"Bird" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Tasmanian Wild Man, but this Tasmanian Wild Man was tall and thin, almost rivaling Mr. Lonergan in that respect. The thin Roman nose and the blinky eyes, together with the manner of holding the head on one side, suggested a bird—a large ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... Australian love-bird; a small parrakeet.], which I have taken under my care during the cold weather, admire this sort of thing exceedingly and thrive under it, so ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... bird's nest all broken with the wind and torn with the storm, and two or three little eggs, with a few wet leaves over them, addled and cold and forsaken, and my little gipsy heart cried over those poor little ...
— Your Boys • Gipsy Smith
... bird student tarry here? What was there to keep him in a birdless place like this? I decided to leave at once, and so, checking my baggage through to Buena Vista, I started afoot down the mountain side, ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... looked first in front, then behind upon the other side, and at last allowed her eyes to move, without hurry, in the direction of the Hermiston pew. For a moment, they were riveted. Next she had plucked her gaze home again like a tame bird who should have meditated flight. Possibilities crowded on her; she hung over the future and grew dizzy; the image of this young man, slim, graceful, dark, with the inscrutable half-smile, attracted and repelled her like ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... around a large mound of mayonnaise of celery. Use either a meat platter, or two round chop dishes. Have the breasts of the birds down, and the back slightly pressed into the salad. In between each bird put a pretty bunch of curly parsley, and garnish the top of the mound with Spanish peppers cut into strips. Serve one to ...
— Ice Creams, Water Ices, Frozen Puddings Together with - Refreshments for all Social Affairs • Mrs. S. T. Rorer
... spare you," answered Humphreys. "And I would advise you to go immediately after breakfast, for, as you know, 'it is the early bird that catches the worm.' But how do you propose to set about your quest? Not quite ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... Gaylord that they ought to issue a daily edition of the Equity Free Press, and at the same time persuading Mr. Halleck to buy the Events for him, and let him put it on a paying basis. He shivered, sighed, hiccupped, and was dozing off again, when Henry Bird knocked him down, and he fell with a cry, which at last brought to the door the uneasy sleeper, who had been listening to him within, and trying to realize his presence, catching his voice in waking intervals, doubting it, drowsing when it ceased, and then catching ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... Bird, T. Jones, 102 (Pasch. 30 Car. II.). These cases show an order of development parallel to the history of the assignment of ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... not live alone; he was accustomed to see those kind blue eyes near him, and to hear the caressing voice with its bird-like inflexions which had so much encouraged him in times of trial and difficulty, and he could not endure the solitude in a strange land after Lucy's death. A great longing for his native land awoke in him, he wished to ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... fancied you would be, Marie, a quiet little home bird, living in your nest beyond the sea, and free from all the troubles and anxieties of our unhappy country. You have been good to write so often, far better than I have been; and I seem to know all about your quiet, well-ordered home, and your good husband and his business that ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... plodding scholar in his library, surrounded by the luxury and comfort which his learning and his labor have earned for him, no less than the poor collier in the mine, with darkness and squalor closing him round about, and want maybe staring him in the face, yet—if he be a true man—with a little bird singing ever in his heart the song of hope and cheer which cradled the genius of Stephenson and Arkwright and the long procession of inventors, lowly born, to whom the world owes the glorious achievements of this, the greatest of the centuries. We are all workingmen—the banker, ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... fragments. When she had reduced it to the smallest shreds, she scraped the pieces out of her silk lap and again collected them in the pink hollow of her little hand, kneeling down on the scrupulously well-swept carpet to peck up with a bird-like action of her thumb and forefinger an escaped atom here and there. These and the contents of her hand she poured into the chilly cavity of a sepulchral-looking alabaster vase that stood on the etagere. ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... had a sweet, clear, bird-like voice, and what she lacked in training she more than made up in the feeling she put into the words she sang; and her singing always touched the hearts of these lonely miners deeply. But to-night, as she stood ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... tabernacle, or temple, under prescribed regulations, a man could bring some live animal which he owned. The man brought that which was his own. It represented him. Through his labor the beast or bird was his. He had transferred some of his life and strength into it. He identified himself with it further by close touch at the time of its being offered. He offered up its life. In his act he acknowledged that his own life ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... or a man, or is it a bird?" asked the commandant in a low voice. "Is it the voice of this ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... The little bird's mother Was flying and wheeling In circles above them; She listened to all, And descending just near them 310 She chirruped, and making A brisk little movement She said to Pakhom In a voice clear and human: "Release my poor child, I will ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... directly. There was every kind of gilt hanging-thing, from gilt pea-pods to butterflies on springs. There were shining flags and lanterns, and bird-cages, and nests with birds sitting on them, baskets of fruit, gilt apples and bunches of grapes, and, at the bottom of the whole, a large box of candles and ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... other guise would have been impossible. Her silvered hair was parted and rippled over her forehead to her ears where it was slightly puffed and caught back with combs of shell, and from beneath it two little black eyes peered out with a bird's alertness of gaze. Although age had claimed her strength, it was evident from the woman's vivacious expression that she had lost none of her interest in life and as she now sat before the silver-laden tea table there was a girlish anticipation in ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... turns always up,—and I answered, that my brother had been exceedingly fortunate, as, notwithstanding the numerous matrimonial nets adroitly spread for him, he had escaped, like the Psalmist, 'as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers,' and fled for safety unto the mountain of celibacy. Bishop, if the new school of science lack the link that binds us to the ophidian type, I can furnish a thoroughly 'developed' ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... of an express train, Mr. Schwab saw the white front of Claremont, and beyond it the broad sweep of the Hudson. And, then, without decreasing its speed, the car like a great bird, swept down a hill, shot under a bridge, and into a partly paved street. Mr. Schwab already was two miles from his own bailiwick. His surroundings were unfamiliar. On the one hand were newly erected, untenanted flat houses ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... dead lim' ober de spring, an' dere's a jay-bird hoppin' about in it right now. Ain't I done heah yo' pa say dat lim' 'll hafter be cut off 'fo' it fall an' ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... met at Dordtrecht. The great John Bogerman, with fierce, handsome face, beak and eye of a bird of prey, and a deluge of curly brown beard reaching to his waist, took his seat as president. Short work was made with the Armenians. They and their five Points were soon thrust ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a sweet bird sing, And love each song it sings the best, Grieve when they see it taking wing And flying to ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... so that they might have sat opposite to each other for a longer time. He listened while she asked the waitress for her bill. The softness of her voice was like gentle music. He thought of the tiny noise of a small stream, of the song of a bird heard at a distance, of leaves slightly stirring in a quiet wind, and told himself that the sound of her voice had the quality of all these. He wondered what it was that brought her to the City of ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... bore 5 The trophies of a conqueror; In dreams, his song of triumph heard; Then wore his monarch's signet ring; Then pressed that monarch's throne—a king; As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing, 10 As Eden's garden bird. ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... will be the prettiest bird among them, and flower too, to my eyes," said Glenn, gazing at the clear and brilliant though laughing eyes of ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... animals is, indeed, perfectly wonderful. A lieutenant in the navy informed me, that while his ship was under sail in the Mediterranean, a favourite canary bird escaped from its cage, and flew into the sea. A Newfoundland dog on board witnessed the circumstance, immediately jumped into the sea, and swam to the bird, which he seized in his mouth, and then swam back with it to the ship. On arriving on board and opening ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... month; and they had begun to reconcile their minds to making the best use of the means they possessed to reach some frequented port. The Rolla's top-gallant sail was first seen in the horizon by a man in the new boat, and was taken for a bird; but regarding it more steadfastly, he started up and exclaimed, d—n my bl—d what's that! It was soon recognised to be a sail, and caused a general acclamation of joy, for they doubted not it was a ship coming to their succour. Lieutenant Flinders, ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... of the kind. I know darn well she had something to do with it—but I don't believe she did the actual killing. That's why I'd arrest this bird Lawrence and also William Barker. They either killed the man or they ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... map maker has undoubtedly accurate ideas as to points of the compass, and faultless proficiency in depicting bird's-eye views, but he neglects entirely the putting in of various ups and down, slants and windings of the country, which apparently twist the north pole around to the east-south-east. You start due west ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... Bird & Co. were originally located at 40, Strand Road, North, a very ancient and out-of-date looking sort of a place. Their first removal was to 5, Clive Row, where they stayed until 101-1, Clive Street was erected, to which they changed finally establishing ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... of Fowls" was at no great interval of time either followed or preceded by two poems of far inferior interest—the "Complaint of Mars" (apparently afterwards amalgamated with that of "Venus"), which is supposed to be sung by a bird on St. Valentine's morning, and the fragment of "Queen Anelida and false Arcite." There are, however, reasons which make a less early date probable in the case of the latter production, the history of the origin and purpose of which can hardly be said as yet to be removed ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... His teachers are harassing his mind with methods of thinking: the historical method; the experimental method of science; the interpretative method of literature. Unfortunately, the charges of information too often lodge higgledy-piggledy, like bird-shot in a signboard; and the waves of influence make an impression which is too often incoherent and confused. If the historians really taught the youth to think historically from the beginning, and the scientists really ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... also had other methods. Albert would take a duck, cut it open and clean it, but leave the feathers on. Then he would put it in water, until the feathers were soaked thoroughly, after which he would cover it up with ashes, and put hot coals on top of the ashes. When the bird was properly cooked and drawn from the ashes, the skin could be pulled off easily, taking the feathers, of course, with it. Then a duck, sweet, tender, and delicate, such as no restaurant could furnish, was ready for the hardy youngsters. ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... leaned eagerly over the plate of gold and clutched the coin with growing avarice. Her fingers opened and closed like a bird of prey. She touched it lovingly and held it in her hands a long time watching Jim's nodding head with furtive glances. She dropped a handful of coin into the plate and watched its ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... The old jail-bird screwed a tear out of his eye with a dirty knuckle, and departed abruptly, leaving the little teacher just about ready ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... hawk" is a proverbial comparison, but kestrels venture into the outskirts of Brighton, and even right over the town. Not long since one was observed hovering above a field which divides part of Brighton from Hove. The bird had hardly settled himself and obtained his balance, when three or four rooks who were passing deliberately changed their course to attack him. Moving with greater swiftness, the kestrel escaped their angry but clumsy assaults; still they drove him from ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... a tall and slight young man with a happy laugh and an air which suggested to Sabre, after puzzlement, that his spirit was only alighted in his body as a bird alights and swings upon a twig, not engrossed in his body. He did not look very strong. His mother said he had a weak heart. He said he had a particularly strong heart and used to protest, "Oh, Mother, I do wish you wouldn't talk that bosh ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... my garden, Where sweet, sweet flowers grow; And in the pear-tree dwells a robin, The dearest bird ...
— Under the Window - Pictures & Rhymes for Children • Kate Greenaway
... was beginning to look cross and sullen; this meeting coming on the top of that lovely walk seemed like a black shadow cast over the radiance of their happiness, and this thin, tall girl, all in black, with black hair fluttering round her pale face, seemed like a big black bird of evil presage: her skirts flapped round her knees like wings and her voice sounded cold and harsh like the croaking ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Songster Pussy Willows Paper-Makers A Butterfly Grasshopper and Cricket. Illustration by Alice Barber Stephens Spider and Web A Woodmouse Little Freehold. By S. J. Carter An Interesting Family. By S. J. Carter Frog and Lily-pads Four little Friends A Bird's House Feathered Travelers Over the Nest A Bird's Nest Swallows Bird and Nest. From photograph by S. J. Eddy Robin Frightened Bird Mother Bird feeding Little One The Goldfinch Sparrows A Wintry Day The Farmer's Friend Head-piece to "The Cost of a Hat" The Snowy Heron Egret Plumes Sea-gulls ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... cried with a sneer, "you are come to fetch your loving bride, I suppose; but the beautiful bird has flown from the nest, and will never sing any more. The cat has fetched it away, and she intends also to scratch your eyes out. To thee is Lettice lost; thou wilt ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... slope. Sweat beaded his forehead and trickled down his nose. Scattered boulders seemed to move gently. He closed his eyes for an instant. When he opened them he thought he saw a movement in the brush below. The heat burned into his back, and he shrugged his shoulders. A tiny bird flitted past and perched on the dry, dead stalk of a yucca. Again Waring thought he saw ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... must inevitably starve. He had no communications with the outside. The Hollanders lay with their ships below Caudebec, blockading the river's mouth and the coast. His only chance of extrication lay across the Seine. But Alexander was neither a bird nor a fish, and it was necessary, so Henry thought, to be either the one or the other to cross that broad, deep, and rapid river, where there were no bridges, and where the constant ebb and flow of the tide made transportation almost impossible in face of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fell from my eyes. I instantly understood that M. de Chalusse had selected the Marquis de Valorsay to be my husband, and thus the marquis had designedly explained his matrimonial programme for my benefit. It was a snare to catch the bird. I felt indignant that he should suppose me so wanting in delicacy of feeling and nobility of character as to be dazzled by the life of display and facile pleasure which he had depicted. I had disliked him at first, ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... encamp for the night. The trees were small of size, but so exquisitely arranged that one might well ask what artist's hand had planted them—scattering them here, grouping them there, and training their shapely spires towards heaven. "Hereafter," says Miss Bird, "when I call up memories of the glorious, the view from this camping-ground will come up. Looking east, gorges opened to the distant plains, there fading into purple-grey. Mountains with pine-clothed skirts rose in ranges, or, solitary, uplifted their grey summits; while close behind, ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... bolted across the plain, but no one thought of them as the Aviatik ran uneasily forward over the soft ground and rose like a bird. ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... dove, after flitting about for a while, at length settled down on the cross before the face of the priest. The deacon was amazed; and trembling on account of the novelty both of the light and of the bird, for that is a rare bird in the land, fell upon his face, and palpitating, scarcely dared to rise even when the necessity of his office required it. After Mass Malachy spoke to him privately and bade him, as he valued his ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... in this neighbourhood. I have almost been induced to think this noise serves as a decoy to the male mole-cricket, this being occasionally found in the craw of these birds when shot. Those who may not be acquainted with the cry of the bird or the insect, may imagine the noise of an auger boring oak, or any hard wood, continued, and not broken off, as is the noise of the auger, from the constant changing of the hands. The eggs of the fern owl have frequently been brought me by boys: they are only two in number, greyish white, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... her bedside." He then led in fervent supplication, followed by a few others. Said a friend present: "The announcement fell upon us like an electric shock, and I never heard brother Smart, or those who followed, pray with such power. Then brother Bird arose and said, 'I feel confident that we shall have an answer to our prayers, that sister Haviland will be restored or ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... impediment, beautiful and affectionate mistresses; but her lot was endless misery (for her tyrant was certainly immortal), unless the supreme Disposer of events should, by some miracle, suspend the listlessness of her existence. She had scarcely finished this ejaculation, when the shadow of a bird, which nearly intercepted all the light proceeding from the narrow window of her room, arrested her attention, and a falcon of the largest size flew into the chamber, and perched at the foot of her bed. ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... country, there being a very thick mist, we sawe our shadowes on the fogg as on a wall by the light of the lanternes, sc. about 30 or 40 foot distance or more. There were several gentlemen which sawe this; particularly Mr. Stafford Tyndale. I have been enformed since by some that goe a bird-batting in winter nights that the like hath been ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... poor Schmucke into the marble-works hard by, where Mme. Sonet and Mme. Vitelot (Sonet's partner's wife) were eagerly prodigal of efforts to revive him. Topinard stayed. He had seen Fraisier in conversation with Sonet's agent, and Fraisier, in his opinion, had gallows-bird written on his face. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Alfred to give my godchild, Cicely Horner,[Footnote: The present Hon. Mrs. George Lambton.], the bird-brooch Burne Jones designed, and the Sintram Arthur [Footnote: The Right Hon. Arthur Balfour.], gave me. I leave my best friend, Frances, my grey enamel and diamond bracelet, my first edition of Wilhelm Meister, with the music folded up in it, and my Burne Jones ''spression' drawings. Tell ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... came to Frankfort, and this afternoon we have been driving out to see the lions, and in the first place the house where Goethe was born. Over the door, you remember, was the family coat of arms. Well, while we were looking I perceived that a little bird had accommodated the crest of the coat to be his own family residence, and was flying in and out of a snug nest wherewith he had crowned it. Little fanciful, feathery amateur! could nothing suit him so well as Goethe's ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is flabby and shows a bluish color; it becomes green over the crop and abdomen, and the skin is already broken or easily pulled apart in handling. The odor of such a bird is disagreeable and ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... the old man, 'half the people of the barony know that their poor auld laird is somewhere hereabout; for I see they do not suffer a single bairn to come here a bird-nesting; a practice whilk, when I was in full possession of my power as baron, I was unable totally to inhibit. Nay, I often find bits of things in my way, that the poor bodies, God help them! leave there, because they think they may be useful to me. I hope they will get a wiser master, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... to himself, with a glance at the tall retiring figure, 'that is a nice friend for a bishop to have. He's a jail-bird if I mistake not; and he is afraid of my finding out his business with Pendle. Birds of a feather,' sighed Mr Cargrim, entering the hotel. 'I fear, I sadly fear that his lordship is but a whited sepulchre. ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... black bird with yellow wings, usually met with along the brook flitting from stone to stone, diverted his thoughts from Jerusalem and set him wondering what instinct had brought the bird up from the brook on to a dry hill-top. The bird must have ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... 1617, these domestic affairs totally changed. The political marriage of his daughter with Villiers being now resolved on, the business was to clip the wings of so fierce a bird as Coke had found in Lady Hatton, which led to an extraordinary contest. The mother and daughter hated the upstart Villiers, and Sir John, indeed, promised to be but a sickly bridegroom. They had contrived to make up a written contract of marriage ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... out of sight beyond the mountains these sounds of bird-life gradually died away. Under the great pines the evening was still with the silence of primeval desolation. The sense of sadness and loneliness, the melancholy of the wilderness, came over me like a spell. Every ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... cubits by thirty, and polishing them down to twenty cubits by ten, will place them in the gates of Jerusalem." A certain disciple contemptuously observed, "No one has ever yet seen a precious stone as large as a small bird's egg, and is it likely that such immense ones as these have any existence?" He happened one day after this to go forth on a voyage, and there in the sea he saw the angels quarrying precious stones and pearls like those his Rabbi had told him of, and upon inquiry he learned that ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... whispering voice of Spring, The thrush's trill, the cat-bird's cry, Like some poor bird with prisoned wing That sits and sings, but longs ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... me," returned his lordship bluntly. "I like not to see a wild bird caged. The linnet is never so sweet ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... the bird's rich notes rang out, a deeper feeling came to him, and a wave of dissatisfaction with his life swept over him. He suddenly seemed lonelier than he had been. Then the picture of the girl on her knees came back to him, and his heart softened ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... self-possessed. When the sovereign bade him receive visitors his countenance changed, and his legs appeared to bend. Bowing to those beside him, he straightened his robes in front and behind, hastening forward with his elbows extended like a bird's wings. When the guest had retired he used to report to the prince, saying, "The guest does not any more look back." When he entered the palace gate he seemed to stoop as though it were not high ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... I am tempted to the agreeable suspicion that I have hit upon the very stream of the legend and that the god Pan sits hard by in the thicket and beats his shaggy hoof in rhythm. It is his song that the wind sings in the trees. If a bird sings in the meadow its tune is pitched to Pan's ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... sweet to stretch one's cramped wings to the sun, to ruffle and spread them, as a released bird will, but it was startling to find already little stiff habits arisen, little creaks and hindrances never suspected, that made flight in the high air not ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... that in man is wise and good, And fear of Him who is a righteous Judge,— Why do not these prevail for human life, To keep two hearts together, that began Their springtime with one love, and that have need Of mutual pity and forgiveness sweet To grant, or be received; while that poor bird— O, come and hear him! Thou who hast to me Been faithless, hear him;—though a lowly creature, One of God's simple children that yet know not The Universal Parent, how he sings! As if he wished the firmament ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... at the Bath War Hospital a hen lays an egg every day in a soldier's locker. Only physical difficulties prevent the large hearted bird from laying it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... king of the birds, the eagle, flew up to Juan, and said, "To repay you for your kindness, I will give you some feathers from my wings. Any time you want aid from us, just burn some of the feathers, and let the ashes be carried by the wind. Then we will come to you." Juan thanked the bird, and put the feathers in his pocket where he kept ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... tons, carrying twelve guns, and sailing under a jury main-mast. On our approach she hoisted English colors; and, on being hailed, told us she belonged to London, and was now bound from Virginia homewards, which seemed probable, as many tame fowl were on board; and a red bird ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... his glance toward the tall, church-like windows, and when he caught sight of a bird that had alighted on the sill and dug his yellow bill into the feathers on his breast, he lost his self-command for a moment and ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... my love yon lilac fair, Wi' purple blossoms to the spring; And I a bird to shelter there, When wearied on my ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... That there was, all the time, a deeper cause of her peace, Kirsty knew well-the same that is the root of life itself; and if it was not, at this moment or at that, filled with conscious gratitude, her heart was yet like a bird ever on the point of springing up to soar, and often soaring high indeed. Whether it came of something special in her constitution that happiness always made her quiet, as nothing but sorrow will make some, I do not presume ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... the passing host, The martial fury in their wonder lost. Jove's bird on sounding pinions beat the skies; A bleeding serpent, of enormous size, His talons trussed; alive, and curling round, He stung the bird, whose throat received the wound. Mad with the smart, he drops the ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... Come, now, love me at once; or, my word, I will return to the fight, and if I am killed, so much the worse for you. You will no longer have a knight to help you, and you will still have seven Mauprats to keep at bay. I'm afraid you are not strong enough for that rough work, my pretty little love-bird." ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... I were you, Gilmore," said the parson, as a bird rose from the ground close at their feet, "I should cease to be nice about the shooting after ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... a spine, they stiffened. There came a fearful rending of laths; the mopboard buckled; two vases of alabaster fell from the parlor mantel, and almost at the same moment the red plush clock with the stone cuckoo-bird over the dial and the music box "where its gizzard should have been," as Elmer always said, fell likewise. Pearl said afterward she knew that had gone because it started playing there on the floor at a great rate. And the next thing she knew ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... abandonment. The absence of the proprietors every summer in avoidance of malaria, and the consequent expense of overseer's wages, hampered operations on a small scale, as did also the maintenance of special functionaries among the slaves, such as drivers, boatswains, trunk minders, bird minders, millers and coopers. In 1860 Louis Manigault listed the forty-one rice plantations on the Savannah River and scheduled their acreage in the crop. Only one of them had as little as one hundred acres in rice, and ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... that hour, naughty fellow. Oh, what a tame ending to your romance! Your beautiful ghost come to visit you from unknown regions, clad in white and rustling garments, has resolved itself into a lame bird, rather poverty-stricken in the matter ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... through breaking mist and flashing dew. A wood-thrush sang, and he knew the song came from the bird of which little Mavis was the human counterpart. Woodpeckers were hammering and, when a crested cock of the woods took billowy flight across a blue ravine, he knew him for a big cousin of the little red-heads, just as Mavis was a ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... I found one day a very old forgotten map after the fashion of a bird's-eye view, representing the Crimea, that fascinated me and kept me for hours navigating its ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... instinct of the horse. Riding beneath the solemn starlight, or soft, gray mist, or densest blackness, the frogs croaking, the strange "chuckwuts-widow" droning his ominous note above my head, the mocking-bird dreaming in music, the great Southern fireflies rising to the tree-tops, or hovering close to the ground like glowworms, till the horse raised his hoofs to avoid them; through pine woods and cypress swamps, or past sullen brooks, or white tents, or the dimly seen huts of sleeping negroes; ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... we say and we sigh; But why should we sigh as we say? The commonplace sun in the commonplace sky Makes up the commonplace day. The moon and the stars are commonplace things, And the flower that blooms, and the bird that sings; But dark were the world, and sad our lot, If the flowers failed, and the sun shone not; And God, who studied each separate soul, Out of commonplace ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... the animal's neck. 'Everything in me answered him,' she informed me, with the grave intelligence of a patient who relates a symptom past. As she took the reins she turned to me again. 'His spirit came to mine like a homing bird,' she said, and in her smile even the pale reflection of happiness was sweet and stirring. It left me hanging in imagination over the source and the stream, a little blessed in the ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... undoubtedly to satisfy themselves as to how the work of destruction had progressed, and one of our little observation planes gave battle to the visitors, engaging the nearest one first. His companion bird made for ours, but before he could get underneath to do anything, the first German bird had been winged and downed. Our anti-aircraft guns now made it so warm for the other bird that he beat it. The visit, however, must have had beneficial results for Fritz, for immediately after the plane ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... thoughts, and in my heart of hearts, I may honestly and truly say so.... I wish I could find in your welcome letter some hint of an intention to visit England. I can't. I have held it at arm's length, and taken a bird's eye view of it, after reading it a great many times, but there is no greater encouragement in it this way than on a microscopic inspection. I should love to go with you—as I have gone, God knows how often—into Little Britain, and Eastcheap, and Green Arbor Court, and Westminster ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... doctor, "I have a peculiar way of cooking that game, and if you recognise it for a sea bird I'll consent never to kill ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... Hungary, at a baptism, the oldest woman present takes the child out, and, digging a circular trench around the little one, whom she has placed upon the earth, utters the following words: "Like this Earth, be thou strong and great, may thy heart be free from care, be merry as a bird" (392 (1891). 20). All of these practices have their analogues in ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... think you called it," he remarked, "may be a very eloquent prophet for the whole kingdom of his species, but the song of life for a bird and that for a man are surely ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long; And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad; The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallowed and so gracious ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... the wrath divine, Of honeyed meal before the powers who save. Behold an eagle flying in affright To Phoebus' shrine; fear struck me mute, my friends. Then lo! a falcon on the eagle swoops, Assails him with his wings and tears his head With angry talons, while the mightier bird Cowers unresisting. Awful 'twas to see, Awful it is for you to hear. My son, If well he fares, will boundless glory win, If ill—yet he no reckoning owes the state; Let him but live and he is ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... you could have knocked me down with a feather, I tell you! I never saw such a sight in my life, and may I never see such another again! There, with his head well out of the water, shaped like a big bird, and higher in the air than the main truck of the ship, was a gigantic reptile like a sarpint, only bigger than you ever dreamt of. He was wriggling through the water at a fearful rate, and going nearly ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... crept along the ground or up the stems of the trees. In one or two open spots we startled several kangaroos of a small species which went hopping away, looking back curiously at us every now and then. Suddenly also we came upon a cassowary, a wingless bird, the body of which is about twice the size of a large turkey, but its long legs raise it to the height of five or six feet from the ground. It is covered with long close black hair like feathers. The skin of the neck is bare, and it is of a bright blue ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... lived, Sen-senb and her mother holding on to the tall papyrus plants and pulling them aside to make room for the boat, or plucking the beautiful lotus-lilies, of which the Egyptians were so fond. When the birds rose, Tahuti and his father let fly their throw-sticks, and when a bird was knocked down, the cat, which had been sitting quietly in the bow of the boat, dashed forward among the reeds and secured the fluttering creature before ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... her comely comrade, and crying as she went. And as she was searching, she saw a crane of the meadows and her two nestlings, and the cunning beast the fox watching the nestlings; and when the crane covered one of the birds to save it, he would make a rush at the other bird, the way she had to stretch herself out over the birds; and she would sooner have got her own death by the fox than her nestlings to be killed by him. And Credhe was looking at that, and she said: "It is no wonder I to have such love for my comely sweetheart, and the bird ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... of his unwonted position; and then, without further preliminaries, rushed into the subject which was uppermost in both our minds by inquiring, in a slightly sarcastic way, if I was very much surprised to find my bird flown when I returned to the Hoffman House ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... drowned in one of the cracks of the ice, by two other men belonging to the same party who had been with him but a few minutes before. We could never ascertain precisely in what manner this accident happened, but it was supposed that he must have overreached himself in stooping for a bird that he had killed. His remains were committed to the earth on Sunday the 10th, with every solemnity which the occasion demanded, and our situation would allow; and a tomb of stones with a suitable inscription was afterwards erected over ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... balloon, father of the dirigible, soars and floats could be deduced by men of natural powers of observation and little science from the action of clouds and smoke, the airplane, the Winged Victory of our day, waited upon two things—the scientific analysis of the anatomy of bird wings and the internal ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... like the rest of the house, and a few straw chairs with one deal table was the only furniture there. On the wall hung several bird-cages, whose inmates were twittering and warbling one to another. Before the small window, which looked out upon a noble walnut-tree, stood several glass globes, in which various worms and fishes were leading an ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the whole world like it. It's a sort of cross between the singing of a bird an' the wailin' of the wind. It's the ghost ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... of melody. The chant was determined by curious signs printed under the words, and the signs that made nice music were rather rare, and the nicest sign of all, which spun out the word with endless turns and trills, like the carol of a bird, occurred only a few times in the whole Pentateuch. The child, as he listened to the interminable incantation, thought he would have sprinkled the Code with bird-songs, and made the Scroll of the Law warble. But he knew this ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... got out of bed to write the letter. Everything she said in it was very sharp and real, but she herself, as a living thing, seemed to have receded into the distance. It seemed to me that she was like a bird, flying far away in distant skies, and I was like a perplexed bare-footed boy standing in the dusty road before a farm house and looking at her receding figure. I wonder if you will understand ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... undoubtedly suffered at the hands of that militant person, Mrs. Willing. "Great Scott!" Duncan exclaimed as he examined the two-inch gash in his head. "That's a bird, Pete." ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... two Master Hardy's existence was brightened by the efforts of an elderly steward who made no secret of his intentions of putting an end to it. Mr. Wilks at first placed great reliance on the saw that "it is the early bird that catches the worm," but lost faith in it when he found that it made no provision for cases in which the worm leaning from its bedroom window addressed spirited remonstrances to the bird on the subject of its ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... down to his office in the morning, all the nurses in the neighborhood were accustomed to stop in his path, that he might have some playful conversation with the little ones in their charge. He had a pleasant nick-name for them all; such as "Blue-bird," or "Yellow-bird," according to their dress. They would run up to him as he approached home, calling out, ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... of our modern reformers knew any biology, or even happened to visit a music-hall where the biograph was showing scenes of bird-life, they would learn that the human arrangement whereby the father goes out and forages for mother and children has roots in hoary antiquity. The pity is that there is no one to point the moral to the crowd when the father-bird is seen returning ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... in the night while my man slept," Mitiahwe answered, looking straight before her, "and it was like the cry of a bird—calling, calling, calling." ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... we came within the searching glance of a hungry eagle, which soaring over our heads for some time, at length swooped within range of our guns, when he paid for his curiosity with the loss of his life. This was the only rapacious bird we saw in Collier Bay, and appears to be of the species Falco leucogaster Latham.* On examination, the stomach contained fish and part of a small snake, and from what I have since observed this bird frequents the sea coast. Their nests are very ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... was abroad; rain had fallen in the night, and the grass was wet and cool to Niger's hoofs; the earth sent up a savor, which like a soft warp was crossed by a woof of sweet odors from leaf-buds and wild flowers, and spangled here and there with a silver thread of bird song—for but few of the beast-angels were awake yet. Through the fine consorting mass of silence and odor, went the soft thunder of Niger's gallop over the turf. His master's joy had overflowed into him: the creatures are not all stupid that can not speak; ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... the unromantic night, out of the somber blurring January fog, came a voice lifted in song, a soprano, rich, full and round, young, yet matured, sweet and mysterious as a night-bird's, haunting and elusive as the murmur of the sea in a shell: a lilt from La Fille de Madame Angot, a light opera long since forgotten in New York. Hillard, genuinely astonished, lowered his pipe and listened. To sit dreaming ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath |
