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More "Perch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tower of the Old North Church, By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, To the belfry chamber overhead, And startled the pigeons from their perch On the somber rafters, that round him made Masses and moving shapes of shade,— By the trembling ladder, steep and tall, To the highest window in the wall, Where he paused to listen and look down A moment on the roofs of the town, And the ...
— Stories of American Life and Adventure • Edward Eggleston
... of food, arranged more about him, and went off. Also the clouds grew thicker and thicker, and the air more and more chilly, till, had we been in any northern latitude, I should have said that snow was pending. From our perch on the roof-top I observed the population of Simba Town discussing the weather with ever-increasing eagerness; also that the people who were going out to work in the fields wore mats ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... his perch, and bade him take the stranger to his father, who would no doubt give him the whistle. And thus, having without exciting attention, separated the fugitive from the rest of her pensioners, she made haste ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... difference between the top of Mount Everest and the gorge through which the Jordan runs would scarcely be perceptible if you were standing on the sun. Thus, 'without respect of persons,' great men and little, rich men and poor, educated men and illiterate, people that perch themselves on their little stools and think themselves high above their fellows: they are all on one dead level in the eye of the Judge. And this question is as to the quality of the work and not as to the dignity of the doer. 'Without respect of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... carrier's cart was just starting homewards from the door of the Magpie and Stump. Joshua, reins in hand, and closely buttoned up to the chin, stood ready to mount to his perch, saying a few last words to the landlord, who was a crony of his; Tim was already in his place. From where he sat he could see something which interested and excited him a good deal, and this was an old ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... Jimple- cute intimate that they may send a yaller-legged policeman across the Pacific in a soap-box to pull the tail- feathers out of the bird o' freedom if it doesn't crawl humbly back upon its perch. If a fourth-class power insults our flag we accept a flippant apology. If our citizens are wrongfully imprisoned we wait until they are starved, shot, or perish of blank despair in dungeons so foul that a hog would die therein of a broken heart; then humbly ask permission ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... going to ask you to take it back to your mistress; and then no doubt you'll be reading it on the sly. Here, I must sit down: suppose you let me perch myself on the top bar of the gate. Also, it would be kind of you to put up an ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... perch on a desk-arm. "There are the girls now clamoring for admission. It must be the hour for the sale to begin. Isn't it fun! Fly, Berta Abbott, flee and bury your blushes. The ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... ice slid down my spine—the unknown with its terrors besieged my brain—the apparition was too big for a dog. I gazed, rooted to my perch, unable to move a hand ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... sack of hay from the top of the creel of turf, and spread some of it on the side of the road for the donkey. While he did so a woman who wore a white cap, a grey bodice, a thick woollen red petticoat, under which her bare lean legs showed, came to the door, waving the yellow hen off her perch. ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... Then of course there is a clatter, what the vulgar call "a shindy," round the pedestal. Squeezed by his believers, shied at by his scoffers, the poor man gets horribly mauled about, and drops from the perch in the midst of the row. Then they shovel him over, clap a great stone on his relics, wipe their foreheads, shake hands, compromise the dispute, the one half the world admitting that though he was a genius he was still an ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... till he is cold, and his mortal part returned to its kindred clay. He has painted, not pictures of the world, but English pictures, such as Gainsborough himself might have done; beautiful rural pieces, with trees which might well tempt the wild birds to perch upon them, thou needest not run to Rome, brother, where lives the old Mariolater, after pictures of the world, whilst at home there are pictures of England; nor needest thou even go to London, the big city, in search of a master, for thou hast one at home in the old East Anglian ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... priest on solid ground. Jimbei takes the coin, goes unscathed, without word now or hereafter. The priest's word for it—and surely Jimbei fears not for himself." He clung fast to Jimbei's neck. The latter had gone off into a most outrageous peal of laughter which almost shook his freight from the perch aloft. Then slowly and carefully he proceeded into the shallows, set down his charge on the further bank—"A magnificent compliment: but no more of this. Perhaps now the Go Shukke Sama will have trust in Jimbei, ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... no idea—yet. But you missed the important point. He is going 4.5 miles a second. When he reaches 5 miles a second he will never come down from his hundred and fifty mile high perch! He will establish an orbit! He has so much centrifugal force already that he has very little weight. We are staying right beneath him, so we don't have much either. Well, there he goes in a last spurt. We are falling behind pretty fast—there we are catching ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... great unconquered heroes famed on earth from west to east, Kankas perch upon their foreheads, hungry wolves ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... hundred yards further, and climbing upon a fence waited. From his perch he could see the road about two hundred yards beyond him, and the hoof beats were rapidly growing louder. Some one was riding ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that it swarms with fish, such as pike, trout, perch, barbel, and other kinds not easily identified. Apparently there is also a form of gar-pike found here (see p. 74); this is described as having scales of a very large and stiff kind, and being a beautiful bright silver in colour. The size ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... mentor and child. Nothing, however, must be so individual as punishment. For some, a threat at rare intervals is enough; while for others, however ominous threats may be, they become at once "like scarecrows, on which the foulest birds soonest learn to perch." To scold well and wisely is an art by itself. For some children, pardon is the worst punishment; for others, ignoring or neglect; for others, isolation from friends, suspension from duties; for others, seclusion—which last, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... and the hornet element seemed by common consent to keep temporarily shady, and even the butterflies seemed to forget that they had wings. But not for long, for now with a shimmering glitter our darning-needle invades the scene, and retires to a convenient perch with a ruby-eyed fly in his teeth, while a swarm of very startled butterflies tells conspicuously of the demoralization which he has left in his path. Among the butterfly representatives I at length observed one individual which at first had escaped me, an exclusive white cabbage-butterfly ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... good as his word, for, expanding himself to the utmost limit, he gave a tremendous wheeze, which nearly blew Tom from his perch, sent his cap flying off into space and smashed the cloud into four separate pieces, one of which, bearing the Poker, floated rapidly off to the north, while the other three sped south, ...
— Andiron Tales • John Kendrick Bangs
... pulled off his pack, And put it a little below his knee, Saying, 'If you do move me one perch from this, My pack and all ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... expanse of which is unbroken by a sign of man; a wood, the depths of which baffle the eye and tangle the foot; let your automobile stop for so long as sixty seconds, and the populace begin to gather, with the small boy in the van; like birds of prey they perch upon all parts of the machine, choosing by quick intuition those parts most susceptible to injury from weight and contact, until you scarcely can move and do the things you ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... Slogger, on resuming his perch, "d'you know I've found traces o' that young gal as you took such a interest in, as runned away from the old 'ooman, an' was ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... threatening horns, and as he came within easy reach, Perry gave him a fierce thrust between the shoulders. As the tines pierced his muscles, the bear reared to his hind legs with a whining roar of pain. Perry, still clinging to the handle of the spear, was suddenly thrown off his perch and tumbled ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... occasionally useful in determining the fresh-water origin of strata. Certain genera, such as carp, perch, pike, and loach (Cyprinus, Perca, Esox, and Cobitis), as also Lebias, being peculiar to fresh- water. Other genera contain some fresh-water and some marine species, as Cottus, Mugil, and Anguilla, or eel. The rest are either common to rivers and the sea, as the salmon; or are exclusively ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... whom was largely due the foundation of the British and Foreign Bible Society. Bala Lake, the largest in Wales (4 m. long by some 3/4 m. wide), is subject to sudden and dangerous floods, deep and clear, and full of pike, perch, trout, eel and gwyniad. The gwyniad (Caregonus) is peculiar to certain waters, as those of Bala Lake, and is fully described by Thomas ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... on the Brenta Where the statues, white as snow, All along the water-terrace Perch like sea-gulls in ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... Does he mean to have it out with Frenchy for the way he talked at that mass-meetin'? Say, Nick, we ought to be handy, for he'll sure need us. Come on, let's ride out that way." And Tuttle began to climb down from his high perch. Ellhorn stopped him with ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... first to respond to the call of the country for champions to defend her from traitors. We understand that he has obtained a captaincy in the th regiment, about to march to the threatened seat of war. May victory perch on ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Jean. Three horses trotted abreast, with the clatter of hoofs on the granite setts, and the yellow, uproarious machine jolted violently behind them, fantastic, lighted up, perfectly empty, and with the driver apparently asleep on his swaying perch above that amazing racket. I flattened myself against the wall and gasped. It was a stunning experience. Then after staggering on a few paces in the shadow of the fort, casting a darkness more ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... south of France—aptly termed 'the austere south.' 'It is austere, grim, sombre. It never smiles: it is scathed and parched. There is no freshness or rurality in it. It does not seem the country, but a vast yard—shadeless, glaring, drear, and dry. Let us glance from our elevated perch over the district we are traversing. A vast, rolling wilderness of clodded earth, browned and baked by the sun; here and there masses of red rock heaving themselves above the soil like protruding ribs of the earth, and a vast coating of drowthy dust, lying like snow upon the ground. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... began to stud the darkness; light-houses of the mind or of the wearied optic nerve, solemnly shining and winking as we passed. At length the mate himself despaired, scrambled on board again from his unrestful perch, and announced that we had missed our destination. He was the only man of practice in these waters, our sole pilot, shipped for that end at Tai-o-hae. If he declared we had missed Takaroa, it was not for us to quarrel with the fact, but, if we could, to explain ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... passed through green aisles of woods, that were ever-shadowed and made fragrant with every various vegetable growth of this temperate northern clime; while the morning beam of the sun in heaven fell brightly aslant the leaves and branches; and the birds, that my lonely step startled from their perch or nest, flew from glen to glen, making with their song, save the murmur of the breeze in the boughs, the only sound I could hear. At length, the high-arched avenues of this immense forest-cathedral let me out upon the broad, open shore, where I saw and heard wave after wave break on the ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... those first miserable months when I was boarding. One was a little cheerful wren of a woman from a little Western town, a Mrs. Boyd. That is, she is cheerful now. Then she was like a bird in a cage, pining to death for the freedom she had been accustomed to, and moping on her perch. She came to New York to bring her niece, Lucy, who is all she has to live for. Some art teacher back home told her that Lucy is a genius—has the makings of a great artist in her, and they believed it. She'll never get beyond fruit-pieces and maybe a dab at china-painting, but she's happy ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... be used for incense. The others are idlers. If they have any duties as acolytes, these are for the moment forgotten. Several are attracted by the ceremonies in the cathedral and look down from their high perch upon ...
— Correggio - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... presently emerged, recrossed the stream, and soon could be seen pushing out into the midst of it, poling an old punt up stream. Anchoring presently in a small cove where the water was deep and cool, he sat in silent watchfulness, occasionally jerking out a perch bass, sometimes a pickerel, but for the most part so still he might have been the occupant of a "painted boat upon a painted" stream. Yet all the time the soft influences of the hour and place were weaving their spell ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... picnic at a way-side pool, splashing and fluttering, with their long wings expanded like butterflies, keeping poised by a constant hovering motion, just tilting upon their feet, which scarcely touch the moist ground. You will seldom see them actually perch on anything less airy than some telegraphic wire; but, when they do alight, each will make chatter enough for a dozen, as if all the rushing hurry of the wings had passed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... momentarily, he paused in doubt and trembling. In that exposed and comfortless perch, the lifeless street on one hand, the black mystery of the neglected park on the other, he was seized and shaken by a sudden revulsion of feeling like a sickness of his very soul. Physical fear had nothing to do with this, for he was quite ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... She's hidin' in the carriage room. Seems as if the child was possessed to get out in that dusty place and perch herself in the old carryall. She calls it her playhouse and you'd think 'twas Heaven the way she loves to stay there. But today of all days! And with her best clothes on! And after I ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... leaves in the depths of the twigs? Some dim little efforts placed in the threads of the birch?— It is only the sparrows, like dead black leaves on the sprigs, Sitting huddled against the cerulean, one flesh with their perch. ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... laughter and encored wildly, but with a last nimble skip the panting Hatter made for the Griffon's ladder and, seating himself upon it, refused to respond beyond a nod and a careless wave of his hand. Later he left his perch and proceeded to convulse his audience by sitting on his tall hat and taking a bite from his teacup, the three-cornered bite having been carefully removed beforehand and held temporarily in place with library paste until ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... and choir effects, for here his true vocation asserted itself. He was wont, too, to hide in the belfry, and revel in the roaring orchestra of metal, when the chimes were rung. On one occasion a stroke of lightning precipitated him from his dangerous perch to the floor below, and the history of music nearly lost one of its great lights. The bias of his nature was intractable, and he was at last permitted to study music, at first under the charge of his uncle Joseph, the cure of Jesi, and ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... excited about something, and many of them are running back and forth," said Harry, from his perch on the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... this Greenland odor?" said my conductor. "Luckily it does not reach me here, or I should seek a still higher perch to roost on";—saying which, he opened the door and led the way inside, first through a little vestibule into a square hall, where we deposited our fur coats, and then to the right, into a small room furnished with a table, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... its end and the dog and horse stood as though hypnotized by the melody and the fingers' magnetic touch. Then the song ended as abruptly as it had begun and Peggy slid lightly from her perch to the ground, raised both arms, stretching hands and fingers and inclining her head in a pose which would have thrilled a teacher of "Esthetic Posing" in some fashionable, faddish school, though it ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... heavenly coat has kept me as warm as pie—Nina Atherton taught me that. That nice family considerably enlarged my vocabulary," she added with enjoyment, slipping out of a heavy fur coat and coming back to perch on the ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... of bronze damascened with silver; those delicately chiselled cups; those glasses and bottles which Vesuvius has preserved for us; that jug, the handle of which is formed of a satyr bending backward to rub his shoulders against the edge of the vase; those vessels of all shapes on which eagles perch or swans and serpents writhe; those cups of baked clay adorned with so many arabesques and inviting descriptions. "Friend," says one of ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... presence. The natives assert that it has been known to strangle the pea-fowl at night, to feast on the brain. During the day the one which I kept was usually asleep in the strange position represented on the last page; its perch firmly grasped with both hands, its back curved into a ball of soft fur, and its head hidden deep between its legs. The singularly-large and intense eyes of the loris have attracted the attention, of the Singhalese, who ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... said the first clerk, descending from his perch with an air of good-will, and requesting the visitor's name ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... a parrot belonging to King Henry VIII. having been kept in a room next the Thames, in his palace at Westminster, had learned to repeat many sentences from the boatmen and passengers. One day sporting on its perch, it unluckily fell into the water. The bird had no sooner discovered its situation, than it called out aloud, 'A boat, twenty pounds for a boat.' A waterman happening to be near the place where the parrot was floating, immediately ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... up beside the porch of the ranch-house and Anne found the family waiting to receive them. She jumped from her perch and greeted Polly, then smiled at Mr. and Mrs. Brewster as the girl introduced her. Even Sary felt flattered at the kindly greeting accorded her by this ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... warriors were busy with this task we will return to the boy Prince, who, when the fog lifted and the sun came out, wakened from his sleep and began to climb down from his perch in the tree. But the terrifying cries of the people, mingled with the shouts of the rude warriors, caused him to pause and ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... sound you ever heard—she was mad as a hornet, too." The General's swift chuckle caught him. "'Hyer,' she said it," he repeated. "'Hyer.'" He liked to say it, evidently. "I stood holding my cap in my hand, so tame by this time you could have put me on a perch in a cage, for the pluck of the girl was as fascinating as her looks. I spoke up like ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... from one thing to another, like a real bird already. When you can't answer one thing, off to another, and, from your new perch on the hawthorn, talk as if you were still on the topmost branch ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... Every creature of the Northland Hastens forth to look and listen, Listen to the songs of gladness, To the harp of Wainamoinen. All the beasts that haunt the woodlands Fall upon their knees and wonder At the playing of the minstrel, At his miracles of concord. All the songsters of the forests Perch upon the trembling branches, Singing to the wondrous playing Of the harp of Wainamoinen. All the dwellers of the waters Leave their beds, and eaves, and grottoes, Swim against the shore and listen To the playing of the minstrel, To the harp of Wainamoinen. ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... "Fire! Fire! Fire!" Hannigan had flung his pipe frenziedly from him because his lungs demanded room. He tumbled down from his perch, swung over the fence, and ran shouting towards the front-door of the Trescotts'. Then he hammered on the door, using his fists as if they were mallets. Mrs. Trescott instantly came to one of the windows on the second floor. ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... the seams of his sacerdotal vestments, and small tassels of grass volunteer to ornament the folds of his priestly drapery, and golden showers of blossoms from some more hardy plant fall from his ample sleeve-cuffs. Little birds perch and chitter and wipe their beaks unconcernedly, now on the tip of his nose and now on the point of his mitre, while the world below goes on its way pretty much as it did when the good saint was alive, and, in despair of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... tight to his hazardous perch, it looked utterly deserted. The ride had been nightmare-like, fraught every second with peril. Several times the whip of wind had come near tearing him loose; the cold air of the upper layers had numbed his fingers, his whole body; he was chilled and, ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... the parrot on the back with the perch which he used as a baton. Blinking and muttering, the bird performed his tricks, and was duly rewarded and returned to his home of iron. "She'll be wanting to take you home with her, but you're not ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... another lad from his perch. "Mad dogs wont drink, and this one is lapping out of a tub ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... still darker, are slightly bronzed at the tips. Their singularly long legs are of a pale flesh colour, while the web on the foot is very much arched near the toes, giving greater pliability to the foot and a power of grasping, which enables them to perch on trees. The head and bill, the latter of a pale ash colour, are both large. When on the wing they make a peculiar though pleasing whistling sound, that can be heard at a great distance,* and which changes as they alight, into a sort of chatter. Their perching on trees is performed in a very clumsy ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... its masterly workmanship, when Signora Caterina, the wife of the Count, entered into the room where those noblemen were, together with one of her sons, who had on his wrist one of those green birds—called in Verona "terrazzani,"[7] because they make their nests on the ground—which learn to perch on the wrist, like hawks. It happened, then, that, while she stood with the others contemplating the picture, the bird, seeing the extended arm and wrist of the painted Child, flew to perch upon it; but, not having been able ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... potable gold outside the tree, so that, as she looked up, the mellow green leaves of the catalpa, coming between her and the bright sky and glowing air, shone like transparent gold—staircase upon staircase of great exotic translucent leaves, with specks of lovely blue sky that seemed to come down and perch among the top branches. Charming as these sights were, contrast doubled their beauties; for all these dimples of bright blue and flakes of translucent gold were eyed from the cool and ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... to see. Without hesitation and without sitting down he poured the basin full of water upon the stone, when straightway it began to blow and rain, and such a storm was caused as had been foretold. And when God had appeased the storm, the birds came to perch upon the pine, and sang their joyous songs up above the perilous spring. But before their jubilee had ceased there came the knight, more blazing with wrath than a burning log, and making as much noise as if he were chasing a lusty stag. As soon as they espied each other they rushed together and ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... aloofly, with a coldness which bordered on hostility, as she flipped her mask into its pocket on top of the gill-pack. Below his rocky perch she came to a halt, her feet slightly apart in the sand, an impish twist to her lips as ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... was in Illinois in the latter part of May. The green grass was springing from the ground, the "Johnny-jump-ups" were in blossom, the trees were bursting into leaf, and the woods were full of feathered songsters. There was a redbird that would come every morning about sunup and perch himself in the tall black-oak tree in our company street, and for perhaps an hour he would practice on his impatient, querulous note, that said, as plain as a bird could say, "Boys, boys! get up! get up! get up!" It became a standing remark among ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... tells; and the tiny victim, hurled from its high perch—after making several somersaults in the air—falls right into the jaws of that hungry savage at the bottom of the tree. Wolf makes his ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... knew what it was. It was the stand of a rocket. The confused, incongruous memories still possessed him up to the very moment of a fierce but familiar sound; and an instant after the rocket left its perch and went up into endless space like a starry arrow aimed at the stars. March thought suddenly of the signs of the last days and knew he was looking at the apocalyptic meteor of something like ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... is. I ain't findin' no fault with him; all is, I thought he was kind of big for the shelf; but then birds do perch on dreadful little places." Mrs. Babcock, full of persistency in exposing herself to rebuffs, was very sensitive and easily cowed by one. "Let me see—he's quite old. Your grandfather bought him, didn't he?" said she, ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... properly encouraged, you would very likely be willing to lend your helpful assistance to the Dear Old Team. And he said: 'Bless you, Amy, for them glad tidings. All is not lost, With Clint Thayer to help us, victory may once more perch upon our pennant!' Or maybe it ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the athlete made the heavy machine spring and quiver with every stroke; while the mignon grey figure with the laughing face, and the golden curls blowing from under the little pink-banded straw hat, simply held firmly to her perch, and let the treadles whirl round beneath her feet. Mile after mile they flew, the wind beating in her face, the trees dancing past in two long ranks on either side, until they had passed round Croydon and were approaching Norwood once more from ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in the morning and the late afternoon. During the hottest part of the day they perch in trees and hold a concert, if such a term may be applied to a ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... strain of all, and more trying to the nerves than anything they had to endure in the clear light of day. It was a never-to-be forgotten ordeal in the lives of the good folk of Kimberley. From his high and dangerous perch on the conning tower the bugler ever and anon blew his bugle, suggesting to the scared housemaid the psychological moment for a plunge beneath the bed. On each application of the fuse to Long Tom the bugle rang out in clarion tones its warning to seek cover. It made plaintive melody ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... sister, he does not approve of her. In looking Aline-ward, his face seems to become perfectly flat, like a slab of stone, features almost disappearing, except his slit of a mouth. "Nice, quiet man! So contented with his uncomfortable perch at his master's feet!" But—when the slightest mishap befalls the Dragon, and his services are needed as doctor or surgeon, he lets bottled-up steam escape. Without a word, he sets to work like a demon, accomplishing what he has to do in about half the time our best chauffeurs have ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... sanctuary splendour, not a sight Able to face an owl's, they still are dight By the blue-eyed nations in empurpled vests, And crowns, and turbans. With unladen breasts, Save of blown self-applause, they proudly mount To their spirit's perch, their being's high account, Their tiptop nothings, their dull skies, their thrones— Amid the fierce intoxicating tones. Of trumpets, shoutings, and belaboured drums, And sudden cannon. Ah! how all this hums, In wakeful ears, like uproar past and gone— Like thunder clouds that spake ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... hour-glass, the northern and southern portions being connected by a winding strait, so crooked that it requires the constant effort of the pilot to prevent the little steamer from running aground. There used to be fine fishing in it,—large perch, bass, and a species of fresh-water salmon often weighing ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... partridges, quails, pheasants and pigeons; choice water fowl, with all their strange varieties, are caught in this huge family net. Beef, veal, mutton and venison, of the most select kinds and quality, roll bounteously to this grand consumer. The teeming riches of the Chesapeake bay, its rock, perch, drums, crocus, trout, oysters, crabs, and terrapin, are drawn hither to adorn the glittering table of the great house. The dairy, too, probably the finest on the Eastern Shore of Maryland—supplied by cattle of the best English stock, imported for the purpose, pours its rich donations ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... of food which these people eat at a meal is prodigious: I have seen one man devour two or three fishes as big as a perch; three bread-fruits, each bigger than two fists; fourteen or fifteen plantains or bananas, each of them six or seven inches long, and four or five round; and near a quart of the pounded bread-fruit, which is as substantial ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... struggle between science and the classics appears to be drawing to a close, with victory about to perch on the banner of science, as a perusal of almost any university or college catalogue shows. While a limited knowledge of both Greek and Latin is important for the correct use of our own language, the amount till recently required, in my judgment, has been absurdly out of ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... is used by the mills. But the blue lake is as beautiful as if it were never useful. On its shore enough grand old pines are left to dream under of forests primeval, of Indian wigwams, and of canoes on the bright water; for the red men knew very well the hiding places of the perch and of the pickerel. So did the white men who chose the region of the Merrimac for their new home. In the "Maids of Attitash" is ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... as that?" he thought. "Does Ska know that I am so near gone that he dares come down and perch upon my carcass?" And even then a grim smile touched those swollen lips as into the savage mind came a sudden thought-the cunning of the wild beast at bay. Closing his eyes he threw a forearm across them to ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... slowly. 'Perhaps in a hundred years, in some flourishing town where I discovered nothing but wilderness, they will commission a second-rate sculptor to make a fancy statue of me. And I shall stand in front of the Stock Exchange, a convenient perch for birds, to look eternally upon the shabby deeds of ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... apprehensive it may even drop its burden and begin a search for insects with the air of one who had never even dreamed of building a nest. Even when unsuspicious it will not always go directly to the nest. From an outhouse I once watched a Blue Jay, with a twig, change its perch more than thirty times before going to the fork where its ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... down with a sigh. His eyes fell on the parrot. It annoyed him that the parrot should immediately turn over and look at him upside down. It also annoyed him that "Satan," an evil-looking raven, was evidently preparing to descend from his perch and ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... until the sun had gone half through the day did the weight reach the bottom. Then he hauled up the line a little way, and almost before it was still, he felt a pull. And he hauled it up, and it was a mighty sea perch. This he killed, but did not let down his line a second time, for in that way it would become evening. He cut a hole in the lower jaw of the fish, and put in a cord to carry it with. And when he took it on his head, it was so long that the ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown
... and don't miss!" cried Seth, hastily following Sol, who had climbed to the top of the dresser as a good perch from which to view ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... watercourses, gliding with a glassy current over swaying reeds. Through this we pass, and leave Bevagna to the right, and ascend one of those long gradual roads which climb the hills where all the cities of the Umbrians perch. The view expands, revealing Spello, Assisi, Perugia on its mountain buttress, and the far reaches northward of the Tiber valley. Then Trevi and Spoleto came into sight, and the severe hill-country above Gubbio in part disclosed itself. Over Spoleto the fierce ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... An insecure perch for the radiant wanderer. The inhospitable saurian dives with embarrassing suddenness and dips the airy visitor into the "rank water." The butterfly finds no charm in the gloomy place and flies away, which less ethereal wanderers might likewise be fain to do. Now and then ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... boys came back they brought three little sunfish, two perch, and one funny-looking fish with horns, which ...
— Uncle Robert's Geography (Uncle Robert's Visit, V.3) • Francis W. Parker and Nellie Lathrop Helm
... all do as they please, and yet somehow act in concert, and all chatter all the time. Now they have alighted, every one, upon the bank of snow that edges the pond, each scraping a little hollow in which to perch. Now every perch is vacant again, for they are all in motion; each moment increases the jangle of shrill voices,—since a boy's outdoor whisper to his nearest crony is as if he was hailing a ship in the offing,—and what they ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... to speak, then settled by our forefathers, they were driven again and again. Now and then they would meet the English with something like equal numbers, and then the eagle of victory would proudly perch upon the stripes and stars. And so they went on as best they could, hoping and fighting until they came to the dark and sombre gloom of ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... have a look!" he cried; and upon their joining him, he began to spread out his catch, so as to have an exhibition of the silvery bass—the brilliant, salmon-shaped fish whose sharp back fins proved to a certainty that they were a kind of sea perch. ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... flush up at the words, and run to perch on her father's knee and put her hand over ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... one after all—at any rate the only one available. Old alligator rolled off his perch and started for me. Yussuf timed his own assault to correspond. They would have landed on me simultaneously, if Suliman had not reminded me that madness is a safe passport nearly anywhere ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... to his ears by the wind. Above the splintered mast a sail rent to tatters was waving; suddenly the ropes that still held it gave way, and it disappeared in the darkness of the night like a vast sea-bird. At the same moment a violent crash was heard, and cries of distress. Dantes from his rocky perch saw the shattered vessel, and among the fragments the floating forms of the hapless sailors. Then all ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... prepare my sermons. By this method I had a treasury of texts from which I could draw every week. Let my readers be careful to notice that word "Text." I have known men to prepare an elaborate essay, theological, ethical or sociological, and then to perch a text from the ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... you," cried the rider on the springs, slipping from her perch and stepping out beside the buggy. So we journeyed for half a mile. The horse, under constant urging, jogged along, while the spring rider and I trotted side by side over the well-made pike. Then Miss Belle drew rein in front of a ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... and seems very happy and contented, swinging there on his perch. He likes to be talked to, and can answer very plain. If you say to him, "How do you do, Poll?" he will answer you, "Quite well, thank you, and how are you?" Poll is quite a companion, ...
— Child-Land - Picture-Pages for the Little Ones • Oscar Pletsch
... of Mackinaw opposite Bois Blanc Island. At its mouth is a village containing two steam saw mills and one water saw mill. A light-house stands a mile or two east from this point. Brook-trout, bass, pike, pickerel, and perch, are caught at the entrance of the river. In the fall and spring numerous water-fowl resort to the upper forks of the river and to the small lakes forming its sources. These lakes also abound with a great variety of fish, which ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... relations were badly strained. He was too fat and soft to use snowshoes or skis, so we loaded him on a light truck and started for the buffalo farm. We stalled time and again, and he sat in lordly indifference while we pushed and shoveled out. We seemed hopelessly anchored in one drift, and from his perch where he sat swaddled up like a mummy came his 'Vy don't you carry a portable telephone so ve couldt hook it over the vires and call for them to come and pull us oudt?' One of the rangers replied, 'It would be nice for us to telephone ourselves to please pull us oudt. We ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... snowflakes fell, the mother said, "Go, Snow-white, and bolt the door," and then they sat round the hearth, and the mother took her spectacles and read aloud out of a large book, and the two girls listened as they sat and spun. And close by them lay a lamb upon the floor, and behind them upon a perch sat a white dove with its head ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... perhaps owing in a great measure to the presence of the whisky-keg, which the old warrior ever and anon took from its perch among the packs behind him, and applied to his lips, sorely, as it appeared, against the will of his companion, who seemed to remonstrate with him against a practice so unbecoming a warrior, while in the heart of a foeman's country, and not a little also against ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... phrase, a person spoke of "swiping Caesar's dope"; or of making Caesar "come off his perch," you would see that something fine in the thought had vanished. Practise expressing your ideas as attractively ...
— Manners And Conduct In School And Out • Anonymous
... lofty perch until her cheek lay along his hair, and they passed into the kitchen, where he set her down with ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... slid from his exposed perch and safely gained the concealing shelter of the lower tree tops before the spy straightened up again. Willie climbed on down the tree and joined Roy at ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... beautiful white bird, Webfooted, not unlike a dove in size And plumage (probably it might have erred Upon its course), passed oft before their eyes, And tried to perch, although it saw and heard The men within the boat, and in this guise It came and went, and fluttered round them till Night fell:—this seemed a better ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... heels together and thinking idly of Major Dabney and certain disquieting rumors lately come to Paradise, when the tinkling drip of the spring into the pool at the foot of his perch was ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... primed, bruised the priming, and covered the vent. Then he took his range steadily, quietly. There was a brisk wind blowing from the south—he must allow for that; but the wind was stopped somewhat in its course by the Perch Rock—he must ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... flitting about it, and you turn dull pain into shattering agony. The vicar's little study, with the rows of books he had made me know and love with some small measure of his own learning and passion, was the perch and seed-bowl of my cage, the things in it, after my sweet mother and saucy Kate, that made life possible, but still part of the cage, and it would have maddened me to hop and twitter there in sight of free men with arms in ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... eagerness to those frequent trips with his father "to the place where Mother dear went to heaven." From his perch on his father's shoulders he could look vast distances into the underbrush and catch glimpses of the wild life therein; when the last nut had been distributed to the squirrels in the clearing, he would follow a flash of blue that was a jay high up among the evergreen ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... for him." On the acquittal of a prisoner, the guards and the butchers, everybody, embraces him with enthusiasm; Weber is greeted again and again for more than a hundred yards; they cheer to excess. Each wants to escort the prisoner; the cab of Mathon de la Varenne is invaded; "they perch themselves on the driver's seat, at the doors, on top, and behind."[3196]—A few even display strange fits of tact. Two of the butchers, still covered with blood, who lead the chevalier de Bertrand home, insist on going up stairs with him to witness the joy of his family; ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... wayfarer for the cries of hawks and crows, or the bleating of the mountain flocks. After they had reconnoitred the neighborhood, and finished their singular discourse, they descended from their airy perch, and returned to their prisoners. The captain posted three of them at three naked sides of the mountain, while he remained to guard us with what ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... vindictive pouter to survive his less lucky comrades, and, escaping among the birds who are duly chronicled as "getting away," to perch, full of resentment at the probable extinction of his species, in the fashionable quarter of London. He would there witness a grand act of retaliation. He would learn how Belgravia avenges Hornsey and Shepherd's Bush. He would see the ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... at the moment flew from a mirror, and settled upon her shoulder. "Here is a new friend," she observed, while she made him perch upon her hand: "he is a present for the children. What a dear he is! Look at him! When I feed him, he flutters with his wings, and pecks so nicely. He ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... rows of books, on the writing table,—very orderly in consequence of Guildea's holiday—and on the uncovered cage of the parrot. Guildea went up to the cage. Napoleon was sitting humped up on his perch with his feathers ruffled. His long toes, which looked as if they were covered with crocodile skin, clung to the bar. His round and blinking eyes were filmy, like old eyes. Guildea stared at the bird very hard, and then clucked with his tongue against his teeth. Napoleon shook himself, lifted ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the gay blandishments of the Nightingale, and incontinently remarking: "Time alone can disclose what may be the end of this frivolity and talk!" After the flowery season of summer was gone, and the black time of winter was come, thorns took the station of the Rose, and the raven the perch of the Nightingale. The storms of autumn raged in fury, and the foliage of the grove was shed upon the ground. The cheek of the leaf was turned yellow, and the breath of the wind was chill and blasting. The gathering ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... "Yes," sleepily, for in spite of the cold and hunger she was getting drowsy; it must have been long past her bedtime. We had sat on our dreary perch three hours, and there were six more to wait. I noticed that the sound of my voice tranquillized the children; so I repeated hymns slowly and monotonously until they nodded against me and fell into weary slumbers. "Thank God!" I murmured when I perceived this, and I leaned back against the ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... forlorn look and an empty ring. Pete sat on his perch grim and curious. He seemed to regard the bustle and hammering ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... streams, though in the lakes they grow too gross to take the fly. Many attempts have so far failed to acclimatise the salmon. The ova may be hatched out successfully, but the fish when turned out into the rivers disappears. The golden carp, however, the perch, and the rainbow trout take readily to New Zealand. The hare increases in size and weight, and has three and four leverets at a birth. The pheasant has spread from end to end of the Colony. The house-fly drives back the loathsome flesh-fly or blue-bottle, to the ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... chase That thought away, turn, and with watchful eyes Feed it 'mid Nature's old felicities, Rocks, rivers, and smooth lakes more clear than glass Untouched, unbreathed upon. Thrice happy guest, If from a golden perch of aspen spray (October's workmanship to rival May) The pensive warbler of the ruddy breast That moral teaches by a heaven-taught lay, Lulling the year, with all its cares, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... your perch, Eugene," he said, "and tell us how you came to drive Count Vassilan's taxi, and ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... and pausing in her song, climbed on to the side of the couch. She held out one little hand for the dove to perch upon, placed the other lightly on Antonina's shoulder, and pressed her fresh, rosy lips to girl's faded cheek. 'I and my bird have come to make Antonina well ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... upon the issues of the present campaign, and upon them it may be bootless to speculate. No one may foretell the fortunes of war—I mean where victory will ultimately perch in this frightful struggle. We are environed and invaded by not less than 600,000 men in arms, and we have not in the field more than 250,000 to oppose them. But we have the advantage of occupying the interior position, always affording ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... to the west a range of broken hills rose to 500 feet parallel to our course and five miles distant. Halted in the bed of the river, which formed fine reaches of water, with dry sand-bars between; caught several catfish and perch; mussels were abundant, the form of the shell much longer than I have before seen in the other parts of the river. At noon: Barometer, 29.80; thermometer, 104 degrees; at 3.0 p.m.: Barometer, 29.65; thermometer, 93 degrees. At 3.30 steered south ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... felt for their escape, a hearty meal was made, the watcher was sent out to perch himself where he could look out unseen, and the day's ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... "Will the bird perch for no longer than this?" said the doctor, turning with humourous appeal to Mrs. Derrick who ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... in Parliament could be regarded as a doing of something. And he had owned himself to be a man almost penniless; he had spoken of himself as being utterly reckless,—as being one whose standing in the world was and must continue to be a perch on the edge of a precipice, from which any accident might knock him headlong. Alice believed in her heart that this last profession or trade to which he had applied himself, was becoming as nothing to him,—that he received from it no certain income;—no ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... dove flies along the rope, pouring forth a tail of fire, down the nave, out at the west gates, over the heads of the crowd, reaches the carro, ignites a fusee there, turns, and, still propelled by its fiery tail, whizzes along the cord again, till it has reached its perch on the pole in the choir, when the fire goes out and it remains stationary. But in the meantime the match ignited by the dove has communicated with the squibs and crackers attached to the carro, and the whole mass of painted wood and ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... crackling, thudding sound. Leo had struck the ground below. Leo was dead, a mangled mass of flesh and bone as I had pictured him. I could not bear it. My nerve and human dignity came back. I would not wait until, my strength exhausted, I slid from my perch as a wounded bird falls from a tree. No, I would follow him at once, ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... through the adjacent meadows, and reaching almost around the village, finally empties into the Kennebec. Its waters are deep and clear, and flow over a rough, gravelly bed, and under high banks, and through many a little nook where the perch and sunfish love to hide. This creek, about half a mile from its mouth, branches off, forming two streams, the smaller of which flows south, parallel with the river for a short distance, and finally empties ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... viol-string. This sound has been supposed to proceed from the action of the air, as the bird dives swiftly through it with open mouth; but this supposition is rendered improbable by the fact that the European species makes a similar sound while sitting on its perch. It has also been alleged that the diving motion of this bird is an act designed to intimidate those who seem to be approaching his nest; but this cannot be true, because the bird performs the manoeuvre when he has no nest to defend. This habit is peculiar to the male, and it is probably one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... of the legacy, to stay near town till affairs were wound up. They told me, with a view to reconcile me perhaps, of a trout stream with a decent inn near it; an unknown stream in Kent. It seems a junior member of the firm is an angler, at least he sometimes catches pike or perch in the Medway some way from the stream where the trout rise in audacious security from artificial lures. I stipulated for a clerk to come down with any papers to be signed, and started at once for Victoria. I decline to tell the name of my find, firstly because the ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... go back to the pool, near the home of his enemy, the puma, as there was a large number of places for him to choose from. So one night, when everything was still and silent, and even the chattering parrots were asleep on one leg, the monkey stole down softly from his perch, and washed off the honey and the leaves, and came out from his bath in his own proper skin. On his way to breakfast he met a rabbit, and stopped for ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... later—bright weather.—An unusual melodiousness, these days, (last of April and first of May) from the blackbirds; indeed all sorts of birds, darting, whistling, hopping or perch'd on trees. Never before have I seen, heard, or been in the midst of, and got so flooded and saturated with them and their performances, as this current month. Such oceans, such successions of them. Let me make a list of those I ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... white dove flies along the rope, pouring forth a tail of fire, down the nave, out at the west gates, over the heads of the crowd, reaches the carro, ignites a fusee there, turns, and, still propelled by its fiery tail, whizzes along the cord again, till it has reached its perch on the pole in the choir, when the fire goes out and it remains stationary. But in the meantime the match ignited by the dove has communicated with the squibs and crackers attached to the carro, and the whole ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... growing more rapturous until finally they reach their climax as he goes abruptly skyward. Then his fluttering wings close, and he drops from a height of perhaps forty or fifty feet, to alight again on his original perch and resume his tender serenade, singing now in a sweet, dreamy way, sounding just like a ripple of moonlit water looks. This love-song of the goldfinch is the climax of the summer's bird-song. If there were none other, the summer would be ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... imagine what Frank's feelings were, as he stood on the deck of the Julia Burton, and found himself once more in sight of his native village. Familiar objects met his eye on every side. There were the weeds that surrounded the perch-bed, where he, in company with George and Harry Butler, was fishing when he made the acquaintance of Charles Morgan, who was afterward the leader of the Regulators. Above the perch-bed was the bass-ground, and to the left was Reynard's Island, ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... these enthusiastic pilgrims, had yet other things to show them. There was the back garden. Here was the green pottery seat upon which the unphilosophic philosopher had smoked his pipe—a singularly cold and uncomfortable perch. And here was where Mrs. Carlyle had tried to build a tent and to imagine herself in the country. And here was the famous walnut tree—or at least the stumpy bole thereof. And here was where the dog Nero was buried, best known of ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... grove Owns faithfully the bond of love. The flocks of ewes, beneath the shade, Around their gallant rams are laid; And Venus bids the birds awake To pour their song through plain and brake. Hark! the noisy pools reply To the swan's hoarse harmony; And Philomel is vocal now, Perch'd upon a poplar-bough. Thou scarce would'st think that dying fall Could ought but love's sweet griefs recall; Thou scarce would'st gather from her song The tale of brother's barbarous wrong. She sings, but I must ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... trout was found here, and shad and herring were among the annual visitors; but the lake is now filled with the black or Oswego bass, pickerel, muscalonge and perch. ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... me with anxious interest while I gently pulled her birds from their perch and transferred them to her hands. Then she kissed them, well-pleased, and with a gentle hesitation in ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... Pernety (1763) all the birds there appear to have been much tamer than at present; he states that the Opetiorhynchus would almost perch on his finger; and that with a wand he killed ten in half an hour. At that period the birds must have been about as tame as they now are at the Galapagos. They appear to have learnt caution more slowly at these latter islands than at ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... with sad stories of unappreciated lives and fond hopes unrealized, never broke in upon his peace. He was not pressed for time. No frivolous dame of tarnished fame sought to share with him his perilous perch. The people on a slow schedule, ten minutes late, never irritated his temper. His correspondence never got in ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... concealment in a coppice, an owl settled on the bush under which he was hid. At the sight of this animal the prince's pursuers never thought of searching the spot, conceiving it impossible that such a bird would perch where any human being was concealed. Jengis escaped, and ever after his countrymen held the white owl sacred, and every one wore a plume of its feathers on his head. The Kalmucs continue the custom to this day, at all their great festivals; and some tribes have an idol in the form of ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... Here the nightingale perch'd on the throne, The poet and prince of the grove, Inviting the lingering morn, Taught the bard the sweet descant of love: And there, from the brake by the rill, When night's sober steps have retir'd, Ten thousand gay choristers thrill Sweet ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... perpendicular. prize, to value. plum, a fruit. pray, to supplicate. place, site; spot. prey, a spoil. plaice, a fish. pore, a small opening. please, to gratify. pour, to cause to flow. pleas, excuses. poll, the head. bell, a sounding vessel. pole, a rod; a perch. ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... all but penniless. The pious, nonconformist soul of Sir Geoffrey Lupton—the wealthy uncle from whom he had had great expectations—had been so stirred to anger by Richard's vicious and besotted ways that he had left every guinea that was his, every perch of land, and every brick of edifice to Richard's half-sister Ruth. At present things were not so bad for the worthless boy. Ruth worshipped him. He was a sacred charge to her from their dead father, who, knowing the stoutness of her soul and the feebleness of ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... to go ashore was refused. Here we saw the Loriotte, which sailed with us from Santa Barbara, coming slowly in with a light sea-breeze, which sets in towards afternoon, having been becalmed off the point all the first part of the day. We took several fish of various kinds, among which cod and perch abounded, and F——, (the ci-devant second mate,) who was of our number, brought up with his hook a large and beautiful pearl-oyster shell. We afterwards learned that this place was celebrated for shells, and that a small schooner ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... sound startled me! A falling leaf; a blade of grass moved by an insect; a snake or a lizard gliding out of my path; the squeal of a monkey; the fluttering of a bird's wings as it flew up to its perch, all subjected ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... otherwise. In Melbourne it is given to Lotella callarias, Guenth., and in New South Wales to several fishes of the genus Serranus. Lotella is a genus of the family Gadidae, to which the European Cod belongs; Serranus is a Sea perch (q.v.). See Rock Cod, Black Rock Cod, Red Rock Cod, Black Cod, Elite Cod, Red Cod, Murray Cod, Cloudy Bay Cod, Ling, ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... amusing. One sees a little of everything here. Le monde qui passe—it makes life more diverting; it helps to kill the time. I look out from my perch, like a bird—a very old one, and caged"—and he shook forth a great laugh from beneath ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... be the only living things about him. Just as my foot touched the ground a double report rang out, and my dog gave a plaintive and prolonged howl. Feeling that all was over, and that no weapons could be of any use, I climbed up again into my perch and looked out. The poor wretch was lying face downwards writhing in his blood; the assassins were reloading their muskets as ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... How cam'st thou hither. Tell me, and wherefore? The Orchard walls are high, and hard to climbe, And the place death, considering who thou art, If any of my kinsmen find thee here, Rom. With Loues light wings Did I ore-perch these Walls, For stony limits cannot hold Loue out, And what Loue can do, that dares Loue attempt: Therefore thy kinsmen are ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... skulker took advantage of the cessation of firing to tumble down from his perch and fly for his life. The indefatigable Smith broke away from Thurstane, dashed after the pitiful fugitive, leaned over him as he ran, and ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... along the high ridge pole, swallows, king birds, jays, and pigeons gathered under the bright blue day to scream, chatter or coo their ideas of life, each according to the speech of its kind. And sometimes a cruel-eyed, hook-beaked, trim, well-bred looking hawk would perch there on the roof—quite alone, let me tell you—and gaze around as if wondering where all the other birds could have gone to! And once in a while also a splendid white-headed eagle would come down out of the blue, and wing ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... this, Clement was determined to wait no longer. He would go to the Abbey at once, and ascertain the cause of Margaret's delay. He rang the bell, went into the park, and ran along the avenue to the perch. Lights were shining in Mr. Dunbar's windows, but the great hall-door was ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... and finally the friend was produced, en costume de ville, but equally jovial,and Italian enough—a brave Lucernese, who had spent half of his life between Bellinzona and Camerlata. For ten francs this worthy man's perch behind the luggage was made mine as far as Bellinzona, and we separated with reciprocal wishes for good weather on the morrow. To-morrow is so manifestly determined to be as fine as any other 30th of September since the weather became on this planet a topic of conversation ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... wild life he was leading, return East, and find another calling. This was precisely what Will himself had in mind, and persuasion was not needed. In his reply he asked that the wedding-day be set, and then he handed Trotter his resignation from the lofty perch of ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... be got to work as soon as they hop off the roost," answered Pan, as he spread a little more of the hay on the floor in front of the perch of the Bird family. ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... on his back, his fine manly nose vibrating with melody; Wind-River was cooing in a gentle, choked-to-death sort of fashion, on the second bunk; Tom was coiled in the corner, the size of half a barrel; the Judge slept on his perch; Robert reposed under the cook-stove with just a front paw sticking out. It was one of them restful scenes our friends the poets sing about. It did appear ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... escape. They were whirled round and banged up against a cliff with the bottom of the canoe tipped to the rock and held there for a while, but fortunately did not turn over till an unusually tempestuous rush of water reached up and lifted the canoe from its perch down into the water again. Then tying a rope at either end they clambered out to a precarious perch on a slope in the cliff. By careful manoeuvring they succeeded in turning the canoe round and getting in again, thus escaping from the trap. Joe and Gilbert came through without mishap. ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... he paused in doubt and trembling. In that exposed and comfortless perch, the lifeless street on one hand, the black mystery of the neglected park on the other, he was seized and shaken by a sudden revulsion of feeling like a sickness of his very soul. Physical fear had nothing to do with this, for he was quite ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... pounding furiously from the sudden effort of muscles long unused, and his nerves were tingling strangely, but he clung to his perch until the period of weakness passed and then planned what he had better do. Inside of an hour every policeman in Sarajevo would be warned by Herr Windt to look out for a man with a beard, wearing a sleeping suit and ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... his bare heels together and thinking idly of Major Dabney and certain disquieting rumors lately come to Paradise, when the tinkling drip of the spring into the pool at the foot of his perch was ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... fellows, absolutely worn out, had crawled to a narrow ledge under the brink of the bank to seek a little shelter from the pitiless storm. There they had lain, growing weaker and weaker, until unable to cling any longer to their precarious perch they had slipped into the trench to lie among the human excreta, urine and other filth. They knew where they were but were so far gone as to be unable to lift a finger on their own behalf. Their condition, when we fished ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... how much better I'm off," observed Van, coming in to perch on the edge of the bed while Percy was hurrying all sorts of garments into the trunk with a quick hand. "I tell you, Percy, I struck good luck when I chose father's business. Now I don't have to run like a dog at the beck of ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... kept up. Seth Green has never operated on the Thames. Were he to take it under his wing, a sum in the single rule of three points to the conclusion that all London would take its seat under these willows and extract ample sustenance from the invisible herds. If perch and dace can hold their own against the existing pressure and escape extinction, how would they multiply with the fostering aid of the spawning-box! We are not deep in the mysteries of the angle, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... saw their cabman sitting idly on his perch and waiting for his quarter of an hour to pass. The Mansions looked on to a square, a long narrow strip of gardens, filled with lofty bushes rather than trees. The spy's cab had taken a sweep round these gardens and was now drawing up on the other side, exactly ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... till evening, as its appearance was very inviting. Its FAUNA and FLORA, however, were poor in the extreme. The only specimens of quadrupeds, birds, fish and cetacea were a few wild boars, stormy petrels, albatrosses, perch and seals. Here and there thermal springs and chalybeate waters escaped from the black lava, and thin dark vapors rose above the volcanic soil. Some of these springs were very hot. John Mangles held his thermometer in ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... of horses and a large rattling truck. He invaded the turmoil and tumble of the down-town streets and learned to breathe maledictory defiance at the police who occasionally used to climb up, drag him from his perch ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... be the fish noticed by Izaak Walton, called the Ruffe, or Pope, "a fish," says he, "that is not known in some rivers. He is much like the perch for his shape, and taken to be better than the perch, but will grow to be bigger than a gudgeon. He is an excellent fish, no fish that swims is of a pleasanter taste, and he is also excellent to enter a young angler, for ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... deemed heresy to doubt the fact. At this season, therefore, the sportsman provides himself with tame pigeon, which he fastens by a string to the cimeaux, in such a manner that the poor bird is obliged to keep perpetually on the wing, not being allowed rope enough to reach a perch. After three or four Sundays passed in this manner, the unfortunate decoy dies of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... constantly followed Muir, exciting my jealousy by his plainly expressed preference. Because of my bad shoulder the higher and steeper ascents of this very rugged region were impossible to me, and I must content myself with two thousand feet and even lesser climbs. My favorite perch was on the summit of a sugar-loaf rock which formed the point of a promontory jutting into the bay directly in front of my glacier, and distant from its face less than a quarter of a mile. It was a granite fragment which had evidently been broken off from ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... I do?" he asked, looking about him from his leafy perch with a glance of despair that would have been comical had the situation not been serious, for the bull, instead of accepting his defeat, stood under the ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... stand below to catch her I think I shall be able to release her," called Harriet from her perch in the tree. ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... and twenty-five pounds of grossness to boil down before making track weight, but the opening spring handicap was five months off, and Crimmins believed in the "slow and sure" adage. Major Calvert, his old weather-beaten duster fluttering in the wind, took his accustomed perch on the rail, while Garrison ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... no purpose. Suddenly the strain would cease, and while waiting for him to commence again, I would see him dart off to a lower tree, or into a thick undergrowth of Witch-Hazel. When I had withdrawn, he would resume his perch and again take up his song. At other times I have come abruptly upon him while singing on a low stump, without his seeming ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... was industrious, and worked hard to get the house finished in season. I think she must have been very tired when night came, and she flew away to her perch to rest till morning. I do not see how she could balance herself so nicely on one foot, as she slept with her head turned back, and half-hidden ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... Provence, where (still according to my information) it is the usual pastime of a Sunday afternoon. At Arles and Nimes it has a characteristic setting, but in the villages the patrons of the game make a circle of carts and barrels, on which the spectators perch themselves. I was surprised at the prevalence, in mild Provence, of the Iberian vice, and hardly know whether it makes the custom more respectable that at Nimes and Arles the thing is shabbily and imperfectly done. The bulls are rarely killed, and indeed often are bulls ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... so; but I believe the notion of fixing the attention by keeping the room empty, is a wholly mistaken one: I think it is just in the emptiest room that the mind wanders most; for it gets restless, like a bird, for want of a perch, and casts about for any possible means of getting out and away. And even if it be fixed, by an effort, on the business in hand, that business becomes itself repulsive, more than it need be, by the vileness of its associations; ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... green, without sign of the coming gold of perfection, when the minister mounted the top of the coach, to wait, silent and a little anxious, for the appearance of the coachman from the office, thrusting the waybill into the pocket of his huge greatcoat, to gather his reins, and climb heavily to his perch. A journey of four hours, through a not very interesting country, but along a splendid road, would carry him to the village where the soutar lived, and where James Blatherwick was parson! There a walk of about three miles awaited him—a long and somewhat weary way to the town-minister—accustomed ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... have happened had he kept his perch. The heap of gunpowder was too small to do serious damage—though he may well be excused for misdoubting this. But when Myra struck a match and challenged him for the last time, he called to her not to play the fool, and began ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Ants caught in it, as well as tufted seeds which have blown from the capitula of the Cichoriaceae. A Gad-fly, as big as a Blue bottle, falls into the trap before my eyes. She has barely alighted on the perilous perch when lo, she is held by the hinder tarsi! The Fly makes violent efforts to take wing; she shakes the slender plant from top to bottom. If she frees her hinder tarsi she remains snared by the front tarsi and has to begin all over again. I was doubting the possibility of her escape when, after ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... the walls of my study, at all the portraits of the friends of my life of active service above the shelves, and the old sixteenth-century Buddha, which Oda Neilson sent me on my last birthday, looking so stoically down from his perch to remind me how little all these things counted. I could not help remembering at the end that my friends at Voulangis had gone—that they were at that very moment on their way to Marseilles, that almost every one else I knew on this side of the water was either ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... them perched on the backs of cows, seeking for gadflies and other insects. Like many birds of these desert places, they fear so little the approach of man, that children often catch them in their hands. In the valleys of Aragua, where they are very common, we have seen them perch upon the hammocks on which we were ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... more, he leading with the huge brass "Dr. Munro" under his arm; then the little woman, and then this rather perturbed and bemuddled young man. He and his wife sat on the deal table in the consulting room, like a hawk and a turtle-dove on the same perch, while I leaned against the mantelpiece with my hands in my pockets. Nothing could be more prosaic and informal; but I knew very well that I was at a crisis of my life. Before, it was only a choosing between two roads. Now my main track had run suddenly to nothing, and ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... madly against wire fences, but I never knew a white goat to injure itself on a fence. Many a wild animal has died from fighting its shipping crate; but no wild goat ever did so. A white goat will walk up a forty-five degree plank to the roof of his house, climb all over it, and joyously perch on the peak; but no mountain sheep or deer of ours ever did so. They are afraid! Only the Himalayan tahr equals the white goat in climbing in captivity, and it will climb into the lower branches of an ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... much else that he had gleaned, Carnaby now climbed to the top of a tree where he had a favourite perch, and did some ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... is! Fire away, and don't miss!" cried Seth, hastily following Sol, who had climbed to the top of the dresser as a good perch from which to ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... literature none is of value except the first; for the connoisseur in bindings, only the last three. A classification of animals including classes of land animals and water animals would hardly suit a student of zoology, as it would associate with the shad and perch such differently organized creatures as the porpoise, whale, and seal. Yet such a classification might prove very suitable for ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office
... my love," remarked Lester, as the coachman closed the door on them and mounted to his perch again. ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... elm-trees, a horse-trough, and a sign-post in front;" where the Pickwickians sought assistance after the breakdown of the "four-wheeled chaise" which "separated the wheels from the body and the bin from the perch," but were inhospitably repulsed by the "red-headed man and the tall bony woman," who suggested that they had stolen the "immense horse" which had recently played Mr. Winkle such pranks. Finally, in a pleasant chat with the Rev. Cyril Grant, Vicar of Aylesford, and his curate, the ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... eyes to hear this avowal of his dependence; just as if a royal eagle, chained to a perch, should be forced to entreat a sparrow to become its purveyor. But I would not be lachrymose: I dashed off the salt drops, and busied myself ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... to the post, she slept. The other children looked up and said to each other, "Look at Hatt, she's done gone off agin!" Tired of their present play ground they trooped off in another direction, but the girl slept on heavily, never losing her hold on the post, or her seat on her perch. Behold here, in the stupid little negro girl, the future deliverer of hundreds of her people; the spy and scout of the Union armies; the devoted hospital nurse; the protector of hunted fugitives; the eloquent speaker in public meetings; the cunning eluder of pursuing man-hunters; ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... walls and the flooring, which were of porcelain, gleamed in the rays of thousands of golden lamps. The most glorious flowers, which could ring clearly, had been placed in all the passages. In the great hall there had been placed a golden perch on which the Nightingale sat. The little kitchen girl had received permission to stand by the door. All the court was in full dress, and all looked at the little gray bird ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... she was off duty. She went upstairs to her perch in the roof, and sat on her bed for over two hours. Then she came down again to the bureau with some bluish note-paper and envelopes in her hand, and, in response to the surprised question of the pink-frocked colleague ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... he had so assiduously hidden from the lady beside him, would be revealed. Jean's mouth was already open to speak. He waved her aside. She adhered to her post. He shouted to the postilion, and the huge, lumbering vehicle was set in motion. At the first turn of the wheels, Jean slipped from her perch, her dress caught in the spokes, and she ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... ceiling, and its bottom drawn out, the bird began to tremble, and turned quite white about the root of his bill: he then opened his mouth as if for breath, and respired quick, stood straighter up on his perch, hung his wings, spread his tail, closed his eyes, and appeared quite stiff and cataleptic for near half an hour, and at length with much trembling and deep ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... the cabman from his perch Towards the horned moon; I saw him dimly overhead Sail like ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 101, November 21, 1891 • Various
... time of it, no doubt, until the coming of the eighteen carat gold idol. Captain Jed had been boss of Denboro—self-appointed to that eminent position, but holding it nevertheless—and to be pushed from his perch by a city rival was disagreeable. If I knew him he would not be dethroned without a fight. There were likely to be some interesting and lively times in ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the corpse by a jerk of his head) tell about that job. G-d, how he used to laugh when he showed us how he fetched him off the perch!' ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... my line beyond The clote-leaves, wi' my withy wand, How I did watch, wi' eager look, My zwimmen cork, a-zunk or shook By minnows nibblen at my hook, A-thinken I should catch a breaece O' perch, or at the leaest some ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... a long rope. Only on one side of the boat was there a bamboo pole fixed lengthways. It did not seem to be a well-balanced boat, yet it sailed along at a great speed; and risky as the sport seemed, the sailor sat perfectly safe on his high and dangerous looking perch, ...
— Fil and Filippa - Story of Child Life in the Philippines • John Stuart Thomson
... from her perch. "I adore great men," she said; "when I go back, I shall make a pilgrimage to Oyster Bay. I wonder how many of us who weep over Great heart's grave would have voted for him if he had lived. In a sense ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... time at last came when I was no longer to rest on my lonely perch at the top of Elm Court. I had kept my terms, and was duly called to the Bar of the Middle ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... growled; the Cat spit; White Owl cried, "Who-oo-o," and flew down from his perch. In a twinkling Hortense was running down the hall, hand in hand with Highboy and Lowboy, behind ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo
... long French "eu" and a French "i." These words I am told mean, "Drunk again to-day also?" the "anc'uei" being a Piedmontese patois for "ancora oggi." The bird repeated these words three or four times over, and then turned round on its perch, to all appearance terra cotta again. The effect produced upon the drunkard was such that he could never again be prevailed upon to touch wine, and ever since this chapel has been the one most resorted to by people who wish to give ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... this place as a means of being nominated for Congress the next year; he was nominated and defeated. In 1840 he was engaged in another scheme to which we will give a moment's attention, as it resulted in giving him a seat on the Supreme Bench of the State, which he used merely as a perch from which ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... hog is what is termed the wood-hog: they are long in the leg, narrow on the back, short in the body, flat on the sides, with a long snout, very rough in their hair, in make more like a fish called a perch than anything I can describe. You may as well think of stopping a crow as those hogs. They will go a distance from a fence, take a run, and leap through the rails, three or four feet from the ground, turning themselves sidewise. These hogs suffer such hardships as no other animal could endure. ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... her, and there was an exceedingly obnoxious boy of about fourteen who sat upon the corner of a table and, with the assurance of a mounted gendarme, put all sorts of questions to me in a voice that would change suddenly from a bark to a bleat. I was seized with such a longing to knock him off his perch that I presently kept my eyes fixed upon the frying-pan so that I might not be tempted beyond my strength. The father was evidently too weak to contend with his horrible offspring. My interest in the man was at once awakened. ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... proteggerti, ospitarti, potr salvarti. Ascoltami. No, non andar da Silvia! Pagare il pane, il letto colla canzon gioconda che ti fiorisce sulle labbra bello ma bisogna conoscere che pan che letto quello. O Zanetto, se mi commovo perch t'amo come un bambinello che si vuoi salvare. Oh seguita a cantare del bosco fra le chiome. E se poi, quando la soglia d'un umil casetta vedrai sovra il lavoro china, una giovinetta da gli occhi neri e dai capelli d'oro, oh fermati cantore quello ...
— Zanetto and Cavalleria Rusticana • Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti, Guido Menasci, and Pietro Mascagni
... other men dug a trench all round, of three feet deep, in which the palisades were to be planted; and, our waggons, the bodys being taken off, and the fore and hind wheels separated by taking out the pin which united the two parts of the perch, we had ten carriages, with two horses each, to bring the palisades from the woods to the spot. When they were set up, our carpenters built a stage of boards all round within, about six feet high, for the men to stand ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... have our change of hope and fear, Small quarrels, reconcilements sweet: I'd perch by you to chirp and cheer, Or hop about on active feet And fetch ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... green aisles of woods, that were ever-shadowed and made fragrant with every various vegetable growth of this temperate northern clime; while the morning beam of the sun in heaven fell brightly aslant the leaves and branches; and the birds, that my lonely step startled from their perch or nest, flew from glen to glen, making with their song, save the murmur of the breeze in the boughs, the only sound I could hear. At length, the high-arched avenues of this immense forest-cathedral let me out upon the broad, open shore, where I saw and ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... work! They are almost like the shape of children's paper boats, high out of the water, over four feet freeboard and seven feet beam, and I'd say about twenty-five to thirty feet over all, with practically flat bottoms. Six or seven rowers perch on bamboo thwarts, level with top of the gunwale, and row with bamboos with flat round blades tied to their ends. They come stem on through the low surf on the harbour strand, then just as they are touching the shore, are swung broadside on, the natives spring out into the shoal water, and ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... some of the fittings still there. In the attic we found an old chest of letters—and, speaking of strange coincidences, a large number of those letters were written and signed by Daddy Wright. Away up in the back corner of the attic sat an old owl. He looked down on us from his perch in a reproving manner, to think we would disturb the haunts of the past in that crude way. He was a weird looking old fellow as he sat there, blinking his big yellow eyes, and I couldn't help thinking that the owl of wisdom perhaps a good many ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... memory had greatly failed him; while his bright green plumage was vast verging into a silvery gray He had but little left of that triumphant chuckle which used to provoke such laughter among the younkers; and day after day he would sit mute and moping on his perch, seldom answering the numerous questions that were put to him regarding the cause of his malady. Had any child of the family been sick, it could hardly have been treated with greater ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... Far different, however, was the impression it made upon me. I knew well why was that gathering around the house of Gayarre. I knew well the game they were about to pursue. I lingered but a moment upon my perch—long enough to perceive that the hunters were all ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... of their charm, and he would coax half words of wondrous wit from their little stammering lips. They made close friends with him at once, just as did the mesenges or blue tits who used to come from woods and orchards of Thornholm, in Lindsey, and perch upon him, to get or to ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... distances from each other, are composed of blocks piled together, or divided into regular and horizontal beds. On the summits of those situated near the Orinoco, flamingos, soldados,* (* The soldado (soldier) is a large species of heron.) and other fishing-birds perch, and look like men posted as sentinels. This resemblance is so striking, that the inhabitants of Angostura, soon after the foundation of their city, were one day alarmed by the sudden appearance of soldados and garzas, on a mountain towards the south. They believed they ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... cleared, each time, by the skin of his teeth. He got me so nervous that I couldn't look at the view. I couldn't look at anything but him. Every time he went sailing over one of those abysses my breath stood still, and when he grabbed for the perch he was going for, I grabbed too, in sympathy. And he was perfectly indifferent, perfectly unconcerned, and I did all the panting myself. He came within an ace of losing his life a dozen times, and I was so troubled about him that I would have shot him if I had had anything to do it with. But I ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sound, 'tis sweet, The hidden rush of eager feet Where robins flutter in the dust, Or perch upon ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... er hurry," squeaked "Little Jim," from his perch in the window, "fer Mandy Calline's ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... whose statue now stands on the Thames Embankment. Lord Randolph Churchill made that night what I suppose was the great speech of his life, for some two hours facing the Irish members waging a forensic battle, memorable for even the House of Commons. From my perch I looked directly into his face at a distance of not many feet as he confronted the Irish crowd. Rather short of stature, he was a compact figure, and his face had in it combative energy as the marked characteristic. He ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... road—possibly the track which we expected to find leading from Malham. Malham Tarn was not in sight, but we had learned that the water was about a mile in length and the only things to be seen there were two kinds of fish—perch and trout—-which often quarrelled and decimated each other. The weather was dull, and we had encountered several showers on our way, passing between the Parson's Pulpit to the left, rising quite 1,700 feet, and the Druid's Altar to our right; but we afterwards learned that it was a ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... ark let forth A palid dove To fly after the swart raven, Over the deep water, To quest whether the foaming sea Had of the green earth Yet any part laid bare. Wide she flew seeking her own will, Far she flew yet found no rest. Because of the flood With her feet she might not perch on land, Nor on the tree leaves light. For the steep mountain tops Were whelmed in waters. Then the wild bird went At eventide the ark to seek. Over the darling wave she flew Weary, to sink hungry To the hands of ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... of water-melons, which he has brought aboard "on spec," to vend among his fellow-passengers, hoping thereby to gain sufficient to defray the cost of his passage. Seated on whatever they can find to perch upon, near the canvas partition, all unmoved by the gay and stirring scenes before them, is a group of Mussulman pilgrims from some interior town, returning from a pilgrimage to Stamboul - fine-looking Osmanli graybeards, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... up a starling that had tumbled out of a nest," said Prissie, "and it was always perfectly tame, and would let me stroke it, and would perch on my hand. I had it for years. Do you think we could have ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... they soon learn (by association) to select the profitable one. They learn to discriminate cards with short words or with signs printed on them, coming down when the "Yes" card is shown, remaining on their perch when the card says "No." Bred to a forest life where alertness is a life-or-death quality, they are quick to respond to a sudden movement or to pick out some new feature in their surroundings. And what is true of vision ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... and many natives flocked down to the beach immediately the steamer arrived and at once held an outdoor market on the beach selling manioc, fish, clothes, pots of various kinds and other articles to the crew and passengers. A Congo flat fish of the perch family is found here, smoke dried and sold for food and ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... Do you think to change and to crow over me. You will not or I'll lay my curse upon you, unless you would change me into an eagle would be turning his back upon the whole of ye, and facing to his perch upon the right hand of the ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... spanned by the Natural Bridge, a valley far too little known or praised. I had noticed an old log house, as I learned to know the outlook from the picturesque hotel, and was sure that it must give a charming view from its perch on the ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... quite as enjoyable as they had hoped, because of a very high wind. Upon their perch at the top of the tram, it required about all their attention to keep their hats and other belongings from blowing away. On the whole, they were quite content to get off at the bridge at Richmond, and walk up the long hill to the famous Star and ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... a man who feels instinctively that he will never own a "house and home" constructs the materiality of his life in chambers upon a fuller basis than the man who feels instinctively that he will, sooner or later, exchange the perch-like existence of his chambers for the nest-like completeness of a home ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... her gay little work-bag in her hand. She lingered to exchange a few kindly words with Sarah, and to look at the new tortoise-shell kitten basking on the kitchen hearth, and to speak to the canary-bird, which a sudden blaze from the fire had startled on its perch; and then she betook herself ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... snatching the feathers out of the tail of a splendid parroquet that was screaming on its gilded perch, in order to make a plume for his hat. Madame de Villefort merely cried,—"Be still, Edward!" She then added,—"This young madcap is, however, very nearly right, and merely re-echoes what he has heard ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Katie treated them with her birds' canary and hemp seed. Robbie gave them bits of his cookies and cakes. Anything that the children liked to eat, these little chickens liked also; and when they heard the little boots coming towards them they would perch on the edge of their yard and chirp and peep and coax for ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... all seasons, and under all circumstances, whether of peace or war between the heads of the two opposite houses; and whenever there chanced to be a lull in the storm, she availed herself of the opportunity to add to her simple tribute a dish of eels from the mill-stream, or perch from the river. That the thought of Edward ("dear Edward," as she always called him,) might not add somewhat of alacrity to her attentions to his wayward aunt, I will not venture to deny, but she would have ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... pippin hung To hear him, clapt his hand in mine and sang— "Oh! who would fight and march and counter-march, Be shot for sixpence in a battle-field, And shovell'd up into a [5] bloody trench Where no one knows? but let me live my life. "Oh! who would cast and balance at a desk, Perch'd like a crow upon a three-legg'd stool, Till all his juice is dried, and all his joints Are full of chalk? but let me live my life. "Who'd serve the state? for if I carved my name Upon the cliffs that guard my native land, I might as well have traced it in the sands; The sea wastes all: but ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... of form, colour, life, in the whole place, crushed me down, without my being able to analyse my feelings as I can now; and then came over me that dream of Pacific Islands, and the free, open sea; and I slid down from my perch, and bursting into tears threw myself upon my knees in the court, and prayed aloud to God to ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... ill, but not dying, received Henry's sympathy with a terrible apathy. "I'm twenty-eight," said he; "and a fork-grinder is an old cock at thirty. I must look to drop off my perch in a year or two, like ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... down from his perch, handed him what appeared to be two thick sticks of yellow wax, and Gordon watched him as he carefully nipped a copper detonator down on a length of snaky fuse, and embedded it in the plastic material. Then he cautiously tamped the two yellow rolls down into the ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... chanted Polly Adams in a vigorous crescendo, as she watched the retreating figure of her guest. Then climbing down from her perch on the front gate, she added to herself, "Mean old thing! I s'pose she thinks I care because she's gone home; but I'm glad of it, so there!" And with an emphatic shake of her curly head, she ran ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... permitted, I should have retained my perch till daylight, but with the consciousness of escape from the jaws of the ferocious brute came a sense of overpowering weakness which almost palsied me, and made my descent from the tree both difficult and dangerous. Incredible as it may seem, I lay down in my old bed, and ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... is naughty the case is exactly reversed. This baby's proper name is Lullitha, which means Playfulness, and illustrates a side of her character undiscovered by the visitor who only sees the Owlet sitting on her perch with serious, watchful, unblinking eyes, regarding the intruder. But most babies are complex characters, and are not known ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... flies, Where other suns to other systems rise. These front the scene conspicuous; overhead Albion's proud oak his filial branches spread: 830 While on the sea-beat shore obsequious stood, Beneath their feet, the father of the flood: Here the bold native of her cliffs above, Perch'd by the martial maid the bird of Jove; There on the watch, sagacious of his prey, With eyes of fire, an English mastiff lay: Yonder fair Commerce stretch'd her winged sail, Here frown'd the God that wakes the living gale. High o'er the poop the ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... letting Frank look over his biplane, not if he knows it. Why, he's afraid Frank might get on to some little device that he expects will play a big part in the game, if ever he races us again. Huh! come off your perch, ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... stood by the wheel, a splendid figure of matchless energy and courage. Aloft the topmasts bent like whips; Stumpy's voice came down in ever-increasing fear as his perch grew shakier; the great expanse of canvas, which should have been treble-reefed even in a floating ship going forward, tore at boom-tackles and earrings, tacks, and mast-hoops, shaking the vessel to the keel and filling ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... of the Silver Bow—chaste Diana—deign to become the leading star of our lucubrations; come perch upon our grey goose quill; shout in our ear the maddening Tally-ho! and ever and anon give a salutary "refresher" to our memory with thy heaven-wrought spurs—those spurs old Vulcan forged when in his maddest mood—whilst we relate such ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... astounded by having such an offer from such a suitor as Lord Hampstead. But in truth the glory of the thing was not very much to her. It was something, no doubt. It must be something to a girl to find that her own personal charms have sufficed to lure down from his lofty perch the topmost bird of them all. That Marion was open to some such weakness may be acknowledged of her. But of the coronet, of the diamonds, of the lofty title, and high seats, of the castle, and the parks, and well-arranged equipages, of the rich dresses, of the obsequious servants, and fawning world ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... referee's shrill whistle blast would sound, the vast crowd in the stands, on the side-lines, and in the parked automobiles, would suddenly still their clamor and breathlessly await the kick-off—then, seventy minutes of grim battling on the turf, and victory, or defeat, would perch on the banners ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... said Jacko, and he twitched his tail with glee, "That the only serious creatures in the country are 'We Three'— You, Polly, honest Jack (an Irish House-dog), and Myself!" (Here he pulled poor Poll's tail-feathers hard, and capered like an elf.) Poll held on to his perch, he'd much tenacity of claw, But performed, involuntarily a sort of sharp see-saw, And he snorted and looked down With a very beaky frown, And his round orb grew as red as any carrot. "'We Three'? your ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various
... are to be found in their due seasons many species of fish, and as fishing is but little preserved they furnish good sport. The most important kinds used for the table in Roumania are two or three varieties of sturgeon, trout (small but sweet), herrings, salmon, shad, pike, and carp, also perch, roach, barbel, tench, &c. Roumania is not a lake country, and the largest lakes, called Baltas, are found in the plains near the Danube, whilst amongst the inland lakes, which are few in number and importance, ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... gesture, and dismounting from his perch made his way along the passage to a door which opened into the shed. Thence he looked out on the quay, and along the ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... and faded upon the soft down quilt that the freaks of live had thrown to the ground. The outlines of Pauline's dress, hanging from a cheval glass, appeared like a shadowy ghost. Her dainty shoes had been left at a distance from the bed. A nightingale came to perch upon the sill; its trills repeated over again, and the sounds of its wings suddenly shaken out for flight, ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... mean design To praise your parts by publishing of mine; That be my thought when some large bulky writ Shows in the front the ambition of my wit; There to surmount what bears me up, and sing Like the victorious wren perch'd on the eagle's wing. This could I do, and proudly o'er him tower, Were my desires but heighten'd to my power. Godlike the force of my young Congreve's bays, Softening the Muse's thunder into praise; ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... in between the rocks, its shore spread with grey sand, smooth and trackless. At least so Gimblet imagined it at first, as his eye roved casually over the beach. Then suddenly, with a smothered ejaculation, he leaped down from his perch of observation, and made his way to the margin ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... cuss-words old Bob never heard before. I never saw a bird that was so anxious to improve. She used to set there with her ear cocked, just simply crazy to learn something new. Every time she'd see me coming she'd begin to hop up and down on her perch and call me names, figurin' I'd lose my temper and give her a tongue lashin'. Gosh, I'm glad she's dead. It was gettin' to be an awful nuisance chasing parrots out of the trees back of Bob's house. They got so's they'd come down there and set around ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... minds, especially among the better classes; thus, for instance, the soul of the dead man is sometimes supposed to enter the body of a bird, in which case the relatives carefully build a semi-circular stone railing round the mound, so that the winged successor of the deceased may have whereon to perch. ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... Nonsuch arrived immediately opposite the opening that Dyer was able, with the assistance of the perspective glass, to pick up the little narrow streak of unbroken water in the midst of the flashing surf which marked the channel through the reef, and from his lofty perch he immediately shouted down the necessary orders to George, who stood aft upon the poop, and who in his turn repeated them to the mariners, whereupon the ship was brought to the wind and, under the pilot's directions, headed straight for ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... it and there was the flare of a light; all March's schoolboy memories woke in him, and he knew what it was. It was the stand of a rocket. The confused, incongruous memories still possessed him up to the very moment of a fierce but familiar sound; and an instant after the rocket left its perch and went up into endless space like a starry arrow aimed at the stars. March thought suddenly of the signs of the last days and knew he was looking at the apocalyptic meteor of something ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... a good many of that sort of craft founder in these waters, as I know to my sorrow"; and, sighing tragically, Mr. Joe turned to help Debby from her perch, but she had glided silently into the sea, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the Lop-Sided, "you may think this is fun, but I don't. Let us take the raft there and go fishing. The tarn is simply crowded with perch ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... sunrise, unless I am badly mistaken. I have heard an old adage which declares that if you give a man long enough rope he will hang himself. My new application is that you let him talk enough he is apt to sing his own swan song, for a farewell perch on the ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... the four or five rabbits thus pulled from the load by his sudden descent from his perch, the dazed little fellow sat up in the sand and solemnly noted the rapid departure of the Indian ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... the reputation of being shocked, like the Judge, Judith slipped down from her perch, and across the room, and out ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... and the tiny victim, hurled from its high perch—after making several somersaults in the air—falls right into the jaws of that hungry savage at the bottom of the tree. Wolf makes his ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... of my own friends—of pious bards and genial companions, lovers of natural and lovely things! Nor for these do I desire a seat at Florian's marble tables, or a perch in Quadri's window, though the former supply dainty food, and the latter command a bird's-eye view of the Piazza. Rather would I lead them to a certain humble tavern on the Zattere. It is a quaint, low-built, unpretending little place, near a bridge, with a garden hard ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... this. She swung on her perch and made queer noises to herself. Then she grew tired. She threw herself on the bottom of the cage and began to moan, "Come quick! Come quick! Polly's sick! Polly's sick!" Then Peggy came with the black cloth, and General Polly was taken ...
— Five Little Friends • Sherred Willcox Adams
... when they had reached the farmyard—"now I'll hide in this oak here and you can hide in that one there." He pointed to a tree a little further from the chicken house than the one where he intended to perch. Naturally, it was not like Jasper Jay to give the best seat ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... "Miss Reston can do it just because she is Miss Reston. If you're a Lord's daughter you can be as eccentric as you like, and make friends with anyone you choose. If we did it, they would just say, 'Oh, so they've come off their perch!' and once we let ourselves down we would never raise ourselves again. I couldn't do it, ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... deep lane where Steadfast had once watched for his brother. Only a few of the more adventurous village lads were before them now, and when Stead explained that the little wench wanted to watch for her father, they were kind in helping him to perch her in the hollow of a broken old pollard, where she could see, and not be seen. For the poor camp maiden knew the need of caution. She drew Steadfast close to her, and bade him not show himself till she told him, for some of the wilder ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shape to be credited with strange actions: but ichthyologists say positively no: that the noise (at least along the coast of the United States) is made by a Pogonias, a fish somewhat like a great bearded perch, and cousin of the Maigre of the Mediterranean, which is accused of making a similar purring or grunting noise, which can be heard from a depth of one hundred and twenty feet, and guides ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... and singing the praises of the Prophet gently through his nose, as the breeze stirred through the trees overhead, and cast chequered and changing shadows over the paved court, and the little fountains, and the nasal psalmist on his perch. On one side was the mosque, into which you could see, with its white walls and cool-matted floor, and quaint carved pulpit and ornaments, and nobody at prayers. In the middle distance rose up the noble towers and battlements ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is there anything in sight, from your perch aloft there, worth looking at?" came floating up to me in the ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... my riding her down and in the boy holding on. There was no possible way for me to reach him. No man could climb the slim, closed parachute; and even if a man could, and made the mouth of the balloon, what could he do? Straight out, and fifteen feet away, trailed the boy on his ticklish perch, and those ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... greeted me, as I crept around the great rock, and peered over the edge down into that beautiful basin wherein the remnant of the Natchez had established their home. The early sun had not as yet illumined the lower levels, and all beneath my dizzy perch remained wrapped in the sombre gray of promised dawn; the slightly rolling valley was dotted with numerous square-topped huts of yellow straw, surrounded by ponderous walls of gray stone or dun-colored ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... that there is life in the smooth water, that it is more than a splendid silver mirror for the sun which streams across it. I disturbed a solitary king-fisher as I went out to the wharf. He rose from his perch upon the rope, circled about for a minute and then settled back, on his watch ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... was a fine stream of water, varying from three to seven yards in width. It was supplied with dace, trout, roach, and perch. Its plaintive, monotonous murmur sometimes impressed the mind with sadness. This was soon dispelled, however, by the twittering, the glee, and the sweet notes of the birds, that hopped from spray to spray, or quietly perched themselves on ...
— Charles Duran - Or, The Career of a Bad Boy • The Author of The Waldos
... the lady. "I expected as much. Well Daisy—I will take you. I might perch you up on a foot-cushion to give you a little more altitude. However—I don't know but it will do. Theresa will be letting ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... in its course. Awhile the flaring disk seemed to perch itself on the far summit of the mountains in the west, brazening all the sky above the city, and rimming the walls and towers with the brightness of gold. Then it disappeared as with a plunge. The quiet ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... boy orator, and hauled him from his perch with such hearty thumps that he feared they would break ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... these words, the (soaring) swan flew westwards with great velocity to the ocean, that abode of Makaras. Then fear entered the heart of the crow who became almost senseless at not seeing any island or trees whereon to perch when tired. And the crow thought within his heart as to where he should alight when tired, upon that vast expanse of water. The ocean, being as it is the abode of countless creatures, is irresistible. Dwelt in by hundreds ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... every creak of this old house at night brings me up broad awake, because I hear in it the crash of those cruel great timbers. Oh, oh, OH! I'm so glad to get you! You're the light of my life; you're my whole life itself!"—she smiled at him from her perch on his knee—"I'm silly, am I not?" she said. "Dear ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... clock, That says, "Tick-a-tock, tick-a-tock!" And I've not forgotten yet quite, How once, on a very still night, I was sitting just over the clock, When it gave such a terrible knock, With a whirring and whizzing, And buzzing and fizzing, That I tumbled headlong from my perch on the shelf, And, scampering wildly, I crowded myself Right under the door, through such a small crack, That I scraped all the hairs off the ...
— The Nursery, January 1877, Volume XXI, No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... "fine work! rare doings! a merry Vauxhalling, with pistols at all your noddles! thought as much! thought he'd tip the perch; saw he wasn't stanch; knew he'd go by his company,—a set of jackanapes! all blacklegs! nobody warm among 'em: fellows with a month's good living upon their backs, and not sixpence for the ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... she looked truly to a man who had paddled two days in a hot sticky fog, as, clad in white, she sat still and placid on her airy perch. Her hair, of the very light fleecy gold seldom seen after babyhood, hung over her shoulders unconfined by comb or ribbon, felling around her like a veil and glittering in the horizontal sunbeams; her face, throat and hands were white as the petals of a white camellia, her features ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... sighing of the autumn leaves, and the cooing of the sleepy doves; while the ice-bird, as the Germans call the water-ouzel, sat on a rock in the river below, and warbled his low sweet song, and then flitted up the grassy reach to perch and sing again on the next ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... be tied down?" suggested Gladys. "He flutters it so much." With infinite pains Hinpoha tied the broken wing down to the bird's side, using strips of gauze bandage for the purpose. The owl made no sound. They fixed a perch in the cage and he stepped decorously up on it and regarded them with an intense, mournful gaze. "Isn't he spooky looking?" said Gladys, shivering and turning away. "He ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... more doth search But on the next green bough to perch, Where, when he first does lure, The ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... of fish and fowl. The landlord is a quiet enthusiast in this Thames fishing. It is a pleasure to watch him at work, whether being rowed down on a hot summer day by one of his men, and casting a long line under the willows for chub, or hauling out big perch or barbel. All his tackle is exquisitely kept, as well kept as the yeoman's arrows and bow in the Canterbury Tales. His baits are arranged on the hook as neatly as a good cook sends up a boned quail. He gets all his worms from Nottingham. I notice that among ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... He from the ark let forth A palid dove To fly after the swart raven, Over the deep water, To quest whether the foaming sea Had of the green earth Yet any part laid bare. Wide she flew seeking her own will, Far she flew yet found no rest. Because of the flood With her feet she might not perch on land, Nor on the tree leaves light. For the steep mountain tops Were whelmed in waters. Then the wild bird went At eventide the ark to seek. Over the darling wave she flew Weary, to sink hungry To the hands of the ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... Crystal-blue streaks and ripples over the lake. A macaw on a gilded perch screams; they have forgotten to take out his dinner. The windows shake. Boom! Boom! It is the rumbling of Prussian cannon beyond Pecq. Roses bloom at Malmaison. Roses! Roses! Swimming above their leaves, rotting beneath ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... and Noddy Newman passed out. To a gymnast of his wiry experience, the feat was not impossible, or even very difficult. Swinging out of the window, he placed his feet on the window-cap below, and then, stooping down, he got hold with his hands, and slipped down from his perch with about the same ease with which a well-trained monkey would have ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... nervous excitement, I happened to go into the room very softly, and the black beads had disappeared. The tiny head had disappeared, too, and only a little round ball of feathers was balanced on his perch. Then I remembered that chickens have a way of putting their heads in their pockets when they go to sleep, and poetry yielded to poultry, Cheri stepped out of Chaucer, and took ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... had a forlorn look and an empty ring. Pete sat on his perch grim and curious. He seemed to regard the bustle and hammering as a ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... of insects, mighty Sol, (A Fly upon the chariot pole Cries out), what Blue-bottle alive Did ever with such fury drive? Tell Belzebub, great father, tell (Says t' other, perch'd upon the wheel), Did ever any mortal Fly Raise such a cloud of dust as I? My judgment turn'd the whole debate: My valor sav'd the sinking state. So talk two idle buzzing things; Toss up their heads, and stretch their wings. But let the truth to light be brought; This neither ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... you think to change and to crow over me. You will not or I'll lay my curse upon you, unless you would change me into an eagle would be turning his back upon the whole of ye, and facing to his perch upon the right hand of the master ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... where he found Mickey with poles and a big can of worms ready. Despite the pressing offer of the car, they walked, in order to show Mickey the country which he was eager to explore on foot. Junior said the sunfish were big as lunch plates at Atwater, the perch fine, and often if you caught a grasshopper or a cricket for bait, you got a big bass around the shore, and if they had the luck to reach the lake, when there was no one ahead of them, and secured a boat they ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... adds, 'the quantity of food which these people eat at a meal is prodigious. I have seen one man devour two or three fishes as big as a perch; three bread-fruits, each bigger than two fists; fourteen or fifteen plantains or bananas, each of them six or seven inches long, and four or five round; and near a quart of the pounded bread-fruit, which is as substantial ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... call them "Machines," and when an improved Machine is announced with steel springs one can imagine the former state of things! It was a frequent practice, notwithstanding the apparent difficulty of maintaining one's perch for a long weary journey and sleeping by the road, for these old coaches to be overloaded at the top, and coachmen fined for it. In his "Travels in England in 1782," Moritz, the old German pastor, in his delightful pages, says on this point: ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... will be fickle, and I expected no otherwise. What I required was the dominion over the mind; I cared little about the sultan's attentions to other women. Like the tamed bird which flies from its cage, and after wandering a short time, is glad to return to its home and reassume its perch, so did I consider it would be the case with the sultan. I never, therefore, wearied him with tears or reproaches, but won him back with smiles and good humour. I expected that this new face would detach him for a short ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of the air, Never did bird a spirit so mean and sordid bear As to exchange his native liberty Of soaring boldly up into the sky, His liberty to sing, to perch, or fly When, and wherever he thought good, And all his innocent pleasures of the wood, For a more plentiful or constant food. Nor ever did ambitious rage Make him into a painted cage Or the false forest of a well-hung ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... soon knock the mould out of it, hey, Dexie?" Lancy laughingly replied, as he lifted his mate down from her perch. ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... he had always walked beside his horses. Now that he had grown old and gray, he was very often glad to perch on the seat and doze there. But just when a short dream had helped him to forget the bitter change in his life, another of those monsters would roar behind him its spiteful, deep "too-oot, too-oot." Then it behooved ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... us to his crow-hut, which was a hole in the ground covered with boughs and pieces of turf, where the hunters lay concealed. The owl, which lured the crows and other birds of prey, was fastened on a perch, and when they flew up, often in large flocks, to tease the old cross-patch which sat blinking angrily, they were shot down from loop-holes which had been left in the hut. The hawks which prey upon doves and hares, the crows and magpies, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... once was my master by the side of the willowy stream; And he talked and told me tales of the war unwaged as yet, And the victory never won, and bade me never forget, While I walked on, still unhappy, by the home of the dark-striped perch. Till at last, with a flash of light and a rattle and side-long lurch, I woke up dazed and witless, till my sorrow awoke again, And the grey of the morn was upon us as we sped through the poplar plain, By the brimming streams ...
— The Pilgrims of Hope • William Morris
... unfriendliness which falls like a blight upon every attempt at united action. The non-Zionists may succeed in defeating their opponents; they can never dispense with Zionism which is a driving force in American Jewish life. The victory may perch on the banners of the Zionists but they can never forego the assistance of the non-Zionists who still form the backbone of American Jewry. Representing the common longings of the Jewish people throughout the world, Zionism should serve as a leaven, quickening and stimulating the ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... a monkey, Ben Zoof had clambered to the top of a eucalyptus, and from his lofty perch was surveying the country to the south, as well as towards both Tenes and Mostaganem. On descending, be informed the captain that the ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... temperature; and I could well understand how it was that Doa Maria, notwithstanding the difficulties of the ascent, often came up here to escape the debilitating heats of the port, and enjoy the magnificent prospect. The dwellers on this mountain-perch consisted of an old man with his two sons and their wives, and a consequent round dozen of children, all of whom gave Dolores the cordial welcome of an old friend, which was reflected on his companions with equal warmth. Our mules were quickly unsaddled and cared for, and our instruments ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... hawke upon a perch, Thy steed eats oats and hay, And thou a fair lady in thine armes, And wouldst ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... of livin'.' The conning of the burial service, shortened to fit the passing of that tiny shade, gave him pleasurable sensation; films came down on his eyes; he listened like some old parrot on its perch, his head a little ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... entered, and pausing in her song, climbed on to the side of the couch. She held out one little hand for the dove to perch upon, placed the other lightly on Antonina's shoulder, and pressed her fresh, rosy lips to girl's faded cheek. 'I and my bird have come to make Antonina well this morning,' ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... unreasoned enjoyment of a child. All at once he developed a passion for fishing. He would sit all day nearly motionless upon a point of rocks, his fish-line between his fingers, happy if he caught three perch in twelve hours. At noon he would retire to a bit of level turf around an angle of the shore and cook his fish, eating them without salt or knife or fork. He thrust a pointed stick down the mouth of the perch, and turned ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... and they had a narrow escape. They were whirled round and banged up against a cliff with the bottom of the canoe tipped to the rock and held there for a while, but fortunately did not turn over till an unusually tempestuous rush of water reached up and lifted the canoe from its perch down into the water again. Then tying a rope at either end they clambered out to a precarious perch on a slope in the cliff. By careful manoeuvring they succeeded in turning the canoe round and getting in again, thus escaping from the trap. Joe and Gilbert came through without ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... fangs of the king of the pack fasten in her skirt, and she knew that she was being pulled out of her perch when, through the woods came Ted and Bud and Ben, and the rest of her friends, yelling like mad and amid a perfect fusillade ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... girlish approval, as she took in every detail of his appearance. Unfortunately that nod cost her her hiding-place. Without in the least realizing it, she had leaned too far forward, and she slipped from her perch. She saved herself by catching at a branch before her; but the sudden jar sent a ripe apple crashing down through the leaves, and it landed plump in one of the cushions, not two inches from ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... rood; The surface had the hue of clay And the scent of human blood; The trees and the herbs that round it grew Were venomous and foul, And the birds that through the bushes flew Were the vulture and the owl; The water was as dark and rank As ever a Company pumped, And the perch that was netted and laid on the bank Grew rotten while it jumped; And bold was he who thither came At midnight, man or boy, For the place was cursed with an evil name, And that name ...
— English Satires • Various
... draggle through the dirt; and he can lick himsel' clean at his leisure, far ben in the cranny o' the rock, and come out a' tosh and tidy by the first dawn o' licht, to snuff the mornin' air, and visit the distant farm-house before Partlet has left her perch, or Count Crow lifted his head from beneath his ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... the water. On entering a channel from the seaward, red buoys are on the starboard, or right hand; white buoys are kept on the port, or left side. Buoys at the end of a channel are usually surmounted each by some device or other fastened at the upper end of a perch. Thus, at the outer entrance of Gedney Channel in New York Harbor, a ball surmounts the perch; at the inner entrance the buoy carries a double square. Sharp angles in a channel are similarly marked. In many instances the buoy carries, ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... looking up, 'What mean,' said I, 'those great flights of birds that are perpetually hovering about the bridge and settling upon it from time to time? I see vultures, harpies, ravens, cormorants, and, among many other feathered creatures, several little winged boys that perch in great numbers upon the middle arches.' 'These,' said the Genius, 'are envy, avarice, superstition, despair, love, with the like cares and passions that ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... than before on Tilly's companionship; for it was a melancholy fact: if you were not in the same class as the girl who was your friend, your interests and hers were soon fatally sundered. On their former companions, Tilly and Laura, from their new perch, could not but look down: the two had masters now for all subjects; Euclid loomed large; Latin was no longer bounded by the First Principia; and they fussed considerably, in the others' hearing, over the difficulties of the little blue books that began: ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... Herbes.—Prepare six fresh perch and marinade them with two tablespoonfuls of olive oil, a sprig of parsley, a little pepper and salt and allspice, bayleaf and other strong spices chopped fine. Keep the fish in this for about an hour, remove and roll in breadcrumbs lightly flavored ...
— Twenty-four Little French Dinners and How to Cook and Serve Them • Cora Moore
... de mon Arrive, la tramontane faisait rage depuis le matin; et quoiqu'on ft au printemps, le petit Chose, perch sur le haut de la diligence, sentit, en entrant dans la ville, le froid le ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... the old field school and the methods of the old-time teachers belong now to the past. Once experienced, however, they have an abiding place in the memory. The master, upon his accustomed perch near the spacious fire-place, with his ever-present symbol of authority, the rod—which even Solomon would have considered fully up to the orthodox standard—in alarming proximity; the boys "making their manners" by scraping ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... to a more secure perch on his shoulder, and drew his head to one side in an effort to slacken Babe's terrific pull on his hair. "Him? Mean an' ornery as the meanest thing you can think of. Sour as a dough can you've went off an' left for a coupla weeks ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... from Trot's high perch seemed like a magnificent painted picture—was a rosy glow such as we sometimes see in the west at sunset. In this case, however, it was not in the west only, ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... it. You are not to have, in any object of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact. You don't walk upon flowers in fact; you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. You don't find that foreign birds and butterflies come and perch upon your crockery; you cannot be permitted to paint foreign birds and butterflies upon your crockery. You never meet with quadrupeds going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds represented upon walls. You must use,' said the gentleman, 'for all these purposes, combinations ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... for all her busy interest in everything going on, and it was not easy to tame her. For a while, she would perch like a canary-bird on some box or package near Tom, while busy in the little arts afore-named, and take from him, with a kind of grave bashfulness, the little articles he offered. But at last they ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... room is much too small, but it is the best we have. The wide doors are left open. So are the wide windows, and the boys are even allowed to perch on the wall opposite the entrance, from which place ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... was still shining brightly. My late companion had halted not far from where I had left him, and stood glaring back with an air of extreme bewilderment. There was something so comical in the sight that I yelled with laughter as I sat securely on my perch. ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... quieted me much. Towards ten in the morning the wind changed; immediately an appalling cry was heard, concerning which the passengers, as well as myself, were equally ignorant. The whole crew were in motion. Some climbed the rope ladders, and seemed to perch on the extremities of the yards; others mounted to the highest parts of the mast; these bellowing and pulling certain cordages in cadence; those crying, swearing, whistling, and filling the air with ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... curtain painted by Parrhasius which Zeuxis himself tried to pull aside; and of the horse by Apelles at which another horse neighed—all these find their counterparts in the literature of Chinese art. One painter, in quite early days, painted a perch and hung it over a river bank, when there was immediately a rush of otters to secure it. Another painted the creases on cotton clothes so exactly that the clothes looked as if they had just come from the wash. Another produced ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... the group stood a small dead tree. This was the phoebe's customary perch, and on those bare branches—first or last—every visitor was sure to appear. On the lower branch the robin paused, with worm in mouth, on the way to his two-story nest under the eaves of the barn. On the top spire the warbler baby sat and stared at the world about ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... whose sake I pray you pardon the young man's transgression." But Angelo replied, "We must not make a scare-crow of the law, setting it up to frighten birds of prey, till custom, finding it harmless, makes it their perch, and not their terror. Sir, he ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... office, interrupting his gravest labors. Mr. Lincoln was never too busy to hear him, or to answer his bright, rapid, imperfect speech, for he was not able to speak plainly until he was nearly grown. "He would perch upon his father's knee, and sometimes even on his shoulder, while the most weighty conferences were going on. Sometimes, escaping from the domestic authorities, he would take refuge in that sanctuary for the whole evening, dropping to sleep ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... noise in the neighboring bushes, and perceived a large and savage dog rushing rapidly from side to side, with his nose to the ground, evidently in search of game or prey. I could not mistake the nature of his hunt. With the agility of a harlequin, I sprang to my friendly perch just in time to save myself from his fangs. The foiled and ferocious beast, yelling with rage, gave an alarm which was quickly responded to by other dogs, three of which—followed by two armed men—promptly made their appearance ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... declared that when the near-at-hand sport was so good it was foolish to tramp ten miles to waylay some unwary and distant trout. And indeed this logic appeared to be sound, for not once did the anglers return from one of their brief tours that they did not bring with them baskets well lined with yellow perch, trout, or land-loch salmon. ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... the forest are three considerable lakes, Hogmer, Cranmer, and Wolmer; all of which are stocked with carp, tench, eels, and perch; but the fish do not thrive well, because the water is hungry, and the bottoms ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... unusual melodiousness, these days, (last of April and first of May) from the blackbirds; indeed all sorts of birds, darting, whistling, hopping or perch'd on trees. Never before have I seen, heard, or been in the midst of, and got so flooded and saturated with them and their performances, as this current month. Such oceans, such successions of them. Let me make a list of those ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... suffer his own offspring to sink into the same ashes; but he snatched the child from the flames and from the womb of his mother, and carried him into the cave of the two-formed Chiron. And he forbade the raven, expecting for himself the reward of his tongue that told no untruth, to perch any longer ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... inside; the Hindus say that the compound should not see the veranda nor the veranda the house. But this rule has of course also the advantage of keeping the house-floor dry. If the main beam of a house breaks it is a very bad omen, as also for a vulture or kite to perch on the roof; if this should happen seven days running the house will inevitably be left empty by sickness or other misfortune. A dog howling in front of the house is very unlucky, and if, as may occasionally happen, a dog should get on to the roof of the house and bark, the omen is of the worst ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... there are 'road agents' in California. The Siberian highwaymen rarely disturb the person of a traveler, but their chief amusement is to cut away outside packages. As a precaution we mounted our Cossack on the trunk, but before we went a mile he fell from his perch in spite of his utmost efforts to cling to the vehicle. After that event he rode by ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... expanse of open water; but at a distance of some seven miles ahead the pack-ice stretched, apparently unbroken, across their track for miles. The skipper of the whaler, however, shouted down to them from his elevated perch the intelligence that a somewhat intricate but continuous channel extended through this ice in a northerly direction as far as the eye could reach. Toward this channel, then, away they went at a speed of something like sixteen knots per hour, the barque with ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... exceedingly deep, and covered with the broad leaves of Villarsia and Nymphaea, and well stocked with numerous large fish, which betrayed their presence by an incessant splashing during the early part of the night. John Murphy caught the small striped perch of the Lynd; and another small perch-like fish, with a broad anal fin, which had already excited our admiration at the Lynd, by the beauty of its colours, and by the singularity of its movements. Charley saw the Silurus and the guardfish, and caught several of the broad-scaled ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... hollow box of wood which helped to support the arch of the bridge, and which was filled with great stones. As the torrent swept his brother past him and under the bridge, the drowning youth gave a spring from the ice on which he still stood, and the other bending at the instant from his perch above, caught him by the collar, and lifted him bodily from his perilous situation. All was the work of a moment; yet the spectators held their breath, and wondered as they saw. It was an act of bold daring on the one hand, of cool determined courage on ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... had a passion for fishing, which he usually indulged whenever the season and business permitted. One day, when reports had been coming in relating to the bass and perch, he announced his intention of making a two or three days' visit to the lakes. He was going down, he said, to Reedy Lake with Judge Archinard, an ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... with a wink and a sly normal lurch, The owl, very gravely, got down from his perch, Walked round, and regarded his fault-finding critic (Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance analytic. And then fairly hooted, as if he should say: "Your learning's at fault this time, anyway; Don't waste it again on a live bird, I pray. I'm ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... the baulks of timber that cumbered the deck of the brig on either side of the caboose. An ideal perch. The sun was setting over Australia way, in a sea that seemed like a sea of boiling gold. Some mystery of mirage caused the water to heave and tremble as ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... finish Mr. Packard entirely. Next day he had rheumatism in his joints, and stayed in camp all day, watching Marks making snow-shoes. The day after that he tried again, and fished all the morning, and caught one yellow perch and an eel. The eel danced right up in his face,—it did, sure as I'm alive, Pink!—and scairt him so, I'm blessed if he didn't sit down again—ho! ho! ho!—on a point o' rock, and slid off into the water, and lost his spectacles. Oh, dear! ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... on earth cannot be compared with them. The birds need to perch and to rest during their sleep, but the fish continue floating around and moving from place to place while asleep. The entire world belongs to them. Wherever there is a mass of water,—ocean, river or lake, in whatever altitude or latitude, a mountain peak lost in the ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... they were gone, Jerry came down from his perch, and off they started once more for ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill
... tempted faith. What was Hezekiah to do with the crafty missive? It was hoped that he would listen to reason, and come down from his perch. But he neither yielded nor took counsel with his servants, but, like a devout man, went into the house of the Lord, and spread the letter before the Lord. It would have gone hard with him if he had not been to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... spreading away below in shallows, and taking the shadows of a row of maples that lined the green shore. Save this roar, no sound reached him, except now and then the rumble of a wagon on the bridge, or the muffled far-off voices of some chance passers on the road. Seen from this high perch, the familiar village, sending its brown roofs and white spires up through the green foliage, had a strange aspect, and was like some town in a book, say a village nestled in the Swiss mountains, or something in Bohemia. And there, beyond the purple ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of long, wavy, golden hair, which was ruffled, but only slightly ruffled, by the gentle summer breeze. Her face, though terrifying by reason of its unearthly pallor, was so beautiful, that, had not some restraining influence compelled me to remain in hiding, I would have descended from my perch to obtain a nearer view of it. Indeed, I only once caught a glimpse of her full face, for, with a persistence that was most annoying, she kept it turned from me; but in that brief second the lustre of her long, blue eyes won my very soul, and boy as ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... but a poor voice, while the Hon. Turkey Pompous said he had a fine bass voice, but no ear for tune. Dr. Parrot was heard to say "Humbug!" when the whole company turned to him for an explanation. He was at that moment taking his morning gymnastic exercise, by swinging himself from perch to perch, holding on by his beak. When he got through, he straightened ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... its beard just sprouting is; Whence a young stream, that trod on moss, Prettily rimpled the court across. And in the pool's clear idleness, Moving like dreams through happiness, Shoals of small bright fishes were; In and out weed-thickets bent Perch and carp, and sauntering went With mounching jaws and eyes a-stare; Or on a lotus leaf would crawl A brindled loach to bask and sprawl, Tasting the warm sun ere it dipped Into the water; but quick as fear ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... stool and the close attention her work required, to the open air and the free rush of the thoughts that came crowding to her out of the wilderness, put her at once in a blissful mood. Even the few dull remarks that the slow-thinking Andrew made at intervals from his perch on the front of the cart, seemed to come to her from the realm of Faerie, the mysterious world that lay in the folds of the huddled hills. Everything Maggie saw or heard that afternoon seemed to wear the glamour of God's imagination, which is at once the birth and the very truth ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... present limits of the forest are three considerable lakes, Hogmer, Cranmer, and Wolmer, all of which are stocked with carp, tench, eels, and perch: but the fish do not thrive well, because the water is hungry, and the bottoms ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... unmistakably, red. She made more fun of it than anybody else, but at heart she loved her hair, and would not have exchanged it for paley-gold or ebony tresses. Bud had fastened his chubby hands in it to steady himself on his perch, as she ran, and pulled some of it loose from her comb. A thick curl strayed over her arm, bare almost to the shoulder, as was the warm-weather custom of young ladies of that time. She drew it around before her eyes, thinning it into a silky veil, holding ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... too intelligent to be caught in any such trap, and so the report of his shot had scarcely died away before the ape-man was on the ground and racing for another tree a hundred yards away. Here he again found a suitable perch from which he could watch the preparations of the raiders. It occurred to him that he might have considerable more fun with them, so again he called to them through ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... as if they were flowers. Snakes swam across the channels, vibrating their heads from side to side. Swallows swept over his head. Pike "struck" from the verge of the thick weeds as he came near. Perch rose for insects as they fell helpless into ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... fellows used occasionally to join us in our swooping, plunging perch. They were as unlike as two men could be, and yet already they had become firm friends. One was a slow, lank, ague-stricken individual from somewhere in the wilds of the Great Lakes, his face lined and brown as though carved from hardwood, ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... as it backed its sails and Jason fell from his precarious perch into the stinking bilge. "The descent of man," he muttered ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... idea, Tom Hunter thought to himself, and it had worked perfectly, exactly as he had planned it ... so far. But now, as he clung to his precarious perch, he wondered if it had not worked out a little too well. The first flush of excitement that he had felt when he saw the Scavenger blow apart in space had begun to die down now; on its heels came the unpleasant ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... he climbed to the tower of the church, Up the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, To the belfry-chamber overhead, And startled the pigeons from their perch On the sombre rafters, that round him made Masses and moving shapes of shade— Up the light ladder, slender and tall, To the highest window in the wall, Where he paused to listen and look down A moment on the roofs of the quiet town, And the ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... ropes that still held it gave way, and it disappeared in the darkness of the night like a vast sea-bird. At the same moment a violent crash was heard, and cries of distress. Dantes from his rocky perch saw the shattered vessel, and among the fragments the floating forms of the hapless sailors. Then ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... according to its different significations, often has a different origin; as, to bear a burden, from fero; but to bear, whence birth, born, bairn, comes from pario; and a bear, at least if it be of Latin original, from fera. Thus perch, a fish, from perca; but perch, a measure, from pertica, and likewise to perch. To spell is from syllaba; but spell, an inchantment, by which it is believed that the boundaries are so fixed in lands that none can pass them against the ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... gathering around Dr. Gordon, who was using a large packing case for a podium. Rick saw the section chiefs conversing in low tones next to Gordon's perch, and his heart pounded. Had the Earthman ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... sound—it was part bark, part growl, and in part a bloodhound's bay—brought Finn from the near-by orchard, and Betty Murdoch from the morning-room, and the Master from his study, and the Persian cat from her perch on the hall mantelshelf; so Master Black-and-Gray had no lack of audience, and, indeed, received an almost embarrassing amount of congratulation, in the course of which he made shift to get a good sniff at Desdemona's legs and satisfy ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... his old games again. Again he had told the commandant that he was leading the British, and that we would rest the next day, and again Jan had to pick him off his perch. ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... minute no one said a word. Then Blacky the Crow leaned down from his perch in the Big Hickory-tree and looked very hard at Little Joe ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess
... her head that she is too wise for the station which Providence or the settled order of society has assigned her. She would therefore neither hide her light under a bushel, that others may not see by it, nor perch it aloft in public, that others may see it; but would simply set it on a candlestick, that it may give light to all in her house. With her noble intellect she has gathered in the sweets of poetry and the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... in a voice from the void, neither is there help in empty breath. Come up, for I am weary of my perch; and verily, if the mountain come not to Mahomet, the prophet must abase himself to the mountain. In short, my ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... different farm-houses to picnic at a way-side pool, splashing and fluttering, with their long wings expanded like butterflies, keeping poised by a constant hovering motion, just tilting upon their feet, which scarcely touch the moist ground. You will seldom see them actually perch on anything less airy than some telegraphic wire; but, when they do alight, each will make chatter enough for a dozen, as if all the rushing hurry of the wings had passed into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... averages 35 minutes per trip. The cost of loading and unloading a cart, using a horse cram at the quarry, and unloading by hand, when labor is $1.25 per day, and a horse 75 cents, is 25 cents per perch—24.75 cubic feet. The work done by an animal is greatest when the velocity with which he moves is 1/8 of the greatest with which he can move when not impeded, and the force then exerted .45 of the utmost force the animal can ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... Threading slant rains that flash and sing, Or under the water-lily's cup, From darkling depths, roll slowly up The bronze flanks of an ancient bream Into the hot sun's shattered beam, Or over a sunk tree's bubbled hole The perch stream in a golden shoal: Come, ye sorrowful; our deep Holds ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... morning an inspiration came to him—he would try the pump! So he rose softly and fixed the handle of the pump high in the air, so that it stuck out like a gallows, and tied a rope with a noose to the end of it. Then he got Tricky to perch on the top of the pump, tied the rope round his neck, and all was ready. The shepherd had heard that the object of hanging was to break the neck of the criminal by a sudden 'drop,' but as he could not give Tricky a long enough drop he determined to make up for it in another ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... nature to fit its owner to the necessities of his habitat. The parrot-fish are screamingly fantastic. There are not even in the warm California or Florida waters the duplicates of these rainbow fish. The Garibaldi perch and the electric fish excite interest at Santa Catalina, but here are a hundred marvels, and if I wish I can see them all as they swim in and out of the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... on and wanted to use his limbs, I put him into a large wicker bonnet-basket, having taken out the lining; it made him a large cheerful airy cage. Of course I had a perch put across it, and he had plenty of white sand and a pan of water; sometimes I set his bath on the floor of the room, and he delighted in bathing until he looked half-drowned; then what shaking of his feathers, what ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... pompous Crevel. "Madame la Baronne, I throw myself at your feet! Good Heavens, how the children grow! they are pushing us off the perch—'Grand-pa,' they say, 'we want our turn in the sunshine.'—Madame la Comtesse, you are as lovely as ever," he went on, addressing Hortense.—"Ah, ha! and here is the best of good money: Cousin Betty, the ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... to be the only living things about him. Just as my foot touched the ground a double report rang out, and my dog gave a plaintive and prolonged howl. Feeling that all was over, and that no weapons could be of any use, I climbed up again into my perch and looked out. The poor wretch was lying face downwards writhing in his blood; the assassins were reloading their muskets as they ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... handsomely. He had had a ring put round one of the cockatoo's ankles, with a bright steel chain attached and a fastener to secure it to the perch. The cockatoo was sent in the cage by coach, and a perch, made of foreign wood, followed by ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... gentleman, having finished his oration, settled himself on a great bench inside the chimney, and put his hawk on a perch over his head, while his cockers coiled themselves up close to the warm peat-ashes, and his son set to work to pull off his father's boots, amid sundry warnings to take care ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... With them flying is a luxury, a fine art; not merely a quicker and safer means of transit from one point to another, but a gift so free and spontaneous that work becomes leisure and movement rest. They are not so much going somewhere, from this perch to that, as they are abandoning themselves to the mere pleasure of riding upon ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... story of my escape with amazement, saying, "You fell into the hands of the Old Man of the Sea, and it is a mercy that he did not strangle you as he has everyone else upon whose shoulders he has managed to perch himself. This island is well known as the scene of his evil deeds, and no merchant or sailor who lands upon it cares to stray far away from his comrades." After we had talked for a while they took me back with them on board their ship, where ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... right: 'My father! If the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldst thou not have done it?' Yes! Of course he would, and the greater the better. Men will stand, as Indian fakirs do, with their arms above their heads until they stiffen there. They will perch themselves upon pillars, like Simeon Stylites, for years, till the birds build their nests in their hair: they will measure all the distance from Cape Comorin to Juggernaut's temple with their bodies along ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... casting, bait casting, trolling, and still fishing. The average boy is a still fisherman, which means not only that he must keep still, but that his bait remains in one place instead of being trolled or cast about. The usual strings of fish that boys catch, such as perch, sunfish, bullheads, catfish, and whitefish, are called pan fish. This is not entirely a correct name as I have seen some catfish that it would take a pretty big pan to hold. One caught in the Mississippi River weighed ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... his box, he gathered up his reins and shouted a good-natured farewell to the crowd. A quick and vigorous application of the whip awakened the dozing horses so suddenly that they started up with a spasmodic jerk which nearly threw the old fellow from his perch. By a desperate effort, however, he maintained his seat, but his broad-brimmed hat went flying from his bald head and rolled to the ground, scattering in its fall his snuff-box, spectacles and a monstrous red bandanna handkerchief. This little episode ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... not my winged neighbors picked up the crumbs I have scattered for them before my window? I see them fly away, come back, perch upon the ledges of the windows, and chirp at the sight of the feast they are usually so ready to devour! It is not my presence that frightens them; I have accustomed them to eat out of my hand. Then, why this fearful suspense? In vain I look around: the roof is clear, the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the white ibis, the white heron, the snake-bird, and vulture. We found a bluff, with deep water below it, into which we had scarcely thrown our lines when we each hooked a large black bass; after which we caught several bream, cat-fish, and perch, until we had as much as we ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... than them all." Then she said to him, "Take a greenish dove with a ring about its neck, and write something on its foot with the menstruous blood of a blue-eyed maid; then let the bird loose, and it will perch on the walls of the city, and they will fall down." For that, says the Arab historian, was the talisman of the city, which could not be destroyed in any other way. And Sapor did as she bade him, and the city fell down in a ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... was so much better that he had managed to fly up on his perch, and was eating seeds quite gayly. "Poor Dick!" said Carl, "leg and a stump!" Dick imitated him in a few little chirps, "A leg ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... those delicately chiselled cups; those glasses and bottles which Vesuvius has preserved for us; that jug, the handle of which is formed of a satyr bending backward to rub his shoulders against the edge of the vase; those vessels of all shapes on which eagles perch or swans and serpents writhe; those cups of baked clay adorned with so many arabesques and inviting descriptions. "Friend," says one of them ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... it, in Penny Green, with what Mabel called "the most extraordinary people." "What you can find in that Mr. Fargus and that young Perch and his everlasting mother," she used to say, "I simply ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... not pester the rose with his protestations of love. He was not a particularly proud fellow, but he thought too much of the rose to vex her with his pleadings. But all day long he would perch in the thicket and sing his songs as only a thrush can sing to the beautiful rose he loves. He sung, we will say, of the forests he had explored, of the famous river he had once seen, of the dew which the rose loved, of the storm-king that slew the old ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... a person spoke of "swiping Caesar's dope"; or of making Caesar "come off his perch," you would see that something fine in the thought had vanished. Practise expressing your ideas ...
— Manners And Conduct In School And Out • Anonymous
... about my disliking Carfax," Olva went on. "And I think, altogether, it's about time I came off my perch. For one thing I'm going ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... and she feared evidently to avail herself of opiates, lest in her heavy slumber, perhaps, I should escape. In her normal condition this seemed impossible, for she slept habitually as lightly as a cat, or bird upon its perch, yet lying, and with her key beneath her head (never dreaming of other outlet) she felt at ease. I had already learned that since her illness there were additional precautions taken to insure my safety, and, as she had alleged, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... and field and cottage, in one continuous blaze of glory. We had walked on in silence for the last half hour; but I could sometimes hear my companion muttering as he went; and when, in passing through a thicket of hawthorn and honeysuckle, we started from its perch a linnet that had been filling the air with its melody, I could hear him exclaim, in a subdued tone of voice, "Bonny, bonny birdie! why hasten frae me?—I wadna skaith a feather o' yer wing." He turned round to me, and I could see that his eyes were ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... are you after now, Mick?" she said, observing that, instead of drawing himself up to level ground, he stood poised on an uncomfortable perch, and looked back the steep way ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... once, her brother decided. Stubbornness or no stubbornness, she must go this time. Why he didn't think of going himself Val never afterwards knew. Perhaps he possessed a spark of the family love of danger, after all, but mostly he clung to his perch because of that last threat. Whoever Jeems was or whatever he had done, he was one and alone. And he might relish another player on his side. But ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... doorway of the room, and slightly cocked up his evil eye at the goldfinch. Instantly a raging thirst beset the bird, and when it was appeased he still drew several unnecessary buckets of water, leaping about the perch and sharpening his ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... conclusion, by this time, that the hungry soldier boy was not a recruiting officer, or even the corporal of a guard sent to apprehend him, and he was returning with confidence to partake of his noonday meal. Tom, from his perch at the top of the chimney, watched him as he ambled along over the rough path with his eyes fixed upon the ground. There was something rather exciting in the situation of affairs, and he soon found himself ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... a perch when the click of a pistol was heard, but no report; the fact having been, that the pistol missed fire, and ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... even numbers will take the starboard side of the ship," said Mr. Lowington from his perch on the hatch. "All who have drawn odd numbers will take ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... the tormenting pin Stills in his awful glance its dizzy din; Beneath that stern regard the chewing-gum Which writhed and squeaked between the teeth is dumb; Obedient to his will the dunce-cap flies To perch upon the brows of the unwise; The supple switch forsakes the parent wood To settle where 'twill do the greatest good, Puissant still, as when of old it strove With Solomon for spitting on the stove Learned Professor, variously great, Guide, ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... for the imagined spot close by, followed by the rest, evidently to Mak's delight, for he began to grin hugely and raised up suspicion in the boys that their sympathy was being wasted, for all at once Pig hopped back on to the top of the wall, baboon fashion, to perch there like one of the hideous little beasts, none the worse for his leap down into the tree top ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... present) 186; domesticate, colonize; take root, strike root; anchor; cast anchor, come to an anchor; sit down, settle down; settle; take up one's abode, take up one's quarters; plant oneself, establish oneself, locate oneself; squat, perch, hive, se nicher[Fr], bivouac, burrow, get a footing; encamp, pitch one's tent; put up at, put up one's horses at; keep house. endenizen[obs3], naturalize, adopt. put back, replace &c. (restore) 660. Adj. placed &c. v.; situate, posited, ensconced, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... top of the morning to you, my pretty Miss chattering Mag, up on your perch there,' responded ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... band goes by; For your perch, the lamp post high; For your pleasure, on the street Dogs are fighting, drums are beat; For your sake, the boyish fray, Organ grinder, run-away; Trucks for your convenience are; For your ease, the bob-tail ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... satisfied to live and die there. Rather than live elsewhere, they will walk, as some of them do, twelve miles in the early morning, to their work down in the valley of the Durance, and twelve miles home again, in the evenings, to their perch on ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... didn't say that," explained Jack, as he landed a good-sized perch in the bottom of the boat, "there's one for luck. That was a comment of my own. Wait until I put a fresh bait on and I will tell you what he did ...
— The Boy Scouts Patrol • Ralph Victor
... the leading horse could barely stagger another fifty yards, notwithstanding the inhuman efforts of the cocchiere to make the most of the poor brute's failing energies. At last the animal stumbled and fell, nearly pulling the driver off his perch. It was sad, but he had more than earned his price, ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... Seated on his perch above the abyss, the officer lowered his field glasses and turned his face. Then he rose and moved over to where she was sitting. She ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... Lamb to Manning, written probably at Margate, where this year's holidays were spent. It is deeply interesting and I wish 1 could print it even with its imperfections. There are references to White, Dyer, Coleridge ("Pity that such human frailties should perch upon the margin of Ulswater Lake") and the Lloyds. Also to politics and the riddle of life. "What we came here for I know ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... Pyramids forty centuries look down upon you. The sun of Austerlitz has risen once more. The Guard dies, but never surrenders. My eagles, flying from steeple to steeple, never shall droop till they perch on the towers ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the prisoners were huddled, it became evident that all must go unless the old tower could be torn away. Up the uneven, rickety wall went Jim, nimble as a squirrel. Crack! crack! fell the dead boards, then with a clang and clamor, down rolled the old bell from its perch, carrying with it the last of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... is only rough work; we will first put up a perch or two for them, and then close in the side, and thatch the roof with cocoa-nut branches; but there's Juno taking in the dinner, so ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... rarely disturb the person of a traveler, but their chief amusement is to cut away outside packages. As a precaution we mounted our Cossack on the trunk, but before we went a mile he fell from his perch in spite of his utmost efforts to cling to the vehicle. After that event he rode by the ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... accept of a jack[53], which is the best I have caught this season. I intend to come and stay with you a week, and see how the perch bite in the Black River. I observed with some concern, the last time I saw you upon the bowling-green, that your whip wanted a lash to it; I will bring half a dozen with me that I twisted last week, which I hope will serve you all the time you are in the ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... was over Jerrie made her grandmother sit still while she washed up and put away the dishes, singing as she worked, and whistling, too—loud, dear, ringing strains, which made a robin in the grass fly up to the perch, where, with his head turned on one side he listened, as if in wonder, to this new songster, whose notes were ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... apparently aniconic. The divinity was not embodied in any graven image, but was inherent in such objects as the rude natural concretions found in the House of the Fetish Shrine, or was supposed to dwell in sacred trees, on which sometimes perch the doves which indicate that the goddess is present as ruler of the air, or which are twined with serpents, showing her presence as goddess of the earth and underworld. In the place of sacred trees we have often sacred pillars, which seem to have been objects of worship down ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... Plant-lice and Ants caught in it, as well as tufted seeds which have blown from the capitula of the Cichoriaceae. A Gad-fly, as big as a Blue bottle, falls into the trap before my eyes. She has barely alighted on the perilous perch when lo, she is held by the hinder tarsi! The Fly makes violent efforts to take wing; she shakes the slender plant from top to bottom. If she frees her hinder tarsi she remains snared by the front tarsi and has to begin all over again. I was ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... memories woke in him, and he knew what it was. It was the stand of a rocket. The confused, incongruous memories still possessed him up to the very moment of a fierce but familiar sound; and an instant after the rocket left its perch and went up into endless space like a starry arrow aimed at the stars. March thought suddenly of the signs of the last days and knew he was looking at the apocalyptic meteor of something ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... it was the custom in Europe to hunt various birds, such as the wild duck and partridge, with falcons. The falcons were long-winged birds of prey, resembling hawks. They were trained to perch on their master's wrist and wait patiently until they were told to fly. Then they would swiftly dart at their prey and bear it to the ground. Henry was very fond of falconry and hence was known as ...
— Famous Men of The Middle Ages • John H. Haaren, LL.D. and A. B. Poland, Ph.D.
... haste, all eagerness, all desire for his mate seemed to have left Thor; and if Iskwao had been eager and yearning she was profoundly indifferent now. For two or three minutes Thor stood looking casually about, and this gave Muskwa time to come up and perch himself ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... Mistis," announced the negro driver, descending from his perch, and at the same instant the door of the house flew open and Eugenia ran out, bareheaded, ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... all was well. It was for this reason that I sat upon the Shrubbery gate towards nine o'clock of a certain evening, swinging my legs and listening for the sound of her step along the path. In the fulness of time she came, and getting off my perch, I took the heavy basket from her ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... those too of the finest kinds. I once saw Mr. Scott secure a Murray cod, floating on the top of the water, that weighed 72lbs. This beautiful and excellent fish is figured in Mitchell's first work. It is a species of perch, and is very abundant, as well as several others of its own genus, that are richer but smaller; the general size of the cod varying from ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... last it became necessary, as the time of being called to the bar approached, to provide a dwelling in London. In his latter days, he pointed out a house in Cursitor Street. "There," said he, "was my first perch. Many a time have I run down from that house to Fleet Market, to get sixpennyworth of sprats for supper." At this period, in mentioning to his brother the kindness of a great conveyancer, Mr Duane, whom he attended as a gratuitous pupil, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... From scenes of art which chase That thought away, turn, and with watchful eyes Feed it 'mid Nature's old felicities, Rocks, rivers, and smooth lakes more clear than glass Untouched, unbreathed upon. Thrice happy guest, If from a golden perch of aspen spray (October's workmanship to rival May) The pensive warbler of the ruddy breast That moral teaches by a heaven-taught lay, Lulling the year, with all its cares, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... time each day drew us closer to each other. He began to perch on twigs only a few inches from my face and listen while I whispered to him—yes, he LISTENED and made answer with chirps. Nothing else would describe it. As I wrote he would alight on my manuscript paper and try to read. Sometimes ...
— My Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... beautiful birds in a large cage, taking their morning bath. They would jump down into their little bath-tub, dip their heads in the water, and then plunge in all over; then they would perch on the side of the tub, shake the bright drops from their feathers, and seem to be enjoying themselves as much as Birdie herself does when mamma ...
— The Nursery, May 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... delicate roots; the storms will batter and tear the frail creepers. No doubt. But at this present moment all is fair and fragrant. And when the storms have done their wicked worst, and the sun and the frosts—nay, when that roof on which we perch is pulled to pieces, tiles and bricks, and the whole block goes—may there not be, for those caring enough, the chance of growing another garden, there ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... statue of the Rev. Thomas Charles, the distinguished theological writer, to whom was largely due the foundation of the British and Foreign Bible Society. Bala Lake, the largest in Wales (4 m. long by some 3/4 m. wide), is subject to sudden and dangerous floods, deep and clear, and full of pike, perch, trout, eel and gwyniad. The gwyniad (Caregonus) is peculiar to certain waters, as those of Bala Lake, and is fully described by Thomas ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... and animals and lies at the mercy of rivers that overflow or skies that withhold the rain. To such people nature-myths and sacred animals appeal with a force that Europeans rarely understand. The parrots that perch on the pinnacles of the temple and the oxen that rest in the shade of its courts are not intruders but humble brothers of mankind, who may also be the messengers of ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... rider attempted to abandon his high perch upon the hump, his chances would have been good for getting dashed against one of the big boulders, or trodden under the huge hoofs of the ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... whom 1676 were foreign-born; (1904) 6893; (1910) 8375. It is served by the Ann Arbor and the Grand Rapids & Indiana railways. Cadillac overlooks picturesque lake scenery, and the good fishing for pike, pickerel and perch in the lake, and for brook trout in streams near by, attracts many visitors. Among the city's chief manufactures are hardwood lumber, iron, tables, crates and woodenware, veneer, flooring and flour. Cadillac was settled in 1871, was incorporated as a village under the name of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... air with fragrance! "Master of Life!" he cried, desponding, 40 "Must our lives depend on these things?" On the third day of his fasting By the lake he sat and pondered, By the still, transparent water; Saw the sturgeon, Nahma, leaping, 45 Scattering drops like beads of wampum, Saw the yellow perch, the Sahwa, Like a sunbeam in the water, Saw the pike, the Maskenozha, And the herring, Okahahwis, 50 And the Shawgashee, the craw-fish! "Master of Life!" he cried, desponding, "Must our lives depend on these things?" On the ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... waving; suddenly the ropes that still held it gave way, and it disappeared in the darkness of the night like a vast sea-bird. At the same moment a violent crash was heard, and cries of distress. Dantes from his rocky perch saw the shattered vessel, and among the fragments the floating forms of the hapless sailors. Then ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of them perch and chatter on the rocks and fly screaming in the air, amongst them being guillemots, kittiwakes, gulls, terns, cormorants, puffins, and eider-ducks, for which latter St. Cuthbert is said to have had great affection; certainly they are the gentlest of these ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... with a sword, from all the dear little safe things that have made up your life in the past. She glanced from the helmet which the airman held toward her to the monoplane spread-eagling on the ground. I saw her big eyes dilate as they fixed themselves anxiously on the passenger's perch, to which the honoured guest must climb, above the conductor's seat, crawling through the wire stays, or whatever you call them, which were like a spider's web inviting a fly. Diana turned pale. Even her lips were white. The shadows ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... eloquent gesture, and dismounting from his perch made his way along the passage to a door which opened into the shed. Thence he looked out on the quay, and along the ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... of holding on with their feet, otherwise they would be liable to continual falls, and they are able to do this by means of their long finger-like toes and large opposable thumbs, which grasp a branch almost as securely as a bird grasps its perch. The true hands, on the contrary, are used chiefly to climb with, and to swing the whole weight of the body from one branch or one tree to another, and for this purpose the fingers are very long and strong, and in many species they are further ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... obeyed, and, stationing herself in the middle of the room, surveyed the whole effect with much approval. Annis, her fair face flushed with the exertion, balanced herself on her lofty perch and gazed complacently upon her handiwork; while even Mistress Vane, who had been seated quietly on a deep chair by the fireplace, roused herself as from a reverie, and looked half-wistfully around the cheerful room. "What bell was that I ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... amusement here, and shared by both sexes. What the Marne and the Morin contain in the way of booty, we hardly know; but it is certain that more cunning fish, whether perch, tench, or bream, never existed, and are not, "by hook or by crook," to be caught. Wherever we go, we find anglers sitting patiently by these lovely green banks, and certainly the mere prospect they have before them—clear water ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... every passer-by, they fancy they are in the upper-ten of womanhood. Vain! The peacock, whose little heart is one beating pulse of vanity, is not half so vain as they. Giddy, trifling, empty, vapid, cold, moonshine women, whose souls can perch on a plume, and whose only ambition is to be a traveling advertisement for the men and women who traffic in what they wear, are many who flaunt in satins and glitter in diamonds. How many such there are we would not say. But I doubt not, that not ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... of anything better, he handed the astonished driver his tobacco-pouch, and waved him to the house. The lad descended from his perch and ran to the door just as Dick Tipping, giving vent to a sharp cry, was rushing out. The cry acted on the skipper like magic, and, snatching up the whip, he gave the horse a cut in which was concentrated ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... "Let's see them!" "Oh, don't go!" they chorused in an equally histrionic alarm, and the shoeman got down from his perch to show ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and pa beat them all going up crab apple trees. The senator's son saw pa up a tree, and he said: "Old gentleman, if these are your animals, or insects, or whatever they are, you ought to come down off your perch and take them to a Keeley cure, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... her ears from hearing and her eyes from seeing all the pleasant sights and sounds around her. But the birds were so busy singing, and the fish kept springing up from the stream, and every now and then a bright butterfly would flit across, or a little bird perch on a spray close to her, and everything around seemed trying so mischievously to take her attention from her book, so that they had reached the gate at the end of the wood before Kitty had learned two verses of ...
— Amy Harrison - or Heavenly Seed and Heavenly Dew • Amy Harrison
... coal-box, hung the newspaper to air upon the fender, put the chair ready, and the screen in its place, and was round upon his heel on the instant of Mr Dombey's entrance, to take his great-coat and hat, and hang them up. Then Perch took the newspaper, and gave it a turn or two in his hands before the fire, and laid it, deferentially, at Mr Dombey's elbow. And so little objection had Perch to being deferential in the last degree, that if he might ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... scanned the stretch of river which he could see from his high perch he suddenly observed something which almost caused him to lose his hold upon the tree and fall, like the bear, to the ground. Coming up the stream were two canoes, each paddled by a couple of Indians, and with three white men in each craft. Even at that distance Enoch knew them to be strangers, ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... grass and tussocks, and weighing anything from a pound to half a hundredweight. He scarred his hands and broke his fingernails to pieces over them, but, on the whole, considered it not a bad employment, except when old Joe took it into his head to perch on the fence and spur him on to greater efforts by disparaging remarks about England. Whatever his work, there was never any certainty that old Joe would not appear, to sit down, light his short, black pipe, and make caustic remarks about his methods or his ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... and which was filled with great stones. As the torrent swept his brother past him and under the bridge, the drowning youth gave a spring from the ice on which he still stood, and the other bending at the instant from his perch above, caught him by the collar, and lifted him bodily from his perilous situation. All was the work of a moment; yet the spectators held their breath, and wondered as they saw. It was an act of bold daring on the ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... once more returned to the glade, and, after lifting Cibolo down from his perch, he approached the fire, and gazed for a moment at the corpse of the yellow hunter. The fires were blazing more brightly than ever. These ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... spectacles, turn up its nose, and cry, "That a man of genius, indeed! Pelt him!—pelt him!" Then of course there is a clatter, what the vulgar call "a shindy," round the pedestal. Squeezed by his believers, shied at by his scoffers, the poor man gets horribly mauled about, and drops from the perch in the midst of the row. Then they shovel him over, clap a great stone on his relics, wipe their foreheads, shake hands, compromise the dispute, the one half the world admitting that though he ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... frightened. He clutched the side of it, and looked out at me. My own mind supplied his words: "Help! I'm caught! Take me out! You promised!" When I transferred him to the cage, for a moment his confidence lasted still. He mounted the perch, shook his plumage, and spoke out bravely and cheerily. Then all at ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... lark, sweet and incessant as it balanced on a rosin-weed, of the lark bunting and lark finch, poured forth melodiously; twittering blue-birds looked into the air and back to their perch atop the dead cottonwood as they gathered luckless insects; the brown thrush, which sings the night through in the bright starlight, rivaled the robin and grosbeak as Philip gazed over the blue-skyed, ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... Who knows whether you will not soon be my widow? I am about to enter into another war, and it will be a desperate, obstinate struggle, in which old Austria will try to wrest the palm of victory from young France. Victory will perch on my banners. I have no doubt of that, but who knows whether I shall not have to pay for it with my blood! for I must not spare myself—I shall always be at the head of my troops, and, like my private soldiers, with them bare my own breast to the hail of bullets. In so decisive a struggle ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... him up the main street, past the rows of shops that had been there four years ago, past the Saskatchewan Hotel and the little Board of Trade building which, like the old barber shop, still hung to its original perch at the edge of the high bank which ran precipitously down to the river. And there, as sure as fate, was Percival Clary, the little English Secretary! But what ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... She left her perch on the railings, and stood erect, in an unconscious attitude of defiance; and Garth watched her speculatively through narrowed lids. He was wondering whether Mrs Desmond's remark that she had persuaded Captain Lenox to go shooting beyond ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... There was a running to and fro and a great draught, but that is just what made the bells ring, and one could not hear oneself speak. In the middle of the great hall where the Emperor sat, a golden rod had been set up on which the Nightingale was to perch. The whole Court was present, and the little kitchen-maid was allowed to stand behind the door, for she had now the actual title of Court Kitchen-Maid. All were there in their smartest clothes, and they all looked toward ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... had leaped down from her high perch, and was now taking a drink from a little sparkling mountain rill which ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... was dwarfed, by a dull and thunderous detonation of cannon from a terrace of the palace. The tonga ponies, reared and plunged, Ram Nath mastering them with much difficulty. Sophia was startled, and Amber himself stirred uneasily on his perch. ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... about the island till evening, as its appearance was very inviting. Its FAUNA and FLORA, however, were poor in the extreme. The only specimens of quadrupeds, birds, fish and cetacea were a few wild boars, stormy petrels, albatrosses, perch and seals. Here and there thermal springs and chalybeate waters escaped from the black lava, and thin dark vapors rose above the volcanic soil. Some of these springs were very hot. John Mangles held his thermometer in one of them, and found the temperature ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... ap' fer ter come up wid um. No matter 'bout dat, de 'simmon patch 'uz dar des like I tell you, en ole Brer Possum mouf 'gun ter water soon's he year talk un um, en mos' 'fo' Brer Rabbit done tellin' 'im de news, Brer Possum, he put out, he did, en 'twa'n't long 'fo' he wuz perch up in de highes' tree in Brer B'ar 'simmon patch. But Brer Rabbit, he done 'termin' fer ter see some fun, en w'iles all dis 'uz gwine on, he run 'roun' ter Brer B'ar house, en holler en tell 'im w'ich dey wuz somebody 'stroyin' un ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... the most wonderful person I have ever known?" he said to Margery, on the first of the sunning days when she had come to perch in ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... For some reason or other this courtyard was a favorite playground for a large company of rats. I don't know what the attraction was for them, except that they may have liked nibbling the paint off the canvas. Out they used to troop in swarms, and I, from my perch on the window-seat, would watch and wonder. Once a terrible storm came on, and years after, at the Lyceum, the Brocken Scene in "Faust" brought back the scene to my mind—the thunder and lightning and the creatures crawling on every side, ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... patience we tame the wild creatures. We learn to know the calls of the wildwood warblers, which I am credibly informed are many and varied in character; and by imitating those calls we charm the feathered minstrels to leave their accustomed haunts on the sheltering bough and to come and perch on our outstretched hands. ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... few steps into the loft and waited. From this elevated perch his eyes could sweep the roofs round about, the upper parts of the luxurious chestnut trees, now delicate in leaves of a week's age, and the drooping boughs of the lines; Farfrae's garden and the green door leading therefrom. In course of ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... wings; and so they let this morning lark rise above their theological mists, and sing to them at heaven's gate, until he had softened all their hearts and might nestle in their bosoms and find his perch on "the big ha' bible," if he would,—and as he did. So did the music of Emerson's words and life steal into the hearts of our stern New England theologians, and soften them to a temper which would have seemed treasonable weakness to their ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... unremarkable. One, indeed, whom I found plying his spade in the red evening, high above Allan Water and in the shadow of Dunblane Cathedral, told me of his acquaintance with the birds that still attended on his labours; how some would even perch about him, waiting for their prey; and, in a true Sexton's Calendar, how the species varied with the season of the year. But this was the very poetry of the profession. The others whom I knew were somewhat dry. A faint flavour of the gardener ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... declare myself the slave of that masculine soul Which ties and alliance on earth once for ever renounces. Told I thee yester-morn how the Iris of heaven Brought to me in my cup a gospel of joy? O high-flying falcon! the Tree of Life is thy perch; This nook of grief fits thee ill for a nest. Hearken! they call to thee down from the ramparts of heaven; I cannot divine what holds thee here in a net. I, too, have a counsel for thee; O mark it and keep it. Since I received ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... lighted his banquet, and the faces of the two girls, rosy in the blaze and mysterious in the shadow, were piquant inspiration. Even the sharp features of Don Anastasio stirred him into a phase of whimsical benevolence. He knocked two chickens from their perch in a tree and baked them in a mould of clay. There was an armadilla too, which a Culebra boy and the dogs had run down during the day. Its dark flesh was rich and luscious, and the Missourian fondly called it 'possum. Crisply ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... we have no servants; We must see to things ourselves. We can't all perch like eagles, therefore, I beg you to be more careful. Kirill ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... cooing ground-dove creeps close to her mate At this sound of alarm, which all living things hate; The snake-bird is startled, and drops from her bough To dive in the stream that runs swiftly below. Whilst perch'd on a tree the wood-pelican's dreams Are disturb'd by the crane's and the crying-bird's screams. The tortoise made off at the mention of rain, And troops of ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... in. A Fringillina, with curious Flycatcher habits, I have only seen two individuals, they perch towards the top of trees, and thence sally out after winged insects. I examined the contents of its stomach, and found only seeds, gravel, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... ships of his flight tucked in and circled. Soon they picked up the flight of Liberators and Fortresses. At twenty-five thousand feet the big bombers left broad vapor trails behind them. Stan looked down upon the killers from his perch in the sky. Dawn was breaking and the ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery
... groove in which a corpse can be laid. There are three concentric circles, the outermost for men, the next inner for women, the innermost for children. The structure has no roof, but is open to the air. Great flocks of vultures perch upon the top of the outermost enclosing wall, waiting in silence and expectation for the time when they can descend upon their prey. Only a half-hour elapses after a body is laid on its stony bed, before these ravenous birds have torn every morsel of flesh ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... Grouse Lodge and ran acrass the road; so I gev the whilloo, and knowing that she'd take the rise of the hill, I made over the ditch, and up through Mullaghcashel as hard as I could pelt, still keeping her in view, but afore I had gone a perch, Spring seen her, and away the two went like the wind, up Drumrewy, and down Clooneen, and over the river, widout his being able onc't to turn her. Well, I run on till I come to the Diffagher, and through it I went, ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... into kindling wood; chips and markers flew! A chair banged against the lookout's high perch, just as he was bringing his sawed-off shotgun ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... items on her fingers. "I did have a good time, I did remember to take my tonic, and this heavenly coat has kept me as warm as pie—Nina Atherton taught me that. That nice family considerably enlarged my vocabulary," she added with enjoyment, slipping out of a heavy fur coat and coming back to perch on the arm ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... those navigators who have little experience in those seas, that on the edge of soundings in all parts of the West Indies, and particularly on the edges of the Bahamas and Salt Key Bank, abundance of fish of excellent quality, as black perch, kingfish, barracooter, and Spanish mackerel, may be taken by trailing during a ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... thought of the terrible duty-calls flashed through her mind Toni slipped down from her perch on the balustrade and made her way down to the towing path beneath. She often walked beside the river in these quiet morning hours, alone unless her dog Jock, an Airedale terrier of unimpeachable ancestry and cheerful disposition, was at hand to ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... by the crossing of any lesser number: how, for instance, could a pouter be produced by crossing two breeds unless one of the parent-stocks possessed the characteristic enormous crop? The supposed aboriginal stocks must all have been rock-pigeons, that is, they did not breed or willingly perch on trees. But besides C. livia, with its geographical sub-species, only two or three other species of rock-pigeons are known; and these have not any of the characters of the domestic breeds. Hence the supposed aboriginal stocks must ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... in my eyes to hear this avowal of his dependence; just as if a royal eagle, chained to a perch, should be forced to entreat a sparrow to become its purveyor. But I would not be lachrymose: I dashed off the salt drops, and busied myself with ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... rouses himself from time to time with a testy twitch and noisy chirrup that urge the poor beast into a faster gait. All the while the little wife sits beside him, as if a twittering sparrow had nestled itself upon the same perch with some grave owl, and sat with him side by side, watching for the big eyes to turn upon her, and chirping some pretty response for every solemn utterance of the wise old ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... varieties, are caught in this huge family net. Beef, veal, mutton and venison, of the most select kinds and quality, roll bounteously to this grand consumer. The teeming riches of the Chesapeake bay, its rock, perch, drums, crocus, trout, oysters, crabs, and terrapin, are drawn hither to adorn the glittering table of the great house. The dairy, too, probably the finest on the Eastern Shore of Maryland—supplied ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... nor The boding raven, nor chough hoar, Nor chattering pye, May on our bride-house perch or sing, Or with them any discord ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... made in December 1844, must be a second-hand job. But some years afterwards (Sept. 10, 1850), the reviews, etc. having been just placed at the disposal of readers in the old reading-room of the Museum, I made a tour of inspection, came upon my critic on his perch, and took a look at him. I was very glad to remember this, for, though expecting only second-hand, yet even of this there is good and bad; and I expected to find some hints in the good second-hand of a respectable clerical publication. I read on, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... rapids, he would watch, till the immensity and the solitude would creep in upon his spirit and oppress him. Then, at last, a shrill yelp, far off and faint, but sinister, would come from the pine-top; and the eagle, launching himself on open wings from his perch, would either wheel upward into the blue, or flap away over the serried fir-tops to some ravine in the cliffs ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... the Cat spit; White Owl cried, "Who-oo-o," and flew down from his perch. In a twinkling Hortense was running down the hall, hand in hand with Highboy and ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo
... fixed tranquillity. The rivulet Sends forth glad sounds, and tripping o'er its bed Of pebbly sands, or leaping down the rocks, Seems, with continuous laughter, to rejoice In its own being. Softly tread the marge, Lest from her midway perch thou scare the wren That dips her bill in water. The cool wind, That stirs the stream in play, shall come to thee, Like one that loves thee nor will let thee pass Ungreeted, and shall give its ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... she had once found her way, and been welcomed to his little bare room, where an old piano, a violin, and heaps of dusty folios of music, were the principal furniture, a day seldom passed without her paying him a visit. She would perch herself at his window, which commanded a wide view over the city, with its countless roofs, and domes, and towers, and beyond the encircling hills, with their scattered villas, and slopes of terraced gardens, and pines, ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... who was versed in book-lore, but, worse luck to him, he could not bind a wheat-sheaf or weed a perch of parsnips, and the result—bankruptcy; failure. That's what ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... said the scout leader, nodding his head approvingly. "Making a little fireplace where he can perch his kettle, and have the hottest part of his fire under it. Note also that the opening is in the direction of the breeze. That allows the flame to be fanned. Wallace will never have to blow out his cheeks and puff to keep his ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... bench in the sun. The Pere Michel, who was my predecessor, had some doves, and had left them behind in a little house by my bench. I took care of and fed them. They were tame, and used to flutter to my shoulders and perch on my hands. To birds and animals I was always a friend. At El-Largani there are all sorts of beasts, and, at one time or another, it had been my duty to look after most of them. I loved all living things. Sitting in the cemetery ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... marry," he would say, "instead of spending the summer in Sarrio, where the etiquette is as strict as in Lancia, I shall go to Rodillero to breathe the fresh air and fish for perch. Listen to me, Micaela; don't be so sharp, woman. You will find a husband won't put up with those frivolous ways; he will expect to be answered in ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... of mounting that horse, I had occasion to cross King's Market Square at midnight. I had been out to a little social gathering, and was on my way home alone. I saw the great horse and rider gleaming in the pale moonlight. I recalled vividly how I had occupied that elevated perch and been hauled down by the scandalized and indignant officers. I remembered the warning of the judge as to what would happen if I ever did it again. Hastily I removed my coat and hat and clambered ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... domesticate, colonize; take root, strike root; anchor; cast anchor, come to an anchor; sit down, settle down; settle; take up one's abode, take up one's quarters; plant oneself, establish oneself, locate oneself; squat, perch, hive, se nicher [Fr.], bivouac, burrow, get a footing; encamp, pitch one's tent; put up at, put up one's horses at; keep house. endenizen^, naturalize, adopt. put back, replace &c (restore) 660. Adj. placed &c v.; situate, posited, ensconced, imbedded, embosomed^, rooted; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... honourable father, for whose sake I pray you pardon the young man's transgression." But Angelo replied, "We must not make a scare-crow of the law, setting it up to frighten birds of prey, till custom, finding it harmless, makes it their perch, and not their ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... drum more promiscuously than does downy. He utters his long, loud spring call, whick—whick—whick—whick, and then begins to rap with his beak upon his perch before the last note has reached your ear. I have seen him drum sitting upon the ridge of the barn. The log-cock, or pileated woodpecker, the largest and wildest of our Northern species, I have never heard drum. His blows should ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... once, above the exquisite valley spanned by the Natural Bridge, a valley far too little known or praised. I had noticed an old log house, as I learned to know the outlook from the picturesque hotel, and was sure that it must give a charming view from its perch on the summit of ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... rushing out of their respective forges, to examine every part of the carriage. "A nail had started here: a screw was wanting there: and a fracture had taken place in another direction: even the perch was given way in the centre!" "Alas, for my voiture de voyage!" exclaimed I to my companion. Meanwhile, a man came forward with a red-hot piece of iron, in the shape of a cramp, to fix round the perch—which hissed ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... nevertheless be deemed heresy to doubt the fact. At this season, therefore, the sportsman provides himself with tame pigeon, which he fastens by a string to the cimeaux, in such a manner that the poor bird is obliged to keep perpetually on the wing, not being allowed rope enough to reach a perch. After three or four Sundays passed in this manner, the unfortunate decoy dies of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... of little fish swarmed out of the pads and ran riot in the pool. Chub, shiners, "punkin-seeds," perch, boiled up at your flies, or chased each other in savage warfare through the forbidden water, which seemed to intoxicate them by its cool freshness. You had only to swing your canoe up near the shadowy edge of the pool ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... asking you, general," said the commodore, as he began to masticate a perch, "whether you are an aristocrat or a democrat. We have had the government pretty much upside-down, too, this morning, but this ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... noise and bustle came Miss Easton and Jack. The groom scrambled down from his perch, and the two got out. In an instant she was surrounded by three or four men, all talking at the same time and upon the same subject: "Was not the day superb?" "Did she know which way the hounds were to run?" "Was she going to ride Midnight?" "What ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... morning and shows the most lively interest in their work while beds are being made or tables dusted. It has the most perfect trustfulness, not merely allowing itself to be handled, but coming to perch on a wrist or shoulder as if it had belonged there from, time immemorial. It really is a pretty thing to have about the house, an embodiment of gentleness and kindness, and, so far as a mere human being can judge, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... Mona. "It was awful for you to perch on one toe for a hundred million mile ride! And I reclined at ease on a Roman trident, or whatever you call it!" "Tripod, you mean," said Adele, laughing, "or is ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... down to a frame that I contrived, straightened its little leg, warmed 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 with its ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and soon, for the rooms were quickly counted in Redman's Farm, he found her chamber small, neat, simplex munditiis. Bright and natty were the chintz curtains, and the little toilet set out, not inelegantly, and her pet piping-goldfinch asleep on his perch, with his bit of sugar between the wires of his cage; her pillow so white and unpressed, with its little edging of lace. Were slumbers sweet as of old ever to know it more? What dreams were henceforward to haunt it? Shadows ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... looked truly to a man who had paddled two days in a hot sticky fog, as, clad in white, she sat still and placid on her airy perch. Her hair, of the very light fleecy gold seldom seen after babyhood, hung over her shoulders unconfined by comb or ribbon, felling around her like a veil and glittering in the horizontal sunbeams; her face, throat and hands were white as the petals of ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... those perch that they let loose in the ponds to chase the great fish and prevent them growing too fat; but suppose that the great fish ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... that of a bachelor, for a man who feels instinctively that he will never own a "house and home" constructs the materiality of his life in chambers upon a fuller basis than the man who feels instinctively that he will, sooner or later, exchange the perch-like existence of his chambers for the nest-like completeness of a home ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... be caught in any such trap, and so the report of his shot had scarcely died away before the ape-man was on the ground and racing for another tree a hundred yards away. Here he again found a suitable perch from which he could watch the preparations of the raiders. It occurred to him that he might have considerable more fun with them, so again he called to them through ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the three kingdoms. Last year there were five fishing Colonels at the Greville Arms all at once. Brown-faced people who live in the open air, and who are deeply versed in the mysteries of tackle, cunning in the ways of trout, pike, perch, and salmon, walk the streets clad in tweed suits, with strong shoes and knickerbockers. The Mullingar folks despise the dictum of the American economist who said that every town without a river should buy one, as they are handy things ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... the hill, with its spreading wings, its stuccoed offices, its massive white columns at the rear, which presided solemnly over the terraced hill-side. A moment later he led me up to the high, spiked wall, and swung me from the ground to a secure perch on his shoulder. With my hands clinging to the iron nails that studded the wall, I looked over, and then caught my breath sharply at the thought that I was gazing upon an enchanted garden. Through the interlacing elm boughs the rosy light of the afterglow fell on the ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... FROM my perch over the bay window of the library, I had heard Tom Thornton express his savage determination to crush out of me the information he wanted. Being forewarned, I was in a measure forearmed, and I did not intend to be caught in a vulnerable position. I ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... from those opprobrious wrongs That press me now, and bend my spirit downward; All Venice free, and every growing merit Succeed to its just right: fools shall be pull'd From wisdom's seat; those baleful, unclean birds, Those lazy owls, who, perch'd near fortune's top, Sit only watchful with their heavy wings To cuff down new-fledg'd virtues, that would rise To nobler heights, and make ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... the window. "A cracker to such a bird as that! Ask it another." I actually, though with a timid air, opened the door of the cage and invited Polly to perch on my finger. She came, looking at me intensely all the while. I petted her little, which she took resignedly and with a faint show of wonder, then in answer to De Kock's summons put ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... by Arthur Wilson as "monstrous satires against the king's own person, that haunted both court and country," when, in the wantonness of the times, "every little miscarriage, exuberantly branched, so that evil report did often perch on them." Fuller has designated these suspicious scribes as "a generation of the people who, like moths, have lurked under the carpets of the council-table, and even like fleas, have leaped into pillows of the prince's bed-chamber; and, to enhance the reputation of their ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... lost way as it backed its sails and Jason fell from his precarious perch into the stinking bilge. "The descent of man," he muttered ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... squadron just then, that the camel might have brought all three into safety. But the Arab bent his head, and urged the swaying beast into a faster trot. Von Kerber fired at him, and the unhappy tribesman tumbled from his perch like a dummy figure. Snatching at the camel's head-rope, the Austrian lifted, almost threw Mrs. Haxton up to the saddle. Owing to its height from the ground, it was impossible to place her there securely, but she helped him bravely, scrambled somehow to the awkward seat, and stooped ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... Select fresh perch of medium size. Clean, bone and wipe dry as possible. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, dip in flour, egg, and crumbs (be sure fish are well coated with crumbs). Lay three at a time in a croquette basket and fry a golden brown in deep hot Cottolene. Cottolene should not be so hot as to brown fish ...
— Fifty-Two Sunday Dinners - A Book of Recipes • Elizabeth O. Hiller
... Grace had halted in their walk. It was full tide and the miniature breakers plashed amid the seaweed on the beach. The mist was drifting in over the bay and the gulls were calling sleepily from their perch along the breakwater. A night hawk swooped and circled above the tall "feather grass" by the margin of the creek. The minister's face was pale, but set and determined, and he was ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... else done. On the 19th and 22d, when the assaults were made on the lines, I watched the soldiers cooking on the green opposite. The half-spent balls, coming all the way from those lines, were flying so thick that they were obliged to dodge at every turn. At all the caves I could see from my high perch, people were sitting, eating their poor suppers at the cave doors, ready to plunge in again. As the first shell again flew, they dived; and not a human being was visible. The sharp crackle of the musketry-firing was a strong contrast to the scream of the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... said, "Go, Snow-white, and bolt the door," and then they sat round the hearth, and the mother took her spectacles and read aloud out of a large book, and the two girls listened as they sat and spun. And close by them lay a lamb upon the floor, and behind them upon a perch sat a white dove with its head hidden beneath ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... species which was not social, or which built its nest and roosted in trees (6/4. In works written on the pigeon by fanciers I have sometimes observed the mistaken belief expressed that the species which naturalists called ground-pigeons (in contradistinction to arboreal pigeons) do not perch and build on trees. In these same works by fanciers wild species resembling the chief domestic races are often said to exist in various parts of the world; but such species are quite unknown to naturalists.) the sharp eyes of fanciers would assuredly have detected ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... almost in the water, many of them having lost their balance and subsided into the lake, being supported in a horizontal position by their branches. The islands and the swampy margins form secure breeding-places for the countless water-fowl, and the lake abounds with pike, perch, eel, and roach. ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... once, to their horror, she seemed to slip and fall. Down she came from her perch, struck the water with a splash and sank ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... had marshalled his facts well, and his measured advance towards his denouement was not without its effect on his audience. Dr. Romain, nursing his knee on a leather settee, Horace Trevert, a tall slim figure eagerly watching the detective from his perch on the arm of the Chesterfield, and Robin and Mary, standing, very close together, behind the empty chair at the desk—each and every one was listening with rapt attention. Inspector Humphries, propping his big bulk uneasily against the wall near the door, was the ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... a church Uprise the prayer and supplicating psalm That Heaven would keep our spreading Eagle calm Upon his perch. ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... it and, if you please, have a mat hung across the opening. But we had not got so far as that yet on our vessel, only just got the staging fixed in fact; and I assure you a bamboo staging is but a precarious perch when in this stage of formation. I made myself a reclining couch on it in the Roman manner with my various belongings, and was exceeding comfortable until we got nearly out of the Rembwe into the Gaboon. Then came ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... even a common cage-glass, but only the neck of a bottle inverted, with a cork below, and filled with water. An old maid stood near the open window; she had just been putting some chickweed into the cage, wherein a little linnet was hopping from perch to perch, and singing until her warbling became ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... nervous Whoop-la into five minutes of active bucking, then she leaped from the saddle and came to perch on the fence beside Douglas. Her gaze wandered from his wistful face to the eternal crimson and orange clouds rolling across ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... Indian had been seen within a radius of six miles, when, all on a sudden, there came a shot—then two, almost together, then a quick crackle and sputter of small-arms afar down the stream. "By Jove!" cried Bonner, from a perch by the lookout at the office. "They've opened ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... as a corpse. Though in the beginning, the tops of the Serapis had not been unsupplied with marksmen, yet they had long since been cleared by the overmastering musketry of the Richard. Several, with leg or arm broken by a ball, had been seen going dimly downward from their giddy perch, like falling pigeons shot on ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... pikes come the perches, also predatory fishes. The European perch (Perca fluviatilis) has a place by itself in the affections of anglers. When young it is easy to catch by almost any method of fishing, and a large number of Walton's disciples have been initiated into ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... smooth macadam road upon which they travelled East at thirty-five miles an hour, the best, no doubt, the old car could do. It was a well-travelled road. They passed all cars bound in the same direction, and to the drivers of these cars Evan on his perch was brilliantly revealed in the rays of their headlights. With the idea of suggesting that it was all a joke, Evan waved facetiously to them. They accepted it as intended, or at any rate none of them sought to give him away. They ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... running around in that pillow case," he remarked to Digger as he extracted the spacehound from it. "Attend me, now. We know why and how those people disappeared. It would take the Space Patrol ship at least a month to arrive here; I don't intend to perch on the back of this devil as long as that. And if we leave, old thing, it'll just lure other chivalrous fools to ...
— The Beast of Space • F.E. Hardart
... in Illinois in the latter part of May. The green grass was springing from the ground, the "Johnny-jump-ups" were in blossom, the trees were bursting into leaf, and the woods were full of feathered songsters. There was a redbird that would come every morning about sunup and perch himself in the tall black-oak tree in our company street, and for perhaps an hour he would practice on his impatient, querulous note, that said, as plain as a bird could say, "Boys, boys! get up! get up! get up!" It became a standing remark among the boys that ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... come across a pike: and no wonder, for a pike of 10 lb. and upwards gives some fair play, though by no means to compare with what a fish of the salmo tribe of that weight would give. Then we have perch in abundance, and splendid eels; but as these need a float and bait to catch them, we dismiss them as quite infra dig. True a perch will come at a minnow, and we have sometimes seen them take a fly; but they are generally voted a nuisance, and ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior
... slender refuge that was scarcely larger in diameter than his arm he remembered the time when he had hung up a thousand pounds of moose meat on cedars as thick as his leg, and the wolves had come the next night and gnawed them through as if they had been paper. From his unsteady perch ten feet off the ground he stared out into ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... my feet on the giddy bridge as gingerly as I could, when Marie crawled quickly over us, and swung himself up to the narrow sill, much as I should mount a horse on the level. He held out his foot to me, and making an effort I reached the same dizzy perch. Croisette for the ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... Mabel was half wild with happiness, and her parents were surprised and delighted to find her grown so healthy and handsome. The faithful Katuka kissed the hands of her master and mistress with tears of joy—while Bobby, grown impatient at not being noticed, called out sharply from his perch—"Avast there shipmates! what a ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... evident that all must go unless the old tower could be torn away. Up the uneven, rickety wall went Jim, nimble as a squirrel. Crack! crack! fell the dead boards, then with a clang and clamor, down rolled the old bell from its perch, carrying with it the last of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... your sport, the band goes by; For your perch, the lamp post high; For your pleasure, on the street Dogs are fighting, drums are beat; For your sake, the boyish fray, Organ grinder, run-away; Trucks for your convenience are; For your ease, the bob-tail car; Every time and everywhere ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... his aching elbows, watching the progress of some animated piece of biscuit, would Master Daunton, the slave of our lamp, which, by-the-by, was a bottle bearing a miserably consumptive purser's dip, beside which a farthing rushlight would look quite aldermanic—I say, this slave of our lamp would perch himself down on the combings of the cable-tier hatchway, in the midst of the flood of Heaven's blessed daylight, that came pouring from aloft into this abyss, and very deliberately take out his private store of viands, and there insultingly wag his jaws, with the most ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... that dire threat, Dolly helped her from her perch with deep respect; and Stuffy relieved her of her empty jugs, solemnly vowing to abstain from all fermented beverages except root-beer, as long as feeble flesh could hold out. Of course they made ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... made matters very hard for Simon. Simon had no sooner seated himself comfortably when Solomon Owl moved to a perch ...
— The Tale of Dickie Deer Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... and covered with one of those thick, bristly skins through which the teeth cannot penetrate with all their efforts. The fowl must have been sought for a long time on the perch, to which it had retired to ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a berth for you," he answered. "I'm from The Waif. The mate died on the run down from Sydney, and Captain Newmarch sent me ashore to hunt up some one for his perch. ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... cried the rider on the springs, slipping from her perch and stepping out beside the buggy. So we journeyed for half a mile. The horse, under constant urging, jogged along, while the spring rider and I trotted side by side over the well-made pike. Then Miss Belle drew rein in front of a ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... and child. Nothing, however, must be so individual as punishment. For some, a threat at rare intervals is enough; while for others, however ominous threats may be, they become at once "like scarecrows, on which the foulest birds soonest learn to perch." To scold well and wisely is an art by itself. For some children, pardon is the worst punishment; for others, ignoring or neglect; for others, isolation from friends, suspension from duties; for others, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... suns will cake the insufficient earth and parch the delicate roots; the storms will batter and tear the frail creepers. No doubt. But at this present moment all is fair and fragrant. And when the storms have done their wicked worst, and the sun and the frosts—nay, when that roof on which we perch is pulled to pieces, tiles and bricks, and the whole block goes—may there not be, for those caring enough, the chance of growing another garden, there ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... having kill'd, no more doth search But on the next green bough to perch, Where, when he first does lure, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... already overcome, but this was not the case. Berwick, who was an excellent swimmer, had a plan of his own, for he was not bewildered or frightened and he had noted one or two things even as the wave caught him. He would not catch the rope flung to him because of the chance of dragging Jim off his perch in spite of the latter's great strength, and then, too, he was liable to be hurled against the cliff and be badly injured, so he let the wave carry him back, exerting himself so as to be brought nearer the beach on ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... is forthwith saddled with an impossible name. If it had not been easy to clip the term "automobile" down to the working stub "auto," the machine would never have run our streets. Again, the decimal system is conceded to be far ahead of the asinine "five and one-half yards make one rod, pole or perch"; the only reason why the commonsense thing does not supersede the foolish one is that the sensible measurement has the fool tag on it. Who could imagine ever going into a store and asking for seven decimetres and nine centimetres ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... striking scenes of animal life, hitherto confined chiefly to the ocean, are now on land; the extensive sheets of fresh water are filled with fishes of a comparatively modern character,—with Whitefish, Pickerel, Perch, Eels, etc.,—while the larger quadrupeds are introduced upon the continents so gradually prepared to receive them. The connection of events throughout the Tertiaries, considered as leading up to the coming of man, may be traced not only in the physical condition of the earth, and in the presence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... busy camps and marts The singing flames were swiftly gone; The trembling leaves of human hearts Hid boughs for them to perch upon. ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... lake is as beautiful as if it were never useful. On its shore enough grand old pines are left to dream under of forests primeval, of Indian wigwams, and of canoes on the bright water; for the red men knew very well the hiding places of the perch and of the pickerel. So did the white men who chose the region of the Merrimac for their new home. In the "Maids of Attitash" is described the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... To bake sturgeon To make sturgeon cutlets Sturgeon steaks To boil sturgeon To bake a shad To boil a shad To roast a shad To broil a shad To boil rock fish To fry perch To pickle oysters To make a curry of catfish To dress a cod's head and shoulders To make sauce for the cod's head To dress a salt cod Matelote of any kind of firm fish Chowder, a sea dish To pickle sturgeon To caveach fish To dress cod fish Cod fish pie To dress any kind of salted fish To fricassee ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph
... nomenclature from being confounded with your common talk. The use of a Greek derivative gives notice that you are scientific. If you speak of an acanthopterygian, it is plain that you are not discussing perch in reference to its roasting or boiling merits; and if you make an allusion to monomyarian malacology, it will not naturally be supposed to have reference to the ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... and they ambled along at "sumpty-sump miles an hour," as Roy said, "but what care we," he added, "as long as she goes." They anchored for several hours in the middle of the day and fished, and had a mess of fresh perch for luncheon. ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... a male American Goldfinch. In the roof of the traps were two little hinged doors, which turned backward and upward, leaving an opening. Inside the upper compartment of the trap, and accessible through the doorway in the roof, was a swinging perch. The traps were placed on stumps among the growth of thistles and dock weed, while the trappers hid behind the trees. The Goldfinches confined in the lower sections of the traps had been the victims of the trappers earlier in the season, and the sight of their familiar haunts, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... having finished his oration, settled himself on a great bench inside the chimney, and put his hawk on a perch over his head, while his cockers coiled themselves up close to the warm peat-ashes, and his son set to work to pull off his father's boots, amid sundry warnings to take ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... water highway, on the other side, just a few feet beyond the iron roads, a horse-car track and a turnpike offer additional facilities for locomotion. Birds perch on the numerous telegraph wires amid wrecks of kites and dingy pennons—once kite-tails—nothing hurts them; and below the children of Twinrip appear just as free and safe, and seem to have as much delight in mere living ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... himself into a serious illness, evidently in the grief he felt at his master's absence. The grieved owner went hastily into the room where the cage was, and spoke gently to the ailing bird, which stood huddled up into what looked like a ball of feathers on his perch. Instantly, at the sound of the loved master's voice, the dim, closed eyes were opened wide. There was a feeble flutter of the faded plumage; the drooping head was raised. Half creeping, half staggering, the ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... empty pistol on the girder beside him, he stripped as quickly as his precarious perch would permit. Then, using the pistol as a central core to give body to the bundle, he swathed it deep within the folds of the clothing, making a thick roll that he could hold in his right hand as ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... watch their meeting; none more bravely wear Their beauty, recognize a woman's own, Than Clara Mercome. Gilbert Wynne has sown His wild oats for her sake; yet he delays, And with my Lady Bond divides his days. Who bets on beauty, hedges in on age; Which tries the flight to perch in Lord Wynne's cage? Will Lady Bond or Clara be the queen? For Lady Bond is certain of her lien." He heard this talk while standing by a beech— Hugh Wynne—and planned how he might overreach ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... insect, forty feeding like one, and each leading its whole earthly career on this floating island of perishable verdure. The "beautiful blue damsel-flies" alight also in multitudes among them, so fearless that they perch with equal readiness on our boat or paddle, and so various that two adjacent ponds will sometimes be haunted by two distinct sets of species. In the water, among the leaves, little shining whirlwigs wheel round and round, fifty joining ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... salmon, and the perch, chub, trout, and eel from the inland streams. Pike had not yet appeared in our waters—they were a later importation—and other fish were more plentiful ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... seemed to be the only living things about him. Just as my foot touched the ground a double report rang out, and my dog gave a plaintive and prolonged howl. Feeling that all was over, and that no weapons could be of any use, I climbed up again into my perch and looked out. The poor wretch was lying face downwards writhing in his blood; the assassins were reloading their muskets as ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... house of the Jesuits, and an Ursuline convent. Yet, regardless of the keen air, soldiers, Jesuits, servants, officials, women, all of the little community who are not cloistered, are abroad and astir. Despite the gloom of the times, an unwonted cheer enlivens this rocky perch of France and the Faith; for it is New-Year's Day, and there is an active interchange of greetings and presents. Thanks to the nimble pen of the Father Superior, we know what each gave and what each received. He thus writes in his private journal:—"The soldiers went with their guns to salute Monsieur ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... these baskets; and as we approached to examine it, out came the live head of a white peacock—a Japan peacock and peahen. The gentleman to whom the carriage belonged appeared next, carrying on a perch a fine large macaw. This perch was made to fasten behind the carriage. The servant who was harnessing the horses would not tell to whom the carriage belonged. He replied to all inquiries, "It belongs ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... it for two dollars or you'll let us git out," was his final word. As one overcome by superior force, the cabman yielded, climbed sulkily to his perch, and, bestowing a large, comprehensive wink upon the by-standers, started for the hotel his fare had indicated. Mr. Smith's spirits rose. Obviously, in this triumph he had demonstrated his fitness to cope with all the other grinding monopolies of New York. He smiled proudly at his wife as ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... blues and greens and oranges, all in the same bird. It seems almost impossible to believe that the feathers really grow like that; it seems as if someone must have taken a big paintbrush and daubed on the colours. If it is warm and fine the parrots are out of doors, each sitting on a perch, and tied by a little thin chain to one leg. What must it be to see them in their own native forests flying about among the green trees? Fancy, if we came across a great bird, as large as the largest doll, brilliantly coloured, flying ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... Joseph, not for Joe,'" sang Fred, merrily. "Fact is, when I told what you had in your mind to Miss Muster she said it was a fine thought, but she was sorry to say in this case no raven need apply. 'Cause why—well, she'd chained Joe to his perch for a week because he got sassy, and wouldn't mind; and so you see, if he had to stay there all the time he couldn't hop or fly into the other room and get away with the opals every other day ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... bright, And the old brig's sail unfurl'd; I said, "I will sail to my love this night At the other side of the world." I stepp'd abroad,—we sail'd so fast,— The sun shot up from the bourn; But a dove that perch'd upon the mast Did mourn and mourn and mourn. O fair dove! O fond dove! And dove with the white, white breast, Let me alone, the dream is my own, And my heart ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... said the Slogger, on resuming his perch, "d'you know I've found traces o' that young gal as you took such a interest in, as runned away from the old 'ooman, an' was robbed ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... side.]; cheek-bones like molehills, and lips splayed out in the manner of speaking-trumpets: often, indeed, the face is a mere attachment to the devouring-apparatus. Throughout the day sexes and ages keep apart. The nude boys perch upon stones or worn-out canoes. Their elders affect the shade, men on one side of the village and women on the other. All the settlements are backed by cocoa-trees in lines and clumps. Those who view Africa biliously compare them with hearse-plumes; I find in them a peculiar ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... sportsman who once fairly starts as a fly-fisher, and is so fortunate as to hook a Salmon or a large Trout, will thenceforward despise or lightly esteem corks and floats, ground-bait and trimmers, punts and Perch fishing, and will fairly wish them all exchanged for a nice stream well stocked with Trout—as a gentleman lately said to me, fly- fishing is a perfect infatuation! He was quite right. The extreme avidity with which it is followed by the thoroughly ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... odor?" said my conductor. "Luckily it does not reach me here, or I should seek a still higher perch to roost on";—saying which, he opened the door and led the way inside, first through a little vestibule into a square hall, where we deposited our fur coats, and then to the right, into a small room furnished with a table, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... sun had gone down behind Mill Hill and the evening was full of blue shadows, full of the odour of smoke and sap, full of mysteriously comfortable silences. For a few moments that particular rod, pole or perch of the great road was empty save for me and a lamplighter on a bicycle, who was coming towards me, riding one hand, his torch over his shoulder, a sort of elderly Mercury illuminating an empty world. On the left the great ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... of the period had reached her perch in the beech tree top none too soon. Even as she swung herself into place upon the huge bough, there came rushing across the space beneath, snarling, smelling and seeking, a brute as foul and dangerous as could be imagined for mother and son upon ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... looks straight at you out of his great glass eyes. And then there are still other birds,—birds little and birds big, birds bright and birds dingy, all scattered about wherever there is room, each sitting or standing on its separate perch, and looking, for all the world, as if it were alive and would fly away only for ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... Rodwell, and his eyebrows fixed at the perch of Colney's famous 'national interrogation' over vacancy of understanding, as if from the pull of a string. He had his audience with him; and the satirist had nothing but his inner gush of acids at sight of a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... at once, he heard a bitter, broken cry, and glancing up, it chanced that from his lofty perch he could look within the lighted window, and thus beheld a nun, whose slender, black-robed body writhed and twisted in the clasp of two leathern-clad arms; vicious arms, that bent her back and back across ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... little boat danced upon the swell as they rounded the outlying rocks. Estelle was on the look-out for dangers, but Marjorie understood her business too well, and they glided along without even grazing a single jagged point. The gulls, startled from their perch on the heights by the approach of the boat, rose, flapping and shrieking. It seemed as if hundreds were circling about the rocks, only to settle down again as the little skiff drew away from them ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... the poetic tribe; but one night, after he had been here long enough to have worn away his nervous excitement, I happened to go into the room very softly, and the black beads had disappeared. The tiny head had disappeared, too, and only a little round ball of feathers was balanced on his perch. Then I remembered that chickens have a way of putting their heads in their pockets when they go to sleep, and poetry yielded to poultry, Cheri stepped out of Chaucer, and took ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... she gave a little squeak; then, without a moment's interval, continued her lecture as if nothing had happened. She looked down from her perch like a hen from a ladder, and laid down the law to David ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... to very many may appear as potent as any of the preceding reasons,—I had in my boyhood a strange fancy for church-belfries and liberty-poles. This fancy led me, in school-vacations, to perch my small self for hours on the cross-beams in the old belfry, and to climb to the very top of the tall pole which still surmounts the little village-green. In my youth, this feeling was simply a spirit ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... 110. Perch Willow (Salix amygdaloides) (Almond-leaf Willow). Small to medium-sized tree. Heartwood light brown, sapwood lighter color. Wood light, soft, flexible, not strong, close-grained. Uses similiar to the preceding. Follows the water courses and ranges across the continent; less abundant ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... we had drifted out over the Hudson at an altitude of 2,500 feet. Here Donaldson descended from the airy perch which he had been occupying since our start on the concentrating ring, when one of us asked how long he expected the cruise to last. He replied that he hoped to be able to sail the Barnum at least ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... just kept him," said Hugh John, unexpectedly; "then we wouldn't have had to paraphrase the beastly thing at school. It is as full of jaw-breakers as a perch is full ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... concealment protracted to an astonishing length, however, the nest was at last discovered, the poor birds were dispersed, and our hero took his ill-fledged flight to perch upon distant sprays, and to pick his meat from the hand that caters for the sparrow. This was the pivot upon which the whole life of Hodgkinson turned. The irresistible impulse of a vigorous genius would, most ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... Joe now appeared with a few perch, but plenty of catfish. They went to work with zeal, and soon had enough brush for the fire, which they built at a good distance. And while Graham fed it, Joe skinned his catfish, salted the perch, and laid them ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... from its green thickets; not one of the hideous objects which the architects of our district churches perpetrate, to puzzle the passer-by as to the purpose of its being,—whether a brewer's chimney, or a shot-tower,—a perch for city pigeons, or a standing burlesque on the builders of the nineteenth age of the fine arts in England. This steeple is an old grey turret, ivy-mantled, modest, and with that look of venerable age which instinctively ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... you to accept of a Jack, which is the best I have caught this Season. I intend to come and stay with you a Week, and see how the Perch bite in the Black River. I observed with some Concern, the last time I saw you upon the Bowling-Green, that your Whip wanted a Lash to it; I will bring half a dozen with me that I twisted last Week, which I hope will serve you all ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... but found that it numbed his arms, and that the sea air made him sleepy. Motor-cars agreed with him only when driving with a pretty woman. Forced through ennui to fish off the rocks, he soon tired of the sea-perch and rock-cod and the ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... the wild slopes and hollow ravines a gesture of impatience escaped Eustacia. She vented petulant words every now and then, but there were sighs between her words, and sudden listenings between her sighs. Descending from her perch she again sauntered off towards Rainbarrow, though this time she did not go ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... gazed for a moment at Kendrick as if trying to collect his thoughts. Then he explained that he had been troubled with insomnia and got up to smoke a cigarette. He had been fool enough to perch up on the brass rail at the rear of the private car, thinking the fresh air might make him sleepy. The train had been hitting up a fast pace on a down grade and as they swung a curve he had lost his balance and pitched clean down a long fill among the rocks ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... hundred and fifty years ago stood in this road. Every day the doctor has taken me a long and beautiful ride in her basket-carriage, driving her own little pony, White Angel, or her hay horse, while her boy-groom rides in his perch behind. Today she drove me through Lord Rosebery's park of thousands of acres. It is lovely as a native forest—the roads macadamized all through—and a palace-like residence ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... whispered to Laura, across Cornet Perch's shell-jacket, as Pen was performing cavalier seul before them, drawling through that figure with a thumb in the pocket of ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wasn't. An' once, on a Thursday, we dug a lot of clams together, an' played hookey Friday to peddle them. An' we used to go out on the Rock Wall an' catch pogies an' rock cod. One day—the day of the eclipse—Cal caught a perch half as big as a door. I never seen such a fish. An' now he's got to wear the stripes for twenty years. Lucky he wasn't married. If he don't get the consumption he'll be an old man when he comes ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... relatives, not only in the armature of the mouth, but also in the fact that the tail was of considerable length. With regard to its habits and mode of life, Professor Phillips remarks that, "gifted with ample means of flight, able at least to perch on rocks and scuffle along the shore, perhaps competent to dive, though not so well as a Palmiped bird, many fishes must have yielded to the cruel beak and sharp teeth of Rhamphorhynchus. If we ask to which of the many families of Birds the analogy of structure ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... it had seemed to beckon. Now she depended on it the white folds eluded her hand. If the wind dropped, she was lost. She couldn't help thinking of all the things she wished not to think of. She thought of that immense depth below her narrow perch. She didn't believe the man or woman lived strong-minded enough to ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... stone wall beyond the Keg of Butter Battery and gazed out over the twinkling Sound and the Islands. The wall ran along the edge of the cliff and moreover was ruinous, as the Commandant had cautioned her when she chose her perch. ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Spring Beauties stood freshly clad for church; A thrush, white-breasted, o'er them sat singing on his perch. "Happy be! for fair are ye!" the gentle singer told them; But presently a buff-coat Bee came booming up to scold them. "Vanity, oh, vanity! Young maids, beware of vanity!" Grumbled out the buff-coat Bee, Half ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... three perch hand running while Giant did not get a nibble. The small member of the club was somewhat disappointed, but suddenly there came a tug that almost ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... look over my shoulder while I work without a break in their confidences—quite as if I was a deaf, dumb, and blind waiter, or twin-brother to old Coco the cockatoo, who has surveyed the same scene from his perch near the roof for the ...
— The Parthenon By Way Of Papendrecht - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... wrong. Pressed me to bosom—keeps me a month." So much I read on her paper while the cabby dropped a grin from his perch. In my excitement I paid him profusely and in hers she suffered it; then as he drove away we started to walk about and talk. We had talked, heaven knows, enough before, but this was a wondrous lift. We pictured the whole scene at ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... Perch, messenger in the house of Mr. Dombey, merchant, whom he adored, and plainly showed by his manner to the great man: "You are the light of my eyes," "You are the breath of my soul."—C. Dickens, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Pressgangs—Cruelty Practised; Pressgang Rows; Woman with Three Husbands; Mother Redcap—Her Hiding-places; The Passage of the River; Ferrymen; Woodside Ahoy!; Cheshire an Unknown Country to Many; Length of passage there; The Rock Perch; Wrecking; Smuggling; Storms; Formby Trotters; Woodside—No Dwellings there; Marsh Level; Holt Hill—Oxton; Wallasey Pool; Birkenhead Priory; Tunnel under the Mersey; Tunnel at the Red Noses—Exploration of it; The Old Baths; Bath Street; The Bath Woman; The Wishing Gate; Bootle Organs; Sandhills; ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... returned to its kindred clay. He has painted, not pictures of the world, but English pictures, such as Gainsborough himself might have done; beautiful rural pieces, with trees which might well tempt the wild birds to perch upon them; thou needest not run to Rome, brother, after pictures of the world, whilst at home there are pictures of England; nor needest thou even go to London, the big city, in search of a master, for thou hast ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... at that moment Nelson opened furiously on the quarter-master at the conn. 'I'll knock you off your perch, you rascal, if you are so inattentive.—Sir Ed'ard, send your best quarter-master ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... December 1844, must be a second-hand job. But some years afterwards (Sept. 10, 1850), the reviews, etc. having been just placed at the disposal of readers in the old reading-room of the Museum, I made a tour of inspection, came upon my critic on his perch, and took a look at him. I was very glad to remember this, for, though expecting only second-hand, yet even of this there is good and bad; and I expected to find some hints in the good second-hand of a respectable clerical publication. I read on, therefore, attentively, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... work required, to the open air and the free rush of the thoughts that came crowding to her out of the wilderness, put her at once in a blissful mood. Even the few dull remarks that the slow-thinking Andrew made at intervals from his perch on the front of the cart, seemed to come to her from the realm of Faerie, the mysterious world that lay in the folds of the huddled hills. Everything Maggie saw or heard that afternoon seemed to wear the glamour of God's imagination, which is at once the birth and the very truth ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... me thou wottest not, to wit, that I have a gift that wild things love and will do my bidding. The house-mice will run over me as I lie awake looking on them; the small birds will perch on my shoulders without fear; the squirrels and hares will gambol about quite close to me as if I were but a tree; and, withal, the fiercest hound or mastiff is tame before me. Therefore I feared not this lion, and, moreover, I looked to it that ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... he then lost himself in one of those meditative moods which ravish and elevate the soul, soothe it, and comfort it. His reverie had no doubt lasted a long time. Night fell. Whether he meant to come down from his perch, or whether he made some ill-judged movement, believing himself to be on the floor—the event did not allow of his remembering exactly the cause of his accident—he fell, his head struck a footstool, he lost consciousness and lay motionless during a space of time of which he knew ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... joyous, in spite of the rain that beat against the windows, the wind that whirled down the chimney, the two ladies who whispered together in the corner, or the magpie, who uttered a satirical and croaking commentary on their conversation from his perch above. In the now bright, blazing fire we could see that the walls were papered with illustrated journals, arranged with feminine taste and discrimination. The furniture was extemporized and adapted from candle-boxes and packing-cases, and covered ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... a match, and maybe you'll hit it by accident!" Assuming with an innocent look that I had spoken seriously, he took me at my word, jumped off his perch, lit a match and peered all round him. Then I got "real" angry, and told him De Cosson Bey kept a professional torture chamber, and that I would have him ground to sausage meat if he trifled with me another moment. Well knowing the impotence of my "hot air" blast, he simply ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... an upside-down bucket for a seat. Nothing more uncomfortable for a fat man can be imagined, yet Cheon sat on his rickety perch, for the most part chuckling and happy. Perhaps, like Mark Tapley, he felt it a "credit being jolly" under ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... whatsoever, Henrietta completely lost her temper. "I'll see what's wrong with you!" she cackled. And throwing herself off her roost, though it was dark as a pocket in the henhouse, she flung herself upon the perch just opposite, where she knew ...
— The Tale of Henrietta Hen • Arthur Scott Bailey
... it was not he; it was a friend of his; and finally the friend was produced, en costume de ville, but equally jovial,and Italian enough—a brave Lucernese, who had spent half of his life between Bellinzona and Camerlata. For ten francs this worthy man's perch behind the luggage was made mine as far as Bellinzona, and we separated with reciprocal wishes for good weather on the morrow. To-morrow is so manifestly determined to be as fine as any other 30th of September since ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... tall pine, but after he had reached the top he saw nothing that might lead him to find the other campers. He shouted and whistled as shrilly as he could from the lofty perch, but no answering sound came to his ears, so ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... golden blackbird standing on a wooden perch, but as stiff and rigid as if he was dead. And beside, was the beautiful cage, ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... through the sleep a dream Of the Frenchman who once was my master by the side of the willowy stream; And he talked and told me tales of the war unwaged as yet, And the victory never won, and bade me never forget, While I walked on, still unhappy, by the home of the dark-striped perch. Till at last, with a flash of light and a rattle and side-long lurch, I woke up dazed and witless, till my sorrow awoke again, And the grey of the morn was upon us as we sped through the poplar plain, By the brimming streams and the houses with their ...
— The Pilgrims of Hope • William Morris
... services were over, Sophy sprang down from her perch, and, taking her flowers, followed the procession. She did not walk with the rest, but at a proper and respectful distance from the last mourner. No one noticed the little black girl with the bunch of yellow ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... upon his perch; April he soundeth his bell; May he sings both night and day; June he altereth his tune; And ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... room of a deserted barrack, which proclaimed its later use at the distance of half a mile. The gladiators were disposed in four long, parallel rows of cages, open cane-work, measuring three feet square. Each had a short wooden trestle placed outside during the day and serving by night as a perch. They were fed and watered at 2 P.M. The fattening maize was first given, and then wheat, with an occasional cram of bread-crumb and water by way of physic. The masala and multifarious spices of the Hindostani trainer are ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... Ay, marry! many a time and oft I've seen the man's great heart stare from his eyes, Just like a girl's, out at the crowing boy: And yesterday it was he perch'd him fair Upon his broad rough shoulder, like a lamb Laid on the topmost reaches of a hill, And so he bore him, all his face a-glow, When heralds came with war-notes from the king; At which he turn'd him soft—the startled ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... feet deep, in which the palisades were to be planted; and, our waggons, the bodies being taken off, and the fore and hind wheels separated by taking out the pin which united the two parts of the perch,[105] we had ten carriages, with two horses each, to bring the palisades from the woods to the spot. When they were set up, our carpenters built ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... bodily out of the square by the stream, others ran wildly with their arms over their heads. The air was full of leather hats, spinning as the water struck them. Every now and then the hosemen elevated the nozzle and gave Colonel Gideon Ward his share. A half-dozen times he nearly fell off his perch and flapped out like a rag on ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... the second mate, when I pointed this out to him; "they say that the birds come down from the skies and live in the air, and as they never perch, they don't want feet. That's why they're called ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... overcome with the cold, that they no longer looked upon exposure as the worst thing that could happen to them. They had made up their minds that it could not be avoided, and told themselves that the sooner it was over and they were allowed to leave their airy perch the sooner they would breathe easily again. They could not talk now. They could only sit and gaze in the direction in which the hostler had disappeared, and wait for somebody to come and call off the dogs. Bob hoped that somebody would be Bert. He was a simple-minded little ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... many as a dozen times. And the twelfth time that Mrs. Grouse rose before one of Tommy's rushes she didn't come down again. She lighted in a tree. And since it appeared to Tommy that she had no intention of leaving her safe perch, he gave up in disgust. He was very angry because he hadn't caught old Mother Grouse. But there was her family! He would get them—the whole eleven of them! And he turned back toward the place where he had ...
— The Tale of Tommy Fox • Arthur Scott Bailey
... me?' shouted the brutal seaman. 'How can you arrive at your journey's end sound and hearty if you sit like a sick fowl upon a perch? Laugh, man, and be merry, or I will give you something to weep for. Out on you, you chicken-hearted swab, to sulk and fret like a babe new weaned! Have you not all that heart could desire? Give him a touch with the rope's-end, Jem, if ever ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ran through the meadow behind the barn, was one of their haunts. They fished in it for minnows and little perch; they made dams and bathed in it; and sometimes they played pirates upon ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... sable plumage flaps heavily along his straightforward course, while the other sails round him, over him, under him, leaves him, comes back again, tweaks out a black feather, shoots away once more, never losing sight of him, and finally reaches the crow's perch at the same time the crow does;' but the comparison goes on after this at needless length, with explanations. Again: 'That blessed clairvoyance which sees into things without opening them: that glorious licence which, having ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... disliked children as much as her mistress, and after submitting ungraciously to a few caresses from the eager little hands, she rose and retired majestically to a safer perch on the top of the high wall which enclosed the garden. Being too lazy to jump, she walked up the shelves of an old flower-stand moulding in a corner, and by so doing, gave Rosy a brilliant idea, which she at ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... the impetus it had already received, and we stopped just at the bank of the river, whereas if the sail had been lowered a moment later the sleigh might have been broken to pieces. We had some excellent perch for dinner, but the strength of the wind prevented us from walking about. I went there again, but as Zaandam is well known as the haunt of the millionaire merchants who retire and enjoy life there in their own way, I will say no more about it. We ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... himself to the same effect. 'What a pity is it,' said he to me 'that Campbell does not give full sweep to his genius. He has wings that would bear him up to the skies, and he does now and then spread them grandly, but folds them up again and resumes his perch, as if afraid to launch away. The fact is, he is a bugbear to himself. The brightness of his early success is a detriment to all his future efforts. He is afraid of the shadow that his ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... which God himself—hush, don't think of God! How firm the stitches are! You must be proud of your darning. Let nothing disturb her. Let the light fall gently, and the clouds show an inner vest of the first green leaf. Let the sparrow perch on the twig and shake the raindrop hanging to the twig's elbow.... Why look up? Was it a sound, a thought? Oh, heavens! Back again to the thing you did, the plate glass with the violet loops? But Hilda will come. Ignominies, humiliations, oh! Close ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... American Presbyterians to give up infant damnation and try to bear it the best they can; and it looks as if their Scotch brethren will still be burning babies in the everlasting fires when Shakespeare comes down from his perch. ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... Finding the perch that seemed to answer his purpose best, Thad broke off a few small dead branches that threatened to interfere with the free use of his arm. After that he gave the whistle to let Smithy know the signalman was fixed, ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... at work which kept the fire-breathing German dragon from laying this garden waste when he was forced out of his stolen lair in the convent! Little remains of the house, and in the rubbish heap of fallen walls and beams and plaster, narrow iron bedsteads, where nuns slept or young girls dreamed, perch timidly among stones and blackened bricks. But in the garden all is flowery peace: and the chapel, though ruined, is a strange vision ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... saw the whole from his perch, but his meal was not at all disturbed, for he began eating again with apparent relish. Indeed, I was soon furnished with another of these unconscious protectors. This one came from the opposite direction to a point where I ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... slept. A cotton curtain with a pattern of roses protected her slumbers. She slept and dreamed. She saw the blue bird flying toward the castle of his love. He looked as beautiful as a star, but she did not expect for a moment to see him perch on her shoulder. She knew she was not a princess, and couldn't expect visits from a prince changed into a bird the color of deep sky. However, she told herself that all birds are not princes, that the birds in the village are villagers and ...
— Our Children - Scenes from the Country and the Town • Anatole France
... Among fish, the Perch and the Sturgeon feign death; according to Couch,[42] the Landrail, the Skylark, the Corncrake adopt the same device. Among mammals, the best-known ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... ground on the bill in this way, Salemina, on the next leisure evening, draws a large armchair under the lamp and puts on her eye-glasses. We perch on either arm, and, after identifying our own extras, we summon the butler to identify his. There are a good many that belong to him or to the landlady; of that fact we are always convinced before he proves to the contrary. We can never see (until he makes us see) ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... only water-hen's eggs, and not so large as the duck's eggs, but then she must not be too particular. And she was just as lucky with her fishing. With a red worm on the end of her line, she managed to catch a fine perch, which was quite sufficient to satisfy hers and Rosalie's appetite. Yet, however, she wanted a dessert, and some gooseberries growing under a weeping willow furnished it. True, they were not quite ripe, but the merit of this fruit is that ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... much so well as Clun used to do; nor another Hart's, which was Cassio's; nor, indeed, Burt doing the Moor's so well as I once thought he did. Thence home, and just at Holborn Conduit the bolt broke, that holds the fore-wheels to the perch, and so the horses went away with them, and left the coachman and us; but being near our coachmaker's, and we staying in a little ironmonger's shop, we were presently supplied with another, and so home, and there ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... leaped down from her high perch, and was now taking a drink from a little sparkling mountain rill which ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... relate, now slothful Thersites handles the arms of Achilles and the choice trappings of war-horses are spread upon lazy asses, winking owls lord it in the eagle's nest, and the cowardly kite sits upon the perch ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... all the other ships of the expedition, which quieted me much. Towards ten in the morning the wind changed; immediately an appalling cry was heard, concerning which the passengers, as well as myself, were equally ignorant. The whole crew were in motion. Some climbed the rope ladders, and seemed to perch on the extremities of the yards; others mounted to the highest parts of the mast; these bellowing and pulling certain cordages in cadence; those crying, swearing, whistling, and filling the air with barbarous and unknown sounds. The officer on ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... intellect in Portia. Though knowing enough for any station, still it never once enters her head that she is too wise for the station which Providence or the settled order of society has assigned her. She would therefore neither hide her light under a bushel, that others may not see by it, nor perch it aloft in public, that others may see it; but would simply set it on a candlestick, that it may give light to all in her house. With her noble intellect she has gathered in the sweets of poetry and the solidities of philosophy, all for use, nothing for show; she has fairly domesticated ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... Institution, contributed an article to Forest and Stream a few years ago, in which he stated that in the salmon no less than sixteen kinds of parasitic worms have been discovered, and undoubtedly many others remain unknown; four species were tapeworms, and four, roundworms. The yellow perch is known to be infested with twenty-three species of ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... had made but one miscalculation—when he had descended it to pull up his lineman, it was summer. Without extraordinary difficulty, Glover gained the ledge where the chimney opened and waited for his companions to ascend. When all were up, they rested a few moments on their dizzy perch, and, while Bill Dancing investigated the chimney, Glover took the chance to renew once more Morris Blood's bandages, which, strained by the ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... lying under our trees, Miss Hansie?" "Gentleman Jim" inquired, from his perch in the mulberry tree behind ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... blanket he presently emerged, recrossed the stream, and soon could be seen pushing out into the midst of it, poling an old punt up stream. Anchoring presently in a small cove where the water was deep and cool, he sat in silent watchfulness, occasionally jerking out a perch bass, sometimes a pickerel, but for the most part so still he might have been the occupant of a "painted boat upon a painted" stream. Yet all the time the soft influences of the hour and place were weaving their ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... been very shy of Ester since the morning's trials, and were at that moment sympathizing with each other in a manner uncomplimentary to her. However, they slid down from their perch and slowly answered ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... speed. Puss, too, by erecting her tail, and by every time raising her back to meet the caressing hand of her mistress, similarly expresses her gratification by certain muscular actions; as likewise do the parrot by awkward dancing on his perch, and the canary by hopping and fluttering about his cage with unwonted rapidity. Under emotions of an opposite kind, animals equally display muscular excitement. The enraged lion lashes his sides with his tail, knits his brows, protrudes ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... thou hither. Tell me, and wherefore? The Orchard walls are high, and hard to climbe, And the place death, considering who thou art, If any of my kinsmen find thee here, Rom. With Loues light wings Did I ore-perch these Walls, For stony limits cannot hold Loue out, And what Loue can do, that dares Loue attempt: Therefore thy kinsmen are no stop ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... art the centre, in whose close embrace, From all the wild circumference, each line Directly runs to find its resting-place: Upon their swiftest wings, to perch on thine Ennobling breast, which is their only butt, The arrows of all ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... stones, half buried in grass and tussocks, and weighing anything from a pound to half a hundredweight. He scarred his hands and broke his fingernails to pieces over them, but, on the whole, considered it not a bad employment, except when old Joe took it into his head to perch on the fence and spur him on to greater efforts by disparaging remarks about England. Whatever his work, there was never any certainty that old Joe would not appear, to sit down, light his short, black pipe, and make caustic remarks about his methods or his ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... but not until the sun had already run nearly half his course, for he never dared to leave his timber observatory before, le pauvre diable dropped down from his perch like an acorn—and, marching off with weary steps, and scarcely a hope that ere another night fell he should gain the shelter of some cottage, he dragged himself along. On he rolled from side to ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... his head as he drew near the group, for by now the eager boys had left their lofty perch, and gathered in an excited bunch to learn what ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... silent, his remarkable, penetrating eyes, lighting under his grizzled brows, smiling at her, at the children, at the grandchildren. And sometimes he would go to the corner table, where the four littlest sat, and fetch one back to perch on his knee and pull at ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... might see Perch'd all around on every tree, In notes of sweetest melody They hail the charming Chloe; Till, painting gay the eastern skies, The glorious sun began to rise, Outrival'd by the radiant eyes Of youthful, charming ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... out-cropping boulder, I began to study the geography of the farm. In imagination I stripped it of stock, crops, buildings, and fences, and saw it as bald as the palm of my hand. I recited the table of long measure: Sixteen and a half feet, one rod, perch, or pole; forty rods, one furlong; eight furlongs, one mile. Eight times 40 is 320; there are 320 rods in a mile, but how much is 16-1/2. times 320? "Polly, how ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... chortled; while my heart fell off its perch and dropped in my shoes. "Her name is Eliza Fanny; some of us call her Aunt Eliza, ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... must be him. When she left, dem buzzards went back to deir perch. First thing dey done was to lap up deir own puke befo' dey started on uncle Alex again. Yes sir, dat's de way turkey buzzards does. Dey pukes on folks to keep dem away, and you can't go near kaise it be's so nasty; but dem buzzards don't waste nothing. Little young buzzards looks like down ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... sure Mrs. Delancy will not be so unkind as to leave me after I've had so much trouble in getting an audience. Here is my card, Mrs. Delancy." Crosby tossed a card from his perch, but Swallow gobbled it up instantly. Mrs. Delancy gave a little cry of disappointment, and Crosby promptly apologized for the dog's greediness. "Mr. Austin ...
— The Day of the Dog • George Barr McCutcheon
... work! rare doings! a merry Vauxhalling, with pistols at all your noddles! thought as much! thought he'd tip the perch; saw he wasn't stanch; knew he'd go by his company,—a set of jackanapes! all blacklegs! nobody warm among 'em: fellows with a month's good living upon their backs, and not sixpence for the hangman in ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... could hold on by the boughs, and crane their necks over the river, so as to see Dexter tearing along the opposite bank into the next meadow where Bob was fishing, in happy ignorance of the approach of danger; and, to further take off his attention, he had just hooked a good-sized perch, and was playing it, when Dexter, boiling over with the recollection of many injuries culminating in Bob's cowardly lies, came close up and gave a formal announcement of his presence by administering a sounding crack ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... Jack brushed off his shirt, his face very white. "I saw him just a little while ago," he said. "He was sitting up on that silly perch watching us, and then swinging back and forth and swinging over ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... point before his eyes. Kitty saw to that. She was the real manager of the household affairs, for all that he paid the bills. Some day she would marry a proper man; but heaven keep that day as far off as possible. What would he do without Kitty? Always ready to perch on his knee, to smooth the day-cares from his forehead, to fend off trouble, to make laughter in the house. He was not going to love the man who eventually carried her off. He was always dreading that day; young men ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... Hubert is delighted to see her, the mention of dinner throws him into a state of great perplexity, as he has nothing in the house which they can make a meal of. Going out of doors, "he espies his hawk upon the perch, which he seizes, and finding it very fat, judges it might make a dish not unworthy of such a lady. Without further thought, then, he pulls his head off, and gives it to a girl to dress and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... down reluctantly from my perch. Josephine was visibly impatient. She had seen the wedding-party going down one of the walks at the back of the house; and the concierge was waiting to let us out. I drew her aside, and slipped a liberal gratuity into ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... from her elevated perch, says, "Her small dark crown looked pretty, and her mantle of cloth of gold very regal; she, herself, looked so small as to appear puny." (At a later stage of the proceedings the same keen critic notes that the enormous train borne by her ladies made the ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... yet frightened them all away. Coot and moorhens paddle in and out of the reeds, and great grebes float leisurely about its surface. It has always been famous for its fishing. In Aubrey's time it was "well known for its carps to the London fishmongers," and to-day it holds pike, perch and tench. I heard of no carp. ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... there were fishermen angling for dace and perch; but when the shout came down from the London road they dropped their poles and ran, through the willows and over the gravel, splashing and thrashing among the rushes and sandy shallows, not to be last when the players came. And old John Carter coming down the Warwick road with a load of ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... instinctively that he will never own a "house and home" constructs the materiality of his life in chambers upon a fuller basis than the man who feels instinctively that he will, sooner or later, exchange the perch-like existence of his chambers for the nest-like completeness of a ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... horseback, chickens in brewis, cygnets, capons of high grease, carpes of venison, herons, calvered salmon, custards planted with garters, tarts closed with arms, godwits, peafowl, halibut engrailed, porpoise in armour, pickled mullets, perch in foyle, venison pasties, hypocras jelly, and ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... pretty!" Thereupon she curtsied. "I have seen all the handsome women in England going for the last ten years, and there has not been one who has made me think that it would be worth my while to get off my perch ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... get inside. And I say, Jim," added the boy, leaning down from his perch, "make yourself comfortable, you know, and don't bother about me. I want to drive all by myself, and you aren't to help me ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... towers. "Era la stagione nella quale la rivestita terra, piu che tutto l' altro anno, si mostra bella," he said, without other salutation, throwing his soft gray hat on a heap of magazines and newspapers in the corner, and finding what perch he could for ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... impossibility: Branling had suggested his staying outside, and he would undertake to bring people to look at him: but Dawson, for some unaccountable reason, was usually suspicious of advice from that quarter; so he "stooped to conquer" and lost all. The shako tumbled from its precarious perch, and hung ignobly suspended by the cap-lines. A lancer with a pair of grey spectacles, and a shako hanging round his neck, would have been a very fancy dress indeed: so he was endeavouring, at the risk of choking himself, to disentangle, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... looked up and said to each other, "Look at Hatt, she's done gone off agin!" Tired of their present play ground they trooped off in another direction, but the girl slept on heavily, never losing her hold on the post, or her seat on her perch. Behold here, in the stupid little negro girl, the future deliverer of hundreds of her people; the spy and scout of the Union armies; the devoted hospital nurse; the protector of hunted fugitives; the eloquent speaker in public meetings; the ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... pavement; the horrible stench of the stagnant cesspools; the utter want of form, colour, life, in the whole place, crushed me down, without my being able to analyse my feelings as I can now; and then came over me that dream of Pacific Islands, and the free, open sea; and I slid down from my perch, and bursting into tears threw myself upon my knees in the court, and prayed aloud to God to let me ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... solid enough to be cultivated. The bottom is mud, though sandy at the east shore: it has no communication with the Luapula. (28th November, 1867.) The Lunde, Chungu, and Mandapala are said to join and flow into Moero. Fish are in great abundance (perch). On the west side there is a grove of palm-oil palms, and beyond west rises a long range of mountains of the Rua country 15 or 20 ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... remind one of butterflies, as they fly in and out of the tall grass, or hang to the mouths of their pendent nests, chattering briskly to their mates within. These weavers seem to have "cock nests," built with only a roof, and a perch beneath, with a doorway on each side. The natives say they are made to protect the bird from the rain. Though her husband is very attentive, we have seen the hen bird tearing her mate's nest to pieces, but why we cannot tell. ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... told me; while he hauled and hauled away, and soon brought to the surface a fish shaped something like a perch, but apparently of sixty or seventy pounds weight. It was indeed, I saw, a species of sea-perch, from the ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... weary on the wing, to perch Once more, and air abandon, Quite apropos he swooped in search Of solid earth ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 • Various
... closed, and the shocking silence was broken only by the thrashing of a giant body in its death agonies. The radiant heat, penetrating through and through the beast's body, withered nearby vegetation and could be easily felt on the perch up the tree. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... My dog followed me with his eyes, which seemed to be the only living things about him. Just as my foot touched the ground a double report rang out, and my dog gave a plaintive and prolonged howl. Feeling that all was over, and that no weapons could be of any use, I climbed up again into my perch and looked out. The poor wretch was lying face downwards writhing in his blood; the assassins were reloading their muskets as ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the powerful bays reared, once, twice, and then, with a thunder of hoofs, started away at a gallop that set the light vehicle rocking and swaying, yet which in no whit seemed to trouble Milo of Crotona, who sat upon his perch behind with folded arms as stiff and steady as a small graven image, until he and the Viscount and the curricle had been whirled into the distance and vanished in a ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... Maids came floating witchingly By wand'ring West winds stoln from Faery land; Where on some magic Hybla MELODIES Round many a newborn honey-dropping Flower 25 Footless and wild, like Birds of Paradise, Nor pause nor perch, warbling on untir'd wing. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... so. And it has sung once too often. It's unpopular in this hotel, that canary of yours. It's just got to rest a while. Take it easy. Sit quiet on its perch ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... canoe passes, and then a startled alligator will slip into the water, monkeys will scurry chattering from branch to branch, parrots will fly screaming away, blue kingfishers and wild ducks will disappear from their perch, and yellow palm birds will gleam for a moment as they flit through the sunlight. The Creek is beautiful at all times, but in the early morning when the air is cool and the light is misty and the vistas are veiled in dimness, the scene ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... with his luxurious feet raised on a holy water-pail, that lay along, and therein a cat, new kittened, sat glowing o'er her brood, and sparks for eyes. And the cart-horse cavalier had on his shoulders a round bundle, and thereon did perch a cock and crowed with zeal, poor ruffler, proud of his brave feathers as the rest, and haply with more reason, being his own. And on an ass another wife and new-born child; and one poor quean a-foot scarce dragged herself along, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Adams in a vigorous crescendo, as she watched the retreating figure of her guest. Then climbing down from her perch on the front gate, she added to herself, "Mean old thing! I s'pose she thinks I care because she's gone home; but I'm glad of it, so there!" And with an emphatic shake of her curly head, she ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... seemed to the curious without, and to the agitated, nervous witnesses peering through the unchinked logs of the wall, they sat on their comfortless perch, half crouching forward, and chewed, and discussed the testimony. There were frequent intervals of silence, and in one of these Con Hite was disturbed to see the sketch of the "witch-face" once more passed from hand to hand. They grew to have a harried, baited look; and ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the parent tree. Midway between the stem and support, a crooked elbow of the bough made a pleasant seat for Joan; and here, when life at the farm looked more gray than common, she came and sometimes sat long hours. Her perch raised her above a velvet scented sea of wall-flowers which ran in regular waves beneath the apple-trees, under murmuring of many bees. The blossom above Joan's head was all a lacework of sunny rose and cream; and the sun painted glorious russet harmonies ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... steam, sir, if you can. As for me, with your permission I'll go perch on the bobstays under the bowsprit, and if we can get within a harpoon ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... longer looked upon exposure as the worst thing that could happen to them. They had made up their minds that it could not be avoided, and told themselves that the sooner it was over and they were allowed to leave their airy perch the sooner they would breathe easily again. They could not talk now. They could only sit and gaze in the direction in which the hostler had disappeared, and wait for somebody to come and call off the dogs. Bob ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... paused in doubt and trembling. In that exposed and comfortless perch, the lifeless street on one hand, the black mystery of the neglected park on the other, he was seized and shaken by a sudden revulsion of feeling like a sickness of his very soul. Physical fear had ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... he rose and bowed quite gravely. She deliberately put down thimble, scissors, work; descended with precaution from her perch, and curtsying with unspeakable seriousness, said, "How ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... little older, though you look ten years older than she does—you do, you glum-faced, blue-bearded little old man! You might have sat, like Darby and Joan, and flattered each other; and billed and cooed like a pair of old pigeons on a perch. I want my wings and to use them, sir." And she spread out her beautiful arms, as if indeed she could fly off like the pretty "Gawrie," whom the man in ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... these resolutions, we shall here insert them for his satisfaction. The committee resolved, that the ell ought to contain one yard and one quarter, according to the yard mentioned in the third resolution of the former committee upon the subject of weights and measures; that the pole, or perch, should contain in length five such yards and a half; the furlong two hundred and twenty; and the mile one thousand seven hundred and sixty: that the superficial perch should contain thirty square yards and a quarter; the rood one thousand two hundred and ten; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... as good as his word, for, expanding himself to the utmost limit, he gave a tremendous wheeze, which nearly blew Tom from his perch, sent his cap flying off into space and smashed the cloud into four separate pieces, one of which, bearing the Poker, floated rapidly off to the north, while the other three sped south, east and ...
— Andiron Tales • John Kendrick Bangs
... old stories, of a jack which had been eating up young ducklings on a certain pond; how he had baited for this fellow with a live duckling, the hook through the tips of its wings, got him in twenty minutes, and he turned the scale at four-and-twenty pounds. Roach and perch were afterwards discussed. In Mr. Sparkes' opinion the best bait for these fish was a bit of dough kneaded up with loose wool. Chaffey's—at all events, Chaffey's of to-day—would not have known ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... What an accurate picture does the creative pencil of our great poet present to the mind's eye! The epithet lofty has fallen through the sieves of all the commentators excepting Theobaldus Secundus. It obviously alludes to the high roosting perch of that valiant bird; nor is the mythological imagery in this sentence to be passed by without its merited eulogium. Lingo, by way of agreeable surprise, informs us that the cock is the bird of Pallas—Pallas is the goddess of wisdom, and of ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... dear, you are," said Mr. Vanstone—"but not too heavy for me. Stop on your perch, if you like it. Well? And what may this business happen ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... on the look-out, you know, Master Austin. Magpies don't perch on folks' window-sills for nothing. You'll believe me a little quicker next ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... yellow perch is present in Lone Star Lake, and probably will become established in future reservoirs ...
— Fishes of the Wakarusa River in Kansas • James E. Deacon
... as a perch for a colony of gray parrots, prattling, quarrelsome, ferocious birds, which set upon living birds, and those who would judge them from their congeners which Europe keeps in cages, would be ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... seat hung on stout leather straps reaching from front to back on each side of the wooden frame. It is not a vehicle for those sensitive to slight jars. The driver sits in a tiny seat in front and one is amazed at the agility with which even old men spring from this perch to walk up and down the steep hills. Their ponies are beautiful little animals, specially fitted by a long development for work in this hilly country. So well do they mount its heights that travellers repeat an unconfirmed ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... too dangerous to stir. My only chance, however, lay in motion, and my only help in myself; and so convinced was I of this, that I did keep in motion the whole of that long night, imprisoned as I was on such a little perch of ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... with cut stones, sapphires and emeralds, selling fine stuffs and other woman's gear for a scrap of written papyrus, which will soon be of no more value than the feather which falls from the wing of that green screaming bird on the perch yonder. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... filled the cup, she seated herself on the rock, disposed herself into a composition; and after they had both drunk, she showed no disposition to move from her perch. In fact, she loosened her brown student beri, shook her hair free, and sat there, a wood-nymph framed by the ruddy brown and dark green of redwood and laurel. He crouched his big frame down beside her, so that she leaned back against the rock. ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... the Little Colonel, laughing hysterically now that her temper had spent itself. "You girls look too funny for any use. Come down off your perch on that wardrobe, Joyce. It was only an old pet that the boys bought from a tramp one time. They keep it up at 'Fairchance,' the home that Mr. MacIntyre founded for little waifs and strays. I s'pose that is what Malcolm ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... take a basket with us," said Nora, "and Bridget shall give me a couple of dozen more of those little brown eggs. Mrs. Perch shall have a brood of chicks if I ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... shall sing The next, and then the cradled king: And the four corners of the roof Then kindly bless; and to your perch aloof, Where Balzac all in yellow dressed And the dear Webster of the west Encircle the prepotent throne Of Shakespeare and of Calderon, ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... him, would be revealed. Jean's mouth was already open to speak. He waved her aside. She adhered to her post. He shouted to the postilion, and the huge, lumbering vehicle was set in motion. At the first turn of the wheels, Jean slipped from her perch, her dress caught in the spokes, and ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... on his carbine. High on his lonely perch, he slowly promenaded his eye over the dusk landscape spread out before him. It was the hour of midnight and a faint star-light barely outlined the salient features of the scenery. Behind him wound the valley ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... 'Is not thy hawke upon a perch, Thy steed eats oats and hay, And thou a fair lady in thine armes, And ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... I kept my lofty perch for hours, frequently closing my eyes to enjoy the music by itself, or to feast quietly on the delicious fragrance that was streaming past. The fragrance of the woods was less marked than that produced during warm rain, when so many balsamic ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... Salette" and elsewhere he eyed askance with the expression of a very sound Protestant indeed. The lovely luxuriant architecture, the foliated carvings, were dim in the evening light. A young sculptor, who was engaged in the work of restoring some of these rich carvings, came down from his perch while the strangers stood to ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... whilst the reverse occurs in France. There the most trifling litigation is never conducted without the introduction of an entire system of ideas peculiar to the counsel employed; and the fundamental principles of law are discussed in order to obtain a perch of land by the decision of the court. This abnegation of his own opinion, and this implicit deference to the opinion of his forefathers, which are common to the English and American lawyer, this subjection of thought which ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... insects with the air of one who had never even dreamed of building a nest. Even when unsuspicious it will not always go directly to the nest. From an outhouse I once watched a Blue Jay, with a twig, change its perch more than thirty times before going to the fork where its nest was ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... no option but to pass the night well above the jungle perils in the suapattah hut, like a cockatoo screeching defiance at a cat from the safety of its perch; and to which safety you climb almost flat on your face by means of a rocking, slender bamboo ladder, and with about as much grace as a ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... came in a bright tone, "may I go with Pearl and get a stick for Ben? He wants something to play with! He is eating his perch." ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... She may think I can be hoodwinked and used as a mere tool, but I will let her see that I cannot." She felt daring and dangerous, and her eyes snapped. The rustling of her skirts and the emphatic tones of her voice aroused the parrot, which had been dosing on its perch, its head sunk between its shoulders and its breast-feathers fluffed out into a little green apron ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... the tower of the church, Up the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, To the belfry-chamber overhead, And startled the pigeons from their perch On the sombre rafters, that round him made Masses and moving shapes of shade— Up the light ladder, slender and tall, To the highest window in the wall, Where he paused to listen and look down A moment on the roofs of the quiet town, And the ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... HIM (indicating the corpse by a jerk of his head) tell about that job. G-d, how he used to laugh when he showed us how he fetched him off the perch!' ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... one once who was versed in book-lore, but, worse luck to him, he could not bind a wheat-sheaf or weed a perch of parsnips, and the result—bankruptcy; failure. That's what it ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... theory, long believed, is that there 492:30 are two factors, matter and mind, uniting on some im- possible basis. This theory would keep truth and error always at war. Victory would perch on neither banner. 493:1 On the other hand, Christian Science speedily shows Truth to be triumphant. To corporeal sense, the sun 493:3 appears to rise and set, and the earth to stand still; but astronomical ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... officer should look like an officer, and comport himself accordingly." In his person he was very clean, wore rings on his great fingers, and a large frill to his bosom, which stuck out like the back fin of a perch, and the collar of his shirt was always pulled up to a level with his cheek-bones. He never appeared on deck without his "persuader," which was three rattans twisted into one, like a cable; sometimes he called it his Order of the Bath, ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... post-house, when not fewer than four blacksmiths came rushing out of their respective forges, to examine every part of the carriage. "A nail had started here: a screw was wanting there: and a fracture had taken place in another direction: even the perch was given way in the centre!" "Alas, for my voiture de voyage!" exclaimed I to my companion. Meanwhile, a man came forward with a red-hot piece of iron, in the shape of a cramp, to fix round the perch—which hissed as the application was made. And all this—before I could say wherefore! or even ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... saw him, over the heads of the people and through a flying tumult of flags and hats and handkerchiefs, she gave one frightened glance about her, and jumped down from her high perch, and sank into the back seat of the buckboard with her burning face turned from the station and her eyes fixed on the ground. She wanted to run away, as she had run from him the first time she had ever seen him. Then, as ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... upon the soft down quilt that the freaks of live had thrown to the ground. The outlines of Pauline's dress, hanging from a cheval glass, appeared like a shadowy ghost. Her dainty shoes had been left at a distance from the bed. A nightingale came to perch upon the sill; its trills repeated over again, and the sounds of its wings suddenly shaken out ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... getting his own back for quite five minutes when Hunter softly turned the handle of the lock. Philpot immediately put out his pipe and descending from his perch opened the door. When Hunter entered Philpot closed it again and, mounting the steps, went on stripping the wall just above. Nimrod looked at him suspiciously, wondering why the door had been closed. He looked all round the ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... on her narrow perch that night, for her sisters, in their dreams, were ever in a sinking ship, or struggling in the foam-driven rapids. Even her heart beat quicker when the paddle-wheels suddenly ceased, and ominous voices, indistinctly heard, appeared in agonized consultation. A familiar ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... Though tenantless ye stand, With none content to pay the rent, Through all the shadowy land, Now, Science true will find in you A sympathetic perch, And take you all, both Grange and Hall, ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... drops his vengeful ire; Perch'd on the sceptre of the Olympian King, The thrilling darts of harmony he feels, And indolently hangs his rapid wing, While gentle sleep his closing eye-lids seals; And o'er his heaving limbs, in loose array To every balmy gale the ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... of the vessel, the masts hung far out over the water, and from my perch on the cross-trees I had nothing below me but the surface of the bay. Hands, who was not so far up, was, in consequence, near to the ship, and fell between me and the bulwarks. He rose once to the surface in a lather of foam and blood, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that he required air after his literary labours, fetched his peregrine from its perch—for he was fond of hawking—and, setting it on his wrist, started out to find a quarry on the ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... thought, "my—faithful cat!" In another instant she had slipped from the table, extracted poor Puss from a clutter of pans in the back of a cupboard, stripped the last shred of masquerade from her outraged form, and brought her back growling and bristling to perch on one arm of the high-backed chair. ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... in an extraordinary way. Nearer and nearer the speck comes, until at last we find ourselves standing under a rook which flies with great difficulty. The poor rascal looks most disreputable, for his tail has evidently been shot away, and he is wounded. He drops on to a perch, but not before he has run the gauntlet of several lines of sharp eyes. The poor bird sits on his branch swinging weakly to and fro, humping up his shoulders in woebegone style. There is a rustle among the flock, a sharp exchange of ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... suddenly flashed upon me; and I discovered myself chuckling at the picture, "Tom, the Rough-neck," to whom all such as Federico Malero with his pick and shovel were mere "silver men," on whom "Tom" looked down from his high perch on his steam-shovel as far less worthy of notice than the rock he was clawing out of the hillside. How many a silent chuckle and how many a covert sneer must the Maleros on the Zone indulge in at the pompous airs of some ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... I could go back behind my teens again. Do you remember the summer that I was twelve—that summer up by the lake? I wish you and I could paddle around in one of the old flat-bottomed tubs once more, don't you, Eric? We'd go for lilies and fish for minnows—that is, we'd fish for perch and catch the minnows—and talk about when you should go to college and pull in the race, and I should wear a long dress and learn all the college tunes to sing with you and your Yale friends. Do you remember, Eric? And now, O dear me, you lost your race, ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... ed alti guai Risonavan per l' aer senza stelle, Perch' io al cominciar ne lacrimai. Diverse lingue, orribili favelle, Parole di dolore, accenti d' ira, Voci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle Facevano un tumulto, il qual s' aggira Sempre 'n quell' aria senza tempo tinta, Come la rena quando 'l ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... for the night. The eastern sky was beginning to grow pale, and as we were supping we saw the paroquets in couples flying over our heads towards the forest. Humming-birds were flitting in every direction, and flocks of other passerines flew from one bush to another. When they offered to perch near our bivouac, l'Encuerado requested them in polite terms to settle a little farther away, and, on their refusal, urged his request by throwing a stone at them, which but rarely failed in its purpose. The sun set, and the mountains stood ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... not acting Iago's part by much so well as Clun used to do; nor another Hart's, which was Cassio's; nor, indeed, Burt doing the Moor's so well as I once thought he did. Thence home, and just at Holborn Conduit the bolt broke, that holds the fore-wheels to the perch, and so the horses went away with them, and left the coachman and us; but being near our coachmaker's, and we staying in a little ironmonger's shop, we were presently supplied with another, and so home, and there to my letters at the office, and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... them off, and here they sat, telling stones in turn, they said, to while away the time till the tide should retire. Before the waters went, however, darkness came; and either from fear of breaking bones in the descent or suspicion of some fresh treachery in the mysterious sea, they clung to their perch, blessing the mildness of a January night without wind or frost, but blessing with still more fervency the lanterns of their rescuers. They had passed five ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... lady. "I expected as much. Well, Daisy I will take you. I might perch you up on a foot- cushion to give you a little more altitude. However I don't know but it will do. Theresa will be ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... to survive his less lucky comrades, and, escaping among the birds who are duly chronicled as "getting away," to perch, full of resentment at the probable extinction of his species, in the fashionable quarter of London. He would there witness a grand act of retaliation. He would learn how Belgravia avenges Hornsey and Shepherd's ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... jungle prowlers 'mid them stray, On their brow and mailed bosoms heedless perch the birds ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... it the white folds eluded her hand. If the wind dropped, she was lost. She couldn't help thinking of all the things she wished not to think of. She thought of that immense depth below her narrow perch. She didn't believe the man or woman lived ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... perched on a dry tree that projected over the river; and, with eye turned upwards, seemed to be drinking in the splendour of the morning sun. Their approach disturbed the monarch's meditations. He first spread one wing, and then the other; balanced himself for a moment; and then, quitting his perch with dignified composure, wheeled slowly over their heads. Dolph snatched up a gun, and sent a whistling ball after him, that cut some of the feathers from his wing; the report of the gun leaped sharply from rock to rock, and awakened a thousand echoes; but the monarch of the air sailed calmly ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... we see him as he moved, How modest, kindly, all-accomplished, wise, With what sublime repression of himself, And in what limits, and how tenderly; Not swaying to this faction or to that; Not making his high place the lawless perch Of winged ambitions, nor a vantage-ground For pleasure; but through all this tract of years Wearing the white flower of a blameless life, Before a thousand peering littlenesses, In that fierce light which beats upon ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... of Lake Athabasca that it swarms with fish, such as pike, trout, perch, barbel, and other kinds not easily identified. Apparently there is also a form of gar-pike found here (see p. 74); this is described as having scales of a very large and stiff kind, and being a beautiful bright silver in colour. The size of these gar-pike range from two feet to four ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... to the boy's perch; every one was silent, waiting anxiously to catch his words, as if their ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... sia sempre piombo ai piedi, Per farti mover lento, com' uom lasso, Ed al si ed al no, che tu non vedi; Che quegli e tra gli stolti bene abbasso, Che senza disfcinzion afferma o nega, Nell' un cosi come nell' altro passo; Perch' egl' incontra che piu volte piega L' opinion corrente in falsa parte, E poi l' affetto lo intelletto lega. Vie piu che indarno da riva si parte, Perche non toma tal qual ei si move, Chi pesca per lo vero e noil ha l' arte." DANTE, "Paradiso," ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... the ark let forth A palid dove To fly after the swart raven, Over the deep water, To quest whether the foaming sea Had of the green earth Yet any part laid bare. Wide she flew seeking her own will, Far she flew yet found no rest. Because of the flood With her feet she might not perch on land, Nor on the tree leaves light. For the steep mountain tops Were whelmed in waters. Then the wild bird went At eventide the ark to seek. Over the darling wave she flew Weary, to sink hungry To the hands of ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... believe that she had improved the occasion of their absence to climb a pear-tree, especially as its fruit had been gathered weeks earlier. Moreover, even granting the possibility of so erratic a proceeding, she must have descended from her perch, unless she had continued her journey by airship. Peggy brought the worsted shawl, and renewed her appeals and commands, while Hobo continued to wag his tail, apparently under the impression that he was being praised ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... run out of rube spots to take in. And then I think suddenly of the observation towers like on the Masonic Temple and the Wrigley Building. I headed for them right away, figuring to take a sandwich or so along and spend the day leisurely giving the city the once over from my eerie perch. ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... fact, Old Boss insisted that they work their own gardens, and they raised plenty of vegetables. Grown folks had rabbits and 'possums but I never did get much 'quainted with them. We fished in the cricks and rills 'round the plantation and brought in lots of hornyheads and perch. You never saw any hornyheads? Why they is just fish a little bigger and longer than minnows and they have little horns on their heads. We caught a good many eels too; they look like snakes, but folks call them eels. I wasn't much 'quainted ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... Theophilus, to the profit of Maitre Jacquet Coquedouille. Since that time the poor penman had never a place to call his own. But by the good help of Jean Magne the bell-ringer and with the protection of Our Lady, whose Hours he had aforetime written, Florent Guillaume found a perch o' nights in the ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... left the door of the cage open for days in the event of his return, and strange to tell, one morning Madame Fouquet got up to quarrel with her next-door neighbor, and, to her amazement, there was her green pet on his perch in his cage. She called to him, but he did not answer; he simply stood on his wired legs and fixed his glassy eyes on her, and said not a word—while the gang of Indians in the windows above ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... on his favourite perch, the music-stool, and swung himself gently to and fro while he mildly upheld the virtues of the ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... regarded her aloofly, with a coldness which bordered on hostility, as she flipped her mask into its pocket on top of the gill-pack. Below his rocky perch she came to a halt, her feet slightly apart in the sand, an impish twist to her lips ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... they brought three little sunfish, two perch, and one funny-looking fish with horns, which Frank said ...
— Uncle Robert's Geography (Uncle Robert's Visit, V.3) • Francis W. Parker and Nellie Lathrop Helm
... favorite place, though it can hardly have been comfortable, it was so narrow. The He imp would alight on the rail, about ten feet in front of her, and pretend to be very sick, squawking feebly and drooping his black wings with a struggling flutter, as if it was all he could do to keep his perch. The cat, her narrow eyes opening very wide, would start to creep up to him. The She imp would then alight on the rail behind her and nip her sharply by the tail, and go hopping clumsily off down ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the trees growing and blowing in the merry weather, the country boys thronging aboard the train with figs and peaches, and the conductors, and the very darky stewards, visibly exulting in the change—up went my soul like a balloon; Care fell from his perch upon my shoulders; and when I spied my Pinkerton among the crowd at Sacramento, I thought of nothing but to shout and wave for him, and grasp him by the hand, like what ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... positions were gained and lost, towns and villages along the far-flung battle line were occupied and evacuated, countless deeds of heroism were wrought, to be sung and celebrated by posterity in a dozen different lands—but the lines on both sides held and victory refused to perch on ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... bare heels together and thinking idly of Major Dabney and certain disquieting rumors lately come to Paradise, when the tinkling drip of the spring into the pool at the foot of his perch was interrupted by a ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... Though knowing enough for any station, still it never once enters her head that she is too wise for the station which Providence or the settled order of society has assigned her. She would therefore neither hide her light under a bushel, that others may not see by it, nor perch it aloft in public, that others may see it; but would simply set it on a candlestick, that it may give light to all in her house. With her noble intellect she has gathered in the sweets of poetry and the solidities ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... his sister have kindly called to see us. We are not in order, of course. Oh, dear!" as Nan looked down on them with startled eyes, not venturing to descend from her perch. "I ought not to have brought them in here," looking half mischievously and half guiltily at the young clergyman, who stood hat in ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... said another young Swallow, springing away from his perch. He was a handsome fellow, with a glistening dark blue head and back, a long forked tail which showed a white stripe on the under side, a rich buff vest, and a deep blue collar, all of the finest feathers. He loved the young Swallow ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... Eagle or Sea Eagle is very fond of fish. Well, he is not a very good fisherman and from his lofty perch he watches for the Fish Hawk or Osprey. Do you ask why? Well, when he sees a Fish Hawk with his prey, he is sure to chase him and take it from him. It is for this reason that Ospreys dislike the ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... account I had heard of them, I could hope for nothing better than to be shot, and cooked forthwith for their suppers. After waiting, however, a short time, I saw them dart among the trees, and, to my great relief, in an opposite direction to the camp. Instantly I hurried down from my lofty perch, and made the best of my way towards the camp, keeping a bright look-out, lest any of their friends should ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... kept for training and fighting. These chickens occupy two good-sized rooms, whose walls are entirely covered with compartments, some two feet square, in each of which resides a cock, with his little perch and drinking-vessel. They are kept on allowance of water and of food, lest they should get beyond fighting-weight. Their voices are uplifted all day long, and on all moonlight nights. An old woman receives us, and conducts ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... were over, Sophy sprang down from her perch, and, taking her flowers, followed the procession. She did not walk with the rest, but at a proper and respectful distance from the last mourner. No one noticed the little black girl with the bunch of yellow flowers, or thought of her as interested ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... this time a beautiful white bird, Webfooted, not unlike a dove in size And plumage (probably it might have erred Upon its course), passed oft before their eyes, And tried to perch, although it saw and heard The men within the boat, and in this guise It came and went, and fluttered round them till Night fell:—this seemed a better ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... relapsed into stillness. I spent the remainder of the night sitting on a log before the fire, smoking my pipe with the bowl downwards, for the rain had never ceased, and clouds of steam rose from our camp-fires. The fear was that the powder would get wet. I must have dropped off my perch asleep, for I picked myself up the next morning out of a pool of water. It was already dawn, and looking eastward I saw a streak of light beneath a dark curtain of cloud, like the gleam on the edge of a sword, so sharp and defined was it. This was hopeful; it had ceased raining too, and a brisk ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... once arranged, there must be no change in it. For new possessions there must be new rooms, and after twenty years' absence—coming back to the room in which one learned one's bird or beast alphabet, we should be able to show our children the old bird on the old perch in the accustomed corner. But—first of all, let the room be beautifully complete, i.e. complete ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... then sailing slowly towards the woods on the opposite shore, alighted and furled his great wings on a huge cypress limb, that stretched itself out against the blue sky, like the arm of a giant, for the giant bird to perch upon. ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... Every day it was two inches longer than the day before. In a month it was two yards long; in two months it was twelve feet long; in three months it was raging up and down the river like a tempest, eating the bream and the perch, and all the small fish that came in its way. There was a bream or a perch swimming lazily in the stream. The pike saw it as it raged by, caught it in its great white mouth, and instantly the bream or the perch was gone, torn to pieces by the pike's teeth, and swallowed as you would swallow ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... a very good reason for it, for he played such havoc amongst the eatables that there was little time for talk. At last, after passing from the round of cold beef to a capon pasty, and topping up with a two-pound perch, washed down by a great jug of ale, he smiled upon us all and told us that his fleshly necessities were satisfied for the nonce. 'It is my rule,' he remarked, 'to obey the wise precept which advises a man to rise from table ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... whom I found plying his spade in the red evening, high above Allan Water and in the shadow of Dunblane Cathedral, told me of his acquaintance with the birds that still attended on his labours; how some would even perch about him, waiting for their prey; and, in a true Sexton's Calendar, how the species varied with the season of the year. But this was the very poetry of the profession. The others whom I knew were somewhat dry. A faint flavour of the gardener hung about them, but sophisticated and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... beneath the shade, Around their gallant rams are laid; And Venus bids the birds awake To pour their song through plain and brake. Hark! the noisy pools reply To the swan's hoarse harmony; And Philomel is vocal now, Perch'd upon a poplar-bough. Thou scarce would'st think that dying fall Could ought but love's sweet griefs recall; Thou scarce would'st gather from her song The tale of brother's barbarous wrong. She sings, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... other houses, are exceedingly beautiful—the Japanese Garden being a wonderful pleasaunce in miniature, with paved walks and toy lake and waterfall. Not far away the River Maun, with rich flowers and shrubs on its banks, glides calmly to a tranquil mere, where grey herons perch like birds of stone on the boughs of the island trees. In front of an older entrance to the house stretches a grass-grown avenue, by which is the "Wilderness" of Elizabethan days. There lie the remains of famous racehorses, ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist
... see him quite plainly now. Below the ape-man Bara was about to pass. Could he do it? But even as he asked himself the question the hungry man launched himself from his perch full upon the ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... its effect. The child sat quietly on his perch on Humphrey's broad shoulder, and soon forgot his vexation in watching the rapid evolutions of a hawk in chase of a flight of small birds, one of which at ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... on your sands no night-born dews distil, 460 Stay'd with vindictive hands the scanty rill.— Loud o'er the camp the Fiend of Famine shrieks, Calls all her brood, and champs her hundred beaks; O'er ten square leagues her pennons broad expand, And twilight swims upon the shuddering sand; 465 Perch'd on her crest the Griffin Discord clings, And Giant Murder rides between her wings; Blood from each clotted hair, and horny quill, And showers of tears in blended streams distil; High-poised in air her spiry neck she bends, 470 Rolls her keen ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... he is an ancient bird, who tried his pipe in better days, and then was scared by random shots, he is fain to lift the migrant wing once more towards the humble perch, among the trees he loves. All gardeners own that he does no harm, unless he flits into a thicket of young buds, or a very choice ladies' seed-bed. And he hopes that he is now too ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... six fresh perch and marinade them with two tablespoonfuls of olive oil, a sprig of parsley, a little pepper and salt and allspice, bayleaf and other strong spices chopped fine. Keep the fish in this for about an hour, remove ...
— Twenty-four Little French Dinners and How to Cook and Serve Them • Cora Moore
... goat, had leaped down from her high perch, and was now taking a drink from a little sparkling mountain rill which ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... I said—(it is mad)—if I said, 'I am in love. I can't go. Send some one who is not in love!'" She glanced down from her perch on the footboard at the olive profile bent over the next car. The driver was sitting on his step with his open hand outstretched to hold a dozen bright washers which he was stirring with his forefinger. The ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... "The house will perch on top of this little hill. Back of it, you see, on top of the ridge, it's quite flat and the garden will be there. I was talking about it with Mr. ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... were occupied by the watchers of the ford. There they lived, no man knows how long, on their perch over the waters of Clyde. They dwelt at top of a stone structure some eight feet above low water mark, for they could not live on the ground floor, of which the walls, fifty feet thick at the base, defied the waves of the high tides driven by ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
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