"Bats" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... things!" he breathed. "Jumping, they were, and leaping, and flying on their leather wings like a lot of black bats out o' hell! And I'm thinkin' that's where they've taken Chet Bullard, and never again will he hold a ship like 'twas in the hollow of his hand, and him settin' it down ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... nervously from side to side, lest haply I should see the white woman standing near a flower-bed or by my couch, I would run at full speed back to the verandah. Then, and only then, I would lie down with my face to the garden, and, covering myself over, so far as possible, from the mosquitos and bats, fall to gazing in front of me as I listened to the sounds of the night and ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... personal peculiarities of the seamen. I remember nothing corresponding at all to the extravagances instanced in my early reading of Colburn's; such as a frigate's watch—say one hundred and fifty men—on liberty in Portsmouth, England, buying up all the gold-laced cocked bats in the place, and appearing with them at the theatre. Many, however, who have seen a homeward-bound ship leaving port, the lower rigging of her three masts crowded with seamen from deck to top, returning ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... Bats Flying Fox, Pteropus Edwardsii Their numbers at Peradenia Singularity of their attitudes Food and mode of eating Horse-shoe bat, Rhinolophus Faculty of smell in bat A tiny bat, Scotophilus foromandelicus Extraordinary parasite of the ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... harass the ambitious Clinton; and, although his agents, as late as 1809, sought reconciliation, the society expelled Cheetham and made Clinton an object of detestation. Cheetham, who died in 1810, did not live to wreak full vengeance; but he did enough to arouse a shower of brick-bats which broke the windows of his home and threatened the demolition of the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... powers, To ask my boldest question, undismayed By muttered threats that some hysteric sense Of wrong or insult will convulse the throne Where wisdom reigns supreme; and if I err, They all must err who have to feel their way As bats that fly at noon; for what are we But creatures of the night, dragged forth by day, Who needs must stumble, and with stammering steps Spell out their paths ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... sight. There have been instances of people, who could see better in the gloom of the evening, than in the stronger light of the day; like owls, and bats, and many quadrupeds, and flying insects. When the eye is inflamed, great light becomes eminently painful, owing to the increased irritative motions of the retina, and the consequent increased sensation. Thus when the eye is dazzled with sudden light, the pain is not owing to the motion ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... from December till February, living on his own fat. Several of them often occupy the same den and conserve their animal heat in that way. The coon, also, is in his den in the rocks for a part of the winter, keeping warm on home-made fuel. The same is true of the bear in our climate. The bats are hibernating in the rocks or about buildings. The muskrats are leading hidden lives in the upper chambers of their snow-covered houses in the marshes and ponds or in the banks of streams, feeding on lily-roots and mussels which they ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... * I wanted to write you in the evening, but the air was so heavenly that I sat for two hours or so on the bench in front of the garden-house, smoked and looked at the bats flying, just as with you two years ago, my darling, before we started on our trip. The trees stood so still and high near me, the air fragrant with linden blossoms; in the garden a quail whistled and partridges ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... of the ghosts in New Caledonia, where Mr. Atkinson informs us that he has occasionally put an able-bodied Kaneka to ignominious flight by whistling softly in the dusk. The ghosts in Homer make a similar sound, "and even as bats flit gibbering in the secret place of a wondrous cavern,... even so the souls gibbered as they fared together" (Odyssey, xxiv. 5). "The familiar spirits make him" (that Zulu sorcerer) "acquainted with what is about to happen, and then he divines for the people." As the Birraarks ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... and grew confused. There was a murmur of harps in the distance, and she wondered whence it could come. Some one was speaking; she tried to rouse herself and listen. The room was filled with bats that changed to butterflies. The murmur of harps continued, and through the wall before her issued a litter ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... leathern belt, and even his breeches. Giacobbe hung over the body; all the rest waited around him; an auroral flush lighted up their perplexed faces; and at that moment of silence, from the river-bank arose the song of the frogs, and bats skimmed back and forth above the ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... all there is a rustling overhead in the feathery branches of the palms in the cobwebby spaces among the leaves that give the bats of Africa a home. A twitter of angry bat voices, shrill squeaks and flutters in the darkness. Then stillness—of a sudden—and the ground trembles with a far-off throbbing as a convoy of motor lorries approaching thunders past us, rumbling ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... very often seen Flying perchance around the village green; But unlike many other bats, its flight Is always made by day and not by night. There may be one exception though,—and that Is when it's aimed at some stray ...
— A Phenomenal Fauna • Carolyn Wells
... themselves. The same reception awaited the Spaniards at the Island San Dimas, at Sesarga, and at Guadalcanar, upon which ginger was found for the first time. In the return voyage to Santa Isabella, the Spaniards pursued a course which enabled them to discover St. George Island, where they found bats as large as kites. Scarcely had the crew of the brigantine cast anchor in the harbour of Santa Isabella, than they were obliged again to weigh it, for the place was so unhealthy that five soldiers died and a great number of others were taken ill. Mendana stopped at the Island of Guadalcanar, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... ominous clouds, save where its rim Was fringed with a dull glow, like that which climbs The crater's sides from the red hell below. Birds ceased to sing, and all the barnyard fowls Roosted; the cattle at the pasture bars Lowed, and looked homeward; bats on leathern wings Flitted abroad; the sounds of labor died; Men prayed, and women wept; all ears grew sharp To hear the doom blast of the trumpet shatter The black sky, that the dreadful face of Christ Might look from the rent clouds, not as he looked A ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... in the sky. The moon must have been rising on the further side of the monastery, for the sky was clear, soft, and transparent. Bats were flitting noiselessly along the ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... from the entrance we found some stray bats,—the first living creatures we had met. We endeavored to attract them by holding up our lamps, and succeeded so well that we were glad to leave them behind ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... air, and in the sea. On the land there stalked huge reptiles fifty and sixty feet long, and, when standing erect, at least thirty feet high. Some of these huge creatures were carnivorous, living on other animals. Others fed on the foliage of trees. In the air, huge reptilian bats, veritable flying dragons with a spread of wings from ten to twenty feet, disported themselves. In the sea there swam great reptilian whales, seals, and walruses. There was a marvelous abundance of reptilian life. At the present day, there are not more than six species of reptiles in the whole world ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... push on. Precautions would have availed them nothing, and there was no refuge nearer than the pueblo. Sometimes they walked down aisles unchoked by brush but full of moving shadows, above which sounded the lonely continuous hooting of the owl. Now and again bats whirred past, and once a startled wildcat scurried across the path and darted up a tree, crying ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... Jeffrey heresy. After a lengthened winter, Wordsworth's glory is now in the long summer days; all good judgments that lay torpid have been awakened, and the light prevails against the darkness. But as bats and owls, the haters of light, are ever most restless in the season when nights are shortest, so are purblind egotists most uneasy when their dusky range is contracted by the near approach and sustained ascendancy of genius. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... Fortunas, for the bosom or the girdle. Household gods were there, and the objects of personal devotion: Minerva or Vesta, with handsome niches or shrines in which they might reside. There, too, were the brass crowns, or nimbi which were intended to protect the heads of the gods from bats and birds. There you might buy, were you a heathen, rings with heads on them of Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Serapis, and above all Astarte. You would find there the rings and signets of the Basilidians; amulets too of wood or ivory: figures of demons, preternaturally ugly; little skeletons, ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... seemed to win. They broke away, and ran wildly to the front of the stage with their arms outstretched, yelling to beat three of a kind. The band cut loose something fierce. The leader tore out about $9.00 worth of hair, and acted generally as though he had bats in his belfry. I thought sure the place would be pinched. It reminded me of Thirsty Thornton's dance-hall out in Merrill, Wisconsin, when the Silent Swede used to start a general survival of the fittest every time Mamie the Mink danced twice in succession with ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... of course not! Where did you ever get such a ridiculous idea?" He sat up suddenly, annoyed beyond expression over disturbing suggestions that seemed to rise like a bevy of black bats all around the ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... the justice of our King! That Bhadrasen—you know what a touching sight he is when he is speaking of his King—the sentimental idiot! He is reduced to such a state of penury that even the bats that infest his house find it ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... never been here as Abolitionists. It is the custom there not to admit colored men into respectable society, and we have been told again and again that we are outraging the decencies of humanity when we permit colored men to sit by our side. When we have submitted to brick-bats, and the tar tub and feathers in America, rather than yield to the custom prevalent there of not admitting colored brethren into our friendship, shall we yield to parallel custom or prejudice against women in Old England? We can not yield this ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... floundered deeper into his troubles, the Temple was spoiled, everything in it that could be laid hands upon was sent to the melting-pot, to pay the Assyrian tribute; and then the doors were shut, the lamps extinguished, the fire quenched on the cold altars, and the silent Temple left to the bats and—the Shekinah; for God still abode in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... while the old-fashioned hall, when the big log fire was lighted, would be hard to beat for coziness. The schoolroom, on the ground floor, had a separate side entrance on to the lawn, leading through a small ante-room where boots and coats and cricket bats and tennis rackets could be kept; the drawing-room had a luxurious ingle nook with cushioned seats, and all the bedrooms but two had a southern aspect. As for the big rambling garden, it was full of delightful old-world flowers that ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... station at Bouley Bay and St. Catherine's Head rendered the further occupancy of the old martello tower at Rozel Head unnecessary, and only a few rats and bats now resented Alaric Hobbs' sequestration of the second story. He meditated a comparative memoir upon the "Tides of Fundy Bay, and the Channel Islands," with a treatise upon "Contracted Ocean Surface Currents." Astronomer, hydrographer, geologist, and all-round savant, ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... The noise they made was like the croaking of many frogs. They were, I believe, of the broad-bill kind, which, are not so commonly seen at sea as the others. Here, however, they are in great numbers, and flying much about in the night, some of our gentlemen at first took them for bats. After restoring the sportsmen to their boat, we all proceeded for the ship, which we reached by seven o'clock in the morning, not a little fatigued with our expedition. I now learned that our friends the natives returned to their habitation at night; probably foreseeing ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... stammered Lang, the second man, perspiring horror, "your bedroom is full of humming birds and bats, sir, and I can't stand ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... when the shadow of the gray eclipse Haggards the countryside, When moon-fooled birds have nothing more to say, And soft untimely bats begin to slide; As darkness sweeps the morning light away, So silence brushes music ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... darkness of caverns, underground tunnels and excavations, or the ocean's depths. To all these sight must be of secondary importance. Hearing also can be of no superior value, and the dominant sense must be that of smell. In the bats there would appear to be a remarkably acute power of touch, if we may judge from the facility with which they can avoid obstacles at full flight after their ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... home of a gallant outlaw band, it contained everything that a romantic boy could love or long for. In Tom Sawyer Indian Joe dies in the cave. He did not die there in real life, but was lost there once, and was living on bats when they found him. He was a dissolute reprobate, and when, one night, he did die there came up a thunder-storm so terrific that Sam Clemens at home and in bed was certain that Satan had come in person for the half-breed's wicked ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... palaces, had crumbled into ruins, and stars twinkled among their shattered and darkened walls. The moon burned icily above the eastern hills. The nightingales (or John was no true prophet) sang better than they had ever sung before, while bats, hither, thither, flew in startling zig-zags, as if waltzing to the music. And all the air was sweet with ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... the thought. The Preacher had dwelt on the sudden alternations of the disease, how apparent recovery was sometimes the precursor of death. She hurried up the stairs, and through the seemingly endless suite of rooms which nobody wanted, which never might be inhabited again perhaps, except by bats and owls, to his lordship's chamber, and found him sitting up in bed, with his eyes fixed on the door by which ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... awhile and cheered right lustily, they will scatter and that is the end of it, but when we interfere, there is no telling where the matter will end. In 1866, we once closed the park against them, and the consequence was a riot in which the police suffered severely from brick-bats, and the mob finally took hold of the iron fence and tore it away for a long distance along the park, made their entry, and took their own way." "Well could you not have punished those offenders according to due process of law?" I asked. "Yes," he rejoined, "we ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... boyhood Max could not have those things which lads prize—fishing- rods, cricket-bats and sleds, and all such things; but he could take most prizes at school open to competition; he could win in the running-jump, the high-jump, and the five hundred yards' race; and he could organize a picnic, or the sports of the school or town—at no cost to himself. His ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... innermost Shrine is set, Where the bats and shadows dwell, The worn and ancient Symbol of Life, at rest In its oval shell, By which the men, who, of old, the land possessed, Represented their Great Destroying Power. I cannot forget That, just as my life was touching its ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... Pyramus and Thisbe. Amour of Mars and Venus. The lovers caught by Vulcan in a net. Sol's love for Leucothoe, and her change to a tree of frankincense. Clytie transformed to a sunflower. Tale of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus. Transformation of Alcithoe and her sisters to bats. Juno's fury. Madness of Athamas; and deification of Ino and Melicertes. Change of the Theban women to rocks and birds. Cadmus and Hermione changed to serpents. Perseus. Transformation of Atlas to a mountain. Andromeda saved from the sea monster. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... made to the first woman married, to the first newspaper, to the first church, to the first child born. But there were no mines near, and the city never had an inhabitant. The half-dozen buildings put up by the proprietors are left for the nightly carnivals of bats and owls. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... down the ancient, darksome stairway, where owls hooted and bats flittered in their faces. Now they were at the last flight, which descended to a little recess set at right angles to the steps and flush with the floor of the basement, for once the door of the stairway had opened here. Thus a person standing on the last stair could not be seen by any in the ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... a line. From the shape of the flames this form of burner received the name "cockscomb." It was somewhat more efficient than the cockspur burner. The next obvious step was to slit the end of the pipe by means of a fine saw. From this slit the gas was burned as a sheet of flame called the "bats-wing." In 1820 Nielson made a burner which allowed two small jets to collide and thus form a flat flame. The efficiency of this "fish-tail" burner was somewhat higher than that of the earlier ones. Its flame was steadier because it was less influenced ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... of piercing into their hidden abode can see them there, those who were once men or women full of a terrible vehemence, and those who have never lived upon the earth, moving slowly and with a subtler malice. The dark powers cling about us, it is said, day and night, like bats upon an old tree; and that we do not hear more of them is merely because the darker kinds of magic have been but little practised. I have indeed come across very few persons in Ireland who try to communicate with evil powers, and the few I have met keep their purpose and practice ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... how To name the bigger light and how the less That burn by day and night; and then I lov'd thee, And show'd thee all the qualities o' th' isle, The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile: Curs'd be I that I did so! All the charms Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you! For I am all the subjects that you have, Who first was mine own king; and here you sty me In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... an undefended prey: Excepting Martin's race; for they and he Had gain'd the shelter of a hollow tree: But soon discover'd by a sturdy clown, He headed all the rabble of a town, 630 And finish'd them with bats, or poll'd them down. Martin himself was caught alive, and tried For treasonous crimes, because the laws provide No Martin there in winter shall abide. High on an oak, which never leaf shall bear, He breathed ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... the rigid old barons of Tuvers. Hugo, the sixth lord, died there in 1309, and in the chapel, which still stands, mass is said at stated periods for the salvation of his soul and the souls of his relations. The whole place would undoubtedly have been given over to the owls and the bats had not two adjacent springs—one of iron, the other of chalk and alum—been considered, a quarter of a century since, either as preventives or as cures for the cholera, then raging. A chalet was therefore planted on the rocks ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... was a rush which nearly made him loosen his hold before he realised what had happened. But fortunately he held on, and in an instant the alarm and danger had passed away. For the occupants he had disturbed proved to be some half-dozen huge bats, which fluttered out, squealing, and made for the opposite side ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... Hoop'd, or un-hoop'd, ungarter'd, or unlac'd. Thus thick in Air the wing'd Creation play, When vernal Phoebus rouls the Light away, A motley race, half Insects and half Fowls, Loose-tail'd and dirty, May-flies, Bats, and Owls. ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... arrangements effected differed from those in other places, as no partitions could, in fact, be discerned. Indeed, the four sides were all alike covered with boards carved hollow with fretwork, (in designs consisting) either of rolling clouds and hundreds of bats; or of the three friends of the cold season of the year, (fir, bamboo and almond); of scenery and human beings, or of birds or flowers; either of clusters of decoration, or of relics of olden times; ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the playthings we left stored away in uncle's garret when we went abroad. The bows are in the long box where you found the mallets, fishing-rods, and bats. The old quivers and a few arrows are there also, I believe. What is the idea now? asked Miss Celia in her turn, as Thorny bounced up in a ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... that I could do little to help him in the impenetrable darkness. Besides, Edith Herndon and her sister were in danger, and the dawn was coming rapidly. Throwing off the parrot-feather mat, which had served me to such good purpose, I raced headlong toward the opening. A few bats, returning early to their sleeping quarters, banged against my face, but the way was otherwise clear, and with a cry of joy I rushed through the mouth of the passage ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... battlements of the latter, which beetled far above; and the convent-bells were proclaiming the festival of the ensuing day. The ravine was overshadowed by fig-trees, vines, and myrtles, and the outer towers and walls of the fortress. It was dark and lonely, and the twilight-loving bats began to flit about. At length the soldier halted at a remote and ruined tower apparently intended to guard a Moorish aqueduct. He struck the foundation with the buttend of his spear. A rumbling sound was heard, and the solid stones yawned ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... small, of wonderful colorings, and the dull and loathsome moccasin sliding warily off the dead tree; in dimmer recesses the cow alligator, with her nest hard by; turtles a century old; owls and bats, raccoons, opossums, rats, centipedes and creatures of like vileness; great vines of beautiful leaf and scarlet fruit in deadly clusters; maddening mosquitoes, parasitic insects, gorgeous dragon-flies and pretty water-lizards: ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... At sundown the vampires, bats and goat-suckers dart from their lonely retreat and skim along the trees on the river's bank. The different kinds of frogs almost stun the ear with their hoarse and hollow-sounding croaking, while the owls and goat-suckers lament and mourn ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... that there is so much beauty throughout nature; for this may be largely attributed to the agency of selection. That beauty, according to our sense of it, is not universal, must be admitted by every one who will look at some venomous snakes, at some fishes, and at certain hideous bats with a distorted resemblance to the human face. Sexual selection has given the most brilliant colours, elegant patterns, and other ornaments to the males, and sometimes to both sexes of many birds, butterflies and other animals. With birds it has often ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... addition to the specimens asked for, any mice, bats, shrew-mice, moles, lizards, snakes or other small quadrupeds or reptiles would be acceptable. They may either be skinned or placed in rum or strong spirits of any kind, a cut being first made in the side of the body to admit the spirits to ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... a sensation. Two friends of mine were climbing at midnight the steep hill to the village, when from beneath a dark arch there dashed down towards them two breathless carabinieri, their cloaks flapping in the moonlight like the wings of the demon-bats of pantomime. "Is it your way that the murdered man lies?" they panted. "Murdered man!" At once a hundred shadowy reminiscences stirred in my friends' minds: Prosper Merimee's novels, stories of vendettas, plots of plays, morceaux d'operas, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... Fritz was not a cowardly boy, but while searching for the matches, he, without thinking, had turned around several times, lost his bearings and knew not in which direction to go to reach the opening of the cave. He heard strange noises which he imagined were bats flopping their wings. There appeared to be something uncanny about the place, and Fritz devoutly wished himself out in the sunshine, when a quotation he had frequently heard his father use came into his mind: "More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of." So ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... like great diamonds here and there. But ill-defined ruins, piles of black earth, and gardens formed deeper masses in the gloom, and below Malqua fishermen's nets stretched from one house to another like gigantic bats spreading their wings. The grinding of the hydraulic wheels which conveyed water to the highest storys of the palaces, was no longer heard; and the camels, lying ostrich fashion on their stomachs, rested peacefully in the middle of the terraces. The porters were asleep in the streets on the thresholds ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... moon and a wry leg like a stricken tree, and his face was as the face of a goblin, with a long, peaked nose, and loose, protruding lips, traitors to the few and evil teeth that interwalled his livid gums, and his ears stood out like bats' wings from his yellow, wrinkled cheeks. He was visibly punished by his journey; the sweat streamed from his leather and under his puckered eyelids his eyes flamed imprecations. His grotesque body was enveloped in yet more grotesque apparel—the piebald of the buffoon, the ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... their side goes to the bat the players must immediately return to and seat themselves upon the players' bench and remain there until the side is put out, except when batsman or base runner. All bats not in use must be kept in the bat racks, and the two players next succeeding the batsman, in the order in which they are named on the score, must be ready with bat in hand to promptly take position as batsman; provided, ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889 • edited by Henry Chadwick
... the door closed on him he heard all the colors laughing, and the laugh of little Rose Madder was highest of all as she cried to Naples Yellow, who was a dandy and made court to her: "Poor old ugly Deposit! He will grumble to the owls and the bats now!" ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... nautical pride we laid aside, And we cast the vessel ashore On the Gulliby Isles, where the Poohpooh smiles, And the Rumbletumbunders roar. And we sat on the edge of a sandy ledge And shot at the whistling bee; And the cinnamon-bats wore water-proof hats As they danced in ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... northeastward into northwestern Utah, and Davis (1939:124) reported specimens from Bingham and Bannock counties, Idaho, that he referred to the above mentioned subspecies. This led Stanford to comment (in litt.) that bats of this species from northern Utah in Cache County might be C. r. intermedius. Insofar as we are aware, C. r. pallescens differs from C. r. intermedius only in being slightly paler. Our specimens from Goldhill and South Fork of the Ogden River are not beyond the range of color ...
— Additional Records and Extensions of Known Ranges of Mammals from Utah • Stephen D. Durrant
... see the blue sky and breathe the free air again, for the bad odor of the bats which inhabited the tower almost suffocated me. But how terrible the cold was in that cage, open to every wind, and how dazzlingly the snow shone over twenty leagues of country! All the little city of Phalsbourg, with its six bastions, three demilunes, two ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... playing Upon this pipe, as low it dangled Over his vesture so old-fangled.) "Yet," said he, "poor piper as I am, In Tartary I freed the Cham, deg. deg.89 Last June, from his huge swarms of gnats; 90 I eased in Asia the Nizam deg. deg.91 Of a monstrous brood of vampire-bats: And as for what your brain bewilders, If I can rid your town of rats Will you give me a thousand guilders?" "One? fifty thousand!"—was the exclamation Of ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... sombre, mysterious, sun, wind, and alkali beaten pile, around which no one by any chance ever saw a sign of life. It was a ruin like those pretentious deserted structures sometimes seen in frontier towns—relics of the wide-open days, which stand afterward, stark and sombre, to serve as bats' nests or blind-pigs. The inn at Calabasas looked its part—a haunt of rustlers, a haven of nameless men, a ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... low it dangled Over his vesture so old-fangled.) "Yet," said he, "poor Piper as I am, In Tartary I freed the Cham, Last June, from his huge swarms of gnats, I eased in Asia the Nizam Of a monstrous brood of vampyre-bats: And as for what your brain bewilders, If I can rid your town of rats Will you give me a thousand guilders?" "One? fifty thousand!"—was the exclamation Of the astonished ...
— The Pied Piper of Hamelin • Robert Browning
... Maltheidae. It is also applied to the Flying Gurnard of the Atlantic and to the Californian Sting-ray. In Australia, and chiefly in New South Wales, it is applied to Psettus argenteus, Linn., family Carangidae, or Horse Mackerels. Guenther says that the "Sea Bats," which belong to the closely allied genus Platax, are called so from the extraordinary length of some portion of their dorsal and anal fins and of ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... myself. Poultry is one of those things which no person can get to the bottom of, there is so much of it and such variety. It is just wings, and wings, and wings, till you are weary: turkeys, and geese, and bats, and butterflies, and angels, and grasshoppers, and flying-fish, and—well, there is really no end to the tribe; it gives me the heaves just to think of it. But this one hasn't any ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... stretching away to the purple mountains of the interior, flank the silvery straits, populous with native proas, coasting steamers, sampans, and the hollowed log or "dug-out" which serves as the Malayan canoe. Patched sails of scarlet and yellow, shaped like bats' wings, suggest gigantic butterflies afloat upon the tranquil sea. The red roofs of whitewashed towns, and the tall shafts of white lighthouses emphasise the rich verdure between the silvery azure of sky and water. The little voyage ends at Tandjon Priok, nine miles ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... west the wash of the tideless Mediterranean tumbled along an unindented coast; to the east the sallow stony earth went up and up, toward an ever receding sallow horizon. Between lay humbled towns, wholly abandoned to the bats and to the ignoble wild life of the Judean wilderness. There were no sheep or cattle. Vespasian had passed that way and required the flocks of the nation for the subsistence of his four legions. There were ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... doctor in the little house with the big garden who really WAS a doctor. And whenever any creatures got sick—not only horses and cows and dogs—but all the little things of the fields, like harvest-mice and water-voles, badgers and bats, they came at once to his house on the edge of the town, so that his big garden was nearly always crowded with animals trying to get in to ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... did the place impress me that it needed an effort of will ere I could bring myself to descend the precipitous slope. Bats flitted to and fro across my path, now and then, emitting their sharp, needlelike note, while, from somewhere in the dimness beyond, an ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... castle if the nearest monsters had not happened to awake and hear the noise of talking and swum to the shore to give battle. The fight was long and hard, and when the king at last beat back his foes another struggle awaited him. At the entrance gigantic bats, owls, and crows set upon him from all sides; but the dragon had teeth and claws, while the queen broke off sharp bits of glass and stabbed and cut in her anxiety to help her husband. At length the horrible creatures flew away; a sound like ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... were warbling their rich, melancholy notes from every brake and thicket; the bats had come forth and were flitting to and fro on their leathern wings under the dark trees; but the brilliant dragon-flies, and all the painted tribe of butterflies had vanished already, and another race, the insects of the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... with the parasitic ivy looked grim and threatening, silhouetted against the lurid after glow. Master Busy liked neither the solitude, nor yet the silence of the woods; he had just caught sight of a bat circling over the dilapidated roof of the pavilion, and he hated bats. Though he belonged to a community which denied the angels and ignored the saints, he had a firm belief in the existence of a tangible devil, and somehow he could not dissociate his ideas of hell and of evil spirits from those which related to the ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... dispensing with the gutters, are its economy and its permanence. Whatever the material may be of which they are made, gutters attached to the eaves or roof cause more or less trouble and expense from the time they are put in place till the house is given up to the owls and the bats. They are liable to be corroded by rust, to be clogged with leaves and dust, to be choked with ice, or to become loosened from their fastenings. If used at all, they should be frankly acknowledged. This is not, however, a point on which I am in need of instructions, ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... sir: that Thornfield Hall was a dreary ruin, the retreat of bats and owls. I thought that of all the stately front nothing remained but a shell-like wall, very high and very fragile-looking. I wandered, on a moonlight night, through the grass- grown enclosure within: here I stumbled over a marble hearth, and there over a fallen fragment ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... set, the blackbird had ended his song, for evening was falling apace; against the glimmering dusk bats wheeled and hovered, and as the shadows deepened I watched the stars shine forth, while low down in the darkening sky was an effulgence that marked ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... humane men like Luther and More protested against the "silly and woeful beastes' slaughter and murder." Tennis was so popular that there were 250 courts in Paris alone. The game was different from the modern in that the courts were 121 feet long, instead of 78 feet, and the wooden balls and "bats"—as racquets are still called in England—were much harder. Cards and dice were passionately played, a game called "triumph" or "trump" being the ancestor of our whist. Chess ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... the ladies, and the dirty shirts and shaggy hair of the young men, who have levelled nobility almost as much as the mobility in France have, have confounded all individuality. Besides, if I did go to public places and assemblies, which my going to roost earlier prevents, the bats and owls do not begin to fly abroad till far in the night, when they begin to see and be seen. However, one of the empresses of fashion, the Duchess of Gordon, uses fifteen or sixteen hours of her four-and-twenty. I heard her journal of last ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... day has declined, it is evening at present. In the lukewarm air, bats glide. The mountaineers of the surrounding villages depart one by one; a dozen carriages are harnessed, their lanterns are lighted, their bells ring and they disappear in the little shady paths of the valleys. In the middle of the limpid penumbra may be distinguished the ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... vegetables is being used, and consequently only half an egg is needed; the other half should then be reserved for this purpose.) Arrange a circle of balls on a hot dish, have ready the carrots boiled, slice them rather thickly and shape them into the form of tennis bats; place them in the centre, and pour the sauce over them. If curried sauce be used, rice may either be served separately, or a border of ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich
... and looking towards the house: 'I swear by the Mother of God that I will never return there again if they do not send after me before I pass the ford in the Brown River,' and he rode on, but so very slowly that the sun went down and the bats began to fly over the bogs. When he came to the river he lingered awhile upon the bank among the flowers of the flag, but presently rode out into the middle and stopped his horse in a foaming shallow. ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... and then with a certain emotion forced himself to do this. He went towards the bushes and cut himself a wand and returned to the rocks and clambered out to a corner between the eddy and the stream, By that time the sunset was over and the bats were abroad—and he was wet ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... at the ticket-seller's Serenely removing her glove, While hundreds of strugglers and yellers, And some that were good at a shove, Were clustered behind her like bats in a cave and unwilling to ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... witch—full of strange spells and devices; Nightly she wandered the woods, searching for charms voodooistic— Scorpions, lizards, and herbs, dormice, chameleons, and plantains! Serpents and caw-caws and bats, screech-owls and crickets and adders— These were the guides of that witch through the dank deeps of the forest. Then, with her roots and her herbs, back to her cave in the morning Ambled that hussy to brew spells of unspeakable evil; ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... He always had his piano in the library, she explained, and it was there that he and Miss Philippa used to play and sing together. "The same piano stands in the morning-room now. I have so many things that were his. My lady told me to throw away his bats and racquets and such things, but I couldn't do it. And some of them he himself asked me to take care of for him, many years ago in his school-days. He probably forgot all about them, but they were safely kept. Will you come one day and see ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... part, however unusually developed, unless it be unusually developed in comparison with the same part in closely allied species. Thus, the bat's wing is a most abnormal structure in the class mammalia; but the rule would not here apply, because there is a whole group of bats having wings; it would apply only if some one species of bat had its wings developed in some remarkable manner in comparison with the other species of the same genus. The rule applies very strongly in the case of secondary sexual characters, ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... will take very unusual baits. Black bass have been caught on young bats. The famous old trout in the Beaverkill River in New York State, which had refused all the ordinary baits and flies that were offered him for years and that on bright days could be seen in a pool lying deep down in the water, finally fell a victim to a ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... sent prisoner to New York, and was detained in captivity for the greater part of the war. In the mean time, the Roost remained a melancholy ruin; its stone walls and brick chimneys alone standing, blackened by fire, and the resort of bats and owlets. It was not until the return of peace, when this belligerent neighborhood once more resumed its quiet agricultural pursuits, that the stout Jacob sought the scene of his triumphs and disasters; rebuilt ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... Daibh; two lapwings from Leanain na Furraich; two woodcocks from Craobh Ruadh; two hawks from the Bright Mountain; two grey mice from Luimneach; two otters from the Boinn; two larks from the Great Bog; two bats from the Cave of the Nuts; two badgers from the province of Ulster; two landrail from the banks of the Sionnan; two wagtails from Port Lairrge; two curlews from the harbour of Gallimh; two hares from Muirthemne; two ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... too—pile it on and sock it to him— he won't ever holler. And you take in a poor man, and if you work him right he'll bust himself on a single lay-out. Or especially a woman. F'r instance: Mrs. O'Flaherty comes in—widow—wiping her eyes and kind of moaning. Unhandkerchiefs one eye, bats it around tearfully over ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mention of Australia, indeed, suggests an illustration which, even alone, would amply prove our case. The Fauna of this region differs widely from any that is found elsewhere. On land, all the indigenous mammals, except bats, belong to the lowest, or implacental division; and the insects are singularly different from those found elsewhere. The surrounding seas contain numerous forms which are more or less strange; and among the fish there ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... these swollen, lustful, unclean things; and it was whilst we staggered on through the swamp in agony of mind and body that we saw the light of many torches amid the trees ahead of us, and in their smoky glare witnessed the flight of hundreds of bats. The moonlight creeping dimly through the mist, and the torchlight—how do you say?—enflaming the vegetation, created a scene like that of Inferno, in which naked figures ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... said. 'There might be—well, bats and owls and things like that, and then there'd be feelings. You'd be sure to fancy there were people or things there, and it wouldn't be half so frightening if you could get into a pew with a carpet, and make a bed of the ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... the-bye, said he had been a wonderful cricketer in his time) told me, that it was the clergyman himself who had established the whole thing: that it was his field they played in; and that it was he who had purchased stumps, bats, ball, and all! ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... out? or buried it? To whom hast thou preached these seven months? to bats and owls? Hast buried it in one hole with thyself ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... blue air, through which the snow-peaks shone out with a strange look that was not natural. The swish of the quickly flowing stream at the edge of the plot we were walking over sounded hollow and unearthly; the velvety whirr of the great mountain bats as they circled near us, stirred from the branches as we passed out, was disagreeable and heavy to hear. The moon shone ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... the study of our church bells has made great progress, and many volumes have been written upon the bells of various counties. Too long have our bells been left to the bats and birds, and the belfry is often the only portion of a church which is left uncared for. We are learning better now, and the bells which have sounded forth the joys and sorrows of our villagers for so many generations are receiving the ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... fall the information that, before he had put the Demon Rum down for the count, he had been looked on as a champion at goin' through the rye. He winks at Joe and orders a tumbler of private stock. Harold never bats a eye, but says he's got a roomful of lovin' cups which was give him for emptyin' bottles. Joe sets down a mixin' glass full of booze before the Kid, and Scanlan looks at Harold and asks Joe what was the ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... realization of this somewhat comprehensive scheme seemed rather remote. It was commonly referred to as "Worcester's dream," and one of my friends in the army medical corps probably quite correctly voiced public sentiment when he said, "Poor Worcester has bats in his belfry." However, he laughs best who laughs last! After the lapse of a good many years my dream came true. The three great institutions which I hoped might sometime be established are to-day in existence, and are doing the work which I hoped that they might perform. Now let us ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... conversation lasted for some ten minutes, about which time gown-boys' dinner was over, and we saw these youths, in their black horned-button jackets and knee-breeches, issuing from their door in the cloisters. There were no hoops, no cricket-bats, as usual on a half-holiday. Who would have thought of play in expectation of such tremendous sport as was in store ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... one of these the boys, Guy and Edwin, slept, against the low roof of which the father generally knocked his head every morning when he came to call the lads. Its windows were open all summer round, and birds and bats used oftentimes to fly in, to the great ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... younger man, tall and vigorous, clad in a thin suit of blue serge, walked by his side. They were followed by a shouting troop of small boys who overran the pavements, and some of whom were armed with baseball bats. The big trolley car was hailed by ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... appetite for the horrible plucked up courage to venture through the dried marsh by the cattle-path, and come before the house at a spectral hour when the air was full of bats. Something which they but half saw—half a sight was enough—sent them tearing back through the willow-brakes and acacia bushes to their homes, where they fairly dropped down, ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... myself, but lived as a sophist rather than a philosopher. And all the while I was digging graves for my better instincts, until my sexton's mood, confining me within churchyard walls, gave me over almost entirely to the company of mental bats and owls. The danger of it all was that though I was yet youthful, and should have been still pliant as a sapling, I was fostering the growth of those habits which, like rings in the grain, are the signature of unyielding years. Naturalists ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... course in the historical sense of that expression. In presence of that conception the petty nationalities lost their centre of gravity, brute fact dispelled their illusions, they flung their gods to the moles and to the bats (Isaiah ii.). The prophets of Israel alone did not allow themselves to be taken by surprise by what had occurred, or to be plunged in despair; they solved by anticipation the grim problem which history set before them. They absorbed into their ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... origin, in certain places, of the patterns, may turn to Mr. Haddon's Evolution of Art. {64c} Mr. Haddon shows how the Portuguese pattern of horizontal triangles is, in the art of the uncivilised natives of Brazil, meant to represent bats. {64d} A cross, dotted, within a circle, is directly derived, through several stages, from a representation of an ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... a favorite evening seat for my sister, for I remember many other delicious gloamings. Bats whirl and squeak in the odorous dusk. Night hawks whiz and boom, and over the dark forest wall a prodigious moon miraculously rolls. Fire-flies dart through the grass, and in a lone tree just outside the fence, a whippoorwill sounds ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... south-west into one with only three sides looking over a lovely green view to the north-east, with a huge sort of solid veranda, as large as the room itself, on the open side; thus I live in the open air altogether. The bats and the swallows are quite sociable; I hope the serpents and scorpions will be more reserved. 'El Khamaseen' (the fifty) has begun, and the wind is enough to mix up heaven and earth, but it is not distressing like the Cape south-easter, and, though hot, not choking like the Khamseen in ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... the Queen Charlotte Islands are, eagles, ravens, crows, hawks, owls, black-birds, blue-jays, humming birds, wrens, swallows and bats, of the same kind found in other ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... But grew to one monster that seized on the light, Like the dragon that strangles the moon in the night; Fierce sphinxes, long serpents, and asps of the south; Wild birds of huge beak, and all horrors that drouth Engenders of slime in the land of the pest, Vile shapes without shape, and foul bats of the West, Bringing Night on their wings; and the bodies wherein Great Brahma imprisons the spirits of sin, Many-handed, that blent in one phantom of fight Like a Titan, and threatfully warr'd with the light; I ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... consists in obviating the debility arising from the constant recurrence of joints. Great insistence must be laid on this point, especially at the junctions of walls, where the admission of closers already constitutes a weakness which would only be increased by the use of other bats ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... how mean and good-for-nothing and how entirely unworthy of even tying her shoe- strings we are, we experience a something compared with which all our former flights heavenward are but the flutterings of bats ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... barking to tell them not to be frightened, Maggie thought she was scolding them fiercely, and her heart beat with terror. Maggie thought it very likely that the round house had snakes on the floor, and bats in the bedroom; for she had seen Bob take off his cap to show Tom a little snake that was inside it, and another time he had a handful of young bats: altogether, he was an irregular character, perhaps even ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... picking them up at almost every station now—men and women coming in for the Christmas Week, with racquets, with bundles of polo-sticks, with dear and bruised cricket-bats, with fox-terriers and saddles. The greater part of them wore jackets like William's, for the Northern cold is as little to be trifled with as the Northern heat. And William was among them and of them, her hands deep in her pockets, her ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... "That's a deputation frae the Callyfloor C.C. I gae them a tume orange box a week or twa syne to haud their bats an' wickets, an' ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... matches, too." The count took out a match and lit it, and the underground stream was lit by a faint ruddy glow. The channel, covered by a semicircular arch, was just wide enough for one boat to pass through, with oars out. The black water flowed silently by in a sluggish, Stygian stream. Bats, startled by the light, fluttered in their faces, and ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... evening they crawled up to prove the weather; each evening, of late, they had shambled back again into the gloomy depths, cannoning awkwardly against each other, snarling and grumbling. The temper of bats is uncertain, and hunger does not ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... countenance, or else his portrait-painters must have been mere block-heads, for no two of their productions were alike. I saw smiling Davids, frowning Davids, mild Davids, and ferocious Davids,—Davids with oblique eyes, red noses, and cavernous mouths,—and Davids as blind as bats, or with great goggle-orbs, aquiline nasal organs, blue at the tips, and lips made for a lisp. One David had a brown Welsh wig on his head, and was anachronistically attired in a snuff-colored coat, black ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... creatures—lambs and kids gamboling, goats and rams tossing their horns, foxes, furry waves of squirrels, rabbits kicking up their heels, Fauns and Nymphs rollicking, frogs and crickets and serpents. Above them flew birds and butterflies and beetles and bats in swirling clouds. Full-voiced, the glorious pipes sang. "Come, come, run, run! Follow, leap and dance, adore and obey! Run, oh, run, heed me before all passes! Follow, before it is too late, too ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... and we, ye, and they, are all bats; and I'm a crow, especially when I stand a'top of this pine tree here. Caw! caw! caw! caw! caw! caw! Ain't I a crow? And where's the scare-crow? There he stands; two bones stuck into a pair of old trowsers, and two more poked into the sleeves ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... Darlot was rather pleasantly situated on rising ground by the side of the blow; behind us, sheer cliffs of conglomerate, worn and weathered into queer little caves, the floors of which were covered inches deep by the droppings of bats and small wallabies; and, stretching away to the South, an open plain enclosed in an endless sea of scrub. Every morning we witnessed the strange phenomenon of a lake appearing in the sky to the South, miles away, above the scrub, a lake surrounded by steep white cliffs. This mirage would ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... time, lifted her out of bed like a rabbit (she hated that and yelled), and, as I had promised, set her out in the verandah with the bats and the moonlight. At this she howled. Then she used coarse language—not to me, but to the bullterrier—till she coughed with exhaustion. Then she ran round the house trying every door. Then she went off to the stables and barked as though some ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... overhead, carrying with it the sweetness of the hayfields and the honeysuckle in the hedges, owls hooted mysteriously, and the frogs croaked in some distant pond. Creatures never seen in the daytime were now awake and busy. As Lilac ran along, the bats whirred close past her face, and she saw in the grass by the wayside the steady little light of the glow-worms. It was certainly very late; there was hardly a glimmer of hope that anyone would be up at the farm. It was equally certain ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... from all the rest Safely buttoned within his vest; And in the loft above the shed Himself he locks, with thimble and thread And wax and hammer and buckles and screws, And all such things as geniuses use;— Two bats for patterns, curious fellows! A charcoal-pot and a pair of bellows; An old hoop-skirt or two, as well as Some wire and several old umbrellas; A carriage-cover, for tail and wings; A piece of harness; and straps and ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... its might with its enormous shovel claws is the occupation of its whole life; constant night surrounds it; its embryo eyes only make it avoid the light. It alone is truly an animal nocturnum; not cats, owls, and bats, who see by night. But what, now, does it attain by this life, full of trouble and devoid of pleasure? Food and the begetting of its kind; thus only the means of carrying on and beginning anew the same doleful course in new individuals. In such examples it ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... evolutionists that wings as organs of flight have been independently evolved in at least four different lines—namely, in insects, the fossil pterodactyls, birds and bats. That an organ so highly specialized as any one of these wings could be evolved seems improbable; while the evolution of the four different kinds, independently of each other, only increases the improbability. ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... is, full of the warmest instincts, but they have been unwinged from birth so they can't fly to you. One of the most talkative people living, in some ways I am strangely speechless. Why! I haven't even told Boggley, though if he had eyes to see instead of being the blindest of dear old bats, my shining face would betray me. I keep on smiling in a perfectly imbecile manner, so that people exclaim, "Well, you are indecently glad to get away," and when they ask Why? I point them to the scene in the Old Testament where Hadad said unto Pharaoh, "Let me depart, that ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... troubles his close friend, Greenough, wrote him: "You lose your hold on the American public with rubbing down their skins with brick-bats." And yet, during Greenough's dark days, he said: "What is the use of blowing up bladders for posterity to jump upon for the mere pleasure of hearing them crack?" The author's keen delight in architecture, sculpture, and painting then gave him daily pleasure ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... meet quite a few people in the theater who are bats on numerology, they use it to pick stage-names. But I'd never have guessed it of Martin. He always struck me as ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... Hall, with its one chair of authority, high-backed and wickered, once the terror of luckless poacher, or self-forgetful maiden—so common since, that bats have roosted ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... lullaby! Baby, hush that little cry! Light is dying, Bats are flying, Bees to-day with work have done; So, till comes the morrow's sun, Let sleep kiss those bright eyes ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... So "air-population" must be the equivalent of "fowl" in verse 20, and "every winged fowl after its kind," verse 21. I suppose I may take it for granted that by "fowl" we have here to understand birds—at any rate primarily. Secondarily, it may be that the bats and the extinct pterodactyles, which were flying reptiles, come under the same head. But whether all insects are "creeping things" of the land-population, or whether flying insects are to be included under the denomination of "winged fowl," is a point for the decision of Hebrew exegetes. Lastly, ...
— The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature - Essay #4 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... coal-car had formerly run still remained; and cautiously walking upon this causeway through the quagmire of mud, Miselle and Mr. Williams penetrated some distance into the mine, but saw nothing more wonderful than mould and other fungi, bats and toads. Retracing their steps, they followed the tram-way to its termination at the top of a high bank, down which the coals were shot into a cart stationed below. This coal is of an inferior quality, bituminous, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... black bats were flying about his brain, each charged with a different portent of disaster. Once more the unreality of the whole affair overwhelmed him. How could he have been so fatuous as to believe that he had really won such a woman? He remembered his first ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... diplomatic spinster requested that the boy be removed from her school—all this according to the earnest biographer. The facts are that the boy had so much energy and restless ambition; was so full of brimming curiosity, mischief and imagination—introducing turtles, bats and mice on various occasions—that he led the whole school a merry chase and wore the nerves of the ancient maiden ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard |
