"Wasp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... definitely and satisfactorily describe by one single trait—except man. Men are not all cowards like the rabbit, nor all brave like the house-fly, nor all sweet and innocent and gentle like the lamb, nor all murderous like the spider and the tiger and the wasp, nor all thieves like the fox and the bluejay, nor all vain like the peacock, nor all frisky like the monkey. These things are all in him somewhere, and they develop according to the proportion of each he received in ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Somerville to his friend, who sat beside him, "it strikes me that we are to have no breakfast at all to-day. Here have I been holding my breath and tightening my belt, until I feel much more like a spider or a wasp ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... advised by a rustic on the bank (whose sympathetic grins upset my chum almost as much as the wasps) to try some clay from the canal-side as a remedy. We were sceptical at first, but were subsequently astonished at the soothing effects of this novel panacea for wasp-stings. Here is a wrinkle for any of my readers who should happen to get stung by the ...
— Through Canal-Land in a Canadian Canoe • Vincent Hughes
... all this was uttered or heard. But that inward murmur filled the soul far better than words, that curtain of foliage which masks our thought. Pierre allowed himself to be cradled by this humming. Such the song of a golden wasp that floats through the chiaroscuro of one's thought. His days became numb things in this new languor. That solitary and naked heart dreamed of the warmth of ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... twenty feet away, stood a caribou, pointing his ears at the children whom he had almost stumbled over as he ran, thinking only of the wolves behind. The long bow sprang back of itself; an arrow buzzed like a wasp and buried itself deep in the white chest. Like a flash a second arrow followed as the stag turned away, and with a jump or two he sank to his knees, as if to rest awhile in ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... Tale (IV. iv. 760 et seq.) Autolycus threatens that the clown's son 'shall be flayed alive; then 'nointed over with honey, set on the head of a wasp's nest,' &c. In Boccaccio's story the villain Ambrogiuolo (Shakespeare's Iachimo), after 'being bounden to the stake and anointed with honey,' was 'to his exceeding torment not only slain but devoured ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... information. She brought out a piece of paper as she spoke, and passed it on to her friend behind the cover of her open desk. It was a fragment of one of Maysie's zoological drawing-sheets, evidently picked up out of the waste-paper basket—a wasp with wings outspread, showing the three divisions of an insect's body. The head was roughly altered so as to form a caricature of a human face, and above was printed, in letters that might have done credit to Maysie herself: "Miss E. in a tantrum," and ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... those animals or make his own intelligible to them. He has no natural power at all over many other creatures. Who, for instance, ever succeeded in frowning away a mosquito, or in pacifying an angry wasp by a smile? ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... intrusion of reasoned act." No doubt; but in the case of the terns—sea-frequenting and sea-loving—which had not the wit to lay their eggs beyond the reach of spring tides, the reasoning is the merest intrusion. Yet an instance of what seems to be the reasoned act of a wasp may be cited. The insect had selected a dead log of soft wood as a site for its egg-shaft. It was at a spot to which the occupations of the season took me daily, so that the boring operations were watched from beginning to end. The work was done rapidly ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... towel. The assistant took it mechanically. The young lady did not wait to give further orders. She rushed out of the room and shut the door. Brown was alone with the wasps, and they were lively company. When, at last, the battle was over, the last wasp was dead, the nest was a crumpled gray heap over in the corner, and the assistant's brow was ornamented with four red and smarting punctures, which promised to shortly become picturesque and painful lumps. Rubbing these absently with one hand, ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... infinite variety, certain animals have a singularly close resemblance to certain others, though they be quite distinct in kind. It is a problem which perplexes us still, when we are astonished and even deluded by the likeness between a wasp and a hover-fly, a merlin and a cuckoo. In certain extreme cases we call it 'mimicry', and invoke hypotheses to account for this 'mimetic' resemblance; and those of us who reject these hypotheses must fain take refuge ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... inquiring wasp came whizzing near, and Billy ducked suddenly to avoid it. "Now I've lost that, and I've got to begin again. Billy, you haven't any string in your pocket, have you? Then I could tie up your hair in bunches when I get to one hundred, and count the ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... garlic and oil, The chances are ten against one, I must own, He gets up as ill-temper'd as when he sat down. And if any reader this fact to dispute is Disposed, I say... "Allium edat cicutis Nocentius!" Over the fruit and the wine Undisturb'd the wasp settled. The evening was fine. Lord Alfred his chair by the window had set, And languidly lighted his small cigarette. The window was open. The warm air without Waved the flame of the candles. The moths were about. In ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... Instances of these names are Dhana (a leaf of the rice plant), Kasia (bell-metal), Gohia (a kind of lizard), Bachhulia (a calf), Gujaria (a milkmaid), Moria (a peacock), Laraiya (a jackal), Khatkira (a bug), Sugaria (a pig), Barraiya (a wasp), Neora (a mongoose), Bhartu Chiraiya (a sparrow), and so on. Thirty-nine names in all are reported. Members of each sept draw the figure of the animal or plant after which it is named on the wall at ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... The Unknown Song She dotes For These March the Third The New House March The Cuckoo Over the Hills Home The Hollow Wood Wind and Mist The Unknown Bird The Lofty Sky After Rain Digging But these things also April The Barn The Barn and the Down The Child on the Cliffs Good-night The Wasp Trap July A Tale Parting Lovers That Girl's Clear Eyes The Child in the Orchard The Source The Mountain Chapel First known when lost The Word These things that Poets said Home Aspens An Old Song There was a Time Ambition No one cares less than I Roads This is no case of petty Right or ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... not earned for themselves a reputation for good-nature or thrift. They have never learned to store up honey, and every winter many of them freeze to death in their elegant paper houses. It is considered wise not to handle a wasp, lest his feelings, which are easily ruffled, get the better of him. But there is room to admire his good looks, his skill in house-building, and his sturdy ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... got their range in return, and many of their shells pitched just in front of my own guns with a whiz and a dust which did us no harm. A little 1-pounder Maxim annoyed us greatly with its cross fire, like a buzzing wasp; it was fired from some trees in Colenso village, and enfiladed our Infantry in the supporting line, which was in extended order; but it did not do much damage so far as I could see, although it was cleverly shifted about and seemed to ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... thing that spoils it, as the colonel said," added Bob, "is the inability of a wasp to distinguish between a friend and a foe. If they could ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... Devotion have not escaped the lash of wanton criticism. They have excited the pious horror of some modern Pharisees because they contain a table of sins for the use of those preparing for confession. The same flower that furnishes honey to the bee supplies poison to the wasp; and, in like manner, the same book that gives only the honey of consolation to the devout reader has nothing but moral poison for those that search its pages ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... Shalt thunder to the ages evermore That dreams and hopes are holy. Thou shalt still The croaking voice of souls that shake at dawn, Loving the dimness of their own decay,— The lone desire, entreaty and despair, The wasting weariness that breeds disgust, All woes but Doubt that, wasp-like, stings Hope back, There are ye justified. And never Time Goldening this page can slip its moral too: And never Thought, loving this sweet success, But still shall love its own wild dreams the more. And still shall brighter ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... as distinguished from normal evil, just as the venom of rabies or cholera differs from that of a wasp or a viper. The life of the insect and serpent deserves, or at least permits, our thoughts; not so, the stages of agony in the fury-driven hound. There is some excuse, indeed, for the pathologic labour of the modern novelist in the fact that he cannot ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... refer to the map they will see, outside the north-west corner of the mainland of Ireland, Tory Island. It was on Tory Island that 'The Wasp' and her gallant captain were lost, without hope of rescue, for want of cable communication; and Tory Island itself has excited the interest of the philanthropist on many occasions. On Tory Island there is a lighthouse, with ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... reason leads us to admire with enthusiasm a multitude of inimitable contrivances in Nature, this same reason tells us, though we may easily err on both sides, that some contrivances are less perfect. Can we consider the sting of the wasp or of the bee as perfect, which, when used against many attacking animals, cannot be withdrawn, owing to the backward serratures, and so inevitably causes the death of the insect by tearing out ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... "splosh!" on the gravel path beneath. It was interesting to watch that, and it happened so often, that it was hard to imagine a windsor pear without a great gash where the sharp stones had cut into it; it was also natural to expect when you picked it up that there would be a cunning yellow wasp hidden somewhere about it, for all the little Hawthorns had always found it so except the baby, and she was too small to have any experience. Five little Hawthorns, without counting the baby, had looked out of the nursery window and watched the pear-tree blossom, and the sparrows build their nests, ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... shun regard >From painter, player, sportsman, bard, Wasp, blue-bottle, or butterfly, Insects that swim in ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this their favourite autumn food. Others that have fallen and been knocked out of the cup are a light yellow at the base and green towards the middle and the point; the yellow part is that which has been covered by the cup. In the sward there is a small hole from out of which creeps a wasp at intervals; it is a nest, and some few of them are still at work. But their motions are slow and lack vivacity; before long, numbers must die, and already many have succumbed after crawling miserably on the ground which they ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... wonderful that the Spanish authorities in Chili or Peru should regard Port Jackson as a kind of wasp's nest, and should look with suspicion on any vessel coming thence which might fall into their hands, however much her commander might endeavour to make of his official certificate declaring the Governor's "full belief" in his lawful intentions. The irritation caused by the use that was being ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... The Hang-nest and the Oriole became one. The unknown poisonous-looking blue Hornet, that sat on the mud with palpitating body, and the strange, invisible thing that made the mud-nests inside old outbuildings and crammed them with crippled Spiders, were both identified as the Mud-wasp ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... 'em out some way or other," he said. "As I said before, the cannon balls make a big fuss, but they don't come so often an' they come at random. It's the little bullets that have the sting of the wasp, an' when a man looks down the sights, draws a bead on you, an' sends one of them lead pellets at you, he gen'rally gets you. Ned, we've got to drive them fellers out of there some way ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a capital watch. One day an Italian with his organ came—first begging, then demanding money—showing that he knew she was alone, and that he meant to help himself, if she didn't. She threatened to "lowse the dowg;" but as this was Greek to him, he pushed on. She had just time to set Wasp at him. It was very short work. She had him by the throat, pulled him and his organ down with a heavy crash, the organ giving a ludicrous sort of cry of musical pain. Wasp thinking this was from some creature within, possibly a whittret, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... degrees 40' S., longitude 69 degrees 6' E. Passing in here, good anchorage may be found under the shelter of several small islands, which form a sufficient protection from all easterly winds. Proceeding on eastwardly from this anchorage you come to Wasp Bay, at the head of the harbour. This is a small basin, completely landlocked, into which you can go with four fathoms, and find anchorage in from ten to three, hard clay bottom. A ship might lie here with her best bower ahead all the year round without risk. To the westward, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... his cell, And the ground mole sinks his well How the robin feeds her young, How the oriole's nest is hung; Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow, Where the groundnut trails its vine, Where the wood grape's clusters shine; Of the black wasp's cunning way, Mason of his walls of clay, And the architectural plans Of gray hornet artisans!— For, eschewing books and tasks, Nature answers all he asks; Hand in hand with her he walks, Face to face with her he talks, Part and parcel of ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... be no more troubled than he would have been by the buzzing of a wasp. "Then you had better change your mind speedily," he answered, in an even voice, "lest being crossed in a ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... was a South Carolinian, and won renown by a remarkable cruise in the Wasp. The Wasp was a stout and speedy sloop, carrying twenty-two guns and a crew of one hundred and seventy men, and in 1814 she sailed from the United States, and headed for the English Channel, to carry the war into the enemy's country, after the fashion of Paul Jones. ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... densely hairy like the bee, and the legs are tufted in a manner most unusual in the order Coleoptera. Another Longicorn, Odontocera odyneroides, has the abdomen banded with yellow, and constricted at the base, and is altogether so exactly like a small common wasp of the genus Odynerus, that Mr. Bates informs us he was afraid to take it out of his net with his fingers for fear of being stung. Had Mr. Bates's taste for insects been less omnivorous than it was, the beetle's disguise might have saved it from his pin, as it had no doubt often done from the beak ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... resting on an altar (?), their heads, oddly enough, combined into one. The column which figures in the relief above the gate is absent from the gem, but is found on another specimen from Mycenae, where the animals, however, are winged griffins. Fig. 41 has only a standing man, of the wasp-waisted figure and wearing the girdle with which other representations have now made ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... next instant formed the contents of Nathaniel's open mouth, leaving, however, a liberal surplusage to ornament his cheeks, chin, and nose. The recipient of this bulletin choked, spluttered, and pawed at his face after the manner of a cat who has tried to eat a wasp. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... "It's a maribundi wasp," she told him "And its sting.... Children have died of it. A strong man will be ill for days from one ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... "Talk to me of a wasp's nest! Bosekop! You shall hear of me there enough to satisfy your appetite for news. Bosekop! In the days when my race ruled the land, such people as they that dwell there would have been put to sharpen my sword on the grindstone, or ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... once, at the end of the street, the officer came in sight, his tall figure, like a wasp in uniform, silhouetted against the dazzling background of snow, and walking with his knees well apart, with that movement peculiar to the military when endeavoring to save their carefully polished boots ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... old man of St. Bees, Who was stung in the arm by a wasp: When they asked, "Does it hurt?" He replied, "No it doesn't, But I thought all the while 'twas ...
— The Best Nonsense Verses • Various
... my heart. I should have cried out to them to spare a plank at least out of that cheerful storeroom, in whose hot window-seat I used to sit and read Cowley, with the grass-plat before, and the hum and flappings of that one solitary wasp that ever haunted it about me—it is in mine ears now, as oft as ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... and something else happened. What it was I'll tell you right soon, when, in case a little boy named Willie doesn't crawl up in my lap when I'm writing and pull my ears, as the conductor does the trolley car bell-rope, the story will be about Uncle Wiggily and the wasp. ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Travels • Howard R. Garis
... don't doubt the ole woman'd git well ef you never gin her the light of your cheerful count'nance. She'd git well fer spite, and hire a calomel-doctor jist to make you mad. I'd jest as soon and a little sooner expect a female wasp to die of ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... when the various kinds of animals dwelt together in a kind of community, a dalag (a kind of mud-fish), a dragonfly, a wasp, and a snail agreed to live together in a common house. They furthermore agreed to divide up the different household duties according to their power and skill. Accordingly, Dalag, since he was the biggest and strongest of all, was made the head of the house. He was also to provide food ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... at such a cause, threw his match-stick at the captain, with such force that the iron point stuck in the door of the round-house. This, in a youth not seventeen, urged well for the pugnacity of the man. At the end of this cruise, he volunteered on board the schooner Wasp, in which he soon had a brush with the Roebuck and another frigate, and with the aid of some galleys in which he had a command, the enemy was forced to retreat, with more loss than honor. Barney for his good conduct in this affair, was appointed to the command of the ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... effect of sorrow devoutly borne, in bringing God closer to us, belongs to it, whether it be great or small; whether it be, according to the metaphor of an earlier portion of this psalm, 'a lion or an adder'; or whether it be a buzzing wasp or a mosquito. As long as anything troubles me, I may make it a means of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... "Coward," muttered the little wasp, "you are afraid, sir;" and the other boys abetting the mischief-maker, the lad was goaded to leave his hold of the cable, and strike out for the buoy. He reached it, and then turned, and pulled towards the ship again, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... of it we said to anybody before Felix was gone, or else somebody 'ud ha' been safe to ha' tould him, for there's plinty of people couldn't be goin' about widout tellin' everythin' they hear any more than a wasp could fly widout buzzin' its wings. And then we got the docther to her, but he couldn't do e'er a hand's turn. Sure what could anybody do agin the lightnin', that's a sort of miracle, you may say, unless it was wid ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... victory were immediately felt: New England shared in it; British naval prestige had received a damaging blow; and the Navy Department could no longer hope to keep the navy at home for police duty. Meantime the sloop-of-war "Wasp" had captured the British brig "Frolic" of equal force; and Decatur, in the frigate "United States", on October 25 took the British frigate "Macedonian". A few weeks later the frigate "Constitution" captured ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... broad and carried himself well, and his hair and beard may have gone rather too long without the application of the shears. Eva Burns was almost as tall. She was a brunette, suggesting in her face and figure, which bore no resemblance to the wasp-like figures of the American women, a race and type more in accordance with the ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... upper room of the palace tower was my lonely hermit cell, my only companions being a nest of wasps. In the unrelieved darkness of the night I slept there alone. Sometimes a wasp or two would drop off the nest on to my bed, and if perchance I happened to roll on one, the meeting was unpleasing to the wasp and keenly ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... be made up in equal parts of rock garden, chicken coops, and whiskey advertisements. The station-master, who appeared also to act as emergency porter, took Yeovil's ticket with the gesture of a kind-hearted person brushing away a troublesome wasp, and returned to a study of the Poultry Chronicle, which was giving its readers sage counsel concerning the ailments of belated July chickens. Yeovil called to mind the station-master of a tiny railway town in Siberia, who had held ...
— When William Came • Saki
... nevertheless, I was astonished to find them using a private scandal against me. They did. I think Handitch had filled up the measure of their bitterness, for I had not only abandoned them, but I was succeeding beyond even their power of misrepresentation. Always I had been a wasp in their spider's web, difficult to claim as a tool, uncritical, antagonistic. I admired their work and devotion enormously, but I had never concealed my contempt for a certain childish vanity they displayed, and for the frequent puerility of their ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... that moment, I think of waspish, and, better still, avispada—literally the same word in Spanish, not having precisely the same meaning nor ever applied contemptuously—only to reject both after a moment's reflection. Yet I go back to the image of an irritated wasp as perhaps offering the best illustration; of some large tropical wasp advancing angrily towards me, as I have witnessed a hundred times, not exactly flying, but moving rapidly, half running and half flying, over the ground, with ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... She was closely watched and kept without food for four-and-twenty hours. Doors and windows remained open to watch for the entrance of some of the devil's imps. These might come in the form of a fly, a wasp, a moth, or some other insect. The work of the watchers was to kill every insect that came into the room. But if one escaped, it was clear proof that this was ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... altogether too tedious a process for a Yookoohoo. I set some traps this afternoon and caught a lot of field-mice, but as I do not like to eat mice, I transformed them into hot biscuits for my supper. The honey in this pot was once a wasp's nest, but since being transformed it has become sweet and delicious. All I need do, when I wish to eat, is to take something I don't care to keep, and transform it into any sort of food I like, and eat it. ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... tirade by simply shaking her head as a child does who hears the buzzing of a wasp and fears its sting; then, as they reached the bench, she said with ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... paws the ground. He throws back his head and bellows. He is upset, and he doesn't care who knows it. Instances could be readily multiplied. Deposit a charge of shot in some outlying section of Thomas the Tiger, and note the effect. Irritate Wilfred the Wasp, or stand behind Maud the Mule and prod her with a pin. There is not an animal on the list who has even a rudimentary sense of the social amenities; and it is this more than anything else which should make us proud that we are human beings on ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Madame Marneffe, and to playing Jupiter to this middle-class Danae. A man could not expend more activity, intelligence, and presence of mind in the honest acquisition of a fortune than the Baron displayed in shoving his head into a wasp's nest: He did all the business of his department, he hurried on the upholsterers, he talked to the workmen, he kept a sharp lookout on the smallest details of the house in the Rue Vanneau. Wholly devoted to Madame Marneffe, he nevertheless ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Henry, he gave me his views on the brains and merits of many of the delegates, views full of wit and brilliant criticism, but when I had finished painting him I came under his kindly lash. He called me "a nasty little wasp," and he kept a "black book" for any of his lady friends who said the sketch was like him. In it their names were inscribed, and they were never to be spoken to again. With all his fun, Sir Henry was a deep thinker, and towered over the majority of the "frocks" ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... set sail in the schooner Wasp for Sandusky, where there was a natural harbor, and from thence in the Fire Fly, for Detroit. But his thoughts reverted to Cleveland, and forming a partnership with Messrs. Mack & Conant, of Detroit, the firm purchased twenty thousand dollars worth of dry goods, groceries, and a general ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... their work and wrapped themselves round Umbelazi's army as the nippers of a wasp close about a fly (why did not Umbelazi cut off those horns, I wondered), the Usutu bull began his charge. Twenty or thirty thousand strong, regiment after regiment, Cetewayo's men rushed up the slope, and there, near the crest of it, ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... Fly—dubbed with brown fur of a badger, warped with red silk, wings from dark grey feather of mallard, with a head made of red silk. 2. The Wasp Fly—dubbed with brown bear or cow's hair, ribbed with yellow silk, and the wings of the inside of starling's wing. 3. The Black Palmer—dubbed with black copper coloured peacock's harl, and a black cock's hackle over that, wings, blackbird. 4. The July Dun—dubbed with ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... the day. In short, they are becoming more and more intimate, to the extremest degree; and, scorning the world, thank Heaven that they are mutually indispensable. Cannot we get away from this scurvy wasp's-nest of a Paris, thought they, and live to ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... breast Was once the wild bee's golden vest; His cloak, of a thousand mingled dyes, Was formed of the wings of butterflies; His shield was the shell of a lady-bug green, Studs of gold on a ground of green; And the quivering lance which he brandished bright, Was the sting of a wasp he had slain in fight. Swift he bestrode his fire-fly steed; He bared his blade of the bent-grass blue; He drove his spurs of the cockle-seed, And away like a glance of thought he flew, To skim the heavens, and follow far The fiery trail ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... coming in one afternoon in September, along the red gravel walk, to look for a basket of yellow crab-apples left in the cool, old parlour, he remembered it the more, and how the colours struck upon him, because a wasp on one bitten apple stung him, and he felt the passion of [189] sudden, severe pain. For this too brought its curious reflexions; and, in relief from it, he would wonder over it—how it had then been with him—puzzled at the depth of the charm or spell ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Mappin terrace, with this difference in our disfavour, that the animals are there to be looked at, while nobody wants to look at us. As a matter of fact there would be nothing to look at. We get colds in winter and hay fever in summer, and if a wasp happens to sting one of us, well, that is the wasp's initiative, not ours; all we do is to wait for the swelling to go down. Whenever we do climb into local fame and notice, it is by indirect methods; if it happens to be a good flowering year for magnolias the neighbourhood ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... cooper at once left the cottage. The latter was let into the secret, and prevailed on to form one of the crew of the Wasp, as the little cutter was named. In the course of the afternoon everything was in readiness. Gascoyne waited till the dusk of evening, and then embarked along with Ole Thorwald; that stout individual having insisted on being one of the party, despite the remonstrances of Mr. Mason, who ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... was stamping about the plateau with the gestures of a man who has been stung by a wasp. "S'cre nom! S'cre nom!" he shouted, showing his strong white teeth under his black waxed moustache. He wrung his right hand violently, and as he did so he sent a little spray of blood from his finger-tips. A bullet had chipped his wrist. Headingly ran out from the cover where he ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... round mottled variety is considered the best. The drone, or, as some call him, the thief,[213] is black with a large belly. The wasp, which has some resemblance to a bee, is not, however, a fellow labourer, but attacks the bees with his sting, wherefore the bees keep him ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... superstitions. Believers in amulets and charms remind us that it is a well-ascertained fact in nature, that for every bane there is an antidote. Wherever the stinging nettle grows, the slimy stem of the dock is near; whenever the wasp stings, honey gathered by the industrious bee may be had, without going far, to put on the injured part; when the cold is most intense without, the fire burns brightest within; and if there be evil ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... what he suffered in consequence of the habit; how he reformed and the happy results. The Wasp Waist—its metaphysics and physiology. Application—the ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... present day, "waps" is considered a vulgar way of pronouncing the word; but it was correct English at the time of which I am writing. "Wasp" is really the corrupt pronunciation. In the same way, they said "claps" ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... and jealous and carp at him. As then the oracle given to Timesias about his colony foretold him, "that his swarm of bees would soon be followed by a swarm of wasps," so those that seek a swarm of friends have sometimes lighted unawares on a wasp's-nest of enemies. And the remembrance of wrongs done by an enemy and the kindness of a friend do not weigh in the same balance. See how Alexander treated the friends and intimates of Philotas and Parmenio, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... in these months good sport may be had with the wet fly; and in September a yellow dun, or a fly that imitates the wasp, will kill, if only you can keep out of sight, and place a well-dried fly ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... childish credulity and a foolish love of fable and adventure is sufficiently testified by the pretty numerous fragments which still remain (Pauly). Demetrius Phalereus, quoted by Pearce, quotes a grandiloquent description of the wasp taken from Kleitarchus, "feeding on the mountainside, her home ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... palms are everywhere to be found. A species of pine, much like the kauri pine of New Zealand, grows on the larger islands. Among the forest trees are also several kinds of tree-ferns and a tree-nettle. When the pointed leaves of the latter prick the skin they sting the flesh as badly as does a wasp. ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... I," said Lissa drily; for the great moaning hum of the thresher filled the air, went on and on as it would all day except at food-times, sounding like some vast wasp held captive and booming unceasingly—some great dragon of a wasp, as Jimmy ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... For a while his opposite neighbour and he were too busy to take much notice of each other, except by a good-humoured nod as each in turn raised the tankard to his head. At length, when our pedestrian began to supply the wants of little Wasp, the Scotch store-farmer, for such was Mr. Dinmont, found himself at leisure ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... hornets claimed to be their cousins Wakonda was good-natured enough to give them the same sort of weapons. Some people, especially boys, think this was a, great mistake, and would be very glad if Wakonda had refused to give stings to the yellow wasp and the ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... insufficient, considering the quality and quantity of the goods delivered—knowledge, scholarship, education. I only had in mind the bitterness of their lot, and the poor indemnity given to the man who spends his life in a wasp's nest. ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... Hazel looked bright, but the list was like a wasp, its sting lay in its tail. However, he put a good face on it. "I'll try and get you all those things; only give me time. Do you know I am writing a dictionary ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... first opened, so as to be recognized as blue larkspur, yellow mimosa, and a red Abyssinian flower, massed closely together on the foundation of a strong leaf cut in zigzags. Among the flowers lay a dead wasp, whose worthless little form and identity were as perfectly preserved as those of the mighty monarch on whose bosom it had completed its short existence. The tent itself consists of a centre or flat top, divided down the middle, and covered over one half with pink and yellow rosettes ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... that his letters reached him with an abominable irregularity, and that it would do his work no harm, but, on the contrary, much good, if he took a daily constitutional in the direction of the post-office, which gave a touch of official dignity to the wasp-filled precincts of a grocer's shop in the village, some two ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fight. It is the spirit which enables them to combine—the great common object before which all personal or tribal disputes become insignificant. What the horn is to the rhinoceros, what the sting is to the wasp, the Mohammedan faith was to the Arabs of the Soudan—a faculty ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... some bruised mallows, may occasionally be substituted with advantage; but their application should be repeated till the pain ceases. Rubbing on a little common salt, after it has been moistened, is also said to be an effectual cure. If a wasp or bee has been incautiously swallowed in a glass of liquor, take a spoonful of common salt, or repeated doses of salt and water. This will immediately kill the insect, and prevent the injurious effects of the sting. To remove the disagreeable itching ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... name, became the favorite leader of the populace, and was in time raised to the consulship. He enlisted a powerful army, ninety thousand strong, and marched away to the field of Cannae, where Hannibal was encamped, with the purpose of driving this Carthaginian wasp from the Italian fields. ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... wild, would be let in and lassoed, with a second lasso thrown over his hind legs. Before tightening the lassoes the men threw a recado, or soft leather saddle on him, the Joven tugging at the string-girths until the unfortunate grass-fed animal looked like a wasp. The lassoes were tautened, and the youngster thrown over on his side. The Joven, grinning cheerfully, then forced a thong of raw hide into his unwilling pupil's mouth, whilst the young horse, half-mad with terror, rolled his eyes impotently. The Joven, standing ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... straw. The country was going to the dogs. He argued, pleaded, stormed and swore and beat his head against the wall of indifference and obstinacy which his daughter reared between them with the unremitting fury of a wasp that finds itself on the wrong side of a windowpane. This new turn in affairs rendered Mrs. Forest so furious that she snapped right and left regardless of persons like a dog possessed of the rabies, rendering herself the most disagreeable ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... returned to Boston filled with spoils, including a half million dollars of money; when the Prince de Neuchatel hovered at her leisure in the Irish Channel and made coasting trade impossible; and when the Young Wasp of Philadelphia cruised for six months in those ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... occupied, a wasp came buzzing along, and, delighted at finding so many flowers without the trouble of searching for them, he began to drink up their honey very voraciously. Little Red Riding Hood knew well the difference ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous
... in by hundreds of thousands. They were like a single wasp inside a bee-hive. Let him kill the bees by hundreds, he must be killed himself at last. He made up his mind to evacuate the city, to leave all his conquests behind him. It was a terrible disappointment, but ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... and many others like them, happened when he was still a boy under five years of age. Recovering from his fever he resumed his old tricks, and brought home one day, wrapped in his shirt, a wasp's nest, which his father took from him and plunged into hot water. Between four and five he was sent to school, his parents thinking to keep him out of mischief of this kind. But he had not the least interest in school knowledge, and constantly played truant; and when he did ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... again, and she couldn't help smiling a little when she said it, "if you call her 'Bee,' don't make it the beginning of any new teasing by calling Rosy 'Wasp.'" ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... into the abysses of the stream, and laid, (might it not have been thought?) for a hopeless eternity, in the dark ooze, the most despised, forgotten, and feeble of all earth's atoms; incapable of any use or change; not fit, down there in the diluvial darkness, so much as to help an earth wasp to build its nest, or feed the first fibre of a lichen; what would it have thought, had it been told that one day, knitted into a strength as of imperishable iron, rustless by the air, infusible by the flame, out of the substance of it, with ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... to go, silly child." Aline tried to withdraw sharpness from her voice, but it was there, like the sting of a wasp in a wound. "Even if I didn't think it wise for some reasons, it isn't my car, you know, but Mr. Somerled's, and he has a perfect right to invite any guests he likes. Don't imagine that I'm going to talk to him about you. It's something ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... measures, which irritates without crushing its victims, which flaps an exasperated wasp-nest with a silk pocket handkerchief, instead of blowing it up with a match and train, is rarely successful; and, after three or four other and much guiltier victims than Lenny had been incarcerated in the stocks, the parish of Hazeldean ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... quoth Adam, coming in from his early inspection; "whither away with such skip-jack grace, habited in yellow and black like a wasp?" ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... Mark me, Germany or England, it 's one to me if I see vital powers in the field running to a grand career. It 's a fine field over there. As well there as here, then! But better here than there if it 's to be a wasp's life. Do ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... years more, owing to the present aqua-vivarium mania, will see it filling every mill-head in England, to the torment of all millers. Young ladies are assured that the only plant for their vivariums is a sprig of anacharis, for which they pay sixpence—the market value being that of a wasp, flea, or other scourge of the human race; and when the vivarium fails, its contents, Anacharis and all, are tost into the nearest ditch; for which the said young lady ought to be fined five pounds; and would be, if Governments ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... not call nor haul ought was odd raw for fault bought watch cot want corn cause sought wasp got walk cord pause caw wash hop salt short caught saw drop dog hall storm naught paw spot fog draw horse naughty draw talk ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... horn-tail, or the cane-borer. The adults are wasp-like insects about a half-inch long and very active. They come out of the canes in spring and the females soon lay eggs in the tender tips of the young shoots. These eggs soon hatch and the larvae ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... generations overlap one another at all? Why cannot we be buried as eggs in neat little cells with ten or twenty thousand pounds each wrapped round us in Bank of England notes, and wake up, as the sphex wasp does, to find that its papa and mamma have not only left ample provision at its elbow, but have been eaten by sparrows some weeks before it began to live ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... wearing at their sides a short sword, like the sword of ancient Rome, which was also used as a bayonet. There was always a drill or a march in progress somewhere, and sentinels paced up and down before the palaces. The officers were immensely impressive; the young ones had wasp waists, surpassing those of the most remorseless belles of fashion; and the old ones were, en revanche, immensely stout in that region, as if outraged nature were resolved to assert herself at last. But, young or old, their swords were ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... ceremony, and was very glad when it was over. I could not admire the foreign uniforms, which were very inferior to ours. Many of them appeared fanciful, and even grotesque, and nothing can be more unsoldier-like than to see a man laced in stays till his figure resembles a wasp. The ceremony which took place two days after, though less pompous, was much more French. In the retinue which, on the 12th of April, momentarily increased round the Comte d'Artos, there were at least recollections for the old, and hopes ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of giving the conversation an agreeable turn, reminded her Majesty that there was a prodigious accumulation of business to see to, especially that difficult affair about the emmet-wasp loan. Her Majesty rose; and leaning on Pipalee's arm, walked down to ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... My poet, take thy lyre; upon the lawn Night rocks the zephyr on her veiled, soft breast. The rose, still virgin, holds herself withdrawn From the winged, irised wasp with love possessed. Hark, all is hushed. Now of thy sweetheart dream; To-day the sunset, with a lingering beam, Caressed the dusky-foliaged linden-grove. All things shall bloom to-night; great Nature thrills, Her couch with perfume, passion, sighs, she ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... is the "wasp dance," allied to the Tarantella. Although less pleasing in motive than that described, the wasp dance gives opportunity for movements of even superior significance—or, as one may say, suggestures. The girl stands in ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... onto his desk, holding him there in a terrible grip. "Ah'll MacDonald ye!" he shouted, shaking him to and fro. "Another MacDonald to be a wild beast in the school! Ah'll knock the MacDonald out o' ye! Ye young English wasp, ye!" ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... round chuckin' me under the chin before the lights come on. Gee! There goes the bell again! I'll bet my switch it's that scraggy old hen in forty-four, wantin' me to run out and buy her some hair pins, or to hook her up so she'll look like a prize winner at a wasp show. She makes me sick, she does! But I'll—Yes Ma'am! Coming right away," she answered in a honeyed voice, as the lady guest was heard calling her name through a transom somewhere ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... was looking over the room, into the faces of her pupils. The buzzing sound kept up. It seemed to be coming nearer and nearer. The windows were open, and she thought a bee or a wasp might have flown in. But it would be a very large wasp or bee, indeed, which would make so loud a ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Keeping Store • Laura Lee Hope
... sedate and dignified as he was, had better have danced a hornpipe in his thinnest silks amongst a bed of stinging nettles, or have poked sticks into a wasp's nest, or amused himself with any other innocent recreation, than have made an enemy of John Brown. It was what he himself would have called a wrong move, and it played the deuce with his game. John was the very man who could annoy him, and he did. None of us knew he had so much ingenuity, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... do their patients further harm, but the bullets of the sharp-shooters which struck fairly in among them, splashing in the water and scattering the pebbles. The sounds of the two bullets were as different as is the sharp pop of a soda-water bottle from the buzzing of an angry wasp. ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... market is the wasp gun. In theory it is something like a letter clip; you pull the trigger and the upper and lower plates snap together with a suddenness which would surprise any insect in between. The trouble will be to get him ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... (for the past), And will be on my guard against future calamity. I will have nothing to do with a wasp, To seek for myself its painful sting. At first indeed it ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... that action. But I am sure that the cat fears the dog, or the dog the cat, as the case may be. I have little or no doubt that the bird fears the cat. I am inclined to believe that the insect fears the bird and the spider the wasp. But does the highest worm fear? I do not know. I do not see how there can have been any fear until there was a nerve-centre highly enough developed to remember past experiences of danger and fair sense-organs to ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... me to tell you where you can find your old faded doll, with a waist just like a wasp, and an old blue sacque—not a bit of powder in ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Queen to let my son resume his studies, and of Mademoiselle to leave her for the time. Both were gracious, though the Queen told me I was going into a wasp's nest; while, on the other hand, Mademoiselle congratulated me on returning to those dear Parisians, and said she should not be long behind me. I was too much afraid of being hindered not to set out immediately after having received my license, so as to take advantage of the escort of ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... quiet and listened, but could hear no sound of human voices. So I became curious to know what made the noise, and to my delight I saw a cow that had evidently strayed away from its field, having probably got into the wood to be under the shade of the trees, and away from wasp-flies. At first she was frightened at me, but I had been used to cattle all my life, so I soon quieted her, and she let me approach her. I saw that it was time for her to be milked, so, making the palm of my hand into a cup, I got enough milk to refresh me considerably and to give me ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... expression and so copious a language as common poultry. Take a chicken of four or five days old, and hold it up to a window where there are flies, and it will immediately seize its prey, with little twitterings of complacency; but if you tender it a wasp or a bee, at once its note becomes harsh, and expressive of disapprobation and a sense of danger. When a pullet is ready to lay she intimates the event by a joyous and easy soft note. Of all the ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... easy work; and the top offers a weak spot which makes it possible for the insect to reach the vein of least resistance at once, without cutting away through the hard ligneous wall. To many, therefore, of the Bee and Wasp tribe, whether honey-gatherers or hunters, one of these dry stalks is a valuable discovery when its diameter matches the size of its would-be inhabitants; and it is also an interesting subject of study to the entomologist who, in the ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... Miss Collis, had "grabbed" the English baronet, and left her only the Austrian count, who looked younger than any man could really be, and had a wasp-waist which, when he bowed—as he did irritatingly often—seemed liable to snap in two. It was if anything more slender than her own, and she disliked him for it. Lady Dauntrey had Mrs. Collis on her hands, and looked sombrely discontented. But she waked up at sight of Mary. The long, pale eyes ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... A Wasp's Nest.—A nest having been discovered, the pupils note how it is suspended and how it is situated with regard to concealment or to protection from rain, its colour, the material of the nest, and ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... Harry?" said his mother reproachfully; "thou know'st thou wast set on it last fall, like a wasp on sugar. Why scarce a day past but thou wast up to the Rectory, to see the Doctor about it; and now thou'rt like to get th'lotment thou'lt not ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... a laugh so silvery that he thought it no extravagance to liken it to the moonbeams that played over her made audible. She was lithe, yet plump; barred with black and yellow and small-waisted like a pretty wasp. Her complexion in that light was a sheen of pearl satin that made her eyes blacker and her little mouth redder than any other color could. She was small, but, remembering the fourteen-year-old wife of the shopkeeper, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... Warnings came from all quarters that mischief was in the wind. Still it was impossible to believe the peril to be a real one. Cicero, to whom Rome owed its existence, to be struck at by a Clodius! It could not be. As little could a wasp hurt ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... and during that time he flew with the ease and assurance of a bird. His machine was, however neither bird-like nor butterfly-like, nor had it the wide, lateral expansion of the ordinary aeroplane. The effect upon the observer was rather something in the nature of a bee or wasp. Parts of the apparatus were spinning very rapidly, and gave one a hazy effect of transparent wings; but parts, including two peculiarly curved "wing-cases"—if one may borrow a figure from the flying beetles—remained expanded stiffly. In the middle was a long rounded body like the body ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... ascertaining just these facts (many more might he added to the list), during the summer months. Our own brief naval history is pregnant with instances of the calamities that befall ships. No man can say when, or how, the Insurgente, the Pickering, the Wasp, the Epervier, the Lynx, and the Hornet disappeared. We know that they are gone; and of all the brave spirits they held, not one has been left to relate the histories of the different disasters. We have some ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... hour Hepson led the big football squad out to the field. Hundreds of midshsipmen went there to see how the Navy would show up in the vitally important tests. At the outset Hepson was everywhere, like a buzzing, excitable wasp. Nor did he prove to be ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... at the present moment rusticating at Malvern Wells. We are on the side of a great hill (which you would call small in America), and our intercourse is only with the flowers and bees and swallows of the season. Sometimes we encounter a wasp, which I suppose ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... and it happened July 12 only a fortnight after Blakely captured the 'Reindeer' farther westward. The 'Siren' was but one of many privateers in those waters. The 'Governor Tompkins' burned fourteen vessels successively in the British Channel. The 'Young Wasp,' of Philadelphia, cruised nearly six months about the coasts of England and Spain, and in the course of West India commerce. The 'Harpy,' of Baltimore, another large vessel of some 350 tons and fourteen guns, cruised nearly three months off the coast ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot |
