"Haystack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stone gates which led from the yard to the fields, old-fashioned solid gates with lions on them, were standing two girls. One of them, the elder, a slim, pale, very handsome girl with a perfect haystack of chestnut hair and a little obstinate mouth, had a severe expression and scarcely took notice of me, while the other, who was still very young, not more than seventeen or eighteen, and was also slim and pale, with a large ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... not appear to me that Benoni had helped me much, after all. You might as well look for a needle in a haystack as try to find anyone who goes to the Italian mountains. The baron offered no further advice, and sat calmly smoking and looking at me. I felt uneasy, opposite him. He was a mysterious person, and I thought ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... required to watch the cows and the sheep from early morn till dark, and often I must needs arise at night to run forth to the fold when there was an alarm of wolves. Day after day my head grew heavier from want of sleep, until at last I could keep my eyes open no longer. I stole under the haystack to snatch a few extra winks, and when I was discovered my shame and disgrace were heralded forth to all the world." And again the poor ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... came by as she was wrapping it up in paper, and Hugh, pointing to his purchase with a melancholy air, said, in an aggrieved tone: "It's a terrible quantity they're about givin' me—yards and yards—enough to rope round a haystack; and it's an ojis colour. Troth, now, if she takes the notion to be stickin' the whole of it on top of the little black head of her, it's an objec' she'll make of herself, she will so. It's a pity. I'd liefer there hadn't been ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... on the gas throttle at the time, which she had forgotten. I jammed my foot down hard, and the car seemed to lift out of the air. We went across the ditch, through a stake and rider fence, through a creek and up the other side of the bank, and brought up against a haystack with a ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... from the woods a short distance to our right and stood in line of battle most needlessly exposed. In less than five minutes a shell burst among them, killing and wounding eleven men. This over, we moved to a haystack nearby, where our horses had more than one refreshing feed during lulls in the battle. It seemed, also, an attractive place for General Jackson, as he was seldom far from it till the close of the battle on the ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... whose bronze leaf-buds were coming unfastened. Just a fragment remained of the haystack, a monument squared and brown, like a pillar of stone. There was a little bed of hay from the ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... burnin' a stack?" remonstrated Andrew, blinking defiantly round the table. "Tell you how it come. Hold on a minute"— he went to the bucket, and refilled his pannikin—"It was this way: I was jist startin' to thatch a new haystack for two ole bosses o' mine, on the Vic. side o' the Murray, when up ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... such is not his intention, papa?' said Kate merrily. 'Old Catty had a dream about a piebald horse and a haystack on fire, and something about a creel of duck eggs, and I trust that every educated person knows ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... and after a kindly welcome on their way from Mr. Marsden at Sydney, things were in the full blush of promise. Eight hundred people worshipped at the chapel of Erineo, near the landing-place. It was a circular building, a good deal like a haystack, with walls of stakes, a thatch of large leaves, and a desk in the centre of the floor for the preacher. This was his first station, and whilst there he gave his assistance in building a ship, to enable King Pomare to open a trade with New South Wales. He stayed in this place ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... took a high dive from the top. Down tumbled the others, over and over. But fortunately for all, there was a great haystack below, and upon this they landed in a jumbled heap close to the magic bean pole. As it happened, there was no one in sight. Up they jumped in a trice, and while the Comfortable Camel and Doubtful Dromedary ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... operations on a large scale, of the Calaveras Copper Company, I found the little settlement crowded to its fullest capacity, and was perforce compelled to resort to genuine "hobo" methods—in short, I spent the night under the lee of a haystack. My original intention had been to walk thence to Sonora, twenty-four miles; but finding the road would take me again into the valley, I decided to make for Angel's Camp, ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... helped in the search, but 'twasn't any use. That general's head had disappeared as if by magic. At first it was thought they might trace it by the cuss-words it was uttering, but you see by this time everybody was swearing, so it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. They kept on hunting for nearly a week, because Grandpa wanted to send that feller's head to his widow, so's she could give it a decent burial and also get the ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... shack, which seemed to answer for a barn, a haystack beside it, and a well-appearing vegetable garden. Then, in one corner of the yard, was a heap of old lumber, stone, brick, doors, window sash, in fact, it looked as if some one had been gathering all the unmated parts of various houses ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... nothing but translation—this simple statement into English. The perplexity which first seizes the hapless school-boy over his "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres" is nothing to it. Like him, he must go hunting, as if for a needle in a haystack, for the word to put first. It is the last idea in his sign-sentence. Then he slowly learns to pick out the words and arrange them in English order—an order, as I said before, not founded on philosophical principles, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... beyond one's reach, beyond one's grasp; too much for; ultra crepidam [Lat.]. Phr. the grapes are sour; non possumus [Lat.]; non nostrum tantas componere lites [Lat.] [Vergil]; look for a needle in a haystack, chercher une aiguille dans une botte de foin [Fr.]; il a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... said Niedermeyer, with a laugh, "to be chiefly occupied in sending flowers to Madame Blumenthal. That is, I went with him the morning of his arrival to choose a nosegay, and nothing would suit him but a small haystack of white roses. I hope ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... danger was all to his taste, it was one thing to risk one's life in open battle with enemies worthy of a soldier's steel, and another and very different thing to run the chance of a stray bullet from behind a haystack or through a cottage window. The line of country he had to patrol (for his work was really little more than that) was all too large for the forces at his disposal. The enemies with whom he had mostly to deal were either old men or women, for the Covenanters were well supplied with intelligence, and ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... beyond, Halts to unroll his bundle of strange food 210 And munch an unearned meal. I cannot help Liking this creature, lavish Summer's bedesman, Who from the almshouse steals when nights grow warm, Himself his large estate and only charge, To be the guest of haystack or of hedge, Nobly superior to the household gear That forfeits us our privilege of nature. I bait him with my match-box and my pouch, Nor grudge the uncostly sympathy of smoke, His equal now, divinely unemployed. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... was to find out where Hugh Davidson was likely to be found, if alive. Dr. Hunter felt as though he were beginning to search for the proverbial needle in a haystack; but by Mrs. Forester's advice he entrusted the matter to his lawyers, and in an incredibly short space of time he heard from them that the man he wanted was now the manager of the A1 Shipping and Transportation Company at Skaguay, Alaska, the largest organization ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... her side with a sigh. On she went at a wonderful pace. Old elms rose up in the background, a splash of red and brown resolved itself into a sunny farm, and four pieces which Berry had recognized as water went to make up a sheltered haystack. When it was nearly finished, she leaned across me ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... imagination? And would it ever be possible to dream her again; or, if she were real, where, where could he find her? To discover a fairy princess and to lose her, lose her, as he ruefully confessed, like a needle in a haystack, was worse than never to have ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... after the visit of Mr. Lovejoy, Samson and Harry built a hollow haystack about half-way from the house to the barn. The stack had a comfortable room inside of it about eight feet by seven and some six feet in height. Its entrance was an opening near the bottom of the stack well screened ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... cow refused to give the milk unless the old woman first gave her a handful of hay. So away went the old woman to the haystack; and she brought ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... and once had staggered white-lipped to the mortuary-shed to identify a Jane Harris, and found her—oh, with what unutterable relief!—to be a coloured lady who had married a Rifleman. After that he had perked up, and continued his quest for the beloved needle lost in the haystack of Gueldersdorp with renewed belief in the ultimate possibility of finding it. Then, in the middle of one awful night, the darkness of his mental state had been luridly illuminated by the conviction that she had joined Slabberts. Now strange voices whispered ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the appointed time I was behind the haystack awaiting my adversary, who did not fail to appear. "We may be surprised," he said; "be quick." We laid aside our uniforms, drew our swords from the scabbards, when Ignatius, followed by five pensioners, came out from behind a haystack. ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... with a long whistle, "and you want Will Fletcher—which shows what a very pretty sheriff you would make. Well, if you're so strong on his scent that you can't turn aside, most likely you'll find him sleeping off his drunk under my haystack. But if you're looking for the man who killed Bill Fletcher, then that's a different matter," he added, taking down his hat, "and I reckon, boys, I'm about ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... the pilot. Follow us and do exactly as we do. I've got this fellow under my thumb. He knows he'll get a good long term for smuggling, but I can get some of it taken off if he pilots us out, and I've promised him to do my best for him. It'll be as hard as finding a needle in a haystack to get a pilot and we have him, so what's the use ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... Billy Louise bit her lips thoughtfully, turned and looked back at the haystack, at the long line of new, wire fence, and at the two heavy-set mares feeding contentedly along the creek. "There must be money in ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... slovenly and ofttimes positively waggish. How any one can think that a girl with a tangled braid hanging down her back, a little wad over one ear, a ragged, jagged fringe edging its way into her eyes and half a dozen little wisps standing out here and there in haystack fashion—how one can even fancy that such a head as that is pretty is more than I can explain. Clothes may make the man, but rational hairdressing goes a pretty long way toward making the woman. Observe my lady in curl-papers and my ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... vice versa, according as we are decent fellows or blackguards. Some natures are more complex than others, of course—that only means that the weighing up of the good and evil in them is a more difficult matter. There are experts who can tell you the weight of a haystack by looking at it, and there are others who are able at Christmas-time to indulge in an unquenchable thirst by accurately computing the weight, down to ounces, of the pig or turkey raffled for at their favourite public-house. So the trained student of ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... thought. However this may be, the fact remains that a trompe-l'oeil has been achieved, and four inches of any one of these pictures looked at separately would be mistaken by sight and touch for a piece of stonework. In another picture, in a haystack with the sun shining on it, the trompe-l'oeil has again been as cleverly achieved as by the most cunning of scene-painters. So the haystack is ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... gray goose she ran round the haystack, Oh, ho! said the fox, you are very fat; You'll grease my beard and ride on my back From this ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... little farther and sit down in the fields, where an unfinished haystack offers us a couch. We can hardly distinguish the line of the horizon between the dark earth and the dark sky. A bat flits across our faces; ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... for a needle in a haystack. A boat would have to comb every foot of the bay in this fog, and night's coming. How long have you ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... a good horse in his stable, and never a bad one. He kept his horses in old barns and farm-stables, turning them out on to the chalk Downs in all seasons of the year with little shelter but the lee of a haystack ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... monstrous crow's nest, but on returning the second week in May I saw a pair of Ospreys coming and going to and fro from the nest. I hoped the birds might return another season, as the nest looked as if it might have been used for two or three years, and was as lop-sided as a poorly made haystack. The great August storm of the same year broke the tree, and the nest fell, making quite a heap upon the ground. Among the debris were sticks of various sizes, dried reeds, two bits of bamboo fishing rod, seaweeds, some old blue mosquito ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... distance of two miles from where we then lived. Our house was a good one. We did not like to leave it. Selling was out of the question: so we e'en resolved to take it with us, wishing, as the Highland robber did of the haystack, that it had legs to walk. A substitute for this was found in the universal resource of New Brunswickers for all their wants, from the cradle to the coffin, "the tree, the bonny greenwood tree," that gives the young life-blood of its sweet ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... somnolence was the price of listening to other people's wisdom. This was one of those transient nightmares that one may have in a doze of twenty seconds. He thought a certain imaginary Committee of Safety of a certain imaginary Legislature was proceeding to burn down his haystack, in accordance with an Act, entitled an Act to make the Poor Richer by making the Rich Poorer. And the chairman of the committee was instituting a forcible exchange of hats with him, to his manifest disadvantage, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... needle in a haystack, going out to find a man in that wilderness," said Helm with optimistic cheerfulness; "and besides Beverley is no easy dose for twenty red niggers to take. I've seen him tried at worse odds than that, and he ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... know all 'bout Gabr'el," continued Jimmy unabashed. "When folks called him to blow his trumpet he was under the haystack fast asleep." ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... control her tears. After she had dashed a drop or two from her eyes, she said: "I cannot tell what it's all about. He's always in a ponder, ponder, with his mouth open—except when he's grindin' his teeth. I hate to see a man walking about like a haystack. And Robbie used to have so much fun once ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... the way for this, To part at last without a kiss? Yea, had she borne the dirt and rain That her own eyes might see him slain Beside the haystack in the floods? ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... We know—and this is rather a tribute to our cleverness—that the year 1924 will contain 366 days, and even the exact point at which the extra day will slip in. Ask a savage to point you out the extra day in Leap Year, and he will be more hopelessly at a loss than a man looking for a needle in a haystack, but even the most ignorant Christian will pick it out at the right end of February as neatly and inevitably as a love-bird on a barrel-organ picking out a fortune. The art of prophecy has grown with civilisation. Prophets were regarded as almost divine ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... men are all accustomed to fighting in the woods, while our men have no idea of it. Their rifles are infinitely superior to these army muskets, and every man of them can hit a deer behind the shoulder at the distance of 150 yards, while at that distance most of our men would miss a haystack." ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... was a haystack with one grave beside it, and again there would be one, usually partly burned, almost encircled with the tiny flags which ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... not—no telling what they'll do. However, by the time they can land and get checked up and ready to hunt for us, we'll be a mighty small needle, well hidden in a good big haystack." ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... Dad staggered—a hail-boulder had struck him behind the ear—and he looked like dropping. Paddy hit himself on the leg, and vehemently invited Dave to "Look, LOOK at him!" But Dad battled along to the haystack, buried his head in it, and stayed there till the storm was over—wriggling and moving his feet as ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... morning found Chad springing from a bed in a haystack—ten miles from Lexington. By dusk that day, he was on the edge of the Bluegrass and that night he stayed at a farm-house, going in boldly, for he had learned now that the wayfarer was as welcome in a Bluegrass farm-house as in a log-cabin in the mountains. Higher and higher grew ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... dark fixed eyes, moving so slowly and heavily, his lank black hair, his grey coarse skin, all made her dislike him now—all his personal ugliness and ungainliness struck on her senses with a jar, since those few words spoken behind the haystack. ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... bring. Why, there is a perfect panic among them. They are falling about like a set of ten-pins. This morning I sent for Wash (best hand on the place) to see about setting out tobacco plants, and behold Wash curled up under a haystack getting ready to die! It is enough to—So as soon as you came this morning a plan entered my head for putting a stop to the thing. It will be necessary to acknowledge that two or three of them are under the spell, and it is better to select those who already fancy themselves ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... a section of the north-west part of the State. "Their style of lodge is the same which prevails generally along Russian River, a huge frame-work of willow poles covered with thatch, and resembling a large flattish haystack. Though still preserving the same style and materials, since they have adopted from the Americans the use of boards they have learned to construct all around the wall of the wigwam a series of little state rooms, if I may so call them, ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... was still out of the window. He was calling to the waggoner and offering him a crown to pull his horses and load to one side, but it was no easy task to move the gigantic lumbering wain with its tilt as big as a haystack and its wheels a foot thick. Lavinia had her eyes fixed at the window on her side, intent on watching a little group of persons who were curious to see the result of the deadlock. ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... five successive Sabbath nights on his manse wall to catch him smoking (and got him). Old wives grumbled by their hearths when he did not look in to despair of their salvation. He told the maidens of his congregation not to make an idol of him. His session saw him (from behind a haystack) in conversation with a strange woman, and asked grimly if he remembered that he had a wife. Twenty were his years when he came to Thrums, and on the very first Sabbath he knocked a board out of the pulpit. Before beginning his trial sermon he handed down the big Bible to the precentor, to ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... Brigade had been in action once and once only in the memory of man, and that time it was a haystack which had burnt itself out just as the rescuers had succeeded in fastening the hose ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... of sufferance were quite worn out, and he was about to implore them to leave him to his fate in the first cottage or shed—or under a haystack or a hedge—or anywhere, so he was left at ease, Collier, who rode ahead, passed back the word that they were at the avenue to Fairladies—'Was ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... the night of the 12th of September, when the squadrons had newly arrived at Saponay. Four machines of No. 5 Squadron were completely wrecked, and others damaged. Lieutenant L. A. Strange saved his Henri Farman machine, which had made a forced landing, by pushing it up against a haystack, laying a ladder over the front skids, and piling large paving-stones on the ladder, using hay twisted into ropes for tying down the machine. A diary of No. 3 Squadron records that when the machines of that squadron arrived at Saponay, about ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... "No more of that; if you want to knock the brains out of that haystack on the back of your head, why, knock away; but spare my ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... moment; one dropped on the floor—the other fell asleep on his horse. I had now a chance of escape; but I was weary, wounded, and overcome with vexation. It happened, as I took my last view of my keeper outside, nodding on his horse's neck, that I glanced on a huge haystack in the stable-yard. The thought struck me, that helpless as I was, I might contrive to give an alarm to some of the British videttes or patroles, if your gallant countrymen should condescend to employ such things. I stole down ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... that gone tell I didn't know whe'er I 'uz rolled up in a haystack er stretched out in a feather-bed. I reckon ef you'd 'a' listened right clost you'd 'a' heern me sno'. I thes laid back an' howled at the rafters, an' once-t er twice-t I wuz afeard I mought waken ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... were extended farther. They were panic-stricken by the shadow of a haystack, or by the forms of branches. On one occasion the entire National Guard turned and ran. In the moonlight they had observed, under an apple tree, a man with a gun, taking aim at them. At another time, on a dark night, the patrol halting under the beech trees, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... a sketch of the devil!" said this very angry and inconsiderate papa. "Why can't she do it some other day?—why the Twelfth? Good heavens! is everything conspiring to vex and annoy me so that I sha'n't be able to hit a haystack?" ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... sir; they couldn't hit a haystack. Their hands are all of a tremble with climbing. We're right enough. I hit ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... Would you believe it? the Russians burned their own city! 'Twas a haystack six miles square, and it blazed for two days. The buildings crashed like slates, and showers of melted iron and lead rained down upon us, which was naturally horrible. I may say to you plainly, it was ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... murderously inclined you may take a shot with your revolver at these great birds, for they are ignorantly brave, and will sometimes allow you to approach within twenty or thirty yards. At last you perceive—most pleasant sight of all—a group of haystack-shaped tents in the distance; and you hurry on to enjoy the grateful shade, and quench your thirst with "deep, deep ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... entirely, and the children suddenly discovered that they had not been snowflakes at all but only a cloud of white feathers sent whirling through the house, out of the windows, and up the chimney by some disturbance in the midst of a great heap in one corner of the room as high as a haystack. From the middle of this heap of feathers stuck up two very thin yellow legs with shabby boots that gave one last despairing kick and then were still. Near by at a counter a Gentleman Goose in a long apron was weighing feathers on a very small pair of scales, ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... accompanied only by a lieutenant and four sailors, cut the moorings of the chief explosion vessel, and drifted off towards the French fleet. Seated, that is, on top of 1500 barrels of gunpowder and a sort of haystack of grenades, he calmly floated off, with a squadron of fire-ships behind him, towards the French fleet, backed by great shore batteries, with seventy-three armed boats as a line of skirmishers. "It seemed to me," says ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... "London is not a haystack, Mr. Drayton. It's a honey-comb, and every cell is labeled. On getting out of the train at St. Pancras Station they will either hire a cab or they will not. If they hire one, then the number will be taken at the lodge. By that ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... false beard and spectacles shielding his identity from the public eye. If you had asked him he would have said that he was a Scotch business man. As a matter of fact, he looked far more like a motor-car coming through a haystack. ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... half-past seven, having come in all thirty miles. At the bishop's house we were welcomed and there got some supper, putting our three animals in his corral. We did not care to sleep in the house, choosing for our resting-place the last remains of a haystack, where we spread our blankets, covering the whole with a paulin, as the sky looked threatening. I never slept more comfortably in my life, except that I was half-aroused in the stillness by water trickling ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... at such a thing." He glared awfully, but his tone softened. "There's some milk yet about that moustache of yours, my boy. You don't know what a man like me is capable of. I would hide behind a haystack if . . . Don't grin at me, sir! How dare you? If this were not a private conversation I would . . . Look here! I am responsible for the proper expenditure of lives under my command for the glory of our country and the honour of the regiment. ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... true bacchantes, clawing the unfortunate wretches who fell into their hands, burning farms and harvests, broaching barrels of wine and oil, and crowning these exploits by orgies with "the Athletes of Christ." When they saw a haystack blazing in the fields, the country-folk were panic-stricken—the "Circoncelliones" were not far off. Soon they appeared, brandishing their clubs and bellowing their war cry: Deo laudes!—"Praise be to God." "Your shout," said Augustin to them, "is more ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... foot. Lifting some strips of bark from the low roof, Ta-in-ga-ro pushed the Spaniard through the aperture and lowered him to the ground, outside the enclosure of which the house formed part. Then, at the embers of a fire he kindled an arrow wrapped in the down of cottonwood and shot it into a haystack in the court. In the smoke and confusion thus made, his own escape was unseen, save by a guardsman drowsily pacing his beat outside the square of buildings. The sentinel would have given the alarm, had not the Indian pounced on him like a panther and ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... that rascally cousin of mine for having taught you," said Russell; "but seriously, isn't it a very moping way of spending the afternoon, to go and lie down behind some haystack, or in some frowsy tumble-down barn, as you smokers do, instead of playing ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... does his own firing, and runs the repair shop and round-house all by himself. He and I run this railway. It keeps us pretty busy, but we've always got time to stop and eject a sassy passenger. So you want to behave yourself and go through with us, or you will have your baggage set off here by the haystack!" ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... yonder all-mirroring pool? Do you know that, the appearance of nature is constantly varying with every change of light and every passing cloud? Do you know how Primrose Hill looks at night? Perhaps you think you know how a haystack looks in the sunlight; yet across the Channel the illustrious Monet devoted months to painting one haystack, making fresh discoveries daily. I do not believe you know how many Roman figures there are on your watch-dial. You probably think ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... Tex. If you was lookin' for a needle in a haystack you'd find it in yore mouth when you picked up a straw to ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... his mind as big as a haystack," grinned Jack Bates. "Watch the way his jaw hangs down, will yuh? ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... the scheme. Ma Fewkes was looking up at him, as if what he said must be the law and gospel. He had them all hypnotized, or as we called it then, mesmerized—so I thought as I went out of sight of them. After a while, Rowena came around the end of a haystack, and spoke to me. ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... that she could not, Win said: "Why shouldn't I?" She told herself that in a vast house of business which employed over two thousand salespeople she would be a needle in a haystack—a needle with a number, not a name. "I'll go and ask for a place," she answered her ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... transparent honesty induced him to include everything, in fact he seemed to glory in the number of false trails he laboriously followed. He was one who might be expected to find the proverbial "needle in a haystack," but unfortunately the needle was not always there. Delambre says, "Ardent, restless, burning to distinguish himself by his discoveries he attempted everything, and having once obtained a glimpse of one, no labour was too hard for him in following or verifying it. All his attempts had ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... booky as big almost as a haystack; I have put up two bottles of the gillyflower water for Mrs. Sedley, and the receipt for making ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at Winchester Cathedral. ''Might as well try to electrify a haystack. And to think that the World would take three columns and ask for ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... to the extreme limits of improbability. The journalist who signs his letters from the front to Le Temps with the pseudonym d'Entraygues recalled a passage from Balzac in which some peasants at work on a haystack call to the postman on the road: "What's the news?" "Nothing, no news. Oh! I beg your pardon, people say that Napoleon has died at St. Helena." Work stops at once, and the peasants look at one another in silence. But one fellow ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... continued Wessex, leading up the lane; "but at the corner by the big haystack they join up with the tracks of a motor-car! I ask for nothing clearer! There was rain that afternoon, ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... one. Zschokke tells a story of a Walpurgis Night dream that is more a vision than a dream. Led to be unfaithful to his wife, a man murders the husband of a former sweetheart; to escape capture he fires a haystack, from which a whole village is kindled. In his flight he enters an empty carriage, and drives away madly, crushing the owner under the wheels. He finds that the dead man is his own brother. Faced by the person whom he believes to be the Devil, ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... supposed that they beheld some demoniac throng newly burst oat of the bowels of earth and to be presently re-engulfed; but seen nearer, the toiling creatures, fighting with all their hearts and souls to save a haystack from flood, had merely excited human interest and commiseration. Farmer Chirgwin and his men were girt as to the legs in old-fashioned hay-bands; some held torches while others toiled with ropes to anchor the giant rick ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... floor on these timbers and over the boats serves to keep the hay dry. Men are stationed at both ends of the boats, and when once in the stream there is little to do beside floating with the current. A mile distant one of these barges appears like a haystack which ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... it's my birthday to-day, and something like this always 'appens on my birthday. Last time it was a fish. I fell into the stream and went right under. When I got out on to the bank again I found a trout in my pocket. The time before I slept beside a haystack, and when I awoke at sunrise I felt something warm and soft against my face like feathers. It was feathers. There was a 'en's nest two inches from my nose, and six nice eggs in it all ready for my birthday breakfast. I only ate four of ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... to bag you with the rest of us. It was a great piece of foolishness me forgetting about the line of the Chihuahua Northern and its telegraph. But there's a chance Chaves has forgot, too. Anyway, get back as soon as you can; after we're hidden, it will be like looking for a needle in a haystack to put his ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... in a few minutes laden with bread and cheese, and a bottle of beer. Prison fare cures a man of daintiness, and the two fugitives dined on these homely viands with considerable complacency. They then resumed their journey, and at length, wearied with exertion, they arrived at a lonely haystack, where they resolved to repose for ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... head." Then others do likewise, and the nature of the growing heap becoming known, every passer-by throws a stick upon it lest he should suffer pains. In this way the heap grows until it attains a large size, in some cases that of a small haystack, and, being known by the name of the liar, is a cause of great shame ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... in a haystack," I answered, suddenly suspicious that she might know something of the fugitive. "Will ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... dream, Frank," Betty was saying as they reached the top. "Look at that great big haystack down there—it must have taken some time to gather it in. Why don't you slow down a little? Don't you think—oh, what is it, Frank?" for she had noticed the set lines of his mouth and the look of terror that had flashed into his eyes. ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... her clatterin' tongue. If she'll talk like that to us, you know she will about town, and it takes a powerful small spark to set a haystack of scandal afire. Folks think Hettie has driv' you pretty far, anyway, with her odd, graveyard notions, and it wouldn't take much ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... three hundred and seventy-five blanks. Once I almost saw a big grain-elevator burn in a Western town. That is, I would have seen it, if I had looked out of my hotel window. But I'd run two miles to see a burning haystack in the afternoon, and I was so dead tired that I slept right through the performance that night. And once I did see a row of stores burn, back in Homeburg—at the distance of a mile. I was in school, ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... Sherberton. And when I arrived there, and saw how it was, I made up my mind that it would serve my turn very nice. Then I set out to satisfy your sister and please her every way I could, because I'm too old now for the road, and would sooner ride than walk, and sooner sleep in a bed than under a haystack." ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... by-the-by, of course - a hideous temple of flint, like a great petrified haystack. Our chief clerical dignitary, who, to his honour, has done much for education both in time and money, and has established excellent schools, is a sound, shrewd, healthy gentleman, who has got into little occasional difficulties with the ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... labours. He was off to every bit of 'divarsion' in the country, and when there were big races at a distance Mick generally took the road a day beforehand, sleeping out in the soft spring night if it was dry weather, trusting to a convenient haystack or barn if it wasn't. He was known so widely that at every farmhouse along the road he was sure of a bite. And on the race-course every one was his friend; and the various parties picnicking were greeted by Mick with uproarious ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... opportunity; he felt as though he could send a million supplications to the throne of Heaven for such an exalted privilege. Poor Leos, who was somewhere in the crowd, looking as attentively as if he was searching for a needle in a haystack; here is stood, wondering to himself why Ambulinia was not there. "Where can she be? Oh! if she was only here, how I could relish the scene! Elfonzo is certainly not in town; but what if he is? I have got the wealth, ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... needle in a bloomin' haystack," he said to himself. "I might as well go back to Clankwood. 'E's a good ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... be attempts or misdemeanors which [67] could not have effected the crime unless followed by other acts on the part of the wrong-doer. For instance, lighting a match with intent to set fire to a haystack has been held to amount to a criminal attempt to burn it, although the defendant blew out the match on seeing that he was watched. /1/ So the purchase of dies for making counterfeit coin is a misdemeanor, although of course the coin would ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... monkeys and matches made our cargo; and the vast continent of these incongruities rolled the while like a haystack; and the stallions stood hypnotised by the motion, looking through the port at our dinner-table, and winked when the crockery was broken; and the little monkeys stared at each other in their cages, and were thrown ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... hahdship and dangeh enough? Not one o' you ain't goin' one step fu'ther this day. Do you want to git shot? Grant's men are a-marchin' into Bolton's Depot right now. Why, honey, you might as well go huntin' a needle in a haystack as to go lookin' fo' Brodnax's brigade to-night. Gen'al Pemberton himself—why, he'd jest send you to his rear, and that's Vicksburg, where they a-bein' shelled by the boats day and night, and the women and child'en a-livin' in caves. You don't ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... Other people came and went, took a look, and ran away; but he was a fixture. He says he always does so,—goes off somewhere and 'finds an Ararat,' and there drifts up and sticks fast. In the winter he's in New York; but that's a needle in a haystack. I never heard of him till I found him at Catskill. He's an English-man, and they say had more to his name once. It was Wharnecliffe, or Wharneleigh, or something, and there's a baronetcy in the ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... come blow me thy horn, The sheep in the meadow, The cow's in the corn. Where is the boy that looks after the sheep? Under the haystack fast asleep." ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... "There's a haystack out there by the barn," said Hawley, pointing to a stack of some kind that could be seen in the rear of the nearest barn. "If you could only get behind that you could see what ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... I suppose. I crawled into a haystack to sleep one night, because it was warmer, and along comes a village constable and arrests me for being a tramp. At first they thought I was a runaway, and telegraphed my description all over. I told them I did n't have any people, ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... to set fire to a heap of brush at one farmhouse. The others were to do certain stunts in the same neighborhood. We found out later that Tompkins was using us as tools to cover some real spite work of his. I set fire to the brush heap to scare the farmer. The wind blew the sparks into a two-ton haystack near by, and it burned down. I was scared and sorry. I was worse scared and sorry the next day, when I was arrested. Tompkins and his crowd had burned down some barns and an old mill. Their folks were rich, and they could hire ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... proclamations were posted beseeching the inhabitants to bring in all weapons they might possess. We found the Signal Company, and rode ahead of it out of the town to some fields above a village called Castres. There we unharnessed and took refuge from the gathering storm under a half-demolished haystack. The Germans didn't agree to our remaining for more than fifty minutes. Orders came for us to harness up and move on. I was left behind with the H.Q.S., which had collected itself, and was sent a few minutes later to 2nd Corps H.Q. at Ham, a ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... it, not merely without raising the smallest objection, but with the greatest keenness. Let us consider for a moment the risk they ran. Our tent on the boundless plain, without marks of any kind, may very well be compared with a needle in a haystack. From this the three men were to steer out for a distance of twelve and a half miles. Compasses would have been good things to take on such a walk, but our sledge-compasses were too heavy and unsuitable for carrying. They therefore had to go without. They had the sun to go by, ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... to hum a hoary roundelay about the splendid audacity of old Mister Haystack and his questionable adventures, set to an unprintable refrain of "Winktum bolly mitch-a-kimo," or some such jumble of words. I have never heard this song in the mouth of any other man. He must have found it somewhere ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... still wanting to make the history of our warblers complete. The woods were extensive, and full of deep, dark tangles, and looking for any particular nest seemed about as hopeless a task as searching for a needle in a haystack, as the old saying is. Where to begin, and how? But the principle is the same as in looking for a hen's nest,—first find your bird, ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... heights of Heath and George Hall on the lofty meadow in Rowe. Each drew his pay from the treasury of the colony; and each had a magnificent lookout from his solitary sentry-box. Monadnock is in plain sight to the east, and Haystack to the north from the site of Fort Shirley and the Hoosacs to the west and Greylock overtopping them greeted the roving gaze of George Hall from the picketed ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... out to say "So?" then snuggled back into his wraps again, to chuckle contentedly. He was so wound up in furs that he looked like a sharp little needle in a fuzzy haystack. ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... Remarks old Pakhom, "Why, the folk must be giants." The two brothers Goobin 30 Are smiling at something: For some time they've noticed A very tall peasant Who stands with a pitcher On top of a haystack; He drinks, and a woman Below, with a hay-fork, Is looking at him With her head leaning back. The peasants walk on 40 Till they come to the haystack; The man is still drinking; They pass it quite slowly, Go fifty steps farther, Then all turn together ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... know exactly what to do, as he crashed through the willows bordering the little river. Then he saw a very large beaver-house, like a small haystack rising ten feet above the water, in a dammed pond. He plunged for it, and commenced to swim. If he might manage to get into that beaver-house before he was sighted—! He had quick wit, did ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... launch at Surbiton: and was versed in the esoteric humours of the House. Who could have thought that the Hunter lay hid in him? Yet, after many weeks, they found him in a wild nook of Hampshire. Ragged, sun-burnt, the nocturnal haystack calling aloud from his frayed and weather-stained duds, his trousers tucked, he was tickling trout with godless native urchins; and when they would have won him to himself with honied whispers of American Rails, he ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... I know! You're going to live in the haystack. A haystack is cozy and warm; it's wind-proof; it sheds water; ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug • Arthur Scott Bailey
... with the children, all of whom are as brown as Indians. My room is all aflame with two great trees of maple; I never saw such a beautiful velvety color as they have. We have just had a very pleasant excursion to a mountain called Haystack, and ate our dinner sitting round in the grass in view of a splendid prospect.... I have thus given you the history of our summer, as far as its history can be written. Its ecstatic joys have not been wanting, nor its hours of shame and confusion ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... square, a network of crests, ridges, cups, and narrow valleys like ravines. He resolved that for the present, at least, he would make no attempt to break from it and pass the Indian lines. He would be for a day or two the needle in the haystack. One might move from cover to cover and evade pursuit for a long time in a tumbled and tangled mass of country fifteen or sixteen miles square, covered moreover with heavy vegetation ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that in all the world there is only one woman specially created for each man, and that the order of the universe will be hopelessly askew unless these two needles find each other in the haystack? You believe it for yourself, perhaps; but do you believe it for Tom Johnson? You remember what a terrific disturbance he made in the summer of 189-, at Bar Harbor, about Ellinor Brown, and how he ran ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... A and D in support. The 5th Leicesters were attacking on our right, and the 19th Division on the left. There was little or no time to make any reconnaissance. Zero was 5.15 a.m. on September 4th, and the barrage came down on the stroke 200 yards East of a line through "Haystack," "Orchard," "Albert," "Dogs" and "Edward's" Posts. Having remained on this line four minutes it moved forward at the rate of 100 yards in two minutes, closely followed by the leading troops. The enemy made little resistance, ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... thought. The whole water system of San Francisco was gone, or supposedly so, through the breaking of the mains. 'But I had a hunch, just a hunch,' said Lane, 'that there was water somewhere in the pipes.' He had learned that a fire company which had given up the fight was asleep on a haystack somewhere in the Western Addition. He went out and found them. They had been working for thirty-six hours; they lay like dead men. Lane kicked the soles of the nearest fireman. He returned only a grunt. The next fireman, however, woke up; Lane ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... "I guess we had better go to bed." Off we started across the lots until we came to a big haystack, and Mike stooped down and began to pull hay out of the stack and work his way inside. Remember I was green at the business; I had never been away from home before; and Mike, though only a little older, was used to this kind of life. Well, I pulled out hay enough, as I thought, and crawled ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney
... the interior structure. In like manner, as we shall see hereafter, the most wonderful peak in the whole range of the Alps seems to have been cut out of a series of nearly horizontal beds, as a square pillar of hay is cut out of a half-consumed haystack. And yet, on the other hand, we meet perpetually with instances in which the curves of the beds have in great part directed the shape of the whole mass of mountain. The gorge which leads from the village of Ardon, in the Valais, ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... at a haystack and borrowed two bundles of hay, and lay on them in a dry ditch out of ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... in finding Stephen, for he was also up against the problem of finding you. New York is a rather large city anyway, and for two people who do not even know one another's names to get together is like hunting a needle in a haystack. Our only recourse to discovering the owner of the pocketbook would be through the advertising columns of the papers and that is the method we should have followed had not Donovan appeared ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... raucous-voiced women, and queer nooks and corners, and ships being laden and ships being stripped of their cargoes and such noise and confusion and inextricable mingling and elbowing that Copplestone thought it was as likely to find a needle in a haystack as to make anything out relating to the quest they ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... its 'column,' and the pyramid at the extremities its 'cap.' Now, here, first you have a straight column, as long and thin as a stalk of asparagus, with two little caps at the ends; and here you have a short thick column, as solid as a haystack, with two fat caps at the ends; and here you have two caps fastened together, and no column at all between them! Then here is a crystal with its column fat in the middle, and tapering to a little ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... what the wicket is like; it's simply mountainous, and black men have no control over their bowling. For you medium-sized chaps it may be comparatively safe, but bowling at me is like bowling at a haystack—you cannot miss. When I go in, the blacks never bother about the stumps, but just let fly at random on the chance of winging me. Last match here, I hit their crack fast bowler all over the island, and he got mad at last, and gave up attempting to bowl me, but just tried ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... arms round his neck and kissed him till they were both out of breath. From that moment the eternal story of love began between them. They plagued one another in corners; they met in the moonlight beside the haystack and gave each other bruises on the legs, under the table, with their heavy nailed boots. By degrees, however, Jacques seemed to grow tired of her; he avoided her, scarcely spoke to her, and did not try any longer to meet her alone, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... stood, dark and shadowy against the north. Another loomed dimly beyond it; a haystack ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... at the expense of your tendon achilles. We know it, for we have suffered. We calculate, and are prepared to prove, that the successful collection of a single ribbon of ruffled seaweed, procured in a slimy haystack of red dulse at the beck of one inconsiderate girl, who is keeping her brass heels dry on a safe and sunny ledge of the Purgatory at Newport, may require more mental calculation, involve more anguish of equilibrium, and encourage more heartfelt secret profanity than the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... me!" he moaned. "The Laird doesn't know where she is, and neither do I. I induced her to go away, and she's lost somewhere in the world. To find her now would be like searching a haystack ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... which way, in a few years, and there's nothing to it. Grant's a good son, and a good brother, and a good friend and neighbor, but"—the Doctor pounds his chair arm vehemently, "there are bats, my dear, bats in his belfry just the same. Don't get excited when you see Grant mount his haystack to jump into the crack o' doom for the ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... had been shot down. A number of men under the direction of the sheriff were scouring the lofty timberland for the deadly marksmen. He knew it would turn out to be as futile as the proverbial effort to find the needle in the haystack. ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... till we get over that haystack," said Jack, "and then play out rope till we lower him. It'll make a nice ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... I'm foolish to go on hunting for the gold when I've got so little evidence to go on. It seems almost like hunting for a needle in a haystack. But there's such a lot at stake that I can't ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... and took over our new line from the Sherwood Foresters the same night. Battalion Headquarters lived in a little cottage, "No. 1" Albert Road, two Companies occupied a large farm house in the same neighbourhood fitted up as a rest house, one Company lived in a series of curiously named keeps—"Haystack," "Z Orchard," "Path," and "Dead Cow," and one Company only was in the ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... comfortable, though they are not half as airy, Samoan huts being very open; but in most of the Fijian huts I visited the only openings were the doors, and, as can be imagined, the interior was rather dark and gloomy. In shape they greatly resembled a haystack, the sides being composed of grass or bunches of leaves, more often the latter. They are generally built on a platform of rocks, with doors upon two or more sides, according to the size of the hut; and a sloping ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... to live in the country! And I love for to live on the farm! I love for to wander in the grass-green fields— Oh, a country life has the charm! I love for to wander in the garden— Down by the old haystack; Where the pretty little chickens go 'Kick-Kack-Kackle!' And the little docks ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... fire for the chef, there would be trouble in camp. You may be a good enough horse wrangler for a through Texas outfit, but when it comes to playing second fiddle to a cook of my accomplishments—well, you simply don't know salt from wild honey. A man might as well try to cook on a burning haystack as on a ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... cannon were all discharged in memory of the day they had been all charged that morning, and having no suspicion of my situation, I was shot over the houses on the opposite side of the river, into a farmer's yard, between Bermondsey and Deptford, where I fell upon a large haystack without waking, and continued there in a sound sleep till hay became so extravagantly dear (which was about three months after), that the farmer found it to his interest to send his whole stock to market. The stack I was reposing on was the largest in the yard, containing about five hundred ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... obvious. Robespierre, Danton, Tinville, Merlin, and the whole of the demmed murderous crowd, will be busy looking after me—a needle in a haystack. They'll put the abortive attempt down to me, and you may—ma foi! I only suggest that you may escape safely out of France—in the Daydream, and with the ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... circulation of the blood, which Descartes adopted from Harvey, supplied additional arguments in favour of his mechanical theory, and he probably did much to popularize the discovery. A fire without light, compared to the heat which gathers in a haystack when the hay has been stored before it was properly dry—heat, in short, as an agitation of the particles—is the motive cause of the contraction and dilatations of the heart. Those finer particles of the blood which become extremely rarefied during this process ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... accustomed to better things," said the beetle. "Do you call this beautiful? Why, there is not even a dung-heap." Then he went on, and under the shadow of a large haystack he found a caterpillar crawling along. "How beautiful this world is!" said the caterpillar. "The sun is so warm, I quite enjoy it. And soon I shall go to sleep, and die as they call it, but I shall wake up with beautiful wings to ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... glad it's your job and not mine," he said, by way of leave-taking. "If your guess is right, it's like looking for the traditional needle in the haystack." ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... I only wanted to say a few words to you about a brother of mine who is out there somewhere, we believe. Now, I know the Northwest is a big place, and you might as well think of lookin' for a needle in a haystack as for a certain feller there; but accidents do happen, and by some sorter luck you might just happen to run across Teddy," said Hank quickly, and with a wistful look on his face that ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... space, stole back to where he could hear any sound from the porch even if he could not see, and when he was certain that Baumberger had gone back to his bed, he got his horse, took him by a roundabout way to the stable, and himself slept in a haystack. At least, he made himself a soft place beside one, and lay there until the sun rose, and if he did not sleep it was not his fault, for ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... nucleus. Later we shall have an expression upon luminosity—different from the luminosity of incandescence—that comes upon objects falling from the sky, or entering this earth's atmosphere. Now our expression is that worlds have often come close to this earth, and that smaller objects—size of a haystack or size of several dozen skyscrapers lumped, have often hurtled through this earth's atmosphere, and have been mistaken for clouds, because they were enveloped ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... been praying for a week past that I might meet you. Holmes, of your service, told me you had pulled through, but everything is in such confusion that to hunt for you would have been the proverbial quest after a needle in a haystack. You have ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... south the Brandon Hills shimmered in a pale gray mirage. Over the trees which sheltered the Stopping-House a flock of black crows circled in the blue air, croaking and complaining that the harvest was going to be late. On the wire-fence that circled the haystack sat a row of red-winged blackbirds like a string of jet beads, patiently waiting for the oats to ripen and indulging in low-spoken but pleasant gossip about all the other ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... Robert crouched behind a haystack in the farmyard, that is at the corner, and when he heard the boy come whistling along, he jumped out at him and caught him by ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... the exact occupation of the person, if he be not a noble living on his income, without business or official position. Otherwise, the attempt to find any one is a harder task than finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. A person who had been asked to call upon us, and who afterward became a valued friend, tried three times in vain to find us by this means, and was informed that we did not exist. This was owing to some eccentricity in the official spelling of our name. An application to the American ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... this morning and I am determined to get this letter written if I break up a dozen parties. As you see, I am in Shanghai, this wonderful big understudy for Chicago, which seems about as incongruous in its surroundings as a silk hat on a haystack! There are beautiful boulevards, immense houses, splendid public gardens, all hedged in by a yellow ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... feet. His eyes were heavy with sleep, and to his cloudy gaze the familiar objects of the barnyard assumed grotesque and distorted shapes. The manure heap near the doorway presented an effect of unreality, the pig-pen seemed to have suffered witchery since the evening before, and the haystack, looming vaguely in the drab distance, appeared to be woven ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... candle at his hand on a chair. A few broken reflections drifted through his mind, as he yawned and prepared to sleep. His brain brought up events of the day—a missed shot, a good shot, lunch under a haystack with Mary and Fayre-Michell's niece. She was smart and showy and slangy—cheap every way compared with Mary. What would his wife think if she knew he was so near? Come to him for certain. He cordially hoped that he might not be recalled to his ship; but ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... rippin' th' air 'ith them air joemightyful big sabres, tew," D'ri went on. "Hed a purty middlin' sharp edge on us. Stuck out luk a haystack right 'n' left." ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... deliberations of Joel Strides on a battle. The Indian leaders, however, gave some of their ordinary signals, to bring their 'young men' more under command and, sending messengers with orders in different directions, they left the haystack, compelling Joel ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper |
