"Feathering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... melody that accompanied a peculiarly tedious system of gymnastics; she scowled unconsciously. Before her, clear to the inward vision, lay a pleasant little pond, set in a ring of new grass. Clear lay the pebbles and roots at the bottom; clear was the reflection of the feathering trees about it; clear shone the eyes of William Thayer as he joyously swam for sticks across it. Great patches of sun warmed the grass and cheered the hearts of two happy wanderers, who fortified themselves from a lunch-basket padded with a red-fringed napkin. Happy yellow dandelions ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... tell you all about it. In one way, it was as good as a circus, though it did make me grit my teeth to see how that miserable sinner acted. Oh! I just wished for a chance to give him a good kick or two. Why, honest, Hugh, I believe I could willingly assist in tarring and feathering a scamp like Brother Lu, who can settle down on his poor relative, and expect to be waited on and fed and treated like an invalid the rest of his life, while all the time he's as strong as anything, and as sleek as a well-fed ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... feet, rolled up his sleeves, and took an oar in each brown hand, bending rhythmically to his task. He looked about him, then at the girl, and drew a deep breath, feathering his oars. "I guess I must have dreamed about this ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... feeling increased, had been exposed to the violence of mobs, and to all sorts of personal indignities, in which private malice or a wanton and insolent spirit of mischief had been too often gratified under the disguise of patriotism. The barbarous and disgraceful practice of tarring and feathering and carting Tories, placing them in a cart and carrying them about as a sort of spectacle, had become in some places a favourite amusement. To restrain these outrages, Congress had specially committed the oversight of Tories and suspected ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... and summer (which they are now too fashionable to celebrate in this country), the hey-day of the whole year marked by the budding of the wild rose, the start of the wheatear from its sheath, the feathering of the lesser plantain, and flowering of the meadowsweet, and, foremost for the angler's joy, the caracole of May-flies—when these things are to be seen and felt (which has not happened at all this year), then ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... bodice or take down her hair; or imagine a valet can be devoted to a master he has to get into bed as best he can because he is too tipsy to get there unaided? Immortal "Figaro" is the type! Supple, liar, corrupt, intelligent,—he aids his master and laughs at him, feathering his own nest the while. There is a saying that "horses corrupt whoever lives with them." It would be more correct to say that domestic service demoralizes ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... to quote from Mr. Madden's "Diary of Master William Silence," "may be seen the advantage of a good character honestly won." Crusty is busy "feathering" down the road, and as he is an absolutely reliable hound, the rest of the pack are not long in coming back to him, and soon, cheered by their huntsman, they are ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... belonged to the Pemberthys, and had descended from father to son from days lying too far back to reckon up just now; and a rare, exclusive, conservative, bad-tempered, long-headed race the Pemberthys had always borne the reputation of being, feathering their own nests well, and dying in them ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... soldiers of Narvaez was whipped this very night for negligence on his post. As our powder was all expended, we were ordered to prepare a good supply of arrows for the crossbows, and were employed all the rest of the night in heading and feathering these, under the direction of Pedro Barba, who was captain of the crossbow-men. At break of day the enemy made a fresh attack and killed one Spaniard, but we drove them back, killing several of their chiefs, and took a great many prisoners. Our cavalry had been ordered out to charge the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... that ever made fuel for hell-fire. You won't get a square deal; they're going to get the fat anyhow. They've got the best claims spotted, an' men posted to jump them at the first chance. Oh, they're feathering their nests all right. They're like a lot of greedy pike just waiting to gobble down all they can. A man can't buy wine at twenty dollars per, and make dance-hall Flossies presents of diamond tararas on a government ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... more in their places. Gone were the Kips, with their waving lines. Of the Cruives, with the heather thick and purple upon them, not a trace. Gone the graceful swirl of the Cooran Hill, which curls over like a wave just feathering to break. ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... gifted to deny Christianity; such a denial and haughty abjuration could not but carry itself more profoundly into the reflective mind, even of servants, when the arrow came winged and made buoyant by the gay feathering of so many splendid accomplishments. This general fact was appreciable by those who would forget, and never could have understood, the particular arguments of the infidel. Yet, even as regarded these particular arguments, 2dly, my mother feared ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... while the moon shines on the stream, And as soft music breathes around, The feathering oar returns the gleam, And dips in concert ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... Mr. Dawkins's 'Early Man' is an Eskimo drawing of a reindeer hunt, and a palaeolithic sketch of a reindeer; these (by permission of the author and Messrs. Macmillan) we reproduce. Look at the vigour and life of the ancient drawing—the feathering hair on the deer's breast, his head, his horns, the very grasses at his feet, are touched with the graver of a true artist (Fig. 14). The design is like a hasty memorandum of Leech's. Then compare the stiff formality of the modern Eskimo drawing (Fig. ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... on the 16th of October, 1860, two Massachusetts clergymen, named Waite and Granger, went in disguise to the house of John Moody, in Rockport, at dead of night, and dragged forth two southern women and their two little children, and after tarring and feathering them conveyed them to Boston and burned them alive in the State House square; and I also grant your proposition that this deed is what led to the secession of South Carolina on the 20th of December following. Very well." [Here the company were pleasantly surprised to hear Williams proceed to come ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and divine right; no taxation without representation; Rivington the printer, Massachusettensis, and Samuel Adams; Yankee Doodle; who began the war? town-meetings, liberty-poles, mobs, tarring, feathering, and smoking Tories; Tryon, Galloway, Burgoyne, Prescott, Guy Carleton; paper-money, regulation, and tender; in short, all the men and topics which preserve our polyphilosophohistorical societies from lethargic extinction. "McFingal" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... Carolina Literary and Commercial Journal,' of January 20, 1838, published at Elizabeth City, devotes a column and a half to a description of the lynching, tarring, feathering, ducking, riding on a rail, pumping, &c., of a Mr. Charles Fife, a merchant of that city, for the crime of 'trading with negroes.' The editor informs us that this exploit of vandalism was performed very deliberately, at mid-day, and by a number of the citizens, 'THE ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... favourable report to make of his province. Notwithstanding every precaution had been adopted, smuggling was still carried on to a very great extent. The Bostonians had even adopted the practice of tarring and feathering all informers, or all who attempted to assist the government: a brutal operation, which was often attended with a violence that destroyed life. Nor was smuggling carried on in the province of Boston alone. Associations against British commerce were organized ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... or confidential land-steward. Where he is an honest, intelligent, and loyal man, he takes half the care and work off your shoulders. Such men are however rare, and if not very closely looked after, they are apt to abuse their position, and often harass the ryots needlessly, looking more to the feathering of their own nests than ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... long in feathering, and yet Dicky had not begun to sing. Still, at moments, after supper, or on a Sunday afternoon, walking in a green lane, Dicky would unbosom himself. He would tell you touching legends of his boyhood and adolescence. Then he would talk to you of women. And then he would tell you how ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... another trouble to confide to me. He had strong reason to believe that Tooke, the managing clerk at Bristol, was carrying on a course of peculation, and feathering his nest at the expense of the firm. What a grand discovery, thought I, for such a youth to have made. The firm would be infinitely obliged to him, and his fortune would be secured. He shook his head, and said that was all my ignorance; the man, Tooke, was greatly trusted, especially by Mr. ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... picturesque and beautiful form, tenanted by the cultivators, the shepherds and the herdsmen, crown every little swell in the bottom of the valley, and cling to the declivities of the mountains which rise on either hand. Above them eternal forests of firs and pines wave, feathering over the steepest and most rocky slopes with their somber foliage. Still higher, gray precipices rise and spires and pinnacles, far grander and more picturesque, if not so symmetrically formed, than those constructed by man. Between these there ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... high-pitched roof is of red tiles, and has deep projecting eaves, forming, in fact, a bold wooden cornice running along the whole length of the building, which is some two or three stories high. At the left extremity stands a clump of ancient cedars of Lebanon, feathering in evergreen beauty down to the ground. The hall is large and lofty; the floor is of polished oak, almost the whole of which is covered with thick matting; it is wainscoted all round with black oak; some seven or eight full-length pictures, evidently of ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... least of the Yankee members of this church have apostatized."* The secession of men like Booth and Ryder, and their public exposure of Smith's methods, coupled with rumors of immoral practices in the fold, were followed by the tarring and feathering of Smith and Rigdon on the night of Saturday, March 25, 1832. The story of this outrage is told in Smith's autobiography, and the details there given may ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... waly, waly, my gay goss hawk, "Gin your feathering be sheen!" "And waly, waly, my master dear, "Gin ye look ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... looking seriously at the bare flower-bed along the wall where amber shoots of peonies were feathering out into palmate grace, and older larkspurs had pushed up into ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... limestone cliffs and the Var, at the present time almost dry. As we slowly advance, the valley widens, and on either side are broad belts of verdure and fertility; fields, orchards, gardens, olive trees feathering the lower slopes, here and there, little villages perched high above the valley. One charming feature of the landscape is the aspen; so silvery were its upper leaves in the sun that at first I took them for snow-white blossoms. These verdant stretches on either side of the river ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Scottice the steep braes, rose abruptly over the little glen, here presenting the gray face of a rock, from which the turf had been peeled by the torrents, and there displaying patches of wood and copse, which had escaped the waste of the cattle and the sheep of the feuars, and which, feathering naturally up the beds of empty torrents, or occupying the concave recesses of the bank, gave at once beauty and variety to the landscape. Above these scattered woods rose the hill, in barren, but purple majesty; the dark rich hue, particularly ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... the original jest itself, bottled in high spirits, and in a fair state of preservation. As clearly as can be deciphered, the legend is something about "an Indian," "an oarsman," and "feathering a scull," ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... in an artistic mood—the mood which took her in town to see exhibitions of Brabazon or Steer—the woods were fairyland. The high slender oak of the middle wood, the spreading oak that lived on its borders, the tall columnar beech feathering into the sky, its grey stem shining as though by some magic property in the beautiful forest twilight—the gleams and the shadows, the sounds and scents of the woodland world—she could talk or write about these things ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... replied Chevydale, "that he is neither more nor less than feathering his own nest at the expense of myself and my tenantry. I cannot understand why he is so anxious to get the M'Mahons off the estate; a family unquestionably of great honesty, truth, and integrity, and who, ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the air was white with sea-gulls flying and circling, rising and descending, shooting up straight into the air; their bodies smooth and long like the body of a babe in white samite, their feathering tails spread like a fan, their wings expanding on the ambient air. In the tall cliffs were the nests of dried seaweed, fastened to the edge of a rocky bracket on lofty ledges, the little ones within piping to the little ones without. Every point of rock had its sentinel gull, looking-looking out ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... late, and is not always to be had pure, even in the neighbourhood of Blenheim. This spaniel may he distinguished by the length and silkiness of the coat, the deep fringe about the ear, the arch and deep-feathering of the tail, the full and moist eye, and the blackness of ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... feet; breadth over all, 82 feet; depth of hold, 14 feet 5 inches, and a draft of 7 feet 6 inches. Her propelling machinery is what is known as the 3-cylinder compound direct acting engine, and her power (6,500-horse) is applied through side wheels with feathering buckets, and steam is supplied from ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... quoth Ganymede, "my commendations; but say to him that Rosalynde sheds as many tears from her heart as he drops of blood from his wounds, for the sorrow of his misfortunes, feathering all her thoughts with disquiet, till his welfare procure her content: say thus, ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... poised between earth and heaven; the sea below, the mountain summits above, with a fairy world of verdure between. The journey was like a dream of enchantment and rapidly changing surprises; and when it ended in a quaint hostelry at San Remo, with palm-trees feathering the Bordighera Point and Corsica, for once seen by day, lying in bold, clear outlines against the sunset, Katy had to admit to herself that Nice, much as she loved it, was not the only, not even the most beautiful place in Europe. Already ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... ten yards I discharged an obsidian-pointed arrow and a steel-pointed arrow from a weak bow. The two missiles were alike in size, weight, and feathering, in fact, were made by Ishi, only one had the native head and the other his modern substitute. Upon repeated trials, the steel-headed arrow uniformly penetrated a distance of twenty-two inches from the front surface of the box, while the obsidian uniformly ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... tips, but they should carry more hair towards the base; the fore-legs well feathered, the hind-legs above the hocks profusely so; but below the hocks fairly smooth, although all heavily coated Collies are liable to grow a slight feathering. Hair on the brush very profuse. COLOUR in the Collie is immaterial. IN GENERAL CHARACTER he is a lithe active dog, his deep chest showing lung power, his neck strength, his sloping shoulders and well ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... the late afternoon and very clear. Far away to the left Ischia hung in a golden haze between sea and sky, and Naples was coldly white against the hills, and before us was Vesuvius with a tall and slender streamer feathering at last towards the south, and the ruins of Torre dell' Annunziata ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... so heavy as that; its miserable weight made him groan at every step. Suddenly the broom-handle slipped from his hand, and down it went. No doubt his laudable object was to spill the tar, in order to gain time for his benefactor, and perhaps postpone the tarring and feathering altogether. But Griffin grasped the kettle in time to prevent its upsetting, and the next instant flourished ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... oldest of all the poplars that now seemed to be standing sentinel to prevent any raid from me on the little stone meeting house over the lilac hedge. "You dear old graybeard," I said to the one on my left, as I looked up and saw a faint feathering of silver on its branches. And as I spoke I took the old trunk into my embrace and laid my cheek against the ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... dinning and spinning, And dropping and hopping, And working and jerking, And guggling and struggling, And heaving and cleaving, And moaning and groaning, And glittering and frittering, And gathering and feathering, And whitening and brightening, And quivering and shivering, And hurrying and skurrying, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... followed the trail that led to the lodge of his mighty enemy. Outside the door sat Black Star of the Bear Clan; astride a fallen tree he lounged arrogantly; his hands, still red with last night's horrors, were feathering arrows. His savage face curled into a sneer as the boy neared him. Then a long, taunting laugh broke over the dawn, ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... where the Pilgrims go to pay their devotions at the Great God's shrine in the awful heights, regretting that we were too early for that most wonderful sight. Above where we were sitting the river fell in a tormented white cascade, crashing and feathering into spray-dust of diamonds. An eagle was flying above it with a mighty spread of wings that seemed almost double-jointed in the middle—they curved and flapped so wide and free. The fierce head was outstretched with ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck |
