"Patch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out in the curagh that had been damaged on the day of my visit to Kilronan, and as we were putting in the oars the freshly-tarred patch stuck to the slip which was heated with the sunshine. We carried up water in the bailer—the 'supeen,' a shallow wooden vessel like a soup-plate—and with infinite pains we got free and rode away. In a few minutes, ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... mainly on base enjoyments,—nay on enjoyments of any kind. His household was of the frugalest; his common diet barley-bread and water: sometimes for months there was not a fire once lighted on his hearth. They record with just pride that he would mend his own shoes, patch his own cloak. A poor, hard-toiling, ill-provided man; careless of what vulgar men toil for. Not a bad man, I should say; something better in him than hunger of any sort,—or these wild Arab men, fighting and jostling three-and-twenty years at his ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... it in the summer; as for carts, he had some already, he must make some more for the autumn. Most important of all was the fodder, and he had not forgotten that, of course; or why should he have thought it so important to get that last patch broken up last year if it hadn't been to save getting rid of one of the cows, and yet have enough keep for a new horse? It was, sown for green fodder now; that was ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... stood in the grateful shade of cathedral elms, and gave thanks to God in their dumb, fumbling way. Motherly, sleepy, stupid sheep lay on the plains, little lambs rollicked out their short-lived youth around them, and no premonition floated over from the adjoining pea-patch, nor any misgiving of approaching mutton marred their happy heyday. Straight through the piny forests, straight past the vocal orchards, right in among the robins and the jays and the startled thrushes, we dashed inexorable, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... a little cloud of smoke showed like a dark patch on the horizon. His heart thumped against his ribs and he drank a liqueur. Then he ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... tied to a fan-shaped support, which Mr. Royall had once brought up from Hepburn to please her. Behind the house a bit of uneven ground with clothes-lines strung across it stretched up to a dry wall, and beyond the wall a patch of corn and a few rows of potatoes strayed vaguely into the adjoining wilderness of ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... sleep at nights, and will surely die of it?... He comes, he pleases, the little maid vanishes, and I pocket my two thousand crowns. What, thou hast a talent like this, and yet in want of bread? Shame on thee, wretch! I recalled a crowd of scoundrels who were not a patch upon me, and yet were rolling in money. There was I in serge, and they in velvet; they leaned on gold-headed canes, and had fine rings on their fingers. And what were they? Wretched bungling strummers, and now they are a kind of fine gentlemen. At such times I felt ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... that his mother had gone to see Aunt Polly Woodchuck, who lived under the hill. And he knew that his father, with a few cronies, was enjoying a feast in Farmer Green's clover patch. ...
— The Tale of Old Dog Spot • Arthur Scott Bailey
... gold,—at least what was gold; so are all the tables. Round the top of the chamber runs a monstrous frieze, ten or twelve feet deep, representing stag-hunting in miserable plastered relief. The next is her dressing-room, hung with patch-work on black velvet; then her state bedchamber. The bed has been rich beyond description, and now hangs in costly golden tatters. The hangings, part of which they say her Majesty worked, are composed of figures as large as life, sewed and embroidered ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... accuse Gay of doing it on purpose, however, for she appeared blandly unconscious of the neighbourhood of fellow beings. She gave a little flick of her whip, and away she went over a great burnt-out patch of veld, leaving the long, white, dusty road to those who had no choice but to ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... over the stile, Off went the tinker man, singing the while; Down by the bracken patch, over the hill, With the little red dog at the heel of him still. And back, as he soberly sauntered along, There came to the riders ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... recollections go back to the morning on which I had found Quick lying dead on the patch of ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... of one of his own relations of the Clan Campbell, I do not recollect; I rather think the latter was the case. On reaching the brow of a bleak eminence overhanging the primitive tower and its tiny patch of cultivated ground, he found his host and three sons, and perhaps half-a-dozen attendant gillies, all stretched half asleep in their tartans upon the heath, with guns and dogs, and a profusion of game about them; ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... It is a clear, warm, sunny morning in May. Diagonally from the middle to the foreground extends a path. The fields on either side are raised slightly above it. In the immediate foreground a small potato patch on which the green shoots are already visible. A shallow ditch, covered with field flowers, separates the path from the fields. To the left of the path on a slope about six feet in height an old cherry tree, to the right hazelnut and whitethorn ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... hut was a small barn in which he kept the produce of the little patch of corn, which grew close to the garden. Here a rat ran out almost under his feet, followed by another and another; but quick as thought the cat was upon them and not one ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... only child of a poor widow, who supported herself and daughter by spinning and carding wool for the farmers' wives. Mrs. Grey was considered much poorer than any of her neighbors, but her humble cottage was always neat and in perfect order, and the small garden patch which supplied the few vegetables which she needed was never choked with weeds. The honeysuckle was carefully trained about the door, and little Annie delighted in tying up the pinks, and fastening strings for the morning glories that she ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... 18th of February,—I had gone down the railroad a little farther than usual, attracted by the encouraging appearance of a swampy patch of rather large deciduous trees. Some of them, I remember, were red maples, already full of handsome, high-colored fruit. As I drew near, I heard indistinctly from among them what might have been the song of a black-throated green ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... upon the ground and, clawing out with their fingers lumps of earth, sucked out the remnants of moisture. Others shouted that evil spirits had murdered the guards and slashed the bags. But Stas and Kali knew what it all meant. M'Kunje and M'Pua were missing from those men howling above that grass patch. In that which had happened there was something more than the murder of two guards and the theft of water. The remaining slashed bags were evidence that it was an act of revenge and at the same time a sentence of death for the whole caravan. The priests of the wicked Mzimu revenged ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... loyal a lover of virtue of that stamp as any other whatever), if he had listened and laid his ear close to himself and he did so no doubt—would have heard some jarring note of human mixture, but faint and only perceptible to himself. Man is wholly and throughout but patch and motley. Even the laws of justice themselves cannot subsist without mixture of injustice; insomuch that Plato says, they undertake to cut off the hydra's head, who pretend to clear the law of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... architect; and he invariably came to the conclusion that the Brahmanical idols formed a harmonic and genuine part of the whole, pillars, decorations, and the general style of the temple; whereas the statue of Buddha was an additional and discordant patch. Out of thirty or forty caves of Ellora, all filled with idols, there is only one, the one called the Temple of the Tri-Lokas, which contains nothing but statues of Buddha, and of Ananda, his favourite disciple. Of course, in this case it would be ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... ranged over from California to sell a patch of ground I owned in Yuma. Then I hiked over to Nogales on a little pasear and offered to pack a gun and wear a uniform for this Mexican squabble, and the powers that be turned me down because one of my eyes could see farther than the other—that's no joke—it's a calamity! ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... his neighbours. Nor indeed was his soldiership justly a subject of derision. In every county there were elderly gentlemen who had seen service which was no child's play. One had been knighted by Charles the First, after the battle of Edgehill. Another still wore a patch over the scar which he had received at Naseby. A third had defended his old house till Fairfax had blown in the door with a petard. The presence of these old Cavaliers, with their old swords and holsters, and with their old stories about Goring and Lunsford, gave to the musters of militia an earnest ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the dead soldier up in the garret above, and climbed up the ladder to search for the cartridges he must have about him. A wide space of the roof had been crushed in; he saw the blue sky, a patch of bright, wholesome light that made him start. Not wishing to be killed, he crawled over the floor on his hands and knees, then, when he had the cartridges in his possession, some thirty of them, he made haste down again as fast his ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... walked rapidly to the field where she knew that her father was working, which she reached in a quarter of an hour. He was toiling with other day-labourers in a potato-patch, pulling the ripe roots out of the ground, and when she came up was stooping over his work. He did not notice his daughter until she was standing by his side and touched him lightly on ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... with M. de Villefort. He followed M. d'Epinay, saw him enter, afterwards go out, and then re-enter with Albert and Chateau-Renaud. He had no longer any doubts as to the nature of the conference; he therefore quickly went to the gate in the clover-patch, prepared to hear the result of the proceedings, and very certain that Valentine would hasten to him the first moment she should be set at liberty. He was not mistaken; peering through the crevices of the wooden partition, he soon discovered the young girl, who cast aside all her usual precautions ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the pleasure of the King that this place should remain so bad. His laborers also have, by the direction of his Majesty's surveyors, been for above these sixteen hundred years employed about this patch of ground, if perhaps it might have been mended: yea, and to my knowledge," said he, "here have been swallowed up at least twenty thousand cart-loads, yea, millions, of wholesome instructions, that have at all seasons been ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... stood was in the shadow, but twenty paces from me a red, level sunbeam came past the tree trunks, and made a bright patch of light on the new growing grass beneath the half-clad branches. And, even as I turned, into that patch of light came two of Matelgar's men, walking swiftly, as if here at last they would overtake me. And, moreover, that sunlight ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... to prevent this. While staring at the little patch of foam where the two men had gone down, he was startled by the sound of ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... York City, some in a space as small as a hearth rug, one yard by two, show how to use a very small patch of land to the best advantage. Nor need it take more time than you ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... day after leaving the frigate, on our way to Gibraltar, I fell in with a ship on the coast of Spain, and knew it to be the one Murphy commanded, by a remarkable white patch in the main-topsail. I made all sail in chase, in hopes of obtaining some spirits from him, knowing that he had more than he could consume, even if he and his people got drunk every day. When I came near him, he made all the sail he could. At dusk I was near enough almost to hail ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... a paper boat is easily repaired by a patch of strong paper and a coating of shellac put on with a hot iron. As the paper boat is a novelty with many people, a sketch of its early history may prove interesting to the reader. Mr. George A. Waters, the son of the senior member of the firm of E. Waters & Sons, of Troy, New York, was invited ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... great part of it has been entirely lost; I can tell you nothing about the beginning and nothing about the end; but the doings of some fifty or sixty hours about the middle remain quite distinct and definite, like a little patch of sunshine on a long, shadowy plain, or the one spot on an old picture that has been restored by the dexterous hand of the cleaner. I remember a tale of an old Scots minister called upon suddenly to preach, who had hastily snatched an ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be so afraid of the issue of our contest with the Sikhs (as they have neither troops sufficient to conquer them and hold the country, nor money to pay the enormous expenses of this prolonged campaign), that I should not be at all surprised they will do their utmost to patch up a peace, which will, to say the least, be not only humiliating to our arms, but disgraceful to British feelings. I am perfectly certain, however, that the Sikhs will entertain no terms with us, except they are based on our ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... bonbon box, No. 4 a fan. The face could remain the same. All marquises looked alike to Pere Issacar; he only exacted that they should all be provided with two black patches, one under the right eye, the other on the left shoulder. This he insisted upon, for the patch, in his eyes, was a symbol of ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... much damage done on this side. We'll patch you up so well that you will still be able ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... sun, but cut with one deep portal where a pass ran into Westmoreland—the scaur-gate whence the house was named; and through this gate of mountain often, when the day was waning, a bar of slanting sunset entered, like a plume of golden dust, and hovered on a broad black patch of weather-beaten fir-trees. The day was waning now, and every steep ascent looked steeper, while down the valley light and shade made longer cast of shuttle, and the margin of the west began to glow with a deep wine-color, as the sun came down—the tinge of many ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... different in my Gramma's time." Grandma pursed her lips as she set a white patch in a blue overall knee. "Then each family grew and canned and ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... however, that there may be exceptions to this general rule; indeed I know a very worthy vender of prints, who keeps in his cellar some hundreds of admirals and generals, ready engraved, and by cutting off the arm of one, or clapping a convenient patch on the eye of another, he is always ready before any of his competitors to present the town with striking likenesses of any or all of those persons who so frequently claim our attention and gratitude. However, as there is no subject on which people are apt ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... miserably. One patch of wall, by a window, was a mess. The windows themselves, cleaned in semi-darkness, were streaked. And some of the floor, down by the door, had ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... emotion in these lines is not in harmony with the romantic context. They are like a patch of cloth of gold let into a lace garment and straining the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Daffy-down-dilly is now come to town. Cock, cock, cock, cock. The lion and the unicorn. Old King Cole. Mistress Mary, quite contrary. Bonny lass, pretty lass. Handy-spandy, Jacky dandy. Ding-dong-bell, the cat's in the well. This pig went to market. There were two blackbirds sitting on a hill. Cross patch, draw the latch. Old Mother Hubbard. Pease-porridge hot. Polly, put the kettle on. The sow came in with the saddle. Little Robin Redbreast sat upon a tree. A farmer went trotting upon his gray mare. There was an old woman sold puddings and pies. Old woman, old woman, shall ...
— Mother Goose - The Original Volland Edition • Anonymous
... The Mail, A bright bay mount, his best of prancers, Out of Forget-me-not by Answers. A thick-set man was Alf, and hard; He chewed a straw from the stable-yard; He owned a chestnut, The Dispatch, With one white sock and one white patch; And had bred a mare called Comic Cuts; He was a man with fearful guts. So too was Rother, the first whip, Nothing could give this man the pip; He rode The Mirror, a raking horse, A piebald full of points and force. All that was best in English life, All that appealed to man or wife, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... on a charge of arson, and set out to arrest him, accompanied by the Nelson police magistrate, at the head of a posse of some fifty Nelson settlers very badly equipped. Rauparaha, surrounded by his armed followers, was found in a small clearing backed by a patch of bush, his front covered by a narrow but deep creek. The leaders of the arresting party crossed this, and called on the chief to give himself up. Of course he defied them. After an argument the police magistrate, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... patch on you," said Mr. Hills, edging his way by slow degrees into the parlour. "I don't take young ladies to the Empire. Were you telling me you came over here to get married, or did ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... me, and forced my way through their ranks. It is needless to say I have been a wanderer since; and though I wish to make friends, they will not allow it, but do all they can to hunt me to death. Now, as you were a friend of my father, I do hope you will patch up this war for me, which you ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... be done," Gerald agreed. "We will at once get disguises. I will dress myself as an old soldier, with one arm in a sling and a patch over my eye; you dress up in somewhat the same fashion as a sailor boy. It is about twelve miles from here to Ribaldo's place. We can walk that easily enough, dress ourselves up within a mile or two of the place, and then go on ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... shared his views. The duke suggested that these legislatures need be only two in number, because the Canadas should be reunited and the three Atlantic colonies placed under one government. No one heeded the suggestion. A few years intervened, and an effort was made to patch up a satisfactory arrangement between Lower Canada and Upper Canada. The two provinces quarrelled over the division of the customs revenue. When the dispute had reached a critical stage a bill was introduced in the Imperial parliament to unite them. This was ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... colour can no longer be detected. Yet the English and Anglo- Irish go on patching, and have carried this art to a remarkable pitch, putting wool or bagging on fustian, or the reverse—it's all the same to them. But the true, transplanted Irish hardly ever patch except in the extremest necessity, when the garment would otherwise fall apart. Ordinarily the rags of the shirt protrude through the rents in the coat or trousers. They wear, as Thomas ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... cushions were of red-and-white glazed patch, the turkey wings that served as hearth brushes were hung against the white-painted chimney-piece with blue skirt braid, and the white shades were finished with home-made scarlet "tossels." A little whatnot in one corner was laden with the trophies of battle. The warrior's brass buttons were ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... webbing should be taken to patch up torn girths; but a good substitute for a girth is made by cutting a band of tanned, or even of dressed, leather, to within four inches of its end, into seven or nine bands, and plaiting these together. But it takes a beginner just ten times as long to plait a girth as to weave it, and, ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... crack leaked it in generous streams, while the main illumination appeared fairly to bulge the walls outward. This was in itself nothing extraordinary, and indicated only the activity of those within, but while I looked an irregular patch of incandescence suddenly splashed the cliff opposite. For a single instant the very substance of the rock glowed white hot; then from the spot a shower of spiteful flakes shot as from a pyrotechnic, and the light was blotted out as suddenly as it ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... snowy crust. Sahwah brought out her brother's bob, which he was not using this evening, and piled the whole company on behind her. She could steer as well as a boy. Down the long street they shot, from one patch of light into another as they passed the lamp posts. The mothers shrieked with excitement and held on for dear life. "Oh," panted Mrs. Brewster when they came to a standstill at the bottom of the slope, "is there anything in the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... bones are black with many a crack, All black and bare, I ween; Jet-black and bare, save where with rust Of mouldy damps and charnel crust They're patch'd ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the Cape trying to patch up the Guardian, and repair it so as to bring it back to port; but all his exertions were fruitless, and in October the Admiralty despatched the Sphinx ship-of-war to bring him and the survivors of his crew to England, where they landed shortly after. ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... patch of land with cabbages and sunflowers, which the corporation is just going to run ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... upon his breast, and remained silent. I ventured to put my head round the door (holding my breath as I did so), but Grisha still made no movement except for the heavy sighs which heaved his breast. In the moonlight I could see a tear glistening on the white patch ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... husband. "How did you expect him to look? Did you think he would have a red nose and a patch over one eye?" ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... only one other hue, beside green, was there upon that island gem floating on the jade-green sea, and that was a patch of black and white! It flashed to the eye of the raiding rogue-raven, and he altered course towards it, when it turned into a female great black-backed gull, running, literally racing, to her nest, which the raven could now see, with its two big, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... eyes you'd ha' seen nothin' like a corn patch for twenty mile round about this. Bread never entered this hut since I been here. I ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... Ascension, at the close of that last concert on the quarter-deck. The watch are taking down the extra awning; they are removing the bunting and the foot-lights. The lanterns are trailed forward before they are put out; from the break of the poop we watch the vivid shifting patch of deck that each lights up on its way. The stars are very sharp in the vast violet dome above our masts; they shimmer on the sea; and our trucks describe minute orbits among the stars, for the trades have yet to fail us, and every inch of canvas has its fill of the ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... true! He had fallen on to a bad patch of marsh. The morass seemed now to be rapidly changing into a quicksand, in which the General and his horse who had gone to his ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... harum-scarum they had ever known. He was even cheerful to look at, too. For with every bright day that passed, Bobby Bobolink's dress took on a gayer hue. The truth was that the yellowish tips of his feathers were wearing away, leaving him a handsome suit of black, set off by a generous patch of creamy yellow on the back of his neck, with enough white on his back and shoulders to make a most ...
— The Tale of Bobby Bobolink - Tuck-me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... me to apologize, for I must have frightened you awfully. And"—he looked at her dress, upon which was a large wet patch where his head had rested—"and I've spoiled your dress. In short, I've made ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... the gray-shingled side of the house, his hands in his pockets, his feet tucked under him on the rung of his chair. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and he had unbuttoned his baggy old waistcoat, for it was a hot night. Mrs. Butterfield was on the kitchen door-step. They could look across a patch of grass at the great barn, connected with the little house by a shed. Its doors were still open, and Josh could see the hay, put in that afternoon. The rick in the yard stood like a skeleton against the fading yellow of the sky; some fowls were roosting ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... place in that part of Scotland, but Mr Jukes Brown considers that the horizon of the fossils is that of the lower Greensand of the Isle of Wight or the Aptien stage of France. Chalk flints are widely distributed in the drift between Fyvie and the east coast of Buchan. At Plaidy a patch of clay with Liassic fossils occurs. At several localities between Logie Coldstone and Dinnet a deposit of diatomite (Kieselguhr) occurs beneath ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... was known as Blue Eyes, on account of the curious bluish patch of hair that grew around one of its eyes. It had always been known as a particularly intelligent ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... glance was to the eastward, the direction from which the light emanated, and he then saw that the heavy veil of black cloud—which now completely overspread the heavens—was in that quarter rent asunder, leaving a great gap through which was revealed a momentarily increasing patch of pale straw-coloured sky. The water was every where black as ink save beneath this livid streak, but there it presented the appearance of a long line of snow-white foam advancing toward the ship with ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... our latitude was 34 degrees 16 minutes 14 seconds, and a large bare, sandy patch upon the land, the Tache Blanche remarquable of Captain Baudin, bore North 77 degrees East (magnetic). At six o'clock in the evening we passed Cape Naturaliste, having experienced a strong current setting North 11 degrees West, at nearly two miles per hour; hence we ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... he was so large and solemn-looking. When the negroes on the plantation told them about Mr. Rabbit—or Brother Rabbit, as he was sometimes called—they had imagined that he was no larger than the rabbits they saw in the sedge-field or in the barley-patch, but this Mr. Rabbit was larger than a dozen of them ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... especially to maize, so the farmers have declared war upon them. The birds seem to be able to hold their own pretty well in this campaign, for they are of wonderful cunning. When a crowd of cockatoos has designs on a farmer's maize-patch, the leader seems to prospect the place thoroughly; he acts as though he were a general, providing a safe bivouac for an army; he sets sentinels on high trees commanding a view of all points of danger. Then the flock of cockatoos ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... that, bein' as Chicago was a thousand miles from Bayport, I hadn't had time to do much visitin' there. I told her the truth, but she didn't believe it. I could see she didn't. She thinks Chicago and San Francisco and New York and Boston are nests of wigwams in the same patch of woods and all hands that live there have been scalped at ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... method is often costly in time because answers may be wrong or irrelevant. It may encourage wandering; a student's reply reveals ignorance of a basic principle, and the aim of the lesson is often forgotten in the eagerness to patch up this misconception. Then, too, in subject matter that is arbitrary, as in descriptive and narrative history, no development is possible. In such cases the questions are designed to test the student's knowledge of the text, and ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... mainly black as night, but is streaked with red stains that bear an awful likeness to blood; and, though it may be climbed—and I myself have done it more than once in search of eggs—it has no scrap of vegetation save where, upon its summit, the gulls build their nests on a scanty patch of ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and such thoughts, young Shiryaev walked on and on. Far, far ahead he saw the inn, a dark patch against the grey background of cloud. Beyond the inn, on the very horizon, he could see a little hillock; this was the railway-station. That hillock reminded him of the connection existing between the place where he was now standing and Moscow, ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... joined an equally lethargic circle around the slumbering forge. A dull intermittent sound of hammering came occasionally from the wheelwright's shed—at sufficiently protracted intervals to indicate the enfeebled progress of Sidon's vehicular repair. A yellow dog left his patch of sunlight on the opposite side of the way and walked deliberately over to what appeared to be more luxurious quarters on the veranda; was manifestly disappointed but not equal to the exertion of returning, and sank down with blinking eyes and a regretful sigh without going further. ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... afforded the description of his household taken from his faithful Cavendish, and likewise the story of Patch the Fool. In fact, a large portion of the whole book was built on ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... as it may, since I shan't buy a new one. If a maid comes to work in my house she can only come in one capacity, which will equally involve my working in hers. She in the kitchen, I in the coalhole or potato patch, 'twill be all one. If she works it will be in our common interest; and for ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... been there a full minute and had not knocked. Every movement, to-day, came only after an inward struggle. Many associations crowded his mind on this doorstep. Six years before, almost on this spot, a mere brier-patch then, he and Maximian Roussel had risen from the grassy earth and given the first two welcoming hand-grasps to the schoolmaster. And now, as one result, Claude, who did not know his letters then, was rising—nay, ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... slowly crossed the belt of shade, stopped and made a frothy patch, and then lengthened out. A flexible pipe slipped across the edge of the open gangway, and Lister felt the line he held. The line was slack and he knew the diver needed nothing. Two half-naked men, their skins shining with sweat, turned the air-pumps handles, and the rattle ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... in the moist land along some stream. Here he would plant the seeds, surround the patch with a brush fence and wander off to plant another one elsewhere. Returning at intervals to prune and care for them, he would soon have thrifty trees growing all over ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... with a metallic ring. Rynch whirled, needler cocked. A glittering ball about the size of his fist rolled away from contact with a boulder, came to rest in the deep depression of one of Hume's boot tracks. Then another flash through the air, a clatter as a second ball spun across a patch of gravel. ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... in the tater patch. Sez 'e, "Why 'ello, Digger. Got a match?" "Digger?" I sez. "Well, you ain't digger 'ere. You better clear. You ought to know that you can't dig them spuds. They don't belong to ...
— Digger Smith • C. J. Dennis
... eleven that night Miss Auriole was looking wonderingly into the eye-piece of the great Reflector, watching a tiny little patch of mist, somewhat brighter towards one end than the other; like a little wisp of white smoke rising from a very faint spark that was apparently floating across an unfathomable sea ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... "Not I. Patch yourself up and I'll meet you at your convenience. There's more urgent matter. When the boy comes to himself—if ever he comes to himself—I must ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... had many and facetious letters. They wanted to know if his idea was that they should stick by the yacht until he got leisure to resume the voyage, or if he expected them to walk home. He had already given orders to the skipper to patch it up and bring it to New York if possible, and he advised his correspondents to stay by the yacht as long as there was anything in the larder, but if they were impatient, he offered them transportation on any vessel that ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... as he made a tremendous heave, and none too soon, for a great patch of the earth at the side gave way where he stood. But he had thrown all a strong man's force into one mighty effort, and as Drew stood trembling and helpless, he saw the two men clasped in each other's arms, rolling over and over into safety, just as a horrible fume rose from the rift which ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... glorious sunlight filled the valley with purple fire. Before him, to left, to right, waving, rolling, sinking, rising, like low swells of a purple sea, stretched the sage. Out of the grove of cottonwoods, a green patch on the purple, gleamed the dull red of Jane Withersteen's old stone house. And from there extended the wide green of the village gardens and orchards marked by the graceful poplars; and farther down shone the deep, dark richness of the alfalfa fields. Numberless red and black and ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... stopped at the companionway and a shadow appeared across the small patch of sunlight on the floor of the forecastle. "Tumble up here, you blasted loafers!" roared ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... them, advanced to the centre of the space and, half laughing at his own folly, set to work. First, having lit another lantern which was kept there, he removed with the sharp end of the pickaxe a large patch of the encaustic tiles exactly in the centre of the depression. Then having loosened the soil beneath with the pick he took off his ulster and fell to digging with a will. The soil proved to be very sandy and easy to work. ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... you nothing, Sambo," one of the Confederate soldiers said as he bought a melon. "Got a neighbor's patch handy, eh?" ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... and secret, and mainly on all fours. At one point Dougal nodded downward, and the other two saw on a patch of turf, where the Garple began to widen into its estuary, a group of figures round a small fire. There were four of them, all men, and Dickson thought he had never seen such ruffianly-looking customers. After that they moved high up the slope, in a shallow glade ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... examine the wires. This is a very dangerous pastime and everybody wanted to volunteer for the service so I ordered that the men should be chosen by roster, that is, according to their turn. Sergeant Jones got out one night in a turnip patch in front of our lines. There was a German sniper in the same patch so they began to stalk each other. Jones got his man first, but as the German keeled over he fired and the bullet tore some fingers off Jones' hand and gave him a severe ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... wild, white jasmine spring from among these boulders with denser growth of thriving shrubs bearing waxen flowers that blaze in brilliant scarlet and orange, and the coarse grass that begins to show on every patch of earth between the rocks is dotted with clusters like dwarf petunias, or purple bells of trailing convolvulus. A rich storehouse this for the botanist, whose contemplative studies, however, might be rudely disturbed ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... stall abroad; not farre from him you shall see a taylor sit crosse-legged (like a witch) on his cushion, theatning the ruine of our fellow prisoner, the AEgyptian vermine; in another place you may behold a saddler empannelling all his wits together how to patch this Scotchpadde handsomely, or mend the old gentlewoman's crooper that was almost burst in pieces. You may have a phisition here, that for a bottle of sack will undertake to give you as good a medicine for melancholly as any ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... nearly completed, and considerable progress has been made in the collection of materials for the construction of fortifications in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Chesapeake Bay. The works on the eastern bank of the Potomac below Alexandria and on the Pea Patch, in the Delaware, are much advanced, and it is expected that the fortifications at the Narrows, in the harbor of New York, will be completed the present year. To derive all the advantages contemplated from these fortifications it was necessary that they should be judiciously ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Monroe • James Monroe
... we had not received new clothes for three years—if I except caps for our grenadiers, originally intended for a Scotch regiment, but found to be all too small for the long-headed generation. Many a patch of brown and grey, variegated the faded scarlet, "of our uniform," and scarcely a pair of knees in the entire regiment did not confess their obligations to a blanket. But with all this, we shewed a stout, weather-beaten front, that, disposed as the passer-by might feel to laugh at our expense, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... the old man's cloak, Was patch'd black, blew, and red; He thought it no shame, all the day long, To wear ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... now concentrated in the house and its immediate patch of garden. Their rear, to the seaward, was unmolested; but on three sides they were beleaguered. On the left, the Samoans occupied and fired from some of the plantation offices. In front, a long rising crest of land in the horse-pasture commanded ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... but an imperfect obedience even to their hereditary princes. For these reasons Henry was determined never to have recourse to this claim; the only one on which his authority could consistently stand: he rather chose to patch up his title, in the best manner he could, from other pretensions: and in the end, he left himself, in the eyes of men of sense, no ground of right but his present possession; a very precarious foundation, which, by its very nature, was liable to be overthrown by every faction of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... of capacious breadth. A small richly-carved altar-piece is now placed within it, and a few chairs. It is a quiet secluded room, having no communication with any other. The top of the walls and turrets of the old town, and a small patch of sky, may be seen by an upward glance at the window; but there is no feature to distract the denizen of the apartment: it is a place for concentration of mind, and such must have been Duerer's habits, as the enormous amount of his works show. Leaving ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... her plainly, "Where are you? Our garden patch is right on the edge of the road; my husband gets up to dig in our garden. As he was digging, Kekalukaluokewa came along from Haneoo; my husband thought at once he had been with Hinaikamalama; my husband returned and told ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... painful fits of depression. Rodolphe would then remain for whole hours as though petrified in a state of stupefied immobility. His elbows upon the table, his eyes fixed upon the luminous patch made by the rays of the lamp falling upon the sheet of paper,—the battlefield on which his mind was vanquished daily, and on which his pen had become foundered in its attempts to pursue the unattainable ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... patient was suffering from congestion of the lungs. The malady ran a rapid course, and in another week he lay white and cold in his coffin, the scar on his cheek, showing like a great pale ridge on a patch of hoar-frost. ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... been propped on his hands when she first discovered his presence was now sitting upright, and seemed to be looking straight at herself, though she knew well that no one in the Ladies' Gallery was really visible from any other part of the House. His face was a mere black-and-white patch in the distance. But she imagined the clear, critical eyes, their ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Pinch and Patch, Gill and Grim, Gae you together; For you change your shapes Like to the weather: Sib and Tib, Licks and Lull, You all have trickes too: Little Tom Thumb that pipes, Shall goe betwixt you; Tom, tickle up thy pipes Till they be weary; I will laugh ho, ho, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... upon Fehrbellin; and Forster," Forester, "Brand, as woodkeeper for the King in these parts, rode along with us. When we came upon the patch of Sand-knolls which lie ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Appendix - Frederick The Great—A Day with Friedrich.—(23d July, 1779.) • Thomas Carlyle
... reason as any other kind of seal—brain power, acquired, no doubt, from a continual fish diet. Tommy doesn't feel aggrieved at the slight put upon him, however, and has a proper notion of his own importance. Watch him rise from a mere floating patch—slowly, solemnly, and portentously, to take a look round. He looks to the left—nothing to interest a well-informed seal; to the front—nothing; to the right everything is in order, the weather is only so-so, but the rain ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... went to separate his milk, while Clematis found Deborah sound asleep on the hay, and ready to visit the raspberry patch. ...
— Clematis • Bertha B. Cobb
... a stone's-throw of the railway and the road, there is a patch of moor where the ground rises in a hillock. In July and August when the heather's out this hillock is a crimson landmark above the ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... but I don't know what we are going to do about it," answered Letitia with genuine trouble, puckering her brow under one of her smooth waves of seal-brown hair. Letitia is one of the wonderful variety of women who patch out life, piece by piece, in a beautiful symmetrical pattern and who do not have imagination enough to admire anything about a riotous crazy quilt. She is in love with Clifton Gray, has been since she wound ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... jumped down into the room, and walked to the door. I thought he was on his way to the library, and followed him, determined, if he went up the stair, not to take one step after him. He turned, however, neither toward the library nor the stair, but to a little door that gave upon a grass-patch in a nook between two portions of the rambling old house. I made haste to open it for him. He stepped out into its creeper-covered porch, and stood looking at the rain, which fell like a huge thin cataract; I stood in the door behind him. The second flash came, and was followed ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... again now," she continued; "but last summer it was growing against the wall in the little patch of garden we had at Bromley, and a beautiful ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... with liquid mud and slosh. Over New Jersey there was still a thin covering of snow, with the face of Nature visible through the rents in her white shroud, though with little or no symptom of reviving life. But when we reached Philadelphia, the air was mild and balmy; there was but a patch or two of dingy winter here and there, and the bare, brown fields about the city were ready to be green. We had met the Spring half-way, in her slow progress from the South; and if we kept onward at the same pace, and could get through the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the boatman, was an ordinary fisherman's hut, built in the midst of white sand-hills, with a few willows planted on a little patch of made earth, and serving as protectors against the fierce summer blaze of ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"
... these cripples to patch themselves up as best they could, Captain Laine set sail with his frigate and gave me orders to follow. We reached Sacrificios, the nearest anchorage to Vera Cruz, after a rapid passage. Here we learnt that the captain of the Medee, M. Leray, had been sent ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... a policy of extermination was to be put into practice this horrible tower was an obvious resource. From the battlements at the top, which is surmounted by an old disused light-house, you see the little com- pact rectangular town, which looks hardly bigger than a garden-patch, mapped out beneath you, and follow the plain configuration of its defences. You take possession of it, and you feel that you ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... view. I was the more amazed to see no moving creature in the landscape. The moon, as the saying is, shone bright as day; and nowhere, under the whole arch of night, was there a growing tree, a bush, a farm, a patch of tillage, or any evidence of man, but one. From the corner where I stood, a rugged bastion of the line of bluffs concealed the doctor's house; and across the top of that projection the soft night wind carried and unwound ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... upon a piece of Kentish road, bordered on either side by a wood, and having on one hand, between the road-dust and the trees, a skirting patch of grass. Wild flowers grow in abundance on this spot, and it lies high and airy, with a distant river stealing steadily away to the ocean, like a man's life. To gain the mile-stone here, which the moss, primroses, violets, blue-bells, and wild roses, would soon render illegible but for peering ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... saying, Philip, and do not be rash. I do not wish to entrap you into marriage. You love money. Remember that Maria, with all her possessions, asks nothing better than to become your wife, and that I have absolutely nothing but my name and my good looks. Look at me," and she stepped out into a patch of moonlight that found its way between the trees, and, drawing the filmy shawl she wore from her head and bare neck and bosom, stood before him in all the brightness of her beauty, shaded as it was, and made more lovely by ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... There are "classes," certainly, with great bars between them here, though this is a republic, and all men and women are supposed to be free and equal and alike in most things. There are lower and wider grades of existence, such that the story of them may never be told save in patch-work or by inference, yet which have as full a history, and where there are loves and hates and hopes and despairs as deep as are ever felt in the mass where the creed-teachers and Mrs. Grundy and the legislatures ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... imbedded in the earth directly at the edge of the pit, and as far as possible trimmed of their branches on the inside. There will thus be a small patch of solid ground for the feet of the fowl, which should be tied by the leg in the enclosure. Our trap is now set, and if there is a puma in the neighborhood he will be sure to pay it a ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... in order to marry, greased the bald patch on his head with an ointment which he read of in an advertisement, and suddenly there began to grow on ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... and a very sweet voice, of which Peter Baron had caught the accent, not from her singing (for she only played), but from her gay admonitions to her child, whom she occasionally allowed to amuse himself—under restrictions very publicly enforced—in the tiny black patch which, as a forecourt to each house, was held, in the humble row, to be a feature. Jersey Villas stood in pairs, semi-detached, and Mrs. Ryves—such was the name under which the new lodger presented herself—had been admitted to the house as confessedly musical. ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... as Barathrum, If it may stand with your most wish'd content, I can refell opinion and approve The state of poesy, such as it is, Blessed, eternal, and most true divine: Indeed, if you will look on Poesy As she appears in many, poor and lame, Patch'd up in remnants and old worn rags, Half starved for want of her peculiar food: Sacred invention, then I must confirm Both your conceit and censure of her merit, But view her in her glorious ornaments, ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... and arrows were securely tied high in the top of a giant tree from which a patch of bark had been removed by a sharp knife near to the ground, and a branch half cut through and left hanging about fifty feet higher up. Thus Tarzan blazed the forest ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... than old Juan Can, if Senor Felipe'd only see it; and why shouldn't he get to see it, if Alessandro's here all summer?" And before the aprons were done, Margarita had a fine air-castle up: herself and Alessandro married, a nice little house, children playing in the sunshine below the artichoke-patch, she herself still working for the Senora. "And the Senorita will perhaps marry Senor Felipe," she added, her thoughts moving more hesitatingly. "He worships the ground she walks on. Anybody with quarter of a blind eye can see that; but maybe the Senora would not let him. ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... carrying out of all plain duty is the only safety. The indulgence given to Paul, in his light confinement, only showed how clearly Felix knew himself to be doing wrong, but small alleviations do not patch up a great injustice. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... or two of ragtime. "I can see myself now, as a lad, sitting on that fence over there—" he indicated a line of rails, half buried in snow, which outlined the borders of an old apple orchard— "counting the quarters in my trousers pockets, earned by hard labour in the strawberry patch. I thought it quite a sum, but it wouldn't ...
— On Christmas Day In The Evening • Grace Louise Smith Richmond
... or two of silent expectation, Mrs Rowland entered her mother's room. She brought with her a draught of wintry air, which, as she jerked aside her ample silk cloak, on taking her seat on the sofa, seemed to chill the invalid, though there was now a patch of colour ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... Fear there comes to most of us the machine fear. Machines are the huge limbs or tentacles of crowds. As the crowds grow the machines grow; grasping at the little strip of sky over us, at the little patch of ground beneath our feet, they swing out before us and beckon daily to us new hells and new heavens ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... later he called on her, expecting to patch up their little misunderstanding, as on previous occasions. She was rather offish, but really would have been glad to make up, had he shown the humility and tractableness he usually manifested after their tiffs; but he was not in a humble frame of mind, ...
— A Love Story Reversed - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... part of the eighteenth century destroyed a large part of the building, but enough remained to patch together the most serviceable of Revolutionary prisons, for at one time it held at least twelve hundred poor souls, of whom two hundred and eighty-eight were killed ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... was lost. She was humiliated and angry—it was long before she would admit it, that she, who prided herself upon her woodcraft, was lost in this little patch of country between the Pangani and the Tanga railway. She knew that Wilhelmstal lay southeast of her about fifty miles; but, through a combination of untoward circumstances, she found herself unable to ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... home they found that tea had been set out on the patch of grass under the apple trees, and Mother and Quenrede were sitting sewing and waiting for them. It was one of those beautiful September days when the air seems almost as warm as in August, and with the ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... the corps had reached a little wooded valley between the mountains. The colonel, with others, rode ahead, and, striking into a bypath, suddenly came upon a secluded little cabin surrounded by a patch of ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... Shakespeare—it may have been the very one I quoted awhile ago, I don't remember—and riddled it with his wild steamboatful interlardings. When an unrisky opportunity offered, one lovely summer day, when we had sounded and buoyed a tangled patch of crossings known as Hell's Half Acre, and were aboard again and he had sneaked the PENNSYLVANIA triumphantly through it without once scraping sand, and the A. T. LACEY had followed in our wake and got stuck, and he was feeling ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Governor, he will condescend to explain how he came to be convicted of perjury by thirty-four witnesses in Wakawak, Cochin China, in 1863, the intent of which perjury being to rob a poor native widow and her helpless family of a meager plantain-patch, their only stay and support in their bereavement and desolation. Mr. Twain owes it to himself, as well as to the great people whose suffrages he asks, to clear this matter up. Will ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... bad to disturb you, miss, but I've got to go and patch up the fence, and smooth over the matter of the turnips with Mrs. Gooch, who is that snorty I don't know 'ow ever I can pacify her. There is nothing for you to do, miss, only if you'll kindly keep an eye on the customer at the yew-tree ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... her voice shaking, 'he isn't a good life, but perhaps I can—patch him up. Come here, sir.' The misshapen beast lurched toward her, squinting down his own nose till he fell over his own toes. Then, luckily, Bettina ran across the lawn and reminded Malachi of their puppyhood. All that family are as queer as Dick's hatband, and fight like man and wife. I had to ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... the hour before daybreak, and Drumsheugh wandered through fields he had trodden since childhood. The cattle lay sleeping in the pastures; their shadowy forms, with a patch of whiteness here and there, having a weird suggestion of death. He heard the burn running over the stones; fifty years ago he had made a dam that lasted till winter. The hooting of an owl made him start; one had frightened him as a boy so that he ran ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... about it, something was moving. There was a rise in the ground a short distance in front of the turkey-blind, and a little patch of dark sky was visible between the trees. Across this bit of sky something ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... barking of dogs from the stables or kennels in the rear of the house. Here was a new danger: and I liked it so little—the prospect of being bayed naked through those pitch-dark shrubberies by a pack of hounds—that I broke from my covert of laurel, hurriedly skirted the broad patch of light on the carriage sweep, and plumped down close to the windows, behind a bush of mock-orange at the end of the verandah, whence a couple of leaps would land me within it among Miss Belcher's guests. And I felt that ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 'Twas sleep like a deep drink, an' up an' away in the mornin', chasin' a young man's hopes to the end o' the Trail! A suppose th' Almighty meant t' anchor men, or He wouldna' permit the buildin' of toons! Once A was in New York! A did na' see but one patch o' sunlight twenty stories overhead! Th' car things screeched an' rulled an' the folks—the wimmen wi' awfu' stern wheeler hats, an' the men—hurryin'—hurryin'!—Wayland, d' they get it? There's only twenty-four hours in a day—they can't catch any more by hurryin'—what are they ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... robin—flying about the lawns with soft whistling calls, or feeding on the ground, so tame and fearless that they barely move aside as you approach. The beak is short and thick; the back of the head and a large patch just above the tail are golden brown; and across the wings are narrow double bars of white. All the rest is soft gray, dark above and light beneath. If you watch them on the ground, you will see that they have a curious ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... three fine large slabs and others yielded pieces of various sizes. The large ones were set up against the frame so as to make the most of them. Of course they were much too big for the top, and much too narrow for the bottom; but the little pieces would do to patch if some way could be found to ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and went away, and pretty soon the trees hid him. I poked into the place a-ways and come to a little open patch as big as a bedroom all hung around with vines, and found a man laying there asleep—and, by jings, it was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sharp-pointed, healthy shoots, every joint prepared to be an independent life and plant. The only way to deal with it is to take one part hoe and two parts fingers, and carefully dig it out, not leaving a joint anywhere. It will take a little time, say all summer, to dig out thoroughly a small patch; but if you once dig it out, and keep it out, you will have no ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... which led to the Castle wound through a pitch-black fir-wood, where we could see nothing save the ragged patch of stars above our heads. Presently, however, it opened up, and there was the Castle right in front of us, about as far as a carbine would carry. It was a huge, uncouth place, and bore every mark of being exceedingly old, with turrets at every corner, and a square keep on the side which was ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... greater London, a map on which the town proper shows as a dark, irregularly rounded patch against the whiteness of suburban districts, and just on the northern limit of the vast network of streets you will distinguish the name of Crouch End. Another decade, and the dark patch will have spread greatly further; for the present, Crouch End is still ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... Strout, "he'll find I'm the wustest kind of a bumblebee if he stirs me up much more. When my dander's up a hornet's nest ain't a patch to me." ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... Sam sit down, in a patch of goodly sunshine, and in a jiffy had a crackling fire of dry willow blazing before him. He took off his coat and ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... off his cap, and while the crescendo nodding of his bristly head seems to brush the night, he adds: "I've mended him his purse. It had become percolated. I've put him a patch on that cost me thirty centimes, and I've resewn the edge with braid, and all the lot. They're expensive, them jobs. Well, when I open my mouth to talk about that matter of his sewing-machine that I'm interested in and that he can't ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... of every man the zenith stands. Every spot of this low earth is smiled upon by that serene apocalypse of the loving will of God. No lane is so narrow and foul in the great city, no spot is so bare and lonely in the waste desert, but that thither the sunlight comes, and there some patch of blue above beckons the downcast eye to look up. The day opens its broad bosom bathed in light, and shows the sun in the heavens, the Lord of light, to preach to us of the true light. The night opens deeper abysses and fills them with stars, to preach to us how fathomless ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... thinking of this as he sat at the edge of the dear Old Briar-patch, looking over to the Green Forest. The Green Forest was no longer just green; it was of many colors, for Old Mother Nature had set Jack Frost to painting the leaves of the maple-trees and the beech-trees, and the birch-trees and the poplar-trees and the chestnut-trees, ...
— The Adventures of Lightfoot the Deer • Thornton W. Burgess
... on. The whole business suggests the arming of Pigwiggin; or the intricacies of Belinda's toilet in The Rape of the Lock. Such a Gabriel should add the last touch of adornment from a patch-box filled with sun-spots; and then is fit ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh |
