"Geese" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... year is hush'd, In bonny glen and shaw, man; And winter spreads o'er nature dead A winding sheet o' snaw, man. O'er burn and loch, the warlike frost, A crystal brig has laid, man; The wild geese screaming wi' surprise, The ice-bound wave ha'e ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... looked about and then descended to the water. Those who were there then said to the children of the Ahtziquinahay: "We have scarcely made the circuit of this lake of ours, this sea, oh my brother. But let one-half of the lake be yours, and one-half of the fruits, of the wild geese, of the crabs, of the fish." Thus he spoke, and the others took counsel: "It is well my brother, that the half of the lake be ours, and a half of thy fruits, of thy wild geese, of thy crabs, of thy fish, a half of thy acorns, and a half of thy bananas be ours, and of all living ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... (a carpenter, who had once eaten two geese for a wager) opened the door, and showed me into the best parlor. Here, Mr. Trabb had taken unto himself the best table, and had got all the leaves up, and was holding a kind of black Bazaar, with ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... manufactory—together with that of porcelaine. This place is known in modern history from the Treaty of Luneville between the Austrians and French in 1801. From hence we went to Benamenil, the next stage; and in our way thither, we saw, for the first time since leaving Paris, a flock of geese! Dined at Blamont—the succeeding post town. While our cutlets were preparing we strolled to the old castle, now in a state of dilapidation. It is not spacious, but is a picturesque relic. Within the exterior walls is a fine kitchen garden. From ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... "O, you geese! cheer up!" laughed Madge. "I know Mrs. Curtis would not disappoint us for worlds. Why, she has all our measures. She couldn't forget. Oh, dear, does my breakfast gown look all right? There is some one knocking at our door. It may be that Mrs. Curtis ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... fortune at Sellanraa, that every spring and autumn they could see the grey geese sailing in fleets above that wilderness, and hear their chatter up in the air—delirious talk it was. And as if the world stood still for a moment, till the train of them had passed. And the human souls ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... heads, and also hideous masks, with moving eyes and lips The costly na-xin, or blanket, woven from the wool of the mountain goat, is thrown over the shoulder; curiously carved rattles are held in their hands, whistles imitating owls, wild geese, loons, eagles and other animals, are blown, drums are beaten; castanets—small hoops upon which numerous puffin beaks are suspended—shaken, birds' down is scattered until it fills the air and covers the performers, who, with a swinging, slouchy movement, dance for an hour at a time, rattling, whistling, ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... the hill be many trees bearing many diverse fruits. And all about the hill be ditches great and deep, and beside them be great fish ponds on that one part and on that other. And there is a full fair bridge to pass over the ditches. And in these vivaries be so many wild geese and ganders and wild ducks and swans and herons that it is without number. And all about these ditches and vivaries is the great garden full of wild beasts. So that when the great Chan will have any disport on that, to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... and salads were during eight months of the year the only vegetable. And on the dresser, and before the fire, whole hecatombs of fragrant victims, which needed neither frankincense nor myrrh; Clovelly herrings and Torridge salmon, Exmoor mutton and Stow venison, stubble geese and woodcocks, curlew and snipe, hams of Hampshire, chitterlings of Taunton, and botargos of Cadiz, such as Pantagruel himself might have devoured. And Jack eyed them, as a ragged boy eyes the cakes in a pastrycook's window; and thought of the scraps from the commoners' ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... chicken feathers, denotes small annoyances. To dream of buying or selling geese or duck feathers, denotes ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... ten days at the little inn near the summit, and obliged to spend both Christmas and New Year's Day there, till the store of provisions laid in for the use of the landlord and his family falling short before the inroads of the unexpected visitors, they had recourse to the turkeys, geese, and Yorkshire pies with which the coach was laden; and even these were beginning to fail, when a fortunate thaw released ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... there he finds a large wooden house. He enters in and sees a stove, garnished with sucking pigs and geese and pies "and everything which the soul could desire." But the stove is guarded by a seven-eyed goat; the moujik charms six of the eyes to sleep, but overlooks the seventh. With it the goat sees him eat and drink and then go ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... ornamental work, the folding stool in the same glass case should be examined; the supports are crossed in a similar way to those of a modern camp-stool, and the lower parts of the legs carved as heads of geese, with inlayings of ivory to assist the design and give ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... lifts up in myriads, if the knock Of oars assail their peace, she saw, and mourned The household gods. For outward they too turned, The spirits of the streams and water-brooks, And nymphs who haunt the pastures, or in nooks Of woodlands dwell. There like a lag of geese Flew in long straying lines the Oreades That in wild dunes and commons have their haunt; There sped the Hamadryads; there aslant, As from the sea, but wheeling ere they crost Their sisters, thronged the river-nymphs, a host; And now ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... unsatisfactory inspection being made of the country, and it is impossible to say what clues or indications to better country or more permanent waters were passed by. In fact, he more than once during this part of his journal mentions the fact of wild geese flying over the camp, although they never found any surface water ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... disastrous—sweeping off the whole large stock. Fowl and egg farming is one of the most successful, perhaps the most successful point with the French peasant-proprietors. To make birdfarming successful the proper plan is to keep a moderate number of as many birds as possible—fowls, "galeenies," ducks, geese, turkeys, large pigeons— and to go in for eggs as well as fowls. I have not seen peasant- proprietors in England attempting this, which seems to me one of the most hopeful ...
— Speculations from Political Economy • C. B. Clarke
... moon when the wild rice is gathered; When the leaves on the tall sugar-tree are as red as the breast of the robin, And the red-oaks that border the lea are aflame with the fire of the sunset, From the wide waving fields of wild-rice —from the meadows of Psin-ta-wak-pa-dan, [a] Where the geese and the mallards rejoice, and grow fat on the bountiful harvest, Came the hunters with saddles of moose and the flesh of the bear and the bison, And the women in birchen canoes well laden with rice from the meadows, With the tall, dusky hunters, behold, came a marvelous ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... at Paris. Sister of Rosa Bonheur, and a pupil of her father. Among her pictures are "A Flock of Geese," "A Flock of Sheep Lying Down," and kindred subjects. The last-named work was much remarked at the Salon of 1875. In 1878 she exhibited "The Pool" ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... board!" cried Bully, the frog, who came hopping along just then. So the ducks and the geese got a board and threw it to Jimmie, but it floated past him, and he couldn't get upon it. Then it surely did look as if he were going to be carried right over the falls, for he was being swept nearer and more near, and he could hear the water making a terrible roaring, splashing ...
— Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble • Howard R. Garis
... do to Frogs in Spawning time, at which time some Frogs are observed to be venemous) so throughly washt her, by tumbling her up and down in the water, that he may devour her without danger. And Gesner affirms, that a Polonian Gentleman did faithfully assure him, he had seen two young Geese at one time in the belly of a Pike: and hee observes, that in Spain there is no Pikes, and that the biggest are in the Lake Thracimane in Italy, and the next, if not equal to them, are ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... the point of the way they had seen large numbers of gulls, wild ducks, and geese, but had perceived none further inward though they had heard their cries, and had found no fish except different kinds of mussels forming ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... which the bitterns boomed and the frogs croaked incessantly: miles on miles of it without a break, unless the fever fog can be called a break. The only life in this great morass was that of the aquatic birds, and the animals that fed on them, of both of which there were vast numbers. Geese, cranes, ducks, teal, coot, snipe, and plover swarmed all around us, many being of varieties that were quite new to me, and all so tame that one could almost have knocked them over with a stick. Among these birds I especially noticed a very beautiful variety of painted ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... engine-houses high up like castles on the hillside, and rows of stamps clattering and working up and down like ogres' teeth. Next they came to a church town, with a green and a heap of linen spread to dry (for it was Tuesday), and a flock of geese that ran and hissed after the van, until Joby took the whip and, leaning out, looped the gander by the neck and pulled him along in the dust. The sailor-boys shouted with laughter and struck up a song about a fox and a goose, which lasted all the way up a long hill ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... an arrant tyrant, If e're I come to reign; therefore look to't, Except you do provide me hum enough And Lour to bouze with: I must have my Capons And Turkeys brought me in, with my green Geese, And Ducklings i'th' season: fine fat chickens, Or if you chance where an eye of tame Phesants Or Partridges are kept, see they be mine, Or straight I seize on all your priviledge, Places, revenues, offices, as forfeit, Call in ...
— Beggars Bush - From the Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... provide for the great consumption consequent upon such entertainments. The following is a list of those sent on this occasion: two sides of venison, two half brawns, three pigs, ninety capons, five geese, six turkeys, four rabbits, eight partridges, two pullets, five sugar loaves, half a pound of nutmeg, one basket of ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... mintery, cutery, corn, Apple seed, and apple thorn; Wine, brier, limber lock, Three geese in a flock, One flew east, one flew west, And one ...
— The Little Mother Goose • Anonymous
... dwellings in order, and the glossy branches of holly with their bright-red berries began to appear at the windows. The scene brought to mind an old writer's account of Christmas preparation: "Now capons and hens, besides turkeys, geese, and ducks, with beef and mutton, must all die, for in twelve days a multitude of people will not be fed with a little. Now plums and spice, sugar and honey, square it among pies and broth. Now or never must music be in tune, for the youth must dance and sing to get them a heat, while the aged sit ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... soon obliterates the remembrance of the privations of winter: fish is then found in every lake, and wild-fowl during the moulting season become an easy prey; while young ducks and geese are approached in canoes, and are destroyed with arrows in great numbers, ere they have acquired the use of their wings. The white man similarly situated would undoubtedly think of the long winter he had passed in want, and would provide for the ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... an acre was his price—with promise of fairish board. He said his crops were very light, ’twas all he could afford. He drove me out in a bullock dray, and his piggery met my view. Oh, the pigs and geese were in the wheat of the ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... you've been careful, Francis. You know Grandfather says that to stock a fresh-water aquarium is like the puzzle of the Fox and the Geese and the bag of seed. It's no use our having things ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... partly of arable cultivated in strips with strict rules of rotation, partly of grazing land and partly of wood and heath. Most people in the village had a right to a strip of arable, to cut firing of brushwood and turf, and rushes for thatch, and to pasture one or more cows, their pigs and their geese. A village cowherd looked after all the animals and brought them back at night. Cobbett in his Cottage Economy (to a new edition of which Chesterton wrote a preface) reckoned that a cottager with a quarter-acre of garden could well keep a cow on his own cabbages plus ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Chaleur—that immense thrust made by the Gulf of St. Lawrence between the provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec—is a paradise for holiday-makers and sportsmen, who, besides their fishing, get excellent shooting at brant, geese, duck, and all kinds ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... wash yourself, Paperarello!' said the queen sometimes, for he did his work so well that she took an interest in him. 'Oh, I should not feel comfortable if I was clean, your Majesty,' answered he, and went whistling after his geese. ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... Fowls are Turkies, Geese, Ducks, Hens, and other Poultry; and among the wild are, Partridges, Geese, Ducks, Pigeons, Owls, Crows, and Swans; with a variety of small Birds, which have nothing peculiar to render a particular description ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... Immortal honour still she claims For Kraunchi, Bhasi, Syeni's names. And wills not that the world forget Suki or Dhritarashtri yet. Then Kraunchi bare the crane and owl, And Bhasi tribes of water fowl: Vultures and hawks that race through air With storm-fleet pinions Syeni bare. All swans and geese on mere and brook Their birth from Dhritarashtri took, And all the river-haunting brood Of ducks, a countless multitude. From Suki Nala sprang, who bare Dame Vinata surpassing fair. From fiery Krodhavasa, ten Bright daughters sprang, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... going off in a short time to Dublin, or to France, and maybe we won't be in the place at all when you come back. There's no fences to the bit of farm I have, the way I'm destroyed running. The calves do be straying, and the geese do be straying, and the hens do be straying, and I'm destroyed running after them. We've no man in the place since himself died in the winter, and he ailing these five years, and there's no one to give us a hand drawing the hay or cutting the bit of oats we have above on the hill. My brother ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... poor, rough, ungentlemanly sort of shire, as far as I have seen it; and however they got on with the things I found that they called hounds I can't for the life of me imagine. I understand they went stringing over the country like a flock of wild geese. However, I have rectified that in a manner by knocking all the fast 'uns and slow 'uns on the head; and I shall require at least twenty couple before I can take the field. In your official report ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... and better fare, rendered this post one of the most agreeable situations in the Indian country. In spring, moreover, the country swarms with game—pheasants and a small species of curlieu in the immediate vicinity, and ducks and geese within a short distance. The sport was excellent, and, with the amusement the cultivation of my garden afforded me, enabled me to vegetate in great comfort—a comfort I was ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... one of the seven churches, and saw the Pope give the mass. The ceremony was imposing, but again—spoiled by the inconsistent conduct of the cardinals and other prelates, who sat about the altar with their hats on, chattering all through the mass like a flock of geese. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... some use I could put it tot " might if you had a good small American pool, that wuz a sellin' cheap; and I could have it set right in our back yard, clost to the horse barn, why I might possibly try to make a dicker with you for it. I might use it for raisin' ducks and geese, though I'd rather have a runnin' stream then. But how under the sun you think I could take a pool home on a tower, how I could pack it, or transport it, or drive it home ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... take my watch out of my pocket and look at it attentively. Then I would see my little people stretch their necks, open their eyes, and come a step nearer; and it would often happen that the chickens, ducklings, and geese, which were loitering close by in the grass, imitated their comrades and drew near too. I then would put my watch to my ear and smile like a man having a secret whispered to him. In presence of this prodigy my youngsters could no ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... land. Those who were engaged in trade on board were so anxious, that we had got almost out of sight of their canoes before they perceived the ship's motion, when they all jumped into the water like a flock of wild geese; but one fellow, more earnest than the rest, hung by the rudder chains for a mile or ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... Six geese drop one by one into the shivering lake; They say "Peeng" and then after a long time, "Peeng," Swimming out ...
— The Garden of Bright Waters - One Hundred and Twenty Asiatic Love Poems • Translated by Edward Powys Mathers
... the proper. place for geese to rest on; and the attempt to do so is productive of much noise and trouble to the birds. The lines would seem to allude to the hardships of the soldiers' lot, called from their homes to ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... accompany Charley up the south branch of the Saskatchewan, where his utmost expectations in the way of hunting were more than realised, and where he became so accustomed to shooting ducks and geese, and bears and buffaloes, that he could not forbear smiling when he chanced to meet with a red-legged gull, and remembered how he and his friend Harry had comported themselves when they first met with these birds on the shores of Lake ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... along the river even a woman could kill coons and squirrels, all we'd need—no need for us to eat rabbits like the Mormons. Our chicken yard was fifty miles across. The young ones'd be flying by roasting-ear time—and in fall the sloughs was black with ducks and geese. Enough and to spare we had; and our land opening; and Molly teaching the school, with twelve dollars a month cash for it, and Ted learning his blacksmith trade before he was eighteen. How could we ask more? What better ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... just keep things going at home right and proper. Keep him busy! Keep him busy! Then he won't go browsing around where he don't belong. Dios! such girls as are growing up nowadays. As much brains as so many geese. I'd like to see a man of mine with enough to him to have anything to spare for other women! Anyhow ... this mess is all over. You're going to make up ... because I say so, if not for a better reason.... Otherwise tia ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... space that had been given to two or three of the main streets had been taken off of the remainder. The High Street, as we English would call it, was occupied by sleds filled with wood for sale; sleds loaded with geese, turkeys, tame and wild, and poultry of all sorts; sleds with venison, still in the skin, piled up in heaps, &c.,—all these eatables being collected, in unusual quantities as we were told, to meet the extraordinary demand created by the different military messes. Deer were ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... of our lovely eldest princess. It happens to be also the birth-day of Miss Goldsworthy; and her majesty, in a sportive humour, bid me, as soon as she was dressed, go and bring down the two "Michaelmas geese." I told the message to the Princess Augusta, who repeated It in its proper words. I attended them to the queen's dressing- room, and there had the pleasure to see the cadeaux presentations. The birth-days in this house are made extremely interesting at the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... important to keep up his brothers' spirits. Had there been a strong wind he might have continued to keep on a straight course; but there was not a breath, and the snow came down from all directions, as Harry observed, "just as if a flock of geese were being plucked overhead." The flakes were almost as big as feathers. In vain Philip looked out for a break in the thick woolly veil. Brave Charley kept up manfully; his legs were getting very tired, though. He said nothing; ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston
... incidents and exploits, which indicate character and assume high interest, when they relate to a person like the subject of this narrative. These hunters, unerring in their aim to prostrate the buffalo on his plain, or to bring down the geese and swans from the clouds, thought little of any other use of the gray goose quill, than its ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... of snipe, A flight of doves or swallows, A muster of peacocks, A siege of herons, A building of rooks, A brood of grouse, A plump of wild fowl, A stand of plovers, A watch of nightingales, A clattering of choughs, A flock of geese, A herd or bunch of cattle, A bevy of quails, A cast of hawks, A trip of dottrell, A swarm of bees, A school of whales, A shoal of herrings, A herd of swine, A skulk of foxes, A pack of wolves, A drove of oxen, A sounder of ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... the wicked always choose the evil out of both evil and good that others speak. Those, however, that are wise, on hearing the speeches of others that are intermixed with both good and evil, accept only what is good, like geese that always extract the milk only, though it be mixed with water. As the honest are always pained at speaking ill of others, so do the wicked always rejoice in doing the same thing. As the honest always feel pleasure ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... rapidly across a field leading by a short cut to the green on which Captain Sedgewick's house stood. This field brought him to the side of the green opposite the Captain's cottage. He stopped for a moment as he came through the little wooden gate, and looked across the grass, where a regiment of geese was marching towards the still pool ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... commences the Illinois territory. Here the general face of the country is flat; but, in some parts, the land is high and craggy. It abounds in deer, wolves, bears, squirrels, racoons, and foxes; in wild turkeys and quails; geese and ducks, partially; and hawks, buzzards, and pigeons in tolerable abundance; and the rivers contain several species of fish. In the prairies there are rattlesnakes. The woods supply grapes, pecan nuts, (similar to our walnut,) and hickory nuts. Hops, raspberries, and strawberries, ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... stretch of coast, occupied by grassy flats and innumerable small lakes, which projects from the mainland of Novaya Zemlya between 72 deg. 10' and 71 deg. 30' N.L. The name is a translation of the Russian Gusinnaja Semlja, and arises from the large number of geese and swans (Cygnus Bewickii, Yarr.) which breed in that region. The geese commonly place their exceedingly inconsiderable nests on little hillocks near the small lakes which are scattered over the whole of Gooseland; the powerful swans, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... gimcracks, genuine Japanese: 70 Gape-jaw and goggle-eye, the frog; Dragons, owls, monkeys, beetles, geese; Some crush-nosed human-hearted dog: Queer names, too, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... aunt sent a complete outfit of gilt-edged china, a clock, and a mahogany chamber set. Aunt Abby relinquished to the young couple a bedroom and a spare chamber in the "main part," while the Days supplied live-geese feathers and table and bed-linen with positive prodigality. Aunt Abby trod the air like one inspired. "Balmy" is the only adjective that could ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 'dragon' pigs; twenty wild pigs; twenty home-salted pigs; twenty wild sheep; twenty grey sheep; twenty home-boiled sheep; twenty home-dried sheep; two hundred sturgeon; two hundred catties of mixed fish; live chickens, ducks and geese, two hundred of each; two hundred dried chickens, ducks and geese; two hundred pair of pheasants and hares; two hundred pair of bears' paws; twenty catties of deer tendons; fifty catties of bche-de-mer; fifty deer tongues; fifty ox tongues; twenty catties of dried clams; filberts, fir-cones, peaches, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... burst upon us in the unrivalled immensity promised. That is, we are doing all this in the personalities of those holiday companions, who generously found the cage as wide and high as their chair-men wished, and gratefully gloated upon its pelicans and storks and cranes and swans and wild geese and wood-ducks and curlews and sea-pigeons, and gulls, and whatever other water-fowl soars and swims. It was well, they felt, to have had this kept for the last, with its great lesson of a communistic captivity in which ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... half-opened doors and the windows dimmed with colored panes or curtains, he had often seen women who walked about like geese; others, on benches, rested their elbows on the marble tables, humming, their temples resting between their hands; still others strutted and posed in front of mirrors, playing with their false hair pomaded by hair-dressers; others, again, took money from their purses and methodically ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... inscribed—"This hooded wolf is the hypocrite of whom is said in the Gospel, 'Beware of false prophets!'" Such exhibitions were often introduced into articles of furniture. A cushion was found in an old abbey, in which was worked a fox preaching to geese, each goose holding in his bill his praying beads! In the stone wall, and on the columns of the great church at Strasburg, was once viewed a number of wolves, bears, foxes, and other mischievous animals, carrying holy water, crucifixes, and tapers; and others more indelicate. These, probably as ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... they seemed to disappear from before his eyes). The monarch heard also melodious strains of vocal music and the agreeable voices of preceptors engaged in lecturing to their disciples on the Vedas and the scriptures. And the monarch also heard the harmonious cackle of the geese sporting in the lakes. Beholding such exceedingly wonderful sights, the king began to reflect inwardly, saying, 'Is this a dream? Or is all this due to an aberration of my mind? Or, is it all real? O, I have, without casting ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... to live like that, catching fish, and shooting wild ducks and geese, and cooking 'em, and eating 'em. Then you have a 'paulin and spread it over the boat of a night, and sleep under it—and there ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... high-posted Colonial bed, stretched himself, looked at the sunlight on the small-paned windows, and sighed with complete content. From the outside came the chirping of birds, the crowing of roosters, the cackle of hens, the quacking of ducks, the scream of geese, the thwack of an ax at the wood-pile, the mellow song of the lank negro chopper, Uncle Zeke, one of the ex- slaves of ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... certain, will buy me a cow, Thirty geese, and two turkeys,—eight pigs and a sow; Now if these turn out well, at the end of the year, I shall fill both my pockets ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... prey needed for its subsistence separates the toes of its feet when it wishes to strike the water[164] and move on its surface. The skin, which unites these toes at their base, contracts in this way the habit of extending itself. Thus in time the broad membranes which connect the toes of ducks, geese, etc., are formed in the ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... bullied into more terror of our enemies than we need, or to be so exalted in conceit of our own force as to undervalue and contemn the power which we cannot reduce." To blame him for making clear the greatness of the French power, was to act as if the Romans had killed the geese in the Capitol for frightening them out of their sleep. "If I, like an honest Protestant goose, have gaggled too loud of the French power, and raised the country, the French indeed may have reason to cut my throat if they could; but 'tis hard my own countrymen, to whom I have shown their danger, ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... noble enclosure so large that it would have been subdivided into building lots had it been anywhere else. It was inhabited by all sorts of fowl, hundreds of them, of all varieties. There were chickens, turkeys, geese, and a flock of ducks. The Captain pointed out the Rouen ducks, almost exactly ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... hollow, past a pond where geese were feeding, then turned to a stiff steep hill, which never seemed to end for miles. The country grew lonelier at every step; there were no houses there; only a few rabbits tamely playing in the outskirts of the coverts. A jay ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... Edith joined the marketing expedition next morning and even Frances was impressed with the holiday spirit overhanging the place. They left Nurse carefully inspecting fat geese in a poulterer's stall and started ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... Next day came on with a strong north wind. By noon the wild ducks had left the lake. Many long strings of geese passed southeastward, honking as they flew. Colder and colder blew the strong wind, and soon the frost was showing on the smaller ponds. It snowed a little, but this ceased. With the clearing sky the wind fell and the ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... everywhere about the lagoons—ducks, shags, great geese, and pigmy geese, hovering and settling about them in screaming clouds; and after dinner, deciding we might as well have a bit of game for supper, we walked across the open salt-bush plain to the Big Red Lily. But revolvers are hardly ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... one; but first we will speak of one more group, the Swimming-birds. You may have often noticed a duck's foot, and seen how the "web," or skin between the toes, can be folded up like a fan; or spread out, when the bird is swimming; Geese, Swans, Sea-gulls, the beautiful great Albatross, all these and a great many more of this family; they have a kind of water-wing, which cleaves its way through the streams, and most of them can also fly, although they are heavy birds. I have seen a flock of grey geese ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... jolly times around the blazing logs in the rude hall, of winter evenings. They had abundant food, fine fresh fish, speared through the ice of the river or taken from the bay, with the flesh of moose, caribou, deer, beaver, and hare, and of ducks, geese, and grouse, and they had organized an "Order of ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... indeed—and a poet unaware of himself; all but the sense of music. You feel it so—do you not? And the 'dear sir' has let him have the 'letter of Cromwell,' I hope; and satisfied 'the obedient servant.' The curious thing in this world is not the stupidity, but the upper-handism of the stupidity. The geese are in the Capitol, and the Romans in the farmyard—and it seems all quite natural that it should be so, both to ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... Napoleonder's head, and he immediately took breath and became a man. He is living now, not very near nor very far away, on the island of Buan, in the middle of the ocean-sea. There is a little less than a verst of land in the island, and Napoleonder lives there and watches geese. Night and day he looks after the geese, without eating, or drinking, or sleeping, or smoking; and his only thought is—how to conquer the ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... tail left streaming all winter from the naked bough where it had caught. It was so good for kites on the Commons, because there were no trees there, and not even fences, but a vast open stretch of level grass, which the cows and geese kept cropped to the earth; and for the most part the boys had no trouble with their kites there. Some of them had paper fringe pasted round the edges of their kites; this made a fine rattling as the kite rose, and when the kite stood, at the ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... itself in a swiftly widening friendship for live things. The spreading ripples of his affection took in the cows and the horses, the hens and the geese, and every creature about the place, till at length it had to pull up at the moles, because he could not get at them. I doubt if he would have liked them if he had seen one eat a frog! He called the pigs little brothers, and the horses and cows big brothers, and was perfectly at home with ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... man or woman, joined with a moral one. Marriages of such dissimilitudes are not unlike the conjunctions of different species of animals with each other, as of sheep and goats, of stags and mules, of turkeys and geese, of sparrows and the nobler kind of birds, yea, as of dogs and cats, which from their dissimilitudes do not consociate with each other, but in the human kind these dissimilitudes are indicated not by faces, but by habits ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... by Days, or by the Return of the Moon, and Cohonks, a sort of wild Geese. They walk one after another in a Line, are very serious in Debates, speak but one at a Time; and in Negotiations all agree to what either proposes or approves of, and are not easily imposed upon; and when affronted, they highly resent Injuries, and being treacherous are ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... Why tell me this stuff? Of course I can guess as well as you that it's a feather-bed, since I see a flock of geese in the yard with their ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... you can hear through the waiting, echoing air the laughing shouts of playing children and the low-dropping honk of the wild geese that in a scarcely quivering line are sailing northward across the reedy lowlands which the gentle spring rains will turn into soft, violet, ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... gander heard and understood, And summoned round his gosling brood: "Whene'er you hear a rogue commended, Be sure some mischief is intended; A fox now spoke in commendation— Foxes no doubt will rise in station; If they hold places, it is plain The geese will feel a tyrant reign. 'Tis a sad prospect for our race When every petty clerk in place Will follow fashion, and ne'er cease On holidays to feed ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... respect, freedom, social standing, is entirely secondary to that. But what has to be done? We women do not know. Our efforts to know are among the most desolating of spectacles. I read the papers of those suffrage women; the effect is more like agitated geese upon a common than anything human has a right to be.... That's why I turn to you. Years ago I felt, and now I know, there is about you a simplicity of mind, a foolishness of faith, that is stronger and greater than the cleverness of any woman alive. You are one of those strange men who take high ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... were in the tomb of Adrian, others at the Capitol; these latter still bear on their capitals the figures of the geese which saved the Roman people. Some of these pillars support Gothic, and others Arabian ornaments. The urn of Agrippa conceals the ashes of a Pope; for even the dead have yielded place to other dead, and the tombs have almost as often changed their masters as the ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... think I can't escape you all—if I want to? Of course I can. What geese you are! None of you will ever prevent me from doing what I want to do. It really would save such a lot of time and trouble if you would get that into ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... retorted Thomas Idle, with the pardonable sharpness of an invalid, 'can't be five gentlemen in straw hats, on a form on one side of a door, and four ladies in hats and falls, on a form on another side of a door, and three geese in a dirty little brook before them, and a boy's legs hanging over a bridge (with a boy's body I suppose on the other side of the parapet), and a donkey running away. What ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... with the fact that in many birds each large feather papilla is accompanied by two or more very small feather papillae, led me to study the papillae of the limbs of other birds. The most striking results were obtained from the embryos of Chinese geese in which the legs are relatively longer than in penguins. In a 13-days goose embryo the whole of the skin below and for some distance above the tarsal joint is quite smooth, whereas the skin of the rest of the leg is studded with feather papillae. On the other hand, in an 18-days goose embryo ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... ramparts—I could have stayed and played with them for hours. Here and there great branches had been torn away by the sheer weight of the snow, and robins perched and hopped on them in their perky conceited way, just as if they had done it themselves. A ragged string of wild geese passed overhead, high on the grey sky, and a few rooks whirled over the trees, inspected, and flapped off homewards with a disgusted expression; but I met no sensible being to ask the news of. About half-way across I came on a rabbit sitting on a stump, cleaning his silly face with his paws. ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... was a village of one street, intended to be straight, crossing a decorous brook that turned the mill, and parting itself just below the church and the "store," to accommodate a small "green," where the geese waddled, hissed, and nibbled Mayweed all summer, and the boys played ball sometimes after school. There was a post-office in the "store," beside boots, sugar, hams, tape, rake-tails, ploughs, St. Croix molasses, lemons, calico, cheese, flour, straw hats, candles, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... of twenty geese (a snow-white train!) Fed near the limpid lake with golden grain, Amuse my pensive hours. The bird of Jove Fierce from his mountain-eyrie downward drove; Each favourite fowl he pounced with deathful ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... shouted one of the men. "Rains geese!" and there was a cheer and a roar of laughter, as one by one five geese fell with a splash in the river, two to lie perfectly still while they were retrieved—the others, poor birds, to make desperate efforts to swim broken-winged away, ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... gotter die fo' long, and I sho' wants to be clean in de mouf and no stains or lies on my lips when I dies. Our sompin' teat wuz a heap better'n what us got now. Us had plenny of evvything right dar in de yard. Chickens, ducks, geese, guineas, tukkeys, and de smoke'ouse full of good meat. Den de mens, dey wuz all time goin' huntin', and fetchin' in wild tukkeys, an poddiges, and heaps and lots of 'possums and rabbits. Us had many fishes as us wanted. De big fine shads, and perch, and trouts; dem wuz de fishes de Jedge ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... drawn by dogs. The mongrel dogs were a remarkable feature of squatter life, and it is said that the Park area contained no less than one hundred thousand 'curs of low degree,' which, with cows, pigs, cats, goats, geese, and chickens, roamed at will, and lived upon the refuse, which was everywhere. In the neighbourhood of these squatter settlements, of which the largest was Seneca Village, near Seventy-ninth Street, the swamps had become cesspools and the ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... are not large enough yet; as soon as they are Humphrey must get me some ducks and geese; for I mean to keep some; and by-and-by I will have some turkeys, but not yet. I must wait till Humphrey builds me the new house for them ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... sadly. "It hain't the same sass. The geese have to get the same strength from it,—strength to swim in the same water, fly over the same fences, from the same pursuers and avengers; and they have to grow the same feathers out of it; but the sass, the ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... it for this the wild geese spread The grey wing upon every tide; For this that all that blood was shed, For this Edward Fitzgerald died, And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone, All that delirium of the brave; Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... and he made up for Joe's weight with a surplus of ballast. He spent the whole day in these preparations, and the latter were finished when Kennedy returned. The hunter had been successful, and brought back a regular cargo of geese, wild-duck, snipe, teal, and plover. He went to work at once to draw and smoke the game. Each piece, suspended on a small, thin skewer, was hung over a fire of green wood. When they seemed in good order, Kennedy, who was perfectly at home in the business, packed ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... in March the far-flung arrows of the geese went over. Honk! honk! A vague, prophetic sense crept into the world out of nowhere—part sound, part scent, and yet too vague for either. Sap seeped from the maples. Weird mist-things went moaning through the night. And then, for the first time, I saw ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... old times there were a great many curious doings, and it would be a fine one to have a way in and out when the enemy thought they'd got people shut up closely, and was going to starve 'em out; and them able to bring in more men, and sacks of corn, and pigs and ducks and geese and chickens, and laughing at the ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... half a day. When I talked of going down the Rhine in one of the steamers, I thought he would have gone into a fit. When I asked him why, he gave me such a look. I know he'll make a goose of himself;—and he'll make geese of ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... waste paddy fields, i.e., abandoned rice terraces, for cattle grazing, and I may point out that this is also of advantage to the amenities of an estate, by providing snipe shooting close at hand. It will also be found of advantage for feeding ducks and geese. I have a stretch of such land on one of my properties, and find it most useful. The water, I may add, should be carefully conducted to the various terraces, just as if they were to be cultivated ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... natural kindliness and geniality made him always try and please those who tried to please him, beautiful or the reverse, whether they succeeded or not; and he was just as popular with the ducks and geese as with the swans and peacocks and nightingales and birds of paradise. The dull, commonplace dames who prosed and buzzed and bored, the elderly intellectual virgins who knew nothing of life but what they had read—or written—in "Tendenz" novels, yet sadly rebuked him, more in sorrow than in anger, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... been sacked by the Gauls, Brennus being at the head of that expedition of theirs, as the Gauls were on the point of capturing the Capitol by ascending secretly to the Acropolis at night, a great outcry of geese arose in that quarter; and one Marcus Manlius roused from sleep saw the enemy creeping up, and by striking some with his oblong shield and slaying others with his sword he repulsed them all and saved the Romans. For this they ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... little below the apex of a rocky promontory that contained the little group, Christian Indians, muleteers and soldados crossed themselves and looked up questioningly. In a dozen litters sick men tossed and moaned. A mule brayed raucously, startling flocks of wild geese to flight from nearby cliffs, a herd of deer ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... their lord has dreamed, and crowed at two in the morning, and praying that the old brown rat would only dare to face him. But while the cock is crowing still, and the pullet world admiring him, who comes up but the old turkey-cock, with all his family round him. Then the geese at the lower end begin to thrust their breasts out, and mum their down-bits, and look at the gander and scream shrill joy for the conflict; while the ducks in pond show nothing but tail, in proof of their ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... December most luckily came on to Edfoo by the American Consul-General, who overtook us there in his steamer and gave me a lunch. Maurice was as usual up to his knees in a distant swamp trying to shoot wild geese. Now we are up close to Assouan, and there are no more marshes; but en revanche there are quails and kata, the beautiful little sand grouse. I eat all that Maurice shoots, which I find very good for me; and as for Maurice he has got back his old round ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... the smallest and most numerous species of the geese which visit the British islands. It makes its appearance in winter, and ranges over the whole of the coasts and estuaries frequented by other migrant geese. Mr. Selby states that a very large body of these birds annually resort to the extensive ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... Mr. Bass sailed with only six weeks' provisions; but with the assistance of occasional supplies of petrels, fish, seals'-flesh, and a few geese and black swans, and by abstinence, he had been enabled to prolong his voyage beyond eleven weeks. His ardour and perseverance were crowned, in despite of the foul winds which so much opposed him, with a degree of success not to have ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... the psychic man's craving for the stimulus of sensation, the din of which smothers the voice of the spiritual man, as, in Shakespeare's phrase, the cackling geese would drown the song of the nightingale. And this craving for stimulus is the fruit of weakness, coming from the failure to find strength in the primal life of ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... all three went out together. And oh! with how much pride Reuben displayed the treasures of her little place to his long-loved Hannah. He showed her her cows and pigs and sheep; and her turkeys and geese and hens; and her beehives ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... going in, I skirted the edge and crept through the bushes on the other side. By the time they had reached the privet hedge, I had gone through the house from the kitchen to the terrace again, where I sat for ten minutes entirely alone laughing and watching those geese chasing each other around in the moonlight. I've never had such ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... cutery-corn, Apple-seed and briar-thorn, Wire, briar, limber-lock, Three geese in one flock; One flew east and one flew west And one flew over the ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... weak battalion present; all naked to the waist, blacked with grease and soot, and painted with white lead and vermilion, according to their beastly habits. They went one behind another like a string of geese, and at a quickish trot; so that they took but a little while to rattle by, and disappear again among the woods. Yet I suppose we endured a greater agony of hesitation and suspense in these few minutes than goes usually ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the banks of a small stream, and the tents are evidently pitched directly upon the roosting ground of wild geese, for during the snowstorm thousands of them came here long after dark, making the most dreadful uproar one ever heard, with the whirring of their big wings and constant "honk! honk!" of hundreds of voices. They circled around so low ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... white-turbaned Moors, who occasionally wore Christian boots, but otherwise looked just such Moslems as landed at Algeciras in the eighth century; people do not change much in Africa. They were probably hucksters from the Moorish market in Gibraltar, where they had given their geese and turkeys the holiday they were taking themselves. They were handsome men, tall and vigorous, but they did not win me to sympathy with their architecture or religion, and I am not sure but, if there had been any concerted movement against them on the landing ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... brook and fallen tree, led by some giant leader. Pigeons, grouse, doves, and quail cleave the air with sudden alarm. Gorgeous in his painted plumage, the wood duck whirrs away over the slow gliding San Joaquin. Swan and wild geese cover ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... Mellot farmer. Miss Andrews had promised her some ducks' eggs. They pushed open the farm gate, passed across the yard and knocked on the house door. Near Mary was a large barn with a heavy door, now ajar. Hamlet sat gazing pensively at a flock of geese, ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... removed by the servants. I thought the dinner was over, and was preparing to go, not a little astonished at such scanty hospitality, when other dishes were brought in, filled with choice viands of every kind—bears from Russia and Germany—hogs from Ireland—fowls and geese from France—turtle from the Mediterranean(?)—venison from the parks of the nobility—some in joints, some quite whole, with their limbs and feet entire. Operations now recommenced, the carvers doling out the same small quantities as before: but though many of the gentlemen present ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... muskrats' fur was longer and heavier than any old-timer had ever known it to be. The beavers were working by day as well as by night, cutting the willow brush, and observant eyes noted that they were storing twice their usual winter's supply. The birds were acting strangely. The ducks and geese, which ordinarily flew south in October, that autumn had, a month earlier, already departed. The snowbirds and the cedar birds were bunched in the thickets, fluttering about by the thousands in the cedar brakes, obviously restless and uneasy. The ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... actually had geese to pave the way for the Christmas pudding; they were quartered in some place where a whip round among the officers and a ride to the nearest town or village secured enough geese ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... knows where Shelford Fen is, and that it is famous for rearing geese. A luckless wight, who had the misfortune to be plucked at his examination for the degree of B.A., when the Rev. T. Shelford was his examiner, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... geese in the barn where Father used to shear the sheep; and to help gather in the flock was a part of my duty also. The geese would submit to the plucking about as readily as the sheep to the shearing, but they presented a much more ragged and sorry appearance after they had been fleeced ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs |
