"Swarm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vegetable couch in fear of being thrown to the ground by one of the waggon's jolts, and his eyes were fixed on the two long lines of gas lamps which stretched away in front of him till they mingled with a swarm of other lights in the distance atop of the slope. Far away on the horizon floated a spreading, whitish vapour, showing where Paris slept amidst the luminous haze of all ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... about fifty yards away and threw a shower of dirt over us. There was a precipitate flop, a falling backwards and forwards and all became messed up in an intricate jumble of flesh, equipment, clothing and rifles in the bottom of the trench. A swarm of "bees" buzzed overhead, a few dropped into the trench and Pryor who gripped one with his hand swore under his breath. The splinter ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... on which any man may without reproach employ his meditations: the innumerable occupations, among which the thousands that swarm in the streets of London, are distributed, may furnish employment to minds of every cast, and capacities of every degree. He that contemplates the extent of this wonderful city, finds it difficult to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... the milk. It seemed impossible to keep meat sweet. Jimmy lost interest in the gathering of firewood and the carrying of water; and as a result, the waterbutts first shrank, then leaked, and finally lay down, a medley of planks and iron hoops. A swarm of grasshoppers passed through the homestead, and to use Sam's explicit English: "Vegetable bin finissem all about"; and by the time fresh seeds were springing the Wet returned with renewed vigour, and flooded out the garden. Then stores began to ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... fairy, in a bright brick- red gown, were to rise in the midst of the red bricks, and to tap the heap of them with her wand, and say, "Bricks, bricks, to your places!" and then you saw in an instant the whole heap rise in the air, like a swarm of red bees, and—you have been used to see bees make a honeycomb, and to think that strange enough, but now you would see the honeycomb make itself!—You want to ask something, Florrie, by the look ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... which does not permit the healthful and fruitful development of a soul. Take the case of a brilliant young man who leaves the University and dives into the great whirlpool of London. Perhaps he goes to the Bar, and earns money meantime by writing for the Press. The young fellows who swarm in the London centres—that is, the higher centres—are gentlemen, polished in manner and strict as to the code of honour, save perhaps as regards tradesmen's bills; no coarse word or accent escapes them, and there is something attractive about their merry stoicism. But they make ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... one of the great lights of his age was the part he was called upon to perform as a powerful intercessor with barbaric kings. When Attila with his swarm of Mongol conquerors appeared in Italy,—the "scourge of God," as he was called; the instrument of Providence in punishing the degenerate rulers and people of the falling Empire,—Leo was sent by the affrighted emperor to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... Salt-Market. The two latter were formerly the principal business streets, and together with High Street, the abode of the rich merchants and other great people of the town. High Street, and, still more, the Salt-Market, now swarm with the lower orders to a degree which I never witnessed elsewhere; so that it is difficult to make one's way among the sullen and unclean crowd, and not at all pleasant to breathe in the noisomeness of the atmosphere. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was to being skinned. The time consumed was but an hour and the pecuniary swindle trifling. But though the hour was early and there were few habitations in sight, there soon gathered around us a swarm of most importunate beggars—brown, withered old women spinning on distaffs held in the hand (a process I fancied the world had outgrown), and stopping every moment to hold out a dirty claw, with a most disgusting grimace and whine—"For the love ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... ever heard of a half mile charge? And such a melee. Firing and yelling and tooting like ten thousand the main party goes in. What would the first "old man" of the 339th, our beloved Colonel John W. Craig, have said at sight of that confused swarm of soldiers heading straight for the Bolo positions. Lucky for us the Bolo does not hold his fire till we swarm out of the woods. As it is in his panic he blazes away into the woods pointblank with his artillery mounted on the trains and with his machine guns, two of which only are ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... fins, the boys started through the dense growth, Scotty in the lead. It was hard going. Mosquitoes whined in a steady swarm around their heads, but with the neoprene suits and helmets, only their faces and hands were exposed. Each traveled with one hand outstretched to fend off branches, the other hand waving the fins to chase the insects from their faces. The outstretched ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... and passes serenely to hold midnight court with her Australian stars. There and there only in barbarous archipelagos, as yet untrodden by civilized man, the name of Washington is unknown; and there, too, when they swarm with enlightened millions, new honors shall be paid ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... situation and the prospects of their being rescued from it Ben announced that he was going to explore the interior of the island and see if he could find some tree up which it would be possible to swarm and attach a sort of signal or at any rate obtain an extended view ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... cam' owre the tap o' Trine, I met a drove o' Highland swine: Some were black, and some were brawnet, Some o' them was yellow tappit. Sic a drove o' Highland swine Ne'er cam' owre the tap o' Trine. [A swarm of bees.] ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... a world explored in vain, And foes triumphant show but half my pain. Dissembling friends, each early joy who gave, And fired my youth the storms of fate to brave, Swarm'd in the sunshine of my happier days, Pursued the fortune and partook the praise, Now pass my cell with smiles of sour disdain, Insult my woes and ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... much awakening as turning over in its bed. Pallid men rushed by, pinching together their coat-collars; a great swarm of tired, magpie girls from a department-store crowded along with shrieks of strident laughter, three to an umbrella; a squad of marching policemen passed, already miraculously protected by ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... was, in a manner, in possession of the Salsette's crew, parties of whom, in their white summer dresses, might be seen scattered over the plains collecting the tortoises, which swarm on the sides of the rivulets, and are found under every furze-bush."—Travels in Albania, 1858, ii. 116. See, too, for mention of "hundreds of tortoises" falling "from the overhanging branches, and thick underwood," into the waters of the Mender, Travels, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... is a severe local irritant and may even cause local gangrene. It also has a depressing effect upon the central nervous system and destroys the red-blood corpuscles. To produce these general effects it must be introduced in very large quantities, as when an animal is stung by a swarm of bees or wasps. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... of course no. The dust was only from another swarm of those hateful Saracens. I knew it would be so. Pah! it has made my tongue more like old boot leather than ever. Have no more drops been squeezed from the well? It's time the ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fears for Prince Ferrante's health have drawn a swarm of quacks to Pianura, and the influence of the Church is sometimes counteracted by that of the physicians with whom the Duke surrounds himself. The latest of these, the famous Count Heiligenstern, who is said to have performed ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... me, look around you. You have spent your whole life in the woods and fields, and do you learn nothing from what you see in all directions?" he asked, pointing to a swarm of flying pigeons, and to the nesting swallows. "Learn from them; they deal in ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... Hence a swarm of little school books pullulates annually, all upside down and wrong from beginning to end; and hence a worse evil afflicts us, that the English schoolboy starts with a false perspective of any given masterpiece, his pedagogue urging, obtruding lesser ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... let the hornets buzz—and they did swarm and buzz and sting. As long as his wrath lasted he was proof against their assaults—in fact their attacks only confirmed him in his position. It was when all this ceased, for few continued to remonstrate with him after they had heard his final: "I decline to discuss it with you, madame," ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... had no more than time to turn her head when a thick swarm of bees surrounded her, angry because they had caught her stealing their honey and intent on stinging the girl as a punishment. She knew her danger and expected to be badly injured by the multitude of stinging bees, but to her surprise the little creatures were unable to fly close ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... horribly barred like the body of a wasp by the iron grating of the window, and had a fierce sting of heat in it, for it was warm though only May, and I was in a high fever by reason of my wounds. And another thing which served to hale me back to acquaintance with my fixed estate of life was a great swarm of flies which had entered at that same window, and were grievously tormenting me, and I was too weak to disperse them. All my wounds were dressed and bandaged and I was laid comfortably enough upon a pallet, but I was all alone ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... once more turned back to a noble but despised industry. Peace and plenty supplanted war and poverty. "The Benedictines," says Guizot, "have been the great clearers of land in Europe. A colony, a little swarm of monks, settled in places nearly uncultivated, often in the midst of a pagan population—in Germany, for example, or in Brittany; there, at once missionaries and laborers, they accomplish their double service, through peril ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... precious store that they could hardly walk. At first, curiosity made me indiscreet, and they stung me several times, but afterwards, we were so well acquainted, that let me approach as near as I would, they never molested me, though the hives were full and the bees ready to swarm. At these times I have been surrounded, having them on my hands and face without apprehending any danger. All animals are distrustful of man, and with reason, but when once assured he does not mean to injure them, their confidence becomes so great that he must ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... loosely grouped a number of solemnly smiling gentlemen in frock-coats with their top-hats genteelly resting in the hollows of their left arms, and without and beyond the station in the space usually filled by closed and open cabs was a swarm of automobiles. Then while our spirits were keyed to the highest pitch, the Queen of Spain descended from the train, wearing a long black satin cloak and a large black hat, very blond and beautiful beyond the report of her pictures. By each hand she led one ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... by. The strength of all these surrounding leagues with their swarm does not flow through his wrist, as it does through mine. He is more powerless than the mote ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... the green lawn, the picture moved with life. A half-haze, precursive of the twilight, lent scenic softness to the forms of old men puffing their pipes before the doors, a maiden listlessly strolling on the sward, a swarm of children playing near the road, a distant toiler making his way home, bearing his scythe. The visitors went down into the place and Chrysler saw that the artistic shapes and ideal colors were worn with daily use, the men and women, serene-looking, ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... tale to relate all their follies, surrounded as they were by a bountiful nature and a kindly people, and yet soon reduced to abject want. In the party there were brawling soldiers and piratical sailors, with only a few quiet, decent artisans and shop-keepers, but with a swarm of reckless young nobles, who had nothing to recommend them but a long name, and who expected to prove themselves Pizarros in fighting and treasure-getting. Unfortunately, the kind of man who is the backbone of a colony, "the man with the hoe," was ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... to venture upon, even in the most modest and deprecatory way. The man who expresses an opinion, or even a doubt, on this subject, contrary to the ruling traditions, will have a swarm of angry critics buzzing about him. He will be called a heretic, a heathen, a cold-blooded freak of nature. As for the woman who hesitates to subscribe all the thirty-nine articles of romantic love, if such ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... were looking backward and shouting. They beckoned with their arms, and as I gazed I saw between them, and ahead of them a great black object, about which a number of the little workmen were running excitedly like a swarm of ants. I leaped to their position. Chapman exclaimed: 'You remember the meteor we saw. ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... Fifty thousand Chinese immigrants enter the port of Singapore every year, mainly because there is employment for them in the rubber plantations of the Straits Settlements. The congestion of population in China drives them southward to Singapore, and from Singapore they swarm northward to Burma, southward to Java, and ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... Onontio. Behold how the English spread over the land, cut down the forests and drive away all the game! But the children of Onontio hunt with the Indians, marry with their women, leave the forests untouched, and the great hunting grounds swarm with game as before. While Onontio abides at Quebec the lands of the ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... first, when the village had beheld one close. And this stranger told them of the Malays and his life amongst them, and how their houses and customs resembled theirs, while Usoof, alone venturing to remain upright, acted as interpreter as a swarm of young brown relations clasped his hands and ruthlessly robbed him of his watch and chain, his brass buttons, and all the loose coins in his pockets. Then X., who has a material mind, asked to see the title deeds of their lands, which were produced and inspected, and they were instructed ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... before the great charge made by Murat and his cavalry, and it was almost impossible to carry out the Emperor's command because a swarm of Cossacks separated us from the 14th. It was clear that any officer sent towards the unfortunate regiment would be killed or captured before he got there. Nevertheless, an order is an order; and the marshal had ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... once more. You see a grey moving cloud about that pebble bed, and underneath that bank. It is a countless swarm of 'sug,' or water-shrimp; a bad food, but devoured greedily by the great trout in certain ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... well indeed, would be of use. Meantime, the Lion would make her way to Havana, as if nothing was the matter. No doubt all sorts of confounded alguazils and custom-house hounds would be ready to swarm on board in full cry. They would be made very welcome. Any strangers on board? Certainly not. Why should there be?... Rio Medio? What about Rio Medio? Hadn't been within miles and miles of Rio Medio; tried this trip to beat up well clear of the coast. Search the ship? ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... peculiarities of the California mesa. For the vegetation of Lower California makes up in bristliness what it lacks in luxuriance. Bush cactuses, so prickly that it makes one's eyes smart to look at them, and bunch cactuses, in wads of thorns as large as a bushel-basket, swarm everywhere. Before the barefooted Padre had traveled far, so Miss Graham tells us in her charming little paper on the Spanish missions, he had made the acquaintance of many species of cactus. Horses in that country become lame sometimes, and people say that ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... that it is obvious English people do without the word for the delightful reason that they have not got the thing. We have it here very badly; an epidemic raging at the end of nearly every summer, when cottages and farms swarm with soldiers and horses, when all the female part of the population gets engaged to be married and will not work, when all the male part is jealous and wants to fight, and when my house is crowded with individuals so brilliant and decorative in their dazzling uniforms that I wish sometimes I might ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... other imperial properties of the kind, it was an aggregation of buildings irregular in form and style, and more or less ornate and imposing. A garden stretched around it. The founder, wanting private harborage for his galleys and swarm of lesser boats, dug a basin just inside the city wall, and flooded it with pure Marmoran water; then, for ingress and egress at his sovereign will, he slashed the wall, and of the breach made the Port of Julian. [Footnote: Only a shallow depression in the ground, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... closed, and the Empress Eugenie quitted the Tuileries and made her escape with a few attendants to Belgium, whence she sought a refuge in England. Prince Louis Napoleon made his way to Italy, and the swarm of courtiers scattered in all directions; some faithful followers of the deposed monarch seeking the castle of Wilhelmshohe, where the unhappy Louis Napoleon occupied as a prison the same beautiful palace and park in which his uncle Jerome Bonaparte had once passed ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... representative men. I went about that Westphalian country after that, with the conviction that headless, soulless, blood-drinking metal monsters were breeding all about me. I felt that science was producing a poisonous swarm, a nest of black dragons. They were crouching here and away there in France and England, they were crouching like beasts that bide their time, mewed up in forts, kennelled in arsenals, hooded in tarpaulins as hawks are hooded.... And I had never thought very much about them before, and there they ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... assassination—and the stinkingest gets it! Or you could simply load it with some disgusting goo and key it to teen-agers as a group—that'd take care of them. Fay, doesn't it give you a rich warm kick to think of my midget missiles buzzing around in your tunnels, seeking out evil-doers, like a swarm of angry wasps ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... the frog boy didn't have his bean-gun with him, for they had hid it, and they stung him, so much that maybe, they would have stung him to death if it hadn't happened that Dickie and Nellie Chip-Chip, the sparrows, flew along just then. Into the swarm of mosquitoes the birds flew, and they caught hundreds of them in their bills and killed them, and the rest were so frightened that they flew away, and in that manner Bawly ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... were entering the large gate of the outer enclosure. In the village and on the opposite hill the people resembled a swarm of black locusts. The drums ceased. Bakahenzie and Marufa and Yabolo ran straight towards him screeching. ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... course!" exclaimed Schafroff, with a wave of his hand. "Lida has only got to accept, and they'll all swarm round her like bees. As for Sarudine, he'll be delighted to sing; it doesn't matter where, so long as he can sing. This will attract a good many of his brother- officers, and we shall get a ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... threatened Scotland with revolution. The regents' commission became of doubtful legality, and a swarm of claimants for the vacant throne arose, whose resources, if not their rights, were sufficiently evenly balanced to make civil strife inevitable. Since southern Scotland had become a wholly feudal, largely Norman, ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... men rowed slowly, making as little noise as possible until clear of the swarm of canoes and small craft that hung about in the bay. Then they went to work with a will. The oars creaked and groaned; the vessel rolled to the ocean swell. The officers awoke in their cabins only to find themselves trapped. Dawn found the galley ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... without doubt, of all large cities, the easiest to get about in. Lines of omnibuses cross and recross its surface in every direction, and, better still, the streets swarm with cabs, in which for the small sum of thirty cents one can pass at will from any given point to any other far distant one within its limits. There are carriage-stands on every side and in every principal street, and unoccupied vehicles ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... noise of which smote sharply upon the ear, like the crack of a pistol in an alley. It was a novel sight to watch them in their play, or labor, rather; for they were feeding upon the caplin, pretty little fishes that swarm along these shores at this particular season. We could track them beneath the surface about as well as upon it. In the sunshine, and in contrast with the fog, the sea was a very dark blue or deep purple. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to which these appliances appeal are such as are most active and dangerous in youth. They offer the freedom and license which youth loves. They throw off the shackles which youth hates. Our cities and villages swarm with traps set expressly for them. Thousands are freely expended to invest the bar room and the gambling hall with the cozy attractions of the parlor. The harlot's palace opens wide its doors. The public ball room displays its fascinations. Dissipation draws round itself the attractions ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... I might have known it by the whispering, shuffling, coughing, buzzing through all the notes of the gamut. It was a true swarm of bees, leaving the old hive. Gottlieb has lighted fresh candles for me, and placed a bottle of Burgundy on the piano-forte. I can play no more, I am perfectly exhausted. My glorious old friend here on the music-stand ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Gregorovitch, or is there also no understanding? Am I the mother of your four children or not? I would like to ask. I suppose you cannot deny that, whatever else you deny which is true, and you tell me to choose my language! Da, I will choose my language, in truth! Da, I will choose out such a swarm of words as ought to sting your ears like hornets, if you had not such a leathery skin and such a soft brain inside it. But why should I? It is thrown away. There is no shame in you. You see nothing, you care for nothing, you ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... substance is liable to so rapid a spontaneous decomposition as mushrooms. In a few days after the fungus has been removed from the dung-bed on which it grows, it becomes the habitation of myriads of insects; and, if even the saleable mushroom be attentively examined, it will frequently be found to swarm with life. ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... wish I were going too!" cried Milly. "What lovely fun it would be! Imagine having a gymnasium, and climbing poles, and walking on planks. Muriel told me all about it when she was over here. She said she learnt to swarm up a rope like sailors do. And there's a swimming bath, and hockey, and cricket, and tennis. You can't think how I envy you, Patty. You're the luckiest girl in the world. It will seem so slow to stay on at Miss Dawson's. I shan't like it ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... for the Mare d'Auteuil I longed the most; that was the loadstar, the very pole of my home-sick desires; always thither the wings of my hopeless fancy bore me first of all; it was, oh! to tread that sunlit grassy brink once more, and to watch the merry tadpoles swarm, and the green frog takes its header like a little man, and the water-rat swim to his hole among the roots of the willow, and the horse-leech thread his undulating way between the water-lily stems; and to dream fondly of the delightful, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... shawl, and tiptoed out. Annina, her bosom friend, had no troubles. She was half undressed, but she too slipped a shawl over her head and went peering into the alley. There she met Ippolita, and joined hands. Flaring torches, a swarm of eager black heads, whispers, grunting, the archers' plumed helmets—"Madonna! What's all this?" cried the two girls together in a stew of curiosity. A dead Jew? A murdered Jew? O Gesu! They borrowed a quattrino apiece from a neighbour and were richly rewarded. Ah, the blood, the staring, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... explicit. Somebody in the swarm that overwhelmed the Narrow Gauge train the previous night had crept back to town after midnight and started the story that young Breifogle had been slugged by the gang. By early morning it got to the father's ears. With the sheriff and some friends he had driven down in ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... The kind of common people I mean are not only to be found low down in the social scale; they crawl and swarm all around us—even in the highest social positions. You have only to look at your own fine, distinguished Mayor! My brother Peter is every bit as plebeian as anyone that walks in two shoes— (laughter ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... though he could not see it; and the moment he did feel it, he caught hold of it. Starting up, he swung it about for joy, and made the little silver bell of it tingle, then set it upon his head, and—O wonderful to relate!—that instant he saw the countless and merry swarm of the ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... the sharp processes over their entire surface, the pollen grains, which readily cling to the hairs of insects, are transported to the two-branched, hairy stigma of an older floret. But even should insects not visit the flower (and in fine weather they swarm about it), it is marvelously adapted to fertilize itself. Farmers may well despair of exterminating a plant so perfectly equipped in every part; ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... disappeared in a body, about a week previous to my visit, adding, "You don't know what a lovely spectacle it is to witness the evolutions of these birds on a summer evening, when they are teaching their young ones to fly. They swarm around the building like bees, and their music is ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... sunny day. No sooner had I entered the auditorium than I felt my personality entirely disappear amid the swarm of light-hearted youths who were seething tumultuously through every doorway and corridor under the influence of the sunlight pouring through the great windows. I found the sense of being a member of this huge community very pleasing, yet there were few among the throng whom I knew, ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... conversation we are always using that phrase, and seldom or never noticing how large a significance it bears. It stands for a curious and interesting fact, to wit: that sleeping or waking, dreaming or talking, the thoughts which swarm through our heads are almost constantly, almost continuously, accompanied by a like swarm of reminders of incidents and episodes of our past. A man can never know what a large traffic this commerce of association carries on in our minds ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... dancing naked in barns; the people of one county could not understand the speech of the inhabitants of the next county; "the disputes about tithes and boundaries were usually settled by bands of armed men, and the records of the Star-Chamber swarm with such cases." Education was at a low ebb. "In one year, 1570 (Bacon was then nine years of age), the scholars of Trinity College, Cambridge, consumed 2,250 barrels of beer." Many of the graduates became beggars; and so extensive was this evil that Parliament, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... think it a thousand years till they could give up their chairs to you. Yes, yes; it is chiefly religious scruple, and partly also the authority of a great classic,—Juvenal, is it not? He, I gather, had his bile as much stirred by the swarm of Greeks as our Messer Angelo, who is fond of quoting some passage about their ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... to get away. Driscoll glanced up the street whence the two had come. At the next corner, before a cafe, he saw things more promising. A ranchero with a drawn revolver was holding off a young officer in sky-blue uniform, while around them a swarm of natives and ten or eleven sailors were circling uneasily, as if waiting for some sign to begin hostilities. The joy of battle dilated ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... fell on an object lying on the rock beside him; he thought it moved. It was a small dog, apparently in the last agony of death from thirst. Its tongue was out, its jaws dry, its limbs extended lifelessly, and a swarm of black ants were crawling about its lips and throat. Its eye moved to the bottle which Hans held in his hand. He raised it, drank, spurned the animal with his foot, and passed on. And he did not know how it was, ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... by any sunset light The gray day darkened into night, A night made hoary with the swarm And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, As zigzag wavering to and fro Crossed and recrossed the winged snow: And ere the early bed-time came The white drift piled the window-frame, And through the glass the clothes-line posts Looked in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... men to keep up a constant discharge of arrows whenever they obtained a glimpse of the savages, and he himself headed a sally and drove them back to the woods. But as soon as he and his men had returned to the fortress, out came the savages again like a swarm of bees, and continued their ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... moment his world had held only half a dozen human beings. Now, so suddenly that he had no flash of warning, he saw a hundred of them, two hundred, three hundred. At sight of Durant and the cage a swarm of them began running down to the shore. And everywhere there were wolves, so many of them that his senses grew dazed as he stared. His cage was the centre of a clamouring, gesticulating horde of men and boys ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... I believe the bear always indulges whenever he can, no matter in what clime he be found, and that is a love for sweets, especially honey. He will dare the sharp bayonets of the most angry swarm of bees or climb the worst tree, if he feels at all certain that there will be honey after his pains. In some countries, he damages a great many telephone and telegraph poles and wires by climbing the poles in search of that ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... distance on the same seat twirling his thumbs with an apparently decided purpose. Once or twice he drew his scented handkerchief from his side pocket with an artful flourish and frightened the troublesome swarm away from his parent's sleeping form, but seeing their undaunted determination to restore themselves almost immediately, he respectfully stowed the scented article away with a final flourish and re-applied himself to the interrupted pleasure or ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... to the door of the Gunroom, and James, opening it, motioned his guest to enter. One end of the table resembled a bee swarm: a babel of voices sounded as those nearest the pile of letters shouted the names of the addressees and tossed the missives back over ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... the big plane dived into the wide white wall of falling water, the air behind it seemed to swarm ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... "cattle." Though these are often used without discrimination, still at various places the Scripture employs them discriminatingly; for instance, when it says, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures." Gen 1, 24. "Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures." Gen 1, 20. In those places the words of the genus stand for all living beings on the earth and in the waters. Here the constituent species are named—chayah, remes, and ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... you?" said Nora. "There'll be two people to decide that point." She was in a blind fury now, and, before Kitty could say another word, began to swarm up the tree. She managed to catch the branch where Kitty had planted herself, and in another instant would have caught hold of the little girl's dress; but Kitty and Boris could both climb like monkeys, and it did not take the little girl an instant to swing herself on to a higher ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... hailstones have been falling swarm on swarm, Or blasts the green field and the trees distress'd, Oft have I seen it muffled up from harm, In close self-shelter, like a ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... cut off their ears, &c.; they speak of these things with the utmost sang froid, not seeming to think it possible, that any one will esteem them at all the less because of these outrages upon their slaves; further, these advertisements swarm in many of the largest and most widely circulated political and commercial papers that are published in the slave states. The editors of those papers constitute the main body of the literati of the slave states; they ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... short time ago, everything bore the aspect of winter. But this almost sudden and pleasing change has brought an unceasing torment: night and day we are perpetually persecuted with the mosquitoes, that swarm around us, and afford no rest but in the annoying respiration of a smoky room. They hover in clouds about the domestic cattle, and drive them (almost irritated to madness) to the smoke of fires lighted with tufts of grass for ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... he had underestimated his worshippers. He had thought at first that the helmets were meant merely for ornament and decoration. He learned better one day when a swarm of creatures like flying lizards swept down out of a group of trees in a fierce attack. He had not known that such creatures existed here, and now that he saw them, he realized how fortunate it was that they were not more numerous. They had sharp teeth and sharper claws, ...
— Divinity • William Morrison
... girls in prints and cottons (or cheap "alpaca," etc.), and a bright bit of ribbon here and there amongst the girls. The white heat blazed everywhere, and "dazzled" across light-coloured surfaces—dead white trees, fence-posts, and sand-heaps, like an endless swarm of bees passing in the sun's glare. And over above the dry boxscrub-covered ridges, the great Granite Peak, glaring like a ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... rushed like a monster o'er cottage and farm, Striking their inmates with sudden alarm; And they ran out like bees in a midsummer swarm. There were dames with their kerchiefs tied over their caps, To see if their poultry were free from mishaps; The turkeys they gobbled, the geese screamed aloud, And the hens crept to roost in a terrified crowd; There was raising of ladders, and logs laying on, Where the thatch ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... of microbe killing, surgical instruments were dipped in carbolic oil, which was a great improvement on not dipping them in anything at all and simply using them dirty; but as microbes are so fond of carbolic oil that they swarm in it, it was not a success from the anti-microbe point of view. Formalin was squirted into the circulation of consumptives until it was discovered that formalin nourishes the tubercle bacillus handsomely and kills men. The popular theory of disease is the common medical ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... into a line of sister ships, and had gone into action in midair against a veritable swarm of foes. Winged centipedes they were—centipedes fully six feet long, hurling themselves along the ground and through the air in furious hordes. From the flying globes emanated pale beams of force, at the touch of which the Sedlor disappeared in puffs of vapor. Upon the ground ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... would put that in his pocket," he said to himself, contemptuously. Then conscious of a new swarm of ideas assailing him, of new dangers, and a new wariness, he returned to the gallery, pacing it till the police appeared. They came in force, within the hour, accompanied ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... In his arms he took Kathleen, an' stepped to the door; And he leaped on his horse, and flung her before; An' they all were so bother'd, that not a man stirred Till the galloping hoofs on the pavement were heard. Then up they all started, like bees in the swarm, An' they riz a great shout, like the burst of a storm, An' they roared, and they ran, and they shouted galore; But Kathleen and Phaudhrig they never ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... greaser stepped out into the road and sent his Minie-ball singing several yards above us, then darted back quickly, before any of us could have him. We waited a moment to see others, but they seemed to be satisfied;—and we were satisfied,—with prospect of a swarm bursting out on us from the town; so, sinking spurs into our weary animals, we made good pace back to the camp,—not without an alarm that a troop of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... seem to have found out the secret of perpetual motion, if we may judge from the experience of the first night we spent in the town. At half past nine, the principal street, which our hotel overlooked, began to swarm with heads. The whole population were on the alert, promenading during the greater part of the night; and such a busy hum arose from beneath the windows, which the heat obliged us to keep open, that it was impossible even to think of sleeping ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... smiled Juan hurrying off towards the store and the Mexicans began to swarm to and fro. Some reward, they knew, was to be given to Juan to compensate him for the loss of his gold. His gold and his labor and all the unpaid debt that was owing to him and his son and the rest. The streets began to clatter with flying hoofs ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... of manzy," replied Tommy, woefully, for he was ashamed of himself, "but—but a manse's a swarm. It would mean that the folk in the kirk were buzzing thegither like bees, instead ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... on November Eve a bogie sits on every stile.[577] On that night in Ireland all the fairy hills are thrown wide open and the fairies swarm forth; any man who is bold enough may then peep into the open green hills and see the treasures hidden in them. Worse than that, the cave of Cruachan in Connaught, known as "the Hell-gate of Ireland," is unbarred on Samhain Eve or Hallowe'en, and a host of horrible fiends and goblins ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... fording a certain river, found his body covered all over by a swarm of small leeches, busily sucking his blood. His first impulse was to tear the tormentors from his flesh: but his servant warned him that to pull them off by mechanical violence would expose his life to danger. They must not be torn off, lest ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... in consideration of a sum of money, all the lands possessed by them south of the Ohio. Land offices would soon be opened for the sale of them. Squatters and speculators were already preparing to swarm in, set up their marks on the choicest spots, and establish what were called preemption rights. Washington determined at once to visit the lands thus ceded, affix his mark on such tracts as he should select, and apply for a grant from ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... these seats of theirs the Boii were dispossessed by the Marcomani and other Germanic tribes even before the time of Posidonius, consequently before 650; detached portions of them in Caesar's time roamed about in Carinthia (B. G. i. 5), and came thence to the Helvetii and into western Gaul; another swarm found new settlements on the Plattensee, where it was annihilated by the Getae; but the district—the "Boian desert," as it was called—preserved the name of this the most harassed of all the Celtic peoples (III. VII. Colonizing of The Region ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... been the custom, from the earliest ages, to rub the inside of the hive with a handful of salt and clover, or some other grass or sweet-scented herb, previously to the swarm's being put in the hive. We have seen no advantage in this; on the contrary, it gives a great deal of unnecessary labour to the bees, as they will be compelled to remove every particle of foreign matter from the hive before they begin to work. A clean, cool hive, free from any ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... he sat, one on each side of the table, in the little sitting-room. The heat was insupportable and all three doors and the window were propped open, in the feeble hope of creating a draught. The lamp had attracted a swarm of flying things: giant moths beat their wings against the globe, or fell singed and sizzling down the chimney; winged-ants alighted with a click upon the table; blowflies and mosquitoes kept up ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... seeing and feeling this boat, with all its light and life, speeding, twinkling on and on through the night like a swarm of stars, the thought came—and I was wishing I could ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... and get the money, and later prove that his father or brother is the real owner, and that relation will do the same, and you will pay several times for the same land. In the Paumotus, where the missionaries are like a swarm of gnats, this ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... it supposed that we will yield to foreign intervention without a struggle? No, the North will rise up as one man, and thousands even from the South will join them. The country will become a camp, and the ocean will swarm with our privateers. Rather than submit to dismemberment or secession, which is anarchy and ruin, we will, we must fight, until the last man has fallen. The Almighty can never prosper such a war upon us. If the views of a foreign power have been truly represented in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... push and darted away. He followed laughing, admonishing her against another thorn. But she deigned no answer. Coming to the bee-hives, she stopped a moment to watch the busy swarm, and Dick stole up beside her. She turned pettishly, and he ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time." Stand aghast, O Earth! Tremble, ye people, but be not deceived. The huge specter of evil confronts us, as the prophet declared. Satan is loosed. From the depth of Tartarus, myriads of demons swarm over the land. The prince of darkness manifests himself as never before, and, stealing a word from the vocabulary of Heaven to designate his work, he ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... among the Invertebrata that we find this collateral testimony to the influence of the glacial period. In this respect we may note that two small crustaceans, Diaptomus bacillifer and D. denticornis, swarm in the ice-cold waters of the highest alpine tarns throughout the entire chain; and the former of these is also a characteristic inhabitant of pools formed from melting snow in the extreme north. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Dublins, took no backward step, but continued to steadily load and fire until help came from the awakened camp. There followed a savage conflict at point blank-range. The mounted infantry men, rushing half clad to the support of their comrades, were confronted by an ever-thickening swarm of Boer riflemen, who had already, by working round on the flank, established their favourite cross fire. Legge, the leader of the mounted infantry, a hard little Egyptian veteran, was shot through the head, and his ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... about the hull by a swarm of natives. They had reached halfway up the ship, which served as a central column. Much of the exterior appeared to be a network of strangely curved sections of wood that had been given a high ...
— A Transmutation of Muddles • Horace Brown Fyfe
... decomposing body. However, it was too late and we were too weary either to hunt up smells or to seek another lodging place. So after a hasty supper out of our tinned food, we put up our cots and went to bed, Mr. Chalfant making a few pleasant remarks about the bedbugs that always swarm in such a building, the centipedes that sometimes crawl into the ears or nostrils of sleepers and the scorpions that occasionally fall from the millet-stalk ceiling on to the bed or scuttle across the floor to bite ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... came a couple of bears. These animals, as you have been told, are great honey thieves, but they always had hard work to find where the timid bees had cunningly hid it away, and now they could hardly believe that right here before them was a great swarm of bees filling the air with their buzzing as they flew in and ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... Low on his funeral couch he lies! No pitying heart, no eye, afford A tear to grace his obsequies. Is the sable warrior fled? Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead. The swarm that in thy noon-tide beam were born? —Gone to salute the rising morn. Fair laughs the Morn, and soft the zephyr blows, While proudly riding o'er the azure realm In gallant trim the gilded Vessel goes: Youth on the prow, and ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... number of scaling ladders, with stout ropes and hooks. The first who got up with the ladders were to fix on the hooks, so that the others might swarm up, and we might ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... and Neddie Benson shrank back against the taffrail as a multitude of moving brown figures seemed to swarm about us. Then I saw Roger leap forward, his arms high ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... by contact with foreigners who swarm in our cities, we learn what will be our best defence in war. Who can tell with what nation we may be next at war? Therefore, to be on the safe side, make such preparations as our future enemies, whosoever they may be, will dislike to hear of. Accordingly you are to order ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... legislative cattle the last month have been most arduous. The people of Albany look on the Legislature as a pestilence to which they must yearly submit, and they welcome its departure as a farmer does the going of a swarm ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... the river-shore, and a swarm of dark forms now threw themselves into the stream. But the long-boat from the frigate came toward us rapidly; I saw white English faces and heard shouts of encouragement in ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... creatures in the air or on the land, or swimming on the waters, I must say that I should be inclined to seek for the source of sounds so audible as those you describe rather among the pulmonated vertebrata, which swarm in the depths of these seas—as fishes, serpents (of which my friend Dr. Cantor has described about twelve species he found in the Bay of Bengal), turtles, palmated birds, pinnipedous and ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... a signal blinked. He opened the circuit and the face of his admiral looked out. "We've received indications of a swarm of small ships, magnificence," the man reported. "High speed and piloted. It ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey |
