"Feather" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... should carry a copy of the Bible. Do they? Are they in affinity with the Bible? Are they even friendly to it? Things that are in affinity with each other are drawn together. "A fellow feeling makes us very kind." "By their fruits ye shall know them." "Birds of a feather flock together." ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880
... fortune in a country lane to come across a wagon laid up by the roadside, just inside a field—a lodging far more tempting than that offered by Mr Josephs, and considerably cheaper. The fatigues and troubles of the day operated like a feather-bed for the worn-out and dispirited outcast, and he slept soundly, dreaming of Forrester, and the bookshop, and the ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... effected, that the onrushing shell scarcely lessened its headway. The trapper seized the oars on the instant, while Herbert supported him with equal swiftness with the paddle and the light craft raced along like a feather ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... man." Democracy means "a victory of sentiment over reason"; it is the triumph of the unfit, the ascendancy of the second-rate, the conquest of quality by quantity, the smothering of the hard and true under the feather-bed of the ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... hundred soldiers burst into the Yamkas and began to wreck house after house. They were joined by an innumerable mob that gathered on the run—men of the golden squad[31], ragamuffins, tramps, crooks, souteneurs. The panes were broken in all the houses, and the grand pianos smashed to smithereens. The feather beds were ripped open and the down thrown out into the street; and yet for a long while after—for some two days—the countless bits of down flew and whirled over the Yamkas, like flakes of snow. The wenches, bare-headed, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... when I remonstrated against this, her reply was, "The little things like it so much!" There was no use in telling her that the fifth comfit weighed a quarter of an ounce, and made every sale into a loss to her pocket. So I remembered the green tea, and winged my shaft with a feather out of her own plumage. I told her how unwholesome almond-comfits were, and how ill excess in them might make the little children. This argument produced some effect; for, henceforward, instead of the fifth comfit, she always told them to hold out their tiny palms, ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... diggin' my 'taters. But I kep' on gazin' at the b'ar a-circusin' at the bottom o' the gulley, an 't wa'n't long 'fore the hull big carcase begun to raise right up offen the ground an' come a-floatin' up outen the gulley, fer all the world ez if 't wa'n't more'n a feather. The b'ar come up'ards tail foremost, an' I noticed th't he looked consid'able puffed out like, makin' him seem lik' a bar'l sailin' in the air. Ez the b'ar kim a-floatin' out o' the dep's I could feel my eyes begin to bulge, an' my knees to shake like ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... title deeds and know that they are sound. You will surely see that faith in this sense, and credulity, a belief without inquiry, are the very reverse of each other, and how much superior is the former to the latter. Credulity is a mere feather, liable to be blown about with every veering wind of doctrine. Faith, as St. Paul means it, is as firm as a castle on a rock, where the foundations have been carefully examined and tested, before the building was ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... were some Sulus on the 'Lorna Doone' with us, wearing horsey-looking trousers, short jackets with buttons on the sleeves, bright sashes stuck full of knives and other arms, and jaunty little turbans, something like a Maccaroni's cap with the traditional feather stuck in it. They seemed altogether superior in point of civilisation and appearance to the Sarawak and Brunei Dyaks; and if the taste of the lady whose adventures I have just recorded was at all consulted, I cannot help thinking she made a mistake in ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... comfort of reflections is thin: the only comfort that counts in life is not to have been a fool. That's a beatitude I shall doubtless never enjoy. "Why, you ought to meet her and talk it over," is what I immediately said. "Birds of a feather flock together." I told him who she was and that they were birds of a feather because if he had had in youth a strange adventure she had had about the same time just such another. It was well known to her friends—an incident she was constantly called on to describe. ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... one of the pillars of the theater, Majkowska, a handsome actress dressed in a light gown, a silken wrap, and a white hat with a big ostrich feather. She was all rosy from a good night's sleep and from an invisible layer of rouge. She had large, dark-blue eyes, full and carmined lips, classical features, and a proud bearing. She ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... circled by his left arm, he took the candlestick in his right hand, and went out of the room with his burden, along a passage leading to a seldom-used staircase, which he ascended, carrying that tall, slim form as if it had been a feather-weight, up flight after flight, to the muniment room in the roof. From that point his journey, and the management of that unconscious form, and to dispose safely of the lighted candle, became more difficult, and occupied a considerable time; during which interval the impatience ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... their mortal feet so oft had trodden. Men of note and worth were there, and men of no other significance than that wrought by rich apparel. Here men brought their dearest hopes and fears, and here they came to flaunt a feather or to tell a traveller's tale. It was the place of deferred hopes and the place of poisoned tongues, and the place in which to suck the last sweet drop in an enemy's cup of trembling. It was the haunt of laughter and of fevered wit and of rivalry in all things, ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... crags, where the fern-trees began to feather up among the fallen boulders, the bushrangers turned like hunted wolves, and ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... indifferent towards her, but had loved her as a child, for the same reason that the twins thought her the most charming of womankind, because she treated them as if they were her equals in intelligence, as no doubt they were. It had never occurred to them to mimic her, which was a feather in her cap if she had known it. And another was that Miss Bird adored her, being made welcome in her house, and, as she said, treated like ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... do so is given to the house of Abraham Levi, and they export as much as they choose. But, as I said before, if Griefensack gets the helm, nothing can be done. For the first year he would be obliged to attend strictly to his duty, in order to be able afterwards to feather his nest at the expense of the country. He must first make sure of his ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... more modern aspect he tells you that a girl at the Junior Promenade had on a blue dress with feathers around her neck—which you must translate into meaning anything from blue satin to organdie, and that between dances she wore a feather boa. ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... headwaters of the James and the Potomac with the tributaries of the Ohio, if the trade and allegiance of the people of Kentucky were to be secured to Virginia and to the Union. "The western States," he wrote to Governor Harrison of Virginia, "stand as it were upon a pivot. The touch of a feather would turn them any way." The situation in Kentucky became more acute as intimations reached the people that John Jay was proposing to renounce the free navigation of ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... narrowed to slits, as they always did when he was thinking intensely. Were their suspicions of the showman about to be justified? Did Jay Hardman's interest in Leroy have its source merely in their being birds of a feather, or was there a more direct community of lawlessness between them? Was he a member of Wolf Leroy's murderous gang? Three men had joined in the chase of Dailey, but the tracks had told him that only two horses had galloped from the scene of the murder into the night. The inference left to draw was ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... then the young Prince Nicholas Andreevich was baptized. The wet nurse supported the coverlet with her chin, while the priest with a goose feather anointed the boy's little red ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... furnishings of the house, the feather-bed is soft to lie on, and the dresser with the delft, and the creepy stool beside the fire, the noble chairs? You wouldn't be selling them ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... brown velvet gown and an ostrich-feather boa in delicate shades of cream and brown, and a cavalier hat with sweeping white plumes. Her hair was the colour of autumn leaves, or a squirrel's back in the sunshine, and she had grey eyes and piquant, irregular features, ears like shells, and a delicate, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... An eagle's feather floated out from between the pages at the eighth of Romans. It had been picked up on the snows of the Rocky Mountains. If she had wondered at first, she soon saw why Vincent had chosen that chapter ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... aspirant, an apprentice in any walk of life, honoured by being permitted to work along with some one who was recognised all over the world as being at the very top of that special profession. Would it not be a feather in the boy's cap all his life? And would he not think it the greatest honour that ever had been done him that he was allowed to co-operate, in however inferior a fashion, with such an one? Jesus Christ says to us, 'Come and work here side by side with Me,' But Christian men, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... or to remember her on account of any peculiarity in it. If she is beautiful, let her dress aid her beauty by not drawing away the attention from it. If she is plain, let her not attract all eyes to her plainness. Let not people say of her, "Did you see that ugly girl with that scarlet feather in her hat?" or, "with that bonnet covered with pearl beads, contrasting with her dark and sallow complexion?" or, "with that bright green gown, which made ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... appeared a man, dressed in blue; the buttons on his coat shone like rows of little lights. She approached. At the same instant she felt a pair of arms with galloons lift her up as if she were a feather and with a swift movement place her in the room. All was changed. Suddenly a crash was heard, a violent blow that shook the house to its foundations. Neither knew the cause of the noise. They trembled ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... after you, Joe, sure as shooting," remarked Jim. "It would be a big feather in their cap to start off with copping the greatest pitcher in the game. They'd be willing to offer you a fortune to get you. They figure that after that start the other fellows they want will be tumbling ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... in my garden of lilies There I saw endible, crindible, cronable kernt Ofttimes pestered my eatable, peatable, partable present, And I called for my man William, the second of quillan, To bring me a quill of anatilus feather That I might conquer the ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... sawdust and bark I would stuff in the dark An owl better than that; I could make an old hat Look more like an owl Than that horrid fowl, Stuck up there so stiff like a side of coarse leather. In fact, about him there's not one natural feather." ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... Jerry. I knew you was about all in, but I never CALLED you old. I wouldn't hurt your feelings. What did you do? You set around on your bony hips and criticized and picked at me. But you've picked my last feather off and I'm plumb raw. Right ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... you from there. I was rooted to the spot—I believe that's the right expression, though it sounds rather agricultural—while at the same time you might have knocked me down with a feather! It's really true, you might. But I know you wouldn't have, you're ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... after her. And Aunt Honeyman must have found out that I am fond of her, for the old lady has received me with a scolding. Uncle Charles seems to be in very good condition again. I saw him in full clerical feather—at Madame de Moncontour's, a good-natured body who drops her h's, though Florac is not aware of their absence. Pendennis and Warrington, I know, would send you their regards. Pen is conceited, but much kinder in reality than he has the air of being. Fred Bayham is doing well, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and pulled a yellow feather out of his crest, which he has planted in the flower-bed, either as a trophy, or to ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... is a native of South America. "It is short-stemmed and procumbent, but has a magnificent crown of light green ostrich-feather-like leaves, which rise from thirty to forty feet high." The fruit is as big as a man's head. Two or three millions of the nuts are imported by us every year, and applied to all the purposes of use and ornament for which ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... footsteps were heard at the end of the corridor. The confessor returned, followed by the Baron de Wostpur, who walked along with his head raised, as if he were discussing with himself the possibility of touching the ceiling with the feather in his hat. Therefore, at the appearance of the Franciscan, at his melancholy look, and seeing the plainness of the room, he stopped, and inquired,—"Who has ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Harrison, and tried to enlist him in their favor by repeating how well James had been treated, and how happy he was in slavery. Friend Harrison replied, in his ironical way, "O, I know very well that slaves sleep on feather beds, while their master's children sleep on straw; that they eat white bread, and their master's children eat brown. But enclose ten acres with a high wall, plant it with Lombardy poplars and the most beautiful shrubbery, build a magnificent castle in the midst of it, give thee pen, ink, ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... quietly together the rest of the way. After arriving, we girls went by ourselves into one of Mrs. Sampson's sloping chambers, where there was a low bedstead, and a thick feather-bed covered with a patchwork-quilt of the "Job's Trouble" pattern, a small, dim looking-glass surmounted by a bunch of "sparrow-grass," and an unpainted floor ornamented with home-made rugs which were embroidered with pink flower-pots containing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... I use to tell him of his two capon's tails about his hat, that are laid spread-eaglewise to make a feather; I would go into the snow at any time, and in a quarter of an hour I would come in with a better feather upon my head; and so farewel, sir; I have had the better on you hitherto, and for this time I ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... adventure; but she averred that, contrariwise, it had the effect to rouse every atom of energy and spirit which she possessed. She had waited only to slip on a double-gown, and, seizing the first article fit for offensive service, which proved to be a feather duster, she hurried to the scene of action. She said afterwards, that she had felt equal to knocking down ten men, if they had come within her range. I remember myself that she did look rather formidable. Her double-gown was red ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... its nomenclature." The Bon-po Lamas are above all sorcerers and necromancers, and are very similar to the kam of the Northern Turks, the bo of the Mongols, and lastly to the Shamans. During their operations, they wear a tall pointed black hat, surmounted by the feather of a peacock, or of a cock, and a human skull. Their principal divinities are the White God of Heaven, the Black Goddess of Earth, the Red Tiger and the Dragon; they worship an idol called Kye'-p'ang formed of a mere block of wood covered with garments. Their sacred symbol ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... a word or two on the subject. This little jar has got tar in it, and tar's a very wholesome and useful thing in its proper place. Now, a few months ago them as shall be nameless meant to daub William all over with this, and feather him afterwards, because he wouldn't break his pledge. A cowardly lot they was to deal so with one man against a dozen of 'em; but that's neither here nor there. I only want you, boys and girls, to take example by William, and stick to your pledge through thick and thin. See how the Lord protected ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... back into the water, like a machine slightly out of gear, which goes on repeating some process ineffectually. The two friends read in her silence an omen of acquiescent conviction, and congratulated each other upon it with furtive nods and winks. Mick went off to the bog in high feather, believing that the interview had been a great success, and that his mother was, as Paddy put it, "comin' round to the notion gradual, like an ould goat grazin' round its tetherin' stump." His hopes, indeed, were so completely in the ascendant that he summed up his most serious uneasiness ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... of canoeing which rewarded the white men for their faith in their disreputable henchman. Charley played with the light craft in the great volume of stream as a feather might yield to a gentle breeze. The canoe sidled in to the shore through a threatening shoal of rocky outcrop, and the first stage ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... bureau, oak washstand 2 mattresses, 2 feather beds, 1 bolster 2 pillows, madras spread 1 box cot, 1 mattress, straw pillow 2 chairs, 2 towel racks Bureau cover, ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... one whose acts pleased God; and this act seems to have been particularly satisfactory. These men were "angels of God" who required this infamy for their protection! If it takes all the honor out of a man when he gets to be an angel, they may use my wings for a feather-duster. ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... Daises, and Celedony, of each a like quantity, stamp and straine out the juice out of them, and put to it a little brown Sugar Candy dissolved in white Rose-water, and drop two or three drops of this liquor at one time into the grieved eye, with a feather, lying upon the back when you doe it an hour after, this is a most approved Medicine to take away all Inflamations, Spots, Webbs, Itches, Smartings, or any griefe whatsoever ...
— A Book of Fruits and Flowers • Anonymous
... to know what to do, whether to proceed to Soudan, or return and finish my tour of the Mediterranean. Sometimes I fancy I'll toss up, and then, checking my folly, I'll try the sortes sanctorum; a feather would turn the scale. On such miserable indecision hangs ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... these occasions; and I dare say I felt as much pleasure in being in the secret of half the loves of the parish of Tarbolton, as ever did statesman in knowing the intrigues of half the courts of Europe. The very goose-feather in my hand seems to know instinctively the well-worn path of my imagination, the favourite theme of my song, and is with difficulty restrained from giving you a couple of paragraphs on the love-adventures of my compeers, ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... 'birds of a feather,'" said Elise, who had heard part of the conversation. "Ethelinda aspires to a family tree and a coat-of-arms, too. I saw her box of stationery spilled out over your table when I was in your room yesterday, and it had quite an imposing crest on the paper—a unicorn ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... add this for my own satisfaction: the man who gets her, and doesn't marry her, will ultimately experience a biting from that same worm which will make our lacerations resemble the agreeable tickling of a feather. ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... weather! Ay, and a favouring breeze! Oars upon the feather! Sun of the Southern Seas! Brave boys! Swing together, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... favorite sport was to dart down suddenly from a great height toward some perching crow, and just before touching it to turn at a hairbreadth and rebound in the air so fast that the wings of the swooper whirred with a sound like distant thunder. Sometimes one crow would lower his head, raise every feather, and coming close to another would gurgle out a long note like. What did it all mean? I soon learned. They were making love and pairing off. The males were showing off their wing powers and their voices to the lady crows. And they must have been highly appreciated, for by the middle ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Mr. R. J. Hamerton's visit Jerrold was in high feather, and, waxing eloquent on the growing influence of Punch, cried for silence while he proclaimed its ingredients. Gilbert a Beckett, he declared, was the spirit, and John Leech the sugar; Albert Smith was ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... patches of cultivation were visible—rice, fruit, and cotton—the latter looking rather unpromising. The destroyers of their rice were the monkeys. There are several varieties of fine large pigeons here, and in abundance. They are beautiful in feather and fat. A common variety has a green back and golden tail. This must be a paradise for monkeys, so abundant is their food in the forests, almost every tree bearing a fruit or nut of some sort. These French ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... with something drawing her on and something drawing her back, and palpitating in every fiber, Mrs. Wilson's voice was heard in low but anxious tones calling her. A feather turned the balanced scale. She must go. Fate had decided for her. She was called. Then the sprites of mischief tempted her to let David know she had been near him. She longed to put his commission into his pocket; but that was impossible. It was at the very bottom of her ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... his window-shelf, formed his idea of an attractive display, and that he shadowed forth his conceptions of the beautiful in symmetrical rows of plucked chickens, presenting to the public eye rear views embellished with a single feather erect in the tail of each bird; that he must be, through the ethics of competition, the sworn foe of those illogical peasants who bring dead poultry to town in cages, like singing birds, and equally the friend of those restaurateurs who furnish you a meal of victuals and a feather-bed in the same ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... hammer, is lean to scrawniness, and his arms are those of the boys you see at the track meet of Lincoln Grammar School Number Seven. The mutilated derby hat he now wore, a hat that had been weathered from plum colour to a poisonous green—a shred of peacock feather stuck in the band—lent ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... My ardent love, which will not be repressed, Plead with thee for acceptance of my suit; For I do love thee with such passionate love, That life itself, if weighed against that love, Were scarce a feather in the scale. ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... at the open window, and watched the swiftly-running mill-stream a few feet below. It had an evil sound. Then I felt the bad power that lies in water; above all, its treachery. Had not this small stream, by lending its strength to a wheel that turned other wheels, taken up a man as if he were a feather, and dashed him through a wall? When the morning light and sunshine returned, the chant of the running water was as soothing as the song ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... very banks rang again with their shouts. He was a tall man, well mounted on a strong black horse, which he caused to turn and wind like a bird in the air, carried a longer spear than the others, and wore a sort of fur cap or bonnet, with a short feather in it, which gave him on the whole rather a superior appearance to the other fishermen. He seemed to hold some sort of authority among them, and occasionally directed their motions both by voice and hand: at which times I thought his gestures were striking, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... were seeking to reach was a new discovery called Gold Lake on Feather River, where many rich gulches that emptied into it had been worked, and the lake was believed to have at least a ship load of gold in it. It was located high in the mountains and could be easily drained and a fortune soon obtained if we got there in time and ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... puzzled about a hat, Humphrey," said Edward: "I hate those steeple-crowned hats, worn by the Roundheads; yet the hat and feather is ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... these, the contents proved to be a bird—and only one—a chick recently hatched, about the size of a squab-pigeon, and fat as a fed ortolan. Unlike the progeny of the megapodes, hatched in the hot sand, the infant hornbill was without the semblance of a feather upon its skin, which was all over of a green, yellowish hue. There was not even so much as a show of ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... out through the door cast the water. Through the door cast the pebble. And when the door of the lodge was closed behind him Yaeethl, the Disappointed, once more took his own form, the shape of the raven, white of wing and white of feather. ...
— In the Time That Was • James Frederic Thorne
... fellow-conspirators out at the door, and while the pair descended the stairs with remarkable agility, she ran to the dining-room, and there beheld Pons, in his shirt, stretched out upon the tiles. He had fainted. She lifted him as if he had been a feather, carried him back to his room, laid him in bed, burned feathers under his nose, bathed his temples with eau-de-cologne, and at last brought him to consciousness. When she saw his eyes unclose and life return, she stood ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... wrote to me, she said nothing of all this, only telling of her visit to Mrs. Shelley, who had received her kindly, and to the tomb of Shakespeare, whose painted effigy she especially derided. "It looks indeed like a man who would cut his wife off with an old feather-bed and a teakettle," was one of her characteristic remarks, I remember; but there was a little postscript that told the whole story of her life, on a separate scrap of paper meant only for my eye I clearly saw, and committed instantly ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... she suggested. "While you have got her in the house, Propriety is rampant. Why condemn poor helpless Philip to cheap lodgings? Time enough to cast him out to the feather-bed and the fleas on the night before your marriage. Besides, I shall be in and out constantly—for I mean to cure your father. The tongue of scandal is silent in my awful presence; an atmosphere of virtue surrounds Mamma ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... sixteen, when she was something just for a schoolboy's taste, created by nature especially for Platonic love. What a charming little girl she was! Pale, fragile, light— she looked as though a breath would send her flying like a feather to the skies—a gentle, perplexed face, little hands, soft long hair to her belt, a waist as thin as a wasp's—altogether something ethereal, transparent like moonlight—in fact, from the point of view of a high-school boy a peerless beauty. . . . Wasn't I in love with her! I did not sleep at night. ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... she felt when she was fairly settled in the dear old bed! It was so snug—just soft enough, but not too soft—not the kind of suffocatingly soft feather-bed in which you get down into a hole and never get out of it all night. It was springy as well as soft, and though the linen was not perhaps so fine as what Lena was accustomed to at home, it was real homespun for all that—and through everything ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... of Tomo Chichi, on presenting the feather of an Eagle to Oglethorpe, is very expressive in his own laconic explication. By a little paraphrase it may be understood to import: "The Eagle has a sharp beak for his enemies, but down on his breast for his friend. He has strong wings, for he is aspiring; but they give shelter ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... Molly, in a carefully modulated tone. "You are killing those poor crocuses that have done you no harm. And you are killing me too, and what harm have I done you? Just as I began to see some chance of happiness before us, you ran away (you a soldier, to show the white feather!), and thereby ruined all the enjoyment I might have known in my good ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... of his oars, when out of the porch rushed a roar of harmony that seemed to seize his boat and blow it away upon its mission like a feather—for in the delight of the music the curate never felt the arms that urged it swiftly along. After him it came pursuing, and wafted him mightily on. Over the brown waters it went rolling, a grand billow of innumerable involving ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... been already mentioned, an ordinary feature of trance is the entire suspension of common feeling. As long as the trance is maintained, the patient is impassive to all common impressions on the touch; the smartest electric shock, a feather introduced into the nose, burning, or cutting with a knife, excite no sensation. So that surgical operations may be performed without suffering during trance just as in the stupor produced by the ether inhalation. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... supernatural powers, like the Algonquin Manabozho, the Great Hare, the king of all animals; or a deified hero, like Hiawatha, the founder of the Iroquois confederacy, and Glooscap, the favourite of Micmac legends. The Manitou or Oki might even be a stone, a fish-bone, a bird's feather, or a serpent's skin, or some other thing in the animate or inanimate world, revealed to a young man in his dreams as his fetich or guardian through life. Dreams were respected as revelations from ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... gracious God. And this fruit is bitter in proportion to the weakness of one's faith. Nay, when rightly considered, this weakness alone, being spiritual, far outweighs every weakness of the body, and renders it, in comparison, light as a feather. ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... it from the tree, and it shrank back upon itself with flattened head and angry hiss. Then it struck fiercely, again and again, at its bewildering assailants. But swift as were its movements, those of the king-birds were swifter, and its fangs never hit upon so much as one harassing feather. Suddenly, in its fury, it struck out too far, weakening for a moment its hold upon the crevices of the bark; and in that moment, both birds striking it together, its squirming folds were hurled to the ground. Thoroughly cowed, ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... He is faint, and fails, for now By the feet he hangs suspended From his glistening saddle-bow. Down are gone both cap and feather, Lance and gonfalon are down! Trunks, and cloak, and vest of velvet, He has flung them ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... the birds, if our eyes are sharp enough to see them. Some clever observer saw this little comedy played among some English sparrows, and wrote an account of it in his newspaper; it is too good not to be true: A male bird brought to his box a large, fine goose feather, which is a great find for a sparrow and much coveted. After he had deposited his prize and chattered his gratulations over it, he went away in quest of his mate. His next-door neighbor, a female bird, ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... cove, a lovely branch of Gloucester's fine harbor, again to look the Spray over and again to weigh the voyage, and my feelings, and all that. The bay was feather-white as my little vessel tore in, smothered in foam. It was my first experience of coming into port alone, with a craft of any size, and in among shipping. Old fishermen ran down to the wharf for which the Spray was heading, ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... in one of the largest hotels at Rome waiting for her husband to come in. The day was so balmy and genial that it was almost impossible for Hilda to believe that the time of year was early February. Dressed in dark-green velvet, with a creamy feather boa lying by her side, Hilda sat amidst all her unaccustomed surroundings, her eyes looking straight down the lofty room and her thoughts far away. The bride was thinking of her English home—she was ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... know whether you could have literally knocked me down with a feather, but a stout feather would certainly have come pretty near doing it. ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... Tuscan crew. His neck and throat unarm'd, his head was bare, But shaded with a length of yellow hair: Secure, he fought, expos'd on ev'ry part, A spacious mark for swords, and for the flying dart. Across the shoulders came the feather'd wound; Transfix'd he fell, and doubled to the ground. The sands with streaming blood are sanguine dyed, And death with honor sought on ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... knickerbockers and a velvet jacket, and Polly and I went into the bedroom, where she helped me to find the way to put them on. With my own blouse and my own hat (I am wearing a felt one now with a broad brim and a feather), and of course my own slippers and stockings, I made a bogh of a boy, I can tell you. I thought Polly would have died of delight in the bedroom, but when we came out she kept covering her face and crying, ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... beautiful creature. Its colour is a most delicate grey; the fur thick and short, and as soft as velvet; the eyes large and full. The membrane by which it is enabled to take its flights is of a soft texture, and white, like the fur of the chinchilla. The tail greatly resembles an elegantly-formed broad feather. ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... built by a lonely old fellow who resorted to it in summer because it was right on the fishing-grounds, and he was getting unable any longer to face the long row to and from his house in the harbour. Nowhere in the world is the old adage concerning the birds of a feather truer than on this coast. The poorer and lonelier a man is, the greater is the certainty that some other poor and lonely person will seek the shelter of their poverty. Thus it had been with old ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... jiggered!" exclaimed Shad, as Bob held his game aloft for inspection. "I didn't suppose there was hide or hair or feather on this wind-blasted, ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... with high collar going up over the neck, sleeves tight-fitting, waist narrow. All this is perfection, and the chief who can array himself in this ancient garb struts out of the fort the envy and admiration of all beholders. Sometimes the tall felt chimney-pot is graced by a large feather which has done duty in the turban of a dowager thirty years ago in England. The addition of a little gold tinsel to the coat collar is of considerable consequence, but the presence of a nether garment is not at all requisite to the completeness of the general get-up. For this most ridiculous-looking ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... of Arts by Mr J. Starkie Gardiner, describes the door as being, from its style, "the oldest piece of grill-work in England. The design is composed of sprays formed of two rolls of scrolls, welded to a central stem, like a much-curled ostrich feather, with lesser scrolls in the interstices and the major scrolls, each terminating in an open-work trefoil, or quinquefoil. The large scrolls are 5-1/2 in. in diameter and rather stout, the grill possessing great resisting powers, though it would not be ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... boys see the luncheon," laughed Susie Sharp, "and you'll be sure to think we might as well have skipped that meal. It will be light and shadowy, I promise you. Toast, lettuce salad, moonbeam soup, sprites' cake, feather ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... her blunted horns. Seen through the turbid fluctuating air, The stars obtuse emit a shivering ray; Or frequent seem to shoot, athwart the gloom, And long behind them trail the whitening blaze. Snatched in short eddies plays the withered leaf, And on the flood the dancing feather floats. With broadened nostrils to the sky upturned, The conscious heifer snuffs the stormy gale.... Retiring from the downs, where all day long They picked their scanty fare, a blackening train Of clamorous rooks thick urge their weary flight And seek the closing ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... back on the right, and The Gull, giving way on the left, Past Tamworth, who feels the whip smite, and Whose sides by the rowels are cleft; Where Tim and the chestnut together Still bear of the battle the brunt, As if eight stone twelve were a feather, He comes with a rush to ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... up the sapling, an eagle came and soared about the council which was sitting in the grass. He dropped a downy feather; it fell. It fell in the center of the cleared space. Now this was the white eagle. The chief said, "This is not what we want," so the white eagle ...
— Myths and Legends of the Great Plains • Unknown
... quite a commotion. I asked to be enlightened on so important a subject, and soon heard all the details from very willing lips. She was very simple in dress, and often came to call upon us in a fresh cotton-print gown and straw hat, with only the feather of a heron or a woodcock in it. Her husband, Captain Clifton, retired from the army, spoke French fairly well, and although he had little in common with Gilbert—being an enthusiastic sportsman—soon became ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... would not enter into conditions for it. Titles at best," added he, "are but shadows; and he that has the substance should be above valuing them; for who that has the whole bird, would pride himself upon a single feather?" ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... "Souvenir of the Bowery" that he made the second class. He started arranging and rearranging all the things in the box, just as he used to arrange the orders and decorations at the Palace. Only those were REAL things such as the Order of the Red Feather, and The Insignia of the Black Duck, and these were only poor tin baubles. But I could see that Uncle no longer knows the difference, and as his fingers fumbled among these silly things he was quite trembling and eager to begin, like a child ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... days we had together, Shadow-stricken all the lights that shone Round them, flown as flies the blown foam's feather, Dead ...
— A Century of Roundels • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Cumberland, and Princess Louisa sitting in a chaise drawn by a favourite dog, the scene in Kew Gardens, painted in 1746. Queen Elizabeth was there as a child aged seven, A.D. 1540—three-quarters, with a feather-fan in her hand. Did the guide of the little unconscious Princess pause inadvertently, with a little catch of the breath, by words arrested on the tip of the tongue, before that picture? And was he or she inevitably arrested again before another picture of Queen Elizabeth in her prime, returning ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... step-son Henry on a lawn under the northern window of the picture-gallery, and there the ladies Elizabeth and Anne joined them—the former a cheerful woman, endowed with a large share of her father's genial temperament; joke or jest would moult no feather in lady Elizabeth's keeping; the latter quiet, sincere, and reverent. The marquis himself, notwithstanding a slight attack of the gout, had hobbled on his stick to a chair set for him on the same lawn. Beside him sat lady ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... were for all the world like two little heaps of snow. Jumper didn't move so much as a hair. Whitey didn't move so much as a feather. Both were waiting and watching. Jumper didn't move because he knew that Whitey was there. Whitey didn't move because he didn't want any one to know he was there, and didn't know that Jumper was there. Jumper was sitting still ...
— Whitefoot the Wood Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... to allow him something from perquisites. If so, his profits from the fur trade become a matter of degree. So long as he kept within the bounds of reason and decency, the government raised no objection. Frontenac certainly was not a governor who pillaged the colony to feather his own nest. If he took profits, they were not thought excessive by any one except Duchesneau. The king recalled him not because he was venal, ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... strayed through many a fitful clime, (Tossed on the wind of fortune like a feather,) And chanced with rare good fellows in my time; But ne'er the time that ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... was bright and dry. The captain and his son set off to pay their intended visit to the Duke of Ormonde. Wenlock, in his new slash doublet and hose, with a feather in his cap and a sword by his side, looked a brave young gallant, ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston
... now took the garments of his father's vanished state—the filibeg of the dark tartan of his clan, in which green predominated; the French coat of black velvet of Genoa, with silver buttons; the bonnet, which ought to have had an eagle's feather, but had only an aigrette of diamonds; the black sporran of long goat's hair, with the silver clasp; the silver mounted dirk, with its appendages, set all with pale cairngorms nearly as good as oriental topazes; and the claymore of the ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... fairly poured his soul into his task. Nothing among the bushes and trees in front of them escaped his attention. Once he saw a red feather move, but he knew that it was stuck in the hair of an Indian and he was looking for different game. He became so eager that he flattened his face against the rock and thrust forward the rifle barrel that he might lose no chance ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... have suggested much of the plastic art of Florence. Indeed, as we view these marbles it is not difficult to see whence the Renaissance sprang and to what we owe the various forms of Renaissance art. The frieze of the Muses, each of whom wears in her hair a feather plucked from the wings of the vanquished sirens, is extremely fine; there is a lovely little bas-relief of two cupids racing in chariots; and the frieze of recumbent Amazons has some splendid qualities ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... night the roar of the stream outside grew louder, and at daybreak it was running feather white. As for the snow, most of it had disappeared; stumps, logs and stones showed through it everywhere; the swamps were flooded, and every hole, hollow and depression ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... fairly broad daylight, and not an Indian feather had shown nor an Indian shot been heard. Slowly, sleepily, at the gruff summons of their sergeants, the troopers were crawling out of their blankets and stretching and yawning by the fires. No stirring trumpet-call had roused them from their dreams. ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... remain quiet during the whole night. The attar is always made at the beginning of the season, when the nights are cool; in the morning the little film of attar which is formed upon the surface of the rose-water during the night is removed by means of a feather, and it is then carefully placed in a small phial; and, day after day, as the collection is made, it is placed for a short period in the sun, and after a sufficient quantity has been procured, it is poured off clear, and of the color of amber, into small phials. Pure attar, when it has ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... even worse than the bad feeling over conscription. In this debate the angry French element in the House were a bad commentary on the still hopeful minority of broadminded French-Canadians who wanted to carry on the honour of Courcellette. The controversy over titles was no feather in the cap of the Premier, who made a bad fist of defending a practice the most glaring instance of which was the creation of hereditary ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... Violet, "that if he had to live in that house, he'd either go out and buy a plush Morris chair from feather-your-nest Saltzman's, and a golden oak sideboard, ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... to my face. Nance Olden, a sniveling coward! Me, showing the white feather—me, whimpering like a whipped ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... pulses ceased to leap and hand and heart were steady. The arrow sang from the bow and buried itself deep in the great bull's neck. Another and another followed until a full dozen were gone, every one sunk to the feather in the animal's body. Roka and Pehansan were firing at the same time, sending in arrows with powerful arms and at such close range that not one missed. They stood out all over his body and he streamed ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... often ranked, as in his vespertilian treatise on the ocelli of the Argus pheasant, which he imagines to be artistically gradated, and perfectly imitative of a ball and socket. If I had him here in Oxford for a week, and could force him to try to copy a feather by Bewick, or to draw for himself a boy's thumbed marble, his notions of feathers, and balls, {84} would be changed for all the rest of his life. But his ignorance of good art is no excuse for the acutely illogical simplicity of the rest of his talk of colour in the ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... Boswell, Esq., in the dress of an armed Corsican chief. He entered the amphitheatre about twelve o'clock. On the front of his cap was embroidered in gold letters, Viva La Liberta; and on one side of it was a handsome blue feather and cockade, so that it had an elegant, as well as a warlike appearance. He wore no mask, saying that it was not proper for a gallant Corsican. So soon as he came into the room he drew universal attention.' Cradock (Memoirs, i. 217) gives a melancholy ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... life in these parts without running across a hoss that could pack me the way a man ought to be packed on a hoss. I weigh two hundred and thirty, son, and it busts the back of a horse in the mountains. Now, you ain't a flyweight yourself, and El Sangre takes you along like you was a feather." ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... learning French, and I had been as much entertained as instructed (I mean instructed in the language). Every one knows a Frenchman can infuse airy elegance into a button, bestow a marketable value upon a straw, breathe esprit into a feather, and make ten dishes out of a nettle-top. So the poet can transform any incident into an attractive vaudeville. The tender situation dramatique, the humorous coup de theatre, the jeu d'esprit sparkling up into music, the elevated sentiment, the ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well." "If thou hast not mercy for others," says Sir Thomas Browne, "yet be not cruel unto thyself; to ruminate upon evils, to make critical notes upon injuries, is to add unto our own tortures, to feather the arrows of our enemies." There is no misery worse than that of a mind which broods continually over its own wrongs, be they real or only fancied. There is no gloom so deep and dark as that which settles ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... between them cleaning a pipe with a collection of seagull's feather gathered for the purpose on the golf links ashore. He was thin, a grey-haired, silent man. His face, in repose, was that of a deliberate thinker whose thoughts had not led him to an entirely happy goal. Yet his smile when amused had ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... The feather-weight pocket-volumes of verse that this poet puts forth, each containing a crop of tiny poems—have an excellent virtue—they are interesting, good companions for a day in the country. There is always sufficient momentum in page 28 to carry you on to page 29—something ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... me. I return you all many sincere thanks for your kindness. I am writing to you with pen and paper hoping sometime I shall come and see you all face to face. I shall not come with a sword in my hand nor a gun nor a fine feather in my cap flying about. I shall come with a nice book in my hand or a roll of paper and tell you some good news. It did not take quite all that money to buy my suit, so my sisters have got a little shawl apiece. They have not quite worn out their ...
— Jemmy Stubbins, or The Nailer Boy - Illustrations Of The Law Of Kindness • Unknown Author
... the mouth, and where they go to; and tell me when I shall die and where my soul will go to; this I ask and no more." Then the Jugi answered, "Your prayer is granted, but you must tell no one; if you do, the power will depart from you." So saying he took from his bag something like a feather and brushed her eyes with it and washed them with water. Then the woman's eyes were opened and she saw spirits—bongas, bhuts, dains, churins, and the souls of dead men; and the Jugi told her not to be afraid, but not to speak to them lest ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... friends are not more stupid than the birds, and that they will not wait for the hand of the fowler to extend their wings. I will show them that hand so plainly, that they will have quite time enough to see it. Poor Porthos! Poor Aramis! No; my fortune shall not cost your wings a feather." ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas |
