"Hen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Northern France came men used to live in constant hazard of their lives; from Paris, confessors such as Merlin, the chaplain who, leaving Coligny's bedside, had been hidden for three days in a hayloft, feeding on the eggs that a hen daily laid beside him; army-chaplains were there who had passionately led battle-psalms ere their colleagues charged the foe, and had striven with vain endeavours to render their soldiers saints; while other pastors came from Pyrenean villages ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... slipped one leg out of his pants and exposed the wound to view. It was only a tiny red puncture of the skin midway between knee and hip, but the bitten one knew that tiny place was more dangerous than a rifle ball. Like a flash, he drew his hunting-knife and cut out a chunk of flesh as big as a hen egg where the wound had been. "Give me that cartridge," he commanded, his teeth ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... would venture beyond the lower branches even for mangoes or tamarinds. And one day when he found a weaver-bird's nest in a bush with three white eggs in it, a splendid nest, stock-full of the fireflies that light the little hen at night, he showed it privately first to Hurry Ghose, and then to Sumpsi Din, and lastly to Budhoo, the sweeper's son; and not one of them could he coax to carry off a single egg in company with him. Sonny Sahib ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Dr. Tusher was away at Salisbury that there came a troop of dragoons with orange scarfs, and quartered in Castlewood, and some of them came up to the Hall, where they took possession, robbing nothing, however, beyond the hen-house and the beer-cellar: and only insisting upon going through the house and looking for papers. The first room they asked to look at was Father Holt's room, where they opened the drawers and cupboards, and tossed over the papers and clothes, but found nothing except his books and clothes, ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... have a room free for the sake of somebody to guard the premises. We've found that he will be out to-night, sitting up with a sick frat., so we've planned to borrow the parsonage in his absence to give a swell dinner. Tingley and Jones will visit several hen-roosts in our behalf, and we'll roast the fowls in the parsonage stove. If you'll just set up the champagne, Jacky, my boy, we'll be 'Yours for ever, little darling,' and we'll gamble on the green of the defunct parson's study table 'till morning ...
— The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle • Annie Fellows Johnston
... several lords taking their cloth of gold to the tomb and carrying their lands upon their shoulders into the other world. And in the farce came Monsieur Cruche with his companions, who had a lantern by which all sorts of things were seen, and among others a hen feeding under a salamander, (1) and this hen carried something on her back which would suffice to kill ten ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... table set for supper, but she laid plates for us and put before us a beautifully roasted chicken. Thrifty Mrs. Louderer thought it should have been saved until next day, so she said to Frau O'Shaughnessy, "We hate to eat your hen, best you save her till tomorrow." But Mrs. O'Shaughnessy answered, "Oh, 't is no mather, 't is an ould hin she was annyway." So we enjoyed the "ould hin," which was ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... getting ready to move the school on to the new farm. At the time we occupied the place there were standing upon it a cabin, formerly used as a dining room, an old kitchen, a stable, and an old hen-house. Within a few weeks we had all of these structures in use. The stable was repaired and used as a recitation-room, and very presently the hen-house was ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... what a world this would be if ruled by the best thoughts of men of letters! Ignorance would die at once, war would cease, taxation would be lightened, not only every Frenchman, but every man in the world, would have his hen in the pot. May would not marry January. The race of lawyers and physicians would be extinct. Fancy a world the affairs of which are directed by Goethe's wisdom and Goldsmith's heart! In such a case, methinks the millennium ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... antarctica Silver-grey petrel or southern fulmar Priocella glacialoides Cape pigeon Daption capensis Snow petrel Pagodroma nivea Lesson's petrel Oestrelata lessoni Wilson petrel Oceanites oceanicus Storm petrel Fregetta melanogaster Cape hen Majaqueus oequinoctialis Small prion or whale bird Prion banksii Crested tern Sterna sp. Southern black-backed or Dominican gull Larus dominicanus Macquarie Island shag Phalacrocorax traversi Mutton bird Puffinus griseus Maori hen or "weka" ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... to the door to listen, and heard 'Gene's mother cackling away like an old hen. How she would carry on, with anybody that came along! She hadn't never settled down, not a bit really, for all she had been married and was a widow and was old. It wa'n't nice to be so lively as that, at her age. But she wasn't nice, Mother Powers wasn't, for ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... England, Anno Dom. 1177. wherein mention is made that certaine of King Henries Noble men and subjects were present with the sayd Emperour in a battell of his against the Soldan of Iconium. Recorded by Roger Houeden, in Annalium parte posteriore, in regno Hen. 2. fol. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... I was sent out to clean the hen house and to burn the straw. I cleaned the hen house, pushed the straw up on a pile and set fire to it and burned the hen house down and I sure thought I was going to get whipped, but I didn't, for ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... any way. You seem to have grown into a very old hen," cried Mollie disconsolately. She looked across the cab at the businesslike young woman, and wondered if a few weeks of home under the new conditions would work a similar transformation in herself and Ruth. It was a comfort to remember ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... convent garden until nothing but a few twigs remained; even the laurels seemed about to lose their leaves. The nuns had retreated with blown skirts; Sister Mary John had had to relinquish her digging, and her jackdaw had sought shelter in the hen-house. ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... biscuit and meat, tied up firmly in flax, and fastened to his belt; but besides this, the bush is affording us other kinds of tucker. Katipo killed a kiwi in the course of our morning's hunt, and this bird is now being skinned, cut up, and roasted on sticks. We wish it had been a weka, or bush-hen, as that is more succulent eating; but we have hearty appetites, and will do justice to the ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... it was in the procuring of these that the gossip concerning her witch practices was revived and flourished. This prescription required the blood of a still-born male child; one old black-letter book recommended the heart of a yellow hen; another ordered the life-warm entrails of a black fighting-cock; a fourth prescription commanded the admixture of hairs from a dead man's beard! These ingredients mixed with herbs plucked in churchyards ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... ground, but it was useless. An old, old hen—who perhaps was ignored by the lord of the harem, and hoped for an adventure—waddled up, stood within a yard of his crouched, rounded shape without seeing him, saw him, shot straight up in the air at least one foot, screaming for help, and promptly charged blindly into ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... you ask the question? "How many circumstances, since then, have befallen me as prodigies? A strange black dog[68] entered the house; a snake came down from the tiles through the sky-light;[69] a hen crowed;[70] the soothsayer forbade it; the diviner[71] warned me not: besides, before winter there is no sufficient reason for me to commence upon any new undertaking." This ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... a prison. As in all Spanish-American towns, the main church fronts the great Plaza where the weekly fairs are held. Save on fair-day, the city is lifeless. Nothing is exported to the coast except a few eggs and fowls, lard and potatoes. Such is the power of habit, an Indian will take a hen to Bodegas and sell it for four reals (50 cents) when he could get three for it in Riobamba, and six on the road. Another instance of this dogged adherence to custom was related to us by Dr. Taylor: The Indians ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... no one can't go for to make out, not even a Frenchy hisself, because I never see one Frog listenin' to another—did you, sir? Wot's more, sir, they gets all of a lather over things which is only fit for women-folk to worry on—such as w'ether a hen has laid its egg reg'lar; or the coffee, was it black enough? From wot I see as puts a Frog in a dither, I sez to myself that if you was to take him to a real hoss-race, he'd never see the finish. No, sir; he'd be dead o' heart-failure afore ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... exclaimed the farmer's wife, "I declar ter goodness, we've bin so flustered thet I don' know no more than a wet hen. My brother, that's Mr. Mortlake, was dead sot on it bein' one of you folks, but ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... almost too far away in its orbit to be seen—all of them presently were dwindled and gone. Lee had a glimpse of the Solar system, a mere bunch of lights. The Sun was a tiny spot of light, holding its little family of tiny planets—a mother hen with her brood. It was gone in a moment, lost like a speck of star-dust ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings
... I rallied at once, and followed them down stairs. Here the scene was the full as amusing as above; the cloaking, shawling, shoeing, &c., of the ladies being certainly as mirth-moving a process as I should wish to see. Here were mothers trying to collect their daughters, as a hen her chickens, and as in that case, the pursuit of one usually lost all the others; testy papas swearing, lovers leering, as they twisted the boas round the fair throats of their sweethearts; vows of love, mingling with lamentations for a ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... this reason having chief authority, draws near and commences patting Seagriff on the chest and back alternately, all the while giving utterance to a gurgling, "chucking" noise that sounds somewhat like the cluck of a hen ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... on us! Yes, he is to go. At first Monsieur did not tell even him, he desired to keep this visit to the king so secret. But this morning he took Vigo into his confidence, and nothing would serve the man but to go. He watches over Monsieur like a hen over a chick." ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... interested him; and it has been stated that the Quaker lad was called in from work in the field to see the dapper young editor and his lady friend. He once told me that the situation was a bit more awkward for him. It happened that on this eventful morning the young poet had discovered that a hen had stolen her nest under the barn, and he was crawling on his hands and knees, digging his dusty way towards the hen, when his sister Mary came out to summon him to receive city visitors. It was only by her urgent persuasion that he was induced to give up ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... hill, both red and wet and tired. R.C. carried a small turkey, about the size of a chicken. He told me, between pants, that they chased the four large turkeys, and were just about to get a shot when up jumped a hen-turkey with a flock of young ones. They ran every way. He got one. Then he told me, between more pants and some laughs, that Romer had chased the little turkeys all over the ravine, almost catching several. Romer said for himself: "I ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... little while. Since he could say nothing and she had nothing to say, the pair of them stood hand-clasped, smiling, dim-eyed and red in the face, like two glad children—Amilcare, anxious mothering hen, clucking about them. The Duke, having recovered himself, murmured some courtesy, and led his captive to a seat in the window. His half-dozen English words and her six Italian, his readiness, her simplicity, put matters on a friendly footing: very soon Molly was chattering ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... birds they had shot within the bell of another flower, which immediately contracted with such force that they saw drops of blood squeezed out. After some minutes the flower opened, as beautiful as ever, and discharged an oblong ball compressed to about the size of a hen's egg, though the bird that was placed within it had been as large as a small duck. Towards evening these flowers sent up their most beautiful song, to hear which flocks of birds came from far and near, alighting ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... the green glimmer of apples in the orchard, Lamps in a wash of rain, Oh, the wet walk of my brown hen through the stackyard, Oh, ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington
... about Dorothy," as well as the famous characters of the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion and something of several new creations equally delightful, including Tiktok, the machine man, the Yellow Hen, the Nome ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... come on, and the days were very hot,—so hot and changeless, with their unclouded skies and their glowing centre, that they seemed to grow stupid with their own heat. It was as if—like a hen brooding over her chickens—the day, brooding over its coming harvests, grew dull and sleepy, living only in what was to come. Notwithstanding the feelings I have just recorded, I began to long for a wider horizon, whence some wind might come and blow upon me, and wake me up, not merely to live, ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... mother, two of them. The black hen was settin' on them, but I drove her away, and you can hear her cackling. Shure, Andy needs them ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... we sat down to dinner, and the steward filled her glass with champagne—that director's yacht was a regular floating Waldorf-Astoria—she winks at me and says, 'What's the use to borrow trouble, Mr. Fly Cop? Here's hoping you may live to eat the hen that scratches on your grave.' There was a piano on board, and she sat down to it and sung better than you give up two cases to hear plenty times. She knew about nine operas clear through. She was sure enough bon ton and ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... didn't you warn me?" said the princess, with mild reproach, as she stood before her pilgrims like a hen ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... five sparkling grains as white as snow, as sweet as honey, and as fragrant as musk. At first the grains were as big as an ostrich's egg, but in the time of Enoch they diminished to the size of a goose's egg, and in Elijah's to that of a hen, while at the commencement of the common era, they shrank so small as not to be larger than grapes, according to a law the inverse of the order of nature. Rabbi Yehudah (Sanhedrin, fol. 70, col. 1) says that wheat was the forbidden ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... them, because they had eaten him up. At last one of the boys—it was the other little girl's brother—said he would run across and get his papa to come out and help them, and the first thing she knew the turkey was after him, gaining, gaining, gaining, and all the grass was full of hen-turkeys and turkey chicks, running after him, and gaining, gaining, gaining, and just as he was getting to the wall he tripped and fell over a turkey-pen, and all at once she was in one of the aunties' room, and the aunty ...
— Christmas Every Day and Other Stories • W. D. Howells
... could catch it. This formed the close of the harvest-festival and was known as "the Cock-catching," and the beer which was served out to the reapers at this time went by the name of "Cock-beer." The last sheaf is called Cock, Cock-sheaf, Harvest-cock, Harvest-hen, Autumn-hen. A distinction is made between a Wheat-cock, Bean-cock, and so on, according to the crop. At Wnschensuhl, in Thringen, the last sheaf is made into the shape of a cock, and called the Harvest-cock. A figure of a cock, made of wood, pasteboard, ears of corn, or flowers, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... and his squadron of protection, dissipated the enchantment, and reduced Pomaree to her true character, that of a lazy, dirty, licentious, Polynesian savage, who walks about barefoot, drinks spirits, and hen-pecks her husband. Her real name is Aimata, but she assumed, on ascending the throne, the royal patronymic by which she is best known. There were Caesars in Rome, there are Pomarees in Tahiti. The name was originally assumed by the great Otoo, (to be read of in Captain Cook,) who united the whole ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... followed. Mr. and Mrs. Stonehouse coming next, and last the nurse, who manifested a phase of the anxiety of a hen who sees her foster ducklings waddling toward ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... had once had recurred to his memory; he had seen a little black hen which, in spite of her efforts, was not able to spread her wings over her whole brood. The poor hen was himself, the chickens were the friars. This dream was a providential indication commanding him ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... cod's eye was waltzing around her showing her how to do it. What's your programme today? Ay. Humane methods. Because the poor animals suffer and experts say and the best known remedy that doesn't cause pain to the animal and on the sore spot administer gently. Gob, he'd have a soft hand under a hen. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... not intrinsically handsome, but they abundantly prove the truth of the old adage, "Handsome is that handsome does." Lord Kaimes describes one kind of beauty as that founded on the relations of objects. And I am sure that the relation of a hen to a dozen fair, white, pure eggs, and the relation of those eggs to puddings and custards, and the twenty-five cents which they can have for the asking, make even an ungainly hen, like many heroines in novels, "not beautiful, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... waited to become indignation, she turned to see whom she was to be angry with. Nobody was near her but Winthrop, and he had disappeared behind the rock on which she had just been standing. Elizabeth was not precisely in a mood for cool judgment; she stood like an offended brood-hen, with ruffled feathers, waiting to fly at the first likely offender. The rest of the ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... their minds," he said, as he threw down a handful of corn. "Now isn't that just like a hen?" he added, ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... in June when David believed he never in this world could get through with it. He heard the chuck and drowsy clack of the sprinkling-wagon as it ponderously advanced upon its lazy way; he heard the almost whispered clucking of a mother-hen who was calling her chicks to come shuffle with her in the cool loose earth under the shade of the crooked old apple-tree, and presently there came a time when the out-of-doors was all so still that even the falling of a shadow ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott
... to our own time, have repeated this nonsense seem to have thought, first, that the Act of Henry the Eighth "for punishment of murder and malicious bloodshed within the King's Court" (Stat 33 Hen. VIII. c. 2.) was law in Guelders; and, secondly, that, in 1674, William was a King, and his house a King's Court. They were also not aware that he did not purchase Loo till long after Dundee had left the Netherlands. See Harris's ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Wooler informs me that this peculiarity is transmitted; for he crossed a common polyanthus with one having a coloured calyx,[786] and some of the seedlings inherited the coloured calyx during at least six generations. In the "hen-and-chicken" daisy the main flower is surrounded by a brood of small flowers developed from buds in the axils of the scales of the involucre. A wonderful poppy has been described, in which the stamens are converted into pistils; ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... to get these same broken tiles and bricks? I could not get sufficient bricks together to build a hen-house," plaintively said Mokei Anisimoff, a man who hawked kalaches (a sort of white bread) which ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... yonder is thy heart's delight, to wit, a sweet rest and a cup of brown beer." So he quickened his pace down the hill and so came to the little inn, from which hung a sign with a stag's head painted upon it. In front of the door a clucking hen was scratching in the dust with a brood of chickens about her heels, the sparrows were chattering of household affairs under the eaves, and all was so sweet and peaceful that Little John's heart laughed within him. Beside the door stood two stout cobs with ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... Mud Hen, is one of the most remarkable, and like its relative, the Corncrake of England, makes its note heard all the night long. It is fourteen inches in length and eighteen in the stretch of the wings; the bill is two inches and a quarter ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... struggles to make Madame understand. For instance, one night Skinny wanted eggs, and he tried in every way to make his wants known, but Madame failed to get his meaning, and finally the boy got desperate, so jumping up, he started to run around the room cackling like a hen. He got the eggs all right, and I think he earned them; but it was so funny that we nearly rolled off ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... the cue from her lips. He, too, had failed publicly and vicariously, in the very presence of his lion-hearted, bull-voiced mother, and sat a white-faced criminal awaiting execution, when Mrs. Pemberton, rising in her voluminous black silk skirts, like an outraged and peppery hen, stood a moment speechless with wrath, and then broke forth with her denunciation before the whole school, visitors and all. "Mr. Garvan," she had exclaimed in a deep voice all a-tremble, "I am ashamed of my son!" ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... islands—miles apart—to rest and breed. The assemblages are indeed prodigious; but they represent the gathering together of clans which have a very wide dispersal. Crowded together the host appears innumerable, but on the mainland during the day (when only the hen birds stay at home) the pigeons seem scarce. An occasional group may be met with, and they may be heard fluttering and flapping on the tree-tops (they are generally silent when feeding), but they are too thinly distributed to afford sport. Any other ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... just loves me. Oh, yes; about the same way an old hen loves a Chicken-hawk. 'Pears to me she sets up nights ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... lifting the roof of a platter. "These are eggs Samuel Butler, an invention of my own, the apotheosis of hen fruit." ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... come to live in the land— Chimneys between the village, And the proprietor upon the white floor! The sheep brings forth a lamb with a white forehead, This is paid to the lord for a righteousness sheep. The sow farrows pigs, They go to the spit of the lord. The hen lays eggs, They go into the lord's frying-pan. The cow drops a male calf, That goes into the lord's herd as a bull. The mare foals a horse foal, That must be for my lord's nag. The boor's wife has sons, They must go to look after my ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... every flower Pearled with the self-same shower. Thou shalt see the field-mouse peep Meagre from its celled sleep; And the snake all winter-thin Cast on sunny bank its skin; Freckled nest eggs thou shalt see Hatching in the hawthorn-tree, When the hen-bird's wing doth rest Quiet on her mossy nest; Then the hurry and alarm When the bee-hive casts its swarm; Acorns ripe down-pattering While the autumn ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Brit. c. 62, 63, p. 114.) Mr. Whitaker, (Hist. of Manchester, vol. ii. p. 31-71) had framed an interesting, and even probable, narrative of the wars of Arthur: though it is impossible to allow the reality of the round table. * Note: I presume that Gibbon means Llywarch Hen, or the Aged.—The Elegies of this Welsh prince and bard have been published by Mr. Owen; to whose works and in the Myvyrian Archaeology, slumbers much curious information on the subject of Welsh tradition and poetry. But the Welsh antiquarians have never obtained a ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... 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 ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the east coast, a race which some day will prove useful when the Sepoy mutiny shall repeat itself, or if the difficulties in Egypt be prolonged. A few thousands of these sturdy fellows would put to flight an army of hen-hearted Hindus ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... cupola, the latter embellishments to match those surmounting his own dwelling, Simeon was set aback with his canvas flapping. At the end of a week he had not driven a nail. "Godfrey's mighty!" he is reported to have exclaimed. "I don't know whether to build the average cupola and trust to a hen's fittin' it, or take an average hen and build a cupola round her. Maybe I'll be all right after I get started, but it's where to start ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... at the "Trout Inn," which has no accommodation for automobiles, except a populated hen-house, the general sleeping-place of most of the live stock of the landlord, dogs, cats, ducks, and geese; to say nothing of the original occupants—the hens. How much better they ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... it lies, With wary half-closed eyes; The cock has ceased to crow, the hen to cluck: Only the fox is out, some heedless duck Or chicken ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... naturalist; two hen-birds flew off, and at the bottom of each nest he could see a couple of eggs of a greenish color, and about ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... suddenly transformed for a brief moment into a lyric poet of great power. It is a great surprise. The bird undergoes a complete transformation. Ordinarily it is a very quiet, demure sort of bird. It walks about over the leaves, moving its head like a little hen; then perches on a limb a few feet from the ground and sends forth its shrill, rather prosy, unmusical chant. Surely it is an ordinary, common-place bird. But wait till the inspiration of its flight-song ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... the elder, pausing in his operations, "mind you give that old hen a good boil, or we won't ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... 1644-5 it suffered much damage, and was patched up by the Parliamentary troops. A hundred years later the Duke of Cumberland thought very little of its powers of defence, for he contemptuously called it "an old hen-coop." ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... babes,'" said Mrs. Valentin, laughing gently. "I own it, dear. Middle age is suspicious and mean and unspiritual and troubled about many things. A middle-aged mother is like an old hen when hawks are sailing around; ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... name it continued to bear, long after the unlucky Wolfert was driven forth once more upon a wrangling world, by the tongue of a termagant wife; for it passed into a proverb through the neighborhood, and has been handed down by tradition, that the cock of the Roost was the most hen-pecked bird in ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... place to make them thankful by-and-by, when they come to look back upon it—a sweet little hole, half a league away from anybody. All is arranged—a frying-pan, a brown-ware tea-pot, a skin of lard, a cock and a hen, to lay some eggs; a hundredweight of ship biscuits, warranted free from weevil, and a knife and fork. Also a way to the sea, and a net, for them to fish together. Nothing more delightful can be imagined. Under such circumstances, they will settle, in three days, which is to be the master—which ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... mean before they get to the store," went on the little girl. "Does a hen lay the marshmallows, same as chickens ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cousin Tom's • Laura Lee Hope
... disapproving consent she will begin to train me up in the way a good housekeeper should go, and talk to me about table linen and the best way to manage a range and how to tell if a chicken is really a chicken or only an old hen. Oh, I know Sara! She will set the teeth of my spirit on edge a dozen times a day and rub all the bloom off my dear, only, little romance with her horrible practicalities. I know one must learn about those things of course and I do want to make Walter's home the best and dearest and most comfortable ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was about to go on speaking, and then decided that after all it would be wiser not to say—what was in fact true—that he had enjoyed above all Paganini's Farmyard Imitations. The man had made his fiddle bray like an ass, cluck like a hen, grunt, squeal, bark, neigh, quack, bellow, and growl; that last item, in George's estimation, had almost compensated for the tediousness of the rest of the concert. He smiled with pleasure at the thought of it. ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... on the watery sod, Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God: I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies: By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God: Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within The range of the marshes, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... royal custom surrounding the estate. Francois placed her in charge of Madame Jolinet, who clapped her plump old hands with delight at the sight of her fresh blonde beauty, and chattered and clucked like a mother hen as she led Joanna to her room on the second floor. As for myself, I had one immediate wish: to see my ...
— My Father, the Cat • Henry Slesar
... gathered in it? Who will look after the farm and the horses and cattle and poultry, the fruit-trees and lawns and flowers as I do? Do you think that all these cares are pleasures to me? No, my dear lad, but they are my duty. I wouldn't have thy father find out that I neglected even a brooding hen. No, I wouldn't. And the yacht was thy father's great pleasuring. I only went with him to double that pleasure. I don't like the sea, though I never let him know it. Oh, my dear! But there! You haven't learned yet that self-sacrifice is love, ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... our national institutions is the 'Hen's Mutual Fire Insurance Company,' supported by the ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... she opened the pantry door and showed him a nice dishful she'd been a-savin' up. Wal, the very next day the parson's hen-turkey was found killed up to old Jim Scrogg's barn. Folks say Scroggs killed it, though Scroggs, he stood to it he didn't; at any rate, the Scroggses they made a meal on't, and Huldy, she felt bad about it 'cause she'd set her heart on raisin' the turkeys; and says ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... her a favor. I could not regret my charitable nature, but I mentally resolved to be more discriminating in future. Besides, the thought of Miss Francis for the work had been sheer sentimentality, the sort of false reasoning which would make of every mother an obstetrician or every hen ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Demetros polyphorbes es lechos elthen e teke Persephonen leukolenon, hen Aidoneus herpasen hes para ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... witnessed the rise of Paternoster Row as a publishing locality. From 1678 and onwards book-auctions were held at the Hen and Chickens at nine in the morning; at the Golden Lion over against the Queen's Head Tavern, Paternoster Row, at nine in the morning and two in the afternoon, and at other places both in the Row and in its numerous ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... filament; it is easy to conceive, that a duplicature of some parts may be formed. And that such superfluous nourishment sometimes exists, is evinced by the double yolks in some eggs, which I suppose were thus formed previous to their impregnation by the exuberant nutriment of the hen. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... the same thing?... If there is any meaning in the words, must not Absolute Unity be Absolute Plurality likewise?" Mr. Mill's "since when?" may be answered in the words of Plato:—"[Greek: Ouden emoige atopon dokei heinai ei hen hapanta apophainei tis to metechein. tou henos kai tauta tauta polla to plethous au metechein; all' ei ho estin hen, auto touto polla apodeixei, kai au ta polla de hen, touto ede thaumasomai.]"[AV] ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... I should fall in love with her if I hadn't the artist before me. Sweet innocent! she's thinking there will come a time when she will be wooed and won like that pretty hen-dove by as fond and fervent a lover; and she's thinking how pleasant it will be, and how tender and faithful he ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... Margharita and a beautiful great voice; but her long-delayed soul was the size of a small island and one family. Funny notion of a soul! A hen might have it. No, not a hen—she is a light-minded promiscuous creature; but a stork, let us say; she is monogamous and quite bound up in her family. No—not a stork either—storks migrate; no island would satisfy her. Apparently it takes ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... that the lawyer thinks shame o'. Lippen[156] to me, but look to yoursell. Mair whistle than woo, as the souter said when shearing the soo. Ye gae far about seeking the nearest. Ye'll no sell your hen on a rainy day. Ye'll mend when ye grow better. Ye're nae chicken ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... with him that fighteth his best, and in like honour are held both the coward and the brave; death cometh alike to the untoiling and to him that hath toiled long. Neither have I any profit for that I endured tribulation of soul, ever staking my life in fight. Even as a hen bringeth her unfledged chickens each morsel as she winneth it, and with herself it goeth hard, even so I was wont to watch out many a sleepless night and pass through many bloody days of battle, warring with folk for their women's sake. Twelve cities of men have I laid waste from ship-board, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... poor widow, as often there has been, and she had one son. A very scarce summer came, and they didn't know how they'd live till the new potatoes would be fit for eating. So Jack said to his mother one evening, "Mother, bake my cake, and kill my hen, till I go seek my fortune; and if I meet it, never fear but I'll soon be back to ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... horse poked his head from a box stall to look at the little visitor, and a little red hen called her chickens, and hastened away, clucking, as if she ...
— Clematis • Bertha B. Cobb
... members from an educational point of view; some at least represented the village malcontent section, now getting rather nervous as to School Board rates. And there was a talkative section who illustrated the truth of the old proverb, "It is not the loudest cackling hen that lays the biggest egg," and of, perhaps, the still more expressive, "It's the worst wheel of the waggon that makes the most noise." One, at any rate, was definitely qualified—"He knowed summat about draining!" ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... hath been searching for the thing yonder; and I have brooded over it night and day, like a hen over a chalk egg,—only that the egg does not snap off the hen's claws, as that diabolism would fain snap off my digits. But the war will carry Hastings away in its whirlwind; and, in danger, the duchess is my slave, and will bear me through all. ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... jess decided ah'd quit. Ah nevah did do no hahm tho. Parents didn't raise me ter drink, ah jes taken up the habit mahself. Ah use ter steal Grandma's aigs, He! He! She use ter go ter church and tell us not to bother anything and fore she got out er sight we'd done gone in de hen house. We boys git dem eggs and git on out in our play thicket and roast em and eat em and you know grandma found out where we roast dem aigs at, and whooe if she didn' whup us. He! He! You know the wurst race ah evah had in mah life ah wuz comin on fum Spearsville and two ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... Xerxes-army of words, but a compact Greek ten thousand, that march safely down to posterity. He set tasks to his divine faculty, which is much the same as trying to make Jove's eagle do the service of a clucking hen. Throughout The Prelude and The Excursion he seems striving to bind the wizard Imagination with the sand-ropes of dry disquisition, and to have forgotten the potent spell-word which would make the particles cohere. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... the bank, which now had a corrugated iron roof, a proper door, and two windows, and (the manager's own private property) a tin shower bath suspended by a cord under the verandah, a seltzogene, and a hen with seven chickens. The manager himself was a young sporting gentleman of parts, and his efforts to provide Sunday recreation for his clients were duly appreciated—he was secretary of the Chinkie's Flat Racing Club (meeting every alternate Sunday), and he and old "Taeping" ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... appearance, a heavy layer is a good hen to own. And laying ability is not confined to any one breed or class of fowls. There are exceptional layers, dependable profit-payers, in practically every fair-sized flock, whether made up ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.
... clearing the streight, and during our passage along this coast, we saw a great number of sea-birds, particularly albatrosses, gannets, sheerwaters, and a thick lumpish bird, about as big as a large pigeon, which the sailors call a Cape-of-Good-Hope hen: They are of a dark-brown or blackish colour, and are therefore sometimes called the black gull: We saw also a great many pintado birds, of nearly the same size, which are prettily spotted with black and white, and constantly on the wing, though they frequently appear as if they were walking upon ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... white dresses or horrid humbly ones. I'm goin' on just the same as ever, for that's the only way I'll ever keep my common senses in this spooky place. I knew when they two started off, left hoof foremost, they was ridin', to trouble; and this morning my hen chicken crowed to beat any rooster I ever heard, and that's ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... existed, and kept their heads. It must in fairness be explained that they were for the most part possessors of obstinate hens that would not lay eggs. Eggs were firm at twenty-five shillings a dozen, and the hen that remained so contemptuous of mammon, so unredeemed by cupidity, so unmoved by the "golden" opportunity, most certainly deserved death. Therefore it was that an odd tough member of the feathered tribe was now and then discussed in secret. There was little conviviality ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... any more." "Well," said the sepoy, very much frightened, "you may carry my ghee." So Sachuli put the jar on his head, and he went on, with the sepoy following. "Now," said Sachuli, "with these four pice I will buy a hen, and I will sell the hen and her eggs, and with the money I get for them I will buy a goat; and then I will sell the goat and her milk and her hide and buy a cow, and I will sell her milk; and then I will marry a wife, and then I shall have some children, and they will say to me, 'Father, ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... very Words; [1] but as it is proper to draw some spiritual Use out of all Afflictions, I should rather recommend to those who are visited with Women of Spirit, to form themselves for the World by Patience at home. Socrates, who is by all Accounts the undoubted Head of the Sect of the Hen-peck'd, own'd and acknowledged that he ow'd great part of his Virtue to the Exercise which his useful Wife constantly gave it. There are several good Instructions may be drawn from his wise Answers to People of less Fortitude than himself on her Subject. A Friend, with Indignation, asked how ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... message for his Lord, he never sought to find a path, but knowing whither he was to go, if his way lay through a wood he went along the tops of the trees. During his whole life, a blade of reed grass bent not beneath his feet, much less did one ever break, so lightly did he tread.) Teithi Hen the son of Gwynhan, (his dominions were swallowed up by the sea and he himself hardly escaped, and he came to Arthur; and his knife had this peculiarity, that from the time that he came there, no haft would ever remain upon it, and owing to this a sickness came over him, and he pined away ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... of a white hen Slaughtered at the break of day, While the cock, in the fairy glen, Thrusts his gold neck every way, Over the brambles, peering, calling, Under the ferns, with a sudden fear, Far and wide—as the dews ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... exhibited; a tame leopard, with his negro keeper, followed the soldiers; a band of natives, called Tamahu, engaged in a sort of sham-fight or war-dance. The misshapen queen and the chiefs of the land of Punt, together with a number of Nubian hunters from the region of Chent-hen-nefer, which lay far up the course of the Nile, were conducted to the presence of Hatasu, offered their homage to her as she sat upon her throne, and presented her with valuable gifts. "Homage to thy countenance," they said, "O Queen of Egypt, Sun beaming like the sun-disk, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... serve up the noontide meal and we twain sat at table; but as before she fell to picking up the rice grain by grain. Thereat said I to her, "O my wife, it irketh me much to see thee picking up each grain of rice like a hen. If this dish suit not thy taste see there are, by Allah's grace and the Almighty's favour, all kinds of meats before us. Do thou eat of that which pleaseth thee most; each day the table is bespread with dishes of different kinds and if these please thee not, thou hast ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... thread. The little car leaped forward on the invisible down grade. Again I anchored myself to one of the top supports. A long, rangy fowl happened into the road just ahead of us, but immediately flopped clumsily, half afoot, half a-wing, to one side in the brush, like a stampeded hen. ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... leaving, a big, fat lady, escorted by four little girls, got into my car. I hardly looked at this mother hen, very big, very round, with a face as full as the moon framed in ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Squire, playfully. "And what is all your useless, chattering life but pleasuring? The playhouse is but a perilous place for giddy-brained lasses like you; but for once, harkee, for once, we'll venture on taking you, if you'll promise to keep your silly head safe under the mother-hen's wing." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... friendly overtures prove of no avail, an appeal, might be made to the King's better judgment with the aid of our six guns and brass bowchaser. It is certain that pearls of great size do exist on these islands. The King wore one in his crown the size of a hen's egg. ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... through setting I felt like a hen, but when she tried to coax me to climb up on a limb of a tree and stay there till she got a picture of me looking like an owl, I swore softly in three languages, fell over the back fence, and ...
— Get Next! • Hugh McHugh
... him hiding behind the hen house watching the parade go by. He won't dare show himself after the way the clowns had fun with him when the show was ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... they told me I would have to sleep with a couple of other folks, but I had no idea that I should strike a wedding party in a cussed little bridal chamber not bigger than a hen coop. But there ain't nothing mean about me, only I swow it's pretty cramped quarters, ain't it, miss?" and he sat down on one end of the seat and put the toe of one boot against the calf of his leg, ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... with all other orders, there are marked and {156} inexplicable exceptions in regard to the fertility of certain species and genera under confinement. Although many trials have been made with the common partridge, it has rarely bred, even when reared in large aviaries; and the hen will never hatch her own eggs.[368] The American tribe of Guans or Cracidae are tamed with remarkable ease, but are very shy breeders in this country;[369] but with care various species were formerly made to breed rather freely in Holland.[370] Birds of this tribe are often kept in a ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... had followed him to the poop, where they remained together about five minutes, when on the breaking of this heavy sea, they jointly seized a hen-coop. The same wave which proved fatal to some of those below, carried him and his companion to the rock, on which they were violently dashed and ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... offered natural conduits, and wherever there was the least grade they had become rushing brooks. We found the safari very bedraggled. Billy had made a mound of valuables, atop which she perched, her waterproof cape spread as wide as possible, a good deal like a brooding hen. We set out for the meeting-point on the Kedong. In half an hour we had there found a bit of higher ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... resembled an enormous egg, and on questioning him was informed that many such were to be found in the interior of the island. The largest of these eggs would hold two gallons. The volume equals that of 135 hen's eggs. Some doubts were at first entertained as to the nature of the animal to which the fossil bones belonged; but M. St Hilliare—a competent judge in such matters—has pronounced them to be those of a bird to which he has given the name ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the household for many years; and Pao-yue, bethinking himself of Hsi Jen, hastened to return to his apartments; where seeing that Hsi Jen was drowsily falling asleep, he himself would have wished to go to bed, but the hour was yet early. And as about this time Ch'ing Wen, I Hsia, Ch'in Wen, Pi Hen had all, in their desire of getting some excitement, started in search of Yuean Yang, Hu Po and their companions, to have a romp with them, and he espied She Yueeh alone in the outer room, having a game of dominoes by lamp-light, Pao-yue inquired full of smiles: "How ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... undesirableness of change that had been their creed for centuries, with churches unconscious of judicious restoration and an unflawed record of curfews; by farms with all the usual besetting sins of farms, black duck-slush and uncaptivating dung-heaps; cattle no persuasion weighs with; the same hen that never stops the same dissertation on the same egg, the same cock that has some of the vices of his betters, our male selves to wit—whether the said old soul really enjoyed all this, who can say? She may have ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... forest the keping, Of the Hundred of Cholmer and Daucing, To Randolph Peperking and to his kindling, (heirs) With heart and hynd, doe and bock, (buck) Hare and fox, cat and brock, (badger) Wild fowell and his flock, Partridge, fesant hen, and fesant cock, With green and wyld stob and stock, To kepen and to yemen (hold) by all his might, Both by day and eke by night: And hounds for to holde, Gode and swift and bolde, Four greyhounds and six beaches, (hound bitches) For hare and fox, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... coop covered with snow) I have sometimes heard, and whom I once had the good luck to see close by me in the mulberry-tree. The wild-pigeon, once numerous, I have not seen for many years.(1) Of savage birds, a hen-hawk now and then quarters himself upon us for a few days, sitting sluggish in a tree after a surfeit of poultry. One of them once offered me a near shot from my study-window one drizzly day for several hours. But it was Sunday, and I gave him the benefit ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... to that too; but I must be off now; and you'd better see after lodgings; I hear that they are very scarce. If you aren't able to get any, come up to the Hen and Chickens; I hear they have rooms to let there. Poor little girls!' he murmured to Williams as they got into a cab. 'They only have twenty-five bob a week; one can't see them robbed by landladies who can let their rooms three ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... that Lop-Ear was not happy. My sister was the daughter of the Chatterer, and she made Lop-Ear's life miserable for him. In no other cave was there so much squabbling and bickering. If Red-Eye was a Bluebeard, Lop-Ear was hen-pecked; and I imagine that Red-Eye was too shrewd ever to ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... of causing disquiet. If any rogue shot me it would grieve you; I make bold to say it, and it would be the death of mother. Few mothers have such a son as me. Try to think of me now and then, and I will bring you some new-laid eggs, for our young blue hen is beginning." ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... in England. It had, according to Moore's (5/23. J.M. Eaton's edition (1858) of Moore page 98.) treatise, published in 1735, a tuft of feathers on the hinder part of the head, which ran down its back not unlike a horse's mane. "When it is salacious it rises over the hen and turns round three or four times, flapping its wings, then reverses and turns as many times the other way." The Turner, on the other hand, when it "plays to the female, turns only one way." Whether ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... non-committally. I wondered what had happened at that meeting. My aunt and I had never been upon terms. She was a great personage in her part of the world, a great dowager land-owner, as poor as a mouse, and as respectable as a hen. She was, moreover, a keen politician on the side of Miss Churchill. I, who am neither land-owner, nor respectable, nor politician, had never been acknowledged—but I knew that, for the sake of the race, she would have refrained ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... draw this letter to a close. We are all well with the exception of colds in the head, but nothing that need give you any uneasiness. Our large seal-brown hen last week, stimulated by a rising egg market, over-exerted herself, and on Saturday evening, as the twilight gathered, she yielded to a complication of pip and softening of the brain and expired in my arms. She certainly led a most exemplary ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... from the north field, drained a slough covering four acres of land, cleaned twenty acres of land for cultivation and built 160 rods of good fence around it. They also built a pretty and very convenient semi-monitor hen house, with open front and ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... here; for as good as we are going to be when we get ourselves made over, still, after all, we are an institution, and our inmates are just little incubator chicks. They don't get the individual, fussy care that only an old hen can give. ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... you hain't brung me my maccaboy snuff. I lay me an' my snuff wan't in your min'. 'Let the old hen cluck,' ez the sparrer-hawk said when he courted the pullet. Well," she continued, smiling with genuine satisfaction as she saw that Woodward no more than half-relished the comparison, "I better be seein' about dinner. Ol' folks like me ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... that I know. Never dreamed of a cow or a hen that I didn't make a hit, and I dreamed of a cow last night. She was giving such a splendid pail of milk, full to the brim, just as old Spot and Brindle used to give. You remember our ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... pondering upon the chances of the important enterprise: one which, perhaps, might in the sequel affect the weal or woe of nations yet to come. Then suddenly clapping his hand to his capacious coat-pocket, dragged out a bit of cork with some hen's feathers, and hurrying to his room, took out his knife, and proceeded to whittle away at a shuttlecock of an original scientific construction, which at some prior time he had promised to send to the young Duchess D'Abrantes that ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... particular friends, and talked to them at the top of her voice in faulty German, Italian, which she spoke fluently, or slangy English. [277] In the insipid conversation of this "magpie sanhedrin," "these hen parties," as he called them, Burton did not join, but went on with his work as if no one was present. Indeed, far from complaining, he remarked philosophically that if the rooms had been lower down probably 140 visitors instead of 70 would have ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... rise to very lofty heights of emotion or language over anything impersonal. She made hardly so much noise over this tragedy as a hen does over ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... breathed from its walls and broad yard spaces the peaceful rise and fall of an infant's repose. There was no sound about the warm and friendly place save the sleepy chunner of a hen on the bauks of the peat-house, just sufficiently awake to be conscious of ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... stream is the 'float,' which is to the prospector the one shining signal to be followed. Timber-line is passed till the forests below look like dank banks of moss. Cloud-line is passed till the clouds lie underneath in grey lakes and pools. A 'fool hen' or mountain grouse comes out and bobbles her head at the passing packtrain. A whistling marmot pops up from the rocks and pierces the stillness. Redwings and waxbills pick crumbs from every camp meal; and occasionally a bald-headed ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... with an air of pleased surprise. "M'sieu' Peaslee he'll got hen-rouse? First tam Ah'll was heard of it, me. Fine t'ing for have hen-rouse, fine t'ing for M'sieu' Peaslee. Ah'll t'ink heem for be lucky, M'sieu' Peaslee. But Ah'll ain't know it. Ah'll ain't see nossin' of it, no, seh!" and Pete smiled innocently round at ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... golden-crested wren, * goldfinch, * chaffinch, * *greenfinch, pied wagtail, sparrow, * dunnock (hedge, accentor), missel thrush, starling, rook, jackdaw, *blackcap, * garden warbler, * willow warbler, * chiffchaff, * wood warbler, tree-creeper, * reed bunting, * sedge warbler, coot, water hen, little grebe (dabchick), tufted duck, wood pigeon, stock dove, * turtle dove, peewit, tit (? coal-tit), * cuckoo, * nightjar, * swallow, martin, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... with his leather bag strapped across his back, and the basket containing a little Dorking hen in his hand. Presently he became aware how hot it was getting, and when he reached a small clump of trees near a hay-field he thought he would sit down and rest a while. He had been walking about an hour by this time. He thought ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... spite of the climate the couple were commonplace and happy. For a year Walker clucked about them like a hen after its chickens and slept the sleep of the untroubled. Then he returned to England and from that time made only occasional journeys to West Africa. Thus for awhile he almost lost sight of Hatteras and consequently still slept the sleep of the untroubled. One morning, however, he arrived ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... death' or 'The property of an English nobleman on whose walls it has hung for two centuries.' By thunder! isn't it beautiful?" He chuckled. "Wonderful how these bullfrogs of connoisseurs swallow the dealers' flies! And here am I, who can paint any blamed thing from a hen-coop to a battle scene, doing signs for tobacco shops; and there is Sam, who can do Corots and Rousseaus and Daubignys by the yard, obliged to stick to a varnish pot and a scraper! Damnable, isn't it? But we don't growl, do we, Sammy? When Sammy has anything left over, he brings ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... with pines, where they delight to wander in places the most difficult of access. They are hunted for the sake of their well-known perfume, which is contained in an oval bag about the size of a small hen's egg, hanging from the abdomen. This receptacle is found constantly filled with a soft, unctuous, brownish substance, of the most powerful and penetrating scent, and which is the perfume in its natural state. When close, and in large quantities, ...
— Book about Animals • Rufus Merrill
... and I can't think why it was called so, for, to my knowledge, it had never harboured anything but two innocent white Russian rabbits with pink eyes. It was situated at the foot of the kitchen-garden, next door to the hen-houses; the roof, made of pavement flags, was easy to climb, and, sloping as it did to the top of the wall overlooking the high-road, was greatly prized by us as a watch-tower from which we could see the ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... a will, dated 12 Hen. VIII., the testator directs that there shall be four trentals of Saint Gregory said for his soul at London at "Scala Coeli." Can any of your readers explain what place ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.04.06 • Various |
