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More "Duckling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unhappy, or in disgrace, sure of getting consolation and sugar-plums from the sad, lonely woman, though equally sure of being sent away as soon as their tears were dried, and their troubles forgotten. If the poor, abused Ugly Duckling of Hans Andersen's tale had strayed on a wintry day to her door, she would have taken it in, and nourished, and cherished it all through the cold, dark weather; but when the summer was come, and the duckling grown into a swan, spread its broad white wings against ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... not be a good woman and remain on the stage, that's what it comes to." In spite of the gravity of the scene, a smile trickled round Evelyn's lips, for she could not help seeing her father like a hen that has hatched out a duckling. He stood looking at her sadly. She had come back—but what new pond would she plunge into? "I am a very unsatisfactory person, I know that. I can't make people happy; but there it is, it can't be ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... mind quite easy; it is impossible that there should be another man foolish enough in all England to want to make love to such an 'ugly duckling' as I am!" ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... and I had brought a great tipsy-cake for the children, and they were all sitting under a table, eating it. It was a pretty picture. I thought I saw in it myself and all my sisters and brothers as we were once. Just such little gypsies and duckling Romanys! And now! And then! What a comedy some lives are,—yea, such lives as mine! And now it is you who are behind the scenes; anon, I shall change with you. Va Pierre, vient Pierette. Then I surprised a little ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... been another story of his infant precocity generally circulated, and generally believed, the truth of which I am to refute upon his own authority. It is told[127], that, when a child of three years old, he chanced to tread upon a duckling, the eleventh of a brood, and killed it; upon which, it is said, he dictated to his mother the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... children five were just the ordinary commonplace little ones such as one would expect to meet in a tailor's household, but the sixth was like the ugly duckling in the fairy tale—a little, strange bird, unlike all the rest, who learned to swim far away and soon left the old commonplace home ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... duck took it carefully up in her bill, And the duckling and hen followed on to the mill, Where the miller's fat sheep was placidly grazing, And there they displayed this ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... discloses here the presence of three distinct and fundamental concepts that are brought into connection with each other in a number of ways. These three concepts are "farmer" (the subject of discourse), "kill" (defining the nature of the activity which the sentence informs us about), and "duckling" (another subject[53] of discourse that takes an important though somewhat passive part in this activity). We can visualize the farmer and the duckling and we have also no difficulty in constructing an image of the killing. In other words, the elements farmer, kill, and duckling ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... elected to nominate the duck for that dubious honor, there is no doubt but that he would have pointed to the Peasley family, of Thomaston, Maine, as evidence of the correctness of his theory of evolution. The most casual student of natural history knows that the instant a duckling chips its shell it toddles straightway to the nearest water. The instant a male Peasley could cut his mother's apron strings, he, also, made for the nearest water, for the Peasleys had always been ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... and mother with a maiden of genius on their hands were like a hen whose duckling takes to the water. The difference of the training of Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, as distinguished from their musical education, is effectually indicated by the following letter from their father to Fanny, written when she was fourteen years old. After referring in ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... first to look down upon, and which many of his critics at the outset regarded as mere child's play. These were the fairy tales which he began in 1835, and which he published at intervals from that time until his death. The children loved The Ugly Duckling, The Fir Tree and The Snow Queen; but it was not only the children who loved them. Gradually people all over the world began to realize that here was a man who knew how to tell tales to children in so masterly a manner that even grown folks would do ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... up the path carrying Betty in his arms. She was wet from head to toe. Damp curls clung to her pale face. Water dripped from her clothes. One hand hung loosely over Walter's arm. The other held a live duckling. She had saved the little duck from drowning. This was Betty's first day in ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... emit sparks?' said the cat to the ugly duckling in the fairy tale, and the poor abashed creature had to admit that it could not. Emerson could emit sparks with the most electrical of cats. He is all sparks and shocks. If one were required to name the most non-sequacious author one had ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... did Pohjola's old Mistress Answer in the words which follow: "I will give you first the duckling, And the blue-winged duck will give you, When the pike, so huge and scaly, He the fish so plump and floundering. You shall bring from Tuoni's river, And from Manala's abysses; But without a net to lift it, Using not a ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... about five minutes to row out there," Jerry said, "and then we'll have seen it at last. It couldn't be a better time. Why, a newly hatched duckling could swim out ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... with the Reformers. How the egg of the Jameson conspiracy came to be laid no one exactly knew. Certain it was that those who looked for the hatching of a swan, were confronted with a very ugly duckling indeed! Arms and ammunition were purchased, and these, concealed as gold-mining impedimenta, were smuggled into the country. Messrs. Leonard and Phillips, two prominent Reformers, consulted Mr. Rhodes ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... were such fine strapping fellows! so tall and stout! But as for the youngest one, Ivan, he was like a half-grown lad or a half-fledged duckling, terribly inferior to the others. Well, their old father died. At that very time there came tidings from the King, that his daughter, the Princess Helena the Fair, had ordered a shrine to be built for her with ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... great scheme of nature belongs to me, and is cast upon my care." And, as the tie in the case of the stranger was not complete in the beginning, so neither can it be made so in the sequel. The little straggler is like the duckling hatched in the nest of a hen; there is danger every day, that as the nursling begins to be acquainted with its own qualities, it may plunge itself into another element, and ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... ugly duckling,' she would say, with tears in her eyes; 'but I shall never turn into a swan like Sara and Lesbia,—not that I want to be like them!'—with a little scorn in her voice. 'Lesbia is too tame, too ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Hussars, when his father died, leaving him a moderate fortune, which steadily decreased as years went by. It had approached attenuation by this time, and Mrs. Rolleston felt as distracted and perplexed as a duckling's hen foster-mother, at the vagaries of the happy-go-lucky, reckless Irish blood in Bertie, which did not flow in her ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... "The Ugly Duckling turned out a swan, you remember. I've always been fond of the boy because he's so genuine and original. Crude as a green apple now, but sound at the core, and only needs time to ripen. I'm sure he'll turn out a capital specimen of the ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... I compliment, with thanks profuse, The touch that gives your feasts their crowning savour, Whose absence must have marred the duckling mousse, Ruined the neige au Kirsch, and soured the flavour Of Madame MELBA'S peaches— I mean the pledge upon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... were asked—Which seemed to him more wonderful, that a hen's egg should always produce a chicken, or that it should now and then produce a sparrow or a duckling?—can it be doubted what answer he would give? or that it would be the wrong answer? What answer, again, would he make to the question—Which is more wonderful, that dwarfs and giants (i.e. people under four feet six ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... original maid. She believed everything in the world. She believed not only what was told her but also what she thought. And among other things she believed herself to be very beautiful, though in reality she was the ugly duckling of the brood. "All God has made is beautiful," Aunt Emily had once reproved her, and, since God had made everything, everything must be beautiful. It was. God had made her too, therefore she was simply lovely. She enjoyed numerous romances; one romance after another flamed into ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... Arabella and Gillian drove home together, the former laughed quietly. There was an element of pride and triumph in the laughter. Probably the hen who has reared a duckling and sees it sail off into the water experiences, alongside her natural apprehension and astonishment, a somewhat similar pride in the startling ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... wet plumage, like a duckling; "what for you look that way to me? I didn't do nuffin,—not the leastest nuffin! The water kep' a comin' ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... experiences of the "block."[256] This explains how it is that the individual members of certain hostile species know one another from birth—the chicken, for instance, which, immediately it has left the egg, trembles before the hawk hovering above in the air; such is also the reason why a duckling plunges into water as soon as it comes to a pond, and the same instinct impels a bird to leave its nest and trust itself to the air ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... as I that it does make a difference with nearly everyone, so don't ruffle up like a dear, motherly hen, when your chickens get pecked by smarter birds. The ugly duckling turned out a swan, you know." and Amy smiled without bitterness, for she possessed a happy temper ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... sudden consciousness that he was observed, and met the half-defiant, half-terrified, and wholly curious gaze of a girl. Hardly more than a child she seemed, not over fourteen at the outside, and with a figure that was all flatness and unlovely angles. Certainly an exceedingly ugly duckling, yet there was promise of future swanship in the clean curves of her neck and in the firm poise of the small head. Moreover, her coloring was good, a clear brown through which a scarlet flush, born of the ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... must have led before he came here! Yes, I'm sure New York will stimulate him. A dose of New York is a very good tonic. It regulates one's mental liver. Don't look so worried, Armand—you remind me of those hens who hatch ducklings. I should think a duckling of John Flint's size could be trusted to swim by himself, at his ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... off my glass of wine, and waited until the waiter, who had been carving a Rouen duckling on a stand by the side of the table, had stepped ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... little duckling did take that, and scampered off to its mother, crying out in such a pitiful voice, "Wheedle-wheedle-wheedle," that the heron forgot his ill-humour and burst out laughing, and felt quite sorry that he had given ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... lame duckling might grow up into a wonderful swan, and munched his apple ruminatively. Neither happened to think of a certain incident, much discussed, in which that edible figured prominently. And he did not ask ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... persistent disregard of him. She watched the set boyish mouth, the pucker of his forehead—her baby. Terry had always had that pucker for perplexity or disappointment. Why, he had had it when the first down was on his baby head, as soft as a duckling's. ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... abused, or gone altogether! The Gate off its Hinges; the Stone Balls of the Pillars overthrowne, the great Bell stolen, the clipt Junipers grubbed up, the Sun-diall broken! Not a Hen or Chicken, Duck or Duckling, left! Crab half-starved, and soe glad to see us, that he dragged his Kennel after him. Daisy and Blanch making such piteous Moans at the Paddock Gate, that I coulde not bear it, but helped Lettice ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... myself as nonplussed," he said more seriously, "and I am. I was never more so; but I see no occasion for anxiety. Since when has it been thought necessary to call priest or physician because of a young lady's growing charm? Confronted by an ugly duckling, we ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... stallion—eight horses; five cattle; total, if my arithmetic be correct, thirteen head of beasts; I don't know how the pigs stand, or the ducks, or the chickens; but we get a good many eggs, and now and again a duckling or a chickling for the table; the pigs are more solemn, and appear only on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a considerable shock to her to find that Robert was fair, with a snub nose, merry eye, and rather a schoolboy manner. "A serpent in duckling's plumage," was her private comment; merciful chance had revealed him to ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... of the ballroom her mother fluttered like a hen with a duckling. Even Celeste was disturbed, for she saw that Nora's conduct was not due to any light-hearted fun. There was something bitter and ironic cloaked by those smiles, that tinkle of laughter. In fact, Nora from Tuscany flirted outrageously. The Barone sulked and tore at his mustache. ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... from the Morbihan, and, on our right, passed the little rocky island of Teigneuse, with its lighthouse; and, on the left, those of Houat and Haedik (the duck and the duckling); the former famous as the retreat of St. Gildas, who leaped from here with one bound, a distance of ten miles, to the peninsula of Rhuys, where he built his monastery. From Auray to Belle Isle is in all forty-eight ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... Mistress Answer in the words which follow: "I will give you first the duckling, And the blue-winged duck will give you, When the pike, so huge and scaly, He the fish so plump and floundering. You shall bring from Tuoni's river, And from Manala's abysses; But without a net to lift it, Using not a hand to grasp it. 160 Hundreds have ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... had enjoyed a great many surprises in the course of their varied career, but the greatest of all was when the Ugly Duckling turned out to be, not a swan, but a golden goose, whose literary eggs found such an unexpected market that in ten years Jo's wildest and most cherished dream actually came true. How or why it happened she never clearly understood, ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... in a voice so sweet I thought I had never heard the like, 'Yes, you're pretty; I want a pretty girl to stay with me and go about selling my things. I love pretty girls; I never was pretty myself. Will you stay with me if I take you up to my room and take care of you? I'll be good to you, little duckling, everybody about here will tell you that; everybody but the children, they don't like me.' I moaned, but it was from happiness. It seemed too good to hear that cooing voice in my ear. I thought of my mother—a ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... the finger and then withdrawing it, till at last she leaped a considerable height above the water, and caught her by the said finger, which made it bleed profusely: by this leap she threw herself completely out of the water into the court. At one time a young duckling got into the well, to solace himself in his favourite element, when she immediately seized him by the leg, and took him under water; but the timely interference of Mr Dormer prevented any further mischief than making a cripple of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... celebrate the birth of Monsieur Napoleon Bingle by dining together at Pierre's. This day he is born again—or, at least, prospectively born. Life for him really begins to-day—the sixth of March. It is my treat! I shall be the host on this memorable occasion. Pierre shall give to us the best duckling in his larder ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... family vied with each other in adoring the ugly duckling, and in happy Irish fashion regarded her shortcomings as a joke rather than a misfortune. "Seen that youngster of mine?" the Major would cry genially to his friends. "She's worth a visit, I tell you! Ugliest child in Galway, though I say it that shouldn't." And Pixie's company tricks were all based ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... are absolutely staunch. She scarcely leaks a tear anywhere; and although she's beamy and heavy-bowed and deep, she isn't such a sluggard either, especially when it's blowing. In fact, dirty weather's our strong point with that ugly duckling of a cutter. She'd sail most of your dandy craft slick under water if it came on really bad. And we got it a week ago by the Dogger here, and last year just to s'uthard of the Bay, as foul as I've ever seen ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... Olives Roast Squab Duckling, Currant Jelly Creamed Mashed Potatoes Peas Lettuce Pimento Dressing Mince Turnover Coffee Cheese and Crackers Nuts ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... best; but he began to be conscious that now he was passing to a new sphere, where the girls are supreme and superior, and he began to feel for the first time that he was an awkward boy. The girl takes to society as naturally as a duckling does to the placid pond, but with a semblance of shy timidity; the boy plunges in with a great splash, and hides his shy awkwardness in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... not omniscient, and she never could have understood the boy. I daresay he was not enough of an ugly duckling to attract special attention, and with many other chicks in the brood he could not have more than the rest, and yet he required it. He ought to have been an only child. If he had been mine, I should have known what his dreaminess ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... after another began to crack. From each little egg came "Cheep! cheep!" and then a little duckling's head. ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... him. She would be rich, rich enough to do anything and everything for Sally's children, for instance. And what pleasure and pride such a marriage would bring to Lydia, and Pa, and Sally! And how stupefied Len would be, to have the ugly duckling ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... at a time in many of the charming resorts among the mountains or along the Pacific seaboard, Miss Allison eagerly accepted their invitation to be one of the party. Mrs. Lawrence was to remain in charge at home, and was permitted to send for and receive under her wing her own graceless duckling, with the distinct understanding that he was in no wise to be allowed to interfere with Cary's studies or duties. Allison "had no use," as he expressed it, for his nephew Lawrence. He had helped pull the cub through many a scrape, but had ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... five minutes to row out there," Jerry said, "and then we'll have seen it at last. It couldn't be a better time. Why, a newly hatched duckling could ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... The dogs also refused to play when she went to them; for they had to watch the house and bark at strangers. Then they also told her to go and play with little Niebla down by the river. Then Alma ran out and caught a little duckling, a soft little thing that looked like a ball ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... to thank for giving us hospitality on two occasions, consists mainly of a bay. Viewed by the norma verticalis, it is shaped like an ugly duckling, with an oval (Wellsted says a circular) body of high ground disposed north-east to south-west; and with head and neck drooping westward so as to form a mighty pier or breakwater. The watery plain ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... critically. "No," she said, slowly. "She is not exactly pretty now, but she's the ugly-duckling kind. She may turn out to be the most beautiful swan of them all. I like that the best of any of Andersen's fairy tales. Don't you? I used to look at myself in the glass and tell myself that it would be that way with me. That my straight hair and pug nose needn't make any difference; that some day ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... be new," said the duckling. "O ho!" said the wise old owl, While the guinea-hen cluttered off chuckling To tell all ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... egg, while the bee larva is almost embryonic in its build. The helpless young maggot of the wasp, which is fed solely by the parent, may be compared to the human infant, while the lusty young grasshopper, which immediately on hatching takes to the grass or clover field with all the enthusiasm of a duckling to its native pond, may be likened to that young feathered mariner. The lowest animals, as a rule, are at birth most like the adult. So with the earliest known crustacea. The king crabs, and in ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... There would be no peace for Ireland either. The factions of the Irish party are yearly becoming more and more numerous. In all except hatred to England they are bitterly opposed. All very well to set up Ulster as being the ugly duckling, as being the one dissentient particle of a united Ireland. If every Protestant left the country Ireland would still be divided, and hopelessly divided. Personal reviling, riot, and blackguardism are already common between the factions, united though they try to appear, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... certain teachers in schools he had been asked to leave back in his ugly duckling days. How didactically, positively, they clung to their exactitudes—like frightened little children in a chaotic world too big for them to face, hanging on to mother's skirts, ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... knees, bends forward toward the firelight, and tells the story with such simplicity and earnestness that I am always glad she is looking the other way and cannot see the tears in my eyes. I cried like a school-girl last night over 'The Ugly Duckling.' She has natural dramatic instinct, a great deal of facial expression, power of imitation, and an almost unerring taste in the choice of words, which is unusual in a girl so young and one who has been so imperfectly trained. I give her an old legend or some fragment of folk-lore, and ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... fled after the General, who, though he was obliged to wear whalebone braces in his shoes on account of youth and a waddling and undeveloped gait, scattered over the ground with the elusive clumsiness of a young duckling. Brother blushed, but ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... was not a happy one. Her mother was severe and impatient of petty faults, and the child's mind became embittered. Her father was reserved and melancholy. Fredrika herself was restless and passionate, although of an affectionate nature. Among the other children she was the ugly duckling, who was misunderstood, and whose natural development was continually checked and frustrated. Her talents were early exhibited in a variety of directions. Her first verses, in French, to the morn, were written at the age of eight. Subsequently she wrote comedies ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... a doctor's certificate as to the health of the birds and animals which the chef presents so artistically in his celebrated plats du jour, and one need not take the journaux comiques too seriously, as once did a gouty milord, who insisted that his duckling Rouennais should, while alive, first be certificated as to the health of its bronches and poumons. All the same one likes to know that due regard is given to the proprieties and necessities of his bedroom, and to know that the kitchen ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... return to M. Ribot. He writes (p. 14):- "The duckling hatched by the hen makes straight for water." In what conceivable way can we account for this, except on the supposition that the duckling knows perfectly well what it can, and what it cannot do with water, ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... store of obits, and that sempiternally, on the anniversary day of his decease, every one of them all be furnished with a quintuple allowance, and that the great borachio replenished with the best liquor trudge apace along the tables, as well of the young duckling monkitoes, lay brothers, and lowermost degree of the abbey lubbards, as of the learned priests and reverend clerks,—the very meanest of the novices and mitiants unto the order being equally admitted to the benefit of ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... years old he became blind in one eye, a loss and deformity which subjected his sensibilities to severe trials and which had the effect of rendering him morose and sour. It was his lament in later life that while his brothers had been sent to college, he was the ugly duckling of the family and came in for his father's neglect and a shrewish step-mother's waspishness. At about fourteen years of age he relieved himself of these home troubles and ran away to sea. During the nine years that he sailed between Bordeaux and the West Indies, he rose from ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... good woman and remain on the stage, that's what it comes to." In spite of the gravity of the scene, a smile trickled round Evelyn's lips, for she could not help seeing her father like a hen that has hatched out a duckling. He stood looking at her sadly. She had come back—but what new pond would she plunge into? "I am a very unsatisfactory person, I know that. I can't make people happy; but there it is, it can't be otherwise. ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... on our story at Potsdam, and shows us Wilhelmine, an unattractive maid of ten, the Cinderella of her family, for whom there seemed no better prospect than a soldier-husband, if indeed she were lucky enough to capture him. She was, in fact, the "ugly duckling" of a good-looking family, removed by a whole world from her beautiful eldest sister Charlotte, who counted among her many admirers no less exalted a wooer than Prince Frederick William, the King's nephew and ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... worth its weight in gold; and you are my good sensible Esther," my mother said once, when I had hinted rather too strongly at my plainness. Dear soul, she was anxious to appease the pangs of injured vanity, and was full of such sweet, balmy speeches; but girls in the ugly duckling stage are not alive to moral compliments; and, well—perhaps I hoped my ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... developed into a woman of great beauty. She was noted for the peculiarly vivacious and radiant expression which was always on her face. She had a kind of vivid loveliness accompanied by grace, simplicity, and a form of exquisite proportions. The ugly duckling had become a swan, for now there was no trace of her former ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... the Director and his wife. These servants had curious ways, and a curious language in the odd pidgin English that enabled the door boy to announce that "the number one topside foreign devil joss man have makee come," when the English Bishop called, and the table boy to announce a dish of duckling as "one piecee duck pups," or of chicken as "one piecee looster." The social scale among the few foreign residents was very precisely defined, and the social life of the foreign colony highly conventionalized, so that the unassuming, practical-minded ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... expanding verification of the adage that blood will tell. For Mr. Surface, said Tim, had been a great scholard, and used to sit up to all hours reading books that Thomason, the butler, couldn't make head nor tail of; and so with Surface's boy. He was the strange duckling among chickens who, with no guidance, straightway plumed himself for the seas of printed knowledge. Time rolled on. When Surface was released from prison, as the papers announced, there occurred not the smallest ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... greatest patriots, from Swift to Davis, have been her children; but she has never understood their spirit, never looked on them as anything but strangers to her family. They have been to her stray robber wasps, to be driven from the hive; while to the others they have seemed cygnets among her duckling brood. It is very wonderful that the University alone has been able to resist the glamour of Ireland's past, and has failed to admire the persistency of her nationality. There has surely been enough in every century that has passed since the ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... literary prowess; and like many authors before and since, one of his first acts upon the kind reception of "Roderick Random," was to get published his worthless blank-verse tragedy, "The Regicide," which, refused by Garrick, had till then languished in manuscript and was an ugly duckling beloved of its maker. Then came Novel number two, "The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle," three years after the first: an unequal book, best at its beginning and end, full of violence, not on the whole such good art-work as the earlier fiction, yet very fine in spots ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... "Well, the duckling shall come, too," shouted heedless Annie; and Kitty, with the full weight and delirious importance of her secret radiating all over her stout little person, slowly returned to the other members of ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... say that there was, so far as I can recollect, none of that flattery of childhood which is so often merely a backhanded way of indulging the vanity of parents. My Mother, indeed, would hardly have been human if she had not occasionally entertained herself with the delusion that her solitary duckling was a cygnet. This my Father did not encourage, remarking, with great affection, and chucking me under the chin, that I was 'a nice little ordinary boy'. My Mother, stung by this want of appreciation, would proceed so far as to declare that she believed that ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... an old hen clucking after her duckling in the water," he replied. "She has been fretting and fuming after you all the week. If it had been me out in Sark, she would have slept soundly and ate heartily; as it was you, she has neither slept ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... his great History. The second part, the reign of Elizabeth, was reserved for future issue in separately numbered volumes. The death of Macaulay in December, 1859, left Froude the most famous of living English historians, and the ugly duckling of the brood had become the glory of the family. The reception of his first six volumes was a curious one. The general public read, and admired. The few critics who were competent to form an instructed and impartial opinion ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... her red-gold hair and her viking-coloured eyes, and that touch of the Berserker in her spirit. It was very different with Holly, soft and quiet, shy and affectionate, with a playful imp in her somewhere. He watched this younger daughter of his through the duckling stage with extraordinary interest. Would she come out a swan? With her sallow oval face and her grey wistful eyes and those long dark lashes, she might, or she might not. Only this last year had he been able to guess. Yes, she would be a swan—rather a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... something beneath one arm. Saved from being thought a 'smug,' by his title, his lack of any conspicuous scholastic ability, his obvious independence of what was thought of him, and a sarcastic tongue, which no one was eager to encounter, he remained the ugly duckling who refused to paddle properly in the green ponds of Public School tradition. He played games so badly that in sheer self-defence his fellows permitted him to play without them. Of 'fives' they made an exception, for in this he attained much proficiency, owing to a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "Oh, you needn't be polite. I'm one, too. Not a very big one or very tragic. A lame duckling, ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... Instantly the young shot out of the cavity that held them, as if the tree had taken an emetic, and came softly down to the water beside their mother. Another observer assures me that he once found a newly hatched duckling hung by the neck in the fork of a bush under a tree in which a brood of Wood ducks had ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... the flocks of Phoebus ever began life as a more ungainly duckling than Ibsen did. The ingenuity of biographers has done its best to brighten up the dreary record of his childhood with anecdotes, yet the sum of them all is but a dismal story. The only talent which was ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... to the recollection of what had set her off on her walk. There was for a time rather a strained silence; but they were all very hungry—dinner was two hours late—and the discussion of Yoshido's roast duckling was anything but favorable for the consideration of painful topics. They had champagne to celebrate her safe escape from the adventure. To the sensation of perfect ease induced by the well-chosen dinner this added a little ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... of the fact. She told me once that no one had ever fallen in love with her, 'I could not expect them to do so,' she remarked candidly. 'As a girl I was plain featured, and so shy and awkward that your Uncle Joe used to tell me that I was the only ugly duckling that would never turn ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... offered to our Young Friends—Nursery Alphabet, Sing-a-Song of Sixpence, The Frog's Wooing, The Three Little Pigs, Puss in Boots, have for many generations delighted the Nurseries of Great Britain. We trust that they and their worthy new companion, The Ugly Duckling, which has come to us from over the Sea, will still afford many hours of quiet amusement ...
— Aunt Friendly's Picture Book. - Containing Thirty-six Pages in Colour by Kronheim • Anonymous
... both been trying at intervals for a certain marauding pike reported to them as a ferocious duck destroyer by a gentleman farmer who came down to gossip. He indicated the field and a gravel pit as a guide to the place where his cowman had seen a duckling seized by a pike, and the man embellished his account by swearing that the fish had ploughed his way down the river half out of water, with the ball of feathers bewhiskering his jaws. Manford, it seems, had revenged the raided ducks. A large pike lay at the bottom ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... been near young ducklings before, and their extreme blondness and the delicate completeness of their feet and beaks filled him with admiration. It is open to question whether there is anything more friendly in the world than a very young duckling. It was with the utmost difficulty that he tore himself away to practise punting, with the plump woman coaching from the bank. Punting he found was difficult, but not impossible, and towards four o'clock he succeeded in conveying a second passenger across the sundering flood ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... example; hero, heroine, demigod, seraph, angel; innocent &c. 946; saint &c. (piety) 987; benefactor &c. 912; philanthropist &c. 910; Aristides[obs3]; noble liver|!, pattern. brick*, trump*, gem, jewel, good fellow, prince, diamond in the rough, rough diamond, ugly duckling|!. salt of the earth; one in ten thousand; one in a million; a gentleman and a scholar; pillar of society, pillar of the community, a man among ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... their utmost speed, we at length nearly overtook the ostriches; and then I saw a number of little brown duckling-looking birds following at the heels of the female ostrich. Greatly to my surprise, the male ostrich at this moment stopped short, and then wheeling round, darted off on one side. As we were anxious to obtain the young as well as the mother, we continued ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... children knew to whom to run when hurt, or unhappy, or in disgrace, sure of getting consolation and sugar-plums from the sad, lonely woman, though equally sure of being sent away as soon as their tears were dried, and their troubles forgotten. If the poor, abused Ugly Duckling of Hans Andersen's tale had strayed on a wintry day to her door, she would have taken it in, and nourished, and cherished it all through the cold, dark weather; but when the summer was come, and the duckling grown into a swan, spread its broad white wings against ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... sister. I think you cannot but love me a little when you know how entirely I am devoted to you. I can bear to have you near me now and think of you only as the hen thinks of her duckling. For a moment you are out of the pond, and I have gathered you ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... book, the sort that a boy would like, to cost about six or seven shillings, and have it sent to this address; you can put in my card and say I hope the boy will like it. Are they poor, did you say? No, not very, but this boy is the 'ugly duckling' of the family, and everybody snubs him, they say he is so dull and stupid, and I think a little kindness will help him to assert himself. Then go to the poulterer's, and have a turkey or goose sent to ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... runaway slave, among the rest, whom I helped to forward toward the north star. Men of one idea, like a hen with one chicken, and that a duckling; men of a thousand ideas, and unkempt heads, like those hens which are made to take charge of a hundred chickens, all in pursuit of one bug, a score of them lost in every morning's dew—and become frizzled and mangy in consequence; men of ideas instead ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... duckling from Redhorse—daughter (they say) of old Calamity Jim—certainly his heiress, with no living relation but an absurd old aunt, who spoils me a thousand and fifty ways— absolutely destitute of everything but ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... A young duckling may be carved in the same manner as a fowl, the legs and wings being taken off first on either side. When the duck is full size, carve it like a goose; first cutting it in slices from the breast, beginning close to the wing and proceeding upward towards the breast bone, ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... I was myself, George answered, 'FRANK, SHALL IT BE HOCK OR MADEIRA? I could have hugged him to my heart but for the presence of the company. Little did Lady Golloper know what was the cause of the emotion which sent the duckling I was carving into her ladyship's pink satin lap. The most good-natured of women pardoned the error, and ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of their acquaintance her interest in Markham had not been unlike that of the motherly hen in the doings of the newly hatched duckling with which she differed as to the practical utility of duckponds. She had been intensely interested in his work and in his career which during the winter in Paris had been definitely shaped as a painter of successful portraits. She had liked the man from the first, liked ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... curios. The owner was a kind-hearted woman, and did not intentionally ill-treat her live-stock; but the shop was very dark and dirty, and one could but wonder how anything contrived to live in such close, stivy air. On going in one day, I nearly walked over a large, pensive-looking duckling which stood in the middle of the shop. His brother had been considered suitable for the adornment of a table-lamp with a looking-glass stand, on which a bright yellow duckling was placed, as if swimming on water; this bird, having some darker markings, was of no use for that purpose and had been ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
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