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More "Sparrow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dog; the snake then coiled itself up, slowly turning its head in every direction, as if to select the best direction for retreat. Suddenly it unrolled its whole length, exposing to our view an unfortunate sparrow, which was still breathing. Leaving it unmolested, after a few minutes' delay it seized its victim by the head, by degrees the little feathered innocent disappeared, and the snake remained motionless as though exhausted by ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... King's Highway. Sometimes Linda lifted her hand from the wheel to wave a passing salute to a particularly appealing flower picture. Sometimes she whistled a note or cried a greeting to a mockingbird, a rosy finch, or a song sparrow. ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... The price after this went down to 2d. for a hedge-hog and 4d. for a polecat, but at Barkway the price of a hedge-hog was still 4d., while at Nuthampstead the price for sparrows, as appears by "the sparrow bill," was ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... intangible something. Then he jerked his head towards the drawing-room, where Marguerite could be dimly heard playing an air from the latest comic opera with a fine contempt for accidentals. "That child," he said, "knows no more about life than a sparrow. A man like myself—seventeen stone—may have to balance his books at any moment. You have a clear field; for you may take my word for it that you will be the first in it. My own experience of life has been mostly financial, but I am pretty certain ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... dismissed, and the darkness about her bed was like a flame. There was no doubt that she was doomed to another night of insomnia. The bell of the French clock struck three, and, quite exhausted, she got up and walked about the room. "In another hour I shall hear the screech of the sparrow on the window-sill, and may lie awake till Merat comes to call me." She lay down, folded her arms, closed her eyes and began to count the sheep as they came through the gate. But thoughts of Owen began to loom up, and in spite of her ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... got into a quarrel, and having killed somebody, they are now going to exact retaliation."—The God who set forth the seven climates of this world assigned to every creature its appropriate lot. Had that wretched cat been gifted with wings, she would not have left one sparrow's egg on the earth. It might happen that were a weak man to get the ability, he would rise and domineer over ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... He prepared the earth for his abode and gave him dominion over it. And He yearned for his deliverance from a fallen estate when He gave him a revelation of His infinite redeeming love. The eye of God is upon each individual of the race, as upon every sparrow. He has in thought, in word and in works, not the favoring of one of an hundred, while the ninety and nine are crushed or neglected, but the happiness and highest good of every one of ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... imagination. Whoever has common sense and a sound heart has the powers by which he may be appreciated. And yet he is not only a real poet, but he is all poet. The Muses have not merely sprinkled his brow; he was baptized by immersion. His notes are not many; but in them Nature herself sings. He is a sparrow that half sings, half chirps, on a bush, not a lark that floods with orient hilarity the skies of morning; but the bush burns, like that which Moses saw, and the sparrow herself is part of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... flowers how they wither, As the north winds pass them by, And the sparrow passing thither ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... of the birds of passage high in the air; a patter, patter, patter among the dead leaves, immediately stilled; and then at the last, from the thicket close at hand, the beautiful silver purity of the white-throated sparrow—the nightingale of the North—trembling with the ecstasy of beauty, as though a shimmering moonbeam had turned to sound; and all the while the blurred figure of the moon mounting to the ridge-line of your tent—these things combine subtly, until at last ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... gave me eyes, she gave me ears; And humble cares, and delicate fears, A heart, the fountain of sweet tears; And love, and thought, and joy. The Sparrow's ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... eat as she had begun. At last, to make me the more uneasy, she ate a grain of rice at intervals only; and instead of eating any of the other meats with me, she only now and then put some crumbs of bread into her mouth, but not so much as a sparrow would have pecked. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... was a wonderful, happy year for the new teacher of the Crow Hill school. When spring came with all the alluring witchery of the Garden Spot it seemed to her she must make every one of her pupils feel the thrill of the song-sparrow's first note and the matchless ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... The English house-sparrow, a pert, daring little bird, which is seen in crowds in almost all cities of the Northern United States, was first brought to this country about twenty years ago. It is said the first specimens were liberated in Portland, Maine, where they immediately made themselves ...
— Harper's Young People, February 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... are one of those who believe that not a sparrow falls to the ground without your Creator's consent," he said, with icy sarcasm; "and this is a specimen of Christian resignation—hey? You charge his act upon a poor fellow like me, simply that you may cheat the devil, and rave ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... threshold threatened to encroach upon the nave. Amid all this quickening life, the big Christ, still in shadow, alone displayed signs of death, the sufferings of ochre-daubed and lake-bespattered flesh. A sparrow raised himself up for a moment at the edge of a hole, took a glance, then flew away; but only to reappear almost immediately when with noiseless wing he dropped between the benches before the Virgin's ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... grubbing, they fail to note that an enemy is near—a little cock-eared cur, that has swum up to the ledge, and, without bark or yelp, is stealthily crawling toward it. Taking advantage of every coign of concealment, the dog creeps on till, at length, with a bound, like a cat springing at a sparrow, it seizes the great seabird, and kills it in a trice, as ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... again toward Chanctonbury Ring; a sparkle of far sea came into view, a sparrow-hawk hovered in the sun's eye so that the blood-nourished brown of his wings gleamed nearly red. Jon had a passion for birds, and an aptitude for sitting very still to watch them; keen-sighted, and with a memory for what ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... before, and why couldn't I leave him in heavenly hands? And then it came into my heart to pray. I knew I hadn't any right to pray expecting to be heard; but yet mine would be the prayer of the humble, and wasn't Faith of as much consequence as a sparrow? By-and-by, as we all sat leaning over the gunwale, the words of a hymn that I'd heard at camp-meetings came into my mind, and I sang them out, loud and clear. I always had a good voice, though Dan 'd never heard me do anything with it except hum little low things, putting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... were put to rout—by what, deem you? These two striplings and one poor hound. Had but one of you had the heart of a sparrow, ye had not furnished a tale to be the laugh of the Barbican and Cheapside. Look well at them. How old be you, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... soda. . . . Most likely I shall have a bilious attack. . . . It's extraordinary, Smirnovsky swills vodka all day long and yet he never has a bilious attack. . . . There's a bird settled on the window . . . a sparrow. . . ." ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... picture. The Father in Heaven persists in the effort to bring the Supreme near to the human heart. A law of obedience unquestioned, a rule of conduct making an actual Way of Life, a power unlimited and yet a loving-kindness that marks the sparrow's fall and has regard for the prodigal as for the upright son—surely there must have been uncounted fathers of goodness and wisdom passing praise to have made the name the easiest one by which to call ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... brunt of the battle well-nigh from sunrise to sunset, had also suffered fearfully. I was standing near the admiral, when a shot struck down Mr Sparrow, his secretary, by his side, and our commander, Captain Ball, also fell shortly afterwards. As I looked along the decks I could see them covered with dead and wounded, there being scarcely men left sufficient to carry the latter below, the survivors having to ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... most devoutly that the God who is present at the death-bed of the sparrow does not forget the sparrow when he is dead; for they had been taught that he is an unchanging God; "and," argued Ian, "what God remembers, he thinks of, and what he thinks of, IS." But Ian knew that what misses the heart falls under the feet! A man is bound to SHARE his best, not to tumble ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... sees, the sparrow's fall, That never sleeps nor slumbers, Beholds our griefs however small, And every sigh he numbers. The angels fly at his command, With love their bosoms swelling, They lead us gently by the hand,— They ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... simply filthy; her hair was a red-brown, loosened tangle that reminded one painfully of oakum in its first stage. And she looked as if she deserved a whipping, and defied it too. She was just a female arab—an arab plus an accomplishment—bright, quick and inconsequent as a sparrow, and reeking of the streets and gutters, which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... have enough to pay for her board, and got desperate. I know her sister did wrong, but that was no reason why she should have, and I don't believe she would if it hadn't been for the strike. It's all on account of the strike. There's no use talking: before the sparrow flies in the eyes of the tiger, he'd ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... gay a room. And always flowers in the window, and always a yellow cat on a red cushion. No canary bird; my mother Marie never would have a bird. "No prisoners!" she would say. Once a neighbour brought her a wounded sparrow; she nursed and tended it till spring, then set it loose and watched ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... braver and hardier ones never entirely desert us. The Robin and the Blue Bird are tenderly associated in the memories of most persons whose childhood was passed on a farm or in the country village. Before the advent of the English Sparrow, the Blue Bird was sure to be the first to occupy and the last to defend the little box prepared for his return, appearing in his blue jacket somewhat in advance of the plainly habited female, who on her arrival quite often found ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... be persuaded to countenance that way of varying the monotony. Not that there was ever much monotony in the neighbourhood of the Heavenly Twins; they managed to introduce variety into everything, and their quickness of action, when both were roused, was phenomenal. One day while at work they saw a sparrow pick up a piece of bread, take it to the roof-tree of an angle of the house visible from the schoolroom window, drop it, and chase it as it fell; and the twins had made a bet as to which would beat, bird or bread, quarrelled because they could not agree as to which had bet on ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... passing such a farm now as I write in the train—it is surrounded by a cut stone wall. Do you suppose the owner business would pay if it were run in the same way that his farm is run? We know the story of the white sparrow to find which would bring luck to the farm—but it was out only at daybreak; the farmer got up each morning to find the sparrow and found a lot of other things to attend to, which did bring luck to the farm. I don't ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... the sun in azure skies, And balmy blows the breeze, On gayer wing the sparrow flies, And softly ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... to the reader, John Sparrow writes: "I must say that this book, 'Aurora,' hath conduced more to open my mind to the understanding of all his writings, and of all Mysteries, both natural and divine (and so, consequently, of the Holy Scriptures) than any other ...
— The Gnosis of the Light • F. Lamplugh
... and distastefully. Her first impression of the stranger had been more correct than are first impressions nine times out of ten; he was as full of impudence as a city sparrow. She had sat up 'looking like a fright'; her father had made himself ridiculous; the stranger was mirthfully concerned with the amusing possibilities of ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... peace, but like a little infant pined away, for lack of care and nourishment. Nothing but the divine mercy of Almighty God could have directed the affairs of my tempest-tossed life. I now know there are no accidents. A sparrow falls by a special providence. There are no sins or temptations that I can not say: "My God delivered, saved and forgave me for that." I go to prisons and all kinds of houses of sin. I say: "I can tell you of one who can save and forgive you for that, he forgave me, and he will forgive ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... gave them no heed, but pushed steadily on. In the road lay a couple of pigeons, farther on a sparrow, and still farther a sleeping dog, showed how complete had been the effect ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... not feel Barclay's abstraction. But the colonel's face cleared like a child's, and he reached for the little man and hugged him off his feet. Then the colonel broke out, "May the Lord, who heedeth the sparrow's fall and protects all us poor blundering children, bless you, John Barclay—bless you and all your household." There were tears in his eyes as he waved a grand adieu at the door, and he whistled "Gayly the Troubadour" as he tripped lightly down the stairs. And in another moment the large ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... proceeds, desiring to know something more concerning the Ash. HAR replied: 'What I have farther to add concerning it is, that there is an eagle perched upon its branches, who knows a multitude of things, but he hath between his eyes a sparrow-hawk (qui Vederloefner vocatur). A squirrel runs up and down the Ash, sowing misunderstanding between the eagle and the serpent, which lies concealed at its root. Pour stags run across the branches of the tree, and devour its rind. There are so many serpents in the fountain ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... preparations are for the game that is to be held to-morrow by the young earl, which will be on this wise. In the midst of a meadow which is here, two forks will be set up, and upon the two forks a silver rod, and upon the silver rod a sparrow-hawk, and for the sparrow-hawk there will be a tournament. And to the tournament will go all the array thou didst see in the city, of men and of horses and of arms. And with each man will go the lady he loves best; and no man can joust for the sparrow-hawk, except the lady he loves ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... people for the sin Of their adulterous king, beloved of him,— The same who offers to a chosen few The right to praise him in eternal song While a vast shrieking world of endless woe Blends its dread chorus with their rapturous hymn? Is this the God ye mean, or is it he Who heeds the sparrow's fall, whose loving heart Is as the pitying father's to his child, Whose lesson to his children is "Forgive," Whose plea for all, "They know not what ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 'The Sparrow's Nest', and the sonnet on Skiddaw, along with some translations from Chaucer, belong to the year 1801. During this year, however, 'The Excursion' was in progress. In its earlier stages, and before the plan of 'The ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... things. In this dilemma, with no food at hand, the condition of the travellers was most deplorable. Richard with the view of obtaining some refreshment for his brother, went into the wood and shot the only bird he saw, which was not much bigger than the sparrow. With this, he returned, made a fire, and prepared a little soup in a half-pint cup, which for want of salt, was rather unsavoury, nevertheless it was of service to his brother; the flesh of the bird, Richard divided between himself and his man, both of them being ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... Latin, in order to teach it to her boy. Those summer mornings were happy, for she was learning neither to look backwards nor forwards, but to live faithfully and earnestly in the present. She rose while the hedge-sparrow was yet singing his reveille to his mate; she dressed and opened her window, shading the soft-blowing air and the sunny eastern light from her baby. If she grew tired, she went and looked at him, and all her thoughts were holy prayers for him. Then she would gaze awhile out ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Councillor was in a bad humor. For he had been kept waiting, and that by a man of no account. At last a forester in a uniform of dark green, with the Prince's bugle and sparrow-hawk in silver everywhere about him, made his appearance at the foot of the gallery, and stood waiting Dessauer's summons with his plumed hat of soft ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... terror and anxiety, I took her up as gently as I could, and made my way to the house. She had hurt the base of her spine as she fell on the roots of the tree; but she seemed to get better as soon as Sparrow, the nurse, had undressed her ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... glorious Nymphs shewed me Quintilia and Cynthea Nauta, with others, in great solace, making sweete harmonies, and singing pleasant verses: there also I behelde the virgin Violantilla with hir Doue, and the other sorrowing for hir Sparrow. ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... the wooden house which fell down last week, the builder is of the opinion that a sparrow must have accidentally ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... and her husband who acted as gardener. The place belonged to Kendrick's uncle, the Honorable Milton Waring, and it was usual for them to open the big house about the end of May. This year, however, his aunt and uncle had chosen to spend the summer at Sparrow Lake and for the past week they had been up at a rented cottage in the woods, leaving Phil behind in charge of the ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... fold on fold the wrath of man to cloak, And the flame-spurts pale ran down the rail as the sealing-rifles spoke. The bullets bit on bend and butt, the splinter slivered free (Little they trust to sparrow-dust that stop the seal in his sea!), The thick smoke hung and would not shift, leaden it lay and blue, But three were down on the Baltic's deck and two of the Stralsund's crew. An arm's-length out and overside the banked fog held them bound, But, as they heard or groan or word, they fired ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... then, was in the mill. A strong conviction took possession of her. She watched as the sparrow-hawk watches its prey. Just at dusk she saw Bingley leave the mill and steal away among the alders that lined the stream. She suspected where he was going, and, by a shorter route, reached a field opposite Laycock's house, ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... have occasioned little disturbance, she suspected, had it not been for the cookies. She was used by now to having no fuss made over her. Laura waved a hand from her seat behind the horses; the boys swung their hats; Priscilla darted over to display a ground-sparrow's nest that the ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... a shadow and a shining, we! One moment nothing seems but what we see, Nor aught to rule but common circumstance— Nought is to seek but praise, to shun but chance; A moment more, and God is all in all, And not a sparrow from its nest can fall But from the ground its chirp goes ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... afternoon we set off to Sparrow Hill, and partook of some tea under a small tent commanding a splendid view of Moscow, and said to be the spot whence Napoleon had his first glance ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... be confessed, he is a slightly ludicrous figure. He presents the spectacle of a sparrow stretching its wings and opening its beak to imitate the eagle of catholic lecterns. And he has a singularly nettling manner with some people which must add, I should think, to this unpopularity. He seems sweepingly satisfied with ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... at his employer. He had a gray, humorous eye; he was slim and alert, like a sparrow-hawk—the sort of boy his father openly rejoices in and his mother is secretly in prayer over. Only, this boy had neither father nor mother. Since the age of twelve he had looked out for himself, never quite without bread, sometimes attaining champagne, getting ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... retort, putting his head on one side, like a meditative sparrow; "'tective fellers can't find out; that's the difficulty. Good mind to go on the prowl ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... in the most significant fashion and replied by the well-know proverb: "'The sparrow was in the orchard eating flax-seed; the grandmother threw a stone at it, and missed.' And you? how ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... miracles by the little black St. John of Kortzeroth, if thou wouldst permit even a single ray of reason to enter the heads of Monseigneur and his friends, I believe it would be more beautiful than the tears of the little saint! And that other one on his island, with his clear eyes like the sparrow-hawk who pretends to sleep as he watches the unconscious geese in a pool,—O Lord, a few strokes of his wing and he is upon them, the birds may escape, while we shall have all Europe ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... eldest of them is only a little bigger than a sparrow. When perching on a tree, it balances itself backwards, for which reason it is called "The Faller Backwards." The youngest of the six has a very large body. It is a bird which brings great luck. If anyone walks beneath this bird, ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... the mansion had not been inhabited or its doors opened. One evidence of fallen grandeur was highly characteristic—over the porch the family-arms had been carved in stone, but was now scarcely distinguishable from dilapidation: a sparrow had established a comfortable nest in the mouth of the helmet, and a griffin 'rampant' had fallen from his place beside the shield, and tamely lay overgrown ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... Cher; and I would have helped you to a wealthy dame. You wore her scarf, which partly misled me, and indeed I thought that Hameline, with her portable wealth, was more for your market penny than the other hen sparrow, with her old roost at Bracquemont, which Charles has clutched, and is likely ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... breaches at Allington, &c. Herons bred heretofore, sc. about 1580, at Easton- Piers, before the great oakes were felled down neer the mannour-house; and they doe still breed in Farleigh Parke. An eirie of sparrow-hawkes at the parke at Kington St. Michael. The hobbies doe goe away at..... and return at the spring. Qure Sir James Long, if any other hawkes doe the ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... love for Patroclus is not pure, for Patroclus is as the moon to the sun of Achilles, and Achilles sees his own glory reflected on his friend. They have both a forecast of their fate; but Hector, in his great brave way, scoffs at omens; he knows that there is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow, and defies augury. To do his duty is the only omen for which Hector cares; and if death must be, he can welcome it like a gallant man, if it find him fighting for his country. Achilles is moody, speculative, and subjective; he ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... A smutty sparrow came and peered down at her from the ivy-colored wall, and chirped and twittered in quite a friendly way, perhaps recognizing the scatter ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... and grilled quail— On every fowl they fare. Boiled perch and sparrow broth,—in each preserved The separate flavour that is most its own. O Soul come back to where ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... I am no longer a reasoning creature; I have no will, unless it be the will never to decide. I have been so overwhelmed by the many storms that have broken over my head, that I am become passive in the hands of the Almighty, like a sparrow in the talons of an eagle. I live, because it is not ordained for me to die. If succor be sent to ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... at my heels I strode up to the dying fire and to those who had sprung to their feet at our approach. "Sparrow," I said easily, "luck being with us as usual, I have fallen in with a party of rovers. I have told them who I am,—that Kirby, to wit, whom an injurious world calls the blackest pirate unhanged,—and I have recounted to them how the great galleon which I took ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... a white-throat sparrow," I said to Nataline, "you know the tiny bird that sings all day in the bushes, ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... in at the window, laughing.] Gran'father, gran'father, they've shot with their guns. Two or three's been knocked down, an' one of 'em's turnin' round and round like a top, an' one's twistin' hisself like a sparrow when its head's bein' pulled of. An' oh, if you saw all the blood ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... in the matter, at least in our garden they do. I fancy that Providence must have originally intended to bring in an amending Act, or whatever it's called, providing either for a less destructive sparrow or a more indestructible crocus. The one consoling point about our garden is that it's not visible from the drawing-room or the smoking- room, so unless people are dinning or lunching with us they can't spy out the nakedness of the land. That is why I am so furious with Gwenda Pottingdon, who ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... forests, as the pygmies of Africa do to this very day. When he felt the pangs of hunger he ate raw leaves and the roots of plants or he took the eggs away from an angry bird and fed them to his own young. Once in a while, after a long and patient chase, he would catch a sparrow or a small wild dog or perhaps a rabbit. These he would eat raw for he had never discovered that food tasted better when ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... across this broad interval the teams are ploughing. The grass in the meadow seems all to have grown green since yesterday. The blackbirds jangle in the oak, the robin is perched upon the elm, the song-sparrow on the hazel, and the bluebird on the apple-tree. There rises a hawk and sails slowly, the stateliest of airy things, a floating dream of long and languid summer-hours. But as yet, though there is warmth enough for a sense of luxury, there is coolness enough for exertion. No ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... to sea I had always considered a London cock-sparrow to be the truest emblem of consummate impudence; but I have since discovered that he is quite modest compared to ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... though not in the least sublime, Is wiser than blank dismay, Since "No sparrow can fall before its time", And we're valued higher than they; So hope for the best and leave the rest In charge of a stronger hand, Like the honest boors in the far-off west, With the ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... was old Joe Burn, Wot does the fits to Natur chuff— And Fogg, And Fogg, wot's blind each day in Ho'born, Saw'd his way there clear enough, Mr. Sinniwating Sparrow, In corduroys span new and nice, Druv up in his pine-apple barrow, Which he used to sell a win a slice. [6] ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... which the girls were unceasingly hurling in the direction of the assailants. Forgetting, in an instant, every thing but the glory of being the first to give this jewel to the catalogues of science, he sprang upward at the prize with the avidity with which the sparrow darts upon the butterfly. The rocks, which instantly came thundering down, announced that he was seen; and for a moment, while his form was concealed in the cloud of dust and fragments which followed the furious ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... with that child to-night," said Madeleine as she and Maurice climbed to the gallery. "Pert little thing! But I suppose even such sparrow-brains ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... build near it, the bee and swallow make a high-road of its convenient thoroughfare. In winter the first snows mark it with a white line; as you wander through you hear the blue-jay's cry, and see the hurrying flight of the sparrow; the graceful outlines of the leafless bushes are revealed, and the clinging bird's-nests, "leaves that do not fall," give happy memories of summer homes. Thus Nature meets man half-way. The paths of the wild forest and of the rural neighborhood are not at all the same thing; ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... that has just brought a rabbit to the younglings in the nest. Plenty of other pictures like these! The chapters deal with the buzzards of the Doone country, the lady's hawk, woodpeckers, brown owls, sparrow-hawks, herons ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... wha sits by the deein' sparrow?" said Mr. Simon, himself taking to the dialect. "Cosmo there was a better nor Grizzie, an' nearer to Linty a' the lang nicht. Things warna gangin' sae ill wi' her as ye thoucht. Life's an awfu' mystery, Cosmo, but it's jist the ae thing the maker ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... BIRD DAY, results similar to those secured by Supt. Babcock are becoming manifest. Only a few days ago a boy said to his teacher, "I used to take pleasure in killing all kinds of birds. Now I don't wish to harm even an English Sparrow." ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... taken from the rabbit for further inoculation. The fowl cholera micrococcus, which has been weakened as just mentioned, may be restored to its original violence by inoculating it into a small bird, like a sparrow, and inoculating a second bird from this. A few such inoculations will make it as active as ever. These variations doubtless exist among the species in Nature as well as in artificial cultures. The bacteria which produce the various wound infections and abscesses, etc., ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... or in the parks of the city, during the breeding season, one's attention is repeatedly attracted by the pitiful shrill call of a sparrow fallen on the pavement upon its first attempt at flight, or by the stronger note of a mother sparrow, sharply bewailing the fate of a little one, killed by the fall, or dispatched alive ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... peaceful ending of the day, while the purple shades of night descended sadly and majestically on the low chain of neighbouring hills. The black squadrons of the rooks had already sought their nests about the city walls, but relieved against the opalescent sky a single sparrow-hawk still hung floating with motionless wings above a ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... pair of Crows to which the nest belonged, in the end of July, when they were determinedly and industriously attempting to fix a nest on the top ledge of a pillar in the verandah of the 'Madras Mail' office. The ledge was so narrow that one would have thought the Sparrow alone of all known birds would have selected it for a site; and even the Sparrow only under the condition of a writing or toilet-table being underneath to catch the lime, sticks, straws, rags, feathers, and ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... And hawk and sparrow shared a nest. And the great sea opened and swallowed Pain, And out of this ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... who want to learn indeed, but do not seek for minute and technical knowledge, the case is different. What one of the general public walking into a collection of birds desires to see is not all the birds that can be got together. He does not want to compare a hundred species of the sparrow tribe side by side; but he wishes to know what a bird is, and what are the great modifications of bird structure, and to be able to get at that knowledge easily. What will best serve his purpose is a comparatively small number of birds ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... together as if he were washing them of the whole matter. The dusk of evening had fallen and crocked the white marble and blurred the lettered legends around us. The mossy stones now reminded me only of the innumerable host of the dead. Softly the notes of a song sparrow scattered down into the silence that followed the ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... saw that tender, touching little act except a grimy sparrow on the leads, and he flew off with a loud chirp, and, joining a neighbour on the old stunted tree, made so much noise that it was just possible he was delivering his opinion ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... the magic giant-likeness in again, took his rod and fled. But Yang Oerlang followed hard on his heels. In his urgent need the ape thrust the rod, which he had turned into a needle, into his ear, turned into a sparrow, and flew up into the crest of a tree. Yang Oerlang who was following in his tracks, suddenly lost sight of him. But his keen eyes soon recognized that he had turned himself into a sparrow. So he flung away spear and crossbow, turned himself into a sparrow-hawk, and darted down on the sparrow. But ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... he couldn't stand listening to him teach the language wrong. I often wonder what's become of him. That bird knew more geography than people will ever know.—PEOPLE, Golly! I suppose if people ever learn to fly—like any common hedge-sparrow—we shall never hear the ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... powers and peculiarities of song. In the present sketches, I have given particular attention to the vocal powers of the different birds, and have endeavored to designate the parts which each one performs in the grand hymn of Nature. I shall first introduce the Song-Sparrow, (Fringilla melodia,) a little bird that is universally known and admired. The Song-Sparrow is the earliest visitant and the latest resident of the vocal tenants of the field. He is plain in his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... hurt the sparrow that you keep in your little dressing-room with a string around the leg, because he hath flown where you did ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... sparrow who tries to drive him out. The holes are made oval to allow all the little ones to get their heads out for fresh air. The long overhanging eaves protect the little birds from the hot summer sun. The rooms are made up with partitions on the inside so each opening will have a room. ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... in frames of gold." The very birds which rise from the clover or wheat, and nest in the trees or hedgerows of furze or quickset, are for the most part English—the skylark, the blackbird, finches, green and gold, thrushes, starlings, and that eternal impudent vagabond the house-sparrow. Heavy is the toll taken by the sparrow from the oat-crops of his new home; his thievish nature grows blacker there, though his plumage often turns partly white. He learns to hawk for moths and other flying insects. Near Christchurch rooks caw in the windy skies. Trout give excellent ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... said the mamma sparrow; "and the swallow's nest brings luck, so people say, and therefore people are pleased to have us. But our neighbors! Such a rose-bush against the wall produces damp; it will doubtless be cleared away, and then, perhaps, some corn at least may grow there. The roses are good for nothing except ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... principal ports of entry on both Atlantic and Pacific coasts by means of which the introduction of noxious mammals and birds is prevented, thus keeping out the mongoose and certain birds which are as much to be dreaded as the previously introduced English sparrow and the house ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... beautiful parrots flash through the Australian forest. It would not be possible to tell of all of them. The smallest, which is known as the grass parrakeet, or "the love-bird," is about the size of a sparrow. I notice it in England carried around by gipsies and trained to pick out a card which "tells you your fortune." From that tiny little green bird the range of parrots runs up to huge fowl with feathers of all the colours of the rainbow. There are two fine cockatoos also in Australia—the white ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... moment, a little bird, no bigger than a sparrow, flew along by and lit on a sage-bush about thirty yards away. Steve whipped out his revolver and shot its head off. Oh, he was a marksman—much better than I was. We ran down there to pick up the bird, and just then, sure ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... perching together over there?" asked Dot, pointing to a branch of the dead tree, "since they all hate one another and want to get away. The Galahs have pecked the Butcher Bird twice in five minutes, the Peeweet keeps quarrelling with the Soldier Bird, and none of them can bear the English Sparrow." ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... human voice is limited in its production of sound,—rarely falling below 80 vibrations a second and rarely exceeding 1000 vibrations a second,—the ear is by no means limited to that range in hearing. The chirrup of a sparrow, the shrill sound of a cricket, and the piercing shrieks of a locomotive are due to far greater frequencies, the number of vibrations at times equaling ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... first fortnight, the novelty of Mrs Sparrow's school wore off. Instead of pegging along briskly to be in time, I pulled up once or twice on the road to investigate the wonders of a confectioner's window, or watch the men harness the horses for the ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... garden, and climbing into what was left of a tall stone greenhouse, now in ruins, sit for hours with my legs hanging over the wall that looked on to the road, gazing and gazing and seeing nothing. White butterflies flitted lazily by me, over the dusty nettles; a saucy sparrow settled not far off on the half crumbling red brickwork and twittered irritably, incessantly twisting and turning and preening his tail-feathers; the still mistrustful rooks cawed now and then, sitting high, high up on the bare top of a ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... and the breath of the apple-blossoms came floating in. The bees, droning over the honey-suckle in the garden below, and the song sparrow on the cherry-bough above, both joined in the hymn to the great Father who had ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... the mud as the other is in the mire. And like as not," continued Mrs. West, a tell-tale tension in her voice, "he was a nice, clean-minded young man when she came along, making eyes at him, like a snake charming a sparrow. I'm not crazy about voting, but if I had the ballot, I'd vote for locking up those kind of women and keeping every last one of 'em at hard labor for the ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... a sharp bill, and he hits the poor sparrow with it. Sparrow calls him all the hard names he can think of, and summons the whole sparrow community to his assistance against the mean fellow who has come to ...
— The Nursery, December 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 6 • Various
... rising in huge swarms like gnats; full-voiced meadowlarks on the fence posts; herons stalking solemnly, or waiting like so many Japanese bronzes for a chance at a gopher; red-tailed hawks circling slowly; pigeon hawks passing with their falcon dart; little gaudy sparrow hawks on top the telephone poles; buzzards, stately and wonderful in flight, repulsive when at rest; barn-owls dwelling in the haystacks, and horned owls in the hollow trees; the game in countless ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... still, to quote Father Mahony, of Cork, "still the Irish peasant mourns, still groans beneath the cruel English yoke." The fact is, he is almost killed with kindness. He is weighed down by the multitude of benefactions. He reminds you of the tame sparrow you once suffocated by overfeeding. So much has been done for him that he naturally expects more, and instead of being grateful he grumbles more than ever. He regards Mr. Gladstone as having acted under compulsion, and as being ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... of the Alpine huts, the snow-finch has adopted the habits of the sparrow and is often so tame that he will almost take crumbs from ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... to her writing-table and reseated herself. Kindly twilight veiled her, and a chatty sparrow who perched upon the window-ledge pretended that he had not noticed two tears which trembled, quivering, upon the girl's lashes. Almost unconsciously, for it was an established custom, she sprinkled crumbs from the tea-tray beside her upon the ledge, ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... martyrdom, in the middle of the long horsehair sofa. Three times within the last twelve months Jane had fled from her husband's roof to the protection of her widowed mother, a weak person of excellent ancestry, who could hardly have protected a sparrow had one taken refuge beneath her skirt. Twice before Mrs. Carr had wept over her daughter's woes and returned her, a sullen saint, to the arms of the discreetly repentant Charley; but to-day, while the four older children were bribed ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... often the only refuge of the unhappy subject of orphanage, or the victim of evil family influences, it seems an unnecessary cruelty to withhold the protection, encouragement, and support, which may be so easily and profitably furnished. It is said that a sparrow pursued by a hawk took refuge in the bosom of a member of the sovereign assembly of Athens, and that the harsh Areopagite threw the trembling bird from him with such violence that it was killed on the ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... temperature that constrained me at last in a fellow feeling to spare them a bit of canvas for permanent shelter. There was a fence in that country shutting in a cattle range, and along its fifteen miles of posts one could be sure of finding a bird or two in every strip of shadow; sometimes the sparrow and the hawk, with wings trailed and beaks parted, drooping in the ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... all kinds, from the smallest jellyfish to the ship-destroying monsters, the beasts of the forest, the birds of the air, they all are called into existence by God, and God has not merely called all these creatures into existence, but His providence preserves them, and not even a sparrow falls from ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings
... Anna Barly peered out at the wet, gray morning. The ground was sopping, the trees black with the night's drenching. In the orchard a sparrow sang an uncertain song; and she heard the comfortable drip, drip, drip from the eaves. It was damp and fresh at the window; the breeze, cold and fragrant after rain, made her shiver. She drew her wrapper closer about her throat, and sat staring ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... I heard a vesper-sparrow sing, Withdrawn, it seemed, into the far Slow sunset's tranquil cinnabar; The crimson, softly smoldering Behind the ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... morning march began, Coeval with the birth and breath of man; Who that could view thee in that Asian clime, God-born, soul-nursed, the infant heir of time— Who that could see thee in that Asian court, Flit with the sparrow, with the lion sport, Talk with the murmur of the babbling rill And sing thy summer song upon the hill— Who that could know thee as thou wast inwrought The all in all of nature's primal thought, And see thee ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... fashioned a four-sided club, practised with it in secret, and kept it constantly with him. He was well laughed at because he clung always to his club and would not learn the use of the bow; but he kept his own counsel, and, as the years went on, no one knew that the Sparrow-hawk had talked to him in a vision, and that he had become possessed of two of its ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... reverence at Ericson,—nor ever thought that there was one who, in the face of the fact, and in recognition of it, had dared say, 'Not a sparrow shall fall on the ground without your Father.' The sparrow does fall—but he who sees it ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... for "the hour." And certainly we are to do so. The will of God for each one of us is unfolded by the events of life. These are not causeless. They are not a chance medley of good and bad. God rules: not a sparrow falls without him. And therefore, as providence unrolls the will of God for us, the true child is to accept and obey. Now he brings an opportunity; now he lays a burden. Now he tries us with prosperity; now with sorrow. Now he sends us into battle ...
— Joy in Service; Forgetting, and Pressing Onward; Until the Day Dawn • George Tybout Purves
... His word, and "binds kings in chains, and nobles with links of iron," as the psalm expresses it; but also not a sparrow falls to the ground without His knowledge and consent. Angels and Archangels worship around His throne, but His ears are equally open to the prayer of the youngest child who lifts up its little ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... the meals are continued by two little dinners of the drollest description. They are brought up on a tray of red lacquer, in microscopic cups with covers, from Madame Prune's apartment, where they are cooked: a hashed sparrow, a stuffed prawn, seaweed with a sauce, a salted sweetmeat, a sugared chili! Chrysantheme tastes a little of all, with dainty pecks and the aid of her little chopsticks, raising the tips of her fingers with affected ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... rosy bloom. The woods were bare: and every night the frost To all my longings spoke a silent nay, And told me Spring was far and far away. Even the robins were too cold to sing, Except a broken and discouraged note,— Only the tuneful sparrow, on whose throat Music has put her triple finger-print, Lifted his head and sang my heart a hint,— "Wait, wait, wait! oh, wait a while ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke
... Passed a French brig at ten; the wind freshened and we took in some sail. About 5 some sail torn by the wind. At three passed another ship and brig nearly together; after dinner a small bird resembling our sparrow though rather larger and with speckled breast. The nearest point of land is at least 200 miles; it fluttered about refusing any food, then flew into the ladies' cabin and there ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... sun arises. Millions of gems seem suspended from the leafless branches. The familiar robin and the bolder sparrow seek the abode of man. Swift fly the balls of snow; the ruddy youth binds on his skates and gracefully ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... and the hills, this wood holds nearly every species of the larger woodland and riverine birds common to southern England. The hobby breeds there yearly. The wild pheasant, crow, sparrow-hawk, kestrel, magpie, jay, ringdove, brown owl, water-hen (on the river-bounded side), in summer the cuckoo and turtle-dove, are all found there, and, with the exception of the pigeons and kestrels, which seek their food at a distance during the day, they seldom leave the shelter ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... of gratitude, the young hunters sat with bowed heads while the kindly old sailor offered up a simple, fervent prayer of thanksgiving for the mercies they had received from the One who heeds even the sparrow's fall. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... called, the "reading pew," occurs till 1603, when, in the ecclesiastical canons then framed, it was enjoined that besides the pulpit a fitting or convenient seat should be constructed for the minister to read service in; and in allusion to the reading desk, Bishop Sparrow, in his Rationale of the Book of Common Prayer, observes, "This was the ancient custom of the church of England, that the priest who did officiate in all those parts of the service which were directed to the people turned himself towards ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... about something 'd happened during the day; and 'd whistle to the guitar, or git his maw into a game of cards with his aunt and the girls. Law! that boy didn't believe in no house of mourning. He'd be up at four in the morning, hoein' up their old garden; raised garden-truck for their table, sparrow-grass and sweet corn—yes, and roses, too; always had the house full of roses in June-time; never was a house sweeter-smellin' to ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... as Cassio says, 'is above all— No more of this, then,—let us pray!' We have Souls to save, since Eve's slip and Adam's fall, Which tumbled all mankind into the grave, Besides fish, beasts, and birds. 'The sparrow's fall Is special providence,' though how it gave Offence, we know not; probably it perch'd Upon the tree ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... wailing cry, "The Bourgeois Philibert! have I slain the Bourgeois Philibert? De Pean lies, Angelique," said he, suddenly turning to her. "I would not kill a sparrow belonging to the Bourgeois Philibert! Oh, tell ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Sparrow," by the witty, but obscene Skelton, who wrote towards the close of the fifteenth century, says that "Gower's Englishe is old;" but the learned Dean Collet, in the early part of the succeeding century, studied not only Gower, but Chaucer, and even Lydgate, in order ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... for me, my thoughts go back, and I can almost hear the tones of your voice. I feel lonely sometimes. Your letters are a great solace. If I feel a little sad I go to my room, and unburden my heart to Him who is not indifferent even to the sparrow's fall. Sometimes the woods seem mournful, and when the wind, in these autumn evenings, wails through the pines, I don't know how it is, but I feel tears ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... against the tinted sky. A faint breath of air rustled the dry leaves of the big sycamores and paw-paw bushes, and the birds called sleepily to each other as they settled themselves for the coming night. A sparrow-hawk darted past on silent wings, a rabbit hopped across the road, while far away, the evening train on the "Frisco" whistled for a crossing; and nearer, a farm boy called to his cattle. After a long silence, George spoke again, with a note of manly dignity in his voice, which made his fair ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... intelligent young Christian Negro knows that the universe does not operate by chance. He feels the full force of what Charles Sumner said in his eulogy on Abraham Lincoln: "In the providence of God there is no accident—from the fall of a sparrow, to the fall of an empire or the sweep of a planet, all is controlled by divine law." And thus he lives undisturbed by the wrathful elements that are at play around him. His full confidence in God at this trying hour, and his firm belief that the wrath ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... heard, when quite a little boy, that a man who gazes steadily between his horse's ears can not possibly tumble off the back. The saying in its wisdom is akin to that which describes the potency of salt upon a sparrow's tail. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Chester and Galway; the late lord chief justice Herbert; the marquis d'Estrades, M. de Rosene, mareschal decamp; Mamoe, Pusignan, and Lori, lieutenant-general; Prontee, engineer-general; the marquis d'Albeville, sir John Sparrow, sir Roger Strictland, sir William Jennings, sir Henry Bond, sir Charles Carney, sir Edward Vaudrey, sir Charles Murray, sir Robert Parker, sir Alphonso Maiolo, sir Samuel Foxon, and sir William Wallis; by the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... entirely in its opposite, the poem. How can the subject determine the value when on one and the same subject poems may be written of all degrees of merit and demerit; or when a perfect poem may be composed on a subject so slight as a pet sparrow, and, if Macaulay may be trusted, a nearly worthless poem on a subject so stupendous as the omnipresence of the Deity? The "formalist" is here perfectly right. Nor is he insisting on something unimportant. He is fighting against our tendency to take the work of art as a mere copy or reminder ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... a fine thing, but it often appeals only to the simple. Art is the only passion of true artists. Palestrina's music resembles the music of Rossini, as the song of the sparrow is like the cavatina of the nightingale. Choose.—Madame ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... dilatoriness as not to annoy her cousin, Busy Bee, even to a degree of very unnecessary fidgeting when there was any work in hand. She sat on thorns all breakfast time, devoured what her grandpapa called a sparrow's allowance, swallowed her tea scalding, and thereby gained nothing but leisure to fret at the deliberation with which Henrietta cut her bread into little square dice, and spread her butter on them as if each piece was to serve as a model ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her mother to the utmost of her strength night after night. To learn to take the universe seriously there is no quicker way than to watch—to be a "waker," as the country-people call it. Between the hours at which the last toss-pot went by and the first sparrow shook himself, the silence in Casterbridge—barring the rare sound of the watchman—was broken in Elizabeth's ear only by the time-piece in the bedroom ticking frantically against the clock on the stairs; ticking harder and harder till it seemed to clang ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... with inexorable insight through the phantasmal optimisms, refused to blind itself with Platonisms and Hegelisms, refused the positions of aesthetes and artists and self-satisfied German savants, equally with the positions of conventional preachers, demanded justice for the individual down to the sparrow, two of which were sold in the market-place for a farthing, and a significance and a purpose in the secular sweep of destiny; yet knew all the while that Purpose was as anthropomorphic a conception of the essence ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... [1] we never saw before. The mighty [2] Thomas Thumb victorious comes; Millions of giants crowd his chariot wheels, [3] Giants! to whom the giants in Guildhall Are infant dwarfs. They frown, and foam, and roar, While Thumb, regardless of their noise, rides on. So some cock-sparrow in a farmer's yard, Hops at the head of an ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... a very old sparrow, but not so old that I cannot still relish a cherry, a grape, or a nice fat worm. I am about to write a short history of my life, for the instruction of my ...
— The Nursery, May 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... dullest cathedral town. It was a place of note during the existence of the Saxon Heptarchy. Twice it had the honour of publicly entertaining King John; and there is a tradition that in the curious and beautifully-ornamented house in the Butter Market—formerly the residence of Mr. Sparrow, the Ipswich coroner, whose old family portraits, including one of the Jameses, presented to an ancestor of the family, filled me not a little with youthful wonder—Charles II. was secreted by one of the Sparrows of that day, when he came to hide ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... Grosbeak Sparrow Hawk Bobolink White-headed Eagle Meadow Lark Great Horned Owl Bluejay Snowy Owl Ruffed Grouse Red-headed Woodpecker Great Blue Heron Golden-winged Woodpecker Bittern Barn-swallow Wilson's Snipe Whip-poor-will Long-biller Curlew Night Hawk Purple Gallinule Belted Kingfisher ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... their position by his compass. Turning to the north, they observed in that direction fewer churches, but numerous villas and lines of wood, with the arid steppe beyond them. To the south-west arose the Sparrow Hills, those celebrated heights whence Napoleon and his then victorious army first caught sight of that magic city which they deemed was soon to be the reward of all their toils, but yet which, ere many ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... his right elbow on his left fist. He puffed out the grey smoke and dozed alternately, spitting now and then into the middle of the room or shifting his hands. When the pipestem began to twitter like a young sparrow, he knocked the bowl a few times against the bench, emptied the ashes, and poked his finger down. Yawning, he got up and laid the pipe on ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... likewise inhabited and yeldeth haukes in great store, as falcons, Ierfalcons, lanardes and sparrow haukes, rauens, crowes, beares, hares and foxes, with horses and other kinde of cattell, vpon which coast in August and September the yse is vtterly dissolued, all which the premises are certainly verified by such as trade thither from Lubec, Hambro, Amsterdam and England ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... is precious. He wanted to give the proceeds to a little Corsican sparrow named Ginetta. You must set old Nourrisson to find her; I will give you the necessary information in a letter which Gault will give you. Come for it to the gate of the Conciergerie in two hours' time. You must place the girl with a washerwoman, Godet's sister; she ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... all this; he learned it in his solitary communings with the animal world. For somehow it seems to be the law of nature that every moving thing goes about in dread of losing its life from something else which either preys upon or persecutes it. The house-sparrow, the most domestic of wild birds, gives a look-out for squalls between every peck, but it will soon learn to distinguish the person who does not molest and who feeds it, even to coming at his call, while fish, those most cold-blooded of creatures, ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... affected her as a catastrophe. She felt that there a crisis had come: a living conscious thing could do nothing for its own life, and lay helpless. Say rather—seemed so to lie. Oh, surely it is in reason that not a sparrow should fall to the ground without the Father! To whom but the father of the children that bemoan its fate, should the children carry his sparrow? But Barbara was carrying her pigeon where was no help ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... a personal God, without whom not a sparrow falleth, though the waters cover the face of the earth and blot out millions of His creatures," answered Adam. "After all, can we do better than follow ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... look after their own. Thereupon they all said sarcastic things to their fellow citizen and left him indignantly. He, poor fellow, found it impossible to explain or justify himself, because his mate was sitting on the eggs; so he flew off in a huff to try and find a sparrow's nest to rob. When he came back he had taken pains to forget just how many eggs there had ever ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... gnat, Lawton," he continued in his old conversational manner. "Though one can kill a sparrow with a five pound shot, is it worth the effort? Small as my personal regard is for you, a note penned in three lines would have brought you back your trinket. But when you ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... a great man or a crazy fool," he remarked to an English sparrow. He turned over rapidly the papers Darrow had found on the mayor's desk, and smiled grimly. "Of all the ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... sir, a long time. And the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth; That God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, sir, in the Sacred Writings, that 'except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... leads the soul to weep because men keep not His law, to cry more about His interests than its own. It is willing for its own house to lie desolate, if that will promote the spread of God's kingdom. It is willing for the sparrow to find a nest on its own altar, if by that it can replenish and ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... of the forest, the birds of the air, they all are called into existence by God, and God has not merely called all these creatures into existence, but His providence preserves them, and not even a sparrow falls from the roof ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings
... Lydia does this: wherefore let her do three things which I shall demand of her for my assurance, and then there is nought that she shall crave of me, but I will certainly render her prompt obedience. Which three things are these:—first, let her in Nicostratus' presence kill his fine sparrow-hawk: then she must send me a lock of Nicostratus' beard, and lastly one of his best teeth." Hard seemed these terms to Lusca, and hard beyond measure to the lady, but Love, that great fautor of enterprise, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... and artists! what are you in comparison with the rich proprietor who has everything he wants, and who feeds your inspiration with the crumbs that fall from his table? What are you but ornamental portions of his feasts and banquets, just to fill up a weary interval? You are no more than the sparrow that warbles in his hedges, or the statue that figures in his garden-walk. It is by him and for him that you exist. What need has he to envy you the incense of pride and vanity—he who possesses the only solid good this world ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... thrill of gladness was in that song, Edward! It was a spontaneous thank-offering to Him, without whom not a sparrow falls to the ground; to Him who clothes the fields in greenness, beautifies the lily, and provides for every creature its food in season. And this reminds me;" she added in a changed and more sobered voice, "that our thank-offering for infinite ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... also materially assisted by Military Store-Keeper Girardey and several young officers—Captain Finney, and Lieutenants Waller, Collier, Sparrow, Hallam, and Cadet Lewis, and towards the close ...
— History of the Confederate Powder Works • Geo. W. Rains
... The assailed could indeed appeal, at least for a partial justification of their love of the chase, to an article of their statutes, revised in the year 1346, according to which and others, a horse, a hound, and a falcon or sparrow-hawk, for hunting, had to be presented to the chaplain of the foundation, who ministered at the annual festival ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... "The sparrow is playing in the mud Don't I wish I could, too. He don't need rubbers on his feet, Behind the clouds it's blue. He wears feathers stead of close And to him the rain aint wet. I wisht that I wore feathers, too, Then I'd stay out ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... accompanying papers, a report from the Secretary of State, answering the resolution of the Senate of January 16, 1896, addressed to him, calling for information concerning the claims against Peru of Thomas W. Sparrow, N.B. Noland, and others, members of the commission known as the Hydrographic Commission of the Amazon, employed by the Government of Peru, for compensation for their services ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... in the trees, or baiting rabbit-traps in the "creeps" of stoat or weasel, and destroying nests, as well as shooting any furred or feathered creature of questionable character. The big brown owl from the beech-grove, the kestrel from the rock on the far side of the brook, the sparrow-hawk from the spinney up-stream, together with the weasels, the stoats, the cats, the jays, and the magpies—all ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... March was there. And when Tony sent up word begging to see me on important business, in imagination I was defending Eagle's hospital cot (naturally with him in it!) against a troop of uhlans. In that mood, Tony's arguments about my going away made as much impression as the chirp of a sparrow on a man stone ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... thy diocese, And all the chirping choristers And other birds are thy parishioners: Thou marriest every year The lyrique lark, and the grave whispering dove, The sparrow, that neglects his life for love, The household bird with the red stomacher; Thou mak'st the blackbird speed as soon As doth the goldfinch or ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... walls; I have never seen so gay a room. And always flowers in the window, and always a yellow cat on a red cushion. No canary bird; my mother Marie never would have a bird. "No prisoners!" she would say. Once a neighbour brought her a wounded sparrow; she nursed and tended it till spring, then set it loose and watched ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... drunkard, seemingly beyond the reach of hope and help, had been led back to sobriety and a life of honest industry by the hand of a little child cast somehow adrift in the world, yet guarded and guided by Him who does not lose sight in his good providence of even a single sparrow. ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... a bustle in your town this evening?' asked Geraint, first of one person and then of another. But they hurried past him, muttering, 'The Sparrow-hawk has his tournament ...
— Stories of King Arthur's Knights - Told to the Children by Mary MacGregor • Mary MacGregor
... gentle pity! I have seen a blackbird that would sooner fly To a man's bosom, than to stay the gripe Of the fierce sparrow-hawk. ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... a story who ever heard? There was a little shivering bird! A sparrow, that in at the window flew, Had ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... solitary communings with the animal world. For somehow it seems to be the law of nature that every moving thing goes about in dread of losing its life from something else which either preys upon or persecutes it. The house-sparrow, the most domestic of wild birds, gives a look-out for squalls between every peck, but it will soon learn to distinguish the person who does not molest and who feeds it, even to coming at his call, while fish, those most cold-blooded of creatures, which in an ordinary way go off like a silver ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... well, and perceiving me to be so lean that I had nothing but skin and bone, he let me go. He took up all the rest one by one, viewing them in the same manner: and the captain being the fattest, he held him with one hand, as I would do a sparrow, and thrusting a spit through him, kindled a great fire, and roasted him in his apartment for supper; which being done, he returned to the porch, where he lay and fell asleep, snoring louder than thunder: ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... those miserable creatures who hold that SHAKSPEARE'S plays were written by SHAKSPEARE. It was therefore with pained regret that I heard him attempting to support his objection to the activities of sparrow-clubs by the argument that, if the birds were destroyed, large numbers of grubs and caterpillars would be left alive. After this I shall not be surprised to hear that he has been summoned by the R.S.P.C.A. for brutality to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... the middle of which pits had been constructed, to which we descended by means of crampons or spiral staircases. These pits led us into other rooms, from which opened out other corridors embellished in the same bizarre manner with sparrow-hawks, serpents coiled in circles, the symbolic tau, pedum, and baris, prodigious works which no living eye should ever see, interminable legends in granite which only the dead throughout eternity have ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... collection of cats; a panther-like French pussy from Dund, a Caucasian with long pointed ears, one from China with wavy silken fur and drooping ears. Then the window was closed, for the company were all assembled—four cats, two pug-dogs, and a sparrow, and ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... the matter that chanced on the banks of the Cher; and I would have helped you to a wealthy dame. You wore her scarf, which partly misled me, and indeed I thought that Hameline, with her portable wealth, was more for your market penny than the other hen sparrow, with her old roost at Bracquemont, which Charles has clutched, and is likely ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... bird. She kept it in constant motion, bringing bright eyes to bear upon the different passengers. She did not travel very far. She stopped the car, springing alertly to her feet and pulling the bell-rope. Then she hopped off as spryly as a sparrow, on her thin ankles, moving with nervous haste. Then it was that Carroll noticed the boy for the first time, although he was seated directly opposite, and the child looked long and intently at the man. When the strange, agile old woman ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... that little carcass of yours than in all those big, hulking troopers, that could spit you on a bayonet like a sparrow!" rumbled Master Ritter. "How shall ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... "made, no doubt, for hundreds—it may be millions—of other purposes, but among these purposes the saving of your life was certainly in the mind of Him who 'knows all things from the beginning,' and with whom even the falling of a sparrow is a ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... gallants, richly clad in ruffs and bands, embroidered shirts, Italian doublets slashed and laced, Venetian hose, gay velvet caps with jeweled bands, and every man a poniard or a rapier at his hip. Nick felt very much like a little brown sparrow in a flock of ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... the tops of walls and battlements a momentary tinge of rose colour, a sight well worth the effort demanded by early rising. Sparrow-hawks and pigeons were fluttering over their nests on the deserted battlements, a stork eyed me with solemn curiosity from the minaret of a near mosque, and only the earliest wayfarers were astir. How slowly the ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... Governor we made the acquaintance of some of the land shells for which these islands are famous—pretty, pearl-like little whorls living on the largest trees, and about the size of a chipping sparrow's egg, with pointed ends, variously colored. There are more than two hundred species on the different islands, I think, each valley having varieties peculiar to itself, showing what a factor isolation is in the evolution of new species. The Governor and his wife, and a ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... been telling her class of boys that recently worms had become so numerous that they destroyed the crops, and it was necessary to import the English sparrow to exterminate them. The sparrows multiplied very fast and were gradually driving ...
— Good Stories from The Ladies Home Journal • Various
... small band of seals that were ahead of us. Away they went, breaching and jumping entirely out of water. A sea-gull with slow, deliberate flight and long, majestic curves circled round us, and as a reminder of home a little English sparrow perched impudently on the fo'castle head, and, cocking his head on one side, chirped merrily. The boats were soon among the seals, and the bang! bang! of the guns could be heard ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... hope so," I answered. "But the song-hour has not yet come to me. How good you all ought to be who can sing! I feel as if my heart would break with delight, if I could sing; and yet there is not a sparrow on the housetop that cannot sing a better song ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... with hothouse daffodils and narcissi, also with flowery hats and airy garments that made the passer-by shiver by their contrast with the cutting March wind. In and out, among automobiles and pedestrians, darted that fearless optimist, the metropolitan sparrow, busy already with straws and twigs for ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... Reginald!" said Thornton. "No, I am not a sparrow, to have my neck wrenched by a woman's hand like your's. Give me my demand—sign the paper, and I will leave you for ever ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... God, and the true sower he who casts it into the mightier ground of the human heart. Did a flock of sheep lie at rest upon the hillside, guarded by a shepherd's care, at once he would unfold the shepherding of a Father's love. A tiny sparrow, flying an unnoticed speck in the distant sky, or falling ground-ward with its weary flight, was a winged witness that the Father knew and saw even the smallest details of human life. A lily in its lowliness, and yet a lily in its beauty shaming a king's array, a ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... I may say here that I am almost glad I made that mistake about the white-throated sparrow, since receiving a note from a lady who writes from among the Berkshire hills, where the sweet call of this bird is constantly repeated. It is very pleasant to know that a little girl out in that beautiful region honors me so much as to recite my verse when she hears the fresh note of this charming ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... similar in size and coloration to the American Sparrow Hawk. They are much more abundant than the Sparrow Hawk is in this country and frequently nest about houses, in hollow trees, on rafters of barns, or on ledges and embankments. Their eggs are of a reddish buff color, speckled and blotched with reddish brown, they being much darker ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... Alone again! Where are those precious darlings of mine? I suppose they've forgotten about me! But, then, why should they remember me? Saints alive, it'll soon be daylight. This night is shorter than a sparrow's beak. How can we go home then? ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... reply; "and he who allows not a sparrow to fall unnoticed, shall he not much more care for us? Yes, Julia, God will provide. My soul, trust thou ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... diminution of their powers through ages! What must be the vigilance which watches over their perpetual possession of existence and enjoyment; or what conclusion can be more just, natural, or consolatory than that, "if not a sparrow falls to the ground without the knowledge and supervision of Providence," a not less vigilant care, and a not less profuse and exalted beneficence will be the providential principle of the government of man, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... replied Paul, "if you notice that the dog leaves the track of his nails every time; while puss, well, she sheathes her claws while she walks, keeping them sharp for business when she sights a sparrow or ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... closed and his head fell too far forward, he righted himself and rested his right elbow on his left fist. He puffed out the grey smoke and dozed alternately, spitting now and then into the middle of the room or shifting his hands. When the pipestem began to twitter like a young sparrow, he knocked the bowl a few times against the bench, emptied the ashes, and poked his finger down. Yawning, he got up and laid the pipe ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... and swim about by twos and threes, pluming themselves, and diving to peck at the root of the lily, and the cranberries which the frost has not loosened. The first flock of geese is seen beating to north, in long harrows and waving lines; the gingle of the song-sparrow salutes us from the shrubs and fences; the plaintive note of the lark comes clear and sweet from the meadow; and the bluebird, like an azure ray, glances past us in our walk. The fish-hawk, too, is occasionally seen at this season sailing ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... a sparrow had early in spring taken possession of an old swallow's nest, and had laid some eggs in it, when the original builder and owner of the castle made her appearance, and claimed possession. The sparrow, firmly seated, resisted the claim of the swallow; a smart battle ensued, in which the swallow ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... science, went in coaches and six to visit the Gresham curiosities, and broke forth into cries of delight at finding that a magnet really attracted a needle, and that a microscope really made a fly loom as large as a sparrow. [186] ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of rock which upheld the roof. I then saw that bees were not the only representatives of the animal kingdom in the interior of this volcano. Birds of prey hovered here and there in the shadows, or fled from their nests on the top of the rocks. There were sparrow hawks, with white breasts, and kestrels, and down the slopes scampered, with their long legs, several fine fat bustards. I leave anyone to imagine the covetousness of the Canadian at the sight of this savoury game, and whether he did not regret ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... help you any," pricked the accuser. "You talk about the honor of the Winnebagos. If you use that information you would be dishonoring the Winnebagos! You're a cheat, you're a cheat," it said tauntingly, and a little sparrow on the window sill outside took up the mocking refrain, "Cheat! Cheat!" Stung as though some one had pointed an accusing finger at her, Migwan flung down her pen in despair and resolutely blotted her paper. She handed in her examination with the last half of the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... cry, "The Bourgeois Philibert! have I slain the Bourgeois Philibert? De Pean lies, Angelique," said he, suddenly turning to her. "I would not kill a sparrow belonging to the Bourgeois Philibert! Oh, tell me ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... cases, the name Woodall. The Alpe, or bullfinch, mentioned in the above lines, also survives as a surname. Dunnock and Pinnock are dialect names for the sparrow. It was called in Anglo-Norman muisson, whence Musson. Starling is a dim. of Mid. Eng. stare, which has itself given ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... of the mill is continued. 'Arising at the voice of the bird' may describe the light sleep or insomnia of old age; but, according to some, with an alteration of rendering ('The voice riseth into a sparrow's'), it is the 'childish treble' of Shakespeare. The former is the more probable rendering and reference. The allegory is dropped in verse 5a, which describes the timid walk of the old, but is resumed in 'the almond trees shall flourish'; that is, the hair is blanched, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... a mind feeling sort of like the famous sparrow who'd gotten trapped for three hours in a badminton game at Forest Hills, I built a strong highball, and poured it down while my halluscene set was warming up. I needed the highball as well as the relaxation, because I knew that the "Drama" being presented was the hundred ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith
... Barclay's abstraction. But the colonel's face cleared like a child's, and he reached for the little man and hugged him off his feet. Then the colonel broke out, "May the Lord, who heedeth the sparrow's fall and protects all us poor blundering children, bless you, John Barclay—bless you and all your household." There were tears in his eyes as he waved a grand adieu at the door, and he whistled "Gayly the Troubadour" ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... for the wing of the sparrow, The bush for the robin and wren, But always the path that is narrow And straight for the children of ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... are private; for the partners, being bachelors and bosom friends, live there; and the door marked Private, next the clerks' office, is their domestic sitting room as well as their reception room for clients. Let me describe it briefly from the point of view of a sparrow on the window sill. The outer door is in the opposite wall, close to the right hand corner. Between this door and the left hand corner is a hatstand and a table consisting of large drawing boards on trestles, ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... Justinian first, and then the Emperor Heraclius, had confirmed them in their old prerogative. The chivalrous St. George was placed between the snakes so as to replace a heathen symbol by a Christian one. Formerly indeed the knight himself had had the head of a sparrow-hawk: that is to say of the god Horus, who had overthrown the evil-spirit, Seth-Typhon, to avenge his father; but about two centuries since the heathen crocodile-destroyer had been transformed into the Christian conqueror ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... these cheerful sounds that wakened us with a start. There! Hear that? Hear it? Two or three long-drawn, reedy notes, and an awkward boggle at a trill, but oh, how sweet! How sweet! It is the song-sparrow, blessed bird! It won't be long now; it ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... extraordinary and sensational were not necessary to literature. And just as the dewdrop on the petal is a divine manifestation, and every blade of grass is a miracle, and the three speckled eggs in an English sparrow's nest constitute an immaculate conception, so every human life, with its hopes, aspirations, dream, defeats and successes, is a drama, joyous with comedy, rich in melodrama and also dark and somber as can be woven from the warp and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... A ground-sparrow's nest in the slope of a bank, brought to view by mowing the grass, but still sheltered and comfortably hidden by a blackberry-vine trailing over it. At first, four brown-speckled eggs,— then two little bare young ones, which, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and the ripple of the river against its pebbly banks below. He glanced a moment from the bush in which he was lying, in search of the barbarians who had lately covered the slope of the hill, but all had vanished; captor and captive had alike fled; and the sparrow twittering among the stunted bushes, and the grasshopper singing in the grass, were the only living objects to be seen. The thong was still upon his wrists, and as he felt it rankling in his flesh, he almost believed that his savage captors, with a refinement in cruelty the more remarkable ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... solemnly. "Not a word of the blessed thing could we understand, and yet we were all hugging ourselves. Not pretty either—a mere bone and a yank of hair—and no more voice than a sparrow. But you just went along too. Couldn't help it. And afterwards we played up as though we liked it, and hadn't been plugging at the rottenest show in England for the last ten weeks. And she laughed and clapped her hands, and our tongues ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... bone be too hard, if the prize suspended be a Mole, an adult Mouse or a Sparrow, the wire ligament opposes an insurmountable obstacle to the attempts of the Necrophori, who, for nearly a week, work at the hanging body, partly stripping it of fur or feather and dishevelling it until ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... game of cards with his aunt and the girls. Law! that boy didn't believe in no house of mourning. He'd be up at four in the morning, hoein' up their old garden; raised garden-truck for their table, sparrow-grass and sweet corn—yes, and roses, too; always had the house full of roses in June-time; never was a ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... time, aided by an ingenious young friend, I constructed a toy windmill, of which the vanes were moved by weights. I placed this toy in a cage, so arranged that its motions could be regulated from the outside, and I put into the cage a sparrow, which had been taken from the nest, and which consequently had no experience of the external world. Much patience was needed, since the toy required careful adjustment and was easily thrown out of gear, but I managed it at last. The sparrow pecked at the little mill as soon ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... his chief poetic works being "Why come ye not to Courte," a satire against Wolsey; the "Book of Colin Clout," against the corruption of the Church; and the "Book of Phyllyp Sparrow," the grief of a nun for the death of her sparrow; Erasmus calls him "the glory and light of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Jude" (London, 1633) is a series of sermons preached in the parish church of North Walsham by Samuel Otes, rector of South Repps, Norfolk, who was chaplain to the Lord Chief Justice Hobart. Reference has already been made to the works of Humphrey Prideaux, Dean of Norwich. Anthony Sparrow, Bishop of Norwich, who was born in Suffolk, published "Rationale upon the Book of Common Prayer" (London, 1661), which was often reprinted and is still of some value, and a companion volume "Collection of Articles, Canons," etc. (London, 1684). Last but not least to be ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... who read it, and may believe it, may form, that such a vast catastrophe as I have depicted militates against the idea that God rules and cares for his world and his creatures. It will be asked, If "there is a special providence even in the fall of a sparrow," how ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... over there?" asked Dot, pointing to a branch of the dead tree, "since they all hate one another and want to get away. The Galahs have pecked the Butcher Bird twice in five minutes, the Peeweet keeps quarrelling with the Soldier Bird, and none of them can bear the English Sparrow." ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... on them. Believe me, ladies, you will find In that sweet light more solid joys, More true contentment to the mind Than all town-toys. Nor Cupid there less blood doth spill, But heads his shafts with chaster love, Not feather'd with a sparrow's quill, But of a dove. There you shall hear the nightingale, The harmless syren of the wood, How prettily she tells a tale Of rape and blood. The lyric lark, with all beside Of Nature's feather'd quire, and all The commonwealth of flowers in 'ts pride Behold you shall. The lily queen, the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... into April. The little red house had all it could do, sometimes, to lift its upper windows above them. In the front yard there was a symmetrical balsam fir-tree, tapering like a Chinese pagoda. One winter morning we found upon one of its lower boughs a little brown sparrow frozen stiff. We put it in a card-board coffin, and dug out a grave for it beneath the fir, with a shingle head-stone. The funeral ceremonies had for the two mourners a solemnity such as is not always felt at such functions ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... come at once. Prices are arranged to please you. I am off to Italy with my wife; so you can have Mistigris to help you along. The young scamp has talent, and I put him at your disposal. He is twittering like a sparrow at the very idea of amusing himself at the chateau ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... and weary to make resistance. He dragged me to the ground before the tent, while the rest set up a skirling that deafened my wits. There he plumped me down, and stood glowering at me like a cat with a sparrow. ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... of winter with a false but none the less agreeable intimation that Spring is on its way. The sidewalks were wet underfoot, and the gutters ran with thawed snow. The sun shone exhilaratingly from a sky the color of a hedge-sparrow's egg. ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... off into New York, and went rapidly from bad to worse. At first he was only fast, and then he was criminal; and then, at the end of a year or two, he was one of the most notorious young crooks in the city. He had formed a friendship with Sparrow MacCoy, who was at the head of his profession as a bunco-steerer, green goodsman and general rascal. They took to card-sharping, and frequented some of the best hotels in New York. My brother was an excellent actor (he might have made an honest name for himself if he had chosen), and he would take ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that the South Seas and them islands was full of queer happenings, anyhow. Said that Eri's yarn reminded him of one that Jule Sparrow used to tell. There was a Cockney in that yarn, too, and a South Sea woman and a schooner. But in other ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... "Nothing but a sparrow." He brushed past a bench on which was squatted a be-shawled, unwashed, immigrant grandmother. "Come on down this little path, Bill. Perhaps we can find some ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... now. I should have been broken-hearted, but it wouldn't have been the same. It's my pride that is hurt. I have always been a bossy, cocksure little creature, swaggering about the world like an English sparrow; and now I'm paying for it! Oh, Ginger, I'm paying for it! I wonder if running away is going to do me any good at all. Perhaps, if Mr. Faucitt has some real hard work ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... later, we both looked up from work at the notes of a song-sparrow in the nearest elm. The song was more elaborate for the perfect morning. It was so joyous that it choked me—in the sunlight and elm-leaves. It stood out from all the songs of the morning because it was ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... was a little bird which is known as the clay-colored sparrow. It belongs to the same genus (Spizella) as the chipping and field sparrows which are so well known in the East; but it has an individuality of its own, and is not merely a copy. I stumbled upon it while pursuing my explorations near Peabody, far out on the level prairie, where the species ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... consisting, for the most part, of canary-seed. The males of these birds are, as a rule, gorgeously attired in brilliant colours, some having long flowing tail-feathers during the nuptial season, while in the winter their showy dress is replaced by one of sparrow-like sombreness. The grass-finches of Australasia contain some of the most brilliantly coloured birds, the beautiful grass-finch (Poephila mirabilis) being resplendent in crimson, green, mauve, blue and yellow. Most of these birds ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... has no fellow, And a sparrow's mouth as rare; Teeth, like bright topazes, yellow; Yet I'm deemed ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... muttered. "Not so bad but what it might be worse. I reckon the watch, chain and pin will bring me another twenty or thirty. Sparrow, you are in ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... nest-building habits are calculated to arouse the wonder and admiration of every observer. What child would not watch with intense interest the bringing of the straws or other materials, and the deft weaving of them into the home which is presently to receive the precious eggs? Even the city sparrow may here be a boon to the mother. Sufficiently encouraged, it will ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... provoked the cat, Who play'd in turn, but with a gentle pat, His wee friend sparing with a merry laugh, Not punishing his faults by half. In short, he scrupled much the harm, Should he with points his ferule arm. The Sparrow, less discreet than he, With dagger beak made very free. Sir Cat, a person wise and staid, Excused the warmth with which he play'd: For 'tis full half of friendship's art To take no joke in serious part. Familiar since they saw the light, Mere habit kept their friendship ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... that a boy saw Cock Sparrow pecking at some seeds, and he picked up a stone and threw it at him, and killed him. So no food came home that morning, and Hen Sparrow grew anxious, and at last set out to ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... Thrush, * blackbird, * lark, * yellowhammer, * robin, *wren, * golden-crested wren, * goldfinch, * chaffinch, * *greenfinch, pied wagtail, sparrow, * dunnock (hedge, accentor), missel thrush, starling, rook, jackdaw, *blackcap, * garden warbler, * willow warbler, * chiffchaff, * wood warbler, tree-creeper, * reed bunting, * sedge warbler, coot, water hen, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... and supernatural power of God Himself is working on them, and for them, perpetually: and how much more on me, and for me, and all my children, and fellow-creatures for whom Christ died. Without my Father in heaven not a sparrow falls to the ground: and am I not of more value than many sparrows? God feeds the birds: and will He not feed me? God clothes the lilies of the field: and will He not clothe me? Ah, me of little faith, who forget ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... and robin build near it, the bee and swallow make a high-road of its convenient thoroughfare. In winter the first snows mark it with a white line; as you wander through you hear the blue-jay's cry, and see the hurrying flight of the sparrow; the graceful outlines of the leafless bushes are revealed, and the clinging bird's-nests, "leaves that do not fall," give happy memories of summer homes. Thus Nature meets man half-way. The paths of the wild forest and of the rural neighborhood are not at all the same thing; indeed, ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the winter time, by baiting with a few grains of corn, I and my brothers used, in this way, to capture robins, hedge-sparrows, and tits. Not far from the chateau was a large osier bed, resorted to by flocks of the common sparrow. Here I set my traps. But it being summer time, and (as I complained when twitted with want of success) French birds being too stupid to know what the traps were for, I never caught a feather. Now this osier bed was a favourite game covert for the sportsmen of the chateau; and ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... knew was the beginning of her sorrows. She wept the loss of her favorite robin, from the ash tree in the middle meadow; and it was no longer a bliss, but a grief, to lie in that lovely shade, and sing her jocund songs, and scent the clover blooms. She missed the little sparrow that had come three years in succession, and reared three broods in a season, from a nest in the honeysuckle that curtained her window. She missed the robins from the cherry-trees, and the cherries palled on her tongue. She missed the bluebirds from the cornfield, ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... childhood, my college classmates, my professional associates, my comrades in arms, but I will remember you and your benedictions until I cease to breathe! Farewell, honest hearts, longing to be free! and may the kind Providence which for-gets not the sparrow ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... are a shadow and a shining, we! One moment nothing seems but what we see, Nor aught to rule but common circumstance— Nought is to seek but praise, to shun but chance; A moment more, and God is all in all, And not a sparrow from its nest can fall But from the ground its chirp goes up ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... maltreated class, whom God's mercy made with equal skill, and sustains with equal care, as in the case of man, and—dare we add?—of angels. Doth He not feed the ravens? Do the young lions not gather what He giveth? Doth a sparrow fall to the ground without Our Father? and is not the unsinning multitude of Nineveh's young children climaxed with "much cattle?" It is true, there may be mighty difference between "the spirit of a man that goeth ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... her looking very pale, and Jane now and then reproached her with eating no more than a sparrow, and told her she was getting into a dwining way; but she made no answer, except that she 'could do her work.' At last, one Sunday evening, when she had been left alone with the children, her mistress found her sitting at the foot of her bed, among the sleeping little ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... James's. Yesterday evening he was at the Queen's and Carlton-house, and at night at Lady Hertford's assembly. He only takes the title of altesse, an absurd mezzotermine, but acts king exceedingly; struts in the circle like a cock-sparrow, and does the honours of himself very civilly. There is a favourite too, who seems a complete jackanapes; a young fellow called Holke, well enough in his figure, and about three-and-twenty, but who will ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... pardoned. Aasa's beauty, however, was also of a very unusual kind; not the tame sweetness so common in her sex, but something of the beauty of the falcon, when it swoops down upon the unwatchful sparrow or soars round the lonely crags; something of the mystic depth of the dark tarn, when with bodeful trembling you gaze down into it, and see its weird traditions rise from its depth and hover over ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... ke-ke-kwi-yan. I am sitting like a sparrow-hawk. [The singer is sitting upright, and is watchful, like a hawk watching for its prey. He is ready to observe, and to acquire, everything that may ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... base, that he would be a bondman?"—Shak. cor. "Who is here so rude, he would not be a Roman?"—Id. "There is not a sparrow which falls to the ground without his notice." Or better: "Not a sparrow falls to the ground, without his notice."—Murray cor. "In order to adjust them in such a manner as shall consist equally with the perspicuity and the strength of the period."—Id. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... domesticus).—One curious fact about this despised animal is that the retired farmer, after whom Elderfield is named, made it his business to exterminate the village sparrows. He often brought them down to one, but always by the next morning that sparrow had provided himself with a mate to share his Castle Dangerous. Sparrows' (or sprows') heads make a figure in many ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... sounded very innocent. Mrs. Pearce listened with her head on one side and with something of the air of a sparrow who doesn't feel well. She complimented him sadly on the fluency of his English, and told him with a sigh that in no cottage would he ever again find the comforts with which ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... on the continent of Europe. And yet it will be hard to kill the little wretches, the only Old World bird we have. When I take down my gun to shoot them I shall probably remember that the Psalmist said, "I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the housetop," and maybe the recollection will cause me to stay my hand. The sparrows have the Old World hardiness and prolificness; they are wise and tenacious of life, and we shall find it by and ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... placid little woman in dove-gray came walking from the bridge and handed over her penny. She eyed the skipper with interest, and cocked her head with the pert demureness of a sparrow while she studied the parrots who ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... a forest tract where cattle of all kinds are pestered by the tsetse fly, and where the small honey bird flies busily about among the trees. It is like the common grey sparrow, but somewhat larger, and has a yellow spot on each shoulder. It receives its name from its habit of flying in short flights just in front of the natives to guide them to the nests of wild bees, in ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... bewildered mind. It might delay his progress, or it might advance it. Who could know? And why should God, who ordered all things with such magnificent detail, from the pathway of a sun to the falling of a sparrow, object to his free choice, or interfere ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... and all nature seemed rejoicing at the advent of spring. Flowers strewed the wayside, and the warble of the blue bird, and the lively song of the sparrow, were heard in the ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... We may close our eyes and fancy we are with Edmund Danton in his sea-girt dungeon, or with Tennyson and his "cold, gray stones," or with King Canute and his flattering courtiers on the sandy shore. But a song sparrow with his recitative "Oleet, oleet, oleet," followed by the well-known cadenza, dispels the fancies and calls our attention to himself as he sits on a hop hornbeam and sings at half-minute intervals. The wind ruffles his sober coat of brown and gray and he looks like ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... the Thrush, And charming Nightingale, Whose sweet jug sweetly echoes Through every grove and dale; The Sparrow and Tom Tit, And many more, were there: All came to see the wedding Of ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... talk and gesture maketh altogether for me. He said to my wife, Be wary of the monkey; that is as much as if she should be cheery, and take as much delight in a monkey as ever did the Lesbia of Catullus in her sparrow; who will for his recreation pass his time no less joyfully at the exercise of snatching flies than heretofore did the merciless fly-catcher Domitian. Withal he meant, by another part of his discourse, that she should be of a jovial country-like humour, as gay and pleasing ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... was always grumbling about something from morning to night. The old man had for a long time ceased to take any notice of her crossness. He was out most of the day at work in the fields, and as he had no child, for his amusement when he came home, he kept a tame sparrow. He loved the little bird just as much as if she ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... ruffled sparrow. "Let's see you throw me off!" When George good-naturedly took him at his word, Joe clinched with him and managed to get a half-Nelson hold on him. Joe always went at things in dead earnest, anyway. Bob and Betty, laughing and shouting, hopped gleefully around the swaying wrestlers, ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... did so, and the Doctor poured the water down the bird's throat. Most of it spilled; the sparrow twisted its head violently, but evidently some of the liquid had gone down ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... object to, but took great pleasure in giving them pans or saucers of clean water, to bathe themselves in; and plenty of fresh sand, and nice food: but most birds he could not bear to see within the bars of a prison. The robin, the thrush, the blackbird, the linnet, the sparrow, he knew it was a sin to deprive of their liberty. I have seen him persuade other boys to break their traps, or to let the poor frightened captives go: and I have seen him clap his hands with joy as they spread out their pretty wings, and flew "above the earth, in the open firmament ...
— Kindness to Animals - Or, The Sin of Cruelty Exposed and Rebuked • Charlotte Elizabeth
... These items of news reached Versailles one after the other. The King received them with visible satisfaction, and if only Pere de la Chaise had known how to profit at the time by the emotion and sentiment of the prince, he would have carried off the tall pyramid as an eagle does a sparrow. The confessor, a man of great circumspection, dared not force his penitent's hand; he was tactful with him in all things, and the society had the trouble of its famous cajolery without gaining anything ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... less than a year, and have observed but one BIRD DAY, results similar to those secured by Supt. Babcock are becoming manifest. Only a few days ago a boy said to his teacher, "I used to take pleasure in killing all kinds of birds. Now I don't wish to harm even an English Sparrow." ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... have been, once only: We lodged in a street together, You, a sparrow on the housetop lonely, I, a lone ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... moved, but intensely curious. She was grinning, but nervously and with contempt of the row. "Joe!" called Mrs. Minto. "Joe! Come upstairs. Don't get quarrelling like that. Ought to be ashamed of yourself. Come upstairs!" She looked over the rails at her husband, like a sparrow on a twig. He was a flight below. "Come ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... turquoise, almost as large, and quite as clear in colour, as a hedge-sparrow's egg. The ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... the case is different. What one of the general public walking into a collection of birds desires to see is not all the birds that can be got together. He does not want to compare a hundred species of the sparrow tribe side by side; but he wishes to know what a bird is, and what are the great modifications of bird structure, and to be able to get at that knowledge easily. What will best serve his purpose is a comparatively small number of birds carefully selected, and artistically, as well as accurately, ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... care is over all, Who heedest even the sparrow's fall, Keep in the little maiden's breast The pity, which is now its guest! Let not her cultured years make less The childhood charm of tenderness. But let her feel as well as know, Nor harder with ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... little way to the right, under a wind-beaten thorn, a mound of fresh earth made a dark spot on the fawn-coloured stubble. Charity walked across the field to the ground. As she approached it she heard a bird's note in the still air, and looking up she saw a brown song-sparrow perched in an upper branch of the thorn above the grave. She stood a minute listening to his small solitary song; then she rejoined the trail and began to mount ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... thought it so strange that poor Quady should think a little girl could smoke a pipe, but I took it to please him, and then he showed me so many curious things; there was a large bow, and arrows with sharp bits of iron in their heads, and he was going to shoot a little sparrow which sat upon the fence, but I caught his arm, and begged him not to kill the poor thing. I told him God made the sparrow to be happy, and he asked me if I meant the Great Spirit, if my God was his God? When I ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... size, as well as in appearance and colour. Some (as the macaws) are larger than the domestic fowl, and some of the parakeets are not larger than a blackbird or even a sparrow. ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... that flashed from the walls and golden cupolas of the Kremlin—whether some shadowy sense of the wondrous beauties of the scene did not enter his soul—is more than I can say with certainty; but this much I know, that neither he nor his legions could have enjoyed the view from Sparrow Hill more than I did the first glimpse of the grand old city of the Czars as I stepped from the railroad depot, with my knapsack on my back, and stood, a solitary and bewildered waif, uncertain if it could all be ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... addition to not liking burglars, is a bloke who has always objected to the idea of being cooked in his sleep, so when he bought the place he saw to it that the fire bell should be something that might give you heart failure, but which you couldn't possibly mistake for the drowsy chirping of a sparrow ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... but, should some circumstance require it, suddenly those powers burst forth, free of any previous attempts, even as the spark potentially contained in the flint flashes forth independently of all preceding gleams. Could one who knew nothing of the Sparrow but her nest under the eaves suspect the ball-shaped nest at the top of a tree? Would one who knew nothing of the Osmia save her home in the Snail-shell expect to see her accept as her dwelling a stump of reed, a paper funnel, a glass tube? My neighbour the Sparrow, ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... such tears unwonted plead For respite short from dubious deed! A child will weep a bramble's smart, A maid to see her sparrow part, A stripling for a woman's heart: But woe awaits a country when She sees the tears of bearded men. Then, oh! what omen, dark and high, When ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... of inspection at the principal ports of entry on both Atlantic and Pacific coasts by means of which the introduction of noxious mammals and birds is prevented, thus keeping out the mongoose and certain birds which are as much to be dreaded as the previously introduced English sparrow and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... your bottom, an' maybe a hole in them—widout shoe or stockin' on your hooves—wid a couple of shiverin', half starved, sick childre, tied by an ould praskeen to your back, an' you sinkin' wid hunger all the time?—ay, and the tail o' your old coat blown up behind every minute, like a sparrow before the wind!—Eh, how would you ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... of interminable length opened into square chambers, in the midst of which pits had been contrived, through which we descended by cramp-irons or spiral stairways. These pits again conducted us into other chambers, opening into other corridors, likewise decorated with painted sparrow-hawks, serpents coiled in circles, the symbols of the tau and pedum—prodigious works of art which no living eye can ever examine—interminable legends of granite which only the dead have time ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... smell—it was doing too, beautifully enough, what we had been doing clumsily. It was living, intent on its own conscious life, the sap hurrying, the scent flowing, the bud waxing. The yellow-hammer poising and darting along the hedge, the sparrow twittering round the rick, the cock picking and crowing, were all intent on life, proclaiming that they were alive and busy. Something vivid, alert, impassioned was going forward everywhere, something being effected, something uttered—and yet the cause how utterly ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... archers, with broad chests and brawny arms Such as the blacksmith's heavy hammer wields With quick, hard blows that make the anvil ring And myriad sparks from the hot iron fly; A golden eagle on a screen their mark, So distant that it seemed a sparrow's size— "For," said the prince, "let not this joyful day Give anguish to the smallest living thing." They strain their bows until their muscles seem Like knotted cords, the twelve strings twang at once, And the ground trembles as at the swelling tones Of mighty organs ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... men may be thus heartlessly sacrificed to Mammon, why should I feel remorse if in the fulfilment of a sacred duty imposed on me by him who deals with us as He thinks meet, a few mortals perish? Not a sparrow fails to the ground without His knowledge, and it is for him to sacrifice or to save. I am but the creature of his will, and I but follow my duty,—but obey the commands of One whose ways are inscrutable. Still, if for my sake this ship be also doomed, I cannot ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... startle a body when you ain't used to him," observed Miss Willy, with a bashful giggle. She was a diminutive, sparrow-like creature, with a natural taste for sick-rooms and death-beds, and an inexhaustible fund of gossip. As Mrs. Treadwell, for once, did not respond to her unspoken invitation to chat, she tied her bonnet strings under her sharp little ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... distinguishable from Peachum; none is exactly alive, but of stage life ail have their share. The reverse of this is the case with the personages of the Fables. They think the thoughts and speak the speech of Mr. Gay. The elephant has the voice of the sparrow; the monkey is one with the organ on which he sits; there is but a difference of name between the eagle and the hog; the talk of Death has exactly the manner and weight and cadence of the Woodman's; a change of label would enable the lion ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... Phoenix! Dost thou not know it? It sang the Marseillaise for thee, and thou didst kiss the plume that fell from its wing: it came in the lustre of Paradise, and thou perhaps didst turn thyself away to some poor sparrow that sat with ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... one's as deep in the mud as the other is in the mire. And like as not," continued Mrs. West, a tell-tale tension in her voice, "he was a nice, clean-minded young man when she came along, making eyes at him, like a snake charming a sparrow. I'm not crazy about voting, but if I had the ballot, I'd vote for locking up those kind of women and keeping every last one of 'em at hard labor for the ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... neighbour's wife was down with inflammation, she explained—inflammation of the lungs, as I learnt by a question or two. It was a bad case. She was a wisht, ailing soul to begin with. Also the owls in the wood above had been hooting loudly, for nights past: and yesterday a hedge-sparrow lit on the sill of the sick-room window, two sure tokens of approaching death. The sick woman was being nursed by her elder sister, who had lived in the house for two years, and practically taken charge of it. "Better the man had married she" ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... himself, in his absurd attire and bound upon his ambiguous errand, he was all out of the picture—horribly suggestive of an addled sparrow who had stayed up all night on purpose to cheat some legitimately early bird out of a ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... only his garments were scarlet, and our brother's are black. His hair, which was not so dark as that of the Indians, was smooth and sleek as the hair on the head of a child, or the feathers on the breast of the humming-bird. His head was encircled with a chaplet made of the feathers of the song-sparrow and the red-headed-woodpecker. He rode slowly through the village without stopping till he came to the lodge of Wasabajinga, when he alighted, leaving his good horse to feed upon the grass which grew around the cabin. He entered ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... a bit of rising ground, the mill-owner and his friend the writer and student of modern industries, and stood in full view of the factory. The air was sweet with scent of apple-blossoms. A song sparrow trilled ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... ours. "No human eye," writes St. John, "has ever seen God: the only Son, who is in the Father's bosom—He has made Him known."[8] He made Him known in His own Person; but He appealed also to the everyday sights and sounds, the lily of the field, the blowing wind, the sparrow falling, the children at their mothers' knees, for the evidence to declare Him. As expressions of Him they may be misinterpreted by the error in my physical senses, or distorted by my limitations of spiritual perception; but even then they bring Him near to ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... note the exact order in which the different birds successively begin their parts in this performance; but the bluebird, whose song is only a short, mellow warble, is heard nearly at the same time with the robin, and the song sparrow joins them soon after with his brief but finely modulated strain. The different species follow rapidly, one after another, in the chorus, until the whole welkin rings with their ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... me," replied Fakrash. "For he has become unto me even as a favourite son, whom I design to place upon the golden pinnacle of felicity. Therefore, I have chosen for him a wife, who is unto this damsel of thine as the full moon to the glow-worm, and as the bird of Paradise to an unfledged sparrow. And the nuptials shall be ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... do say. And that's why I be sent along down to Brook with haymaking going on and all. Spring chicken with sparrow grass be the right feeding for such as they. So ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... by each one, Nothing is fair or good alone. I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, Singing at dawn on the alder bough; I brought him home in his nest at even; He sings the song, but it pleases not now, For I could not bring home the river and sky;— He sang to my ear,—they sang to my eye. The delicate shells lay on the shore; The bubbles of the latest ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... exile's chance acquaintances was a sparrow, whose elegy he also sings, comparing the bird to Lesbia's sparrow, much to the latter's disadvantage. All of Herrick's geese were swans. On the authority of Dorothy King, the daughter of a woman who served Herrick's successor ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... be humbly thankful. Was there not One who marked the fall of a sparrow, who clothed the lilies, who knew the needs of His creatures? There, in the solemn temple of the night, he gave thanks for the protection vouchsafed to Iris and himself, and prayed that it might be continued. He deplored the useless bloodshed, the ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... into pie. But if such considerations cannot lead, the struggle for existence should drive a man in this country to learn the ways of his border tribes. For no one, I take it, who reflects for an instant will deny that a small mosquito, with black rings upon a white ground, or a sparrow that has finally made up its mind to rear a family in your ceiling, exercises an influence on your personal happiness far beyond the Czar of the Russias. It is not a question of scientific frontiers—the enemy invades us on all, sides. ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... conscience that I am not angry when they smile and nod the head; why should I be? But, John, it is known to myself only and Him before whom all hearts are open how great is my suffering in being among my neighbours as a sparrow ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... Spirit of God never leads the soul to a selfish prayer. No; it leads the soul to weep because men keep not His law, to cry more about His interests than its own. It is willing for its own house to lie desolate, if that will promote the spread of God's kingdom. It is willing for the sparrow to find a nest on its own altar, if by that it can replenish and glorify the ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
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