"Cock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pretty well. But it seems "he had summoned from Amsterdam a certain physician, whom," says the biographer, "I shall not otherwise point out to notice than by these two letters, L.M. This L.M. had directed the people of the house to purchase an ancient cock, and to have him boiled forthwith, in order that Spinosa might take some broth about noon, which in fact he did, and ate some of the old cock with a good appetite, after the landlord and his wife had returned ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... for the fourth time. "I can do no work," he said, turning round. "I can't fix my mind. I suppose we are going to war. I'd got so used to the war with Germany that I never imagined it would happen. Gods! what a bore it will be.... And Maxse and all those scaremongers cock-a-hoop and 'I told you ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... from the farm and sat down by him, and whined. When the master saw this, he called to his wife: 'Bring a piece of bread to give to the dog.' The wife brought some bread and threw it to the dog, but he would not look at it. Then the farm cock came and pecked at the bread; but the dog said to it: 'Wretched glutton, you can eat like that when you see that your master is dying?' The cock answered: 'Let him die, if he is so stupid. I have a hundred wives, which I call together when I find a grain of corn, and as soon as they are ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... have heard, The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat Awake the god ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... which they lacked the moral courage to keep. Dr. Norman Macleod tells a curious anecdote of a well-known character who lived in the parish of Sedgley, near Wolverhampton, and who, having lost a considerable sum of money by a match at cock-fighting—to which practice he was notoriously addicted—made a vow that he would never fight another cock as long as he lived, "frequently calling upon God to damn his soul to all eternity if he did, and, with dreadful imprecations, wishing the devil might fetch ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... kind of dramatic trick of jumping into the limelight. Things are quiet, so friend Challenger sees a chance to set the public talking about him. You don't imagine that he seriously believes all this nonsense about a change in the ether and a danger to the human race? Was ever such a cock-and-bull story ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not usually beards. Neither men nor women ever put off the sacred shirt or the thread. They eat the flesh only of goats and sheep among animals, and also consume fish, fowls and other birds; but they do not eat a cock after it has begun to crow, holding the bird sacred, because they think that its crowing drives away evil spirits. If Ahura Mazda represented the sun and the light of day, the cock, the herald of the dawn, might be regarded as his sacred bird. Sometimes when a cock or parrot dies the body ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... exclamation frequently made use of in cock-pits, at cock-fightings, where persons refusing or unable to pay their losings, are adjudged by that respectable assembly to be put into a basket suspended over the pit, there to remain during that day's ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... the contrary, wiry, vigorous "Cock-leg," as they called him, was always the foremost climber; he had done the Alpines, one by one, planting on their summits inaccessible the banner of the Club, La Tarasque, starred in silver. Nevertheless, he was only vice-president, V. P. C. A. But he manipulated the place so well that evidently, ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... last. "Chick! chick!" said the little one, and out it tumbled—but, oh! how large and ugly it was! The Duck looked at it. "That is a great, strong creature," said she. "None of the others are at all like it. Can it be a young turkey-cock? Well, we shall soon find out. It must go into the water, though I push it ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... hollow breath over the city, and all things seemed to sleep in the embrace of nothingness. The cock-crow alternated with the strokes of the clocks in the church towers and the mournful cries of the weary sentinels. A waning moon began to appear, and everything seemed to be at rest; even Ibarra himself, worn out by his sad thoughts or by ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... conspicuously Sir William Wilford, who after a French invasion returned the charge by swooping down on Brittany, where he 'made them to pay, besides costs and charges, more than sixfold damages.' And Captain Cocke, a 'Cock of the Game indeed,' according to Fuller; 'A Volanteer in his own ship,' he went out against the Armada, and 'lost his life to save his Queen and Countrey.' Then there is Cockrem, who sailed with William Hawkins, and was left alone among the Brazilians as a hostage for one of ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... cried the man, giving his steel cap a cock over on one side, and displaying a large pink patch of his bald head. ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... love-lyrics of puss upon the tiles and the melodious love-songs of the nightingale." "War, the father of all things," goes back to the same origin as language. The serenade is matched by the battle-cry. The fight between two cock-pheasants for the love of a hen-pheasant is war in its last analysis, in its primal manifestation. Selfish hatred is at the bottom of it. It is the hell-fire to which we owe the heat that is necessary to some ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... with the warm reception he met from everybody there. And the house was full of women; and they seemed, somehow, all cock-a-hoop, and filled with admiration ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... long room which faced the street, and as we came in at one end of it the men behind the cots fired a frightened volley at us and fled out at the other. In less than two minutes the barracks were empty, and we had changed our base from that cock-pit of a fountain to a regular fortress with walls two feet thick, with rifles stacked in every corner, and, what at that moment seemed of greatest importance, with a breakfast for two hundred men bubbling and boiling in great iron pots in the kitchen. I had never felt such elation ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... neighbourhood given up to convents. There were courtyards and gardens enough to make it seem like a small village. There was also a labyrinth of passages above and underground, just as in one of Anne Radcliffe's novels. There were old walls overgrown with vine and jasmine. The cock could be heard at midnight, just as in the heart of the country, and there was a bell with a silvery tone like a woman's voice. From her little cell, Aurore looked over the tops of the great chestnut trees on to Paris, so that the air so necessary for the ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... a gay young sea-cock does not come hither for naught. Drink first, man, and tell us thy business after," and he reached the ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... wrought great execution on the deck of the Englishman. Her captain was desperately wounded early in the fight; and the first lieutenant, who took his place, was struck down by a musket-ball from the "Ranger's" tops. The cock-pit of the "Drake" was like a butcher's shambles, so bespattered was it with blood. But on the "Ranger" there was little execution. The brave Wallingford, Jones's first lieutenant and right-hand man, was killed early in the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... of the merchant prince who owned our ships, played cock-o'-the-walk, took rank next to M. Radisson, and called himself deputy-governor. Foret, whose father had a stretch of barren shingle on The Labrador, and who had himself received letters patent from His Most Christian Majesty for a marquisate, swore he would be cursed ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... give you six hundred marks upon these chests, and keep them a full year, swearing not to open them till that time be expired, else shall we be perjured." "Take the chests," said Martin Antolinez; "I will go with you, and bring back the marks, for my Cid must move before cock-crow." So they took the chests, and though they were both strong men they could not raise them from the ground; and they were full glad of the bargain which they had made. And Rachel then went to the Cid and kissed ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... did guide, To passe away time, but increasing their treasure (When Jack is on cock-horse hee'l galloping ride, But falling at last, hee'l repent it at leisure). The widow, the fatherlesse, gentry and poore, The tradesman and citizen, with a great many, Have suffer'd full dearly to heap up their store; But twelve Parliament ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... and example to your children, this sacking in place of burning. There was a lake quite close to the town, and, indeed, he had forgotten yesterday to propose it to them. The plan was this. They were to tie her up in a leathern sack, with a dog, a cock, and a cat. (Ah, what a pity he had killed the wild-cat which he had caught some weeks before in the fox-trap.) Then they would throw all into the lake, where the cat and dog, and cock and witch, would scream and fight, and bite and scratch, until ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... sons of neighbouring tradesmen and farmers, who were able perhaps to buy a horse or two, or three good coats in a year, and who set up for gentlemen, and spent their days in hunting, shooting, or cock-fighting, thought that the Grays were poor-spirited fellows for sticking so close to business. They prophesied that, even when these brothers should have made a fortune, they would not have the liberality to spend or enjoy it; but this prediction was not verified. ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... Philanor, verily even the glory of thy fleet feet would have fallen into the sere leaf unrenowned, abiding by the hearth of thy kin, as a cock that fighteth but at home, had not the strife of citizen against citizen driven thee from ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... if God were a coquettish woman. That reminds me that Mr. Worldly-Wealthy-Wiseman is no longer a canon, having got himself made archdeacon, and as such he looks more than ever like a black Spanish cock, being clad, of course, in those funny clothes, like the bishops, which always make one think their lordships must be in doubt on getting up in the morning whether they ought to wear a schoolboy's knickerbockers or a ballet-girl's skirt, so they settle the difficulty by putting on ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... Tumm?—saucy as blood an' riches. They fair bored me t' the soul like Sir Harry McCracken's. They's blood behind them eyes—blood an' a sense o' wealth. An' his strut! Is you marked the strut, Tumm?—the very air of a game-cock in a barnyard. It takes a gentleman born t' walk like that. I tells you, Tumm, with wealth t' back un—with wealth t' back body an' brain an' blue blood like that—the lad would be a lawyer at twenty-three an' Chief Justice o' Newf'un'land ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... ship's side, Blood's eyes anxiously scanned the line of seamen leaning over the bulwarks in idle talk with the Spaniards in the cock-boat that waited at the ladder's foot. But their manner showed him that there was no ground for his anxiety. The boat's ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... had in the meanwhile transformed itself into a cock, fell to picking up the seeds of the pomegranate one after another, but finding no more, he came towards us with his wings spread, making a great noise, as if he would ask us whether there were any more seeds. There ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... should be small rather than large, if quick curing is desired. In making these, skilled labor counts for much. The cocks are simply little miniature stacks. The part next to the ground has less diameter than the center of the cock. As each forkful is put on after the first, the fork is turned over so that the hay spreads out over the surface of the heap as it is being deposited. Smaller forkfuls are put on as the top is being reached. The center is kept highest when making the cock. Each one may be made to contain ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... he assented, "I didn't dream I'd be there so long." He rubbed his forehead with a weary hand. "I'll tell you all about it presently," he said. "I had a letter from my wife's mother that worried me, and I started off at half-cock, I got worrying—but of course ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... I was presented to the English officers, and freely supplied with money, to which I had been quite unused, so long as my father was the only source of supply. We were out late when I was presumed to be at my Aunt Gainor's; and to drink and bet, or to see a race or cock-fight, or to pull off knockers, or to bother the ancient watchmen, were now some of my most reputable amusements. I began to be talked about as a bit of a rake, and my Aunt Gainor was not too greatly displeased; she would hear of our exploits and say "Fie! fie!" ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... the Cock.] Suddenly, however, Henning the cock appeared, followed by his two sons, Kryant and Kantart, bearing the mangled remains of a hen upon a bier. In broken accents the bereaved father related how happily he had dwelt in a convent henyard, with the ten sons and fourteen daughters ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... the night when I am reposing with my (now) far-away spouse, having exchanged jewel-pillows[18] with her, let not the cock crow, even though the ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... shouldering his axe, jibbering the while: "I will not go to fight; I am an American. I will not be put in the front rank to be shot by the English, or made to dig trenches." The whole scene was so comic that I sat down and laughed, and the climax was reached when the cock-sparrow, who had always talked so big of what he was going to do and to say to the Boers, crawled under the old grand piano in the farther corner of the big room. I was forced to tell him that no American or Englishman could be found in such an ignominious position, should the house be searched, ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... was exhausted or their hearts flagged, and when the voice of the early cock woke the swan that tended her callow brood amongst the sedges of the Meuse the Old Man departed. Jacques never saw him again, although he often looked in all directions when he went to the hill for a supply of fuel; but from that day Liege grew up in industry, riches, ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... a heathen temple. Of a sudden, a dreadful light shone about him, and he beheld the Demon in the guise of that false god, who fell upon him and seemed like to slay him. But Sisinnius—so is the holy man named—strove in prayer and in conjuration, yea, strove hours until the crowing of the cock, and thus sank into slumber. And while he slept, an angel of the Most High appeared before him, and spoke words which I know not. Since then, Sisinnius wanders from land to land, seeking out the temples of the heathen which have not been purified, and passing ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... in the regency of Paseroean, in the east of the island, Mr. Wallace collected ninety-eight species of birds. Among these he mentions the Javan peacock, of which he obtained two specimens more than seven feet long; the jungle fowl (Gallus furcatus); the jungle cock (Gallus bankiva), called by the natives bekeko; various species of woodpeckers and kingfishers; a hornbill (Buceros lunatus) more than four feet long; and a "pretty little lorikeet (Loriculus pusillus) scarcely more than as many inches." When he visited the west of the island, he found ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... my bed of straw and looked round me. The sunshine was streaming through a small window and under the door, but the door was closed, the bar was very still and quite empty save for my own presence, and the crowing of a cock and the clucking of hens were at first the only sounds that reached me from outside. Then I became conscious of a soft and regular "swish," rising and falling constantly and perpetually, and I remembered the ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... 'Maybe I am,' replied Meg, 'maybe I am not; and if I be, what for no? But as to what the laird, whose grandfather was my father's landlord, said to the new doings yonder—he just jumped at the ready penny, like a cock ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... sang shrill, the cock he crew, And loudly Marmion's bugles blew, And with their light and lively call, Brought groom and yeoman ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... And what men! Everywhere the scarlet and grey of uniforms, the glister of gold lace—the familiar decorous lines of devout top-hats broken by glittering helmets, bear-skins, white nodding plumes, busbies, red caps a-cock, glengarries, all the colour of the British army, mixed with the feathered jauntiness of the Colonies and the khaki sombreros of the C.I.V.'s! Coldstream Guards, Scots Guards, Dragoon Guards, Lancers, ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... or when, without having committed the great crime she innocently lets out the secrets of her thoughts. For our own part we never see a landing without wishing to set up there a mariner's card and a weather-cock. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... did it very well," she said; "but if you're as cock-a-hoop as you make out I don't see how I'm ever to get rid of my depression. I shall be starting to contradict ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... than a match for the whole fraternity of her order. She could only be matched by Mrs. Scutcheen, of Patrick-street, Dublin—the lady who used to boast of her "bag of farthin's," and regale herself before each encounter with a pennorth of the "droppin's o' the cock." Curran was passing the quay at Cork where this virago held forth, when, stopping to listen to her, he was requested to "go on ou' that." Hesitating to retreat as quick as the lady wished, she opened a broadside ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... so high above them, they had no chance. He seized the coal-scoop and whanged Mr. Poodle across the skull. The Bishop came dangerously near reaching him, but Gissing released a jet of scalding steam from an exhaust-cock, which gave the impetuous prelate much cause for grief. A lump of coal, accurately thrown, discouraged Mr. Airedale. Mr. Towser, attacking on the other side of the engine, managed to scramble up so high that he carried away the embroidered stole, but otherwise the fugitive had all the best of ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... place. The hour is doubtful. "It was the hour when the streak of dawn is seen, the hour known in the warfare of heathen times as the hour of the night attack," says the Mataafa official account. A native whom I met on the field declared it was at cock-crow. Captain Hufnagel, on the other hand, is sure it was long before the day. It was dark at least, and the moon down. Darkness made the Samoans bold; uncertainty as to the composition and purpose of the landing-party ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... withheld from me. A nobleman, who had been a most assiduous courtier of the Count, said, rubbing his hands with an air of great joy, "I have just seen the Comte d'Argenson's baggage set out." When the King heard him, he went up to Madame, shrugged his shoulders, and said, "And immediately the cock crew." ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... ain't a rich man, and two hundred's two hundred. Thereby, sir], I don't mind telling you I've had a bit of a worry at it already. You see, Mr. Procurator-Fiscal, I had to look into a ken to-night about the Captain, and an old cock always likes to be sure of his walk; so I got one of your Scotch officers - him as was so polite as to show me round to Mr. Brodie's - to give me full particulars about the 'ouse, and the flash companions that use it. In his list I drop on the names of two old lambs of my ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... for nothing else: "The New York Medical Journal is accredited with publishing the following extract from the history of a journey to Saragossa, Barcelona, and Valencia, in the year 1585, by Philip II of Spain. The book was written by Henrique Cock, who accompanied Philip as his private secretary. On page 248 the following statements are to be found: At the age of eleven years, Margarita Goncalez, whose father was a Biscayian, and whose mother was French, was married to her first ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Mayor, Here sit his two men, Here sits the cock, And here sits the hen; Here sit the chickens, And here they go in, Chippety, ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... figure, who was subsequently devoured by a crocodile on the Blue Nile, Mr. Chumbleton spoke with genuine affection. "He was something like a Dook," said the old man, "and not one of your barley-water-drinking faddists. Yes, in those days a Dook was a Dook and not a cock-shy for demigods [? demagogues]. I can remember," he went on, "when there were three Dooks in residence at the same time, the Dook of Midhurst, the Dook of St. Ives and the Dook of Clumber. But the Dook of Midhurst was the pick of the bunch. Why, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... sweet to sweat through stables, sweet to empty kitchen slops, And it's sweet to hear the tales the troopers tell, To dance with blowzy housemaids at the regimental hops And thrash the cad who says you waltz too well. Yes, it makes you cock-a-hoop to be "Rider" to your troop, And branded with a blasted worsted spur, When you envy, O how keenly, one poor Tommy being cleanly Who blacks your boots and sometimes calls ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... "And go off at half-cock into the bargain? I ain't one of the kind, you know, that talks around Robin Hood's barn. I go straight in at the front door and out at the back. It's my rough way of coming to the p'int at once. I kin see that ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... got you into this scrape, Van," Bob said after a long pause. "I was too cock-sure of myself. That comes of ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... quick. Come and have a look at it. Hang me if this doesn't beat cock-fighting. They've stuck up the pub and cleared off with the till and all the ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... crew, the red cock crew, But never came the day: And crooked shape of Terror crouched, In the corners where we lay: And each evil sprite that walks by night Before us ...
— The Ballad of Reading Gaol • Oscar Wilde
... much better. Why, even in the fields it is the women who do the work; the men go to the cock fights and gamble. The woman is the one who supports the man there, so every law of justice demands that in political life they should have the privilege over ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... Starting from Waka at cock-crow, we marched up a steep ascent, through a bleak-looking range of hills, to Khurboo, where we bivouacked under a tree and ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... the title of Alfaraga Badal-Schidda (i.e. El Ferej bad esh Shiddeh), which signified "Joy after Affliction"; but that, wishing to give his work an original air, he converted the aforesaid plays into tales. Cazotte's story of the Indian plays savours somewhat of the cock and the bull and it is probable that the Hezar o Yek Roz (which is not, to my knowledge, extant) was not derived from so recondite a source, but was itself either the original of the well-known Turkish collection or (perhaps) a translation ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... angel voice, That softly seems to say "Pale stranger, all may yet be well, Then wipe thy tears away; Erect thy head, and cock thy hat, And follow me afar, And thou shalt have a jolly meal, And ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Johnson, incredulous on all other points, was a ready believer in miracles and apparitions. He would not believe in Ossian; but he was willing to believe in the second sight. He would not believe in the earthquake of Lisbon; but he was willing to believe in the Cock ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a tumult over his head, like people passing. He went out to see what made the noise and saw many crows crossing back and forth over the canon. This was the home of the crow, but there were other feathered people there, and the chaparral cock. He saw many fires made by the crows on each side of the caeon. Two crows flew down near him and the youth listened to hear what ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... Awful fight. Grand things, good, old-fashioned, long skirts are for Africa! Get through geese and advance in good order, but somewhat rapidly down road, turn sharply round corner of native houses. Turkey cock—terrific turn up. Flight on my part forwards down road, which is still going strong, now in a northerly direction, apparently indefinitely. Hope to goodness there will be a turning that I can go down and get back by, without returning through ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... handfuls of rice are thrown over them, with prayers that they may be happy and fruitful. After this, the bridegroom repairs in state to the house of the bride, where he is received at the door by one of her friends, who sprinkles him with the blood of a cock, and her with that of a hen. This completes the affair, and ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... been the proudest day of my life. Never, never have I been so lionized! I assure you, I was cock of the walk. My dear sister," said the young man, "nous n'avons qu'a nous tenir; we shall be ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... it will take us a good two and a half hours, if not more, to do it. Now, the question is—Do we go straight there, or do we put up for the night? There's an inn here at this junction: there's the Moor Cock Inn a mile or so along the road which we must take before we turn off to the moorland and the fells. It's going to be a black night—look at those masses of black cloud gathering there!—and possibly a wet one, and we've no waterproofs. But it's for you to say—I'm game for ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... endless evils in the body. 'Yes.' The body should have the most exercise when growing most. 'What, the bodies of young infants?' Nay, the bodies of unborn infants. I should like to explain to you this singular kind of gymnastics. The Athenians are fond of cock-fighting, and the people who keep cocks carry them about in their hands or under their arms, and take long walks, to improve, not their own health, but the health of the birds. Here is a proof of the usefulness ...
— Laws • Plato
... receive. But he waked in a moment to the knowledge that he was sitting upon his horse in the empty road and in the quiet of an August morning. There were larks singing in the pale blue above his head; a landrail sent up its harsh cry from the meadow on the left; the crow of a cock rose clear from the valley. He looked about him, and rode briskly on down the incline in front of him and up the ascent beyond. He rode again with his company of ghosts—phantoms of people with whom upon this road he had walked and ridden and laughed, ghosts ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... every bird, and fish, and fly, and could read, as cunningly as the oldest sailor, the meaning of every drift of cloud which crossed the heavens. Lastly, he had been for some time past, on account of his extraordinary size and strength, undisputed cock of the school, and the most terrible fighter among all Bideford boys; in which brutal habit he took much delight, and contrived, strange as it may seem, to extract from it good, not only for himself but for others, doing justice among his school-fellows with a heavy hand, and succoring the oppressed ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... a democratic country. Nobody is troubled about keeping the underworld in its place, so mahout or sweeper has the ear of majesty as readily as any other man, if not even more so. And it would not make the slightest difference now what kind of cock and bull story the mahout might tell to the Maharajah. However wild it might be it would certainly include the fact that two white men had ridden to Yasmini's palace on the Maharajah's favorite elephant ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... then a common stone Which I at last must break my heart upon, For all God's charge to his high angels may Guard my foot better? Did I yesterday Wash thy feet, my beloved, that they should run Quick to deny me 'neath the morning sun? And do thy kisses like the rest betray? The cock crows coldly. Go and manifest A late contrition, but no bootless fear! For when thy final need is dreariest, Thou shalt not be denied, as I am here. My voice, to God and angels, shall attest, "Because I know this man, let ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... bright and empty, as if it had been swept bare and cleansed for that which was to come. Up above me soft little gray clouds showed suddenly, all touched with pink on their eastern sides, while the sky behind them warmed with a faint dun glow. A cock in the Beaumanoir yard woke suddenly and crowed, and the challenge was answered from La Vauroque. Jeanne Falla's pigs grunted sleepily at the disturbance. The pigeons rumbled in their cote, and the birds began to twitter in the trees about the house. And behind ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... and colic; but the bear, on the contrary, whatever sickness he may have, becomes stronger by devouring them. The viper is benumbed if one twig of the oak 58 touches it, as is also the bat by a leaf of the plane-tree. The elephant flees before the ram, and the lion before the cock, and seals from the rattling of beans that are being pounded, and the tiger from the sound of the drum. Many other examples could be given, but that we may not seem to dwell longer than is necessary on this subject, we conclude by saying that since the same things are pleasant to ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... a weird, intermittent creaking told him that the milk-cart of provincial towns was on its beat; from a distant freight-train came the long, melancholy wail that locomotives give at night; and then drowsily, but with the promptness of one conscientious in his duty, a cock crew. Ford knew that somewhere, unseen as yet by him, the dawn was coming, and—again ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... Gurley rose, smoothed down her apron, and was just on the point of turning away, when on the bed opposite Laura's she espied an under-garment, lying wantonly across the counterpane. At this blot on the orderliness of the room she seemed to swell like a turkey-cock, seemed literally to grow before Laura's eyes as, striding to the door, she commanded an invisible some one to send ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... life, Najib could run on the sands and sit down when tired to rest; in two months he could imitate in voice and gesture whatever he heard or saw: the donkey's bray, and with a tilt of the head like him; the cry of the cock; the shrill whistle of the train; and the howling of donkey boys. His keen sense of discrimination in sounds is incredible. And one day, seeing a Mohammedan spreading his rug to pray, he begins to kneel and kiss the ground in imitation of him. He even went into the tent and brought Khalid's ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... Sundays came, the father, daughter, son Walked to the church across their own loved fields. It was an ugly church, with scarce a sign Of what makes English churches venerable. Likest a crowing cock upon a heap It stood—but let us say—St. Peter's cock, Lacking not many a holy, rousing charm For one with whose known self it was coeval, Dawning with it from darkness of the unseen! And its low mounds of monumental grass Were far more solemn than great marble tombs; For flesh is grass, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... Golah stood by with their muskets on full cock, and the first move any of Bill's companions could have made to assist him, would have been a signal for ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... in an adjoining pond, convoying whole fleets of ducks; regiments of turkeys were gobbling through the farmyard, and Guinea fowls fretting about it, like ill-tempered housewives, with their peevish, discontented cry. Before the barn door strutted the gallant cock, that pattern of a husband, a warrior and a fine gentleman, clapping his burnished wings and crowing in the pride and gladness of his heart—sometimes tearing up the earth with his feet, and then generously calling his ever-hungry family of wives and children to enjoy ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Lawless; "come on, and let's see how the old cock does it; "and, suiting the action to the word, off he ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... ROUGH COCK'S-FOOT-GRASS.—Has a remarkable rough coarse foliage, and is of little account as a grass for the hay-stack; but from its early growth and great produce it is now found to be a useful plant, and is the only grass at this ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... Let not him live, who reached at another's life.' (Here he turned to Kouritzin, but remembering that he was always disinclined to severe punishments, he continued, waving his hand,) 'I forgot that a craven[2] croweth not like a cock.' (At these words the deacon's eyes sparkled with satisfaction.) 'Mamon, be this thy care. Tell my judge of Moscow—the court judge—to have the Lithuanian and the interpreter burned alive on the Moskva—burn them, dost thou hear? that others may not think ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... was filled with visitors only on Sundays, and there refreshed myself with some bread and cheese and a bottle of wine. A crowd of hens surrounded me, and I kept throwing them pieces of bread, and was touched by the self-sacrificing abstemiousness with which the cock gave all to his wives though I aimed particularly at him. They became bolder and bolder, and finally flew on to the table and attacked my provisions; the cock flew after them, and noticing that everything was topsy-turvy, pounced upon the cheese with the eagerness ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... so much to tell, that I am cock-sure about." I began slowly. "Kirby had you securely hidden away somewhere on the second deck, while this Clark girl had been locked into a stateroom above. I possessed such a growth of beard and was altogether so disreputable looking as to be mistaken ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... glowing, The cock on high is crowing; Upon the heath's brown heather 'Tis time our bands we gather. Ye Chieftains disencumber Your eyes of clogging slumber; Ye mighty friends of ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... in modernised Dutch costume comes in waddling laughingly after her parent. Another Member turns round on his swivel chair as his page-boy runs up to him, shakes him heartily by the hand, tosses him on his foot and gives him a "ride-a-cock-horse." Oh, you English sticklers for etiquette! What would you say if Mr. Labouchere came in on all fours with his little child pulling his coat-tails and whacking him with a stick, or if Sir William Harcourt played at leapfrog with Lulu round ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... monopolizers in general, he was apt to speculate a little too deeply. Eager to enjoy, he was impatient to obtain the means of enjoyment. So that, at one time, the turning up of the jack at all fours was to make his fortune; but how provoking! it happened to be the ten: at another it depended on a duck-wing cock, which (who could have foreseen so strange an accident?) disgraced the best feeder in the kingdom, by running away: and it more than once did not want half a neck's length of being realized by a ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... they were supposed to be anything but Germans, I'd say you'd told us a cock and bull story, young 'un! English troops, or French, would show some sort of a light. Some fool would take a chance to get a smoke. But these Germans! They're not men—they're machines. They'll obey orders that officers wouldn't take the trouble to give in any other army. ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... the prejudices of the vulgar, they are themselves under the influence of those very prejudices. It probably was not altogether on grounds of expediency that Socrates taught his followers to honour the gods whom the state honoured, and bequeathed a cock to Esculapius with his dying breath. So there is often a portion of willing credulity and enthusiasm in the veneration which the most discerning men pay to their political idols. From the very nature of man it must be so. The faculty by which we inseparably ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... solitary, and I was filled with pleasing anticipation of all the wild life I should see in such a place, especially after an experience I had on my second day in it. I was standing in an open glade when a cock-pheasant uttered a cry of alarm, and immediately afterwards, startled by the cry perhaps, a roe-deer rushed out of the close thicket of oak and holly in which it had been hiding, and ran past me at a very short distance, giving me a good sight of this shyest of the large wild ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... Gehenna can burn nothing but the chaff and carcases, so we shall be none the poorer in reality. So as the frost has broken gloriously, I wish you would get me a couple of dozen of good flies, viz., cock a bondhues, red palmers with plenty of gold twist; winged duns, with bodies of hare's ear and yellow mohair mixed well; hackle duns with grey bodies, and a wee silver, these last tied as palmers, and the silver ribbed all the way down. If you could send ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... sunburn. The young girl's delight angered her. Perhaps, too, the beauty and grace, the cloth habit fitting her slim, elegant figure, the beaver hat that looked so jaunty and had in it some long cock's plumes, quite a new fashion. Then there was the trim foot with its fine shoe and steel buckle, all gauds of worldliness to be sure, but they would attract a ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... was then set at liberty, and for one short half-hour strutted like a giant-hero among the astounded hens. But no sooner did the former old cock—who had game blood in him, repute said—return from a distant excursion into the cornfields with his especial favorites about him, and behold the mighty majesty of the monster, than his pride and ire blazed up. He put his head low, ruffled out his long neck-feathers, his eyes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... Resting-places in this grim wilderness of his: poor snow-clad Hamlets,—with their little hood of human smoke rising through the snow; silent all of them, except for the sound of here and there a flail, or crowing cock;—but have been awakened from their torpor by this transit of Belleisle. Happily the bogs themselves are ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... on the second morning, Norman reported his reasoning, it was that a man must walk about with somebody on Commemoration week, and that it was a comfort to do so with ladies who wore their bonnets upon their heads, instead of, like most of those he met, remind him of what Cock Robin said to Jenny Wren in that ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... A cock crowed from under the hen-roost, the dog barked indoors, and the mare began to stamp in ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... skylark, quarrel, and make it up again, after the manner of boys. The wardroom was large and airy, and there was ample space for the party. At meals they consisted of the three lieutenants, the surgeon, purser, and seven midshipmen. As he had never been accustomed to a rough life in the cock-pit of a British man-of-war, the contrast to his former condition was not so strong as it would have been to a midshipman in the royal service; but the somewhat stiff courtesy that prevailed among the ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... the chief Orders ruffle their feathers when angry or frightened. Every one must have seen two cocks, even quite young birds, preparing to fight with erected neck-hackles; nor can these feathers when erected serve as a means of defence, for cock-fighters have found by experience that it is advantageous to trim them. The male Ruff (Machetes pugnax) likewise erects its collar of feathers when fighting. When a dog approaches a common hen with her chickens, she spreads out her wings, raises her tail, ruffles ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... but still seeing nothing, and being a little startled, they rose and went up to bed. When Robert came to the top of the garret stairs, he saw a handmill, which was at a little distance, whirled about very swiftly.... When he was in bed, he heard as it were the gobbling of a turkey cock close to the bedside; and soon after, the sound of one stumbling over his shoes and boots; but there were none there, he had left them below.... The next evening, between five and six o'clock, my sister ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... about to be swept away; for the adventurous Spaniard, moved by his thirst for the gold, of whose existence rumour had from time to time told him, was now in the land. The simple people, coasting along in their light balsas or rafts, had seen the coming of what to them were then wondrous ships, cock-boats, though, as compared even to our collier brigs. War and rapine were in the land; the arms of the Spaniards—the thunder and lightning they bore with them in their guns— were everywhere victorious, and ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... with the young and lusty West the fruits of their knowledge. On a May morning, as skillful carriers swing you up to the heights of the South India hills, there is a sudden sound reminiscent of the home barnyard, a scurry of wings across the path, and a gleam of glossy plumage; Mr. Jungle Cock has been disturbed in his morning meal. Did you know that from his ancestors are descended in direct lineage all the Plymouth Rocks and the White Leghorns of the poultry yard, all the Buff Orpingtons that ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... insisted. "Come, buck up, old man. Bathe your feet in the creek, and then you'll feel as fit as a fighting-cock. We've got to get into town hot-foot. They've got a bunch of crooks at the gold office, and we're liable to lose our ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... Gardens was but one page in the book of life, and every page in that book was equally interesting to him. He desired all amusements, to know all things, to be loved by every one; and longing for new sensations of life, he often escaped to the Cock tavern for a quiet dinner with some young barristers, and a quiet smoke afterwards with them in their rooms. It was there he had met ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore |
