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More "Wasp" Quotes from Famous Books



... for it, with my consent. Do you hear? What I won't have is, flat robbery! Mark me, Germany or England, it 's one to me if I see vital powers in the field running to a grand career. It 's a fine field over there. As well there as here, then! But better here than there if it 's to be a wasp's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... than the death of the fair washerwoman of Portillon and often would cry out "I will eat her flesh! I will cook one of her breasts, and swallow it without sauce!" It was a tremendous hate of good constitution—a cardinal hate—a hate of a wasp or an old maid. It was all known hates moulded into one single hate, which boiled itself, concocted itself, and resolved self into an elixir of wicked and diabolical sentiments, warmed at the fire of the most flaming furnaces of hell—it was, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... with holes like an enormous wasp's nest, the ruined watch-towers, and the soaring, honey-coloured minaret with its intricate carvings, its marble pillars, its tiles and inset enamels iridescent as a Brazilian beetle's wing, all gleamed with a splendour ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... fold thy kindly care have found, The horned bull, tremendous, spurns the ground; The lordly lion has enough and more, The forest trembles at his very roar; Thou giv'st the ass his hide, the snail his shell, The puny wasp, victorious, guards his cell. Thy minions, kings defend, controul devour, In all th' omnipotence of rule and power: Foxes and statesmen subtle wiles ensure; The cit and polecat stink, and are secure: Toads with their poison, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... to see one of our large observing biplanes engaged with a very small but fast enemy plane. The boche had all the best of it and soon our plane was seen to slip and stagger and begin to descend. The little "wasp" came swooping down after it, firing all the while until, when a few hundred feet from the ground, our machine turned its nose straight downward and crashed to earth, well behind our lines, both occupants being instantly killed, or perhaps they had already been killed by the bullets. The German ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride

... of the palace tower was my lonely hermit cell, my only companions being a nest of wasps. In the unrelieved darkness of the night I slept there alone. Sometimes a wasp or two would drop off the nest on to my bed, and if perchance I happened to roll on one, the meeting was unpleasing to the wasp ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore

... this contented me, and I felt free to devote myself to the conquest of my new world. Looking back to those critical first years, I see myself always behaving like a child let loose in a garden to play and dig and chase the butterflies. Occasionally, indeed, I was stung by the wasp of family trouble; but I knew a healing ointment—my faith in America. My father had come to America to make a living. America, which was free and fair and kind, must presently yield him what he sought. I had come to America to see a new world, and I followed my own ends with the utmost assiduity; ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... the humming, the freshness, the perfume of the garden seemed to lie upon it—and coming in one afternoon in September, along the red gravel walk, to look for a basket of yellow crab-apples left in the cool, old parlour, he remembered it the more, and how the colours struck upon him, because a wasp on one bitten apple stung him, and he felt the passion of [189] sudden, severe pain. For this too brought its curious reflexions; and, in relief from it, he would wonder over it—how it had then been with him—puzzled ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... a wasp on the window-pane, flicked the corpse in Mordaunt's direction with airy adroitness, and ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... from it precipitately, as from a wasp's nest, and examined some of the studies on the wall, for it was more than probable from the unfinished picture on the easel that Adam lurked behind the delicious screen. Terrible though it all was, ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson

... inquiring wasp came whizzing near, and Billy ducked suddenly to avoid it. "Now I've lost that, and I've got to begin again. Billy, you haven't any string in your pocket, have you? Then I could tie up your hair in bunches when I get to one hundred, ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow

... very hot. With her nostrils close to the opening In the shutters, she inhaled the heated air of the yard of drying grass. On the white window-sill just outside, a bronze wasp was whirling excitedly, that cautious stinger which never arrives until summer is sure. The oleanders in the big green tubs looked wilted though abundantly ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen

... vinegar, and plastered on the bite, will immediately allay the pain; and if not rubbed, no mark will be seen next day. It is well to keep salt and vinegar always in a chamber that is infested with musquitoes. It is also good for the sting of a wasp or bee; and for the bite of any venomous animal, if applied immediately. It should be left on till it becomes ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie

... wonderful power of bringing out the fine warm tints of this tropical flesh. Such are the hues of those rich costumes Nature gives to her nearest of kin and her dearest,—her honey-lovers—her insects: these are wasp-colors. I do not know whether the fact ever occurred to the childish fancy of this strange race; but there is a creole expression which first suggested it to me;—in the patois, pouend gupe, "to catch a wasp," signifies making love to a pretty colored girl. ... And the ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... they reveal, with surer delicacy than does any other record, the spirit of Mr. Brummell's day. Grego guides me, as Virgil Dante, through all the mysteries of that other world. He shows me those stiff-necked, over-hatted, wasp-waisted gentlemen, drinking Burgundy in the Cafe des Milles Colonnes or riding through the village of Newmarket upon their fat cobs or gambling at Crockford's. Grego's Green Room of the Opera House always delights me. The formal way in which Mdlle. Mercandotti ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... one, I must own, He gets up as ill-temper'd as when he sat down. And if any reader this fact to dispute is Disposed, I say... "Allium edat cicutis Nocentius!" Over the fruit and the wine Undisturb'd the wasp settled. The evening was fine. Lord Alfred his chair by the window had set, And languidly lighted his small cigarette. The window was open. The warm air without Waved the flame of the candles. The moths were about. In the ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... birds! she still remembers with pride that "they came boldly into my room," when she had neglected her "duty" and put no food on the window-sill for them; she knew all the wild birds, and forgets the royal crown on her head to remember with pride that they knew her; also that the wasp and the bee were personal friends of hers, and never forgot that gracious relationship to her injury: "never have I been stung by a wasp or a bee." And here is that proud note again that sings in that little child's elation in being singled out, among all the company of children, for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the room, into the faces of her pupils. The buzzing sound kept up. It seemed to be coming nearer and nearer. The windows were open, and she thought a bee or a wasp might have flown in. But it would be a very large wasp or bee, indeed, which would make so loud a buzzing sound ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Keeping Store • Laura Lee Hope

... anything, Liff Hyatt?" she assailed him, as he stood before her with the look of a man who has stirred up a wasp's nest. ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton

... present moment rusticating at Malvern Wells. We are on the side of a great hill (which you would call small in America), and our intercourse is only with the flowers and bees and swallows of the season. Sometimes we encounter a wasp, which I suppose ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... blocks of coral (Astraea and Maeandrina) in the pools; one of the last, remarkable for its very long, slender, black spines, has the power of giving an exceedingly painful puncture, if carelessly handled—for a few minutes the sensation is similar to that caused by the sting of a wasp; of the others, a fine Ophiura is remarkable for its great size and grass-green colour, and an Ophiocoma for the prodigious length ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... told of the craft of the fox to compass his prey, of which Ol. Magnus hath many: such as feigning the bark of a dog to catch prey near the houses; feigning himself dead to catch such animals as come to feed upon him; laying his tail upon a wasp's nest and then rubbing it hard against a tree, thus catching the wasps so killed; ridding himself of fleas by gradually going into the water with a lock of wool in his mouth, and so driving the fleas up into it and then leaving it in the water; by catching crab fish with his tail, which he saith ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various

... the leaf is considered a cure for the bite of a poisonous snake. I have been told that an ash-leaf rubbed on a mosquito-bite will at once take out the sting and itching, and no better remedy can be found for the sting of a bee or a wasp." ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church

... of the coal-black Trigona (Trigona carbonaria), from eastern Australia, Mr. F. Smith, of the British Museum, found from four hundred to five hundred dead workers, but no females. The combs were arranged precisely similar to those of the common wasp. The number of honey-pots which were placed at the foot of the nest was two hundred and fifty. Mr. Smith inclines to the opinion that the hive of Trigona contains several prolific females, as the great number of workers can only be thus explained, ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard

... mother is to-day; thought Wishie to herself, as she scampered up the corridor; however, I must try and find something to do here—it's very dull being all by oneself. Just then, as she drew near one of the windows, she heard a great buzzing and fluttering, and looking up, saw a large wasp dancing about in the sunshine. Wishie thought it would be very good fun to try and catch him, so she made several springs at the window, but all in vain; the wasp was as young and active as she was, and eluded ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin

... plants and animals. While a dictation lesson was being corrected around me, with generous assistance from the dictionary, I would examine, in the recesses of my desk, the oleander's fruit, the snapdragon's seed vessel, the wasp's sting and the ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... did I forsake you so long? Friends have reproached me for it. Ah, tell them, tell those friends, who are yours as well as mine, tell them that it was not forgetfulness on my part, not weariness, nor neglect: I thought of you; I was convinced that the Cerceris [a digger wasp] cave had more fair secrets to reveal to us, that the chase of the Sphex held fresh surprises in store. But time failed me; I was alone, deserted, struggling against misfortune. Before philosophizing, one had to live. Tell them that; and they ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... said Lissa drily; for the great moaning hum of the thresher filled the air, went on and on as it would all day except at food-times, sounding like some vast wasp held captive and booming unceasingly—some great dragon of a ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... Fanning so swiftly, the wasp's wings are but just visible as he passes; did he pause, the light would he apparent through their texture. On the wings of the dragon-fly as he hovers an instant before he darts there is a prismatic gleam. These wing textures are even more delicate than the minute filaments ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... insidious suggestions to the contrary, it has appeared that he conformed to his instructions, promoted the public interest, and gave entire satisfaction to the government. In 1811, he was transferred to the command of the sloop-of-war Wasp, mounting eighteen twenty-four pound carronades, and dispatched, in the spring of 1812, with communications to the courts of St. Cloud and St. James. Before he returned, war had been declared against Great Britain. He refitted his ship with all possible dispatch, ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various

... dyes, Was formed of the wings of butterflies; His shield was the shell of a lady-bug queen, Studs of gold on a ground of green; And the quivering lance which he brandished bright, Was the sting of a wasp he had slain in fight. Swift he bestrode his fire-fly steed; He bared his blade of the bent grass blue; He drove his spurs of the cockle seed, And away like a glance of thought he flew, To skim the heavens and follow far The fiery trail of ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake

... call nor haul ought was odd raw for fault bought watch cot want corn cause sought wasp got walk cord pause caw wash hop salt short caught saw drop dog hall storm naught paw spot fog draw horse naughty draw ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams

... and dolorous throughout the storm. The night before last, William Allen was stung by a wasp on the eyelid; whereupon the whole side of his face swelled to an enormous magnitude, so that, at the breakfast-table, one half of him looked like a blind giant (the eye being closed), and the other half had such a sorrowful and ludicrous aspect that I was constrained to laugh ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... in to-day's mail and seven in yesterday's; and good orders for the wasp-moths, single or together, and that house in New York wants steady supplies from now on. And here's a fancy shop wants a dozen trays, like that last one I finished. We're looking up," said ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... guns of mighty strength, Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves, Deep in her draught, and warlike in her length, She seems a sea wasp ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... portions of those goddesses became, O king, in this world of men, the wives of Vasudeva. And a portion of Sri herself became incarnate on earth, for the gratification of Narayana, in the line of Bhishmaka. And she was by name the chaste Rukmini. And the faultless Draupadi, slender-waisted like the wasp, was born of a portion of Sachi (the queen of the celestials), in the line of Drupada. And she was neither low nor tall in stature. And she was of the fragrance of the blue lotus, of eyes large as lotus-petals, of thighs fair and round, of dense masses ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... between some vast yellow body and the unfortunate spider. Then the spider, suddenly as immobile as a lump of stone, was drawn up into the heavens by the roaring yellow thing, and disappeared. A wasp had struck, and had ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst

... Wasps.—The first wasp seen in the season should always be killed. By so doing you secure to yourself good luck and freedom ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various

... to the guava bushes and ate all the fruit he could hold, and then he decided to play a joke on his father's guests instead of giving them a feast of guavas. A wasp's nest hung near by. With some difficulty he succeeded in taking it down and putting it into a tight basket that he had brought for the fruit. He hastened home and gave the basket to his father, and then as he left the room where the guests ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole

... Iwanich in a dilemma. But as he did not want the real story to be known, he said that about midnight a huge wasp had flown through the branches, and buzzed incessantly round him. He had warded it off with his sword, and at dawn, when he was becoming quite worn out, the wasp had vanished as ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang

... "No, I've no waist, and don't want any, but I know a little chap that has; he's a little black and yellow fellow, who goes buzzing about, making a fine noise, and likes sweet things; he'd suit you, only he has such a tickler in his tail. His name's Wops, or Wasp, ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn

... a Vegan girl, blue-skinned and fantastically wasp-waisted like all her kind, drifted over to Ramsey. He'd seen her around. He thought he recognized her. Maybe he'd even danced with her in the unit-a-dance halls reserved ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance

... uncertain mind, lest you should work more evil than you think, and making mine uncertain also, spoil my skill. Nay, do not try to fly, for already the net has thrown itself about you and you cannot stir, who are bound like a little gilded wasp in the spider's web, or like birds beneath the eyes ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... stung by a wasp. The dance ceased for her, and she hastened to a seat. "De Pean," said she, "you promised to bring Le Gardeur forthwith back to the city; will you ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... refer to the map they will see, outside the north-west corner of the mainland of Ireland, Tory Island. It was on Tory Island that 'The Wasp' and her gallant captain were lost, without hope of rescue, for want of cable communication; and Tory Island itself has excited the interest of the philanthropist on many occasions. On Tory Island there is a lighthouse, with a fixed light, which can be seen sixteen miles. Not long ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... act." No doubt; but in the case of the terns—sea-frequenting and sea-loving—which had not the wit to lay their eggs beyond the reach of spring tides, the reasoning is the merest intrusion. Yet an instance of what seems to be the reasoned act of a wasp may be cited. The insect had selected a dead log of soft wood as a site for its egg-shaft. It was at a spot to which the occupations of the season took me daily, so that the boring operations were watched from beginning to end. The work was done ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... next noted achievement was the defeat of the English brig Frolic by the sloop-of-war Wasp, off the coast of North Carolina. When the former was boarded by her captors, her colors were still flying, there being no one to haul them down. The man at the helm was the only sailor left on ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.

... friend, I suppose? You look down on him just because he's a hard worker, and of some use in the world—not a dandified, conventional, wasp-waisted idiot like Cecil Reeve! Perhaps you prefer ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson

... stream, and laid, (would it not have thought?) for a hopeless eternity, in the dark ooze, the most despised, forgotten, and feeble of all earth's atoms; incapable of any use or change; not fit, down there in the diluvial darkness, so much as to help an earth-wasp to build its nest, or feed the first fibre of a lichen;—what would it have thought, had it been told that one day, knitted into a strength as of imperishable iron, rustless by the air, infusible by the flame, out of the substance ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... for Rich. Marriot, in S. Dunstans Church-yard, Fleetstreet" in 1653, which constitutes the editio princeps of Walton's Angler. Probably they were worn out in the pockets of Honest Izaak's "brothers of the Angle," or left to bake and cockle in the sunny corners of wasp-haunted alehouse windows, or dropped in the deep grass by some casual owner, more careful for flies and caddis-worms, or possibly for the contents of a leathern bottle, than all the "choicely-good" madrigals of ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

... Arms flapping with a fin-like motion under sun burning down through a sky-light like a glass lid. Light skating on the rims of wheels... boring in gimlet points. Needles flickering fierce white threads of light fine as a wasp's sting. Light in sweat-drops brighter than eyes and calico-pallid faces and bodies throwing off smells— and the air a bloated presence pressing on the walls and ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge

... called the Wasp, issued at Nauvoo under Mormon editorship, had been succeeded by a larger one called the Neighbor, edited by John Taylor (afterward President of the church), who also had charge of the Times and Seasons. The Neighbor likewise ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... Marine Committee the success of the expedition. On the 11th the Committee congratulated the "gallant commander, brave officers and men concerned in it throughout the whole cruise." He was informed that the "Alert" would be purchased for a cruiser, her name changed to the "Wasp," of which he was to take command or bestow it on some brave, active and prudent officer on a cruise on the coast and off Cape Henlopen, so as "to descry the enemies' vessels coming and going." Barry's "well-known bravery and good conduct" were ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin

... seemed to be proud to wear the poet's double name, and was particularly great in all that author's plays that were usually performed, viz "Wasp," in Bartholomew Fair; "Corbaccio;" "Morose," in The Silent Woman; and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... with a feeling of peaceful delight. As the years of his generosity rolled on, he avoided reading it at all—"like most optimists," remarked the cure, "he did not wish to know the truth." At forty-six he married the niece of an impoverished old wasp, a gentleman still in excellent health, owing to de Savignac's generosity. It was his good wife now, who read ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith

... that she could be when a dubious debtor failed to fulfil his obligations, stormed her way up the steps. The rent was long overdue, and uncanny councils were being held in the living room, in which an invalid from the Wasp's Nest and a soap-maker from Kamerarius Street ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... He's a proper hobo, too, and a land lubber, and don't weigh more'n a hundred pounds, and must be fifty years old, and he's got curvature of the spine, and he's able seaman, if you please, on the Elsinore. And worse than all that, he puts it over on you; he's nasty, he's mean, he's a viper, a wasp. He ain't afraid of anything because he knows you dassent hit him for fear of croaking him. Oh, he's a pearl of purest ray serene, if anybody should slide down a backstay and ask you. If you fail to identify him any other way, his name is ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... accompanied neither by the incessant wing-beat of the bat, the jump of the locust, nor the buzz of the wasp, but carries it easily in any direction. It has the further merit of a music neither sullen as with the gnat kind, deep as with the bee, nor grim and threatening as with the wasp; it is as much more tuneful than they as the ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... "Coward," muttered the little wasp, "you are afraid, sir;" and the other boys abetting the mischief-maker, the lad was goaded to leave his hold of the cable, and strike out for the buoy. He reached it, and then turned, and pulled towards the ship again, when he caught ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various

... there being a jam of carriages, and no getting forward for half the day. In short, they are becoming more and more intimate, to the extremest degree; and, scorning the world, thank Heaven that they are mutually indispensable. Cannot we get away from this scurvy wasp's-nest of a Paris, thought they, and live ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle

... wasp is apt to select inconvenient places in which to build a mud-cell wherein to deposit its egg, and the store of live caterpillars destined to be the food of its young when hatched. You find a keyhole, ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin

... set sail in the schooner Wasp for Sandusky, where there was a natural harbor, and from thence in the Fire Fly, for Detroit. But his thoughts reverted to Cleveland, and forming a partnership with Messrs. Mack & Conant, of Detroit, the firm purchased twenty thousand dollars worth ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... no more troubled than he would have been by the buzzing of a wasp. "Then you had better change your mind speedily," he answered, in an even voice, "lest being crossed in a peevish whim sour ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... to whom he had given the melon came to him and said, "It may well be that things do not go right." He then related to him that he had laid the melon down where the large one now lay; that when he had come near it, at a later period, a great wasp had settled on the melon and pierced it with its sting. Hardly had it flown away, when a bee came buzzing, and lodged on it: after stinging it, this one also flew away. From this moment the melon grew larger and larger; and they should have called him to see the wonder long ago, had not ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... rock garden, chicken coops, and whiskey advertisements. The station-master, who appeared also to act as emergency porter, took Yeovil's ticket with the gesture of a kind-hearted person brushing away a troublesome wasp, and returned to a study of the Poultry Chronicle, which was giving its readers sage counsel concerning the ailments of belated July chickens. Yeovil called to mind the station-master of a tiny railway town in ...
— When William Came • Saki

... sweet; But once, when I made her jealous for fun At something I whispered or looked or done, One Sunday, in San Antonio, To a glorious girl in the Alamo, She drew from her garter a little dagger, And—sting of a wasp—it made me stagger! An inch to the left, or an inch to the right, And I shouldn't be maundering here tonight; But she sobbed, and sobbing, so quickly bound Her torn rebosa about the wound That I swiftly forgave her. Scratches don't count In Texas, ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various

... law-breakers would ultimately be brought to justice. And if these but knew of the presence of this boy in his tower room, some dark night that tower would be rocked by an exploding bomb and the boy in his room would be shaken to earth like a young mud-wasp in his nest. ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell

... be mine, in cheerful privacy, 530 To wait Thy will, not sanguine, nor depressed; In even course, nor splendid, nor obscure, To steal through life among my villagers! The hum of the discordant crowd, the buzz Of faction, the poor fly that threads the air Self-pleased, the wasp that points its tiny sting Unfelt, pass by me like the idle wind That I regard not; while the Summer Sylph, That whispers through the laurels, wakes the thought Of quietude, and home-felt happiness, 540 And independence, in ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... purple bed, Outside, the wall is red, Thereby the apple hangs, And the wasp, caught ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris

... peeping inside, looking for crumbs. And, seeing what looked like a party, down flew, with a whir and rustle, a flock of doves, saying, "Coo-oo! how do-oo-do!" and prinking themselves in our very faces. Yes, we really had too many of these surprise-parties; for, another time, it was a wasp that came to tea, and flew from me to Katy, and from Katy to me, till we flew, too, to hide our heads in grandma's lap. Then she gave us the apron, which was very grand, though the blue stripes were walking into the red ones, and there were a good many little ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various

... whom I give the best Education I am able: But, Sir, it is my Misfortune to be married to a Drone, who lives upon what I get, without bringing any thing into the common Stock. Now, Sir, as on the one hand I take care not to behave myself towards him like a Wasp, so likewise I would not have him look upon me as an Humble-Bee; for which Reason I do all I can to put him upon laying up Provisions for a bad Day, and frequently represent to him the fatal Effects [his [4]] Sloth and Negligence ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... you think it very ugly, and say you are afraid of it, but sensible children will not be frightened at a spider, because they will remember that they are very harmless little things, and have not got a sting as the wasp and bee have. They are very ugly, to be sure, but every ugly insect is not to be called a nasty creature, for some are very useful, notwithstanding their not being as handsome as others; and spiders are very useful too, ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... need some part of the house that he may call his very own. Here he can keep his specimens, his aquarium, his herbarium and what not. Around the wall he can hang the twigs with their cocoons, oak galls, last year's wasp and bird nests and other treasures. He should also have a work table that a little glue or ink will not injure and a carpet that has no further use in the household. Usually one corner of the attic or cellar ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... her on several occasions and she was a dangerous person to snub. Judah expressed it characteristically when he declared that anybody who "set out" to impose on Esther Tidditt would have as lively a time as a bare-footed man trying to dance a hornpipe on a wasp's nest. "She'll keep 'em hoppin' high, I tell ye," ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... cruiser, or two, in ascertaining just these facts (many more might he added to the list), during the summer months. Our own brief naval history is pregnant with instances of the calamities that befall ships. No man can say when, or how, the Insurgente, the Pickering, the Wasp, the Epervier, the Lynx, and the Hornet disappeared. We know that they are gone; and of all the brave spirits they held, not one has been left to relate the histories of the different disasters. We have some plausible conjectures concerning the manner in which the two latter were ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... in the bay of Passamaquoddy; and the English frigate "Phobe" captured the United States' frigate "Essex," off Valparaiso, on the western coast of South America. On the other hand, a British sloop of war was captured by the American sloop "Wasp;" and an expedition, under Admiral Cochrane and Sir E. Pakenham, against New Orleans failed, after a severe rencontre with the American troops who defended the city. The final event of the war was the capture ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... sorrow devoutly borne, in bringing God closer to us, belongs to it, whether it be great or small; whether it be, according to the metaphor of an earlier portion of this psalm, 'a lion or an adder'; or whether it be a buzzing wasp or a mosquito. As long as anything troubles me, I may make it a means of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... precisely at the proper place in which all the conditions of life to which they were adapted occurred: the humming-birds at the same time as the flowers; the trichina at the same time as the pig; the bark-coloured moth at the same time as the oak, and the wasp-like moth at the same time as the wasp which protects it. Without processes of selection we should be obliged to assume a "pre-established harmony" after the famous Leibnitzian model, by means of which the clock of the evolution of organisms ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... this difference in our disfavour, that the animals are there to be looked at, while nobody wants to look at us. As a matter of fact there would be nothing to look at. We get colds in winter and hay fever in summer, and if a wasp happens to sting one of us, well, that is the wasp's initiative, not ours; all we do is to wait for the swelling to go down. Whenever we do climb into local fame and notice, it is by indirect methods; if it happens to be a good flowering ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki

... his organ came—first begging, then demanding money—showing that he knew she was alone, and that he meant to help himself, if she didn't. She threatened to "lowse the dowg;" but as this was Greek to him, he pushed on. She had just time to set Wasp at him. It was very short work. She had him by the throat, pulled him and his organ down with a heavy crash, the organ giving a ludicrous sort of cry of musical pain. Wasp thinking this was from some creature ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... attractiveness, importance, and value, finished the same in a ludicrously deflated condition—and a quiet civilian, to whom the cub had been shamefully insolent, was moved to present him with a little poem of his composition commencing "There was a puppy caught a wasp," which gave him the transient though salutary gift of sight of himself as ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... very quiet and listened, but could hear no sound of human voices. So I became curious to know what made the noise, and to my delight I saw a cow that had evidently strayed away from its field, having probably got into the wood to be under the shade of the trees, and away from wasp-flies. At first she was frightened at me, but I had been used to cattle all my life, so I soon quieted her, and she let me approach her. I saw that it was time for her to be milked, so, making the palm of my hand into a cup, I got enough milk to refresh me considerably and to give me strength ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking

... a fly or a wasp. Its body dirt-coloured; of the same colour too its flat, stiff wings; outspread feathered claws, and a head thick and angular, like a dragon-fly's; both head and claws were bright red, as ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... said Henry, extending his brawny arm: "I will have no more close hugs—no more bodkin work, like last night. I care little for a wasp's sting, yet I will not allow the insect to come near ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... explain to the class that the sect called Jains do not hurt the smallest creature, and will suffer the sting of a wasp ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle - Book One • Prince Sarath Ghosh

... with her in the garden. Here, on a rustic table, stood wine and a few delicacies,—while, by extending a hand, we could grasp the hanging pears and nectarines, still warm to the lip and luscious with sunshine, as we disputed possession with the envious wasp who had established a ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... any great extent at the present period, but formerly they were used quite extensively. The galls are found upon the leaves of the oak or sumac, etc. The direct cause of their growth is that a certain wasp (cynips galles) stings into the leaf and after depositing its egg, flies away. The egg develops into a larva and then into a full-fledged wasp, boring its way out of the gall which has served as a protection and nourisher. This accounts ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various

... elevated point of rock, as high up as I could well climb, I decided both questions with my glass. The tomb resembled nothing so much as a mud-wasp's nest, high on a barn wall. The fact that it had never been broken open quite carried Wallace ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey

... several centres of sensation, and which seem, in consequence, less to envelope a single existence in a single body than to contain many centres of existence separated and different from one another—these will have fewer and duller perceptions. The polypus, which can be reproduced by fission; the wasp, whose head even after separation from the body still moves, lives, acts, and even eats as heretofore; the lizard which we deprive neither of sensation nor movement by cutting off part of its body; the lobster which can restore its amputated limbs; the turtle whose heart beats long after it has ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... up to get that wasp's nest we stuck behind it," Rex explained. "My coat sleeve caught on the clock and ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.

... (justify) pravigi. Warrant (assure) certigi. Warrantable pravigebla. Warren kuniklejo. Warrior militisto. Wart veruko. Wary atenta, singardema. Wash lavi. Wash one's self sin lavi. Washerwoman lavistino. Wash-house lavejo. Washstand lavtablo. Wasp vespo. Wasp's nest vespejo. Waspish malgxentila, ekkolerema. Waste (squander) malsxpari. Waste (grow thin) konsumigxi, malgrasigxi. Waste (rubbish) forjxetajxo, difektajxo. Waste (untilled) senkultura. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... poet, take thy lyre; upon the lawn Night rocks the zephyr on her veiled, soft breast. The rose, still virgin, holds herself withdrawn From the winged, irised wasp with love possessed. Hark, all is hushed. Now of thy sweetheart dream; To-day the sunset, with a lingering beam, Caressed the dusky-foliaged linden-grove. All things shall bloom to-night; great Nature thrills, Her couch with perfume, passion, sighs, she fills, Like ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... for his friend, and cautioned him to look to himself. Warnings came from all quarters that mischief was in the wind. Still it was impossible to believe the peril to be a real one. Cicero, to whom Rome owed its existence, to be struck at by a Clodius! It could not be. As little could a wasp hurt an elephant. ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... present day, "waps" is considered a vulgar way of pronouncing the word; but it was correct English at the time of which I am writing. "Wasp" is really the corrupt pronunciation. In the same way, they said "claps" where ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt

... mania, will see it filling every mill-head in England, to the torment of all millers. Young ladies are assured that the only plant for their vivariums is a sprig of anacharis, for which they pay sixpence—the market value being that of a wasp, flea, or other scourge of the human race; and when the vivarium fails, its contents, Anacharis and all, are tost into the nearest ditch; for which the said young lady ought to be fined five pounds; and would be, if Governments governed. What ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... the room. She was closely watched and kept without food for four-and-twenty hours. Doors and windows remained open to watch for the entrance of some of the devil's imps. These might come in the form of a fly, a wasp, a moth, or some other insect. The work of the watchers was to kill every insect that came into the room. But if one escaped, it was clear proof that this was ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... As that wasp will soon sadly perceive, Who has feasted awhile on a plum; And, his thirst thinking now to relieve, For a sweet liquid draught he ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... sorrowful heaviness And all without redress. . . . . It had a velvet cap, And would sit upon my lap, And seek after small worms, And sometimes white bread-crumbs. . . . . Sometimes he would gasp When he saw a wasp, A fly or a gnat He would fly at that; And prettily he would pant When he saw an ant; Lord, how he would fly After the butterfly. And when I said Phip, Phip Then he would leap and skip, And take me by the lip. Alas it will me slo,* That ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... crimson feet, which with its store Of seven spotted eggs the cruel lad Had stolen from the lofty sycamore At daybreak, when her amorous comrade had Flown off in search of berried juniper Which most they love; the fretful wasp, that ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde

... roamings right up the wall of the summer-house and along a joist bare of all save dust, and—well, the spider walked straight on, moving with little jerks as if by intermittent clockwork, and she seemed to stroll right on top of the wasp lying curled up on her side. Only when one of the latter's delicate feelers shifted round towards her, as though in some uncanny way conscious of her approach, did she leap back as if she had touched an electric wire. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... engaged my particular attention because it was not alone, being accompanied by a green caterpillar bigger than herself, which she held beneath her body as she travelled along on the window-sill so near my face. "So, so! my little wren-wasp, you have found a satisfactory cranny at last, and have made yourself at home. I have seen you prying about here for a week and wondered where you ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... "The wasp has stung me. She aimed straight at my head. What's this? Blood?" he pulled out his handkerchief to wipe the blood, which flowed in a thin stream down his right temple. The bullet seemed to have just ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... yacht lengthened. My husband had sold his small property before ever we came to Port William, and had managed to invest the whole under the name of Carlingford. There was no difficulty about letters of credit. At each port on the way we had shown the Wasp's papers, and used the name of Carlingford; and at Lisbon we read in an English newspaper about the supposed capsizing of the Queen of Sheba. Still, we had not only to persuade the officials at the ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the fleets should attack from the sea. The fleet was to form a semicircle before the harbour's mouth; the French to engage the forts on the south, the English the forts Constantine and Alexander and the Stone and Wasp forts on the north. The morning was actively spent by the ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... Mary to Emma, O now do I see Why you are more loved, and more happy than me; And we're like mama's tale of the Wasp and ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various

... skeleton, it may be as well to point out that as the flesh rots, so do the ligaments which hold the bones, and consequently the skeleton falls to pieces. When, therefore, you have made your skeleton by the means recommended by various authors, such as exposing it in an ant-hill, a wasp's nest, or to the attacks of the "blow-flies" or "mealworm" (the larvae of a beetle), to "tadpoles," or —as is the usual way with the bone preservers—by maceration in water for a lengthened period (after removal of a great deal of ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... to ask too much about the Louvre, because we scamped it. The fact is, there was a little unpleasantness with one of the fellows, owing to Jim's cane happening to scratch one of the pictures by a chap named Rubens. It was quite an accident, as we were only trying to spike a wasp on the frame, and Jim missed his shot. The fellow there made a mule of himself, and lost his temper. So we didn't see the ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... out his works for our inspection. In proof, and in illustration of this fact, we may refer to the telescope, which has from the beginning had its type in the human eye;—to the formation of paper, which has been manufactured for thousands of years by the wasp;—to the levers, joints, and pulleys of the human body, of which the mechanist has as yet only made imperfect imitations;—and to the saw of an insignificant insect, (the saw-fly) which has never yet been successfully ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall

... surface. Nearer and nearer it came, and it was of a blackish-grey colour with more than one dark hole. It took shape as a face—a human face—a burnt human face: and with the odious writhings of a wasp creeping out of a rotten apple there clambered forth an appearance of a form, waving black arms prepared to clasp the head that was bending over them. With a convulsion of despair Humphreys threw himself back, struck his head against a hanging ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James

... Tibet, and a legend was spread abroad that if any foreigner ventured there he would be surely murdered by Turkish brigands; meanwhile it was full of Viennese ladies giving picnics and dances and tennis parties to the wasp-waisted officers of the Austrian garrison. Bosnia and Hercegovina, on the other hand, became the model touring provinces of Austria-Hungary, and no one can deny that their great natural beauties were ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... the king, "for a wasp had crept within it, which might have given you a deadly wound. Go now, and take this letter to Trenck, and take his sword from him. He is under arrest, and must be sent at once to ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... recreation hour Hepson led the big football squad out to the field. Hundreds of midshsipmen went there to see how the Navy would show up in the vitally important tests. At the outset Hepson was everywhere, like a buzzing, excitable wasp. Nor did he prove to be minus a sting ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock

... and then went on again and said: "To say sooth they be not very handy for crushing as a man crushes a wasp, because sorcery goes with them, and the wiles of one who is their Queen, the evilest woman who ever spat upon the blessed Host of the Altar: yet is she strong, a devouring sea of souls, God help us!" And he blessed ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... the Constitution was won on unequal terms,—the Guerriere was undoubtedly inferior,—the British Admiralty could not excuse a second naval defeat on this score. On October 17, the American sloop-of-war Wasp encountered the brig Frolic convoying merchantmen six hundred miles east of Norfolk. There was little to choose between the vessels either in size or equipment, yet the marksmanship of the American gunners was so far superior that in forty-three minutes the crew ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... fellows ought not to claim a moment's attention from me. I should brush them away, like flies from my forehead, when they presume to tease or settle themselves upon me.' I have taken your advice, and fly-slapped the wasp that was more willing than ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... having done their work and wrapped themselves round Umbelazi's army as the nippers of a wasp close about a fly (why did not Umbelazi cut off those horns, I wondered), the Usutu bull began his charge. Twenty or thirty thousand strong, regiment after regiment, Cetewayo's men rushed up the slope, and there, near the crest of it, were met by Umbelazi's regiments springing forward ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard

... never replaced the normal end of sexual desire. His love for Madam Parangon, one of the deepest emotions in his whole life, was also the climax of his shoe-fetichism. She represented his ideal woman, an ethereal sylph with wasp-waist and a child's feet; it was always his highest praise for a woman that she resembled Madame Parangon, and he desired that her slipper should be buried with him. (Restif de la Bretonne, Monsieur Nicolas, vols. i-iv, vol. xiii, p. 5; ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... his photograph. He is leathery, agile, dried up. And his grandmother was waspish. He himself always felt strangely close to wasps, and so did wasps to him. I dare say that in addition to Fabre's "Life of the Wasp," there exists, if we could only get at it, ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.

... listening, on the Olympian summit sat Well-pleased, and, in his heart laughing for joy, Beheld the Powers of heaven in battle join'd. Not long aloof they stood. Shield-piercer Mars, His brazen spear grasp'd, and began the fight 460 Rushing on Pallas, whom he thus reproach'd. Wasp! front of impudence, and past all bounds Audacious! Why impellest thou the Gods To fight? Thy own proud spirit is the cause. Remember'st not, how, urged by thee, the son 465 Of Tydeus, Diomede, myself assail'd, When thou, the radiant spear with ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... the grasshoppers so gallant Called to arms each nimble callant, With their wings, and stings, and nippers, Bee, and wasp, and hornet, awful; Gave the villain such a jawful, That ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... Gresham, taking up a revolver and box of cartridges he had brought on deck with him, and going towards the after gangway, abreast of which the steam pinnace was lying, buzzing away like a little wasp alongside; the intimation on the part of our captain that he would 'like' a thing being done being quite equivalent to a command to do it! "You mean, sir, that queer-shaped headland some twenty miles ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... as if attacked by a wasp. Attorney General Smith said, "Hum," very loudly and looked at Assemblyman Brown who looked blank. Dr Johnson's nose raised itself a perceptible inch and Judge Robinson, sensing a sensation among his colleagues, shouted, "Speak up, madam, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... Chickens' bones were there dealt with on all sides as nature perhaps intended that they should be dealt with, namely, by taking them between finger and thumb, and removing superfluities with the teeth; and French officers with wasp-like waists, and red trousers gathered in plaits to match, boldly despised the sophistication of spoons, and ate their vanilla cream like men, by the help of bread and fingers. The manners and broken French of the stranger formed ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... Coleridge's on Shakespeare and Carlyle's on Heroes. To my astonishment Oscar would not admit the superlative quality of Whistler's talk; he thought the message paradoxical and the ridicule of the professors too bitter. "Whistler's like a wasp," he cried, "and carries about with him a poisoned sting." Oscar's kindly sweet nature revolted against the disdainful aggressiveness of Whistler's attitude. Besides, in essence, Whistler's lecture was an attack on the ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... Worcester reproves him, and his father chides him as "a wasp-stung and impatient fool," who will only talk and not listen. But again Hotspur breaks forth, and again his anger ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... 4. The wasp of this country fixes his habitation under ground, that he may not be affected with the various changes of our climate; but in Jamaica he hangs it on the bough of a tree, where the seasons are less severe. He weaves a very curious paper ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... tell you that these ants are much larger than any we have here. Some of the tropical ants are an inch long, and as large as a large wasp; so you may imagine that a whole army of them is not ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... had stung us before, but this was a triple-expansion, double-back-action, high-explosive sting, with a dum dum point. We hurt all over; and the worst of it was, we hadn't really been stung yet and didn't know where it was going to hit us. Did you ever wait perfectly helpless while a large, taciturn wasp with a red-hot tail ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... its fly-blown window-panes. Here the consumption of tough macaroni or of an ambiguous frittura sufficed to transport me to the Cappello d'Oro in Venice, while my cup of coffee and a wasp-waisted cigar with a straw in it turned my greasy table-cloth into the marble top of one of the little round tables under the arcade of the Caffe Pedrotti at Padua. This feat of the imagination was materially aided by Agostino, the hollow-eyed and low-collared ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton

... abusive counsel he could find against Pitt (and hereafter perhaps against Fox), attacked the former for eternal invectives. Oh! since the last philippic of Billingsgate memory you never heard such an invective as Pitt returned-Hume Campbell was annihilated! Pitt, like an angry wasp, seems to have left his sting in the wound, and has since assumed a style of delicate ridicule and repartee. But think how charming a ridicule must that be that lasts and rises, flash after flash, for an hour and a half! Some day or ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... by his work is known." A piece of honey-comb, one day, Discovered as a waif and stray, The Hornets treated as their own. Their title did the Bees dispute, And brought before a Wasp the suit. The judge was puzzled to decide, For nothing could be testified Save that around this honey-comb There had been seen, as if at home, Some longish, brownish, buzzing creatures, Much like the Bees in wings and features. But what ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various

... suggestions to the contrary, it has appeared that he conformed to his instructions, promoted the public interest, and gave entire satisfaction to the government. In 1811, he was transferred to the command of the sloop-of-war Wasp, mounting eighteen twenty-four pound carronades, and dispatched, in the spring of 1812, with communications to the courts of St. Cloud and St. James. Before he returned, war had been declared against Great Britain. He refitted his ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various

... stream, and laid, (might it not have been thought?) for a hopeless eternity, in the dark ooze, the most despised, forgotten, and feeble of all earth's atoms; incapable of any use or change; not fit, down there in the diluvial darkness, so much as to help an earth wasp to build its nest, or feed the first fibre of a lichen; what would it have thought, had it been told that one day, knitted into a strength as of imperishable iron, rustless by the air, infusible by the flame, out of the substance ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin

... love of fable and adventure is sufficiently testified by the pretty numerous fragments which still remain (Pauly). Demetrius Phalereus, quoted by Pearce, quotes a grandiloquent description of the wasp taken from Kleitarchus, "feeding on the mountainside, her ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus

... monolayer; epitaxial deposition[Engin]. thinness &c. adj.; tenuity; emaciation, macilency[obs3], marcor|. shaving, slip &c. (filament) 205; thread paper, skeleton, shadow, anatomy, spindleshanks[obs3], lantern jaws, mere skin and bone. middle constriction, stricture, neck, waist, isthmus, wasp, hourglass; ridge, ghaut[obs3], ghat[obs3], pass; ravine &c. 198. narrowing, coarctation[obs3], angustation[obs3], tapering; contraction &c. 195. V. be narrow &c. adj.; narrow, taper, contract &c. 195; render narrow &c. adj; waste away. Adj. narrow, close; slender, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... purring against grandmother's stool, had jumped on the window-sill in pursuit of a belated wasp, and Sarah, rushing to the rescue of her flowers, cuffed the animal soundly and placed her in grandfather's lap. He was a lover of cats—a harmless fancy which was a source of unceasing annoyance to ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... more'n a hundred pounds, and must be fifty years old, and he's got curvature of the spine, and he's able seaman, if you please, on the Elsinore. And worse than all that, he puts it over on you; he's nasty, he's mean, he's a viper, a wasp. He ain't afraid of anything because he knows you dassent hit him for fear of croaking him. Oh, he's a pearl of purest ray serene, if anybody should slide down a backstay and ask you. If you fail to identify him any other way, his ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... the end of the street. On the snow that bound the horizon, his tall and wasp-like uniformed figure outlined itself; he walked, knees apart, with that motion particular to soldiers who are anxious not to ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant

... passages is there any wonder that it is hard to persuade women that men do not admire "wasp" waists? How are they to know that the "jimp middle" of the ballads was in its jimpness in proportion to the shoulders? The trouble is, that the early rhymesters have used up the only side of the question capable of poetical treatment. One cannot sing of the reverse: no poet could ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... was early directed to send a ship of war to Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay, to receive Mr. Washburn and his family and remove them from a situation which was represented to be endangered by faction and foreign war. The Brazilian commander of the allied invading forces refused permission to the Wasp to pass through the blockading forces, and that vessel returned to its accustomed anchorage. Remonstrance having been made against this refusal, it was promptly overruled, and the Wasp therefore resumed her errand, received Mr. Washburn and his ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... to feed on the young foliage and grow rapidly into the conspicuous cream, yellow and black 'looper' caterpillars mentioned in a previous chapter (p. 60). These, when fully-grown, spin among the twigs of the food-plant a light cocoon, in which the black and yellow-banded wasp-like pupa spends its short summer term before the emergence of ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter

... rectors and earls and dukes had crossed the ocean in the same ship and had been scattered abroad over Manitoba and the Northwest Territories to be instructed in agricultural pursuits by the honest granger, and incidentally to furnish nutriment for the ever-ready mosquito or wasp, who regarded all Old Country men ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung

... as if a wasp had stung him, and there is no guessing what his reply might have been to this seemingly innocent observation, had not a gallant horseman at that instant entered the court, and, dismounting like the others, gave his horse to the charge ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... good many adjourned to the drawing-room, Captain and Mrs. Ray, the Strachys, Rutherfords, &c. We had a scientific experiment with the shadow of the moon. Mr. Ray told a curious story of a wasp. He saw it advance slowly to a great spider, which the wasp apparently completely mesmerised, and then the wasp carried him off to a little house he had made, and deposited the spider next an egg, then another egg, and again another spider, till there was a long ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh

... easier to such knowing adepts in guilt than to transfer to his charge any deed of violence one of their own gang had committed—heap damning circumstances round him—privily apprise justice—falsely swear away his life. In short, the man was in their way as a wasp that has blundered into an ants' nest; and, while frightened at the size of the intruder, these honest ants were resolved to get him out of their citadel alive or dead. Probable it was that Jasper Losely would meet with his deserts at ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... misery. When the entertainment had become nearly unbearable, he conceived the idea of gripping them between his fingers and putting them out of commission. He succeeded with many of them, but at great cost, for, as he couldn't see the wasp, he was as likely to take hold of the wrong end of him as he was the right; then the dying wasp gave him a punch ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... the market is the wasp gun. In theory it is something like a letter clip; you pull the trigger and the upper and lower plates snap together with a suddenness which would surprise any insect in between. The trouble will be to get him in the right place before firing. But I can see that a lot of fun can be ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne

... well-known species, while the additions made to the Fossorial group contain many of great beauty and rarity. A new species belonging to the tribe of Solitary Wasps, Odynerus clavicornis, is perhaps the most interesting insect in the collection; this Wasp has clavate antennae, the flagellum being broadly dilated towards the apex, convex above and concave beneath. I am not acquainted with any other insect belonging to the Vespidious group which exhibits such ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various

... Prioress, blushing to her white hair, bent forward and whispered in the Abbot's ear words at which he sprang up as though a wasp ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... Because he's my friend, I suppose? You look down on him just because he's a hard worker, and of some use in the world—not a dandified, conventional, wasp-waisted idiot like Cecil Reeve! Perhaps you ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson

... back of one hand made that purpose only too clear to Shann, and he retreated hurriedly from the vicinity of the excavation. They had found an earth-wasp's burrow and were hunting grubs, naturally arousing the rightful inhabitants ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... quite ready for a quarrel, but Theophilus, contrary to my expectations, did not choose to take any notice of my imprudent speech. Not that he wanted personal courage. Like the wasp, he could, when unprovoked, attack others, and sting with tenfold malice when he felt or fancied an affront. His forbearance on the present occasion, I attributed to the very handsome riding-dress in which he had encased his ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie

... the cub had spent three quarters of his time in eating, but since yesterday morning he had not swallowed so much as a bug. He was completely empty, and the object he saw hanging to the bush set every salivary gland in his mouth working. It was a wasp's nest. Many times in his young life he had seen Noozak, his mother, go up to nests like that, tear them down, crush them under her big paw, and then invite him to the feast of dead wasps within. For ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... Romans knew better; to keep people quiet they filled their bellies. Those fools—" he jerked his head backwards with disgust; I thought, of the shawls and the high combs and the hair gleaming black under lace and the wasp-waists of the young men and the insolence of black eyes above the flashing wheels of the carriages, "—those fools give only circuses. Do you people in the outside world realize that we in Andalusia starve, that we have starved for generations, ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... 'at they dinna nip you, for haein' a wid leg," says Sandy, as raised as a wasp. "Awa' oot o' that, an' mind your ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond

... top offers a weak spot which makes it possible for the insect to reach the vein of least resistance at once, without cutting away through the hard ligneous wall. To many, therefore, of the Bee and Wasp tribe, whether honey-gatherers or hunters, one of these dry stalks is a valuable discovery when its diameter matches the size of its would-be inhabitants; and it is also an interesting subject of study to the entomologist who, in the winter, pruning-shears in hand, can gather in the hedgerows ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... as asteroids go, but about it clung a silvery mist of atmosphere. Deeper flashes through the mist betokened water, and green patches hinted of rich vegetation. The space-patroller circled the little world knowledgeably, like a wasp buzzing around an apple. In the control room, by the forward ports, the Martian skipper addressed his ...
— The Devil's Asteroid • Manly Wade Wellman

... egg sandwiches and marmalade sandwiches, and cold minced-collop sandwiches, he pricked forth into the wilderness, making for the country inhabited by the Yellow Dwarf. The princess was glad he was riding, for she privately accompanied him in the disguise of a wasp; and a wasp, of course, could not have kept up with him ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang

... Third The New House March The Cuckoo Over the Hills Home The Hollow Wood Wind and Mist The Unknown Bird The Lofty Sky After Rain Digging But these things also April The Barn The Barn and the Down The Child on the Cliffs Good-night The Wasp Trap July A Tale Parting Lovers That Girl's Clear Eyes The Child in the Orchard The Source The Mountain Chapel First known when lost The Word These things that Poets said Home Aspens An Old Song There was a Time Ambition No one cares ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas

... excitement of the law courts, there occurs the following episode, that has for its basis the activity of the Athenians at the battle of Plataea. We learn from this episode that the appellation, the "Attic Wasp," had its origin in the venomous persistence with which the Athenians, swarming like wasps, stung the Persians in their retreat, after the defeat of Mardonius. Occurring in a popular satirical comedy, it also shows how readily any allusion to ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... anything like it before. I suspect it arose from the help I've been giving the grade teachers in their nature work. They are trying to teach the children something, and half the instructors don't know a blue jay from a king-fisher, a beech leaf from an elm, or a wasp from ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter

... you wish me to tell you where you can find your old faded doll, with a waist just like a wasp, and an old blue sacque—not a bit of powder in ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... thirteen hundred miles southeast of Great New York. I could do a good normal three-ninety in this fleet little Wasp, especially if I kept in the rarer air-pressures over the zero-height. The thousand-foot lane had a southward drift, this night. I was making now well over four hundred; I would reach Nareda ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... for half the day. In short, they are becoming more and more intimate, to the extremest degree; and, scorning the world, thank Heaven that they are mutually indispensable. Cannot we get away from this scurvy wasp's-nest of a Paris, thought they, and live to ourselves ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle

... hit him right in the middle of his starched shirt front. Like an infuriated wasp he rose from his seat to find the criminal; a plain little girl's face laughed into his; a labourer in his Sunday clothes and straw hat appeared, took her by the hand and smilingly expressed a hope that the child had not ...
— Married • August Strindberg

... a particularly intelligent lot. They were Diggers, so named on account of their habits of digging in the ground for roots, and the larva of various insects for food. Eggs of ants, and the maggots found in wasp's nests ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill

... the Wasp, issued at Nauvoo under Mormon editorship, had been succeeded by a larger one called the Neighbor, edited by John Taylor (afterward President of the church), who also had charge of the Times and Seasons. The Neighbor ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... midnight. No mail, passenger or freight flyers were scheduled to pass near there at that hour, and, save for some chance private craft, we would be undisturbed. The ransom gold was available to Hanley. He had said he would bring it in his personal Wasp. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... bath-tub, while the pastor opens out a new box of theological thunders and fills the air full of the sullen roar of sulphurous waves, licking the shores of eternity and swallowing up the great multitudes of the eternally lost; but when one little wasp, with a red-hot revelation, goes gently up the leg of that same man's pantaloons, leaving large, hot tracks whenever he stopped and sat down to think it over, you will see a sudden awakening and a revival that will ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... the wind and that all animals talk like men on Christmas morning at a certain time. Children wore moles feet and pearl buttons around their necks to insure easy teething and had their legs bathed in a concoction of wasp nest and vinegar if they were slow about learning to walk. This was supposed to strengthen the weak limbs. It was a common occurence to see a child of two or three years still nursing at the mother's breast. Their masters encouraged the slaves to do this, thinking ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... on several occasions and she was a dangerous person to snub. Judah expressed it characteristically when he declared that anybody who "set out" to impose on Esther Tidditt would have as lively a time as a bare-footed man trying to dance a hornpipe on a wasp's nest. "She'll keep 'em hoppin' high, I tell ye," ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... think I'm clever enough! Well, suppose I try, and you set me right if I make mistakes. "How doth the great idle wasp—"' ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... compromise. The lawsuit will be ugly, and probably ruinous. He has a right to claim six years' arrears—that is above L100,000. Make yourself his father-in-law, and me his uncle-in-law; and, since we can't kill the wasp, we may at least soften the venom of ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... the reason of this seems to be nothing else, but the corrosive penetrant liquor contain'd in the small baggs or bladders, upon which grow out those sharp Syringe-pipes, as I before noted; and very consonant to this, is the reason of the pain created by the sting of a Bee, Wasp, &c. as I elsewhere shew: For by the Dart, which is likewise a pipe, is made a deep passage into the skin, and then by the anger of the Fly, is his gally poisonous liquor injected; which being admitted among the sensible parts, and so mix'd with the humours or stagnating ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... spout being probed the gush of gas expelled a quantity of clay and thirty-five small spiders, representative of about six different species. The spout had been converted into a nursery and larder by a carnivorous wasp, for in addition to the moribund spiders stored for the sustenance of future grubs were several unhatched eggs. Such wasps are exceedingly common, some building "nests" as large as a tea-cup, the last compartment being fitted with an elegantly fashioned ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... know?" he cried. "The black old scamp had CARBONARO funds on a deposit - two hundred and eighty thousand; and of course he gambled it away on stocks. There was to have been a revolution in the Tridentino, or Parma; but the revolution is off, and the whole wasp's nest is after Huddlestone. We shall all be lucky if we can ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... house, or taken bite or sup in it for at least twenty years. And as for his behaviour to everybody round about—well, I can tell you all about that whenever you want to know! However, now they've stormed him—they've smoked him out like a wasp's nest. My goodness—he did buzz! Undershaw found a man badly hurt, lying on the road by the bridge—bicycle accident—run over too, I believe—and carried him into the Tower, willy-nilly!" The speaker chuckled. "Melrose ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... honour lay in me, From me by strong assault it is bereft. My honey lost, and I, a drone-like bee, Have no perfection of my summer left, But robb'd and ransack'd by injurious theft: In thy weak hive a wandering wasp hath crept, And suck'd the honey which ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]

... and she couldn't help smiling a little when she said it, "if you call her 'Bee,' don't make it the beginning of any new teasing by calling Rosy 'Wasp.'" ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth

... knocked out of the cup are a light yellow at the base and green towards the middle and the point; the yellow part is that which has been covered by the cup. In the sward there is a small hole from out of which creeps a wasp at intervals; it is a nest, and some few of them are still at work. But their motions are slow and lack vivacity; before long, numbers must die, and already many have succumbed after crawling miserably on the ground which ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... and wretched, confined like the pith within the bark of the tree.... My voice is like a wasp imprisoned within a sack of skin and bone. ... My teeth rattle like the keys of an old musical instrument.... My face is a scarecrow.... There is a ceaseless buzzing in my ears—in one a spider spins his web, in the other a cricket chirps all night.... My catarrh, which causes a rattle in my ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... sting, with a dum dum point. We hurt all over; and the worst of it was, we hadn't really been stung yet and didn't know where it was going to hit us. Did you ever wait perfectly helpless while a large, taciturn wasp with a red-hot tail was looking ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... reason leads us to admire with enthusiasm a multitude of inimitable contrivances in Nature, this same reason tells us, though we may easily err on both sides, that some contrivances are less perfect. Can we consider the sting of the wasp or of the bee as perfect, which, when used against many attacking animals, cannot be withdrawn, owing to the backward serratures, and so inevitably causes the death of the insect by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... he gave me his views on the brains and merits of many of the delegates, views full of wit and brilliant criticism, but when I had finished painting him I came under his kindly lash. He called me "a nasty little wasp," and he kept a "black book" for any of his lady friends who said the sketch was like him. In it their names were inscribed, and they were never to be spoken to again. With all his fun, Sir Henry was a deep thinker, and towered over the majority ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen

... ever to fulfill his promise to locate Boyd, that would have to come later. Quirk's horse catch delivered, the scouts were on the move again, on the Georgetown road, riding at a pace which suggested they must keep ahead of a boiling wasp's nest of Yankees. There was an embarrassment of blue-coat prisoners on the march between two lines of gray uniforms, and pockets of the enemy such as that at Fort Clay were left behind. The strike northward took ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton

... prove fatal. So may a pin scratch, if the blood of the subject be in bad enough condition. There is a well-substantiated case of a trained nurse who died from blood poisoning following a mosquito bite. Ant bite has resulted fatally, as has a single sting from the common wasp. No one, however, considers these everyday insects as "deadly." But substitute "scorpion" for "ant," and "centipede" for "wasp," and shrieks of dismay rise from the general throat. Yet perhaps there is no other variety of harmful creature ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... angler to succeed in it. The worm has to be cast up-stream rather like a fly, and the method is little inferior to fly-fishing in delicacy and difficulty. The other baits for trout, or rather the other baits which they will take sometimes, are legion. Wasp-grubs, maggots, caterpillars, small frogs, bread, there is very little the fish will not take. But except in rural districts little effort is made to catch trout by means less orthodox than the fly, minnow and worm, and the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... first encount'ring with a Wasp, He in his arms the fly doth clasp As though his breath he forth would grasp Him for Pigwiggen taking: "Where is ny wife, thou rogue?" quoth he; "Pigwiggen, she is come to thee; Restore her, or thou diest by me!" ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

... rustic on the bank (whose sympathetic grins upset my chum almost as much as the wasps) to try some clay from the canal-side as a remedy. We were sceptical at first, but were subsequently astonished at the soothing effects of this novel panacea for wasp-stings. Here is a wrinkle for any of my readers who should happen to get stung by the ferocious ...
— Through Canal-Land in a Canadian Canoe • Vincent Hughes

... it by the strongest of all ties, that of religion. Most of all was this the case with Acadia, founded in hot and justifiable anger, and eager to justify its existence. Had Howe been a wary politician, he would have thought twice before stirring up such a wasp's nest, more especially as the {77} Baptists had hitherto been his faithful supporters. But Howe was both more and less than a wary politician, and when early in 1843 a private member brought in resolutions ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant

... namely, the Lord of Fulham. Whereunto the gentleman answered that he had been a poor freeholder in Fulham, before Don John came to be L. there, hoping also to be so, when he and all his brood (my Lady his daughter and all) should be gone. At the hearing of this speech, the wasp got my brother by the nose, which made him in his rage to affirm, that he would be L. of Fulham as long as he lived in despite of all England. Nay, soft there, quoth M. Madox, except her Majesty. I pray you, that is my meaning, call dumb John, and I tell thee Madox that thou art but a Jack ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... to be proud to wear the poet's double name, and was particularly great in all that author's plays that were usually performed, viz "Wasp," in Bartholomew Fair; "Corbaccio;" "Morose," in The Silent Woman; and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... marmalade or to make no marmalade at all. Personally I am inclined to think that the President of the Board of Agriculture will go further than this. I think that encouragement will be given to those who take the State Marmalade course to follow it up with a subsidiary or finishing course of wasp treatment. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various

... passionate tirade by simply shaking her head as a child does who hears the buzzing of a wasp and fears its sting; then, as they reached the bench, she said with ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... on a stool in the centre of the room. She was closely watched and kept without food for four-and-twenty hours. Doors and windows remained open to watch for the entrance of some of the devil's imps. These might come in the form of a fly, a wasp, a moth, or some other insect. The work of the watchers was to kill every insect that came into the room. But if one escaped, it was clear proof that this was one of the ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... 'Where on earth does this idiot put her liver?' Did you ever read of the frog who burst, trying to swell to an ox? Well, here is the rivalry reversed; Mrs. Vivian is a bag of bones in a balloon; she can machine herself into a wasp; but a fine young woman like you, with flesh and muscle, must kill yourself three or four times before you can make your body as meagre, hideous, angular, and unnatural as Vivian's. But all you ladies are mono-maniacs; one might as well talk sense ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... was, when they came to the point, what they should put down. If, indeed, they could have got hold of the ringleaders, the bishops of the Church, they would have tortured and smashed them con amore, as you would kill a wasp; and with the greater warmth and satisfaction, just because it was so difficult to get at them. Those bishops were a set of fellows as mischievous as they were cowardly; they would not come out and be killed, but they skulked in the desert, and hid in masquerade. ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... Correspondent of 'the Field' records an experiment which he made with a wasp. 'Having,' he says, 'severed a wasp in two pieces, I found that the head and thorax with the uninjured wings retained full vitality.... It tried to fly, but evidently lacked the necessary balance through the loss of the abdomen. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various

... hour the trout ceased leaping at dark fly or moth, and could see only in the dim light the ghostly white miller? Did they know the comparative merits, as a tempting bait, of grasshopper, cricket, spider, or wasp; and could they, with bits of wool, tinsel, and feather, copy the real dipterous, hymenopterous, or orthopterous insect? And the birds: he knew them as do few ornithologists, by sight, by sound, by little ways and tricks of their own, ...
— Fishin' Jimmy • Annie Trumbull Slosson

... devoutly borne, in bringing God closer to us, belongs to it, whether it be great or small; whether it be, according to the metaphor of an earlier portion of this psalm, 'a lion or an adder'; or whether it be a buzzing wasp or a mosquito. As long as anything troubles me, I may make it a means of bringing God ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... sudden; to a wasp or two that had come foraging on Daisy's window-sill. But Dr. Sandford was at home there; and so explained the wasp's work and manner of life, with his structure and fitness for what he had to do, that Daisy was in utter delight; though her eyes sometimes opened upon Dr. Sandford ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell

... a long time no word was spoken. I watched my life run redly through the wasp waist of the transparent glass, then suddenly the sand ceased to flow, half in the upper bulb, half in ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr

... to the thorns near the centre of one of each pair, and not near the end, and it is not so active as the other species. It is also rather scarce; but when it does occur, it occupies the whole tree, to the exclusion of the other. The glands on the acacia are also frequented by a small species of wasp. I sowed the seeds of the acacia in my garden, and reared some young plants. Ants of many kinds were numerous; but none of them took to the thorns for shelter, nor the glands and fruit-like bodies for food; for, as I have already mentioned, the species that attend on the thorns are not found ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... said, when she had furnished the desired information. She brought out a piece of paper as she spoke, and passed it on to her friend behind the cover of her open desk. It was a fragment of one of Maysie's zoological drawing-sheets, evidently picked up out of the waste-paper basket—a wasp with wings outspread, showing the three divisions of an insect's body. The head was roughly altered so as to form a caricature of a human face, and above was printed, in letters that might have done credit to Maysie herself: "Miss E. in a tantrum," and below: "How ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... sobbed Frances. "She is like a wasp—all sting." After a long pause devoted to drying her eyes, she continued, "But it has not been much ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major

... longest slope, of which the angle was very steep. Down this the stone rushed like an arrow from a bow, till it reached the narrow waist of the bridge, whereof the general conformation bore some resemblance to that of a dead wasp lying on its back. Indeed, from where Leonard and Juanna stood, the span of ice at this point seemed to be no thicker than a silver thread, while Otter and the stone might have been a fly upon the thread. Now of a sudden Leonard distinctly saw the rock sledge and its living burden, which ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... some of you think it very ugly, and say you are afraid of it, but sensible children will not be frightened at a spider, because they will remember that they are very harmless little things, and have not got a sting as the wasp and bee have. They are very ugly, to be sure, but every ugly insect is not to be called a nasty creature, for some are very useful, notwithstanding their not being as handsome as others; and spiders are very useful too, although ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... to watch that, and it happened so often, that it was hard to imagine a windsor pear without a great gash where the sharp stones had cut into it; it was also natural to expect when you picked it up that there would be a cunning yellow wasp hidden somewhere about it, for all the little Hawthorns had always found it so except the baby, and she was too small to have any experience. Five little Hawthorns, without counting the baby, had looked out of the nursery ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton

... the beetle has the thorax and body densely hairy like the bee, and the legs are tufted in a manner most unusual in the order Coleoptera. Another Longicorn, Odontocera odyneroides, has the abdomen banded with yellow, and constricted at the base, and is altogether so exactly like a small common wasp of the genus Odynerus, that Mr. Bates informs us he was afraid to take it out of his net with his fingers for fear of being stung. Had Mr. Bates's taste for insects been less omnivorous than it was, the beetle's disguise might have saved it from his pin, as it had no doubt often ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various

... their work and wrapped themselves round Umbelazi's army as the nippers of a wasp close about a fly (why did not Umbelazi cut off those horns, I wondered), the Usutu bull began his charge. Twenty or thirty thousand strong, regiment after regiment, Cetewayo's men rushed up the slope, and there, near the crest of it, were met by Umbelazi's regiments ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard

... Here, on a rustic table, stood wine and a few delicacies,—while, by extending a hand, we could grasp the hanging pears and nectarines, still warm to the lip and luscious with sunshine, as we disputed possession with the envious wasp who had established ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... which thou, too, art the Hereditary High Priest that is to be. And meanwhile, I will sit here and watch, for my hour is not yet, and, by the help of the Gods, spin the web of Death wherein thou shalt catch and hold the wasp of Macedonia. ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... Hell's that?" Mr. Wix started as if a wasp had stung him, as the old charwoman's knock came at the private entrance alongside of the bar. He seemed very sensitive, always on ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... needle go in and out; and the dreary hum of the bees and the noise of the children's voices became a confused murmur in her ears, as she worked slowly and more slowly. Then the bees, the long-legged wasp-like fellows who make no honey, flew closer and closer to her head, droning. Then she grew more and more drowsy, and she laid her hand, with the stocking over it, on the edge of the table, and leaned her head upon ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner

... what he had come to see. So he asked a ruffianly looking wasp where the raising bee was. But the wasp, who was hurrying by, merely glanced at Buster ...
— The Tale of Buster Bumblebee • Arthur Scott Bailey

... wishing nothing less than the death of the fair washerwoman of Portillon and often would cry out "I will eat her flesh! I will cook one of her breasts, and swallow it without sauce!" It was a tremendous hate of good constitution—a cardinal hate—a hate of a wasp or an old maid. It was all known hates moulded into one single hate, which boiled itself, concocted itself, and resolved self into an elixir of wicked and diabolical sentiments, warmed at the fire of the most flaming furnaces of hell—it was, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... has gone. In her place we have strong, capable, broad-minded women. Seldom do we hear of a woman fainting today, yet look back sixty years and recall the Lydia Languish females with long ringlets and wasp waists, who invariably carried smelling salts. I'm proud to belong to the women of today—healthy, strong, athletic, and brave—women who do and are not ashamed of it. Look at Aunt Susan. There's a woman who is an example. I hope I may amount to as much as she ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson

... and the wasp's sharp eyes had found him out; and then, quick as lightning, she darted down upon him, and pierced him with her sting. When the locust lay perfectly still, the wasp seized him and flew off. Arrived at her ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... scientific contemplation. As if a Martian should suddenly become visible to an astronomer, I found that one of the egg planets was inhabited. Perched upon the summit—quite near the north pole—was an insect, a wasp, much smaller than the egg itself. And as I looked, I saw it at the climax of its diminutive life; for it reared up, resting on the tips of two legs and the iridescent wings, and sunk its ovipositor deep into the crystalline ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... his happiness as he excavates the twig of a silver maple. Probably he has found the larvae which the wood wasp left there in the fall. The big hairy woodpecker flies across the clearing with a strident scream. Next to the crow and the jay he is the noisiest fellow in the winter woods. He hammers away at a decaying basswood and the chips which fall are an inch and a half long. His ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... spoil With a horrible mixture of garlic and oil, The chances are ten against one, I must own, He gets up as ill-temper'd as when he sat down. And if any reader this fact to dispute is Disposed, I say... "Allium edat cicutis Nocentius!" Over the fruit and the wine Undisturb'd the wasp settled. The evening was fine. Lord Alfred his chair by the window had set, And languidly lighted his small cigarette. The window was open. The warm air without Waved the flame of the candles. The moths were about. In the ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... once, when I made her jealous for fun, At something I'd whispered, or looked, or done, One Sunday in San Antonio, To a glorious girl on the Alamo, She drew from her belt a dear little dagger, And—sting of a wasp!—it made me stagger! An inch to the left, or an inch to the right, And I shouldn't be maundering here to-night; But she sobbed, and, sobbing, so swiftly bound Her torn rebosa about the wound, That I quite ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... flapping with a fin-like motion under sun burning down through a sky-light like a glass lid. Light skating on the rims of wheels... boring in gimlet points. Needles flickering fierce white threads of light fine as a wasp's sting. Light in sweat-drops brighter than eyes and calico-pallid faces and bodies throwing off smells— and the air a bloated presence pressing on the walls and the ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge

... falsity, I have reproduced in this paper plates taken from leading American and English fashion monthlies during the past three decades, in each of which it is noticeable that extremes have been reached. In 1860-65, the hoop-skirt held sway, and the wasp waist was typical of beauty. Then no lady was correctly attired according to the prevailing idea who did not present a spectacle curiously suggestive of a moving circus tent. During this era four or ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... nest of the coal-black Trigona (Trigona carbonaria), from eastern Australia, Mr. F. Smith, of the British Museum, found from four hundred to five hundred dead workers, but no females. The combs were arranged precisely similar to those of the common wasp. The number of honey-pots which were placed at the foot of the nest was two hundred and fifty. Mr. Smith inclines to the opinion that the hive of Trigona contains several prolific females, as the great number of workers can only ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard

... of mine. She would hunger that I might eat, Would take the bitter and leave me the sweet; But once, when I made her jealous for fun At something I whispered or looked or done, One Sunday, in San Antonio, To a glorious girl in the Alamo, She drew from her garter a little dagger, And—sting of a wasp—it made me stagger! An inch to the left, or an inch to the right, And I shouldn't be maundering here tonight; But she sobbed, and sobbing, so quickly bound Her torn rebosa about the wound That I swiftly forgave her. ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various

... Carey looked on them very kindly, and said: "Little ones, I love your brave spirit. You shall not die. Neither shall you lose your beauty. I will give you a defence that will keep off all your enemies but one, that is the Long-stinger Wasp, for you must in some way pay for your loveliness." She waved her wand, and all over each of the Beauty-crawlers, there came out bunches of sharp stickers like porcupine quills, only they were worse than porcupine quills for each of the stickers was poisoned at the tip, so that ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... books of account, and began to piece figures together on backs of envelopes, using a shorthand of accounts such as a principal will use when he is impatient and not particular to a few pounds. A little wasp of curiosity was teasing Edwin, and to quicken it a comparison was necessary between the result of the first six months of that year and the first six months of the previous year. True, June had not quite expired, but most of the quarterly accounts were ready, and he could form a trustworthy estimate. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... with a letter for the post. By nature a bachelor, he was instinctively ashamed of his family, and when the weary-looking wife, the thin, shy girl, or the corpulent, stupid-faced son were with him and he heard steps outside, he would come out like a little wasp, and, unmistakably resenting the intrusion, would ask what ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore

... the tips of the wheat—burr-rr—as he passed; then a scarlet fly, and next a bright yellow wasp who was telling a friend flying behind him that he knew where there was such a capital piece of wood to bite up into tiny pieces and make into paper for the nest in the thatch, but his friend wanted to go to the house because there was a pear quite ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... frae the toon, and it's droll I never saw ye land. There was never mony got into Doom withoot the kennin' o' the garrison. It happened aince in Black Hugh's time wi' a corps o' Campbells frae Ardkinglas, and they found themselves in a wasp's byke." ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... such a variety of expression and so copious a language as common poultry. Take a chicken of four or five days old, and hold it up to a window where there are flies, and it will immediately seize its prey, with little twitterings of complacency; but if you tender it a wasp or a bee, at once its note becomes harsh, and expressive of disapprobation and a sense of danger. When a pullet is ready to lay she intimates the event by a joyous and easy soft note. Of all the ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... place of capture was very significant, and it happened July 12 only a fortnight after Blakely captured the 'Reindeer' farther westward. The 'Siren' was but one of many privateers in those waters. The 'Governor Tompkins' burned fourteen vessels successively in the British Channel. The 'Young Wasp,' of Philadelphia, cruised nearly six months about the coasts of England and Spain, and in the course of West India commerce. The 'Harpy,' of Baltimore, another large vessel of some 350 tons and fourteen guns, ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... was the comb I had contrived out of the stumps of the king's beard, and another of the same materials, but fixed into a paring of her majesty's thumb-nail, which served for the back. There was a collection of needles and pins, from a foot to half a yard long; four wasp stings, like joiners' tacks; some combings of the queen's hair; a gold ring which one day she made me a present of, in a most obliging manner, taking it from her little finger and throwing it over my head like a collar. I desired the ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... in doing ample credit to both. For a while, his opposite neighbour and he were too busy to take much notice of each other, except by a good-humoured nod as each in turn raised the tankard to his head. At length, when our pedestrian began to supply the wants of little Wasp, the Scotch storefarmer, for such was Mr. Dinmont, found himself at ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... its perseverance, and its virtue. Patience, industry, and perseverance it has, beyond a doubt, and in a wonderful degree; but ingenuity, and virtue, it has none, more than the spider, who spins his worthless web, or the wasp, who stings you when disturbing his labors. Instinct, the bee has, like all animals; but of kind feeling, and gratitude, it has nothing; and with all our vivid nursery remembrance of good Doctor Watts' charming ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen

... rather night, to you, Thane of Aescendune," said he to Elfwyn; "we have had a fair night's work, and destroyed a big wasp's nest; have you come for your share ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... she scampered up the corridor; however, I must try and find something to do here—it's very dull being all by oneself. Just then, as she drew near one of the windows, she heard a great buzzing and fluttering, and looking up, saw a large wasp dancing about in the sunshine. Wishie thought it would be very good fun to try and catch him, so she made several springs at the window, but all in vain; the wasp was as young and active as she was, and eluded ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin

... spoke with earnest unction. "Thou knowest that I do not much busy myself in lay schemes; when I do, the object must be great. Now, Montagu, I have of late narrowly and keenly watched that spidery web which ye call a court, and I see that the spider will devour the wasp, unless the wasp boldly break the web,—for woman-craft I call the spider, and soldier-pride I style the wasp. To speak plainly, these Woodvilles must be bravely breasted and determinately abashed. I do not mean that we can deal with the king's wife and her family as with any other foes; but we must ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... we said to anybody before Felix was gone, or else somebody 'ud ha' been safe to ha' tould him, for there's plinty of people couldn't be goin' about widout tellin' everythin' they hear any more than a wasp could fly widout buzzin' its wings. And then we got the docther to her, but he couldn't do e'er a hand's turn. Sure what could anybody do agin the lightnin', that's a sort of miracle, you may say, unless it was ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane

... himself as sure of getting the better of his neighbour as thou dost, a wasp that buzzes against the cicala. But as it is plain thou thinkst the kid no fair stake, lo, here is this he-goat. Begin ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang

... Hodgett, sedate and dignified as he was, had better have danced a hornpipe in his thinnest silks amongst a bed of stinging nettles, or have poked sticks into a wasp's nest, or amused himself with any other innocent recreation, than have made an enemy of John Brown. It was what he himself would have called a wrong move, and it played the deuce with his game. John was the very man who could annoy him, and he did. None ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... pointed, seemed peering at his great teeth, yellowed by much smoking of cigarettes. He added to his charms an attire intentionally bizarre, for he dressed himself, so to speak, in character. And with these natural and achieved drawbacks to his appearance he had the temper of a wasp, so that it was small wonder that questionings were rife as to the reason of his retention, his overpaid retention, in the De Nemours' household. He had a wit of his own, had Quantrelle. Frequently his pleasing fancy led him to ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane

... Secretary of State's despatches by any vessel going from our distant ports, I retained the polygraph therein mentioned for a safer conveyance. None such has occurred till now, that the United States' armed brig the Wasp, on her way to the Mediterranean is to touch at Falmouth, with despatches for our ministers at London, and at Brest, with others for yourself ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... Bohemians without labour fed! The ant the worst of all the crew— Fly, drone, wasp, beetle too with horned head, All of them sharpers thro' and thro', Idlers the sun drew to thy well apace— None more than she was ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... another shape," quoth the Queen, "for I fear lest the bees should take thee for a stinging wasp, Porro." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... especial chronicler of this time. Such a man must have been an intolerable nuisance in his day, but his piquant impertinence is amusing in ours. He was evidently a wasp, pretending to perform the part of a butterfly, and fluttering over all the court flowers, only to plant his sting. As he was a perpetual flirt, he dangled round the Pomfret family; and probably received some severe rebuke from their mother, for he describes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... that this contented me, and I felt free to devote myself to the conquest of my new world. Looking back to those critical first years, I see myself always behaving like a child let loose in a garden to play and dig and chase the butterflies. Occasionally, indeed, I was stung by the wasp of family trouble; but I knew a healing ointment—my faith in America. My father had come to America to make a living. America, which was free and fair and kind, must presently yield him what he sought. I had come to America to see a new world, and I followed my own ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... am I made your laughing-stock? For you, sir, I shall find a time; but take off your wasp here, or the clown may grow boisterous; I have ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... with his motion, Scarce a leaf was stirred or rustled, But the wary roebuck started, Stamped with all his hoofs together, Listened with one foot uplifted, Leaped as if to meet the arrow, Ah! the singing, fatal arrow; Like a wasp it ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck

... tablecloth in a vengeful mess of gravy. Chickens' bones were there dealt with on all sides as nature perhaps intended that they should be dealt with, namely, by taking them between finger and thumb, and removing superfluities with the teeth; and French officers with wasp-like waists, and red trousers gathered in plaits to match, boldly despised the sophistication of spoons, and ate their vanilla cream like men, by the help of bread and fingers. The manners and broken French of the stranger formed an open and agreeable subject of conversation, and the table ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... flowers are, and working upward; the wasps commencing at the top, among the newly opened ones. In spite of the fact that we usually see hive bees about this plant, pilfering the generous supply of nectar in each tiny cup, it is undoubtedly the wasp that is the flower's truest benefactor, since he carries pollen from the older blossoms of the last raceme visited to the projecting stigmas of the newly opened flowers at the top of the next cluster. Manifestly no flower, even though it were especially adapted to wasps, as this ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... Hazel looked bright, but the list was like a wasp, its sting lay in its tail. However, he put a good face on it. "I'll try and get you all those things; only give me time. Do you know I am writing a dictionary on a ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... the Louvre, because we scamped it. The fact is, there was a little unpleasantness with one of the fellows, owing to Jim's cane happening to scratch one of the pictures by a chap named Rubens. It was quite an accident, as we were only trying to spike a wasp on the frame, and Jim missed his shot. The fellow there made a mule of himself, and lost his temper. So we didn't see the fun ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... have not seen in any other insects of this family. The fore wings have a protective colouring; the hind wings are bright red. When at rest, with the red and purple tints concealed, it is only a very pretty grasshopper, but the instant it takes wing it becomes the fac-simile of a very common wasp of the genus Pepris. These wasps vary greatly in size, some being as large as the hornet; they are solitary, and feed on the honey of flowers and on fruit, and, besides being furnished with stings like other wasps—though ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... exclaimed. "Talk to me of a wasp's nest! Bosekop! You shall hear of me there enough to satisfy your appetite for news. Bosekop! In the days when my race ruled the land, such people as they that dwell there would have been put to sharpen my sword on the grindstone, or to wait, hungry and ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... (October 13).—The next noted achievement was the defeat of the English brig Frolic by the sloop-of-war Wasp, off the coast of North Carolina. When the former was boarded by her captors, her colors were still flying, there being no one to haul them down. The man at the helm was the only sailor ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.

... when they are quite young they will follow with equal readiness any moving object remotely resembling their mother, or even a human being (James, "Psychology," ii, 396). Bergson, quoting Fabre, has made play with the supposed extraordinary accuracy of the solitary wasp Ammophila, which lays its eggs in a caterpillar. On this subject I will quote from Drever's ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell









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