"Weathercock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... parlour with the regulated temperature; and the tin shoes go equably forward over blood and rain. To be overwise is to ossify; and the scruple-monger ends by standing stockstill. Now the man who has his heart on his sleeve, and a good whirling weathercock of a brain, who reckons his life as a thing to be dashingly used and cheerfully hazarded, makes a very different acquaintance of the world, keeps all his pulses going true and fast, and gathers impetus as he runs, until, if he ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... knows that conscience is d——nab-y overlooked in Africa, and will not judge the nigger hardly for any little blunder he may make in the account of his religion. But the fellow is a thorough seaman, and should know a top-gallant-sail from a weathercock. Now, look you, S'ip, for the credit of your friends, if you've no great pride on your own behalf, just ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... many churches and chapels. Should the reader desire a more distinct impression of them, he may imagine on each square league of territory[1202], and to each thousand of inhabitants, one noble family in its weathercock mansion. In each village there is a curate and his church, and, every six or seven leagues, a community of men or of women. We have here the ancient chieftains and founders of France; thus entitled, they still enjoy many possessions ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... through the Lido port, and moved toward its mooring-place at a group of rose-tinged piles. In just such a boat Columbus must have sailed when he was a boy. The rounded prow was decorated with a flying goddess blowing a trumpet; on the masthead there was perched a weathercock and a little figure of a hump-backed man, like the one hidden away in St. Mark's. A great sail, painted deep red, caught the sea-breeze and carried the boat slowly ...
— Rafael in Italy - A Geographical Reader • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... toward the rocks. The dominie chanted the song of Saint Nicolaus, and the goblin, unable to endure either its spiritual potency or the worthy parson's singing, shot upward like a ball and rode off on the gale, carrying with him the nightcap of the parson's wife, which he hung on the weathercock of ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... least a fortnight to have noted what is here set down; but it happened that the gentleman, being struck with the old house, or with the plump pigeons which were skimming and curtseying about it, or with the tall maypole, on the top of which a weathercock, which had been out of order for fifteen years, performed a perpetual walk to the music of its own creaking, sat for some little time looking round in silence. Hence John, standing with his hand upon the horse's bridle, and ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... started from their sockets, but the monk looked on without pity. He dragged him to that part of the tower whence the gilded weathercock could be seen toying with the free air of heaven. The sky shone blue and bright; never had it seemed so fair to the wretch that was looking his last upon its azure dome. He felt himself raised in the ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... random bits from Crofton Croker's "Traditions of the South of Ireland," Mrs. Carey's "Legends of the French Provinces," Andrew Lang's Green, Blue and Red fairy books, Laboulaye's "Last Fairy Tales," Hauff's "The Inn in the Spessart," Julia Goddard's "Golden Weathercock," Frere's "Eastern Fairy Legends," Asbjornsen's "Folk Tales," Susan Pindar's "Midsummer Fays," Nisbit Bain's ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... this crimson pageant, meet inauguration of England's bloodiest reign. Of other pageants there was no lack; but I pass them by, as also the airy gyrations of Peter the Dutchman on the weathercock of Saint Paul's. ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church jumped over its own weathercock. Then, he held me by the arms, in an upright position on the top of the stone, and went on in these ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... tense interest held us all spellbound. We could see nothing but some stray glimpses of an ivy-clad wall. A weathercock, that had once been gilded, stood out black against the evening sky. The Grey Lady in the rustling silk, through whom you could see the rain drops splash on the gravel stones, was by no means on view. No green demons leaped these sullen ten-foot barricades, and ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... desirous of a re-election. But his nominee for governor had been defeated at the last election, and the State had been only with difficulty carried for the national candidates of the party. The lesson was plain: the people of Illinois did not approve the Kansas policy of Senator Douglas. Hence the weathercock ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... Polly as happy as I can. Money doesn't always make people happy or agreeable, I find." And Van looked at Aunt Kipp in a way that would have made her hair stand erect if she had possessed any. She stared at him a moment, then, obeying one of the odd whims that made an irascible weathercock of her, she ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... was a weathercock it was my sister-in-law. Without even pretending to consult me, she made Colville, the chauffeur, turn the car round. (He was her chauffeur, ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... little puzzled, he added: "Just like a weathercock, and by Keel-Surface I mean everything you can see when you view the Aeroplane from the side of it—the sides of the body, struts, ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... Cai, and laughed in pure pleasure of heart. "Come along, man—or you'll be makin' me Prime Minister before we get to the Ship. . . Yes, yon's the church—Established. You can tell by the four spikes an' the weathercock; like-wise by the tombstones. But they bury folks up the hill nowadays." He paused—"That reminds ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... farewell, an owl cried out, "Tu—whoo—oo!" and then was perfectly silent again. The evening now seemed so cool and fresh that the boys forgot their fatigue, and kept on chatting and planning for future excursions till they reached the gates of the Grange, just as the sun ceased to gild the weathercock at the top of the ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... he, a touch of irony in his accent, himself looking a droll figure, hunched round his books and turning like a weathercock jerkily to keep the umbrella between him and the wind that strained its whalebone ribs till they ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... his trouble, a reward quite adequate to such an exploit. We have a similar story related, I think, of Charles II.: a posture master climbed up Grantham steeple, and then stood on his head upon the weathercock. The facetious monarch, after witnessing his ascent, told him he might forthwith have a patent that none should ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... is in the north," said Colline, gravely, pointing to a weathercock on a neighboring roof. "We shall not breakfast today, the elements are ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... weathercock, and goes whichever way the wind blows, monsieur—today he is with the Admiral, tomorrow he may be with ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... they saw a pretty old manor. It lay with the forest back of it, and the sea in front of it; had red walls and a turreted roof; great sycamores about the grounds, and big, thick gooseberry-bushes in the orchard. On the top of the weathercock sat the starling, and sang so loud that every note was heard by the wife, who sat on an egg in the heart of a pear tree. "We have four pretty little eggs," sang the starling. "We have four pretty little round eggs. We have the whole nest filled ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... of road was very solitary, being much overshadowed with trees. One house alone stood there, and that was about three-quarters of a mile before you came to East Lynne. It was on the left hand side, a square, ugly, red brick house with a weathercock on the top, standing some little distance from the road. A flat lawn extended before it, and close to the palings, which divided it from the road, was a grove of trees, some yards in depth. The lawn was divided by a ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Mariano; I'm tired of it, I'm dying. This life is killing me. My husband! He doesn't count. My friends! Fools that flay me as soon as I leave them. The doctor! as untrustworthy as a weathercock. All those men in my coterie, idiots. Master, have pity on me. Take me far away from here. You must know some other ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... me a weathercock,' said the matron, putting on the look of a good woman; 'but I have reasoned it out, and at last, thank God, I have got over my ambition. The Lovedays are our true and only friends, and Mr. Festus Derriman, with all his money, is nothing to ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... in the neighborhood of that bleak hill-top upon which the Castle Inn reared its rickety walls. The cruel blasts raved wildly round that frail erection. They disported themselves with the shattered pigeon-house, the broken weathercock, the loose tiles, and unshapely chimneys; they rattled at the window-panes, and whistled in the crevices; they mocked the feeble building from foundation to roof, and battered, and banged, and tormented it in their fierce gambols, until ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... incorrigible. France is beaten, discredited among nations, naked to her enemies. She lies here, between England and Prussia, as in a vise. God summons you, a Frenchman, to reign in Noumaria, and in addition affords you a chance to marry that weathercock of Badenburg's daughter. Ah, He never spoke more clearly, Louis. And you would reply with a shallow jest! Why, Badenburg and Noumaria just bridge that awkward space between France and Austria. Your accession ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... at different heights and of varying diameters to accommodate the wrists of man, woman, and child, may still be found in the middle of the Priests' Green. These stand, it will be remembered, under a quaint old roof supported on rough, oaken pillars, and surmounted by a weathercock which the monkish fancy has fashioned to the shape of the archangel blowing the last trump. His clarion or coach-horn, or whatever instrument of music it was he blew, has vanished. The parish book records that in the time ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... ideal, no convictions—such a man is a mere article of the world's furniture—a thing moved, instead of a living and moving being—an echo, not a voice. The man who has no inner life is the slave of his surroundings, as the barometer is the obedient servant of the air at rest, and the weathercock the humble servant of the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... into the city by "one Peter, a Dutchman," who placed himself on the weathercock of St. Paul's, holding "a streamer in his hand five yards long;" occasionally kneeling down on the said weathercock, "to the great marvell of the people," and balancing himself sometimes on one foot and sometimes ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... asked the Major a little nervously if he knew anything further. The Major knew nothing except Street rumors. Jack was uneasy, for the Major was a sort of weathercock, and before he left the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... I was reckoned a good actor. Besides Harrow speeches (in which I shone), I enacted Penruddock in the Wheel of Fortune, and Tristram Fickle in Allingham's farce of the Weathercock, for three nights (the duration of our compact), in some private theatricals at Southwell, in 1806, with great applause. The occasional prologue for our volunteer play was also of my composition. The other performers were young ladies ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... should have made improper choice of facts, and if I should be found at length most to resemble Maister Fabyan of old, who writing the life of Henry V. lays heaviest stress on a new weathercock set-up on St. Paul's steeple during that eventful reign, my book must share the fate of his, and be like that forgotten: reminding before its death perhaps a friend or two of a poor man (Macbean) living in later times, that Doctor Johnson used to tell us of; who being advised to take subscriptions ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... almighty man, The county God—in whose capacious hall, Hung with a hundred shields, the family tree Sprang from the midriff of a prostrate king— Whose blazing wyvern weathercock'd the spire, Stood from his walls and wing'd his entry-gates And swang besides on many a windy sign— Whose eyes from under a pyramidal head Saw from his windows nothing save his own— What lovelier of his own ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... large symmetrical building—a stone quadrangle, heavily topped off by a dark slate roof, and a dejected-looking weathercock that rebelled against the ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... his hand, Marion turned from him without deigning to receive it. Everybody was surprised at this conduct of the general, and some spoke of it in terms of high displeasure. However, it was not long before they caught the old weathercock at one of his tricks, and, soon as the confiscation act was passed, had him down on the black list, fondly hoping, no doubt, to divide a large spoil. Marion, who was then a member of the legislature, arose to speak. The aged culprit, who also ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... loud utterance of three words, of which the two last were "Webster's Unabridged," and the first was an emphatic monosyllable.—Beg pardon,—he added,—forgot myself. But let us have an English dictionary, if we are to have any. I don't believe in clipping the coin of the realm, Sir! If I put a weathercock on my house, Sir, I want it to tell which way the wind blows up aloft,—off from the prairies to the ocean, or off from the ocean to the prairies, or any way it wants to blow! I don't want a weathercock with a winch in an old gentleman's study that he ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... own flesh and blood?" said Joe. "Sell? What's thy mare's nest now, thou weathercock? One wouldn't think that butter wad melt in thy mouth sometimes, ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... said Bully Tom, in a tone of polite assent; "and there's a weathercock on the church-steeple but I never heard of either of 'em coming down to ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... hillside abuts boldly on the salt marsh. One of the cemetery-paths runs along the brink of the hill; and here, on a wooden bench under a clump of red cedars, Putnam would sit for hours enjoying the listless mood of convalescence. Where the will remains passive, the mind, like an idle weathercock, turns to every puff of suggestion, and the senses, born new from sickness, have the freshness and delicacy of a child's. It soothed his eye to follow lazily the undulations of the creek, lying like the folds of a blue silk ribbon on the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... openings in the walls. There are two porches, one in the centre the other in the north tower, and the walls show indications of characteristic Saxon masonry. On the central roof is a large fleche or turret of two stages carrying a weathercock on a very ...
— Exeter • Sidney Heath
... came into Joan's eyes, and she turned her shoulder to Palgrave, who was giving her his most amorous glances. "It doesn't matter," she said, "but I notice that you are all beginning to treat me like a sort of moral weathercock. I wonder why?" She gave no more thought to the matter which just for the most fleeting moment had rather piqued her, but sat drinking in the music of Mascagni's immortal opera entirely ignoring the fact ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... she that she failed to notice that her horse had suddenly become very alert. His large, low-bred ears, that weathercock of the horseman, were pricked up, and he looked inquiringly from side to side as he picked his way. Once he gave a ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... turning away half-petulantly. "Of course I know you are as changeable as a weathercock, Manuela. But as you were saying, if we had a few nails, we should do well enough here. I will go ask ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... set up to operate on public sentiment. Such a paper as the London "Times," having nothing higher than avaricious commerce and national pride to consult, in a conspicuous centre of affairs has thus become the great weathercock of the world, splendidly gilded, lifted very high in the air, but, like some other stupid chanticleers, crowing at false signals of the dawn, and well called the "Times," as in its columns nothing eternal was ever evinced. Everywhere exist these agents ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... word for it. How'd you ever get on without us, d'you think? Like fish out of water! And yet we're reckoned as outcasts and all that. Devil take all your society women, I say. There's one I see pass by every day, a judge's wife, haughty and stuck up as a weathercock on a church spire. Think she'd look at one of us? But her ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... Serve or not serve, I shan't ask license of you, sir, nor the weathercock your companion. I direct my discourse to the lady, sir. 'Tis like my aunt may have told you, madam? Yes, I have settled my concerns, I may say now, and am minded to see foreign parts. If an how that the peace holds, whereby, that is, ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... forigxi. Weapon batalilo. Wear (use as clothes) porti. Wear away (decay by use) eluzi. Wear away (to decline) konsumigxi. Weariness enuo, laceco. Wearisome enua, enuiga. Weary, to enui. Weary laca, enua. Weather vetero. Weather, to kontrauxstari. Weathercock ventoflago. Weave teksi, plekti. Weaver teksisto, plektisto. Web (tissue) teksajxo. Wed (cf. marry) edzigxi. Wedding (cf. marry) edzigxo. Wedge kojno. Wedlock edzeco. Wednesday merkredo. Weed malbonherbo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... happy childhood. How was my heart grieved when the old-fashioned meeting-house was converted into the modern temple! Time and decay had rendered the tall spire unsafe, yet its fall by force and premeditated purpose seemed a sacrilege. I felt affronted for the huge weathercock, reclining sulkily against a fence, no more to point his beak to the east with obstinate preference. I mourned over the broad, old-fashioned dial, on which young eyes could discern the time a mile off. The old sexton lived to see this change, and at the end of half a century of care under ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... he little dreamed of the help Heaven was to send him in this matter. There was, in the lower House, a young man by the name of Harper, a lawyer from Brighton, who was sufficiently eccentric not to carry a pass. The light of fame, as the sunset gilds a weathercock on a steeple, sometimes touches such men for an instant and makes them immortal. The name of Mr. Harper is remembered, because it is linked with a greater one. But Mr. Harper was the first man ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... will ever have affecting me. For, whatever course I take in public affairs in this country, I conceal nothing, I take it publicly, openly, and deliberately. If I err, I am satisfied to abide the consequences; and, whenever it may suit the weathercock judgment of Lord Mayo, and his vacillating law advisers, to characterise my acts or my opinion as illegal, seditious, heretical, idolatrous, or treasonable, I must, like every other subject, be content to take my chance of their being able to find a jury sufficiently ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... The weathercock on the ancient stronghold at Cleve is a swan, and in olden times the dynasty that ruled over the lovely country round Cleve had also a swan in their crest. A legend, tragic and beautiful, preserved to posterity forever in Richard Wagner's lovely opera, is ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... fades the fire on the hearth, its embers Scattering wide at a stronger gust. Above, the old weathercock groans, but remembers Creaking, to turn, in ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... Romish King—how will it be with him as Kaisar? It is but of his wonted madness that he is here at all, when his Austrian states must be all astray for want of him. No, no; I would rather make a weathercock guardian to my daughter. You yourself are the only guard to whom ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... desire to climb upward—so that without shifting his horizon, he could yet extend it, and take in a far wider sweep of vision. "I envied every bird," he goes on, "that sat singing on the topmost bough of the great, century-old cherry tree; the weathercock on our barn seemed to me to whirl in a higher region of the air; and to rise from the earth in a balloon was a bliss which I would almost have given my life to enjoy." His desire to ascend soon took the ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... pushed into my hand by Hadji Ali just in time to take the shoulder of the last of the herd, who had already charged headlong after his comrades and was disappearing in the jungle. Bang! went the "Baby;" round I spun like a weathercock, with the blood pouring from my nose, as the recoil had driven the sharp top of the hammer deep into the bridge. My "Baby" not only screamed, but kicked viciously. However, I knew that the elephant must be bagged, as the half-pound shell had been aimed ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... shake hands in such a manner as to win hearts, how to say "My dear friend" in a certain tactful way to people he knows the least, to change his mind without suspecting it, to be carried away by each new idea, to be sincere in their weathercock convictions, to let themselves be deceived as they deceive others, to forget the next morning what ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... of man prevented him from applying the latter with effect to the heads of slumberers during divine service. By way of retaliation the youths, when opportunity occurred, would tie the cord of the "tinkler" to the weathercock, and the parish on a stormy night would be startled by the sound of ghostly, fitful ting-tangs. To Sunday blows the clerk, who was afflicted with rheumatism, added weekday anathemas as he climbed the steep ascent to the bell-chamber and the yet steeper ladder that gave access to the ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... bedridden, and his two daughters and Goldie. Goldie was the tomcat, so termed by reason of his splendid tawniness. Goldie had more to do with the Ebag marriage than anyone or anything, except the weathercock on the top of the house. This may sound queer, but is as naught to the queerness about ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... that the motives which prompted our youthful actions are not very different from those now inciting children of a larger growth to band together, blackball their friends, crown queens, and perform other senseless mummeries, such as having the weathercock of a departed meeting-house brought in during a banquet, and dressing restaurant waiters in knickerbockers ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... amenable to his own belief. The primary question respecting men is this,—How far are they affected by the original axiomatic truths? Truths are like the winds. Near the earth's surface winds blow in variable directions, and the weathercock becomes the type of fickleness. So there is a class of little truths, dependent upon ever-variable relations, with which it is the function of cunning, shrewdness, tact, to deal, and numbers of men seldom or never lift their heads above this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... heard. Ages ago the road Approached. The people stood and looked and turned, Nor asked it to come nearer, nor yet learned To move out there and dwell in all men's dust. And yet withal they shot the weathercock, just Because 'twas he crowed out of tune, they said: So now the copper weathercock is dead. If they had reaped their dandelions and sold Them fairly, ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas
... the assuming he would go to Scotland would be the best persuasion to make him)—; and at the end I told him that I thought my arguments had prevailed a little with Her Grace, and that though she could not at once turn weathercock, he might take my word for it that she would not be so forward as she had been. But I did not tell him what argument I had chiefly used; for I hold that even to such a woman as that, a man should ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... much admired indeed. "He is as beautiful as a weathercock," remarked one of the Town Councillors who wished to gain a reputation for having artistic tastes; "only not quite so useful," he added, fearing lest people should think him unpractical, which he really ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde
... each and all of them, old and young, healthy and sickly, would if they could take not merely the grand tour, but circulate round the two hemispheres with all the pleasure imaginable. At a certain period of the year, when the weathercock points the right way, the sun burns in the sign of the Lion, and the husbandman bends his weary form to gather in the golden corn, the legs of the rich Englishman begin to be nervously agitated, he feels a sense of suffocation, and pants for change—of air, of place, of everything; ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... is yea and nay; Autumn is a weathercock, Blown every way: Summer days for me, When every leaf ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... carriage-window as the train whirled rapidly through the scarcely-awakened country, and she had seen the soft and beautiful landscapes of the South lit up by the early sunlight. How the bright little villages shone, with here and there a gilt weathercock glittering on the spire of some small gray church, while as yet in many valleys a pale gray mist lay along the bed of the level streams or clung to the dense woods on the upland heights! Which was the more beautiful—the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... to the Abbey, now a Cathedral, amidst much curious pageantry, and for the first time a Bible was presented to the sovereign.... Mary's procession to the Abbey is signalised by the exploits of a Dutchman, who sat astride on the weathercock of St. Paul's five hundred feet in the air, as the Queen passed. The two Archbishops and the Bishop of London were all in the Tower, so Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, put the crown on Mary's head. ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... out of the Carlisle hotel, but before it had occurred to them that Lord George had been concerned in the robbery, and possibly Lady Eustace herself. Men had been sent down from London, of course at considerable expense, and Portray Castle had been searched, with the consent of its owner, from the weathercock to the foundation-stone,—much to the consternation of Miss Macnulty, and to the delight of Andy Gowran. No trace of the diamonds was found, and Lizzie had so far fraternised with the police. But when Mr. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... sovereign judge of the world is not so independent that it is not liable to be disturbed by the first din about it. The noise of a cannon is not necessary to hinder its thoughts; it needs only the creaking of a weathercock or a pulley. Do not wonder if at present it does not reason well; a fly is buzzing in its ears; that is enough to render it incapable of good judgment. If you wish it to be able to reach the truth, chase away that animal which holds its reason in check and disturbs that powerful intellect ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... distracted and unhappy Spain. Federico enthusiastically loved his country, and his proud eyes often filled with tears when the old man placed its former greatness in striking contrast with its present degradation. In spite of all the veerings and weathercock variations of his political life, Regato was at heart a Liberal. He set forth in glowing colours the evils and tyranny of Ferdinand's government, expatiated on the barbarous executions of Riego, Torrijos, and other martyrs to freedom's cause, and exposed the corruption and villany ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... death. The farm had on it a small Dutch cottage, built about a century before, and inhabited by the Van Tassels. This was enlarged, still preserving the quaint Dutch characteristics; it acquired a tower and a whimsical weathercock, the delight of the owner, and became one of the most snug and picturesque residences on the river. A slip of Melrose ivy was planted, and soon overrun the house; and there were shaded nooks and wooded ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... look me in the face and tell me that you are false as that! You can confess to me that you will change like a weathercock;—be his one day, and then mine, and his again the next! You can own that you give yourself about first to one man, and then to another, just as may suit you at the moment! I would not have believed it of ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... lavished condoling or congratulatory phrases apropos of all the petty miseries and all the little felicities of life. He concealed under a deluge of commonplaces his native incapacity, his total want of education, and a weakness of character which can only be expressed by the old word "weathercock." Be not uneasy: the weathercock had for its axis the beautiful Madame Beauvisage, Severine Grevin, the most remarkable woman in ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... with the tent! I see Mrs. Barker doing up the lunch in a hamper and a great basket. Now Mr. Laurence is looking up at the sky and the weathercock. I wish he would go too. There's Laurie, looking like a sailor, nice boy! Oh, mercy me! Here's a carriage full of people, a tall lady, a little girl, and two dreadful boys. One is lame, poor thing, he's got a crutch. Laurie didn't tell us that. Be quick, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... felt inclined to play the part of the young enthusiast in "Excelsior," as I looked up at the weathercock which surmounts the spire. But the man who oils the weathercock-spindle has to get up to it in some way, and that way is by ladders which reach to within thirty feet of the top, where there is ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... at him, a pygmy flashed with sun. A weathercock or scarecrow or both things in one? As bright as a jewelled crown hung above ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... of you ought to be a person of stability. I am to look, indeed, to your opinions,—but to such opinions as you and I must have five years hence. I was not to look to the flash of the day. I knew that you chose me, in my place, along with others, to be a pillar of the state, and not a weathercock on the top of the edifice, exalted for my levity and versatility, and of no use but to indicate the shiftings of every fashionable gale. Would to God the value of my sentiments on Ireland and on America had been at this day a subject ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to back so as to form a sort of square; on the top of these place three more dove-cots, also back to back; above these set up two more dove-cots, and one on the top of all, with a short steeple above it, and a spire with an enormous weathercock on the top of that, and the building will not be a bad model of a Norwegian church, especially if you paint the sides white, ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... the wisdom of its action and the wisdom of its abstinence from action were very good. And now again the fields in Ireland are green, and the markets are busy, and money is chucked to and fro like a weathercock which the players do not wish to have abiding with them; and the tardy speculator going over to look for a bit of land comes back muttering angrily that fancy prices are demanded. "They'll run you up to thirty-three years' purchase," says the tardy speculator, thinking, as it ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... passed her by, she felt suddenly out of tune with them, especially with Zeb, who, at least, might have understood her better. Some angry tears gathered in her eyes at the callous indifference of her father, who just now was revolving in the porch like a weathercock, and shouting orders east, west, north, and south for axes, hammers, ladders, cart-ropes, in case the vessel struck ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Serene Highness is pleased to eat his victuals, down to the low lane, where in her door-sill the aged widow, knitting for a thin livelihood, sits to feel the afternoon sun, I see it all; for, except the Schlosskirche weathercock, no biped stands so high. Couriers arrive bestrapped and bebooted, bearing Joy and Sorrow bagged-up in pouches of leather: there, top-laden, and with four swift horses, rolls-in the country Baron and his household; here, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... an unpitying extent of babble, To hide the vacancy of its ignorant mind. Of the Trifling it is a tender lover; The Trifling alone takes possession of its brain. People flighty, indiscreet, imprudent, Turning like the weathercock to every wind. Of the ages of the Caesars those of the Louises are the shadow; Paris is the ghost, of Rome, take it how you will. No, of those vile French you are not one: You think; they do not ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... expense of truth, just as you now are, in your mad vindication of Romanism. A tool for others to work with, till you have found yourself in a condition to use such tools as you yourself have been, you are now a trimmer and weathercock, leading on men of less sense than yourself, to such distinction as ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... serious kind of perseverance that requires a more firm support than emotions, however lively and true to nature. To give an example of order, the soul of virtue, some austerity of behaviour must be adopted, scarcely to be expected from a being who, from its infancy, has been made the weathercock of its own sensations. Whoever rationally means to be useful, must have a plan of conduct; and, in the discharge of the simplest duty, we are often obliged to act contrary to the present impulse of tenderness ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... means abated any of his prudent provisions against surprise, because of the non-appearance of the enemy. The Captain argued that his present security was too profound and wonderful to endure much longer; he knew that when the wind stood in a fair quarter, the weathercock was seldom nailed there; and he was too well acquainted with the determined and dauntless character of Mrs MacStinger, to doubt that that heroic woman had devoted herself to the task of his discovery and capture. Trembling beneath the weight ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... CONSISTENCY is absolutely necessary to form the character of a useful and honourable public man; that amongst the dangerous failings in a public character, inconsistency is the most dangerous. A vacillating, weathercock, changeable being, in the common pursuits, in any pursuits of life, is, to say the least of him, a contemptible creature, one who is generally despised by all classes; but a weathercock in politics, which is the same as a weathercock in principle, is ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... instability, unstable equilibrium; vacillation &c. (irresolution) 605; fluctuation, vicissitude; alternation &c. (oscillation) 314. restlessness &x. adj. fidgets, disquiet; disquietude, inquietude; unrest; agitation &c. 315. moon, Proteus, chameleon, quicksilver, shifting sands, weathercock, harlequin, Cynthia of the minute, April showers[obs3]; wheel of Fortune; transientness &c. 111[obs3]. V. fluctuate, vary, waver, flounder, flicker, flitter, flit, flutter, shift, shuffle, shake, totter, tremble, vacillate, wamble[obs3], turn and turn about, ring the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... slang word usually means a milksop, but here it is equivalent to 'a butterfly', 'a weathercock'—a man of changeable ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... I call back man and house again Is that now on a beech-tree's tip I see As then I saw—I at the gate, and he In the house darkness,—a magpie veering about, A magpie like a weathercock in doubt. ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... make her love him. And with the rush of the desire came the thought, as though it were a whispered voice from the heart of the desert: "What are you that you should speak so to her. What have you done to make you worthy of this woman? You, a laggard, as frivolous a thing until now as a weathercock, and by no means so useful a factor in the world, your regeneration merely begun; she the ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... vacant carcass, from which the life is newly dislodged, shifting between earth and heaven, the sport of every gust; like a weathercock, serving to show from which point the wind blows; like a maukin, fit only to scare away birds; like a nest left to swing upon a bough when the bird is flown: these are uses to which we cannot without ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... defiance of conquerors, anxious, for reasons not indeed apparent, but which they were undoubtedly within their rights in holding to, not to blow it at once into the air—the steeple, the perky weathercock—to James Stokes in particular, always eloquent in action, longing for heroic effort, and ready to pay its price, maddened now by the palpable imposture in front of him morning after morning, as he demonstrates ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... former faith, and that feigned good conscience they had. From which number if you, Sir, have kept yourself clear, the less blood of the damned will fall upon your head: I know you not by face, much less your personal practice; yet I have heard as if blood might pursue you, for your unstable weathercock spirit, which doubtless could not but stumble the weak, and give advantage to the adversary to speak ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... from the locality then called "Welsh End," on account of the number of Welsh people living on that side of the town; though why the "Taffies" were honoured with a distinct little market house of their own is not made clear. This building was taken down in 1803, the 3-dial clock, weathercock, &c., being advertised for sale, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... bulge of reddish saffron striped with dark of a plowed field they saw a weathercock, then under it the slate cap of a tower. "The Alcazar," said Don Alonso. The road turned away and olive trees hid the weathercock. At the next bend the towers were four, strongly buttressing a square building where on the western ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... hunter was not sufficiently heavy for the weight of the projectile; it only weighed twenty pounds: thus, with a charge of ten drachms of powder, behind a HALF-POUND shell, the recoil was so terrific, that I was spun round like a weathercock in a hurricane. I really dreaded my own rifle, although I had been accustomed to heavy charges of powder and severe recoil for ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... up and down his garden next day thinking of the contingency. The sense that the paths he was pacing, the cabbage-plots, the apple-trees, his dwelling, cider-cellar, wring-house, stables, and weathercock, were all slipping away over his head and beneath his feet, as if they were painted on a magic-lantern slide, was curious. In spite of John South's late indisposition he had not anticipated danger. To inquire concerning his health had been ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... chair could be lowered, a rival boat would shove the first one away, and with a third boat would be fighting for its place. Meanwhile, high above the angry sea, the chair and its cargo of black women would be twirling like a weathercock and banging against the ship's side. The mammies were too terrified to scream, but the ship's officers yelled and swore, the boat's crews shrieked, and the black babies howled. Each baby was strapped between the shoulders of the mother. A mammy-chair is like one of those two-seated ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... eagerly). If thou liest, rascal, I'll hang thee up alive in irons at the weathercock of the Lorenzo tower, where the wind shall whirl thee nine times round with every blast. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... down at her, smiling a little, but smiling sadly. "If Jean's mother had lived I should not have been such a weathercock. Will you write to me—promise me that ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... be added, that Dub-a-dub is found in Halliwell's Arch. Gloss. with the definition, "To beat a drum; also, the blow on the drum. 'The dub-a-dub of honour.' Woman is a weathercock, p. 21., there used metaphorically." Mr. Halliwell might also have cited ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... castle gate like a warder blowing his horn; but there was no warder," said the wind. "I turned the weathercock above the tower—it sounded like a watchman snoring inside the tower; but no watchman was there—it was only kept by rats and mice. Poverty presided at the table—poverty sat in the clothes' chests and in the store-rooms. ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... and to tell him that they had now begun to smooth the way for his return to France and the throne of his ancestors. She had returned with authority to organize the conspiracy of the royalists, and to give them the king's sanction. Talleyrand, the minister of Napoleon, the glittering weathercock in politics, had already experienced a change in disposition, in consequence of the shifting political wind, and when Countess Ducayla, provided with secret instructions for Talleyrand from Louis XVIII., ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... obedient to their captain's order: And now this bloodless siege a month had lasted, When, viewing the country round, the city warder (Who, like a faithful weathercock, did perch Upon the steeple of St. Sophy's church), Sudden his trumpet took, and ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... would say to herself, watching him, "you can't do that, George! You can't change about like a weathercock, and expect me to change, too, and forget everything that went before! You've chosen to dig the gulf between us—I'm not like Mamma, I'm not a child—my dignity and my rights can't ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... her fears of John Jay's dying. Although the promise made to George on the haymow was faithfully kept, he could no more avoid getting into mischief than a weathercock can keep from turning ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... explicit statement of his attitude: "Christ has declared war against the Christianity of the world, and it must down. There is no help for it. The church, that great bulwark of our practical paganism, must be reformed from foundation to weathercock."[12] These passages indicate his dissatisfaction with an external religion and with dogmatic theology. On the other hand, his letters and his poems prove that he was strongly grounded in the faith of the spirit. In that ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... am nae weathercock. Thirty guineas, if ye land me on the sea-side; and sixty, if ye put ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Sofron had had an eye to the ornamental as well as the useful; he had planted all the ditches with willows, between the stacks he had made little paths to the threshing-floor and strewn them with fine sand; on the windmill he had constructed a weathercock of the shape of a bear with his jaws open and a red tongue sticking out; he had attached to the brick cattle-shed something of the nature of a Greek facade, and on it inscribed in white letters: 'Construt in the village Shipilovky 1 thousand eight Hunderd farthieth year. This cattle-shed.' ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... unto. vane, a weathercock. too, also. vain, proud; empty. two, one and one. vein, a blood-vessel. trey, three at cards. waste, to consume; loss. tray, a shallow vessel. waist, part of the body. vale, a valley; a dell. ware, merchandise. veil, a cover; a curtain. wear, to use; to waste. wait, to tarry; to stay. ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... up in the steeple! There the foul blast roars and whistles! High up in the steeple, where it is free to come and go through many an airy arch and loophole, and to twist and twine itself about the giddy stair, and twirl the groaning weathercock, and make the very tower shake and shiver! High up in the steeple, where the belfry is, and iron rails are ragged with rust, and sheets of lead and copper, shrivelled by the changing weather, crackle and heave beneath the unaccustomed ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... ever be happy? He happy? He is a tyrant; that is, the vilest of slaves, and at the same time the most miserable of beings. I have seen children thus reared who wanted those about them to push the house down, to give them the weathercock they saw on a steeple, to stop the march of a regiment so that they could enjoy the drum-beat a little longer; and as soon as obedience to these demands was delayed they rent the air with their screams, and would listen to no one. In vain everybody tried ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... tears cannot wash! Master Marlowe hath too deep a reading i' the books of nature to nail his heart upon a gilded weathercock. He is only desperate after the fashion of a pearl diver. When he hath enough he will desist—breathe freely, polish the shells, and ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... easy to conceive my astonishment to find myself in the midst of a village, lying in a churchyard; nor was my horse to be seen, but I heard him soon after neigh somewhere above me. On looking upwards I beheld him hanging by his bridle to the weathercock of the steeple. Matters were now very plain to me: the village had been covered with snow over night; a sudden change of weather had taken place; I had sunk down to the churchyard whilst asleep, gently, and in the same proportion as ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... world, so a lady who desires to ride well should not be satisfied if she can merely stick on, like the lady in Fig. 101, but should try to ride correctly. Her head will perhaps at first be jerked to and fro like a "vexed weathercock," but practice will enable her to overcome the tendency to fix the muscles of her neck and to allow her head to follow the motion of her body. She should take care that her elbows do not flap up and ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... chimney-top—singeing a pair of worsted stockings that, knit in an ill-starred hour, when the sun had entered Aries, had been hung out to dry on a line in the backyard, or garden as it is called—or cutting a few inches off the tail of an old Whig weathercock that for years had been pecking the eyes out of all the airts the wind can blaw, greedy ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... hope, my dear, is in a new and practically untried man—Abraham Lincoln. The South is one in opinion—we are perplexed by the fears of commerce and are split. There you have all my wisdom. Read the news, but not the weathercock essays called editorials. Oh! I forgot to tell the Squire that Tom, my young doctor, has passed the Army Board and is awaiting ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... is yea and nay, Autumn is a weathercock Blown every way: Summer days for me When every leaf is ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... turn the bows in the direction of the arrow, as illustrated in Fig. 146, and the sail or sails abaft the mast turn the boat in the direction of the arrow A. The boat thus revolves upon the center of the mast much as a weathercock revolves upon its pivot. If there is more than one mast, all the sails carried abaft the mainmast serve to turn the boat in the direction A. The work of sailing depends greatly upon the skill in balancing these two effects so that the boat will progress in ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... to be sure, was monstrously hot and stuffy. Not a breath of wind ruffled the waters of the dock, around the head of which we trudged to a recently erected church on the opposite shore. I remember observing, on our way, the dazzling brilliance of its weathercock. ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... are compelled to scud along before the gale, shorn of all the impressiveness of their wonted solemn gait, holding, perchance, their shovel-hat firmly on with both hands; and finally, there is neither pathos nor glory in having your head broken by a chimney-pot, or volant weathercock. No, the wide sea is an emblem of all that is deceitful and false, smiling most blandly when preparing to devour you; and the wind is only one shade more respectable—nay, perchance the worse of the two; for the waters, in the self-justifying, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... Corinthia: you have my pistol. Will you have the goodness to blow my brains out. I should prefer it to any further effort to follow the gyrations of the weathercock you no doubt call your mind. If you refuse, then I warn you that youll not get another word out of me—not if we sit ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... and I am unfitted for any periodically recurring task, or any stipulated labor of body or mind. I have no command of my talents, such as they are, and have to watch the varyings of my mind as I would those of a weathercock. Practice and training may bring me more into rule; but at present I am as useless for regular service as one of my own country ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... toe!" muttered Bill, using his clasp-knife for a tooth-pick. "It's as tough as a rifle sling. Yer must have got hold of the bloomin' weathercock." ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... like the more domestic weathercock, may often be seen wheeling through the air on the approach of a storm, and exhibits unmistakable signs of exultation when it is going to thunder. It is not a bird of song, but is unsurpassed as a screamer. To the common Kite, a plebeian member of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... close along the east side of Staten Island; and as we shot by the quarantine establishment, with its hospital and many offices, the sun rose, without one attendant cloud, over the forest heights of Brooklyn, burnishing, as with gold, every window and weathercock opposed to its radiance. ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... 'You a weathercock woman!' he reproached her, quite mystified, and fell to rubbing his head. 'Suppose I go to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is two dollars; four times two is eight—yes, eight dollars tax, please. And hurry up, too, if you can, for they have a new batch of kittens over at Baldwin's, and I want to ketch old Baldwin before he goes out. By the way, when did you put that weathercock on your stable?" ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... invisible, As a nose on a man's face, or a weathercock on a steeple! My master sues to her; and she hath taught her suitor, He being her pupil, to become her tutor. O excellent device! Was there ever heard a better, That my master, being scribe, to himself ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... a beautiful morning in Easter week. The sun is shining on the gilded weathercock, which flashes every time it veers from south to west; the snowdrops are getting quite out of date, and the buttercups and primroses have it all their own way; the grass is making a start, and getting quite long upon the graves ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... either, especially as she was more religious than any one in the whole house. Spite of her marvellous beauty—Katterle knew that there was nothing false about it—she would probably end by joining the nuns in the convent. But her mood changed with every breath, like the weathercock on the steeple. If she got out of bed the wrong way, or one did not guess her wishes before they were uttered, she would fly into a rage at the least trifle. Then she sometimes used very unkind words; but no one could cherish anger against her long, for she had an indescribably lovely ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... scenery, or by dissection of motive. It may be empty of action and filled with philosophy. It may be humorously perverse in its license of digression,—as it was in Sterne's hands, for example. It may be all things to all men: it is a very chameleon-weathercock. And it is too varied, too negligent, too lax, to spur its writer to his utmost effort, to that stern wrestle with technic which is ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... flaxen-tressed The fires of the morning flush. Till, as a mist, their beauty died, Their singing shrill and fainter grew; And daylight tremulous and wide Flooded the moorland through and through; Till Urdon's copper weathercock Was reared in golden flame afar, And dim from moonlit dreams awoke The towers and ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... yesterday, not one, nor two, but many days, or even years ago, since he had quitted them. There, indeed, was each former trace of the street, as he remembered it, and all the peculiarities of the houses, with the due multitude of gable-peaks, and a weathercock at every point where his memory suggested one. Not the less, however, came this importunately obtrusive sense of change. The same was true as regarded the acquaintances whom he met, and all the well-known shapes of human ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "Ha, ha," crowed the Weathercock on the Big Red Barn. "Jack Frost is here, for I can see the silver frost upon the grass in the Sunny Meadow," and then that gilded rooster turned his head to the North and blew on his gilt toes to ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... "for it all makes me feel now that we are stupid to think anything wrong can have happened to poor old Weathercock. He's all right somewhere." ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... young man answered; "I will forth and pay my duty. The rusty-weathercock, my lord, is often too ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... point straight back. He was made to be eaten, and he knows it. So it is with the whole tribe of deer, and even with the horse, pampered and cared for and unacquainted with danger; his ears are a weathercock registering the drift of all his petty hopes and fears. I see the left ear go forward and prepare for a desperate shy at that wheelbarrow. He knows a wheelbarrow familiarly—there is one in his stall all day—but I am taking him a ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... occupied by the square front of the Province House, three stories high, and surmounted by a cupola, on the top of which a gilded Indian was discernible, with his bow bent and his arrow on the string, as if aiming at the weathercock on the spire of the Old South. The figure has kept this attitude for seventy years or more, ever since good Deacon Drowne, a cunning carver of wood, first stationed him on his long sentinel's watch ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... had a horror of the east wind; and Tom Sheridan once kept him prisoner in the house for a fortnight by fixing the weathercock in that direction. ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... most happily burlesques by describing Harvey under a yew-tree at Trinity-hall, composing verses on the weathercock of ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... stone shafted casements, a great bow-window of heavy stone work, and a portal with armorial bearings over it, carved in stone. At each corner of the building is an octagon tower, surmounted by a gilt ball and weathercock. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... however, probably soon know; and when I do, I will send off this, but not before, lest the weathercock should veer once more from ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... dost, Goro, with snout upward, like a pig under an oak-tree. And as for Lorenzo—dead and gone before his time—he was a man who had an eye for curious iron-work; and if anybody says he wanted to make himself a tyrant, I say, 'Sia; I'll not deny which way the wind blows when every man can see the weathercock.' But that only means that Lorenzo was a crested hawk, and there are plenty of hawks without crests whose claws and beaks are as good for tearing. Though if there was any chance of a real reform, so that Marzocco [the stone Lion, emblem ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... my old grammatical exercises," answered her brother; "and I must trust her, were she as changeable as a weathercock.—And yet—if she should jilt me!—What will you do—what will you say, Clara, if I am unable, contrary to my hope, trust, and expectation, to repay you this money within ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott |
