"Pigeon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... met with the raven, as she was walking in the fields she saw some naughty boys who had taken a pigeon and tied a string to its leg, in order to let it fly and draw it back again when they pleased; and by this means they tortured the poor animal with the hopes of liberty and repeated disappointment. This pigeon she also bought. He was ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... of them, he straightened himself up from the couch and bowed. Then, in flawless English,—far different from the pigeon-talk he had always used for their benefit,—he said respectfully, ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... was roaring on, his machine seemingly feeling like a homing pigeon. He felt a fierce love for that noble hunter. He felt he could almost talk to it and tell it how proud he was of having been able to put it through its paces. Never had there been such a ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... within his reach,—fish, stewed fruits, goose fat, bread, boiled cabbage, and beer,—the idiot grinning with delight all the while, and singing, "Ne uyesjai golubchik moi," (Don't go away, my little pigeon), between the handfuls which he crammed into his mouth. The guests roared with laughter, especially when a juggler or Calmuck stole out from under the gallery, and pretended to have designs upon the basin. Mishka, the bear, had also been well ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... long narrow room occupying, with his bedroom, the ground floor of the chapel wing of the house, struck chill as he entered it. Above the range of pigeon-holes and little drawers, forming the back of the writing-table, two candles burned on either side of a bronze pieta, which Julius had brought back with him from Rome. On the broad slab of the table below were the many quires of foolscap forming the library catalogue, neatly ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... potted or stewed. Potting is the best, and the least trouble. After they are thoroughly picked and cleaned, put a small slice of salt pork, and a little ball of stuffing, into the body of every pigeon. The stuffing should be made of one egg to one cracker, an equal quantity of suet, or butter, seasoned with sweet-marjoram, or sage, if marjoram cannot be procured. Flour the pigeons well, lay them close together in the bottom of the pot, just cover them with water, throw in a bit of ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... shops and tilted eaves, and fantastic riddles written over everything. I have no idea in what direction Cha is running. I only know that the streets seem to become always narrower as we go, and that some of the houses look like great wickerwork pigeon-cages only, and that we pass over several bridges before we halt again at the foot of another hill. There is a lofty flight of steps here also, and before them a structure which I know is both a gate and a symbol, imposing, yet in no manner resembling the great ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... and Oliver and their kind thought that they were only writing for ministerial eyes, that they were only whispering into royal ears. They no doubt assumed that their letters would be safely pigeon-holed, or still more safely destroyed. It did not occur to them that they ever could or would be made public, and by their publication thrust new weapons into the hands of the men whose liberties they were so zealous to suppress. But ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... accurate and correct English. I heard the Governor ask this secretary one day where a certain report was. "I placed it in the second business-hole on your Excellency's desk," answered Mr. Wung Ho, who evidently considered it very vulgar to use the term "pigeon-hole." ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... celestial architect, and venerate their trade implements on the Dasahra festival. They consider the sight of a mongoose and of a light-grey pigeon or dove as lucky omens. They burn the dead and throw the ashes into a river or tank, employing a Maha-Brahman to receive ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... been the case ever since we had been upon it. The coast still continued to be of a moderate height, forming alternately rocky points and sandy beaches; but within, between Mount Dromedary and the Pigeon House, we saw high mountains, which, except two, are covered with wood: These two lie inland behind the Pigeon House, and are remarkably flat at the top, with steep rocky cliffs all round them as far as we could see. The trees, which almost every where clothe this country, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... The music mounts. Singers attired as singers were never attired before crawl on, bounce on, tumble on. And M. Coini, as undisturbed as a traffic cop or a loop pigeon, commands his stage. He tells the singers where to stand while they sing, and when they don't sing to suit him he sings himself. He leads the chorus on and tells it where to dance, and when they don't dance to suit him he dances himself. He moves the scenery himself. He fights ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... life lies in the fact that he is unafraid of man. He is wary of man; by which I mean he will quickly fly up from in front of man's feet. It is exceedingly difficult to catch a sparrow in one's hand. It is far easier to lure a pigeon within reach. But the sparrow, when escaping your hands, comes to rest but a slight distance away, only to elude you quite as successfully if you try again. If the sparrow is let severely alone he becomes ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... current, but found none. From this time to the 16th, we had the wind between the north and east, a gentle gale. We had for some time ceased to see any of the birds before-mentioned; and were now accompanied by albatrosses, pintadoes, sheerwaters, &c., and a small grey peterel, less than a pigeon. It has a whitish belly, and grey back, with a black stroke across from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other. These birds sometimes visited us in great flights. They are, as well as the pintadoes, southern birds; and are, I believe, never seen within the tropics, ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... As the pigeon is too small a bird to disjoint, it is the fairest division to cut it through the middle of the breast and back in two equal parts. Another mode is to insert the knife at 1, and cut on each side to 2 and 3, and forcing them asunder, to divide each portion into two; but this is not ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... as straight as a young pine. All his life had been spent on the frontier. He had seen it move westward, and had moved with it from the Great Lakes across the Great Plains. He had seen it vanish, as the wild pigeon and the buffalo had gone—mysteriously, in a season, almost. Wheat fields, etched in green and gold, lay where he had made his lonely camps; orchards nestled by little lakes and in mountain valleys where he had trapped the beaver; strings of brass-bound, ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... "Jest a pigeon. Tom, he knows how to write, and he's gwine to tuck a little letter under the wing o' the bird ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... before. On the way into the forest Hansel crumbled his in his pocket, and often stood still and threw a morsel on the ground. 'Hansel, why do you stop and look round?' said the father, 'go on.' 'I am looking back at my little pigeon which is sitting on the roof, and wants to say goodbye to me,' answered Hansel. 'Fool!' said the woman, 'that is not your little pigeon, that is the morning sun that is shining on the chimney.' Hansel, however little by little, threw all the ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... corners of the hut and suspended my kit on them. He watched the comings and goings of other officers and looted from vacant huts a whole collection of useful articles—a lantern which held a candle, a nest of pigeon-holes, three bookshelves, a chair without a back, a tin mug for shaving water, and a galvanised iron pot which made an excellent basin. He spent a whole morning making and fixing up outside my door a wooden boot-scraper. I suppose he hoped in this way to prevent my covering the floor of the hut ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it. And he said, Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it? And He said unto him, Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon. And he took unto him all these, and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another: but the birds divided he not. And when the fowls came down upon the carcases, Abram drove them away. And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... tied to the collar of an English terrier, and with her right arm linked with that of a man in knee-breeches and silk stockings, whose hat had its brim whimsically turned up, while snow-white tufts of hair like pigeon plumes rose at its sides. A slender queue, thin as a quill, tossed about on the back of his sallow neck, which was thick, as far as it could be seen above the turned down collar of a threadbare coat. This couple assumed the stately tread of ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... carrier-pigeon!" said Throppy. "I know a fellow at home who makes a specialty of raising 'em. The bird that owned this foot was taking a message to somebody. Perhaps he was shot; or he may have become tired, lost his way, and fallen into the water, ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... believe, a tolerably fair reputation. Soon after sunrise the next morning, a heavenly morning of June, we dropped our anchor in the famous Bay of Dublin. There was a dead calm; the sea was like a lake; and, as we were some miles from the Pigeon House, a boat was manned to put us on shore. The lovely lady, unaware that we were parties to her guilty secret, went with us, accompanied by her numerous attendants, and looking as beautiful, and hardly less innocent, than an angel. Long afterwards, Lord Westport ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... of nearly twelve hundred acres, extending across the ridge of the hills to the slopes North and South. Seven counties rolled their backs under this commanding height, and it would have tasked a pigeon to fly within an hour the stretch of country visible at the Copsley windows. Sunrise to right, sunset leftward, the borders of the grounds held both flaming horizons. So much of the heavens and of earth is rarely granted to a dwelling. The drawback was the structure, which had no charm, scarce ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... against nature is the wanton destruction of wildlife—like the American bison and the wood pigeon. ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... doors open into pigeon-holes where Judges of the First Appeal sit singly, and halls of audience where the supreme Lords sit by three or four. Here, you may see Scott's place within the bar, where he wrote many a page of Waverley novels to the drone of judicial proceeding. You will hear ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... firing of the house, which would incidentally mean the roasting alive of its innocent contents. All this (for the sake of ARISTOTLE and the Unities) was to take place in a single day, though I for one could not believe that either the pigeon post or the ordinary mail would be equal ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... now give up your suit, You may repent your love;— I who have shot a pigeon match, Can shoot a ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... [1] The carrier-pigeon, it is well known, flies at an elevated pitch, in order to surmount every obstacle between her and the place to which ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the Minister of War happening to visit one day his Chief of Staff, saw with surprise that the large room where General Panther worked, which was formerly quite bare, had now along each wall from floor to ceiling in sets of deep pigeon-holes, triple and quadruple rows of paper bundles of every as form and colour. These sudden and monstrous records had in a few days reached the dimensions of a pile of archives such as it ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... kettles, were their sole movable wealth. They relied on Lincoln's kit of tools for their furniture, and on his rifle for their food. At Posey's they hired a wagon and literally hewed a path through the wilderness to their new habitation near Little Pigeon Creek, a mile and a half east of Gentryville, in a rich ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... per cent. Stamped letters are considered as paid in cash. On newspaper postages, fifty per cent, on all sums, large or small. If a postmaster's commission exceeds $2,000 a year, besides the expenses of the office, the excess is paid to the general post office. Postmasters may also receive for pigeon-holes or boxes, not exceeding $2,000, the excess, if any, to be paid to the general post-office. Postmasters whose compensation amounts to $1,000 or more in a year, are appointed by the ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... Nor any bold, presumptuous cur shall dare To lift his leg against his sacred dust. Where'er I have my rhymes, thence vermin fly, All, saving that foul-fac'd vermin poverty. This sucks the eggs of my invention, Evacuates my wit's full pigeon-house. Now may it please thy generous dignity To take this vermin napping, as he lies In the true trap of liberality, I'll cause the Pleiades to give thee thanks; I'll write thy name within the sixteenth sphere: I'll make th'Antarctic pole to kiss ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... Arabic document, "if my uncle should make me his heir, or if I should ever grow rich by any other means, I swear that I will take you to the Plaza of San Antonio in Cadiz to live, and I will buy you more jewels than Our Lady of Sorrows of Granada has. So good-bye for a while, my pigeon." ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... my pigeon, eat and be off; I've looked at you quite enough! Drive Marfa to her bridegroom, old man. And look here, old greybeard! drive straight along the road at first, and then turn off from the road to the right, you know, into the forest—right up to the big pine ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... ask my young readers to mount my hippogriff and hie with me to the almost inaccessible heights of the Rocky Mountains. There, for years, a band of wild and untamable savages, known as the Pigeon Feet, had resisted the blankets and Bibles of civilization. For years the trails leading to their camp were marked by the bones of teamsters and broken wagons, and the trees were decked with the dying scalp- locks of women and children. The boldest of military leaders hesitated to attack ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... Skewton were together next day, and the carriage was waiting at the door to take them out. For Cleopatra had her galley again now, and Withers, no longer the-wan, stood upright in a pigeon-breasted jacket and military trousers, behind her wheel-less chair at dinner-time and butted no more. The hair of Withers was radiant with pomatum, in these days of down, and he wore kid gloves and smelt ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... myself with the new joys I constantly found in the pigeon-toed ladies and slant-eyed warriors. Uncle needed absorption, concentration and occupation. Mine was the privilege to give ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... him to Boulogne and dispatch him thence to the shores of Britain. As he rolled along in the train he asked himself what had become of his revenge, and he was able to say that it was provisionally pigeon-holed in a very safe place; it ...
— The American • Henry James
... and you shall hear how. My wife is at Fontainbleau, passing a few days with her mother. The day before yesterday I happened to remark that the key of my desk fitted her drawers. Mechanically, I opened one of them, and in a sort of mysterious pigeon-hole I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... are also highly colored; to what end? In Bermuda I saw on low bushes great masses of what they called "pigeon-berries" of a brilliant yellow color and very tempting, yet I was assured they were poisonous. It would be interesting to know if anything eats the red berries of our wild turnip or arum. I doubt if any bird or beast could stand them. Wherefore, ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... T. X. went through the accumulation without finding anything to help him. Then his eye was attracted by a small tin case thrust into one of the oblong pigeon holes at the back of the desk. This he pulled out and opened and found a small wad of paper wrapped in ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... tempered all voices from below and made a sounding board for the winds. The beach, however, was not as broad then as now. To the east for a mile is a shallow sickle of shore with breakers on the point. In itself this indentation is but a squab of the main Pigeon Bay, which stretches around for twenty miles and is formed of Pelee Point, the most southern extension of Canada. The nearer and lesser point is like a bit of the Mediterranean. It takes the greys of the rain-days with a beauty and power of its own, and ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... to the marines, say the illiterate Jews and the jewelers. Go, buy a house, or a ship, if you can, with your charcoal! Yea, all the woods in Canada charred down to cinders would not be worth the one famed Brazilian diamond, though no bigger than the egg of a carrier pigeon. Ah! but these chemists are liars, and Sir Humphrey Davy a cheat. Many's the poor devil they've deluded into the charcoal business, who otherwise might have made his fortune with ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... de Vasselot laid upon the table in front of Colonel Gilbert, the nugget no larger than a pigeon's egg, that Mademoiselle Brun had found in the debris of the landslip. The colonel looked at it, and gave a short laugh. He was too indolent a man to feel an acute curiosity. But there were many questions he would have liked to ask at that ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... white, vibrating as though waves were passing over it. When we came nearer we saw that the field was covered so thick with gulls that the ground was hidden. The gull was a small white variety about the size of a pigeon, with a black ruff around its neck. The wave-like motion was made by the birds digging away in the newly turned earth for worms and larvae; judging by the way they worked, they must have cleaned up millions ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... Your subjects are too grave, Too much morality you have,— Too much about religion; Give me some witch and wizard tales Of slip-shod ghosts with fins and scales, Of feathers like a pigeon. ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... but found no shred of comfort. The sea, all rough and torn by the high wind, looked cold and cruel; the brow of the hill, which Gethin's whistle had so often enlivened, looked bare and uninteresting; the moor had lost its gorgeous tints; a rock pigeon, endeavouring to reach its nest, was driven by the ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... on a slope of orchard, Francis laid A damask napkin wrought with horse and hound; Brought out a dusky loaf that smelt of home, And, half cut down, a pasty costly made, Where quail and pigeon, lark and leveret, lay Like fossils of the rock, with golden yolks ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... pathetical adjuncts, incomparably fair, curiously neat, divine, sweet, dainty, delicious, &c., pretty diminutives, corculum, suaviolum, &c. pleasant names may be invented, bird, mouse, lamb, puss, pigeon, pigsney, kid, honey, love, dove, chicken, &c. he ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... them up with little or no aid from his rider. Hence once astride Pepper and Pepper with his nose pointed toward the ranging cows, the doctor could allow his heart to roam at will. And like a homing pigeon, his heart, after some faint struggles in the grip of its owner's will, made swift flight toward the far-away Highland glen across the sea, the ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... life, so they rebelled against the Whitefeathers, and gave the power to Wind-Rush, who was the worst nest-plunderer and robber that could be imagined—if his wife, Wind-Air, wasn't worse still. Under their government the crows had begun to lead such a life that now they were more feared than pigeon-hawks ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... the secret of his reaction—not that it was reaction so much as the turning of his footsteps toward home. He was homing to her. He was homing to her by an instinct beyond his skill to analyze, though he knew it to be as straight and sure as that of the pigeon to ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... much to interest him, for there is a fine church, and the town has many ecclesiastical associations. It was at one time the site of a Benedictine Priory, which was subsequently converted into an abbey of Austin Canons in 1525. Of this foundation nothing now remains but a three-storeyed pigeon-house (which stands out conspicuously on the summit of a little knoll behind the town) and the abbey court-house in High Street (see below). The abbey itself stood on the site of the present rectory, which is said to incorporate one of its ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... in his work, but I went. A flattering man he was; smart, a good talker, a good looker ... Only he proved to be a skunk and a traitor afterwards. He played at revolution; while he himself gave his comrades away to the gendarmes. A stool-pigeon, he was. When they had killed and shown him up, then all the foolishness left me. However, it was necessary to conceal myself ... I changed my passport. Then they advised me, that the easiest thing of all was to screen myself with a yellow ticket ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... going into that little pigeon-box, just under the shadow of Woodbine Lodge. If we have to come down so low, it will not be in this neighbourhood. There's too much pride in the Markland blood ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... sistre, comme and se us, and pass the de here if yeux canne, and chat tu my dame, and dine here; and yeux mai go to the faire if yeux plaise; yeux mai have fiche, muttin, porc, buter, foule, hair, fruit, pigeon, olives, sallette, forure diner, and excellent te, cafe, port vin, an liqueurs; and tell ure bette and poll to comme; and Ile go tu the faire and visite the Baron. But if yeux dont comme tu us, Ile go to ure ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... beating about the trees and bushes in a systematic manner, often a dozen or more of them wheeling together about one tree, like so many moths about a candle, and one occasionally dashing through the branches until a pigeon—usually the Zenaida maculata—or other bird was scared from its perch. The instant the bird left the tree they would all give chase, disappearing in the darkness. I could not endure to see the havoc they were making amongst the ovenbirds (Furnarius rufus—a ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... swings and whirls Of the happy boys and girls, In the good old time cotillion long ago! Oh! they danced the highland fling, And they cut the pigeon wing, To the music of the ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... awake that night. From a disused pigeon-hole in her mind she drew out and unfolded to its short length that attractive remnant, that half-forgotten episode of her teens. She remembered everything—I mean everything she wished to remember. Michael's face had recalled it all, those exquisite days which he had taken so much more seriously ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... sighed softly in the branches of the 'Tavau' trees, from out the green recesses of the 'Toi' came the plaintive coo of the wood-pigeon. In and out of the branches of the magnificent 'Fau' tree, which overhangs the grave, a king-fisher, sea-blue, iridescent, flitted to and fro, whilst a scarlet hibiscus, in full flower, showed up royally against the gray lichened ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... Where can a cow live and not get milked? Where will you find land without stones, or meat without bones? Everywhere on earth men must eat bread in the sweat of their faces. To fly from trouble men must have eagle's wings. Alteration is not always improvement, as the pigeon said when she got out of the net and into the pie. There is a proper time for changing, and then mind you bestir yourself, for a sitting hen gets no barley; but do not be forever on the shift, for a rolling stone gathers no moss. Stick-to-it is the conqueror. He who can ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... again it was the night when he and Hooker had hit upon the Chinamen's secret; he saw the moonlit trees, the little fire burning, and the black figures of the three Chinamen—silvered on one side by moonlight, and on the other glowing from the firelight—and heard them talking together in pigeon-English—for they came from different provinces. Hooker had caught the drift of their talk first, and had motioned to him to listen. Fragments of the conversation were inaudible, and fragments incomprehensible. A Spanish galleon from the Philippines hopelessly aground, and its treasure ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... cannot, for instance, be beset with one tenth of the dangers that threaten the robin, and yet apparently there are a thousand robins to every shrike. It builds a warm, compact nest in the mountains and dense woods, and lays six eggs, which would indicate a rapid increase. The pigeon lays but two eggs, and is preyed upon by both man and beast, millions of them meeting a murderous death every year; yet always some part of the country is swarming with untold numbers of them. [Footnote: This is no longer the case. The passenger pigeon now seems on the verge of extinction (1895).] ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... nonchalant ease, becoming a man who travelled with viscountesses, and was at home in the best company. The table had his first hungry glance. He espied roast and cold, a pair of smoking ducklings just set on, a dish of trout, a round of beef, a pigeon-pie, and hot rolls. Relieved, he heaved ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... kind were rare in these woods. A pigeon-hawk came prowling by our camp, and the faint piping call of the nuthatches, leading their young through the ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... quietly, up the twisty wooden stairs at the far end of the Meeting-house, and to make their way up into the 'loft' where four or five low forms had been specially placed for them. Lois loved to find herself sitting there. She felt like a little white pigeon, high up on a perch, able to see over the heads of all the people below, and able even to look down on the grave faces of the Ministers opposite. The row of broad-brimmed hats and coal-scuttle bonnets looked entirely different and much more attractive, seen from above, than when ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... not agricultural labourers; they were not townspeople, nor operatives, nor mechanics; they were the sort of people that one never sees except on such an occasion as this. I believe if I was in the habit of attending low pigeon matches, dog fights, or steeplechases, in the "Harrow County," I should recognize most of them enjoying the spectacle of such diversions. One peculiarity I remarked amongst them, with scarcely an exception. Although in the last stage of shabbiness, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... last pigeon went home to the trees on the dry land in the distance, whose shapes already had taken upon themselves a ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... public statue descend from its pedestal at a particular appointed hour. A crew of giggling servant-maids will get hold of some simple swain, and send him to a bookseller's shop for the 'History of Eve's Grandmother,' or to a chemist's for a pennyworth of 'pigeon's milk,' or to the cobbler's for a little 'strap-oil,' in which last case the messenger secures a hearty application of the strap to his shoulders, and is sent home in a state of bewilderment as to what the affair means. The urchins in the street ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... days, sacred deeds, sacred callings, religious services; all separate from the rest of life, belonging in a department, a pigeon-hole, by themselves. Whatever is not of these is of the world, worldly, secular, lacking in the peculiar aroma of sanctity that attaches to the church or the ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... of finding the way homeward over the trackless sea, without a landmark from horizon to horizon to steer by for weeks and weeks. What seems a sixth sense is given to some of us—the sense of "direction," which the passenger pigeon has and which enables it to fly straight back to its nest, though set free hundreds of miles from home. When of old a young man had that faculty, the chances were that he would become a famous pilot; and sometimes he might be ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... wink, drew back, and cried, Avaunt! my name's Religion! And then she turn'd to the preacher And leer'd like a love-sick pigeon. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... glittering from the blossoms and grasses. Here it was secluded, yet full of life, and amidst the wealth of sounds in which might be heard the tapping of the woodpecker, the cry of the lapwing, and the call of the distant wood-pigeon, it was so still and peaceful that Eva's heart grew lighter in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... all the waiting-rooms, and surveyed the refreshment-counter; but there was still no sign of the man he sought. He went back to the ticket-office; but here again all was desolate, the shutters of the pigeon-holes hermetically closed, and no vestige ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... left one minute alone,—when his eye fell on it. "H'm! Sheraton!" he remarked. (He had a smattering of most things, this uncle, especially the vocabularies.) Then he let down the flap, and examined the empty pigeon-holes and dusty panelling. "Fine bit of inlay," he went on: "good work, all of it. I know the sort. There's a secret drawer in there somewhere." Then, as I breathlessly drew near, he suddenly exclaimed: "By Jove, ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... of the utmost importance to have a precise place for everything connected with it. The carpenter or machinist must have a place for each tool, and always put it there when he is through using it. The merchant must have a definite book and page or drawer or pigeon-hole for every item which he records. The scholar must have a set of cards or envelopes or drawers or pockets alphabetically arranged in which he keeps each class of facts where he can turn to it instantly. This keeping ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... black, his complexion sallow; but his features were good. He might have been called a handsome man, but for a strange, ugly mark upon his cheek. A very strange-looking mark indeed, quite as large as a pigeon's egg, with what looked like radii shooting from it on all sides. Some of the villagers, talking familiarly among themselves, would call it a hedgehog, some would call it a "porkypine"; but it resembled a star as much as anything. That is, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... we see nothing, or almost nothing, of this tremendous slaughter of the innocents going on all around us. In severe winters a few birds are found dead, and a few feathers or mangled remains show us where a wood-pigeon or some other bird has been destroyed by a hawk, but no one would imagine that five times as many birds as the total number in the country in early spring die every year. No doubt a considerable proportion of these do not die here but during or after migration to other countries, but others ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... fulsome, but every thing panegyrical, has already been written out, with blanks for names, to be filled when the convention shall adjourn. When "manifest destiny" shall be unrolled, all these strong panegyrics, wherever they may light, made beforehand, laid up in pigeon-holes, studied, framed, emblazoned, and embossed, will all come out; and then there will be found to be somebody in the United States whose merits have been strangely overlooked, marked out by Providence, a ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... for his guests, as he still treated them, was very refreshing and very good. There was cold fish and pigeon pie, and a hot omelet filled with mushrooms and olives and tomatoes and onions all sliced up together, and strong black coffee. After supper, Stedman went off to see the King, and came back in a little while to say that his Majesty would give them an audience ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... is a general practice with the granivorous tribes, in order to provide their young with soft and digestible food before they are strong enough to digest the hard, coriaceous seed. Nature has formed an exception in the Pigeon tribe; but has compensated them by providing that the parent bird shall soften the food in her own crop before it is given to the tender young. From the peculiar manner in which the young are fed comes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... poison on an animal may be trusted to inform us, with certainty, of the effect of the same poison on a man. To quote two instances only which justify doubt—and to take birds this time, by way of a change—a pigeon will swallow opium enough to kill a man, and will not be in the least affected by it; and parsley, which is an innocent herb in the stomach of a human being, is deadly poison ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... that you will remember.' And they did so before we left them behind. Now, above the lily-spotted water, deep and clear, showed a little cluster of houses on a low cliff, and below these, close to the river, an old pigeon-house with pointed roof. ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... the river, the dogs killed a jaguar kitten. There was no trace of the mother. Some accident must have befallen her, and the kitten was trying to shift for herself. She was very emaciated. In her stomach were the remains of a pigeon and some tendons from the skeleton or dried carcass of some big animal. The loathsome berni flies, which deposit eggs in living beings—cattle, dogs, monkeys, rodents, men—had been at it. There were seven huge, white grubs making big abscess-like swellings over its eyes. These flies deposit ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... of ten Whydah birds (Vidua purpurea) come to the pomegranate-trees in our yard. The eight young ones, full-fledged, are fed by the dam, as young pigeons are. The food is brought up from the crop without the bowing and bending of the pigeon. They chirrup briskly for food: the dam gives most, while the redbreasted cock gives one or two, and then ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... about eating birds that suggested cages and swings and stands, but as we had nothing else to eat was fain to cook them, and a very excellent dish they made. I have read somewhere that the dodo and a relative of his called the 'tooth-billed pigeon' are still to be found on this island. It would be delightful to ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... through the ilex-branches beyond. But the good Sisters abominate these pigeons, who, it appears, are messy little creatures, and they complain that, were it not that the Reverend Director likes a pigeon in his pot on a holiday, they could not stand the bother of perpetually sweeping the chapel steps and the kitchen threshold all along of those ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... village of Hartford were astounded when they heard the moan and groan of one of their neighbors, Dr. William Waters, who had the misfortune of being capsized beneath a small building in the mad waters of Pigeon River. ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... his plaintive cry, like the very distant note of a hound. This bird is most beautifully formed, and his peculiarity of color is well adapted to his shape. He is something like a cock pheasant in build and mode of carriage, but he does not exceed the size of a pigeon. His color is white, with a fine brown tinsel glittering head and long tail; the wings of the cock bird are likewise ornamented with similar brown tinsel feathers. These birds are delicious eating, but I seldom fire at them, as they are generally among the lotus plants in such deep ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... then the music, or the ordinary murmur of the Square in the long intervals, is broken by the noisy rattle of a descending shop shutter, or the hour is struck by the Merceria clock's bronze giants; now and then a pigeon crosses the sky and shows luminous where the light strikes its breast; now and then a feather flutters from a window ledge, great bats flit up and down, and the mosquitoes shrill in one's ear. It is an entertainment never failing in interest to the observer, and not the ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... father's sufferings in the army, when, upon an expedition near Little Miamac, he and some others were left to carry the wounded. They got out of provisions: went three days without anything to eat, except one pigeon between nine. I will give you his own words. He says: 'The first day we came to where an Indian's old pack-horse had mired in the mud; it had lain there ten days in the heat of summer; the smell was dreadful; still some of our men cut out slices, roasted ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... happened to be in the Post Office getting my mail when, amongst a bunch of letters on the counter I saw one addressed to 'Gavin Blake, Esq., Governor of Barmsworth Prison, England.' Old Kelly, the postmaster, having his back to me at the time, fumbling around the pigeon-holes, I promptly annexed this letter and slipped it into ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... of a blend-like of Hepsom, and Goodwood, and Altcar, mixed up With the old Epping 'Unt and new Hurlingham, thoughts of the Waterloo Cup, Swell Polo and Pigeon-match tumbled about in my mind, while the din Was like Putney Reach piled on a Prizefight, with ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... should be stool pigeon!" said I. "Nay, God forbid! Ranjoor Singh need but give an order that ye have no liking for and ye will shoot me in the ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... spare parts, cigarettes, pin-up pictures, liquor and so forth, and came travelling. I didn't forget tools. You'd be astonished by what you can sell and fix—and for what prices—out in the isolated areas, or what you can bring back. I even got a couple of emeralds as big as pigeon eggs. I'm getting myself a reputation, besides. What difference does just one good leg make—at only one-sixth Earth grav? You still hop along, even when you don't ride. And everywhere I go, I leave that left boot print behind in the dust, like a record that ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... farther back on the plain. The kill was one of the big barren rabbits, and Gray Wolf turned in its direction. She did not require sight to find it. In her was developed to its finest point that sixth sense of the animal kingdom, the sense of orientation, and as straight as a pigeon might have winged its flight she cut through the bush to the spot where they had cached the rabbit. A white fox had been there ahead of her, and she found only scattered bits of hair and fur. What the fox had left the moose-birds ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... fault alleged against Lancelot's person by carpers was that he was something "pigeon"—or "guardsman"—chested. But Guinevere showed her love and her wit, and her "valiancy" (for so at least on this occasion we may translate vaillant) by retorting that such a chest was only big enough—and hardly big enough—for such ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... the circumstances; could do no less than challenge the torpedoes, like Farragut in Mobile Bay. Whether the game was worth the candle, I was not to be bullied out of my privileges by a clown swash-buckler who aped the characteristics of a pouter pigeon. ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... more wheat than all us farmers, Paul? Men in Wall street, don't they? And how much wheat do you suppose those fellers have got amongst the lot of them? Not enough to feed a sick pigeon with. I sold these lambs first—for ten dollars. Then I bought them off of Bill Heffers, an' Henry Berry an' Ben Best—for ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... verging to blackness. Below, it was lighter; but a long, lurid bar of cloud stretched along the west, temporarily excluding the sun. The shadows rushed afar into the void, and a solemn, Sabbath twilight reigned around. I was now startled by a fluttering in my gondola. It was my carrier-pigeon. I had forgotten him entirely. I attached a string to his neck, with a label, announcing my hight, then nearly four miles, and the state ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... the question as to whether he is good or bad (and he really can be pigeon-holed no better than any one else) we have to accept this: He is the biggest factor in the American commonwealth to-day. It follows then, naturally, that what he thinks and feels will color and probably dominate the ideas and the ideals of the rest of the country. Numbers ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... behind her, but a breeze blew through the dim hall, fluttering the folds of her dress. Beyond the adjoining garden a lady in mourning entered a gate where honeysuckle grew, and above, on the low-dormered roof, a white pigeon sat preening its feathers. Up the main street, where a few sunken bricks of a vanished pavement were still visible, an old negro woman, sitting on the stone before her cabin, lighted her replenished pipe with a taper, and leaned back, smoking, in the doorway, her scarlet handkerchief ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... Cardinal was looking out of a window, Benvenuto's shop being under the palace of the Cardinal, he took his gun and pointed it upon the Cardinal. The Cardinal, however, had been warned, and presently withdrew. Benvenuto, in order that his intention might escape notice, aimed at a pigeon which was brooding high up in a hole of the palace, and hit it exactly in the head-a feat one would have thought incredible. Now let your Holiness do what you think best about him; I have discharged my duty by saying what ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... soon left the fishing wear and coasted along the northeastern shore of Lake Simcoe until they reached its most eastern border, when they made a portage to Sturgeon Lake, thence sweeping down Pigeon and Stony Lakes, through the Otonabee into Rice Lake, the River Trent, the Bay of Quinte, and finally rounding the eastern point of Amherst Island, they were fairly on the waters of Lake Ontario, just ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... on Vesuvius in January. You were with two elderly ladies. You were dreadfully sunburnt. I made their acquaintance next day in Naples. You had gone, but they told me your name. Let me see. I know everybody and never forget anything. My mind is pigeon-holed like my office. Don't ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... Puritan mind. They make him THAT, hold him THERE. They lean heavily on what they find of the above influence in him. They won't follow the rivers in his thought and the play of his soul. And their cousin cataloguers put him in another pigeon-hole. They label him "ascetic." They translate his outward serenity into an impression of severity. But truth keeps one from being hysterical. Is a demagogue a friend of the people because he will lie to them to make them cry and raise ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... unintelligible to me, and apparently had no connection with my father's affairs; but there were several letters dated at London, which I thrust into my pocket. I could find nothing else which promised to be of service to me, and I was about to close the door, when I discovered a sealed letter lying in a pigeon hole by itself. I took it from its place, and read the direction: "Robert G. Bunyard, ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... man for method, Leonard Reeve. He seemed to me to organize classes with real talent anybody who came to the Mission at all habitually was pigeon-holed as 'Inquirer,' 'Hearer,' 'Catechumen,' 'Under a cloud,' or something else, and dealt with accordingly. His work, as I watched it day by day, and evening by evening in church and school and villages and Mission farm seemed ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... Here lies Johnie Pigeon: What was his religion Whae'er desires to ken In some other warl' [world] Maun follow the carl [Must, old fellow] For here Johnie ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... hashed oddments under an elegant French name and sell it for as much money as a dinner for a hungry man. Norah used to fight shy of the famous "lark-pudding" until it was whispered to her that what was not good beef steaks in the dish was nothing more than pigeon or possibly even sparrow! after which she enjoyed it, and afterwards pilgrimaged to the kitchen to see the great blue bowls, as big as a wash-hand basin, in which the puddings have been made since ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... the golden oriole or mango bird, the koel, with here and there a red-tufted bulbul, make a faint attempt at a chirrup; but as a rule the deep silence is unbroken, save by the melancholy hoot of some blinking owl, and the soft monotonous coo of the ringdove or the green pigeon. The exquisite honey-sucker, as delicately formed as the petal of a fairy flower, flits noiselessly about from blossom to blossom. The natives call it the 'Muddpenah' or drinker of honey. There are innumerable butterflies of graceful shape ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... had a quotation that could not wait: "We got to be 'wise like snake' an' innocent like pigeon'!'" ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... what sort of person you are now. Perhaps if I did know I wouldn't dare put pen to paper. But I don't know. I only remember that we were great chums. In fact, I chummed with you even more than with your brothers. But I am like the pigeon that went away in the fable of the Two Pigeons. If I once start to tell you I would want you to feel that you have been there yourself. I may overtax your patience with the story of my life so different from yours, ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... he stands a little apart, however, because he is too big to take a place in any scheme of historical development; he is one of those figures that dominate an age and are not to be fitted into any of the neat little pigeon-holes so thoughtfully prepared for us by evolutionists. He passed through the greater part of life unnoticed, and came near creeping out of it undiscovered. No one seems to have guessed at what was happening. It is easy now to see how ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... a proposition to be assented to, and then put away and forgotten. It is always in our minds, and for ever in our thoughts. It guides our every action, it colours our whole life. It is not for a day, but for ever. When we have learnt that a cobra's bite is death, we do not put the belief away in a pigeon-hole of our minds, there to rust for ever unused, nor do we go straightway and pick up the first deadly snake that we see. We remember it always; we keep it as a guiding ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... usually talented; his brain seems to thrive at the expense of his general health. His breast-bone projects out, and the sides of his chest are flattened; hence he becomes what is called chicken-breasted or pigeon-breasted; his spine is usually twisted, so that he is quite awry, and, in a bad case, he is hump-backed; the ribs, from the twisted spine, on one side bulge out; he is round-shouldered; the long bones of his body, being soft, bend; he is bow-legged, ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... the excitement experienced by young sportsmen when they have the luck to fall in with some bird or animal not previously known to them. Every one remembers the delight with which, when a boy, he shot his first wood-pigeon, or lay in ambush behind a hedge ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor |
