"Hen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... free use of carbolic acid soap. The larger animals, as well as hogs, dogs, and sheep may be washed in strong suds of this soap, without fear, and the application repeated after a week. This generally destroys both the creatures and their eggs. Hen lice are best destroyed by greasing the fowls, and dusting them with flowers of sulphur. Sitting hens must never be greased, but the sulphur may be dusted freely in their nests, and it is well to put it ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... word—a very Hebe! I should fall in love with her if I hadn't the artist before me. Sweet innocent! she's thinking there will come a time when she will be wooed and won like that pretty hen-dove by as fond and fervent a lover; and she's thinking how pleasant it will be, and how tender and faithful he ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... the top of that tall maple, you discover a bee tree, and behold numberless diligent little beings going and coming on the business of a miniature state. Then you hear the chip-squirrels chirrup, and the red squirrels mock; then the hen-hawks chatter and shriek in the air, and the crows caw and clamor; the thrushes and swamp robins bandy their boasts in challenges of music; the blue jay ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... receive the guests for him, can not be too strongly condemned as out of place. Such a maneuver on her part, instead of impressing his guests with her own grace and beauty, is far more likely to make them think what a "poor worm" her husband must be, to allow himself to be hen-pecked. And for a mother to appear at a son's dinner is, if anything, worse. An essential piece of advice to every woman is: No matter how much you may want to say "How do you do" to your husband's or your ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun, Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain. As the marsh hen secretly builds on the watery sod, Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God! I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh hen flies In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies: By so many roots as the marsh grass sends in the sod ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... street; In which, if e'er the poet go astray, You all can point, 'twas there he lost his way. But, what's so common, to make pleasant too, Is more than any wit can always do. For 'tis like Turks, with hen and rice to treat; To make regalios out of common meat. But, in your diet, you grow savages: Nothing but human flesh your taste can please; And, as their feasts with slaughtered slaves began, So you, at each new play, must have a man. Hither you come, as to see prizes ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... of it; for the older woman seemed to take an impish delight in teasing her about her friendship with Wargrave and their relations as nurse and patient, although it was apparent that her malicious humour made the others uncomfortable. She paraded her authority over Frank and treated him like a hen-pecked husband. When finally she bore him away to escort her to the Amusement Club she left the two girls speechless behind her. But not for the same ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... with one mistress, and as he fortunately does not suspect that the beautiful Marianne Meier is at the same time my mistress, he is a great friend of mine. Yes, if he knew that—ah!" he interrupted himself, laughing, "that would be another illustration of La Fontaine's fable of the two cocks and the hen. Well, I ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... skiff, and being well acquainted with the currents and eddies, had shifted his station, according to the shifting of the tide, from the Hen and Chickens to the Hog's Back, from the Hog's Back to the Pot, and from the Pot to the Frying Pan; but in the eagerness of his sport he did not see that the tide was rapidly ebbing, until the roaring of the whirlpools and eddies warned him of his danger, ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... half a score of the ripest apples for the Generals, and took one, a sour one, for himself. Then he dug in the earth and got some potatoes; then he took two pieces of wood, rubbed them together, and produced fire. Then he made a snare from his own hair and caught a hazel-hen. Last of all, he arranged the fire, and cooked such a quantity of different provisions that the idea even occurred to the Generals, "would it not be well to give the ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... on the State-House in Paris, and are intended to shelter the youthful damsels, here assembled, as the wings of a hen do the chickens of her bosom—hem! Cause and effect, sir—philosophy and poetry unite to render this edifice the paragon and brag ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... were fair, smooth specimens of good size. These he cut so that only one eye was left to a piece of potato the size of a hen's egg. These pieces were dropped into the furrows at distances of fifteen inches apart and four inches deep. After covering, the man went over the potato patch with a harrow. A boy might use a rake for this work, but as Peter's patch was a small part of his grandfather's ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... coarse leather cover on the carriage top, the coachman wearing a vast brown great coat, which he spreads on each side him over the corners of his coach-box, and looks as somebody was saying—like a sitting hen. ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... six miles (one hour and forty-five minutes). The path from Sharm Yhrr crosses the hard sands of the maritime plain, metalled with the natural macadam of the Desert. The stone is mostly dark silex, the "hen's liver" of the Brazil, and its surface is kept finely polished, and free from "patina," by the friction of the dust-laden winds. The line is deeply gashed by short, broad gullies: the Hajj-road, running further east, heads these ugly Nullahs. The third and largest channel is Wady Surr, the great ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... besom, wi' your deleries; there's trouble enough aboot the night without you skirling like a craking hen. It's no' your kind I'm feared for, ye useless one, but these wild hill lassies, for when the devil is loose among the hills, he gars the wild blood leap in their veins, and the wind tae loose the knot o' their lang hair—ay, and ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... name given at her baptism by the Devil. From "Collection of Original Documents," belonging to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, MS. As a specimen of the other charges, take the following: "Williame Richardsone, in Dalkeith, haiving felled ane hen of the said Cristianes with ane stone, and wpone her sight thereof did imediatly threatne him, and with ane frowneing countenance told him, that he 'should newer cast ane vther stone!' And imediatly the said Williame fell into ane franicie and madnes, and tooke his bed, and newer ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... from it in the fields, was a splendid Taoist temple fit for a capital. In this village we were delayed for nearly an hour while my three men bargained against half the village for the possession of a hen that was all unconscious of the comments, flattering and deprecatory, that were being passed on its fatness. It was secured eventually for 260 cash, the vendors having declared that the hen was ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... walls it has hung for two centuries.' By thunder! isn't it beautiful?" He chuckled. "Wonderful how these bullfrogs of connoisseurs swallow the dealers' flies! And here am I, who can paint any blamed thing from a hen-coop to a battle scene, doing signs for tobacco shops; and there is Sam, who can do Corots and Rousseaus and Daubignys by the yard, obliged to stick to a varnish pot and a scraper! Damnable, isn't it? But we don't growl, do we, Sammy? When Sammy has anything left over, he brings half of it down ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... with the good old Sage rubbed into them," said Ranse. "I will certainly show the Buckwheats how to take a Joke and the way I'll dip into that Coffee will be a Caution. And mebbe I won't go to those Eggs direct from the Hen!" ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... dream. There stood the farmhouse just as before, with the kitchen door wide open and the sun streaming in upon the sanded floor. There were only the marks of many feet in the soft earth of the farmyard, an empty pigpen, and a few chicken feathers blowing about the hen house, to show where the invaders had been and what they had carried away with them. Jan and Marie, followed by Fidel, ran through the house. From the front door, which opened on the road; they could see the long gray line sweeping across the ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... maam: it didnt come natural. My wife had to break me into it. It came natural to her: she's what you might call a regular old hen. Always wants to have her family within sight of her. Wouldnt go to bed unless she knew they was all safe at home and the door locked, and the lights out. Always wants her luggage in the carriage with her. Always goes and makes the engine driver ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... not be a good woman and remain on the stage, that's what it comes to." In spite of the gravity of the scene, a smile trickled round Evelyn's lips, for she could not help seeing her father like a hen that has hatched out a duckling. He stood looking at her sadly. She had come back—but what new pond would she plunge into? "I am a very unsatisfactory person, I know that. I can't make people happy; but there it is, it can't be otherwise. If ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... already in flight, a little yellow Demoiselle, scurrying around close to the earth like a frightened hen, and a Bleriot, high overhead, making slow and graceful ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... is carving brought, That different gestures, by our curious men Are used for different dishes, hare or hen." ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... chaffinch, * *greenfinch, pied wagtail, sparrow, * dunnock (hedge, accentor), missel thrush, starling, rook, jackdaw, *blackcap, * garden warbler, * willow warbler, * chiffchaff, * wood warbler, tree-creeper, * reed bunting, * sedge warbler, coot, water hen, little grebe (dabchick), tufted duck, wood pigeon, stock dove, * turtle dove, peewit, tit (? coal-tit), * cuckoo, * nightjar, * ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... I say of the House-Cock, which treads any Hen, and then (contrary to the Swan, the Partridg, and Pigeon) takes no care to hatch, to feed, or to cherish his own Brood, but is sensless ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... be bound, Meester Pepper, that you 'members vell ven Harry Cook, the great highvayman,—poor fellow! he's gone vhere ve must all go,—brought you, then quite a gossoon,' for the first time to the little back parlour at the Cock and Hen, Dewereux Court?" ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... affected than her husband by what had happened. When she came home, poor Mildred's fortitude had just given way, and she was crying over the body of her dear white hen. This caused Ailwin's eyes to fill at the thought of her stockings and cloak, so that the family ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... you what it is," broke in Dotty; "I always thought Mrs. Pragoff must be queer as soon as I heard she came from Poland, where grandma's cropple-crown hen came from; don't you remember, Prudy? the one that hatched the duck's eggs. But I didn't know she worshipped things. Only I noticed that she didn't buy any black pins when those pitiful little boys ran after us, and said, 'O, lady! please, lady!' ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... If it was a joke to him, it sure wasn't to me, even if they weren't in very deep. Finally he was done. He stood there clucking like an old hen with no family but a brass doorknob. Something didn't seem quite right ...
— Inside John Barth • William W. Stuart
... at the drug stores. Remove your fowls to some other building, prepare the poison according to directions, and place it in the poultry-house. The best kinds to use are those that make the rats thirsty and cause them to die immediately after drinking; water can then be left in the hen house and the dead rats will be found close by. When you have rat poison in the house see that it is properly marked and put out of reach of children and careless hired girls; and always see that all remnants of bait are taken ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... and accordingly, in addition to what he had formerly done, he ordered two pigs a boar and sow, to be put on shore. There was reason to believe, that some of the cocks and hens which had formerly been left here still existed. None of them, indeed, were seen; but a hen's egg was found, which ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... That's good! Now for the boy's supper. Beautiful white egg laid by beautiful white hen and all beat up fluffy with sugar to make ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... for a thing as big as that to lay eggs like a hen," observed Cuyp, not intending to ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... of the freshness of her morning egg, and that afternoon she leaned nearer the casement to catch the cluck of a motherly hen with her brood, and smiled at the scurry of wing and feet as grain was ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... where will we find anything better than Miss Wansey, and Mr. P. Pipkin, Esq. The picture of Mr. Dink's school, too, is capital, and where else in fiction is there a better nick-name than that the boys gave to poor little Stephen Treadwell, "Step Hen," as he himself pronounced his name in an unfortunate moment when he saw it in print for the first time in his lesson ...
— The Telegraph Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... private notions and opinions. It pleased him not to have his ward so given up to society, so engrossed with other people, as for months he had been obliged to see her. Mr. Falkirk had a vague sense of danger, comparable to the supposed feelings of a good mother-hen which has followed her brood of ducklings to the edge of the water. For Mr. Falkirk's attendance seemed to himself not much more valuable or efficient to guard from evil than the said mother-hen's clucking round the pond. True, he stood by, and saw Wych Hazel was there; he went and ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... cause a do send the yellow hammers a flying; for thof it might a be happen to be true enough, a would get small thanks for his pains. Every man eat his meat, and he that do like cut his fingers. The foolish hen cackles, and the cunning quean chuckles. For why? A has her chalk and her nest egg ready. Whereof I tout and trump about at no man, an a do not tout and trump about at me. Always a savin and exceptin your onnurable onnur; and not a seekin of quarrels and rupturs, an they do not seek me. Otherwise, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... the discussion, however, the Wright bill was not considered at all. Nobody was thinking of the Wright bill - that is to say, nobody outside of those scheming for its passage. Like a mongrel duck's egg under a respectable hen, it was left to incubate undisturbed, to ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... Her Majesty every morning. I could not understand why it was that my chickens gave less eggs than any of the others until one day my eunuch informed me that he had seen one of the other eunuchs stealing the eggs from my hen house and transferring them to another, in order to help his mistress to ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... along the edge of the water or turning head over heels in their feeding trough, young shoots thrusting forth their tender little leaves above ground, little chickens running along before their mother hen, or little men staggering among the grass-all these little creatures resemble one another. They are the babies of the great mother Nature; they have common laws, a common physiognomy; they have something inexplicable about them which is at once comic ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... been wild. The girl vows she won't live with me as my wife. Well, I shall hold Ahmara as a threat over her head till she sees the error of her ways. It's the one thing to do, as I look at it. Besides, if I try to pack Ahmara back to Touggourt she'll screech like a hen with her head cut off. I won't be made a laughing stock before my men, at the start, before I've shown them what sort of a leader they've got. Ahmara comes from the south. If Sanda decides to behave herself I'll drop the dancer at her own place, en route. Meanwhile, I'll ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... in the North were called Freya's hair or Freya's eye dew, while the butterfly was called Freya's hen. This goddess was also supposed to have a special affection for the fairies, whom she loved to watch dancing in the moonbeams, and for whom she reserved her daintiest flowers and sweetest honey. Odur, Freya's husband, besides ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... notes, Mr. Newton first used guano in 1846—one ton of Ichaboe at $30, on 8 acres, with 8 bushels of seed, upon land so deadly poor, that an old negro we conversed with said; "him so done gone massa, wouldn't grow poverty grass nuff to make hen's nest for dis nigger." No attempt had been made for years to grow any crop, not even oats or rye, the last effort of expiring nature to yield sustenance to man upon one of those old worn out Virginia farms. Think of the astonishment of the poor negro, who thought his master crazy ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... who she is or why she is or who is aboard her," he told Nellie, after recounting to her the previous visitation of the schooner. "She reminds me of a nervous old hen keeping track of a stray chick. Pretty soon I won't be able to curse the weather without being afraid my guardian will hear me. I say guardian, and yet I don't know whether she is friendly or merely fixing up some calamity to break all at ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... suddenly opened, and the woman of the breakfast table disclosed herself. She was dressed for going out, wearing a hat that seemed a yard in diameter, and a feather boa, from which her hen-like face and neck rose to the crowning ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... off your shawls when you get there, an' carry them over your arms," said the mother, clucking like an excited hen to her chickens. "They'll do to keep the dust off your new dresses goin' an' comin'. An' when you eat your dinners don't get spots on you, an' don't point at folks as you ride by, an' stare, or they'll know you come from the country. An' ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... exposed the wound to view. It was only a tiny red puncture of the skin midway between knee and hip, but the bitten one knew that tiny place was more dangerous than a rifle ball. Like a flash, he drew his hunting-knife and cut out a chunk of flesh as big as a hen egg where the wound had been. "Give me that cartridge," he commanded, his teeth ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... indifferently up and down; so that at first we were obliged to put up with this fare. We often met with flights of partridges, which the natives cannot kill, because they cannot shoot flying; I killed some for a change. The second day I had a turkey-hen brought to regale me. The discoverer, who killed it, told me, there were a great many in the same place, but that he could do nothing without a dog. I have often heard of a turkey-chace, but never had an opportunity of being at one: I went with him and took my dog along with me. On coming to ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... thought he would if I stayed long enough," said Hiram, with a grin; "but come along, Mandy, no hen fruit, no puddin'." ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... says in the New York Tribune: "Put your hen feed around the currants. I did this twice a week during May and June, and not a currant worm was seen, while every leaf was eaten off other bushes 150 feet distant, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... grass hath nature set, That when the Sun on's Love (the earth) doth shine These might as lace set out her garments fine. The fearfull bird his little house now builds In trees and walls, in Cities and in fields. The outside strong, the inside warm and neat; A natural Artificer compleat. The clocking hen her chirping chickins leads With wings & beak defends them from the gleads My next and last is fruitfull pleasant May, Wherein the earth is clad in rich aray, The Sun now enters loving Gemini, And heats us ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... up with an inverted tub; while as he left the platform among signs of visible emotion and torrents of applause, he thought, he said, that the idea of being paid for such stuff made him feel like a man who had been robbing hen-roosts. ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "that would fain spread oot wings, like a great big hen, ower a' the bairns, you an' me ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... eminent French physician, recently reported to the Biological Society of Paris the results of experiments which he had been conducting for the purpose of throwing light upon this question. These experiments demonstrate that the exposure of hen's eggs to the influence of the vapor of alcohol, previous to incubation, retards the development of the embryo, and favors the production of malformations. It is evident from these experiments that alcohol may act directly upon the embryo when there is no marked influence ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... 103; seldomness^; uncommonness. V. be rare &c adj.. Adj. unfrequent^, infrequent; rare, rare as a blue diamond; few &c 103; scarce; almost unheard of, unprecedented, which has not occurred within the memory of the oldest inhabitant, not within one's previous experience; not since Adam^. scarce as hen's teeth; one in a million; few and far between. Adv. seldom, rarely, scarcely, hardly; not often, not much, infrequently, unfrequently^, unoften^; scarcely, scarcely ever, hardly ever; once in a blue moon. once; once in a blue moon; once ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... a Belgian farmer, a pigeon yields about 6 lb. of dung in a year, a hen about 12 lb., a turkey or goose about 25 lb., and ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... told dad I could drive that team as well as he can, he'd just look at me and think I was crazy," she thought resentfully and gave the broom a spiteful fling toward a presumptuous hen that had approached too closely. "If I'd asked him to let me go along he'd have made some excuse—oh, I'm beginning to know dad! He thinks a woman's place is in the house—preferably the kitchen. And here I've thought all my ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... had barely screwed round on his elbow to chat with his Junior before Mr. Justice Bentham himself appeared—a thin, rather hen-like man, with a little stoop, clean-shaven under his snowy wig. Like all the rest of the court, Waterbuck rose, and remained on his feet until the judge was seated. James rose but slightly; he was already comfortable, and had ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a whirlpool, on which is bestowed the pleasant-sounding title of the Devil's Pot. On one side is his gridiron, and on the other his frying-pan, while another batch of rocks goes by the name of his "hen and chickens." Now, although I cannot take upon myself to affirm that even on the darkest and most stormy night I ever beheld his Satanic majesty engaged in the exercise of his well-known culinary talents in frying soles or any other fish or fowl, or quadruped, or biped, yet ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... one he recalled the events of yesterday. First he had been late for this appointment with Lysbeth, which evidently vexed her. Then the Captain Montalvo had swooped down and carried her away, as a hawk bears off a chicken under the very eyes of the hen-wife, while he—donkey that he was—could find no words in which to protest. Next, thinking it his duty to back the sledge wherein Lysbeth rode, although it was driven by a Spaniard, he had lost ten florins on that event, which, being a thrifty young ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... Grimey sits upon yon hill, Christmas I wish you a merry Kessenmas an' a happy New Year, Cleveland Christmas Song A Christmas Wassail Sheffield Mumming Song Charms, "Nominies," and Popular Rhymes Wilful weaste maks weasome want A rollin' stone gethers no moss Than awn a crawin' hen Nowt bud ill-luck 'll fester where Meeat maks The Miller's Thumb Miller, miller, mooter-poke Down i' yon lum we have a mill, Hob-Trush Hob "Hob-Trush Hob, wheer is thoo?" Gin Hob mun hae nowt but a hardin' hamp, Nanny ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... heard the news, friendly like, of course. Grandma had Jimmy out in the yard, washing baby dresses, while she stood in the door giving him what for. Jimmy was dribbling cigarette ashes over the suds but he sure was game. He grinned and got red when he saw me. 'I'm the hen-peckedest damn fool ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... fu'st," replied Big Abel, "but I d'clar dose eggs des melted in my mouf like butter. Whew! don't I wish I had dat ole speckled hen f'om home. I could hev toted her unner my arm thoo dis wah des es ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... difference between a hen and a magazine writer is this—while they both scratch for a living, the ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... in 1644-5 it suffered much damage, and was patched up by the Parliamentary troops. A hundred years later the Duke of Cumberland thought very little of its powers of defence, for he contemptuously called it "an old hen-coop." ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... unfortunate old hen, as her ducklings took to the black amphibious mass, but not a whit did Lucilla heed. In the ardour of the chase, on she went, unheeding, leaving her brother sticking half way, where having once stopped, he began to find it difficult to withdraw his feet, and fairly screamed ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reluctant Grinder put it in her hand, her daughter, coming quietly back, caught the hand in hen, and ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... not half so suspicious. The handsome and notorious blue jay plunders the nests of other birds and of course he could not trust us. Almost all the others—brown thrushes, bluebirds, song sparrows, kingbirds, hen-hawks, nighthawks, whip-poor-wills, woodpeckers, etc.—simply tried to avoid being seen, to draw or drive us away, or paid no ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... various parts of their khaki uniforms that they wore, even when off on a hunting trip. The clear-eyed fellow who seemed to be in charge of the party was Thad Brewster; one of his companions was known as Step Hen Bingham, because, as a little chap he had insisted at school that was the way his name should be spelled, while the third was an exceedingly wiry boy, Davy Jones by name, and who had always been a human monkey when it came to athletics, climbing trees, and ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... ... with flights and songs and screams that answer those of the wild pigeon and high-hold and orchard-oriole and coot and surf-duck and red-shouldered-hawk and fish-hawk and white ibis and Indian-hen and cat-owl and water-pheasant and qua-bird and pied-sheldrake and blackbird and mockingbird and buzzard and condor and night-heron and eagle. To him the hereditary countenance descends both mother's and father's. To him enter the essences of the real things ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... for future want? 40 My dog (the trustiest of his kind) With gratitude inflames my mind. I mark his true, his faithful way, And in my service copy Tray. In constancy and nuptial love, I learn my duty from the dove. The hen, who from the chilly air, With pious wing protects her care; And every fowl that flies at large, Instructs me in a parent's charge. 50 From nature too I take my rule, To shun contempt and ridicule. I never, with important air, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... for the appointment of a judicial counsel. That's what the family council meets for to-morrow; and I think, this time, my dear Madame Lambert, your old Picot will find himself restrained. There are serious allegations, I can tell you. It was all very well to take the eggs, but to pluck the hen ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... through a wheat-field, the grain up to my shoulders, toward the log dwelling. A mangy little cur disputed my right to knock at the door; but, flourishing my two tin pails at him, he flew yelping to take refuge in the hen-coop. To my summons at the portal, there came no response, save the mewing of the cat within. It was clear that the people of Point Sandy were not ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... big shell, and around in the bottom of the shell there were little circus actors, boys and girls, dressed in their circus clothes, and they all looked exactly like fairies. They scarce seemed to see the fellows, as they ran alongside of their chariot, but Hen Billard and Archy Hawkins, who were always cutting up, got close enough to throw some peanuts to the circus boys, and some of the little circus girls laughed, and the driver looked around and cracked his whip at the fellows, and they all had to get ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... have won mucho dinero, "much money." Each has also its appointed value;—this cock is worth forty dollars, this four ounces, this one six ounces,—oh, he is a splendid fellow! No periodal and sporadic hen-fever prevails here, but the gallo-mania is the chronic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... mouth was made of two long uncertain lips which twitched nervously. His cropped black hair was rumpled; his blouse, from which hung a croix de guerre, unbuttoned; and his unputteed shanks culminated in bed-slippers. In physique he reminded me a little of Ichabod Crane. His neck was exactly like a hen's: I felt sure that when he drank he must tilt his head back as hens do in order that the liquid may run their throats. But his method of keeping himself upright, together with certain spasmodic contractions of ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... clear it of vermin. It is supposed to know an antidote against snake-poison, as the weasel eats rue before battle (Pliny x. 84; xx. 13). In Modern Egypt this viverra is called "Kitt (or Katt) Far'aun" Pharaoh's cat: so the Percnopter becomes Pharaoh's hen and the unfortunate (?) King has named a host of things, alive and dead. It was worshipped and mummified in parts of Ancient Egypt e.g. Heracleopolis, on account of its antipathy to serpents and because ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... thy childishnesse will moue him more Then can our Reasons. There's no man in the world More bound to's Mother, yet heere he let's me prate Like one i'th' Stockes. Thou hast neuer in thy life, Shew'd thy deere Mother any curtesie, When she (poor Hen) fond of no second brood, Ha's clock'd thee to the Warres: and safelie home Loden with Honor. Say my Request's vniust, And spurne me backe: But, if it be not so Thou art not honest, and the Gods will plague thee That thou restrain'st from me the Duty, which To a Mothers ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... fine duck which was hatched under a hen, there being seven young ones produced at the time. When these ducks were about ten days old, five of them were taken away from beneath the hen by the rats, during the nighttime, the rats sucking them to death and leaving the body perfect. My duck, which escaped this danger, now alarms all the ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")
... under land to a quiet anchorage, the San Sebastian and the San Martin following us as the chickens the hen. Still before us we saw that current ridge the sea. The Admiral stood gazing upon the southward shore that hung in a dazzling haze. Now we thought water, now we thought land. He called to a ship boy and the lad presently brought ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... out from the porter, though the blessed old buffer can't speak anything but his French gibberish. 'Madame?' I said, bawling into his stupid old ear. 'Mossoo and Madame Hostin? comprenny?' and he says, 'Ya-ase,' and then bursts out laughing, and looks as proud as a hen that's just laid a hegg—' ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... the sex created especially to supply companionship," returned the hen, "therefore I will accompany ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to the Memphis wharf-boat. But there Hugh, the first clerk, the steward, and the doctor went up into town, and it was a long hour before they reappeared and the black smoke billowed again from her chimneys and she backed out and started up and away around "Paddy's Hen and Chickens." ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... such food. It would be absolutely useless to make such an experiment. We must find the equivalent of the bee smeared with honey; that is, we must offer the larva its ordinary food with a mixture of animal matter added. I shall experiment with albumen, as provided by the egg of the hen; albumen being an isomer of fibrine, which is the principal element ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... strike his face. He caught the game by the legs and then received a peck in the hand that drew blood. Before the turkey could do any more harm the young hunter stunned it by a blow against the tree and then finished it. In the meantime the other hen was killed by Whopper, while Jed Sanborn took his gun and poked the gobbler out of the tree crotch ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... story-books, but you never seed it in life. I won't be quite as rough as that," added the guide, in the same breath; "I have seen a redskin that didn't furgit that a man had saved him from dying or being shot, but such redskins are as scarce as hen's teeth. The rule is that they take all such kindnesses as signs of cowardice, and despise the one that shows 'em. Let me tell you something that I know," continued Hazletine, seriously. "Three years ago, when I was down in Arizona, Jim ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... name of Dandelion Lodge," Mrs. McAlister added. "There isn't a dandelion in sight, and, architecturally speaking, it is more like a hen-house than a lodge. Still, I suppose it is well to have a name, even if there isn't anything ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... and there may be many years of prosperity before them; but they no longer possess the future that was sparkling with possibility a few years ago. Peter is as full of schemes as ever, but who now supposes that he will do anything? Natasha is absorbed in her children like a motherly hen; Nicholas, the young cavalier, is a country gentleman; they are all what they were bound to be, though nobody foresaw it. But shyly lurking in a corner, late in the evening, with eyes fixed upon the elders of the party who are talking and arguing—here once ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... song and the laughter stop. Nothing can be heard within but faint vague cluckings as if in a sleeping hen-house. Hold on thinks our hero, something is about to happen, but what happened mostly was a big pot of cold water on his head, or orange peel and fig ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... did not remotely imagine—that he was less utterly unmanageable with her sister than with herself, certain it is that the brothers went into still more intolerable places, and treated their guardian as ducklings treat an old hen. At last they quite disappeared from the view round a projecting point of rock, and when she turned it, she found a battle royal going on over an old lobster-pot—Conrade hand to hand with a stout fisher-boy, and Francis and sundry amphibious creatures of both sexes exchanging a hail ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... drink water, water won't quench fire, fire won't burn Tartars, Tartars won't slay people, people won't kill wolf, wolf won't eat goat, goat won't nibble bush, bush won't give little sparrow a swing."—"We won't!" said the worms.—Then the sparrow went to the hen and said, "Hen, hen, peck worms, worms won't gnaw pole-axe, pole-axe won't strike ox, ox won't drink water, water won't quench fire, fire won't burn Tartars, Tartars won't slay people, people won't kill wolf, wolf won't eat goat, goat won't nibble bush, bush won't give little sparrow ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... the way my car went to Granville! Jean drove till we were clear of Paris and then I took the wheel and things began to hum. From the tail of my eye I could see Jean devoutly crossing himself whenever we hit the earth, but we made the boat and didn't so much as run down a hen. I did wonder that we weren't held up anywhere for exceeding the speed limit, but the mystery was explained when we reached ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... floated as calmly as if their price was a penny a dozen. The poor lady tried to believe that they were spinning with vitality; but at last she allowed me to break one, and lo! it had been half boiled by the advertiser. "This is very sad," cried Mrs. Hockin; and the patient old hen, who was come in a basket of hay to see the end of it, echoed ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... fact," said Mrs. Copley. "And in the hen, or under it—in the hen, I believe—there is a crown of gold and diamonds and pearls, with a motto. Oh, it's wonderful. It's better than the Arabian Nights, if ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... said Diggle, hastening to the door. "We were just talking of you. Come in; 'tis a late hour; si vespertinus subito—you remember old Horace? True, we haven't a hen to baste with Falernian for you, but sure friend Job can find a wedge of Cheshire and a mug ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... sure to be in the dirt. A man may be the straight thing, that is right up and down, like a cow's tail, but hang me if he can be the clean thing anyhow he can fix it." And he stretched out his feet to their full length, put his hands in his trowsers pocket, held down his head, and clucked like a hen that is calling her chickens. I vow I could hardly help bustin' out a larfin myself, for it warn't a slow remark of hisn, and showed fun; in fact, I was sure at first he was ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... man relinquished Menlove, and on the spur of the moment seized Picotee. Picotee flounced away from him in indignation, backing into a corner with ruffled feathers, like a pullet trying to appear a hen. ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... medicine. They hate it, and one can scarcely force it into their mouths on account of their sharp teeth. The way is, to smear it on their sides, and they lick it off. A good idea, isn't it? Here we are at the hen house, or rather one of the ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... offspring from much the same standpoint as does a hen the brood of enterprising ducklings which, owing to some stratagem on the part of the powers that be, have hatched out from the eggs upon which she has been conscientiously sitting in the fond belief that they were those of her ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... in his Diary (Sep. 4, 1715) Hearne says:—'Mr. Richard Smith's Catalogue that is printed contains a very noble and very extraordinary collection of books. It was begun first in the time of King Hen. VIII., and comeing to Mr. Smith, he was so very diligent and exact in continueing and improving, that hardly anything curious ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... own security, for the cowardly whelps have not the courage otherwise to defend what they get by their knavery. But damn ye altogether for a pack of crafty rascals, and you, who serve them, for a parcel of hen-hearted numbskulls! They vilify us, the scoundrels do, when there is the only difference that they rob the poor under cover of the law, forsooth, and we plunder the rich under the protection of our own courage. Had you not better ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... know whether the affection of puss was returned by her protege, carried it to the hen, the cat following with loud cries of distress. But on being released, the chicken at once returned to her attached friend, who received her with ...
— Minnie's Pet Cat • Madeline Leslie
... bought at Martinville market, I had finished writing it, I found such a sense of happiness, felt that it had so entirely relieved my mind of the obsession of the steeples, and of the mystery which they concealed, that, as though I myself were a hen and had just laid an egg, I began to sing at ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... and raised him up, and looked at him with a grin that was tantalizing. "What is it, sewer gas? My, but the board of health won't do a thing to you if the inspector happens in here. Those eggs must have been mislaid by a hen that had a diseased mind," and the bad boy took a bottle of cologne out of the show case and began to sprinkle the floor, and squirted some of it on ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... you were a mother hen with a brood of chicks!" laughed Donald's father. "Well, you have a right to be pleased with your herd. You have a ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... one evening, as the sun was preparing to set among a select apartment of gold and crimson clouds in the western horizon—although for that matter the sun has a right to "set" where it wants to, and so, I may add has a hen—a manly Mormon, I say, tapped gently at the door of the mansion of ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... feathers, the rooster struts to attract the female, and fights aggressively with his sex competitors. When he is made a capon, he loses his spurs and comb and distinctive plumage, and in addition becomes retiring and submissive, in short, a pseudo-hen in his instincts as well as in appearance. If the genital glands are extirpated from a male before puberty, the wattles remain small, pale and bloodless, no active, amorous or combative instinct emerges. The creature maintains a demure silence, ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... "Ahatiu-en-Heq" (i.e. "Warrior of the Princes," or "Crown-warrior"). I transported the King of the South, the King of the North, Aakheperkara, whose word is truth, when he sailed up the river to Khent-hen-nefer, to put down the rebellion in Khet land, and to put an end to the incursions of the people of Asemt. I fought with great bravery in his presence in the troubled water during the towing (?) of the fighting barges over the rapids(?), and the king ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... most attractive partner. Those who have closely attended to birds in confinement well know that they often take individual preferences and dislikes: thus Sir R. Heron has described how one pied peacock was eminently attractive to all his hen birds. It may appear childish to attribute any effect to such apparently weak means: I cannot here enter on the details necessary to support this view; but if man can in a short time give elegant carriage and beauty to his bantams, according to his standard of beauty, I can see no good reason ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... Scandal under the titles of Reverence and Decency;" of having "defiled the Church by adorning the churches," of having "destroyed as much of the Gospel as they could without themselves being destroyed by the law." He compared them to the hen in AEsop, fed too fat to lay eggs, and to dogs in the manger, who would neither preach nor let others preach. He charged them with checking instruction in order to introduce that religion which accounts ignorance the mother of devotion. He endorsed the common belief that one ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... about as often as a hen gets a tooth pulled. But I got a letter the time you mention,—a dozen lines or so, with another added, saying that he was in for a ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... from others. You hitch a race horse up to a plow and you spoil a good horse and your field both. Seems to me as if, if Luke got a chance to be a writer or a professor or something, he might turn out to be a wonder. You can't teach a canary bird to be a hen, you know, and——" ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... well as the old word underneath, is a mother word. The brooding hen sits so faithfully, day after day, upon the eggs, bringing the new lives by the vital warmth of her own body. The mother-bird nestles softly down upon the nest in the crotch of the tree, patiently, expectantly brooding, by the strength of her own life giving life to the coming young. ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... old Hen, you might as well have lain with a Paring-Shovel; but what think you of a young Woman, ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... loudly, in a slow, stubborn voice, and stepped suddenly towards her. With a faint, frightened cry she shrank back into the doorway of the hen-house. ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... Silver-grey petrel or southern fulmar Priocella glacialoides Cape pigeon Daption capensis Snow petrel Pagodroma nivea Lesson's petrel Oestrelata lessoni Wilson petrel Oceanites oceanicus Storm petrel Fregetta melanogaster Cape hen Majaqueus oequinoctialis Small prion or whale bird Prion banksii Crested tern Sterna sp. Southern black-backed or Dominican gull Larus dominicanus Macquarie Island shag Phalacrocorax traversi Mutton bird Puffinus griseus Maori hen or "weka" ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... Something, which else could hope for no esteem. It is the fair acceptance, Sir, creates The entertainment perfect, not the cates. Yet shall you have, to rectify your palate, An olive, capers, or some better salad, Ushering the mutton; with a short-legg'd hen, If we can get her, full of eggs, and then, Limons, and wine for sauce: to these, a coney Is not to be despair'd of for our money; And though fowl now be scarce, yet there are clerks, The sky not falling, think we may have larks. I'll tell you of more, and lie, so you will come: Of partridge, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... cupola, the latter embellishments to match those surmounting his own dwelling, Simeon was set aback with his canvas flapping. At the end of a week he had not driven a nail. "Godfrey's mighty!" he is reported to have exclaimed. "I don't know whether to build the average cupola and trust to a hen's fittin' it, or take an average hen and build a cupola round her. Maybe I'll be all right after I get started, but it's where to ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... wife, "there is nobody here. You only smell a crow that is flying over the chimney." Then the giant sat down to dinner, which was quite ready, and when he had eaten a whole sheep, he said, "Bring me my hen." ...
— The National Nursery Book - With 120 illustrations • Unknown
... Other whites take part in our brabbles, while temper holds out, with a certain schoolboy entertainment. In the Germans alone, no trace of humour is to be observed, and their solemnity is accompanied by a touchiness often beyond belief. Patriotism flies in arms about a hen; and if you comment upon the colour of a Dutch umbrella, you have cast a stone against the German Emperor. I give one instance, typical although extreme. One who had returned from Tutuila on the mail cutter complained of the vermin ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... whose ample Semitic countenance gave a copious background for violet talcum, but who said nothing wittier in Vivian's hearing than "Very pleased to make your acquaintance, I'm sure"—and once to admit Miss Henrietta Cooney, of Saltman's bookstore. Hen came by from the store late one August afternoon, having heard something of the case which seemed to worry V.V. more than all his others put together. She was allowed to spend twenty minutes in the sick-room, provided she did not permit Kern to talk. Having faithfully obeyed these instructions, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison |
