"Pairing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... did not mean the measles, but that more serious malady called love, which is apt to ravage communities, spring and autumn, when winter gaiety and summer idleness produce whole bouquets of engagements, and set young people to pairing off like the birds. Franz began it, Nat was a chronic and Tom a sudden case; Demi seemed to have the symptoms; and worst of all, her own Ted had only the day before calmly said to her: 'Mum, I think I should be happier if ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... been a sort of Midsummer Saturnalia answering to the real Saturnalia which fell at Midwinter. In modern Europe, as we shall learn later on, the great Midsummer festival has been above all a festival of lovers and of fire; one of its principal features is the pairing of sweethearts, who leap over the bonfires hand in hand or throw flowers across the flames to each other. And many omens of love and marriage are drawn from the flowers which bloom at this mystic season. It is the time of the roses and of love. Yet the innocence and beauty ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... officer appeared to enjoy the skating-parties most, when the frost would allow us to indulge in this pastime, and I could not help noticing how regularly we seemed to separate into two parties; the skipper invariably pairing off with Florrie, and leaving Amy ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... couples will be increased to four or five, and little children of three years old end by pairing of their own accord ten or a ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... reduced to a shining simplicity. Thus is the dominant sun sufficient for his day. His passage kindles to unconsuming fires and quenches into living ashes. No incidents save of his causing, no delight save of his giving: from the sunrise, when the larks, not for pairing, but for play, sing the only virginal song of the year—a heart younger than Spring's in the season of decline—even to the sunset, when the herons scream together in the shallows. And the sun dominates by his absence, compelling the low country to ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... and rebound in the air so fast that the wings of the swooper whirred with a sound like distant thunder. Sometimes one crow would lower his head, raise every feather, and coming close to another would gurgle out a long note like. What did it all mean? I soon learned. They were making love and pairing off. The males were showing off their wing powers and their voices to the lady crows. And they must have been highly appreciated, for by the middle of April all had mated and had scattered over the country for their honeymoon, ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Perhaps the pairing has not been altogether accidental. Whether or no, it is done; and the conversation, hitherto general, is reduced to the ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... make haste, then, to get back for safety to the ornithological aspect of the subject. Here there can be no penalties for heresy. And here I make bold to avow my conviction that the pairing season is not the only point of interest in the life of the birds; nor is the instinct by which they mate altogether and beyond comparison the noblest passion that stirs their ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... pudding in his belly, and an apple in his mouth; the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a comfortable pie, and tucked in with a coverlet of crust; the geese were swimming in their own gravy; and the ducks pairing cosily in dishes, like snug married couples, with a decent competency of onion sauce. In the porkers he saw carved out the future sleek side of bacon, and juicy relishing ham; not a turkey but he beheld daintily ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... even without that he knew what the hour was. Prayer meeting at the corner church was over; boys of his own age were ranging themselves along the curb, waiting for the girl of the moment. When she came, a youth would appear miraculously beside her, and the world-old pairing off ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Hawks always keep together after pairing, working jointly in building the nest, in sitting upon the eggs, and in feeding the young. The nest is clumsily made of hay, occasionally lined with feathers, pine needles, and small twigs. It is built on the ground, and ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... weaver and slip the loop over the upper vertical group and with the pairing weave go around each group four times. Next, separate the spokes in groups of two and continue the pairing weave until four more rows have been woven in. Then separate the spokes by ones and weave until the ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... couples were unpairing and pairing again with an ease and rapidity that encouraged Undine to bide her time. It was simply a question of making Van Degen want her enough, and of not being obliged to abandon the game before he wanted her as much as she meant he should. This was precisely what would happen if she were ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... history with natural history. "The history of an institution," he writes, "which is controlled by public opinion and regulated by law is not natural history. The true history of marriage begins where the natural history of pairing ends.... To treat these topics (polyandry, kinship through the female only, infanticide, exogamy) as essentially a part of the natural history of pairing involves a tacit assumption that the laws of society are at bottom mere formulated instincts, and this ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... own time for pairing cards. For instance, if you require, say, a ten of clubs for one of the foundations, you may defer making a vacancy in the Navy until the ten of clubs is at the top of the talon. When you have played all ...
— Lady Cadogan's Illustrated Games of Solitaire or Patience - New Revised Edition, including American Games • Adelaide Cadogan
... Again, in Mabuiag, another of these islands, women who have their courses on them may not eat turtle flesh nor turtle eggs, probably for a similar reason. And during the season when the turtles are pairing the restrictions laid on such a woman are much severer. She may not even enter a house in which there is turtle flesh, nor approach a fire on which the flesh is cooking; she may not go near the sea and she should not walk on the beach ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... the average age at marriage rises steadily; and so long as they remain celibate we are prepared with some sort of ideas about the future development of their social life, clubs, hostels, living-in, and so forth. But at present we haven't any ideas at all about the adaptation of the natural pairing instinct to the new state of affairs. Ultimately the employee marries; they hold out as long as they possibly can, but ultimately they have to. They have to, even in the face of an economic system that holds ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... better than to be lax in pronunciation and it is absolutely necessary to rise above provincialism. "Maria" is not a rhyming companion for "fire" except in dialect verse, though this pairing sounds natural ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... sexes are winged on their first attaining the adult state; they alone propagate their kind, flying away, previous to the act of reproduction, from the nest in which they have been reared. This winged state of the perfect males and females, and the habit of flying abroad before pairing, are very important points in the economy of ants; for they are thus enabled to intercross with members of distant colonies which swarm at the same time, and thereby increase the vigour of the race, a proceeding ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... I was human and original. Considered I was like Lamb—on the strength of the stutter, I believe. Father, an eminent authority on postage stamps. She read a great deal in the British Museum. (A perfect pairing ground for literary people, that British Museum—you should read George Egerton and Justin Huntly M'Carthy and Gissing and the rest of them.) We loved in our intellectual way, and shared the brightest hopes. (All gone now.) And ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... Blanche's ambition of tennis courts all over the lawn was fulfilled, and sundry dinners, which were crosses to Alice, who had neither faculty nor training for a leader and hostess, suffered much from the menu, more from the pairing of her guests, more again in catching her chief lady's eye after, and most of all from her husband's scowls and subsequent growls and their consequence, for Ursula broke out, 'It is not fair to blame my mother. ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... paralleled. Dr. Christopher Staines is matched and contrasted with Rosa Lusignan, precisely as Lydgate is matched and contrasted with Rosamond Vincy. There is even a further resemblance in the minor pairing and natural dissonance of Phebe Dale and Reginald Falcon in the one book and of Mary Garth and Fred Vincy in its predecessor; while Lady Cicely Treherne, though her simplicity, unlike that of Dorothea, is merely assumed, is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... shall we have true Judaism in London and a burst of literary splendor far exceeding that of the much overpraised Spanish School, none of whom had that true lyrical gift which is like the carol of the bird in the pairing season. O why have I not the bird's privileges as well as its gift of song? Why can I not pair at will? Oh the stupid Rabbis who forbade polygamy. Verily as the verse says: The Law of Moses is perfect, enlightening the eyes—marriage, divorce, all is regulated ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the February day—of the spring breathing everywhere!—of the pairing birds and the springing wheat—and the bright patches of crocuses and snowdrop in the gardens along the line. A rush of pleasure in the mere return to the country and her home, in the mere welling back of health, ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... life. In other cases some slight effect may possibly be attributed to natural selection, as cats in many cases have largely to support themselves and to escape diverse dangers. But man, owing to the difficulty of pairing cats, has done nothing by methodical selection; and probably very little by unintentional selection; though in each litter he generally saves the prettiest, {48} and values most a good breed of mouse or rat-catchers. Those cats which have a strong tendency ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... Eagle in the wrong. But still, their hatred was so old and strong, These enemies could not be reconciled; And, that the general peace might not be spoiled— The best that he could do—the god arranged That thence the Eagle's pairing should be changed, To come when Beetle folks are only found Concealed and dormant ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... said naught awhile, but sat listening happily to the song of the pairing birds. At last Ralph said: "What was it, beloved, that thou wert perchance to tell me concerning the thing that caused thine heart to see that thy betrothed, for whom thou wepst or seemedst to weep at the ale-house at Bourton Abbas, was of no avail ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... began to show a hint of spring, in pairing plovers and breaking eglantine, Senhouse, in a temporary dejection, ceased work upon his poem, and Glyde said that he must know the news. All through the winter they had had little communication with the world beyond their gates. A shepherd homing ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... one might attain quickest by cohabitation. This, however, is not the only way, although perhaps the original one." (Jung, Jb. ps. F., IV, pp. 266 ff.) In another place it is said: The separation of the son from the mother signifies the separation of man from the pairing consciousness of animals, from the lack of individual consciousness characteristic of infantile archaic thought. "First by the force of the incest prohibition could a self-conscious individual be produced, who had before been, thoughtlessly ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... Hall watched the whole game, and saw how the young people were pairing, and talked ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... mates all the road, And who would wish surer delight for the eye Than to see pairing goldfinches gleaming abroad Or yellowhammers sunning on ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... strikingly by his well-known definition of marriage, that he has not escaped its fascinations. "Schopenhauer ignores all phenomena which are not in support of his myth," says Lucka, who denies this instinct of philoprogenitiveness and would substitute for it a "pairing-instinct." "The experience of others," he argues, "not our own instinct, has taught us that children may, not necessarily must, be the result of the union of the sexes. Into the mediaeval ideal which reached its climax in metaphysical love, the idea of propagation did ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... would have been entitled to rank as distinct species—or even, in many cases, as distinct genera. Yet we know, as a matter of fact, that all these differences have been produced by a process of artificial selection, or pairing, which has been continuously practised by horticulturists and breeders through a number of generations. It is the business of these men to note the individual organisms which show most variation in the directions required, and then to propagate from ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... planning how she might escape the party if Claudius changed his mind and went, and how she could with decency leave herself the option of going if he remained. She did not intend to give people any farther chance of pairing her off with Claudius or any one else whom they thought she fancied, and she blamed herself for having given people even the shadow of an idea that such officious ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... a habit with the Chinese, when a number are out walking together, for the eldest to go first, the others pairing off according to their age. It is a custom much older ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... get on to this lande by walking up the bed of a rivulet, and once on it we had perfect massacres of winged game, especially of that sort of gray grouse called ptarmigan by the English. It was these birds' pairing season. They never flew away, and when we killed one the other would ruffle up its feathers in a fury and fly pecking at our legs. The wooded sides of the island must have been full of reindeer, to judge by the quantities of tracks to ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... their birth. The mother's instinct is not more certainly the means of securing and providing for her young, than her gratification in the act of maternal care is great and is also needless for making her perform that duty. The grove is not made vocal during pairing and incubation, in order to secure the laying or the hatching of eggs; for if it were as still as the grave, or were filled with the most discordant croaking, the process would be as well performed. So, too, mark the care with which injuries are remedied by what has been ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... pretty numerous." Mr Danford[11] goes on to say that "feathered game is certainly not abundant. There are a good many capercailzie in the quiet pine-woods, pretty high up, but they are only to be got at during the pairing season. Hazel-grouse too are common in the lower woods, but are not easily found unless the call-system be adopted. Black game are scarcely worth mentioning as far as sport is concerned. Partridges scarce, not preserved, and the hooded crows and birds of prey making life rather hard for them." Mr ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... But the pairing off, which was so deftly managed by Nitocris, did not at first appear entirely satisfactory to them, yet a very few minutes' conversation sufficed to convince them of the wisdom of the arrangement. Brenda, with all the delicate tact which makes every highly-trained woman a skilled diplomatist, managed, ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... soon as laid: but as the cuckoo stays a shorter time in this country than any other migratory bird, she certainly would not have time enough for the successive hatchings. Hence we can perceive in the fact of the cuckoo pairing several times, and laying her eggs at intervals, the cause of her depositing her eggs in other birds' nests, and leaving them to the care of foster-parents. I am strongly inclined to believe that this view is correct, from having been ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... a right to happiness almost as passionately as the men of the French Revolution and as the women in their late movement for enfranchisement felt for liberty. Very likely she has turned to other women and entered into innocent Platonic pairing-off relations with some one. There is a little more affectation, playing a role, and interest in dress and appearance is either less or more specialized and definite. Perhaps she has already begun to be a seeker who will perhaps find, lose, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... sensibilities, and try for the repose of the common—the uncommon—domestic virtues. Ah, he said, they were sweet, like lavender. (Already, I told him, he smelled the housekeeper's linen-chest.) But I did not interrupt him much; I couldn't, he was too absorbed. To temperamental pairing, he declared, the century owed its breed of decadents. I asked him if he had ever really recognized one; and he retorted that if he hadn't he didn't wish to make a beginning in his own family. In a quarter of an hour he repudiated ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... are good enough for any woman alive. I am very glad, Dick. Patty married to you! You old farmer," affectionately, "I've always been mentally pairing off you two! Come on; let's hear what the political windmill has to say. They're burning red fire in front of ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... afire with a hope that shamed her. Three could not walk abreast on the narrow sidewalk up the hill, and when she heard Hendricks say after the group had parleyed a moment, "Well, Jake, good night; I'll go on home with the colonel," she managed the pairing off so that the young man fell to her, and the colonel and Mrs. Culpepper walked before the younger people, and they all talked together. But at Lincoln Avenue, the younger people disconnected themselves from the talk of the elders, and finally lagged a few feet behind. When they reached the gate ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... Does it explain the evidence of design which is presented in pairing off male and female in the same ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... shrivelled up in the glorified feminine vision of mundane things. The moral is to be found on page 447. "Of all the forms offered to us by life it is the one demanding a couple to realise it fully which is the most imperative. Pairing off is the fate of mankind. And if two beings thrown together, mutually attracted, resist the necessity, fail in understanding, and stop voluntarily short ... they are committing ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... a couple of weeks later that Andre-Louis realized what had really happened to him, and he found himself at the same time an exhausted man, for during that fortnight he had been doing the work of two. If he had not hit upon the happy expedient of pairing-off his more advanced pupils to fence with each other, himself standing by to criticize, correct and otherwise instruct, he must have found the task utterly beyond his strength. Even so, it was necessary for him to fence some six hours daily, and every day he brought ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... hair. How moles and dreams are to be interpreted. When most proper season to bleed. Under what aspect of the moon best to draw teeth, and cut corns. Pairing of nails, on what day unlucky. What the kindest sign to graft or inoculate in; to open bee-hives, and kill swine. How many hours boiling my Lady Kent's pudding requires. With other notable questions, fully and faithfully resolved, by me Sylvester Patridge, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... ray: They overleapt the horizon's edge, Searched with Apollo's privilege; Through man, and woman, and sea, and star Saw the dance of nature forward far; Through worlds, and races, and terms, and times Saw musical order, and pairing rhymes. ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... am led to suppose that the females generally prefer, or are most excited by the more brilliant males." [Footnote: Ibid. p. 399.] "Nevertheless, when we see many males pursuing the same female, we can hardly believe that the pairing is left to blind chance; that the female exerts no choice, and is not influenced by the gorgeous colours, or other ornaments with which the male alone is decorated" [Footnote: Descent of Man, vol. i p. 421.] Such sentences are of continual occurrence, and ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... evidence of sinful selfishness, what they call "exclusive and idolatrous attachment" of two persons for each other, and aim to break up by "criticism" and other means every thing of this kind in the community; that they teach the advisability of pairing persons of different ages, the young of one sex with the aged of the other, and as the matter is under the control and management of the more aged members it is thus arranged; that "persons are not obliged, under any circumstances, to receive the attentions of those whom they ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... pavilion, they vie with each other in pairing verses on the scenery. In the Nuan Hsiang village, they compose, in beautiful style, riddles for the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... a shaggy world, and yet studded with gardens; where the salt and tumbling sea receives clear rivers running from among reeds and lilies; fruitful and austere; a rustic world; sunshiny, lewd, and cruel. What is it the birds sing among the trees in pairing time? What means the sound of the rain falling far and wide upon the leafy forest? To what tune does the fisherman whistle, as he hauls in his net at morning, and the bright fish are heaped inside the boat? These are all airs upon Pan's pipe; he it was who gave them breath ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their promenade ground. With a nurse for each, their convalescence could have been no more agreeable in the midst of civilization. And as Barry gained strength, yet before Jerry Rolfe was allowed in to worry him about the ship, he found himself and Natalie, Little and Mrs. Goring, pairing off in their slow rambles, and once more awkwardness of speech descended upon him like a wet blanket. He had caught a suggestive look on Little's face, and an answering smile on Mrs. Goring's, that told him as plainly as words that his opportunity ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... affectionate manner, and the next moment savagely gore her. Hate and cruelty for the most part rule in the animal world. A few of the higher animals are monogamous, but by far the greater number of species are polygamous or promiscuous. There is no mating or pairing in the great bovine tribe, and none among the rodents that I know of, or among the bear family, or the cat family, or among the seals. When we come to the birds, we find mating, and occasional pairing for life, as with the ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... of minstrelsy wrought in the favorable influence of chivalry on the condition of women, causes psychological, physiological, and social. The exalting effect of love is well known; its inciting and glorifying power is seen even in birds and beasts at the pairing-time, in a new brilliancy of plumage, and a wonderful increase of courage. Love produces a greater secretion of force in the brain and other nervous centres. This exuberance of spirit, or exaltation of function, is usually a transient phenomenon, the gratification ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... over. The cotillon itself was almost over; the maypole figure adding a flutter of bright ribbons to the array of flags and bunting, evening dresses, and uniforms. Twice, in the earlier figures, she had chosen him; but this time, the chance issue of pairing by colours gave her to Desmond. Roy saw a curious look pass between them. Then Lance put his arm round her, and ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... surprise, the translation of this was greeted by unmistakable twitterings of gladness. The members of the adulterous group turned to each other with excited gestures, and Weaver saw a pairing-off process ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... he had begun as much in her true interests as on behalf of justice and her particular friend Miss Le Mesurier, and went home. By return of post he received a pen-and-ink drawing of himself and Clarice 'pairing off.' He was figured in the costermonger's dress, with his arm tucked under the girl's, and her hat ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... the pomegranate flowers and eat insects therein too, as well as nectar. The young whydah birds crouch closely together at night for heat. They look like a woolly ball on a branch. By day they engage in pairing and coaxing each other. They come to the same twig every night. Like children they try and lift heavy weights ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... all, was she to think? All the girls were pairing off with the boys for the after-chapel ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... Except in the pairing time, the old males usually live by themselves. The old females, and the immature males, on the other hand, are often met with in twos and threes; and the former occasionally have young with them, though the pregnant ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... joy. The streets are flooded once more with eager multitudes, gay as in wedding garments. Christ has arisen! The heathen myth of the awakening of nature blends the old tradition with the new gospel. The vernal breezes sweep the skies clean and blue. Birds are pairing in the budding trees. The streams leap down from the melting snow of the hills. The brown turf takes a tint of verdure. Through the vast frame of things runs a quick shudder of teeming power. In the heart of man love and will ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... a cultivated growth. All it is at first is a rude satisfaction of the erethism. The wild tribes of California had their pairing seasons when the sexes were in heat, "as regularly as the deer, the elk and the antelope."[63-1] In most tongues of the savages of North America there are no tender words, as "dear," "darling," and the like.[63-2] No desire of offspring led to their unions. The women had ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... chaps Declare the numerical run Of women and men in the world Is Twenty to Twenty-and-one: And hence in the pairing, you see, Since wooing and wedding began, For every connubial score They've got a ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... ancient origin. It is doubtful whether even the primitive man was not governed in the intercourse of the sexes by some recognition of the union being confined to one chosen one. No greater promiscuity can certainly be supposed than occurs in the lower animals, where pairing is the law. The nobler animals, as the lion, elephant, etc., never have but one mate, and even in case of death do not remate. As men advanced, civil codes were inaugurated and certain protection given to the choice ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... that these were a class of disappointments exceedingly common to the lot of young men; it was the way of the world. In the process of pairing off a generation, probably ninety-nine out of every hundred couples would secretly have preferred some other distribution; yet they made the best of it, and the world wagged on just the same as before. With all these ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... to springiness, look brown, and the small leaves of the woodbine, which have also ventured to peep forth, are of a sad purple, frost-bitten, like a dairymaid's elbows on a snowy morning. The very birds, in this season of pairing and building, look chilly and uncomfortable, and their nests!—'Oh, Saladin! come away from the hedge! Don't you see that what puzzles you and makes you leap up in the air is a redbreast's nest? Don't you see the pretty speckled eggs? Don't you hear the poor hen calling as it were ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... all delighted at the number of our minority, which is far greater than anybody expected the first time, and would have been greater still had not many members quitted the House, with or without pairing, in the expectation that the subject would not come on. But the greatest triumph of all was ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... devouring mind's eye he pictured to himself every roasting-pig running about with a pudding in his belly, and an apple in his mouth; the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a comfortable pie, and tucked in with a coverlet of crust; the geese were swimming in their own gravy, and the ducks pairing cosily in dishes, like snug married couples, with a decent competency of onion-sauce. In the porkers he saw carved out the future sleek side of bacon, and juicy relishing ham; not a turkey but he beheld daintily trussed up, ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... her choice, gave the father pain; but he loved his daughter too well to wish to make her unhappy by a marriage with one she did not love. He had seen—and who does not?—that the bird selects for its mate the bird it likes best; that love and affection go to the pairing of all creatures, save man and woman; and that only with them is it a practice to bind together, and fetter for life, those whose hearts are far apart. And he knew, that the Great Spirit disliked that force or constraint should be ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... and sometimes a dancer in short petticoats and stuffed pink legs; occasionally, perhaps, a singer. But beyond these, success in this art of entertaining is not often achieved. Young men and girls linking themselves kind with kind, pairing like birds in spring because nature wills it, they, after a simple fashion, do entertain each ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... ornaments. When we bear in mind how unimportant a role the regard for personal beauty plays even among the females of the most advanced human beings, the idea that the females of the lower animals are guided in their pairing by minute subtle differences in the beauty of masculine animals seems positively comic. It is an idea such as could have emanated only from a mind as ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... them, Seeking something yet unfound though I have diligently sought it many a long year, Singing the true song of the soul fitful at random, Renascent with grossest Nature or among animals, Of that, of them and what goes with them my poems informing, Of the smell of apples and lemons, of the pairing of birds, Of the wet of woods, of the lapping of waves, Of the mad pushes of waves upon the land, I them chanting, The overture lightly sounding, the strain anticipating, The welcome nearness, the sight of the perfect body, The swimmer swimming naked in the bath, or motionless ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... savage is only a little less unteachable than the beasts of the field. The savage family is at first barely discernible amid the primitive social chaos in which it had its origin. Along with polyandry and polygyny in various degrees and forms, instances of exclusive pairing, of at least a temporary character, are to be found among the lowest existing savages, and there are reasons for supposing that such may have been the case even in primeval times. But it was impossible for strict monogamy to flourish in the ruder stages of social development; ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... The duty of the active or male individual is to bring the spermatozoa to a point where they can easily reach the female cells or ovules. When this is done the duty of the male is accomplished. In the passive or female individual of the higher animals, pairing and conjugation are only the commencement of reproductive activity. However, this is not the case in the whole animal kingdom. For instance, fish have distinct sexes, but in them the female deposits her non-fecundated eggs in ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... the thrushes hopped for joy, and that very day was begun the celebrated Building of the Boat. All their ordinary business fell into arrears. It was the time of year when they should have been pairing, but not a thrush's nest was built except this big one, and so Solomon soon ran short of thrushes with which to supply the demand from the mainland. The stout, rather greedy children, who look so well in perambulators but get puffed easily when they walk, were all ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... at the long tables by squads and tribes. Those who belong together sit together. There is no attempt at pairing off for conversation or mutual entertainment, at speech-making or toasting. The business in hand is to eat, and it is attended to. The bridegroom, at the head of the table, with his shiny silk hat on, sets the example; and the guests emulate it with zeal, the men ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... croquet and the flute, pleads guilty to having cultivated the Nine, and affects a simpering pooh-pooh when he is impeached with having inspired that wicked but so witty bit of scandal in the local paper. By singularity of pairing, his fast friend is the muscular sub, who walks against time, and can write his initials with a ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... of insulting Fulk by pairing him with old Hall, the ex-agent; but Hall found it out in time, and refused to go, and when the moment came everybody fell back, and Fulk found himself close to poor little Trevor, who tried to get his hand out of Perrault's and cling to him; ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... depends on balance and space. If the walls balance one another in light and shadow, if the furniture is placed formally, if walls and furniture are free from mistaken ornament, the room will be serene and beautiful. In most other rooms we avoid the "pairing" of things, but here pairs and sets of things are most desirable. Two console tables are more impressive than one. There is great decorative value in a pair of mirrors, a pair of candlesticks, a pair of porcelain jars, two cupboards flanking a ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... that they could scarcely be forgotten or forgiven. I was a little anxious to know whether her ladyship would honour me with an agnomen. I could not learn this from Miss Bland, and I was too prudent to betray my curiosity: I afterwards heard it, however. Pairing me and Mr. M'Leod, whom she had seen together, her ladyship observed, that Sawney and Yawney were made for each other; and she sketched, in strong caricature, my relaxed elongation of limb, and his rigid rectangularity. A slight degree of fear of Lady Geraldine's ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... suspected to lurk close beside them. Fig. 2 in the same plate shows the spectrum as it was seen and mapped by Lady Huggins, February 2 to 6, together with the spectra employed to test the nature of the emissions dispersed in it. One striking feature will be at once remarked. It is that of the pairing of bright with dark lines. Both in the visible and the photographic regions this singular peculiarity was unmistakable; and since the two series plainly owned the same chemical origin, their separate visibility ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... the name of all that's preposterous, do they persist in pairing me off with the least interesting man of ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... But compulsory pairing is one thing, and the maintenance of general limiting conditions is another, and one well within the scope of State activity. The State is justified in saying, before you may add children to the community for the community to educate and in part to support, you must be above a certain minimum ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... social organization, which have nothing to do with kinship. Sex, for instance, has a direct bearing on social status. The men and the women often form markedly distinct groups; so that we are almost reminded of the way in which the male and the female linnets go about in separate flocks as soon as the pairing season is over. Of course, disparity of occupation has something to do with it. But, for the native mind, the difference evidently goes far deeper than that. In some parts of Australia there are actually ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... a believer in this doctrine of non-resistance, modified, however, by the fact that she also believed in the existence of earthly representatives of the heavenly matrimonial bureau, to whom is entrusted the pleasing duty of selecting and pairing. Of this glorious company, Mrs. Burrell believed herself a member in good standing, and one who stood high upon the honour roll. Therefore, having decided that Arthur should marry Martha Perkins she proceeded to arrange ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... the horizon, there is frequently a great deal of mirage, and the visible horizon may be miraged up several minutes. This will reduce the altitude observed, and corrections on this account are practically impossible to apply. This error may be counterbalanced to some extent by pairing observations as described above, but it by no means follows that the mirage effect will be the same in the two directions. Then again, during the summer months, no stars will be visible, and observations for latitude will ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... declared that, when persons, though twain, Are in wedlock united, one flesh they remain. But had he been by, when, like Pharaoh's kine pairing, Dr. Douglas, of Benet, espoused Miss Mainwaring, St. Peter, no doubt, would have altered his tone, And have said, "These two splinters shall now make ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... resembles a banana, and is clearly chosen for this purpose on account of its shape. The ceremony should be performed three days before or after the new moon. In the county of Bekes, in Hungary, barren women are fertilised by being struck with a stick which has first been used to separate pairing dogs. Here a fertilising virtue is clearly supposed to be inherent in the stick and to be conveyed by contact to the women. The Toradjas of Central Celebes think that the plant Dracaena terminalis has a strong soul, because when it is lopped, it soon grows up again. Hence when ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... all peoples contains this physiological perversion. Birds do not sing hymns; the song of the male is simply to call the female and when the pairing-season ends all are ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... interruptions, but on the whole sweetly, until six, and has already walked a mile or so of deck, among a fleet of other steamers waiting for the tide, within view of Havre, and pleasantly entertained by passing fishing-boats, hovering sea-gulls, and Vulgarians pairing on deck with endearments of primitive simplicity. There, sir, can be viewed the sham quarrel, the sham desire for information, and every device of these two poor ancient sexes (who might, you might think, have learned in the course of the ages something new) down ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "spongy things"—one of the more constant throes of his malady. His bitter face recurred: he chewed the cud of horrid hallucinations. He told Richard he must give up going about with him: people telling of their ailments made him so uncomfortable—the birds were so noisy, pairing—the rude bare soil ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... must forage where the grain is grown: I share my kopecks with the village priest, Who winnows peccadillos by the sheaf." Then Zanthon, laughing in his foxy beard: "When Amine meets me in the plane-tree walk (Where pairing little finches seek to build, We saw the cuckoo thieve their nests when boys), Shall I then tell her, in my peasant way, Your broken promise, and her troth denied?" And he was gone—gone, with the stud he bought ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... The essential features of reproduction proclaim monogamy to be the true method of procreation. Promiscuity would render the mother unable to designate the father of her children. Among lower animals, pairing is an instinctive law whenever the female is incapable of protecting and nourishing her offspring alone. During at least fifteen years, the child is dependent for food and clothing upon its parents, to ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... pleasure; for if we change the circumstances, so as to put self- sacrifice in the place of self-interest, it becomes at once apparent that they have a higher source than this. We think, for example, that birds pair for the sake of mere sexual gratification; why, then, do they leave off pairing as soon as they have laid the requisite number of eggs? That there is a reproductive instinct over and above the desire for sexual gratification appears from the fact that if a man takes an egg out of the nest, the ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... shuddered and gasped, cannon belched forth, thunder and flaming, battleships crashed together and sudden death was almost as unintermitting as the ticking of the clock, among the thousands of pairing souls and bodies drawn together in a new world where for the time being all sound was stilled but the throb of pulsing hearts, there moved with the spellbound throng one boy and girl whose dream of being was a ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... exemption from witnessing this part of the ceremony; and you, Mr. Flemming, must resume or discover your Protestantism and enter the carriage with me. I must show you a little of the city while these young birds are pairing." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... of his so-called plaintive note, from which he gets one of his names, and always amiable. So far as I know, he never utters a harsh sound; even the young ones asking for food, use only smooth, musical tones. During the pairing season, his delight often becomes rapturous. To see him then, hovering and singing,—or, better still, to see the devoted pair hovering together, billing and singing,—is enough to do even a cynic good. The happy lovers! They have never read it in a book, but ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... main forms of the family, corresponding in general to the three main stages of human development. For savagery group marriage, for barbarism the pairing family, for civilization, monogamy supplemented by ...
— Women As Sex Vendors - or, Why Women Are Conservative (Being a View of the Economic - Status of Woman) • R. B. Tobias
... was precocious. Youth. The fauna. I sacrificed to the god of the forest. The flowers that bloom in the spring. It was pairing time. Capillary attraction is a natural phenomenon. Lotty Clarke, flaxenhaired, I saw at her night toilette through illclosed curtains with poor papa's operaglasses: The wanton ate grass wildly. She rolled ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... lasses grow up together, they meet together in religious associations, in daily employments, and in their amusements on the village green. They have learned their A, B, C and pothooks together, and when the time comes for pairing off they have had excellent opportunities of knowing the qualities and the defects of those whom they select as their partners in life. Everything in such a community lends itself naturally to the indispensable ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... cocoons I only obtained one pairing. The moths emerged from the beginning of March till the 13th of August, at intervals of some duration, or in batches of males or females. I obtained a pairing of Selene on the 30toh of June, 1881, and the worms commenced to hatch on the 13th of July. The larvae in first stage are of a fine brown-red, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... pairing season we always watch for trouble, and the danger signal always is up. In October a male elk may become ever so savage, and finally develop into a raging demon, dangerous to man and beast; but when he first manifests his new temper openly and in the broad light of day, ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... (Sir Patient Fancy) end up without a thought of, save it be jest at, the wedding ring. But even this freedom can be amply paralleled. In the Duke of Buckingham's clever alteration of The Chances (1682), we have Don John pairing off with the second Constantia without a hint of matrimony; we have the intrigue of Bellmour and Laetitia in Congreve's The Old Bachelor (1693), the amours of Horner in The Country Wife (1675), of Florio and Artall in Crowne's City Politics (1683), and many another beside. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... complaint the mystery clear'd. The god pronounced the eagle in the wrong. But still, their hatred was so old and strong, These enemies could not be reconciled; And, that the general peace might not be spoil'd,— The best that he could do,—the god arranged, That thence the eagle's pairing should be changed, To come when beetle folks are only found Conceal'd and ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... don't really think so," he added. "The whole institution of getting engaged to be married should be regulated by the public authorities. Every county should have its Matrimonial Bureau, whose duty it should be to pair off all the eligible candidates in the matrimonial market, and in pairing them off it should be done on a basis of mutual fitness. Bachelors and old maids should be legislated out of existence, and nobody should be allowed to marry a second time until everybody else had been provided for. It is perfectly scandalous to me to read in the newspapers that a ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... and the Comandante's secretary created another diversion, and the pairing off of the two couples indicated by Dona Isabel for a stroll in the garden, which was now beginning to recover from the still heat of mid-day. This left Don Ramon and Mrs. Brimmer alone in the corridor; Mrs. Brimmer's indefinite languor, generally accepted as some vague aristocratic condition ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... than our four-footed kindred. I refer to the practice of courtship. The male of all birds, so far as I know, pays suit to the female and seeks to please and attract her.[2] This the quadrupeds do not do; there is no period of courtship among them, and no mating or pairing as among the birds. The male fights for the female, but he does not seek to win her by delicate attentions. If there are any exceptions to this rule, I do not know them. There seems to be among the birds something that is like what is called romantic love. The choice ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... from the street-lamps. Every one was talking, smoking, stamping cold feet upon the stones in the effort to keep warm, cracking jokes, both good and bad, craning necks to see the position of the standards, making agreements for pairing at the 'Landesvater,' and generally complaining that the town clocks were all slow that night in Schwarzburg. Occasionally, a roar of laughter arose in the distance, where some unlucky burgher had found his way ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford |
