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More "Owl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feels what it is to be poor and contemned. I tell you boldly, godfather, and on my very heart, you must put an end to my misery—for you can do it. Give me back my money and land, and make me honourable amongst my neighbours. I can't sit alone like a night-owl in my hovel. I like to have my fellow-creatures about me, to eat bread and drink water, or it may be a draught of beer with me. I can't live the life of a blessed hermit. I am, as you know, but a simple plain fellow, a boor, a foolish forlorn lad, the unhappy son of poor Mike, danced ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... under-jaw, which appeared not to open and shut by an act of volition, but to be dropped and hoisted up again by some complicated machinery within the inner man, the harsh and dissonant voice, and the screech-owl notes to which it was exalted when he was exhorted to pronounce more distinctly,—all added fresh subject for mirth to the torn cloak and shattered shoe, which have afforded legitimate subjects of raillery against the poor scholar from Juvenal's time downward. ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... by the creaking of a door. It was an extraordinary thing at that hour. The whole house hold was asleep. Nothing could be heard save the footsteps of the watch-dogs on the sand, or their scratching at the foot of a tree in which an owl was screeching. An excellent opportunity to use his listening-tube! Upon putting it to his ear, M. Gardinois was assured that he had made no mistake. The sounds continued. One door was opened, then another. The bolt of the front ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... been railroads that "began somewhere and ended in a sheep pasture." The Poquette Carry Road, known to the legislature of its state as "The Rainy-Day Railroad," is even more indifferently located, for it twists for six miles, from water to water, through as tangled and lonely a wilderness as ever owl ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... and in five minutes he and his comrades were deep in the forest, and beyond the sight of their own camp fires. The weather was now clear and there was a good moon and many stars. Far to the right of them rose the hoot of an owl, but it was a real owl and they paid no ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Southern moon rises above the cotton fields, Romance touches even Grangerville itself, the baying of the yellow dog, darkey voices, the distant plunking of a banjo, the owl in the trees—all are the same as of old—and the houses are the same, nearly, and the people, and it is hard to believe that over there to the North the locomotives of the Atlantic Coast railway are whistling down the night, that men are able to talk to one another at a ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... which might have made The Thracian furies' bosoms kind. Canidia with her uncomb'd head And hair with vipers short entwin'd, Commands wild fig-trees, once that stood By graves, and cypresses uptorn, And toads foul eggs, imbued with blood, And plume, by night-owl lately worn, Herbs too, which Iolchos and Spain Produce, renown'd for poisons dire, And bone from hungry mastiff ta'en, Straight to be burn'd in magic fire. And now the witch strode through the house, Hell-waters scattering ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... choice of insects, devouring live grasshoppers with delight. [172] It was extremely ludicrous, when he was fed in the day time, to see the animal standing, perched up perpendicularly on his two thin legs with his bare tail, and turning his large head—round as a ball, and with very large, yellow, owl-like eyes—in every direction, looking like a dark lantern on a pedestal with a circular swivel. Only gradually did he succeed in fixing his eyes on the object presented to him; but, as soon as he did perceive it, he immediately extended ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... turned the eye of his coach-lantern upon its face. It was a man's face, prematurely old and wrinkled, with very large eyes, in which there was that expression of perfectly gratuitous solemnity which I had sometimes seen in an owl's. The large eyes wandered from Bill's face to the lantern, and finally fixed their gaze on that ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... Of vulgar chops and stews and hashes, First course—a Phoenix, at the head. Done in its own celestial ashes; At foot, a cygnet which kept singing All the time its neck was wringing. Side dishes, thus—Minerva's owl, Or any such like learned fowl: Doves, such as heaven's poulterer gets, When Cupid shoots his mother's pets. Larks stewed in Morning's roseate breath, Or roasted by a sunbeam's splendor; And nightingales, berhymed to death— Like young pigs whipt ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... be impossible: there were all sorts of strange sounds; and the moon, too, was so splendid that they almost felt as if they were lying beneath the radiance of a calcium light; while in the dark places, midst the branches of thick foliage, the owls hooted gloomily. If you had happened to be an owl in that vicinity, you might have heard not only the feverish tossing to and fro of the girls in the hammocks, but many dismal sighs and groans from Dr. Winship and the boys; for the bare ground is, after all, more rheumatic ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... chattering, his hair standing up on his head. "Who's that?" exclaimed the terrible voice once more, and then he saw a big black shape drop down from the tree above and settle on a dead branch a few feet above his hiding-place. It was a bird—a great owl, for now he could see it, sharply outlined against the clear starry sky; and the bird had seen and was peering curiously at him. And now all his fear was gone, for he could not be afraid of an ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... to hide virtues in? I did think by the excellent constitution of thy leg, it was framed under the star of a galliard!"—How Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and the Clown afterwards chirp over their cups, how they "rouse the night-owl in a catch, able to draw three souls out of one weaver!" What can be better than Sir Toby's unanswerable answer to Malvolio, "Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?"—In a word, the best turn is ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... for it," he gasped, "take me home—yo'! It's a sure 'nough sign! Last night ole whippo'will flopped ovah my head. Three nights runnen' a hoot owl hooted 'fore my cabin. An' now the ghost of a woman what ain't dead yet, sot there an' stare at me! I ain't entered fo' no mo' races in this heah worl', boy; I done covah the track fo' las' time; I gwine pass undah the line at the jedge stan', I tell yo'. ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... bottle, like the fisherman in the Arabian Nights,' answered Logotheti. 'He has read Kant till he believes that the greatest things in the world can be squeezed into a formula of ten words, or nailed up amongst the Categories like a dead owl over a stable door. My intelligence, such as ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... stopped to pull the briars out of my torn trowsers, scratched face and dishevelled locks, listen to the enemy, and ascertain where the Doctor had got to. No sound broke the reigning stillness, save the sonorous "coo-hoot" of an owl. My rifle was empty, and a search satisfied me that my caps were not to be found. My own cap had also disappeared in the fright, and I was in a bad way for defence, and completely at a dead loss as to the bearings ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... the very morrow after their return, while they were darting to and fro close to Cuvier's window, to whose presence they had become accustomed, and which did not in the least incommode them, a screech-owl, that seemed to fall from above, pounced upon the male, seized him in his talons, and was already bearing him away, when Cuvier took down his gun, which was within reach, primed and cocked it, and fired at the owl; the fellow, mortally wounded, fell head over heels into the garden, and Cuvier ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... by this wordy assault, looked from one to the other with his heavy eyes, the eyes of an owl rudely disturbed. Alixe almost danced her excitement. She hummed shrilly and grasped Van Kuyp's arm ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... then all melted: and he awoke with a loud cry that echoed through the edifice, now dark and cold as the grave; and a great white owl went whirling, and with his wings made the only air ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... case was, and ordering up a short ladder, bid Joseph climb to the spot, and thrust his hand into the hole. This he did rather unwillingly, and soon drew it back, crying loudly that he was bit. However, gathering courage, he put it in again, and pulled out a large white owl, another at the same time being heard to fly away. The cause of the alarm was now made clear enough, and poor Joseph, after being heartily jeered by the maids, though they had been as much frightened as he, sneaked into bed again, and ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... their being friends," retorted Zeke. "I'm thinkin' the prairie dog does most of the work any way you fix it. He's the one that digs the hole, then along comes the snake and makes his home in it, and then the owl creeps in and there ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... situation in which I found myself was full of difficulty. An owl screeched somewhere in the trees, but nothing else stirred. The sound of the shot had not attracted attention, apparently. I stooped and examined the garments of the man who ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... you that I should go with you? I'm to sit on a mountain beside him for forty years on end—a pretty story! And upon my word, how long-suffering people have become nowadays! No, it cannot be that a falcon has become an owl. My prince is not like that!" she said, raising ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in France, in particular Brittany, during the French Revolution, and even for a time under the Empire, when their head-quarters were in London; so named from their muster by night at the sound of the chat-huant, the screech-owl, a nocturnal bird of prey ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... upon a wild Florida forest, and all was still save for the hooting of a distant owl and the occasional plaintive call of a whip-poor-will. In a little clearing by the side of a faint bridle-path a huge fire of fat pine knots roared and crackled, lighting up the small cleared space and throwing its flickering rays in amongst the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... knew full well just what every one of the sounds meant. An owl called mournfully to its mate from a hollow tree. Katydids and merry crickets added their shrill music to the chorus of that late summer night. Even a colony of tree frogs solemnly chanted their appeal ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... friendship in early days with the painter-astrologer Varley. If a horse stopped for no ascertained reason or if a house martin fell they wondered what it portended. They disliked the bodeful chirp of the bat, the screech of the owl. Even the old superstition that the first object seen in the morning—a crow, a cripple, &c.—determines the fortunes of the day, had his respect. "At an hour," he comments, "when the senses are most impressionable ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... statical in our institutions and rational in our law, but to blend into one elemental creed the spiritual aspirations of Aryan and of Semite. Italy was not a pioneer in intellectual progress, nor a motive power in the evolution of thought. The owl of the goddess of Wisdom traversed over the whole land and found nowhere a resting-place. The dove, which is the bird of Christ, flew straight to the city of Rome and the new reign began. It was the fashion of early Italian painters to represent in mediaeval costume ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... standing black against the night-sky, rose the quaint, ponderous, but broken walls of the ancient stronghold, where an owl hooted weirdly in the ivy, and where the whispering of the waters rose from ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... to ten," he cried, running wildly up and down till his dressing-gown flapped round him like the wings of an owl. "So he has made nearly three thousand dollars! I have always had a bad opinion of that man; now I know what he is. He is a rascal—a double dealer. He never advanced the seven thousand either; his whole shop ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... what seemed an endless time, the long dusty road was desolate of any travellers except this pair of runaways. Sometimes a coyote yelped in the distance; occasionally some creeping thing barred the track before them; and a screech owl sent its blood-curdling cries into their ears. Otherwise they were alone in the wilderness and the night, and beyond speaking distance even ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... thoughtfully to himself. Now as he descended the steep Sherrill lane to the valley, ravine and hollow were already dark with twilight. From the rustling trees arching the lane overhead came the occasional sleepy chirp and flutter of a bird. Off somewhere in the gathering dusk a lonely owl hooted eerily. Still there was storm in the warm, sweet air to-night and back yonder over the hills to the north, the sky brightened fitfully ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... Vanna's unsteady figure moved from bed to chair. "I seed a coffin floatin' in de air in dat room—" she shivered, "and I heard a heap o' knockings. I dunno what it bees—but de sounds come in de house. I runs ev'y squeech owl away what comes close, too." Nancy clasped her hands, right thumb over left thumb, "does dat—and it goes on away—dey quits hollerin', you chokin' 'em ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... winter-tam most all the animals in the wood he'll go white. Those hare, he'll get white just same color as the snow. Those picheu, those lynx, he'll get gray, almost white. The ptarmigan, he'll get white, too, so those owl won' see heem on the snow; an' the owl he'll get white, so nothing will see heem when he goes on the snow. Some tam up north the wolf he'll be white all over, an' some fox he'll also be white all same as ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... smiled, for in the distance there was a resonant, "Hoi, hoi," such as might have been made by people come in search of him. But he knew better, as the shout rose up, and nearer and nearer still at intervals, for it was an owl sailing along on its soft, silent pinions, the cry being probably to startle a bird from its roost or some unfortunate young bird or mouse into betraying its whereabouts, so that a feathered leg might suddenly be darted down to seize, with four keen claws all ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... have no recollection of exchanging a word for more than an hour. We merely continued to pull sturdily against the downward rush of the stream, the deep silence of the night broken only by the dripping of uplifted blades, or the occasional far-off hooting of an owl upon the bank to our left. The pressure of the river's current was scarcely perceptible close against the shore, so we made fair progress. Yet it was hard work, neither of us being accustomed to such exercise, the heavy ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... my own caravan I've my wits about me. Outside and among folks—well, maybe you've seen an owl in the daylight with the small birds mobbin' him. . . . Now about yourself and the Mortimers—from this child's story there's no evidence yet to connect her or the boy with either of you. The man Hucks knows, and that carrier fellow at the wharf saw ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... made a boat of one of the wagon beds, and had a regular ferry, and when they pulled the wagons over they sank below the surface but came out all right. We came to Pawnee Village, on the Platte, a collection of mud huts, oval in shape, and an entrance low down to crawl in at. A ground owl and some prairie dogs were in one of them, and we suspected they might be winter quarters ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... Ambition-fired once on a day He took himself to flight, And in a castle all decay He nestled out of sight. "O why," said he, "should mind like mine "Midst gosling-flock be lost? "In learning I was meant to shine!" And up his bill he tossed. "I'll hide," said he, "and in the dark "I'll like an owl cry out ("In wisdom owls are birds of mark), "And none shall find me out!" And so from turret hooted he At all he saw and heard; Hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo! What melody! And what a silly bird! At length a Starling which had flown Down on the Castle wall Thus spake: "Why ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... as children could possibly do at table, though they prattled a little, and told Mrs. Howard of the animals they had at home, their kittens and the old cat, and an owl in the garden called Ralph, and many other things. When the dinner was removed, Mrs. Howard said she had ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... of bird-lime is of ancient origin, and is practised in many countries. Pennant gives an account of how to take Small birds by liming twigs around a stuffed or tethered live owl. I have heard of this plan being adopted, but have not tried it myself. From the curious manner in which small birds usually mob an owl, I should fancy it ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... penetrating mind will discover the villain in all his actions.... That Thugut is caballing.... Pray keep an eye upon the rascal, and you will soon find what I say is true. Let us hang these three miscreants, and all will go smooth." Suvaroff was not more complimentary. "How can that desk-worm, that night-owl, direct an army from his dusky nest, even if he had the sword of Scanderbeg?" ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... mopes apart, As owl mopes on a tree; Although she keenly feels the smart, She cannot tell what ails her heart, With its sad "Ah me!" 'Tis but a foolish sigh - "Ah me!" Born but to droop and die - "Ah me!" Yet all the sense Of eloquence Lies hidden in a ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... think that she has any wish to strain an argument with a view to "bolstering up her own art and ritual theory." It can, indeed, be no matter for surprise that such suspicions should be aroused. When, for instance, an educated man hears that the Israelites worshipped a golden calf, or that the owl and the peacock were respectively sacred to Juno and Minerva, he can readily understand what is meant. But when he is told that an Australian Emu man, strutting about in the feathers of that bird, does not ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... proprietors of the 'Morning Post,' the 'Oracle,' and the 'World,' in all of which the Della Cruscans wrote. His "Owls and Nightingales" are explained by a reference to 'The Baviad' (l. 284), where Gifford pretends to mistake the nightingale, to which Merry ("Arno") addressed some lines, for an owl. "On looking again, I find the owl ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... deeper, sterner, harder, more wicked, and more silent questions, than anyone has ever asked on earth before.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} Trust in life has vanished; life itself has become a problem.—But let no one think that one has therefore become a spirit of gloom or a blind owl! Even love of life is still possible,—but it is a different kind of love.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} It is the love for a woman whom we ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... Fringillidae or Sylviadae erect their feathers when frightened or enraged? (469/1. See "Expression of the Emotions," page 99.) I want to show that this expression is common to all or most of the families of birds. I know of this only in the fowl, swan, tropic-bird, owl, ruff and reeve, and cuckoo. I fancy that I remember having seen nestling birds erect their feathers greatly when looking into nests, as is said to be the case with young cuckoos. I should much like to know whether nestlings do really thus erect their feathers. I am now at work on expression ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... the development of the alphabet from pictures, our letter M represents the ears of an owl, which in Egypt was called MU, and the picture of which, later reduced to the ears, came to represent the sound ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... rose-colored cat and a yellow owl. The cat was carved impressionistically in a series of circles. She was altogether celestial and comfortable. The owl might have ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... your Grace look: for, like an unsophisticated [eye] sees everything upside down, you who are wise will discern the shadow of an idiot in lawn sleeves and a rochet setting springes to catch woodcocks in haymaking time. Poor Archy, whose owl-eyes are tempered to the error of his age, and because he is a fool, and by special ordinance of God forbidden ever to see himself as he is, sees now in that deep eye a blindfold devil sitting on the ball, and weighing words out between king and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... his joy could not conceal— "In guns," thought he, "I'll make a deal!" The Owl, who all his speeches heard, Took care to ...
— The Animals' Rebellion • Clifton Bingham
... art, such as a prince in the Arabian Nights might have been told to bring from a far distant country before he could hope to win the hand of some lovely princess. Among them was a clock under a glass case, consisting of a golden tree, with a peacock, an owl, a cock, a mouse, a stream of running water, and many other things. At each hour the peacock unfolds his tail, the cock crows, the owl rolls his goggle eyes, and the mouse runs out of its hole. But far more interesting than all the crowns of gold, the robes of silk, and the ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... orb Order of, stand not upon the —is Heaven's first law —this matter in France Ore, and tricks with new-spangled Orient pearl, sowed the earth Othello's occupation's gone Out of mind, oat of sight Outrun the constable Owl, was by a mousing, hawked at Own, do what I will with mine Ox, better than a stalled Oxlips and the nodding violet Oyster, then the world's mine Oysters not good without ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... not come. But the day before yesterday, about midnight, I found the three owl-feathers there ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... hidden behind the woods. The still surface of the pond was now a glossy, dark plane between two starry deeps—one above, the other beneath. In the shadow of the forest, near the far shore, Solomon stopped and lifted his voice in the long, weird cry of the great bush owl. This he repeated three times, when there came an ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... sorry," said the Owl, "to have to contradict the Crow, my famous friend and colleague. To my mind this Marionette is alive; but if, by any evil chance, he were not, then that would be a sure sign that he is ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... matter?' he said. 'Do you feel ill?' 'Lord Ashiel is dead,' I said; 'in the library. Some one shot him. Didn't you hear?' 'Dead?' he cried; 'Uncle Douglas shot! Do you know what you're saying! I heard a shot, it is true, five minutes ago, but surely that was the keeper shooting an owl or something.' ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... the aviary," she said to her father. "Especially the new owl. It's so amusing to look at in the daytime. Will you take him round and ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... long, melancholy hoot of the owl, and he did it so well that he was surprised at his own skill. The note, full of desolation and menace, seemed to come back in many echoes. He saw the swart leader and the men with him start and look fearfully toward the forest that curved so near. Then he saw them ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the seashore, the waves lap my feet and murmur: "Baroja, you will never amount to anything." The wise owl that perches at night on our roof at Itzea calls to me: "Baroja, you will never amount to anything," and even the crows, winging their way across the sky, incessantly shout at me from above: "Baroja, you will never amount ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... plan the king put it into execution. Satan incensed with indignation stood unterrified. My friend seeing me in need offered his services. James being weary with his journey sat down on the wall. The owl hid in the tree ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... fearful owl of death, Our nation's terror and their bloody scourge! The period of thy tyranny approacheth. On us thou canst not enter but by death; For, I protest, we are well fortified And strong enough to issue out and fight: If thou retire, the Dauphin, well appointed, Stands with the snares of war to ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... down, till he reached a branch thick enough to cling to. The turban was none too long, the branches at the top were so slender. Just as he grasped a thick one, clutching it with both arms and legs, and swaying desperately in the dark, he felt a rush of wings across his face, and a great white owl flew out hooting in her panic. The boy almost missed his catch with fear, and the Maharajah, wakeful in his apartments, lost another good hour's sleep through hearing the owl's cry. It was the worst of omens, the Maharajah ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... book On Prescriptions, which has so signally smitten the heretics of our times, was never found fault with. How finely, how, clearly, has Hippolytus, Bishop of Porto pointed out beforehand the power of Antichrist, the times of Luther! They call him, therefore, "a most babyish writer, an owl." Cyprian, the delight and glory of Africa, that French critic Caussee, and the Centuriators of Magdeburg, have termed "stupid, God-forsaken corrupter of repentance." What harm has he done? He has written On Virgins, On the Lapsed, On the Unity of the Church, ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... weasel crosses his path, he stops, and either throws three pebbles into the road, or, with the innate selfishness of fear, lets someone else go before him, and attract to himself the harm which may ensue. He has a similar dread of a screech-owl, whom he compliments in the name of its mistress, Pallas Athene. If he finds a serpent in his house, he sets up an altar to it. If he pass at a four-cross-way an anointed stone, he pours oil on it, kneels ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... it?' said I to myself, bent double creeping under the young larch with my plaid drawn up to fend my eyes, and the black fright crept over me. An owl's whoop would have been cheery, or the snort of a hind—and Creag Dubh is in daytime stirring with bird and beast—but here was I stark lonely in the heart of it, never a sound about, far from the hunting road, and my mind back among the terrors of a thousand years ere ever the ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... Thy streets and broad places which once rang with the tramp of mighty hosts and echoed with the songs of jubilant multitudes welcoming them home from victory are buried under the drifting desert sands; in the ruins of thy holy temples the statues of the gods lie prone in the dust, and the owl rears her brood on thy crumbling altars, and hoots to the moon where once rose the solemn chant of priests and the sweet hymns of the Sacred Virgins; the jackal barks where once the mightiest monarchs of earth ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... Olympic games they that start up before the rest are lashed. "And they," replied Themistocles, "that are left behind are not crowned." Some say that while Themistocles was thus speaking things upon the deck, an owl was seen flying to the right hand of the fleet, which came and sat upon the top of the mast; and this happy omen so far disposed the Greeks to follow his advice, that they presently prepared to fight. Yet, when the enemy's fleet was arrived at the haven of Phalerum, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... in the heavens. Also, a short time before, a thunderbolt fell at Sirmium, accompanied with a terrific clap of thunder, and set fire to a portion of the palace and senate-house: and much about the same time an owl settled on the top of the royal baths at Sabaria, and pouring forth a funeral strain, withstood all the attempts to slay it with arrows or stones, however truly aimed, and though numbers of people shot ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... to the Crumpetty Tree Came the Stork, the Duck, and the Owl; The Snail and the Bumblebee, The Frog and the Fimble Fowl (The Fimble Fowl, with a corkscrew leg); And all of them said, "We humbly beg We may build our homes on your lovely Hat,— Mr. Quangle Wangle, grant us that! Mr. ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail, When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu whit, Tu whu, a merry note While greasy Joan doth ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... tree, and seats himself among the lowest of its great limbs. Listen to the almost human halloo, the "hoo! hohoo, hoo!" that comes out from the clustering foliage of an ancient hemlock. It is the solemn call of the owl, as he sits among the limbs, looking out from between the branches with his great round grey eyes. Listen again and you will hear the voice of the catbird, the brown thrush, the chervink, the little chickadee, the wood robin, the blue-jay, the wood sparrow, and ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... the breathless silence like the inquiries of an owl. But his ideas had all taken wings again and left him, as on the occasion when he attempted to preach without ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... the door. The witch undressed herself, and then took some boxes of ointment out of a casket, and opened one box and smeared herself with the stuff it contained. In the twinkling of an eye, feathers sprouted out of her skin, and she changed into an owl, and flew out of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... some love no fish, and some Love not their friends, nor their own house or home; Some start at pig, slight chicken, love not fowl, More than they love a cuckoo, or an owl; Leave such, my CHRISTIANA, to their choice, And seek those who to find thee will rejoice; By no means strive, but in humble-wise, Present thee to them in thy ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... short, brisk little man with a pronounced abdominal convexity, and he maintained toward his superior, though but a few years his junior, a mingled attitude of awe, admiration and affection such as a dickey bird might adopt toward a distinguished owl. ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... sat on the foot of his bed. Galors, strapped and bandaged till he looked like a mewed owl in a bush, turned his chalk face to her with inquiry shooting out of his eyes. He had grown a spiky black beard, from which he plucked hairs ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... a sudden the red radiance died out; the forest turned ashy; the sun had set; and on the wings of silence already the swift southern dusk was settling over lake and forest. A far and pallid star came out in the west; a cat-owl howled. ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... attention to Eben's chatter, my dear," advised her grandfather. "His authority seems to be the ancient storekeeper, whom I saw but once and didn't fancy. He looks like an old owl, in those big, ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... and, to-night, the pattern of the naked boughs above was thrown down upon the stones in a black lace work by the moon. The place was very still, but half a mile distant there dreamed great woods, whence came the hooting of an owl. ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... solemn hoot of a distant owl was heard. One of the men holding the rope dropped it, and ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... the younger one take his seat at the luncheon table. But now they spoke of a raid on the settlement to procure "grub," as the American slang for food has it. Bidding me stop on there and to utter the cry of the great horned owl if danger threatened, they stealthily crept toward the buildings of the camp. Presently came a scream, followed by a hoarse shout of rage. A second later the two dashed by me into the dense woods, Hawk Eye bearing a plucked ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... too much," was my inward comment. An owl could see that she was in love with him. (It is true that the owl is ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... Salve, derisively, "for our fine friendship's sake. Throw up your knife, though, first;" and he made a noose in his handkerchief then to reach down to him. "You and your owl of a sister," he muttered as he did so, "have taught me a thing or two. I should only have had exactly what I deserved if I had been both stuck and plundered, after being fool enough to put faith for one moment in you ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... raven or crow." Dr Seler says that the Quiche-Cakchiquel word ahmak seems to signify the vulture, "who pecks out the eyes," "who makes deep holes;" while Dr Brinton maintains that the Quiche ahmak means "the master of evil," referring to the owl, which is esteemed a bird of evil omen and bad fortune. The Pipil tecolotl also denotes "the night ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... broad flight of shallow steps, Monsieur the Marquis, flambeau preceded, went from his carriage, sufficiently disturbing the darkness to elicit loud remonstrance from an owl in the roof of the great pile of stable building away among the trees. All else was so quiet, that the flambeau carried up the steps, and the other flambeau held at the great door, burnt as if they were in a close room of state, instead of being in the open night-air. ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... moments the fugitives had lost all sight of the men without the city; they were swallowed up in the maze of narrow lanes and by-ways which had once been thronged by busy crowds of city folk, and were now given up to the snake, the owl, and ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... winds are whist and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid, And naught is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket's chirp and the answer shrill Of the gauze-winged katydid, And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, Who moans unseen, and ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... Brasilian pike, garfish, dolphins, cavalhas, parrot-fish, sting-rays, toothless-rays, angel-fish, sharks, sinking-fish, and varieties of mackrel. Its birds are several sorts of pigeons, parroquets, fly-catchers, the Ceylonese owl, a species of creeper, a sort of duck, and a purple water-hen. The cock and hen are its only tame fowls; and there are but three quadrupeds, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... passed, and the wind blew louder, rushing amongst the branches of the old pines, and making them moan more and more sadly. The cries of strange weird birds were heard, probably the shrieks of the ill-omened screech-owl, and the place seemed more and more remote from all human sympathy. Genji could only helplessly repeat, "How could I have chosen such a retreat." While Ukon, quite dismayed, cried pitifully at his side. To him it seemed even that this girl might become ill, might die! The light of the ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... back on those cushions?" she asked one morning when we were out in her boat. "You ought to be dozing half the day—and instead you're as wide awake as an owl." ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... suspicion of the truth, accuses me of eccentricity; he calls me an owl, and he, too, is determined that I shall resume my visits to Pepita. Last night I could no longer resist his repeated importunities, and I went to her house very early, as my father was about to settle his accounts with ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... with incised patterns filled with white clay. The productions of sculpture were limited to carving of small flat idols of Minerva [Greek: glaukopis][6] of marble, almost in the forms of two discs, which adhered to each other, and upon which the owl's face is rudely scratched. The Trojan treasure certainly shows more art, but it is characterized by an absence of ornamentation. In Mycenae, on the contrary, the monuments which I have brought to light show a high state of civilization, and ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... beamed mildly down. We floated out into that spectral shadow-land and moved slowly on as before. The silence was most impressive. Now and then the faint yeap of some traveling bird would come from the air overhead, or the wings of a bat whisp quickly by, or an owl hoot off in the mountains, giving to the silence and loneliness a tongue. At short intervals some noise in-shore would startle me, and cause me to turn inquiringly to the silent ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... wild night comes like an owl to its lair, The black clouds follow fast, And the sun-gleams die, and the lightnings glare, And the ships go heaving past, past, past— The ships go heaving past! Bar the doors, and higher, higher Pile the faggots on the fire: Now abroad, by many a light, ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... analytic; He could distinguish, and divide A hair 'twixt south, and south-west side: On either which he would dispute, Confute, change hands, and still confute, 70 He'd undertake to prove, by force Of argument, a man's no horse; He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl, And that a lord may be an owl, A calf an alderman, a goose a justice, 75 And rooks Committee-men and Trustees. He'd run in debt by disputation, And pay with ratiocination. All this by syllogism, true In mood and figure, he would do. 80 For RHETORIC, he could not ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... had been, passed away. The heathen temples ceased to be preserved as public monuments. The Capitol, on its desolate hill, lifted into the still air its fairy world of pillars in a grave-like silence, startled only by the owl's night cry. The huge palace of the Caesars still occupied the Palatine in unbroken greatness, a labyrinth of empty halls yet resplendent with the finest marbles, here and there still covered with gold-embroidered tapestry. ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... in every respect," sneered Gagabu; "and though he does not resemble him in any feature, grows more and more like him. But unfortunately, it is as the goose resembles the swan, or the owl resembles the eagle. For his father's noble pride he has overbearing haughtiness; for kindly severity, rude harshness; for dignity, conceit; for perseverance, obstinacy. Devout he is, and we profit ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... which the Owl and the Whippoorwill are conspicuous examples, are distinguished by a peculiar sensibility of the eye, that enables them to see clearly by twilight and in cloudy weather, while they are dazzled by the broad light of day. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... engine, to be ignorant if the train is going northeast or southeast, would be insupportable to me, all the more as when night comes, I shall see nothing, for I cannot see in the dark as if I were an owl ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... evidently incensed, and the new footman seemed to share her indignation. "Why, how is it?" he exclaimed. "Is the count an owl? A man who's not yet fifty years old, and who's said to be ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... nimbly vents his heat: "Who meets a fool must find conceit. I grant you were at Athens graced, And on Minerva's helm were placed; But ev'ry bird that wings the sky, Except an Owl, can tell you why. From hence they taught their schools to know How false we judge by outward show; That we should never looks esteem, Since fools as wise as you might seem. Would you contempt and scorn avoid, Let your vain-glory be destroy'd: Humble ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... capable of entertaining, simultaneously, the most contradictory notions. Thus, in the Australian "Legend of Eerin," the mourners implore Byamee to accept the soul of the faithful Eerin into his Paradise, Bullimah. No doubt Byamee heard, yet Eerin is now a little owl of plaintive voice, which ratters warning cries in time of peril. {65} No incongruity of this kind is felt to be a difficulty by the childlike narrators. Now I conceive that, starting with the relatively high idea of a Spirit of the Grain, early man was quite capable of envisaging it ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... "Archibald eclipses the Muses themselves; his words flow like the sylvan stream by moonlight, and his melody is a crossbreed of the nightingale and the owl." ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... assembled. Then it was that the real search began and a swarm of riders scoured the country for miles and miles. And once more, from all, the testimony was as before. There was not a clue to the disappearance, nor the semblance of a clue. As out of the darkness of night surrounding, a great horned owl swoops down upon its prey, and as mysteriously disappears, so the Indian had come and gone; and satisfied at last, irresistibly awed as well into an unwonted quiet, one by one, as they had arrived, the ranchers dispersed—and ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... in the mornings and evenings. These birds are continually quarrelling among themselves, sallying after insects, or making their best attempts at singing. They are dead on Kites, Crows, and such-like depredators. For several days an Owl (Bulaca newarensis) was flying about near the Cinchona Bungalow at Mongpho, and being a stupid creature at the best, and doubly so during daylight when it had no business to be abroad, was evidently considered fair game by the Long-tailed Drongo ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... the great Constantine, but which in a few hours had been stripped of the pomp of royalty. A melancholy reflection on the vicissitudes of human greatness forced itself on his mind; and he repeated an elegant distich of Persian poetry: "The spider has wove his web in the Imperial palace; and the owl hath sung her watch-song on ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... of the talking and laughing and the formless progress of the mob hushed the nearer night voices of the fields and woods; but from a distance the shuddering cry of a screech-owl could be heard; and the melancholy call of a killdee in a pasture beside the creek. The people, friends and foes together, made their way unlighted except by the tin lantern which some one had caught from where it stood on ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... the more than Stygian night Descends with slow and owl-like flight, Silent as Death (who comes—we know— Unheard, unknown of all below;) Above that dark and desolate wave, The reflex of the eternal grave— Gigantic birds with flaming eyes Sweep upward, onward through the skies, Or ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... owl sitting in the crotch of a tree, and he replied with a laugh: "All right, old Fussy," and stopped whistling until he had passed out of the owl's hearing. At noon he came to a farmhouse where an aged couple lived. They gave him a good dinner and treated him kindly, but the man ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... am returning you your book, little friend; and ,if you were to ask of me my opinion of it, I should say that never before in my life had I read a book so splendid. I keep wondering how I have hitherto contrived to remain such an owl. For what have I ever done? From what wilds did I spring into existence? I KNOW nothing—I know simply NOTHING. My ignorance is complete. Frankly, I am not an educated man, for until now I have read scarcely a single book—only ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... him, a certain liking, a regret at our opposition, a quality of friendliness. His broad face, which the common impression and the caricaturist make so powerful and eagle-like, is really not a brutal or heavy face at all. It is no doubt aquiline, after the fashion of an eagle-owl, the mouth and chin broad and the eyes very far apart, but there is a minute puckering of the brows which combines with that queer streak of brown discoloration that runs across his cheek and into the white of his eyes, to give something faintly plaintive and pitiful to his ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... thou art struck with an apoplexy of sense. Wisdom peeps through both thine eyes, like the unexpected apparition of a bed-ridden old woman at a garret window. Thou art the very owl of Minerva, and the little bill, that thou ever carriest with thee, is given thee for this purpose, to peck at man's frailty in the matter of repayment. Come, thou art in danger. ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... portraits,' said the Baronet. 'I am a blind owl; I had misread you strangely. And yet remember this; a sprint is one thing, and to run all day another. For I still mistrust your constitution; the short nose, the hair and eyes of several complexions; no, they are diagnostic; and I must end, I ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he said quietly, "if you're always as easy in your choice of men you're not the wise owl I thought you ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... a piper, drunk as an owl, drunk as David's sow, drunk as a lord, fuddled as an ape, merry as a grig, happy as ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... exclaimed. "Why, Leonetta would fall in love with a stuffed owl at present, provided it could dance ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... you having a cosy tte—tte with a young barrister of many inches and little brains," she laughed. "Come, Lorraine, spout away. What is your favourite hors d'oeuvre? Did you feel like a boiled owl at your first appearance? And which horse do you back ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... upon whose black sides were engraved many curious pictures, the mystic symbols of the Indians; and as they stood gazing at it an eagle with pointed wings wheeled slowly above them, gazing with clear eyes down into the sunlit vale. From her round nest in the crotch of a sycamore a great horned owl plunged out at their approach and glided noiselessly away; and in the stillness the zooning of bees among the rocks came to their ears like distant music. Beneath their feet the grass grew long and matted, shot here and there with the blue and gold of flowers, like the rich meadows ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... scorpion, and similar deceptions. Others of these nanahualtin will transform themselves to all appearances (segun la aparencia), into a tiger, a dog or a weasel. Others again will take the form of an owl, a cock, or a weasel; and when one is preparing to seize them, they will appear now as a cock, now as an owl, and again as a weasel. ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... the wisdom of the owl!" scoffed Helen. "Why, Tommy is only a girl turned inside out. A girl keeps all her best and softest attributes to the fore, while a boy thinks it is more manly to show a prickly surface—like ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... the egret, the crane, the stork, the pelican, the flamingo, the red partridge, the black partridge or francolin, the parrot, the Seleucian thrush (Turdus Seleucus), the vulture, the falcon or hunting hawk, the owl, the wild swan, the bramin goose, the ordinary wild goose, the wild duck, the teal, the tern, the sand-grouse, the turtle dove, the nightingale, the jay, the plover, and the snipe. There is also a large ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... white rod a foot and a half long designed to awaken the respect accorded by the English to their constables. We recognized many well-known men; but the Berlin populace, called by Goethe insolent, is not easily impressed, and we saw constables surrounded by street boys like an owl with a train of little birds fluttering teasingly around it. Even grown persons called them nicknames and jeered at their sticks, which they styled "cues" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Professor elsewhere, in quite antipodal contrast with these high-soaring delineations, which we have here cut short on the verge of the inane, "Man is by birth somewhat of an owl. Perhaps, too, of all the owleries that ever possessed him, the most owlish, if we consider it, is that of your actually existing Motive-Millwrights. Fantastic tricks enough man has played, in his time; has fancied himself to be most things, down even to ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... Mike was a clever feller & a orficer in Otheller's army. He liked his tods too well, howsoever, & they floored him as they have many other promisin young men. Iago injuces Mike to drink with him, Iago slily throwin his whiskey over his shoulder. Mike gits as drunk as a biled owl & allows that he can lick a yard full of the Veneshun fancy before breakfast, without sweatin a hair. He meets Roderigo & proceeds for to smash him. A feller named Mentano undertakes to slap Cassio, when that infatooated person runs his sword into him. That ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... joined a club, which produced a magnificent Owl, with a large head, and huge goggling eyes; and never did owl hiss more loudly than did their owl as it met Monsieur Malin's terrific dragon. They at last rushed at each other with such fury, that Tommy's head very nearly went ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... the Seneschal moved. The noise of his slumbers culminated in a sudden, choking grunt, and abruptly ceased. His eyelids rolled slowly back, like an owl's, revealing pale blue eyes, which fixed themselves first upon the ceiling, then upon Anselme. Instantly he sat up, puffing and scowling, his hands shuffling ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... hath berries, as black as any sloe, There comes the owl and eats them as she go. ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... creeping through the white darkness; fifty yards or so at a time, and then a pause to listen. Henry judged that they were about a half mile from their original anchorage, when the solemn note of an owl arose, to be answered by a ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... plumage, it will naturally follow that their nests must also differ. The lark never perches on a tree, and sings only when mounting in the air, and builds her nest on the ground. The swallow builds about the roofs of houses, under what we call the eaves, and sometimes in the corners of windows. The owl, which flies abroad only in the night, seeks out deserted habitations, or some hollow trees, wherein to deposit her eggs; and the eagles, who soar above the clouds till absolutely out of sight, bring forth their young in the cliffs of craggy rocks. Those birds, ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... they so, And you be silent? Do I speak, And you not hear? An arm you throw Round someone, and I feel so weak? —Oh, owl-like birds! They sing for spite, They sing for hate, they sing for doom, They'll sing through death who sing through night, They'll sing and stun me in the ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... characteristic arrangement seemed partial or dubious.[331] A tendency in the exterior stars of other clusters to gather into curved branches (as in our Galaxy) was likewise noted; and the existence of unsuspected analogies was proclaimed by the significant combination in the "Owl" nebula (a large planetary in Ursa Major)[332] of the twisted forms of a spiral with the perforated effect ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... the ground; but Akka restrained him. She did not seem to be the least bit angry. Instead, she said in a confident tone of voice: "It would be pretty poor business if one who is as old as I am could not manage to get out of worse difficulties than this. If only Mr. and Mrs. Owl, who can stay awake all night, will fly off with a couple of messages for me, I think ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... variations of his pulse; and I simply observed his manner. The trick is to introduce some word connected with the supposed crime in a list of words connected with something quite different, yet a list in which it occurs quite naturally. Thus I wrote 'heron' and 'eagle' and 'owl', and when I wrote 'falcon' he was tremendously agitated; and when I began to make an 'r' at the end of the word, that machine just bounded. Who else in this republic has any reason to jump at the name of a newly-arrived Englishman like Falconroy except the man who's shot him? Isn't that ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... high place there sits an Ass, settled beyond the reach of all the greatest intellects in this world to pull him down. Over our whole social system, complacent Imbecility rules supreme—snuffs out the searching light of Intelligence with total impunity—and hoots, owl-like, in answer to every form of protest, See how well we all do in the dark! One of these days that audacious assertion will be practically contradicted, and the whole rotten system of modern society will come down ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... rescuing Madge Plunket from a caitiff knight, or else hunting snakes and field-mice and lizards, and digging for lizard's eggs, which we would hatch at home—that happy refuge for all manner of beasts, as well as little boys and girls. For there were squirrels, hedgehogs, and guinea-pigs; an owl, a raven, a monkey, and white mice; little birds that had strayed from the maternal nest before they could fly (they always died!), the dog Medor, and any other dog who chose; not to mention a gigantic rocking-horse made out of a real stuffed pony—the ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... goin' to die when we heard a owl come to a house and start screechin'. We always said, 'somebody is gwine to die!' Honey, you don't hear it now and it's good you don't fur it would skeer you to death nearly. It sounded so mo'nful like and we'd put the poker or the shovel in the fire and that always run him away; it burned his ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... soft natural death, that art joint-twin To sweetest slumber! no rough-bearded comet Stares on thy mild departure; the dull owl Beats not against thy casement, the hoarse wolf Scents not thy carrion: pity winds thy corse, Whilst ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... plunged out into the night, and ran through the blackness for his life. And a great owl swooped softly by and ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... me a lullaby, And trickle the white moonbeams To my face on the balsam where I lie While the owl hoots at my ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... the spring came, also, Tommy's tame owl and "Happy Moses." Tommy's owl emerged from his winter-quarters, and took up his daily post of observation on the fence on the shady side of the school-house. He was blind in one eye, which eye was always open, the other was always closed. Yet with that one glassy, unblinking ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... think so! In the law-courts day in and day out, and in the empty flat at night alone like an owl." ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... may assert that he developed himself from the protoplasm of ignorance, and in the gloomy fog of fear and superstition grew by degrees into a formidable monster, being changed by the overheated imaginations of dogmatists into a reptile, an owl, a raven, a dog, a wolf, a lion, a centaur, a being half monkey, half man, till, finally, he became a polite ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... the body of a sleeping robin. An owl, lodged in the fork of a tree, moved not as the men passed. It, too, was ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... early, while Romer slept, and the men had just begun to stir, I went apart from the camp out into the woods. All seemed solemn and still and cool, with the aisles of the forest brown and green and gold. I heard an owl, perhaps belated in his nocturnal habit. Then to my surprise I heard wild canaries. They were flying high, and to the south, going to their winter quarters. I wandered around among big, gray rocks and windfalls and clumps of young oak and majestic ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... week at the Winter Garten at Berlin. Why that pudding-headed quagga, Bevan, at the Embassy, hasn't kept his eyes open for me, as he promised," he went on a while later, "I don't know! I can understand Eugen Pattenhausen, the owl-eyed coot who runs the International Aid Society, not doing a hand's turn to aid anybody—but Bevan! For Heaven's sake, while you're there call at the Embassy and ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... her in it, and wrote in golden letters upon it her name, and that she was a king's daughter. Then they set the coffin out upon the mountain, and one of them always remained by it to watch. And the birds came too, and mourned for Snow-white, first an owl, then a raven, and lastly, ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... in silence for a moment, looking earnestly at one another. Outside, somewhere in the woodland, there sounded the haunting gush of a night-bird's song, shivering through the quietness like a silver bell. The sweet note finished in a frightened squawk, and was followed by the cry of an owl. The song had ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... time, Ruby had stirred uneasily in her sleep, and at last when the owl who lived in the tall elm-tree close by, gave a long, mournful hoot, she awakened, and sat up, wondering, as she rubbed her eyes ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull
... respect on the old lady, and treated her to all his choicest airs and graces, rounding his elbows, pursing his lips, strutting and swaggering. She would not relax a muscle, and sat there as silent and sulky as an owl. ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... beings of fancy, but with living things, squirrels, and chipmunks, and weasels, chattering ground-hogs, thumping rabbits, and stealthy foxes, not to speak of a host of flying things, from the little gray-bird that twittered its happy nonsense all day, to the big-eyed owl that hooted solemnly when the moon came out. A wonderful place this forest, for children to live in, to know, and to love, and in after days to ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... though not so loud as a screech owl, and then she tottered, swayed, and lost her senses. If she'd fallen to the left no harm had overtook her; but to the right she fell and dropped unconscious, face ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... his "r's" with unctuous joy And, preening, wonders whom he may annoy, Then imitates a hen, a water-fowl And next the "Be quick" of a white barn-owl. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... "I think I will," he said. "I'm dog tired, and as sleepy as an owl," and he descended the poop ladder. Pine took a couple of turns up and down the deck, and then catching Blunt's eye, stopped ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... himself upon a high stool, a wizened little old man with a bent back, a bald head, and a hooked nose upon which were set a pair of enormous horn-rimmed spectacles that accentuated his general resemblance to an owl perched upon the edge of its nest-hole. He was busily engaged in doing nothing, and in staring into nothingness as, according to Tom, was his habit when communing with what he, Tom, ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... content now, dear. Had we not heard, This plot might have passed on to its dire end, Like the pale owl that noiseless cleaves the dark, And, on its dreaming ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... an owl," returned Russ, trying to think of the most harmless creature that made a noise ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... the great stair, "the Corridors of Time," where the white owl glared his glassy wisdom on the passings and counter-passings, she was haunted with the thought that Harry had seen the extraordinary Kerr before; not shaken hands with him, perhaps—perhaps not even heard his name; but somewhere, across some distance, once ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... chose the Owl, That bird of solemn phiz, That truly awful-looking fowl, To represent her wis- Dom, little recked the goddess of The time when she would howl To see a Peanut set on end, And ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... this morning, high and pure, in the middle of the tone. Helmanoff has trained you well, child, you take the notes as if nature herself had been your teacher. Neumann is gone; she screeches like an owl! Elle a son conge!" He continued to look at the pillow and the gold ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... very sooth the gift is after the measure of the giver." So he accepted this from her and gave it back to her and kissed her on the mouth and cheeks and eyes. When this was ended and done, for naught is durable save the Living, the Eternal, Provider of the peacock and the owl,[FN438] Nur al-Din rose from the seance and stood upon his feet, because the darkness was now fallen and the stars shone out; whereupon quoth the damsel to him, "Whither away, O my lord?"; and quoth he, "To my father's home." Then the sons of the merchants conjured him to night ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... murky gloom, in which she fancied she could discern the shapes of pursuers. Once thinking she had heard a sound behind her, she caught Markham's arm and they stopped, breathless, and listened, but they heard nothing in the rushing blackness but the complaint of an owl and the crash of a dead limb at a distance to their right. A drop of rain fell on Markham's hand. Their prospect was not pleasant. Markham struck a match under his coat and looked at his watch. It was one o'clock. They had been walking for ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... stratagem In the confining all our courtiers To their several wards: I must have part of it; My intelligence will freeze else. List, again! It may be 'twas the melancholy bird, Best friend of silence and of solitariness, The owl, that screamed ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... lofty, and its domes were shining; its rivers were running, its trees were fruitful, and its gardens bore ripe produce. It was a city with impenetrable gates, empty, still, without a voice but the owl hooting in its quarters, and the raven croaking in its thoroughfare-streets, and bewailing those who ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... silence. Suddenly an owl flew, hooting, past the window, and in the dusk his white wings ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... nor an idle boy, will do so well at a great school as at a private one.' Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 22, 1773. See ante, under Dec. 5, 1775. On June 16, 1784, he said of a very timid boy:—'Placing him at a public school is forcing an owl upon day.' Lord Shelburne says that the first Pitt told him 'that his reason for preferring private to public education was, that he scarce observed a boy who was not cowed for life at Eton; that a public school might suit a boy of a turbulent forward disposition, but would not do where there was ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... the spruce-tops; but in this silence it fell upon the starving man's hearing with a distinctness that drew his muscles rigid and set his eyes staring about him in wild search. Just beyond the hanging pails a moose-bird hopped out upon the snow. It chirped hungrily, its big, owl-like eyes scrutinizing Dixon. The man stared back, fearing to move. Slowly he forced his right foot through the snow to the rear of his left, and as cautiously brought his left behind his right, working himself backward step by step until he reached the shelter. Just inside was his rifle. He drew ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... are on the moving stream, And fling, as its ripples gently flow, A burnished length of wavy beam In an eel-like, spiral line below; The winds are whist, and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid, And nought is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill Of the gauze-winged katy-did; And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings, Ever a note of wail ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... every feathered mother had her brood quiet under her wings, the talk in the little beds was over, and God's bird-nursery at rest beneath the waves of sleep. Once more a few flutterings made me look up: an owl went sailing across. I had only a glimpse of him, but several times felt the cool wafture of his silent wings. The mother birds did not move again; they saw that he was looking for ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... profiled on a stormy sky, invaded by large coppery clouds which created a sort of twilight amid the night. On the left was an old abandoned mill, with its motionless wings, from the ruins of which an owl threw out its shrill, periodical, and monotonous cry. On the right and on the left of the road, which the dismal procession pursued, appeared a few low, stunted trees, which looked like deformed dwarfs crouching down to watch men traveling ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... could never escape from? Was man a being capable of high spiritual attainment, as he had heard in the church that morning? or was he no better than the ruthless creatures of the woodland, where the weasel preyed on the chipmunk, and the owl on the mouse, and the fox on the rabbit, and the shrike on the ph[oe]be, and the ph[oe]be on the insect, in an endless round of ferocity? Had man emerged above this estate? or was it as foolish to expect him to spare his brother-man as to ask a hawk ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... awfully fraudulent, but his smarty remarks about women in the oil business still rankled, so I just sat pretty and blinked like a little owl. Bell swore. In his best and most horrible manner, he swore, but—he gave in." "Bob" laughed again, a bit hysterically. "That's about all, dad. They agreed to put up the money and carry me—us, I mean—for a quarter ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... on the wet grass where it had fallen. There was a half-framed accusing thought that he might have gone for it; but she put the thought away; the time had passed for courtesies from him. When she stooped for the shawl, an owl flew viciously at her, snapping its bill close to her face and stirring the air with its wings. Unnerved, she ran back into the porch, but stopped there ashamed and looking kindly toward the tree in ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... cradle and looked at the baby. It was wide awake and it stared at her like a little owl. Except for that, it looked like any other baby. The way that the baby stared at her came nearer to making Kathleen afraid than anything that she had seen yet. But she took him out of the cradle, sat down on a low seat that ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... me, honey! But nobody has ivir loved me—that way. The good Lord made me a fright, honey—ain't ye noticed? I've a face like an owl. An' they told me from th' cradle up I'd nivir land a man. An' I didn't, honey; they all ran from me—an' so I become a bride o' th' ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... one chance in five to save my life. Still, I'd be an experiment! Before I went off under the stuff I told them who I was, for I'd heard they were sometimes fairly decent to enemy aviators, and I hoped to get a message through to my people. I was feeling as stupid as an owl, but I did think I saw a change come over the men's faces when they heard my name. Later, putting two and two together, I concluded that Germany was just the kind of business nation to know all about ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... might happen for the passing of reinforcements between Shiloh and his position, extending from Crump's landing westward, and he sends it over the road running from Adamsville to the Pittsburg landing and Purdy road. These two roads intersect nearly a mile west of the crossing of the latter over Owl Creek, where our right rested. In this letter General Lew. Wallace advises General W. H. L. Wallace that he will send "to-morrow" (and his letter also says "April 5th," which is the same day the letter was dated and which, therefore, ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... fog, and this elderly sylph clapped her hands and exulted: "They've fired it, they've fired it! and now the captain will blow the whistle in answer." But the captain did nothing of the kind, and the lady, after some more girlish effervescence, upbraided him for an old owl and an old muff, and so sank into such a flat and spiritless calm that ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... were supposed to care for nothing save their own family concerns, they kindly advised the young parents how to rear the brood, saying, 'Care, care,' was all that was necessary; nay, it is even recorded, as an undoubted fact, that an old Owl, who had lived for ages in a hole in the tree, actually opened her eyes quite wide when the news was first told to her, although it was broad daylight! You may imagine, then, how happy they were, surrounded thus by kindness and love; ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... was being fought between us under a smooth surface of civility, and Sidney might easily have complained to Diana that my owl stare was "getting on his nerves," even though he could have brought no other complaint. If he had spoken to her she would have made some excuse to scratch me off her list of bridesmaids. I hoped she would, and save me trouble! ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Flies ever; red drops o'er the victim are stealing: His whole body bleeds. Alas! to the wild horses foaming and champing That followed with mane erect, neighing and stamping, A crow-flight succeeds. The raven, the horn'd owl with eyes round and hollow, The osprey and eagle from battle-field follow, ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... To hear by the nose, it is dulcet in contagion. But shall we make the welkin dance indeed? Shall we rouse the night-owl in a catch, that will draw three souls out of one ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... Mother Chattox!" he cried. "What mischief is afoot? What makes the darkness-loving owl abroad in the glare of day? What brings the grisly she-wolf from her forest lair? Back to thy den, old witch! Ar't crazed, as well as blind and palsied, that thou knowest not that this is a merry-making, and not a devil's sabbath? Back to thy hut, I say! These ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... if but Laila would send me a greeting down of grace, though between us lay the dust and flags of stone, My greeting of joy should spring in answer, or there should cry toward her an owl, ill bird that shrieks in the gloom ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... eye ever piercing through the long leafy vistas of the forest on the watch for the fresh-chipped bark of the trees that guided his course, or the narrow indurated path over the spongy mould worn by running warriors. And when night filled the forest with the hoot of owl, and the far, weird cries of wild creatures on the rove, there sped through the aisled columns of star light and shadow, the ghostly figure of the French boy slim, and lithe as a willow, with muscles tense as ironwood, and step silent as the mountain-cat. All that night ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... that Stalky isn't here, you owl!" said McTurk. "Take down the key, and look sorrowful. King'll only jaw you for half an hour. I'm going to read in the ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... He is to be found under the carcasses of birds, Dogs or Cats, in the company of the undertakers-in-ordinary. The gourd which I will presently describe was lying in the earth under the remains of an Owl. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... mountain chickadees and nuthatches of various kinds, together with an occasional woodpecker. In the northern country we had come across a very few blue grouse and ruffed grouse, both as tame as possible. We had seen a pigmy owl no larger than a robin sitting on top of a pine in broad daylight, and uttering at short intervals a ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... was very still,—it was steeped in quietness. The rustling of the dry leaves under the feet of the woman was all she heard, except when the low sighing of the wind, the sharp bark of a fox, or the shriek of an owl, broke the silence for a moment, and all ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... thy royal finger, and take leave. I am a votary: I have vowed to Jaquenetta to hold the plough for her sweet love three yeasr. But, most esteemed greatness, will you hear the dialogue that the two learned men have compiled in praise of the owl and the cuckoo? It should have followed in the end ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... friar's hood; Fast, and fast, and they plunged therein,— But the viewless rider rode to win, Out of the wood to the highway's light Galloped the great-limbed steed in fright; The mail clashed cold, and the sad owl cried, And the weight of the dead ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... at all at his first summons. He spoke loudly, looking around him as he did so in some terror. A night owl, preparing to go home, was seated on a tree near by. The owl looked at Orion and hooted in a very melancholy manner. His voice seemed ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... pervading me, I presently noticed that a multitude of small birds were gathering about me, flitting through the trees overhead and the bushes on either hand, but always keeping near me, apparently as much excited at my presence as if I had been a gigantic owl, or some such unnatural monster. Their increasing numbers and incessant excited chirping and chattering at first served to amuse, but in the end began to irritate me. I observed, too, that the alarm was spreading, and that larger birds, usually shy of men—pigeons, jays, and magpies, I fancied ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... by courtesy, for it was eminently, peaceful in character, in spite of the turret inhabited by my dear "moping owl," H——) was finely situated on an eminence from which the sea, with the picturesque fishing village of Skerries stretching into it on one side, and the Morne Mountains fading in purple distance beyond its blue waters on the other, formed a beautiful prospect. A pine ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... over the fells with a company of schoolfellows, a poor blind lamb ran bleating past them, a black cloud of ravens, crows, and owl-eagles flying about it. The merciless birds had fallen upon the innocent creature as it lay sleeping under the shadow of a tree, had picked at its eyes and fed on them, and now, as the blood trickled in red beads down its nose, they croaked and cried ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... were in mature plumage, but the third was in the plumage of the previous year. Even with the rare golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos), Mr. Birkbeck was assured by a trustworthy gamekeeper in Scotland, that if one is killed, another is soon found. So with the white owl (Strix flammea), "the survivor readily found a mate, and the mischief ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... in the breathless silence like the inquiries of an owl. But his ideas had all taken wings again and left him, as on the occasion when he attempted to preach ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... believe Alice is really dead. I guess you must be pretty dog-goned crazy about birds yourself to have done such a lovely job on Alice, and I guess you know how perfectly sick I was over her death. Honestly, Mr. Epps, she was such a PEACH of an owl. But I suppose it had to be, and anyway, thanks just heaps for having done such a really perfectly gorgeous bit of taxidermy. Gratefully, FLORENCE CHASE. 593 ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... the station, and must take the morning train. It's not quite an "owl train"but comes along. I believe, by eight o'clock. Why Hazel, if the Marylands will be all here ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... both genius and training for the wilderness. He knelt at a little brook to slake his thirst, but did not stop long there. His happiness decreased in nowise. The familiar voices of the night were speaking to him. He heard the distant hoot of an owl, a deer rustled in the bush, a lizard scuttled over the leaves, and he rejoiced at the sounds. He did not think of hunger but toward midnight he raked some of last year's fallen leaves close to the trunk of a big tree, lay down ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... figure in the world; one by talking faster than they think, and the other by holding their tongues and not thinking at all. By the first many a smatterer acquires the reputation of a man of quick parts; by the other many a dunderpate, like the owl, the stupidest of birds, comes to be considered the very type of wisdom. This, by the way, is a casual remark, which I would not for the universe have it thought I apply to Governor Van Twiller. It is true he was a man shut up within himself, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... conveyed the message. "She says she likes it, an' I reckon she does. Scripture says them whose deeds is evil likes darkness better'n light. You certainly made a mistake when you clapped 'er in here—that is, if you meant to punish 'er. Ann's a reg'lar bat, if not a' owl." ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... "sixty-four volumes of valuable books, curiously bound." To these reference is made in the following extract from the Gentleman's Magazine for September, 1781. "Mr. Hollis employed Mr. Fingo to cut a number of emblematical devices, such as the caduceus of Mercury, the wand of AEsculapius, the owl, the cap of liberty, &c.; and these devices were to adorn the backs and sometimes the sides of books. When patriotism animated a work, instead of unmeaning ornaments on the binding, he adorned it with caps of liberty. When wisdom filled the page, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... gather some plants to stick into the mouths of the bottles as stopples. As he went he heard a voice saying "Hist!" and looking in the direction whence it came he saw a form sitting in the water; it wore a mask like the head of a great owl and it was smoking a pipe. When he turned towards it, it said, "You walk around like one without sense or knowledge. Why don't you do something for yourself? When next you hear my voice it will be well for you if you ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... now, that's all the sense one gets from my old owl— "what d'you call it, what d'you call it," and he doesn't know himself what he means. Peter Ignatitch, don't listen to me, but go yourself and ask any one you like about the girl, everybody will say the same. She's ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... she was superstitious, she said: "Well when I wuz young, I reckin' I wuz, but now my pore ole mine is jes so tired and h'it doan wuk lak h'it uster, so I never does think much 'bout superstition, but I doan lak ter heer er "squinch owl" holler in de night, fer h'it sho is a sign some uv yore folks is goin' ter die, en doan brin' er ax froo de house onless yer take h'it back de same way yer brung h'it in, fer dat 'ill ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... she mopes apart, As owl mopes on a tree; Although she keenly feels the smart, She cannot tell what ails her heart, With its sad "Ah me!" 'Tis but a foolish sigh - "Ah me!" Born but to droop and die - "Ah me!" Yet all the sense Of eloquence Lies hidden ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... easel—these disposed of the sultry hours of daylight. The evenings were always sure to bring enjoyment. Best of all were the rapturous horseback rides with Teddy, when the moon gave light over the wind-swept leagues, chaperoned by the wheeling night-hawk and the startled owl. Often the Mexicans would come up from their shacks with their guitars and sing the weirdest of heart-breaking songs. There were long, cosy chats on the breezy gallery, and an interminable warfare of wits between Teddy and Mrs. MacIntyre, whose abundant Scotch shrewdness ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... low, threw a circle of light on the table and floor, leaving the corners full of vague, uncertain shadows. From the wide, black fireplace a pair of rusty and battered andirons held out empty arms, and on the high stone shelf above the opening, flanked on each side by a stuffed owl, was a tall, square-faced clock, with the hour-hand missing. The minute-hand still went on its useless round, and behind it, on the face of the clock, a tiny schooner with all sail set rocked with the swinging of ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... woodcock, is supposed to have its forerunner. Just as the small horned owl, which reaches our shores a little in advance of the latter, is popularly known as the "woodcock owl," so also the wryneck, which comes to us about the same time as the first of the cuckoos, goes by the name of "cuckoo-leader." It is never a very conspicuous bird, and appears to be ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... Mr. Payne announces that Eva climbed out of a cab in "a fawn-coloured jacket," conspicuous by reason of its newness, and a hat "with an owl's head upon it!" ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... that I'd stay the night here. I didn't think ... Well, an owl's been sitting there! Children can't very well climb higher than that—not to recognize their own fathers! Anna is now taking the best way to become a fine lady, too.... I shall be wondering how long I shall know myself! Devil take it, Kalle Karlsen, I'm of good family, too, look ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Macleans, and till lately garrisoned by a detachment from Fort William. It is fast falling into ruin since it was abandoned as a barrack. When a few years shall have passed, the almost roofless tenant will surrender his spacious apartments to the bat and the owl, and seek shelter, like his neighbours, in the thatched hovel which rises near him. But the walls, of formidable thickness, may long bid defiance even to the storms of this region; remaining to ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... possible for pushing natures to get an extra bath on other days," by a method which works all the world over. At Burg "the new Commandant was a tall, well-made, soldierly figure. He had a strong face, curiously resembling an owl." An amusing little story follows as to the preciseness of the Commandant and Mr. O'Rorke continues: "It is pleasant to add that this new Commandant was in one respect just the man that was needed. From the first day he began to make the place hum, the foul clean, and ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... and so am I. You shouldn't ought to have cotched hold of me like that. But it's all of a match with the rest of your doings, you great stupid owl. You've lost me more'n a dozen prime sheep by not mixing your dip proper—after having lost me the best of my ewes and lambs with your ignorant notions—and now you go and put finger marks over my new alpaca body, all because you won't ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... occasion or, rather, hastened some crisis that was already near at hand. For some time now I am haunted by most potent premonitions of a violent death. Night after night, dark apparitions hang around my bed, and only last night I awoke to find the Bird of Nu, the Owl, from out the inner Sanctuary of the Temple, perched upon my pillow and shaking his head and croaking at me ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... his bonds before the royal palace, and leaned on a certain tree for grief, with many others, who were in bonds also; and as a certain bird sat upon the tree on which Agrippa leaned, [the Romans call this bird bubo,] [an owl,] one of those that were bound, a German by nation, saw him, and asked a soldier who that man in purple was; and when he was informed that his name was Agrippa, and that he was by nation a Jew, and one of the principal men of that nation, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... the screech-owl flies You sometimes scarce believe your eyes, Until you start to hear him shout To timid mice, "Come out! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... direction of the jungle, there came the haunting cry of a jackal, and a little nearer he heard the weird call of an owl. But close at hand there was no sound. He lay in absolute stillness, gazing along the verandah with eyes that looked into ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... descended the steep Sherrill lane to the valley, ravine and hollow were already dark with twilight. From the rustling trees arching the lane overhead came the occasional sleepy chirp and flutter of a bird. Off somewhere in the gathering dusk a lonely owl hooted eerily. Still there was storm in the warm, sweet air to-night and back yonder over the hills to the north, the sky ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... pile in strengthen'd horrour lower'd, Large and majestic ev'ry object tower'd: Dim thro' the gloom they shew'd their forms unknown, And tall and ghastly rose each whiten'd stone: Aloft the waking screech-owl 'gan to sing, And past him skim'd the bat with flapping wing. The fears of nature woke within his breast; He left the hallowed spot of Mary's rest, And sped his way the church-yard wall to gain, Then check'd his coward heart, and turn'd again. The shadows round a deeper ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... subjects thou dost fright, And sleep, the lazy Owl of night; Asham'd and fearful to appear, They skreen their horrid shapes, with ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... "Sooner could an owl overtake a lark than we overtake them, my beautiful lord," cried the prince's boatman, laughing. "But who art thou? Thou art not a surveyor, but an officer, maybe even an officer of the guard of his holiness. Thou dost strike right always on the forehead! ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... It is foolish, but that is no reason why you should not do it. After all, folly is the great attribute of man. No judge is as grave as an owl; no soldier fighting for his country flies as rapidly as the hare. You may be strong, but you are not so strong as a horse; you may be gluttonous, but you cannot eat like a boa-constrictor. But there is no beast that can be as foolish as man. And ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... not behindhand in English. Fancy my calling you, upon a fitting occasion,—Fool, sot, silly, simpleton, dunce, blockhead, jolterhead, clumsy-pate, dullard, ninny, nincompoop, lackwit, numpskull, ass, owl, loggerhead, coxcomb, monkey, shallow-brain, addle-head, tony, zany, fop, fop-doodle; a maggot-pated, hare-brained, muddle-pated, muddle-headed, Jackan-apes! Why I could go ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... I was through setting I felt like a hen, but when she tried to coax me to climb up on a limb of a tree and stay there till she got a picture of me looking like an owl, I swore softly in three languages, fell over the back fence, and ran ...
— Get Next! • Hugh McHugh
... the noise of an owl and a cricket, flees through the forest and into a stream, where it crushes a small fish almost to death. The fish complains to the court; and the deer, owl, cricket, and fish have a lawsuit. In the trial comes out this ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... ate their chocolates. The sun set, dew began to fall; the river changed, and grew whiter; the sky paled to the colour of an amethyst; shadows lengthened, dissolved slowly. It was past nine already; a water-rat came out, a white owl flew over the river, towards the Abbey. The moon had come up, but shed no light as yet. They saw no beauty in all this—too young, too ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of the great hoot-owl, listening, after its booming cry, for the stir of its frightened prey. But we did not fir, and we moved only when he moved. And so we dodged about the deck, hand in hand, like a couple of children ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... a wild Florida forest, and all was still save for the hooting of a distant owl and the occasional plaintive call of a whip-poor-will. In a little clearing by the side of a faint bridle-path a huge fire of fat pine knots roared and crackled, lighting up the small cleared space and throwing its flickering rays in amongst the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... arriving, save that now a clear moonlight rested on it, instead of the doubtful twilight. The ivy was black against the white light, the empty doorway yawned like a toothless mouth, and the round eye above looked blindness on us. As I gazed, a white owl came from within, and blinked at us over the curve. Yvon started, thinking it a spirit, perhaps; but I laughed, and taking off ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... tongue, old owl," I replied, stammering; "I am sure you are drunk. Go to bed, ... but first help me ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... look as if he had had a taste of paradise with his houri, for his week, does he? Before we'd heartened him up on the platform a bit—give you my word—he looked as mum as an owl," Jimmy said. "And she looked like an iceberg, as she's done all the time. I've never seen ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... sanctuary, it is very rare for one to attack you. I remember, however, a boy who once had the bad manners to put his hand into a {26} Cardinal's nest and had a finger well bitten for his misdeed. Beware, too, of trying to caress a Screech Owl sitting on its eggs in a hollow tree; its claws are very sharp, and you will need first-aid attention if you persist. Occasionally some bird will let you stroke its back before deserting its eggs, and may even let you ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... hiding stars; the night is deprived of its fires. Thou, Icarus, dost conceal thy rising countenance; and {thou}, Erigone, raised to the heavens through thy affectionate love for thy father. Three times was she recalled by the presage of her foot stumbling; thrice did the funereal owl give an omen by its dismal cry. Yet {onward} she goes, and the gloom and the dark night lessen her shame. In her left hand she holds that of her nurse, the other, by groping, explores the secret road. {And} now she is arrived at the door ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... by the wall And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail; When blood is nipt, and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl Tuwhoo! Tuwhit! Tuwhoo! A merry note! While greasy Joan ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... the serpent's head, we all went off to reconnoitre. Going in pursuit of a troop of squirrels, we were led to the edge of the glade without having been able to reach them. A little way in the forest, Sumichrast espied a small russet-colored owl, which suddenly disappeared in a hollow at the foot of an old tree. We all kept quiet for ten minutes, in order to observe the bird's way of hunting. At last it suddenly reappeared, and, standing motionless and upright upon its legs at the entrance of its place of refuge, ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... which takes in the smallest detail, she thought of everything. While Francine was completing the arrangements for this extraordinary trip, Marie practised the art of imitating an owl, and so far succeeded in rivalling Marche-a-Terre that the illusion was a good one. At midnight she left Fougeres by the gate of Saint-Leonard, took the little path to Nid-aux-Crocs, and started, followed ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... to tell us that, Sir Evelyn, for though he is supposed to be a Roman, he seems to have lived most of his life in your country. As silent as an owl and as inscrutable as a sphinx. Nobody in Rome knows certainly who his father was, nobody knows certainly who his mother was. Some say his father was an Englishman, some say a Jew, and some say his mother was a gipsy. A self-centred man, who never ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... all expressed their admiration, while Gatty added, "I wish Smart had sent his bullet where he said, for if there is an owl in the ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... by the south-side where the vine Grapples the wall; and if it shine This evening thro' the boughs and leaves, And if the wind with silence weaves More silence than itself, each stalk Of flower just swayed by it, we'll walk, Mary and I, when every fowl Hides beak and eyes in breast, the owl Only awake to hoot."—But clover Is beaten down now, and birds hover, Peering for shelter round; no blade Of grass stands sharp and tall; men wade Thro' mire with frequent plashing sting Of rain upon their faces. Sing, Then, Mary, to ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... car—and set the road afire between here and the 'drome. Move! Don't stand there blinking like a blooming owl." ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... I have always found them seated in holes in the rocks, or in shady dells, and have never seen them fly in the daytime unless compelled by fear; they are very stupid when disturbed, and in flight and manner closely resemble the common English owl. I cannot however recollect having ever seen one on the wing ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... Major's inquiry was not to get, but to give, information. He didn't the least want to know what she thought; he was only working to give her a useful tip. So she would take her time about answering. She took it, looking as grave as a little downy owl-tot. Meanwhile, to show there was no bad feeling, she went and sat candidly on the fossil's knee, and attended to his old whiskers ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... snail-crusher?" said the blackbird, for he was in rather an ill temper that morning, through having had a fright in the night, and being woke up by old Shoutnight the owl, who had been out mousing and lost his wife, and sat at last in the ivy-tod halloaing and hoo-hooing, till the gardener's wife threw her husband's old boot out of the window at him, when he went flop into the laurel bush, ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... The flowers return with every spring, but lost happiness never returns. I wonder who taught me that? I think it was Nicholas himself. [Listens] The owl is hooting again. ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... our time was not spoiled, from a naturalist's point of view, by too much trapping or shooting the enemies of game, though there was plenty of wild game in it, the balance of nature was quite undisturbed. Of course we never shot a hawk or an owl, and I think the most important item of vermin killed was two cats, which were hung up as an awful instance of what we could ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... set; an owl began to hoot in the wood. There were many unpleasant things lying about, that had much better have been buried; rabbit bones and skulls, and chickens' legs and other horrors. It was a shocking ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... am a great ada[']wehi, I never fail in anything. I surpass all others—I am a great ada[']wehi. Ha! It is a mere screech owl that has frightened him. Ha! now I have put it away in the laurel thickets. There I compel it ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... 1831); the "Jaguar devouring a Hare"; the "Lion devouring a Doe," the "Crocodile devouring an Antelope," the "Python swallowing a Doe," the "Tiger devouring a Gazelle," the "Bear on a tree devouring an Owl" and the "Lion devouring a Boar." What a series of banquets on blood and warm, almost living flesh is here presented! How cruel these creatures are to each other, is the thought that first comes to us, but a second, reminds that it is but their instinct and a necessity of natural law, and ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... those of sheep, and jackals. Some were terrible and had faces like those of makaras and porpoises. Some had faces like those of cats and some like those of biting flies; and the faces of some were very long. Some had faces like those of the mongoose, the owl, and the crow. Some had faces like those of mice and peacocks and fishes and goats and sheep and buffaloes. The faces of some resembled those of bears and tigers and leopards and lions. Some had faces like those of elephants and crocodiles. The faces of some resembled ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... saw no prairie dogs, he noticed an owl sitting upon a heap of earth that had been tossed out ...
— The Tale of Benny Badger • Arthur Scott Bailey
... as how the winter's comin', and some 'un ought to look out for Scraggy. She goes 'bout the lake doin' nothin' but hollerin' like a hoot-owl, and she don't have enough to eat. But she's been gone now goin' on two weeks, disappearin' like she's been doin' for a few years back. Scraggy allers says she has ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... Boy who listened. He had sent forth his questing, questioning soul, and he waited for an answer. But in those regions, that night, all things were still; and not so much as the hoot of an owl answered him nor the chirp ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... warmth that hatches eggs in which a screech-owl, a horned owl, and a viper lie acts as it does when it hatches those in which a dove, a bird of paradise and a swan lie. Put eggs of both sorts under the hen and they will be hatched by her warmth, ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... to that. There's odds o' fairies, and often enough I think the world is nothing else; troops, societies, hierarchies—S.T.C., a supreme hierarch; look at his face; think of meeting him at moonlight between Stowey and Alfoxden, like a great white owl, soft and plumy, with eyes ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... little need for talk. The brush was heavy, broken by thickets of plum trees and an occasional sapling of hickory; the ground was boggy in spots, and once Jerry sank almost to his knees in oozy mud. A screech owl hooted in a tree close by, and cold shivers ran up and down their backbones. Unbroken by path or opening, the island wilderness lay ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... had a feeling that she was getting something for nothing by means of them—that with them she was getting the better of a world that was getting the better of her in so many other ways. So she watched them every hour of the day, and had learned to see like an owl at night to watch them then. One of them had been stolen long ago, and not a month passed that some one did not try to steal another. As the frustrating of this one attempt involved a score of false alarms, it will be understood what a tribute old Mrs. Jukniene brought, just because Teta Elzbieta ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... brain when she in early childhood roamed those dark, solemn woods, or sat at night on the lowly cottage stile, gazing on the wild, grotesque shadows cast by the moonbeams from the huge, forest trees; or how she listened to the solemn hootings of the lonesome owl, the monotonous cuckoo, and sudden whippoorwill; or laughed at the glowworm's light in the dark swamps, and asked her aunty if they were not a group of stars come down to play ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... in the side of a cliff, and was dark and gloomy as a tomb. The only sounds they heard were the hooting of an owl and the wails and howls of wandering ghosts; the only sights were the corpses of men hanging on trees or lying stark upon the ground. Sir Trevisan turned his horse's head and would fain have fled, but the Red Cross ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... the entrance of the grotto, and bowing his head, he penetrated into the interior of the cavern, imitating the cry of the owl. A little plaintive cooing, a scarcely distinct echo, replied from the depths of the cave. Aramis pursued his way cautiously, and soon was stopped by the same kind of cry as he had first uttered, within ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... galloped past us, and their hoofs made monotone behind, till the cadence died so gradually away that we did not know when the sound ceased and when the silence began. The streams had a talk to themselves, as they strolled away into the meadow, and an owl or two challenged us, calling up a corporal hawk. This latter fellow bantered and blustered, and finally we fell into an ambush of wild pigs, which charged across the road and plunged into the woods. There were despatch stations ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... the poem had proceeded from our clique) were severely censured; for nothing of the sort had been seen since Cronegk's and Rost's attacks upon Gottsched. We had besides already secluded ourselves, and now found ourselves quite in the case of the owl with respect to the other birds. In Dresden, too, they did not like the affair; and it had for us serious, if not unpleasant, consequences. For some time, already, Count Lindenau had not been quite satisfied with his son's tutor. For although the young man was by no means ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... say that the jaguar, when wandering about at night, is much tormented by the foxes yelping as they follow him: this may perhaps serve to alarm his prey, but must be as teasing to him as the attentions of swallows are to an owl, who happens to be taking a daylight promenade; and if owls ever swear, it ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... how now? Told you so, you know. Don't crow, another time, before you're out of the woods! Does your mother know you're out? Oh, no, no!—so go home at once, now, John, to your odious old woods of Concord! Go home to your woods, old owl—go! You won't! Oh, poh, poh, don't do so! You've got to go, you know! So go at once, and don't go slow, for nobody owns you here, you know! Oh! John, John, if you don't go you're no homo—no! You're only a fowl, an owl, a cow, a sow,—a ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... 'membrance short dese days. Oh, I hear talk bout all kind of signs de people used to worry over en some of dem still frets bout dem, too. Hear talk dat you mustn't wash none on de New Years' Day. It bad luck, so a heap of dem say. Den some folks say it a sign of death to hear a owl holler at night. Some people can' bear to hear dem, but don' no owls worry me, I say. Lord, Maggie, dis child ax me how a owl holler when it a sign of death. Well, dey does holler a right good space apart. Don' ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... from time to time with a testy twitch and noisy chirrup that urge the poor beast into a faster gait. All the while the little wife sits beside him, as if a twittering sparrow had nestled itself upon the same perch with some grave owl, and sat with him side by side, watching for the big eyes to turn upon her, and chirping some pretty response for every solemn utterance of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... mist, with the snow high-pil'd, In the Winter night, in the forest wild, I heard the wolves with their ravenous howl, I heard the screaming note of the owl: ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... inside my own caravan I've my wits about me. Outside and among folks—well, maybe you've seen an owl in the daylight with the small birds mobbin' him. . . . Now about yourself and the Mortimers—from this child's story there's no evidence yet to connect her or the boy with either of you. The man Hucks knows, and that carrier fellow at the wharf ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... better presented to the reader in the Weekly News-books." Hence we find some papers, entitled "News from Hull," "Truths from York," "Warranted Tidings from Ireland," &c. We find also, "The Scots' Dove" opposed to "The Parliament Kite," or "The Secret Owl."—Keener animosities produced keener titles: "Heraclitus ridens" found an antagonist in "Democritus ridens," and "The Weekly Discoverer" was shortly met by "The Discoverer stript naked." "Mercuriua Britannicus" was grappled by "Mercurius Mastix, faithfully lashing all Scouts, Mercuries, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... tried to give vent to his complaints; but his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth: his spirits sunk within him. No sound now reached his ears but the baying of the shepherds dogs, and the drowsy tinklings of the distant folds. The owl, the solemn bird of night, sat buried among the branches of the aged oak, and with her melancholy hootings gave an additional serenity to the scene. At a small distance, on his right hand, he perceived a contiguous object that reflected the rays of the moon, through ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... of the feathered tribe, with one or two animals without feathers. A large wirework aviary is filled with fifty specimens of tropical birds with pretty plumage and names hard to pronounce. A couple of cocos—a species of stork, with clipped wings—run freely about the yard, in company with a wild owl and a grulla, a tall crane-like bird five feet high. In a tank of water are a pair of young caymanes, or crocodiles. These interesting creatures are still in their infancy, and at present measure only four feet six inches from the tips of their hard noses to the points of their flexible ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... myself) I can fancy in such a stormy twilight some such smell of death and fear. The ruined sunset really looks like one of their ruined temples: a shattered heap of gold and green marble. A black flapping thing detaches itself from one of the sombre trees and flutters to another. I know not if it is owl or flittermouse; I could fancy it was a black cherub, an infernal cherub of darkness, not with the wings of a bird and the head of a baby, but with the head of a goblin and the wings of a bat. I think, if there were light enough, I could sit here and write some very creditable ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... knowledge of wood-ranging, heard only the coarser sounds. Therefore he lay half dreaming for some moments after the Indian raised his head and lent an attentive ear to some noise which came from far away. The night-owl's hoot was intermittent; a lone wolf howled mournfully on the hillside; in the swamp a catamount screamed as it pounced upon its prey. But it was none of these sounds which had attracted the Indian's attention. ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... you see that Stalky isn't here, you owl!" said McTurk. "Take down the key, and look sorrowful. King'll only jaw you for half an hour. I'm going to read in ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... shading his eyes with his hand, as he returned the gaze of the Gipsy—"is it you, Bess Airlie: your welcome is like the owl's, and reads the wrong way. But I must not stop. This ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... now a roundel and a fairy song; Then, for the third part of a minute, hence; Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds; Some war with rere-mice for their leathern wings, To make my small elves coats; and some keep back The clamorous owl, that nightly hoots and wonders At our quaint spirits. Sing me now asleep; Then to your offices, and let ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... reproduce a bit of her own village in the Rhine Valley. She hid herself behind the growth she had fostered, lived under the shade of what she had planted and watered and pruned. In the blaze of the open plain she was stupid and blind like an owl. Shade, shade; that was what she was always planning and making. Behind the high tamarisk hedge, her garden was a jungle of verdure in summer. Above the cherry trees and peach trees and golden plums stood the windmill, with ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... banks of Rio Biobio. The country still presented the same fertile aspect, and abounded in flowers, but animals of any sort only came in sight occasionally, and there were no birds visible, except a solitary heron or owl, and a thrush or grebe, flying from the falcon. Human beings there were none, not a native appeared; not even one of the GUASSOS, the degenerate offspring of Indians and Spaniards, dashed across the plain like a shadow, his flying steed dripping with ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... girls tittered, unawed by Mrs. Aylett's proximity and her brother's owl-like stare ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... you will make a solitary bachelor of yourself, but at least give up your useless toiling at the wine- office. To what end do you plod there every day,—you who are wifeless and childless, and have no need of money for yourself? Give me up this great house in which you live all alone, like an owl in an oak-tree, and let me find you a cottage somewhere in the neighborhood, where I can often come and see you, and where you may spend your days in happiness and comfort." And the little old man shook his head and answered, "Nay, brother ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... walls. He continued past the mouth of the valley's southern arm wherein were entombed the kings of the eighteenth dynasty. Here, in this open space, he could see the circling bats, which before he could only hear above his head. Somewhere among the rocks up the moonlit hollow an owl hooted. But the tombs he sought were in the upper end of ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... subdivided into horned grazers and fur bearers. Of the many species he claims to find, it seems to us the most satisfactorily identified are the buffalo, moose, deer, or elk; the panther, bear, fox, wolf and squirrel; the lizard and turtle; the eagle, hawk, owl, goose and crane; and fishes. One or two man mounds are known, although most of those so-called are bird mounds—either the hawk or the owl. Sometimes, too, "composite mounds" are found. Nor are these mounds all that are found. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... moaning in the wrath Of winds that blew aloof; The weeds were in the gravel path, The owl was on the roof. ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... the Garden Mouse Christina Rossetti Robin Redbreast Unknown Solomon Grundy Unknown "Merry Are the Bells" Unknown "When Good King Arthur Ruled This Land" Unknown The Bells of London Unknown "The Owl and the Eel and the Warming Pan" Laura E. Richards The Cow Ann Taylor The Lamb William Blake Little Raindrops Unknown "Moon, So Round and Yellow" Matthias Barr The House That Jack Built Unknown Old Mother Hubbard Unknown The Death and Burial of Cock Robin ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... was awakened suddenly by the creaking of a door. It was an extraordinary thing at that hour. The whole house hold was asleep. Nothing could be heard save the footsteps of the watch-dogs on the sand, or their scratching at the foot of a tree in which an owl was screeching. An excellent opportunity to use his listening-tube! Upon putting it to his ear, M. Gardinois was assured that he had made no mistake. The sounds continued. One door was opened, then another. The bolt of the front door was thrown ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... o' turkey yes ever put in yer mouth.' An' so he did; an' he said it was the best show he iver was to, and he wouldn't 'a' missed seein' Mary Moran get the prize fur twice the money. An' so he went home with me, ye see, as sober as an owl, and we bought our own turkey; but if he'd gone to the tavern, not a cint would he had of his week's wages, and been drunk beside! An' he used to be swate on Mary too, so there's no knowin' what ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... him of any matter, he was ever ready with a swift and discreet answer. He had lost nothing of his wonderfully clear and shrewd wit; nevertheless, I was not so much at my ease with him as of old time. When my uncle said in jest that the wise owl from Padua seemed to wear a motley of gay feathers, his intent was plain as soon as one looked at my brother; and in the fine clothes he had chosen to wear at supper the noble lad was less to my mind than in the hunting weed which he had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... as men have root Deep in apparent and substantial things. Birds on your branches leap and shake their wings, Long ere night falls the soft owl loosens her slow hoot From the unfathomed fountains of your gloom. Late western sunbeams on your broad trunks bloom, Levelled from the low opposing hill, and fold Your inmost conclave with a burning gold. ... Than those night-ghosts awhile more solid, men Pass ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... out while I was asleep. This Tin Man seems a very solemn person"—indeed, the Tin Woodman was looking solemn, just then, for he was greatly disturbed—"so I shall change him into an Owl." ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... you, sir. We take the "owl" stage day after to-morrow morning,—and we tell nobody of our intention.' And Wych Hazel's finger made an impressive little dent ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... right, though, old Galushy is. Nothin' harmful about him. See how easy I get along with him. I shake hands with him and hit him a clip on the back, and, gosh t'mighty, he thinks I'm his best friend on earth. He'd do anything for me, that old owl would." ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail, When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl To-who; Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note, While greasy Joan doth ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... quadrupeds, must have holidays, and I have flown hither. But the wind has changed, and the owl, for all his feathers, is a-cold, as the poet observes. I shall return to the Metropolis—templa quam dilecta—as Plautus might have said in his Owlowlaria, if he had liked. I never thought much of these Latin dramatists, and ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... in one age-long instant while he stood in horror on the black shining rock. He saw their heads, red-skinned, pointed, their staring eyes as large as saucers—owl-eyes. They were naked, and their bodies, that would have been almost crimson in the light of day, were blotched and ghastly in the green light. And each one held in long clawlike hands a thing of shining metal—a lava tip like the one ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... light feet scampering upstairs, clattering merrily about on the boards overhead. He sat very still. The glow in the east deepened, spreading a lurid glory over the dark velvety stillness of the woods. Crickets sang and curlews cried in the meadow, and the long ghostly hoot of an owl trembled through the motionless air. Joseph de la Mariniere leaned his elbows on the table, his chin resting on his hands, and gazed up thus into ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... cannot be even mentioned. It is sufficient to name but one—say the example from "Robinson Crusoe" (Blackie), reproduced on page 32—to realise Mr. Gordon Browne's vivid and picturesque interpretation of fact, or "Down the Snow Stairs" (Blackie), also illustrated, with a grotesque owl-like creature, to find that in pure fantasy his exuberant imagination is no less equal to the task. In "Chirp and Chatter" (Blackie), fifty-four illustrations of animals masquerading as human show delicious ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... proportioned to the terrific bulk of the head of the house. He was there, seated at his desk which his belly prevented him from approaching very closely, obese, ill-shaped, and so yellow that his round face with its hooked nose, the head of a fat and sick owl, suggested as it were a light at the end of the solemn and gloomy room. A rich Moorish merchant grown mouldy in the damp of his little court-yard. Beneath his heavy eyelids, raised with an effort, his glance glittered for a second when the accountant entered; he signed to him to approach, and ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... ebbed with none to stanch the failing, By love's sad harvest garnered in the spring, When Love in ignorance wept unavailing O'er young buds dead before their blossoming; By all the gray owl watched, the pale moon viewed, In past grim ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... sitting room, which seemed uncomfortably full when he was in it—not on account of his size, but because he seemed so swollen with a sense of his own importance as to convey the idea that he was cramped for space—very much like an owl in the cage of ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger
... his odd ways. It might amuse Mrs. Patmore and the children. They'd have more sense than he! He'd be like a Fool kept in the family, to keep the household in good humour with their own understanding. You might teach him the mad dance set to the mad howl. Madge Owl-et would be nothing to him. "My, how he capers!" [In the margin is written:] One of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... o' Chinamen, Malays, Seedee boys, and all them sort of animals. Laff? You should ha' seen me standing up in the boat, hollerin' at Sartoris, and laffin' so as I couldn't hardly keep me feet. 'Sartoris,' I says, 'when do the animals feed?' An' he looks over the rail, just like a stuffed owl in a glass case, and says nothing. I took a bottle from the boat's locker, and held it up. 'What wouldn't you give for a drop o' that!' I shouts. But he shook his fist, and said something disrespectful about port wine; but I was that roused up with the humour o' the ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... could perceive that he was in a room on the ground floor. Outside, shapes flitted by, and these Juve soon found to be bats hurrying to their nearby lairs. An owl hooted in the distance. The detective determined to make an effort to get up. To his surprise he met with no resistance and easily climbed out of the sort of box in ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... flight of partridges, the impudent bark of squirrels, the quavering voices of owls and coons, the music of the winds in the high trees,—all these impressions unite in my mind like parts of a woodland symphony. I soon learned to distinguish the raccoon's mournful call from the quavering cry of the owl, and I joined the hired man in hunting rabbits from under the piles of brush in the clearing. Once or twice some ferocious, larger animal, possibly a panther, hungrily yowled in the impenetrable thickets to the north, but this only lent a still more enthralling interest ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... lost three lovely little owlets,' was the response. 'Darling little fluffy cherubs! Never had an owl-mother three such beauties!' ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... round turn and required to part company with his ears or nose, or to be turned adrift on the cold charity of the world, deprived of his hands by the crude and summary justice of Khorassan. His eyes are brown and large, and spherical almost as an owl's eyes, and they bulge out in a manner that exposes most of the white. He wears long hair, curled up after the manner of Persian la-de-da-dom, and in his crude, uncivilized sphere evidently fancies himself something of ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... decorated with incised patterns filled with white clay. The productions of sculpture were limited to carving of small flat idols of Minerva [Greek: glaukopis][6] of marble, almost in the forms of two discs, which adhered to each other, and upon which the owl's face is rudely scratched. The Trojan treasure certainly shows more art, but it is characterized by an absence of ornamentation. In Mycenae, on the contrary, the monuments which I have brought to light show ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... plumage; made fine speeches in Russ, French and tolerable English; the ladies were exceedingly diverted; everybody laughed except Prince Henri, who stood beside the Empress, and was so grave and so solemn, that he would have performed his part most admirably in the shape of an owl. The Parrot observed him; was determined to have revenge; and having said as many good things as he could to her Majesty, he was hopping away; but just as he was going out of the circle, seeming to recollect himself, he stopped, looked over his shoulder at the formal Prince, and quite in ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... they went, and now the track became more distinct, and it led downwards. An owl in a tree overhead hooted as Cuthbert passed by, and something of a cold shiver ran through the young man's frame; he stumbled over the outspread root of a gnarled old oak, and fell, making more ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... and wallflower, grown Matted and massed together, hillocks heap'd On what were chambers, arch crush'd, column strown In fragments, choked up vaults, and frescoes steep'd In subterranean damps, where the owl peep'd, Deeming it midnight:—Temples, baths, or halls— Pronounce who can; for all that Learning reap'd From her research hath ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... snake, Or a dove whose ways were wild. A bluefish draped in petticoats, Or a tiger nice and mild. A mackintosh upon an owl To me would be just fine. I'd like to know a kangaroo Who'd ...
— The Gray Goose's Story • Amy Prentice
... had the hardihood—as in "The Lion and The Gnat"—to modify the elegance of the original with phrases more appropriate to our contemporary beasts. Animal talk, I feel sure, has lost something of its stateliness since the days when our French author overheard it. The Owl is no less pedantic perhaps, but the Lion certainly has declined in majesty—along ...
— Fables in Rhyme for Little Folks - From the French of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... in the elegance of simplicity, and Smilax extinguished our small fire of buttonwood. Leaning my back against a stalwart pine, I watched the shadows stealing through our avenue of trees. Somewhere above my head a whistling owl, one of those lovable little feathered cavaliers that showers his mate with unstinted adulation, fluttered and courted. Later the mournful call of a whooping ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... musician laid down his violin suddenly. The instrument struck upon a keg of nails, and gave out an abrupt, discordant jangle, startling to the nerves. "Shet up, ye durned squeech-owl!" he exclaimed, irritably. Then, lowering his voice, he asked: "Didn't they 'low down yander in the Cove ez Widder Peters, the day her husband war killed by the landslide up in the mounting, heard a hoe a-scrapin' mightily on the gravel in ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Korea, he had been wakened by the yammering of a tigress. His terror for a moment had been primal, literally a simian's helpless quaking. Earlier still, he had heard a hoot-owl, and encountered through it, his first realization of phantom horrors; he knew then there was an Unseen, and nether acoustics; here was a key to ghostly doors. A mourning-dove had brought back in a swift passage of consciousness the breast of some savage mother. Night-birds everywhere ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... distance and the dimness, glides along the edge of the wood, then across in front before the fir plantation, next down the hedge to the left, and presently passes within two yards, going towards the wood again along this mound. It is a white owl: he flies about five feet from the ground and absolutely without a sound. So when you are walking at night it is quite startling to have one come overhead, approaching from behind and suddenly appearing. This owl is almost fearless; ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... difficulty; there are many such. And with that fiend-like shape in her cupboard the one ambition of Mistress Croale's life was henceforth inextricably bound up: she would turn that bottle into a witness for her against the judgment she had deserved. Close by the cupboard door, like a kite or an owl nailed up against a barn, she hung her soiled and dishonoured satin gown; and the dusk having now gathered, took the jug, and fetched herself water. Then, having set her kettle on the fire, she went out with her basket, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... you must first decide which one of you is to be the Bird-catcher; the other players then each choose the name of a bird, but no one must choose the owl, as it is forbidden. All the players then sit in a circle with their hands on their knees, except the Bird-catcher, who stands in the center, and tells a tale about birds, taking care to specially mention the ones he knows to have been chosen by the company. As each bird's ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... had set. There were no shadows anywhere as Richard and his sheep went homeward, but on every side the colors of the world were more sombre. Twice his flock roused a covey of partridges which had settled for the night. The screech-owl had come out of his hole, and bats were already blundering about, and the air was cooling. There was as yet but one star in the green and cloudless heaven, and this was very large, like a beacon: it appeared to him symbolical that he ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... the Fern Owl, by Rusticus.—Beyond Godalming, on the Liphook road, is a great tract of barren heathy land: it stretches wide in every direction, and includes immense peat-bogs, and several large ponds. One particular district, called the Pudmores, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... you are so ill you must not tire yourself by waiting for me. You will hear me if I cry like an owl. Happily my father taught me to imitate their note. So when you hear the cry three times you will know I am there, and then you must let down the cord. But I shall not come again for some days. I hope then to ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... "Oh, God, let the cost Be my life; if she dies, I am lost, I am lost!" And Joshua Bell smote his breast with a blow That only the frenzy of a lover can know. At a deep hour of night when the hoot of the owl Made the dark glen as lonesome as haunt of a cowl, Josh Bell left his cabin for a cave in the hill, And began the erection of a small mountain still. For weeks here he labored at midnight alone, With a firm resolution and a heart like a stone: Then his ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... see something for which, as Professor Mivart has well said, "to us the word 'mind' is the least inadequate and misleading symbol," as having given to the eagle an eyesight which can pierce the sun, but which, in the night is powerless; while to the owl it has given eyes which shun even the full moon, but find a soft brilliancy in darkness? Or shall we deny that there has been any purpose or design in the fashioning of these different kinds of eyes, and see nothing to make us believe that any living being made the eagle's eye ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... stage. A few evenings later ("Der Freischutz" was being played), I stood with a beating heart behind the scenes, and friend Lipp stood by my side. In my hand I held a string, with which I set the wings of the owl in the wolf's glen in rhythmic motion. My companion performed the wild chase. By turns he whistled through his fingers, cracked a whip, and imitated the yelping of the hounds. It ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... father?" said young Reuben. "Ye've bin a-settin' there shakin' yer head like a old owl since I turned into the road. It be time to ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... on over the rolling plateau. I saw a great owl flying before me against the sky, different from the owls of home. I saw Jupiter shining above a cloud and Venus shining below one. The long light lingered in the north above the English sea. At last I came quite unexpectedly upon that delight and plaything ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... her. Wouldn't give her address, but told me that she was appearing this week at the Winter Garten at Berlin. Why that pudding-headed quagga, Bevan, at the Embassy, hasn't kept his eyes open for me, as he promised," he went on a while later, "I don't know! I can understand Eugen Pattenhausen, the owl-eyed coot who runs the International Aid Society, not doing a hand's turn to aid anybody—but Bevan! For Heaven's sake, while you're there call at the Embassy and ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... be illustrated in gold and colours, sumptuously got up, and yet they are failures. Children do not take these to bed with them. I have seen this myself; I bought so many books to please children, but could never do it till by chance some one sent a little American toy-book, 'The History of the Owl and his Little One, and the Manoeuvres of the Fox.' This had a little of the spirit of the woods in it, and was read and re-read for a year. Only the other day a lady was telling me much the same thing, how she had bought book after book but could never hit on anything ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... the day is only a long evening, a waiting for the utter dark. The doctor's little square satchel of instruments, vials, and bandages lay open on the table; he had changed the apartment as utterly as he had changed his face by putting on great, horn-rimmed spectacles. They gave an owl-like look to him, an air of omniscience. It seemed as if no mortal ailment could persist in ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... and ivy, weed and wallflower grow Matted and massed together, hillocks heaped On what were chambers; arch crushed, columns strown In fragments; choked up vaults, where the owl ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... they had come, rode hatchet-faced Crosby; but he, too, was not as before. His saddle had been removed and, in front of him, astride the horse's bare back, warmed by the animal heat, was a brown waif of a boy; not asleep or even drowsy, but wide awake indeed, silently watchful as a prairie owl of every movement about him, every low-spoken word. What whim of satirist chance had put him there, what fate for good or evil, they could only conjecture, could not know, could never know; yet there he was, strangest figure in a land that knew only the bizarre, with whom the ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... a funeral marriage crave, Nor grudge my cold embraces in the grave. I have too just a title in the strife; By me, unhappy me, he lost his life: I called him hither, 'twas my fatal breath, And I the screech-owl that ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... a ring: In One I saw a Robin swing, In Two a Peacock spread his tail, In Three I heard the Nightingale, In Four a White Owl hid with craft, In Five a Green Woodpecker laughed, In Six a Wood-dove croodled low, In Seven lived a quarrelling Crow, In Eight a million Starlings flew, In Nine ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... turban was none too long, the branches at the top were so slender. Just as he grasped a thick one, clutching it with both arms and legs, and swaying desperately in the dark, he felt a rush of wings across his face, and a great white owl flew out hooting in her panic. The boy almost missed his catch with fear, and the Maharajah, wakeful in his apartments, lost another good hour's sleep through hearing the owl's cry. It was the worst of omens, the Maharajah believed, and sometimes he ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... before the camp became very quiet. Langdon, Bruce, and the Indian rolled themselves in their blankets and were soon asleep. The fire burned lower and lower. Soon there was only a single smouldering log. An owl hooted a little deeper in the timber. The drone of the valley and the mountains filled the peaceful night. The stars grew brighter. Far away Muskwa heard the rumbling of a boulder rolling down the side of ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... my love, I could get somebody to play piquet with me," Miss Crawley said one night when this functionary made his appearance with the candles and the coffee. "Poor Briggs can no more play than an owl, she is so stupid" (the spinster always took an opportunity of abusing Briggs before the servants); "and I think I should sleep better if ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... portentous silence. Percy stared at the floor. Lady Caroline breathed deeply. Lord Marshmoreton, feeling that something was expected of him, said "Good Gad!" and gazed seriously at a stuffed owl on a bracket. Maud ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... won't." And he added after a moment, "You'd better go to bed. You're sleepy and as stupid as an owl." ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... of noise—and peep through this crack. You'll see the biggest owl that ever you did see, in all your life." Both of them looked through. It was very dark, but Samuel saw two great eyes, like balls of fire, and in a little while he could perceive the body of an owl, which, as John had said, was the largest he had ...
— The Summer Holidays - A Story for Children • Amerel
... what the price of corn, the crow is well and finds life sweet. He is the dusky embodiment of worldly wisdom and prudence. Then he is one of Nature's self-appointed constables and greatly magnifies his office. He would fain arrest every hawk or owl or grimalkin that ventures abroad. I have known a posse of them to beset the fox and cry "Thief!" till Reynard hid himself for shame. Do I say the fox flattered the crow when he told him he had a sweet voice? Yet one of ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... day, describing Mr. Perkins to his mother. Mrs. Boswell seldom appeared beyond her special domain—that of the kitchen—but left the rest of the housekeeping to her daughters Bertha and Sue; the management of the Inn to Tom and Tim. "Silent as an owl. Seems to like his food—nothing strange about that. He doesn't act sick, exactly, but tired, or bored, or used up, somehow. Eyes like coals and sharper than a ferret's. I can't make him out. He won't talk to anybody, except now and then a word or two to Mr. Griffith. ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... falls across the vale From nightingale to nightingale; The owl within the ivied tree Makes love to me, makes love to me; But all the tadpoles in the pond Are ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... came knocking, I'm sure - sure - sure; I listened, I opened, I looked to left and right, But naught there was a-stirring In the still dark night; Only the busy beetle Tap-tapping in the wall, Only from the forest The screech-owl's call, Only the cricket whistling While the dewdrops fall, So I know not who came knocking, At ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... with lips of glue, And undisturb'd maintain'd her law; Save when the Owl cry'd "whoo! whoo! whoo!" Or the hoarse Crow ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... riv'd Tree, that stands beside the grave Of the Self-slaughter'd, to the misty Moon Calls the complaining Owl in Night's pale noon; And from a hut, far on the hill, to rave Is heard the angry Ban-Dog. With loud wave The rous'd and turbid River surges down, Swoln with the mountain-rains, and dimly shown Appals the Sense.—Yet see! from yonder cave, Her shelter in the recent, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... you some berries for breakfast," said the Kookooburra, "and she asked me to look after you, and that's why I'm here. That Snake got on you whilst I flew away to consult my doctor, the White Owl, about the terrible indigestion I have. He's very difficult to catch awake; for he's out all night and sleepy all day. He says cockchafers have caused it. The horny wing-cases and legs are most indigestible, he assures me. I didn't fancy them much when I ate them last night, so I took his advice ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... "Ah, no, my little owl, Jean Jacques will wind the boa-constrictor round his neck like a collar, all for love of those he has lost," answered the Judge with emotion; and he caught M. Fille's arm in the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... individual who had joined them sat down before Stuart and Jules and treated the two of them to an amiable grin, made all the more amiable and owl-like by those glasses. ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... hair should be grown long enough to hide her ears. Meanwhile the diviners drew omens of her future character from the various birds or animals that flew past or crossed her path. If they saw a parrot, they would say she was a chatterbox; if an owl, she was lazy and useless for domestic labours, and so on.[132] In similar circumstances the Chiriguanos of southeastern Bolivia hoisted the girl in her hammock to the roof, where she stayed for a month: the second month the hammock was let half-way down from the roof; and ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... old owl! What's the matter with you? After all, it's good to be alive! I wish I had a horse as good as Buster and I wouldn't ask ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... cards away in a hurry, as if caught in an incongruous employment; and then the maids and men trooped in to prayers—the windows were still open, and the sounds of the solitary corncrake, and the owl hooting in the trees, mingled with the words spoken. Then to bed; ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... at the seminary a curst Lazarist, who by undertaking to teach me Latin made me detest it. His hair was coarse, black and greasy, his face like those formed in gingerbread, he had the voice of a buffalo, the countenance of an owl, and the bristles of a boar in lieu of a beard; his smile was sardonic, and his limbs played like those of a puppet moved by wires. I have forgotten his odious name, but the remembrance of his frightful precise countenance remains with me, though hardly can I recollect it without trembling; ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... violent earthquake occurred, an owl was seen, thunderbolts descended upon the Capitol and upon the temple of the so-called Public Fortune and into the gardens of Caesar, where a horse of considerable value was destroyed by them, and the temple of Fortune opened of its own accord. In addition to this, blood issuing ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... Owl and eaglet? Have they fled? Then let witch-toads sing! Oaths forgotten, Would they wed? Then let bull-bats, Wild a-wing, Flap the moon from heaven! Deep in the forest— ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... brown owl sits up in the Tree, And if you look well His big eyes you may see. He says Whit a whoo, when the night grows dark, And he hears the dogs and the ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... had hobbled up to bed. The kitchen window was open, and Charity seated herself near it, her idle hands on her knee. The evening was cool and still. Beyond the black hills an amber west passed into pale green, and then to a deep blue in which a great star hung. The soft hoot of a little owl came through the dusk, and between its calls the men's ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... claret with sandwiches of potted egg and things that adoring women make and men never notice. Then back, to surprise the otter grubbing for fresh-water mussels, the rabbits on the edge of the beechwoods foraging in the clover, and the policeman-like white owl stooping to the little fieldmice, till the moon was strong, and he took his rod apart, and went home through well-remembered gaps in the hedges. He fetched a compass round the house, for, though he might have broken every law of the establishment ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... among the country people that every bird chose its mate on Valentine's day; and at one time it was the custom for young folks to go out before daylight on that morning and try to catch an owl and two sparrows in a net. If they succeeded, it was a good omen, and entitled them to gifts from the villagers. Another fashion among them was to write the valentine, tie it to an apple or orange, and steal up to the house of the chosen one in the evening, open the door quietly, ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... leaves of the karan grass and tied to his legs, and made a chain of the grass and let him down to the earth. When he reached the earth he was no longer a man but was an owl." ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... was terrible, like the sin. This man for whom I had abandoned everything—whom I had made my idol—do you know what he said to me the third day after my flight from home? 'You must be more stupid than an owl to have forgotten to take your jewels.' Yes, those were the very words he said to me, with a furious air. And then I could measure the depths of the abyss into which I had plunged. This man, with whom I had been so infatuated, did not love ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... would enter the nuthatch's nest Its figure would have to be much compressed. If the nuthatch had but the face of an owl It would be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... this morning but furnished the occasion or, rather, hastened some crisis that was already near at hand. For some time now I am haunted by most potent premonitions of a violent death. Night after night, dark apparitions hang around my bed, and only last night I awoke to find the Bird of Nu, the Owl, from out the inner Sanctuary of the Temple, perched upon my pillow and shaking his head and croaking ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... Staple, with a host of smaller commercial and economical measures, was of their origination. But it was not till an open breach took place between the baronage and the prelates that their full weight was felt. In the Parliament of 1371, on the resumption of the war, a noble taunted the Church as an owl protected by the feathers which other birds had contributed, and which they had a right to resume when a hawk's approach threatened them. The worldly goods of the Church, the metaphor hinted, had been bestowed on it for the common weal, and could be taken from it on the coming ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... ask any one into the house for the next twelve months. I used to think that nothing would ever knock me up, but now I feel that I'm almost done for. I hardly dare open my mouth to Plantagenet. The Duke of St. Bungay has cut me. Mr. Monk looks as ominous as an owl; and your husband hasn't a word to say left. Barrington Erle hides his face and passes by when he sees me. Mr. Rattler did try to comfort me the other day by saying that everything was at sixes and sevens, and I really took it almost ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... anybody else would be welcome to accompany me who might be willing to come to his shrine of innocence and love in the spirit of the wise men of the East. But, lest anybody should inquire for me at the hospital at the first of the hours aforesaid, this is to give warning that the White Owl has expressly forbidden all intercourse between the members of her staff and the discharged and dishonoured mother. Set it down to my spirit of contradiction that I intend to disregard the mandate, though I am only too well aware that the poor discharged and dishonoured ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... trenches which sapped their way forward to those pits. When the guns ceased firing the French soldiers often heard the sound of singing. But above the voices of the Germans there came sometimes a series of piercing cries like the screeching of an owl in a terrible plaint, followed by strange and bloodcurdling laughter. It was the voice of a mad woman who was one of those captured from neighbouring villages and brought into the trenches by the Germans. One day the German ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... indifferent Circumstances into Misfortunes, and suffer as much from trifling Accidents, as from real Evils. I have known the shooting of a Star spoil a Night's Rest; and have seen a Man in Love grow pale and lose his Appetite, upon the plucking of a Merry-thought. A Screech-Owl at Midnight has alarmed a Family, more than a Band of Robbers; nay, the Voice of a Cricket hath struck more Terrour, than the Roaring of a Lion. There is nothing so inconsiderable [which [3]] may not appear dreadful to an Imagination that is filled with Omens and Prognosticks. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... point of view, we may assert that he developed himself from the protoplasm of ignorance, and in the gloomy fog of fear and superstition grew by degrees into a formidable monster, being changed by the overheated imaginations of dogmatists into a reptile, an owl, a raven, a dog, a wolf, a lion, a centaur, a being half monkey, half man, till, finally, he became a ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... ivy-mantled tower, The moping owl does to the moon complain Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... out into the night, and ran through the blackness for his life. And a great owl swooped softly ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... with their drivers, passing through the streets of the city. Some of the men have a way of leading the cattle by a peculiar call, a wild, pensive hoot, quite musical, prolong'd, indescribable, sounding something between the cooing of a pigeon and the hoot of an owl. I like to stand and look at the sight of one of these immense droves—a little way off—(as the dust is great.) There are always men on horseback, cracking their whips and shouting—the cattle low—some obstinate ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... voyage of the main party began on the 8th of April, 1805, early passing the mouth of the Big Knife River, one of the five considerable streams that fall into the Missouri from the westward in this region; the other streams are the Owl, the Grand, the Cannonball, and the Heart. The large town of Stanton, Mercer County, North Dakota, is now situated at the mouth of the Big Knife. The passage of the party up the river was slow, owing to unfavorable winds; and they observed ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... of the forest went on as though she were not there. A big owl far off said hurriedly his whoo-whoo-whoo, as though he had the message to deliver and wanted to finish the task. A smaller owl near at hand cried ko-ko-ko-oh with the intonation of a tin horn. Across the river a lynx screamed, ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... up to be an oak with a hundred branches, and then slowly decay down to a withered stump, yet he had never heard of Mabon. 'But I will be your guide to the place where there is an animal which was formed before I was;' and he guides them to the Owl of Cwm Cawlwyd. 'When first I came hither,' says the Owl, 'the wide valley you see was a wooded glen. And a race of men came and rooted it up. And there grew a second wood; and this wood is the third. ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... or unable to disentangle the one from the other: thus the savage attributes bounty or the will to render him service, to any object whether animate or inanimate, such as a stone of a certain form, a rock, a mountain, a tree, a serpent, an owl, &c. if every time he encounters these objects in a certain position, it should so happen that he is more than ordinarily successful in hunting, that he should take an unusual quantity of fish, that he should be victorious in war, or that he should compass any enterprize whatever that ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
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