"Crows" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when the sun passed behind the distant hills. Near by was a deep, rock-walled canon, from the depths of which many mingled voices could be heard. Bilh Ahati{COMBINING BREVE}ni walked to its edge and peered over. Back and forth from side to side flew countless crows, passing in and out of dark holes in opposite walls. From below, when darkness had shrouded all, Bilh Ahati{COMBINING BREVE}ni heard a human voice call in loud echoing tones, "They say, they ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... and Happy Jack the Gray Squirrel and Chatterer the Red Squirrel and Whitefoot the Wood Mouse and Striped Chipmunk and a lot more. Of course, Sammy Jay was there, but Sammy didn't try to keep out of sight. Oh, my, no! He joined right in with the Crows, calling Hooty all sorts of bad names and flying about just out of reach in the most impudent way. You see he knew ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... children, but all a refreshment and delight. And it has also its clock-tower, with one of those ingenious pieces of mechanism, in which the sober people of this region take pleasure. At the hour, a procession of little bears goes round, a jolly figure strikes the time, a cock flaps his wings and crows, and a solemn Turk opens his mouth to announce the flight of the hours. It is more grotesque, but less elaborate, than the equally childish toy in the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... what perils lurked in them or beyond them. The new climate might give them sunshine or healing rain, but was quite as likely to strike their houses with thunderbolts or harrow their harvests with a cyclone. Meanwhile marauding crows pulled up their precious corn; fierce owls with tufted heads preyed upon their poultry; bears and eagles harried their flocks; the winter wail of the wolf pack or the scream of a hungry panther, sounding through icy, echoless woods, made them shiver in their cabins and draw nearer the blazing ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... Pueblo Indians keep, and have kept from time immemorial, great numbers of eagles and hawks of every obtainable species, as also turkies, for the sake of the feathers. The Dakotas and other western tribes keep eagles for the same purpose. They also tame crows, which are fed from the hand, as well as hawks and magpies. A case nearer in point is a reference in Lawson to the Congarees of North Carolina. He says, "they are kind and affable, and tame the cranes and storks of their savannas." ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... most of us go through life, and down into a hole in the ground like moles, without having taken any notice of the bird that flew or the bill that sang. We believe that the small birds are sparrows, the larger probably crows; barndoor fowls are the ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... first place, I was the leader of as wild and mischievous a band of crows as you ever heard tell of. There was one particular farm in our territory we loved to visit. The owner's name was Silas Whimple and he was the grouchiest, most miserly man in the county. He lived alone and what part ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... always the risk of a mistake when we judge of people by appearances; but how startling is the truth of that commonplace remark when applied to the clergy! This Abbe Plomb looks like a scared sacristan; he goes about gaping at invisible crows, and he seems so ill at ease, so loutish, so awkward—and this is our learned man and devoted mystic, in love with his Cathedral! Certainly it is not safe to judge of an Abbe from appearances. Now that it is to be my fate to live in this clerical ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... you for sending me the photograph of one of your brother's admirable pictures. His "Forgotten" is a dismal, ghastly symphony of crows and vultures; I understand it, and deeply enter ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... up the ground with his plough, and scattered in the seed-corn, the crows were watching from the old apple-tree, and they came down to pick up the corn; and, indeed, they did carry away a good deal. But the days went by, the spring showers moistened the earth, and the sun shone; and so the seed-corn ...
— The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children • Jane Andrews
... execution by Major Q. Icilius, in a most barbarous manner. The king was apparently satisfied; but when Q. Icilius in 1764 applied for repayment of moneys spent in executing the royal command, the king indorsed on the application—"My officers steal like crows. They ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... this list may be included four species of the Caracara or Polyborus, the Turkey buzzard, the Gallinazo, and the Condor. The Caracaras are, from their structure, placed among the eagles: we shall soon see how ill they become so high a rank. In their habits they well supply the place of our carrion-crows, magpies, and ravens; a tribe of birds widely distributed over the rest of the world, but entirely absent in South America. To begin with the Polyborus Brasiliensis: this is a common bird, and has a wide geographical range; it is most numerous on the grassy savannahs ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... which he added for food, the deer, the elk, and the bison; to the pale-faced son he gave the horse to carry him, because his legs were weak, the cow, the hog, the sheep, and the cat. The white son took, of the feathered tribes, the fowl which crows at the glimmering of light, the duck and the goose, which love to dabble in mud, and the turkey, which sings a song that is none of the best; and the red man took the eagle, the owl, and all the rest of the birds. The fishes were not divided, because they could not be kept apart, but ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... and saw again the same inconceivably sticky clay of France. There were the rain-washed gullies, the half-roofed entrances to the vast underground fortresses, clean-swept, perfect roads, as efficient as the arteries of Verdun, flapping dead leaves like the omnipresent, worn-out scare-crows of camouflage, and over in one corner, to complete the simile, were a dozen shell-holes, the homes of voracious ant-lions, which, for passing insects, were unexploded mines, ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... [26:32]but after I have risen I will go before you into Galilee. [26:33]And Peter answered and said to him, If all men shall be offended with you, I will not. [26:34]Jesus said to him, I tell you truly, that this night, before the cock crows, you will deny me thrice. [26:35]Peter said to him, If it should be necessary for me to die with you, I will by no means deny you. And all the disciples said ...
— The New Testament • Various
... the trader. "Did you not know it? As you do not want my powder, I thought I would plant it, and raise a crop which I could gather and sell to the Crows." ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... thirty-seven kinds that I have referred to, some are, of course, very rare, or only found in particular parts of the country, but at least forty or fifty of them occur everywhere, and some are as plentiful as crows. Yet they keep themselves out of our way so successfully that it is quite a rare event to meet with one. Occasionally one finds its way into a house in quest of frogs, lizards, musk-rats, or some other of the ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... darkness of the morning, before the breaking of the day, in the hour when the crows first begin to fly abroad and cry, the dead mother of Shuntoku came to him ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... do it,' said the Crow kindly, 'so that's all right. I thought you'd better get used to seeing rather large crows before I take you to Crownowland. We are all ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... his voice made his helplessness more pathetic than ever to Mary, but she answered gaily, "You know I'll stand by you till 'the last cock crows and the last trump blows!' You didn't have to be born in Mars month to make undaunted courage ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... corruption, slander, and revolution.[31] Revolution has so rapidly followed revolution that history has ceased to count them; and it may be said of them what Milton wrote of the wars of the Saxon Heptarchy, "that they are not more worthy of being recorded than the skirmishes of crows and kites." The Grand Plaza, the heart where all the great arteries of circulation meet and diverge, is where the high tides of Quito ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... from the sparrows, pigeons, ravens, and other voracious birds. On the branches of the cedars were perched large eagles; amid the foliage of the weeping willows were herons, solemnly standing on one leg; and on every hand were crows, ducks, hawks, wild birds, and a multitude of cranes, which the Japanese consider sacred, and which to their minds ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... and turns, so that we never knew what might be ahead of us. Sometimes we sailed so near the shore that the boom swept along the bank, brushing the grass. Once we turned a corner suddenly, and started up four crows, who were pecking at a dead fish, and in another place a big crane jumped clumsily up from a pool, and flapped heavily away. The dark, muddy water boiled up in thousands ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... and gazed out of the kitchen window towards the far-reaching fields, where none but the crows could find a living now. She was only able to run up from New York once a month, since she had taken a position of junior instructor at the Academy, and yet each time she found herself turning with a sigh of relief and safety from the city life to the ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... house is known. More, there is an order out that if I attempt to leave the town by land or water, I am to be seized, whereon my house will be searched instantly, and it will be found that my bullion is gone. Think, lad, how great is this wealth, and you will understand why the crows are hungry. It is talked of throughout the Netherlands, it has been reported to the King in Spain, and I learn that orders have come from him concerning its seizure. But there is another band who would get hold of it first, Ramiro and his crew, and that is why I have been left safe so long, because ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... his hunters for company, and stain, his gentility with droppings of ale. He is fearful of being sheriff of the shire by instinct, and dreads the assize-week as much as the prisoner. In sum, he's but a clod of his own earth, or his land is the dunghill and he the cock that crows over it: and commonly his race is quickly run, and his children's children, though they scape hanging, return to the ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... and battered as it looked, it was strong with the strength of renewed life. On the other side of the stream was a smooth green haugh; the clouds of the early part of the day had vanished, and the blue sky stretched overhead; innumerable crows flying homeward dotted it all over and patterned ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... kind may be drawn from the vertebrates. Among the birds there are none more quick-witted than the social crows, none with less display of intelligence than the solitary carnivorous species. Birds are rather gregarious than social. There are few species whose association is above that of mere aggregation in flight. Those more distinctively ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... common, and breeds in most of the Islands, and probably at times commits considerable depredations amongst the eggs and young of the Gulls and Shags—at all events it is by no means a welcome visitor to the breeding stations of the Gulls, as in this summer (1878) I saw four Crows about a small gullery near Petit Bo Bay, one of which flew over the side of the cliff to have a look at the Gulls' eggs, probably with ulterior intentions in regard to the eggs; but one of the Gulls saw him, and immediately ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... stagnant, viscous water was yellow under the sunset, and a yellow light hung over the green slopes, the grey walls and the dark tree tops. An echelon of geese passed high overhead in the region of the pale moon. Within the mysterious enclave of the "Son of Heaven" the crows were uttering ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... The crows flapped over by twos and threes, In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their knees, 110 The little birds sang as if it were The one day of summer in all the year, And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees: ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... whiffletree, and besides lost my balance and fell down flat. Master then jumped down, and getting a cudgel struck me over the head, and I thought my troubles were over. This happened just before Mr. Ben Ham's house, and I should have been finished and ready for the crows, if he had not stepped out and told master not to strike again, if he did he would shake his liver out. That saved my life, but I was sorry, though Mr. Ham meant good.' The goad with the iron brad was in the wagon, and snatching ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... some of our best horses," said War Eagle, as soon as the other guests had gone. "That is all right—we shall get them back, and more, too. The Crows have only borrowed those horses and will pay for their use with others of their own. To-night I shall tell you why the Mountain lion is so long and thin and why he wears hair that looks singed. I shall also tell you why that person's ...
— Indian Why Stories • Frank Bird Linderman
... tutor had been three parts smothered in his bed by a red-pepper squib dropped down the chimney; and on the morning after the Master's laundry was raided, and the linen (belonging to both sexes) distributed amongst the crows' nests in the avenue, I think special trains must have been running into Cambridge, so thick was ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... in a gilt frame. When she arrived there, what was her surprise to find the city entirely inhabited by birds and animals! Parrots and peacocks prevailed, but ospreys and jackdaws, vultures and cormorants, crows and cockerels, and many, many other kinds of birds were also fluttering about, making a perpetual whizzing. Then there were hundreds of monkeys, all jauntily dressed, with little canes in their hands, and a great many camels and spaniels, and other animals, wild and tame, in neat linen blouses. ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... sides. The Americans did not meddle with forbidden topics, as they had been cautioned not to do, such as their religion and burial rites; but they could not help thinking of this elegant lady's comely form being torn to pieces by the crows and vultures in the Tower of Silence with ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... I shall enjoy it afterwards (please God), if I get years enough allotted to me for the thing to ripen in. When I am a very old and very respectable citizen with white hair and bland manners and a gold watch, I shall hear three crows cawing in my heart, as I heard them this morning: I vote for old age and eighty years of retrospect. Yet, after all, I dare say, a short shrift and a nice green ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the second archipelago above the gate; south of us lay the "Low Islands" of the chart, with plantations of beans and tobacco; the peasants stood to stare like Icelanders, leaning on oblong-bladed paddles six feet long, or upon alpen-stocks capped with bayonets; the "scare-crows" were grass figures, with pots for heads and wooden rattles suspended to bent poles. On the right bank a block of hills narrows the stream, and its selvage of light green grasses will contribute to the ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the very worst cases of neurosis of the housewife come in the early thirties, in women previously beautiful or extraordinarily attractive. They watch the crows'-feet, the fine wrinkles, the fat covering the lines of the neck and body with something of the anguish that the general watches the enemy cutting off his lines of communication or a statesman marks the rise of an ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... nymph within was singing with a sweet voice as she fared to and fro before the loom, and wove with a shuttle of gold. And round about the cave there was a wood blossoming, alder and poplar and sweet-smelling cypress. And therein roosted birds long of wing, owls and falcons and chattering sea-crows, which have their business in the waters. And lo, there about the hollow cave trailed a gadding garden vine, all rich with clusters. And fountains four set orderly were running with clear water, hard by one another, ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... landlord, to his sub., "bring out der ole hoss again, pefore he die mit de crows, in mine stable; now, you ole fool, you shall go vay pout your bishenish mit nossin to eat, mit yer hoss too!" said the landlord, with an evident rush of blood and beer to ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... and me standing by her side. He made some remark upon the beauty of the afternoon, and withdrew himself into the shadow of the wood. Then we talked about autumn, and about the pleasures of being lost in the woods, and about the crows whose voices Margaret had heard; and about the experiences of early childhood, whose influence remains upon the character after the recollection of them has passed away; and about the sight of mountains from a distance, and the view from their summits; and about other ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... lees of vulgar slaves; Slaves, with the minds of slaves; so born, so bred. Yet such as these, united in a herd, Are called, the public! Millions of such cyphers Make up the public sum. An eagle's life Is worth a world of crows. Are princes made For such as these; who, were one soul extracted From all their beings, could not raise ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... like jewels; yellow butterflies, beetles with wings of ruby-red or gold, and dragonflies that picked out the undergrowth with fire. In the shadow overhead flew and chattered crowds of green paroquets and glossy crows, while here and there we could see a Bird of Paradise drooping its smart tail-feathers amid the foliage. A little further, and deep in the forest the ear caught the busy tap-tap of the woodpecker, the snap of the toucan's beak, or far away the deep trumpeting of the elephant. Once we startled a leopard ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to the crow he started, like one mad, And tore out every feather that he had, And made him black, and reft him of his stores Of song and speech, and flung him out of doors Unto the devil; whence never come he back, Say I. Amen. And hence all crows are black. ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... gruel isn't to your taste? Oh, you crows! You're scared!" they shouted at the militiamen who stood hesitating before the man whose leg had ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... cock crows.—Is he dreaming? 'Tis dark still. He crows again and now, from farm to farm, His fellows echo far his dazed alarm And flap of wings on fences. He is shrill Because it is not dawn above the hill, That wakes him, but the English, as they arm, And murder ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... they worship the good while the others worship the devil, and as your father the Predikant used to say, Good is the cock which always wins the fight at the last, Baas. Yes, when he seems to be dead he gets up again and kicks the devil in the stomach and stands on him and crows, Baas. Also these northern folk are mighty magicians. Through their Child-fetish they give rain and fat seasons and keep away sickness, whereas Jana gives only evil gifts that have to do with cruelty and war and so forth. Lastly, the priests who rule through the Child have ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... the interest he took in the course of the recent war and his intelligent appreciation of the finer points of Marshal FOCH'S strategy were most pleasing to observe. He would greet the news of our victorious onsweep with exultant crows, while at the announcement of any temporary set-back he would mutter gloomily and go and scratch under the shrubbery. On Armistice day he quite let himself go, cackling and mafficking round the yard in a manner almost ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various
... the trap kind, there is, perhaps, no one more novel and comical than the "Fool's Cap" crow-trap, which forms the subject of our present illustration. Crows are by no means easy of capture in any form of trap, and they are generally as coy and as shrewd in their approach to a trap as they are bold in their familiarity and disrespect for the sombre scarecrows in the ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... like, for it is very rare indeed for a piece of ground to be fresh ploughed without rooks coming to it. There were rookeries beneath in the plains where the elms and beeches grew tall, but the birds never came up to forage. Crows could be found, and stopped on the hill all the year. Wood-pigeons, like the rooks, went over, but did not stay. Starlings were not at all plentiful; blackbirds and thrushes were there, but not nearly so numerous as is usually ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... suggested the speech of Juliet, in which she figures herself awaking in the tomb of her ancestors. Some one mentioned the description of Dover Cliff. JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; it should be all precipice,—all vacuum. The crows impede your fall. The diminished appearance of the boats, and other circumstances, are all very good descriptions; but do not impress the mind at once with the horrible idea of immense height. The impression is divided; you pass ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... to work he is not fit for, for he will never do it well. They say that if pigs fly they always go with their tails forward, and awkward workmen are much the same. Nobody expects cows to catch crows, or hens to wear hats. There's reason in roasting eggs, and there should be reason in choosing servants. Don't put a round peg into a square hole, nor wind up your watch with a corkscrew, nor set a tender-hearted man ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... no doubt he said—'I can't stand it any longer; I must have a look,' streamed out in radiant majesty. The mist, too shy and gentle for such lusty company, fled off, quite scared, before it; and as it swept away, the hills and mounds and distant pasture lands, teeming with placid sheep and noisy crows, came out as bright as though they were unrolled bran new for the occasion. In compliment to which discovery, the brook stood still no longer, but ran briskly off to bear the tidings to the water-mill, three ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... domestic olives and poppies were all she wanted; and lacking these, tares and wormwood must be her portion. She was then taken behind a grating, her hair cut, and her clothes exchanged for the nun's vestments; the black-robed sisters who worked upon her looking like crows or ravens at their ominous feasts. All the while, the music played, first sweet and thoughtful, then triumphant strains. The effect on my mind was revolting and painful to the last degree. Were monastic seclusion always voluntary, and could it be ended whenever the mind required ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Martin I how thine eyes— That one would think had put aside its lashes,— That can't bear gashes Thro' any horse's side, must ache to spy That horrid window fronting Fetter-lane,— For there's a nag the crows have pick'd for victual, Or some man painted in a bloody vein— Gods! is there no Horse-spital! That such raw shows must sicken the humane! Sure Mr. Whittle Loves thee but little, To let that poor horse ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... same fleet which he had employed the year before against the Carthaginians. Many prodigies were reported to have happened this year, which increased in proportion as they were believed by the credulous and superstitious. That crows had built a nest within the temple of Juno Sospita at Lanuvium; that a green palm-tree had taken fire in Apulia; that a pool at Mantua, formed by the overflowing of the river Mincius, had assumed the appearance of blood; that it had rained chalk at Cales, and blood at Rome ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... day three went, and again she perceived that only two retired. In fine, it was found necessary to send five or six men to the watch house to put her out in her calculation. The crow, thinking that this number of men had passed by, lost no time in returning.' From this he inferred that crows could count up to four. Lichtenberg mentions a nightingale which was said to count up to three. Every day he gave it three mealworms, one at a time. When it had finished one it returned for another, but ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... asked about Marquise? Well, he was what you are—a hawk among carrion crows, a gentleman in the ranks. Dieu! how handsome he was! Nobody ever knew his real name, but they thought he was of Austrian breed, and we called him Marquise because he was so womanish white in his skin and dainty in all his ways. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... about for an hour in the blistering sun, searching stupidly for what we knew we could never find; crocodiles remove traces of identity more swiftly than kites and crows. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... and dignity of this hawk, when attacked by crows or the kingbird, are well worth of him. He seldom deigns to notice his noisy and furious antagonists, but deliberately wheels about in that aerial spiral, and mounts and mounts till his pursuers grow ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... American railroads, and what he thought himself of these. Mrs. Lander noted the difference of the English stations; but she did not see much in the landscape to examine him upon. She required him to tell her why the rooks they saw were not crows, and she was not satisfied that he should say the country seat she pointed out was a castle when it was plainly deficient in battlements. She based upon his immovable confidence in respect to it an inquiry into the structure of English society, and she made him tell her ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... admiral, whose flag was flying on board the Marlborough, for a cruise off Cape Tiberon. I should make my letter too long if I were to describe all that took place. We had not been many days on the station before we captured two French privateers, and from their crows learned that a rich convoy was preparing at Port au Prince to sail for Europe, under the protection of two large armed private ships. The admiral on this sent in his tender to ascertain if such was the fact. Her commander, ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... day a Royston rook {206} went among the crows (black birds), and they asked him, "Where did you steal your white coat?" And he told (them), "I stole it from a fool of a pigeon." Then he went among the pigeons and said, "How are you, brothers?" And they asked him, "Where did you get those black trousers and sleeves?" ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... cock crows in the morning you must be quick to rise; you must keep your ears awake to hear the cry of the cock. And if there be no cock, or the cock does not crow, then let the moon be as a cock for you, let the constellation of the great Bear tell you when it is time to rise. Then you ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... is this sudden gayety that shakes the grayest boughs? A voice is calling fieldward—'T is time to start the ploughs! To set the furrows rolling, while all the old crows nod; And deep as life, the kernel, to cut the golden sod. The pen—let nations have it;—we'll plough a ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... "Before the cock crows thrice," smiled Leon Giraud, "this man will betray the cause of work for an idle life and the vices ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... seem to be a branch of the Sheep Eaters who afterwards intermarried with the Mountain Crows, a tall race of people who gave to the Shoshones a taller and better physique. From what can be gleaned, the Sheep Eater women were most beautiful, but resembled the Alaskan Indians in ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen
... our path lay was white with fresh hoar-frost, and the thicket away to the south was a haunt for crows such as I never have seen again since; the black birds flew round and about it in dark clouds with loud shrieks, as though in its midst stood a charnel and gallows, and from the brushwood likewise, by ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... glistened in the October sunlight! It was very hard to fix my mind upon the contra-indications of calomel and the bromides while the snowy gulls were circling gracefully over the gliding waters, and the noisy crows were leading my thoughts across the stream to the island thickets where I knew the wild-deer lay. I remember how I used to interpret their cawing into mocking laughter because I had no wings to follow them into those shady fastnessess, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... o'clock was noted and still no sight or sound of assailant came, Sergeant Carmody turned a wearied, aching eye from his loophole and muttered to the officer crouching close beside him: "I could wring the neck of the lot of those infernal cat crows, sir, but I'll thank God if we hear ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... prick," said Bill, "And I saw the shells so thick (p. 218) comin' over us that you couldn't see the sky. They was like crows up above." ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... last day of July. The fields were dotted with sheaves of grain, and the farmers were hastening to gather them in. They had been surprised by countless numbers of crows and ravens which invaded the valley and filled the air with their hoarse, discordant cries. Those experienced in war knew that these birds were the usual attendants and heralds ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... was a bard with her, to whom Agamemnon had given strict orders on setting out for Troy, that he was to keep guard over his wife; but when heaven had counselled her destruction, Aegisthus carried this bard off to a desert island and left him there for crows and seagulls to batten upon—after which she went willingly enough to the house of Aegisthus. Then he offered many burnt sacrifices to the gods, and decorated many temples with tapestries and gilding, for he had succeeded ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... and told us to go down to the clam flats and not to come home till we'd got two bushels o' clams for the hens. Fast as I get a roller full and go over and emp'y 'em on the bank the crows come 'n' ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... halted, and marched down with Julia on his arm, like a game-cock when another rooster crows defiance. ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... us to his crow-hut, which was a hole in the ground covered with boughs and pieces of turf, where the hunters lay concealed. The owl, which lured the crows and other birds of prey, was fastened on a perch, and when they flew up, often in large flocks, to tease the old cross-patch which sat blinking angrily, they were shot down from loop-holes which had been left in the hut. The hawks which prey upon ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... man had made his appearance, and whither he had presumably returned. We were not many minutes on the road, though we sometimes stopped to lay hold of each other and hearken. But there was no unusual sound—nothing but the low wash of the ripple and the croaking of the crows in the wood. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... could not help but be convinced of the truth of the Grand Chew Chew's story. The pole in the Munchkin farmer's cornfield was none other than the magic beanstalk, and he, thrust on the pole by the farmer to scare away the crows, had received the spirit of the Emperor Chang Wang Woe. "Which accounts for my cleverness," he thought gloomily. Now, surely he should have been pleased, for he had come in search of a family, but the acquisition of an empire, sons and grandsons, ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... rail of that fence and all whirling. Behind the fence, on posts, were other and larger windmills; behind these, others larger still. Interspersed among the mills were little wooden sailors swinging paddles; weather vanes in the shapes of wooden whales, swordfish, ducks, crows, seagulls; circles of little wooden profile sailboats, made to chase each other 'round and 'round a central post. All of these were painted in gay colors, or in black and white, and all were in motion. The mills spun, the boats sailed 'round and 'round, the sailors did vigorous ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and ran so swiftly along the wall, or from branch to branch, or up and down the trees. Their chattering made a fine accompaniment to the bird-songs. And here I learned to indulge a fondness for the very crows, which to this day I have never outgrown. Though they have been denounced as mischievous, and bounties have been set upon them, I never could find it in my heart to indulge in the warring propensity against them. They always seemed ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... What need I tell you on? Or by a red cow Tom Thumb devoured? ('cock crows') Hark the cock crowing! I must be going: I ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... from Sir Roger's house, among the ruins of an old abbey, there is a long walk of aged elms; which are shot up so very high, that when one passes under them, the rooks and crows that rest upon the tops of them seem to be cawing in another region. I am very much delighted with this sort of noise, which I consider as a kind of natural prayer to that Being who supplies the wants of his whole creation, and who, in the ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... botanist, it is a delightful country, in which I could pass a month, two months, three months, a year even, alone, quite alone, with no other companion than the crows and the jays which gossip among the oak-trees; without being weary for a moment; there would be so many beautiful fungi, orange, rosy, and white, among the mosses, and so many ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... immediately gave the Princess his daughter to the King's son, and they asked him what death the wicked coachman should die. And he answered, "Let him be tied to the tails of four wild horses, and drive them into the endless steppe that they may tear him to pieces there, and the ravens and crows may come and ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... the band several Blackfeet, six or seven Crows, some Sioux, who had come far north, and to his astonishment a few Southern Indians, such as Caddos, Cheyennes, ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... time he related a strange dream; how he had seen a long broad book with black boards, flying in the air, with many black fowls like Crows flying about it; and as it touched any of them, they fell down dead; upon which he heard an audible voice speak to him, saying, Haec est ira Dei contra pastores ecclesiae Scoticanae; upon which he fell a-weeping and praying ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... figure a ruler should as he sat in his easy chair, and whined and cursed his Swiss. He was scarce a year over forty, and he had all but run his race. Dissipation and corrosion had set their seal upon him, had stamped his yellow face with crows' feet and blotted it with pimples. But then the glimpse of a fine gentleman just out of bed of a morning, before he is made for the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... will go before you into Galilee. [14:29]But Peter said to him, Even if all should be offended, yet I will not. [14:30]And Jesus said to him, I tell you truly, that to-day, on this night, before the cock crows twice, you will deny me thrice. [14:31]And he said, more strongly, If it should be necessary for me to die with you I will by no means deny you; and they all said ...
— The New Testament • Various
... Hawke had noted the doubtful gloss of the dress suit; it was the polish of long wear, not the velvety glow of newness. There was a growing bald spot, scarcely hidden by the Hyperion Polish curls; there were crows'-feet around the bold, insolent eyes, and the man's smile was lean and wolfish when the glittering white teeth flashed through the professional smirk of the traveling artist. The old, easy assurance was still there, but cognac had dulled the ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... this was done by Way of Robe, with a Thrum Cap on his Head, and a large Pair of Spectacles upon his Nose. Thus equipp'd, he settled himself in his Place; and abundance of Officers attending him below, with Crows, Handspikes, etc., instead of Wands, Tipstaves, and such like.... The Criminals were brought out, making a thousand sour Faces; and one who acted as Attorney-General opened the Charge against them; their Speeches were very laconick, and their whole Proceedings concise. We shall give it ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... made many other journeys to the ship, and took away among other things two or three bags of nails, two or three iron crows, and a great roll of sheet lead. This last I had to tear apart and carry away in pieces, it was so heavy. I had the good luck to find a box of sugar and a barrel of fine flour. On my twelfth voyage I found two ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... at night, Rises with the morning light, Very loud and shrill he crows; Then the sleeping ploughman knows, He must leave his bed also, To his ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... sicken you some. I can't help that. Peter was my brother and blood's thicker than water. I wasn't going to let him be hunted down by a lot of bloodthirsty coyotes who were no better than he. I wasn't going to let my mother's flesh feed the crows from the end of a lariat. I helped Peter to steer clear of the law—lynch at that—and if he fell at last, a victim to the sucking muck of the muskeg, it was God's judgment and not man's—that's good enough for me. I'd do it all again, I guess, ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... will probably each pitch its camp (protected by simple fortifications) and perhaps wait over night, that the men may be well rested and have a good dinner and breakfast. The soldiers will be duly heartened up by being told of any lucky omens of late,—how three black crows were seen on the right, and a flash of lightning on the left; and the seers and diviners with the army will, at the general's orders, repeat any hopeful oracles they can remember or fabricate, e.g. predicting ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... first of June, when the people of the neighborhood go to the marshes an egging, as it is so called. So abundant are the nests of this species, and so dexterous some persons at finding them, that one hundred dozen of eggs have been collected by one man in a day. At this time the crows, the minx, and the foxes, come in for their share, but, not content with the eggs, these last often seize and devour the parents also. The bones, feathers, wings, &c., of the poor mud hen lie in heaps by the hole of the minx, by which circumstance, however, he ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... more congenial way to rest, he consented. They made the trip by easy stages stopping at places where good hunting promised and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. The little steamer was full of pets they picked up at various points; coons, foxes, opossum, crows ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... testimony of my courage, whenever you are called upon to do so. I say this, knowing how curiously officious on matters of physical development are the New York politicians, among whom we shall mix, though we must take heed lest, like dogs and crows, they fall upon and devour us." He now shrugged his shoulders, and, with an air of resumed courage, again mounted his faithful beast, and, heedless of the remonstrances and entreaties of Captain Luke's wife, braced himself firmly in his saddle, drew up the reins, and sat ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... the Cid's tent he said unto him, "I have sped well, Campeador! you have gained six hundred marks. Now then strike your tent and be gone. The time draws on, and you may be with your Lady Wife at St. Pedro de Cardena, before the cock crows." ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... than one— as lateres, bricks; fabae, beans; tubae, trumps; flammae, blazes; aethiopes, niggers; cornices, crows. ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... found in the lower animals, and is exemplified ordinarily by rats, mice, crows, robins, etc. In the Zoologic Garden at Baltimore two years ago was a pair of pure albino opossums. The white elephant is celebrated in the religious history of Oriental nations, and is an object of veneration ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... as father met the manager of the Fur Company, he advised us to go right on as soon as we could, because he said the Sioux were on the war-path, going to fight the Crows or Blackfeet, and their march would be through the country which we had to cross, and they might treat us badly, or rob us, as they were in an ugly humor. This greatly frightened some of the women, and to calm them the men cleaned and loaded their rifles and did everything they could ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... nose was too large and too prominently aquiline. He had faultlessly black side-whiskers and hair correspondingly black—too black, Frank Wallace said—not to have been "doctored" by Batchelor or Cristadoro, at least. The dark eyes were a little faded, and there were crows-feet at the corners of the same eyes, for age has its own way of telling its story, and not all of us who wish to be young can alter the record in the old family Bible. In dress Colonel Bancker presented no variation from the other ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... around the house make more noise than the elevated trains at the rush hour, and the rotten roosters begin crowing just about the time I'm going to sleep, and the dogs bark, and the cows,—the cows do whatever cows do to make a noise,—and then the crows begin to yawp. And all night long the katydids keep up their beastly racket, and the frogs in the pond back of the barns,—my God, man, the city is as silent as the grave compared to what you get in ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... this object!" he cried; "did you ever see such a caution to students? If we do nothing else in Kent we shall scare the crows, eh, Tom?" ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... same Jacopo executed, likewise after the design of Rosso, the story of the daughters of Pierus, who, for seeking to contend with the Muses and to sing in competition with them, were transformed into crows. ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... opportunely that he was serving as Inspector of the meat issue at the Crow Agency, and on the following day we accompanied him on his detail, a deeply instructive experience, for, at night we attended a ceremonial social dance given by the Crows in honor of Chief ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... loud cries, stamping of feet, clashing of swords, and breaking of furniture. A moment after, those who, surprised by this tumult, had gone to their windows to learn the cause of it, saw the door open, and four men, clothed in black, not COME out of it, but FLY, like so many frightened crows, leaving on the ground and on the corners of the furniture, feathers from their wings; that is to say, patches of their clothes and ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... either extremely foolish or extremely vain; but that he himself could see that great improvements had been made therein in a few years, and that philosophy would in a little time arrive at perfection. And Theophrastus is reported to have reproached nature at his death for giving to stags and crows so long a life, which was of no use to them, but allowing only so short a span to men, to whom length of days would have been of the greatest use; for if the life of man could have been lengthened, it would have been able to provide itself with all kinds of learning, and with arts in ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... honest tradesmen, meeting in the Strand, One took the other briskly by the hand; 'Hark ye,' said he, ''tis an odd story this, About the crows!' 'I don't know what it is,' Replied his friend.—'No! I'm surprised at that; Where I come from, it is the common chat. But you shall hear: an odd affair indeed! And, that it happen'd, they are all agreed; Not to detain you from a thing so strange, A gentleman that lives not far ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... blessed!" he muttered, "if crows ain't thicker in Kaintuck than I ever knowed 'em afore at ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... doorstep, and who seems almost as pleased with the whole scene as the children themselves; whereupon 'baby' not precisely understanding the importance of the business in hand, but clearly perceiving that it is something unusually lively, kicks and crows most lustily, to the unspeakable delight of all the children and both the parents: and the dinner is borne into the house amidst a shouting of small voices, and jumping of fat legs, which would fill Sir Andrew Agnew ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... and Coy; when he Kills, reward him not as usually, but slide some other Meat under him and let him take his pleasure on it; giving him some Feathers to make him scour and cast. If he be Wild, look not inward; but mind Check, (i.e. other Game, as Crows, &c. that fly cross him) then lure him back, and stooping to ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... whip for shame On beasts that crawl along; We have to drop the weak and lame, And try to save the strong; The wrath of God is on the track, The drought fiend holds his sway, With blows and cries and stockwhip crack We take the stock away. As they fall we leave them lying, With the crows to watch them dying, Grim sextons of the Overland that fasten on their prey; By the fiery dust-storm drifting, And the mocking mirage shifting, In heat and drought and hopeless pain ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... feathers of animals which are adapted to the purpose of concealment. "Thus the snake, and wild cat, and leopard are so colored as to resemble dark leaves and their light interstices" (p. 248). The eggs of hedge-birds are greenish, with dark spots; those of crows and magpies, which are seen from beneath through wicker nests, are white, with dark spots; and those of larks and partridges are russet or brown, like their nests or situations. He adds: "The final cause of their colors is easily understood, as they serve some purpose of the animal, but the ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... commonly represented either as winged men with beak-shaped noses, or as birds of prey. There are different kinds of Tengu; but all are supposed to be mountain-haunting spirits, capable of assuming many forms, and occasionally appearing as crows, vultures, or eagles. Buddhism appears to class the ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... gelatinous viands for the purpose of acquiring, as they suppose, a proper degree of corpulency[61], which is considered by them as respectable and imposing upon the multitude; of a great portion of whom it may be observed, as Falstaff said of his company, "No eye hath seen such scare-crows." It would be rare to find, among the commonalty of China, one to compare with a porter-drinking citizen or a jolly-looking farmer of England. They are indeed naturally of a slender habit of body and a sickly appearance, few having the blush of health upon their cheeks. ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... "you can only lose your place by interfering; the boy is food for the crows already. Philosophy should teach you to regard ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... harbor. It was so still and so early that the village was but half awake. I could hear no voices but those of the birds, small and great,—the constant song sparrows, the clink of a yellow-hammer over in the woods, and the far conversation of some deliberate crows. I saw William Blackett's escaping sail already far from land, and Captain Littlepage was sitting behind his closed window as I passed by, watching for some one who never came. I tried to speak to him, but he did not see me. There was a patient look on the old man's face, as if the world ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... morning. The pups were produced before the King as the offspring of his new wife, and great was his anger and vexation. He gave orders that she should be expelled from the palace, clothed in leather, and employed in the market-place to drive away crows and keep off dogs, all of which was ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... absence of trees, the natives having to secure their fuel from the neighbouring islands. Animal life seemed to consist of black and grey crows, jackdaws, a few hares, and ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... cloudless, became overcast, a tremendous storm gathered from the west, broke in all its fury of rain, hail and thunder and lightning—even a partial eclipse of the sun occurred. There was a terrible downpour, and to the horror of the moment was added the hoarse cries of crows and ravens which fluttered before the storm, and in the gathering darkness, circled around the heads of the army, terrifying the Italian bowmen who were superstitious, and not accustomed to the severity ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser |
