"Downy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wonderful and powerful interposition, such as Burrell held out. It was astonishing to witness the fortitude with which the fragile and delicate Jewess, who had been clothed in purple and fine linen, fed on the most costly viands, and slept on the most downy couch, encountered the illness, terrors, and miseries attendant on a sea voyage in the vessel of a Buccaneer. The Fire-fly certainly deserved every encomium bestowed upon her by her captain; yet was she not the most pleasing ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... a long distance, and you must be very tired." There was no reply; so Yates continued. "At least, I thought it a long distance; but perhaps that was because I was riding on Bartlett's hay rack. There is no 'downy bed ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... expect to see The downy peach make court to thee? Or that thy sense shall ever meet The bean-flower's deep-embosom'd sweet Exhaling with an evening blast? Thy evenings ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Peter consumed the rice and stew, his bruised feet were bathed in warm water, rubbed with a soothing ointment, and wrapped in a downy bandage. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... beauty met her eyes! The snow had draped all things in white. The trees that had seemed so gaunt and skeleton-like as they writhed and moaned in the gale were now clothed with a beauty surpassing that of their summer foliage, for every branch, even to the smallest twig, had been incased in the downy flakes. The evergreens looked like old-time gallants well powdered for a festival. The shrubbery of the garden was scarcely more than mounds of snow. The fences had almost disappeared; while away as far as the eye could reach all was sparkling whiteness. Nature was like a bride adorned for her nuptials. ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... there! She mingled with its gorgeous dyes The milky baldric of the skies, And striped its pure celestial white With streakings of the morning light; Then, from his mansion in the sun, She called her eagle bearer downy And gave into his mighty hand The symbol of ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Lord would come and meet, My soul would stretch her wings in haste. Fly fearless through death's iron gate, Nor feel the terrors as she passed. Jesus can make a dying bed Feel soft as downy pillows are, While on His breast I lean my head And breathe ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... it presents this appearance, but at night a hard pillow is added, the native woman wraps herself in a sheet, and lies down on the matting to sleep as peaceful and dreams as blissful, let us hope, as her more favored sister who reclines upon a downy couch ...
— Six Days on the Hurricane Deck of a Mule - An account of a journey made on mule back in Honduras, - C.A. in August, 1891 • Almira Stillwell Cole
... a Chinese species, at present little known in this country. It forms a low bush with spreading wiry purplish downy branches, and loose terminal panicles of white flowers. Its peculiar spreading habit, dark green leaves, and abundant flowers render it a desirable acquisition to the shrubbery. It ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... a peasant boy, little Petter Nord. He was short and round; he was brown-eyed and smiling. His hair was paler than birch leaves in the autumn; his cheeks were red and downy. And he was from Vaermland. No one, seeing him, could imagine that he was from any other place. His native land had equipped him with its excellent qualities. He was quick at his work, nimble with his fingers, ready with his tongue, ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... near the steaming coffeepot. "You arrive early," I remarked. "Now how could you know that breakfast was so near ready?" This last a trifle sarcastically, I fear. "Huh, me, I sleep here," pointing to the side of a rock not ten feet from my own downy bed. That settled me for keeps. I subsided and just gazed with a fatal hypnotism at the flapjacks disappearing down his ample gullet. It was fatal, for while I was spellbound the last one disappeared and I had to make myself some more or go ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... of that genial season, when the young grass covers the downy hills with verdure, and the glowing branches of the trees bud with an infant foliage, the sun smiles in the heavens, and the pellucid streams reflect his glorious rays, the day was fixed by Sir Robert Somerset, and approved by the beloved ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... so eloquently bright, Untroubled sentries of the shadowy night, While half the world is lapp'd in downy dreams, And round the lattice creep your midnight beams, How sweet to gaze upon your placid eyes, In lambent beauty ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... at the midnight hour. She leaped the brook and she swam the river; Her course through the forest Wiwst wist By the star that gleamed through the glimmering mist That fell from the dim moon's downy quiver. In her heart she spoke to her spirit-mother: "Look down from your teepee, O starry spirit. The cry of Wiwst, O mother, hear it; And touch the heart of my cruel father. He hearkened not to a virgin's ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... and messy," Peter complained, following with Cherry nevertheless, to see her scatter her chopped food carelessly on the surface of the little pond, the struggling bodies of the ducklings, and the bobbing downy heads alike. With quacking and wriggling and dabbling, the meal was eaten, and Alix, scraping the bowls for last fragments, and blinking in a flood of sunlight, laughed ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... chin downy, his hair flaxen, his hat a white fur one, with a long fleecy nap. He had neither trunk, valise, carpet-bag, nor parcel. No porter followed him. He was unaccompanied by friends. From the shrugged shoulders, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... to Emily Travis. He looked her over, keenly and carefully, every square inch of her. Especially did he appear interested in her silky brown hair, and in the color of her cheek, faintly sprayed and soft, like the downy bloom of a butterfly wing. He walked around her, surveying her with the calculating eye of a man who studies the lines upon which a horse or a boat is builded. In the course of his circuit the pink shell of her ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... the evil one brought him a full-bosomed lady in a red dress, and said that this was his new wife. He spent the whole evening kissing her and eating gingerbreads, and at night he went to bed on a soft, downy feather-bed, turned from side to side, and could not go to ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... laughed at for his formless efforts. The director of the school, M. Mareschal, told him a fable, with the charitable intent of turning him aside from his ambitions. There was once upon a time a young linnet in a soft and downy nest; but the young linnet longed for the free and open air and the blue sky. Its wings had not yet grown, and yet the imprudent bird made up its mind to fly. What happened? Why, simply that the young linnet fell from the tree in which the nest was built, ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... unseeing eyes at the bank of flowers before her. Behind her tall, fragrant shrubs rear themselves, and somewhere behind her, too, a tiny fountain is making musical tinklings. The faint, tender glow of a colored lamp gleams from the branches of a tropical tree close by, and round it pale, downy moths are flitting, the sound of their wings, as every now and then they approach too near the tempting glow and beat them against the Japanese shade, mingling with the silvery fall ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... so that each commanded one of the runways indicated. How light it was, though the sun was hidden! Every branch and twig beamed in the sun like a lamp. A downy woodpecker below me kept up a great fuss and clatter,—all for my benefit, I suspected. All about me were great, soft mounds, where the rocks lay buried. It was a cemetery of drift boulders. There! that is the hound. Does his voice come across the ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... y has the same meaning in the following words. They are, however, too simple to need defining; in fact, there are no simpler words on which to base definitions: airy, balky, bony, briny, chunky, downy, dusty, healthy, hearty, miry, musty, rusty, ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... limbs personified the utmost freedom of movement. His eyes beamed with clear decision; his velvet brows curved in a bold arch; his sunburnt cheeks glowed with all the ardour of youthful fire; and his downy black ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... It is impossible for any woman to surpass this girl; she is like the cat who rubs herself against your legs; a white girl with ash-colored hair, delicate in appearance, but who must have downy threads on the third phalanx of her fingers, and all along her cheeks a white down whose line, luminous on fine days, begins at her ears and loses itself ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... it was the very incarnation of bodily comfort and enjoyment! And, when the officers should be ready to retire for the night, warm and cozy berths awaited them, where they would stretch their limbs on downy quilts and mattresses, utterly oblivious to the wet and chill on the outside. Then I turned my head and took in my surroundings! A black, cold night, cinders and soot drifting on us from the smoke stacks, and a drizzling rain pattering down. And my supper had consisted of hardtack and raw sow-belly, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... bore with the martyred smile he's been cultivating. . . . As though a happy girl would dream of marrying anybody with all life before her to learn important things in! . . . And that dreadful, downy Scott Innis—trying to make me listen to him! . . . until I was ashamed to be alive! And Bradley Harmon—ugh!—and oh, that mushy widower, Percy Draymore, who got hold of ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... spot. There was a wild flurry, as if a whirlwind had struck the ant hill; but it was only the wind of the mother bird's wings, whirling up the dust to blind my eyes and to hide the scampering retreat of her downy brood. Again her wings beat the ground, sending up a flurry of dead leaves, in the midst of which the little partridges jumped and scurried away, so much like the leaves that no eye could separate them. Then the leaves settled slowly and the brood was ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... pow'r I court thee, not to ruin: Smile on my wishes, and command the globe. Security shall spread her shield before thee, And love infold thee with his downy wings. If greatness please thee, mount th' imperial seat; If pleasure charm thee, view this soft retreat; Here ev'ry warbler of the sky shall sing; Here ev'ry fragrance breathe of ev'ry spring: To deck these bow'rs each region shall combine, And e'en our prophet's gardens envy thine: Empire ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... listening, and, his eyes fixed on the hated officer, while the wind played with the downy hair on his head, he distorted his slashed face, giving it a truly terrible expression, and, swelling out his chest, he spat, as hard as he could, right in ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... hair shall be made radiant with gems,—jewels shall sparkle on that fair neck, and on those taper fingers,—you shall ride in a carriage, and have servants to wait on you,—and you shall sleep on a downy bed, and live in a grand house, like this. Say, will not all these fine things be better than selling ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... their native lands Allotted are; no clime but India bears Black ebony; the branch of frankincense Is Saba's sons' alone; why tell to thee Of balsams oozing from the perfumed wood, Or berries of acanthus ever green? Of Aethiop forests hoar with downy wool, Or how the Seres comb from off the leaves Their silky fleece? Of groves which India bears, Ocean's near neighbour, earth's remotest nook, Where not an arrow-shot can cleave the air Above their tree-tops? yet no laggards they, ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... over a third pebble come to life that it scuttled back between his legs; but he spun upon himself like a snake, and caught it ere it had gone a yard. He snapped again, held it, dropped it, and another downy, soft, warm chick thing straightened, horribly and pathetically, in the unpitying sun, and ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... my mother laid six pure white eggs. She sat on them and kept them warm until at last six downy birds came ...
— Stories of Birds • Lenore Elizabeth Mulets
... of living, and the hungry crows, in great crowds, called loudly the tidings of spring. But not long could they stop to sing, for the homes must be made, and soon from every tree and bush could be seen these dainty, downy nests, and in every nest the eggs, and in every egg a wonderful secret about which all the happy birds ...
— A Child's Story Garden • Compiled by Elizabeth Heber
... first view, but a more critical observation would lead to the conclusion that there was too much of the voluptuous in the design and execution of the penciling. In one corner of the room was a door which opened into an inner room of small dimensions, in which was a downy couch, and all the paraphernalia of a luxurious and elegant bed-room. It was a place that contrasted very strangely with the misery and crime it had sheltered—with the tears of unavailing agony that had been wrung from eyes that sparkled above once happy hearts—alas! ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... approaching stupor, Hal Hastings allowed himself to be coaxed to stretch himself at full length in the downy berth. ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... of the game," [1] On the prigging lay to the flash-house came, [2] Lushing blue ruin and heavy wet [3] Till the darkey, when the downy set. [4] All toddled and begun the hunt For readers, tattlers, ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... Accordingly, when all was still, and several young men that were sitting by the fire on account of every bed being occupied, gave note, by their deep breathing, that sleep had descended upon them, and darkened their senses with her gracious and downy wings, he rose softly from the side of Winterton, and stepping over him, slipped to the door, which he unbarred, and the moon shining bright he went to the stable to take out his horse. It was not his intent to have done this, ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... said Dolly, unfurling her small downy fan, and using it with much serene grace; "but I wasn't ready at eight. I hope you ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Upon the brink a pair of swans: beyond, The hills adjacent to Himalaya, Studded with deer; and, near the spreading shade Of some large tree, where 'mid the branches hang The hermits' vests of bark, a tender doe, Rubbing its downy forehead on the horn Of a black ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... of most exquisite pattern; curtains of richest lace; lambrequins of costly texture; richly-embroidered and velvet-covered sleepy-hollows and lounging chairs; nothing stiff, nothing that did not betoken abandonment to ease and pleasure; downy cushions; rarest pictures; loveliest statuettes; finest bronzes; delicate vases; magnificent, full length mirrors, a bookcase, itself a rare work of art, containing the best works of the best authors, all ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... the black-and-white Downy Woodpecker, running up a telegraph pole in search of grubs; "dogs have bones to eat and I like to pick bones, especially ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... (which was evidently distasteful to both) go on to the conclusion of the ceremony, he could not comprehend. There were, however, so many things in the world that he could not comprehend, and he had grown so accustomed, after an effort to master a difficulty, to lean his head back upon downy ignorance, that he treated this significant letter of Edward's like a tough lesson, and quietly put it by, together with every recommendation it contained. For all that was practical in it, it might just as ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... alluring attitude upon a low divan. Her luxuriant form, arrayed in rich, soft, white moire antique and lace, was thrown into harmonious relief by the crimson velvet cover of the divan. She was asleep, or perhaps affecting to be so. One fine, round, brown arm, with its elbow deep in the downy pillow, rose from its falling sleeve of silk and lace, and with its jeweled hand, buried in masses of glittering, purplish black ringlets, supported a head that Rubens would have loved to paint. Those rich ringlets, flowing down, half veiled the rounded arm and full, curved neck and bosom that ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... in his "Natural History" informs us that "in Upper Egypt, towards Arabia, there grows a shrub which some call Gossypion and others Xylon. It is small, and bears a fruit resembling the filbert, within which is a downy wool that is spun into thread. There is nothing to be preferred to these stuffs for whiteness or softness. Beautiful garments are made from them for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... surprise, saw that the stables were thatched with downy bird feathers, no two of ...
— Stories to Read or Tell from Fairy Tales and Folklore • Laure Claire Foucher
... recommend cool Zephyr, and made ease More easy, wholesome thirst and appetite More grateful, to their supper-fruits they fell, Nectarine fruits which the compliant boughs Yielded them, side-long as they sat recline On the soft downy bank damasked with flowers: The savoury pulp they chew, and in the rind, Still as they thirsted, scoop the brimming stream; Nor gentle purpose, nor endearing smiles Wanted, nor youthful dalliance, as beseems ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... the corn, he cheerly sings, And trusts with conscious pride his downy wings; Still louder breathes, and in the face of day Mounts up and calls on Giles to mark his way. Close to his eye his hat he instant bends And forms a friendly telescope that lends Just aid enough to dull the glaring light And place the wandering bird before his sight, That oft beneath a light ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... of May, when the leaflets were unfolding, and when the downy bluebells were lifting their clustered blossoms filled with a mysterious fragrance, like the breath of young babes, Adele loved to linger in the study of the parsonage; more than ever the good Doctor seemed a "New Papa,"—more than ever his eye dwelt upon her with a parental smile. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... of lustral ablution to efface the soil imprinted by the eyes of Gyges. She would have voluntarily torn, as it were, from her body that skin upon which the rays shot from a burning pupil seemed to have left their traces. Taking from the hands of her waiting-women the thick downy materials which served to drink up the last pearls of the bath, she wiped herself with such violence that a slight purple cloud rose to the spots she ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... friendly little chap, at first, about the size of a small hen—very much like most other young birds, only bigger. His plumage was a dirty brown to begin with, with a sort of grey scab that fell off it very soon, and scarcely feathers—a kind of downy hair. I can hardly express how pleased I was to see him. I tell you, Robinson Crusoe don't make near enough of his loneliness. But here was interesting company. He looked at me and winked his eye from the front backwards, like ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... Low, downy cloudlets drifted over the sky in the early hours of the morning. Dark, lowering masses followed in their wake. The snow fell in large, cold, ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... on a chair an inch or two higher than the rest, between two bundles. From the first, a huge heap of feathers and wings, she was taking the downy plumes, and pulling the others from the quills, and so filling bundle two littering the floor ankle-deep, and contributing to the general stock a stuffy little malaria, which might have played a distinguished part in a sweet room, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... where nothing grew but heather and blaeberries. There he threw himself down, and gazed into the heavens. The sun was below the horizon; all the dazzle was gone out of the gold, and the roses were fast fading; the downy blue of the sky was trembling into stars over his head; the brown dusk was gathering in the air; and a wind full of gentleness and peace came to him from the west. He let his thoughts go where they would, and they went up into the abyss over ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... ordinary. But Aurelian (from whom I had every tittle of her Description) fancy'd he saw a little Nest of Cupids break from the Tresses of her Hair, and every one officiously betake himself to his task. Some fann'd with their downy Wings, her glowing Cheeks; while others brush'd the balmy Dew from off her Face, leaving alone a heavenly Moisture blubbing on her Lips, on which they drank and revell'd for their pains; Nay, so particular were their allotments in her service, that Aurelian was very positive a young ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... governor Did talk to us of honour—! you all heard him! Can any of you tell us what is honour? He drinks his wine, he feeds on beeves and capons; His table groans beneath a load of meats; His hounds, his hawks, are fed like Christian men! He sleeps in a downy couch, o'erhung with purple; And these, all these are honourable doings! He talks of liberty! Is it, then, liberty to be cooped up Within these prison walls, to starve from want, That we may have the liberty—mark it, my friends!— The wondrous liberty to call him Governor? ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... perfect was the illusion. The heavens, this day particularly, attracted our attention. What a sky! how beautiful! The ground was a soft, light azure; and on its mildly resplendent surface were scattered loosely about some downy, feathery clouds, of the purest white—veils manufactured ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... act. The impulse was irresistible; hopeless as his case had before appeared, he determined to escape. But how? This question had not yet presented itself. Escape from the jail!—from death!—himself,—more than himself, his wife! Stone walls lost their appalling firmness, and were no more than downy masses, which his breath could ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... of a spacious garden were thrown open at this instant, and I accepted with avidity an invitation to walk in it. Mirth and hilarity prevailed, and the moments fled on downy wings, while we traced the beauties of Art and Nature, so liberally displayed and so happily blended in this delightful retreat. An enthusiastic admirer of scenes like these, I had rambled some way from the company, when I was followed ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... borderland of the grotesque. And of this quality there are three remarkable instances in the Scuola. No one but Tintoretto could have evoked the fiend in his 'Temptation of Christ.' It is an indescribable hermaphroditic genius, the genius of carnal fascination, with outspread downy rose-plumed wings, and flaming bracelets on the full but sinewy arms, who kneels and lifts aloft great stones, smiling entreatingly to the sad, grey Christ seated beneath a rugged pent-house of the desert. No one again but Tintoretto could have dashed the hot lights of that fiery sunset ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... coat of my own—a padded gray coat, of a most comfortable warmth, and which buttoned straight up from the knee to the neck. I thought Turkey would appreciate the favor, and abate his rashness and obstreperousness of afternoons. But no; I verily believe that buttoning himself up in so downy and blanket-like a coat had a pernicious effect upon him—upon the same principle that too much oats are bad for horses. In fact, precisely as a rash, restive horse is said to feel his oats, so Turkey felt his coat. It made him insolent. He was a ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... gnarled and twisted in such a way that he could seat himself and arrange his body in such a way that he could have enjoyed a night's slumber with as much refreshment as if stretched out upon a blanket on the ground. But the serenade below was not calculated to soothe his nerves into soft, downy sleep, and he shuddered at the thought of sitting where he was for four or five hours, with the pattering feet below him, varied by a yelp or howl, when he should feel disposed to close ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... fruitful Summer loads the teeming plain, She crops the harvest, and she stores the grain. How long shall sloth usurp thy useless hours, Unnerve thy vigour, and enchain thy powers? While artful shades thy downy couch enclose, And soft solicitation courts repose, Amidst the drowsy charms of dull delight, Year chases year with unremitted flight, Till Want now following, fraudulent and slow, Shall spring to seize thee, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... was anything needed to make it seem more homelike than it already was, I found it when we started out to explore the back premises. A fussy old hen, with her feathers all fluffed out importantly, was clucking and scratching for a brood of downy yellow chickens, just out of the shell. Old Mom Beck had sent them over as a wedding present, May ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... known as the Oregon or downy squirrel, is found in the Territory from which it takes its name, and also northward in British America. In size it resembles the chipmuck, and its color is light red above, pure white beneath, and ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... into his house, and found no one up but the maids, who were keeping that saturnalia among the household gods, which, I am given to understand, goes on in every well-regulated household before the lords of the creation rise from their downy beds. I have never seen this process myself, but I am informed, by the friend of my heart, who looked on it once for five minutes, and then fled, horror struck, that the first act consists in turning ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... with at least a certain sense of physical satisfaction. The grass was soft and warm, scented with the aromatic odours of wild peppermint, and it yielded like a downy cushion beneath her limbs. Still, she was just a little uneasy in mind, for she fancied she had seen a sudden sign of tension in the man's face when he had for a moment held her on the edge of the ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... me! how lovely is the golden braid That binds the skirt of night's descending robe! The thin leaves, quivering on their silken threads, Do make a music like to rustling satin, As the light breezes smooth their downy nap. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... whom brings a fair share of the straw and mortar for the building of the nest and the midges for the young brood? No, he does nothing; perhaps alleging the excuse of his relative weakness. But this is a poor excuse; for to cut out little circles from a leaf, to rake a little cotton from a downy plant, or to gather a little mortar from a muddy spot, would hardly be a task beyond his powers. He might very well collaborate, at least as labourer; he could at least gather together the materials for the more intelligent mother to place in position. ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... bringing out of all the beauties with which a beneficent providence endowed the kings and conquerors they are to personate at night, on that sequestered world called the stage. You may know by the downy state of his wardrobe that he has a place to sleep. But where he gets his breakfast is a mystery no friend has ever yet solved for me. Aside from taking a two shilling dinner at an oyster cellar in William Street and wiping his greasy fingers on a leather ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... what he was about, till she found his hand on her head, and heard the scissors close, when she perceived that he had cut off one of her pale, bright ringlets, and saw his pocket-book open, and within it a thick, jet-black tress, and one scanty, downy tuft of baby hair. She made no remark; but the tears came dropping, as she packed; and, with a sudden impulse to give him the thing above all others precious to her, she pulled from her bosom a locket, hung from a slender gold chain, and held it ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wonders; no place so beautiful; and wondering how even the land of the kara ghuz kiz, the material paradise of the Mohammedans, can possibly be more lovely. The contemplative young man is tall and slender, has large, dreamy, black eyes, a downy upper lip, a melancholy cast of countenance, and wears a long print wrapper of neat dotted pattern, gathered at the waist with a girdle a ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... the Bois who has money: and just tell me who are those who make money. Why, those who have plenty of cheek and a good sound business. Well, I have learned my business from some real downy cards, who made it pay well. Why should I ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... sewing resembles shoemakers' or saddlers' work; but, the leaf being like fine cloth and not like leather, perhaps the name "tailor-bird" is the most appropriate for the little worker. The bag is lined with soft, downy material, and in this the tiny eggs are laid—tiny indeed, for the tailor-bird is no larger than the hummingbird. The weight of the little creature does not even draw down the nest, and the leaf in which the eggs or young birds ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... the steaming rain-washed slopes, Now satisfied with sunshine, and behold Those lustrous clouds, as glorious as our hopes, Softened with feathery fleece of downy gold, In all fantastic, huddled shapes uprolled, Floating like dreams, and melting silently, In the blue upper regions of ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... snake beside its lead-colored pipe-like case; a tin soldier in an English uniform—red coat, and pill-box cap held on by a chin-strap; a second uniformed tin man who turned somersaults, but in repose stood upon his head; a black dog on wheels, with great floppy ears; and a half-dozen downy ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... separating his room from Miss Bower's, Hedger kept all his wearing apparel, some of it on hooks and hangers, some of it on the floor. When he opened his closet door now-a-days, little dust-coloured insects flew out on downy wing, and he suspected that a brood of moths were hatching in his winter overcoat. Mrs. Foley, the janitress, told him to bring down all his heavy clothes and she would give them a beating and hang them in the court. ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... sympathies, we constantly, in our play, suppose it to be something which it resembles in certain of its characteristics. By its color, it may represent a fruit, a flower, or a gayly dressed child; by its form, an egg, a downy chicken, a tiny duckling; by its mobility, a bird, a squirrel, a baby; or when fastened to its string, a bucket in the well, a toy wagon, a pendulum, or a pet lamb tethered ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... forgetting, goes about his affairs; but, lying awake at night in the silence of his chamber, recalls the unheeded words and perceives their full significance. My sojourn with this people—angelic women and mild-eyed men with downy, unrazored lips, so mild in manner yet in their arts "laying broad bases for eternity"—above all the invalid hours spent daily in the Mother's Room, had taught me how unlovely a creature I had been. It would have been strange indeed if, in such an atmosphere, ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... open, and moths had come in. One had settled on the hydrangea plant that filled the hearth. Gyp looked at the soft, white, downy thing, whose head was like a tiny owl's against the bluish petals; looked at the purple-grey tiles down there, and the stuff of her own frock, in the shaded gleam of the lamps. And all her love of beauty rebelled, called up by his: "Oh, no!" She would ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "Here's yer downy," he said, with an attempt at jocularity. "Now you'd better hit de hay, fer youse must be ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... thou saiest true, a cannot punish thee; Thou wert no actor of their Tragaedie. But for my beard thou canst not counterfet And bring gray haires uppon thy downy chinne; White frostes are never ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... shuffled into a single rank; their faces were wreathed in sheepish smiles. Jack noticed that a Bavarian helmet and side-arm hung from the knapsack of one, a mere freckled lad, downy and dimpled. Tricasse drew his sabre, turned, marched solemnly along the ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... salad-green bodice on her elder daughter. That young woman's efforts to see her own spine, where her mother was distributing pins with solemn intentness, had dyed her face a somewhat unnatural red, but the hands that lay upon her downy arms were much whiter than those that hovered about her back. A dining-table, bearing the more permanent part of its outfit, was pushed into a corner of the room, and covered with a yellow mosquito-net, and from the kitchen came a sound of crockery ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... accommodations, if so they were to be called, of log huts and hasty, mud-built houses in the Western States of America, life, its daily habits, its passing accommodations, seemed to assume an importance, under these aspects, which it had not worn before; those deep downy beds, those antique chairs, the heavy carpet, the tester and curtains, the stateliness of the old room,—they had a charm as compared with the thin preparation of a forester's bedchamber, such as Redclyffe had chiefly known them, ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I've a deal to do before I get to my downy; and I don't like those doctored tipples. Good night, Mr. Scott. I wishes you good night, sir;' and making another slight reference to his hat, which had not been removed from his head during the whole interview, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... white downy covering of the seed of several special of cotton of cotton plant. It is a native of many parts of the world, being found by Columbus growing in the West Indies and on the main land, by Cortez in Mexico, and Pizarro ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... and in complacent triumph I returned to my sandy couch, expecting to enjoy a quiet and comfortable night's rest. A heap of stones served me now for a pillow. Some of my readers may say, if you had had a downy couch or a feather-stuffed pillow, in a nice room with curtains, and a good fire, you might have had some reason for your hopes; but let me assure them that our ideas of comfort arise from comparison. The first night I slept in a feather bed after my camp life ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... to—hem! to welcome you as a neighbor—as a neighbor. Arthur Bimby, humbly at your service—Arthur Bimby, once a man of parts though now brought low by abstractions, gentlemen, forces not apparent to the human optic, sirs. Still, in my day, I have been known about town as a downy bird, a smooth file, and ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... linen, which belong to the vegetable kingdom, and silk and wool, which are obtained from the animal world. These four, either in their own form or else in combination with each other, such as merino, constitute most of our wearing apparel. Cotton is the fine, soft, downy material of a hairy nature which is found on the seeds of a certain plant, the cotton plant, which belongs to the mallow family. Its fibres are flattened in shape, and are twisted at intervals. The form of the fibres has an important effect in the action of cotton ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... be impressed, and impressed more strongly the better you draw them, with the idea of their softness of surface. A distant tree is not a flat and even piece of colour, but a more or less globular mass of a downy or bloomy texture, partly passing into a misty vagueness. I find, practically, this lovely softness of far-away trees the most difficult of all characters to reach, because it cannot be got by mere ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... but mousing owls and bats of low degree may not aspire to bliss so whelming and ecstatic as is found in ye downy ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... by spiders spun; With jacket wove of thistle's down; His trowsers were of feathers done. His stockings, of apple-rind, they tie With eyelash from his mother's eye His shoes were made of mouse's skin, Tann'd with the downy hair within." ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... bald head bowing a welcome to the watchers. For it was not he who was the guest, for from time almost immemorial the old fruit seller has presided at the contests of Harwell, rejoicing in her victories, lamenting over her defeats. Down the line he limped, while gray-haired graduates and downy-lipped undergrads cheered him loyally, calling his name over and over, and so back to a seat in the middle of the stand, from where all through the battle his crimson-bedecked ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... a twelvemonth yet, although it seems ten years agone, since I blew the downy globe to learn the time of day, or set beneath my chin the veinings of the varnished buttercup, or fired the fox-glove cannonade, or made a captive of myself with dandelion fetters; for then I had not very much to trouble me in earnest, but ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... kissed the soft, downy cheek greedily, with the same ardour she had just been throwing into her ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of undisturbed consecutive repose in the downy bed at the Mehadia hotel had made up the deficiency of sleep during the foregoing week, and drowsiness overcame us. I think we must have had a couple of hours of monotonous jog-trot on the fairly level road when I fell asleep, and I suppose ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... palmito are eaten roasted. They use but little pepper and grains, the one in surgery and the other in cooking. There is a singular fruit, growing six or eight together in a bunch, each as long and thick as one's finger, the skin being of a brownish yellow colour, and somewhat downy, and within the rind is a pulp of a pleasant taste; but I know not if ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... mamma! she keeps the lists: I'm sure I don't trouble my head," said the little beauty; and she looked so natty and jaunty when she said it, just arching her queenly white neck, and making soft, downy dimples in her cheeks as she gave her fresh little childlike laugh; turning round and round before the looking-glass, and issuing her orders for the fitting of the jacket with a precision and real interest which showed that there were things in the world which didn't become old stories, ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... there was nothing to be seen on the nest-bog. I feared that something had heard their whistling and put an untimely end to the young Hukweems while mother bird was away. But when she came back, after a more fearful survey than usual of the old bark canoe, two downy little fellows came bobbing to meet her out of the grass, where she had hidden them and told them to stay till she ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... effect of a ferocious scowl, will admirably suit those who would wish to have an imposing appearance; the chin, with its pointed tuft a la capricorne, will, at all events, ensure distinction from the human herd; and the decorated upper lip, with its downy growth dyed black, and gummed (the cheek at the same time having been faintly tinged with rouge, the locks parted, perfumed, and curled, the waist duly compressed, a slight addition, if necessary, made to the breadth of the hips, and the feet confined ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... ajar for the first time, he soon started a draft; that with the coming of cooler evening lowered the child's temperature, and made her hungry. As he worked Mickey talked. The grass, the blooming orchard, the hen and her little downy chickens, the big cool porch, the wonderful woman and man, the boy whom they expected and who did not come; and then cautiously, slowly, making sure she understood, he developed his plan to take her to the country. Peaches drew back and opened her lips. Mickey promptly ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Freedom spreads her downy wings Over all created things; Glory to the King of kings, Bend low to Him the knee! Bring the heart before His throne— Worship Him and Him alone!— He's the only King we own— And He has made ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... gradually get so absorbed in his wonderful geological story that she sat looking at him, leaning forward with crossed arms, and with an entire absence of self-consciousness, as if he had been the snuffiest of old professors, and she a downy-lipped alumna. He was so fascinated by the clear, large gaze that at last he forgot to look away from it occasionally toward Lucy; but she, sweet child, was only rejoicing that Stephen was proving to Maggie how clever he was, and that they would certainly ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... to give up the search, much disappointed, when he perceived something "like a slight moldiness among the withered leaves, and, on stooping down, discovered it to be a young whippoorwill seemingly asleep." Wilson's description of the young is very accurate, as its downy covering does look precisely like a "slight moldiness." Returning a few moments afterward to the spot to get a pencil he had forgotten, he could find ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... Wordsworth, that arch-priest of poesy, expresses it, I could place the gentle reader "atween the downy wings" of some beneficent and willing angel, in one brief instant of time should he be deposited on the little hill that first discovers the smiling, quiet village of Ellendale. He would imbibe of beauty more in a breath, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... the wench, outdrive her. Oft in the morn, her hairs not yet digested, Half-sleeping on a purple bed she rested; 20 Yet seemly like a Thracian Bacchanal, That tired doth rashly[213] on the green grass fall. When they were slender and like downy moss, Thy[214] troubled hairs, alas, endured great loss. How patiently hot irons they did take, In crooked trannels[215] crispy curls to make. I cried, "'Tis sin, 'tis sin, these hairs to burn, They well become thee, then to spare them turn. Far off be force, no fire to them may reach, ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... after a moment's survey of the country beyond dropped down on the farther side. Now that was a lane much frequented by negroes, and, being alarmed for his safety, I sent a boy after him, and in a moment had him in my hand. He was a beautiful little creature, having a head covered with downy dark feathers, and soft black eyes, which regarded me with interest, but not at all with fear. All this time, of course, the parents were scolding and crying, and I held him only long enough to look carefully at him, when I replaced him on the grass. Off he started ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... may be prepared, especially if a few notes be made as to colour, etc. The more important notes are as to the colour of the stem and pileus, together with any peculiarities of the surface, e.g., whether it be dry, viscid, downy, scaly, etc., and whether the flesh of the pileus be thin or otherwise; as to the stem, whether hollow or solid; as to the gills, whether they are attached to the stem or free; and especially what is their colour and that of the spores. It is not in general expedient to preserve specimens ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... Remember the earth-encrusted cicada cases you have seen clinging to the trunks of trees, after the insect has reached the surface and abandoned them. Think what would happen to the delicate moth head, wings, and downy covering! I am willing to wager all I possess, that no lepidopterist, or any amateur, ever found a freshly emerged moth from an underground case with the faintest trace of soil on its head or feet, or a particle of down missing; ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... loosely about the baby's body—the swaddling band, which, when tightly drawn, is to hold the figure straight. The fingers of one hand peep out from the folds, and one little foot is free. For the rest we see only the downy top of the baby's head and one plump shoulder. The little figure glows lite an incandescent body, and the mother's face is lighted as if she were bending over a fire. It is a girlish face, for we are told that Mary was a very young ...
— Correggio - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... white raiment, ready to appear before his heavenly judge. Obrazetz was the chief of the party in years, in grave majestic dignity, and patriarchal air. Crossing his arms upon his staff, he covered them with his beard, downy as the soft fleece of a lamb; the glow of health, deepened by the cup of strong mead, blushed through the snow-white hair with which his cheeks were thickly clothed; he listened with singular attention and delight to the story-teller. This pleasure was painted on his face, and shone brightly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... not visit an African jungle or an Indian forest to hunt the tiger. One can lie in bed amid downy pillows and dream tigers as terrible as any in the pathless wild. I was a little girl when one night I tried to cross the garden in front of my aunt's house in Alabama. I was in pursuit of a large cat with a great bushy tail. A few hours before ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... the broad Pactolus, stemming the waters with its downy breast; and anon, it would rise upon the wing, and soar to other skies; so, taking down that snow-white sail, it seeks for a moment to rest its foot on shore, and thence take flight: alas, poor bird! thou art sinking ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... had better dispense with your company as soon as we have eaten a bite, and retire to it. On second thought, we will eat in it. Carnes, we will go to our downy couches at once and leave our substitutes in possession of the cabin. I trust, gentlemen, that things come out all right and that you ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... browsing on the short grass. The old ones are in the process of the spring moulting; their thick, matted hair is peeling off in large flakes, like fragments of a ragged, moth-eaten coat. The young ones are covered with pearl-gray wool, soft and almost downy, like gigantic goslings with four legs. (What is the word for a young camel, I wonder; is it camelet or camelot?) But young and old have ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... some allusion to the male sex. But listen as attentively and discreetly as I could, not one allusion did I hear made to the mysteriously absent beings. I was astonished that young girls, with cheeks like the downy bloom of a ripe peach, should chatter and laugh merrily over every conversational topic but that of the lords of society. The older and the wiser among women might acquire a depreciating idea of their worth, but innocent and inexperienced girlhood was apt to surround that ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... last, upon the marge We found ourselves, and there, behold, In hosts the lilies, white and large, Lay close, with hearts of downy gold! ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... settlements of the East, the following are the most approved varieties:—The royal plantain, which fruits in eight months; one which bears in a year, the milk plantain, the downy plantain, and the golden plantain or banana. A species termed gindy has been lately imported from Madras, where it is in great request. It has this advantage over the other kinds, that it can be stewed down like an ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... by laying down a barrel near the radishes and driving stakes in front of it to confine the hen, which otherwise, with the best intentions, would have scratched up all my sprouting seeds. Hither we brought her the following day, with her downy brood of twelve, and they soon began to make themselves useful. Winnie fed them with Indian-meal and mashed potatoes and watched over them with more than their mother's solicitude, while Merton renewed his vigilance against hawks and ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... refer you to the interesting and complete work of Dr. Bowman, On the Structure of the Cotton Fibre. Suffice it to say that in certain plants and trees the seeds or fruit are surrounded, in the pods in which they develop, with a downy substance, and that the cotton shrub belongs to this class of plants. A fibre picked out from the mass of the downy substance referred to, and examined under the microscope, is found to be a spirally twisted ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... or pitch, and which are known as "heroic" measures, are equally undesirable, since they are not permanent cures any more than the depilatory powders. The worst feature of these cures is that for every hair pulled out or burnt off a coarser one takes its place, and for every tiny, downy growth a fully developed hair appears. Of course, the plaster removes this soft lanuginous growth with the hardier one, and for that reason should be left severely alone. The tweezers are therefore less objectionable than the plaster, but this is such a painful ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... that I recollect, except birds of prey. And not only do birds of the same kind associate, but certain species are almost always found together. Thus, the chickadee, the golden-crested wren, the white-breasted nuthatch, and, less constantly, the brown creeper and the downy woodpecker, form a little winter clique, of which you do not often see one of the members without one or more of the others. No sound in nature more cheery and refreshing than the alternating calls of a little troop of this kind echoing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... was so certain, that, had the reality been less dreadful she would have been ashamed of the fuss she had made. She wanted only this final assurance that the boy was at home, safe and sound; then she would think of her own affairs. She watched the moths fly about the lantern, and when one poor downy pair of wings touched the hot, domed top and fell fluttering into the road, she bent forward and looked at it, wondering what she could do for it. To kill it would be the kindest thing,—to put it out of its pain. But some obscure connection of ideas made her shudder ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... Blithesome and cumberless, Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea! Emblem of happiness, Blest is thy dwelling-place,— Oh to abide in the desert with thee! Wild is the day and loud Far in the downy cloud, Love gives it energy, love gave it birth. Where, on thy dewy wing, Where art thou journeying? Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth. O'er fell and mountain sheen, O'er moor and mountain green, O'er the red streamer that heralds the day, Over the cloudlet dim, ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... my eldest lad—I hadn't begun to think of sons then—is an American citizen, and looking forward to leaving Harvard. There's a touch of grey in my hair. And this man, not a day older nor wiser (practically) than I was in my downy days. It's ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... thy mother's breast, So fondly folded, sweetly rest! Within that fair and quiet world, With downy pinions scarce unfurl'd, Life gently passes, nor doth bring One dream of sorrow ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... their immortall eyes Upon our offerings. Yet, I talke not idly, Yet, Anthonie, I may; for sleepe, I think, Is gone out of my kingdome, it is else fled To th'poore; for sleepe oft takes the harder bed And leaves the downy pillow of ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... deserted in his native country. The ancient historical rivers flowing through a land made sacred by the divine madness of the human spirit; the snow-capped mountains at the feet of which the lily and the oleander bloom; the pine forests diffusing their fragrance even among the downy clouds; the peaceful, sun-swept multi-coloured meadows; the trellised vines, the fig groves, the quince orchards, the orangeries: the absence of these did not disturb his serenity in the cellar, his voluptuousness in Bohemia, his enthusiasm ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... his boat, he brought Sam one of the soft, light coverings peculiar to the country. The foundation was a wide-meshed net of cord, to which had been tied hundreds of the fragile, downy pelts. Sam could stick his finger anywhere through the interstices, yet it was warmer than a ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... downy cots (there is positively no virtue in sleeping on hard beds, and Bart considers it an absolute vice), there is a delicious period before sleep comes. Bats flit about the rafters, and an occasional swallow twitters ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... fruit, which colours the thickets;[237] the styrax, famous for yielding the gum storax of commerce, grows towards the east end of Carmel, and is a very large bush branching from the ground, but never assuming the form of a tree; it has small downy leaves, white flowers like orange blossoms, and round yellow fruit, pendulous from slender stalks, like cherries.[238] Travellers in Phoenicia do not often mention the caper plant, but it was seen by Canon Tristram hanging from the fissures of the rock, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... hawks' and crows' feathers. 2. Neck-bands of opossum wool. 3. String bracelets. 4. Fragments of quartz, suitable for spear and chisel heads. 5. Fragments of sandstone, for making red paint. 6. Message-stick. 7. A stick 12 inches long, wrapped in downy feathers and greasy string; on this was wound a great length of human-hair string, forming a bobbin-shaped article, the use of which I do not know. I have ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... approximate; my feet are small; my hands superb; the fingers curved back and with glistening nails, rosy and polished, cut squarely like those of ancient statues. My neck is long and round, the nape charmingly adorned with downy hairs. My head is charming, and at 18 was more so. The oval of it is perfect and strikes all by its infantine form. At 23 I am to be taken for 17 at most. My complexion is white and rosy, deepening at the faintest emotion. The forehead is not beautiful; ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... steepest and most slippery wall and walk upside down or right side up with the greatest ease. Perhaps some day you can make a fly keep still long enough so that you can look at its foot. At the end of the foot are two little round pads thickly covered with downy hair. On each side are two sharp claws and many stiff, clinging hairs. With this flattened foot it ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... perpetual motion, Full of bother And pother, Would make paralytic old Bridget A Fidget. So you see (to my notion), Better leave our downy Diminutive browny Alone, near his "diggings;" Ever free to pursue, Rush round, and renew His loved vaulting Unhalting, His whirling, And curling, And twirling, And swirling, And his ways, on the whole So unsteady! 'Pon my soul, Having gazed Quite amazed, ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... (Britain). This species is of erect bushy growth, with the leaflets softly downy on both sides. Flowers white or pale pink, succeeded by globular fruits, that are more or less covered with fine ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... brought out—Junior! He was only a month old, but you know how heavenly sweet they are with their rose-leaf skins, and their little crumpled hands and their downy heads—Junior's down was brown, for Billy and ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... these birds with downy feathers, who look so pitiable to me? Tell me, oh swallow with the ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... lots of eider ducklets Up in Heaven, above the blue, And they're dropping off their feathers,— And such downy feathers, too! ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... like the thistle, provide their seed with downy wings, by which the wind carries them afar to other fields. Other seeds have a faculty of tumbling and rolling along the ground to great distances, owing to their peculiar shape and formation. The maple provides its seed with a peculiar ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... which a traveller in this country sleeps are various and strange. Sometimes he reposes on a pile of branches of the pine-tree; sometimes on soft downy moss; occasionally on a pebbly beach or a flat rock; and not unfrequently on rough gravel and sand. Of these the moss bed is the most agreeable, and the sandy ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... estate; Fortune has rent away my plenteous store; of all my wealth, honor alone is left. Fortune has turned my joy to tears—how oft did Fortune make me laugh with what she gave! But for these girls, the kata's downy brood, unkindly thrust from door to door as hard— Far would I roam, and wide, to seek my bread, in earth, that has no lack of breadth and length. Nay, but our children in our midst, what else but our hearts are they, walking on the ground? If but the breeze blow ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... faces may be, I find it very sweet you should have recognized mine after 'just the first little minute,'" she said, with a coaxing touch of mimicry. "You haven't quite parted company with the baby I remember so well, even yet. I used to call you my downy owl, with solemn saucer eyes and fierce little beak. You were extraordinarily, really perplexingly like your father then. A miniature edition, but so faithful to the original it used, sometimes, to give me the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine; Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine; Make not your rosary of yew-berries, Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl A partner in your sorrow's mysteries; For shade to shade will come too drowsily, And drown the ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... statement that will be as surprising to any German who reads it as the statements made by Germans about England have often been to me. It is true, however, that tall people do find the old-fashioned German bedsteads short; and it is true that the big square downy pillows are supported by a wedge-shaped bolster called a Keilkissen. But the Plumeau is what the German loves, and the Briton hates above all things: the mountain of down or feathers that tumbles off on cold nights and stays on on hot ones. You hate it all the year ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... spot of rest (Love's little throne!) shalt thou be torn; Time hovers o'er thy downy nest, To crown ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... the softest cashmeres; and to sleep in the downiest of beds; these were to her the necessities of life. That the food was provided from the larder of her niece; that the silks and cashmeres were gracious gifts, and that the downy couch cost her nothing, mattered little; her niece needed her, she needed her niece; ergo, her niece sought in every way possible to render her happy and comfortable; and she, in return for her comfort and happiness, was a model duenna; never questioning, never criticising, humoring all that young ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... birds' heads and eagle claws, came paddling across the inlet. Three savages were in one, six in the other, ten in the third. They came slowly over the water, singing some song of welcome, beating time with their paddles, {186} scattering downy white feathers on the air, at intervals standing up to harangue a welcome to the newcomers. Soon thirty canoes were around the ships with some ten warriors in each. Still they came, shoals of them, like fish, with savages almost naked, the harbor smooth ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... as his companion, but giving promise that he will excel him in due time. In the matter of hair, his head exhibited locks if possible more curly and redundant, while the chin and lip are not yet clothed with young manhood's downy shadow. ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... It grew in intensity. He would stand on the front rail of his trundle bed, night and morning, with arms extended above him, palms together, to dive, to split the imaginary water, take a header into the soft, downy tick; then thresh his arms about in swimming fashion as he had seen the big boys ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... when they move one woman takes hold of one end and a second of the other, and thus carry the infant. If you ask them, they will find you a 'hop-dog,' a handsome green caterpillar marked with black velvet stripes and downy bands between. Their labour usually ends early in ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... wild cochineal and fine cochineal. The latter may be considered a cultivated product, its food and wants being carefully attended to, while the former is left in a natural state, and is less valuable. Wild cochineal is distinguished by having a woolly downy coat, which is not the case with the fine cochineal. The females, of which there are from one hundred and fifty to two hundred for each male, are marked by the absence of wings, and constitute the commercial article. They are generally killed by immersion in boiling water, ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... in many experiments to relieve them, he came unwillingly to the resolution of cutting down the trees. These insects are of a dark red, approaching to a purple, and combine in such numbers on the roots as well as branches, as to shew in protuberated clusters, exhibiting a downy whiteness on the surface. A gardener of the colony, who has attended a good deal to this matter, affirms that a weed called the Churnwort presents a perfect remedy to the disaster; with this weed, the roots, cleared ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... most gorgeous of all flowering trees, as distinguished from creepers, is the sea-loving pohutu kawa. When the wind is tossing its branches the contrast is startling between its blood-red flowers and the dark upper side and white, downy under side of ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... Or is thy wish to dwell in the marble halls of Dea Flavia's house, where the air is filled with the perfume of roses and violets and tame songbirds make their nests in the oleander bushes? Wouldst like to recline on soft downy cushions, allowing thy golden hair to fall over thy shoulders the while I, mallet or chisel in hand, would make thy face immortal by carving it in marble? The praefect saith thine is a case for pity, then ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the tea's delicious flower. On cakes luxuriously I dine, And drink the fragrance of the vine. Studious of elegance and ease, Myself alone I seek to please.' The man his pert conceit derides, And thus the useless coxcomb chides: 130 'Hence, from that peach, that downy seat, No idle fool deserves to eat. Could you have sapped the blushing rind, And on that pulp ambrosial dined, Had not some hand with skill and toil, To raise the tree, prepared the soil? Consider, sot, what would ensue, Were all ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville |
