"Scarecrow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... son of a poor widow who lived near Jack's house. He was somewhat younger than myself and small for his age, but a sharp, intelligent little fellow, though amusingly ignorant of affairs in general. His chief employment was acting the part of a scarecrow by frightening birds from the cornfields, and running on errands into Bideford for any of the neighbours, by which means he enabled his mother to eke out her scanty pittance. I used to share with him my school pasty, ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... was no longer wanted. A sudden dense guffaw was heard from the senior captain—a big-headed man, with little round eyes and monstrously fat cheeks which never moved. The old major, tall and fantastically ragged like a scarecrow, walked round the body of the late Senor Hirsch, muttering to himself with ineffable complacency that like this there was no need to guard against any future treacheries of that scoundrel. The others ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... "'Going to make a scarecrow to keep the ravens off old Teufel's pictures,' answered Heinrich, as he went on dressing the lay-figure in Karl's clothes. He next seated the creature at an easel with its back to the door, so that it should be the first thing the painter should see when he entered. Karl meant to remove ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... child?" she sobb'd, "Look here!" I saw it in the wheel entangled, A weather beaten rag as e'er From any garden scarecrow dangled.' I. 85, 86. ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... could be treated to a dose of "the cat" now and then, it might add considerably to the peace and comfort of the borough. Flogging by proxy was not unknown in some of the old scholastic establishments, but whipping a scarecrow seems to have been the amusement on February 26th. 1842, when Sir Robert Peel, at that day a sad delinquent politically, was ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... in its actions. Most birds are wary. The crow is wary, and something more. Other shy birds, for instance ducks, avoid every strange object. The crow considers whether there be anything dangerous in the strangeness. An ordinary scarecrow will not keep our crow from anything worth a little risk. He fathoms the scarecrow, compares its behavior, under various circumstances, with that of the usual wearer of its garments, and decides to take the risk. To protect his corn, the farmer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... hereabouts, He's mounted on a hazel bavin, A cropp'd malignant baker gave 'm; And to the largest bone-fire riding, They've roasted COOK already and PRIDE in; 1550 On whom in equipage and state, His scarecrow fellow-members wait, And march in order, two and two, As at thanksgivings th' us'd to do; Each in a tatter'd talisman, 1555 ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... very look's an oath: The captain's honest, Sirs, and that's enough, Though his soul's bullet, and his body buff. He spits fore-right; his haughty chest before, Like battering rams, beats open every door: And with a face as red, and as awry, As Herod's hangdogs in old tapestry, Scarecrow to boys, the breeding woman's curse, Has yet a strange ambition to look worse; Confounds the civil, keeps the rude in awe, Jests like a licensed fool, commands like law. Frighted, I quit the room, but leave it so As men from jails to execution go; For hung with deadly ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... girl? Yes. Wait till the heat has dried her up, though. She'll be a scarecrow, like the rest of them. By the way, what ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... If you want to make an invalid scarecrow of yourself before your time, it's not my business. Only don't come to me for ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... had already hanged Count Charles in reality. Further, they said that he was no count at all, but the son of their old bishop, Heinsberg. They went so far as to suspend the effigy on a gallows and then riddled it with arrows and left it dangling like a scarecrow in sight of the ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... about as if they were timber logs. Many is the time I have said to my scholars, when I was teaching dancing-school,—great lumbering fellows, hulking through a quadrille as if they were pacing a raft in log-running,—"Don't insult your Creator by making a scarecrow of the body He has seen fit to give you. With reverence, He might have given it to one of better understanding; but since you have it, for piety's sake hold up your head, square your shoulders, and put your feet ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... round which the bark wigwams were built, dark figures moved to and fro in a kind of measured dance, slow and solemn, and marked at intervals by dismal cries. As the boats touched the shore and the white men sprang out, a boy, stationed as scarecrow upon the usual scaffold in the midst of the maize fields, raised a shrill whoop of warning which brought the lamentation of the women and the dance of the men to a dead stop. The latter rushed down to the river side, brandishing their weapons, and yelling; but there seemed little strength in the ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... drawing whereof the Englishman is indeed represented as eccentric and splenetic, but himself philosophical and by no means ridiculous. Even in the severe period of national struggle which preceded the Revolutionary war, and for some time after the beginning of that war itself, the scarecrow-comic Anglais was slow to make his appearance. Pigault-Lebrun himself, as was noted in the last volume, indulges in him little if at all. But things ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Sir Timothy was out in the street. For the first time Francis saw him angry. His eyes were blazing. His voice—Francis had followed him at once into the street—shook with passion. His hand had fallen heavily upon the shoulder of a huge carter, who, with whip in hand, was belabouring a thin scarecrow of ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... garment that draped so charmingly those of the living statue hired to parade before her. Jacqueline could not help laughing as she watched this way of hunting larks; and thought the mirror might have warned them, like a scarecrow, rather than have tempted them ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... served only to make them the laughing-stock of their antagonists, they assumed the offensive; and, showing that the socialists understood nothing at all themselves of this organization that they held up as a scarecrow, they ended by saying that it was but a new socialistic chimera, a word without sense,—an absurdity. The latest writings of the economists are full of ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... charged with challenges, and the prophecy was made and made again that never in the same place could this man go back and get a second hearing. Yet he did go back year after year, and crowds hung upon his utterances and laughed with him at the scarecrow that had once filled their day-dreams, made the nights hideous, and the future black with terror. Through his influence the tears of pity put out the fires of hell; and he literally laughed the devil out of court. This man, more than any other ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... shock of red hair, gave him a kind of intellectual charity that made his whole countenance shine with kindness. Yet his clothes belied the promise of his brow. They were ill-fitting, with an air of Sunday-bestness that gave him an incongruous scarecrow effect. It was easy to see why Market Street was beginning to call him that "Mad Adams." As he lifted his glance from the floor, his eyes met Laura Van Dorn's, then flitted away quickly, and the smile she should have had for her own, he gave to his audience. He began speaking with his arms behind ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... de l'Histoire de France pour l'Education du dauphin; OEuvres completes (1828), t. xvii. pp. 541, 545.] Bossuet had good grounds for speaking so. Louis XII. himself said, in 1511, to the ambassador of Spain, that "this pretended council was only a scarecrow which he had no idea of employing save for the purpose of bringing the pope to reason." Amidst these vain attempts at ecclesiastical influence the war was continued with passionateness on the part ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... had the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman to help you conquer those enemies," suggested the Wizard. "Just now, my dear, there is not a single warrior ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... a scarecrow of the law, Setting it up to fear the birds of prey, And let it keep one shape, till custom make it Their perch, ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... liked gray hairs," he responded, with a sigh. "She is as beautiful as ever, I hear; but I have not caught a glimpse of her. Tell me, Barby,—for I have grown timorous with sorrow,—will she hate the sight of such a miserable scarecrow?" ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... World before others were infected by the example. So that the best Fate which a Lady thus knowing, and singular, could expect, would be that hardly escaping Calumny, she should be in Town the Jest of the Would-be-Witts; tho wonder of Fools, and a Scarecrow to keep from her House many honest People who are to be pitty'd for having no more Wit than they have, because it is not their own Fault that they have no more. But in the Country she would, probably, fare still worse; for there her understanding ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... ask mamma. She doesn't grudge Vovo 500 roubles for his dogs, but 100 is too much for a dress. I can't act dressed like a scarecrow. [Pointing to Peasants] And who ...
— Fruits of Culture • Leo Tolstoy
... fear I'd miss something. But when I went 'Back to the Land,' did it take me long to fall in love with the forests and the green fields? It took me a week. I go to bed now the same day I get up, and I've passed on my high hat and frock coat to a scarecrow. And I'll bet you when those bears once scent the wild woods they'll stampede for them like Croker ...
— The Nature Faker • Richard Harding Davis
... shabby-looking man suddenly crossing from the other side of the street and taking up his stand directly in their path. The stranger wore a battered brown hat, no necktie, and a suit of clothes which he might have stolen from some scarecrow. ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... I think, Lindore would be more eloquent than me, so I shall leave it for him to discuss that chapter with you. But, to return to your own immediate concerns. Pray, are you then positively prohibited from falling in love? Did Mrs. Douglas only dress up a scarecrow to frighten you, or had she the candour to show you Love himself in ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... without longer and closer observation than he seemed to court; for his progress up Abersush Street, toward the Home in the gloom of the winter evening, was not visibly faster than what might have been expected of a scarecrow blessed with youth, health, and discontent. The man was indisputably ill-clad, yet not without a certain fitness and good taste, withal; for he was obviously an applicant for admittance to the Home, where poverty was a qualification. In the army ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... poet—weak enough, but capable of endless delight. The time had been when now and then he read a good book and dreamed noble dreams. Even yet the stuff of which such dreams are made, fluttered in particoloured rags about his life; and colour is colour even on a scarecrow. ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... some weight to their argument. But, in the present case, we should reflect how apt mankind are to relent after they have inflicted punishment;—so that, perhaps, the same men who would have detested the noble Lord, while alive and in prosperity, pointing him as a scarecrow to their children, might, after being witnesses to the miserable fate that had overtaken him, begin in their hearts to pity him; and from the fickleness so common to human nature, perhaps, by way of compensation, acquit him of part of his crimes; insinuate that he was ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... of the afternoon in throwing stones at a scarecrow. His aim was fairly good, and he succeeded in knocking off the hat and finally prostrating the wooden framework. Followed—an exciting ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... mouse-colour. Betty had refused to submit to this durance. "What sort of dinner would be on my father's table-cloth if I were to sit under one all day?" said she in answer to Harriet's representation of the fitness of things. "La, my dear, what matters it what an old scarecrow ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... twinkling eyes. His head was cased in a woollen nightcap, over which he wore a flapped hat; he had a silk handkerchief about his neck, and his mouth was furnished with a short wooden pipe, from which he discharged wreathing clouds of tobacco-smoke." This scarecrow turned out to be an Italian marquis; and no doubt the singularity of his smoking apparatus was of a piece with the ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... were six of them,—to a man, turned and regarded me. I was painfully aware of my likeness to a scarecrow. A laugh went up at my appearance,—a laugh that was not lessened or softened by the dead man stretched and grinning on the deck before us; a laugh that was as rough and harsh and frank as the sea itself; that arose out of coarse feelings and blunted sensibilities, ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... laughter surged again in Aja's soul, saying within himself: Out on this pitiable old scarecrow of a King, whose only thought is dancing! the King turned, and stood aside. And Aja looked, and instantly, the laughter died out of his heart, which ceased as it were to beat. And he murmured to himself: Ha! this is the most wonderful thing of all. King and women and desert and all vanished ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... Nurse gave him to understand that she was to marshal him to the altar, Balder, never more heroic than at that moment, offered her his arm, which she accepted with an air of scarecrow gentility. Either the change of costume had struck in, or it was the symbol of inward change. She seemed struggling against her torpor, her dimness and deadness. She tried, perhaps, to recall the day when that dress was first put on,—the day of Helen's marriage, when Salome had ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... she made gestures in all directions, first to one side, then to the other, just such floppy gestures as Ole Man Scarecrow would have made. That is, sometimes they looked like that, and sometimes her arms looked like the arms of a windmill. And her frizzy pigtails swished around with her arms—just like the sails of a windmill that had suddenly gone mad. The people ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... He was happy until he caught sight of his own reflection in the pool, and then he could not bear to stay any longer in this wood, because unlike the squirrel and the woodpecker and the jay he was an ugly intruder here, a scarecrow in ill-fitting clothes, round the ribbon of whose hat like a chain ran the yellow zigzag of Haverton House. He became afraid of the wood, perceiving nothing round him now except an assemblage of menacing trunks, a slow gathering of angry and forbidding branches. The silence of the day ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... and in some the Wife of Bath, in whose character Chaucer has been equally minute and exact; because she is also a scourge and a blight. I shall say no more of her, nor expose what Chaucer has left hidden; let the young reader study what he has said of her: it is useful as a scarecrow. There are of such characters born too many for the peace of ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... I have heard of my friend Paddy changing clothes with the scarecrow. I don't know which name is the most distinguished, that of the English bishop or the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... though your landing might be soft enough, it would have a nameless horror, far more killing than a stony fall. The women stand about frowsy and unkempt, with wild Irish eyes, all wearing the shawl as a hood, many in picturesque tatters, like the cast-off rags of a scarecrow, rags and flesh alike unwashed and of evil odour. The children look healthy and strong, though some of them are almost in puris naturalibus. Their faces are washed once a week; one of them said so, but the statement lacks confirmation, and is opposed to the evidence of the senses. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... not want the dude to think me a scarecrow," she said to herself; "though who cares what he thinks? I did not favor his coming, and they know it. I told them they would have him on their hands for life, and Bessie actually said they might have a worse thing. I don't know about that, but I do know he ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... habitations are not often met with in the forest, little native settlements occur from time to time, where, surrounded by small clearings, over which a primitive scarecrow mounts guard, sufficient rice is grown for their needs. These little hamlets are occupied by woodmen, or little communities of Chins, a kindred race to the Burmans, though differing from them in many customs, most curious of ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... with a mingled sigh and laugh. "There you were growing as gaunt as a scarecrow, and I loving you all the time. What a little goose I was! If you had looked at Gertrude as Burt did I should have found myself out long ago. Why hadn't you the ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... the way, Mr Leigh, I would certainly change my uniform; for, you will excuse my saying so, you look more like a scarecrow than an officer." ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... greeting me with a squawk; for, like some of his bigger (and wiser?) fellow-creatures, he assumed that a stranger must be a suspicious personage, and an unusual position must mean mischief. I was very comfortable, and I thought I would see if I could not fool him into thinking me a scarecrow, companion to those adorning the "patch" at that moment. I sat motionless, not using my glass, but looking him squarely in the eyes. This seemed to impress him; he ceased squawking, and hopped a twig ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... squadron used to proceed to Tunis, and stay there wasting its time while the Turkish ministry and those diplomats who were hostile to our influence amused themselves by waving the Capitan Pasha's attack before us like a scarecrow. ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... and buy something to eat with his own money," said Martha; "all the better,—it is just so much saved. Isn't he stingy, the old scarecrow!" ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... Arminius (Germany in long-past happier days lent the world these playful philosophical spirits), so the later author invents an old village grandpapa, with the grandpapa-name of Altegans and a prose-poem printed in scarecrow duodecimo on paper-bag pages and entitled "Erster Schulgang," 'first school-going,' or 'first ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... certain organized conventions, which men have devised to keep up what is called the social compact. Honor! truly a very convenient coin, which those who know how to pass it may lay out with great advantage.*** Conscience! oh yes, a useful scarecrow to frighten sparrows away from cherry-trees; it is something like a fairly written bill of exchange with which your bankrupt merchant staves ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... buttons, and a shirt with a flat-pleated frill completed his costume. In the middle of the shirt-frill twinkled a small gold locket, in which might be seen, under glass, a little temple worked in hair, one of those pathetic trifles which give men confidence, just as a scarecrow frightens sparrows. Most men, like other animals, are frightened or reassured by trifles. Old Canquoelle's breeches were kept in place by a buckle which, in the fashion of the last century, tightened them across the stomach; from the belt hung on each side a short steel chain, composed ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... same folly shall be found yet remaining where it least ought, to the perishing of thousands? The greatest burden in the world is Superstition, not only of ceremonies in the Church, but of imaginary and scarecrow sins at home. What greater weakening, what more subtle stratagem against our Christian warfare, when, besides the gross body of real transgressions to encounter, we shall be terrified by a vain and shadowy menacing of faults that are not! ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... a cousin of Miss Moreton's, a respectable clergyman. Mrs. Freke was so much incensed by his insolent interference, as she was pleased to call it, that she made an effigy of Mr. Moreton dressed in his canonicals, and hung the figure up as a scarecrow in a garden close by the high road. He was so much beloved and respected for his benevolence and unaffected piety, that Mrs. Freke totally failed in her design of making him ridiculous; her scarecrow was torn to pieces by his parishioners; ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... the most experienced shepherds, whose whole lives had been spent going to and fro on the downs, frequently lost their way. There is a story of a waggoner and his lad going slowly along the road after the thaw, and noticing an odd-looking scarecrow in a field. They went to it, and found it was a man, dead, and still standing as he had stiffened in the snow, the clothes hanging on his withered body, and the eyes gone from the sockets, picked out by the crows. It is only one of many similar accounts, ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... bungling workman; he makes a creature pretty enough; then he daubs and trims and pares and pulls and squeezes the thing about, draws the nose and chin out of their sheaths, knocks in the cheeks, eats ruts into the forehead, till he has turned it into a scarecrow; and then at last he gets ashamed, smashes the whole wretched concern to pieces, and shovels it over with earth that all the world may not see his disgrace. Your cheeks too, smooth and polisht as they are, will not be so like a roseleaf by and ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... he exclaimed. "No, last night. Then, if you like, you had. But yesterday morning? Fortune and you, scarecrow? ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... verander, an' blarneys an' wheedles and whines and argues like a hundred Jews an' ole Irishwomen put tergether, an' accuses me o' takin' his blarsted country from him, an' makes me an' the missus laugh; an' we gives him a bottl'er rum an' a bag of grub ter get rid of him an' his rotten ole scarecrow tribe—It all tells up. I was allers soft on the blacks, an', beside, a ole gin nursed me an' me mother when I was born, an' saved me blessed life—not that that mounts to much. But it all tells up, an' I got me licence ter pay. An' ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... of geese, so slowly that I soon caught him up; and such a man or such geese I had never seen. To begin with, his rags were worse than a scarecrow's. In one hand he carried a long staff; the other held a small book close under his nose, and his lean shoulders bent over as he read in it. It was clear, from the man's undecided gait, that all his eyes were for this book. Only he would look ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Luis was a fine, square-shouldered, well-built fellow, I had shrunk to little more than a skeleton, so that although the clothes fitted me well enough as to their lateral dimensions, in other respects they made me look pretty much of a scarecrow, and I could not avoid seeing the ghost of a smile flickering in Don Luis's eyes when, upon my first appearance in public, so to speak, he presented me in due form to his wife, Dona Inez. But there was no smile on that sweet lady's lips, nor in her ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... Adams as a hawk does a hen; he watched Etienne as a hawk does a scarecrow, Etienne watched Miss Adams as a weasel does a henhouse. He paid no ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... backwards, with her arms crossed behind her: he had pinioned her. She cried out to Oliver to run up, and set the mill-sails agoing, to bring neighbour Gool. Stephen took this second hint. He quietly swung Oliver off the steps, sent down his scarecrow after him, and himself took his seat on the threshold of the mill. There he sat, laughing to see how Ailwin wearied herself with struggles, while Roger, by merely hanging on her arms, prevented her getting free. When, however, Oliver flew at the boy, and ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... with long ungainly strides, his coat-tails flapping like a scarecrow's. The coat, in fact, was a cast-off one of Mr. Wesley's, narrow in the chest, short in the sleeves, but inordinately full in the skirts. The Rector had found and taken Johnny from the Charity School at ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... contrast the neat, bright doctor, with his powder as white as snow, and his bright black eyes and pleasant manners, made with the coltish country folk, and above all, with that filthy, heavy, bleared scarecrow of a pirate of ours, sitting far gone in rum, with his arms on the table. Suddenly he—the captain, that is—began to pipe ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... into a loud laugh. "The Austrians, then, believe my soldiers to be sparrows, and think they can drive them out by setting up a scarecrow! If the Emperor Francis himself intends to command, he will command the army only to retreat, for the word 'forward' is not to be found in his dictionary. Have you looked over the dispatches from Germany, and can you report ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... heath came a jolly knave, Like a scarecrow, all in rags: It made me crow to see his old duds All abroad in the wind, like flags;— So up he came to the timber's foot And pitch'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... He stood like a scarecrow in the cornfields. If they entered a house, he sat in the parlor; if they peeped into the kitchen, he was there. He made himself at home in every cottage, and, under one disguise or another, stole into ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... of the Forbes stood about half-way up Ben Sgurrach, the highest hill in the district, and the house was at least 1,000 feet above the sea. It was sheltered from the east wind by a clump of scarecrow-looking pine trees, and a spur of barren rock rose behind it on the north. I could imagine those trees, though I have never seen them; we have some such in our little wood behind the presbytery. Gaunt-looking figures they are indeed! Some have been twisted into ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... scarecrow, taking things as coolly as though he had always been used to having white men row him about a harbour," laughed Cabot, "and yet I don't suppose he was ever in ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... a thing is this?" grumbled the Colonel, as he took out a hat that had been carefully packed in one corner of the box. "I told them to send the most stylish thing they had. It looks like a scarecrow," he continued, as he set it ...
— The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows Johnston
... our watch in vain. Zounds! not a soul Will pass and do obeisance to the cap. But yesterday the place swarm'd like a fair; Now the old green looks like a desert, quite, Since yonder scarecrow hung upon ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... "One is a scarecrow who's stuffed with straw, and the other a woodman made out of tin. They haven't any appetites inside of 'em, you see; so they never ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... drumming in his head.... His stomach's leading him on! [Laughs] Your houour's a happy man. Lie down and go to sleep! What's the use of standing like a scarecrow in the middle of the ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... that man who begged for a pennyworth of muddy ale was first of all a brilliant soldier, then a brilliant lawyer, then a brilliant historian. His doctor's degree—he was Doctor of Laws—was gained by fair hard work. Think of that, and then look at my picture of the sodden, filthy scarecrow! Yes; that man began my education, and had I only gone straight on I should not be loafing about The Chequers. You ask how he could have anything to do with my education? Well, long ago I was a little bookworm, living in a lonely country house, and ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... sprawled aft, and at a nearer sight of him some of the men broke out into nervous titters. There was some excuse, for surely such a scarecrow had never before been the sport of wind and wave. A thing of shreds he was, elaborately ragged, a face overrun with a scrub of beard, and preternaturally drawn, surmounted by a stiff-dried, dirty, cloth semi-turban, with ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... what unteachable, untamable creatures men are. They learn wisdom about all the little matters of daily life by experience, but they do not seem to do so about the higher. Even a sparrow comes to understand a scarecrow after a time or two, and any rat in a hole will learn the trick of a trap. But you can trick men over and over again with the same inducement, and, even whilst the hook is sticking in their jaws, the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... reason why Ulster should be a distinct unit in the federal system. The Archbishop dealt more fully with the Ulster question. Admitting that he had formerly believed "that this attitude of Ulster was something of a scarecrow made up out of old and outworn prejudices," he had now to acknowledge that the men of Ulster were "of all men the least likely to be 'drugged with the wine of words,' and were men who of all other men mean and do what they say." Behind all the glowing ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... one Ribi, the other Matteuzzo by name, fellows both of them not a whit less jolly than Maso himself; and having found them, he said to them:—"An you love me, come with me to the court, and I will shew you the queerest scarecrow that ever you saw." So the two men hied them with him to the court; and there he pointed out to them the judge and his breeches. What they saw from a distance served to set them laughing: then drawing nearer to the dais on which Master Judge was seated, they observed that ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... laughed Mr. Adams. "Don't let's rig up a scarecrow, to spoil our good-byes. Charley and I'll take care of ourselves; won't we, Charley? We'll stick by each other, and other folks can do as they please, as long as they don't interfere. Come on; let's go aboard, and you can see our state-room, and say ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... should want to have such a thing in his home no one can say. Some naturalists believe that he uses it as a scarecrow to frighten his enemies away. But I do not think he could give a ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... you, old fellow?" said Desmond heartily. "I am a bit of a scarecrow, no doubt, but we've won the trick, man. The real guy is down below, dead from fright by this ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... looking pair of scoundrels," Ned said to himself as he looked after the retreating figures of the two men. "The master I truly know by name as one of the worst instruments of the tyrant; as to the man, knave is written on his face. He is as thin as a scarecrow — he has a villainous squint and an evil smile on his face. If I had been bent on any other errand I would have given very different answers, and taken my chance of holding my own with this good stick of mine. At any rate ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... You fellers are enough to make a minister swear. I don't care what you do. Go ahead and write to her if you want to, only I give you fair warnin', I ain't goin' to have her if she don't suit. I ain't goin' to marry no scarecrow." ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... at your being disquieted about W. Thomson. Tell George from me not to sit upon you with his mathematics. When I threatened your tropical cooling views with the facts of the physicists, you snubbed me and the facts sweetly, over and over again; and now, because a scarecrow of xy has been raised on the selfsame facts, you boo-boo. Take another dose of Huxley's penultimate G. S. Address, and send George back to college. (383/2. Huxley's Anniversary Address to the Geological Society, 1869 ("Collected ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... the butcher. His eyes were swollen slits; his nose a pickled beet; his hair would have made the wildest thatch of a Jack-in-the-box look like the satin poll of a Cleo de Merode. The rest of him was scarecrow done to ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... his comic, scarecrow pal who originated from the dark side of trouble, on Earth and out here, too, were fading against ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... scarecrow, which had been there since spring and which protected the leafless branches with its ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... has been seen—Beaumaroy was right in his opinion of the Captain's value as a sentry, or a scarecrow to keep away hungry birds. The confederates had stolen back to their base of operations—to where their car lay behind the trees. There, too, no Sergeant and no sack! Neddy reached for his roomy flask, drank of it, and with hoarse curses consigned the entire course of events, ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... however, the misleading features of the statistical scarecrow were revealed — but, ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... the upper story was forty cubits, and the string course one cubit, and the rain channel two cubits, and the beams one cubit, and the covering plaster one cubit, and the battlement three cubits, and the scarecrow one cubit. Rabbi Judah said, "the scarecrow was not counted in the measurement; but the battlement was ...
— Hebrew Literature
... story out of a scarecrow, giving it odd attributes. From different points of view, it should appear to change,—now an old man, now an old woman,—a gunner, a farmer, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... beheld him without knowing who he was. With this measured pace and in this guise he advanced to kneel before the duke, who, with the others, awaited him standing. The duke, however, would not on any account allow him to speak until he had risen. The prodigious scarecrow obeyed, and standing up, removed the veil from his face and disclosed the most enormous, the longest, the whitest and the thickest beard that human eyes had ever beheld until that moment, and then fetching ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... whatsoever, especially as he had all he could do to keep his own wolf at bay without encouraging mine, and who, besides teaching good English, loved it wisely and too well. I think Uncle Rilas would have held Uncle John up to me as an example,—a scarecrow, you might say,—if it hadn't been for the fact that he loved him in spite of his English. He must have loved me in spite ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... It need hardly be said that with such parsimony of movement Savka was as poor as a mouse and lived worse than any homeless outcast. As time went on, I suppose he accumulated arrears of taxes and, young and sturdy as he was, he was sent by the commune to do an old man's job—to be watchman and scarecrow in the kitchen gardens. However much they laughed at him for his premature senility he did not object to it. This position, quiet and convenient for motionless contemplation, exactly fitted ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... place for himself. He was employed by his guardian, Farmer Rodel, in the capacity of scarecrow, an occupation which required him to swing a rattle in the farmer's orchard all day long, for the purpose of frightening the sparrows away from the early cherries and vegetable-beds. At first this duty appealed to him as sport, but he soon ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... arrived, a thin, white scarecrow of a dog. He was sick and unhappy, and would eat nothing, and started up at the slightest sound. He was listening for the Italian's footsteps, but he never came, and one day Mr. Harry looked up from his newspaper and said, "Laura, Bellini is dead." Miss Laura's eyes filled with tears, and Billy, ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... General eyed him, and saw his great spirit shining through this man. The more he looked, the less could the scarecrow veil the ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Gowanus, had been selected for his trust on account of his pre-eminent goodness, which, as seems to be invariably the case, was associated with an absence of personal beauty trenching upon the scarecrow. Possibly an excess of strong and disproportionate carving in nose, mouth and chin, accompanied by weak eyes and unexpectedness of forehead, may tend to make the Evil One but languid in his desire for the capture of its human exemplar. This may help account for the otherwise rather curious ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... such gathering that a ghost appeared—a lank, saffron ghost, ragged as a scarecrow—wearing a foolish smile and the cape of a cavalryman's overcoat with no coat beneath it. The apparition was a youth of about twenty, with a downy beard all over his face, and countenance well mellowed with coal-soot, as though he had ridden several days on top of a freight-car ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... too, and daws Flock hither to advance their caws, And, with a sudden courage armed, Devour the foe who once alarmed— In life and death a fair deceit: Nor strong to harm nor good to eat. King bogey of the scarecrow host, When known the least affrighting most, Though light his hand (his mind was dark) He left on ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... mountain in the south, excepting Mt.!! Darwin!!). We then shall scud away for Concepcion in Chili. I believe the ship must once again steer southward, but if any one catches me there again, I will give him leave to hang me up as a scarecrow for all future naturalists. I long to be at work in the Cordilleras, the geology of this side, which I understand pretty well is so intimately connected with periods of violence in that great chain ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... a new paragraph. Long, lean and hollow cheeked, the term "gangling" fits him better than any other. Mr. Luther Barr's black suit hung on him as baggily as the garments of a cornfield scarecrow and Mr. Luther Barr's sharp features were not improved by a small growth of gray hair; of the kind known as a "goatee" that sprouted from his lower rip. For the rest of the boys noticed that Mr. Barr was gifted with a singularly gimlet-like pair of steely blue eyes ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... will the taste of England stop in its descent? Where will the impositions on it by bastard genius end? Yet since this monster has produced a powerful effect, and is managed with such perverted skill as to excite a strong interest, and since whole audiences condescend to club tastes with the scarecrow old women of the heath and the mountain, and to play "look at the bugabow," with the nurselings of the lap, we should be sorry to be deficient in curtesy, or when so many good and wise people drivel not to drivel a little too; we bend therefore with stiff and painful ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... Vile scarecrow, thou! Thy lord and master dost thou know? What holds me, that I deal not now Thee and thine apes a stunning blow? No more respect to my red vest dost pay? Does my cock's feather no allegiance claim? Have I my visage masked to-day? Must ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... this strangely motionless one who has thrown the west side into an uproar. There is no drama around him. He is a dead young man in uniform walking slowly, limply through three acts. This is all one remembers—that his eyes were open and unseeing, that his arms hung like a scarecrow's and that the fingers of his hands ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... on his legs, and in the next out of sight, but whether to return to the sportsman, or the mountain, or to seek and find a new master to cozen, we never heard, as this was our last visit to Lucca. The lesson inculcated by Frate's misconduct has not been lost upon us; so whenever any queer canine scarecrow now meets us on the Pincian, and by his dejected looks seeks to enlist our sympathy, we cut short the appeal, stare him in the face, and then utter the word "never" with sufficient emphasis to send him off shaking his head, as if ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... through pleasant woods bright with the golden blossoms of the pines. Although it was early in February, we saw the negroes at work in the fields, 'listing' the ground—a process of breaking up the soil with hoes—while here and there a solitary palmetto stood, like a scarecrow, as if to warn away all invaders. We soon reached 'Camp Saxton,' which we found pleasantly situated near a large and magnificent grove of live oaks, just at the bend of the river, where a fine view is given of the winding stream, the harbor ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... skandalo. Scandalise skandali. Scandinavian Skandinavo. Scantling lignajxo, trabetajxo. Scanty malsuficxega. Scapegoat propekulo. Scapula skapolo. Scar cikatro. Scarabaeus skarabo. Scarce malsuficxa. Scarcely apenaux. Scarcity malsuficxo. Scare timigi. Scarecrow timigilo. Scarf skarpo. Scarlatina skarlatino. Scarlet skarlato. Scatter disjxeti, dissemi. Scene scenejo. Scene (painted) sceno. Scenery pejzagxo. Scent odoro. Scent flari. Sceptic skeptikulo. Sceptical ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... to look like a scarecrow, and not get asked again, I've got a dress that'll do PERFECTLY," Undine threatened, in a tone between ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... reach, "I forgive you all your deception and treason. What Father Letheby has got in store for you I cannot say. But I'll never forgive you, you most unscientific and unmathematical artist, for having given me so many shocking misfits lately, until I have looked like a scarecrow in a cornfield; even now you are smelling like a distillery. And tell me, you ruffian, what right had you to say at Mrs. Haley's public house that I was 'thauto—thauto—gogical' in my preaching? If I, with all the privileges of senility, ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... pointed out, is anarchy. Civilization means restriction; and so does socialism. So far from being anarchy, it is the very antithesis of it. Anarchy is the goal of liberalism, if liberalism could ever be persuaded to be logical. So the scarecrow of anarchy, at least, need not frighten away any would-be convert to socialism. There remains, it is true, the other scarecrow, revolution; and that, I admit, has more life in it. Socialism is revolutionary; but so is liberalism, or was, while it was anything. ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... she cried, "do tell! You've completely taken me in! I expected a scarecrow. What for did you frighten me with that letter I got last week? It might ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... Reed, what have you done to that child! He looks like a scarecrow! He's shaved thin in one place and great tufts left in another. I was going to cut his hair this very evening. And I'll trim it to some ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... does he give the wife any corresponding rights to get rid of her husband. These, and a hundred other difficulties all too visible to duller eyes, he utterly ignores as he proceeds on his violent way of deliverance from what he calls "imaginary and scarecrow sins." Nothing is allowed to stand in his path. For instance, the awkward texts in the Bible, whose authority he accepts, are given new interpretations with which it is to be feared his temper had more to do than his knowledge ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... got the "dummy" rigged out to his satisfaction, he reached cautiously forward—still keeping the fronds of the pisang between himself and the bear. In this position, he held the "scarecrow" out at the full length of his arm; and, giving the stick a punch, set it erect in the ground. The bruang, from his elevated perch on the tree, could not fail to see the object—though the hunter himself was still concealed ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... the borders of the fields and among the grain, that the reapers, in cutting the wheat, laid the flowers low before them as well. Niels liked to bind the sheaves, and did his work so deftly that he was always welcome. He it was, too, who made such a wonderful "scarecrow" that not a bird dared venture near. But little Hansa laughed and said: "Silly birds! the old hat cannot harm you. See! I will bring my flowers close beside it." Then the reapers, laughing, called the ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... along with his ragged shirt fluttering like a scarecrow's, nodded. "Yes, so do I. But I guess they need our help or Hero Giles wouldn't have risked his life to ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... a Christian, and doubting if we shall know our friends hereafter! In those who do not believe such a doubt is more than natural, but in those who profess to believe, it shows what a ragged scarecrow is the thing they call their faith—not worth that of many an old Jew, or that of ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... Barrows! Come right in! I haven't seen you for—well, how long is it?" exclaimed Mr. Tutt, extending a long welcoming arm toward a human scarecrow upon the threshold. ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... then up and pressing on again. Here a fiery spirit grows pugnacious, but is restrained by his class-mates; there another has his shirt torn off him, and presents the picturesque appearance of an amateur scarecrow. There are, in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... sign of human life. A lean and threadbare scarecrow flapped his ragged coat-sleeves in the wind that swept across the barren garden patch farther up the slope,—this was the nearest approach to human life that came within the range of vision. And as if to invite jovial companionship, this pathetic gentleman wore his ancient straw hat cocked ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... drownded him wid the languidges—the father, you see, ould Denis himself, tuck a faver whin the son was near a year in the college, an' it proved too many for him. He died; an' whin young Dinny hard of it, the divil a one of him would stay any longer in Maynewth. He came home like a scarecrow, said he lost his health in it, an' refused to go back. Faith, it was a lucky thing that his father died beforehand, for it would brake his heart. As it was, they had terrible work about it. But ould Denis is never dead while young Denis is livin'. Faix, he was as stiff as they wor stout, an' wouldn't ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... help any," Mr. Crow said gloomily. Usually the merest mention of a scarecrow sent him into a rage. But now he was too angry with Grandfather Mole to pick a quarrel with any one else. "Grandfather Mole couldn't see a scaremole if he ran head first into it," Mr. Crow continued. "And besides, even if he had eyes to see with, he's working underground. Grandfather Mole ...
— The Tale of Grandfather Mole • Arthur Scott Bailey
... friend. Its style of face and curious outfit were utterly foreign to the miner, for he had been bearded with the robust, unkempt growth of many years, tanned to a leathery hue, and garbed perennially in the habit of a scarecrow, while this creature was shaved and clipped and curried, and the clothes it stood up in were of many startling hues. Its face was scraped so clean of whiskers as to be a pallid white, but lack of adornment ended at this point and the rest was overladen wondrously, while from ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... her injustice. She gave us wit when she placed us naked and miserable on the shore of this great ocean-world. Swim who can, and whoso is too clumsy let him sink. The right is with him that prevails. Family honor? A valuable capital for him that knows how to profit by it.—Conscience? An excellent scarecrow with which to frighten sparrows from cherry-trees.—Filial love? Where is the obligation? Did my father beget me because he loved me? Did he think of me at all? Is there anything holy in his gratification ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... if he holds communion when a boy with Murtagh, the scarecrow of an Irish academy, he associates in after life with Francis Ardry, a rich and talented young Irish gentleman about town. If he accepts an invitation from Mr. Petulengro to his tent, he has no objection to go home with a rich genius to dinner; who then will say that he prizes a thing or ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... almost invites a stranger to vie a repartee with it. But what insolent familiar durst have mated Thomas Coventry?—whose person was a quadrate, his step massy and elephantine, his face square as the lion's, his gait peremptory and path-keeping, indivertible from his way as a moving column, the scarecrow of his inferiors, the brow-beater of equals and superiors, who made a solitude of children wherever he came, for they fled his insufferable presence, as they would have shunned an Elisha bear. His growl was as thunder in their ears, whether he spake to them ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... useless to expostulate with this feminine scarecrow; her son was, happily for himself, unconscious, and after some more wrangling he was laid down on her doorstep, where he shortly afterward expired, his body being afterward carted away like so much ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli |
