"Bird" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... black-soil springs, was a long, low, oblong weatherboard-and-shingle building, with blind, broken windows in the gable-ends, and a wide steep verandah roof slanting down almost to the level of the window-sills—there was something sinister about it, I thought—like the hat of a jail-bird slouched over his eyes. The place looked both deserted and haunted. I saw no light, but that was because of the moonlight outside. The mare turned in at the corner of the clearing to take a short cut to the shanty, and, as she ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... the last of the woods and copses will have disappeared five years hence, and there is no trace of moorland left; in Kaluga, on the contrary, the moors extend over tens, the forest over hundreds of miles, and a splendid bird, the grouse, is still extant there; there are abundance of the friendly larger snipe, and the loud-clapping partridge cheers and startles the sportsman and his dog ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... warm, genial, and peaceful, save for the melancholy notes of poor ill-used Philomel, who is foolish enough to visit a cruel country, wherein every bird is merely regarded as a toothsome morsel for the family pot. We bird-lovers of Britain, with our Selborne Societies and our Wild Birds' Protection Acts, find it extremely difficult to understand ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... the dewy flowers, I see her sweet and fair; I hear her in the tunefu' birds, I hear her charm the air: There's not a bonie flower that springs By fountain, shaw, or green; There's not a bonie bird that sings, But ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... ordinarily applied by means of reeds which were either beaten out at the end into fine brushes so that the characters were painted rather than written, or sharpened and split at the end like a modern pen. Later the quill of the goose or some other large bird, cut to a point and split, largely took the place of the reed and continued to be the writer's tool for centuries. In later years they have been displaced by the modern pen of steel or gold. It is interesting to note that bronze pens imitating quills were used ...
— Books Before Typography - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #49 • Frederick W. Hamilton
... And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies. And ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... distinguished myself in anything, I have not taken one prize, my composition has never once been marked T. B. R, to be read; to be read aloud, that is; and I have never done anything but to try to be perfect in every recitation and to be ladylike in deportment. I am always asked to sing, but any bird can sing. I was discouraged last night and had a crying time down here on the rug before the grate. Miss Prudence had gone to hear Wendell Phillips, with one of the boarders, so I had a good long time to cry my cry out all ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... the bird rose with a roar that brought a cry of terror to the girl's lips. Involuntarily she gripped ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... but Richmond was gay, nevertheless. The heavens opened in fold on fold of golden sunshine, and a bird of winter, rising above the city, poured out a flood of song. The boys had a holiday and they were shouting in the streets. Officers in their best uniforms rode by, and women, bringing treasured dresses of silk or satin from old chests, appeared now in gay ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... the capon are similar to those of the hen, but he still has the plumage and the spurs of the entire cock. Many investigators have made experiments in relation to this subject, and most of them have found that complete castration is difficult, and that portions of the testes left in the bird during the operation become grafted in some other position either on the parietal peritoneum, or on that covering the intestines, and produce spermatozoa, which, of course hare no outlet. In such cases the secondary male characters may fee more or less ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... spring had no flight, no song, but went like a half-fledged bird, hopping tentatively through the undergrowth. The bright springing mercury that carpeted the open spaces had only just hung out its pale flowers, and honeysuckle leaves were still tongues of green fire. Between the larch boles and under the thickets of honeysuckle and blackberry came a tawny ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... and the amusement of the others was marked. Every time she called to the bird it flitted to another limb, and every time the bird flitted she wrung her hands and cried. An empty cage upon a lawn bench told ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... business, finds himself with a mind relaxed and wearied, will not be tempted to sit at home dreaming over impossible scenes of pleasure, or to go for amusement to haunts of coarse excitement, if he have in every hedge-bank, and wood land, and running stream, in every bird among the boughs, and every cloud above his head, stores of interest which will enable him to forget awhile himself, and man, and all the cares, even all the hopes of life, and to be alone with the inexhaustible beauty and glory of Nature, and of God ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... have had lots of allocations. These are not the times to conceal hereditary distinctions. But now comes the serious work. We must have one or two men of known wealth upon the list. The chaff is nothing without a decoy-bird. Now, can't you help me ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... on the bignonias. They are fonder of them than any other blossoms. See! he has gone up into the funnel of the flower. Ha! he is out again. Listen to his whirring wings, like the hum of a great bee. It is from that he takes his name of 'humming-bird.' See his throat, how it glitters—just like ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... way into her modest room, which was bright and sunny with a flowered paper on the walls, potted plants and a bird-cage. She then began a recital of the interview she had had with Susy. This threw no fresh light upon the case and at the end, ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... came to take the very story which STRADA tell's to show what a Genius CLAUDIAN had. OVID's Metamorphoses is full of such Fairy and Romantick Tales, and he might well enough have given a Description of a Bird's contending with a Man for the Prize in Singing, but methinks 'tis not wholly probable enough ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... we can tame the goldfinch and the linnet; but we shall never reclaim the guinea-fowl, or accustom the swallow to a cage. Teach the Gipsy to read, or even to write; he remains a Gipsy still. His love of wandering is as keen as is the instinct of a migratory bird for its annual passage; and exactly as the prisoned cuckoo of the first year will beat itself to death against its bars when September draws near, so the Gipsy, even when most prosperous, will never so far forsake the traditions of his tribe as to stay ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... contest against a genuine power and one that had grown wiser by losses, for Mithridates was now having recourse to shields, and swords and horses. Lucullus retorting said, that Pompeius was going to fight with a phantom and a shadow of war, being accustomed, like a lazy bird, to descend upon the bodies that others had slaughtered and to tear the remnants of wars; for so had he appropriated to himself the victories over Sertorius, Lepidus and Spartacus, though Crassus, Metellus and ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... other. "It would be easy for me to get in through the window, were it not that one hates to scare the pretty bird; ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... very busy plucking the feathers off a bird and dropping them on a sheet placed for that purpose on the floor. She is trilling to herself in the lightness of her heart. We may remember that Tweeny, alone among the women, had dressed wisely for an island when they fled the yacht, and her going-away gown still adheres to her, though ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... life, for every spirit from head to heel is such as his love is, and therefore such as his life is; and to convert his life into its opposite is to destroy the spirit completely. The angels declare that it would be easier to change a night-owl into a dove, or a horned-owl into a bird of paradise, than to change an infernal spirit into an angel of heaven. That man after death continues to be such as his life had been in the world can be seen above in its own chapter (n. 470-484). From all this it is evident that ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... on this property will be punished with the utmost severity of private chastisement and prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law. Lawrence Boythorn." These he showed us from the drawing-room window, while his bird was hopping about his head, and he laughed, "Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!" to that extent as he pointed them out that I really thought he would have ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... As the bird and the butterfly kites of the Chinese can be bought at a low price, I shall not attempt a description of them here, but the barrel kite, which is distinctly American, cannot be ignored. This kite was tried some years ago by the ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... evening of a beautiful summer's day, I stood, with thousands of my fellow creatures, on the dock of one of our northern cities, to witness the departure of a noble steamer, which sat upon the blue waters like a sea bird at rest, freighted with the wealth and beauty of the land. The golden sun had sunk behind the curtains of the west, bathing the earth with a flood of crimson glory; and the noisy hum of busy life was hushed, as the quiet shades of twilight fell upon ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... 'spirit world,' holding converse with the indwellers thereof, some of whom they once knew in the body. And in going to these cities they were accompanied by their guardian angels, and appeared to be flying, using their hands and arms for wings, moving with as much velocity as the wings of a bird. ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... confusion; deception breeds and thrives; confidence dies, and universal suspicion reigns. Each man feels an impulse to kill his neighbor, lest he be first killed by him. Revenge and retaliation follow, and all this, as before said, may be among honest men only. But this is not all. Every foul bird comes abroad, and every dirty reptile rises up. These add crime to confusion. Strong measures deemed indispensable, but harsh at best, such men make worse by maladministration. Murders for old grudges and murders for ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... cockatoos and wild pigeons drinking salt water. I was stationed at a place called Kabaira, the then "furthest-out" trading station on the whole island, and as I had but little to do in the way of work, I found plenty of time to study the bird-life in the vicinity. Parrots of several varieties, and all of beautiful plumage, were very plentiful, and immense flocks of white cockatoos frequented the rolling, grassy downs which lay between my home and the German head-station in Blanche Bay, twenty miles distant, while the heavy forest ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... allotted to three or four birds is not more than ten by twenty feet, and Mr. George Ethelbert Walsh tells of a case where sixty pheasants were kept in excellent condition in a house ten by fifty feet, with five yards attached, averaging 10 X 25 feet. However, with pheasants, as with all the bird family, especially turkeys, the more ground they have for ranging the less liable they will be to disease. The chief difficulty in breeding game birds like the pheasant is to secure the insects, such as flies, maggots, and ant eggs, which are the natural food of the young. Sufficient green food ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... Prince," he explained, as they walked along, "is a noisome place. There are quagmires even in the middle of it, where a man may sink in and be never heard of again. Every sort of vermin abounds there, every unclean insect and bird are to be found in the thickets. I suppose the character of the place has encouraged the local superstition in which every one of ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... feather bed, Missy wasn't yet distracted by daytime affairs. She dreamily regarded the patch of blue sky showing through the window, and bits of fleecy cloud, and flying specks of far-away birds. How wonderful to be a bird and live up in the beautiful sky! When she died and became an angel, she could live up there! But was she sure she'd become an angel? That reflection gradually brought her thoughts to the events of ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... into laughter. "There ain't a gamer old bird in the valley than Pop," Jeff cried. "C'm awn, Pop, I'll bet yuh ten dollars the kid ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... slain the body of the fierce musical Sphinx. Alas me! my father; what Grecian, or what Barbarian, or what other of the noble in birth, of mortal blood, in time of old ever bore such manifest sufferings of so many ills? Wretched I, how do I lament! What bird, sitting on the highest boughs of the oak or pine, will sing responsive to my lamentations, who have lost my mother? who weep the strain of grief in addition to these moans for my brothers, about to pass my long life in floods of tears.—Which shall I bewail? On which first shall I scatter ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... very sick for home, Sick for the home that my love haunts! Far from that foreign country, As the bird far from its nest, I am ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... they came to a short street with a row of small houses on each side. Each house had a garden in front and a porch. In the very last one which had more ground around it than the rest, Miss Newman lived. The porch was covered with vines and in the garden there was a perfect wealth of flowers. A bird-cage in which a canary was singing, hung near the window. One end of the porch was screened by a bamboo shade. It was a very pretty nesty little place. Huddled down in a chair, with her head supported by pillows ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard
... Great Britain had left foreign competitors far behind in the instrumental department of astronomy. The quadrants and circles of Bird, Cary and Ramsden were unapproached abroad. The reflecting telescope came into existence and reached maturity on British soil. The refracting telescope was cured of its inherent vices by British ingenuity. But with the opening of the nineteenth century, ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... the wake of gull and frigate-bird the Wreckers come, the Spoilers of the dead,—savage skimmers of the sea,—hurricane-riders wont to spread their canvas-pinions in the face of storms; Sicilian and Corsican outlaws, Manila-men from the marshes, deserters from many navies, Lascars, marooners, refugees of a hundred nationalities,—fishers ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... maybe learn to love me better when she saw how much she was to me. It was coming summer, and I made things look as home-like and as pretty as I could. She liked flowers, and I fixed a garden for her; she was fond of pets, and I got her a bird, a kitten, and a dog to play with her; she fancied gay colors and tasty little matters, so I filled her rooms with all the handsome things I could afford, and when it was done, I was as pleased as any boy, thinking ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... bird," they said, "his nerve's gone at last. All right," they shouted, "don't you worry. The storeman will look after the dump. You go to bed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... at him, but now her eyes met his fearlessly, and in their beautiful depths he read an expression of helpless repulsion, such as a bird might evince for the serpent whose glittering ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... clearly where we were. The extreme right of the position held by our army would be, at least, ten miles east, and the Confederate left scarcely nearer. Beauregard was off in here somewhere,—at Bird's Ferry according to our camp reports the evening previous. This knowledge prompted ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... in Brion's mind. In spite of muffled cloth and silence, he knew them for what they were. The eyes were empty of expression and unmoving, yet were filled with the same negative emptiness as those of a bird of prey. They could look on life, death, and the rending of flesh with the same lack of interest and compassion. All this Brion knew in an instant of time, without words being spoken. Between the time he lifted one foot and walked a step he understood ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... the make-believe women we have turned loose in our streets!—where do they come from? Not out of Boston parlors, I trust. Why, there is n't a beast or a bird that would drag its tail through the dirt in the way these creatures do their dresses. Because a queen or a duchess wears long robes on great occasions, a maid-of-all-work or a factory-girl thinks she must make herself a nuisance by trailing through the street, picking up ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... morning. We had little wind all night, and in the morning, as soon as it was light we saw another high peaked island; at eight it bore south-south-east half-east, distance eight leagues: and this I knew to be Bird Isle. It is laid down in our drafts in latitude 5 degrees 9 minutes south, which is too far southerly by twenty-seven miles, according to our observation, and the like error in laying down the Turtle Islands might be the occasion of ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... nymph pouring water on Neckar Street and two nymphs on a reservoir in the palace garden show his fine taste in architectural sculpture. Among his other works are a statue of Alexander, a monument to Count Zeppelin, a Cupid, and a Maiden lamenting a Dead Bird. Some of his works are among the very best productions of modern sculpture; his portraits are noble and true to nature; the works named here are by no means all that he did, and we should add that his efforts in religious subjects exhibit ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... doves were conspicuous; the alcalde says that six or eight species occur here, the different kinds singing at different seasons; one of them had a peculiarly sad and mournful song, and is heard in the early morning. Another bird, the primavera, seems to be like our mockingbird, imitating the notes and cries of many other birds and animals. At two places we passed black lines of foraging ants, and he told us that insects, frogs, toads, and even snakes, ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... are lords of their own soil, and of course, to a certain degree, independent—they therefore will resist tyranny—they will equally oppose anarchy because they are aware that in any storm which may arise they must abide its fury. The merchant, with his thousands, can seek a shelter—to the mere bird of passage, who has no "abiding country and who seeks none to come," it is of little moment whether stability or confusion predominate, but to the former who is enchained to the State, peace and ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast
... applause went up, and, "encore, encore," the forestieri shouted, "encore!" And other gondolas came gliding up, and the spreading fan stretched in ever widening compass, divided now, like the pinions of a great sable bird studded with dots of light. Then, while the flowing moonlight brightened, and a perfumed breeze came wafted over the water from the rose gardens of the Giudecca, the sweet voice again took up the simple ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... A mocking-bird came at last to build her nest in a bush beside the garden, and her mate began to make the sky ring with his song. The puzzle of the feathered tribe whose habits he couldn't fathom was the whip-poor-will. His mother seemed to dislike his ominous sound. But the soft mournful notes ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... fervent prayer that God would crown it with honor, protect it from treason, and send it down to our children, with all the blessings of civilization, liberty and religion. Terrible in battle, may it be beneficent in peace. Happily, no bird or beast of prey has been inscribed upon it. The stars that redeem the night from darkness, and the beams of red light that beautify the morning, have been united upon its folds. As long as the sun endures, or the stars, ...
— The Flag Replaced on Sumter - A Personal Narrative • William A. Spicer
... woods were calm and silent. It was impressive, if disappointing; and, when at last the fir stillness was broken by a succession of trumpet notes from the Great Pileated Woodpecker, the sound went rolling on and on, in reverberating echoes that might well have alarmed the bird himself. ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... largest black gobbler Sawney was on terms of deadly enmity; for on more than one occasion had his precious biscuit been plucked from his unsuspicious hand, and borne away in triumph by the wily bird. Half of feeding time was usually consumed by Sawney in throwing small stones at his enemy, who, as he was never by any chance smitten, would raise his head from time to time and ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... be counted, but perhaps three had passed, and through the scented, velvety darkness there came a touch of gray in the east, which changed to pink, then to opal, as the coming sun tinged the low-lying clouds. The animal and bird life began to stir, preparing to greet the beauty of the dawn, or rather, to start on their affairs of the day, for it is likely that the denizens of the prairie had as little thought for the glory of the sunrise as had Injun and Whitey, ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... observed that a dove, inasmuch as the only obstacle it has to overcome is the resistance of the air, might suppose that if only the air were out of the way it could fly with greater rapidity and ease. Yet if the air were withdrawn, and the bird should try to fly in a vacuum, it would fall instantly to the ground, unable to fly at all. The very element that offers the opposition to flying is at the same time the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... The Dutch, amongst whom there are very severe penalties for those who are convicted of killing this bird. They are kept tame in almost all their towns, and particularly at the Hague, of the arms of which they make a part. The common people of Holland are said to entertain a superstitious sentiment, that if the whole species of them should become extinct, they should ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... 'em! Give it to 'em!" Grandfather Fragini cried, his old voice a quavering bird note in the pandemonium. "My, but they do come ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... feasting mediaevally on an old roast peacock, in company with the trusty friends, who had also been taken very bad on that occasion; and they ever afterwards avoided that dish, but at their banquets would have the peacock's head and what was left of its tail tacked on to some more digestible bird...." ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... buried among trees," says Wordsworth; "a metaphor expressing the love of seclusion by which this bird is marked; and characterizing its note as not partaking of the shrill and the piercing, and therefore more easily deadened by the intervening shade; yet a note so peculiar, and withal so pleasing, that the breeze, gifted with that love of the sound which the poet feels, ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... contrast. How can we laugh over there when they are crying here? Perhaps more than anything else, the difference in conditions was brought home to me as I motored the other day through a country where there was absolutely no sign of life, not a tree or a bird—except those war birds, the aeroplanes, ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... been perched upon a stone griffin sculptured on a house eave near. August had felt for the crumbs of his loaf in his pocket, and had thrown them to the little bird sitting so ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... entrance to a chapel on the summit. There is hardly a grave that has not its little enclosure planted with shrubbery, and a thick mass of foliage half conceals each funeral stone. The sighing of the wind, as the branches rise and fall upon it—the occasional note of a bird among the trees, and the shifting of light and shade upon the tombs beneath have a soothing effect upon the mind; and I doubt whether any one can enter that enclosure, where repose the dust and ashes of so many great ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... has undoubtedly accurate ideas as to points of the compass, and faultless proficiency in depicting bird's-eye views, but he neglects entirely the putting in of various ups and down, slants and windings of the country, which apparently twist the north pole around to the east-south-east. You start due west on a bee line, according to directions; after about ten feet you scramble over a fallen ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... secret worships were naturally still more popular. As early as Cato's time the Chaldean horoscope-caster had begun to come into competition with the Etruscan -haruspex- and the Marsian bird-seer;(16) star-gazing and astrology were soon as much at home in Italy as in their dreamy native land. In 615 the Roman -praetor peregrinus- directed all the Chaldeans to evacuate Rome and Italy within ten days. The same fate at the same time befel the Jews, who had admitted Italian proselytes ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... luck more excruciatingly bad,—to all which apologies very little attention was paid. Lily and Bell had not come there to inquire after partridges, and would have forgiven the sportsmen even though no single bird had been killed. But they could not forgive the want of good spirits which ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... the ice in north-flowing rivers is always wearisome for those who are waiting to ascend. Beginning to melt farther south, the ice at the mouth is always last to move. Besides, the arrival was anxiously awaited of Bird, Sinclair and House. By continuous urging of the dull and inefficient workmen to greater effort, Miles Macdonell had succeeded in securing four boats—none too well built—but commodious enough to carry his boat-crews, ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... that delightful engine of her thoughts, That blabb'd them with such pleasing eloquence, Is torn from forth that pretty hollow cage, Where, like a sweet melodious bird, it sung Sweet varied notes, ...
— The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... which makes its nest in a semi-circle when it is attaching it to a wall, which builds it in a quarter circle when it is in an angle, and in a circle upon a tree; that bird acts always in the same way? That hunting-dog which you have disciplined for three months, does it not know more at the end of this time than it knew before your lessons? Does the canary to which you ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... it was with something like the lightness of a bird that Sime descended the shaft. At ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... the Pigeon we shall see that in pure breeds of various colours, when a blue bird is occasionally produced, certain black marks invariably appear on the wings and tail; so again, when variously coloured breeds are crossed, blue birds with the same black marks are frequently produced. We shall further see that these facts are explained by, and afford strong ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... the sandhills. White balls on tombs. Australian shamrock. Old canoe. Dry state of the country. Danger and difficulty of watching the cattle on the riverbanks. Uniform character of the Darling. The Grenadier bird. The Doctor and the natives. A range discovered by refraction. Dance of natives. A lake. Tombs of a tribe. Plan of natives' hut. Method of making cordage. The tall native's first visit. Channel of a small stream. The carts beset on the journey by very covetous natives. Mischievous signals. Cattle ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... for me. However, I shall answer briefly, as I am writing just after the journey, and shall reply in particular on those matters which are, as you write, strictly to the point. Men's thoughts are so varied, 'to each his own bird-song', that it is impossible to satisfy everyone. My own feelings are that I want to follow what is best to do, God is my witness. Those feelings which I had in my youth have been corrected partly by age, partly by experience of ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... I did not know, for of these, being a beautiful woman, she found many. The end of it was that she departed back to Thebes with a soldier whom I had never seen, for I was always working at home thinking of the babe who was dead and how happiness is a bird that no man can snare, though sometimes, of its own will, it flies in ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... her that had he been alone he would have gone out and tramped the snowy streets for half the night. But he would not leave her alone in the hotel. "No, sir," said Uncle Henry. "Robert would never forgive me if anything happened to his honey-bird. And fire, or something, might break out ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... said this he gently strove to disengage himself from her hold. The struggle was too powerful for her nature, and like the poor bird when under the magic influence of the serpent, yields itself to the destructive charm, Theodora, unable any longer to combat with her overpowering feelings, threw herself into her lover's arms, and exclaimed passionately upon his bosom—"No, no, ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... 'Like a bird,' answered the lady. 'It will be great fun. I shall pick up copy about the habits of the middle classes ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... had noble and spiritual motives for his simplest and most common actions, God made use of this for the instruction of men by the example of a bird. Near the Convent of Mount Ranier, or Mount Colombo, there was a nest of crested larks, the mother of which came every day to feed out of the hand of the Servant of God and took sufficient for herself and her brood: ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... said the hope of the family; "I'll tell you what we'll do. Let's give the little beggar another month of it. Let her off lightly THIS time, and the moment the lawyer-bird's gone, read her the riot-act. Pull her up with a jerk. Ride her on ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... Buzzby, on being brought thus unexpectedly within reach of the ball, braced up his energies for a kick; but seeing O'Riley coming down towards him like a runaway locomotive, he pulled up, saying quietly to himself, "Ye may take it all yer own way, lad; I'm too old a bird to go for to make my carcass a buffer for a madcap like you to ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... sorry!" he panted fiercely; "ay, that indeed I am. Sorry that I did not wring her neck as the fowler wrings the neck of the bird his shaft hath brought down; sorry I did not cast her headlong down the steep precipice, that there might be one less of the hated race contaminating the air of our pure Wales with their poisonous breath. Sorry! ay, that I am! I would my hand had done a deed which should have set proud Edward's ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... would be a place of great business, profit and glory, and would require a man of first-rate abilities. Lucy has painted a beautiful portrait of her bullfinch, picking at a bunch of white currants—the currants would, I am sure, be picked by any live bird. ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... I decided to refrain from so doing. I recalled the fact that we ourselves are not entirely free from certain petty national economies. Abroad we house our embassies up back streets, next door to bird and animal stores; and at home there is many a public institution where the doormat says WELCOME! in large letters, but the soap is chained and the roller towel is padlocked ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... leave, this day of all the year, Your silly suits, petitions, quarrels, pleas? Could ye not leave, this once in seven years, Our Lady to come holy-quiet from Mass. Lean on the wall, and loose her cage-bird heart, To lift and breast and dance upon the breeze. Draws home her lord ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... the two following may for the present be sufficient instances: by the figure of a vulture they indicate the name of nature; because naturalists declare that no males are found in this class of bird. And by the figure of a bee making honey they indicate a king; showing by such a sign that stings as well as sweetness are the characteristics of a ruler; and ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... see is enchanting, but there is a strange stillness in the groves; rarely does the song of a bird break the silence; indeed, I know but one warbler whose note has any music in it, the uguisu, by some enthusiasts called the Japanese nightingale—at best, a king in the kingdom of the blind. The scarcity of animal life of all descriptions, man and mosquitoes alone ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... am going to do, Aleck, after I have had a few lessons. I hope to fly right over the house, just like a bird." ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer
... no unlike the serpent that's more subtle than any beast of the field. She has a way of glowerin' a body and giving a bit of a girn to her mouth. Man or woman or red-coated sojer itself, they'd need to be up gey an' early that would get the better o' her. A bird might be lang afore it could find time to build a nest in her ear, so it might. Eh! but, my poor lad, it's a sorry thing to think of ye lyin' the night through among the hard stones and me in my warm bed. Eh! but it grieves me sore—— ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... physical tiredness vanishing under the magic spell of impending action, Wilmshurst led his extended platoon toward their allotted positions. It was slow work. The ground was difficult; every spot likely to afford concealment to a hostile sniper had to be carefully examined. The absence of bird life was ominous. It meant that either the returning Huns had disturbed the feathered denizens or else the advance of the Haussas had driven them over the enemy position, in which case the wily Hun ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... heart-strings round thee cling, Close as thy bark, old friend! Here shall the wild-bird sing, And still thy branches bend. Old tree! the storm still brave! And, woodman, leave the spot; While I've a hand to save, Thy ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... "A little bird told me," grinned Professor Young. Then, glancing at Tess, and seeing how white she was, there rose within him a righteous indignation, and he went on, "You might employ your time ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... bird?" Romer asked, getting up to look at a strange, shiny, abnormal-looking parrot on a ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... lingered, but signs were abroad of her coming departure. Noons were hot, and nights were chill; bird carols were infrequent; chrysanthemums were unfurling their buds. The vines that festooned the windows of the children's convalescent ward sent an occasional yellow-coated messenger to the lilac bushes below—a messenger that never ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... and love may go, And fly, like a bird, from tree to tree: But I will love no more, no more, Till Ellen Adair ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... attempt to check him, and only clung to the saddle pale with fear as he neared the high gate which closed its course. As he rose with a grand lift to take the leap she closed her eyes in terror. Easy and swift as a bird's flight was the leap with which the strong-limbed horse cleared the high palings and lighted on the soft springy turf within; another bound or two and she heard a sharp, strong voice which rang above the storm with a tone of command that betrayed ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... certainly was, and of a species Talbot had never before laid eyes on. The bird stood on the crumbling rim of the mining shaft and regarded him with golden eyes. Its body was as large as that of a buzzard, and its head had a flat, reptilian look, unpleasant to see. Nor was that the ...
— The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds • Francis Flagg
... a chair three feet from where he stood. The victim of this, his first excursion into the fields of mesmerism, tripped with bird-like steps to the chair and sat down. Barnes went easily toward her and sat down on the arm. He was as solemn about it as if his every move ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... tiger-owls yelped and hallooed across the valley; all night the spectral whip-poor-will whispered its husky, frightened warning. And long after midnight a tiny bird awoke and sang monotonously ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... and with narrowing eyes watched the stranger's approach. Something wrong somewhere, he reasoned. He had ordered a speed-boat. One that would beat Mascola's. A craft with real lines and bird-like grace like the Fuor d'Italia. The oncoming launch, he observed bitterly, was the direct antithesis of his expectations. Surely there could be no speed in that squatty packet with her sagging bow and queer looking box-affair ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... fowl into four quarters, put them on a bird-spit, and tie that on another spit, and half roast. Or half roast the whole fowl, and finish it on the gridiron, which will make it less dry than if wholly broiled. Another way is to split the fowl down the back, pepper, salt, and ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... harder, attacked the bed as bravely as he had done the fowl; and, as he had as good an inclination to sleep as he had had to eat, he took scarcely longer time to be snoring harmoniously than he had employed in picking the last bones of the bird. ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... In the matter of sacrifices the Law had in view the poverty of the offerers; so that those who could not have a four-footed animal at their disposal, might at least offer a bird; and that he who could not have a bird might at least offer bread; and that if a man had not even bread he might offer flour ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... proceedings described occupied the white people, the servants, Roxy and Virgie, in their clean Sunday suits, loitered around the bridge behind the store, or strayed a little way up the Manokin brook, hearing the mocking-bird rend his breast in all the ventriloquy ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... for a moment oblivious to everything: the evening bird fluttering among the rafters, the song of the nightingale without, the sighing wind in the tower entry, the rustics in the doorway, the group in the choir. Presently he became conscious ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... followed by the pause as it turned, and its gradual crescendo as it approached again. Otherwise everything outside was strangely silent; as the hot hours of midday and early afternoon went by there was no note of bird-music, nor any sound of wind in the elm-tops. Just a little breeze stirred from time to time, enough to make the slats of the half-drawn Venetian blind rattle faintly. Earlier in the day there had come in from the window the smell of dew-damp earth, but ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... short slope and found themselves looking towards the sea over the face of a dizzy cliff. A falcon, on their approach, started with rustle of wings from its ledge and then swayed crazily over the abyss. Watching this bird, the bishop felt a sudden voice in his stomach. A sensation of blackness came before his eyes—sky and sea were merged together—his feet were treading on air. He ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... a dear, and he is going to marry a bred-in-the-bone countess next January. You will like him, because he is every bit as much in love with his real countess are you are with a sham one. He is a bird of your feather. And now don't you want to come with me to ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... consistently lived the life of a selfish butterfly. And I cling to it. Despise me if you will. I do. I like my pretty clothes and my car, and how I do love my two saddle-horses! And I like dancing, too—I turn into a bird in the tree-tops when I dance, with not a care, not a responsibility. I don't want to give all that up. Have I got to? Have I got to "lay down my life" to find it? For, somehow, cling as I will to all these things, something is pushing, pushing ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... only seemed to accentuate the colour of his puffy pink cheeks, whilst the blackness of his little beady eyes and pointed nose rather gave him the appearance of some overfed bird gorged to repletion after a particularly satisfying meal, slightly apoplectic, with its beak out of focus. The Judge, moreover, appeared to be afflicted with a little wheezy asthmatical cough which attacked him at intervals as he prepared ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... question by a contemptuous fling at strong-minded women and hen-pecked husbands. The principle will gain more strength from the character of the arguments of its opponents than from any number of Bloomer conventions. The modern idea of the fashionable belle, floating like a bird of paradise through the soiree; the impersonation of motion and grace in the ball-room, indulging alternately in syncope and rapture over the marvelous adventures and despair of the hero of a mushroom romance, her rapid transition from ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... clothed with an enormous and riotous growth of calamaries, tree-ferns, cane and palm, which rocked and crashed in places as if some colossal wayfarers were pushing through them. Here and there along the edge of the cliffs sat tall beings with prodigious, saw-toothed beaks, like some species of bird ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... preserved, besides a numerous collection of foeti and monsters. To see these things properly; would require to pass several days in these rooms; but a week would not suffice to do justice to the grand Museum, every description of bird and beast that has been known to exist in our days may be found here stuffed, and preserved in glass cases with the nicest care; it appears strange to see an enormous elephant and a tall ostrich within ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... come, too," said Elizabeth, relieving the awkwardness of a rather long pause. "I always like to see you play. Kitty is as light as a bird," she added to Mr. Vivian, who bowed and looked ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... son from Iesi. He cursed his art and those who taught it him, vowing that thenceforth he would never work at large plate, but give his whole attention to those brothel gewgaws, since they were so well paid. Equally enraged on my side, I answered, that every bird sang its own note; that he talked after the fashion of the hovels he came from; but that I dared swear that I should succeed with ease in making his lubberly lumber, while he would never be successful in my brothel gewgaws. ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... the thigh-bone, so that the pelvis in this region has a T-shape, the ilium forming the cross-bar of the T, and the femur or thigh-bone the downward limb. Huxley shewed that a large number of the Dinosaurs had this and other peculiarities of the bird's pelvis, and separated these into a group which he called the "Ornithoscelida," seeing in them the closest representatives of the probable reptilian ancestors of birds. While further work and the discovery of a still greater number of extinct reptiles has made it less probable that these ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... A wee bird cam to our ha' door, He warbled sweet an' clearly, An' aye the owercome o' his sang Was, "Waes me for Prince Charlie." Oh! whan I heard the bonnie soun', The tears cam drappin' rarely; I took my bannet aff my head, For weel I lo'ed ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... they saw that the bird had come from Jove, they rushed the more against the Trojans, and were mindful of battle. Then none of the Greeks, numerous as they were, could have boasted that he had driven his swift steeds before Diomede, and urged them beyond the ditch, and fought against [the enemy]; for far the first ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... shady retirements. The sweetness and serenity of Nature and the quiet watchfulness of the sport gradually bring on pleasant fits of musing, which are now and then agreeably interrupted by the song of a bird, the distant whistle of the peasant, or perhaps the vagary of some fish leaping out of the still water and skimming transiently about its glassy surface. "When I would beget content," says Izaak Walton, "and increase confidence in the power and wisdom and providence of Almighty ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... of a greater economy than she had ever before attempted. All her feeble efforts to find employment and earn money had failed. She felt herself slipping down, and with all her courageous determination to save herself from social chaos she was like a bird fluttering at the brink of a chasm, unable to wing itself steadily out of danger. The Reddons, she knew, would soon need their apartment, for Marion was coming north in the first warm weather. Then there would be ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... rebuilt in two quadrangles, the chief of which fronted the Fleet river (now a sewer under the centre of Bridge Street). We have already given on page 12 a view of Bridewell as it appeared previous to the Great Fire; and the general bird's-eye view given on page 187 in the present number shows its appearance after it was rebuilt. Within the present century, Mr. Timbs says, the committee-rooms, chapel, and prisons were rebuilt, and the whole formed a large quadrangle, with an entrance from Bridge Street, the keystone ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the clerk, "that my replies haven't been sidetracked somewhere? I have seen people taking letters away from here all day, and that bird there just walked off ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Thereupon the bird began to repeat its vocabulary, much more extensive than that of ordinary Pollies; and Schaunard stood stupefied when he heard the animal, prompted by a female voice, reciting the speech of Theramenes with all the ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... troubles to think of. I have been to look at that wall, and it is useless to think of climbing it. If he had been a professional mason, Meyer could not have built it up better; no wonder that we have seen nothing more of the Molimo, for only a bird ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... of the world. The difference in their respective ages, so long ignored by him, now glared perpetually upon the Marchesino, even roused within him a certain condemnatory something that was almost akin to moral sense, a rare enough bird in Naples. He said to himself that Emilio was a wicked old man, "un vecchio briccone." The delights of sin were the prerogative of youth. Abruptly this illuminating fact swam, like a new comet, within the ken of the Marchesino. He towered towards the heights of ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... disturbed, came diving down, and flapped its wings across the burial-ground. The sight of something, moving there, almost startled Charles out of his senses, and the matter was not much mended when he discovered it was only a bird. He turned, and flew down the passage to the entrance quicker than he had come up it; but, instead of passing out, he found the iron gate closed. What could have shut it? There was no wind. And if there had been ever so boisterous a wind, it could scarcely have moved that little ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... me," rejoined the valet; "I warrant you I'll find a way when the time comes, and that will very likely be no further off than to-morrow, to tempt the silly little bird into the snare of the fowler." Saying this, the valet rose as if to depart, but at the same moment the fiery little king of the kitchen bounded from his chair, sprang at him, and seized him by ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... have the rock in his pocket, and he just lent it to me to throw at a bird right above the window. It was a nice round one, and he brought it from home to see if he could kill anything. It most killed the minister, and the rock is a little bluggy. Isn't it, Jimmy? He's got it in his ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... frankly could not understand the attraction of sport, and the things that pleased her brother; she was afraid of the hawks, and liked to stroke a horse and kiss his soft nose better than to ride him. But, after all, Anthony liked to watch the towering bird, and to hear and indeed increase the thunder of the hoofs across the meadows behind the stomping hawk; and so she did her best to like them too; and she was often torn two ways by her sympathy for the partridge on the one hand, as it sped ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... flavour of the Goodwins but at any rate the sea-bird does not sweep to the raging summit of a wave, or glide more easily from its seething crest down the dark deep blue slope to its windless trough, or more safely than the Deal boatmen in ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... that had concealed me between me and the pirates, I crawled to one of these wide-spreading bunches of gigantic leaves drooping to the ground, and managed to get behind it. But as I rolled under the stalks a bird rose near me and screamed shrilly in long-drawn cries of alarm, and several of its young, hunting for cover, set up a racket in the ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... consolation in those evils; and I daresay at this moment, now you are laid up, you are the person of the most importance in the whole house—Sarah is sliding about the room with cordials in her hands and eyes; Libby is sitting quite disconsolate by the bed (poor Libby! when one little bird fell off the perch, I wonder the other did not go up and fall off, too!) the expression of sympathy in Ben's eyes is perfectly heart-rending; even George is quiet; and your Father, Mother and Uncle (all 3 so notorious for ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... she must keep the king well in hand; in short, he chatted so pleasantly that the time passed quickly until she found herself in the Hotel de l'Hirundelle where afterwards lived Madame d'Estampes. The poor husband shed scalding tears, when he found his little bird had flown, and became melancholy and pensive. His friends and neighbours edified his ears with as many taunts and jeers as Saint Jacques had the honour of receiving in Compostella, but the poor fellow took it so to heart, that at last they tried rather to assuage his grief. ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... Strona's vale! We wonder not thy night's repose Is mournful, when with Donegal In distant years thou first arose: O lonely bird! we wonder not, For time the strongest heart can bow, That thou should'st heave a mournful note, Or that ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... can see the difference between these two quotations you can see the difference between the poetry of Dryden's age and all that went before him. It is the difference between art and nature. Chaucer sings like a bird, Dryden like a trained concert singer who knows that people are listening to him. There is room for both in life. We want ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... make a good sized room. The stone work is remarkably solid and good, and every stone smoothly fitted into the next with no appearance of mortar. It is wonderful to see how the projection of one stone is neatly fitted into a cavity made to correspond in its fellow. On one stone a bird is cut in relief, another nearly the same in the attitude of following is cut on another stone. There is also a representation of a coffin. The beautiful stone work goes up a great way, and suddenly stops, the remainder of the building being done ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... Then you hit your head a second time when ascending the stairs and again on entering the bedroom. If you are a heavy breather you sweep the ceiling clear of flies and cobwebs while you sleep. At dawn, or possibly an hour or so before (for he is a nervously conscientious bird), the farm cock steps off the roof of the cow-shed on to your window-sill and bursts into enthusiastic admiration of himself and things in general. Some people of an egoistic and unimaginative temperament get up at once, in order that they may spend the rest of the day telling you how ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... continued. "This morning as we rounded the bend in the river where the banks are set close together and where the water roars and boils in its haste to pass the terrible place so it may join the peaceful stretches below, Tupi's sharp eyes saw the form of a vulture in the sky. We watched the evil bird and soon discovered other black specks circling above the gorge. It was there we found the proof, on a rock in the midst of the raging water; a black tiger of such great size that it could be none other than the Black Phantom. The broken shaft of an arrow was ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... BIOLOGICAL SURVEY maintains game, mammal, and bird reservations, including among others the Montana National Bison Range, the winter elk refuge in Wyoming, the Sully's Hill National Game Preserve in South Dakota, and the Aleutian Islands Reservation in Alaska. It studies the food habits of North ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... on him—when pestilence threatens to break up his house-keeping—and death takes him by the throat and hauls him down stairs to the grave; then he, who never prayed, crieth, Pray for me, and the poor soul is as loath to go out of the body for fear the devil should catch it, as the poor bird is to go out of the bush while she sees the hawk waiting to receive her. But I must not detain the reader longer from entering on this solemn and impressive treatise, but commend ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... this antique tapestry is said to have been taken from a King of France, while the English were masters there. We were shown here, among other things, the horn of a unicorn, of above eight spans and a half in length, valued at above 10,000 pounds; the bird of paradise, three spans long, three fingers broad, having a blue bill of the length of half an inch, the upper part of its head yellow, the nether part of a . . . colour; {16} a little lower from either side of its throat stick out some reddish feathers, ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... are Brother Jerome, the senior novice after Brother Dunstan, a pious but rather dull young man with fair hair and a squashed face, and Brother Raymond, attractive and bird-like, and considered a great Romanizer by the others. There is also Brother Walter, who is only a probationer and is not even allowed wide sleeves and a habit like Brother Lawrence, but has to wear a very moth-eaten cassock with a black band tied round it. Brother Walter had been marketing in High ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... might have shown that these "hunters, whose game is man," have many sports analogous to our own. As we drown whelps or kittens, they amuse themselves now and then with sinking a ship, and stand round the fields of Blenheim, or the walls of Prague, as we encircle a cockpit. As we shoot a bird flying, they take a man in the midst of his business or pleasure, and knock him down with an apoplexy. Some of them perhaps are virtuosi, and delight in the operations of an asthma, as a human philosopher in the effects of the air-pump. Many a merry bout ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... find no better shelter than the spreading branches of a spruce tree, under which, covered with earth and boughs, I lay during the two succeeding days; the storm, meanwhile, raging with unabated violence. While thus exposed, and suffering from cold and hunger, a little benumbed bird, not larger than a snow-bird, hopped within my reach. I instantly seized and killed it, and, plucking its feathers, ate it raw. It was a delicious meal for ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... saw the necessity of having a dog of nice scent having for its role the finding or hunting up of game without pursuing it, in order to permit the falcons themselves to enter into the sport. This animal was called the bird dog, and was regarded as coming from various countries, especially from Spain, whence the name of spaniel that a breed of pointers has preserved. It is quite curious to find that for three or four centuries ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... "Yet when the bird Is tired, and each little wave, Aloft is heard A call, reminds thee gird Thy robe and climb ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... in a moment, "you mus'n't invite Miss Penny, Meg, 'cause if you do F'lissy an' me 'll be thest shore to disgrace the party a-laughin'. She looks thest ezzac'ly like a canary-bird, an' Buddy has tooken her off till we thest die a-laughin' every time we see her. I think she's raised canaries till she's a sort o' half-canary herself. Don't let's invite ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... the cobweb of feet and outstretched legs with the face of a man who thought he ought to speak to everybody. Fifty times in the first three hours he went forward to peer through the wind and the glaring sunshine for the first glimpse of the Isle of Man. When at length he saw it, like a gray bird lying on the waters far away, with the sun's light tipping the hill-tops like a feathery crest, he felt so thick about the throat that he took six steerage passengers to the bar below to help him to ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... have legs rush blindly about, butting against each other and everything else in their way, and end in a general stampede to underground retreats from the region poisoned by sunshine. Next year you will find the grass growing fresh and green where the stone lay—the ground-bird builds her nest where the beetle had his hole—the dandelion and the buttercup are growing there, and the broad fans of insect-angels open and shut over their golden disks as the rhythmic waves of blissful consciousness pulsate through ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... gloried in. The bird was perched in every available nook at Selwoode; it was carved in the woodwork, was set in the mosaics, was chased in the tableware, was woven in the napery, was glazed in the very china. Turn where you would, an eagle or two ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... anything in all biography grander than the saying of young Henry Fawcett, Gladstone's last Postmaster-General, to his grief-stricken father, who had put out both his eyes by bird-shot during a game hunt: "Never mind, father, blindness shall not interfere with my success in life." One of the most pathetic sights in London streets, long afterward, was Henry Fawcett, M. P., led ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden |
