"Oyster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who dines, and is seldom willing to allow a luncheon to spoil a dinner. In a country neighborhood, however, or after a long walk, a visitor is almost always glad to break his fast and enjoy a pickled oyster, a sandwich, or ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... question, when one invites company," she said; "but I don't mind answering it. For one thing I thought we would have an oyster stew and some good coffee together. Then, if any of you like music, I have a friend with me who is a good singer; and I have a few pictures I should like you to see, if you cared to; and—I don't know whether you are fond of flowers, but some ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... this place, on a course a little to the west of south and not far from the whites, with whom they traded for horses, mules, cloth, metal, beads, and the shells here worn as ornaments, and which are those of a species of pearl oyster. In order to reach his country we should be obliged during the first seven days to climb over steep rocky mountains where there was no game, and we should find nothing but roots for subsistence. Even for these however we ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... perfect spheres! The pearl which Cleopatra dissolved in vinegar and swallowed, and which was worth ten thousand sesterces, was not more pure. But does she know, that young woman, that in far-off Ceylon, on the pearl-oyster banks of Arripo and Condatchy, the Indians of the Indian Company plunge heroically down in twelve fathoms of water, one foot in the heavy stone weight which drags them down to the bottom, a knife in the left hand for ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... small, round countenance, garnished about the eyes with the kind of wrinkles commonly known as crow's feet and surrounded by an abundant crop of red curls, with a little cap resting on the top of them. Altogether, he had the look of a man more conversant with mint juleps and oyster suppers than with the hardships of prairie service. He came up to us and entreated that we would take him home to the settlements, saying that unless he went with us he should have to stay all winter ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... were divided out among the supporters of the measure at an oyster supper, and as I was apparently to get nothing but the shells, I fortified myself with a drink, and exclaimed, "Well, gentlemen, what is to ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... any amount of hard work if there is a bear or bobcat ahead, but now that he is in the White House he thinks he would much rather do nothing but sit about all day with his friends, and threatens to turn into a lapdog. But when we get him to Oyster Bay I think we can make him go out riding with us, and then I think he will be with Archie a great deal. He and Jack are rather jealous of one another. He is very cunning and friendly. I am immensely pleased with Mother's Virginia cottage and its name. I am going down there for Sunday with ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... the president of the college. Half a dozen, or more, of the students, the eldest about twelve years old, were at table; some without shoes and stockings, and others without coats. A couple of dishes of salted meat, and some oyster-soup, formed the whole ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... with oyster-mushroom stew, then they had roast chicken, baked wild-potatoes, stewed bracken that tasted exactly like young spinach, dandelion salad, ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... in weak salt water until tender; drain, and put in white sauce. Oyster plant may ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... scalp-pole, assembled around one of the telegraph poles. One fellow pounded lustily on a piece of leather nailed over the mouth of a keg, while the others hopped around in a circle, first upon one leg, then the other, shaking over their heads oyster-cans, that had been filled with pebbles, and keeping time to the rude music, with a sort of guttural song. Now it would be low and slow, and the dancers barely move, then, increasing in volume and rapidity, it would become wild ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... placed, in advance of the sauroid, ophidian, and batrachian reptiles,—the whale united in close relationship to the sharks and rays,—animals of the tortoise kind classed among animals of the lobster kind, and both among shell fish, such as the snail, the nautilus, and the oyster. And yet Goldsmith was engaged on his work little more than eighty years ago. In fine, the true principles of classification in the animal kingdom are of well nigh as recent development as geologic science itself, and not greatly more ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... vocabulary we meet with a tolerably rich variety of fish, of which the consumption was relatively larger in former times. The Saxons fished both with the basket and the net. Among the fish here enumerated are the whale (which was largely used for food), the dolphin, porpoise, crab, oyster, herring, cockle, smelt, and eel. But in the supplement to Alfric's vocabulary, and in another belonging to the same epoch, there are important additions to this list: the salmon, the trout, the lobster, the bleak, with the whelk and other shell-fish. But we do not notice the turbot, ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... heaven, if my mistress do not like it, I'll make no more conscience to undo thee, than to undo an oyster. ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... point of the trip comes when one changes at Jamaica, there boarding the 1:15 for Salamis. This is the train that on Saturdays takes back the two famous club cars, known to all travellers on the Oyster Bay route. Behind partly drawn blinds the luncheon tables are spread; one gets narrow glimpses of the great ones of the Island at their tiffin. This is a militant moment for the white-jacketed steward of the club car. On Saturdays there are always some strangers, ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... killing of his dog, it had not been his design to accept any more retainers for a long time to come. That occurrence had lifted him, as by the ears, from the proletariat into the capitalistic leisure class; and the map of the world had become but the portrait of his oyster. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... stone which is formed in the bowels of the earth by the intimate combination, as they approach one another, of analogous and similar molecules, up to the sun, that vast reservoir of heated particles that gives light to the firmament; from the numb oyster up to man—we observe an uninterrupted progression, a perpetual chain of combination and movements, from which there result beings that only differ among one another by the variety of their elementary matters, and of the combination and proportion ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... were now entombed in that gorgeous sepulchre. A Florentine tourte, or tansy, an old English custard, a more refined blamango, and a riband jelly of many colours, offered a pleasant relief after these vaster inventions, and the repast closed with a dish of oyster loaves and ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... like—exactly like the eye of an oyster in its pulp. And, by Jove, there's another!" ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... A man can sail in the forecastles of big ships all his life and never know what real sailing is. From the time I was twelve, I listened to the lure of the sea. When I was fifteen I was captain and owner of an oyster-pirate sloop. By the time I was sixteen I was sailing in scow-schooners, fishing salmon with the Greeks up the Sacramento River, and serving as sailor on the Fish Patrol. And I was a good sailor, too, though all my cruising had been on San Francisco Bay and the rivers tributary to it. ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... not an extra person," she replied. "I have come to see Mr. Noyes," and she displayed once more the large square envelope, her legacy from the lodger, the knife with which she proposed to shuck from its rough shell that oyster, ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... the washing-green, under her mulberry-tree. It commenced at four o'clock in the afternoon, and ended with dusk and the bats, and a gipsy fire, and roasting groats and potatoes in the hot ashes, in imitation of the freakish oyster supper which ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... play the fiddle. All efforts of the kind, mean simply that we have neither master nor scholars in any rank or any place. And I, also, what have I done for Coniston schools yet! I don't deserve an oyster shell, far ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... warn't you, Tony. It must ha' been that 'ere naughty little chap as comes sometimes out o' the empty watch-box round the corner, - that same little chap as wos found standing on the table afore the looking-glass, pretending to shave himself vith a oyster-knife.' ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... tide, protecting it to some degree from the blows of waves. On the rock bench each little pool left by the ebbing tide is an aquarium abounding in the lowly forms of marine life. Below low-tide level occur beds of molluscous shells, such as the oyster, with countless numbers of other humble organisms. Their harder parts—the shells of mollusks, the white framework of corals, the carapaces of crabs and other crustaceans, the shells of sea urchins, the bones and teeth of fishes—are gradually ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... to be as dumb as an oyster, Ned," pleaded the other; and so it was settled that he could help to ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... that ever came back again. As for Achilles and Hector (as the ballads of those times mention), they were pretty smart fellows; they fought at sword and buckler; but the former had much the better of it; his mother, who was an oyster-woman, having got a blacksmith of Lemnos to make her son's weapons. There is a pair of trusty Trojans in a song of Virgil's, that were famous for handling their gauntlets, Dares, and Entellus;[317] and indeed it does appear, ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... Smith, like Lane at Roanoke Island, in May, 1609, dispersed the whole colony in three parties, sending one to live with the savages, another to Point Comfort to try for fish, and another, the largest party, twenty miles down the river to the oyster-banks, where at the end of nine weeks the oyster diet caused their skins "to peale off from head to foote as if ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... Mayor, Sam Thompson Chief of Police, Lott Smith was the 'Squire of the town, and 'Squire Doney in the township. Chief Heinmiller ran the Fire Department and ran it right. Oliver Evans had the exclusive oyster trade of the city, handling it personally with a one horse wagon. The postoffice was near the Neil House. The canal boats unloaded at Broad Street, and Columbus had a Fourth of July celebration ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... bay, filled with little keys, but nothing to tell Dick which way to steer. He tried to keep to a southeast course, but ran into shallows which soon ended in a pocket from which they had to back out. Often they followed a good channel for a mile, only to have it end in an oyster reef, and again they had to turn back. A pair of dolphins lifted their heads above the surface in front of the canoe and with a sniff of fright started away across the bay like an express train. They were great ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... time we partly relieved our necessities, yet in Maye followinge we weare forced (leavinge a small guarde of gentlemen & some others about the president at James Towne) to disperse the wholl Collony, some amongst the Salvadges but most to the Oyster Banks, where they lived uppon oysters for the space of nine weekes, with the allowance only of a pinte of Indian corne to each man for a week, & that allowance of corne continued to them but two weekes of the nine, which kinde of feeding caused all our skinns to peele ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various
... some things I should think she'd be glad to send back. After all, twelve dozen oyster forks are too many for a small family ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch
... know that what he felt must be love;—nothing else could distend him with happiness, until his soul felt light and bladder-like, but love. As an oyster opens, when expecting the tide, so did his soul expand at the contemplation of matrimony. Labor ceased to be a trouble to him; he sang and sewed from morning to night; his hot goose no longer burned him, for his heart was as hot as his goose; ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... would have eaten me up as easily as you might swallow an oyster," laughed Monsieur Maurice. "Nay, my child, why that serious face? I should have escaped a world of trouble, and been missed by no one—except ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... Jo drifted into that sad-eyed, dyspeptic family made up of those you see dining in second-rate restaurants, their paper propped up against the bowl of oyster crackers, munching solemnly and with indifference to the stare of the passer-by surveying them through ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... Well, the only thing I could do, was just to take an opportunity to drop in at the College in the evening, where we had a quiet rubber of whist, and a little social and intellectual conversation, with maybe an oyster and a glass of punch, just to season the thing, before we separated; all done discreetly and quietly—no shouting nor even singing, for the 'superior' had a prejudice about profane songs. Well, one of those nights it was, about the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... will find places just suited to their capacity, not only in the underground oyster-cellar, or at the table back of the curtain, covered with greasy cards, or in the steamboat smoking cabin, where the bloated wretch with rings in his ears deals out his pack, and winks in the unsuspecting traveller,—providing free drinks all around,—but ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... aphorisms, those axioms of practice, that are made out of the pith and heart of sciences—he did not know it was of any value! That is his history. That is the sum of it, and surely it is enough. Who, that is himself at all above the condition of an oyster, will undertake to say, deliberately and upon reflection, that it is not? So long as we have that one fact in our possession, it is absurd, it is simply disgraceful, to complain of any deficiency in this person's biography. There is enough of it and to spare. With that fact ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... skins stretched out on canes, and ornamented with a variety of feathers; and when they wore skin cloaks, the head of the animal usually hung down behind, and had a very grotesque appearance. They wear corselets of leather, stuffed, and some large pearl-oyster shells, to serve as armour. Their sumpitans are most exactly bored, and look like Turkish tobacco-pipes. The inner end of the sumpit, or arrow, is run through a piece of pith fitting exactly to the tube, so that there is little friction as ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... writing when I ought; and long ago I grew familiar with your mercy and power of pardoning; and then—and then—if silence and sulkiness are proved crimes of mine to ever such an extreme, why it would not be unnatural. Do you think I was born to live the life of an oyster, such as I do live here? And so, the moaning and gnashing of teeth are best done alone and without taking anyone into confidence. And so, this is all I have to say for myself, which perhaps you ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... left a spell of thoughtful reticence behind him. The hills never dare to rise into abrupt earnestness; the two broad, bright-faced rivers that hold it in lapse with a calm consciousness into the sleepy, oyster-bedded bay; even the accretion of human life there never has been able to utter itself in the myriad rebellious phases of a great city, but falls gravely into the drilled monotony of its streets. Brick and mortar will not yield themselves there to express any whim in the mind of their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... and at the intelligence she had drooped like a severed snowdrop, and died. The only tie strong enough to induce him to return to Ireland was therefore broken, his father's worldly advice had not been forgotten, and O'Donahue considered the world as his oyster. Expensive in his habits and ideas, longing for competence, while he vegetated on half-pay, he was now looking out for a matrimonial speculation. His generosity and his courage remained with him—two virtues not to be driven out of an ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... too dull and commonplace of colour to be termed pretty, worth nothing, and justifying, in appearances its worthlessness, is remarkable for the exercise of a certain sort of deliberate wit in accordance with special conditions. Nature provides various species of the great oyster family with respective methods of holding their own in the sea, and in the case under review she permits the individual to exercise a choice of two different methods of fixture as chance and the drift of circumstances decide ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... "Where are you going to draw the line? Life is life, and a sponge is just as much alive as a herring; a nettle is just as much alive as an oak-tree; and an oak-tree is just as much alive as you are. What becomes of its vital spark when you eat an oyster?" ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... fugitives gained the bank of the river, where the stream ran deep and narrow, and they still had fifty yards in hand of Wau, the foremost pursuer, the man who made the smiting-stones. He carried one, a large flint, the shape of an oyster and double the size, chipped to a ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... purpose is accomplished. With the blow given by Peter the aim of Cyril was reached, but his merciless adherents had not glutted their vengeance. They outraged the naked corpse, dismembered it, and incredible to be said, finished their infernal crime by scraping the flesh from the bones with oyster-shells, and casting the remnants into the fire. Though in his privacy St. Cyril and his friends might laugh at the end of his antagonist, his memory must bear the weight of ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... and finally buried in the drifts by every wind. Every handful of the sand contains fragments of them. Forchhammer, in Leonhard und Bronn s Jahrbuch, 1841, p. 8, says of the sand-hills of the Danish coast: "It is not rare to find, high in the knolls, marine shells, and especially those of the oyster. They are due to the oyster-eater [Haemalopus ostralegus], which carries his prey to the top of the dunes to devour it." See also Staring, De Bodem van Nederland, i., p. 821.] and they are also, usually somewhat changed in consistence by ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... wrapping himself up for life in the scanty lambswool of a fellowship. But he had won for himself reputation as a clever speaker, as a man who had learned much that college tutors do not profess to teach, as a hard-headed, ready-witted fellow, who, having the world as an oyster before him, which it was necessary that he should open, would certainly find either a knife or a sword with which to ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... believe I'd drop it. That little pitchfork thing doesn't look near big enough to hold such an enormous oyster." ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... is like some rural hamlet into which a powerful regiment has marched. Every bed and barn is occupied by the soldiers. Who would not be irritated by a splinter, he asks, if the irritation leads to such an inrush of divine power and grace? It is like the pain of the oyster that is ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... not," I said coldly; "but, of course, if I'm to call Pisa a grass widow, it will have to be. Although I warn you, poppa, that in case of any critic being able to arise and indicate that it is laid out in oyster beds, I shall make it plain that the responsibility ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... brother to him who first ate an oyster—put up the window out of bravado to snap thereby his fingers at the forms of darkness, and being found whole and without blemish or mark of witch upon his throat and without catarrhal snuffling in his nose, of a consequence the harsh ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... mentioned above lies before us with its valves open, helpless as an oyster on its shell, inviting the critical pungent, the professional acid, and the judicial impaling trident. We will be merciful. This fat little literary mollusk is well-conditioned, of fair aspect, and seemingly good of its kind. Twenty-four thousand individuals,—we ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... sure when we speak of the treasures of the sea, you are thinking of places where pearls lie deep, hidden in the shell of the oyster—but I did not know until lately that not only iron and copper, but also gold and silver, are found ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... rudimentary tinge of the pride of those of his ancestors who looked down upon commerce, though not upon oppression, or even on robbery. But the true man will change to nobility even the instincts derived from strains of inferior moral development in his race—as the oyster makes, they say, of the ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... intolerable, that he had let the cat out of the bag. No one now remained but the party entrenched behind the smoke, and the mistress of the house. Pindar solemnly proposed to the captain that they should go and enjoy an oyster-supper, in company; and, the proposal being cordially accepted, they rose in a body, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... of fulsome compliment and invitation go to her accordingly. But the daring little free lance who accepts these attentions pays a high price for the bit of supper that is followed by gross impertinences. One would think that the democratic twenty-five-cent oyster stew, and respect therewith, would taste better than the small bird and the small bottle with insult as a demi-tasse. Then, too, she loses caste at once; for it is not enough that a girl should not do evil: she must also avoid the appearance of evil. ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... civilization were first planted in China by people strongly imbued with the belief that the pearl was the quintessence of life-giving and prosperity-conferring powers:[169] it was not only identified with the moon, but also was itself a particle of moon-substance which fell as dew into the gaping oyster. It was the very people who held such views about pearls and gold who, when searching for alluvial gold and fresh-water pearls in Turkestan, were responsible for transferring these same life-giving properties to jade; and the magical value thus attached to jade was the nucleus, so to speak, ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... were at least a week old. The rations since then had evidently been stolen from the helpless man by those around him. The place where he lay was indescribably filthy, and his body was swarming with vermin. Some good Samaritan had filled his little black oyster can with water, and placed it within his reach. For a week, at least, he had not been able to rise from the ground; he could barely reach for the water near him. He gave us such a glare of recognition as I remembered to have seen light up the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... among women leaders. He was not offended, morally or politically, by our preferring to go to jail rather than to submit in silence. In fact, he was at this time under Administration fire, because of his bold attacks upon some of their policies, and remarked during an interview at Oyster Bay: ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... by a reader of canoe books, and next day we inspected the oyster-beds, and a curious corn-mill driven by tide-water confined in a basin—one of the few mills worked by the power of the moon. Also we wandered over the new sea fortifications, which are built and hewed by our Government one week, and the week afterwards if there comes a shower of rain ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... Crab took the opportunity of saying to its daughter "Ah, my dear! let this be a lesson to you never to lose your temper!" "Hold your tongue, Ma!" said the young Crab, a little snappishly, "you're enough to try the patience of an oyster!" ...
— Alice's Adventures Under Ground • Lewis Carroll
... the sign about, Set up their throats with hideous shout. 535 When tinkers bawl'd aloud to settle Church discipline, for patching kettle: No sow-gelder did blow his horn To geld a cat, but cry'd, Reform. The oyster-women lock'd their fish up, 540 And trudg'd away, to cry, No Bishop. The mouse-trap men laid save-alls by, And 'gainst Ev'l Counsellors did cry. Botchers left old cloaths in the lurch, And fell to turn and patch the Church. 545 Some cry'd the Covenant instead Of pudding-pies and ginger-bread; And ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... Peter the Reader, and the young and innocent woman was dragged to the ground, stripped of her garments, paraded naked through the streets, and then torn limb from limb on the steps of the Cathedral. The still warm flesh was scraped from her bones with oyster-shells, and the bleeding fragments thrown into a furnace, so that not an atom of the beautiful virgin should escape destruction." The cruelty of man when spurred on by the mania of ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... have scarcely held speech with anyone but the Algonquin chief since we took to the water. Cassion has but given orders, and Chevet is mum as an oyster. I endeavored to find you in Montreal, but you were safely locked behind gray walls. That something was wrong I felt convinced, yet what it might be no one would tell me. I tried questioning the pere, but he only shook ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... only sixty. The spade showed a substratum of thick old wall, untrimmed granite, and other hard materials. Further down were various shells, especially bnitiers ( Tridacna gigantea) the harp (here called "Sirinbz"), and the pearl-oyster; sheep-bones and palm charcoal; pottery admirably "cooked," as the Bedawin remarked; and glass of surprising thinness, iridized by damp to rainbow hues. This, possibly the remains of lachrymatories, was very different from the modern bottle-green, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... To make ducks and drakes: a school-boy's amusement, practised with pieces of tile, oyster-shells, or flattish stones, which being skimmed along the surface of a pond, or still river, rebound many times. To make ducks and drakes of one's money; to throw it ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... York. The latter Metropolitan pair, though they confined their interest chiefly to their own city, at times transferred their attention to Chicago. Thus, for nearly thirty years, these five men found their oyster in the transit systems of America's three greatest cities—and, for that matter, ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... the great case of Virtue vs. Money, I appear for the defendant. Confound Virtue, say I, and the whole tribe of the Virtuous! I am as weary of both as was that sensible Athenian of hearing Aristides called The Just; and if I had been there, and a legal voter, I know into which box my humble oyster-shell would have been plumped. Such was the vile, self-complacent habit of the Athenians, that I suspect the best fellows then were not good fellows at all. And what did the son of Lysimachus make by being recalled from banishment? He died so poor, that he was buried at the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... powerful tugs. Six hundred people inhabited this floating village and they stood on the decks of their migratory houses, going north with the spring, like the ducks, and hurrahed, and each tug screamed a salute. The oyster dredgers cheered and schooners changed ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... our point of view—the most important of the world's spinners, yet they are not the only creatures who possess this secret, for the spiders and mussels and the pearl oyster have also shown themselves ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... but a dinghy, or the like of that, has ever gone in very far. Leastwise, I don't think so. The islands are just a lot of oyster-shell bars covered with sand and overgrown with red mangrove trees. I've been told the channel between 'em sometimes isn't more'n a foot deep; but in other places there may be good water. What I mean to say is that they're not charted, and I doubt if any man living could find ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... shores of the Eastern Sea toward Che-lu, neither brooks nor ponds are met with in the country, although it is intersected by mountains and valleys. Nevertheless, there are found in the sand, very far away from the sea, oyster-shells and the shields of crabs. The tradition of the Mongols who inhabit the country is, that it has been said from time ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... significance of my question entirely, Juffrouw Laps. The meaning would be similar if I were to ask you if you belonged to that class of organisms that live in oyster-shells." ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... year in islands of the Pacific Ocean, are of the species Numenius cyanopus. They leave New Zealand in autumn, with the exception of a few individuals which remain in favoured localities. The 'aigrettes blanches et noires' were perhaps reef herons; the black bird of the form of an oyster-catcher, and possessing a red bill and red feet, was doubtless the Sooty Oyster-catcher (Haematopus unicolor), which in Tasmania is known as the Redbill. Terns and gannets were amongst the birds of the coastal waters. ...
— Essays on early ornithology and kindred subjects • James R. McClymont
... Smelt, spoiled son of the wealthy shrimp and oyster scion. And there's nothing as bad, my father said, as spoiled Smelt. He disowned me, of course. I owned six Cadillacs—one right after the other, I wrecked them all. I traveled all over the world and probably counteracted a billion dollars' worth of foreign aid. ...
— Master of None • Lloyd Neil Goble
... charm in the scenery or moral circumstances that surround him. It is not love, but instinct. The new inhabitant—who came himself from a foreign land, or whose father or grandfather came—has little claim to be called a Salemite; he has no conception of the oyster-like tenacity with which an old settler, over whom his third century is creeping, clings to the spot where his successive generations have been imbedded. It is no matter that the place is joyless for him; that he is weary of the old wooden ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... costumes that were in vogue before the revolution. Even when it pours, this cheerless old dining-room at The Three Wolves is deserted, since there are half a score of far cosier little round pavilions for lovers and intimate friends, built over the oyster pools. ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... "Shuts up like an oyster directly I get anywhere near it," replied the captain; "sticks to it that it is a yachting trip and that Tredgold is studying the formations of islands. Says he has got a list of them ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... still bordered by extensive marshes, with here and there the habitation of man located upon some slight elevation of the surface. Having rowed twenty-six miles, and being off the mouth of Murderkill Creek, a squall struck the canoe and forced it on to an oyster reef, upon the sharp shells of which she was rocked for several minutes by the shallow breakers. Fearing that the paper shell was badly cut, though it was still early in the afternoon, I ascended the creek of ominous name and associations ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... was decided, the whole demos, or people, had to vote, according to their tribes; and if a man was thought to be dangerous to the state, the demos might sentence him to be banished. His name was written on an oyster shell, or on a tile, by those who wished him to be driven away, and these were thrown into one great vessel. If they amounted to a certain number, the man was said to be "ostracised," and forced to leave the city. This was sometimes done very ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seriously. "Only I wish you'd tell people who come here that while I undoubtedly am a bear, I have not yet lost my womanly taste, and I don't want to be fed all the time on buns. If anybody asks you what you think I'd like, tell them that an occasional omelette soufflee, or an oyster pate, or a platter of petits fours would please ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... not One obscure hiding-place, one little spot Where pleasure may be sent: the nested wren Has thy fair face within its tranquil ken, And from beneath a sheltering ivy leaf Takes glimpses of thee; thou art a relief To the poor patient oyster, where it sleeps Within its pearly house.—The mighty deeps, The monstrous sea is thine—the myriad sea! O Moon! far-spooming Ocean bows to thee, 70 And Tellus feels his forehead's ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... truth. I know of no quality more magnificent in fools than their faith: that perfect consciousness they have, that they are doing virtuous and meritorious actions, when they are performing acts of folly, murdering Socrates, or pelting Aristides with holy oyster-shells—all for Virtue's sake; and a "History of Dulness in all Ages of the World," is a book which a philosopher would surely be hanged, but ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... once and said that she was just the sort of girl his mother would like. He declared that Marion's oyster patties were things of pure delight and ought to be eaten to slow music. (Yes, I always got Marion to make some of her special pastry when the eligibles came to dine.) He openly sought her society. They even played draughts together and he always ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... flat ridges, a boy goes along, and with a three-foot marker marks the spots for the plants; a man follows with a hoe and makes a hole, about the size of a quart dish, to receive each plant. During the winter we have gathered up 200 or 300 tomato and oyster cans, melted off the tops and bottoms, leaving tubes about five inches long by three or four across. Now, armed with a light wheelbarrow with a wooden tray, containing from 50 to 75 of these cans, we go to the cold-frame (having well soaked it with water the night before); ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... the Above.—Six tablespoonfuls of turtle meat chopped very fine. Rub to a paste, with the yolk of two hard-boiled eggs, a tablespoonful of butter, and, if convenient, a little oyster liquor. Season with cayenne, mace, half a teaspoonful of white sugar and a pinch of salt. Bind all with a well-beaten egg; shape into small balls; dip in egg, then powdered cracker; fry in butter, and drop into the soup when it ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... intentions, which made her dance with joy. Besides, she had a little money, left her by a female oyster-dealer, who had picked her up when she had been left on the quay at Havre by an American captain. This captain had found her, when she was only about six years old, lying on bales of cotton in the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... of Sydney are some good oyster-beds, and many are the picnics got up for the purpose of visiting them. The oysters cling to the rocks, and great numbers are ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... the physician, 'yes, you are both right. But I may as well tell you that I can find nothing the matter with Mr Merdle. He has the constitution of a rhinoceros, the digestion of an ostrich, and the concentration of an oyster. As to nerves, Mr Merdle is of a cool temperament, and not a sensitive man: is about as invulnerable, I should say, as Achilles. How such a man should suppose himself unwell without reason, you may think strange. But ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... stop your mouth with that, Ralph," said Peterkin, holding a large oyster to my lips. I opened my mouth and swallowed it in silence, and ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... We're all mighty comfortable in here and lots of good victuals, if so be we get hungry. Plenty to drink, too, for I just brought in a crock of fresh water to cool my eggs in. I've got my knittin' work and am as happy as an oyster. Go back, for I ain't ready to talk yet. When I am I'll come out and bring these ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... introduced. The frequenters of Slam's spent all their pocket-money at that place in one way or another; and the pity of it was, that most of them would much rather, certainly at starting, have laid it out in oyster-patties, strawberry messes, and ices, than in forming habits which they would very probably give their right arms to be rid of in after-life. The best hope for them, next to being found out, was that their course of boxing lessons would soon be over, and Mr Wobbler would go away ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... his eyes in the Third Avenue oyster house before which the touring car Norman had been using was drawn up. At a long table, eating oysters as fast as the opener could work, sat Norman and his friend Gaskill, a fellow member of the Federal Club, and about a score of broken and ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had even struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of a pretended scale of beings. It is supposed, that God has divided his creatures into different classes, in which each enjoys the degree of happiness, of which it is susceptible. According to this romantic arrangement, from the oyster to the celestial angels, all beings enjoy a happiness, which is suitable to their nature. Experience explicitly contradicts this sublime reverie. In this world, all sensible beings suffer and live in the midst of dangers. Man cannot walk without ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... hasten to close our Notes on Gower—to proceed with our circuit of the coast:—West from Oxwich is Porteyron, where there is an extensive lobster and oyster fishery, near which is Landewy Castle. There is a wonderful precipice here. Further west we come to the village of Rossilly, near the Worms-Head, the termination of a range of rocks, which form the western point of the peninsula, being connected ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... cooked—Irish sausage, pork sausage, black pudding, Welsh mutton, and all kinds of rare and exquisite feeding. There are ever so many cases of this kind of thing. We saw, for instance, further along, several good specimens of the common oyster shell (Ostrea edulis), cockle shells, and whelks, both "almonds" and "whites," and then came breadstuffs. The breadstuffs are particularly impressive, of a grey, scientific aspect, a hard, hoary antiquity. We always knew that stale bread was good for one, but yet the Parkes Museum startled ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... plate for Mitchell, and brought oyster cocktails for everyone. Aunt Mary eyed hers with early curiosity and later suspicion; and she ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... the people need but little clothing. Their houses are not very high. The highest house is only two stories. In some parts they have strange windows in their houses. The panes are not made of glass, as in our houses. They are made of oyster shells. But they are not like our oyster shells. They are very thin—so thin that the light can come through them nearly as well as through glass. The shell is made square, and fits in the window like a pane of glass. Sometimes the sides or walls of the upper stories are made of frames, ...
— Big People and Little People of Other Lands • Edward R. Shaw
... trim and bright, though still somewhat reddened in face and arms from her last attentions to the supper—an elaborate meal on such occasions, though lighter than the mid-day repast. There were standing pies of game, lobster and oyster patties, creams, jellies, and other confections, on which Sir Philip and his lady highly complimented Anne, who had been engaged on them for at least a couple of days, her mother being no longer able to assist except ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... departments were disposed of, and they were led to another part of the works. On their way thither they passed the ovens. These were scattered over the ground like beehives in a garden. Lennox patted their round sides, approvingly saying that they reminded him of oyster boys in a pantomime, and might be introduced into the next Christmas show. Kate looked at him, her eyes full of wonder. She could not understand how he could think ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... stone edgings. When quite newly laid, like miniature rockwork, they are, perhaps, the least bit cockneyfied, and suggestive of something between oyster-shell borderings and mock ruins. But this effect very rapidly disappears as they bury themselves in cushions of pink catch-fly (v. compacta), or low-growing pinks, tiny campanulas, yellow viola, London pride, and the vast variety of rock-plants, ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... looked discouraging, and the fat would swim about in a way that attracted attention. Croquettes were not so bad, though they were a little stringy; but beef a la mode was positively unpleasant. Jugged hare did very well, but oyster pates were dubious. ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... which way the wind blew; he had learned the sunset signs, which tell what change of wind the night might bring. He knew without going to the shore whether the tide was a little ebb, with poor chances, or a mighty outflow that would expose the fattest oyster beds. His practiced fingers told at a touch whether it was a turtle or a big fish on his night line; and by the tone of the tom-tom he knew when a ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... The pearl-breeding oyster (Avicula margaritifera, Cuvier) abounds on the shoals which extend from Cape Paria to Cape la Vela. The islands of Margareta, Cubagua, Coche, Punta Araya, and the mouth of the Rio la Hacha, were, in the sixteenth century, as celebrated as ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... bird movements that might well give us the dates, day by day. To me the first warning of the passing of summer comes in the tin-trumpet notes of the blue jays. While the nesting season is on the blue jay is as dumb as an oyster. The woods may be full of him and his tribe, but never an old bird says a word. After the young can fly you may hear them if you slip quietly along in the pine woods. You have to be pretty near though, ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... a wicked habit. Pearls are valuable, and they are found in oyster shells. Dickens wrote David Copperfield, and he died in 1870. Some animals are vertebrates, and they ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... impatiently-the Captain rubbed his eyes, and began to pour out a glass of water; and dryly said he'd no choice, which was responded to by the rest. It was left to Master George, and he ordered a bountiful supply of grouse, partridges, oyster, and champagne of his favourite brand-none other. There was also a billiard-room, reading-room, a room for more important gambling, and a bar-room, up-stairs. All these were well filled with very well-dressed and very noisy people; the latter being a very convenient place, ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... and single genus of birds is seldom seen amongst the numerous descriptions of wild fowl, which, in the winter seasons, wing their flight to our marshes. The most striking part of the Oyster-catcher is its bill, the colour of which is scarlet, measuring in length nearly four inches, wide at the nostrils, and grooved beyond them nearly half its length: thence to the tip it is vertically compressed on the sides, and ends ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various
... little farm on the neck of land in New Haven which is now known as Oyster Point, and it was here that Charles spent the earliest years of his life. When, however, he was quite young, his father secured an interest in a patent for the manufacture of ivory buttons, and looking for a convenient location for a small mill, settled at Naugatuck, Conn., where ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... complete establishment as a barn-yard or hen-coop to a modern farmer or rural gentleman. Wherever there was a well-appointed Roman villa, it contained a piscina; while many gardens near the sea could boast also a vivarium, which, in this connection, means an oyster-bed. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... the party. If you take a Jonah nothing will go well. Leave me behind, and you will have a charming trip,' said Lavinia, who had an oyster-like objection to being torn ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... consequence of this, Eneas, an audacious young negro, in whom wisdom hath not waited for years—Eneas, my groom, I say, will probably be elevated to the post of valet-de-chambre. But where was I? I think I was speaking to you of an oyster breakfast, to which, on our return from the Park (du Bois), a company of pleasant rakes are invited. After quitting Borel's, we propose to adjourn to the Barriere du Combat, where Lord Cobham proposes to try some bull-dogs, which he has ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray |
