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More "Peck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the fields, left her nurslings in the charge of a paralytic old man, who sometimes let them fall into the fire; and there was La Cauchois, who, having nobody to watch the babes, contented herself with tying them in their cradles, leaving them in the company of fowls which came in bands to peck at their eyes. And the scythe of death swept by; there was wholesale assassination; doors were left wide open before rows of cradles, in order to make room for fresh bundles despatched from Paris. Yet all did not die; here, for instance, was one brought home again. But even when they ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... getting itself up in Poland at this time. Nothing known about it for certain; much guessed. "Something in the rumor!" nods this wig; "Nothing!" wags that, slightly oscillating; and gazetteers, who would earn their wages, and have a peck of coals apiece to glad them in the cold weather, had to watch with all eagerness the movements of King August, our poor old friend, the Dilapidated-Strong, who is in Saxony at present; but bound for Warsaw shortly,—just about lifting the curtain on important events, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of activity but not of excitement, or in any sense of joy. The matter was too hard an importance; it made too much difference on both sides whether potatoes were twelve or fifteen cents a peck. The dealers were laconic and the buyers anxious; country neighbours exchanged the time of day, but under the pressure of affairs. Now and then a lady of Elgin stopped to gossip with another; the countrywomen looked on, curious, grim, and a little contemptuous ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... digs in the ground under Cow or Horse-dung, and there rests all Winter, and in March or April comes to be first a red, and then a black Beetle: gather a thousand or two of these, and put them with a peck or two of their own earth into some tub or firkin, and cover and keep them so warm, that the frost or cold air, or winds kill them not, and you may keep them all winter and kill fish with them at any time, and if you put some of them into a little earth and honey a day before you use ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... threads with which it is knitted are stout, and the structure is therefore, not liable to be torn by the beaks of insectivorous birds, while its pendulous position makes it doubly secure against their attacks, the apparatus giving way when they peck at it. There is a small orifice at each end of the egg-shaped bag, to admit of the escape of the moth when it changes from the little chrysalis which sleeps tranquilly in its airy cage. The moth is of a dull slatey colour, and belongs to the Lithosiide group of the silk-worm ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... brought to Alexander to exhibit a trick which he had acquired, of pitching a pea into a distant hole, which just fitted it;—when the reward which the great conqueror bestowed upon the soldier for his useless application of time was a peck ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... the filbert fungus taken from our pathological collection. It shows the mature fruiting bodies of the fungus and it also shows that the twigs are killed. This fungus is known as Cryptosporella anomala. It was described as Diatrype anomala by Peck of Albany, N. Y., but was afterwards found to belong to another genus. There have been two or three articles published on it, the best one probably by Humphrey in Massachusetts. I have an abstract of that which can be copied in the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... know Sam—was afraid to go up. He said he should fall, and that the old birds would peck his eyes. So I went by myself one morning quite early, with a bag tied round my neck, and got up. It was hard work, and I nearly tumbled once; but I got on the bough beneath the hole at last. It shook very much; it is so rotten, you have no ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... C. B. Hartley's Boone (including Boone's autobiography); J. M. Peck's Boone;[1] and see the excellent sketch of Boone's life in Theodore Roosevelt's The Winning of the West, ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... was beginning to feel the effects of her run, or whether she did it out of the pure effrontery of her warped and unpleasant nature, I do not know; but she now slowed down to walk, and even began to peck in a tentative manner at the grass. Her behaviour infuriated me. I felt that I was being treated as a cipher. I vowed that this bird should realise yet, even if, as seemed probable, I burst in the ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... Major, they've got buck-shot," said Gid. "And they could mow us down before we could cross that place. They still outnumber us two to one—packed in there like sardines. Don't you think we'd better scatter about and peck at 'em when they show an eye? I'd like to know who built that church. Confound him, he cut out too many windows to ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... becoming slightly confused—"it would be natural for her to be melancholy—only if she were a bird she wouldn't care, she would fly off with some one else and leave Major Clowes, and all the other birds would come and peck him to death. They manage these things better in bird land." Isabel's eyes shut but she hurriedly opened them again. "I'm not going to go to sleep. It's perfectly absurd. It can't be much after nine o'clock. I dare say Captain Hyde will come out ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... a laugh. "Don't wear your heart on your sleeve, Mr. Keating. She wouldn't be above taking a peck at ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... like you, Bluff, standing up for a friend. Well, I'm rather inclined to believe the same way. Anyhow, it was a mighty mean dodge. If that Andy Lasher keeps on he'll get in a peck of trouble sooner or later. Why, for such a thing as this he deserves a peppering of shot at a distance," ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... Dey wasn't educated up to de use ob de pen. Deir han's was only fit for de ruff use ob de swoard. Now, as de modern poet says, our swoards rust in deir cubbards, an' peas, sweet peas, cover de lan'. An' what has wrot all dis change? De pen. Do I take a swoard now to get me a peck ob sweet taters, a pair ob chickens, a pair ob shoes? No, saar. I jess take my pen an' write an order for 'em. Do I want money? I don't git it by de edge ob de swoard; I writes a check. I want a suit ob clothes, for instance—a stroke ob de pen, de mighty ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... dreadful!" she added; "for were you to come across any one from the house, or to meet master; or were, in the streets, people to press against you, or horses to collide with you, as to make (his horse) shy, and he were to fall, would that too be a joke? The gall of both of you is larger than a peck measure; but it's all you, Ming Yen, who has incited him, and when I go back, I'll surely tell the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... horribly—such was her attraction. His birds also, a jackdaw and an owl, who had the run of the studio, tolerated her as they tolerated no other female, save the housekeeper. The jackdaw would perch on her and peck her dress; but the owl merely engaged her in combats of mesmeric gazing, which never ended ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a good fellow that had but a peck of corn weekly to grind, yet would needs build a new mill for it, found his error eftsoons, for either he must let his mill lie waste, pull it quite down, or let others grind at ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... numbers, and with loud chattering commence assailing and annoying him in various ways, and soon drive him out of his retreat. The Jay, usually his first assailant, like a thief employed as a thief-taker, attacks him with great zeal and animation; the Chickadee, the Nuthatch, and the small Thrushes peck at his head and eyes; while other birds, less bold, fly round him, and by their vociferation encourage his assailants and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... yourselves upon the foe, spill his blood; take to your wings and surround them on all sides. Woe to them! let us get to work with our beaks, let us devour them. Nothing can save them from our wrath, neither the mountain forests, nor the clouds that float in the sky, nor the foaming deep. Come, peck, tear to ribbons. Where is the chief of the cohort? Let ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... garden this spring. As fur back as the time I was gittin' the seed in, them hens of Widder Sidene Pike, that lives next farm to mine, began their hellishness, with that old wart-legged ostrich of a rooster of her'n to lead 'em. They'd almost peck the seeds out of my hand, and the minit I'd turn my back they was over into that patch, right foot, left foot, kick heel and toe, and swing to pardners—and you couldn't see the sun for dirt. And at every rake that rooster lifts soil enough ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... ANSTRUTHER, calls attention to the statement made by Mr. Christopher Wren, Secretary of the Order of the Garter (A.D. 1736), in his letter to Francis Peck, on the authority of the Register of the Order in his possession; which letter is quoted by Burke (Dorm. and Ext. Bar., iv. 408.), that "King Henry VII. had the title Defender of the Faith." It is not found in any acts or instruments of his reign that I am acquainted ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... slacked, strain into another barrel through a sieve. Put a pound of glue in a glue-pot; melt it over a slow fire until dissolved. Soak the glue in cold water before putting the pot over the fire. Dissolve a peck of salt in boiling water. Make a thin paste of three pounds of ground rice boiled half an hour. Stir to this half a pound of Spanish whiting. Now add the rice paste to the lime; stir it in well; then the glue; mix well; cover the barrel, and let it stand twenty-four hours. When ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... can wish. A peck o' trouble, by the looks of it. Chris Blanchard be gone—vanished like a dream! Mother Blanchard called her this marnin', an' found her bed not so much as creased. She've flown, an' there's a braave upstore ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... front, move over the driveway, and build a couple of two-story rooms, with basement for cellar and furnace, and a bathroom in front of the cabin and use it with some fixing over for a dining-room and kitchen. Then we will deepen and widen Singing Water, stick a bushel of bulbs and roots and sow a peck of flower seeds in the marsh, plant a hedge along the drive, and straighten the lake shore a little. I can make a beautiful wild-flower garden and arrange so that with one season's work this will appear very well. We will express this stuff and then select ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... proceedings in the House in the case of charges which may involve impeachment have been well and wisely settled by long practice upon principles of equal justice both to the accused and to the people. The precedent established in the case of Judge Peck, of Missouri, in 1831, after a careful review of all former precedents, will, I venture to predict, stand ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... ain't one of the shootin' kinds, an' anyhow, Fiddy Maddox wa'n't one to look ahead; whatever she wanted to do, that she done, from the time she was knee high to a grasshopper. I've seen her set down by a peck basket of apples, 'n' take a couple o' bites out o' one, 'n' then heave it fur 's she could heave it 'n' start in on another, 'n' then another; 'n' 't wa'n't a good apple year, neither. She'd everlastin'ly spile 'bout a dozen of 'em 'n' smaller 'bout two mouthfuls. Doxy Morton, now, would ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... watched while it fed a hungry complaining intruder. It used to fly on the cuckoo's back and then, standing on its head and leaning downwards, give it a caterpillar. The tit-bit having been greedily snatched and devoured, the cuckoo would peck fiercely at its tiny attendant—bidding it, as it were, fetch more food and not be long about it. Wordsworth tells us in a famous line that "the child is father of the man," and no apter illustration of this truth could ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Galapagos Archipelago, for instance—where man has so seldom been that he is unknown to the indigenous animal life, travellers relate that birds are so tame and friendly and curious, being wholly unacquainted with the bloodthirsty nature of man, that they will perch on his shoulders and peck at his ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... to his old position. Pleasant as that had been, it no longer contented the restless, ambitious Barnum. He opened a "porter-home," but sold out a few months later, at a good profit, and took another clerkship, this time at 29 Peck Slip, New York, in the store of a certain David Thorp. He lived in his employer's family, with which he was a great favorite, and where he had frequent opportunities of meeting old friends, for Mr. Thorp's place was a great resort for Bethel and ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... a termination dear to the boarding school girl; but its truth does not make it any more attractive than the vision of that same young girl rushing into a room with her hat and coat half on, to swoop upon her mother with a peck of a kiss, and with a "—by, mamma!" whirl out again! Turmoil and flurry may be characteristic of the manners of to-day; both are far from the ideal of beautiful manners which should be as assured, as smooth, as controlled as the running ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... glide in thin long streaks over it. In the distance is the dark mass of forests, the glitter of ponds, yellow patches of village; larks in hundreds are soaring, singing, falling headlong with outstretched necks, hopping about the clods; the crows on the highroad stand still, look at you, peck at the earth, let you drive close up, and with two hops lazily move aside. On a hill beyond a ravine a peasant is ploughing; a piebald colt, with a cropped tail and ruffled mane, is running on unsteady ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... when ye go to bed, God send you good rest, and a peck of fleas in your nest, every one as ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... Twain a Century Hence', published at the time of Mr. Clemens' death, Professor H. T. Peck makes this observation: "We must judge Mark Twain as a humorist by the very best of all he wrote rather than by the more dubious productions, in which we fail to see at every moment the winning qualities and the characteristic ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... story of English political and social life, making no demands upon one's credulity, but satisfying the requirements in the way of a thoroughly good novel. The characters are all drawn with real fidelity to life.—HARRY THURSTON PECK, Editor ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... external air. I have made the scale for one barrel, in order to make it more generally useful to the community at large; however, the same proportions will answer for a greater or less quantity, only proportioning the materials and utensils. Take one peck of good malt ground, one pound of hops, put them in twenty gallons of water, and boil them for half an hour, then run them into a hair cloth bag, or sieve, so as to keep back the hops and malt from the wort, which, when cooled ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... vowed that if God would give him the victory he would offer to Him whatever first came out of the door of his house to meet him on his return. It was a rash vow, I am ready to admit. Yet rash as it was, I do not find it in my heart to be severely critical of him. I rather join with Dr. Peck in my admiration. You know what is the matter with a great many of us smug church members? We are so prudent. We have such admirable possession of all our faculties. We are in danger of dying of self-control. This man in the white ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... was by far and away Balzac's greatest and most passionate love, the present writer cannot agree with the late Professor Harry Thurston Peck in the following dictum: "It was his first real love, and it was her last; and, therefore, their association realized the very characteristic aphorism which Balzac wrote in a letter to her after he had known her but a few short weeks: 'It is only the last love ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... get money of the men. If the laborers are to pay for all their supplies, some think higher wages could be paid; but it would be necessary to require the negro to supply himself with at least two suits of clothes, one pair of shoes, a hat, and four pounds of pork or bacon, one peck of corn meal a week, vegetables at least twice a week, for a first-class hand. The laborer should pay for his medicine, medical attendance, nursing, &c.; also, house rent, $5 a month, water included; wood at $2 a cord in the tree, ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... pity, the beauteous green gold-bedropped wing—that no armour of thine can equal, Stephen, not even that for the little King of Scots. But shouldst not be so silly a bird, Goldie, even though thou hast thine excuse. There! Peck not, ill birdling. Know ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... parrot had been our chief sources of amusement. The two creatures had become great friends, though Quacko now and then showed an inclination to pick the feathers out of his companion's back; but when he made the attempt, she resented it by a severe peck on his head—and one day caught the tip of his tail, and gave it a bite which was calculated to teach him not to behave in the same manner again. Whenever we asked Kallolo to try and catch us some more pets, he invariably replied, "Wait till I can make my blowpipe and some poison, and then I will ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... Hullo there, Peck! where are you?" roared a stern voice from the stable department of the circus, just as the clown's wife seemed about to ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... and although he was now in a sitting posture, grasping the legs of the condor, yet his head and shoulders were still enveloped in the bull's hide. He knew better than to show his naked face to the giant vulture, that at a single "peck" of his powerful beak would have deprived him of an eye, or otherwise injured him severely. The vaquero was aware of all this, and therefore did not leave his hiding-place until he had firmly knotted one end of the long cord around the shank of the bird—then slipping out at one side, he ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... your child; you'll soon believe The text which says, we sprung from Eve. As an old hen led forth her train, And seemed to peck to shew the grain; She raked the chaff, she scratched the ground, And gleaned the spacious yard around. A giddy chick, to try her wings, On the well's narrow margin springs, And prone she drops. The mother's breast All day with sorrow was ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... my dear," she said, making a peck at Kitty's cheek. "That flunkey, idling his life away on the hall mat, said I should find you here, so I saved him from overwork by showing myself in. How are you, St. John? You're looking a bit peaky this ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... wants to speak with you, and won't give his message. He's a queer little body, and not so bad-looking either, with a bolster on the top of his head, and himself not higher than a pillow; a pigeon could sit upon his shoulder and peck up peas out of his shoes; he struts like a grenadier, and, by the powers! a grenadier's cap would serve as an extinguisher for him. Shall I ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... before losing the plumage characteristic of youth. Young house-sparrows and hedge-sparrows not only chatter and swear at one another like the full-grown birds at pairing time, but also like the latter the young birds distend their throats, let their wings droop, peck at one another, and in fact behave as exactly as they will next spring when fully grown. Young linnets also begin to sing before losing their youthful plumage, learn to sing well during the moulting season, ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... I shan't love you half as much as I do now, I shall always come to see you, I think; and, as I shall be a very old man by that time, perhaps you will still sit on a stool at my knee and give me a kiss now and then—oh, a mere bird's peck, just for kindness.... The Via de' Bardi is grey, and you are there in yellow. You are like a young daffodil dancing in the winter grass. But soon you will have strained to your full flower-time, and I see you in your summering, lithe and rather languid, with heavy-lidded eyes, ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... ready to leave, and the locomotive was filling the great train-shed with stertorous hissings, when a red-faced man slipped through the gates to saunter over to the Pullman and to peck inquisitively ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... long bedroom windows went thump thumping; the moon could be seen through them lighting up the graves with their ghastly shadows; the yew-tree, cut into the shape of a bird, looked particularly dreadful, and bent and swayed as if it would peck something off that other yew-tree which was of the shape of a dumb-waiter. The bells at midnight began to ring as usual, the doors clapped, jingle—jingle down came a suit of armor in the hall, and a voice came and cried, "Fatima! Fatima! Fatima! look, ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... compost from the cow-stable is probably the best barnyard fertilizer. Wood-ashes are peculiarly agreeable to the constitution of this tree, and tend to maintain it in health and bearing long after others not so treated are dead. I should advise that half a peck be worked in lightly every spring around each tree as far as the branches extend. When enriching the ground about a tree, never heap the fertilizer round the trunk, but spread it evenly from the stem outward as far as the branches ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... with sable-coloured melancholy, I did commend the black, oppressing humour to the most wholesome physick of thy health-giving air, and, as I am a gentleman, betook myself to walk. The time when? About the sixth hour: when beasts most graze, birds best peck, and men sit down to that ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... intelligent and leading spirits among the colored men in the United States, such as James Forten, Robert Douglass, I. Bowers, A.D. Shadd, John Peck, Joseph Cassey, and John B. Vashon of Pennsylvania; John T. Hilton, Nathaniel and Thomas Paul, and James G. Barbodoes of Massachusetts; Henry Sipkins, Thomas Hamilton, Thomas L. Jennings, Thomas Downing, Samuel E. Cornish, and others of New York; R. Cooley and others of Maryland, and ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... with a gun across his knees, first one and then half-a-dozen large birds, emboldened by the silence, came stalking out from beneath the bushes, looking something like so many farmyard hens as they began to peck and ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... the first mention of the potato occurs in the household book of the Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth. From Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh we learn that the price in 1701 was half-a-crown a peck. Robertson, of Irvine discovered what he thought the earliest evidence of potatoes in Scotland in the household book of the Eglinton family. The date of this entry, however, was 1733, and Robert Chambers showed that the date in the Buccleuch ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... quite amazing; you would never have thought that San Massimo or the neighboring hills contained as many. They flutter down like snowflakes, and strut and swell themselves out, and furl and unfurl their tails, and peck with little sharp movements of their silly, sensual heads and a little throb and gurgle in their throats, while Dionea lies stretched out full length in the sun, putting out her lips, which they come to kiss, and uttering strange, cooing ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... friend. I saw that, and set down the anxiety he expressed that I should write to him at its proper value. I have quite got over my weakness for him at last. No man who really loved me would have put what he owed to a peck of newspaper people before what he owed to his wife. I hate him for letting me convince him! I believe he was glad to get rid of me. I believe he has seen some woman whom he likes at Turin. Well, let him follow his new fancy, if he pleases! I shall ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... Meadowsweet," she said, running up to the good lady and giving her a kiss, which resembled the peck of an eager bird, on her cheek. "I ran on first, and Martha is following. I came to know how you are, and how you're bearing up—and ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... the doctor. "I am not. I would like to see her married some day. Meanwhile I would like to see a dozen lovers about her. It is as natural for a young girl to coquet as it is for a canary to peck at its seed or trim its bill on a bit of fishbone. It is had for the girl and the ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... we put on our window-sill, one day found the water frozen. What did the intelligent creature do? Why, it rapped on the window-pane with its beak till the window was opened, then hopped on to the sideboard, and began trying to peck the cork out of a whiskey bottle! I took the hint, and poured some of the spirit into the saucer; the bird drank it greedily! My wife's comment on this occurrence is really too good to be lost, so I send it you. She said, "Evidently the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... Peter, Peter, pumpkin-eater Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers Piping hot, smoking hot Polly, put the kettle on Poor old Robinson Crusoe! Pretty John Watts Pussy-cat ate the dumplings, the dumplings Pussy-cat Mew jumped over a coal "Pussy-cat, pussy-cat" Pussy-cat sits by ...
— The Real Mother Goose • (Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright)
... the livery-stables thus indicated, and waited to see him walked about to cool, well rubbed down, and made comfortable over half a peck of oats,—for Kenelm Chillingly was a humane man to the brute creation,—and then, in a state of ravenous appetite, returned to the Temperance Hotel, and was ushered into a small drawing-room, with a small bit of ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... while he was still talking with them, the ruler of Israel came down to him and said, "See, this is the evil that comes from Jehovah! Why should I put my hope in Jehovah any longer?" But Elisha said, "Hear the word of Jehovah, for he says, 'To-morrow about this time a peck of fine meal shall be sold for a piece of silver and two pecks of barley for a piece of silver in the gate of Samaria.'" Then the charioteer on whose arm the ruler of Israel leaned answered the man of God, "If Jehovah himself should make windows in heaven, could this be ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... law, by the joint authority of the Alabama Legislature and the city government of Mobile, the labor of thousands of willing men could be hired for the low wages of twenty-five cents per day, with an allowance of a peck of corn-meal and four pounds of bacon for each man per week. It does not change the character of the crime against these humble laborers, but it certainly enhances its degree that the law-makers of Alabama preferred an oppressive ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... the lights and grunted out something which optimism might translate into an affectionate husbandly greeting. She came dutifully forward and raised her face, still exquisite and cool from the outer air, for her lord's home-coming kiss. That resolved itself into a slovenly peck. ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... forth, Now shifted east, and east by north; Bare trees and shrubs but ill, you know, Could shelter them from rain or snow; Stepping into their nests, they paddled, Themselves were chill'd, their eggs were addled; Soon every father bird, and mother, Grew quarrelsome, and peck'd each other; Parted without the least regret, Except that they had ever met; And learn'd in future to be wiser Than to neglect ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... should do. Then suddenly the wolf had an idea, and he started off into the wood, where he found an ox, which he straightway killed. Then he called the fox, and told him to mount guard over the dead ox, and if a bird came past and tried to peck at the flesh he was to catch it and bring it to the lion. Soon after a crow flew past, and began to peck at the dead ox. In a moment the fox had caught it and brought it to the lion. Then the ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... cheaply and regularly, they would cease to be "a troublesome neighbour."[59] We do not know the details of his scheme of organisation except in one particular, the price at which the corn was to be sold per modius (peck): this was to be six and one-third asses, or rather less than half the normal market-price of the day, so far as it can be made out. Whether he believed that the cost of production could be brought down to this level by regularity of demand and transport ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... and arms of Peggotty, so hard and red in my childish days, when I wondered why the birds didn't peck her in preference to apples, are shrivelled now; and her eyes, that used to darken their whole neighbourhood in her face, are fainter (though they glitter still); but her rough forefinger, which I once associated with a pocket nutmeg-grater, is just the same, and when I see my least child catching ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... spiritual Use out of all Afflictions, I should rather recommend to those who are visited with Women of Spirit, to form themselves for the World by Patience at home. Socrates, who is by all Accounts the undoubted Head of the Sect of the Hen-peck'd, own'd and acknowledged that he ow'd great part of his Virtue to the Exercise which his useful Wife constantly gave it. There are several good Instructions may be drawn from his wise Answers to People of less Fortitude than himself on her Subject. A Friend, with Indignation, asked how ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... all you wanted last week, by the bushel or peck or barrel,—finest, juiciest apples you ever laid your ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... child! one would think I was a hungry pussy-cat, and she a hen-sparrow, with her wings all fluttering, and her little eyes aflame, and her beak ready to peck me just because I happened to look near her nest. Nay, child! if thou lik'st to be stifled in a nasty close room, learning things as is of no earthly good when they is learnt, instead o' riding on Job Donkin's ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Badshah in cover and waited. Presently there was a patter over the dry leaves lying on the ground, and a jungle cock, a bird similar to an English bantam, stalked across the glade twenty yards away. It stopped and began to peck. Dermot quietly raised his rifle and took careful aim at its head. He fired, and the body of the cock fell to the ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... get father's permission to marry you at all. Next to that I'd rather elope. It's terrible for wealthy people to be married in America at present—they always have to send out bulletins to the press saying that they're going to be married in remnants, when what they mean is just a peck of old second-hand pearls and some used lace worn once by the ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... trees here bore quite a crop and no squirrel ever hoarded his winter supply with more satisfaction than I had with that first peck or so of nuts. Last year promised well, and many trees had nuts set for the first time, but owing to the intensely hot summer, or some other reason they ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... rather frigid kiss, indeed, 'twas a mere peck on Mrs. Bunting's part, there fell, with startling suddenness, loud cries on the still, cold air. Long-drawn and wailing, they sounded strangely sad as they rose and fell across the distant roar of ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... appears, "enlisted the Harts and others in an enterprise which his own genius planned," says Peck, the personal acquaintance and biographer of Boone, "and then encouraged several hunters to explore the country and learn where the best lands lay." Just why Henderson and his associates did not act sooner ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... lived with his widowed mother, Mrs. Mehetable Piper. His name was Peter, but whether he was descended from the renowned Peter Piper who picked a peck of pickled peppers, the present chronicler does not know. At the time in question he was eating the handbook alive. The speeding auto passed, the mighty Bridgeboro scout pinned his missive to his remnant of sandwich and hurled it out into the dark world, ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... highly characteristic adventure, in which Boone was engaged about this time, is thus narrated by Mr. Peck: ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... Sergeant! the floor hasn't been sprinkled.' The sharp, quick tones of the sergeant of the guard (more like the sound of a tenpenny nail scratching mahogany than aught else in nature) soon set matters right. You think you have surely swallowed your peck of dirt that morning, and feel even more gastric than you usually do on an empty stomach. You can go home to breakfast now: but you hear Johnny Todd's cheery voice sing out; 'Fall in, cocktail squad!' and march off with a score of your comrades to the nearest restaurant, which, finding just open, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... given out on the plantation per week, was invariably one peck of corn or meal for each slave. This allowance was given in meal when it could be obtained; when it could not, they received corn, which they pounded in mortars after they returned from their labor in the field. The slaves on our plantation were provided with very little meat In addition to ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... few minutes Gahogan, of the Tenth; Gildersleeve, of the Fourteenth; Peck, of the First; Thomas, of the Seventh; Taylor, of the Eighth, and Colburn, of the Fifth, were gathered around their commander. There, too, was Bradley, the boyish, red-cheeked chief of the artillery; and Stilton, the rough, old, bearded regular, who ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... confounding brain. Horses reared and plunged and wheeled. All was at once in confusion. The men made frantic efforts to seize their tormentors, but not one could they touch; and they outdoubled them in numbers. Between every wild clutch came a peck of beak and a buffet of pinion in the face. Generally the bird would, with sharp-clapping wings, dart its whole body, with the swiftness of an arrow, against its singled mark, yet so as to glance aloft the same instant, and descend skimming; ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... singular discussions about Western history—have even been used by diplomatists to support or weaken territorial claims. Such, for example, is the question concerning the antiquity of Vincennes, a controversy founded on the mistake noticed in the text. Vide Western Annals. 2d Ed. Revised by J. M. Peck. ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... subtract some half-dozen pieces, either coarse in language or equivocal in purpose, the influence of his poetry may be considered good. (We of course say nothing here of the volume called the "Merry Muses," still extant to disgrace his memory.) It is doubtful if his "Willie brew'd a peck o' Maut" ever made a drunkard, but it is certain that his "Cottar's Saturday Night" has converted sinners, edified the godly, and made some erect family altars. It has been worth a thousand homilies. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... The clam on high began to die— A sweet anticipation! Beware the scent, tho' hunger groan! My gentle kiss (a fishing smack) Shot far amiss and with a hiss I landed pretty well for'ard. A smack I smote with a fearful thwack, A stunning whack across the back, On the upper deck of the Judy Peck. At noon to-day, the fishermen say, We ornament the table— O, wretched deed!—or chicken feed, Two rods ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... water. Exactly the same thing happens at home to many of our pretty little European stone-crops. I have a rockery near my house overgrown with the little white sedum of our gardens. The birds often peck off a tiny leaf or branch; it drops on the dry soil, and remains there for days without giving a sign of life. But its thick epidermis effectually saves it from withering; and as soon as rain falls, wee white rootlets sprout out from the under side of the ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... they were off in the way of food. She replied that they had about a peck of corn meal in the house and several bushels of potatoes buried in the garden; and she reckoned they could do right well till she could get some more washing and other work to do. I gave that ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... A peck of perfectly ripe tomatoes, two quarts of fine cooking salt, half a pound of ground mustard, one ounce of cloves, two green peppers, two or three onions and one pound of brown sugar. Pierce the tomatoes with a silver fork or broom straw, put them in a stone jar with salt in alternate ...
— The Golden Age Cook Book • Henrietta Latham Dwight
... that year, and then came March, rough and boisterous and dull as usual, with its cruel east wind and the dust, "a peck of which was worth a king's ransom," as father used ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... experiences, practically all our mess crockery was smashed; the continual rolling seemed to make the servants wilfully reckless. Also, having an inefficient caterer, our sea stores were exhausted on the way, with the ludicrous exception of about a peck of nutmegs. Another singular incident remains in my memory. At dawn of the day before our arrival, a mirage presented so exactly, and in the proper quarter, the appearance of Table Mountain, the landmark of Cape Town, that our captain, who had been there more than once, was sure of it. As ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... to scratch and peck upon the rough bark of the log, but Oh dear me! suddenly she began to feel very seasick. The log was rolling over! The log was teetering up on end like a boat in a storm! And before she knew what was really happening the poor Hen found herself floundering in the water in the very jaws ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... admiring themselves in the clear water. One of them finds a bit of succulent weed, and the others come running, for all the world like curious girls, ruffling their pretty feathers, cocking their pretty heads; and they peck, and chatter, and peck again, wholly unconscious of the two monsters who are drifting nearer and nearer. Suddenly one of them catches sight of a moving shadow, hears some faint lapping of water against the side of the canoe, ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... beginning to loan on crop-liens. The food supplied is often based on the number of working hands, irrespective of the number of children in the family. This is occasionally a hardship. The customary ration is a peck of corn meal and three pounds of pork per week. Usually a crop-lien together with a bill of sale of any personal property is given as security, but in some states landlords have a first lien upon all crops for rent and advances. ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... the animals of that insolent scoundrel. It is enough to frighten him," added he, as he carefully collected the oats from the manger; "once in another stable, and there must be others in this place, he will no longer leave his peck, and we shall be able ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... burial mound, which was explored by tunneling in from one side. We notice there are no different layers or stratifications in this case. In some cases, at least, the building of such a mound occupied several years. We can see where the dirt was thrown down in small quantities, averaging about a peck, as if from a basket. In one case grass had started to grow on the unfinished surface of the mound, to be covered up by ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... lumbered away along the shore. The crows circled above the voyagers, cawing in not unfriendly excitement. Smaller birds alighted on the raised poles, and several—a robin, a catbird and a little brown wren—ventured with hesitating boldness to peck at the crumbs the girls threw to them. Deer waded knee-deep in the shallow water, and, lifting their heads, instantly became motionless and absorbed. Occasionally a buffalo appeared on a level stretch of bank, and, tossing his huge head, ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... by no social requirements. If a poor lost waif from another coop strays into her realm, no pity, no sympathy springing from the memory of her own offspring, moves her to kindness; but she goes at it with a demoniac fury, and would peck its little life out, if fear did not lend it wings. She has a self-abnegation great as that of human mothers. Her voracity and timidity disappear. She goes almost without food herself, that her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... so!" assented Mr Altham, with a sigh: for his fair and wayward Alexandra had cost him no little care before that summer afternoon. "And to speak truth, Master Tynneslowe, I would not be sorry to put the maid forth, for she is somewhat a speckled bird in mine house, whereat the rest do peck. ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... that nation was finally broken and overthrown. For Papirius being encamped over against the Samnites, and perceiving that he fought, victory was certain, and consequently being eager to engage, desired the omens to be taken. The fowls refused to peck; but the chief soothsayer observing the eagerness of the soldiers to fight and the confidence felt both by them and by their captain, not to deprive the army of such an opportunity of glory, reported to the consul that the auspices were favourable. Whereupon Papirius ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... a future attempt be treated with the same mercy?—no, my dear Susy, quite the contrary; there would not, indeed, be the same plea to save it; it would no longer be a young lady's first appearance in public; those who have met with less indulgence would all peck at any second work; and even those who most encouraged the first offspring might prove enemies to the second, by receiving it with expectations which it could not answer: and so, between either the friends or the foes ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... could we follow one implicitly, then we have found the centre of all. Therefore the best critic of art is the man whose life has been hid with God in nature; and therefore the triumph of art is complete when birds peck at the grapes. ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... the chirch supers and eats moar than enny man there. one time Charlie Folsom the resterant man whitch makes clam chowder wanted to see how mutch old Eben cood eat and he invited him in and made a hoal wash boiler full of chowder. Charlie sed he put in a peck of clams and 2 galons of milk and a lot of potatoes and onyiuns and he invited old decon Petigrew in and he et and et and et and et. Charlie begun to get scat for feer he wood bust. bimeby he stoped eating becaus he coodent hold enny moar. he had et all but about 4 quats. Charlie ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... doors from this was the office of The Birmingham Journal, a very different paper then from what it afterwards became. It had been originally started as a Tory paper by a few old "fogies" who used to meet at "Joe Lindon's," "The Minerva," in Peck Lane; and this was how it came about: The Times had, early in 1825, in a leader, held up to well-deserved ridicule some action on the part of the Birmingham Tory party. This gave awful and unpardonable offence, and retaliation was decided upon. Notes were sent ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... went on, gleefully, 'that I got off about as cleanly as any criminal ever did, thanks to you. If we'd fixed the thing up between us it couldn't have been any neater, could it? Because I went straight to Far Harbor and got you into a peck of trouble, right away, and then slipped quietly into Canada, and put on the outfit of a travelling salesman. And right here another bright idea struck me. Why not carry the thing farther? I knew that you had advertised a trip to Europe (why, the Lord only ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... decision,—that's your go! 'Pon my life, one picks up sad vulgar sayings among the natives here! 'That's your go!'—shocking! What would your poor father say? How is he,—good Austin? Well? That's right; and my dear sister? Ah, that damnable Peck! Still harping on the 'Anti-Capitalist,' eh? But I'll make it up to you all now. Gentlemen, charge ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... were at dinner, and paid a visit to a rose-headed parraquet (Palaeornis rosa), mounting up on Polly's perch, and sitting down to supper in the tin receptacles for food at each end. She generally treated them with silent contempt, or gave a snappish little peck if they were too familiar; sometimes, when they were too sky-larky, she retreated to her ring above, where she swung and looked down at them from a coign of vantage. Their agility in running up and down the wires of a cage is marvellous. ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... corruption, that I went to him, and expressed my great surprise. Hot words ensued between us; and I told him very plainly that I would have nothing further to say to him or his political profligacy. However, his potatoes were sold, and brought upwards of three guineas the peck, the nabob being the purchaser, who, to show his contentment with the bargain, made Mrs M'Lucre, and the bailie's three daughters, presents of new gowns and princods, that ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... what the man says in the rhymes—what is it? you know—makes up for his own little peccadilloes by damning yours and mine. I forget how it goes. But there'll be more in by-and-by, and then we'll have another table. Those who come late will be more in your line; not so ready to peck your eyes out if you happen to forget a card. That Miss Ruff is dreadful." Here an awful note was heard, for the Lady Ruth had just put her thirteenth trump on Miss Ruff's thirteenth heart. What Littlebathian female soul could ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... History? Erostratus by a torch; Milo by a bullock; Henry Darnley, an unfledged booby and bustard, by his limbs; most Kings and Queens by being born under such and such a bed-tester; Boileau Despreaux (according to Helvetius) by the peck of a turkey; and this ill-starred individual by a rent in his breeches,—for no Memoirist of Kaiser Otto's Court omits him. Vain was the prayer of Themistocles for a talent of Forgetting: my Friends, yield cheerfully to Destiny, and read since it is written."—Has Teufelsdrockh, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... try to crush them inside our preconceived opinions. It is quite common to hear men of education maintain that not even when it was on the point of being hatched, had the chicken sense enough to know that it wanted to get outside the eggshell. It did indeed peck all round the end of the shell, which, if it wanted to get out, would certainly be the easiest way of effecting its purpose; but it did not, they say, peck because it was aware of this, but "promiscuously." Curious, such a uniformity of promiscuous ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... and I need it now," he replied doggedly. "It's not for myself, but for that friend I told you about. He's in a peck of trouble, and he's got to get his lift now or not ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... up for a trifle. But you must write me word whether the Miltons are worth paying carriage for. You have a Milton; but it is pleasanter to eat one's own peas out of one's own garden, than to buy them by the peck at Covent Garden; and a book reads the better, which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots and dog's-ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins, or over a pipe, which I think is the maximum. But, Coleridge, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... and caws solemnly to them for ten minutes. I have noticed (through an opera-glass) that the congregation wears a very devout appearance. Churchwarden rooks go round while the service is proceeding, and peck any birds that seem inattentive. At the close there is a universal caw, which I believe stands for "Amen." It is a curious fact that the chaplain rook on these occasions always ornaments himself with a wisp of white grass ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... the object of my visit, of which, however, as I observed, she must be aware. She listened to me, blinked her eyes rapidly, and only lifted her nose till it stuck out still more sharply, as though she were making ready to peck. ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... bedmakers, and gyps, is broken into knots of people, who are chatting together according to their several kinds; but they are so quiet and expectant that the very pigeons hardly notice them, but flutter about and coo and peck up the scattered bread-crumbs, just as if nobody was there. If you look attentively round the court, you will see, too, that many of the windows are open, and you may detect faces half concealed among the window curtains. ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... been consulted in the preparation of this work are, "British Fungi," by Rev. John Stevenson; "British Fungus-Flora," by George Massee; "Mushrooms and their Uses," and "Boleti of the United States," by Professor Charles H. Peck, State Botanist of New York; "Moulds, Mildew and Mushrooms," by Professor L. M. Underwood; and a pamphlet by Mr. C. G. Lloyd, entitled "The Volvae of the ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... sort, excepting in the uniformity of its brown colour. In the Lampong country of Sumatra and western part of Java lying opposite to it there is a very large breed of fowls, called ayam jago; of these I have seen a cock peck from off of a common dining table; when inclined to rest they sit on the first joint of the leg and are then taller than the ordinary fowls. It is singular if the same country produces likewise the diminutive breed that goes by the name ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... all the water in the pond, and if there is no water there will be no fish for you to catch. Fly down now and peck a hole in Botete, and let the water out, before the fish are all dead." So Salacsacan flew down and pecked a hole in the side of Botete, and the water rushed out and ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... truth, Mr. Crow had never set eyes on the strange bird. But he did not like to admit it. "He's a great credit to the neighborhood," said old Mr. Crow. "And you'd better let him alone, if you should happen to find him, because he's solid gold, you know. And if you flew at him and tried to peck him, just as likely as not you'd break your bill on him, ...
— The Tale of Jolly Robin • Arthur Scott Bailey
... anybody available on any conceivable thing—the minutes late a train would be; the pints of milk a cow would give; the people who would be at a hunt breakfast; the babies that would be christened on a Sunday; the number of eyes in a peck of raw potatoes. I was out against the universe. But it wasn't serious at all—just a boy's mania—till one day my father met me in London when I came down from Oxford, and took me to Thwaite's Club in St. James's Street. There was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... elapsed. A fearless blue-jay alighted on the bank and made a prospecting peck at the tobacco pouch. It yielded in favor of a gopher, who endeavored to draw it toward his hole, but in turn gave way to a red squirrel, whose attention was divided, however, between the pouch and the ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... in the pantry, eating bread and honey The maid was in the garden, hanging out the clothes; There came a little blackbird and peck'd off her nose. ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... my voice, Mog, louder still, As sure as you were born, Why should you ask "How many loaves Came from the peck of corn?" ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... Wife, in turning up her Tail To bear the Threshing of her Gallant's Frail, A Groat (which always is a Cuckold's Fee) Under the Candlestick I've laid for me; Besides good Peck and Booze, so till she's Dead, She may and will Whore on to ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... fat hen. No one knew better than she how foolish it would be to go over to that henyard and just trust to luck for a chance to catch one of those biddies. Of course, they might be lucky and get a hen that way, but then again they might be unlucky and get in a peck ...
— Old Granny Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... dinner served up just as the king had given these orders, the bird, flapping his wings, hopped off the king's hand, and flew on to the table, where he began to peck the bread and victuals, sometimes on one plate, and sometimes on another. The king was so surprised, that he immediately sent the officer to desire the queen to come and see this wonder. The officer related it ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... haven't hunted for buried treasure before is that we have lacked the opportunity. We think we have it now. Captain Killam, here, has told us of an island on which is a buried pirate hoard—millions in gold, priceless jewels by the peck. And that's what ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... . The kea is pretty to look at, having rich red and green plumage, but it is a cruel bird. It is said that it will fasten on the back of a living sheep and peck its way down to the kidney-fat, for which this parrot has a special fancy. No tourist need feel compunction about shooting ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... no doubt, by divine influence, of the importance of missions to this people, led, in 1817, to the appointment of J. M. Peck and J. E. Welch to be missionaries to the North American Indians. J. M. Peck commenced their first Indian mission among the Cherokees in 1818. Many tribes are now embraced by the labors of the board, and although the progress ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... seldom called him to his plantation; while the latter was notorious as a hard master and a cruel tyrant, who exacted a larger amount of labour from his negroes than his fellow planters, and gave them less to eat. His opinion was, that a peck of corn a week was quite enough for a negro; and this was his systematic allowance;—but he otherwise tempted the appetites of his property, by driving them, famished, to the utmost verge of necessity. Thus driven to predatory acts in order to ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... and Prevention of Scales in Steam Boilers, is spoken of in highest terms by those who have given it a thorough trial. Circulars and price lists furnished on application. A. H. Downer, 17 Peck Slip, ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... "Sinful Peck." An undersized man, with a cultivated blond mustache, lifted his hat politely to Mr. Jackson, disclosing a smooth, bald head, and passed over, smiling sweetly. Whatever his character, his name belied his appearance; for his face was cherubic in ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... she is," the cook would say, and give her sugar from his pocket, and then the bird would peck at the bars and swear straight on, passing belief for wickedness. "There," John would add, "you can't touch pitch and not be mucked, lad. Here's this poor old innocent bird o' mine swearing blue fire, and none the wiser, you may lay to that. She would swear the same, in a manner of ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a peck of trouble, Miss Constance. And the worst is, I don't know whether to tell about it, or to keep it in. He'd not like it to get to the missis's ears, I know: but then, you see, perhaps I ought to ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... working in the fields with her man, so that the three or four nurslings that she generally has are left in charge of the grandfather, an old cripple of seventy, who can't even prevent the fowls from coming to peck at the little ones.* And things are worse even at La Cauchois', for, as she has nobody at all to mind the children when she goes out working, she leaves them tied in their cradles, for fear lest they should tumble out and crack their skulls. You might visit all the ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... running along the bottom, and being filled, the juice slowly simmers Much of the foreign substance rises in a scum to the surface and is skimmed off by the sugar maker. It is further purified by the addition of Thomaston or what is called sugar lime. At one half a peck is considered sufficient for seven hundred and fifty gallons of juice, but much depends upon the quantity of saccharine matter it contains. Another set of pipes now permit the liquor to run into the evaporators, in the boiling room below. These ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... undercut of prime beef, half a Bayonne ham, two young chickens, and a sweetbread. To these add leeks, chervil, carrots, turnips, fifty heads of asparagus, a few truffles, a large cow-cabbage, a pint of French beans, a peck of very young peas, a tomato cut in slices, some potatoes, and a couple of bananas. Pour in three gallons of water, and boil furiously till your soup is reduced to about a pint and a-half. As it boils, add, drop by drop, a bottle of JULES MUMM's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 21, 1892 • Various
... perished; near two hundred souls Had left their bodies; and what's worse, alas! When over Catholics the Ocean rolls, They must wait several weeks before a mass Takes off one peck of purgatorial coals, Because, till people know what's come to pass, They won't lay out their money on the dead— It costs three francs ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Andover Theological Seminary had one of its most famous treasurers, Samuel Farrar; the American board of missions had one of its grandest leaders and secretaries, Dr. Elias Cornelius; the American Baptist Missionary Union had one of its eminent secretaries, Dr. Solomon Peck; the American Missionary Association had as its great treasurer, W.E. Whiting; the famous young ladies' seminary of Lenox, Mass., had for thirty years its great principal, Elizabeth Sedgwick; Boston had a prominent lawyer, a graduate of Harvard, William Minot; St. ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... unsuspicious trustingness as imbecility, while he hates him as a man because his nature is the perpetual opposite and perpetual reproach of his own. Now, Reineke would not have hurt a creature, not even Scharfenebbe, the crow's wife, when she came to peck his eyes out, if he had not been hungry; and that [Greek: gastros ananke], that craving of the stomach, makes a difference quite infinite. It is true that, like Iago, Reineke rejoices in the exercise of his intellect: the sense of his power and the scientific employment of his ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... cloves, and good store of butter, close it up and bake it, the pye being first basted with eggs, being baked and cold, fill it up with clarified butter, and keep it to eat cold. Make the paste as you do for red deer, course drest through a boulter, a peck and a pottle of this meal will serve for a side or ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... that I look at. It is the heart. The checks in the waistcoat are but the wires of the cage. But the heart is the bird. Ah! How many sich birds are perpetually moulting, and putting their beaks through the wires to peck at all mankind!' ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... Hartman now prefers to dwell among the tombs: he has lived these ten years in a graveyard, so to speak, under a canopy of funereal gloom, and he thrives on it. He and Clarice are the most superior persons I know; and they have gone and got themselves into a peck, or rather several bushels, of trouble, about nothing at all. They must like it, or why should they do it? I doubt if I can ever be educated up to that point. I have the rude and simple tastes of a child: sunshine ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... the table with a sinuous, beguiling motion, and, extending his long neck towards the prospector, with the air of a turkey-gobbler about to peck, he crooned, softly: "Ira, it's a heap risky puttin' your faith in maverick sharps that trail around the country, God-a'mightying it, renaming little, old rocks into precious stones, seein' gold mines in every gopher-hole they come to. They names your backyard ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... come into the room, like a cold wind or a thin ghost, and there would be a kiss on the cheek, a cold, precise peck, like a bird's. And, "Did you have a good voyage?" just as if she said, "Do you ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... in my whole life, Jack, so far as my body goes; and, if I do say it myself, I firmly believe I'd be able to do better work on Saturday than any of you have ever seen me give. But I'm in a peck of trouble at home, and I'm terribly afraid that I won't be able to ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... fortified camp in the Pineta with a view to preventing food or reinforcements arriving to his enemy from the sea. Ravenna was closed upon all sides and before the end of the siege corn rose in the beleaguered city to famine price, some seventy-two shillings of our money per peck, and the inhabitants were forced to eat the skins of animals and all sorts of offal, ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... when it was Belcher begun to get wise and start his counter-attack; but the first time I had a chance to slip out and take a squint his way, I saw this whackin' big sign in front of his place: "Potatoes, 40 cents per peck." Which I ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... was," said Tom Betts, with a chuckle, "and I could string off more'n a few times when that same curiosity hauled Bobolink into a peck of trouble. But p'raps your father might let out the secret to you, after the old boxes have been taken away, and then you can ease his mind. Because it's just like he says, and he'll keep on dreamin' the most wonderful things about those cases you ever heard tell about. That imagination ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... ones worth taking along are potatoes and onions. Choose potatoes with small eyes and of uniform medium size, even if you have to buy half a bushel to sort out a peck. They are very heavy and bulky in proportion to their food value; so you cannot afford to be burdened with any but the best. Cereals and beans take the place of potatoes ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... into a museum of antiquarians. In our own country, the movement initiated by Chatterton, Cowper, and Burns, was carried out by two classes of great writers. They agreed in opposing freedom to formality; in substituting for the old, new aims and methods; in preferring a grain of mother wit to a peck of clerisy. They broke with the old school, as Protestantism broke with the old Church; but, like the sects, they separated again. Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, while refusing to acknowledge the literary precedents of the past, submitted themselves to a self-imposed law. ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... and wheeled. All was at once in confusion. The men made frantic efforts to seize their tormentors, but not one could they touch; and they outdoubled them in numbers. Between every wild clutch came a peck of beak and a buffet of pinion in the face. Generally the bird would, with sharp-clapping wings, dart its whole body, with the swiftness of an arrow, against its singled mark, yet so as to glance aloft the same instant, and descend ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... said Quimbo throwing down a coarse bag containing a peck of corn, "thar, nigger, grab, you won't get ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... one it hath; its blood is eath and quick of flow, Wide-mouthed, though all the rest be black, its ears are white as snow. It hath an idol like a cock, that doth its belly peck, And half a dirhem is its worth, if thou its ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... future attempt be treated with the same mercy?—no, my dear Susy, quite the contrary; there would not, indeed, be the same plea to save it; it would no longer be a young lady's first appearance in public; those who have met with less indulgence would all peck at any second work; and even those who most encouraged the first offspring might prove enemies to the second, by receiving it with expectations which it could not answer: and so, between either the friends or the foes of the eldest, the second would stand an equally bad chance, and a million ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... shook his feathers and looked very bold, but suspicious, for a few minutes, turning first one eye towards the hand, and then the other. After a little he hopped on a branch still nearer, and, seeing no motion in the hand, he at last hopped upon the palm and began to peck the crumbs. Instantly the fingers closed, and Jasper caught him by the toes, whereupon the whisky-John began to scream furiously with rage and terror. But I am bound to say there was more of rage than of terror ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... literally marched off with the greater portion of the seed that was exposed. I saw them on many occasions returning in countless numbers from a foray, each carrying in its mouth a grain of barley or wheat. I tracked them to their subterranean nests, in one of which I found about a peck of corn which had been conveyed by separate grains; and patches of land had been left ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... sceptre, was eager and quick to discover occasions to use it. Many a staid and demure-looking hen, or saucy, daring young chicken, had stolen quite near to her post, stopping every few moments to peer cautiously around, or to peck at a blade of grass or an imaginary worm, as if quite indifferent to the attractions presented by the field beyond, but just as they had come close to the fence, thinking themselves unnoticed, Nelly ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... twenty miles with only one check. Then we chased a cow some distance and into the dry bed of a stream, where she whirled on us savagely. By luck her horn hit only the leather of my saddle skirts, so we left her; for when a cow has sense enough to "get on the peck," there is no driving her farther. We gained nothing, and had to give ground, but we succeeded in holding a semblance of order, so that the cattle did not break and scatter far and wide. The sun had by now well risen, ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... tell me the prices of any of the articles which you get from their shop? For instance, what do you pay for meal?- The meal that Messrs. Adie sell now is 1s. 5d. per peck, whereas I can get the same meal in Lerwick for 1s. 2d. now. Five months ago, when I lived in Lerwick, I could get it ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... chief political opponent in the county was Jedediah Peck, who settled in Burlington, Otsego county, in 1790, a man of an entirely different type from Judge Cooper, yet equally famous in the political life of the times. Coarse and uneducated, Peck overcame all disadvantages by his shrewdness, intellectual power, and great natural ability. He ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... degree of verbal asperity, those ill-natured neighbors of his who visited his dunghill to read moral, political, and economical lectures on his misery. I am alone. I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. Indeed, my Lord, I greatly deceive myself, if in this hard season I would give a peck of refuse wheat for all that is called fame and honor in the world. This is the appetite but of a few. It is a luxury, it is a privilege, it is an indulgence for those who are at their ease. But we are all of us made to shun disgrace, as we ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... fairly tore the travellers from their carriages; then the young lord had a custom of lying in wait with a few intimates, and shooting at passers-by with an air gun, on a wager; then inside the court was a peacock, which flew at everybody's head and tried to peck out his eyes. Man and beast were trained here to harass the stranger. The day when the arrival of Father Peter was expected, the mistress took care to have her beloved child's air gun put away, for the round Jesuit hat would be altogether too convenient a target; ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... ours keep the chicks quite as warm, and never peck the little fellows, or step upon them, as the old hen ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... scenery worth looking at," said Harry, as we started again, after watering the horses, and taking in a bag with a peck of oats—"to feed at three o'clock, Frank, when we stop to grub, which must do al fresco—" my friend explained—"for the landlord, who kept the only tavern on the road, went West this summer, bit by the land mania, and there is now no stopping place 'twixt this and Warwick," naming the village ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... grace of acrobats. It is only when they have found their feet that the disorder begins. Whether it is worms or insects or verdure they seek among the grazing cows, there is evidently little enough to go round, and starling fights starling with peck and protest all over the field. It is a scene of civil war, save that the birds do not form themselves into sides but each wrestles with its neighbour at random. But, after all, they are very hungry. They cluster ravenously on the ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... it," said he. "We'll make a foot give us a yard's worth. Cram a bushel into a peck, though 'The Doctor' said you never could do that! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... eager hands—a shallow creature who was proud to be seen with Hugh because he had been captain of the high-school track team. But she did wish that he wasn't so slow. Why, he had kissed her only once, and that had been a silly peck on the cheek. Perhaps he was just shy, but sometimes she was almost sure that he ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... sat there with a gun across his knees, first one and then half-a-dozen large birds, emboldened by the silence, came stalking out from beneath the bushes, looking something like so many farmyard hens as they began to peck and ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... your lady would, that is, if she is a wopper, and one of the right sort; the others would be more likely to take up mud and pelt you with it, provided they saw you in trouble, than to help you. So take care of your horse, and feed him every day with your own hands; give him three-quarters of a peck of corn each day, mixed up with a little hay-chaff, and allow him besides one hundred weight of hay in the course of the week; some say that the hay should be hardland hay, because it is wholesomest, but I say, let it be clover hay, because ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... tethered to a cart wheel stretched its neck to the utmost in an attempt to peck at Drew's spurs. He laughed, attracted, wrenched out of his own private world. The smell of spicy foods, of fruit, of animals and people ... the ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... like one of those old oaks which the late hurricane has scattered about me. I am stripped of all my honors, I lie prostrate on the earth; I am alone, I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. I greatly deceive myself, if in this hard season of life, I would give a peck of refuse wheat for all that is called fame and ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... of pickled pepper; A peck of pickled pepper Peter Piper picked; If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper, Where's the peck of ...
— Young Canada's Nursery Rhymes • Various
... Gahogan, of the Tenth; Gildersleeve, of the Fourteenth; Peck, of the First; Thomas, of the Seventh; Taylor, of the Eighth, and Colburn, of the Fifth, were gathered around their commander. There, too, was Bradley, the boyish, red-cheeked chief of the artillery; and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... could never become entirely accustomed to the wonder of her, and that delighted her. Even the obviousness of his slippers stuffed out with carrots could catch him napping. To her dance of glee behind him, he kept poking and poking to get into them, only the peck of her kiss upon his neck finally initiating him into ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... caterpillars spin by the hundred, in boxes containing most of these things, have gathered outdoor cocoons by the peck, and microscopically examined dozens of them, and with the exception of leaf, twig, bark, or some other foundation against which it was spun, I never have seen a cocoon with shred, filament, or particle of anything used in its composition that was not drawn from ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Mr. Crow loved to look on while others wrangled. And though he had no taste himself for actual fighting, he liked to see his neighbors pummel and peck and buffet and ...
— The Tale of Nimble Deer - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... from the ditch to the trunk of an elm where the thick bark is green with lichen: he goes up the tree like a woodpecker, and peers into every crevice. His little beak strikes, peck, peck, at a place where something is hidden: then he proceeds farther up the trunk: next he descends a few steps in a sidelong way, and finally hops down some three inches head foremost, and alights again on the all ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... Take a peck of peas, separate the old from the young, boil the former till they are quite tender in good stock, then pass them through a sieve, and return them to the stock, add the young peas, a little chopped lettuce, small pieces of cucumber ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... lost patience and became angry; and in his anger he overreached himself. The chair slid back. He tried to balance himself and, in the mad effort to maintain a perpendicular position, made a frantic clutch at the pipe. Ruin and devastation! Down came the pipe, and with it a peck of greasy soot. ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... intrinsically, is not all this the inevitable fortune, not of a false man in such times, but simply of a superior man? Such a man must have reticences in him. If he walk wearing his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at, his journey will not extend far! There is no use for any man's taking-up his abode in a house built of glass. A man always is to be himself the judge how much of his mind he will show to other men; even to those he would have work along with him. There are impertinent ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... I have had to pay constant visits to my cousin, who lives in a big castle on the sea-side, ten miles from here, over the mountains, and who is in a peck of troubles;—in spite of her prosperity one of the unhappiest women, I should say, that you could meet anywhere. You know so much of her affairs that, without breach of trust, I may say so much. I wish she had a father or a brother to manage her matters for her; but she has none, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... by the legs under his arm, allowing them to peck away at his back, attempted the same manoeuvre, but the old people put on such a look of dull stolidity that I was certain they would give no more fowls for the dollar. I told him, therefore, to give up the dollar, and we continued on our way to another hut, where, for ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... stopped and listened. "Zounds!" he said, "what's that I hear there? Whence doth come that trumpet-blowing?" Werner's music through the March night, Plaintive soared up to the castle, Begging entrance like a pet-dove, Which, returning to its mistress, Finds the window closed and fastened, And begins to peck and hammer. To the terrace went the Baron And his daughter; Hiddigeigei Followed both with step majestic. Through the cat's heart then swept omens Of a great, eventful future. All around they looked—but vainly. For the turret's gloomy shadow Covered both ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... Palais-Royal. He had lived for twenty years not far from there, in a little apartment near Saint-Roch. Drinking in the fresh air, under the striped awning of the Cafe de la Rotunde, he read the journals, one after the other, or watched the sparrows fly about and peck up the grains in the sand. Children ran here and there, playing at ball; and, above the noise of the promenaders, arose the ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... of this new attack—equally unexpected as the peck in the eye—the fierce panda showed no signs of yielding without a struggle; and, although far overmatched by its canine antagonist, it was likely to give the latter a scratch or two, as souvenirs that he ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... how much cotton could be got from a certain amount of seed. I ginned just five pounds of cotton and had thirteen pounds of seed left, being over a peck, for it weighs forty-four pounds to the bushel. The people were very much amused to see me gin so long, and wondered that I had the strength for it. You know they consider us rather effeminate in regard to strength, but ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... position. Pleasant as that had been, it no longer contented the restless, ambitious Barnum. He opened a "porter-home," but sold out a few months later, at a good profit, and took another clerkship, this time at 29 Peck Slip, New York, in the store of a certain David Thorp. He lived in his employer's family, with which he was a great favorite, and where he had frequent opportunities of meeting old friends, for Mr. Thorp's place was a great resort for Bethel and Danbury ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... for your request that I will come up and superintend your establishment, I have advised with Lady Betty on the subject, and she agrees with me that, for the honour of the family, it is better that I should come, as it will save appearances. You are in a peck of troubles, as most men are who are free-livers, and are led astray by artful and alluring females. However, as Lady Betty says, "the least ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... has any use for a turncoat. I take it all in all, he is the most onpopular man in Illinoy to-day. His conduct is as hard to swaller as a dose of them old Greek twins, Castor Oil and Politics, we use to wrastle with at school. Of course in political life, like in ordinary life, you have to eat a peck o' dirt before you die, but you don't have to eat it all at oncst like he's a doin'! Why, old war-horses, Republicans all their lives, were turned down for this here upstart! It's done the party a deal of harm. And then, as ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... a little work in de garden. Dey say I is too ole ter work, so charity gives me a little ter go upon every week. For one weeks 'lowance o' sumptin' ter eat dey gives me, hold on, I will show you, dat beats guessin'. Here it is: 1/2 peck meal (corn meal), 2 lbs oat meal, 2 lb dry skim milk, and 1 lb plate meat. Dis is what I gits fer one week 'lowance. I can't work much, but de white folks gib me meals fur washin' de woodwork in dere houses, de white ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... brood is softened by no social requirements. If a poor lost waif from another coop strays into her realm, no pity, no sympathy springing from the memory of her own offspring, moves her to kindness; but she goes at it with a demoniac fury, and would peck its little life out, if fear did not lend it wings. She has a self-abnegation great as that of human mothers. Her voracity and timidity disappear. She goes almost without food herself, that her chicks may eat. She scatters the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... bequest of seven hundred and seventy-nine pounds seventeen shillings and two pence was a gift munificent enough to confer upon the donor the honor of giving his name to the College so endowed; when a tax of one peck of corn, or twelve pence a year, from each family was all could reasonably be levied for the maintenance of poor scholars at the College; when the Pilgrims—hardly escaped from persecution, and plunged into the midst of perils by Indian warfare, perils by frost and ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... sacking, lifted it up, and taking out the unfinished rope, worked away rapidly, but with the action of sparrows feeding in a road—one peck and two looks out ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... they were in rags. Lady Clanranald's six good shirts had long since disappeared; it was as much as he could do to have a clean shirt once a fortnight. The provisions they carried were reduced to one peck of meal. In this state did the Prince arrive in the familiar country round Loch Arkaig. It was a year almost to the day since he had passed through that very country elate and hopeful at the head of his ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... gather food. The king Powhatan was grown so lofty in his bearing, because of the honor some of our foolish people had shown him, that it was well nigh impossible to pay the price he asked, even in trinkets, for so small an amount as a single peck of corn. ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis
... did not seem to be at all disturbed or frightened by the noise of carriages or the press of people; but would fly down, and light on the peddler's wrist, and peck the food from ...
— The Nursery, March 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... p. 307.] On that sacred day, so desecrated by the havoc of war, he gathered the neighbours together and buried the slain, friend and foe, in one wide, common grave. Among the traditions of the war is one which records that the boys of the Gage family gathered up a peck of bullets which had been intercepted by the stone fence bounding the lane ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... the legend of Quentin Massys of Antwerp and the fly, or the still older, but perhaps not more historical story of the Greek painters, Zeuxis and the bunch of grapes, which the birds came to peck at, and Parrhasius, whose curtain deceived ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... complications arising from the evil influence of demons or devils. One whole chapter is devoted to "Extraordinary Diseases," and teaches anxious relatives to give instant relief in cases of "the face swelling as big as a peck measure, and little men three feet long appearing in the eyes." "Seeing one thing as if it were two," would hardly be classed by London doctors as an extraordinary disease, and is not altogether unknown even amongst foreigners in China. "Seeing things upside down after drinking wine," belongs ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... ("Spirit Lake village") and Wa-qpe-ku-te ("Shoot among deciduous trees"), mostly located in Knox county, Nebraska, on the former Santee reservation, with some oa Fort Peck reservation, Montana. B. Sisseton or Si-si-ton-wan ("Fish-scale village"), mostly on Sisseton reservation, South Dakota, partly on Devils Lake reservation, North Dakota. C. Wahpetou or Wa-qpe-ton-wan ("Dwellers among deciduous trees"), mostly on Devils Lake reservation, North ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... cans corned beef, 2 lbs. cheese, 3 lbs. lard, 8 cans condensed milk, 8 lbs. hard tack, 10 packages soda crackers, 6 packages sweet crackers, 12-1/2 lbs. of wheat flour, 12-1/2 lbs. of yellow cornmeal, can baking powder, 1/2 bushel potatoes, 1 peck onions, 3 lbs. ground coffee, 1/2 lb. tea, sack salt, 7 lbs. granulated sugar, 3 packages prepared griddle cake flour, 4 packages assorted cereals, including oatmeal, 4 lbs. rice, dried fruits, canned corn, peas, beans, canned baked beans, salmon, tomatoes, sweetmeats ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... have therefore noticed it here, but I do not think it so good as many others. It grows on the sandy hills near Combe Wood in Surrey, and forms the principal part of the pasturage; but it is neither very productive, nor are cattle observed to thrive on it. The seeds are very small; one peck would ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... trim it. Here and there among the trees a yellow leaf or so still hangs, but the birches are full of catkins set with pearly drops. Now and again half, a dozen small birds swoop down on one of these birches, to peck at the catkins, and then look about for a stone or a rough tree trunk to rub the gum from their beaks. Each is jealous of the rest; they watch and chase and drive one another away, though there are millions of catkins for them to take all they will. And the one that is chased never does ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... case a good fellow that had but a peck of corn weekly to grind, yet would needs build a new mill for it, found his error eftsoons, for either he must let his mill lie waste, pull it quite down, or let others grind at it. So ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... good?" was John's mental comment, as he daily watched the proceedings, and while Hannah pronounced him "the hen-peck-ed-est man she had ever seen," the amused villagers knew that will had met will, ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... unimaginative in its conception of art. Shakespeare, reading the story of Timon, saw in him an image of tragic destiny that would flood the heart of even an ingrate with pity. Great poets have something more difficult and more noble to do than to pin their hearts on their sleeves for daws to peck at. Shakespeare wrought the figure of Timon with as grave justice as he wrought Alcibiades. He wrought both from something feeling within himself, as he wrought Cleopatra, and Macbeth, and Sir Toby ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... danger from them, and the people in the fort wandered about as freely as if no foe had ever excited their fears. An accident occurred which sent a tremor of dismay through the whole colony, and which we will describe as related to the intelligent historian, Peck, from the lips of one of the parties, who experienced all the terrors of ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... hurry to the grizzled mender of roads, already at work on the hill-top beyond the village, with his day's dinner (not much to carry) lying in a bundle that it was worth no crow's while to peck at, on a heap of stones? Had the birds, carrying some grains of it to a distance, dropped one over him as they sow chance seeds? Whether or no, the mender of roads ran, on the sultry morning, as if for his life, down the hill, knee-high in dust, and never ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... the same. And I assure you that they are succeeding—I assure you that they are. Yet I would rather die than not help you. If I cannot help you I SHALL die; but, to enable me to help you, you must flee like a bird out of the nest where these owls, these birds of prey, are seeking to peck you to death. How distressed I feel, my dearest! Yet how cruel you yourself are! Although you are enduring pain and insult, although you, little nestling, are in agony of spirit, you actually tell me that it grieves you to disturb me, and that you will work off your debt to me with the labour of ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... reign of Edward III to the reign of Henry VII, a day's earnings, in corn, rose from a pack to near half a bushel, and from Henry VII to the end of Elizabeth, it fell from near half a bushel to little more than half a peck. ...
— Observations on the Effects of the Corn Laws, and of a Rise or Fall in the Price of Corn on the Agriculture and General Wealth of the Country • Thomas Malthus
... glad to get away from its victims, and from under the sphere of its influence, and plunge into the wild wastes of The Sahara, where I could breathe more freely. I must relate one other anecdote illustrating this oppression. A poor man sold me a peck of barley. The myrmidons of power, hearing of the sale, immediately went to him, and he refusing to give them the money, they got hold of his throat and nearly strangled him. To make them desist, I paid them also the value of the barley. Several of ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... had made for himself, of doing things, not for their own sakes, but in order that he might have done them. Of course, it had appeared to a fellow like that, that Romarin himself had always had a calculated end in view; he had not; Marsden merely measured Romarin's peck out of his own bushel. It had been Marsden who, in self-consciously seeking his own life, had lost it, and Romarin was more than a little inclined to suspect that the vehemence with which he protested that he had not lost it was precisely the ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... cities, Caesena and Rimini, beside Ravenna, now remained to Odovacar, and for the next two years and a half (from the autumn of 490 to the spring of 493) Ravenna was straitly besieged. Corn rose to a terrible famine price (seventy-two shillings a peck), and before the end of the siege the inhabitants had to feed on the hides of animals, and all sorts of foul and fearful aliments, and many of them perished of hunger. A sortie made in 491 by a number of barbarian recruits ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... holding it uncrushed, walk into a wood, and have seen a woodthrush flutter down to him, take the butterfly from his fingers, speed away with it to feed its young and presently return to his empty hand, as if expecting another insect, perch on his hand, peck at it and remain some time; and there is no song-bird more fearful of mankind, more aloof, more retiring, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... committed hundreds of the like mistakes in the best humour possible; while the Grocer and his people were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas daws to peck at if ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... as always, bade Arethusa peremptorily to go right straight to sleep, and left her. But very unexpectedly, she came back after shutting the door, and trotted briskly across the dark room to give Arethusa a quick little peck on one cheek, which was Miss Eliza's only way of kissing, and to tell her very gruffly that she was awfully glad Arethusa was at home again, and she certainly hoped that she'd have sense enough to stay. Then she once more bade her niece to go straight to ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... more than his peck of trouble with the Sydney Ducks that roosted on his land. He sent the town authorities to dispossess them, but without result. There were too many squatters and too few police. Next he sent an agent to collect rents, but the man returned ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... browse, and free them from these pests. In the low country the same acceptable office is performed by the "cattle-keeper heron" (Ardea bubuleus), which is "sure to be found in attendance on them while grazing; and the animals seem to know their benefactors, and stand quietly, while the birds peck their tormentors from their flanks."—Mag. Nat. Hist. p. ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... being was singing with the utter joy of the ride. Beneath her Brunette was spurning the turf with dainty hooves; stretching out in her gallop, yet gathering herself cleverly at her fences, with alert, pricked ears—judging her distance, and landing with never a peck or stumble. The light weight on the pony's back was nothing to her; the delicate touch on her mouth was all she needed to steady her ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... him more good than a peck out o' our apples. Better for his morials. He ought to ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... him," said Dennet. "Ah! 'tis pity, the beauteous green gold-bedropped wing—that no armour of thine can equal, Stephen, not even that for the little King of Scots. But shouldst not be so silly a bird, Goldie, even though thou hast thine excuse. There! Peck not, ill birdling. ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... was not dead. It let her put her hand round it and draw it in, and to her delight she felt that it was soft and warm, and it even gave a gentle peck ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... minutes elapsed. A fearless blue-jay alighted on the bank and made a prospecting peck at the tobacco pouch. It yielded in favor of a gopher, who endeavored to draw it toward his hole, but in turn gave way to a red squirrel, whose attention was divided, however, between the pouch and the revolver, which he regarded with mischievous fascination. Then ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... us on the west of Pinfold-street, keeping it about twenty yards on our left; up Peck-lane, till we come near the top, when we turn to the right, keeping the buildings, with the Free-school in New street, on our left, into Swan-alley. We now turn up the Alley into New-street, then to the right, which leads us to the Party-wall, ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... corn had been shipped, the boat had steamed down the river, and the place, lately so full of busy life, had returned to its accustomed quiet seclusion, the redbirds came to peck up the corn left upon the ground. I remember how once, upon a cold, gray afternoon, I put on my wraps and ran down to the Sycamore Barn, on purpose to watch the shy, beautiful things. Snowflakes were beginning to fall and whisper about the great bamboo vines; twisted around ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... came running across the lawn to meet his father, seizing him warmly by the hand, and having administered a dutiful peck to his aunt, turned to introduce the little group of strangers who ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... The latter thrust his arm into them, one after the other, and found that the first contained corn meal enough to keep him and his hungry family in hoe-cake until he could earn money from the committee to buy more, and that there were three chickens and about a peck of potatoes ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... is hatched. So it does; but had it no knowledge before it was hatched? What made it lay the foundations of those limbs which should enable it to run about? What made it grow a horny tip to its bill before it was hatched, so that it might peck all round the larger end of the eggshell and make a hole for itself to get out at? Having once got outside the eggshell, the chicken throws away this horny tip; but is it reasonable to suppose that it would have grown it at all unless it had known that ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... that denial. It meant a free education and a free revel in the frequent performances of Shakespeare, and of repertory companies that gave such triumphs as "East Lynne" and "Camille," not to mention the road companies that played the uproarious "Peck's Bad Boy," "Over the Garden Wall," "Skipped by the Light of the Moon," and the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... five thousand years had failed to mark or mar. The relic-hunter battered at these persistently, and sweated profusely over his work. He might as well have attempted to deface the moon. They regarded him serenely with the stately smile they had worn so long, and which seemed to say, "Peck away, poor insect; we were not made to fear such as you; in ten-score dragging ages we have seen more of your kind than there are sands at your feet: have they ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 358.).—Your correspondent asks, Who was Salgado? and his question has not yet, I believe, been answered. James Salgado, whose name does not appear in any biographical dictionary, though it deserves to do, and whose pieces are unnoticed in Peck's Catalogue, though they should certainly not have been omitted, was a Spanish priest, who renounced the Roman Catholic belief, and was imprisoned by the Inquisition, and after undergoing many sufferings made his escape to England in the latter part of the reign of Charles II. His history ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... Captain Edwin Peck, E.N., Had the habits of a hen. Edwin's nose was like a bone, And his teeth were not his own; Neither, I regret to tell, Did they fit him very well. It was not his fault, no doubt, That they tried to tumble out, And in fact he seldom dropped them, For he almost always copped them Just as they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... enough: so he was sent into hospital, and when he recovered, transported for the rest of the life that had thus been given back to him. While he was on his way down the town to go on board the vessel, I should think that if he had one dollar given him, he had at least half a peck, though I do not expect they would be much use to him where he was going to. I never heard any more of him, but I don't suppose many men could say that they had been hanged and ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... London, who was factour many yeares at S{an}cta-Cruce, in Barberie, and brought over a quantity of these leaves for his own use and his friends. 'Tis pity it is not more known. 'Tis leaves of a tree like a berbery leafe. Mr. Clarke hath yet by him (1690) above half a peck of the alhanna. ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... affections. At five-and-thirty (I know I am five-and-thirty, because you have told people so for the last three years) there exists a certain reticence in the youthful heart which declines to lay bare its inmost feelings even for an aunt to—we won't say peck at, but speculate upon. I have told you all I know. I have done what I was bidden to do, up to a certain point. I am now here to recruit, and restore my wasted energies, and possibly to heal (observe, I say possibly) my wounded affections in the intimacy ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... parties now venture in, owing to the inconvenience that attend, and when they do go they have to get in the best way they can. The pleasure boat and other boats in the canal were cut up by order of General Peck, commanding the United States forces at Suffolk, Va., and carried to the Black water river to be used as pontoons across that stream. But I doubt if they were ever used for that purpose. After the surrender so great was the demand for boats by strangers that wished to visit the Lake of the Dismal ...
— The Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, Early recollections - Vivid portrayal of Amusing Scenes • Robert Arnold
... higher class there is restraint and a rather stupid bashfulness. I have seen a wounded youngster flush apprehensively and only peck his mother in return for her sobbing embrace. That is not Bert's way. He knows—he is not a fool—that his mother looks a trifle absurd as, with bonnet awry, she surges perspiringly past the sentries, the tails of her skirt dragging in the dust and her feet flattened with the weight of over-clad, ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... shoot on, He's got "No Smoking" posted up in big letters in every room in the house. REGGIE said it was awful. He had to lock his bedroom door, shove the chest-of-drawers against it, and smoke with his head stuck right up the chimney. He got a peck of soot, one night, right on the top of his nut. Now I call that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 19, 1892 • Various
... goes from tavern to tavern, picking out his men. There is an ale-house in Sea-coal Lane—the same where lady-like George Peele was found by the barber, who had subscribed an hour before for his decent burial, "all alone with a peck of oysters"—and here Ned is detained an unconscionable time. Just as he is leaving with Kempe and Cowley, Armin and Will Shakespeare burst in with a cry for wine. It is Armin who gives the orders, but his companion pays. They spy Alleyn, and Armin must tell his news. He is the bearer of ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... joined the hue and cry. An old friend of Lincoln's, Ebenezer Peck, came east from Illinois to work upon him against Blair.(3) Chandler, who like Wade was eager to get out of the wrong ship, appeared at Washington as a friend of the Administration and an enemy of Blair.(4) But ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... Bruce," Jim said emphatically. "Sheer rot. She's just Betty Gordon and in a peck of trouble. It's up to you and me, being countrymen of hers, to see her through instead of ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... and baked), one half peck, 10c.; one lb. rolled wheat, 5c.; one and one half lbs. zwieback for toast, 15c.; one pint of canned grape pulp for toast, 12c.; puffs (for which beside milk, three eggs at 25c. per doz., and one and one half lbs. whole-wheat flour at 5c. per lb. were used), 14c.; two and one half lbs. of ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... something is near; No knock, no footsteps three or four, Only a presence outside the door! See! the moon is remembering!—what? The wail of a mother-left, lie-alone brat? Or a raven sharpening its beak to peck? Or a cold blue knife and a warm white neck? Or only a heart that burst and ceased For a man that went away released? I know not—know not, but something is coming Somehow back with an ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... up for his own little peccadilloes by damning yours and mine. I forget how it goes. But there'll be more in by-and-by, and then we'll have another table. Those who come late will be more in your line; not so ready to peck your eyes out if you happen to forget a card. That Miss Ruff is dreadful." Here an awful note was heard, for the Lady Ruth had just put her thirteenth trump on Miss Ruff's thirteenth heart. What Littlebathian female soul ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... sunken mouth, ruddy cheeks, and quick brown eyes gave her the appearance of a bird which walks about pecking suddenly here and there. As Helena reluctantly entered the mother drew herself up, and immediately relaxed, seeming to peck forwards as ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... Smith saw what was the matter. That blow on the hip had ruined Greer's right hand, strained it, perhaps broken it. Greer's rushes had stopped, and Smith, who was a boxer, not a fighter, could stand off and peck at his man's eyes or ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... dress duck Jack fell till Jess tack pack Nell fill less press lack Bell pill neck luck sack sell will Bess still tack tell hill block stick shall well mill peck trill shell ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... nearly two miles in circumference and fifty feet deep, and encircled by a dense forest. Its deep, sluggish outlet into the Hudson is now Canal Street. In wet weather there was another water communication with the East River, near Peck Slip, cutting off the lower part of the island, leaving another island, containing some eight hundred acres. Through Broad Street, along which now rolls each day the stream of business, and swells the tumult of the Brokers' Board, then swept a deep stream, up which boatmen rowed ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... Peck, of New York, shows that during the year 1891, in about 6,000 manufacturing establishments in that State embraced within the special inquiry made by him, and representing 67 different industries, there was a ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... And yet some spy might fool you with a cute story and get your help and maybe play you for a sucker on the other side. I saw that happen once. It was a nice young chap, and a pretty girl fooled him—got him into a peck of trouble. What you want to remember is that good spies never seem ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... often be cold and hard, or not much moved, when the positive crisis arrives, and why it is that they are prepared for astonishing leaps over the gradations which should render their conduct comprehensible to us, if not excuseable. She watched the blackbird throw up his head stiffly, and peck to right and left, dangling the worm on each side his orange beak. Specklebreasted thrushes were at work, and a wagtail that ran as with Clara's own rapid little steps. Thrush and blackbird flew to the nest. They had wings. The lovely morning breathed of sweet earth into ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... degree. He traces his lineage in unbroken line to that haughty Johann Jakob who came to America in the steerage, wearing a Limburger linsey-woolsey and a pair of wooden shoes. Beginning life in the new world as a rat-catcher, he soon acquired a gallon jug of Holland gin, a peck of Brummagem jewelry, and robbed the Aborigines right and left. He wore the same shirt the year 'round, slept with his dogs and invested his groschens in such Manhattan dirt as he could conveniently transport ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... weeks together, still finding food. If you will consider the incredible number of little mouths, and the busy rate at which they ply them hour by hour, you may imagine what an immense number of grains of wheat must have escaped man's hand, for you must remember that every time they peck they take a whole grain. Down, too, come the grey-blue wood-pigeons and the wild turtle-doves. The singing linnets come in parties, the happy greenfinches, the streaked yellow-hammers, as if any one ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... formerly of Lisbon, the writer is indebted for a set of European types, and to Professor Bethel, pathologist of Denver, for rich material from the fertile mountains of Colorado and California. To Professor Morton Peck, of Oregon, we are indebted for many notes of the color of plasmodia and for collections of Pacific coast forms. Mr. Bilgram, of Philadelphia, read the manuscript of the genus Physarum and has contributed many rare species. To Dr. Sturgis, of Massachusetts, ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... spent the long days on the muddy trail in wondering when and where the next race was to come off, and whether at this rate he would be fit for a finish. One day on the Yellowstone I had come suddenly upon a quartermaster who had a peck of oats on his boat. Oats were worth their weight in greenbacks, but so was plug tobacco. He gave me half a peck for all the tobacco in my saddle-bags, and, filling my old campaign hat with the precious grain, I sat me down on a big log by the flowing Yellowstone and told poor ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... O, I shall have instantly my Vulture, Crow, Raven, come flying hither, on the news, To peck for carrion, my she-wolfe, and all, ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... chicken, Miss West. He was just a little golden ball. He would run up to me and peck out of my hand. And he was handsome when he grew up, too—white as snow, with such a beautiful curving white tail, though Mary Vance said it was too short. He knew his name and always came when I called him—he was a ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... snake is feared, but because it is incomprehensible. The talk of its upas-like influence, its deadly fascination, is chiefly picturesque humbug. Ducks will approach a snake curiously, inwardly debating the possibility of digesting so big a worm at one meal; the moving tail-tip they will peck at cheerfully. This was the sort of thing that one might have observed for himself years ago, here at the Zoo; at the time when the snakes lived in the old house in blankets, because of the unsteadiness of the thermometer, and were fed in public. Now the snakes are fed in strict ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... or Vellas; But with this difference, the Warracha is hard, but the Vellas as soft as pap, both looking alike to the eye no difference; but they are distinct Trees. These are a great help to the People, and a great part of their Food. They grow upon a large Tree, the Fruit is as big as a good Peck loaf, the outside prickly like an Hedg-hog, and of a greenish colour; there are in them Seeds or Kernels, or Eggs as the Chingulayes call them, which lie dispersed in the Fruit like Seeds in a Cucumber. They usually gather them before they be full ripe, boreing an hole in them, and feeling of the ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... Yacht; Or, A Young Millionaire and the Kidnappers," Dick got into a "peck of trouble," to quote his chum, Innis Beeby. But the rich youth finally triumphed over the designs of Uncle Ezra, and was able to ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... form of intelligent action in the animal world and that from which most of the higher forms have arisen is illustrated in the following example: a chick will peck at a strange worm, and, finding it unpalatable, will then in the future refuse to peck at worms of that sort. This refusal to do a second time what has once had a disagreeable result is intelligent. We now say that the ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... His stature was but medium, not exceeding five feet four inches, I think; and to make the most of it, he flung his head far back, and gave himself a little strut in walking. He had a thin face with a sharp nose that looked as if it would peck you, and grey eyes that could pierce a millstone if there was a guinea on the far side of it. His hair, for he wore his own, had been red, though it was now grizzled; and the colour of it was set down in Moonfleet to his being ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... great battle he fought with the Samnites wherein that nation was finally broken and overthrown. For Papirius being encamped over against the Samnites, and perceiving that he fought, victory was certain, and consequently being eager to engage, desired the omens to be taken. The fowls refused to peck; but the chief soothsayer observing the eagerness of the soldiers to fight and the confidence felt both by them and by their captain, not to deprive the army of such an opportunity of glory, reported to the consul that ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... peck of pickled peppers, Now if Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, Where is that peck of pickled ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... which during the breeding season seek hollows in trees; there the female lays eggs and sits upon them, while the male pastes the opening with clay so that only her head is visible, and not until the young are hatched does the male begin to peck with his long beak and free ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... friend to me. I will know to-day about whether I can go back to the French front. If not I will try the Belgians and then London, and home. I spent Christmas day in Rome in the catacombs. I could not wear my heart upon my sleeve for duchesses to peck at. It is just as you say, Dad and Mother made the day so dear and beautiful. I did not know how glad I would be to be back here for while the trip East led to no news value, to me personally it was interesting. But I am terribly tired after the last ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... and prick them with a fork—lay them in a deep dish, and to each layer put a layer of salt. Let them remain in it four or five days, then take them out of the salt, and put them in vinegar and water for one night. Drain off the vinegar, and to each peck of tomatos put half a pint of mustard seed, half an ounce of cloves, and the same quantity of pepper. The tomatos should be put in a jar, with a layer of sliced onions to each layer of the tomatos, and the spices ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... 26th Currt was soe short and soe abrupt that I fear you can peck butt little satisfaction ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... the entire monthly allowance of a full grown slave, working constantly in the open field, from morning until night, every day in the month except Sunday, and living on a fraction more than a quarter of a pound of meat per day, and less than a peck of corn-meal per week. There is no kind of work that a man can do which requires a better supply of food to prevent physical exhaustion, than the field-work of a slave. So much for the slave's allowance of food; now for his raiment. The yearly allowance of clothing for the slaves on ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... only one's amusements. I pass my lighter hours with them. They interest me in the same manner as a chess problem. We do not care, we in the mighty East, which of you holds your head highest this side of Suez. All you western nations are to us a peck of dust outside our palace gates. Listen, dear one. We can leave, if you will, to-night, and top the clouds before sunrise. And I promise you this," he went on, "when you pass from the greyness of these sordid lands into the everlasting ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... an exceedingly dull person who made the remark, Ex pede Herculem. He might as well have said, "From a peck of apples you may judge of the barrel." Ex PEDE, to be sure! Read, instead, Ex ungue minimi digiti pedis, Herculem, ejusque patrem, matrem, avos et proavos, filios, nepotes et pronepotes! Talk to me about your [Greek text which cannot ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... pleasantly, and yielded a very good crop; but having part of the seed left only, and not daring to sow all that I had yet, I had but a small quantity at last, my whole crop not amounting to above half a peck of each kind. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... Quimbo throwing down a coarse bag containing a peck of corn, "thar, nigger, grab, you won't get no more dis ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... 29th of June was duly received. I did not answer it because it plagued me. This morning I received another from Judd and Peck, written by consultation with you. Now let me tell you why I ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... a people who certainly do not wear their hearts on their sleeves for daws to peck at. In the eyes of the more volatile southern Celts they seem a "dour" people. They are naturally reserved, laconic of speech, without "gush," far from lavish in compliment, slow to commit themselves or to give their confidence without ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... want some flowers; please hang about my neck A dozen lais; and give me half a peck Of nice bouquets; then I will hire a band And celebrate my entrance to your land. I'll dance the Hula, up and down the street And cry Aloha, to each girl I meet; And if she frowns, and calls me cad, and churl, I'll shout, Long ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Mr Monke were married when the summer came. John Avery and Isoult were invited to the wedding; and Philippa sent a special message requesting that their little Kate might be included; for, said she, "Arthur shall be a peck of trouble, and an' he had one that he might play withal he should be ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... one peck of small potatoes and a pound and a half of salt pork; arrange the fish, pork, and potatoes into mounds; divide each equally into four parts; add one quarter of the fish to the stock, next a quarter ...
— Fifty Soups • Thomas J. Murrey
... he wer, a-prowlen roun' Upon the green; an' I look'd down An' told en that I hoped he voun' He mussen think to peck Upon a body zoo, nor whip The meaere to drow me off, nor tip Me out o' cart ageaen, nor slip Cut ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... me, Elphinstone. A week's cruise somewhere away out there to the eastward would set the little darling up far more effectively than all the professor's drugs. Try it, man; it can do no harm; and I'll bet you a— a—well, let us say a peck of rubies, that you'll ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... old Blinkie will look?" said Bob, trying to picture the jackdaw as he would appear when conscious of his owner's return; and then, deciding in his own mind that the only tribute of affection which he might expect would, most probably, be a sharp peck from Blinkie's beak, he added, "I dare say he ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... minutes Gahogan, of the Tenth; Gildersleeve, of the Fourteenth; Peck, of the First; Thomas, of the Seventh; Taylor, of the Eighth, and Colburn, of the Fifth, were gathered around their commander. There, too, was Bradley, the boyish, red-cheeked chief of the artillery; and Stilton, the rough, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... said: 'Friend, he that labours for the sparrow-hawk Has little time for idle questioners.' Whereat Geraint flashed into sudden spleen: 'A thousand pips eat up your sparrow-hawk! Tits, wrens, and all winged nothings peck him dead! Ye think the rustic cackle of your bourg The murmur of the world! What is it to me? O wretched set of sparrows, one and all, Who pipe of nothing but of sparrow-hawks! Speak, if ye be not like the rest, hawk-mad, Where can ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... it. Sufficient provocation having been given, they are allowed to go at each other in their own fashion, and their attacks and breathing-spells are not very unlike a bout of fencing. They flap, fly at each other, fly over, peck, seize by the neck, let go, rest a moment, and begin again, getting more and more excited with each round. The negro separates them, when about to draw blood. And as for Don Manuel, he goes mad over them, like an Italian maestro over his favorite pupil. "Hombre, hombre!" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... morning. Two-and-a-half pounds of meat, a quantity of syrup, and a peck of meal were given each adult for the week. A special ration for Sunday alone was potatoes, buttermilk, and material for biscuits. Each family had its own garden from which a supply of vegetables could always be obtained in season. The smaller children had additional delicacies, for ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... and in something of a troubled fashion at Anderson, then at Carroll. His mind was in the throes of displacing a barrel of sugar and a half-peck of pease by a little boy. Then his face brightened. He spoke ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... it. Here and there among the trees a yellow leaf or so still hangs, but the birches are full of catkins set with pearly drops. Now and again half, a dozen small birds swoop down on one of these birches, to peck at the catkins, and then look about for a stone or a rough tree trunk to rub the gum from their beaks. Each is jealous of the rest; they watch and chase and drive one another away, though there are millions of catkins for them to take all they will. And ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... there, Peck! where are you?" roared a stern voice from the stable department of the circus, just as the clown's wife seemed about ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... has achieved a greater national reputation for books of genuine humor and mirth than GEORGE W. PECK, author of "Peck's ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... of the external air. I have made the scale for one barrel, in order to make it more generally useful to the community at large; however, the same proportions will answer for a greater or less quantity, only proportioning the materials and utensils. Take one peck of good malt ground, one pound of hops, put them in twenty gallons of water, and boil them for half an hour, then run them into a hair cloth bag, or sieve, so as to keep back the hops and malt from the wort, which, when cooled down to 65 degrees by Fahrenheit's thermometer, add to ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... old Mr. Crow loved to look on while others wrangled. And though he had no taste himself for actual fighting, he liked to see his neighbors pummel and peck and buffet and bounce ...
— The Tale of Nimble Deer - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... eyes on the strange bird. But he did not like to admit it. "He's a great credit to the neighborhood," said old Mr. Crow. "And you'd better let him alone, if you should happen to find him, because he's solid gold, you know. And if you flew at him and tried to peck him, just as likely as not you'd break your bill on ...
— The Tale of Jolly Robin • Arthur Scott Bailey
... alive," he mutters. "I mustn't, shan't leave him here. The wolves would soon make bare bones of him, and the carrion crows peck that handsome face of his. They shan't either get at him. No. He's did me a kindness more'n once, it's my turn now. Slave, mulatto, nigger, as they call me, I'll show them that under a coloured skin there can be gratitude, as much as under a white one—may be more. Show them! What ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... remembered the book she was reading. He come back with a copy he'd bought at Spokane and kept it on his bureau. Not that he read it much. It was harder to get into than 'Peck's Bad Boy,' which was ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... they leave the place in a day or two, and I shall go home; though I dare say not for long. Your wife seems nearly right again; I saw her To-day. Your Father has engaged to sell his Shrimps to Levi, for this season and next, at 4s. a Peck. Your old Gazelle came in on Saturday with all her Nets gone to pieces; the Lugger Monitor came in here yesterday to alter her Nets—from Sunk to Swum, I believe. So here is a Lowestoft Reporter for you: and you may never have it after all. But, if ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... with much of a like nature, and the use of these test-phrases and sentences has not yet entirely departed from the schools. Familiar are: "Up the high hill he heaved a huge round stone; around the rugged riven rock the ragged rascal rapid ran; Peter Piper picked a peck of prickly pears from the prickly-pear trees on the pleasant prairies," and many others still in use traditionally among the school-children of to-day, together with linguistic exercises of nonsense-syllables and the ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... "Don't peck at one another, children. Don't you wish we had the money Papa lost when we were little, Jo? Dear me! How happy and good we'd be, if we had no worries!" said Meg, who could remember ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... always be money. A foot is always twelve inches, but when is a dollar a dollar? If ton weights changed in the coal yard, and peck measures changed in the grocery, and yard sticks were to-day 42 inches and to-morrow 33 inches (by some occult process called "exchange") the people would mighty soon remedy that. When a dollar is ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... beak broke through the shell. "Peck!" more beak. "Crack!" a funny little head, a long, bare neck, and then "Pick! Peck! Crack!" before them stood the funniest, fluffiest brown ball resting ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... called them outcasts, so they threw stones and mud at him, and went their way. Then the wolves gathered at the foot of the cross, and the birds flew lower and lower. And presently the birds lighted all at once upon his head and arms and shoulders, and began to peck at him, and the wolves began to eat his feet. 'Outcasts,' he moaned, 'have you also ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... George W. Peck's hand is of the free and independent order of chirography. It is easy and natural, but not handsome. He writes very voluminously, doing his editorial writing in two days of the week, generally Friday and Saturday. Then he takes a rapid horse, a zealous bird dog and an improved ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... raising her head, she first of all perceived before her a large tablet with blue ground, upon which figured nine dragons of reddish gold. The inscription on this tablet consisted of three characters as large as a peck-measure, and declared that this was ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... do," he was saying. "A runabout, perhaps." He came forward rubbing his hands, followed by a thin man in overalls. "Mr. Peck says," he began,—"this is Mr. Peck of Peck and Peck,—says that the place we are looking for is about seven miles from the town. It's ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... at all: their suffering is most unchristian, and 'tis evident thereupon to me, that a French post-horse would not know what in the world to do, was it not for the two words...... and...... in which there is as much sustenance, as if you give him a peck of corn: now as these words cost nothing, I long from my soul to tell the reader what they are; but here is the question—they must be told him plainly, and with the most distinct articulation, or it will answer no end—and yet to do it in that plain way—though their reverences may laugh at ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... furnace, and a bathroom in front of the cabin and use it with some fixing over for a dining-room and kitchen. Then we will deepen and widen Singing Water, stick a bushel of bulbs and roots and sow a peck of flower seeds in the marsh, plant a hedge along the drive, and straighten the lake shore a little. I can make a beautiful wild-flower garden and arrange so that with one season's work this will appear very well. We will express this stuff and then select and fell some ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... of my trees are now 7 years old from seed. These trees had about 1/2 bushel of hulled walnuts last summer and I expect to have about 2 bushels this summer. Last summer I also had about a peck of hard shell almonds from my two trees that were planted in 1927. In 1931 my 6 filberts had about 1/2 peck of nuts. These trees are now big enough to have at least a bushel or two of nuts if the catkins had not frozen ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... or propriety of the measure, especially when he was assured in his own mind that the Legislature had not transcended their constitutional powers; and this opinion was sustained as correct by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Fletcher vs. Peck. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... meet with a great noise of some that endeavor to peck out the crows' eyes; that is, to blind the doctors of our times and smoke out their eyes with new annotations; among whom my friend Erasmus, whom for honor's sake I often mention, deserves if not the first place yet certainly the second. O most foolish instance, ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... hours without a quaver. At Calais we had the same good luck as at London—a compartment of the car all to ourselves. Here we were to be settled without change for that night and the next day, so with bags and shawl-straps, bundles, lunch-baskets and a peck of oranges, we adjusted ourselves. We breakfasted at Basle, after having pillowed on each other for the night as best we could. Now we were in the midst of the Jura mountains, and all day long we wound up and down their snowy sides and around the beautiful lakes nestling at their feet—through ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... that, instead, you don't get us into a peck of it," chuckled Grace, tucking herself in under the blankets. "Thank you for getting the bed so nice and ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... and Rimini, beside Ravenna, now remained to Odovacar, and for the next two years and a half (from the autumn of 490 to the spring of 493) Ravenna was straitly besieged. Corn rose to a terrible famine price (seventy-two shillings a peck), and before the end of the siege the inhabitants had to feed on the hides of animals, and all sorts of foul and fearful aliments, and many of them perished of hunger. A sortie made in 491 by a number of barbarian recruits whom Odovacar had by some means ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... down, the disturbed sea birds fluttered and screamed around our heads, the boldest even offering to peck at our hands, but fearing to do so for all the clatter they ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... crow again. Dermot halted Badshah in cover and waited. Presently there was a patter over the dry leaves lying on the ground, and a jungle cock, a bird similar to an English bantam, stalked across the glade twenty yards away. It stopped and began to peck. Dermot quietly raised his rifle and took careful aim at its head. He fired, and the body of the cock fell to ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... distance is the dark mass of forests, the glitter of ponds, yellow patches of village; larks in hundreds are soaring, singing, falling headlong with outstretched necks, hopping about the clods; the crows on the highroad stand still, look at you, peck at the earth, let you drive close up, and with two hops lazily move aside. On a hill beyond a ravine a peasant is ploughing; a piebald colt, with a cropped tail and ruffled mane, is running on unsteady legs after its mother; its shrill whinnying reaches us. We drive on into the birch wood, ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... make the captive more secure, and then let his legs drop over the edge of the lantern, intending to get on the rounds of the ladder, but his foot missed the first one. In his effort to regain it he slipped. At that instant the bird freed his head, and with a triumphant "caw!" gave Billy an awful peck on the nose. The result was that the poor boy fell back. He could not restrain a shriek as he did so, but he still kept hold of the raven, and made a wild grasp with his disengaged hand. Fortunately he caught the ladder, ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... hedge-sparrow. For days a sparrow has been watched while it fed a hungry complaining intruder. It used to fly on the cuckoo's back and then, standing on its head and leaning downwards, give it a caterpillar. The tit-bit having been greedily snatched and devoured, the cuckoo would peck fiercely at its tiny attendant—bidding it, as it were, fetch more food and not be long about it. Wordsworth tells us in a famous line that "the child is father of the man," and no apter illustration of this truth could be ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... see good days. No: lying is so deeply rooted in nature that we may expel it with a fork, and yet it will always come back again: it is like the poor, we must have it always with us; we must all eat a peck of moral dirt before ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... with a dark stain and waxed, or, as it is small, it can be easily fumed. If stain is used, stain and wax the pieces before putting them together. The fuming process is more easily done after the clock is assembled. Secure a bucket, a peck measure, or any receptacle large enough, when inverted, to put over the clock. Pour about 2 oz. of strong ammonia into a saucer or small pan. Support the clock above the saucer and cover both with the inverted bucket. Allow it to stand for three or ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 2 • H. H. Windsor
... he said, very gently holding up a bit of bread to the canary to peck at, "if I were in your place I would seize every master in Chancery by the throat to-morrow morning and shake him until his money rolled out of his pockets and his bones rattled in his skin. I would have a settlement out of somebody, by fair means or by foul. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... use it, if not, take 1 peck of barley, and put it into a stove oven, and steam the moisture from them, grind coarsely, and pour into them 3-1/2 gallons of water, at 170 or 172 degrees. (If you use malt it does not need quite so much water, as it does ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... (dimensions) 192; multitude &c (number) 102; immensity; enormity; infinity &c 105; might, strength, intensity, fullness; importance &c 642. great quantity, quantity, deal, power, sight, pot, volume, world; mass, heap &c (assemblage) 72; stock &c (store) 636; peck, bushel, load, cargo; cartload^, wagonload, shipload; flood, spring tide; abundance &c (sufficiency) 639. principal part, chief part, main part, greater part, major part, best part, essential part; bulk, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Logan had called him out to the lobby. There was a letter for him, she said, with three stamps on it. Three stamps! Did anyone ever hear the like of that? And he was to go into the lobby and give her three kisses, one after the other ... peck, peck, peck ... and then it would be his turn to call for someone, and Aggie would expect him to call for her! ... Willie Logan had called for a girl. He had a letter for her with fifty stamps on it ... A great roar of laughter had gone ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... burst out Steve; "I tell you, fellows, we're going to have a peck of trouble with this ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... mid-air. The glossy threads with which it is knitted are stout, and the structure is not likely therefore to be torn by the beaks of insectivorous birds; while its pendulous position makes it doubly secure against their attacks, as the apparatus gives way when they peck at it. There is a small orifice at each end of the egg-shaped bag, to admit of the escape of the moth when it changes from the little chrysalis which sleeps tranquilly in its ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... never did mother-sheep love her lamb as the pelican loves its young. When the young are born, the parent bird devotes all his care and thought to nourishing them. But the young birds are ungrateful, and when they have grown strong and self-reliant they peck at their father's face, and he, enraged at their ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Authorities, and raises the "Black Flag" upon White Officers commanding Negro Soldiers.—The New York Press calls upon the Government to protect its Negro Soldiers.—Secretary Stanton's Action.—The President's Order.—Correspondence between Gen. Peck and Gen. Pickett in Regard to the Killing of a Colored Man after he had surrendered at the Battle of Newbern.—Southern Press on the Capture and Treatment of Negro Soldiers.—The Rebels refuse to exchange Negro Soldiers captured on Morris and James Islands on Account of the Order of the Confederate ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... with a speckled coat and a comb the color of red coral: very small, but lively and vigorous, and exhibiting in all her movements both grace and stateliness. She would nestle in my lap, take a ride on my shoulder, and walk the length of my arm to peck at a bit of cake in my hand, regarding me all the while with a queer sidelong glance, and croaking out her satisfaction and content. When she was ready to go she walked to the kitchen door, and asked in a very shrill voice to be let out. She ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... Skinner'll have to buy them four nickel-plated fire-extinguishers that Miss Briggs owns, at twenty-five dollars each, I'll give you four bushels of Benoni apples, two bushels of Early Rose potatoes, four bunches of celery, a peck of peas, and one spring chicken. And if you won't" he added, raising his hand threateningly, "I'll go to them six councilmen, an' I'll graft 'em one at a time, an' THEN where 'll your boss grafter ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... enlivened by grunts and whistles, and the occasional asseveration of the singers that their paternal parent was a man of less than ordinary stature. This insensibly changes into "Willy brewed a Peck of Malt," and finally settles down into "Nix my Dolly," appropriately danced and chorussed, until a policeman, who has no music in his soul, stops their harmony, but threatens to take them into charge if they do not bring their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various
... imposition of whose hands, I, and several other brethren in Canada, have been set apart to the Holy Ministry. After my return to Kingston, brother Healy and I received from the Black River Conference a complimentary resolution in regard to our visit. In enclosing it to me, Rev. Jesse T. Peck, the Secretary [afterwards Bishop], said:—Allow me humbly, but earnestly, to beg a continuance of that friendship with you, which in its commencement has afforded ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... powers were useful to fill up the time, she shone with singular brilliance. The West End is too often in debt to the City, but, in the matter of chaff, it was not so this day; for whenever she took a peck she returned a bushel; and so she rattled to the door of Solomon Oldfield, ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... Ask for oatmeal at breakfast and they send to the livery stable for a peck of oats and ask you please to be so kind as to show them ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... He turned to Dufrenne, excitement showing in every line of his face. As he hurried toward the door he spoke over his shoulder to Monsieur Perrier. "Don't open your mouth to a soul—do you hear? If you do, you'll get yourself into a peck of trouble." The last thing they heard as they left the shop was the ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... which the corn-spirit often assumes is that of a cock. In Austria children are warned against straying in the corn-fields, because the Corn-cock sits there, and will peck their eyes out. In North Germany they say that "the Cock sits in the last sheaf"; and at cutting the last corn the reapers cry, "Now we will chase out the Cock." When it is cut they say, "We have caught the Cock." At Braller, in Transylvania, when the reapers come to the last patch of ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... many little cubs, as well as a few ole Bears, have been gobbled up by your confounded efforts at runnin' up gold, while you grin and chuckle like the laffin' hyena, when ransackin' Navy Yards and whisky distilleries. But, if you insist on goin' ahead and earnin' your daily peck by smashin' things and layin' out the onsofisticated, all I have got to say is, that next time you've got a sure thing to make a speck, by telegrafin' me at Skeensboro, I won't mind comin' down and takin' a hand in, if my pocketin' ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... number of snakes, evenly laid side by side, so as to take up as little room as possible. The majority of these creatures were rattlesnakes; but there were black snakes among them, and one large spotted snake. Besides these, there were, as the narrator expressed it, at least a peck of spring frogs; these having probably crawled in to fill up all corners and vacant places. All these reptiles were of course dormant and ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... Come up, now, prithee, Bridewell Bird! You will drink, will you? I saw no dust or cobwebs come out of your mouth. Go hang, you moon-calf, false faucet, you roaring horse-courser, you ranger of Turnbull, you dull malt-house with a mouth of a peck and the sign of the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... the discomfort of fatuous conversation, Daniel played a number of old motetts for Herr Carovius. Herr Carovius was so pleased that he ran into his pantry, and got a half dozen Boxdorf apples and put them in Daniel's pockets. He bought these apples every autumn by the peck, and cherished them ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... me extremely about my "World," but it has brought me into a peck of troubles. In short, the good-natured town have been pleased to lend me a meaning, and call my Lord Bute Sir Eustace. I need not say how ill the story tallies to what they apply it; but I do vow to you, that so far from once entering into ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... chirp and a twitter, and when she looked at the bare flower-bed at her left side there he was hopping about and pretending to peck things out of the earth to persuade her that he had not followed her. But she knew he had followed her and the surprise so filled her with delight that ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... trustingness as imbecility, while he hates him as a man because his nature is the perpetual opposite and perpetual reproach of his own. Now, Reineke would not have hurt a creature, not even Scharfenebbe, the crow's wife, when she came to peck his eyes out, if he had not been hungry; and that [Greek: gastros ananke], that craving of the stomach, makes a difference quite infinite. It is true that, like Iago, Reineke rejoices in the exercise of his intellect: the sense of his power and the ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... The hens peck the cock. They must be keeping Lent, or perhaps the virtuous widows don't care for their ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... and spake the fair Whitefoord, As she sat by the Bishop's knee, 'A peck o' white pennies, my good lord, If ye'll grant Hughie the ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... life of Priest Sander began in 1901. Then Jos. C. Peck, racer and raiser of trotting horses, met this priest in Albany, who wore the ordinary garb of a citizen. They met at the race track, which was not a very good recommendation to say the least of it, for the Rev. Father Sander. Peck found that this priest was a keen judge ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... gentle airs of eve. His straw-decked thatch, where doves bask in the sun, And play, and hop, invites to sweeter rest Than golden halls of state Or beds of down afford. To him the plumy people Chatter and whistle on his And from his quiet hand Peck crumbs ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... again, sprang toward her friend, dabbed a little kiss, like the peck of a bird, on each cheek, cried: "Well, I must be off, or mother will have to tie up the professor to keep him," and was off accordingly with the speed and lightness of a ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... lived these ten years in a graveyard, so to speak, under a canopy of funereal gloom, and he thrives on it. He and Clarice are the most superior persons I know; and they have gone and got themselves into a peck, or rather several bushels, of trouble, about nothing at all. They must like it, or why should they do it? I doubt if I can ever be educated up to that point. I have the rude and simple tastes of a child: sunshine seems to me better than shade (except during the heated term), and pleasure ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... have instantly my Vulture, Crow, Raven, come flying hither, on the news, To peck for carrion, my she-wolfe, and all, Greedy, ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... You're a good American, eh? And yet some spy might fool you with a cute story and get your help and maybe play you for a sucker on the other side. I saw that happen once. It was a nice young chap, and a pretty girl fooled him—got him into a peck of trouble. What you want to remember is that good spies never seem ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... he said aloud: "be ye bird, or be ye beast, ye are safe from these old hands. I have eaten and I have drunk: why should I take life, when my wants call for no sacrifice? It will not be long afore the birds will peck at eyes that shall not see them, and perhaps light on my very bones; for if things like these are only made to perish, why am I to expect to live for ever? Come forth, come forth; you are safe from harm at these ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... children flies to the back-door when school lets out. "Don't you come in here with all that mud!" she squalls excitedly. "Look at you! A peck o' dirt on each foot. Right in my nice clean kitchen that I just scrubbed. Go 'long now and clean your shoes. Go 'long, I tell you. Slave and slave for you and that's all the thanks I get. You'd keep the place looking like a hogpen, if I ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... liked and many could not eat. It was boiled cracked wheat with a little meat chopped in, no sauce or other relish upon it. I mentioned the case to the doctor, who said, "They purchased a quantity of potatoes, half a peck of which I took to my house and cooked, finding only one or two, among the whole, fit to put into the human stomach. Hence, I looked over my army dietary, found the cracked wheat answered a good purpose, and proposed it here." The ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... She has had two strokes and can't talk any more. We have no boys but two girls, Matilda and Emma Maye Smith. Matilda Parker my daughter lives in Pittsburg, Pa. Emma Maye works to support us. She works as nurse for Mrs. J.H. Hunter but right now is out of work. Charity helps us a little. One half peck meal, 1 pound powdered milk, two cans grape fruit juice, one half pound coffee per week. This amounts to about eighty cents worth rations per week. The charity don't ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... notes, and in another week of ten hours a day labor I had results which astonished myself and satisfied him. Still there was no trace of praise in words or manner. He signified that it would do by placing before me about a half a peck of bones, telling me to see what I could make of them, with no further directions to guide me. I soon found that they were the skeletons of half a dozen fishes of different species; the jaws told ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper
... de slaves wuz 'lowed ter stay on de plantation en 'lowed ter farm en gib half dey made. Atter slavery I useter wuk fer fifty cents en git a peck ob meal, three pounds ob bacon en a quart ob syrup which would ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Tennessee Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... Democrat, has any use for a turncoat. I take it all in all, he is the most onpopular man in Illinoy to-day. His conduct is as hard to swaller as a dose of them old Greek twins, Castor Oil and Politics, we use to wrastle with at school. Of course in political life, like in ordinary life, you have to eat a peck o' dirt before you die, but you don't have to eat it all at oncst like he's a doin'! Why, old war-horses, Republicans all their lives, were turned down for this here upstart! It's done the party a deal of harm. And then, as ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... perhaps the original bold explorer, seeking vainly for another crumb, hopped upon his bare hand as it lay in the grass, but feeling its warmth flew away a foot, hung hovering a moment or two, then came back and took a peck. ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... furnished directly, although in recent years banks are beginning to loan on crop-liens. The food supplied is often based on the number of working hands, irrespective of the number of children in the family. This is occasionally a hardship. The customary ration is a peck of corn meal and three pounds of pork per week. Usually a crop-lien together with a bill of sale of any personal property is given as security, but in some states landlords have a first lien upon all crops for rent and advances. In all districts the tenant is allowed to cut wood for ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... to belong, has sent many a good man to the gallows. One of the best of Rosecrans's scouts—a native of East Kentucky—lost his life because he would "bounce" (mount) his nag, "pack" (carry) his gun, eat his bread "dry so," (without butter,) and "guzzle his peck o' whiskey," in the midst of Bragg's camp, when no such things were done there, nor in the mountains of Alabama, whence he professed to come. Acquainted only with a narrow region, the poor fellow did not know that every Southern district has its ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... beast, or bird, it has been said, can put himself into such a posture as to make an Ionic volute. When the volutes are made by the heads of eagles, well and good; but it is certainly strange to make them out of the heads of cranes, who are holding down their long necks to peck each one at a human skull which he firmly holds down with one of his feet. And on the other side of Laval will also be found the church of Price, an almost untouched Romanesque building the masonry of which seems to carry it back to days before the growth of either Angevin or Norman ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... old hen led forth her brood To scratch and glean and peck for food; A chick, to give her wings a spell, Fluttered and tumbled in a well. The mother wept till day was done, When she met with a grown-up son, And thus addressed him:—"My dear boy, Your years and vigour give me joy: You thrash all cocks around, I'm told; ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... cast our grappling over the bow, and begun to tow the boat to the ship, than the abominable bird that we had scared settled down into it again, notwithstanding our proximity, and began to peck at the face of the dead boy. At this moment we heard a gibbering noise, and saw something like a bundle of old rags roll out from beneath the stem—sheets, and whatever it was, apparently make a fruitless attempt to drive ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... silent during the drive. But they kissed each other in parting, not with the peck which women so often give each other, but with a true kiss. And when Leonore, in crossing the porch, encountered the mastiff which Peter had given her, she stopped and kissed him too, very tenderly. What is more, she brought him inside, which was against the rules, and ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... dried German yeast in about three tablespoonfuls of cold water, add to this one pint and a half of water a little warm, and pour the whole into the flour; knead it well immediately, and let it stand as before directed for one hour: then bake at pleasure. It will not hurt if you make up a peck of flour at once, and bake three or four loaves in succession, provided you do not keep the dough too warm. German yeast may be obtained at almost any corn-chandler's in the metropolis and suburbs. In winter it will keep good for a week in a dry place, and in summer it should ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... had been shipped, the boat had steamed down the river, and the place, lately so full of busy life, had returned to its accustomed quiet seclusion, the redbirds came to peck up the corn left upon the ground. I remember how once, upon a cold, gray afternoon, I put on my wraps and ran down to the Sycamore Barn, on purpose to watch the shy, beautiful things. Snowflakes were beginning to fall and whisper about the great bamboo vines; twisted around the trees upon the ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... he saw the last of his friend. I saw that, and set down the anxiety he expressed that I should write to him at its proper value. I have quite got over my weakness for him at last. No man who really loved me would have put what he owed to a peck of newspaper people before what he owed to his wife. I hate him for letting me convince him! I believe he was glad to get rid of me. I believe he has seen some woman whom he likes at Turin. Well, let him follow his new fancy, if he pleases! ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... you, Mrs. Meadowsweet," she said, running up to the good lady and giving her a kiss, which resembled the peck of an eager bird, on her cheek. "I ran on first, and Martha is following. I came to know how you are, and how you're bearing up—and ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... writer's zoological knowledge is at fault. Animals, which never or very rarely see man, have no fear of him whatever. This is well-known to those who visit the Gull-fairs at Ascension Island, Santos and many other isolated rocks; the hen birds will peck at the intruder's ankles but they do not rise from off their eggs. For details concerning the "Gull-fair" of the Summer Islands consult p. 4 "The History of the Bermudas," edited by Sir J. H. Lefroy for the Hakluyt Society, 1882. I have seen birds on Fernando ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... interesting story of English political and social life, making no demands upon one's credulity, but satisfying the requirements in the way of a thoroughly good novel. The characters are all drawn with real fidelity to life.—HARRY THURSTON PECK, ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... almost burst myself with eating and drinking, and all of the very best, but she has gone and filled my portmanteau too, filled it up chock full, sir! A fine ham of bacon, sir, and a pair of roasted fowls, with two bottles of brandy, and a matter of a peck ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... each horse, for the twenty-four hours. His steam mill in London consumes one hundred and twenty bushels of coal in twenty-four hours, turns ten pair of stones, which grind eight bushels of flour an hour each, which is nineteen hundred and twenty bushels in the twenty-four hours. This makes a peck and a half of coal perform exactly as much as a horse, in one day, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... at a bound, and was met by a peck between the eyes that would have turned most dogs; but Crusoe only winked, and the next moment ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... strongest in the State!" denied the stranger. "I know a man who can lift a barrel of flour as easily as I can a peck of potatoes." ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... changed his tactics. His axe was six or eight inches longer in the haft than that of Rezu, and therefore he could reach where Rezu could not, for the giant was short-armed. He twisted it round in his hand so that the moon-shaped blade was uppermost, and keeping it almost at full length, began to peck with the gouge-shaped point on the back at the head and arms of Rezu, that as I knew was a favourite trick of his in fight from which he won his name of "Woodpecker." Rezu defended his head with his shield as best he ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... "table," with mountains of rice, scow-loads of apricots cooked in various ways, and a good sized flock of chickens spitted and smeared with peppery sauce. At a guess, I should say there were several pounds of meat, about two chickens, and a peck of rice per man, with apricots and raisins added; but they ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... to apprehend the least danger from them, and the people in the fort wandered about as freely as if no foe had ever excited their fears. An accident occurred which sent a tremor of dismay through the whole colony, and which we will describe as related to the intelligent historian, Peck, from the lips of one of the parties, who experienced all the terrors ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... explain one of my failures a few years ago in planting some Persian walnuts. I went to another tree in western New York, and got a peck or more. They were planted the same day, in the same ground, and all came up. Those I got from another tree resembled a hill of beans, and stayed that way for three years. Why wouldn't those grow? In soil three feet from those, there were ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... Paddy-bird felt hungry, she flew to a cocoa-nut and began to peck at it. But she did not know the secret of the three little holes at the top of the cocoa-nut; so she pecked, and pecked, and got no further. At last she gathered all her strength, and gave a tremendous ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... you half as much as I do now, I shall always come to see you, I think; and, as I shall be a very old man by that time, perhaps you will still sit on a stool at my knee and give me a kiss now and then—oh, a mere bird's peck, just for kindness.... The Via de' Bardi is grey, and you are there in yellow. You are like a young daffodil dancing in the winter grass. But soon you will have strained to your full flower-time, and I see you in your summering, ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... slaughter was so great that, according to Livy, when Mago, a brother of Hannibal, carried the news of the victory to Carthage, he, in confirmation of the intelligence, poured down in the porch of the Senate- house, nearly a peck of gold rings taken from the fingers of ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... in this country upon marine Protozoa. A few observations have been made by Kellicott, Stokes, and Peck, but these have not been at all complete. With the exception of Miss Stevens's excellent description of species of Lichnophora I am aware of no single papers on individual forms. Peck ('93 and '95) ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins
... sea-water thread Below them. Ah, the autumn day I, passing, saw you overhead! First, out a cloud of curtain blew, Then a sweet cry, and last came you— 140 To catch your lory that must needs Escape just then, of all times then, To peck a tall plant's fleecy seeds, And make me happiest of men. I scarce could breathe to see you reach So far back o'er the balcony To catch him ere he climbed too high Above you in the Smyrna peach That quick the round smooth cord of gold, This coiled hair on your head, unrolled, ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... boiled, (p.73, 75.) Mass is ordered to be said at six o'clock, in order, says the household book that all my lord's servants may rise early, (p.170.) Only twenty-four fires are allowed, beside the kitchen and hall, and most of these have only a peck of coals a day allowed them. (p.99.) After Lady-day, no fires permitted in the rooms, except half-fires in my lord's and lady's, and lord Piercy's and the nursery, (p.101.) It is to be observed, that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... around a bundle, and when they tried to move this bundle, they found it was very heavy. It was something wrapped up in a blanket and tied with a cord, and when they opened the bundle, they were pretty nearly struck dumb; for they saw it held, as Shirley expressed it, about a peck ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... since, on his wide errands; fat Valori too we have seen, who is assiduously here. The other figures, except the English, can remain dark to us. Of Montijos, the eminent Spaniard, a brown little man, magnificent as the Kingdom of the Incas, with half a page of titles (half a peck, five-and-twenty or more, of handles to his little name, if you should ever require it); who, finding matters so backward at Frankfurt, and nothing to do there, has been out, in the interim, touring to while away the tedium; and is ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... mirth and revelry, Out to the Warden eagerly they cry, That be should let them, for a merry round, Go to the mill and see their own corn ground, And each would fair and boldly lay his neck The Miller should not steal them half a peck Of corn by sleight, nor by ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... neighbors made us some trouble. It was no other than a veritable woodchuck, whose hole we had often wondered at when we were scrambling through the underbrush after spring flowers. The hole was about the size of a peck-measure, and had two openings about six feet apart. The occupant was a gentleman we never had had the pleasure of seeing; but we soon learned his existence from his ravages in our garden. He had a taste, it appears, for the very kind of things we wanted to eat ourselves, and helped himself ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... chine of mutton, or a chine of beef boiled, (p.73, 75.) Mass is ordered to be said at six o'clock, in order, says the household book that all my lord's servants may rise early, (p.170.) Only twenty-four fires are allowed, beside the kitchen and hall, and most of these have only a peck of coals a day allowed them. (p.99.) After Lady-day, no fires permitted in the rooms, except half-fires in my lord's and lady's, and lord Piercy's and the nursery, (p.101.) It is to be observed, that my lord kept house in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... women were hired to come over from the islands and cut potatoes for seed—every "eye" of the potato making a sprout—these distributed to them by the peck, like other seed. ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... who was at the time a great admirer of his genius, wishing to show the perfection of the picture, said to some people who were looking at it, 'These strawberries are so very natural and perfect, that I have seen birds coming down from the trees to peck them, mistaking them ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... and cold, into a country ale-house on the coast of Kent, found the fire completely blockaded. He ordered the landlord to carry his horse half a peck of oysters. "He cannot eat oysters," said mine host. "Try him," quoth the traveller. The company all ran out to see the horse eat oysters. "He won't eat them, as I told you," said the landlord. "Then," coolly replied the gentleman, ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... morning after his mother's departure, Dicky almost missed kissing me good-by in his mad haste to catch his train. He rushed out of the door after a most perfunctory peck at my cheek, and I saw him almost running down the little lane bordered with wild flowers that led "across ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... the liberty he had taken by a sense of what one might, perhaps, venture to qualify as his 'cheek.' For, if it was n't already a liberty to embody his notion of her in a novel—in a published book, for daws to peck at—it would have become a liberty the moment he informed her that he had done so. That would have had the effect of making her a kind ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... of General Peck, the American Commissioner-General, who was criticised by the American exhibitors, was made at length. He considered these criticisms unjust, and said so. During our stay in Paris Dr. Talmage preached at the ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... exceedingly interesting story of English political and social life, making no demands upon one's credulity, but satisfying the requirements in the way of a thoroughly good novel. The characters are all drawn with real fidelity to life.—HARRY THURSTON PECK, ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... tavern to tavern, picking out his men. There is an ale-house in Sea-coal Lane—the same where lady-like George Peele was found by the barber, who had subscribed an hour before for his decent burial, "all alone with a peck of oysters"—and here Ned is detained an unconscionable time. Just as he is leaving with Kempe and Cowley, Armin and Will Shakespeare burst in with a cry for wine. It is Armin who gives the orders, but ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... defiance. Alas! I am not a Hector, and the worthy Doctor's foes are as securely armed as Ajax was. Ignorance, superstition, bigotry, stupidity, malevolence, self-conceit, envy—all strongly bound in a massy frame of brazen impudence. Good God, Sir! to such a shield, humour is the peck of a sparrow, and satire the pop-gun of a school-boy. Creation-disgracing scelerats such as they, God only can mend, and the devil only can punish. In the comprehending way of Caligula, I wish they all had but one neck. I ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... He was, cry they, the chief of liars. But how, intrinsically, is not all this the inevitable fortune, not of a false man in such times, but simply of a superior man? Such a man must have reticences in him. If he walk wearing his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at, his journey will not extend far! There is no use for any man's taking-up his abode in a house built of glass. A man always is to be himself the judge how much of his mind he will show to other men; even to those he would have work along ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... able ter do now is a little work in de garden. Dey say I is too ole ter work, so charity gives me a little ter go upon every week. For one weeks 'lowance o' sumptin' ter eat dey gives me, hold on, I will show you, dat beats guessin'. Here it is: 1/2 peck meal (corn meal), 2 lbs oat meal, 2 lb dry skim milk, and 1 lb plate meat. Dis is what I gits fer one week 'lowance. I can't work much, but de white folks gib me meals fur washin' de woodwork in dere houses, de white folks in Hayes's Bottom. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... pig, "You will care If I act like a bear And tear your two wings from your neck," "What a nice little pen You have got!" says the hen, Beginning to scratch and to peck. ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... was the office of The Birmingham Journal, a very different paper then from what it afterwards became. It had been originally started as a Tory paper by a few old "fogies" who used to meet at "Joe Lindon's," "The Minerva," in Peck Lane; and this was how it came about: The Times had, early in 1825, in a leader, held up to well-deserved ridicule some action on the part of the Birmingham Tory party. This gave awful and unpardonable offence, and retaliation was ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... poetess of you! But as to the mud, I don't mind a little mud. It is only dirt, and has its part in the inevitable peck, I hope." ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... cheeks, and quick brown eyes gave her the appearance of a bird which walks about pecking suddenly here and there. As Helena reluctantly entered the mother drew herself up, and immediately relaxed, seeming to peck forwards as she said: ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... she had now and again to give an undignified little skip to keep up with them. As well as her luggage strapped into a neat sausage, Fenella carried clasped to her her grandma's umbrella, and the handle, which was a swan's head, kept giving her shoulder a sharp little peck as if it too wanted her to hurry... Men, their caps pulled down, their collars turned up, swung by; a few women all muffled scurried along; and one tiny boy, only his little black arms and legs showing out of a white woolly shawl, was jerked along angrily between his father and mother; he ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... the powder in the tower—dug stones out, on the inside, and buried the powder in the walls themselves, which were fifteen feet thick at the base. We put in a peck at a time, in a dozen places. We could have blown up the Tower of London with these charges. When the thirteenth night was come we put up our lightning-rod, bedded it in one of the batches of powder, and ran wires ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... understand an indiwidooal who has a mind inside of his hat, and a whole soul packed away under his jacket. You'll never rise, a flutterin' and a ringin' like a bald-headed eagle—men like you have got no wings, and can only go about nibblin' the grass, while we fly up and peck cherries from the trees. I'm always thinkin' on what I'm going to be, and a preparin' myself for what natur' intended, though I don't know exactly what it is yet. But I don't believe that sich a man as Montezuma Moggs was brought into the world only to put patches ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... about me. I am stripped of all my honors, I lie prostrate on the earth; I am alone, I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. I greatly deceive myself, if in this hard season of life, I would give a peck of refuse wheat for all that is called fame ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... Drawing her kimono closer about her, Mary V put her face up to be kissed. Her mother hesitated, looking dubiously at the cream dabs, compromised with a peck on Mary V's forehead, and went away. Mary V braided her hair, put on a pair of beaded moccasins, buckled on her six-shooter and gathered together her other paraphernalia. She waited an hour by her wrist watch, but even that sixty minutes ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... me. Hartman now prefers to dwell among the tombs: he has lived these ten years in a graveyard, so to speak, under a canopy of funereal gloom, and he thrives on it. He and Clarice are the most superior persons I know; and they have gone and got themselves into a peck, or rather several bushels, of trouble, about nothing at all. They must like it, or why should they do it? I doubt if I can ever be educated up to that point. I have the rude and simple tastes of a child: sunshine seems to me better than shade (except during the heated term), and pleasure ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... spake the fair Whitefoord, As she sat by the Bishop's knee, 'A peck o' white pennies, my good lord, If ye'll grant Hughie ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... Pitt v. Yalden, 4 Burrows, 2060. He shall be protected, when he acts with good faith, and to the best of his skill and knowledge. Gilbert v. Williams, 8 Mass. 57. The want of ordinary care and skill in such a person is gross negligence. Holmes v. Peck, 1 Rhode Island, Rep. 245; Cox v. Sullivan, 7 Georgia, 144; Pennington v. Yell, 6 Engl. 212. As between the client and the attorney, the responsibility of the latter is as great and as strict here as in any country when want of good faith or attention to the cause is ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... real concert, the people throw beautiful flowers to the singers that please them most. Annie and I got up an immense bouquet, about the size of a peck measure, without telling anybody a word about it; and saved it up, to throw at one of ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... in session, one of the machine's most effective workers, Walter Parker, could not be present at his post at Sacramento, because he was required at Los Angeles, where, because of the "recall," the machine was in a peck ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... Broxton Day, when he heard the good news and had the treasure-box in his hands, "'All's well that ends well.' But what a peck of trouble that Swedish ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... and build a couple of two-story rooms, with basement for cellar and furnace, and a bathroom in front of the cabin and use it with some fixing over for a dining-room and kitchen. Then we will deepen and widen Singing Water, stick a bushel of bulbs and roots and sow a peck of flower seeds in the marsh, plant a hedge along the drive, and straighten the lake shore a little. I can make a beautiful wild-flower garden and arrange so that with one season's work this will appear very well. We will express ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... herself, and her heart beat fast as the door opened; and there marched gravely in—not a young lady—but a little old gentleman, whose hair was perfectly white, though he seemed to have a great deal of it, for his head was about the size of a half peck measure. He wore a very long-tailed coat, buttoned up very tight; his pantaloons only reached down to his knees; but to make up for that his stockings came up to meet them, and were fastened with perfectly beautiful garters, with a big silver buckle ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... across the lawn to meet his father, seizing him warmly by the hand, and having administered a dutiful peck to his aunt, turned to introduce the little group of strangers ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... in a handful at a time, we reduced the speed of the stones gradually, and then suddenly piling in a peck or more slowed it down till it fairly came to a standstill, glutted with cobs. The water-wheel had stopped, although the water was still pouring down upon it; and in that condition we left it, with ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... the sick, in the hope of a legacy, I look upon him in this to be no better than a raven, that watches a weak sheep only to peck out the eyes ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... seem to be at all disturbed or frightened by the noise of carriages or the press of people; but would fly down, and light on the peddler's wrist, and peck the food from the ...
— The Nursery, March 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... a scrap from the long table, scoured as white as snow, but puts no linen on it. On the buttery-shelves, a set of pewter rivals silver in brightness, but Dorcas does not touch them. She places a brown rye-and-Indian loaf, of the size of a half-peck, in the centre of the table,—a pan of milk, with the cream stirred in,—brown earthen bowls, with bright pewter spoons by the dozen,—a delicious cheese, whole, and the table is ready. When Dinah appears, with her bright Madras turban, and says she is ready to dish ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... It would be curious to get the answers of a hundred men and a hundred women, of a hundred young people and a hundred old ones, of a hundred scholars and a hundred operatives. My own specialty is asking questions, not answering them, and I trust I shall not receive a peck or two of letters inquiring of me how I should choose if such a question were asked me. It may prove as fertile a source of dispute as "The Lady ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... night it's pillar of fire, and every hard rock a rod that could shatter it into crystal fountains at his feet. More than once he came to his last dollar; but right behind that last dollar he found Him who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and out of the palm of whose hand all the fowls of heaven peck their food, and who hath given to each one of His disciples a warrantable deed for the whole universe in the words, 'All ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... my companion; 'we had better not show ourselves for a little. They may be friends; but birds though they are, if they see anything strange in our appearance, they will fall upon us, and may peck out our feathers, if ...
— The Cockatoo's Story • Mrs. George Cupples
... fowls the most economical things a farmer can keep? Because for every grain they give a peck. ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... rival of a mighty king? Which of you will compare yourself with him,—whom you dared not even strike, you and your robber crew, fairly in front, but, skulked round him till he fell pecked to death by you, as Lapland Skratlings peck to death the bear. Ten years ago he swept this hall of such as you, and hung their heads upon yon gable outside; and were he alive but one five minutes again, this hall would be right cleanly swept again! ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... sure Mrs. Vane had appeared a dove, but doves can peck on certain occasions, and no doubt she had a spirit at bottom. Her coming to him proved it. And had not the other been a dove all the morning and afternoon? Yet, jealousy had turned her to a fiend before ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... hers, while the sheep-dogs would lie perfectly still at her feet, blinking horribly—such was her attraction. His birds also, a jackdaw and an owl, who had the run of the studio, tolerated her as they tolerated no other female, save the housekeeper. The jackdaw would perch on her and peck her dress; but the owl merely engaged her in combats of mesmeric gazing, which never ended in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... beginning to feel the effects of her run, or whether she did it out of the pure effrontery of her warped and unpleasant nature, I do not know; but she now slowed down to walk, and even began to peck in a tentative manner at the grass. Her behaviour infuriated me. I felt that I was being treated as a cipher. I vowed that this bird should realise yet, even if, as seemed probable, I burst in the process, that it was no light matter to be pursued by J. Garnet, author of "The Manoeuvres ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... it off; but more than half an hour afterwards, while we were looking at some horses, nearly a mile from the spot, the plucky little owl returned to the charge, and again swooped down upon the same dog, with a dismal cry, and administered a vigorous peck to him. Altogether it was a striking and interesting proof of the attachment existing between these curious birds and beasts; the object of the owl in the present instance clearly being to revenge if possible the death of ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... are on your death-bed, he may happen to be passing; and if he should, you are safe; for three knocks with his staff will make you hale, and he never forgets any kindnesses. Many stories are current of his wonderful cures; but there is one to be found in Peck's History of Stamford which possesses the rare merit of being written by the patient himself. Upon Whitsunday, in the year of our Lord 1658, "about six of the clock, just after evensong," one Samuel Wallis, of Stamford, ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... the field the Thirteenth New York, Colonel Quinby; the Sixty-ninth New York, Colonel Corcoran; the Seventy-ninth New York, Colonel Cameron; and the Second Wisconsin, Lieutenant- Colonel Peck. These were all good, strong, volunteer regiments, pretty well commanded; and I had reason to believe that I had one of the best brigades in the whole army. Captain Ayres's battery of the Third Regular Artillery ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... of Peter Piper, alleged to have picked the peck of pickled pepper, it was held physically desirable to have evidence of the existence of the peck of pickled pepper which Peter Piper was alleged to have picked; so, in this case, it was held psychologically important to know why Miss Landless's brother threw a bottle, knife, or fork-or bottle, knife, ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... forward at a bound, and was met by a peck between the eyes that would have turned most dogs; but Crusoe only winked, and the next moment ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... have now become a convert to it. The final arcanum of that, I think, is, Something Nothing. You give this abstraction a concrete form; your axiom is, No Hire Hire for Life. To deny that laborers have any property in their own toil, and to allow them their poor peck of maize and pound of bacon per week, not at all as a wage for their work, but solely as a means of converting corn into cotton, and cotton into seats in Congress and summers at Saratoga,—that, according to the Chelsea metaphysic, is "hiring them for life"! To deny laborers any ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... but a child, and I freely confess that in some of my most important achievements his example, wish, and advice, though then but a very young man, largely influenced my action." In a sketch of the relations of the two men by Dr. John M. Peck we are told that "after Jefferson became President of the United States, he retained all of his early affection for Mr. Lemen"; and upon the occasion of a visit of a mutual friend to the President, in 1808, "he ...
— The Jefferson-Lemen Compact • Willard C. MacNaul
... Trinity College; Governors James Bowdoin and William Eustis; Lieutenant-Governors Cushing and Winthrop; James Lovell; Adino Paddock, who planted the "Paddock Elms"; Judges Francis Dana, Thomas Dawes, and Charles Jackson; Drs. John C. Warren, James Jackson and Henry I. Bowditch; Professors William D. Peck, Henry W. Torrey, Francis J. Child, Josiah P. Cooke, and William R. Dimmock; Mayors Harrison G. Otis, Samuel A. Eliot and Frederick O. Prince; Honorables Robert C. Winthrop, Charles Francis Adams, George S. Hillard, Charles Sumner, William M. Evarts and Charles Devens; such writers ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... to tell you one of the stories that some boys and girls tell about my red head. You will find it on another page of the book. Now I must fly away to peck for ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous
... certain toucans which during the breeding season seek hollows in trees; there the female lays eggs and sits upon them, while the male pastes the opening with clay so that only her head is visible, and not until the young are hatched does the male begin to peck with his long beak and free ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... when he got to the top he was compelled "to make a road with his club among the albatross. These birds were sitting upon their nests, and almost covered the surface of the ground, nor did they otherwise derange themselves for their new visitors than to peck at their legs as they ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... Aunt Polly," argued the little girl, her eyes widening; "and I thought sisters were always alike. We had two sets of 'em in the Ladies' Aiders. One set was twins, and THEY were so alike you couldn't tell which was Mrs. Peck and which was Mrs. Jones, until a wart grew on Mrs. Jones's nose, then of course we could, because we looked for the wart the first thing. And that's what I told her one day when she was complaining that people called her Mrs. Peck, and I said if they'd only look for the ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... means. Under the strong influence of temptation they would strut with bold aspect, but timid, hesitating step, towards the proffered crumb, but the slightest motion would scare them away; and when they did venture to peck, they did so with violent haste, and ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... top, to make a road with his clubs amongst the albatrosses. These birds were sitting upon their nests, and almost covered the surface of the ground, nor did they any otherwise derange themselves for the new visitors, than to peck at their legs as they passed by. This species of albatross is white on the neck and breast, partly brown on the back and wings, and its size is less than many others met with at sea, particularly in the high southern ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... singleness of heart; honesty &c. 939; plain speaking; epanchement[Fr]. rough diamond, matter of fact man; le palais de verite[Fr]; enfant terrible[Fr]. V. be artless &c. adj; look one in the face; wear one's heart upon his sleeves for daws to peck at[obs3]; think aloud; speak out, speak one's mind; be free with one, call a spade a spade. Adj. artless, natural, pure, native, confiding, simple, lain, inartificial[obs3], untutored, unsophisticated, ingenu[obs3], unaffected, naive; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... to serve for all purposes—cooking, as well as warming. We split the rations up into slips about the size of a carpenter's lead pencil, and used them parsimoniously, never building a fire so big that it could not be covered with a half-peck measure. We hovered closely over this—covering it, in fact, with our hands and bodies, so that not a particle of heat was lost. Remembering the Indian's sage remark, "That the white man built ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... made up ready to leave, and the locomotive was filling the great train-shed with stertorous hissings, when a red-faced man slipped through the gates to saunter over to the Pullman and to peck inquisitively ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... of Labor Commissioner Peck, of New York, shows that during the year 1891, in about 6,000 manufacturing establishments in that State embraced within the special inquiry made by him, and representing 67 different industries, there ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... meaning, Thad," Davy replied, without showing the least concern, for he was a fearless chap; "which is, that they've got the boat, and could chase after me if they thought I was going to get 'em in a peck of trouble by flitting. Never you fear, I'll keep low ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... blood; take to your wings and surround them on all sides. Woe to them! let us get to work with our beaks, let us devour them. Nothing can save them from our wrath, neither the mountain forests, nor the clouds that float in the sky, nor the foaming deep. Come, peck, tear to ribbons. Where is the chief of the cohort? Let him ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... believe comparisons of creator and critic are unprofitable, being for the most part a confounding of intellectual substances. The painter paints, the composer makes music, the sculptor models, and the poet sings. Like the industrious crow the critic hops after these sowers of beauty, content to peck up in the furrows the chance grains dropped by genius. This, at least, is the popular notion. Balzac, and later Disraeli, asked: "After all, what are the critics? Men who have failed in literature and art." ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... were at the sour, ashy-gray bread she gave her family to eat. She mixed her dough, we discovered, in an old tin peck-measure that Krajiek had used about the barn. When she took the paste out to bake it, she left smears of dough sticking to the sides of the measure, put the measure on the shelf behind the stove, and let this residue ferment. The next time she made bread, she scraped this sour stuff ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... and around the edge of the bar they have built a nicely finished woodwork wall which looks exactly like a great coffin, the coffin of John Barleycorn. After the manner of my species I wanted to see over the edge and the young man, thinking that I might be suspecting a blind pig, boosted me up to peck over. I asked him why they didn't remove the bar entirely and he said with unsmiling naivete that they were waiting "to see" and that they had ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... that, it was Serjeant Saunders that got maltreated: first one judge had a peck at him: then another: till they left him scarce a feather to fly with; and, when Alfred's counsel rose to reply, the judges stopped him, and the chief of the court, Alfred's postponing enemy, delivered his ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... "Frank, I'm in a peck of trouble," he said, with a whimsical smile, "and I wish you could help me out, though I dislike putting ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... thus, it appears, "enlisted the Harts and others in an enterprise which his own genius planned," says Peck, the personal acquaintance and biographer of Boone, "and then encouraged several hunters to explore the country and learn where the best lands lay." Just why Henderson and his associates did not act sooner upon the reports brought back by the hunters—Boone ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... before she rejoined Wilhelmine, who was removing her wrap in a leisurely way while the other ladies there eyed her rudely. It was very like the advent of a strange bird into a cage of canaries; the indigenous birds were all prepared to peck at the intruder. How willingly would they have torn out the strange bird's feathers! Wilhelmine appeared unconscious of this unfriendly scrutiny, though, in reality, she was disagreeably aware of it. Madame de Stafforth had torn the hem ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... accomplished artist who is fastidious as to his tools; the bungling beginner can bungle with anything. The fiddle-bow, however, affords only one example of a rule which is equally well exemplified by many humbler tools. Quarryman's peck, coachman's whip, cricket-bat, fishing-rod, trowel, all have their intimate relation to the skill of those who use them; and like animals and plants, adapting themselves each to its own place in the universal order, they attain to ...
— Progress and History • Various
... art. Shakespeare, reading the story of Timon, saw in him an image of tragic destiny that would flood the heart of even an ingrate with pity. Great poets have something more difficult and more noble to do than to pin their hearts on their sleeves for daws to peck at. Shakespeare wrought the figure of Timon with as grave justice as he wrought Alcibiades. He wrought both from something feeling within himself, as he wrought Cleopatra, and Macbeth, and Sir Toby Belch. They are as much autobiographical, and as little, ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... down a coarse bag, which contained a peck of corn; "thar, nigger, grab, take car on 't,—yo won't get ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... a flock of plovers, quietly feeding on the ground, when, in a moment, all the birds were seized by a joyous madness, and each one, after making a vigorous peck at his nearest neighbour, began running wildly about, each trying in passing to peck other birds, while seeking by means of quick doublings to escape being pecked in turn. This species always expresses its glad ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... ham, 4 cans corned beef, 2 lbs. cheese, 3 lbs. lard, 8 cans condensed milk, 8 lbs. hard tack, 10 packages soda crackers, 6 packages sweet crackers, 12-1/2 lbs. of wheat flour, 12-1/2 lbs. of yellow cornmeal, can baking powder, 1/2 bushel potatoes, 1 peck onions, 3 lbs. ground coffee, 1/2 lb. tea, sack salt, 7 lbs. granulated sugar, 3 packages prepared griddle cake flour, 4 packages assorted cereals, including oatmeal, 4 lbs. rice, dried fruits, canned corn, peas, beans, canned baked beans, salmon, tomatoes, sweetmeats and whatever ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... and toss. You catch very well for a girl, but you can't throw worth a cent," replied Jamie, gamboling down the hall in his slippers and producing a ball from some of the mysterious receptacles in which boys have the art of storing rubbish enough to fill a peck measure. ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... would think I was a hungry pussy-cat, and she a hen-sparrow, with her wings all fluttering, and her little eyes aflame, and her beak ready to peck me just because I happened to look near her nest. Nay, child! if thou lik'st to be stifled in a nasty close room, learning things as is of no earthly good when they is learnt, instead o' riding on Job Donkin's hay-cart, it's thy look-out, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... my—of the young person for whom I am the alternative, is in a peck of trouble; I quote her verbatim. She and her two daughters hold some three thousand shares of Western Pacific stock. It was purchased at fifty-seven, and it ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... there is a great deal of room in it, but very ugly till my Lord hath bestowed great cost upon it. So to the Exchequer, and there took Spicer and his fellow clerks to the Dog tavern, and did give them a peck of oysters, and so home to dinner, where I found my wife making of pies and tarts to try, her oven with, which she has never yet done, but not knowing the nature of it, did heat it too hot, and so a little overbake her things, but knows how to do better ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... got himself into a peck of trouble. That's what I want to talk to you and Uncle John about," she replied, her happy face growing as serious as it could ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... hearty eater, so that the peck of corn flour allowed the slaves for a week's ration lasted him only a half. He used to lug large sticks of wood on his shoulders from the woods, which was from a mile to a mile and a half away, to first one and then another ...
— My Life In The South • Jacob Stroyer
... word he carries about as a hen carries a boiled potato—something too big to swallow but nice to peck at. And he ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... in Herb. "They say that every one has got to eat a peck of dirt before they die, and you might as well ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... wheel. You may be sure that no one ever got a chance to stay abed more than his eight hours while Polynesia was around. She used to watch the ship's clock; and if you overslept a half-minute, she would come down to the cabin and peck you gently on the nose ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... red, Which stands thereon like stiffen'd gore Upon the slain when battle's o'er, And some long winter's night hath shed Its frost o'er every tombless head, So cold and stark the raven's beak May peck unpierced each frozen cheek: 'T was a wild waste of underwood, And here and there a chestnut stood, The strong oak, and the hardy pine; But far apart—and well it were, Or else a different lot were mine— The boughs gave way, and did not tear My limbs; and I found strength to bear My wounds, already ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... tell you the truth, Mr. Fenwick," continued Lord St. George, "you might be put, most unjustly, into a peck of troubles if we did not do this. You have no right to let the glebe on a building lease, even if you were willing, and high ecclesiastical authority would call upon you at once to ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... claws, which looked slender as cobwebs, were knotted close to his body, and it was long before one could feel the least motion in them. Finally, to our great joy, we felt a brisk little kick, and then a flutter of wings, and then a determined peck of the beak, which showed that there was some bird left in him yet, and that he meant at any rate to ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... I had a special swell function to attend that night, but next mornin', when the Turkish-bath man was willin' to risk the peace o' that locality by turnin' me loose, I gathered up a peck or so o' watches an' cashed 'em in. I reckon I got beat some; but anyhow, I drew down somethin' over sixteen hundred in yeller money; an' I took them two Maggies down to the train an' shipped 'em back where the little one would have a chance to grow up like ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... which have been consulted in the preparation of this work are, "British Fungi," by Rev. John Stevenson; "British Fungus-Flora," by George Massee; "Mushrooms and their Uses," and "Boleti of the United States," by Professor Charles H. Peck, State Botanist of New York; "Moulds, Mildew and Mushrooms," by Professor L. M. Underwood; and a pamphlet by Mr. C. G. Lloyd, entitled "The Volvae ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... same thing," he murmured cynically. "We wear our sentiments on our sleeves for publishers to peck at." (he made a mental note of this epigram for future use.) "I've an idea! Suppose you run home with me now and try over some of my songs, will you? There's a lot of stuff that might interest you. I've got one of Farwell's machines down in ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... of this poplar? He is actually at work doing a bit of butchery on a small warbler. See how he is beating the poor little fellow on the head; he wants to get at his brains. "Are there not birds called butcher-birds?" asked Willy, "that fix their victims on thorns, and then peck off their flesh? Shall we see any of them?" There are three kinds of butcher-birds that have been known to come to this country. Two kinds are very uncommon, and we are not likely to meet with any of them ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... has been a great good friend to me. I will know to-day about whether I can go back to the French front. If not I will try the Belgians and then London, and home. I spent Christmas day in Rome in the catacombs. I could not wear my heart upon my sleeve for duchesses to peck at. It is just as you say, Dad and Mother made the day so dear and beautiful. I did not know how glad I would be to be back here for while the trip East led to no news value, to me personally it was interesting. But I am terribly ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... be like Laura. Poor Laura! Now if she were in that tree"—Isabel's ideas were becoming slightly confused—"it would be natural for her to be melancholy—only if she were a bird she wouldn't care, she would fly off with some one else and leave Major Clowes, and all the other birds would come and peck him to death. They manage these things better in bird land." Isabel's eyes shut but she hurriedly opened them again. "I'm not going to go to sleep. It's perfectly absurd. It can't be much after nine o'clock. ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... competitors in the prize contest recently closed that it was impossible to decide who were the winners in time to announce their names in last week's paper. The quotation was, "The Pen is Mightier than the Sword," and Miss H.K. Peck, Crown Street, Meriden, Conn., won the first prize, and Miss E. DuBois, Greenwich, ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 54, November 18, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... I still like a cock in a strange farm-yard, at which even the hens peck: but on that account I am ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... goes weeding. His nett produce is less than the production of the larger methods, but his gross is greater, and usually it is mortgaged more or less. Along the selvage of many of the new roads we have foretold, his hens will peck and his children beg, far into the coming decades. This simple, virtuous, open-air life is to be found ripening in the north of France and Belgium, it culminated in Ireland in the famine years, it has held its own ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... I shall have instantly my Vulture, Crow, Raven, come flying hither, on the news, To peck for carrion, my she-wolfe, and all, ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... them on one side contemptuously, "these are only one's amusements. I pass my lighter hours with them. They interest me in the same manner as a chess problem. We do not care, we in the mighty East, which of you holds your head highest this side of Suez. All you western nations are to us a peck of dust outside our palace gates. Listen, dear one. We can leave, if you will, to-night, and top the clouds before sunrise. And I promise you this," he went on, "when you pass from the greyness of these sordid lands ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... use, he had taken me in hand, and went on asking question after question; the more we parleyed the less we understood each other, until at last we both grew angry, and I actually thought the Signor would have liked to peck me with his hooked beak, until the maids, who had been listening to our confusion of tongues, laughed heartily at us. I put down my knife and fork and went out of doors; for in this strange land I, with my German tongue, seemed to have sunk down fathoms deep into the sea, where all sorts of ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... words she gave the boy a withered bean-pod, and, summoning a meek little brownie, bade him see that the lad did not over-fill the acorn-cup, and that he did not so much as peck at a grain of rye. Then glancing sternly at her prisoner, she withdrew, sweeping after her the long ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... a lone creature up fifty year old, and she come along to Mrs. Badge one fine day with a proper peck of troubles. She crept down the path to Walna from Merripit Hill, like a snail with a backache, and weren't in no case at all for merriment; yet the first thing she heard as she come in was laughter; and the first thing she seed was pretty Mary Tuckett sitting on Mrs. Badge's kitchen ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... store, who should be there but Abby Matilda Stevens and Rhody Mills! Abby is generally thought a beauty, because she has great black eyes that are always so bright and shiny I wonder the hens don't try and peck at them; then she is tall and slim waisted, and her hair is as black as a coal, and longer than common; but I never liked such dreadful sparkly eyes, do you? I think the kind that have a sort o' hazy look come into them—like the pond when a little summer ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... edition of Soule's Synonymes because it is cheap, but insist upon the revised and enlarged edition of 1892. Never acquire an antiquated Lempriere's or Anthon's Classical Dictionary, because some venerable library director, who used it in his boyhood, suggests it, when you can get Professor H. T. Peck's "Dictionary of Classical Antiquities," published in 1897. Never be tempted to buy an old edition of an encyclopaedia at half or quarter price, for it will be sure to lack the populations of the last census, besides being a quarter of a century or more in arrears in its other information. ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... that will be the best thing in the world, and if you'll wait ten minutes I'll get a boat. Cap'n Silas Peck is a friend of mine, and has got two boats that ain't likely to be out. I'll run down and get one, and have it ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... Use a half peck of kale. Strip the leaves from the stems and choose the crisp and curly ones for use, wash through two waters and drain. Boil in salted water twenty minutes, then pour into a colander and let cold water run over ...
— Vaughan's Vegetable Cook Book (4th edition) - How to Cook and Use Rarer Vegetables and Herbs • Anonymous
... Miss, I know more of his Lordship than you do, for all you knew him first. So, when I came to the door, I was in a peck of troubles, a-thinking what I should say to him: however, the servants had no mind I should see him; for they told me he was busy, but I might leave my message. So I was just a-coming away, when I bethought myself to say I ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... proudly as if it had been a sceptre, was eager and quick to discover occasions to use it. Many a staid and demure-looking hen, or saucy, daring young chicken, had stolen quite near to her post, stopping every few moments to peer cautiously around, or to peck at a blade of grass or an imaginary worm, as if quite indifferent to the attractions presented by the field beyond, but just as they had come close to the fence, thinking themselves unnoticed, Nelly would jump from her perch, and, with a thwack of the ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... House in the case of charges which may involve impeachment have been well and wisely settled by long practice upon principles of equal justice both to the accused and to the people. The precedent established in the case of Judge Peck, of Missouri, in 1831, after a careful review of all former precedents, will, I venture to predict, stand ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... Walnut Growers Association has on his home grounds two black walnut trees grown from nuts obtained in the East which were 6 years old when this picture was taken. Each of these trees which you will notice are from 20 to 30 feet high bore approximately a peck of nuts during the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... especial mark of gratitude for the favour about to be bestowed; then he explained with a serious weighing of his words, "It was her love of children. I had barely been introduced to her when she turned her back upon me and gave her whole attention to Professor Peck's little boy Willie. I said to myself, 'any girl of that age who prefers children to young chaps of my age, is ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... the five yellow hens had gathered round the nest, and pretty soon all the others were craning their necks to gaze at the marvel. After the cocks had poked the eggs about a little with their beaks the hens went nearer and tried to peck off the black marks. All the time there was a great hubbub of anxious conversation. The next morning more than half the eggs had been destroyed, and to save those that were left I had to ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... the lightning. To be furious Is to be frighted out of fear; and in that mood The dove will peck the estridge; and I see still A diminution in our captain's brain Restores his heart: when valour preys on reason, It eats the sword it fights with. I will seek Some way to ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... the Highlands, I set out with him, contrary to all advice, on my homeward journey, and, for the first six or eight miles, got on tolerably well. My cousin, a stout, active lad, carried the bag of Highland luxuries—cheese, and butter, and a full peck of nuts—with which we had been laden by my aunt; and, by way of indemnity for taking both my share of the burden and his own, he demanded of me one of my long extempore stories, which, shortly after leaving my aunt's cottage, I accordingly began. My stories, when I had cousin Walter for my ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... provision given out on the plantation per week, was invariably one peck of corn or meal for each slave. This allowance was given in meal when it could be obtained; when it could not, they received corn, which they pounded in mortars after they returned from their labor in ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... 'em three pounds of meat a week, peck of meal, pint of molasses; some of them give 'em three to five pounds of flour on a Sunday morning according to the size of the family. The majority of them had shorts from the wheat. Some of the slaves would clean up a flat in the bottoms and plant rice in it. That was where they ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... ambition. He loves display and would like to have power, but is inadequate to the continued effort and the endurance necessary to obtain it. He wields a more potent influence in the pulpit, on the rostrum or in journalism. George W. Peck, T. DeWitt Talmage and R. B. Hayes represent three different types of this temperament all possessing ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... with pain and difficulty, teach us nothing, Books done by pedants and tenebrific persons, under the name of men; dwelling not on things, but, at endless length, on the outer husks of things: of unparalleled confusion, too;—not so much as an Index granted you; to the poor half-peck of cinders, hidden in these wagon-loads of ashes, no sieve allowed! Books tending really to fill the mind with mere dust-whirlwinds,—if the mind did not straightway blow them out again; which it does. Of these let us say nothing. Seldom had so curious a Phenomenon worse ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... indispensable importations from other quarters of the town were on a remarkably diminutive scale: for example, the wealthier inhabitants purchased their coal by the wheelbarrow-load, and the poorer ones by the peck-measure. It was a curious and melancholy spectacle, when an overladen coal-cart happened to pass through the street and drop a handful or two of its burden in the mud, to see half a dozen women and children scrambling for the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... barbarity, That they could not so much as dig their own graves, But must needs go break those of the dead race, Their far superiors, and masters in craft and lore! And bury themselves there, just out of sight, Where the vulture's beak could peck them, Were he so obscenely minded, And the wolf could scrape ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... her; only all her being was singing with the utter joy of the ride. Beneath her Brunette was spurning the turf with dainty hooves; stretching out in her gallop, yet gathering herself cleverly at her fences, with alert, pricked ears—judging her distance, and landing with never a peck or stumble. The light weight on the pony's back was nothing to her; the delicate touch on her mouth was all she needed to ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... twenty bushels of coal in twenty-four hours, turns ten pair of stones, which grind eight bushels of flour an hour each, which is nineteen hundred and twenty bushels in the twenty-four hours. This makes a peck and a half of coal perform exactly as much as a horse in one day ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... poke." Equally good advice for the heroines of fiction or drama would be never under any circumstances to marry a bridegroom in a mask. In more cases than I can recall, neglect of this simple precaution has led to a peck of trouble. I am thinking now of Yvonne, leading lady in The Mark of Vraye (HUTCHINSON). I admit that poor Yvonne had more excuse than most. Hers was what you might call a hard case. On the one hand there was the villain Philippe, a most naughty man, swearing that she was in his power, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... take Jesse James's place. There is no encouragement for a boy here. Well, good morning. If Pa comes in here asking for me tell him that you saw an express wagon going to the morgue with the remains of a pretty boy who acted as though he died from concussion of a bed slat on Peck's bad boy on the pistol pocket. That will make Pa feel sorry. O, he has got the awfulest cold, though." And the boy limped out to separate a couple of ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... here, but I do not think it so good as many others. It grows on the sandy hills near Combe Wood in Surrey, and forms the principal part of the pasturage; but it is neither very productive, nor are cattle observed to thrive on it. The seeds are very small; one peck would sow an acre. ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... his consort oh-so-gently on the head, If he throttles her a little round the neck, He's a brute; if he's considerately conjugal instead, Everybody calls him Mr. Henry Peck. ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... leave of the rooster, who was a regular old "Blue Beard;" and she knew very well that he wouldn't scratch her up another worm, for a good twelve-month, for being absent without leave. So she dug her claws into Hal's side, every now and then, and tried to peck him with her bill, but Hal told her it was no use, for go into that ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... reverend smock with the splay foot? Come up, now, prithee, Bridewell Bird! You will drink, will you? I saw no dust or cobwebs come out of your mouth. Go hang, you moon-calf, false faucet, you roaring horse-courser, you ranger of Turnbull, you dull malt-house with a mouth of a peck and the sign of the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... Mack hits this small town of Pina, about thirty miles out from Denver, and finds an elegant two-room house that just suits us. We deposited half-a-peck of money in the Pina bank and shook hands with every one of the 340 citizens in the town. We brought along the Chinaman and the cuckoo clock and Buckle and the Instructor with us from Denver; and they made the cabin ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... father, Earl of Norwich's operations against the parliament in Essex in 1648, is given in a curious autobiography of Arthur Wilson, the author of the History of James I., which is printed in Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, book xi. part 5. Wilson was living at the time ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various
... tome here in Athens. and asked where you were. I told him you were in a peck of trouble. He acted quietly and somewhat queerly,. and said that he would try to look you up. He said you were friends of his. I warned him against trying it. Yes, I said it was impossible, I had no idea that he would ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... started on again, at the pregnant weight of this new parcel. But he did not stop to investigate. He did not care to gulp and lose the mystery at one swallow. He scurried off with it, chucklingly, like a barnyard hen with a corncob, to peck at it in solitude. He swung south and then west again, to his own street. He went up his own steps, through his own door, and up to his own top-floor room with the rakish back wall. There he cautiously lighted the gas, drew the blinds, and ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... I know it, but I can't give it. I thirst for information. What do I mean? If my taking so much trouble to recover her does not mean that I care for her, what does it mean? "If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper, where's ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Stapler stopped, on his way to market in his cart, at Elizabeth Hanson's house, in Shipley Street, to leave a dozen eggs and two pounds of butter, as he did each Tuesday and Friday evening. Elizabeth came to the door with a basket for half a peck of potatoes. William Stapler took off his broad-brimmed hat, and slowly rubbed his horny hand over his short-cut, stubbly ...
— Harper's Young People, April 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... must have run nearly twenty miles with only one check. Then we chased a cow some distance and into the dry bed of a stream, where she whirled on us savagely. By luck her horn hit only the leather of my saddle skirts, so we left her; for when a cow has sense enough to "get on the peck," there is no driving her farther. We gained nothing, and had to give ground, but we succeeded in holding a semblance of order, so that the cattle did not break and scatter far and wide. The sun had by now well risen, and was beginning to shine hot. Brown Jug still ran gamely and displayed ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... net: the care of age is provident and foresees much: suspicion is a virtue, where a man holds his enemy in his bosom. Thou, fond girl, measurest all by present affection, and as thy heart loves, thy thoughts censure[2]; but if thou knowest that in liking Rosalynde thou hatchest up a bird to peck out thine own eyes, thou wouldst entreat as much for her absence as now thou delightest in her presence. But why do I allege policy to thee? Sit you down, housewife, and fall to your needle: if idleness make you so wanton, or liberty so malapert, I can quickly tie ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... victory, because of the enormous odds he fought. Longstreet, with two of his divisions, was not at Chancellorsville, but was at Suffolk opposing the Federals under Peck. Hooker's army had numbered a hundred and thirty thousand, while Lee had less than sixty ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... woman, gently pinching the flushing cheek of the embarrassed Carrie. "There, dear, I was just teasing. I want to please all my girls, but sometimes I have to disappoint them a little. Mercedes will room with Bertha Peck who was here last year, and Tabitha we will try with Chrystobel Clayton. Come now, and I will show you your rooms. Bertha is here already, but Chrystobel has not arrived. Carrie, you have the same room you had last year, and little Cassandra is busy decorating ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Willie brew'd a peck o' maut, And Bob and Allan cam to see; Three blyther hearts, that lee-lang night, Ye ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... 17. Toucan (Ramphastos).] A native of America, where it builds in the hollows of trees, and sits at the entrance, ready to peck at the monkeys, who often endeavour to destroy and eat the young. It is about the size of a Magpye, but the head large in proportion, to enable it to support its immense bill, which is six inches and a half in length, but extremely thin. It is a mild ...
— The Peacock 'At Home:' - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball • Catherine Ann Dorset
... took a trip to Louray one day last week and purchased three sacks of fertilizer, one peck of clover seed and a half bushel ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... all pecking billfuls out of it. As I may have said before, he always felt at liberty to share with the animals, partly, I suppose, because he saw they had no scrupulosity or ceremony amongst themselves; so he dipped his hand into the dish: why should not the bird of the air now and then peck with the more respectable of the barn-door, if only to learn his inferiority? Greatly refreshed, he got up from among the hens, scrambled over the dry stone-wall, and trotted ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... precedence of Peter Piper, alleged to have picked the peck of pickled pepper, it was held physically desirable to have evidence of the existence of the peck of pickled pepper which Peter Piper was alleged to have picked; so, in this case, it was held psychologically important to know why Miss Landless's brother threw ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... reprehended is not followed at New York, and the result is, not that the ladies "wear their hearts on their sleeves for daws to peck at," but that they are unaffected, lively, and agreeable. The repose so studiously cultivated in England, and which is considered perfect when it has become listlessness, apathy, and indifference, finds no favour with ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... years old. They were dressed in all colors, but most of them wore a native bonnet tied about the ears. They formed in line on the stairs and then the coal was passed along from hand to hand until it reached the bunkers. These baskets held a little over a peck of coal, and the rapidity with which they moved along this ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... mother, with her pretty hair and youthful shape, and Peggotty, our faithful serving maid, with no shape at all, and eyes so dark that they seemed to darken their whole neighbourhood in her face, and cheeks and arms so hard and red that I wonder the birds didn't peck her ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... I've gone and done it!" groaned Teall, beginning to shake in his shoes. "Now, I'm in a whole peck and half of trouble, for I'll never be lucky enough to find ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... few chances, you know, as we must. And that twenty miles is a big trip for our little craft. All depends on the wind and the sky. But there are always lots of boats around here; and if we got in a peck of trouble they'd help ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... said, making a peck at Kitty's cheek. "That flunkey, idling his life away on the hall mat, said I should find you here, so I saved him from overwork by showing myself in. How are you, St. John? You're looking a bit peaky this ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... me good to see you men eat this way," she said, laughing. "That's one thing we don't do properly in the city—eat. We peck at a lot of things, instead of eating a few plain ones, and a lot of them. And I'll bet that you men will work all the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the March - Bessie King's Test of Friendship • Jane L. Stewart
... land on spec, Plow and sow, There's a place for every peck, You can grow. Swat the Kaiser in the neck, Issue him ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... two kinds of this shell-fish, the common thin-shelled clam and the quahaug. The first is the most abundant. It is sold by the peck or bushel in the shell, or by the quart when shelled. Clams are in season all the year, but in summer a black substance is found in the body, which must be pressed from it before using. The shell of the quahaug is ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... or Manufactures by Irish Suicides, and the rest is laid out in Dress and Equipage, in Gaming and Drinking, and Horse-Racing, except a Pittance that is scrambled for, by our Labourers and Workmen to buy Potatoes and Whisky, and once in a Month, half a Peck of Meal for the Children of the Nation. What will become of a Kingdom, whose Manufactures are the Scorn of its own Inhabitants; who will not Drink of their own Liquors, write on their own Paper, or be fed with their own Bread, as I observ'd before, and can't observe ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... bound, and was met by a peck between the eyes that would have turned most dogs, but Crusoe only winked, and the next moment the eagle's career ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... the truth, Mr. Crow had never set eyes on the strange bird. But he did not like to admit it. "He's a great credit to the neighborhood," said old Mr. Crow. "And you'd better let him alone, if you should happen to find him, because he's solid gold, you know. And if you flew at him and tried to peck him, just as likely as not you'd break your bill on him, he's ...
— The Tale of Jolly Robin • Arthur Scott Bailey
... contrary to all advice, on my homeward journey, and, for the first six or eight miles, got on tolerably well. My cousin, a stout, active lad, carried the bag of Highland luxuries—cheese, and butter, and a full peck of nuts—with which we had been laden by my aunt; and, by way of indemnity for taking both my share of the burden and his own, he demanded of me one of my long extempore stories, which, shortly after leaving ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... he was saying. "A runabout, perhaps." He came forward rubbing his hands, followed by a thin man in overalls. "Mr. Peck says," he began,—"this is Mr. Peck of Peck and Peck,—says that the place we are looking for is about seven miles from the ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... new world I told you you'd be finding." Mary Cary laughed, running her hand through a peck measure of black-eyed peas. "And where but in Yorkburg will eggs serve ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... his friends, who was at the time a great admirer of his genius, wishing to show the perfection of the picture, said to some people who were looking at it, 'These strawberries are so very natural and perfect, that I have seen birds coming down from the trees to peck them, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... long that year, and then came March, rough and boisterous and dull as usual, with its cruel east wind and the dust, "a peck of which was worth a king's ransom," ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... one, as I thought him) that I had the offender caught, and without more ado, in a pet of humanity, wrung his neck off. What followed this execution? Why that other grew insolent, as soon as his insulter was gone, and was continually pecking at one or two under him. Peck and be hanged, said I,—I might as well have preserved the first, for I see it is the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... officers in the army—and as I saw him then death had given him a great dignity and nobleness. He was only twenty-eight years old, the age when life has just begun, but he rested his head on the surgeon's shoulder like a man who knew he was already through with it and that, though they might peck and mend at the body, he had received his final orders. His breast and shoulders were bare, and as the surgeon cut the tunic from him the sight of his great chest and the skin, as white as a girl's, and the black open wound against it made the yellow stripes and the brass ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... us never to buy a "pig in a poke." Equally good advice for the heroines of fiction or drama would be never under any circumstances to marry a bridegroom in a mask. In more cases than I can recall, neglect of this simple precaution has led to a peck of trouble. I am thinking now of Yvonne, leading lady in The Mark of Vraye (HUTCHINSON). I admit that poor Yvonne had more excuse than most. Hers was what you might call a hard case. On the one hand there was the villain Philippe, a most naughty man, swearing that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... a thing she called a "puff" And some very peculiar whitish stuff, And using about a half a peck, She spread it over her face and neck, (Deceit was a thing she hated!) And she looked as fair as a lilied bower, Or a pound of lard or a sack of flour;— And the young ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... its cage on his finger. It hopped up his arm till it reached his cheek, where it began to peck at his whiskers, crying all the while in its shrill, lonely tones,—"Blind, ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... tinctured these hurried lines, if I have been unjust in my estimate of the world's honors and the rewards of the Muses, you will forgive me, if you will remember how the great Burke reduced the value of earthly honors and emoluments to less than that of a peck of wheat. My fire is gone out. My candle is flickering in the socket. There is light in the cold, gray East. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... the ring Would not stay on which they did bring; It was too wide a peck: And, to say truth (for out it must), It look'd like the great collar (just) About our young ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... yard of it. Here he shook his feathers and looked very bold, but suspicious, for a few minutes, turning first one eye towards the hand, and then the other. After a little he hopped on a branch still nearer, and, seeing no motion in the hand, he at last hopped upon the palm and began to peck the crumbs. Instantly the fingers closed, and Jasper caught him by the toes, whereupon the whisky-John began to scream furiously with rage and terror. But I am bound to say there was more of rage than of terror ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... entered the cellar at the O. L. Paris home last week and stole about a peck of pickles. Mr. Paris says that if the pickles are returned or paid for he will refrain from publishing the name on an envelope found in his cellar and supposed to have ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... to add a shelf here or build a cabinet there in my tiny cabin for me. But all that I had to learn later. There was Frank, Ranger Winess; he and the Chief had been together many years in Yellowstone; and Ranger West, and Ranger Peck. These and several ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... get on the peck, Em. It don't do you no good to make me sore. Maybe you'll need a friend before you're ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... myself. Sam—you know Sam—was afraid to go up. He said he should fall, and that the old birds would peck his eyes. So I went by myself one morning quite early, with a bag tied round my neck, and got up. It was hard work, and I nearly tumbled once; but I got on the bough beneath the hole at last. It shook very much; it is so rotten, you have no idea. There were three little ones in ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... with a fine brood of chickens. To keep her from straying away again, she was put into a coop. For several days, she was a good mother to her children; but, after a week or so, she began to act very strangely, and, when her children came near her, she would peck and ...
— The Nursery, No. 106, October, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... Greene. He left a child— See—in its face he prays her not to find The father's, but her own. 'He is yet green And may grow straight,' so flickers his last jest, Then out for ever. At the last he begged A penny-pott of malmsey. In the bill, All's printed now for crows and daws to peck, You'll find four shillings for his winding sheet. He had the poet's heart and God help all Who have that heart and somehow lose their way For lack of helm, souls that are blown abroad By the great winds of passion, without power To sway them, chartless captains. Multitudes ply Trimly ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the injured bone by sucking it, and strapped it to little wooden splints. And behold it really set: the bird got quite well and fluttered about the workshops again as sound as before, and whenever it saw me it would perch upon my shoulder and peck very gently at my hair ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the old lady said, as she tore open the first letter, "go and see if Andy is hitching-up yet. Tell him that the dinner boxes will be ready in quarter-hour. Maybe you'll find him in the bean patch, I sent him to gather a peck o' broad beans. Who's this from?" she went on, turning to the last page of her letter to look at the signature. "H'm—Winnipeg—the bank. Guess I'll read ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... confused—"it would be natural for her to be melancholy—only if she were a bird she wouldn't care, she would fly off with some one else and leave Major Clowes, and all the other birds would come and peck him to death. They manage these things better in bird land." Isabel's eyes shut but she hurriedly opened them again. "I'm not going to go to sleep. It's perfectly absurd. It can't be much after nine ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... Rachel and I went through the two hours without a quaver. At Calais we had the same good luck as at London—a compartment of the car all to ourselves. Here we were to be settled without change for that night and the next day, so with bags and shawl-straps, bundles, lunch-baskets and a peck of oranges, we adjusted ourselves. We breakfasted at Basle, after having pillowed on each other for the night as best we could. Now we were in the midst of the Jura mountains, and all day long we wound up ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... playing with pigeons. The number of pigeons she collects about her is quite amazing; you would never have thought that San Massimo or the neighboring hills contained as many. They flutter down like snowflakes, and strut and swell themselves out, and furl and unfurl their tails, and peck with little sharp movements of their silly, sensual heads and a little throb and gurgle in their throats, while Dionea lies stretched out full length in the sun, putting out her lips, which they come to kiss, and uttering strange, ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... from the long table, scoured as white as snow, but puts no linen on it. On the buttery-shelves, a set of pewter rivals silver in brightness, but Dorcas does not touch them. She places a brown rye-and-Indian loaf, of the size of a half-peck, in the centre of the table,—a pan of milk, with the cream stirred in,—brown earthen bowls, with bright pewter spoons by the dozen,—a delicious cheese, whole, and the table is ready. When Dinah appears, with her bright Madras turban, and says she is ready ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... mass of forests, the glitter of ponds, yellow patches of village; larks in hundreds are soaring, singing, falling headlong with outstretched necks, hopping about the clods; the crows on the highroad stand still, look at you, peck at the earth, let you drive close up, and with two hops lazily move aside. On a hill beyond a ravine a peasant is ploughing; a piebald colt, with a cropped tail and ruffled mane, is running on unsteady legs after its mother; its shrill whinnying reaches us. We drive on into the birch ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... the group had suddenly seemed to take umbrage at the appearance of the stranger, and stalking straight up to it darted its head sharply, evidently giving a vicious peck. ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... is no mention of the poor swineherd, God rest him! His stone original lives in Lincoln cloisters, and a reproduction stands on the north pinnacle of the west front (whereas Hugh is on the south pinnacle), put there because he hoarded a peck of silver pennies to help build the House of God. He lives on in stone and in the memories of the people, a little flouted in literature, but, if moral evidence counts, unscathedly genuine: honourable ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... eats a peck of dirt in the course of his life," said Happy Tom, "but I know that I've already beat the measure a dozen times over. Why, I took in a bushel at least at the Second Manassas, but I still live, and here I am, surveying this peaceful domestic ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and heard the fowl crow again. Dermot halted Badshah in cover and waited. Presently there was a patter over the dry leaves lying on the ground, and a jungle cock, a bird similar to an English bantam, stalked across the glade twenty yards away. It stopped and began to peck. Dermot quietly raised his rifle and took careful aim at its head. He fired, and the body of the cock ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... was sent into hospital, and when he recovered, transported for the rest of the life that had thus been given back to him. While he was on his way down the town to go on board the vessel, I should think that if he had one dollar given him, he had at least half a peck, though I do not expect they would be much use to him where he was going to. I never heard any more of him, but I don't suppose many men could say that they had been ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... little nearer; not too near, however, either to mislead you or to put himself in your hands, but just near enough to tempt you to try to tempt him. You hold out a nut, and then, with a quick dart and a sharp peck with a bill trained to certain and sure work, your thumb and finger lose that which they held, and Mr. Bluejay is eating it in perfect security well beyond your reach. Oh, he is a fascinating creature is this bunch of beautiful blue ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... a quarter of beef. For each hundred weight take half a peck of coarse salt, a quarter of a pound of saltpetre, the same weight of saleratus and a quart of molasses, or two pounds of coarse brown sugar. Mace, cloves and allspice may ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... unexpected quarter. Grace's rooster had at last been persuaded to rush violently between the required posts. In one of its excited turns, it brushed close behind the old goose. Here was a chance for revenge! The rooster gave a flying peck at the goose's tail ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... in something of a troubled fashion at Anderson, then at Carroll. His mind was in the throes of displacing a barrel of sugar and a half-peck of pease by a little boy. Then his face brightened. He ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... git erlong widout his trials en tribberlations. One day a woodpecker come erlong en 'mence' ter peck at de tree; en de nex' time Sandy wuz turnt back he had a little roun' hole in his arm, des lack a sharp stick be'n stuck in it. Atter dat Tenie sot a sparrer-hawk fer ter watch de tree; en w'en de woodpecker come erlong nex' mawnin' fer ter finish his nes', ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... enough when our crops are full, but when we are starving, it is a wonder that we can hold our heads up at all. If I ever see that farmer's boy again, I'll—I'll—I'll peck his foot!" ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... nails, and penknives; but this is a slander. It needs gravel, like all creatures of its class which have to grind their food in an interior grist-mill; but though it will usually bite at any bright object, it will not always swallow it. I saw one peck at a ribbon on a lady's hat, and, also, at a pair of shears in its keeper's hands, but this was no proof that it intended to devour either. On another occasion, an ostrich snatched a purse from a lady's hand and instantly ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... porridge hot Peter, Peter, pumpkin-eater Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers Piping hot, smoking hot Polly, put the kettle on Poor old Robinson Crusoe! Pretty John Watts Pussy-cat ate the dumplings, the dumplings Pussy-cat Mew jumped over a coal "Pussy-cat, pussy-cat" Pussy-cat sits ...
— The Real Mother Goose • (Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright)
... spring of 1824, I went into company with two men by the name of Peck, from Bristol. We took two hundred of these movements and a few tools in two one horse wagons and started East, intending to stop in the vicinity of Boston. We stopped at a place about fifteen miles from there called East Randolph; ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome
... Herb. "They say that every one has got to eat a peck of dirt before they die, and you might ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... a laugh. "A peck of them will completely satisfy me, my boy." Then, turning to Lobelalatutu, who was keenly watching them ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... of "The Last of the Plantagenets" is, says the author of a Romance with the above name, in Peck's "Desiderata Curiosa," where a letter is inserted from Dr. Brett to Dr. Warren, the president of Trinity Hall, in which he says that, calling on Lord Winchilsea in 1720, his lordship pointed out to him this entry in the register of Eastwell—"Anno 1550, Rycharde Plantagenet was buryed the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... for oatmeal at breakfast and they send to the livery stable for a peck of oats and ask you please to be so kind as to show them ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... whose branches depended seven roasted 'possums. It was some consolation to look at them, and imagine how good they would taste if he only could taste them. Presently a little gingerbread bird flew down and began to peck at him, and say, "Git up, Sam! ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... shell was broken, a spider was turned loose before this very youthful brood; the destroyer of flies had hardly proceeded more than a few inches, before he was descried by one of these oven-born chickens, and, at one peck of his bill, immediately devoured. This certainly was not imitation. A female goat very near delivery died; Galen cut out the young kid, and placed before it a bundle of hay, a bunch of fruit, and a pan of milk; the young kid smelt to them all very attentively, and then began ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... hurry—come." He turned to Dufrenne, excitement showing in every line of his face. As he hurried toward the door he spoke over his shoulder to Monsieur Perrier. "Don't open your mouth to a soul—do you hear? If you do, you'll get yourself into a peck of trouble." The last thing they heard as they left the shop was the ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... with a succession of wild green dells and hillsides cleft with fern-choked ravines. Still we were in Burns's country, for by Craigie Burn lived Jean Lorimer, to whom he wrote love-songs; and a little farther on was the scene where "Willie brewed a peck o' maut." The next bit of beauty was associated with the Ettrick Shepherd (I can't bear to think of his name being Hogg), for he wrote a Covenanter story, "Brownie of Bodesbeck," about a mountain we could see hovering ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... differed as to the source from which our [author] drew the first hint of writing Paradise Lost; Peck conjectures that it was from a celebrated Spanish Romance called Guzman, and Dr. Zachary Pearce, now bishop of Bangor, has alledged, that he took the first hint of it from an Italian Tragedy, called Il Paradiso Perso, still extant, and printed ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... she doesn't want money now—but revenge. She's perfectly furious over my coming off without telling her—always had an awful temper—and—well, you know an infuriated woman is capable of anything. The Spaniard was right who said it was easier to take care of a peck of fleas than ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... animals were rude, but they were often successful. For instance, we used to gather up a peck or so of large, sharp-pointed burrs and scatter them in the rabbit's furrow-like path. In the morning, we would find the little fellow sitting quietly in his tracks, unable to move, for the burrs stuck ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... it lovely to see you, dear," Mrs. Dingle effusively cried, as she gave her a peck-like kiss upon the right cheek. "We have been talking so much about you lately. Sammie is fairly crazy to see you, and you must be prepared for a visit from him as soon as he learns you are in town. I am so thankful that I have such a dutiful son. He is quite a comfort to me, and I am sure ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... to sing before losing the plumage characteristic of youth. Young house-sparrows and hedge-sparrows not only chatter and swear at one another like the full-grown birds at pairing time, but also like the latter the young birds distend their throats, let their wings droop, peck at one another, and in fact behave as exactly as they will next spring when fully grown. Young linnets also begin to sing before losing their youthful plumage, learn to sing well during the moulting season, and often continue to warble right on into the winter; in a mild winter young ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... rendering one, and frequently both the combatants hors-de-combat, by inflicting on them mortal wounds. Then begins the most disgusting part of the scene. The owner of each bird takes him up, blows into his mouth and eyes, and uses every exertion to make the poor tortured victim give the last peck to his adversary. Failing this last peck, the battle is a drawn one. Bets are usually paid, particularly in the country, in gold dust, which is weighed out in small ivory steelyards kept for the purpose. The Dutch, with their usual policy, derive a revenue from every cock-pit within ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... followers in the wilderness. Quoth one, 'My husband hath travelled as far as Plymouth (which is near forty miles), and hath with great toil brought a little corn home with him, and before that is spent the Lord will assuredly provide.' Quoth the other, 'Our last peck of meal is now in the oven at home a-baking, and many of our godly neighbors have quite spent all, and we owe one loaf of that little we have.' Then spake a third, 'My husband hath ventured himself among the Indians for corn, ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... borers in the hickory and other nut trees. Then, too, the leopard moth, zeuzera pyrina Linn., and the carpenter worm, Prionoxystus robiniae Peck, may be found occasionally in most any kind ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... Sicto can never harm you, nor will he ever reach Ganassi. The python would smother him; the mina-bird would peck out his eyes; the gentle fawn ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... woman, and a mother into the bargain. She had, too, the remains of a woman's heart, where lingered a few maternal sympathies. These were quick to prompt her to duty. Turning away without a reply, she weighed out two pounds of fish, measured a peck of potatoes, poured out some milk in a cup, and filled a small paper with flour. These she handed to Mrs. Gaston without ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... a little afraid of rooks; they were so big and strong and black that she feared they would peck her legs; but she was very tired and warm, and as the church-gate was open she thought she would venture into the cool shade of the elms inside. Her little steps took her to the church porch, and finding the door partly open, with a child's ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... showing bloom, unless of very gross habit, will receive benefit from a supply of a little weak manure water. For that purpose put cow, horse, or sheepdung into a tub, and to one peck add five gallons of rain or other soft water. When taking it for use draw it off clear, and give the plants a watering twice a week. Give air freely, shut up early, and syringe the plants overhead till the flowers ...
— In-Door Gardening for Every Week in the Year • William Keane
... this Thome mixed a remedy as generous as the balm of Gilead itself. It was composed of the most potent ale, concocted with spices and a little white sugar, to be drunk every morning before taking food. For these prescriptions Bessie Dunlop's fee was a peck of meal and some cheese. The young woman recovered. But the poor old Lady Kilbowie could get no help for her leg, which had been crooked for years; for Thome Reid said the marrow of the limb was perished and the blood benumbed, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... in need of my sympathy or pity. They liked the invigorating cold and chattered merrily in the desolate boughs and enjoyed many a nice meal from under the melting snow. The crimson dogwood berries, standing out like rosettes of coral, at which they liked to peck, also furnished them an aesthetic and sumptuous feast. Much more to be dreaded than the winter's cold was the ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... requirements. If a poor lost waif from another coop strays into her realm, no pity, no sympathy springing from the memory of her own offspring, moves her to kindness; but she goes at it with a demoniac fury, and would peck its little life out, if fear did not lend it wings. She has a self-abnegation great as that of human mothers. Her voracity and timidity disappear. She goes almost without food herself, that her chicks may eat. She scatters the dough about with her own bill, that it may be accessible ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... her their addresses and asked her to write to them, Miss Bowes had been kindness itself, and even Miss Teddington, whose conduct was generally of a Spartan order, when bidding her good-bye in the study, had actually bestowed an abrupt peck of a kiss, a mark of favour never before known in the annals of the school. To be sure, she had followed it with a warning against relapsing into loud laughter in other people's houses; but then she was ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... Street on the north to Wall Street on the south; but Edison soon realized that this territory was too extensive for the initial experiment, and he decided finally upon the district included between Wall, Nassau, Spruce, and Ferry streets, Peck Slip and the East River, an area nearly a square mile in extent. One of the preliminary steps taken to enable him to figure on such a station and system was to have men go through this district on various days and note the number of gas jets burning at each hour up to two or three ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... to say now is by no means a criticism. I am merely asking for an explanation. I have no regard for those people who are continually looking for flaws to peck about in ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... Miss Carrington was drawn to think of a certain thing Ferdinand Laxley had said he had heard from the mouth of this lady's brother when ale was in him. Alas! how one seed of a piece of folly will lurk and sprout to confound us; though, like the cock in the eastern tale, we peck up zealously all ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... our adventurers is thus graphically described by Mr. Peck, in his excellent Life of ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... he passed through Hertford to order four horses to come to Tytten after six o'clock and four more to be ready at the Inn to change, but knowing the forgetfulness of the young gentleman, Mama and I were in a peck of troubles lest he should forget the horses, and then we could not have gone. However, they did come, and at eleven o'clock after various directions and orders given we packed off and got to Hertford safely. ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... prominent, the margins sparingly but sharply toothed. In dry, open woods and thickets, and along shady roadsides, its loosely clustered heads of clear yellow, about one inch across, are displayed from July to September; and later the copious brown bristles remain for sparrows to peck at. ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... legend of Quentin Massys of Antwerp and the fly, or the still older, but perhaps not more historical story of the Greek painters, Zeuxis and the bunch of grapes, which the birds came to peck at, and Parrhasius, whose curtain deceived even ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... discarded my first notes, and in another week of ten hours a day labor I had results which astonished myself and satisfied him. Still there was no trace of praise in words or manner. He signified that it would do by placing before me about a half a peck of bones, telling me to see what I could make of them, with no further directions to guide me. I soon found that they were the skeletons of half a dozen fishes of different species; the jaws told me so much at a first inspection. The task ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper
... tho' you peck at my dress, I will not get angry at that; I know you would gobble me up if you could, As quick as ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... his full length on the ground with the timely administration of a well-planted blow. Mr. Garth was probably too much taken by surprise to repay the obligation in kind, but he rapped out a volley of vigorous oaths that fell about his adversary as fast as a hen could peck. Then he remounted his horse, and, with such show of valorous reluctance as could still be assumed after so unequivocal an overthrow, he made the best ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... was now taking out the good things from her basket. She produced a piece of bacon, some beans, about a peck of peas, a home-made dripping cake, ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... bell kill dress duck Jack fell till Jess tack pack Nell fill less press lack Bell pill neck luck sack sell will Bess still tack tell hill block stick shall well mill peck trill shell yell rock ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... we wear our hearts upon our sleeves for cynics such as you to peck at?" she replied. "The art of dissembling is one of our few privileges. But do you think the Countess is ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... this; we have been persuaded to take a furnisht house, where we go on Monday; and we are to pay for it, for three months, no less than a hundred and fifty pounds, which is more than the half of the Doctor's whole stipend is, when the meal is twenty-pence the peck; and we are to have three servan' lassies, besides Andrew's man, and the coachman that we have hired altogether for ourselves, having been persuaded to trist a new carriage of our own by the Argents, which I trust the Argents will find money to pay for; and masters ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... handsome craft, she is," the cook would say, and give her sugar from his pocket, and then the bird would peck at the bars and swear straight on, passing belief for wickedness. "There," John would add, "you can't touch pitch and not be mucked, lad. Here's this poor old innocent bird o' mine swearing blue fire, and none the wiser, you may lay to that. She would swear the same, in ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ride. Beneath her Brunette was spurning the turf with dainty hooves; stretching out in her gallop, yet gathering herself cleverly at her fences, with alert, pricked ears—judging her distance, and landing with never a peck or stumble. The light weight on the pony's back was nothing to her; the delicate touch on her mouth was all she needed to steady her ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... the girl. "Then you can tell him for me that he's goin' to get into a peck of trouble ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... surprised. "Why—a mere mouthful, a taste, a tidbit, was all any of you had. See—there's a pigeon or two left, and half a duck, and part of the beef pie—why, you do but peck at your food, all of you, like ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... bushel and a peck, and a hug around the neck. (She embraces JIM playfully. He hands her the gum, patting his shoulder as he sits on box.) Oh, thank you. Youse ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... the book she was reading. He come back with a copy he'd bought at Spokane and kept it on his bureau. Not that he read it much. It was harder to get into than 'Peck's Bad Boy,' which was ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... for the future. The cold was intense. Although dressed in the thickest of tweeds and sheepskin jacket, sable pelisse, enormous "bourka," and high felt boots, it was all I could do to keep warm even when going at a hand gallop, varied every hundred yards or so by a desperate "peck" on ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... what it is doing; the night distributes stellar essences to the sleeping flowers. All birds that fly have round their leg the thread of the infinite. Germination is complicated with the bursting forth of a meteor and with the peck of a swallow cracking its egg, and it places on one level the birth of an earthworm and the advent of Socrates. Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two possesses the larger field of vision? Choose. A bit of mould is a pleiad ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... is humble, and your fortune lowly. It isn't the waistcoat that I look at. It is the heart. The checks in the waistcoat are but the wires of the cage. But the heart is the bird. Ah! How many sich birds are perpetually moulting, and putting their beaks through the wires to peck at ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... says, that this "incomparable Latin poem was translated by an ingenious and worthily dignified clergyman, and a great lover of gardening, Mr. Gardiner, Sub-Dean of Lincoln." He became afterwards (I believe) Bishop of Lincoln; and a Latin epitaph on this bishop is in Peck's Desid. Curiosa. There is a print of "Jacobus Gardiner, Episc. Lincoln," engraved by ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... time, too! It's a peck of fun getting off here in the woods away from everything, and ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... with no work to be had, that the report has been called for and read and discussed to a degree unknown to any of its predecessors. While it gives results only in the most compact form and by no means compares with work like that of Mr. Charles Peck in his investigations for the New York Bureau of Statistics of Labor, it still holds a mass of information invaluable to all who are seeking light on the cause of present evils. As with us the system is ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... virgate, 12 to 15 acres of arable land at least, for which his rent was chiefly corn and labour, though there were two money payments, a halfpenny on November 12 and a penny whenever he brewed. He had to pay a quarter of seed wheat at Michaelmas, a peck of wheat, 4 bushels of oats, and 3 hens on November 12, and at Christmas a cock, two hens, and two pennyworth of bread. His labour services were to plough, sow, and till half an acre of the lord's land, and give his work as directed by the bailiff except on Sundays and feast days. In harvest ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... spots,—you wonder how there can be any enjoyment in them. I meet a girl in a chintz gown, with a small shawl on her shoulders, white stockings, and summer morocco shoes,—it looks observable. Turkeys, queer, solemn objects, in black attire, grazing about, and trying to peck the fallen apples, which slip ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... can always do it—what I shall do next I know not, being naked for clothes and void of money, and winter present, and provisions very skerce; fresh meat one shilling per pound, Butter three shillings per pound, Cheese two shillings, Turnips and potatoes at a shilling a half peck, milk 15 Coppers per quart, bread equally as dear; and the General says he cant find us fuel thro' the winter, tho' at present we receive sum cole. [Footnote: I have made no changes in this letter except to fill up some blanks and to add a ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... in turning up her Tail To bear the Threshing of her Gallant's Frail, A Groat (which always is a Cuckold's Fee) Under the Candlestick I've laid for me; Besides good Peck and Booze, so till she's Dead, She may and will Whore on to get ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... mother of my—of the young person for whom I am the alternative, is in a peck of trouble; I quote her verbatim. She and her two daughters hold some three thousand shares of Western Pacific stock. It was purchased at fifty-seven, and it ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... ship builders who have assisted greatly in building up the commerce and reputation of the port of Cleveland, is Elihu M. Peck. The vessels built by him, or by the firm of Peck & Masters, which existed about nine years, are known over the lakes. A large proportion of the work done, especially in the later years, was in the construction of propellers, of which several of the finest ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... he murmured cynically. "We wear our sentiments on our sleeves for publishers to peck at." (he made a mental note of this epigram for future use.) "I've an idea! Suppose you run home with me now and try over some of my songs, will you? There's a lot of stuff that might interest you. I've got one of Farwell's machines ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... makes a poetess of you! But as to the mud, I don't mind a little mud. It is only dirt, and has its part in the inevitable peck, I hope." ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... Meshach Milburn surprised Samson Hat by saying: "Boy, when you have another fight and make yourself a barbarian again, remember to bring back, from Nassawongo furnace, about a peck of the bog ores!" ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... cows in the stalls nowadays; no pig grunting comfortably of future spare ribs in the sty; no hens to peck the plants in the cherished garden patch. The Sawyer girls were getting on in years, and, mindful that care once killed a cat, they ordered their lives with the view of escaping that particular doom, at least, and succeeded fairly well until Rebecca's ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... no dream," said Pud. "If that old Major-General Norris had not been such a thoroughbred, he might have given us a peck of trouble." ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... melancholy, I did commend the black-oppressing humour to the most wholesome physic of thy health-giving air; and, as I am a gentleman, betook myself to walk. The time when? About the sixth hour; when beasts most graze, birds best peck, and men sit down to that nourishment which is called supper: so much for the time when. Now for the ground which; which, I mean, I upon; it is ycleped thy park. Then for the place where; where, I mean, I did encounter that obscene and most preposterous event, ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... said Tom, looking a little sheepish, but anxious to set his mind at rest, "she never will let me kiss her on her cheek, nothing but an unsatisfactory peck at her lips. Then the other day, as I took a bit of heliotrope out of a vase to put in my button-hole, I whisked a drop of water into her face; I was going to wipe it off, but she pushed my hand away, and ran to the glass, where she carefully dabbed it dry, and ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... a scene of activity but not of excitement, or in any sense of joy. The matter was too hard an importance; it made too much difference on both sides whether potatoes were twelve or fifteen cents a peck. The dealers were laconic and the buyers anxious; country neighbours exchanged the time of day, but under the pressure of affairs. Now and then a lady of Elgin stopped to gossip with another; the countrywomen ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... boy," she cried, and gave him a peck of a kiss, "and does not that prove what I say, that there are no villainies in Ferrara? For, see, the trees are as thick as a forest." She made him laugh again before many paces. His ringing tones caught the ears of Captain Mosca, and ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... or equivocal in purpose, the influence of his poetry may be considered good. (We of course say nothing here of the volume called the "Merry Muses," still extant to disgrace his memory.) It is doubtful if his "Willie brew'd a peck o' Maut" ever made a drunkard, but it is certain that his "Cottar's Saturday Night" has converted sinners, edified the godly, and made some erect family altars. It has been worth a thousand homilies. And, taking his songs as a whole, they have done much to stir the flames of pure love, of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... wear my heart upon my sleeve for those pleasant daws to peck at. At any rate they do it gently, and both Mrs. Barnett and this young lady are birds of a very ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... (alias wild Carrot) a reasonable burthen of Saxifrage, Wild-sage, Blew-button, Scabious, Bettony, Agrimony, Wild-marjoram, of each a reasonable burthen; Wild-thyme a Peck, Roots and all. All these are to be gathered in the fields, between the two Lady days in Harvest. The Garden-herbs are these; Bay-leaves, and Rosemary, of each two handfuls; a Sieveful of Avens, and as much Violet-leaves: A handful of Sage; three handfuls ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... has turned its brown to green After three nights of humming rain, And in the valleys peck and preen Linnets with a ...
— Flame and Shadow • Sara Teasdale
... the HENS, resuming his tone of command.] Ladies, stand in line! Your orders are to peck in the fields. ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... stock in trade at nightfall. All indispensable importations from other quarters of the town were on a remarkably diminutive scale: for example, the wealthier inhabitants purchased their coal by the wheelbarrow-load, and the poorer ones by the peck-measure. It was a curious and melancholy spectacle, when an overladen coal-cart happened to pass through the street and drop a handful or two of its burden in the mud, to see half a dozen women and children scrambling for the treasure-trove, like a dock of hens ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... New York. As in most subjects of deep popular or scientific importance, the sense of need for more data by which to judge seemed in the air; and already the Labor Bureau of the State of New York, under the efficient guidance of Mr. Charles F. Peck, had begun a course of inquiries of the same nature. For years, beginning with the New York "Tribune," in the days when Margaret Fuller worked for it and touched at times upon social questions,—always in the mind of Horace Greeley, its founder,—there ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... with a few particulars relative to the wretched state of this country. Our markets are exceedingly high; oatmeal 17d. and 18d. per peck, and not to be got even at that price. We have indeed been pretty well supplied with quantities of white peas from England and elsewhere, but that resource is likely to fail us, and what will become of us then, particularly the very poorest sort, Heaven only knows. This country, till of ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... doubtful whether five bushels were the allowance of each individual or of each family; but if Dr. Arbuthnot be correct in estimating the modius at fourteen pounds, the allowance must have been for each family, amounting to one quarter seven bushels, and one peck per annum. ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... barrel, in order to make it more generally useful to the community at large; however, the same proportions will answer for a greater or less quantity, only proportioning the materials and utensils. Take one peck of good malt ground, one pound of hops, put them in twenty gallons of water, and boil them for half an hour, then run them into a hair cloth bag, or sieve, so as to keep back the hops and malt from the wort, which, when cooled down to 65 degrees by Fahrenheit's ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... day. Up to the seventeenth month there is great uncertainty in finding the mouth with anything held in the hand—a spoon, for instance, striking the cheeks, chin, or nose, instead of at once going between the lips; this forms a striking contrast to the case of young chickens which are able to peck grains, etc., soon after they are hatched. Sucking is not a pure reflex, because a satisfied child will not suck when its lips are properly stimulated, and further, the action may be originated centrally, as in a sleeping suckling. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... with a laugh. "Don't wear your heart on your sleeve, Mr. Keating. She wouldn't be above taking a peck at it as ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... down a coarse bag containing a peck of corn, "thar, nigger, grab, you won't get no ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... that, I think, is, Something Nothing. You give this abstraction a concrete form; your axiom is, No Hire Hire for Life. To deny that laborers have any property in their own toil, and to allow them their poor peck of maize and pound of bacon per week, not at all as a wage for their work, but solely as a means of converting corn into cotton, and cotton into seats in Congress and summers at Saratoga,—that, according to the Chelsea metaphysic, is "hiring them for life"! To deny laborers any legal status ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... Discoloured with a lifeless red[bu], Which stands thereon like stiffened gore Upon the slain when battle's o'er; And some long winter's night hath shed Its frost o'er every tombless head— So cold and stark—the raven's beak 480 May peck unpierced each frozen cheek: 'Twas a wild waste of underwood, And here and there a chestnut stood, The strong oak, and the hardy pine; But far apart—and well it were, Or else a different lot were mine— The boughs gave way, and did not tear My limbs; and I found strength ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... barn were as familiar to him as those of his own chamber; and taking the half peck measure, he filled it heaping full of oats at the grain chest as readily as though it had been ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... describes the blotches. In this one ordinary speech seemed to have been insufficient to describe the blotch, and he had to resort to a neologism. "Is that supposed to be a 'perpendicament'? It's got a head like a sea devil; the upper part seems like a peacock trying to peck him in ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... great deal in use—another element may be delightful, when used to it. There is no doubt my old friend Wideawake's attack upon the Captain was mere envy; and as to his insinuating that I should never eat a peck of salt with that man—to say I shall never know that man, is preposterous!—as to eating the literal peck, no man, probably, will do that; for the Captain has an aversion to saline food, saying it makes the bones soft. I wonder if it has the ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... envied or pitied is more than I can say; but at least they are more to be respected than the people who wear their hearts upon their sleeves for daws to peck at, and very often are all the prouder the more they are pecked at, and the more elegantly they bleed; which was not likely to be the case with either of these young folks, young as ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... doctor. "I am not. I would like to see her married some day. Meanwhile I would like to see a dozen lovers about her. It is as natural for a young girl to coquet as it is for a canary to peck at its seed or trim its bill on a bit of fishbone. It is had for the girl and the ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... from Cork on January 8th, 1835, B. H. Peck, master; Dr. Stevenson, R.N., surgeon. She had on board 150 female prisoners and thirty-three of their children, nine free women and their twenty-two children, and a crew of twenty-six. Several ships had been wrecked on King's Island, and when a vessel ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... beat fast as the door opened; and there marched gravely in—not a young lady—but a little old gentleman, whose hair was perfectly white, though he seemed to have a great deal of it, for his head was about the size of a half peck measure. He wore a very long-tailed coat, buttoned up very tight; his pantaloons only reached down to his knees; but to make up for that his stockings came up to meet them, and were fastened with perfectly beautiful ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... thing," he murmured cynically. "We wear our sentiments on our sleeves for publishers to peck at." (he made a mental note of this epigram for future use.) "I've an idea! Suppose you run home with me now and try over some of my songs, will you? There's a lot of stuff that might interest you. I've got one of Farwell's ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... porridge I'll take—um, yes—a little hot partridge. And you might as well bring me an oyster or two on the half shell, and a mouthful of soup (mock-turtle, consomme, anything), and perhaps you might fetch along a dab of fish, and a little peck of Stilton, and a ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... have been consulted in the preparation of this work are, "British Fungi," by Rev. John Stevenson; "British Fungus-Flora," by George Massee; "Mushrooms and their Uses," and "Boleti of the United States," by Professor Charles H. Peck, State Botanist of New York; "Moulds, Mildew and Mushrooms," by Professor L. M. Underwood; and a pamphlet by Mr. C. G. Lloyd, entitled "The Volvae of the ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... so as to take up as little room as possible. The majority of these creatures were rattlesnakes; but there were black snakes among them, and one large spotted snake. Besides these, there were, as the narrator expressed it, at least a peck of spring frogs; these having probably crawled in to fill up all corners and vacant places. All these reptiles were of course dormant and insensible, and ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... from an unexpected quarter. Grace's rooster had at last been persuaded to rush violently between the required posts. In one of its excited turns, it brushed close behind the old goose. Here was a chance for revenge! The rooster gave a flying peck at the goose's ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... that all this was going on, the sparrow, whose nest was in the hawthorn-tree, had brought a few seeds and a morsel of crust to her young ones. The seed she distributed with ease, but the morsel of crust was rather hard, and required her to pinch and peck it a good deal with her bill before it could be soft enough for the young birds. The young ones, however, were all so anxious to be first to receive the crust the moment it was ready, that they all began to make a loud chirruping, ...
— The Goat and Her Kid • Harriet Myrtle
... responsible letter, and directed it, and made it a thing of the past with a stamp on it in a little basket on the hall-table outside. Then he came back to his mother, and bestowed on her the kiss, or peck, of peace. It always made him uncomfortable when he had to go away to the hospital under the shadow of ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... while it fed a hungry complaining intruder. It used to fly on the cuckoo's back and then, standing on its head and leaning downwards, give it a caterpillar. The tit-bit having been greedily snatched and devoured, the cuckoo would peck fiercely at its tiny attendant—bidding it, as it were, fetch more food and not be long about it. Wordsworth tells us in a famous line that "the child is father of the man," and no apter illustration of this truth could be found than the cuckoo. Let us ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... soul, Jarndyce," he said, very gently holding up a bit of bread to the canary to peck at, "if I were in your place I would seize every master in Chancery by the throat to-morrow morning and shake him until his money rolled out of his pockets and his bones rattled in his skin. I would have a settlement out of somebody, by fair means or by foul. If you would ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... anonymous author of Literary Leisure, or the Recreations of Solomon Saunter, Esq. (1799-1800) divides two numbers, VIII and XV, between other affairs and a Shandyesque argument about the nursery charm for the hiccup "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper." This author was most likely not Byron's assailant Hewson Clarke (born 1787, author of The Saunterer in 1804), as asserted in the Catalogue of the Hope Collection (Oxford, 1865), ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... to half a jill, will be found very convenient in every kitchen; though common pitchers, bowls, glasses, &c. may be substituted. It is also well to have a set of wooden measures from a bushel to a quarter of a peck. ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... district extending from Canal Street on the north to Wall Street on the south; but Edison soon realized that this territory was too extensive for the initial experiment, and he decided finally upon the district included between Wall, Nassau, Spruce, and Ferry streets, Peck Slip and the East River, an area nearly a square mile in extent. One of the preliminary steps taken to enable him to figure on such a station and system was to have men go through this district on various days and note the number of gas jets burning at each hour up to two or three o'clock in the ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... Serjeant Saunders that got maltreated: first one judge had a peck at him: then another: till they left him scarce a feather to fly with; and, when Alfred's counsel rose to reply, the judges stopped him, and the chief of the court, Alfred's postponing enemy, delivered his judgment after ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... was very proud of her; but it had been her mother's work to have her carefully trained. If she had lived this tale might not have been written; but she did not. She died a year before it begins, and left her old husband to a peck of troubles. ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... acknowledge my deep obligations to Mr. Forrest Morgan, of the Watkinson Library, Hartford, and to Miss Elizabeth P. Peck, of the Hartford Public High School, both of whom have read the manuscript and have made many valuable criticisms ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... begged him to go with them and aid in making their guest at the country inn pass the evening as pleasantly as possible. Lincoln, with his usual good nature, went with them, and entertained the party for hours with graphic descriptions of Western life, anecdotes and witty stories. Judge Peck, who was of the party, and a warm friend of the ex-President, says that Lincoln was at his best. There was a constant succession of brilliant anecdotes and funny stories, accompanied by loud laughter in which Van Buren took his full share. "He also," says the Judge, "gave us incidents and ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... Removal and Prevention of Scales in Steam Boilers, is spoken of in highest terms by those who have given it a thorough trial. Circulars and price lists furnished on application. A. H. Downer, 17 Peck Slip, ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... sister; they could talk of her with calmness, and recall the many pleasant little traits of character which she had even at so early an age exhibited. The robin that she had fed daily, came still at her brother's call to peck daintily at the grain which he threw toward it. The pet kitten gamboled upon the sunny porch, or peered with curious face over the deep well, as if studying her own reflection, unconscious that the one who had so loved to watch her ceaseless play was gone forever. Even Mary could smile ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... woods and the amount of unnecessary duffle with which they encumbered themselves was simply appalling. Why a shrewd business man, who goes through with a guide and makes a forest hotel his camping ground nearly every night, should handicap himself with a five-peck pack basket full of gray woolen and gum blankets, extra clothing, pots, pans and kettles, with a 9 pound 10-bore and two rods—yes, and an extra pair of heavy boots hanging astride of the gun-well, it is one of the things I shall ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... couldn't learn until I was old enough to learn properly. He said I must not get into the habit of using the hunt-and-peck system, or I'd ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... picked a peck of pickled peppers—even so did I—such a peppering never yet was seen, neither aforetime, or aftertime, not in the land where the pepper grows, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... known to fly on her shoulder and peck her neck, so that now she carried a stick or took one of the children with her when she went ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... the neighbors had taken the whole affair with that splendid philosophy neighbors apply to other people's woes. Mrs. Budd Granger had said to Mrs. Ad. Peck when they met in Bostwick's dry-goods store, at ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... throw yourselves upon the foe, spill his blood; take to your wings and surround them on all sides. Woe to them! let us get to work with our beaks, let us devour them. Nothing can save them from our wrath, neither the mountain forests, nor the clouds that float in the sky, nor the foaming deep. Come, peck, tear to ribbons. Where is the chief of the cohort? Let him ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... "enlisted the Harts and others in an enterprise which his own genius planned," says Peck, the personal acquaintance and biographer of Boone, "and then encouraged several hunters to explore the country and learn where the best lands lay." Just why Henderson and his associates did not act ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... instant Smith saw what was the matter. That blow on the hip had ruined Greer's right hand, strained it, perhaps broken it. Greer's rushes had stopped, and Smith, who was a boxer, not a fighter, could stand off and peck at his man's eyes or jaw without danger ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... bushes, from whose branches depended seven roasted 'possums. It was some consolation to look at them, and imagine how good they would taste if he only could taste them. Presently a little gingerbread bird flew down and began to peck at him, and say, "Git up, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... errand and went into the new house and asked for a light for his pipe. But as soon as he got inside the door the sheep gave him such a butt that he fell head foremost into the hearth. Then the pig began to bite him, and the goose to nip and peck him, and the cock upon the roost to crow and chatter, and as for the hare, he was so frightened that he ran about aloft and on the floor and scratched and scrambled in every corner ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... and I aint nuthin' now. All de work I am able ter do now is a little work in de garden. Dey say I is too ole ter work, so charity gives me a little ter go upon every week. For one weeks 'lowance o' sumptin' ter eat dey gives me, hold on, I will show you, dat beats guessin'. Here it is: 1/2 peck meal (corn meal), 2 lbs oat meal, 2 lb dry skim milk, and 1 lb plate meat. Dis is what I gits fer one week 'lowance. I can't work much, but de white folks gib me meals fur washin' de woodwork in dere houses, de white ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... St. Hospital; and riwle is 'rule,' or an instruction of daily conduct. It is a sound old book, written in the thirteenth century by a certain good Bishop Poore (excellent name!) for a household of such good women at Tarrent, on the River Stour; and it contains a peck of counsel which might be preached not only upon the scandal-mongering women who are the curse of this place—yes, and applied; for it recommends here and there, a whipping as salutary—but even, mutatis mutandis, ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... with planks and two or three feet of earth, in which they dropped themselves, after firing, to reload and be secure from flying shot and shell. I picked up a couple of cannon-balls about the size of a small tea-cup, of which a peck is used for a load. An officer told me that he saw twenty-five rebels killed with one discharge of these balls. O, what slaughter ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... wife, number one, Mo-ki, who had come through the Everglades to visit her relatives. She was the proud wearer of certainly not fewer than two hundred strings of good sized beads. She had six quarts (probably a peck of the beads) gathered about her neck, hanging down her back, down upon her breasts, filling the space under her chin, and covering her neck up to her ears. It was an effort for her to move her head. She, however, was only a little, if any, better off in her possessions than most of the others. ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... some sort of religion about them, who never feel any anxiety to say a word to any soul concerning the Master whom they profess to love. I know, of course, that deep feeling is silent, and that the secrets of Christian experience are not to be worn on the sleeve for daws to peck at. And I know that the conventionalities of this generation frown very largely upon the frank utterance of religious convictions on the part of religious people, except on Sundays, in Sunday-schools, pulpits, and the like. But for all ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... composed, intelligent, courteous gentleman of a laird's degree. Take any old friend aside, and he will tell, with respectful sympathy, that the quiet, sensible, well-bred Laird, has suffered agonies in the course of his life, though too wise and modest a man to hold up his heart for daws to peck at, and you will believe him. Look narrowly at the well-preserved, well-veiled exterior, and you will be able to detect, through the nicely adjusted folds, or even when it is brightened by smiles, how remorse has ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... He is very tall and well made. Beside him was Mr. James W. Moore. Behind him, as he walked through the thronged rooms, were the Rev. Dr. Henry Highland Garnett, and Mrs. Garnett; the Rev. E. W. S. Peck of the Thirty-fifth Street Methodist Church; Mr. Charles Remond Douglass, son of Fred Douglass, and United States Consul in San Domingo; the Rev. J. S. Atwell, of St. Philip's Episcopal Church; the Rev. John Peterson; Professor Charles L. Reason, of the Forty-first Street Grammar School; ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... came there upon their business; but the turf roof of it had fallen entirely in; so that the hut was of no use to me, and gave me less shelter than my rocks. What was more important, the shell-fish on which I lived grew there in great plenty; when the tide was out I could gather a peck at a time: and this was doubtless a convenience. But the other reason went deeper. I had become in no way used to the horrid solitude of the isle, but still looked round me on all sides (like a man that ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the colonel over most of those weary miles, and Van spent the long days on the muddy trail in wondering when and where the next race was to come off, and whether at this rate he would be fit for a finish. One day on the Yellowstone I had come suddenly upon a quartermaster who had a peck of oats on his boat. Oats were worth their weight in greenbacks, but so was plug tobacco. He gave me half a peck for all the tobacco in my saddle-bags, and, filling my old campaign hat with the precious grain, I sat me down on a big log by the ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... spread, and dinner served up just as the king had given these orders, as soon as the dishes were placed, the bird, clapping his wings, leaped off the king's hand, flew upon the table, where he began to peck the bread and victuals, sometimes on one plate and sometimes on another. The king was so surprised that he immediately sent the officer of the eunuchs to desire the queen to come and see this wonder. The officer related it to her majesty, and she came forthwith; but ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... for his book. Do you recollect Renzo tying four fat capons by the legs, and carrying them, with their heads hanging down, to Signor Azzeccagarbugli,—and the capons, in that awkward predicament, finding no better occupation than to peck at each other? "As is too often the case with companions in misfortune," observes the author, in his quiet, humoristic way. We were just as wise. Instead of saying, Mea culpa, we began to recriminate, and find fault with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... immense fancy fair. The temple pigeons wheeled disconsolately in the air or perched upon the roofs, unable to find one square foot of the familiar flagstones, where they were used to strut and peck. Stalls lined the stone pathways and choked the spaces between the buildings. Merchants were peddling objects of piety, sacred images, charms and rosaries; and there were flowers for the women's hair, and toys for the ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... lines, if I have been unjust in my estimate of the world's honors and the rewards of the Muses, you will forgive me, if you will remember how the great Burke reduced the value of earthly honors and emoluments to less than that of a peck of wheat. My fire is gone out. My candle is flickering in the socket. There is light in the cold, gray East. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... his life, and swam round and round, up and down, hither and thither, trying to escape from this terrible murderer; but it was no use, he could not free himself from his grip; and while the poor little wretch was giving the last few flutterings of his tail, the water-beetle proceeded coolly to peck out his left eye, and to devour it at once." The larva not only of the carnivorous dytiscus but also of the vegetable-feeding water-beetle are ferocious and carnivorous, and deadly enemies of young ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... earth has turned its brown to green After three nights of humming rain, And in the valleys peck and preen Linnets ...
— Flame and Shadow • Sara Teasdale
... truth, lord, your courtesy has suffered since you began to peck and pine for this ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... slowly in the west, The village labourer from the threshing-floor Hied home full laden with the gathered corn, When soon there came, as from a cage just freed, Two lovely doves intent to peck the grain That scattered lay upon the vacant field. Between these birds, by instinct closely linked, Attachment fond had grown. It seemed, indeed, That God for speech denied to them had given Sense exquisite to know each other's ways. Not all the speech of favoured ...
— Tales of Ind - And Other Poems • T. Ramakrishna
... disturbed by this open corruption, that I went to him, and expressed my great surprise. Hot words ensued between us; and I told him very plainly that I would have nothing further to say to him or his political profligacy. However, his potatoes were sold, and brought upwards of three guineas the peck, the nabob being the purchaser, who, to show his contentment with the bargain, made Mrs M'Lucre, and the bailie's three daughters, presents of new gowns and princods, that ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... of the Moor, Iago despises Othello's unsuspicious trustingness as imbecility, while he hates him as a man because his nature is the perpetual opposite and perpetual reproach of his own. Now, Reineke would not have hurt a creature, not even Scharfenebbe, the crow's wife, when she came to peck his eyes out, if he had not been hungry; and that [Greek: gastros ananke], that craving of the stomach, makes a difference quite infinite. It is true that, like Iago, Reineke rejoices in the exercise of his intellect: the sense of his power ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... great time, too! It's a peck of fun getting off here in the woods away from everything, and ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... mention of the potato occurs in the household book of the Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth. From Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh we learn that the price in 1701 was half-a-crown a peck. Robertson, of Irvine discovered what he thought the earliest evidence of potatoes in Scotland in the household book of the Eglinton family. The date of this entry, however, was 1733, and Robert Chambers showed that the date in the Buccleuch book ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... in one it hath; its blood is eath and quick of flow, Wide-mouthed, though all the rest be black, its ears are white as snow. It hath an idol like a cock, that doth its belly peck, And half a dirhem is its worth, if thou its ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... At heart, I always respected him. He wasn't a fellow to take the worst view of one's character, you know, or to make nasty innuendoes—" He stopped, and eyed Kennedy as a parrot eyes a finger put into his cage, which he could peck if he would. "He wasn't, you know, a kind of fellow who would force you to leave the table by sneering at you in hall—" He still continued to eye Kennedy, but in vain, for Kennedy kept his moody glance on the table and was silent, and would not look at him ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... and be silent that ye may here I've been among the Seseshers, a earnin my daily peck by my legitimit perfeshun, and havn't had no time to weeld my facile quill for "the Grate Komick paper," if you'll allow me to kote from your ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... she, nor any other woman, shall ever see what I am or am not. My heart is not for them to peck at. So ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... cried East, putting his finger on the place and looking up; "but a pretty peck of troubles you'll get into, if you're going to play that game. However, I'm all for a strike myself, if we can get others to join. ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... drawn heavily on others who have written in this field—Andrews, Beard, Paxson and Peck, and especially on the volumes written for the American Nation series by Professors Dunning, Sparks, Dewey, Latane and Ogg. Haworth's United States in Our Own Time, 1865-1920, was unfortunately printed too late to give me the benefit of the author's well-known ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... fire, and every hard rock a rod that could shatter it into crystal fountains at his feet. More than once he came to his last dollar; but right behind that last dollar he found Him who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and out of the palm of whose hand all the fowls of heaven peck their food, and who hath given to each one of His disciples a warrantable deed for the whole universe in the ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... Ninian W. Edwards, Jesse K. Dubois, O.H. Browning, were but a few of the brilliant men who were throwing all their ability and ambition into the contest for political honors in the State. Nor were the Whigs a whit superior to the Democrats. William L.D. Ewing, Ebenezer Peck, William Thomas, James Shields, John Calhoun, were in every respect as able as the best men of the Whig party. Indeed, one of the prominent Democrats with whom Lincoln came often in contact, was popularly regarded as the most brilliant and promising politician of the State—Stephen A. Douglas. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... panting and tugging, wriggled his plump, round body into the hen-house. He walked over where a lonesome looking hen was sitting patiently on a nest. He put out a cautious hand and the hen promptly gave it a vicious peck. ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... would be more likely to take up mud and pelt you with it, provided they saw you in trouble, than to help you. So take care of your horse, and feed him every day with your own hands; give him three-quarters of a peck of corn each day, mixed up with a little hay-chaff, and allow him besides one hundred weight of hay in the course of the week; some say that the hay should be hardland hay, because it is wholesomest, but I say, let it be clover hay, because the horse likes it ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... ale-wife in Forfar, had brewed her 'peck of malt' and set the liquor out of doors to cool; the cow of B., a neighbour of A., chanced to come by, and seeing the good beverage, was allured to taste it, and finally to drink it up. When A. came to take in her liquor, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... their barbarity, That they could not so much as dig their own graves, But must needs go break those of the dead race, Their far superiors, and masters in craft and lore! And bury themselves there, just out of sight, Where the vulture's beak could peck them, Were he so obscenely minded, And the wolf could scrape them up ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... "Doctor, how much camphire can anybody take by mistake without its killing them?" To which the reply was, "Who's taken it?" And the answer was "Margaret Fuller." The doctor answered in great wrath, as he slammed down the window, and returned to bed: "A peck." ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... returned and told the Raja that the man was in the forest but that no messenger could approach for fear of the wild buffaloes. However a crow said, "I can bring him if any one can," so they sent the crow and it went and perched on the backs of the buffaloes and began to peck them; then Ledha threw stones at it, but it would not go away; then he threw a stick at it and last of all he threw his flute. The crow caught up the flute and flew up to a tree with it. Ledha ran after it, but the crow kept flying on a short distance ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... plentiful. The only drawback to complete enjoyment of this dish is that the grasping and avaricious German restaurant keeper has the confounded nerve to charge you, in our money, forty cents for awhole pheasant and half a peck of cabbage—say, enough to furnish a full meal for two tolerably hungry adults ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... mean, with God's blessing, to try and realise the truth that is in this dying request. I hope I may be given to see the truth and comfort to be derived from the Communion. I have in some degree seen it must be a means of very great grace; but of this in the future. It is a beautiful subject. Do not peck at words. Communion is better than sacrament, but communion may exist without the eating of the bread, &c. Sacrament means the performance of a certain act, which is an outward and visible sign of spiritual grace. You need not fear my leaving off this subject, it is far too ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... other thing. What that thing is I will tell you when we have drunk the blood-brotherhood! But now it behoveth me to be a-going, so I'll away. But when you shall seek me, as seek me ye will, shipmate, shalt hear of me at the Peck-o'-Malt tavern, which is a small, quiet place 'twixt here and Bedgebury Cross. Come there at any hour, day or night, and say 'The Faithful Friend,' and you shall find safe harbourage. Remember, comrade, the word is 'The Faithful Friend,' and if so be you can choose your time—night is ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... was grown so lofty in his bearing, because of the honor some of our foolish people had shown him, that it was well nigh impossible to pay the price he asked, even in trinkets, for so small an amount as a single peck of corn. ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis
... Home John Howard Payne The Grapevine Swing Samuel Minturn Peck Lullaby of an Infant Chief Sir Walter Scott The First Thanksgiving Day Margaret Junkin Preston A Visit from ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... soon believe The text which says, we sprung from Eve. As an old hen led forth her train, And seemed to peck to shew the grain; She raked the chaff, she scratched the ground, And gleaned the spacious yard around. A giddy chick, to try her wings, On the well's narrow margin springs, And prone she drops. The mother's breast All day with sorrow was possess'd. 10 A cock she ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... angleworms and arranged them temptingly in rows, but the big, white rooster passed them by with a feeble peck or two. Bits of bread failed to tempt him, or even his favorite cooky crumbs. His eighth appetite ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... fearless blue-jay alighted on the bank and made a prospecting peck at the tobacco pouch. It yielded in favor of a gopher, who endeavored to draw it toward his hole, but in turn gave way to a red squirrel, whose attention was divided, however, between the pouch and the revolver, which he regarded with mischievous fascination. Then ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... on 'is back ower this letter job,' said the father secretly to me. 'Mother, 'er knows nowt about it. Lot o' tom-foolery, isn't it? Ay! What's good o' makkin' a peck o' trouble over what's far enough off, an' ned niver come no nigher. No—not a smite o' use. That's what I tell 'er. 'Er should ta'e no notice on't. Ty, what can ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... and wandered back to the club. Somebody was making a racket in our old rooms in the High, windows open, you know, and singing. I stopped to look at them, and then they started, 'Willie brewed a peck o' maut,' and, 'pon my soul, I had to come away. Couldn't stand it. It reminded me so badly of you and Arthur and old John Lambert, and all the honest men that used to be there. It was infernally absurd that I should have got so sentimental, but that wasn't the worst of it. For I met Tony ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... to the door and brought in a peck basket full of large, black, twisted shells, and with a heavy clasp-knife proceeded to open one, and took out a great oyster, which he held up on the point of ...
— The Village Convict - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... could never catch this hare; it always disappeared in a mill, running between the wings and jumping in at an open window, though they stationed two men and a dog at the spot, when it immediately turned into the old witch. And the old miller never suspected, for the old woman used to take him a peck of corn to grind a few days before any hunt, telling him she would call for it on the afternoon of the day of the hunt. So that when she arrived she ...
— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson
... into the next town, and I will soon find you plenty of food.' So on they went together into the town: and as they passed by a butcher's shop, the sparrow said to the dog, 'Stand there a little while till I peck you down a piece of meat.' So the sparrow perched upon the shelf: and having first looked carefully about her to see if anyone was watching her, she pecked and scratched at a steak that lay upon the edge of the shelf, till at last ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... Wildcat pretended to be dead, and the Rabbit persuaded the Turkeys to go near him. When they are near enough, the Rabbit exclaims: "Jump up and catch a red-leg! jump up and catch a red-leg!" The Wildcat catches one, and proceeds to eat it, whereupon the Turkeys pursue the Rabbit, and peck and nip him until his tail comes off, and this is the reason the Rabbit has a short tail. The Creeks, as well as other tribes, were long in contact with the negroes, some of them were owners of slaves, and it is perhaps ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... the Thirteenth New York, Colonel Quinby; the Sixty-ninth New York, Colonel Corcoran; the Seventy-ninth New York, Colonel Cameron; and the Second Wisconsin, Lieutenant- Colonel Peck. These were all good, strong, volunteer regiments, pretty well commanded; and I had reason to believe that I had one of the best brigades in the whole army. Captain Ayres's battery of the Third Regular Artillery was also attached to my brigade. The other regiment, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... their undiminished stock in trade at nightfall. All indispensable importations from other quarters of the town were on a remarkably diminutive scale: for example, the wealthier inhabitants purchased their coal by the wheelbarrow-load, and the poorer ones by the peck-measure. It was a curious and melancholy spectacle, when an overladen coal-cart happened to pass through the street and drop a handful or two of its burden in the mud, to see half a dozen women and ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... it is knitted are stout, and the structure is therefore, not liable to be torn by the beaks of insectivorous birds, while its pendulous position makes it doubly secure against their attacks, the apparatus giving way when they peck at it. There is a small orifice at each end of the egg-shaped bag, to admit of the escape of the moth when it changes from the little chrysalis which sleeps tranquilly in its airy cage. The moth is of a dull slatey colour, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... hollow at the foot of an oak tree that I had chopped down one cold winter day, I found a poor ground squirrel frozen solid in its snug grassy nest, in the middle of a store of nearly a peck of wheat it had carefully gathered. I carried it home and gradually thawed and warmed it in the kitchen, hoping it would come to life like a pickerel I caught in our lake through a hole in the ice, which, after being frozen as hard as a bone and thawed at the fireside, squirmed itself out of the ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... proofs of his elegance and art in the wedding-supper, which had been committed to his management and direction. This genial banquet was entirely composed of sea-dishes; a huge pillaw, consisting of a large piece of beef sliced, a couple of fowls, and half a peck of rice, smoked in the middle of the board: a dish of hard fish, swimming in oil, appeared at each end; the sides being furnished with a mess of that savoury composition known by the name of lub's-course, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... remarked Miss Genie. "He was a regular dandy, and I liked him—but," she said, with a thirsty peck at a glass of champagne, as they waited for the breakfast, "Phenie will then have to give that long-legged Italian fellow the tip. The Marquis of Santa Marina! He's not much, but better than nothing at all. We'll have a ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... even to swish their tails against the flies; pass by an hour later, and they are still there, and the black man lounging by the leaders has hardly shifted one leg; pass by at evening, and they have moved on three hundred yards, and are resting again. In the daytime hens peck and cackle in every street; at nightfall the bordering veldt hums with crickets and bullfrogs. At morn come a flight of locusts—first, yellow-white scouts whirring down every street, then a pelting snowstorm of them high up over the houses, spangling ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... son went into the small railed garden, where was a scent of red gillivers. By the open door were some floury loaves, put out to cool. A hen was just coming to peck them. Then, in the doorway suddenly appeared a girl in a dirty apron. She was about fourteen years old, had a rosy dark face, a bunch of short black curls, very fine and free, and dark eyes; shy, questioning, ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... that the place for birds is in the air or on the bushy tops of trees or on smooth-shaven lawns. Let them twitter and strut on the greens of golf courses and intimidate the tired business men. Let them peck cinders along the railroad track and keep the trains waiting. But really they have no right to take possession of a man's house as ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... they please the more they drink, the more they drink the less they please. They don't quit because they can, if they couldn't quit they would, because they can, they won't. Thus they reason, while appetite eats its way into their wills, birds of ill omen peck into their characters and finally they will go down to drunkards' graves, as thousands before them have gone. Young men, in the morning of life, while the dew of youth is yet upon your brow, I beg you to bind the pledge of total-abstinence as a garland ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... advising or congratulating her, that the boys joked him. "Say, looky here! You're gom' to get into a peck o' trouble with your wife yet. You spend about hall y'r time ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... matched as nearly as possible in strength and weight, were brought into the ring by their respective owners, while the onlookers discussed the birds' relative points. The two cocks, still held by their masters, were then allowed to peck at each other's combs until fully angered, when they were put into the ring a short distance apart, and while each owner held the tail feathers of his bird, the cocks made futile efforts to reach each other, giving vent the while ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... were threatened with a tremendous influx of people. The new bridge at Fulton Ferry across the East River would soon be opened. It looked as though there was to be another bridge at South Ferry, and another at Peck Slip Ferry. Montauk Point was to be purchased by some enterprising Americans, and a railroad was to connect it with Brooklyn. Steamers from Europe were to find wharfage in some of the bays of Long Island, and the passage across the Atlantic reduced to six days! Passengers six days out of Queenstown ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... that calls itself organised Christianity will have to go down because there is not vitality enough in it to stand. For you know it is low vitality that catches all the diseases that are going; and it is out of the sick sheep's eyeholes that the ravens peck the eyes. And it will be the feeble types of spiritual life, the inconsistent Christianities of our churches, that will yield the crop of apostates and heretics and renegades, and that will fall ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... estates, that they are not clothed, 'till winter is nearly expired; and then, the most valuable only are attended to; the young, and the labour-worn, having no other allowance, in this respect, than the tattered garments, thrown off by the more fortunate. A single peck of corn a week, or the like measure of rice, is the ordinary quantity of provision for a hard working slave; to which a small quantity of meat is occasionally, tho' rarely, added. While those miserable degraded persons thus scantily subsist, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... short to both of them. As the magnificent whites plodded steadily on, there was added to the music of the nickeled bells the rapid clicking of Jo at the portable typewriter, or the slower, hesitating peck of Hiram Hooker. They were a silent pair, for they were deep in ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
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