"Oyster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it up, became fond of each other, and married; but madam returning to her old tricks, his father, who had high notions of honour, soon separated himself from her; she then joined a family who strolled about with a puppet-show. In time she arrived at Rome, where she kept an oyster-stand. You have all heard, no doubt of Pope Ganganelli, commonly called Clement XIV.: he was remarkably fond of oysters. One Good Friday, as he was passing through this famous city in state, to assist at high mass at St. Peter's Church, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... first aim is concerned, it is certainly most laudable, taken in one sense: the persons who can live in the midst of a people without endeavoring to gain an insight into its character and its customs must be possessed of an exceptionally oyster-like organization indeed. But the majority of American women seek foreign society on other grounds than this—chiefly from that tendency to ape everything European and to decry everything American to which I have already ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... (that is, my sister and niece, my lord) are apt to place on the table, for the display rather of their own house-wifery than the accommodation of our wants. However, a broiled bone, or a smoked haddock, or an oyster, or a slice of bacon of our own curing, with a toast and a tankardor something or other of that sort, to close the orifice of the stomach before going to bed, does not fall under my restriction, nor, I ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... as it came from the womb of the press, hold the larger part of the fresh reading we live upon. We must have the latest thought in its latest expression; the page must be newly turned like the morning bannock; the pamphlet must be newly opened like the ante-prandial oyster. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... explain all at a little luncheon at which I trust that you will be my guest. Already, such is the stress of this journalistic life, I hear my tissues crying out imperatively to be restored. An oyster and a glass of milk somewhere round the corner, Comrade Jackson? I ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... spontaneous, seem to have died out and left their manners with their wardrobes to narrow-breasted children, whom neither clothes nor courtesies will fit. So in every department we find the snail freezing in an oyster-shell. The judges do not know the meaning of justice. The preacher thinks religion is a spasm of desire and fear. A young man soon loses all respect for titles, wigs, and gowns, and looks for a muscular master-mind. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... made at least six or eight inches thick, but not one inch longer than necessary for the use designed. The outer filaments are dyed black; and, as an additional ornament, the most of them have a few pearl oyster-shells fixed on the right side. The general ornaments of both sexes are ear-rings of tortoise-shell, necklaces or amulets, made both of shells and stones, and bracelets, made of large shells, which they wear above the elbow. They have punctures, or marks on the skin, on several parts of the body; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... know! I suspect that he's been involving himself in some ridiculous love affair!" Mrs. Sewell looked a silent inculpation. "It's largely conjecture on my part, of course,—he's about as confiding as an oyster!—but I fancy I have said some things in a conditional way that will give him pause. I suspect from his manner that he has entangled himself with some other young simpleton, and that he's ashamed of it, or tired of it, already. If that's the case, I have hit the nail on the head. I told him ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... These were that class of "conservatives" who, having amassed a fortune, button up their pockets, shut their mouths, sink, as it were, into themselves, and pass the rest of their lives in the indwelling beatitude of conscious wealth; as some phlegmatic oyster, having swallowed a pearl, closes its shell, sinks in the mud, and devotes the rest of its life to the conservation of its treasure. Every plan of defence seemed to these worthy old gentlemen pregnant with ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... loves the merry moonlight, The mackerel loves the wind, But the oyster loves the dredging sang, For they come of a ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... its club-house and rooms on the site of the building. The theatre is referred to in Edwin Drood:—"Even its drooping and despondent little theatre has its poor strip of garden, receiving the foul fiend, when he ducks from its stage into the infernal regions, among scarlet beans or oyster-shells, according to the season of the year." And again in The Uncommercial Traveller, on "Dullborough Town," when the beginning ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... believe I'd drop it. That little pitchfork thing doesn't look near big enough to hold such an enormous oyster." ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... concerning that "molycoddle Taft." R. was elected by the greatest majority in history until the ballots were hatched. Later he joined the ranks of William Jennings Bryan. Publications: The "I" books. Ambition: To get back into Who's Who and Washington. Address: The Outlook. Oyster Bay for newspapermen. Clubs: Founder of the ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... whole calendar of bird voices and bird movements that might well give us the dates, day by day. To me the first warning of the passing of summer comes in the tin-trumpet notes of the blue jays. While the nesting season is on the blue jay is as dumb as an oyster. The woods may be full of him and his tribe, but never an old bird says a word. After the young can fly you may hear them if you slip quietly along in the pine woods. You have to be pretty near though, to do it. They sit in a family group in the treetops and complain, ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... regiment has marched. Every bed and barn is occupied by the soldiers. Who would not be irritated by a splinter, he asks, if the irritation leads to such an inrush of divine power and grace? It is like the pain of the oyster that is ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... strongly imbued with the belief that the pearl was the quintessence of life-giving and prosperity-conferring powers:[169] it was not only identified with the moon, but also was itself a particle of moon-substance which fell as dew into the gaping oyster. It was the very people who held such views about pearls and gold who, when searching for alluvial gold and fresh-water pearls in Turkestan, were responsible for transferring these same life-giving properties to jade; and the magical value thus attached to jade was the nucleus, so to speak, ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... best a petty piece of machinery. It is oyster-like in its functioning, or, perhaps better, clam-like. It has its little siphon of thought-processes forced up or down into the mighty ocean of fact and circumstance; but it uses so little, pumps so faintly, that the ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... of December, 1795,[65] speaking of a contemporary member of the cabinet, he says, "The fact is that he has generally given his principles to the one party and his practice to the other, the oyster to one, and the shell to the other. Unfortunately, the shell was generally the lot of his friends, the French and Republicans, and the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... hundred canal boats and five schooners was passed, drawn by four powerful tugs. Six hundred people inhabited this floating village and they stood on the decks of their migratory houses, going north with the spring, like the ducks, and hurrahed, and each tug screamed a salute. The oyster dredgers cheered and schooners changed their course ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... his brother, "are quite looking forward to see our niece—of course we make all allowance for the rhapsodies of a lover; but discounting all that, I really think, Meurig, he has found a pearl in that old, rough oyster-shell of a house." ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... like an oyster directly I get anywhere near it," replied the captain; "sticks to it that it is a yachting trip and that Tredgold is studying the formations of islands. Says he has got a list of them he is going ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... ancient brickwork are to be seen amongst the ruins of the latter city, where the material is compact and smooth, and the edges sharp and unworn. The mortar shows the remains of the pearl oyster-shells from which it was burnt, and the chunam with which the walls were coated, still clings to some of the towers, and retains ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... time after this failure to settle upon the coast, the Spanish came to Lower California for the pearl-fisheries. Along the Gulf of California were many oyster-beds where the Indians secured the shells by diving for them. Large and valuable pearls were found in many of the oysters, and the Spanish collected them in great quantities from the Indians who did ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... of good humor. In almost every small social and individual attitude Count Fosco was human. He was exceedingly attentive to his wife in society and bullied her only in private and when necessary. He struck no dramatic attitudes. "The world is mine oyster!" is not said by real men bent on terrible deeds. Count Fosco is the perfect villain, and also the perfect criminal, inasmuch as he not only acts naturally, but deliberately determines the action instead of being drawn into it or having it ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... degree brilliantly; registered as a student at St. Stephen's Hospital; won an Entrance Scholarship in Science, and secured the William Brown Exhibition in his second year. Thenceforward the world was an oyster, to be opened with scalpel and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... illustrations, that I do not believe in the right of Illinois to interfere with the cranberry laws of Indiana, the oyster laws of Virginia, or the liquor laws of Maine. I have said these things over and over again, and I repeat them here as my sentiments. * * * What can authorize him to draw any such inference? I suppose there might be one thing that at least enabled him to draw such an inference that ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... eaten me up as easily as you might swallow an oyster," laughed Monsieur Maurice. "Nay, my child, why that serious face? I should have escaped a world of trouble, and been missed by ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... in at oncet," John said to him one day, when he borrowed ten dollars for the payment of an oyster bill. "I tell you she's got more besom in her than ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... give the effect of moonlight. The rarest pieces are those of which the luster is a delicate green. Some blaze with yellow, as if of gold; others exhibit the brilliancy of the ruby; while others resemble the interior of the pearl oyster shell. Whether this sheen is produced by polarization of the light in some manner, or whether it is at all analogous to fluorescence, is yet to be decided. The impression of the surface with fine microscopic lines might produce an iridescence, ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... seemed to have become acclimatised, putting out the petals of their flower-like bodies as freely as when in their native pools at Seaview. So, too, did a beautiful rose and white dianthus, which Dick had picked up adhering to an ugly old oyster-shell; and, the even rarer anthea, whose long hanging filaments were never altogether withdrawn into its body when disturbed, as was the case with the other sea-anemones, and which were thus a constant source of alarm to Bob's little crabs; ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... to ten Patten's Greening trees that had been attacked by a disease called by some "oyster scale." The trees abnormally lost their foliage early in the season, and I had about decided they were dead when, after a dormant spray the following spring, they entirely revived and are now as healthy as any trees on ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... is among the foremost sea products of the United States in value. The oyster thrives best in moderately warm and sheltered waters. The coves and estuaries along the middle Atlantic coast produce the best in the world. Chesapeake Bay and Long Island Sound yield the greater part of the output. In the latter ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... never out of bed until twelve o'clock in the day and looking then as if you hadn't had a wink of sleep all night. Not a word out of you, Seymour, until I've finished. I'm going to take Kate down to Tom Coston's and keep her there till she gets well. Too many stuffy balls—too many late suppers—oyster roasts and high doings. None of that at Tom's. Up at six and to bed at ten. I've just had a letter from him and dear Peggy is crazy to have us come. Take your mare along, Kate, and you won't lack fresh air. Now ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the ocean and leave them for a few days in shallow water where they may plump up or fatten, and they have found by experience that this fattening occurs more rapidly in dirty water. If the oysters are fattened in sewage-polluted water, the typhoid germs get inside the shell in the oyster liquor and are thus transmitted to those persons who eat the ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... chamber door but a gentle tap! "Bless us," cried the mayor, "what's that?" (With the corporation as he sat Looking little though wondrous fat; Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister Than a too-long-opened oyster, Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous For a plate of turtle green and glutinous), "Only a scraping of shoes on the mat Anything like the sound of a rat Slakes my ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... color harmony, and consisted of consomme, salted crackers, oyster patties, chicken jelly salad with green mayonnaise, salad rolls, olives, pistachio ice-cream in holly-decked cases, little cakes with green icing and silver bonbons stuck on top, ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... chartered the schooner 'Waterwitch' for 100 pounds a month for six months, and found her in everything. She arrived on March 2nd, 1842, but could not come up to the Port being too sharp in the bottom, and drawing (when loaded with cattle) thirteen feet six inches, so she lay down at the Oyster Beds. McFarlane borrowed the square punt from the 'Clonmel' wreckers, a weak stockyard of tea tree was erected, and the punt was moored alongside. A block was made fast to the bottom of the punt, and a rope rove through it to a bullock's head, and the men hauled on the rope. ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... grave question, she was jostled by a man carrying a rocking-chair, and very nearly fell down stairs into an oyster-saloon. A minute more and she was back on Broadway, the very street, where Aunt Madge and Prudy were waiting for her, but so much lower down that she might as well have been in ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... to Sierra Leona, on the coast of Guinea, where we arrived the 22nd of July, and found necessary provisions, great store of elephants, oysters upon trees of one kind [mangrove], spawning and increasing infinitely, the oyster suffering no bud to grow. We departed thence ...
— Sir Francis Drake's Famous Voyage Round the World • Francis Pretty
... it all, Stephen! Where's your mind in these matters? Why haven't you tackled these things? Why do you leave it to me to dig these questions into you—like opening a reluctant oyster? Aren't they patent? You up and answer them, Stephen—or ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... a romancer, this mere anecdote probably would "rest, lovely pearl, in the brain, and slowly mature in the oyster," till it became a novel. Properly handled, the incident would make a very agreeable first chapter, with the aid of scenery, botany, climate, and remarks on the manners and customs of the red deer stolen from St. John, or the Stuarts d'Albanie. Then, probably, one would reflect ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... the slave goes out to execute it.) I have been in Britain—that western land of romance—the last piece of earth on the edge of the ocean that surrounds the world. I went there in search of its famous pearls. The British pearl was a fable; but in searching for it I found the British oyster. ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... servant and avant courier of my lady, he was a genteel, dignified, taciturn gentleman, like an elderly duke in difficulties, with whom it was impossible to take liberties or ask questions—a sort of human oyster: who kept himself and his knowledge hermetically sealed up. He told nothing, and they had to be contented with ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... left Newhaven pier for the oyster dredging in the Firth of Forth. One of the crew, a young lad, who had been at a circus in Edinburgh the previous evening, happened, while giving an account of what he had seen, to say "horse." No sooner had the hated word been uttered, than his companions ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... sinking behind the western hills in a bank of golden and purple clouds. Two miles yet lay between the lads and their objective point—the odd little oyster and chop house so much frequented by the students of Milton. It was an historic place, was Kelly's; a beloved place where the lads foregathered to talk over their doings, their hopes, their fears, their joys and sorrows. It was an old-fashioned ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... some one or more perceptions; nor can I ever perceive any thing but the perceptions. It is the composition of these, therefore, which forms the self. We can conceive a thinking being to have either many or few perceptions. Suppose the mind to be reduced even below the life of an oyster. Suppose it to have only one perception, as of thirst or hunger. Consider it in that situation. Do you conceive any thing but merely that perception? Have you any notion of self or substance? If not, the addition of other perceptions can never give ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... Feversham," replied Morganstein. "Saw that little scoop, too, about Tisdale. He's the closest oyster on record." ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... publication to one journal, or to extend it to several, is a question so very difficult of decision to a stranger, that I have finally resolved to send these papers to you, and ask you (mindful of the conversation we had on this head one day, in that renowned oyster-cellar) to resolve the point for me. You need feel no weighty sense of responsibility, my dear Felton, for whatever you do is sure to please me. If you see Sumner, take him into our councils. The only two things to be borne in mind are, first, that if they be published ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... composed of fourteen young men and two professors from Columbia University. Professor Gordon looked after the athletics and Professor Gamage the general management of the camp. The men lived in three small, portable houses, which were set up along the shores of Oyster Sound, a little stretch of quiet water between the mainland and a ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... communication was to elicit information. She knew Brinton perhaps better than any one else in the company. Couldn't she give him some "points"? Alas! she had no "points" to give, for, however expansive Brinton may have been under Cupid's influence, he was as close as an oyster in what related to his profession, as has already been said. There was but one course left for Rounders to pursue, which was to play a close imitation ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... mad as they listened to the nonsensical ideas aroused by wine, the sight of the shell fish and the recollection of certain fragmentary reading in his youth. "We're going to eat our grandfathers like the merry cannibals that we are." The oyster is one of the primitive manifestations of life on the planet—one of the earlier forms of organic matter, still resting, uncertain and aimless in its evolution in the immensity of the waters. The sympathetic and slandered monkey only has the importance of a first cousin who has failed ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... just left, and my father showed my sisters how to eat them without spilling the liquor. He even tried to give them an example, and seized an oyster. He attempted to imitate the ladies, and immediately spilled all the liquid over his coat. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... breathing will be thaw'd, Doth practise physic; and his credit grows, As doth the ballad-singer's auditory, Which hath at Temple-Bar his standing chose, And to the vulgar sings an ale-house story: First stands a porter; then an oyster-wife Doth stint her cry and stay her steps to hear him; 10 Then comes a cutpurse ready with his[539] knife, And then a country client presseth[540] near him; There stands the constable, there stands ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... staring with his beautiful goggle-eyes, at the quaint old streets, and the shops, and the houses. Everything looked very strange, indeed; for here was a town abandoned by its nurse, the sea, like an old oyster left on the shore till it gaped for weariness. It used to be one of the five chief seaports in England, but it began to hold itself too high, and the consequence was the sea grew less and less intimate with it, gradually drew back, and kept more to itself, till at length ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... an Oyster. For, says he in his prayer, "Our souls are constantly gaping after thee, O LORD! yea, verily, our souls do gape, even ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... drowning matter to pick up pink shells, still there was nothing to prevent the whole commerce of the country from being carried on by means of a system equally conchological. He found that the social action in every part of the island was regulated and assisted by this process. Oyster-shells were first introduced; muscle-shells speedily followed; and, as commerce became more complicate, they had even been obliged to have recourse to snail-shells. Popanilla retired to rest with ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... in the rough part of the heterogeneous crowd. This man, while on a footing of the greatest intimacy with the runners, was far inferior to them in the matter of dress. Locus, in reply to my queries, informed me that he was a professional oyster-opener; but, judging from his appearance in general, I should have guessed that he was a professional oyster-catcher also,—a human dredge, employed chiefly at the bottom of the sea. A perfect Hercules in build, "Lobster Bob," as Locus called him, made his appearance on the wharf with two ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... paid by dem words, and I don't want no tanks. Jes lub me, and come sometimes to see me ef you can, it's so hard livin' in dis yere place. I don't tink I'll bar it long. I wish I was a bird to fly away, or a oyster safe in de mud, and free to do as I's ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... with two figures on all of them,—three tens and one twenty. It took his breath away for a minute; then he hugged the old book tight in both his grimy hands, and rocked to and fro all in a heap among the oyster-shells and rusty tin kettles, saying to himself, with tears running down his cheeks, 'O Nanny! O Nanny! ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... incomes: they, in their social moments, shrank absurdly far from the poor people's porter and shrimps; crawled contemptibly near to the rich people's rare wines and luxurious dishes; exposed their poverty in imitation by chemical champagne from second-rate wine merchants, by flabby salads and fetid oyster-patties from second-rate pastry-cooks; were, in no one of their festive arrangements, true to their incomes, to their order, or to themselves; and, in very truth, for all these reasons and many more, got no real enjoyment ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... the like reasons were not to be trusted. The general belief was very slow. There were frowzy fields, and cow-houses, and dunghills, and dustheaps, and ditches, and gardens, and summer-houses, and carpet-beating grounds, at the very door of the Railway. Little tumuli of oyster shells in the oyster season, and of lobster shells in the lobster season, and of broken crockery and faded cabbage leaves in all seasons, encroached upon its high places. Posts, and rails, and old cautions to trespassers, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... an Owl and Oyster: Did Oliver Oglethorpe ogle an Owl and Oyster? If Oliver Oglethorpe ogled an Owl and Oyster, Where are the Owl ...
— Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation • Anonymous
... lecture room and textbook and field work and close personal association with his able and friendly professors, and, finally, with the knowledge that he had already found exactly the right girl for him, Herbert Hoover went out from Stanford, in 1895, with his Pioneer Class, ready to open his oyster. But he had only himself to rely on ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... shut up here for goodness knows how long. And they say there are seven fellows down with it in the hospital now. What do you suppose they will do if it gets to be an epidemic in the school? I saw old Nealum just now, and he was mum as an oyster: looked bad, because he always loves to give out information, you know. We are to go to chapel in half an hour for instructions and new rules. Wish they would send us home! ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... make a noise upon some instrument or other, and charm their friends, or split the ears of their neighbours, with something which courtesy calls music. Europeans, as they walk our streets, are often surprised with the flute rudely warbling "Hail Columbia," from an oyster cellar, or the piano forte thumped to a female voice screaming "O Lady Fair!" from behind a heap of cheese, a basket of eggs, a flour barrel, or a puncheon of apple whiskey; and on these grounds we take it for granted that we are a very ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... nostrils—for hours before I dared to descend to the coarse process of chewing. And then—ah heavens! can mortal mixture ever equal that first chew again! How bright and beautiful the world looked! What happy remembrances I reveled in all that day, of serenades, and oyster-suppers, and pretty girls, and a thousand other fascinations of early youth, all of which grew out of a paper ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... however, if he has not proved so redoubtable a fishtamer as my original informant opined, has proved very successful in oyster culture. Having a little salt-water inlet, with a river running into it, he conceived the idea of breeding and raising oysters, but found the climate bad for "spatting," and now buys his tiny young oysters by the ten thousand ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... oyster did not absolutely replace bread and meat, it furnished an aliment in no whit less nutritive and in a condition capable of being absorbed in large quantities. But as this mollusk is of very easy digestion, it is somewhat dangerous in its use, to say ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... two pilgrims espied upon the sands of the shore an oyster that had been thrown up by the tide. They devoured it with their eyes whilst pointing at it with their fingers; but whose teeth should deal with it was a ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... it's like—exactly like the eye of an oyster in its pulp. And, by Jove, there's another!" ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... harder to drain, is worth from $25 to $50. The immediate water front has risen in price in recent years and brings fancy prices for residence purposes. Curiously enough some of the best land of the county is that beneath the waters of the rivers—the oyster beds. Land for this use may be worth from nothing to many hundreds of dollars an acre, according to its nature. The county contains 250 square miles, 6,224 whites and 6,608 blacks, the latter forming 51 ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... the Hotel de L'Athenee, the long boxes duly piled up in tiers, like coffins at the morgue. Then Theobald's aunt, the baroness, called on me, in state. She came in that funny, old-fashioned, shallow landau of hers, where she looked for all the world like an oyster-on-the-half-shell, and spoke so pointedly of the danger of international marriages that I felt sure she was trying to shoo me away from my handsome and kingly Theobald Gustav—which made me quite calmly and solemnly tell her that I intended to take Theobald out of under-secretaryships, ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... knife-boards of omnibuses, dining at cheap restaurants, making music at each other's studios. His personal charm was great, as great in its way as Leech's; he was democratic and so was I, as one is bound to be when one is impecunious and the world is one's oyster to open with the fragile point of a lead-pencil. His bohemian world was mine—and I found it a very good world and very much to my taste—a clear, honest, wholesome, innocent, intellectual, and most industrious British bohemia, with lots of tobacco, lots of good music, plenty of talk about literature ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... yourself. Now listen to me! I said I wasn't going to let you have a cent out of that charter deal—and I mean it. If you couldn't say Boo! from now until the day you finger a dollar of that income you'd be as dumb as an oyster by the time I hand you the check. What do you know about money?" he piped shrilly. "You big, overgrown baby! Yah! You've had a little taste of business and turned a neat deal, and now you think you're a wonder, don't you? Like everybody else, you'll keep on thinking ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... his conception of the perfect Englishman. Ah, how he rejoiced in this wider horizon of London, so thickly starred with music-halls, billiard-rooms, and restaurants! 'We are emancipated now,' was his cry: 'we have too much intellect to keep all those old laws;' and he swallowed the forbidden oyster in a fine spiritual glow, which somehow or other would not extend to bacon. That stuck more in his throat, and so was only taken in self-defence, to avoid the suspicions of ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... think he does, exactly. He's ma's uncle, but he's sich a nice man that even pa likes him. They can't nobody help likin' him, he's so nice; but ever'body laughs at him, he says sich blunderin' things sometimes. Onct when Aunt Alviny (that's his wife) was a-makin' oyster soup, Uncle Mel he come and looked over her shoulder and says, 'Put lots o' water in it, mother, 'cause I'm ...
— The Fotygraft Album - Shown to the New Neighbor by Rebecca Sparks Peters Aged Eleven • Frank Wing
... various parts of Europe, which are found to consist of the bones, shells, and other refuse thrown out by these later Palaeolithic men, who had no reverence for the dead, casting out the bodies of their relations to decay with as little thought as they threw away oyster-shells or reindeer-bones. Traces of Palaeolithic men of this type have been found as far north as Derbyshire. Their descendants are no longer be met with in these islands. The Eskimos of the extreme ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... extensive marshes, with here and there the habitation of man located upon some slight elevation of the surface. Having rowed twenty-six miles, and being off the mouth of Murderkill Creek, a squall struck the canoe and forced it on to an oyster reef, upon the sharp shells of which she was rocked for several minutes by the shallow breakers. Fearing that the paper shell was badly cut, though it was still early in the afternoon, I ascended the creek of ominous name and associations to the landing of an inn ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... ever been since or ever expect to be again. Peter was a jolly little round freckled chap. He was all right when no girls were around; when they were he retired within himself like a misanthropic oyster, and was about as interesting. This was the one point upon which we always disagreed. Peter couldn't endure girls; I was devoted to them by the wholesale. The Croyden girls were pretty and vivacious. I had a score of flirtations ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... that will do—they can just pull and pull and pull till it's all gone. A starfish isn't strong, but he can open the strongest oyster just because he can pull from now on. You may ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... story of two "smart" Yankees, one named Hosea and the other Hezekiah, who met in an oyster shop in Boston. Said Hosea, "As to opening oysters, why nothing's easier if you only know how." "And how's how?" asked Hezekiah. "Scotch snuff," replied Hosea, very gravely—"Scotch snuff. Bring a little of it ever so near their noses, and they'll sneeze their lids off." ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... boxes labelled with transcendent names, lives Mr. Tulkinghorn, when not speechlessly at home in country-houses where the great ones of the earth are bored to death. Here he is to-day, quiet at his table. An oyster of the old school whom ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... rude, warm-hearted, and unsophisticated inhabitants, became more and more fresh and lively in his memory. Distance and absence turned the quaint dialect to music, and out of this mild home-sickness grew the Alemannic poems. A healthy oyster never produces ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... occasion to none; but I would I were equally certain of the good meaning of this sullen- browed Thomas Dickson towards the English soldiers, for I seldom go to bed in this dungeon of a house, but I expect my throat will gape as wide as a thirsty oyster before I awaken. Here he comes, however," added Anthony, sinking his sharp tones as he spoke; "and I hope to be excommunicated if he has not brought with him that mad animal, his son Charles, and two other strangers, hungry enough, I'll be sworn, to eat up the whole supper, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... new in this. It has all been done before. But tell me, what is new? Does the aspiring and perspiring summer vaudeville artist flatter himself that his stuff is going big? Then does the stout man with the oyster-colored eyelids in the first row, left, turn his bullet head on his fat-creased neck to ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... no more toasts for the present. They seem too formal when only we three are together. And we know what we wish each other without them. Oyster soup! You see, I remembered what you are fond of, Claudie. I recollect ages ago in London I once met Mr. Whistler. It was when I was very small. He came to lunch with Madre. By the way, Claude, did you take Madre's cablegram with you when you went ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... klabaw, jilawat, lai-is, pattain, udang or prawn, shrimp, talang, sinanging, bawan, rowan, taylaon, duri, bleda, tingairy, alu-alu, pako, jumpul, pari or skait, boli ayam, tamban or shad, belut or eel, iyu or shark, lida or sole, batu batu, kabab batu, klaoi, krang or cockle, tiram or oyster, tipy and lapis pearl oysters, cupang or muscle, all the varieties of the turtle, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... a motley assemblage, as you say. Yet I'm inclined to think I found my pearl in the oyster. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... answered admirably. One poor girl had been subject to fits ever since a stupid fellow, during the haymaking, jokingly picked up a snake and threw it round her neck. Yet even in that far-away coombe-bottom they knew enough to put an oyster-shell in the kettle to ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... kind of fun, and was enjoyed to the utmost. They went to near-by towns, and had oyster suppers, going to informal dances afterward. Mr. Blackford stayed, and as he could do little business while thus snow-bound he made arrangements to remain in camp a week or two. The boys and girls were glad to have him, as ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope
... piled up on shore and allowed to decompose, so as to render it easier to get at the pearls, for he makes one of his characters say, speaking of an honest man in a poor dwelling, that he was like a "pearl in your foul oyster". (As You Like It, Act v, ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... be ranked the acquired sense of Dignity, which induces us often to forfeit pleasure and incur pain. We should not choose the life of Plato's beatified oyster, or (to use Aristotle's example) be content with perpetual childhood, with however great ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... I would not trouble myself with the oyster laws of Virginia, or the cranberry laws of Indiana. The doctrine of self-government is right—absolutely and eternally right—but it has no just application as here attempted. Or perhaps I should rather say, that whether it has such ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... Vinton"; it was surmised that they came from the baroness. In her bodice at dinner, and to the concert after, Gyp wore one La France and one Gloire de Dijon—a daring mixture of pink and orange against her oyster-coloured frock, which delighted her, who had a passion for experiments in colour. They had bought no programme, all music being the same to Winton, and Gyp not needing any. When she saw Fiorsen come forward, her cheeks began to colour ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... round velvet dish on his head, to keep warm the broth of his wit, and a long gown that makes him look like a Cedant arma togae, whilst the poor Aristotelians walk in a short cloak and a close Venetian hose, hard by the oyster-wife; and the silly poet goes muffled in his cloak to escape the counter. And you, Master Amoretto, that art the chief carpenter of sonnets, a privileged vicar for the lawless marriage of ink and paper, you ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... dead of the yellow fever, and at the intelligence she had drooped like a severed snowdrop, and died. The only tie strong enough to induce him to return to Ireland was therefore broken, his father's worldly advice had not been forgotten, and O'Donahue considered the world as his oyster. Expensive in his habits and ideas, longing for competence, while he vegetated on half-pay, he was now looking out for a matrimonial speculation. His generosity and his courage remained with him—two virtues not to be driven out of an Irishman—but his other good qualities lay in abeyance; and ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... old seaman's life, every finer particle of his nature came out in her concentrated and polished, and he often wondered at a creature so ethereal belonging to him—as if down on some shaggy sea-green rock an old pearl oyster should muse and marvel on the strange silvery mystery of beauty that was growing in ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... ventured to battle; but in an incredible space of time he had gathered together his routed army, and was as formidable as before. The Germans liked the bold old fellow, and called, and still call him, Marshal Forwards. He had his disappointments, no doubt, but turned them, like the oyster does the speck of sand which annoys it, to a pearl. To our minds, the best of all these heroes is Robert Hall, the preacher, who, after falling on the ground in paroxysms of pain, would rise with a smile, and say, "I suffered much, but I did not cry out, did I? did I cry out?" ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... up, piping louder and louder, scudding across the now darkening water. The entrance to Oyster Haven was only half a mile on. It was too far to go to Kinsale. The Old Head was invisible in ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... From the stone which is formed in the bowels of the earth by the intimate combination, as they approach one another, of analogous and similar molecules, up to the sun, that vast reservoir of heated particles that gives light to the firmament; from the numb oyster up to man—we observe an uninterrupted progression, a perpetual chain of combination and movements, from which there result beings that only differ among one another by the variety of their elementary matters, and of the combination and proportion of these elements. From ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... little gate into the street, so we did the same. It was a very dirty street, with houses on one side and the railway on the other. There were cabbages and carrots and old shoes and fishes' heads and oyster-shells and potato-peelings in the street, and a goat was routing among it all with its nose, as if it had lost something and hoped to find it ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... taciturnity gave way to torrents of reproach. "Beware of him as has no use for horses, Master Richard," he would say; for this trait in Grafton in Harvey's mind lay at the bottom of all others. At my uncle's approach he would retire into his shell like an oyster, nor could he be got to utter more than a monosyllable in his presence. Harvey's face would twitch, and his fingers clench of themselves as he touched his cap. And with my Aunt Caroline he was the same. He vouchsafed but a curt reply to all her questions, nor did her raptures over the stud soften ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... for a surety, at the very last moment, the Woman-with-the-squalling-brat will rush on the platform and head straight for me! Or, I have only to see the Remarkably Plain Person hesitating between two tables in a restaurant to know that she will invariably choose mine! (c) If there is a bad oyster—I get it! If a wasp flies into the garden seeking repose—I always look to it like a Chesterfield couch! If one day I have not shaved—my latest "pash" is sure to call! Should I invest my hard-earned savings ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... Oyster, Who decided to enter a cloister. He could not return, So continued to yearn For his home in the ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... language, and threatening; but said nothing of their attacking him, or throwing anything at him - Mr. Hinckley declared, that the people went to the centry, and at last some of them cried kill him, but did not see any attempt to hurt him - Mr. Cornwall swore, that he saw snow balls and 2 or 3 oyster shells thrown at the centry, but did not think they hit him - he heard several young gentlemen perswading the people to go off, and believed they all would have gone off, if the Soldiers had not come down - Mr. Helyer ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... transactions executed, and the general affairs of the city carried on. On the other side of the square were the shops, where the butchers, bakers, or fishmongers plied their trade. You can find plenty of oyster shells, the contents of which furnished many a feast to the Romans who lived there seventeen hundred years ago. The objects which have been found tell us how the dwellers in the old city employed themselves, and how skilful they were in craftsmanship. Amongst other things ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... piquant, Arlesian sausages, and lobsters in their dazzling red cuirasses, prawns of large size and brilliant color, the echinus with its prickly outside and dainty morsel within, the clovis, esteemed by the epicures of the South as more than rivalling the exquisite flavor of the oyster,—all the delicacies, in fact, that are cast up by the wash of waters on the sandy beach, and styled by the grateful fishermen ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... recesses of this bay, known as Oyster Harbour, a naturalist, named M. Faure, discovered a large river, named after the French, the mouth of which was as wide as the Seine at Paris. He undertook to ascend it, and thus penetrated as far as possible into ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... of those of his ancestors who looked down upon commerce, though not upon oppression, or even on robbery. But the true man will change to nobility even the instincts derived from strains of inferior moral development in his race—as the oyster makes, they say, of ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... cleanshaven except for the conventional seaman's fringe of beard below the chin, and always exquisitely neat. Whether you met him in his best suit, on Sunday morning, or in his old clothes, going to his oyster-beds or his cranberry-marsh, it was always the same. He was usually in his shirt-sleeves in summer. His white cotton shirt, with its easy collar and wristbands, seemed always to have just come from the ironing-board. "It ain't no trouble at all to keep James clean," ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... taken out of their shells and served en masse in a large dish. Our friends were astonished that we did not like these famous oysters of theirs in any form, which we did not, they being very huge in size and strong in flavour. We said, too, we did not like making two bites of an oyster; they pitied our want of taste, and lamented over our miserably small ones in England. After tea we saw some sea-weed and autumnal leaves beautifully dried and preserved by Mrs. Flagg, and we also looked over ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... scrap book. Now if She'd engaged you an' me to keep tab of things for Her, we'd have done a deal better. Those poor blamed sea-gulls, or whatever they are, would have been squatting around on elegant beds of moulted feathers, laid out on steam-heat radiators, feeding on oyster cocktails and things, and handing out the instructive dope of a highbrow politician working up a press reputation, and learning their kids the decent habits of folk who're yearning to keep out of penitentiary as long as the police'll let 'em. No. It's no use. Nature got busy. Look at the result. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... far to trust his experience of me, that he formed the habit of giving me an annual supper. Some days before this event, he would appear in my study, and with divers delicate and tentative approaches, nearly always of the same tenor, he would say that he should like to ask my family to an oyster supper with him. "But you know," he would explain, "I haven't a house of my own to ask you to, and I should like to give you the supper here." When I had agreed to this suggestion with due gravity, he would inquire our engagements, and then say, as if a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... see all that is to be seen, as he does move about, and the use of his tongue to describe all that he has seen, and so I'll use mine to good purpose, and indulge you, but, as I've said before, I say again, I will have no one doubt my word. If there's any cavilling, I'll shut up as close as an oyster when he's had his dinner, and, having made this preliminary observation, here goes. Let me recollect, where had I got to?" Mr Johnson said this while taking his usual seat on a bucket, between our hammocks, ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... To plates of oyster soup. Let pap engage The gums of age And appetites that droop; We much prefer to ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... "I didn't know Grandpa Goosey was to give a party, but, if he is, you certainly look well enough to go with your new coat. Of course, it might be better if it had some lace insertion around the button holes, or a bit of ruching, with oyster shell trimming sewed down ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis
... This is the River Nile, in which you see the Dolphin, that natural Friend to Mankind, fighting with a Crocodile, Man's deadly Enemy. Upon the Banks and Shores you see several amphibious Creatures, as Crabs, Seals, Beavers. Here is a Polypus, a Catcher catch'd by an Oyster. ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... for them to breathe.' Even the overpraised citizens of Athens at the time of Pericles, who must have been in all their ways so like the Athenians of to-day, were not more instant in the Agora or diligent in writing patriots' names on oyster-shells than the noisy mob of half-breed patriots who in the sandy streets of Asuncion were ever agitating, always assembling, and doing everything within their power to show the world the perfect picture of a democratic State. ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... experimental station could have charge of work connected therewith—that one of the provisions we would insist on being put in the law would be one to control the pests which may come. Right in our district today the tent caterpillar is playing havoc with our walnuts; the oyster shell scale is going through our timber in Center County; and I can take you into the mountains five miles from any residence and I can show you oyster shell scale on half a dozen of our native species. It is nice to kid ourselves ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... of this pearl, as told by the Persians, is worth recounting, for perhaps to some it may not seem altogether incredible. For they say that it was lodged in its oyster in the sea which washes the Persian coast, and that the oyster was swimming not far from the shore; both its valves were standing open and the pearl lay between them, a wonderful sight and notable, for no pearl in all history could be compared with it at all, either in size or in ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... plates place the knives, the spoons, and the forks that are to be used without knives (as for oysters, fish, or salad). At the left, place all the forks that are to be used with knives. Many prefer, however, to place all the forks, except the oyster fork, at the left of the plate. Enough silver for all courses, except the dessert course, is usually placed on the table; it is permissible, however, to place the silver for all courses. If the silver for any course is not placed on the table before ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... startled and offended than to hear from feminine lips, rosily wreathed by beauty and youth, issue the words, "The concert will come off on Wednesday." This vulgarism should never be heard beyond the "ring" and the cock-pit, and should be banished from resorts so respectable as an oyster-cellar. ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... I watched the oyster-catcher, as he flew from point to point, and cautiously waded into the shallow water; and the patient heron, that pattern of a fisherman, as with retracted neck, and eyes fixed on vacancy, he has stood for hours without a single snap, motionless as a statue. Here, too, have I pursued ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... in a domestic museum. Then, presto! friends had begun to congratulate them on the uniqueness of their establishment, and to express affection for it. It had become a favorite resort for many modern spirits—artists, literary men, musicians, self-supporting women—and Pauline's oyster suppers, cooked in her grandmother's blazer, were still a ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... to her daughter, "Ah, my dear! Let this be a lesson to you never to lose your temper!" "Hold your tongue, Ma!" said the young Crab, a little snappishly. "You're enough to try the patience of an oyster!" ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. With a Proem by Austin Dobson • Lewis Carroll
... you think?" said Mike, who while he talked was trying how far he could jerk the flat pieces of oyster-shell, of which there were plenty near, off the cliff; but with all his skill—and he could throw far—they seemed, in the immensity around, as if they dropped close to the ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... so few in this world, from the oyster up to man. Why should there not be one more, when once that period is accomplished which separates the successive apparitions from all ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... advantages of the usual village, has a quiet charm all its own, due to the fact that it has seen better days. In a sense, it is a ruin, and ruins are always soothing to the bruised soul. Ten years before, Belpher had been a flourishing centre of the South of England oyster trade. It is situated by the shore, where Hayling Island, lying athwart the mouth of the bay, forms the waters into a sort of brackish lagoon, in much the same way as Fire Island shuts off the Great South Bay of Long Island from the waves of the Atlantic. ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... madness, is the true world-advancer. This madness, when cultured, ripens into talent; if original and inborn, we call it genius, and the subtile anatomists of the French schools prove it by telling us that the brains of geniuses are diseased. The healthy oyster ministers only to the palate. It is the diseased oyster that secretes the pearl for Miss Shoddy's necklace. It is the diseased brain that shines through the ages, lights men on to new epochs in knowledge, and advances the race to the millennial perfection. Immortal Jean ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various |
