall else be ashamed when the little mouse comes forth. The stories are printed and bound the same size as Evenings at Home, but I am afraid you will dislike the title; my father had sent The Parent's Friend, [Footnote: Mr. Edgeworth had wished the book to bear ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... a mouse or a rich widow, there is nothing on earth that a normal girl dreads so much ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... moment the little house disappeared entirely, and Rosalie saw with the greatest consternation that the key alone remained in her hand. She now saw at her side a small gray mouse who gazed at her with its sparkling little eyes and began to laugh ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... astigmatic, and two had a slight degree of astigmatism. They also examined other animals, and the same proportion of hypermetropia existed. These gentlemen found that as an optical instrument the eye of the horse, cow, cat and rabbit is superior to that of the rat, mouse and guinea pig. ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... wild duck. The flowers were in great profusion; but we saw no animals anywhere, excepting a few chipmunks and gophirs, which are sort of half-rats, half-squirrels. The chipmunks are dear little things about the size of a mouse, with long bushy tails and a dark stripe running the whole ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... sailors, whom he derided with impudent remarks about their fatness of person, weight of leg, and stupidity generally, till he judged it dangerous to wait any longer, when he went off like a clockwork mouse, skimming over the stones, and from the first strides beginning ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... Dominus Doctoratus At the broad gate-house. Doctor Daupatus And Bachelor Bacheleratus, Drunken as a mouse At the ale-house, Taketh his pillion and his cap At the good ale-tap, For lack of good wine. As wise as Robin Swine, Under a notary's sign, Was made a divine; As wise as Waltham's calf, Must preach in Goddys half; In the pulpit solemnly; More meet in a pillory; For by St. ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... between a mouse and a rat, five or six inches long, with a tail perhaps five inches more, about as big around as a man's thumb, bushy, but of even size the whole length, top of head dark gray, yellowish circles about the shining ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... up, acutely miserable. He could see her following him with her eyes, and knew she was afraid she had driven him away. She said coaxingly: "Don't mind me talking, ni-ice boy. I don't know any one to talk to. If you don't like it, I can be quiet as a mouse." ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... was the object of such a serious and almost solemn request. "Well," said he, "promise me then that you will never wear white breeches again!" Every one appeared thunder-struck, that the mountain had brought forth such a mouse. I had on a clean pair of white cord breeches, and a neat pair of top boots, a fashionable, and a favourite dress of mine at that time. There was a general laugh, and as soon as this subsided, all were curious to hear my answer. It was briefly this: "I certainly will, upon one condition." ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... awful penetralia of the bison and the tiger. Even here everything is strange to me; the common native has become a Bheel, the sparrowhawk an eagle, the grass of the field a vast, reedy growth in which an elephant becomes a mere field mouse. Out of the leaves come strange bird-notes, a strange silence broods over us; it is broken by strange rustlings and cries; it closes over us again strangely. Nature swoons in its glory of sunshine and weird music; it has put ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... a wine-cellar! I began to be very nervous; I had already, with aid, searched every crevice of the cellar; and now I thought it would be some consolation to discover the thief, if I never regained the diamond. A distant clock tolled midnight. There was a faint noise,—a mouse?—no, it was too prolonged;—nor did it sound like the fiz of Champagne;—a great iron door was turning on its hinges; a man with a lantern was entering; another followed, and another. They seated themselves. In a few ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... costume—with which, of course, she wore no corset, but only a narrow belt—was very becoming: a light blouse, a mouse-coloured skirt, close fitting over the hips and not reaching to her ankles, grey silk stockings, and white suede ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... corner are piled up cases and military-looking trunks of outlandish aspect, with R. D. C. in brass nails on their sides. From these we turn with involuntary respect and call off Juba, who has wedged himself behind in pursuit of some imaginary mouse. But in the other corner is what seems to me a child's cradle,—not an English one, evidently; it is of wood, seemingly Spanish rosewood, with a railwork at the back, of twisted columns; and I should scarcely have known it to be a cradle but for ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for the cricket, The wheat stack for the mouse, When trembling night winds whistle And moan all round the house. The frosty ways like iron, The branches plumed with snow,— Alas! in winter dead and dark, Where can poor Robin go? Robin, Robin Redbreast, ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... in upon all places [upon Jagerndorf, for instance, though fifteen miles wide of their road], to ascertain if Prussians are there. One can judge whether Friedrich and Schwerin were thankful when the huge alarm produced nothing! 'The mountain,' as Friedrich says, 'gave birth to a mouse;'—nay it was a 'mouse' of essential vital use to Friedrich and Schwerin; a warning, That they must instantly collect themselves, men and goods; and begone one and all out of these parts, double-quick ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... animal like a mouse," said his father, "only it is blind. It lives underground, in the dark all the while, so really it has no use for eyes, any more than have the blind fish in the ...
— Daddy Takes Us to the Garden - The Daddy Series for Little Folks • Howard R. Garis
... a sort of overwhelming beatitude. He made no attempt to move. He knew that sorrow lay in ambush for him, like a cat waiting for a mouse. He lay like one dead. Already.... There was no one in the room. Overhead the piano was silent. Solitude. Silence. ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... Bagatellerl, schluck, und druck! and when I put it away again, I let it slip gently into its hiding-place, saying, Now, now, now, now! [Nu—nu—nu—nu!] but with an appropriate emphasis on this significant word; and at the last one I say, quickly, 'Good night, darling mouse, sleep soundly!' I know I have written something very foolish (for the world at all events), but not in the least foolish for us, who love each other so fondly. This is the sixth day that I have been absent from you, and, by heavens! it seems to me a year. Love me as I shall ever ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... so to Lucinda," said Lady Atherley, as we all rose, "because it only puts her out; but I shall always feel certain myself it was a mouse; because I remember in the house we had at Bournemouth two years ago there was a mouse in my room which often made such a noise knocking down the plaster inside the wall, it ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... her, peeped almost into her face, so that if she had been really asleep I rather think it would have awakened her, except that all he did was so very gentle and like a little mouse; and then, quite satisfied that she was fast asleep, he slowly settled himself down on the floor by ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... who had traveled over many countries was shipwrecked off the coast of Opera land. After a desperate battle with the waves he managed to near the shore where the cruel waves played with him like a cat with a mouse. He would pull himself up the beach, half fainting, and a great, dancing, hissing breaker would pounce upon him ...
— Fables For The Times • H. W. Phillips
... man eyed the speaker with a leer of malicious satisfaction. It was meat to his soul to see this lordly young aristocrat racked with misery and dread, to hold him in his power as a cat holds a mouse, which it can crush and crunch at any moment if it will. Alan Massey's mood filled Jim Roberts with exquisite enjoyment, enjoyment such as a gourmand feels on setting his teeth in ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... my mistress, seemed a symbol of my experience. It sounded like a gurgle in the throat of debauchery. It seemed to me that my mistress, having been unfaithful, must have such a voice. I was reminded of Faust who, dancing at the Brocken with a young sorceress, saw a red mouse emerge ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the place, Wall,' says Mr. Knightley, as if he was in his own house, just the same as usual; 'run up the horses, there's a good fellow; they're in the little horse paddock. Mrs. Knightley's is a gray, and the doctor's is a mouse-coloured mare with a short tail; you can't mistake them. The sooner they're off the sooner you'll ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... grasses and reeds in the salt meadows were already tipped with a golden colour here and there; flocks of purple grackle and red-winged blackbirds rose, drifted, and settled, chattering and squealing among the cat-tails just as they used to do when I was a child; and the big, slow-sailing mouse-hawks drifted and glided over the pastures, and when they tipped sideways I could see the white moon-spot on their backs, just as I remembered to look for it when I ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... the lady, after vainly trying to comprehend what seemed so exceedingly simple to Mr. Graham and the electrician, "I don't care at all about all that. Since it's only a mouse, let's forget that subject and get on to a more interesting one—our picnic sleigh-ride. Here come Molly and a lady; I suppose the one who is to help us feed ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... out of the room with such a look of mingled contempt, grief, and anger, that the three culprits stood dumb with shame. Tom had n't even a whistle at his command; Maud was so scared at gentle Polly's outbreak, that she sat as still as a mouse; while Fanny, conscience stricken, laid back the poor little presents with a respectful hand, for somehow the thought of Polly's poverty came over her as it never had done before; and these odds and ends, so carefully ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... independent thought. Zadig "did not employ himself in calculating how many inches of water flow in a second of time under the arches of a bridge, or whether there fell a cube line of rain in the month of the Mouse more than in the month of the Sheep. He never dreamed of making silk of cobwebs, or porcelain of broken bottles; but he chiefly studied the properties of plants and animals; and soon acquired a sagacity that made him discover a thousand differences where other ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... believe that," rejoined the farmer, with another fit of laughter; "for, the other night, a mouse came gnawing and scratching beneath the floor, and would not let us go to sleep. Your mother sprang out of bed, and going as near it as she could, mewed so infernally like a great cat, that the noise ceased instantly. I believe the poor mouse died of the fright, for we have ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... dignity and importance. Gay, who commenced life as apprentice to a silk mercer, became a secretary of legation at five-and-twenty. It was to a poem on the death of Charles the Second, and to the City and Country Mouse, that Montague owed his introduction into public life, his earldom, his garter, and his Auditorship of the Exchequer. Swift, but for the unconquerable prejudice of the queen, would have been a bishop. Oxford, with ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... threw him. The Jack Rabbit was let out. The Eagle poised himself for a moment, then swooped upon him. The Cotton Tail came forth. The Prey Mole waited in his hole and seized him; the Wood Rat, and the Falcon made him his prey; the Mouse, and the Ground Owl quickly ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... corner of the room, could be heard a little scratch, scratch. Then across the floor, serene and fearless, "right where I had been sweeping," Catherine said later with a shiver, ran a small gray mouse. ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... do nowadays?" he asked presently. "You are more of a live mouse than you used to be! I can't call you Mousie any more, only for the sake ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... closely in the grass and saw a tiny creature. It was about the size of a baby mouse, and had no hair on its skin excepting a little bunch on the tip of its tail. He picked it up and sewed it in his belt. Then he travelled on until he came to a village where a tribe of Indians lived. A broad road ran through the centre of the village, but the ...
— Thirty Indian Legends • Margaret Bemister
... Had I fallen into some cursed trap? Why had this woman—this Bluette—not been awakened by the loud knocking of her husband at the doorway leading into her room; could it have been merely a signal conveying to accomplices: "There's a mouse in the trap! I'm going to look out to prevent him escaping. 'Tis for you to do ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... But you, you just sit there, silent and calm and indifferent, whether the moon is new or full; whether it's Christmas or mid-summer; whether other people are happy or unhappy. You are incapable of hatred, and you don't know how to love. As a cat in front of a mouse-hole, you are sitting there!—you can't drag your prey out, and you can't pursue it, but you can outwait it. Here you sit in this corner—do you know they've nicknamed it "the mouse-trap" on your account? Here you read the papers to see if anybody is in trouble, ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... came upon a general of division seated upon a horse that pricked its ears in an interested way at the battle. There was a great gleaming of yellow and patent leather about the saddle and bridle. The quiet man astride looked mouse-colored upon ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... shook his many-jointed rattle and adjusted his loops for the fatal stroke. His eyes were drawn as with magnets toward the circles of flame. His ears rung as in the overture to the swooning dream of chloroform. Nature was before man with her anaesthetics: the cat's first shake stupefies the mouse; the lion's first shake deadens the man's fear and feeling; and the crotalus paralyzes before he strikes. He waited as in a trance,—waited as one that longs to have the blow fall, and all over, as the man who shall be in two pieces in a second waits for the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... shall not need an escort. It's such a little way and I'm used to Green Valley now." But David knew just how afraid this city mouse was of the ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... moisture, 'leer' in that of empty, 'eame' in that of uncle, mother's brother (the German 'oheim'), good Saxon-English once, still live on in some of our provincial dialects; so does 'flitter-mouse' or 'flutter-mouse' (mus volitans), where we should use bat. Indeed of those above named several do the same; it is so with 'frimm', with 'to sag', 'to nimm'. 'Heft' employed by Shakespeare in the sense ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... dusky, and then the little man said, "Let me get down, I'm tired." So the man took off his hat and set him down on a clod of earth in a ploughed field by the side of the road, But Thumbling ran about amongst the furrows, and at last slipped into a mouse-hole. "Good-night, masters," said he, "I'm off! mind and look sharp after me the next time." They ran directly to the place, and poked the ends of their sticks into the mouse-hole, but all in vain; Thumbling only crawled further and further in, and at last it became quite dark, so they were obliged ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... you will say, how can he discover them under the snow? By that wonderful instinct with which nature has endowed the brute creation to provide for their sustenance, each according to its nature, to its wants. By his marvellously acute ear, the fox detects the ground mouse under the snow, though he should utter a noise scarcely audible to a human ear. Mr. Fox sets instantly to work, digs down the earth, and in a trice gobbles up mus, his wife, and young family. Should nothing ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine |
