"Snipe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... countryside of long distances by windy roads, with scarcely ever a village as a focus for gossip, news flew fast. The next morning Ned Cromarty had set out with his gun towards a certain snipe marsh, but while he was still on the high road he met a man on a bicycle. The man had heard strange news and stopped to pass it on, and the next moment Ned was hurrying as fast as his long legs could take him ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... careful. Use the methods of compromise. If you find your friend obstinately pinned to No. 5, when you have declared a preference for No. 6, meet him half-way, or even profess to be converted by his arguments. Or tell him the anecdote about the Irishman, who always shot snipe with No. 4, because, "being such a little bird, bedad, you want a bigger shot to get at the beggar." You can then inform him how you yourself once did dreadful execution among driven grouse in a gale of wind with No. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... cross, how comes it that this snipe of a stripling may speak from his mouth of what lieth beyond the grave? For this is death, and death is a matter concerning Holy Church alone. By what right doth he tell us of what she says no ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... face pressed against the glass of the window. Was Strangwise staying at "The Dyke Inn"? Nothing was more probable; for the latter had told him that he was going to spend his leave shooting in Essex, and Morstead Fen must abound in snipe and duck. ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... the form of a fillet, is never seen at a "sit-down" supper, and even a fillet is rather too heavy. Lobster in every form is a favorite supper delicacy, and the grouse; snipe, woodcock, teal; canvasback, and squab on toast, ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... did it well! He looks that peanut headed snipe straight in the eye all the time after that and takes what's comin' to him without turnin' a hair. It was "Yes, Mr. Piddie," and "No, Mr. Piddie"; but nothin' else. And the cooler and politer he was, ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... are they in every detail with the carved woodwork of Picau, of Cauner, or of Nilson, who designed the flamboyant frames of the time of Louis XV. Others have more individuality. In his mirror frames he introduced a peculiar bird with a long snipe-like beak, and rather impossible wings, an imitation of rockwork and dripping water, Chinese figures with pagodas and umbrellas; and sometimes the illustration of Aesop's fables interspersed with scrolls ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... anyone be more entirely lost than I? When the gun fired, how should I dare to go down to the boats among those fiends, still smoking from their crime? Would not the first of them who saw me wring my neck like a snipe's? Would not my absence itself be an evidence to them of my alarm, and therefore of my fatal knowledge? It was all over, I thought. Good-by to the Hispaniola, good-by to the squire, the doctor, and the captain. There was nothing left for me but ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stuff in him he would have made good. As it was, he attended to his duties in the most perfunctory and superficial manner. He showed not the slightest interest in the business. In fact, his position could have been ably filled by the veriest gutter-snipe. And he is the man who one day, in all probability, would have come into control of the Carmody millions! And he would have scattered them in a riot of dissipation the ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... and stopped in a wide clearing remote from any habitation. The instant it touched the soil, all needful precautions were taken to hold it there firmly; and Kennedy, fowling-piece in hand, sallied out upon the sloping plain. Ere long, he returned with half a dozen wild ducks and a kind of snipe, which Joe served up in his best style. The meal was heartily relished, and the night was passed in ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... bleat, as of a new-born lamb, high above her head; she started and looked up. Then a wail from the cliffs, as of a child in pain, answered by another from the opposite rocks. They were but the passing snipe, and the otter calling to her brood; but to her they were mysterious, supernatural goblins, come to answer to her call. Nevertheless, they only quickened her expectation; and the witch had told her not to fear them. If she performed the rite ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... with him, thinking there might be a chance to pick up some shore birds, in the way of snipe or curlew. ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... treat ment such as this that makes women desperate; and if we cannot keep him we love, we make believe to love some one else, and flaunt our fancy in the deceiver's face. Do you think I cared for Buckingham, with his heart of ice; or for such a snipe as Jermyn; or for a low-born rope-dancer? No, Fareham; there has been more of rage and hate than of passion in my caprices. And he is with Frances Stewart to-night. She sets up for a model of chastity, and is to marry Richmond ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... on the committee who had ever done anything more dangerous than shooting snipe, nor one who had seen anything more inexplicable than spots before his eyes after too much dinner. Yet they mocked King and me, in a sort of way that monkeys in ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... Lesser Tell tale sometimes called Yellow-leg Snipe, and Little Cucu, inhabits the whole of North America, nesting in the cold temperate and subarctic districts of the northern continent, migrating south in winter to Argentine and Chili. It is much rarer in the western than eastern province of North America, and is only accidental in Europe. ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... neck for a mouthpiece, gave it to the boy to suck - and suck he did. In a few seconds his eyes dilated, his face became lividly white, and I had some trouble to tear the intoxicating bladder from his clutches. The moment I had done so, the true nature of the gutter-snipe exhibited itself. He began by cutting flip-flaps and turning windmills all round the room; then, before I could stop him, swept an armful of valuable apparatus from the tables, till the whole floor was strewn ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... waiter by inquiring. When that functionary recommended a bite of broiled tenderloin, prepared with Madeira sauce, and the addition of fresh mushrooms and a small sweetbread, he allowed himself to be persuaded. An English snipe, with chicory salad and some cheese, with coffee, completed his order. Oh, and a pint of ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... suppose I made an awful ass of myself. But even if she is a public dancer, that snipe shouldn't have insulted her. Of course I'd found out long before that Miss Toots was no longer anything to ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... gutter-snipe—I'll show you who I am. Wipe that off if you can;" and then almost shouting, he cried, "Here, Anna, come down and see what I've done to your little ewe lamb, come down and comfort ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... subject of Jung's shooting-party, I must remark, in justice to him as a sportsman, that he considers nothing less than a deer to be game at all. Tiger or rhinoceros shooting is his favourite sport, and he looks upon shooting a parrot, a snipe, a hawk, or a partridge as being equally unworthy of the name of sport, nor does he understand why some of those birds should be dignified with the name of ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... place in Suffolk, Nugget Towers. The best of the shooting is over, the partridges being very wild by now, and it is not a pheasant country, as there are no woods to speak of. But there are a good many snipe down towards the river, so you had better bring your gun. Besides we will have a day's partridge driving, for there are plenty, if you could only get at them. And there is a pack of foxhounds that meets about ten miles off once a week at least, and some harriers close ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... gone, and his hair and beard flying in the wind. He ran in little zigzags from one knot of people to another, whilst his peculiar appearance drew a running fire of witticisms as he went, so that he reminded me irresistibly of a snipe skimming along through a line of guns. We saw him stop for an instant by the yellow barouche, and hand something to Sir Lothian Hume. Then on he came again, until at last, catching sight of us, he gave a cry of joy, and ran for us full speed with ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in Europe.} Birds of Carolina. Eagle bald. Eagle gray. Fishing Hawk. Turkey Buzzard, or Vulture. Herring-tail'd Hawk. Goshawk. Falcon. Merlin. Sparrow-hawk. Hobby. Ring-tail. Raven. Crow. Black Birds, two sorts. Buntings two sorts. Pheasant. Woodcock. Snipe. Partridge. Moorhen. Jay. Green Plover. Plover gray or whistling. Pigeon. Turtle Dove. Parrakeeto. Thrush. Wood-Peckers, five sorts. Mocking-birds, two sorts. Cat-Bird. Cuckoo. Blue-Bird. Bulfinch. Nightingale. Hedge-Sparrow. Wren. ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... Brackley came and told me of a delightful rough shooting he had rented in an obscure corner of Ireland. According to him it was a congested snipe area. You could not see the pools for wild-duck. The honking of wild-geese kept one awake at night. The drawback to the estate was that you were always tripping ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... Arras, after the Ridge was in our possession, had to be seen to be appreciated. Heretofore such a thing as a pleasure walk or shopping tour was out of the question, as the sniping was continuous, and the only way now for Fritz to snipe the town was with his heavy naval pieces, six or seven miles off, and as these visitors are a hundred times scarcer than the callers from the short range boys, the peace and quiet of our fellows were correspondingly increased one ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... by, when my naked feet were tripped By the honey-suckle's tangles where the water-lilies dipped, And the ripples of the river lipped the moss along the brink Where the placid-eyed and lazy-footed cattle came to drink, And the tilting snipe stood fearless of the truant's wayward cry And the splashing of the swimmer, in ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... together than we had passed at the rookery under the cliffs in the morning; but we sailed by an island, of which birds of all descriptions had taken entire possession. There were various species of ducks, and geese, and snipe, and teal, and shags, and grebes, and penguins, and albatrosses, and sea-rooks, and oyster-catchers, and gulls with pink breasts, and many others, of whose names I have no note. As we believed that we had plenty of time, we landed ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... the month in which the avian population attains its maximum. Geese, ducks, teal, pelicans, cormorants, snake-birds and ospreys abound in the rivers and jhils; the marshes and swamps are the resort of millions of snipe and other waders; the fields and groves swarm with flycatchers, chats, starlings, warblers, finches, birds of prey and the other migrants which in winter visit the plains from the Himalayas ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... so! We are such near neighbours." She was ready to say anything that would make him feel he was not being treated as a shopman. "And did you have your day's shooting? Were you successful?" "Well," with modest pride, "I came upon snipe unexpectedly, and brought home a couple of brace. If I had thought you would condescend to accept them, Miss Pennycuick—if I ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... Thus do I euer make my Foole, my purse: For I mine owne gain'd knowledge should prophane If I would time expend with such Snipe, But for my Sport, and Profit: I hate the Moore, And it is thought abroad, that 'twixt my sheets She ha's done my Office. I know not if't be true, But I, for meere suspition in that kinde, Will do, as if for Surety. He holds me well, The better shall my purpose worke on him: Cassio's a proper ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... on exhibition in 47. There was "Shorty," for instance. "Shorty" was a jolly, ugly open-handed, four-eyed little snipe of a roughneck machinist who had lost "in the line of duty" two fingers highly useful in his trade. In consequence he was now, after the generous fashion of the I.C.C., on full pay for a year without work, providing he did not leave the Zone. And while "Shorty," ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... reedy tarn, and at his approach several snipe got up, and they flew above his head uttering sharp cries. His fishing-rod was a long hazel stick, and he threw the frog as far as he could into the lake. In doing this he roused some wild ducks; ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... who having come a little way out of the thicket is beatifically listening.] And how do you, Snipe, translate ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... I won't give you any trouble, either.... I reckon," mused the adventurer, jingling his manacles thoughtfully, "I'm a back-number, anyway. When a half-grown girl, a half-baked boy, a flub like Mulready—damn his eyes!—and a club-footed snipe from Scotland Yard can put it all over me this way,... why, I guess it's up to me to go home and retire to my country-place up the Hudson." He ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... Jack Snipe Eats Tripe: It is therefore credible That tripe is edible. And therefore, perforce, It follows, of course, That the Devil will gripe All who do ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... beautiful. A steamer plies on the lake carrying mail and passengers. The bird life on this body of water and its shores is represented by swans, geese, ducks, cranes, pelicans, curlews, herons, plovers, and snipe. ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... I got at least one loophole, from which men can snipe, for every section? Have I pointed out to Section Commanders the portion of the enemy's trench they are responsible for keeping under fire, and where his ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... was St. Elijah's day, July 20th—I came to stay with my brother and did not find him at home: he had been ordered off for a whole week somewhere. I did not want to go back to Petersburg; I sauntered about the neighbouring marshes, killed a brace of snipe and spent the evening with Tyeglev under the shelter of an empty barn where he had, as he expressed it, set up his summer residence. We had a little conversation but for the most part drank tea, smoked pipes and talked sometimes to our host, a Russianised Finn or to the pedlar who ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... railroads give free transportation to quantities among the hay used in packing; birds and animals lift many on their feet - Darwin raised 537 plants from a ball of mud carried between the toes of a snipe! - and such feathered and furred agents as feed on berries and other fruits sometimes drop the seeds a thousand miles from the parent. but it will be noticed that such vagabonds as travel by the hook or by crook method, getting a lift in the world ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... the latter part of my school life I became passionately fond of shooting; I do not believe that any one could have shown more zeal for the most holy cause than I did for shooting birds. How well I remember killing my first snipe, and my excitement was so great that I had much difficulty in reloading my gun from the trembling of my hands. This taste long continued, and I became a very good shot. When at Cambridge I used to practise throwing ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... English company had been formed to supply the parched seaport and the ships that call there with fresh water, and its reservoirs were situated at La Piedad. In the bowels of the flats below, where the snipe-shooting ought to be good, our countryman told me the water was to be sought. Galleries had been sunk in every direction in land which the company had purchased, and pumps and engines are soon to be erected that will raise the liquid collected there up to the reservoirs which have been hewn out ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... Caryophylia with translucent tentacles, plus anemone with grassy tufts from the genus Zoantharia; and to complete the illusion, minnows flitted from branch to branch like a swarm of hummingbirds, while there rose underfoot, like a covey of snipe, yellow fish from the genus Lepisocanthus with bristling jaws and sharp scales, flying ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... inland sounds and resembles the auk in some particulars of habit and appearance. There are numerous species in these sheltered channels, inlets and sounds of geese, ducks, swans, cormorants, ibises, bitterns, red-beaks, curlew, snipe, plover and moorhens. Conspicuous among these are the great white swan (Cygnus anatoides), the black-necked swan (Anser nigricollis), the antarctic goose (Anas antarctica) and the "race-horse" or "steamer ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... in the neighbourhood; but all around was deep, clear, green water. He kept hold of the cable, however, and seemed determined not to put himself in harm's way, until a little wicked urchin, who used to wait on the warrant—officers mess, a small meddling snipe of a creature, who got flogged in well—behaved weeks only once, began to taunt ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... literature, and life. But, as I have remarked elsewhere in this volume, the Strindbergs and Wildes and Gorkis are having their day in Germany just now, and beneath this again is this large distribution of the lawless and sooty literature, frankly intended as a debauch for the gutter-snipe and his consort. Even the coarse, and in no line squeamish, Rabelais wrote that, "Science sans conscience n'est que ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... woe must indeed be heavy which a new hammerless gun by such a maker cannot do something towards lightening. So on the next morning he took this gun and went to the marshes by the river—where, he was credibly informed, several wisps of snipe had been seen—to attempt to shoot some of them and put the new weapon to ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... the day, take a stroll outside the town, and you meet the heroes returning. "Well, what sport?" "Pas mal, mon cher. Not so bad," is the reply, in a tone of ill-concealed triumph; and plunging his hand into his game-bag, the chasseur produces—a phthisical snipe, a wood pigeon, an extenuated quail, and perhaps something which you at first take for a deformed blackbird, but which turns out to be a water-hen. As far as our own observations go, we do aver this to be a very handsome average of a French ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... plenty of soldiers, to help us. Instead, we are treated like the dogs of snipe-hunters; we are always sent ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... imperiousness, there is an affectionate simplicity in the fancy names he used to bestow upon his female friends. Sir William Temple's wife, Dorothea, became Dorinda; Esther Johnson, Stella; Hester Vanhomrigh, Vanessa; Lady Winchelsea, Ardelia; while to Lady Acheson he gave the nicknames of Skinnybonia, Snipe, and Lean. But all was taken by them in good part; for his rather dictatorial ways were softened by the fascinating geniality and humour which he knew so well how to employ when he used to "deafen them with puns ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... those new strangers over in the Fork have been paying cash and filled him up with conceit," said Union Mills, trying to dry his leg by alternately beating it or rubbing it against the cabin wall. "Once begin wrong with that kind of snipe and you drag ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... in the October evenings, may hear the murmurings of the snipe, circling over the meadows, the most spirit-like sound in nature; and still later in the autumn, when the frosts have tinged the leaves, a solitary loon pays a visit to our retired ponds, where he may lurk undisturbed till the season of moulting is passed, making the woods ring with his ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... I found that where it had been dry in spring one might now sink to his knees in the bog; also that the snipe which had vanished for a season were back at the old spot where they used to breed. It was a bitter day near the end of an unpleasant summer, with the wind back in the old hateful north-east quarter; but the sun shone, the sky was ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... geese here, and cranes and ducks and grouse—clouds and clouds of them! The gentry used to meet together for shooting, and one heard nothing but pouf-pouf-pouf! pouf-pouf-pouf! There was no end to the woodcocks, the snipe, and the little teals, and the water-snipe were as common as starlings, or let us say sparrows—lots and lots of them! And what has become of them all? We don't even see the birds of prey. The eagles, the hawks, and the owls have ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... always fond of the young officers, and is not the less inclined to be so of one who is so dear and near to you. I wish he would have stayed longer, and hope that he shall come again. We have not much to offer in the way of amusement, but in January and February there is good snipe shooting. ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... fox's, albeit slightly bloodshot, upon the contemptible white-faced person who had preferred spending the raw hours over his papers, within the radius of a glorious fire's warmth, to creeping slyly over treacherous quagmires in the pursuit of timid bog creatures (snipe shooting had been the order of the day)-the baron, I say, became aware of my existence and entered ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... it should lift up their hearts and no longer be oppressed with humility. But on the second I determined for a rousing Latin thing, such as men shouted round camp fires in the year 888 or thereabouts; so, the imagination fairly set going and taking wood-cock's flight, snipe-fashion, zigzag and devil-may-care- for-the-rules, this seemed ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... 'Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth, peace and goodwill towards men.' So no great shells were fired into the Boer entrenchments at dawn, and the hostile camps remained tranquil throughout the day. Even the pickets forbore to snipe each other, and both armies attended divine service in the morning and implored Heaven's blessing on their righteous causes. In the afternoon the British held athletic sports, an impromptu military tournament, and a gymkhana, all of which caused much merriment and diversion, ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... clash, telling that I was utterly incapable of any such thing, being a man of a guileless heart, and a spiritual simplicity, that would be ornamental in a child. We then had the latheron summoned before the session, and was not long of making her confess that the father was Nichol Snipe, Lord Glencairn's gamekeeper; and both her and Nichol were obligated to stand in the kirk: but Nichol was a graceless reprobate, for he came with two coats, one buttoned behind him, and another buttoned before him, and two wigs of my ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... water-fowl, including several varieties of duck, also shag, divers, pigmy geese, small teal, grebe, red-headed plover, spur-wing plover, curlew, sandpipers, snipe, swamp hen, water-rail, and many other birds. The red-headed plover were especially numerous, and ran about on the surface of the lake, which was covered with the water-lily leaves and a thick sort of mossy weed. All the birds seemed ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... family belongs its own quarrels, its own revenge. If the Big Throat should interfere too deeply, it would anger the other small families, who might fear the same treatment at some other time. And with Beaver, Snipe, Deer, and Potato united against us,—well, it is ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... bangs around me to remind me of that snipe-legged Alta Wood. Bangs may be all right for fellers with music boxes in their watches, but they don't go ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... wake of an easterly squall the sloop Arrow, Lemuel Vinton master and owner, was making her way along the low coast, southward, from Snipe Point, one of the islands in Florida Bay about twelve miles northeast ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... " 'This snipe,' says Luke to the judge, 'shot and willfully punctured with malice and forethought one of the most respected and prominent citizens of the town of Bildad, Texas, Your Honor. And in so doing laid himself liable to the penitence of law ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... found themselves, however, in the position of the hunter who, when he is out for a snipe, puts up a tiger. All went well with the expedition as far as Holspruit, the farm which they had started to search. Commandant Pretorius, to whom it belonged, was taken by the energy of Major Vaughan, ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... big grey eyes of hers. Only a five-day acquaintanceship, but they had crowded much into it as one did in a strange land. The episode had been a green and dangerous spot, like one of those bright mossy bits of bog when you were snipe-shooting, to set foot on which was to let you down up to the neck, at least. Well, there was none of that danger now, for her husband was dead-poor chap! It would be nice, in these dismal days, when nobody spent any time whatever ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... field and I run and climbed up in one of 'em. A mosely tree grows crooked; I don't care how straight you put it in the ground, it's goin' to grow crooked. So I climb up in the mosely tree and begin to yell. My brother heard me and come 'cause he knowed what was up. He used to say, 'Now, Snipe, when you come 'cross that mosely field, don't you wear that old red dress 'cause they'll get you down and tear that dress off you.' I liked the dress 'cause he had give it to me. I had set the milk down at ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... artist about his art. To war it was that he owed his power and glory. Without it, he said, he would have been nothing; by it, he was everything. Hence he felt for it not merely love, but gratitude; loving it both by instinct and calculation. He preferred the bivouac to the Tuileries. Just as the snipe-shooter prefers a marsh to a drawing-room, he was more at home under a tent than in a palace. To men who like the battle-field, war is the most intense of pleasures. They love it as the gamester loves ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... not at all a bad place as headquarters for the sportsman. In the neighbourhood there is very good snipe-shooting in spring and autumn. The fishing too is excellent for trout and grayling. The bear, the wolf, and the chamois are to be met with on the heights, which form this portion of the great ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... three sappers are at work lengthening the hollows, watched by the Germans who, from point to point, can snipe the insufficiently protected places. At this end the last sentry guards about ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... obliged to pass the winter of 1615-6 in the Huron country. At that time it swarmed with game. Amongst birds, there were swans, white cranes, brent-geese, ducks, teal, the redbreasted thrush (which the Americans call "robin"), brown larks (Anthus), snipe, and other birds too numerous to mention, which Champlain seems to have brought down with his fowling-piece in sufficient quantities to feed the whole party whilst waiting for the capture of ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... states—"The raven is seen more frequently in the neighbourhood than in most parts of England: his croak over head is not at all an uncommon sound. A pair of buzzards will occasionally circle aloft for a considerable time. The snipe is found very early on the Forest, so much so that I have known in the month of July six killed in a day. The jack snipe particularly abounds about 'the Dam Pool.' The bittern has been twice shot near the same spot within the last twenty years. ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... my gun and strolled with the dogs into the narrow valley below the mill. The waterwheel was at work, and the people were engaged in cleaning cotton, as the machinery was adapted for both purposes of grinding corn or of ginning cotton when required. There were plenty of snipe in the marshes below the cotton-fields, for which rushes, low bushes of tamarisk and other shrubs, afforded excellent cover. I quickly bagged two couple and my first Francolin partridge, and was just in time, before dark, to assist ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the man's life. For his gallantry in going to treat wounded men at posts which were under fire, the French commander remembered him with a citation. He is the officer whom the Bolshevik artillery tried to snipe with three-inch shells, as he passed from post to post during a quiet time ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... progress had been made, and they were now drawing close in to the island. It lay there, looking calm and peaceful in the morning sunlight. A few birds flew up from along the shore, some of them "teeter" snipe that had been feeding. Davy even pointed with his paddle to a big gray squirrel that ran along a log in plain view, and sat up on his haunches as if to curiously observe these approaching human beings who intended to invade ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... rede was good, And, turning on the poor hen, He clapt his hands, and stamped, and shooed, Hunting the exile tow'rd the wood, To house with snipe and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... pleased me so much. Well—I followed this little brook till it entered the river, and then took the path that runs along the bank. On the opposite side I observed several little birds running along the shore, and making a piping noise. They were brown and white, and about as big as a snipe. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... that the earth was once covered with water and the sky alone was inhabited, until God sent his only begotten daughter in the form of a kuri, or snipe, to look for dry land. She found a spot, and brought down to it earth, and a creeping plant, which grew and decomposed into worms, and, lo! the worms ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... The American Snipe has some of the nocturnal habits of the Woodcock, and the same habit of soaring at twilight, when he performs a sort of musical medley, which Audubon has very graphically described in the following passage:—"The birds are met with in meadows and low grounds, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... a thrashing, you lying little snipe, always hanging around the petticoats! Don't you suppose I can ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... varied tits; wagtails; five species of parrots; eight or nine species of wren; thrushes of a dozen species; ten species of robin; and, lastly, many species of waders such as florekin, cranes, plovers, snipe, sandpipers, coots, water-hen, storks, heron, cormorants, terns, divers, ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... neither the hawk amid the cover nor its partner above nor the clamorous beaters could harm it. The King laughed at the mischance and rode on. Continually birds of various sorts were flushed, and each was pursued by the appropriate hawk, the snipe by the tercel, the partridge by the goshawk, even the lark by the little merlin. But the King soon tired of this petty sport and went slowly on his way, still with the magnificent silent ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... duck (canvas-back, mallard, teal, widgeon, and many other varieties) literally filled the lagoons and reed-beds, giving magnificent shooting as they flew in countless strings to and fro between the sea and the fresh water; whilst, farther inland, snipe were to be had in the swamps almost "for the asking." On the plains were antelope, and in the hills and in the Sierra Nevadas, deer and bears, both cinnamon and ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... where there are so few sources of amusement. But never fear! You can not be always reading, and when the fine weather comes you will yield to the temptation; all the more likely because you have Claudet Sejournant with you. A jolly fellow he is; there is not one like him for killing a snipe or sticking a trout! Our trout here on the Aubette, Monsieur de Buxieres, are excellent—of the salmon kind, and ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... month's leave,' Charlie wrote, 'shooting; the sport will be mostly snipe and other small game, but there's a chance of tigers. Now, I know you are a busy ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... of listless dreaming Through the lazy day: Jovial wind of winter Turns us out to play! Sweep the golden reed-beds; Crisp the lazy dyke; Hunger into madness Every plunging pike. Fill the lake with wild-fowl; Fill the marsh with snipe; While on dreary moorlands Lonely curlew pipe. Through the black fir-forest Thunder harsh and dry, Shattering down the snow-flakes Off the curdled sky. Hark! The brave North-easter! Breast-high lies the scent, On by holt and headland, Over ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... against some one black or pink bully in particular? Which of us is there, who has not passed moments in the company of these brutes, such as might well 'score years from a strong man's life'? Some of us have been gored by the brutes, and most of us, who have pursued the crafty snipe bird in his native padi swamps, have put in various mauvais quarts d'heure, with some of these sullenly vindictive animals mouching after us, much in the way that a gendarme pursues a gamin. Then has entered upon the scene a ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... to about thirty years old, he came, most unfortunately, upon a certain Sir John Snipe, Bart., that was a very scandalous young squire of Oxfordshire, and one that had published five lyrics and a play (enough to warn any Bull against him), who spoke to him somewhat ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... and walks on through the rye; then comes the sugarcane field and he disappears into the narrow lane cutting through the tall stems of sugarcanes; then he reaches the open meadow where the cricket chirps and where there is not a single man to be seen, only the snipe wagging their tails and poking at the mud with their bills. I can feel him coming nearer and nearer and my heart ...
— The Post Office • Rabindranath Tagore
... your short, well-rounded mouth, your diminutive but strong legs, almost hidden by the long, silky hair from your stomach, and hear you sing as you lie on the rug before a good fire in the winter, after a hard day's cock or snipe-shooting, wet and tired with your indefatigable exertions! Yes—strange as it may sound, Doll would sing in her way, as I have stated in a previous page; and such was her sagacity, that in process of time when ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... that we are strangers, and not so intimately domesticated in the planet as the wild man and the wild beast and bird. But the exclusion reaches them also; reaches the climbing, flying, gliding, feathered and four-footed man. Fox and woodchuck, hawk and snipe and bittern, when nearly seen, have no more root in the deep world than man, and are just such superficial tenants of the globe. Then the new molecular philosophy shows astronomical interspaces betwixt atom and ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... generally full of suckers, as the road connected with the Galveston steamers at Burwick's Bay. Tom Brown and Holly Chappell, my partners, were both along; and as game was plenty along the road, we carried our shotguns along, and in the event of no bigger game were accustomed to get off and shoot snipe, catching the return train to the city in the evening. Sure enough, there was a party of traders aboard, and Brown lost no time in making their acquaintance and opening out. One of them commenced to cut his clothes the minute he got a glimpse of the corner after Chappell made one cap. To make matters ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... coarse, but rich, and of excellent flavour—and so fat that the flakes fell into crumbs when fried. This day a bird of a new species was shot by Roach. It was of a swallow kind, about the size of a snipe, of a leaden colour, with ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... The Lady of the Lake and The Lay of the Last Minstrel whose middle-aged author was just turning from poetry to win unprecedented success as a writer of fiction. In the spring he goes out shooting for snipe nearly every day; and he sends to Murray Bay for his fishing tackle. When a fellow officer falls ill he sends him down to Murray Bay for ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... of a footstep; but the tadpoles sported recklessly in the sunny water, for as yet their legs as well as their troubles were to come. I confess that this long morass by the sparkling Beuene, frequented by the heron, the snipe, the water-hen, and other creatures that seek the solitude, interested me more than the caverns which I had set out to see. I nevertheless followed the old man into them, and tried to admire all that ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... replied the domestic, with perfect gravity, "but there ought to be capital snipe ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... George Snipe was an ardent book-lover, and sat in the smoking car in a state of suspended ecstasy. He had been invited out to Mandrake Park to visit the library of Mr. Genial Girth, the well-known collector of rare autographed books. Devoted amateur of literature as he was, George's humble career rarely ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... flocks and herds, live stock; domestic animals, wild animals; game, ferae naturae [Lat.]; beasts of the field, fowls of the air, denizens of the sea; black game, black grouse; blackcock^, duck, grouse, plover, rail, snipe. [domesticated mammals] horse &c (beast of burden) 271; cattle, kine^, ox; bull, bullock; cow, milch cow, calf, heifer, shorthorn; sheep; lamb, lambkin^; ewe, ram, tup; pig, swine, boar, hog, sow; steer, stot^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the time they took up the tomahawk and agreed to join their father, the king, they were promised plenty of white men to fight with them; "but the number is not now greater," said he, "than at the commencement of the war; and we are treated by them like the dogs of snipe hunters; we are always sent ahead to start the game: it is better that we should return to our country, and let the Americans come on and fight the British." To this proposition his followers agreed; but the Sioux and Chippewas, discovering his intention, went to him and insisted that inasmuch ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... three times a week. When they wanted us, German guards would come in, line up about twenty of us, and take us out to work in the fields. The first job they put us at was planting potatoes and we worked faithfully the first day, but when we came in that night I said to "Snipe," the new pal I had made, "By golly! Snipe, I don't like the idea of producing food for these 'square-heads,' let's see if we can't put one over them." "All right," said Snipe, "I'm game, but how in hell ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... hyenas, wolves, jackalls, foxes, hares, partridges, etc.; but not being a very capital shot, I have seldom made much devastation amongst them. Under the hill are swamps and paddy-fields, which abound in snipe and other game. Now, is not this a Zoological Garden on the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... minutes, to the railway station, where in good time I caught the train for the West, and at daybreak I was ready to observe the beautiful country through which we passed. I had made no provision for breakfast, but one of my fellow travellers, who came from Tokio, had the courtesy to offer me two snipe with bacon, ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... bell on me. I'm a sucker. I know it. I'm one of the few hundred other God-damned fools that you've managed to catch out shooting snipe. Now what I want to know is, how much is it going to cost me to get out of your corner? What's the figure? ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... where the heath-cock was as jaunty, and the willow grouse and partridge were wise in covert to avoid the hungry snowy owl. Upon the river and lagoons and creeks the swan and wild goose and countless duck made constant clamor, and there were water-rail and snipe along the shallows. There were eggs to be found, and an egg baked in the ashes was a thing most excellent. It was with the waterfowl that the boys were most successful. The ducks would in their feeding approach close to the shores of the river banks or the little islands and would gather in bunches ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... four pounds weight. While Archer, who had gone forth with Garry only in the canoe, had picked up half a dozen wood-duck, two or three of the large yellow-legs, a little bittern, known by a far less elegant appellative throughout the country, and thirteen English snipe. ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... find himself fully alive to the delight of forcing his way through a furze-brake, hearing the ice in the peaty bogs crackle beneath his feet; getting a good shot, bringing down his bird, finding snipe, and diving into the depths of the long, winding valleys and dingles, with the icicle-hung banks of their streamlets. He came home through the village at about half-past three o'clock, sending the keeper to leave some of his game at the parsonage, while he went himself ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... addition to the spurred lapwing, characteristic and most interesting resident of most of South America, we found tiny red- legged plover which also breed and are at home in the tropics. The contrasts in habits between closely allied species are wonderful. Among the plovers and bay snipe there are species that live all the year round in almost the same places, in tropical and subtropical lands; and other related forms which wander over the whole earth, and spend nearly all their time, now in the arctic and cold temperate regions of the ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... my wings gits stwaight agin, Where you all cwumpled 'em," he says, "I bet I'll ist fly clean away an' won't take you To old Miss Hoodjicum's at all!" he says. An' nen I ist weach out wite quick, I did, An' gwab the sassy little snipe agin— Nen tooked my topstwing an' tie down his wings So's he can't fly, 'less'n I want him to! An' nen I says: "Now, Mr. Squidjicum, You better ist light out," I says, "to old Miss Hoodjicum's, an' show ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... fen-men and others at night for taking lark, snipe, plover, etc, by dragging a long net of a certain construction over the fields and swamps. The actual originator of this method of capture as applied to snipe and such birds, appears to have been Mr. Daniel himself (vide "Rural Sports," vol. 3, ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... are you when you listen behind doors to things you're not expected to hear? When you talk like a gutter snipe and act—" ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... his uniform, with medals strung on his breast and his new gold-handled sword. You'd never have taken him for the little white-headed snipe that the girls used to order about and make fun of. He just stood there for a minute, looking at Myra with a peculiar little smile on his face; and then he says to her, slow, and kind of holding on to his words with ...
— Options • O. Henry
... command the counsellor sent the Snipe and the Turnstone, Aiwohikupua's swiftest messengers, to go up and find out ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... said to me. We then rejoined the rest of the party, and the engine having received its supply of water, the carriage was placed behind it, for it cannot turn, and was set off at its utmost speed, thirty-five miles an hour, swifter than a bird flies (for they tried the experiment with a snipe). You cannot conceive what that sensation of cutting the air was; the motion is as smooth as possible, too. I could either have read or written; and as it was, I stood up, and with my bonnet off 'drank the air before me.' The wind, which was strong, or perhaps ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... geological changes have taken place in the country. So much for the dead, and now for the living: there is a poor specimen of a bird which to my unornithological eyes appears to be a happy mixture of a lark, pigeon and snipe (No. 710). Mr. MacLeay himself never imagined such an inosculating creature: I suppose it will turn out to be some well-known bird, although it has quite baffled me. I have taken some interesting Amphibia; a new Trigonocephalus beautifully connecting in its habits Crotalus and the ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Broom-Squire, assuming an air of confidence, "between you and me, as old acquaintances, and me as gave you the feathers out o' a snipe's wing to make your first brush—and, so to speak, launched you in your career of greatness—between you and me I'm in an awkward perdic'ment. Through the failure of the Wealden Bank, of which you've heard tell, I've lost pretty much everything ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... and a day in November: the day after I finished husking. Huldah reckoned a wild turkey wouldn't go with a bad relish, and so I shouldered the old gun in the morning, and letting Bose follow slyly along behind, I put away out into the woods. I killed three or four pigeons, and a squirrel, and snipe; but on and on, and round, I ranged, afore I could get a single crack at a turkey. But a flock flew up at last, and one proud old Tom taking a tall maple in sight, and swinging his red gorget ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... vague horrors that may be comprised in the additional 'all kinds.' Jack's account of the game on St. Simon's is really quite tantalising to me, who cannot carry a gun any more than if I were a slave. He says that partridges, woodcocks, snipe, and wild duck abound, so that, at any rate, our table ought to be well supplied. His account of the bears that are still to be found in the woods of the mainland, is not so pleasant, though he says they do no harm to the people, if they are not meddled with, but that they steal ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... Ed let fall, fell, ez I say, on Sunday— Which is the reason we wuz shocked to see him sail in Monday A-puffin' at a snipe that sizzled like a Chinese cracker An' smelt fur all the world like rags instead uv like terbacker; Recoverin' from our first surprise, us fellows fell to pokin' A heap uv fun at "folks uz said how they had gin ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... little mountain-brooks which roll their limpid waters over silver sands; hurl by through whispering ledges, the resort of snipe and woodcock; or, varying this quiet and serene existence with occasional action, dart between abrupt banks over mossy rocks, laughing as they fly onward to ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... of the fairer sex, I am yet to see why it is allowable to render the female bird a bereaved widow, but totally forbidden to make the male a widower! Or why it is permissible to slay a minute bird such as a snipe, while a titlark is on no account to ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... Captain in the Quartermaster's Department was arranged for, and she expected to have the young officer assigned to New York so that he could live at home in the comfort and luxury suitable to his wealth and condition. And what she wanted us to understand clearly was that no designing little gutter-snipe was to be allowed to compromise David's future. She concluded with an imaginative and most unflattering estimate of Mayme McCartney's character, manners, and morals, in the midst of which I ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... are not a man of energy, not a man to take things in your hands. The obstacles are too big. Those three husbands! You might even take that woman, that lovely, royal dancing woman—you, my dear sir, a common street snipe. What would a woman like that, with that novel, impassioned, barbaric, foreign dance, be worth to a man on your Broadway? Eh? But obstacles! Obstacles! You have her not on Broadway. It is too many thousand miles, and you have no money. But see, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... content," he replied, "if you will say nothing about it until you are well settled. After that I promise to send you a bill as long as a snipe's." ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... foot through the Mockerson; they are so numerous that it requires one half of the traveler's attention to avoid them In these plains I observed great numbers of the brown Curloos, a small species of curloo or plover of a brown colour about the size of the common snipe and not unlike it in form with a long celindric curved and pointed beak; it's wings are proportionately long and the tail short; in the act of liteing this bird lets itself down by an extention of it's wings without motion holding their points very much ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... raises his gun, quick as for the shooting of a snipe. The crack comes; and, simultaneous with it, Richard Darke is seen to drop out of his saddle, and fall face foremost on the plain— his horse, with a wild neigh, bolting ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... the fruit is ripe, the birds light and are caught by the bird lime. This is called ka riam thit. Another is a kind of spring bow made of bamboo which is laid on the ground in marshy places, such as are frequented by snipe and woodcock. This form of snare is unfortunately most common. A third is a cage into which birds are lured by means of a bait, the cage being hidden in the grass, and the entrance being so contrived that the birds can hop in but not out again. This is ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... A nide of pheasants, A wisp of snipe, A flight of doves or swallows, A muster of peacocks, A siege of herons, A building of rooks, A brood of grouse, A plump of wild fowl, A stand of plovers, A watch of nightingales, A clattering of choughs, A flock of geese, A herd or bunch of cattle, A bevy of quails, A cast of hawks, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... and as the really serious moment approached the old ranger was blessed with a sudden inspiration. He sprang forward and seizing Enoch Harding by the collar dragged him to his knees and whispered a command in his ear. "Quick, you young snipe you!" he exclaimed, as Enoch prepared to obey. "Run like the wind—and don't let 'em see you ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... the Iroquois were as follows: Wolf, Bear, Beaver, Tortoise, Deer, Snipe, Heron, Hawk. (Morgan, 79.) The clans of the Snipe and the Heron are the same designated in an early French document as La famille du Petit Pluvier and La famille du Grand Pluvier. (New York Colonial Documents, IX. 47.) The anonymous author of this ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... the porcupine, we climbed to the top of a rain-scarred hillock of earths and looked across the scrub seamed with cattle paths, white with the long grass, and dotted with spots of level pond-bottom, where the snipe would ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... trolls off a wheelbarrow and a fearful cry at the same time; not in unison with his merchandise, for he has birds—quail, woodcock, and snipe—for sale, besides a string of dead nightingales, which he says he will 'sell cheap for a nice stew.' Think of stewed nightingales! One would as soon think of eating a boiled ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... thoroughly at home in their duties; besides, the fat cattle would be finished very shortly and sent off to be sold in Dublin. Jack had announced his intention of stealing a holiday on the morrow, and taking Hayes to a certain famous "snipe bottom," when the game was, to use Dick's expression, "as thick as plums in one of ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... little larks, The lapwing, and the snipe, And tune their song like Nature's clerks, O'er meadow, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... mother, whoever they were, when they ran away from me, didn't run away with my appetite. I wonder how long master means to play with his knife and fork. As for Mr Brookes, what he eats wouldn't physic a snipe. What's your ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... we read that he was born eighty-three times as an ascetic, fifty-eight as a monarch, forty-three as a deva, twenty-four as a Brahman, eighteen as an ape; as a deer ten, an elephant six, a lion ten; at least once each as a thief, a gambler, a frog, a hare, a snipe. He was also embodied in a tree. But as a Bodisat he could not be born in hell, nor as vermin, nor as a woman! Says Spence Hardy, with a touch of irony: "He could descend no ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... winesap and rambo in the boiling cider, while the newly opened bottles of grape juice filled the house with the tang of Concord and muscadine. It seemed to me I never got nicely fixed where I could take a sly dip in the cake dough or snipe a fat raisin from the mincemeat but Candace would say: "Don't you suppose the backlog ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... behind them, at a pace which would leave any pheasant standing. As peacocks are regarded as sacred by Hindoos, the Maharajah had particularly begged us not to shoot any. There were plenty of other birds, snipe, partridges, florican and jungle-cocks, the two latter greatly esteemed for their flesh. I shot a jungle-cock, and was quite disappointed at finding him a facsimile of our barndoor game-cock, for I had imagined that he would have the velvety black wing starred ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... He preferred to take the journey on foot, and he may be here at almost any time. But, as I have told you, he is very uncertain. If he should happen to make the acquaintance of some interesting snipe, or crane, or plover, he may prefer its company to ours, and then there is no counting on him any longer. He may be as likely to turn up at the North Pole as at ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... compelled to rise from time to time and tighten up my belt, until I must have resembled one of the ladies of fashion, so far as the waist was concerned. Again we came to marshy ground, filled with royal duck, teal, water-hens, snipe, etc, and forgot the pangs of past hunger. At such places we would fill our horns and drink the putrid water, or take off our shirts and wash them and our bodies. Mud had to serve for soap. Our washing, ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... follern' 'em up. Enny man that'll do that is little enough to crawl through a knot-hole without rubbing his clothes." Says I: "I suppose you made her think the moon rose in your head and set in your heels. I daresay you acted foolish enough round her to sicken a snipe, and if you makes fun of her now to please me, I let you know you have got holt of the ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... we agreed on a former occasion, is the principal cause why animals change their places. The different tribes of wading birds always migrate when rain is about to take place; and I remember once in Italy, having been long waiting, in the end of March, for the arrival of double snipe, in the campagna of Rome; a great flight appeared on the third of April, and the day after, heavy rain set in, which greatly interfered with my sport. The vulture, upon the same principle, follows armies; and I have no doubt that the augury of the ancients ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... with a loud snap; another variety called tumblers turn themselves over in the air. Some birds have movements peculiar to the season of love: thus ring-doves, though strong and rapid at other times, yet in the spring hang about on the wing in a toying and playful manner; thus the cock-snipe, while breeding, forgetting his former flight, fans the air like the wind- hover; and the green-finch in particular exhibits such languishing and faltering gestures as to appear like a wounded and dying bird; the king-fisher darts along like an arrow; fern-owls, or goat- suckers, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... love to walk for hours in pursuit of game in the autumn, on the chance of bagging an occasional brace of partridges or a wild pheasant (for everything here is wild), or, in winter, when lake and fen are frostbound, by the river and its withybeds after snipe and wildfowl—for the Cotswold stream has never been ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... If the boy had been permitted to choose, it isn't likely that he would have thought of alighting there; but the birds probably looked upon this as a veritable paradise. Ducks and geese walked about and fed on the meadow; nearer the water, ran snipe, and other coast-birds. The loons lay in the sea and fished, but the life and movement was upon the long sea-weed banks along the coast. There the birds stood side by side close together and picked grub-worms—which ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... with a sentiment not far removed from poetry—the only poetry of which they are not half-ashamed. Audubon even joined in, forgetting for the moment his customary pose, and rhapsodizing with the rest over his favourite pursuits of snipe-shooting and cricket. Much of this talk was lost upon me, for I am nothing of a sportsman; but some touches there were that recalled experiences of my own, and for that reason, I suppose, have lingered in my memory. Thus, I recollect, some one ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... informed that on the Imperial preserves in the neighbourhood of Vienna the first snipe had been seen, the passionate huntsman said, 'I am exceedingly sorry, but I've no ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... reading up in the library. We have cleaned this up now, and it is an altogether curious sensation to recline here in an easy-chair, reading some fine old book, and just taking the precaution not to stay in front of the glassless windows through which the sharpshooters can snipe at you from their posts in the thickets on the slopes of the plateau, not six hundred metres away. Sometimes our artillery opens up and then you lay down your book for a while, and, looking through a peek-hole, watch the 75's and 120's throw up fountains of dirt and debris all along the ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... on the surface of the stagnant water, fluttered numbers of birds. Wild duck, teal, snipe lived there in flocks, and those fearless birds allowed themselves ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... dance had concluded, Terence led his glowing partner to a cool quiet corner, where leaving her, he flew to the side table, and in less time than he would take to bring down a snipe, he was again beside her with a large mugful of hot negus, into which he had put, by way of stiffener, a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... afterwards he was helped to two very greasy-looking entrees; he then despatched a plate of roast mutton; there then appeared before him the largest, and to my mind the hardest, slice of ham that ever figured on the table of a nobleman, yet it disappeared just in time to answer the enquiry of the butler, 'Snipe or pheasant, my lord?' He instantly replied, 'Pheasant,' thus completing his ninth dish of meat at that meal." A few weeks later the Speaker, in conversation with Palmerston, expressed a hope that he was ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... still keeping watch, when Harpstenah was called by her mother to assist her. The father's morning meal was prepared early, for he was going out to hunt. Wild duck, pigeons, and snipe, could be had in abundance; the timid grouse, too, could be roused up on the prairies. Larger game was there, too, for the deer flew swiftly past, and had even stopped to drink on the opposite shore of ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... the French gutter-snipe, Virot—paused a moment to ride up to a window of the hall and discharge his revolver through the glass. Fortunately his aim was as evil as his intent. Beyond shattering a priceless vase, the bullet ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... London was invited to go for "a day's snipe-shooting" in the country. The invitation was accepted, and host and guest shouldered guns and sallied forth in quest ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... more than half its extent, leaving outside a strip of sandy beach, never more than a mile wide. All kinds of sea fish and fowl take refuge in this bay and the interminable reedy marshes, and for a few weeks in the snipe-and duck-season sportsmen from New York find their way to "Shattuck's" and the houses of other old water-dogs along the bay. But during the rest of the year the wooden shed and its occupants are left to the companionship of the sea and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... merry companion, and his conversation was much courted." Geffery had but little sense of religion. He is now buried on the west side of Binsey churchyard, near St. Margaret's well. Geffery selected Binsey for the place of his sepulchre, because he was partial to the spot, having often shot snipe there. In order to moisten his clay, he desired his friend Will Gardner, a boatman of Oxford, who was accustomed to row him down the river, to put now and then a bottle of ale by his grave when he came that way; an injunction ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... who are ill-endowed from a musical point of view, have their wing feathers or tails peculiarly developed and stiffened, and are able to produce with them a strange snapping or cracking sound. Thus several species of snipe make drumming or "bleating" noises—something like the bleat of a goat—with their narrowed tails as they descend in flight.[74] Magpies have a still more curious method of call, by rapping on dry and ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... cannot fail; conspicuous on parade with them our Crown-Prince as Lieutenant-Colonel: "the beauty of this Corps as well as the perfection of their EXERCITIA,"—ah yes, we know it, my dim old friend. The Marriage itself followed, at Berlin, after many exercitia, snipe-shootings, feastings, hautboyings; on the 30th of the month; with torch-dance and the other customary trimmings; "Bride's garter cut in snips" for dreaming upon "by his Royal Majesty himself." ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... smoothbore. How can he possibly get a correct aim with "ball" out of a smoothbore, without squinting along the barrel and taking the muzzle-sight accurately? The fact is, that many persons fire so hastily at game that they take no sight at all, as though they were snipe-shooting with many hundred grains of shot in the charge. This will never do for ball-practice, and when the rifle is placed in such hands, the breech-sights naturally bother the eye which is not accustomed ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... lately that an American vessel brought them. There is a rabbit-warren on the north-east of the island, belonging to the Duke of Argyle. Young Col intends to get some hares, of which there are none at present. There are no black-cock, muir-fowl, nor partridges; but there are snipe, wild-duck, wild-geese, and swans, in winter; wild-pidgeons, plover, and great number of starlings; of which I shot some, and found them pretty good eating. Woodcocks come hither, though there is not a tree upon the island. There are no rivers in Col; but only some brooks, in which there is a ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... fact, they form an attraction to many English sportsmen to visit the Island. Both my brother and A. L. T. were sportsmen, but our time was too limited to admit of the exercise of this taste. Among the birds may be noted swan, geese, duck, curlew, mallard, snipe, plover, ptarmigan,—90 species of birds, in fact, 54 of which are wildfowl. During our ride, A. L. T. shot a fine raven, and on our return to the ship, my brother skinned and stuffed it, as a memento of his inland trip. Many of the ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... much alike. McCloud dropped forward in his saddle, and, seeking no explanation, laid his head low and spurred Bill Dancing's horse for life or death. The horse, quite amazed, bolted and swerved down the grade like a snipe, with his rider crouching close for a second shot. But no second shot came, and after another mile McCloud ventured to take off his hat and put his finger through the holes in it, though he did ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... about your garret. How about me, and this job? You get out of yours to-night for keeps. What about me? I can't do anything but act as a damned blind for the rest of you with this fool store, just because I was born a freak that every gutter-snipe on the street ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... the juniper plant, which grows very plentifully in Belgium. A traveller through Belgium in the summer or early autumn should always make a point of ordering grives at a good restaurant. When grives go out of season, we have woodcock and snipe; and there are several houses which make a speciality of Becasses a la fine Champagne. At Mons and at Liege, and I think at Charleroi also, there is every year a woodcock feast, just as there is an oyster ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... tete-a-tete with Keene on the previous evening after a hard day's snipe shooting, and bore evident traces about him of a heavy night—a fact which he lost no time in alluding to, not without a certain pride, like the man in Congreve's play, who exults in having "been drunk in excellent ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... south to Ruddy Cove of the Newfoundland coast, disgusted with the fishing of Buccaneer. It was before Jimmie Grimm had fallen in with Billy Topsail and Donald North, before he had ever clapped eyes on Bagg, the London gutter-snipe, or had bashfully pawed the gloved hand of Archie Armstrong, Sir Archibald's son. It was before Donald North cured himself of fear and the First Venture had broken into a blaze in a gale of wind off the Chunks. It ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... the exceeding brilliancy of its plumage. But nowhere could a spot be found where the ship's boat could approach without extreme danger. The water was shallow everywhere, and the breakers were heavy. Fish of many kinds—more especially mullets,—geese, snipe, teal, and other birds of excellent flavour, were caught and killed ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... covers. And bless you, what they thought was Dessie turned out to be a feather bolster. John snatched back the covers. The bed was empty except for that long feather bolster that strumpet had covered over lengthwise of the bed. Come to find out Dessie had sent John snipe huntin', so to speak, and she skipped out with a timber cruiser. Dyke was laid up for all of a week; took a deep cold on his chest from riding home ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... sun slanted up out of Behring Sea, they marched back towards the hills, their feet ankle-deep in the soft fresh moss, while the air tasted like a cool draught and a myriad of earthy odors rose up and encircled them. Snipe and reed birds were noisy in the hollows and from the misty tundra lakes came the honking of brant. After their weary weeks on shipboard, the dewy freshness livened them magically, cleansing from their memories the recent tragedy, so that the ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... sparks around an' acts real entertainin', evenin's. I shouldn't wonder, with such a smart ma, if she caught a beau. I do wish, Janet, since you ain't got no one but Billy,—an' every one knows he's got 'bout as much gumption as a snipe,—I do wish you could land one of these boarders. They must be real easy from what ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock |
