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More "Haystack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a mere tramp, clearly a man of no importance to you or me or anyone else in the world. The evening was warm, the place secluded and remote, and, other things being equal, he climbed over the hedge, chose a comfortable position against a haystack, pulled from his pocket a fragment of a newspaper and a fragment of a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... followed your trail to where we found the rig. After that it was guessing where the needle was in the haystack It just happened we were cutting across country to water when we ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... 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
... by the fields, Dollops," whispered Cleek as they took to their heels up the rough road. "Got to pass him. This mist will help us. That was a near shave about the haystack. I nearly tripped us up there. Awful creature, ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... you were searching for rebels, you thought a man was concealed in a dairy-yard in the neighbourhood of my mother's house, major, in Stephen's Green; and you thought he was hid in a hay- rick, and ordered your sergeant to ask for the loan of a spit from my mother's kitchen to probe the haystack." ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... 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 standing ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... can I? I am a-growing, and I dare say I could hit a haystack as well as a good many of our chaps. They ain't all of them so clever because they are a bit ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... '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
... Canty's house was stretched the body of Lieut. Edward K. Lonergan, of the 7th Irish Republican Regiment, of Buffalo. He had been killed at Ridgeway and the body brought back to Canty's barn and abandoned there. Several more Fenians were discovered under the barn, and more in a haystack near by, all of ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... to confirm these deductions by observation. In April I unpotted my plant of thyme for the third time. I broke up the mould and spread it under the magnifying-glass. It was like looking for needles in a haystack; but at last I recovered my little Cigales. They were dead, perhaps of cold, in spite of the bell-glass with which I had covered the pot, or perhaps of starvation, if the thyme was not a suitable food-plant. I give up the problem as too ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... tramp up the mountain road in which the two men 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
... like finding a needle in a haystack, and for a time Stoddard despaired of success. But those rugged mountains were an open book to the planes circling high overhead, and with Martin's Bluff once located, the rest was not ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... flames attacked the haystack, which was but a morsel to its fury, and then seizing the house devoured it more slowly, while the great volume of the fire swept around over the plain. Long did the light of the burning home blight the eye of the lone woman after the flames ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... blow your horn! The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn. Where's the little boy that looks after the sheep? Under the haystack, fast asleep! ...
— The Real Mother Goose • (Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright)
... pulsating earth. To the 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
... 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
... 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 ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... in doubt as to which of the two plans they should lend their support to. "Are you sure we'll catch 'em, Cap?" inquired one, doubtfully, "there are so powerful many forks to this river, it's like hunting for a needle in a haystack." ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... 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 ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... haystack stood by the road-side, but over there in the field he saw a barn near a farm-house. He could find shelter in that. Waiting until it was dark, he crept cautiously through a small sheep door, and entered. He heard in another part of the building ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... step 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 of its kind ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... 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 ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... to her: "If you will go to yonder hay-stack, and fetch me a handful of hay, I'll give you the milk." So away went the old woman to the haystack and she brought ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... try to find that strange man, whoever he is," suggested Tom. "Although looking for him would be a good deal like looking for the proverbial pin in the haystack. I would rather dig up the whole of the Atlantic seacoast looking for Captain Kidd's treasure;" ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... along with me and you may have a piece of this pie for yourself. And you may stay with Grandpa Goosey Gander until summer comes, and then blow your horn for the sheep in the meadow and the cows in the corn. There is no need, now, for you to stay out in the cold and look for a haystack under which ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis
... heavy rumbling sound, like a very large old gentleman asleep after dinner; and there was a smaller sort of rumble going on at the same time; and there was a sort of crowing, clucking sound, such as a chicken might make if it happened to be as big as a haystack. ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... over that haystack," said Jack, "and then play out rope till we lower him. It'll make a nice soft ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... though it would burst. As I approached the little inn, I saw the stranger in a sloping meadow behind the house. She was seated at the foot of a sunny wall, against which the inhabitants of the place had piled a few stones. Her white dress shone out on the verdant meadow, and the shade of a haystack screened her face from the sun. She was reading in a little book that lay open on her lap, and every now and then interrupted her reading to play with the children from the mountain, who came to offer her flowers, or chestnuts. On seeing me, she attempted to rise as if to meet me ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... a person to shoot if he mayn't shoot in his own woods? Not that the Duke cares about the shooting for himself. He could not hit a pheasant sitting on a haystack, and wouldn't know one if he saw it. And he'd rather that there wasn't such a thing as a pheasant in the world. He cares for nothing but farthings. But what is a man to do? Or, rather, what is a woman to do?—for he tells me that I ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... 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 to—to start a ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... 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
... at 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 ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... to her: "If you will go to yonder haystack and fetch me a handful of hay, I'll give you the milk." So away went the old woman to the haystack; and she brought the hay to ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... 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
... the gaoler in such a manner that he afterwards died. The friend was caught at once, but David ran well—"never did a fox double the hounds in better style"—and got away in woman's clothes. As he was resting in a haystack after his run of ten miles in an hour, he heard a woman ask "if that lad was taken that had broken out of Dumfries Gaol," and the answer: "No; but the gaoler died last night at ten o'clock." He got arrested in Ireland ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... Our striped friend had the best of the start, and we gained not an inch upon him. To our unspeakable mortification, he reached the dense cover on ahead, where we might as well have sought for a needle in a haystack. Never, however, shall I forget that mad headlong scramble. Fancy an elephant steeple-chase. Reader, it was sublime; but we ached for it ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... the fools!" said an exasperated voice. "Off you go, with no cap, and a head like a haystack. Do you remember that they have a burra khana[1] on? Do you want to be turned back for a lunatic? Dress first and get there early, and then speak to her. Call your boy, can't you? Why I ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... ignorant soul, and settled down to stay. She said it over nights when she found a shelter in some unpleasant place or days when the road was rough or a storm came up and she was compelled to seek shelter by the roadside under a haystack or in a friendly but deserted shack. She thought of it the day there was no shelter and she was drenched to the skin. She wondered afterward when the sun came out and dried her nicely whether God had really been ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... choice between this pair of perfect twins: one is as exquisite as the other.... And yet you must take one and I the other... this or that, whichever you prefer.... You shall take it home with you to-night and practise thrusting at a haystack or at a bobbin, as you please... The sword is yours to command until you have used it against my unworthy person... yours until you bring it out four days hence—on the southern ramparts of Boulogne, ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... happened to meet a band of Chukchis who had seen them, we might wander over those desolate plains for a month without coming across the stove-pipe, which was the only external sign of their subterranean habitation. It would be far worse than the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack. ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... 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
... wit and brilliancy, I had thought them to be hard and intellectual and lacking in all that broader base of humor which aims at truth. His writing—catching the bad habit of the time—is too ready to proclaim a paradox and to assert the unusual, to throw aside in contempt the valuable haystack in a fine search for a paltry needle. His reviews are seldom right—as most of us see the right—but they sparkle and hold one's interest for their perversity ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... hint 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 ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... was not a palace. It stood, low and whitewashed, amid a medley of little tumble-down erections, and was guarded on one side by cowsheds and on the other by the haystack. You stepped across the threshold into the kitchen. A door on the right gave access to the bedroom. A ladder connected with a hole in the roof enabled you to reach the cockloft, the guest room of the establishment. That was all. What on earth could man want more? asked Paragot. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... half the way over. As he walked through Birkenhead, bound for Chester, he pricked himself on to note red-brick house-rows, almost shocking in their lack of high front stoops. Along the country road he reflected: "Wouldn't Morty enjoy this! Farm-yard all paved. Haystack with a little roof on it. Kitchen stove stuck in a kind of fireplace. Foreign ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... places as the Mansion House has to be met. The hall is so vast and the multitude so bewildering that, unless you know exactly where to look, it is as hopeless to expect to find any given partner at the right moment as to seek a needle in a haystack. The only safe expedient is to agree upon a pillar. A row of substantial pillars runs down either side of the hall, the base of each fringed with seats, apt head-quarters for chaperons, who, sitting there at ease, survey the fray and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... Here a haystack smoldered in what had been a farmstead yard; its thin blue smoke wavered up in the morning, incense over the dead hope of the humble heart that had dreamed it had found a refuge in that spot. At the roadside ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... three or four miles 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 ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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 the hay ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... chance like a good un. The boss still sprees and loafs about town till some one has to go and haul him home. I'm about full of him, and I'm going to leave home before next Christmas, or my name ain't what it is. Mother says the kiddies would starve if I leave; but Stanley is coming on like a haystack, I tell him, and he does kick up, and he ought to be able to plough next time. I ploughed when I was younger than him. I put in fourteen acres of wheat and oats this year, and I don't think I'll cut a wheelbarrow-load of it. I'm full of the place. I never have a single penny ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... threepence was exactly the price of a little book, The Tale of a Tub, which he spied in a bookseller's window. He bought it, took it into a field near Kew Gardens, and sat down to read; read on till it was dark, tumbled to sleep under a haystack, and woke to ask the head gardener for work. He was given work, but the gardener persuaded him to return home. Ten years later he ran away from Farnham again, and for the last time. He was out on the road to meet ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... 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, only thirteen ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... Blue, come blow your horn, The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn. Is this the way you mind your sheep,— Under the haystack, fast asleep?" ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... have divined by the rhythm of my impromptu phrases, but it happened at that time that a play of mine had been accepted at the Grand Guignol, subject to an additional thrill being introduced, and I preferred pondering for a thrill in my garret to hunting for a pin in a haystack, ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... can they ever find it? Seems to me it'll be like hunting for the proverbial needle in a haystack, only more so!" ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... of the car and set off running at top speed for the scene of the blaze, which was in a haystack back of the main barn of the farmhouse. Several farm hands, under the direction of the disagreeable old man, whose name was Zenas Hutchings, were running about with buckets of water, which were about as effective as trying to sweep the sea back with a broom, so far as gaining any headway ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... 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 ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... right, 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
... 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
... thing of real value; and, at last, wearied with the philosophical twaddle, I resolved to make a new search for the criterion. I confess it, to my shame, this folly lasted for two years, and I am not yet entirely rid of it. It was like seeking a needle in a haystack. I might have learned Chinese or Arabic in the time that I have lost in considering and reconsidering syllogisms, in rising to the summit of an induction as to the top of a ladder, in inserting a ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... come," said he, "without the praying for. When the fire came owre the hill the other day, I just put up a bit prayer to the Lord, that He'd spare the haystack, and He spared it. (I didna stop working, ye ken; I worked the harder; if ye dinna mean to work, ye should na pray.) But I never prayed for rain,—I didna, ye see, like to ask the Lord to upset all ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... exclaimed, springing to the ground beside me. "I've actually 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 been ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... for myself, I am happy in this occasion to make a public avowal of my own."[48] Without the "Reliques," "The Ancient Mariner," "The Lady of the Lake," "La Belle Dame sans Merci," "Stratton Water," and "The Haystack in the Floods" might never have been. Perhaps even the "Lyrical Ballads" might never have been, or might have been something quite unlike what they are. Wordsworth, to be sure, scarcely ranks among romantics, and he expressly renounces the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... 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 ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... in our great city with its constant removals and changes of population. The individual is like the proverbial needle in the haystack, unless we adopt a method of accounting not only for each family but for each individual down to the latest-born child.* *In order that I may not be as one that beateth the air, I venture to suggest a method of laying the foundation of records that has been helpful ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... remember that haystack over there," said the boy, with entire irrelevance, "but there's a house with a light in it, and—maybe we'd best ask if we're on the right road. ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... exclaimed. "Now I know! You're going to live in the haystack. A haystack is cozy and warm; it's wind-proof; it sheds water; and ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug • Arthur Scott Bailey
... bumping a few miles away—mostly at aeroplanes. I went to the trenches with a friend. Our last sight, as we came away from the region of them, was of a group of French boys and girls and a few elders around a haystack; and half a dozen big Australians, with rolled shirtsleeves, up on the farming machinery helping them to do ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... and we had to drive up the pigs, whose stye was threatened with submersion. The scene was truly one of desolation as we looked beyond our own homestead; trunks of trees and palings, and now and then a haystack, and barns, and parts of houses, and occasionally whole dwellings came floating by, showing what ravages the flood must have committed above us. Malcolm and I agreed that it was fortunate we had repaired our canoe. As the waters extended, ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... up the road distances from Denver, Cole. Your job's like lookin' for a needle in a haystack. I'll put a detective agency on James. He might take a notion to run out to the cache any fine evenin'. He likely will, to make ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... 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 by the pendant hay. But no ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... some cottagers were going to their day's labor, and saw, to their astonishment, that several acres of ground were strewn with black ashes. In the middle of a field there was a heap of whitened bones a great deal higher than a haystack. Nothing else was ever seen of the dreadful Chimera. And when Bellerophon had won the victory he bent forward and kissed Pegasus, while the tears stood ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... spectacle that inspired Pan as never before. The wagons were lined up near the lake, their big white canvas tops shining in the afternoon sun, and higher on a bench stood the "hoodelum" or bed wagon, so stocked with bedrolls that it resembled a haystack. Beyond the margin of the lake, four hundred fine saddle horses grazed and kicked and bit at one another. Beyond the saddle horses grazed the day herd of cattle. And over on the other side dinned the melee over the main herd, the incessant riding, ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... discovered. They had not walked far that day and now pressed forward north. They had filled their pockets with the remains of their supper, and after walking all night, left the road, and climbing into a haystack at a short distance, ate their breakfast and were soon ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... chameleon-like, Jerry reflected her tepor, her supineness and femininity. She recounted his virtues with pride, while I questioned her, hoping against hope to hear of some prank, the breaking of window-panes, the burning of a haystack or the explosion of a giant cracker under the cook. ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... to carry me down the river to Bhagulpore, whence I was to proceed to the Sikkim-Himalaya. The vessel, which, though slow and very shabby, had the advantage of being cooler and more commodious than the handsomer craft. Its appearance was not unlike that of a floating haystack, or thatched cottage: its length was forty feet, and breadth fifteen, and it drew a foot and a half of water: the deck, on which a kind of house, neatly framed of matting, was erected, was but a little above the water's edge. My portion of this floating residence was lined with a ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... children; or stopping to pull and tug at a snow-trapped steer and by main effort, drag him into a barren spot where the sweep of the gale had kept the ground fairly clear of snow; at times also, they halted to dig into a haystack, and through long hours scattered the welcome food about for the bawling cattle; or gathered wood, where such a thing was possible, and lighting great fires, left them, that they might melt the snows about a spot near a supply ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... would probably only stay a few hours. "We can't treat him like that; tell him to stay a week and send for his gun. For the matter of that he can have one of mine. I don't expect he will be able to hit a haystack," was his reply. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... to his twisted knees; he had long, yellow, overlapping horse's teeth in his mouth, with a fall-down under-lip and a drawn-back upper-lip; he had a matted rug of hair on his head. He was as high as a haystack. He carried in his twisted hand an iron spike pointed at the end. And wherever he was going he went as quickly ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... food they purchased by the way under some thick, tree, or beside a stream through whose limpid waters they could watch the trout glide and play. And they often preferred the chance shelter of a haystack, or a shed, to the less romantic repose offered by the small inns they alone dared to enter. They went in this much by the face and voice of the host or hostess. Once only Philip had entered a town, on the second day of their flight, and that solely for the purchase of ruder ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Lawd, child, ain't you in 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 ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... jumped on to the sledge (for he was running) having seen Stareek put his paws through. It was a nasty crevasse, about twenty feet across with blue holes on both sides. The sledge ran over and immediately on the opposite side was brought up by a large 'haystack' of pressure which we had not seen owing to the light. Meares' team, on our left, never saw any sign of pressure. The light was so bad that we never saw this cairn of ice until we ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... 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
... beneath which his legs trembeled. "Name shis town's London. Shame name's big town 'cross ocean. Lots history c'nected wish name. Shtacks an' cords of it. Old times when King went out t'meet him, wish shtyle pile on bigger'n a haystack. Fact. Clothes finer'n a peacock. Tendered him keys, freed'm city. All shat short shing. Ver' impreshive shpectacle. Everybody felt better'n for improvin' sight. Undershtand? We'll be Lord Mayor and train for shis London. We can rig out right here. Our trouseau's here in shis ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... a haystack; but the speed at which he was going lodged his head several inches under the thatch, whence he projected horizontally into space, feet, arms, and wings gyrating furiously. The governess, however, soon released him with much laughter, ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... the street, surging this way and that, some eagerly joining in the chase, others, from ready sympathy with any rogue, doing their best to hinder and confuse us. There was no way to tell how he had gone. A needle in a haystack is easy found compared with him who loses himself in a ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... most venerable aspect. The note of welcome in his cheery voice was unmistakable and soon the maid who had spoken from the balcony had shown the way up a winding circular staircase to a welcome exchange to the shelter of a haystack which I had begun to fear would be my only ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... thank 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
... speak truth, the finding of the needle in the haystack would have been as easy as any hope of ever locating the machine in all those thousands ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... believe 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 away with her in September. You have also seen them together (occasionally) at Lenox ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... 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, ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... the family had assembled—some thirty or forty people, in fact, for Finland is famous for big families—and tables of cakes and coffee were spread at a point from which every one could see the enormous Kokko, as high as a haystack, standing on a lonely rock in the water. The boatmen went off and lighted it, having thrown turpentine over the dried branches, and stacked up tar-barrels, so that it might the more readily catch fire, and in a few moments huge volumes of smoke ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... 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 to ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... on yonder haystack,' observed Charteris poetically, as he and Tony, accompanied by Swift and Daintree, made their way across the fields to Parker's Spinney. Each carried a bicycle lamp, and at irregular intervals each broke into piercing yells, to the ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... superstitious watchers might have 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 against the gathering waters. There was no immediate fear, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... boys were examined as to their knowledge of Samuel Mills. "Where was he born?" asked the leader. "Under a haystack!" replied a small boy. Had the question been, Where was the American Board of Foreign Missions born? the answer would not have been so far from the way. Its baptismal naming came some years later, but under a ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker
... of "H. W." so that I may not have to correct them on a Sunday. I am not going over to the Sabbatarians, but like the haystack (particularly) on a ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... full of water that she steered like a haystack; and as any one in the waist got half-drowned every minute, long spells at the pumps ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... 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
... many in perpetuating the lawlessness for which the Bad Lands had for years been famous. Geography favored the criminal along the Little Missouri. Montana was a step or two to the west, Wyoming was a haven of refuge to the southwest, Canada was within easy reach to the north. A needle in a haystack, moreover, was less difficult to lay one's finger upon than a "two-gun man" tucked away in one of a thousand ravines, scarred with wash-outs and filled with buckbrush, in the broken ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... to take a walk uptown, to get the outdoor exercise and also in hope of seeing something of the tramp who had taken the packet. He knew that looking for the tramp in the metropolis was a good deal like looking for a pin in a haystack, but imagined that even that pin could be found if one looked long ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill
... 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 netting, and some rags of fish net, also about half ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... figurin' on two or three days' get-a-way, and so don't care a tinker's dam 'bout these yere marks. Once in the sand, an' thar won't be no trail anyhow. It's some kintry out thar, an' it would be like huntin' a needle in a haystack to try an' find them fellars after ter-night. This is my idea—we'll just mosey along slow, savin' the hosses an' keeping back out o' sight till dark. Them fellars ain't many hours ahead, an' are likely ter make camp furst part o' ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... can't do it. I know some people who always try to show themselves in public; but when they are home, they never have their collar on straight, and in the morning look like a whirlwind breakfasting on a haystack. As for me, I am practical, and winter is winter, and sleet is sleet, and ice is ice, and a tea-cup is a tea-cup; and if you will pass mine up to the hostess to be resupplied, I will like it a great deal better than all this sentimentalism. No sweetening, if you please. ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... and doubled again, and shifted and crept into holes; at last vanished up some dark crevice, and nothing was seen but his tail. One thought one was to see no more of him, when, on one of the polling mornings, he suddenly emerged, like a rat out of a haystack, and voted for Round. The Heads, in fact, have been thoroughly inefficient. The election has literally gone on without ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... lonely from the blue—brilliantly blue—waves; then a yellow crag of sandstone, looking like a haystack; and then a whole group of wild and fantastic islands, evidently of volcanic origin, and varying in rough peaks and abrupt cliffs of the strangest colours—brick-red, purple-black, grey, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... of meadow hay out in the meadow, with the tide-water all about them. Then his eyes were fixed on one particular haystack. On its top, with her yellow hair and smiling face in sight, was—it could not be, though—but it was—a little girl, and dangling by the side of the stack was a guitar with a yellow face. The man waded through the water that lay between the dry ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... surface of 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 there ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... lonesome, ignorant soul, and settled down to stay. She said it over nights when she found a shelter in some unpleasant place or days when the road was rough or a storm came up and she was compelled to seek shelter by the roadside under a haystack or in a friendly but deserted shack. She thought of it the day there was no shelter and she was drenched to the skin. She wondered afterward when the sun came out and dried her nicely whether God had really been speaking the words to her troubled ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... pool showed clear enough, but around him the vegetation was so dense that, unless he had some clue to guide him, to prosecute a search within it was like trying the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack. ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... looked for the Merian half the way over. As he walked through Birkenhead, bound for Chester, he pricked himself on to note red-brick house-rows, almost shocking in their lack of high front stoops. Along the country road he reflected: "Wouldn't Morty enjoy this! Farm-yard all paved. Haystack with a little roof on it. Kitchen stove stuck in a kind of fireplace. Foreign as ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... commands a most satisfactory view of the whole country embraced within a radius of 40 to 60 miles, including, as the landscape shows, Parks Hill to the south; Katahdin, the Traveller, and Mars Hill to the southwest; Quaquajo, the Horseback, the Haystack, and one or two peaks beyond the Aroostook to the west; the heights upon the Fish River and the southern margin of the Eagle Lakes to the northwest, and those south of the St. John (except a small angle obstructed by the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... heroines, Catriona and Barbara Grant, is even better than, the original. To think of it is to wish to take it from the shelf and read it again. It is all excellent, from the scenes where Alan is hiding under a haystack (suggested by an adventure of the Chevalier Johnstone after Culloden), and the first meeting with that good daughter of Clan Alpine and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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
... I wuz 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 ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... seemed one magnificent pageant of knightly and kingly fortunes; he only murmurs a "great pity" for the death of a knight or the massacre of a town. It is rather the pity of it that Mr. Morris sees: the hearts broken in a corner, as in "Sir Peter Harpedon's End," or beside "The Haystack in the Floods." Here is a picture like life of what befell a hundred times. Lady Alice de la Barde hears of the death ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... share," grumbled Bess. "But what about Tubby's additional avoirdupois, Frankie? He's as big as a haystack anyway." ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... loneliest land he had ever seen, and one of the loveliest. Here Earth, the Woman, rounded and beautiful, reclined at her ease before him, naked as God had made her. How different she was from that savagely shaggy man-land in the North whence he sprang! But for a haystack like a hive on a far ridge, a fold in a hollow, and the hillsides patched here and there with plough, it might have been ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... southward. At last a good sized gap in the long, ghostly line gave them courage to cross. They got through safely enough, and kept on steadily for a time across country. They skirted two villages, and reached a haystack near a river-bank before daybreak. Out toward the east they saw the faint outlines of a fairly large town. Before them lay the river, spanned by a bridge guarded at each end by a German sentry. Hope ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... 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
... sky, but the song went on without a quaver. The girl was evidently in the field and the voice seemed to come vaguely from a haystack about twenty ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... won't," said Pan, sagely enough. "'Tarn't likely at this time o' night; I wish we could find a haystack." ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... hail bouncing off Dad. Once 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 though ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... 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
... doorway. His long grey beard gave him a most venerable aspect. The note of welcome in his cheery voice was unmistakable and soon the maid who had spoken from the balcony had shown the way up a winding circular staircase to a welcome exchange to the shelter of a haystack which I had begun to fear would be my ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... gallant race of it. The foot men perspired and swore, but it was not to be. Our striped friend had the best of the start, and we gained not an inch upon him. To our unspeakable mortification, he reached the dense cover on ahead, where we might as well have sought for a needle in a haystack. Never, however, shall I forget that mad headlong scramble. Fancy an elephant steeple-chase. Reader, it was sublime; but we ached for ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... 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 ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... about town till some one has to go and haul him home. I'm about full of him, and I'm going to leave home before next Christmas, or my name ain't what it is. Mother says the kiddies would starve if I leave; but Stanley is coming on like a haystack, I tell him, and he does kick up, and he ought to be able to plough next time. I ploughed when I was younger than him. I put in fourteen acres of wheat and oats this year, and I don't think I'll cut a wheelbarrow-load of it. I'm full of the place. I never have ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... a spectacle that inspired Pan as never before. The wagons were lined up near the lake, their big white canvas tops shining in the afternoon sun, and higher on a bench stood the "hoodelum" or bed wagon, so stocked with bedrolls that it resembled a haystack. Beyond the margin of the lake, four hundred fine saddle horses grazed and kicked and bit at one another. Beyond the saddle horses grazed the day herd of cattle. And over on the other side dinned the melee over the main herd, the ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... sweet, odorous hay. There was no reason why she should not have taken the hammock in the shade of the veranda that morning, save that she wanted to be alone. Therefore she had taken a book and wandered forth. Behind the corrals she had come upon a haystack, cut halfway down and halfway across, and on impulse she had climbed up a short ladder and lain down. Her hands clasped behind her head, her book forgotten, she stared up into the blue sky, and dreamed daydreams. And ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... 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 of face; but ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... only knew where to look for Phil, I'd go after him," said Dave. "But to look for him in the darkness is like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack." ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... James, they did not meet with the devil after cruising about, but that he had accompanied them from the first, and that she had seen him dimly in the distance, rolling himself before them over the great waves, in shape and size not unlike a huge haystack. They met with a foreign ship richly laden with wines and other good things, which they boarded, and sunk after they had drunk all the wine and ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... 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 ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... 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 it ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... is too blame slow fer me," said Ricks, one chilly night in late September, as he and Sandy huddled against a haystack and ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... hourly execrated in every note of the gamut; and it must be owned that the detention they cause, when a fine fresh breeze is blowing, is excessively provoking to all the rest, and mortifying to themselves. Sometimes the progress of one haystack of a vessel is so slow that a fast-sailing ship is directed to take her in tow, and fairly lug her along. As this troublesome operation requires for its proper execution no small degree of nautical knowledge, as well as dexterity, ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... dear," the Doctor said to Isobel; "I don't suppose anyone is hit. The Sepoys are not good shots at the best of times, and firing running they would not be able to hit a haystack at a hundred yards. The cavalry stand firm, you see," he said, turning his glass in that direction. "Forster is haranguing them. There, three of the native officers are riding up to him. Ah! one has fired at him! Missed! Ah! that is a better ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... finest time conceivable, and enjoyed myself more than I could have hoped on board our strange floating menagerie: stallions and 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 ports 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 overboard like little bluish babies; and the big monkey, Jacko, ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... its feet, which they threw into the sea to excite a tempest: they embarked in sieves with much mirth and jollity, the fiend rolling himself before them upon the waves dimly seen, and resembling a huge haystack in size and appearance. They went on board of a foreign ship richly laden with wines, where, invisible to the crew, they feasted till the sport grew tiresome; and then Satan sunk the vessel and all on board. Fian or Cunninghame was also visited by the sharpest tortures, ordinary and extraordinary. ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... 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 netting, and some rags of fish net, also about ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... I have told you, and what you have told me. Then I will point out the futility of looking for a needle in a haystack. He may be inclined to let the case drop. He ought to be weary of it ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... Nat, angered at the other's apparent coolness. "You needn't think you're going to get them back for nothing. I found them all camped under our haystack this morning, and drove them into the old hen-house. You've just got to pay me ten cents apiece for them before I'll let them out. I bet you'll keep ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... 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 for ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... a 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, ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... employments: the poise of a fisherman, for instance, the play of his arm, the cast of his line or net,—these take the eye as do the stealthy movements of the hunter, the fine attitudes of the wood-chopper, the grasp of the sailor on the helm. A haystack and a boat are always picturesque objects, and so are the men who are at work to build or use them. So is yonder stake-net, glistening in the noonday light,—the innumerable meshes drooping in soft arches ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... 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 an hour ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hunting for a 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 got out with a whole skin, too. Don't ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... born of the music and his dreaming 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
... do me any good," he returned gloomily. "The only thing that can help me now is for me to git the fellow myself, and I might just as well look for a needle in a haystack." ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... many things now. The old house that had been patched and patched, and had one corner propped up from outside. The barn that was propped up all around and had a thatched roof that suggested an immense haystack. Old Barby crooning songs by the kitchen fire, sweet old Miss Arabella with her great high cap and her snowy little curls. Why did Aunt Priscilla think curls wrong? She had a feeling Aunt Elizabeth ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... gifted with that strange facility for comfort without work which characterizes some people, found resting-places ready made. They managed to steal away night after night and sleep in the sweet security of a haystack, a barn, a stable, a porch, or, if fortune favored them, in some ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... claws on his arm. "Now, Rufe, bubby," a most insinuating tone, Crann had summoned, "all them fool fellers air diggin' up the face of the yearth, wharever they kin find a Chilhowee lily—like sarchin' fur a needle in a haystack. But we uns will do a better thing than that. I drawed the idee ez soon ez I seen you an' Pete hyar this evenin' so onexpected. 'Them's my pardners,' I sez ter myself. 'Pete ter holp dig an' tote ef the box be heavy. An' you ter find out edzac'ly whar it be hid.' You uns ...
— A Chilhowee Lily - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... 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, only thirteen ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... crisis of my life was approaching. How the monition came to me I hardly know; I felt like a man wandering in the dark, with eyes strained and hands outstretched, who is dimly aware of some great object, tree or haystack or house, looming up ahead of him, which he cannot directly see, but of which he is yet conscious by the vibration of some sixth sense. The wonder came by degrees to overshadow my thoughts with a sense ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... can be on the beach," said their mother, as cheerfully as she could, "but it is like looking for a needle in a haystack. I will go and speak to the ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... likely that the Indians and stock were several hundred miles away, and that it would be next to impossible to get any trace of them, and in my opinion it would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... 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
... with him held close in her lap for a while, watching his enemies within. Then she started on a long detour, with the new haystack as her destination. He kept close to her heels, snarling wearily. A few days before she had made a cave in the stack, which stood between the barn and the chicken-house. The cave was on the side nearest ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... figure in the legislative assembly. He was honest, but slow of wit, and apt to become passive if pushed beyond his power to understand. This man who could throw the earth up to a hill of corn with skill and precision, who could build a haystack which would turn the rains and snows of winter, and break a colt to the harness without breaking its spirit, who had handled successfully the problems to which he had been trained, was not able to throw arguments ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... birth of intellect. I read on till it was dark, without any thought of supper or bed.' Cobbett adds, that having read till he could see no longer, he put the volume in his pocket, and 'tumbled down' by the side of a haystack, 'where I slept till the birds in Kew Gardens awakened me in the morning; when off I started to Kew, reading ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... less than just now. From what I have said any one might infer that I had not read, or had not appreciated, that volume called "The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems," in which are to be found things of pure beauty, "Summer Dawn," "In Prison," "The Wind," "The Haystack in the Floods"; any one might suppose that I did not know "Love is Enough." These are the poems which, with "Sigurd," give William Morris his place amongst the poets. Mr. Clutton Brock feels this surely enough, because he ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... last turned his back upon Walkherd Lodge, and went the way he came. The road he trotted along, with his feet on good Rutlandshire soil, but his head still somewhat in the clouds, got gradually more and more narrow, till it ended at a broad ditch, with, a dungheap on the one side and a haystack on the other. It was now that John perceived for the first time that he had lost his way. While walking along with Martha Turner, he no more thought of marking the road than of solving riddles in algebra, and, besides a faint ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... alone for a tramp up the mountain road in which the two men 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
... storm of sobs. One of the group, who had been watching him more closely than the others, soon withdrew from the game, and going in the opposite direction from that taken by Bud Perkins, came tiptoeing around the haystack. ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... 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
... miraculously darned, is a self-respecting young man, brought up by a worshiping mother who knows about ginger cookies and winter underwear, and whose Monday washing is fragrant with the clean-smelling scent of green grass and sunshine. But it was remarkable that she could pick this one needle from the haystack of socks and shirts that towered above her. She ran her hand through hundreds of garments in the day's work. Some required her attention. Some were guiltless of rent or hole. She never thought of mating them. That was the sorter's work. But with Eddie's socks it was different. They ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... 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
... 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
... looking at Winchester Cathedral. ''Might as well try to electrify a haystack. And to think that the World would take three columns and ask for more—with illustrations too! ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... fortnight after the last-recorded events, an elderly tramp was sitting against a haystack upon some farm premises, at no great distance from the town of Cottonborough. His age might be sixty, or, allowing for the rough life he had led, something less. He looked jaded and unwell. The day had been very warm, and the man ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... watchers might have 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 against the gathering ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... their dens, but I fancied the fox asleep upon some rock or log, and allowing the flakes to cover him. The hare in her form, too, was being warmly sepulchred with the rest. I thought of the young cattle and the sheep huddled together on the lee side of a haystack in some remote field, all enveloped ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... happy that it is so with my friends; and, for myself, I am happy in this occasion to make a public avowal of my own."[48] Without the "Reliques," "The Ancient Mariner," "The Lady of the Lake," "La Belle Dame sans Merci," "Stratton Water," and "The Haystack in the Floods" might never have been. Perhaps even the "Lyrical Ballads" might never have been, or might have been something quite unlike what they are. Wordsworth, to be sure, scarcely ranks among romantics, and he expressly renounces ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... the pariah class, certain back seats being reserved for them, while here and there may be seen a shovel-hatted priest, as eager in the result as the professionals themselves. The cock-pit is a circular building, thirty or forty feet in diameter, resembling on the outside a huge haystack. The size, however, is regulated according to the population of the immediate neighborhood. The seats are raised in a circle, one above another, about a central ring in which the contest takes place. The ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... and I've drawn about 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, and the teacher wouldn't dismiss us. By stretching my neck several feet I ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... burst. As I approached the little inn, I saw the stranger in a sloping meadow behind the house. She was seated at the foot of a sunny wall, against which the inhabitants of the place had piled a few stones. Her white dress shone out on the verdant meadow, and the shade of a haystack screened her face from the sun. She was reading in a little book that lay open on her lap, and every now and then interrupted her reading to play with the children from the mountain, who came to offer her flowers, or chestnuts. On seeing me, she attempted to rise as if to meet me ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... to leave that haystack for me to slide on," complained the boy, "and he said he wouldn't, and began to pull it down. I wish you'd ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... it. You remember the Breeds cleared away from their old settlement lately. We've never found them. Once they take to the hills, it's like a needle in a haystack. Maybe friend Anton is in ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... 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 managed to get him enthusiastic. He found a wrench, ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... don't you even hint 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. Do you understand that? Well, ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... The Federals had a battery entrenched on Moccasin Point, just across the river. The detail left before day and passed the danger point before it was light enough to be seen. By mid-day sufficient forage of corn and fodder had been obtained. Each horse and mule resembled a perambulating haystack, for it was loaded with two big sacks filled with corn on each side and as many bundles of fodder as could ...
— A History of Lumsden's Battery, C.S.A. • George Little
... 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 ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... "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 ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... want of 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 ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... his voice became gentle. "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. Do you understand ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... Not far from where your feet rest now we got our first sight of the Anakims, giants of Canaan. They were giants indeed. Their legs looked like tree-trunks, and covering their faces was a dense growth of beard out of which their eyes gleamed like crystals in a haystack. The sight of them set my heart all aflutter, because I knew at once that they were very dangerous foes, not easily reckoned with. We were very cautious that they should not see us, and I must say ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... said the Head of the Police. "He was sharp enough to find the needles in the haystack, and he's smart enough and strong enough to take care of them ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... their uniforms of scarlet and gold, each with his beautiful and abundant hair done up in a queue, Mr. Binkus laughed and said they looked "terrible pert." He told the virile and profane Captain Lee of Howe's staff, that the first thing to do was to "make a haystack o' their hair an' ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... week 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 by the pendant ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... of the Seventy-First, N.Y., and a squad of the Third Pennsylvania Cavalry awaiting us. Reporting to the General we took the right of the Seventy-First, and with the cavalry in advance moved out on the Hagerstown road across a stone bridge to a point designated on the diagram by a haystack, at which point, by direction of the General, the reserve was stationed. After giving me instructions as to the direction in which he wished the line of pickets extended, and orders to hold the point to the latest possible moment, and under no circumstances ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... 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 ride of ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... like looking for a needle in a haystack," was the comment of the senator's son, after a full hour had been spent in ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... Her steps became feebler, and she strained her eyes to look afar upon the naked road, now indistinct amid the penumbrae of night. At length her onward walk dwindled to the merest totter, and she opened a gate within which was a haystack. Underneath this she sat ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... 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 of ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... vicariously 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... after farewells, "I or one of my staff will return to scour the immediate neighbourhood. It has been done, you tell me, but only by amateurs. The skilled detective, sir, will see a needle where the amateur cannot discern a haystack." ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... to get it with. But threepence was exactly the price of a little book, The Tale of a Tub, which he spied in a bookseller's window. He bought it, took it into a field near Kew Gardens, and sat down to read; read on till it was dark, tumbled to sleep under a haystack, and woke to ask the head gardener for work. He was given work, but the gardener persuaded him to return home. Ten years later he ran away from Farnham again, and for the last time. He was out on the road to meet some friends on the way to Guildford Fair; the ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... missed a mesh of clothesline, frightened the barnyard chickens into a panic, and rose up again clear over a haystack—all this almost quicker than it takes to tell. Then we came down in an orchard, and when my feet had touched the ground I fetched up the balloon by a couple of turns of the ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... the present good or ill; Nor estimates alone one blessing's worth, From changeful seasons, or capricious earth; But views the future with the present hours, And looks for failures as he looks for show'ers; For casual as for certain want prepares, And round his yard the reeking haystack rears; Or clover, blossom'd lovely to the sight, His team's rich store through many a wint'ry night. What tho' abundance round his dwelling spreads, Though ever moist his self-improving meads Supply his dairy with a copious flood, ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... 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 on ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... at all. Saturday morning: the first good news I heard was that the cows had been found, and dragged by ropes down to the enclosure the horses had made for them-selves: they were half dead, poor beasts; but after struggling for four hours to and from a haystack two hundred yards off, one end of which was unburied, some oaten hay was procured for them. There was now not a particle of food in the house. The servants remained in their beds, declining to get up, and alleging that they might as well "die warm." In the middle of the ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... all that night unmolested, his foot giving him but little trouble, and passed the following day under a haystack, assuaging his hunger with some bread and cheese he ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... scatter, it'll be like looking for a needle in a haystack," remarked one of the more ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... merely a question of destroying an organization it might be managed, for an organization presents a big front. But it's a question of destroying this one man, and his front is a razor edge. How are you going to find him? It's like looking for a needle in a haystack, and such a needle! A needle which can become a piece of straw or a tin-tack ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... it would be like hunting for a needle in a haystack. You certainly do not understand the ways of the Indians. If the Indians have killed those men, they will take the bodies with them if they have to carry them a hundred miles. They will take them to their village and spend two ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... work, or if he did itself, you'd see him raising up a haystack like the stalk of a rush, or driving our last cow till he broke her leg at the hip, and when he wasn't at that he'd be fooling over little birds he had — finches and felts — or making mugs at his own self in the bit of glass we ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... charmin' a burd out iv a three; 'tis a way I have,' says I, shovin' in a fresh cartridge from my waistcoat pocket, fair an' aisy, an' kapin' me back to the haystack. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... powers 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 he ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... if he died, he should go to "a bad place," and therefore started saying his prayers. His brother George used to push him over when he was praying half-dressed in the bedroom, or occasionally vary proceedings by stirring him up with a sweeping brush. At last he found out a quiet place under a haystack, and there retired to pray. The old man drew a perfect picture of the first prayer thus offered, and told us he could remember every little detail of the spot, and the great oak tree spreading its branches over it. "Here I am," he said, "a poor old pilgrim ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... given to our guns, which were firing on this particular section of ground. The German battery commanders at once took advantage of the lull in the action to climb up their observation ladders and on to a haystack to locate our guns, which soon afterward came under a far more accurate fire than any to which they had been subjected up ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... distinguished by a name, have no "local habitation." They may be on the "Dogger Bank" to-day, on the "Swarte Bank" or the "Great Silverpits" to-morrow. With hundreds of miles of open sea around, and neither milestone nor finger-post to direct, a lost fleet is not unlike a lost needle in a haystack. Fortunately Jim discovered a brother smacksman looking, like himself, for his own fleet. Being to windward the brother ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... they jolted home again, hot, dusty, and weary, but supremely content in having lived up to the traditions of Menlo Park. Tiny alone came out triumphant on these trying occasions. Dressed in cool white, she seated her diminutive self in the very middle of the haystack and talked little. The others, undaunted by the sun, started in high spirits, flirted with energy, and changed their positions many times. Upon the return journey, Tiny, again, sat serene and white; the rest dangled over the sides as a last relief ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... of that day was employed in piling up the cocoa-nut branches and wood. Ready made a square stack, like a haystack, with a gable top, over which he tied the long branches, so that the rain would ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... great fun playing about the High Haystack. Here they all gathered after a snow storm, for the snow soon melted on ...
— Little Jack Rabbit's Adventures • David Cory
... love for 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 ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... friendly haystack stood by the road-side, but over there in the field he saw a barn near a farm-house. He could find shelter in that. Waiting until it was dark, he crept cautiously through a small sheep door, and entered. He heard in another part of the building the cattle munching the last of ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... 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
... though 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, ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... 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 of ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... silver to the purposes of currency. Your standard or measure, for instance, must, in the first place, possess a certain uniformity; if it be a measure of capacity, it must not be of the size of a thimble in the morning, and as big as a haystack at night, like the mystic bottle of the fairy tale; if a measure of length, it must not be made of caoutchouc, as long as your finger to-day, and as long as the Atlantic Cable to-morrow; and so, if a measure of value, it must not equal one thousand at ten o'clock, and equal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... grass growing on the dry ground lying between the marshes," said Ned, "and I suppose that the Mexicans cut it for the Vera Cruz market. Maybe we can find something like a haystack or a windrow. Dry ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... attention as possible by the way. After they had once recovered from their parting with Rhoda their spirits rose, and they tramped along lightly and cheerfully. It was eleven o'clock when they started, and through the night they did not meet a single person. Towards morning they got under a haystack near the road, and slept for some hours; then they walked steadily on until they had done twenty miles since their start. They went into a small inn, and had some breakfast, and then purchasing some ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... stretched down to his twisted knees; he had long, yellow, overlapping horse's teeth in his mouth, with a fall-down under-lip and a drawn-back upper-lip; he had a matted rug of hair on his head. He was as high as a haystack. He carried in his twisted hand an iron spike pointed at the end. And wherever he was going he went as quickly as ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... hamlet: though, more often, they loved to spread the simple food they purchased by the way under some thick, tree, or beside a stream through whose limpid waters they could watch the trout glide and play. And they often preferred the chance shelter of a haystack, or a shed, to the less romantic repose offered by the small inns they alone dared to enter. They went in this much by the face and voice of the host or hostess. Once only Philip had entered a town, on the second day of their flight, and that solely for the purchase of ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... shook all over as with ague. His nostrils felt choked. His mouth was wide open in his efforts to breathe. His heart pounded like a sledge-hammer. With that mumbling brute advancing upon him, he felt as if he couldn't fire so as to hit a haystack or a flock of hens at ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... be as bad as hunting for a needle in a haystack in all this big wilderness," ventured Bud; "though there'd be no harm in our trying,—-that is, if I'm in any shape to go with you after I've had ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler
... said the farmer (who wasn't). "There's some one behind that haystack, and the old watch-dog's back is up. See! there he runs; and as I'm a sinner, it's that black rascal who was loitering round, the day my ricks were fired, and you lads let him slip. Off after him, for I fancy I see smoke." And the ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... I was to proceed to the Sikkim-Himalaya. The vessel, which, though slow and very shabby, had the advantage of being cooler and more commodious than the handsomer craft. Its appearance was not unlike that of a floating haystack, or thatched cottage: its length was forty feet, and breadth fifteen, and it drew a foot and a half of water: the deck, on which a kind of house, neatly framed of matting, was erected, was but a little above the water's edge. My portion of this floating residence ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... village street. Some deep power in his youthful heart, akin to the wondrous sympathy of women, had been touched. Like a shock of fire it came home to him. He, too, might lose his dearest possession thus, and be unable to climb trees, jump ditches, risk his neck along the edge of the haystack or the roof. 'That might happen to me too!' was the terrible thing he realised, ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... 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 ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... rick of corn, and fell fast asleep, having made twenty miles since he started. In his hurry to escape pursuit, and the many thoughts which occupied his brain, Joey had made no observation on the weather; if he had, he probably would have looked after some more secure shelter than the lee-side of a haystack. He slept soundly, and he had not been asleep more than an hour, when the wind changed, and the snow fell fast; nevertheless, Joey slept on, and probably never would have awakened more, had it not been that a shepherd ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... 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
... a pin in a haystack," grumbled Roger. "If he got into these woods it's good-bye to him. We might search all night and not get a ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... lucky!" he exclaimed, springing to the ground beside me. "I've actually 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
... under the shelter of a haystack, and in the morning dug up the packet, sewed it up in its hiding place again, and re-entered the city as soon as the gates were opened, going in with a number of market people who had congregated there awaiting ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... regiments emerged 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 ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... Lieut. Edward K. Lonergan, of the 7th Irish Republican Regiment, of Buffalo. He had been killed at Ridgeway and the body brought back to Canty's barn and abandoned there. Several more Fenians were discovered under the barn, and more in a haystack near by, all of whom were taken ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... throughout the country 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, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... 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, then ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... were endless rows of vegetables—beans, turnips, cabbages, and garden truck of all sorts. This was the sort of country that had made Belgium known for years as the vegetable garden of Europe. Finally they stopped near a dark house, and made themselves comfortable in the lee of a haystack. And there they slept until the light of the sun came to rouse them. They awoke to see a peasant ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... began 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 ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... Looks like a regular haystack," grunted Stuart, as he dropped from the train and stood in the fairway, one hand held out in front of him, and a ponderous finger pointing ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... 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 to—to start ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... We followed your trail to where we found the rig. After that it was guessing where the needle was in the haystack It just happened we were cutting across country to water ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... their hour of triumphant ease, rested that which we had come to find. I sat with my back against a cottonwood and smoked a cigarette while I considered the impassive front of Writing-On-the-Stone; and the fruit of my consideration was that he who sought for the needle in the haystack had no more difficult ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... he continues to load the elephant, each time holding down with his foot a separate bough, until he has secured it by the weight of another, placed in the same position opposite. This plan enables him to build up a load like a small haystack, which is then secured by ropes, and almost hides the animal that carries it. My mighty beast was condemned to this useful but degrading employment, instead of being honoured by a place in the line of shikari's elephants, and we started into the valleys among ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... "Now I know! You're going to live in the haystack. A haystack is cozy and warm; it's wind-proof; it sheds water; and ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug • Arthur Scott Bailey
... not leaving an address. That would be useless. My decision is unalterable. It is futile to come after or try to find me. In a large city I will immediately become a needle in a haystack and that is what I want and need for my work. Do not worry. You know very well I can take excellent care of myself, and in case of unforeseen accident I will always be identified by your name and address on me. So by my very silence you are to ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... to get to see him. Yet he was willing to sell food at any time for cash; hay, too, as long as there was still some remaining in his lofts. He would also sell hay against promises of lambs, especially wethers, once it was certain that the cold of winter was past. But his old haystack he refused to touch ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
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