"Wasp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hit him right in the middle of his starched shirt front. Like an infuriated wasp he rose from his seat to find the criminal; a plain little girl's face laughed into his; a labourer in his Sunday clothes and straw hat appeared, took her by the hand and smilingly expressed a hope that the child had not hurt him; ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... have not only had their instincts but their structure modified in accordance with their parasitic habits; for they do not possess the pollen-collecting apparatus which would have been indispensable if they had stored up food for their own young. Some species of Sphegidae (wasp-like insects) are likewise parasitic; and M. Fabre has lately shown good reason for believing that, although the Tachytes nigra generally makes its own burrow and stores it with paralysed prey for its own larvae, yet that, ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... this passionate tirade by simply shaking her head as a child does who hears the buzzing of a wasp and fears its sting; then, as they reached the bench, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... partial Nature! I arraign; Of thy caprice maternal I complain: The lion and the bull thy care have found, One shakes the forests, and one spurns the ground: Thou giv'st the ass his hide, the snail his shell, Th' envenom'd wasp, victorious, guards his cell; Thy minions, kings, defend, control, devour, In all th' omnipotence of rule and power; Foxes and statesmen, subtile wiles insure; The cit and polecat stink, and are secure; Toads with their poison, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... swinging in a loop, and looking as if she was alive, hung Polly, who died at an advanced age, had been carefully stuffed, and was no presented by Mrs. Jo. The walls were decorated with all sorts of things. A snake's skin, a big wasp's nest, a birch-bark canoe, a string of birds' eggs, wreaths of gray moss from the South, and a bunch of cotton-pods. The dead bats had a place, also a large turtle-shell, and an ostrich-egg proudly presented by Demi, who volunteered to explain these rare curiosities to guests whenever they ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... yours, Sir Wasp, And delicate is your wing; Your armour is brave, in black and gold; But we do ...
— Woodside - or, Look, Listen, and Learn. • Caroline Hadley
... common, but now nearly eradicated by culture, has a soft pleasant green. A cornflower, too, flowered in another field, quite a treasure to find where these beautiful blue flowers are so scarce. The last day of August there was a fierce combat on the footpath between a wasp and a brown moth. They rolled over and struggled, now one, now the other uppermost, and the wasp appeared to sting the moth repeatedly. ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... gigas). It is often thirty feet in height, and has a large, broad, green leaf. It is appropriately named; and the pain caused by touching the leaf is, I think, worse than that occasioned by the sting of a wasp." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... not a particularly intelligent lot. They were Diggers, so named on account of their habits of digging in the ground for roots, and the larva of various insects for food. Eggs of ants, and the maggots found in wasp's ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... jangling of common people worrying about their long hours of work or the right to give their offspring a decent chance in the world became a distant murmur, no more unpleasant or menacing than the whang of a wasp outside the window. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... her. All these are sufficient wrongs, but the fact still remains that in some way Floyd is likely to make a great fortune for Violet, while the rest will gain nothing. More than all, Marcia has a good deal of the wasp in her nature, and loves to make a great buzz, as ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... uncertain mind, lest you should work more evil than you think, and making mine uncertain also, spoil my skill. Nay, do not try to fly, for already the net has thrown itself about you and you cannot stir, who are bound like a little gilded wasp in the spider's web, or like birds ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... pleased to hear me. Paramanus ten A parasukshma make; ten of those build The trasarene, and seven trasarenes One mote's-length floating in the beam, seven motes The whisker-point of mouse, and ten of these One likhya; likhyas ten a yuka, ten Yukas a heart of barley, which is held Seven times a wasp-waist; so unto the grain Of mung and mustard and the barley-corn, Whereof ten give the finger joint, twelve joints The span, wherefrom we reach the cubit, staff, Bow-length, lance-length; while twenty lengths of lance Mete what is named a 'breath,' which is to say Such space as man may ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... lay in me, From me by strong assault it is bereft. My honey lost, and I, a drone-like bee, Have no perfection of my summer left, But robb'd and ransack'd by injurious theft: In thy weak hive a wandering wasp hath crept, And suck'd the honey which ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... protection against the bullets that came with the whip of a wasp through the tree-tops, the detachment went boldly up the enemy's hill before them. On the hillside they came to an old trench, which had been used in an earlier battle of the war. They ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... between some vast yellow body and the unfortunate spider. Then the spider, suddenly as immobile as a lump of stone, was drawn up into the heavens by the roaring yellow thing, and disappeared. A wasp had struck, and had ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... knife; don't put out my eyes in your ardour against that wretched wasp. Wat Greenwood may well say "there is a terrible sight of waspses ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... while Hazel's little fingers dived down after peaches and plums of extra size with which to crown her dish; but so doing, they suddenly brought up a white note, suspiciously sealed with red wax. The girl dropped it, as if it had been a wasp; and hastily setting the basket down on the floor, pushed the unfinished dish to a ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... Doctor and Mrs. Pringle managed their matters so well. "Ay," said Mrs. Craig, "but we a' ken what a manager the mistress is—she's the bee that mak's the hincy—she does not gang bizzing aboot, like a thriftless wasp, through her neighbours' houses." "I tell you, Betty, my dear," cried Mr. Craig, "that you shouldna make comparisons—what's past is gane—and Mrs. Glibbans and you maun now be friends." "They're a' friends to me that's no faes, and am very glad to see Mrs. Glibbans sociable in my house; but ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... were riveted, all mouths open; and, in fact, when she danced thus, to the humming of the Basque tambourine, which her two pure, rounded arms raised above her head, slender, frail and vivacious as a wasp, with her corsage of gold without a fold, her variegated gown puffing out, her bare shoulders, her delicate limbs, which her petticoat revealed at times, her black hair, her eyes of flame, she ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... is acquainted with the pretty picture Sir Walter Scott has drawn of the affectionate terrier, which was the companion of his hero in "Guy Mannering." We see the faithful Wasp "scampering at large in a thousand wheels round the heath, and come back to jump up to his master, and assure him that he participated in the pleasures of the journey." We see him during the fight with the robbers, "annoying their heels, and repeatedly effecting a moment's diversion ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... Nathaniel's open mouth, leaving, however, a liberal surplusage to ornament his cheeks, chin, and nose. The recipient of this bulletin choked, spluttered, and pawed at his face after the manner of a cat who has tried to eat a wasp. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... contrived out of the stumps of the king's beard, and another of the same materials, but fixed into a paring of her majesty's thumb-nail, which served for the back. There was a collection of needles and pins, from a foot to half a yard long; four wasp's stings, like joiner's tacks; a gold ring, which one day she made me a present of, in a most obliging manner, taking it from her little finger, and throwing it over my head like a collar. I desired the captain ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... figures in the relief above the gate is absent from the gem, but is found on another specimen from Mycenae, where the animals, however, are winged griffins. Fig. 41 has only a standing man, of the wasp-waisted figure and wearing the girdle with which other representations have now ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... attractiveness, importance, and value, finished the same in a ludicrously deflated condition—and a quiet civilian, to whom the cub had been shamefully insolent, was moved to present him with a little poem of his composition commencing "There was a puppy caught a wasp," which gave him the transient though salutary gift of sight of himself as ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... the wood, Having his hunger throughly satisfide With pray of beasts and spoyle of living blood, Safe in his dreadles den him thought to hide: His sternesse was his prayse, his strength his pride, And all his glory in his cruell clawes. I saw a Wasp, that fiercely him defide, And bad him battaile even to his iawes; Sore he him stong, that it the blood forth drawes, And his proude heart is fild with fretting ire: In vaine he threats his teeth, his tayle, his pawes, And from his bloodie eyes doth ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... before Madame Marneffe, and to playing Jupiter to this middle-class Danae. A man could not expend more activity, intelligence, and presence of mind in the honest acquisition of a fortune than the Baron displayed in shoving his head into a wasp's nest: He did all the business of his department, he hurried on the upholsterers, he talked to the workmen, he kept a sharp lookout on the smallest details of the house in the Rue Vanneau. Wholly devoted to Madame Marneffe, he nevertheless attended the sittings of the Chambers; he was everywhere ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... A WASP seated himself upon the head of a Snake and, striking him unceasingly with his stings, wounded him to death. The Snake, being in great torment and not knowing how to rid himself of his enemy, saw a wagon heavily laden with wood, and went and purposely placed his head under the ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... short bristly fat waddling person with a grin; he grinned all over his face. He was not nice in his habits. He ate wasp nests and frogs and worms; and he waddled about ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... the end of the street. On the snow that bound the horizon, his tall and wasp-like uniformed figure outlined itself; he walked, knees apart, with that motion particular to soldiers who are anxious not to ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... 201 The wasp thinks that the honey-hive of the neighbouring bees is too small. His neighbours ask him ...
— Stray Birds • Rabindranath Tagore
... his shell, How the woodchuck digs his cell, And the ground-mole sinks his well; How the robin feeds her young, How the oriole's nest is hung; Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow, Where the ground-nut trails its vine, Where the wood-grape's clusters shine; Of the black wasp's cunning way, Mason of his walls of clay, And the architectural plans Of gray hornet artisans!— For, eschewing books and tasks, Nature answers all he asks; Hand in hand with her he walks, Face to face with her he talks, Part and parcel of her joy,— ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... tale, he started as if stung by a wasp: and urging Grace to tell it no one else (though the poor girl "must," she said, "for honour's sake"), he took up his hat, and ran off breathlessly to Acton's cottage. Roger was at home, in bed, and sick; there was no escape; and Simon chuckled at the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Carey looked on them very kindly, and said: "Little ones, I love your brave spirit. You shall not die. Neither shall you lose your beauty. I will give you a defence that will keep off all your enemies but one, that is the Long-stinger Wasp, for you must in some way pay for your loveliness." She waved her wand, and all over each of the Beauty-crawlers, there came out bunches of sharp stickers like porcupine quills, only they were worse than porcupine ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... country was a network of deep lanes, sunk between impenetrable hedgerows, inclosing small fields, orchards, and thickets, and gently undulating in low hills and shallow valleys, interspersed with tall wasp-waisted windmills airily waving their arms on the top of lofty masts. It was partitioned into small farms, inhabited by a simple-hearted peasantry, religious and diligent, with a fair amount of rural wealth and comfort. Their love for their lords was loyally warm, and Eustacie ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... returned to Boston filled with spoils, including a half million dollars of money; when the Prince de Neuchatel hovered at her leisure in the Irish Channel and made coasting trade impossible; and when the Young Wasp of Philadelphia cruised for six months in ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... family. The fore wings have a protective colouring; the hind wings are bright red. When at rest, with the red and purple tints concealed, it is only a very pretty grasshopper, but the instant it takes wing it becomes the fac-simile of a very common wasp of the genus Pepris. These wasps vary greatly in size, some being as large as the hornet; they are solitary, and feed on the honey of flowers and on fruit, and, besides being furnished with stings like other wasps—though their sting is nok so venomous as in other genera—they ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... don't want any, but I know a little chap that has; he's a little black and yellow fellow, who goes buzzing about, making a fine noise, and likes sweet things; he'd suit you, only he has such a tickler in his tail. His name's Wops, or Wasp, or ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... a curious wasp-like uniform of black and yellow appeared down the passage, and one hastened to throw up a sliding shutter that had seemed a door to Graham, and led the way through it. Graham found himself in a gallery overhanging the end of a great chamber. The attendant in black and ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... we take our sorrows rightly. The effect of sorrow devoutly borne, in bringing God closer to us, belongs to it, whether it be great or small; whether it be, according to the metaphor of an earlier portion of this psalm, 'a lion or an adder'; or whether it be a buzzing wasp or a mosquito. As long as anything troubles me, I may make it a means of bringing God ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... found himself involved in an animated discussion with Dr. Rolph. Nearly all the prominent members of the House erelong became participants, and the situation became critical. Hard words were freely bandied about, amid the greatest confusion and disorder. An eye-witness compares the scene to a wasp's nest disturbed.[267] The Speaker finally put a stop to the ebullitions of temper, and brought the scene to a close by announcing that the time had arrived for waiting on the Lieutenant-Governor with certain addresses. There was no opportunity ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... Germans, it is doubtful whether the old Teutons borrowed them from the Latins, or the Latins from the Teutons, or both had them from some common original; as wine, vinum; wind, ventus; went, veni; way, via, wall, vallum; wallow, volvo; wool, vellus; will, volo; worm, vermis; worth, virtus; wasp, vespa; day, dies; draw, traho; tame, domo, [Greek: damao]; yoke, jugum, [Greek: zeugos]; over, upper, super, [Greek: hyper]; am, sum, [Greek: eimi]; break, frango; fly, volo; blow, flo. I make no doubt but the Teutonick is more ancient than the Latin: and ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... the guava bushes and ate all the fruit he could hold, and then he decided to play a joke on his father's guests instead of giving them a feast of guavas. A wasp's nest hung near by. With some difficulty he succeeded in taking it down and putting it into a tight basket that he had brought for the fruit. He hastened home and gave the basket to his father, and then as he left the room ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole
... in years arrayed in a long night-shirt, pawing fiercely at the unattainable spot in the middle of his back, while he danced an unnatural, weird, wicked-looking jig by the dim, religious light of the night-lamp. And while he danced and howled, and while they gazed and shouted, a navy-blue wasp, that Master Middlerib had put in the bottle for good measure and variety, and to keep the menagerie stirred up, had dried his legs and wings with a corner of the sheet, and after a preliminary circle or two around the bed to get up his motion and ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... without labour fed! The ant the worst of all the crew— Fly, drone, wasp, beetle too with horned head, All of them sharpers thro' and thro', Idlers the sun drew to thy well apace— None more than she was eager ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... done their work and wrapped themselves round Umbelazi's army as the nippers of a wasp close about a fly (why did not Umbelazi cut off those horns, I wondered), the Usutu bull began his charge. Twenty or thirty thousand strong, regiment after regiment, Cetewayo's men rushed up the slope, and there, near the crest of it, were met by Umbelazi's regiments springing forward ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... and so copious a language as common poultry. Take a chicken of four or five days old, and hold it up to a window where there are flies, and it will immediately seize its prey, with little twitterings of complacency; but if you tender it a wasp or a bee, at once its note becomes harsh, and expressive of disapprobation and a sense of danger. When a pullet is ready to lay she intimates the event by a joyous and easy soft note. Of all the occurrences of their ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... Hymenoptera, Diptera, Coleoptera, and Hemiptera from among the visitors to a single field of golden-rod alone. Usually to be discovered among the throng are the velvety black Lytta or Cantharis, that impostor wasp-beetle, the black and yellow wavy-banded, red-legged locust-tree borer, and the painted Clytus, banded with yellow and sable, squeaking contentedly as he gnaws the ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... The Badger fly, the Orange fly, the little white Dun, the Wasp fly, the Black Hackle, the Shell fly, the ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... adjourned to the drawing-room, Captain and Mrs. Ray, the Strachys, Rutherfords, &c. We had a scientific experiment with the shadow of the moon. Mr. Ray told a curious story of a wasp. He saw it advance slowly to a great spider, which the wasp apparently completely mesmerised, and then the wasp carried him off to a little house he had made, and deposited the spider next an egg, then another egg, and again another spider, till there was a long row alternately, then the larvae ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... sorrowful heaviness And all without redress. . . . . It had a velvet cap, And would sit upon my lap, And seek after small worms, And sometimes white bread-crumbs. . . . . Sometimes he would gasp When he saw a wasp, A fly or a gnat He would fly at that; And prettily he would pant When he saw an ant; Lord, how he would fly After the butterfly. And when I said Phip, Phip Then he would leap and skip, And take me by the lip. Alas it will me slo,* That ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... and the Indian to the Hebrew, the Arab, and the Hindoo, what pleases the men in women is not their beauty, but their voluptuous rotundity; they care only for those sensual aspects which emphasize the difference between the sexes. The object of the modern wasp waist (in the minds of the class of females who, strange to say, are allowed by respectable women to set the fashion for them) is to grossly exaggerate the bust and the hips, and it is for the same reason that barbarian and Oriental girls are fattened for the marriage market. The appeal ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... the smaller animals, the birds and the insects, gathered themselves together in a common council. Here, too, all were bitter against the useless cruelty of mankind. After all complaints had been heard, Am-wee-soo the Wasp addressed the council. ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... well-known species, while the additions made to the Fossorial group contain many of great beauty and rarity. A new species belonging to the tribe of Solitary Wasps, Odynerus clavicornis, is perhaps the most interesting insect in the collection; this Wasp has clavate antennae, the flagellum being broadly dilated towards the apex, convex above and concave beneath. I am not acquainted with any other insect belonging to the Vespidious group which exhibits ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... back door," he cried, and pushed Dan before him. "Will ye wait till that wasp's bink is buzzin' ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... present day, "waps" is considered a vulgar way of pronouncing the word; but it was correct English at the time of which I am writing. "Wasp" is really the corrupt pronunciation. In the same way, they said ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... Mappin terrace, with this difference in our disfavour, that the animals are there to be looked at, while nobody wants to look at us. As a matter of fact there would be nothing to look at. We get colds in winter and hay fever in summer, and if a wasp happens to sting one of us, well, that is the wasp's initiative, not ours; all we do is to wait for the swelling to go down. Whenever we do climb into local fame and notice, it is by indirect methods; if it happens to ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... so finding no rest for the sole of our feet, I persuaded Robert to go to the Baths of Lucca, only to see them. We were to proceed afterwards to San Marcello or some safer wilderness. We had both of us, but he chiefly, the strongest prejudice against these Baths of Lucca, taking them for a sort of wasp's nest of scandal and gaming, and expecting to find everything trodden flat by the Continental English; yet I wanted to see the place, because it is a place to see after all. So we came, and were so charmed by the exquisite beauty of the scenery, by the coolness of the climate ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... know, that there is a wasp buzzing about his honey-comb," said Phoebe; "and, moreover, that I know that this young Scotch Scapegrace shifted himself out of a woman's into a man's dress at Goody Green's, and gave Goody Green's Dolly a gold-piece to say nothing about it; and ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... you that these ants are much larger than any we have here. Some of the tropical ants are an inch long, and as large as a large wasp; so you may imagine that a whole army of them is not to be ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the same period should have shown their colours and forms when the cases were first opened, so as to be recognized as blue larkspur, yellow mimosa, and a red Abyssinian flower, massed closely together on the foundation of a strong leaf cut in zigzags. Among the flowers lay a dead wasp, whose worthless little form and identity were as perfectly preserved as those of the mighty monarch on whose bosom it had completed its short existence. The tent itself consists of a centre or flat top, divided down the middle, and covered over one half with pink and yellow rosettes ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... will refer to the map they will see, outside the north-west corner of the mainland of Ireland, Tory Island. It was on Tory Island that 'The Wasp' and her gallant captain were lost, without hope of rescue, for want of cable communication; and Tory Island itself has excited the interest of the philanthropist on many occasions. On Tory Island there is a lighthouse, with a fixed light, which can be seen sixteen miles. ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... so I lay very quiet and listened, but could hear no sound of human voices. So I became curious to know what made the noise, and to my delight I saw a cow that had evidently strayed away from its field, having probably got into the wood to be under the shade of the trees, and away from wasp-flies. At first she was frightened at me, but I had been used to cattle all my life, so I soon quieted her, and she let me approach her. I saw that it was time for her to be milked, so, making the palm ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... at any of those front doors," advised Grandmother, "because Mrs. Wasp lives there, and might not understand; although if you let her alone she will not hurt you. Just let me tell ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... tribes of insects without wings, from the spider to the scorpion, from the flea to the lobster; or with wings, from the gnat and the ant to the wasp and the dragon-fly, differ so totally from each other, and from the red-blooded classes above described, both in the forms of their bodies, and their modes of life; besides the organ of sense, which they seem to possess in their ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... equal parts of rock garden, chicken coops, and whiskey advertisements. The station-master, who appeared also to act as emergency porter, took Yeovil's ticket with the gesture of a kind-hearted person brushing away a troublesome wasp, and returned to a study of the Poultry Chronicle, which was giving its readers sage counsel concerning the ailments of belated July chickens. Yeovil called to mind the station-master of a tiny railway town in Siberia, who had held him in long and rather intelligent converse on the poetical ...
— When William Came • Saki
... a new complication, one which left me with feelings too involved for calm scientific contemplation. As if a Martian should suddenly become visible to an astronomer, I found that one of the egg planets was inhabited. Perched upon the summit—quite near the north pole—was an insect, a wasp, much smaller than the egg itself. And as I looked, I saw it at the climax of its diminutive life; for it reared up, resting on the tips of two legs and the iridescent wings, and sunk its ovipositor deep into the crystalline surface. ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... hadn't been such a fool as to keep it to myself. Here it has been worrying my very life out for months, and made me as irritable as a wasp. You are a good fellow, Dick! But, honour bright, I ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... Colonel and his daughter went away to Scotland, Captain Brown, having no relatives in the country, resolved to follow them. He set out on foot, having for sole companion a little terrier named Wasp. On the way he had to pass a long and weary waste of heath and morass. One house alone broke the monotonous expanse. It was little better than a shed, but was sheltered by an ash tree, and a clay-built shed alongside served ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Committee the success of the expedition. On the 11th the Committee congratulated the "gallant commander, brave officers and men concerned in it throughout the whole cruise." He was informed that the "Alert" would be purchased for a cruiser, her name changed to the "Wasp," of which he was to take command or bestow it on some brave, active and prudent officer on a cruise on the coast and off Cape Henlopen, so as "to descry the enemies' vessels coming and going." Barry's "well-known bravery and good conduct" were ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... caterer, are acquiring bigger appetites. We somehow suspected that the demand for a return of the wasp waist had influential ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... her. Three came to me who had been ill-used in the voyage which followed, though she had then sailed under a new captain. Two applied to me from the Africa, who had been of her crew in the last voyage. Two from the Fly. Two from the Wasp. One from the Little Pearl, and three from the Pilgrim or Princess, when she was last upon ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... sex. In each, we should observe a somewhat similar tension of manner, and somewhat similar points of honour. In each the larger animal keeps a contemptuous good humour; in each the smaller annoys him with wasp- like impudence, certain of practical immunity; in each we shall find a double life producing double characters, and an excursive and noisy heroism combined with a fair amount of practical timidity. I have known dogs, and I have known school heroes ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the cub had spent three quarters of his time in eating, but since yesterday morning he had not swallowed so much as a bug. He was completely empty, and the object he saw hanging to the bush set every salivary gland in his mouth working. It was a wasp's nest. Many times in his young life he had seen Noozak, his mother, go up to nests like that, tear them down, crush them under her big paw, and then invite him to the feast of dead wasps within. ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... a soft "splosh!" on the gravel path beneath. It was interesting to watch that, and it happened so often, that it was hard to imagine a windsor pear without a great gash where the sharp stones had cut into it; it was also natural to expect when you picked it up that there would be a cunning yellow wasp hidden somewhere about it, for all the little Hawthorns had always found it so except the baby, and she was too small to have any experience. Five little Hawthorns, without counting the baby, had looked out of the nursery window and watched the pear-tree blossom, and the sparrows build their ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... I were at Brantwood again, now, and could send you my wasp book! It is pathetic, and yet so dreadful,—the wasp bringing in the caterpillar for its young wasp, stinging each enough to paralyze but not to kill, and so laying them up ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... than half an hour they started, the cider-makers in the yard having ceased their labors and gone away, so that the only sounds audible there now were the trickling of the juice from the tightly screwed press, and the buzz of a single wasp, which had drunk itself so tipsy that it was unconscious of nightfall. Grace was very cheerful at the thought of being soon in her sylvan home, but Fitzpiers sat beside her almost silent. An indescribable oppressiveness had overtaken ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... their might. The wasps did as they were told; and when Reynard felt the first sting, he started aside and shook one of his legs, but still held up his tail with wonderful bravery. At the second sting he was forced to drop his tail for a moment; but when the third wasp had fixed itself, he could bear it no longer, and clapped his tail between his legs, and ran away as fast as ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... It killed the one man she felt safe with, whom she would have married, and it finally disgusted her with love. Since then she had been embittered. She was struggling as angrily in the sweet stuff of life as a wasp got caught in honey. Just as desperately did she try to unstick her wings. It gave her no pleasure to outdo other women; she didn't want their tiresome men. What could one do with men when one had got them? None of them would talk to her of anything but the things of love, ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... alone and wretched, confined like the pith within the bark of the tree.... My voice is like a wasp imprisoned within a sack of skin and bone. ... My teeth rattle like the keys of an old musical instrument.... My face is a scarecrow.... There is a ceaseless buzzing in my ears—in one a spider spins his web, in the other a cricket chirps all night.... My catarrh, which causes a rattle in ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... smugglers, and all other types of law-breakers would ultimately be brought to justice. And if these but knew of the presence of this boy in his tower room, some dark night that tower would be rocked by an exploding bomb and the boy in his room would be shaken to earth like a young mud-wasp in ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... was put about, and flashed past us at high speed down into the valley. When the sound of the humming motor had died to something no louder than the buzz of a sleepy wasp, I held out my hand to Carneta and she rose, pale, but with blazing eyes, and picked ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... idiot put her liver?' Did you ever read of the frog who burst, trying to swell to an ox? Well, here is the rivalry reversed; Mrs. Vivian is a bag of bones in a balloon; she can machine herself into a wasp; but a fine young woman like you, with flesh and muscle, must kill yourself three or four times before you can make your body as meagre, hideous, angular, and unnatural as Vivian's. But all you ladies are mono-maniacs; one might as well talk sense to a gorilla. It brought ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... shouldn't lose no time a saddlin' your'n, though I don't doubt the ole woman'd git well ef you never gin her the light of your cheerful count'nance. She'd git well fer spite, and hire a calomel-doctor jist to make you mad. I'd jest as soon and a little sooner expect a female wasp to ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... Lissa drily; for the great moaning hum of the thresher filled the air, went on and on as it would all day except at food-times, sounding like some vast wasp held captive and booming unceasingly—some great dragon of a wasp, as ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... to-day's mail and seven in yesterday's; and good orders for the wasp-moths, single or together, and that house in New York wants steady supplies from now on. And here's a fancy shop wants a dozen trays, like that last one I finished. We're looking ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... true!" Nap was smiling somewhat grimly. "And doubtless your wish is law. But it doesn't follow that you always desire what is best for yourself. Hadn't you better consult the queen before you admit the wasp to the hive?" ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... they reveal, with surer delicacy than does any other record, the spirit of Mr. Brummell's day. Grego guides me, as Virgil Dante, through all the mysteries of that other world. He shows me those stiff-necked, over-hatted, wasp-waisted gentlemen, drinking Burgundy in the Cafe des Milles Colonnes or riding through the village of Newmarket upon their fat cobs or gambling at Crockford's. Grego's Green Room of the Opera House always delights me. The formal way in which Mdlle. Mercandotti is standing ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... change the full mourning of the soul into half-mourning; it is enough if I can say to myself, "I will be content to endure the sorrow that philosophy has left me; without it, it would be greater, and the gnat's bite would be the wasp's sting."' ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... Tristan, "were it the last act of my life, I would sting him home like an expiring wasp, should I be crushed to pieces on the ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... her guns of mighty strength, Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves, Deep in her draught, and warlike in her length, She seems a sea wasp flying ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... like the bee, and the legs are tufted in a manner most unusual in the order Coleoptera. Another Longicorn, Odontocera odyneroides, has the abdomen banded with yellow, and constricted at the base, and is altogether so exactly like a small common wasp of the genus Odynerus, that Mr. Bates informs us he was afraid to take it out of his net with his fingers for fear of being stung. Had Mr. Bates's taste for insects been less omnivorous than it was, the beetle's disguise might have saved ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... frowzy coat of brown, And beard of ancient growth and mould, Bestrode a bony steed and strong, As suited well with bulk he bore— A wheezy man with depth of hold Who jouncing went. A staff he swung— A wight whom Mosby's wasp had stung. ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... to go, silly child." Aline tried to withdraw sharpness from her voice, but it was there, like the sting of a wasp in a wound. "Even if I didn't think it wise for some reasons, it isn't my car, you know, but Mr. Somerled's, and he has a perfect right to invite any guests he likes. Don't imagine that I'm going to talk ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... says, in the woods of Brazil is frequently found hanging from the branches the nest of a species of bee, formed of clay, and about two feet in diameter. It is more probable that these nests belong to some species of wasp, many of which construct hanging nests. One sort of these is very common in the northern parts of Britain, though it is not often found south ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various
... pretense, as if the roof you were born under was not big enough for you. And then your eyes—I have seen your eyes flash up, as if you were fighting; and the bosom of your Sunday frock was loose in church two buttons; it was not hot at all to speak of, and there was a wasp next pew. All these things make me unhappy, Mary. My darling, tell ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... so proud that he could not listen to a little bird. The magician bent to lift a stone, and an arrow flew from the warrior's bow. It buzzed and stung like a wasp. It came so close to the crest of feathers that the magician trembled with terror. Before he could run, another arrow came, and this one struck him right on his crest. His heart grew cold with fear. "Death ...
— The Book of Nature Myths • Florence Holbrook
... back as if attacked by a wasp. Attorney General Smith said, "Hum," very loudly and looked at Assemblyman Brown who looked blank. Dr Johnson's nose raised itself a perceptible inch and Judge Robinson, sensing a sensation among his colleagues, shouted, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... wasp. I've seen ye do ut. I say there's nothin' better than the bay'nit, wid a long reach, a double twist av ye can, an' a ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... said Calvert. "I hate the very sight of a wasp-waisted, self-sufficient Prussian subaltern. They're everywhere. Imperial arrogance seems to pervade even their beer gardens." His voice trailed off into silence again, as in a preoccupied manner his finger wandered over ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... happened. What it was I'll tell you right soon, when, in case a little boy named Willie doesn't crawl up in my lap when I'm writing and pull my ears, as the conductor does the trolley car bell-rope, the story will be about Uncle Wiggily and the wasp. ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Travels • Howard R. Garis
... his hand to capture the rod, but before he could interfere, Bet had brought it down with a thud on the ground. A wasp flew from the hole with an angry buzz and lighted fair and square on Billy's nose, burying its stinger deep ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... corrosive penetrant liquor contain'd in the small baggs or bladders, upon which grow out those sharp Syringe-pipes, as I before noted; and very consonant to this, is the reason of the pain created by the sting of a Bee, Wasp, &c. as I elsewhere shew: For by the Dart, which is likewise a pipe, is made a deep passage into the skin, and then by the anger of the Fly, is his gally poisonous liquor injected; which being admitted among the ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... for a wasp and Gottfried Keller to bring us out of the era of rag paper. Together, they saved us from a retardation of universal thought. Therefore, ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... Paraguay, to receive Mr. Washburn and his family and remove them from a situation which was represented to be endangered by faction and foreign war. The Brazilian commander of the allied invading forces refused permission to the Wasp to pass through the blockading forces, and that vessel returned to its accustomed anchorage. Remonstrance having been made against this refusal, it was promptly overruled, and the Wasp therefore resumed her errand, received Mr. Washburn and his family, and conveyed them to a safe ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson
... I like your remark, 'Such fellows ought not to claim a moment's attention from me. I should brush them away, like flies from my forehead, when they presume to tease or settle themselves upon me.' I have taken your advice, and fly-slapped the wasp that was more willing than able ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... the purpose. Should there be much swelling or inflammation, foment the part with hot water, and then apply hot bread poultice, and renew it frequently. In eating apricots, or peaches, or other fruit, they ought beforehand to be carefully examined, in order to ascertain that no wasp is lurking in them; otherwise, it may sting the throat, and serious consequences ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse |
