"Loon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... What OF it? Did she ever use to want to go to such things? Down in Trumet did she ever want to go? I bet she didn't! But now she does. And she's goin' to join the thing—join it, herself! As if one loon—I mean as if one Chapter member in the family wasn't enough. I thought when Gertie come home she'd probably keep her ma from goin' off the course altogether. I thought, with her level head, she'd swing us back into the channel again. But she didn't—she didn't. John, Gertie's ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... but suppressed not his indignation a moment after he could vent it with safety. "Would not any one think," he said to Jasper, an old ploughman, who, in coming to his assistance, had heard Christie's imperious injunctions, "that this loon, this Christie of the Clinthill, was laird or lord at least of him? No such thing, man! I remember him a little dirty turnspit boy in the house of Avenel, that every body in a frosty morning like this warmed his fingers by kicking or cuffing! and now he is a gentleman, and swears, d—n him and ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... when in the habit of shooting, the very great length of time that the loon, or northern diver, (colymbus glacialis,) remained under water after being fired at, and fancied he must be a living diving-bell, endued with some peculiar functions which enabled him to obtain a supply of air at great ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... streets or fields of a region in which they are ordinarily unknown. These birds have become exhausted during the storm of the night before, or have been injured by striking telephone or telegraph wires, an accident which often happens. Once I picked up a Loon after a stormy night. Apparently it had recovered its strength after a few hours' rest, but, as this bird can rise on the wing only from a body of water, over the surface of which it can paddle and flap for many rods, and as {78} there was no pond or lake in all the neighbouring country, the Loon's ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... isn't such a loon as to get off the road on to Appleby's land just by mistake, or ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... proper thing, cases of them, fitting enough for museums, often being seen in private homes. I can remember taking lessons in taxidermy from Father, and of skinning and mounting wildfowl, and today there are a loon and a prairie chicken here in the house at Riverby that he mounted in those early years. The collections of birds he made are scattered far and wide or were destroyed long ago. All of them were shot with the little muzzle-loading cane gun or with a little muzzle-loading ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... champagne-basket and hamper of lunch, are starting thence for a sail over to Brigantine Beach. Two gentlemen in flannel, with guns, are urging a little row-boat up toward the interior country. They will return at night laden with rail or reed-birds, with the additional burden perhaps of a great loon, shot as a curiosity. Others, provided with fishing-tackle, are going out for flounder. Laughing farewells, waving handkerchiefs and the other telegraphic signs of departure, are all very gay, but the tune may be changed when the great sailing-party comes back, wet and wretched, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... the sun. A kildee timidly chirped good-night; the full, rich throat of a robin proclaimed good-morrow. From an island on the breast of the Yukon a colony of wild fowl voiced its interminable wrongs, while a loon laughed mockingly back across a ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... child's b'loon," states the accuser, fixing him with a pitiless eye. For the moment the object of this serious charge is too taken aback to be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... William, Dance up and doon, Set to your partners, William, We'll play the tune! What! Wad ye stop the pipers? Nay, 'tis ower-soon! Dance, since ye're dancing, William, Dance, ye puir loon! Dance till ye're dizzy, William, Dance till ye swoon! Dance till ye're dead, my ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... some others. He had an idea, of course, that though I had collected and mounted birds, and knew their names and habits, I probably knew little about their anatomy. At any rate the first thing he did was to give me a badly mutilated old loon, from old alcohol, telling me to prepare the skeleton. This I did so well and so quickly that he expressed regret that he had not given me some better bird with unbroken bones. He gave me next a blue heron, but it being spring, I 'went collecting' ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper
... was sorry he had put himself about, turned his back upon me without a sign of salutation, and as he went towards the door, I could hear him telling Duncan that I was "only some kinless loon that didn't know his own father." Angry as I was at these words, and ashamed of my own ignorance, I could scarce keep from smiling that a man who was under the lash of the law (and was indeed hanged some three years later) should be so nice as to ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... autumn color of pearly beauty. Here — thrilling sound to huntsman — echoes the wild melody of the hound, awakening the solitude with deep-mouthed bay as he pursues the swift career of deer. The quavering note of the loon on the lake, the mournful hoot of the owl at night, with rarer forest voices have also to the lover of nature their peculiar charm, and form the wild language ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... not a losel and idle, mither, nor a thief that steals; I do but hunt God's cattle, upon God's ain hills; For no man buys and sells the deer, and the bonnie fells are free To a belted knight with hawk on hand, and a gangrel loon like me. ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... eyes, but she looked somewhere off into the untraveled west,—the west that was the portal of my enterprise. What was her thought? I must not let myself trap it unaware. I gave a long, low call; the call of the loon as he skirts the ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... water may be found; it seems as if every pool and lake were solid to the bottom, and yet, when we see a large bird, with goose-like body, long neck and long, pointed beak, flying like a bullet of steel through the sky, we may be sure that there is open water to the northward, for a loon never makes a mistake. When the first pioneer of these hardy birds passes, he knows that somewhere beyond us fish can be caught. If we wonder where he has spent the long winter months, we should take a steamer to Florida. Out on the ocean, sometimes a hundred ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... surely not such a loon, Father Wilfred? No,—I long to be great. I feel as though greatness stirred within me. But what can I do,—a squire? If I were a knight I could sign my shoulder with the holy cross, and go fight for our Lord's sepulchre. That were something ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... shots quos nidi et quorum pars, etc. We have seen a bird no larger than a half-grown chicken killed off-hand at eighty rods (nearly fourteen hundred feet); have known a deer to be killed at a good half mile; have shot off the skull-cap of a duck at thirty rods; at twenty rods have shot a loon through the head, putting the ball in at one eye and out at the other, without breaking the skin;—but such shooting, ordinarily, is a physical impossibility, as any experienced rifleman knows. These were chance shots, or so nearly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... and the peaceful revolution and the power greater than bullets and your fanatical ranting about the Holy Ghost in the dupes you are inciting to murder? Come now, maybe you are crazy? Maybe if you'd talk and not stand there like a loon—" ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... wrote rapidly. He had hardly touched the paper with the point of his twig when a low, wild peal of laughter broke out at a measureless distance away, and growing ever louder, seemed approaching ever nearer; a soulless, heartless, and unjoyous laugh, like that of the loon, solitary by the lakeside at midnight; a laugh which culminated in an unearthly shout close at hand, then died away by slow gradations, as if the accursed being that uttered it had withdrawn over the verge of the world whence it had come. ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... were happy. The farm was made fast by another rope put round the town pump. Then the villagers all went to bed. They were happy in having rescued a runaway farm, and they expected a good "loon" (reward) from the rich old Ryer, who, in the barroom, had talked big about ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... Sheep, etc., come out and are killed; while all the rest are persuaded that the victims flew away. But the Coyote and the Loon have their doubts. They danced in their turns, but said they didn't want any change. They are satisfied as the Great Spirit made them. They are slow about hiding their eyes. At last, they peek and realize that it is all a trap and the Loon shouts: "Nana-bo-jou is killing ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... marked the camp at Crane Creek were pitched on a grassy slope that led down to the Athabasca's dancing waters. This had been their camp-ground for several days after a desultory hunting pilgrimage from Loon Portage—the last town where they had left railways and civilisation. Having penetrated northwards into a region that was apparently remote from attacks of the plough and beyond the sound of the rancher's whoop, it was determined to make this a headquarters ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... over an see Harrigan jump off.' So whin th' la-ad is r-ready f'r to go out ivry body gathers in his room. 'Tis a fash'nable ivint, like th' Horse Show. Among those prisint is his mother. She's a frivolous ol' loon, this Marie Louisa, that was Napolyon's sicond wife, though between you an' me, Father Kelly has niver reconized her as such, th' Impror havin' a wife livin' that was as tough as they make thim. But annyhow she was there. She hadn't done much f'r her son, but she come to see him off with siv'ral ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... wrongs with the existing economic system, reverencing the great Adam Smith. The son was for a new deal, a new system, the Socialistic, with modifications all his own. All, or almost all, that Malcolm had read the mother had read with the exception of Marx. She "cudna thole yon godless loon" or his theories or his works. Malcolm had grown somewhat sick of Marx since the war. Indeed, the war had seriously disturbed the foundations of Malcolm's economic faith, and he was seeking a readjustment of his opinion and convictions, which were rather at loose ends. In this state ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... sure, sir," returned the keeper; "there's Ian Anderson an' Tonal' from Cove, an' Mister Archie an' Eddie, an' Roderick—that's five. Oo, ay, I forgot, there's that queer English loon, Robin Tips— he's no' o' much use, but he can mak' a noise—besides three o' Mr ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... there, lass!—But what's this aboot Francie?' 'Ow naething, father, worth mentionin! The daft loon wud hae bed me ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... his skinny hand, "There was a ship," quoth he. 10 "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!" Eftsoons his hand ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... was again obeyed; but the tree replied, "It is the last time; I cannot get any higher." The waters continued to rise till they reached up to his chin, at which point they stood, and soon began to abate. Hope revived in his heart. He then cast his eyes around the illimitable expanse, and spied a loon. "Dive down, my brother," he said to him, "and fetch up some earth, so that I can make a new earth." The bird obeyed, but rose up to the surface a lifeless form. He then saw a muskrat. "Dive!" said he, "and if you succeed, you may hereafter live either on land or water, as you ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... men can do? You'll see; they'll be flying like birds, one of these days. That's what we little boys think, but we overhear old Nate Wells say to Tom Slaymaker, as we pass them: "Well, I d' know. I d' know 's these here b'loon ascensions is worth the money they cost the 'Sociation. I seen so many of 'em, they don't interest me nummore. 'Less, o' course, sumpun ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... as well go to live on the poor-farm! Aaron Boynton was a disrep'table hound; Lois Boynton is as crazy as a loon; the boy is a no-body's child, an' Ivory's no better than a ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... girls who like true tales of adventure. "A Short History of Discovery From the Earliest Times to the Founding of the Colonies on the American Continent," written and done into colour by Hendrik Willem van Loon. ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... the scout; "the lake is as smooth as if the winds had never blown, and I can see along its sheet for miles; there is not so much as the black head of a loon ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... an old-time trapper, named Charley Norton, while on Loon Creek, of the middle fork of the Salmon, meddled with a she and her cubs. She ran at him and with one blow of her paw almost knocked off his lower jaw; yet he recovered, and was alive when I ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... 25 In the lodges of the beaver, In the hoof-prints of the bison, In the eyry of the eagle! "All the wild-fowl sang them to him, In the moorlands and the fen-lands, 30 In the melancholy marshes; Chetowaik, the plover, sang them, Mahn, the loon, the wild goose, Wawa, The blue heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah And the grouse, the Mushkodasa!" 35 If still further you should ask me, Saying, "Who was Nawadaha? Tell us of this Nawadaha," I should answer your inquiries Straightway ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... snakes!—but she listened demure, Comparing day's music with morn's. Of the gentle spirit that slips From the bark of the tree she discoursed, And of her of the wells, whose lips Are coolness enchanting, rock-sourced. And much of the sacred loon, The frolic, the Goatfoot God, For stories of indolent noon In the pineforest's odorous nod, She questioned, not knowing: he can Be waspish, irascible, rude, He is oftener friendly to man, And ever to beasts and their brood. For the which did she love him well, She said, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... I had the loon that did it, Sworn I have as well as said it, Though a' the warld should forbid it, I wad gie his neck a thra': I never met wi' sic a turn As this sin' ever I was born, My Ewie, wi' the crookit horn, Silly Ewie, stown awa'; My Ewie ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... tribe's adepts with hook and line She raised her eyes as she heard the patter of footsteps upon the shore, but did not exhibit any alarm when she saw the two young men. The ordinary young woman of the Shell People did not worry when away from land. She could swim like an otter and dive like a loon, and of wild beasts she had no fear when she was thus safely bestowed away from the death-harboring forest. The maiden on ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... The water, deep and dark, leading far away, every rugged hill capped with snow, and the white peaks sparkling in the sunshine. A loon laughed at them as they passed, and an invisible wolf on a mountainside sent forth its ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... down in his hands for a minute; then he went on: "I started out this morning and gave each of the fellows his money back. They didn't want to take it,—they think me a crazy loon; but I insisted. I've got beyond caring for their opinion. And now, Fee, the rest of my life belongs to you; you've paid an awful price for it, old fellow,—I'm not worth it. Think of your college course—your profession—all the things we planned! I'm not ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... of Keats's Poems Apples of Hesperides Azure and Gold Petals Venetian Glass Fatigue A Japanese Wood-Carving A Little Song Behind a Wall A Winter Ride A Coloured Print by Shokei Song The Fool Errant The Green Bowl Hora Stellatrix Fragment Loon Point Summer "To-morrow to Fresh Woods and Pastures New" The Way Diya {original title is Greek, Delta-iota-psi-alpha} Roads Teatro Bambino. Dublin, N. H. The Road to Avignon New York at Night A Fairy Tale Crowned To Elizabeth Ward ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... swept between the thin spruce trunks that loomed vaguely out of the surrounding gloom as the red glare leaped up, and wisps of acrid smoke drifted about the camp. There was a lake up the hollow, and now and then the wild and mournful cry of a loon rang out. The men were tired and somewhat dejected as they sat about the blaze with their damp blankets round them. A silence had fallen upon them; but ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... of the families who derived their pedigree from Wodin, and that a son should, as natural, succeed his father, were old rules: but the barons would, as all history shews, make little of crowning a younger son instead of an elder, if the younger were a hero, and the elder an 'arga'—a lazy loon; and little, also, would they make of setting aside the whole royal family, and crowning the man who would do their business best. The king was, as this preface and these laws shew, the commander in chief of the exercitus, the militia, and therefore of every free man in the state; (for all ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... distorted height in the dimness; sprays of withered grass nodded along the edge, like Ossian's spectres. Light seemed to be vanishing from the universe, leaving them alone with the sea. And when a solitary loon uttered his wild cry, and rising, sped away into the distance, it was as if life were following light into an equal annihilation. That sense of vague terror, with which the ocean sometimes controls the fancy, began to lay its grasp on them. They remembered that Emilia, in speaking ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... dropped down beside you to say that young Wilkinson went broke in your place last night and has it in for you. He's plum fuzzy with drink, and you better look sharp or he'll do you. He's been on the rampage for two days—crazy as a loon." ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... never refuse, To fight for a Leard so valiant and bold; While I have a drop of Blood for to lose, E'er any fickle Loon shall keep us in hold: This Sweard in my Hand I'll valiantly weild, And fight by your side to kill or be kill'd, For forcing the Gates and set ourselves free, And so bid adieu to ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... ago, had believed himself to be one of the most fortunate men in the big wilderness. That was before La Mort Rouge—the Red Death—came. He was half French, and he had married a Cree chief's daughter, and in their log cabin on the Gray Loon they had lived for many years in great prosperity and happiness. Pierrot was proud of three things in this wild world of his. He was immensely proud of Wyola, his royal-blooded wife. He was proud of his daughter; ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... morning, when the shoemaker awoke, he went to see what work Ivan had done; but, perceiving him still fast asleep, he flew into a rage, and exclaimed: "Up, you lazy loon! have I engaged you only to sleep?" Ivan, stretching himself slowly, replied: "Have patience, master; first go to the workshop, and see what you shall find." So the shoemaker went to the shop; and what was his astonishment at beholding a quantity of shoes all made and ready! And ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... Another time a shark seemed on the point of leaping from the surf to swallow me, nor did I wholly without dread approach near enough to ascertain that the man-eater had already met his own death from some fisherman in the bay. In the same ramble I encountered a bird—a large gray bird—but whether a loon or a wild goose or the identical albatross of the Ancient Mariner was beyond my ornithology to decide. It reposed so naturally on a bed of dry seaweed, with its head beside its wing, that I almost fancied it alive, and trod softly lest it should ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this month," while still another announced, "Owing to the indisposition of Professor Podge, all botanical classes are suspended, but Professor Podge hopes to be able to join in the Botanical Picnic Excursion to Loon Lake on Saturday afternoon." You could judge of the grinding routine of the work from the nature of these notices. Anyone familiar with the work of colleges would not heed it, but it shocked Tomlinson ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... the lake is probably the most charming in America. Why the young ladies and gentlemen who camp there occasionally vex the days and nights with hooting, and singing sentimental songs, is a mystery even to the laughing loon. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... a loon," declared the farmer, winking at his men. "Gets nearly drowned in a well and then begins chopping at a rock as ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... little bed that counts with you just now," said the doctor. "You come with me at once, or I'll throw up the case. 'You're as loony as a loon." ...
— Options • O. Henry
... curiosity than of fear. Woodland ponds, whose placid waters have never reflected the dark lines of a canoe, lie like jewels in their setting of green hills; ponds where soft-eyed deer come down to drink at twilight, and where the weird laughter of the loon floats through the morning mists. Toward the south, however, man is fast penetrating the secrets of the forest, blazing dim trails and leaving fear and destruction in the wake of his guns ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... Lu'u a e-a. To dive and then come up to take breath, as one does in swimming out to sea against the incoming breakers, or as one might do in escaping from a pursuer, or in avoiding detection, after the manner of a loon.] ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... and never knew anything of it. Mr. Thornton went on to say that he knew beyond a doubt that the sensational account of Lincoln's insanity was untrue, and he quoted from the House journal to show how it was impossible that, as Lamon says, using Herndon's notes, "Lincoln went crazy as a loon, and did not attend the legislature in 1841-1842, for this reason;" or, as Herndon says, that he had to be watched constantly. According to the record taken from the journals of the House sent us by Mr. Thornton, and which we have had verified in ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... mouth as if to speak in defense of his son, but was silent in satisfaction at his wife's explanation: "'Lias ain't bad; he jes' ca'less. Sometimes he stays at home, but right sma't o' de time he stays down at"—she looked at her husband and hesitated—"at de colo'ed s'loon. We don't lak dat. It ain't no fitten place fu' him. But 'Lias ain't bad, he jes' ca'less, an' me an' de ol' man we 'membahs him in ouah pra'ahs, an' I jes' t'ought I'd ax you to 'membah ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... tell you," cried the little girl, in a husky whisper, darting to her brother's side. "Oh, why did you make me get him here? Everybody says he's crazy as a loon, and—" ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... for in addition to his green turban he wears a broad green kammer bund and a green undergarment; he is in fact very green indeed. Then a crazy person pushes his way forward and wants me to cure him of his mental infirmity; at all events I cannot imagine what else he wants; the man is crazy as a loon, he cannot even give utterance to his own mother-tongue, but tries to express himself in a series of disjointed grunts beside which the soul-harrowing efforts of a broken-winded donkey are quite melodious. Someone has probably told him that I am a hakim, or a wonderful person on general principles, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... ancestry, Some warm touch of an ancient pride Drew my feet to her willing side. My comrade, she, in the Touchwood Camp, To ride, hunt, trail by the fire-fly lamp; To track the moose to his moose-yard; pass The bustard's doom through the prairie grass; To hark at night to the crying loon Beat idle wings on the still lagoon; To hide from death in the drifting snow, To slay the last of the buffalo. . . . Ah, well, I speak of the days that were; And I swear to you, I was kind to her. I lost her. How are the best friends lost? The lightning lines ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... last night; and I only had a bed and a breakfast at the twa Blue Pillars' house, for which they extortioned me three shillings and sax-pence, as I sit here. And then there was the chambermaid hussy and waiter loon axed me to remember them, and wanted more siller; but I told them as I told the guard and coachman, that I had none ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... while he was attending me I was as crazy as a loon, but that I was more lucid than the physician. Even with my little, shattered wreck of mind, tottering between a superficial knowledge of how to pound sand and a wide, shoreless sea of mental vacuity, I still ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... wandering round crazy as a loon, seeing three big lions with eyes like coals of fire stalking him night and day, and him always trying to dodge 'em. He says at last they came nearer and nearer until he stumbled and fell, and then he felt their hot breath on ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... and the Quarry-holes, and the Gusedub, ye fause loon!" answered Master George, speaking Scotch with a strong and natural emphasis; "it is such land-loupers as you, that, with your falset and fair fashions, bring reproach on ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... Gustavus Vasa had been seen to pass that way. Another moment and they might have become curious about the stranger sitting at the hearth, when the woman hastily turned round, and struck him on the shoulder with the huge spoon she held in her hand. 'Lazy loon!' she cried. 'Have you no work to do? Off with you at once and see to your threshing.' The Danes only saw before them a common Swedish servant bullied by his mistress, and it never entered their heads to ask any questions; so once ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... dark Wayagamack, in bark canoe we glide, And watch the shades of evening glance along the mountain side. Anon we hear resounding the wizard loon's wild cry, And mark the distant peak whereon the ling'ring ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond
... "Silly loon," said the queen, "I tell you I cannot! Choose something else, John; and I conjure you, dear John, ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... tell you," said little Miss Fuzzy tall, "It wasn't like anything I ever had heard before. It was something like the voice of Hooty the Owl and the voice of Dippy the Loon and the voice of a little yelping dog all in one, and it was ...
— Mrs. Peter Rabbit • Thornton W. Burgess
... 'plaining of pains in his bones, Christabel as is common, Roger well, Mary making o' candles," replied Tabitha rapidly. "As for yon ill-doing loon of a husband of yours, he's eating cakes and supping ale ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... to the rule of philosophic sedateness in newly caught birds is the loon, or great northern diver. That bird is so exceedingly nervous and foolish, and so persistent in its evil ways, that never once have we succeeded in inducing a loon to settle down on exhibition and be good. When caught and placed in our ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... admitted, "I ain't gone in the s'loon. I tells the lady on our floor that my papa likes that she should lend her can und she says, 'He's welcome, all right.' Und I gives the can on a man what stands by the s'loon, und I says: 'My papa he has a sickness, und beer is healthy for him. On'y he couldn't to ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... back toward the house, and I laughed at my momentary confusion as I rode on through the deepening shadow, for though it is strangely mournful the loon's shrill call was nothing unusual in that land. Still, mere coincidence as it was, remembering Grace's shiver it troubled me, and I should have been more uneasy had I known how we were ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... in a border of gigantic trees. Over its waters hung the interlacing branches of mighty oaks and beeches and pines. Its surface was frequented by flocks of wild, aquatic birds,—the duck, the gull, and the loon. In this lofty valley among the hills were also to be found, then as now, in fullest perfection, the clear atmosphere, the cloudless skies, and the brilliant light of midsummer suns, that characterize everywhere the American highlands. More even than the beauty ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... abroad himself, we inquired of a porter, and by his direction went to an alehouse, where after a cup or two we parted. I went towards London, and in my way went in to see Crowly, who was now grown a very great loon and very tame. Thence to Mr. Steven's with a pair of silver snuffers, and bought a pair of shears to cut silver, and so homeward again. From home I went to see Mrs. Jem, who was in bed, and now granted to have the small-pox. Back again, and went to ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... up to the westward. In the shadow of the grey rocks of the grim old mountains that so stubbornly held their secret of what lay beyond, we had a good supper of trout and were happy, though through the gulch the creek roared defiance at us, and off in the night somewhere a loon would break out at intervals in derisive laughter. At the base of the mountains the narrow lake reflected a million stars, and in their kindly light the snow and ice patches on the slopes above us gleamed ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... Down by Loon Lake the great saurians were basking themselves in the hot sun, and the appearance of the boys among them made a slight disturbance along the ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... within a quarter of a mile but received a volley; not a loon that showed his distant head above water but went down under the fire of a platoon; and not a frightened duck darted overhead but heard the air behind him torn with whistling shot enough to have exterminated ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... Miss, he's read through your letter To the end,—and "the end came too soon;" That a "slight illness kept him your debtor," (Which for weeks he was wild as a loon); That "his spirits are buoyant as yours is;" That with you, Miss, he "challenges Fate," (Which the language that invalid uses At times ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... on her husband himself, once a professor here, and who, just before his last illness, had published a brilliant book on Russian literature which resulted in his being called to Harvard. They had gone to Switzerland instead, and Augusta Maturin had come back to Silliston. She told Janet of the loon-haunted lake, hemmed in by the Laurentian hills, besieged by forests, where she had spent her girlhood summers with her father, Professor Wishart, of the University of Toronto. There, in search of health, Gifford Maturin had come at her ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Pacific were known to Hudson as the South Sea. And now the tide rolled south over shelving, sandy shores, past countless islands yellowing to the touch of September frosts, and silent as death but for the cries of gull, tern, bittern, the hooting piebald loon, match-legged phalaropes, and geese and ducks of every hue, collected for the autumnal flight south. It was a yellowish sea under a sky blue as turquoise; and it may be that Hudson recalled sailor yarns of China's seas, lying yellow under skies blue as a robin's egg. At any ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... that this political old hen had hatched out her various sort of eggs. We expected that her motley brood would afford us some fun. Here we expected to see a young hawk, and there a goslin, and next a strutting turkey, and then a dodo, a loon, an ostrich, a wren, a magpie, a cuckoo, and a wag-tail. But the old continental hen has now set so long, that we conclude that her eggs are addled, and incubation frustrated. During all this time, the Gallick cock is on his roost at Elba, with ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... if he likes. That's Shakespeare, Cruttendon. I'm with you there. Shakespeare had more guts than all these damned frogs put together. 'Hang there like fruit my soul,'" he began quoting, in a musical rhetorical voice, flourishing his wine-glass. "The devil damn you black, you cream-faced loon!" he exclaimed as the wine ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... he adores that Pilgrim flock, The same that split old Plymouth rock, Their "Bay Psalm" when they tried to sing. Devoid of metre, sense, and tune, Who but a Puritanic loon Could have devised ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... sharp-eyed and shrill-voiced as all such ragged little urchins are, would run after this big man with the streaming white hair and the tattered cloak, calling him names or tapping their brown little foreheads with their dirty fingers to show that even they knew that he was "as crazy as a loon." ...
— The True Story of Christopher Columbus • Elbridge S. Brooks
... the fools are hangin' on for is more'n I can see. Martha Phipps was down on her knees beggin' me to buy only a little spell ago. Old Jeth, of course, thinks his 'spirits' are backin' HIM up. Crazy old loon! Spirits! In this day and time! God sakes! Humph! I wish to thunder I could deal with the spirits direct; might be able to do business with THEM. Perfessor, now come, think it over. There ain't anything crooked about it.... Why, what is it, ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... trash!" stormed the Squire. "Not one of them shall ever darken my threshold again. Hech! that's what comes of being kind to such objects. They take you to be as big fools as themselves, and act accordingly. The constable shall lay his grip on that loon so sure as ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... it from a peddler loon," he said. "It is bonnie and soft, and it sets you well, and I hope you will ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... the snow Drifted down from the maple tree (Oh, the wind that is sobbing so! Weary and worn and old are we)— Only the snow and a wounded loon— Rest and ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... were passed, "if it be only to ask where you flew to, the day we left you in the Mona Passage? We looked out for you with all our eyes, expecting you would be down between San Domingo and Jamaica, but I hardly think you got by us in the night. Our master thinks you must have dove, and gone past loon-fashion. Do you ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... or prefer to keep out of his way, if they do; fevers and congestions were the surgeon's business, and I always kept people to their own department; cramp and exhaustion were dangers I could measure, as I had often done; bullets were a more substantial danger, and I must take the chance,—if a loon could dive at the flash, why not I? If I were once ashore, I should have to cope with the Rebels on their own ground, which they knew better than I; but the water was my ground, where I, too, had been ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... he saw and heard, the peddler attempted to question her, but failing to obtain any satisfactory answers he finally left, mentally pronouncing her "as crazy as a loon." This opinion was confirmed by the people on whom he next called, for, chancing to speak of Hagar, he was told that nothing which she did or said was considered strange, as she had been called insane for years. This satisfied Martin, who ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... "Base loon!" cried the stranger, starting to his feet, "ye shall rue that blow." And he flung off his bonnet as if ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... doest thou, scullion, in my fellowship? Deem'st thou that I accept thee aught the more Or love thee better, that by some device Full cowardly, or by mere unhappiness, Thou hast overthrown and slain thy master—thou!— Dish-washer and broach-turner, loon!—to me Thou smellest ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... hooked, for a good hold on slippery little fish. The foot has three long toes in front and a foolish little short one behind. The web between the front toes goes down to the tips; but it makes only a small paddle, after all, and when it comes to swimming, the loon and the duck and several other birds can easily distance the gull. It is as a floater that he excels in water sports; he rides the waves more lightly and gracefully ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... glistening, insolent eyes of Louis Laplante, gazing out of the dusk with an expression of rakish amusement, the amusement of a spider when a fly walks into its web. Taken unawares I have ever been more or less of what Mr. Jack MacKenzie was wont to call "a stupid loon!" On discovering Laplante I promptly sustained my reputation by letting the door fly to with a sharp click that startled the whole room-full. Whereat Louis Laplante gave ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... to the loon some gait or other; ye had better take it yoursell, I think, wi' peep o' light, up to Ringan Aikwood's. I wadna for a hundred pounds it was fund in ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... skim over it, and the peetweets (Totanus macularius) "teter" along its stony shores all summer. I have sometimes disturbed a fishhawk sitting on a white-pine over the water; but I doubt if it is ever profaned by the wing of a gull, like Fair-Haven. At most, it tolerates one annual loon. These are all the animals of consequence which ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... is a light-hearted loon, If you listen to popular rumor; From morning to night he's so joyous and bright, And he bubbles with wit and good-humor! He's so quaint and so terse, both in prose and in verse; Yet though people forgive his transgression, There are one or two rules that all Family Fools Must observe, ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... thee does the soft-shining moon Silver o'er the green waves of the bay; Nor at evening, the notes of the wandering loon Bid farewell ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... and clean. The tables, chairs, and benches were all homemade. On the floor were magnificent skins of wolf, bear, musk ox, and mountain goat. The walls were decorated with heads and horns of deer and mountain sheep, eagle's wings, and a beautiful breast of a loon, which Gwen had shot and of which she was very proud. At one end of the room a huge stone fireplace stood radiant in its summer decorations of ferns and grasses and wildflowers. At the other end a door opened into another room, smaller, and ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... river, joined with fatigue and long exposure to the sun and air, caused her at length to fall asleep. The last rosy light of the setting sun was dyeing the waters with a glowing tint when she awoke; a soft blue haze hung upon the trees; the kingfisher and dragon-fly, and a solitary loon, were the only busy things abroad on the river,—the first darting up and down from an upturned root, near the water's edge, feeding its younglings; the dragon-fly hawking with rapid whirring sound for insects; and the loon, just visible from above the surface of the still ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... these strange speeches till she heard Nancy say to Mrs. Hunter, "Crazy as a loon, ain't she? I'm afraid it's water ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... loved to be under water, even in moderate weather. Many a time have I seen her send the water aft, into the quarter-deck scuppers, and, as for diving, no loon was quicker than she. Now, that she was deep and was rolling her deck-load to the water, it was time to think of lightening her. The cotton was thrown overboard as fast as we could, and what the men could not start the seas did. After a while we eased the ship sensibly, ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... "He's a loon," MacDonald paused with a forefinger in the bowl of his pipe. "He doesna know a moccasin from a snowshoe, scarce. I'd like tae be aboot when 'tis forty below—an' gettin' colder. I'm thinkin' he'd relish a taste o' hell-fire then, ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the wildness of the loon's weird hullo, coming in at the open flaps of the tents from afar; and the clumsy fluttering and flapping of great beetles against the canvas, attracted by the lantern light that shone through. The cawing of crows just above their heads awoke ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... "It's a loon," said Mr. Waterman, as they came up. "Let me have a try," he said, turning to Pierre and reaching for the gun. Pierre handed it over and Mr. Waterman scanned the waterfront closely. In about a minute, ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... shad-pole gyrated past me with force enough to brain an elephant had it struck him. It was good fun, though, in old times to go out and see them raise the nets, for they often came up heavy with fish. Strange to say, a loon was once pulled up with the shad. Driven by fear, it must have dived so vigorously as to entangle itself, for there it hung with its head and one leg fast. I suppose that the last moment of consciousness that the poor bird had was ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... philosopher sits in solitary state. He shall keep me awake by the Walden shore till the moon and the shadow meet. How tranquil sits the philosopher, how grandly rings the man! Here, in his homespun house, the squirrels click under his feet, the woodchucks devour his beans, and the loon laughs on the lake. Here rich men come, and cannot hide their lankness and their poverty. Here poor men come, and their gold shines through their rags. Hither comes the poet, and the house is too narrow for their thoughts, and the rough walls ring ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... countries will come to me. I may stick it out yet, and not miss much after all. The great trouble is for Mohammed to know when the mountain really comes to him. Sometimes a rabbit or a jay or a little warbler brings the woods to my door. A loon on the river, and the Canada lakes are here; the sea-gulls and the fish hawk bring the sea; the call of the wild gander at night, what does it suggest? and the eagle flapping by, or floating along on a raft of ice, does ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... I should tell you, "In the bird's-nests of the forest, In the lodges of the beaver, In the hoof-prints of the bison, In the eyry of the eagle! "All the wild-fowl sang them to him, In the moorlands and the fen-lands, In the melancholy marshes; Chetowaik, the plover, sang them, Mahng, the loon, the wild-goose, Wawa, The blue heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, And the grouse, the Mushkodasa!" If still further you should ask me, Saying, "Who was Nawadaha? Tell us of this Nawadaha," I should answer your inquiries ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... said Lynde to himself, "as mad as a loon; everybody here is mad, or I've lost my senses. So you are building a marble ship?" he added aloud, good-naturedly. "When it is finished I trust you will get all the inhabitants of this town into it, and put to sea ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... menacing grumble. It sounded like the roar of machinery, with the falling of a heavy trip-hammer at regular intervals, and it seemed possible that they were in the vicinity of a manufacturing town. There was a little light in the eastern horizon, and Puck suddenly exclaimed, "T'ere's anoder b'loon!" It was the full moon, instead, that rose majestically, and the fog seemed to be disappearing. Looking down, the professor thought he could see the land, and he allowed the balloon to slowly descend. By and by, they could all see that the ground was marked with white streaks ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... ilka Scot, that sells his conscience and his vote.' — He discharged a third sarcasm at a person very gaily dressed, who had risen from small beginnings, and made a considerable fortune at play. — Filling his glass, and calling him by name, 'Lang life (said he), to the wylie loon that gangs a-field with a toom poke at his lunzie, and comes hame with a sackful of siller.' — All these toasts being received with loud bursts of applause, Mr Fraser called for pint glasses, and filled his ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... him. His anxiety to hear from home increased, until finally he learned from her brother, a soldier of the Eighteenth Ohio, that she was married. Strong, healthy, good-looking fellow that he was, this intelligence prostrated him completely, and made him crazy as a loon. He imagined that he was in hell, thought Dr. Seyes the devil, and so violent did he become that they had ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... But he never knew what he was dloin'—he wus crazy as a loon. There's nuthin' fer yer ter fuss over now. Tell us about it, Gates—the bath ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... in arms the Moon? I counsel thee, from soul cast out the wish that dwells therein, * And cut that short which threatens thee with sore risk oversoon: An to such talk thou dare return, I bid thee to expect * Fro' me such awful penalty as suiteth froward loon: I swear by Him who moulded man from gout of clotted blood,[FN34] * Who lit the Sun to shine by day and lit for night the moon, An thou return to mention that thou spakest in thy pride, * Upon a cross of tree for boon I'll ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... in the money market— plenty of stock in the funds, Mrs. Gray, and, indeed, I think this poor young woman is better with her ain father, though he be a Jew and a dour chield into the bargain, than she would have been with the loon that wranged her, who is, by your account, Dr. Gray, baith a papist and a rebel. The Jews are well attached to government; they hate the Pope, the Devil, and the Pretender, as much as any ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... hill, and were coming along at a pretty good jog, when we heard some body hallooing after us, and we held up. Looking around, we saw a man running down from the house standing upon the side-hill, a little away from the road. May be you remember the house up there? Well, he was hallooing like a loon, and we waited till he came up. Soon as he got near enough to talk, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... late; and the air was chill as the sisters stood on a rock waiting until its rays should silver the placid waves. Overhead ran a strange, broad, coruscating band of magnetic light, meteors flashed down the sky, a solitary loon sent a wild, despairing cry athwart the lake, and for the first time did our travellers feel they were alone, eighteen hundred feet above the Hudson, far away from other human habitation. A truly feminine shudder ran through their hearts, as they ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... doog-win Nin dinaindoon—" "Loon's wing I thought it was In the distance shining. But it was my lover's paddle In ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... away, our little friend solemnly protesting, long after they were reduced to mere specks in the air, that he could still distinguish the white hat of Mr. Green. The gardens disgorged their multitudes, boys ran up and down screaming 'bal-loon;' and in all the crowded thoroughfares people rushed out of their shops into the middle of the road, and having stared up in the air at two little black objects till they almost dislocated their necks, walked slowly in again, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Cunningham, that the foreign soldier should bear himself modestly and decorously towards the people of the country if you would not have the whole dogs of the town at your heels? However, if you must have a bargain [a quarrel, videlicet. S.], I would rather it were with that loon of a Provost than any one else; and I blame you less for this onslaught than for other frays that you have made, Ludovic, for it was but natural and kind-like to help your young kinsman. This simple bairn must come to no skaith [same as scathe] neither; so give me the roll of the company yonder ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... thing—the ill-natured loon! Were it ever sae rightly, he 'll no let it be; And I rubbit at my e'en, and I thought I would swoon, How the carle had come roun' about our ain Bessie Lee! The wee laughing lassie was a gudewife grown auld, Twa weans at her ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... crazy loon?' I whispered. 'Can't you see he's three sheets in the wind? And you haven't told him what Kelly you want, ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and ill-mannered loon," Cuthbert said angrily. "Were you in any other presence I would chastise you ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retires to solitary ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its slough, and the caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and expansion; for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. Otherwise we shall be found sailing under false colors, and be inevitably cashiered ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... worry him so that he will be crazier than a loon at the party,' she said, and so Harold waited, but started for the park the next morning as soon as he thought Mr. Tracy ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... and Mr. Van Loon, from Poughkeepsie, addressed the people on the Sabbath; and also, on the same evening, a large concourse at the Court House. The day following, there were not less than ten thousand people assembled on the beautiful grounds, belonging to the village Academy-attentive listeners ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... she said, very low, "and from my father's house! Forth with you for a mocker and a gangrel loon!"—speaking in our common Scots,—"and herd with the base thieves from whom you came, ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... a breath from the east, cool as a hand on the brow of fever. Twittering of sleepy chickadees were heard among the pines, and out in the lake a loon laughed. ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... nimblelike, his eyne chock full o' mischief lookin' round fur to see some poor soul to play a prank on. It do feel strange-like to have him a-sittin' by my elbow today. Many's the tale I could tell o' his doin' an' our sufferin'. Why, I mind a poor lump of a 'prentice as I wunst had, a loon as never could raise a keek: poor soul, he bin underground this many year. Well, as I were sayin', this 'prentice o' mine were allers bein' baited by the boys o' the grammar school. I done my best for him, spoke them boys fair an' soft, but, ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... him silent until day dawned, and with the coming of the sun there woke in unison the chorus of joyous animal life. Then Ichabod, his long legs dangling over the dashboard, lifted up a voice untrained as the note of a loon, and sang lustily, until his companion on ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... on like that, shaking and stuttering there in the road, like a fit had struck him, crazy as a loon. But he got hold of himself enough to quit talking, in a minute, and his cunning come back to him before he was through trembling. Then the doctor says slow and ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... is strangely silent; one hears only the occasional puffing of the white whale or the sad cry of the loon. ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... crowed triumphantly. "Ah, ha!" he crowed. "Ah, ha! That's the answer. That's the one he's shakin' day-days to, that Fosdick girl. I've seen you 'round with her at the post office and the ice cream s'loon. I'm onto you, Al. Haw, haw! What's her name? Adeline? Dandelion? Madeline?—that's it! Say, how do you think Helen Kendall's goin' to like your throwin' kisses ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... the conical heaps of small stones on the river-shallows, one of which heaps will sometimes overfill a cart,—these heaps the huge nests of small fishes; the birds which frequent the stream, heron, duck, sheldrake, loon, osprey; the snake, musk-rat, otter, woodchuck, and fox, on the banks; the turtle, frog, hyla, and cricket, which make the banks vocal,—were all known to him, and, as it were, townsmen and fellow-creatures; so that he felt an absurdity ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... tiger, eagle, or the bird they call cuntur (condor), or some other bird of prey." (2) According to Lewis Morgan, the North American Indians of various tribes had for totems the wolf, bear, beaver, turtle, deer, snipe, heron, hawk, crane, loon, turkey, muskrat; pike, catfish, carp; buffalo, elk, reindeer, eagle, hare, rabbit, snake; reed-grass, ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... night with Tenny Gouley. In the early morning, sharply turning a corner, we flush a mixed family of water-fowl—gulls in great variety, something that looks like a brant, and a loon with its uncanny laughter. Snipe are on every batture, and sand-pipers, with kingfishers and all the lesser waders. The boreal summer is short and if broods are to be raised there is no time to waste. ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... has had ought to die easier, Cinthy,' says I. 'It's pretty hard to have forty years' consumption, and then go off with a fever,' 'We can't question the Lord's doin's,' says Cinthy. But for all that, she wouldn't stay in the room to see him. He couldn't ketch his breath and he was as crazy as a loon. Lord, how he worried! All day, yesterday, he was a loadin' ship down to the shore. It would a' made your bones ache to hear him workin' so; and all night long he was a loadin', and a loadin.' Thinks I, won't there never be no end to this, for I felt hard, and him a loadin' and a ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... says, Miss, he's read through your letter To the end,—and the end came too soon; That a slight illness kept him your debtor (Which for weeks he was wild as a loon); That his spirits are buoyant as yours is; That with you, Miss, he challenges Fate (Which the language that invalid uses At times it were ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... A loon was caught, by a set line for fishing, sixty-five feet below the surface of a lake in New York, having dived to ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... Aucassin was of Beaucaire, And abode in castle fair. None can move him to forget Dainty-fashioned Nicolette Whom his sire to him denies; And his mother sternly cries: "Out on thee! what wilt thou, loon? Nicolette is blithe and boon? Castaway from Carthage she! Bought of Paynim compayne! If with woman thou wilt mate, Take thee wife of high estate!" "Mother, I can else do ne'er! Nicolette is debonair; Her lithe form, her face, her bloom, Do the heart of ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... realization flashed all through him, and he threw his head still higher and opened wide his shapeless trap of a mouth, and out across the lake he sent skittering and rolling his cry. And in his cry was the laugh of a loon, and the croaking bellow of a frog, and the bay of a hound, all the compounded night noises of the lake. And in it, too, was a farewell and a defiance and an appeal. The heavy roar of the duck ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... my house for ten days, till his bruises lost their purple glow and he looked a little less like a bad case of erysipelas. Then he started out again, crazy as a loon! I didn't hear from him for nearly two years. Then I got a letter telling about his life of adventure down on the Border. It seems he'd got in with a good capable stockman down there and they was engaged in the cattle business. The business was to go over into ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... scoffed. "Crazy as a loon!" and he walked away and left Mr. Gubb struggling for a suitably ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... my lord,' he said, 'I've stown the horse frae the sleeping loon; But for you I'll steal a beast as braid, For I'll steal Lord Durie frae ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... "Thou sely loon! [Simple creature!] Dost reckon I mean to work mine own broidery, trow? I'd have a fair score of maidens alway a-broidering for me, so that I might ever have a fresh device when I ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... a saucy loon, whoever thou be! I'll warrant thee as much impudence in thy face as wind i' thy muzzle," said the disturbed seneschal. "Tarry a while, Hugo; ope not the gate without a parley, despite the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Commission are too much to the purpose to be suppressed. The object was to investigate the conduct of the Revenue Boards in Ireland and Scotland. In the former, it is well known, great mismanagement was discovered; for Pat, poor fellow, had been playing the loon to a considerable extent. In Scotland, not a shadow of abuse prevailed. You would have thought, Mr. Journalist, that the Irish Boards would have been reformed in some shape, and the Scotch Establishments honourably acquitted, and suffered to continue on the footing of independence which ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... looby^, hoddy-doddy^, noddy, nonny, noodle, nizy^, owl; goose, goosecap^; imbecile; gaby^; radoteur^, nincompoop, badaud^, zany; trifler, babbler; pretty fellow; natural, niais^. child, baby, infant, innocent, milksop, sop. oaf, lout, loon, lown^, dullard, doodle, calf, colt, buzzard, block, put, stick, stock, numps^, tony. bull head, dunderhead, addlehead^, blockhead, dullhead^, loggerhead, jolthead^, jolterhead^, beetlehead^, beetlebrain, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... travelled far. The sun goes down. You build a fire and cook your meat, and then good tea and the tabac. It is ver' fine. You hear the loon crying on the water, or the last whistle of the heron up the pass. The lights in the sky come out and shine through a thin mist— there is nothing like that mist, it is so fine and soft. Allons. You are sleepy. You bless the good God. You stretch pine branches, wrap in your ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... "Ye ill-faured loon, stan' awa'," yelled Scoodrach, as Max laid his hand on Kenneth's shoulder; and they went down together to the boat, while the bailiff and his man walked muttering back to ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... dirty, trading loon Wad gar the water ca' his wheel, And drift his dyes and poisons doun By fair ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... in desperation, as he strove to master an almost overwhelming impulse to turn and fly from the spot. "Crazy as a loon," thought the boy, with a shudder, "and I've got to take him clear to Fort Norman, alone!" "I'm a stump, I'm a stump," chanted the man, shrilly, and the boy saw that he had come to a rigid stand ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... mind when the Whipples offered, in so many words, to set him up in any business he wanted to name, and pay all expenses, and he spurned 'em like so much dirt beneath his heel. Acted like a crazy loon is what I say, and this Jack-of-all-trades is showing the strain. Mark my words, they'll both end ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... had an initial in my hat, and I don't know Briggs. Mr. Crow, you are as crazy as a loon." He prepared to bring the machine to a standstill. "I'm going home. You can ride back with me or get out and walk on, just as ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... When I see him, I'm going to kiss him on both cheeks. He's got enough dope on them to hang them higher than Franklin's kite, and we'll nail those jaspers to the cross or I'm a polyp! He's crazier than a loon in most of his hunches, but he's filled four of our biggest gaps. There is such a thing, as a ray-screen, you kill-joy, and there are also lifting or tractor rays—two things I've been trying to dope out and that you've been giving me the Bronx ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... Blackjack's shoulder, in the wildest part of these retreats, this odd couple had lived for twenty years. They had neither dog nor children to mitigate the heavy silence of the hills. Pike Garvey was little known in the settlements, but all who had dealt with him pronounced him "crazy as a loon." He acknowledged no occupation save that of a squirrel hunter, but he "moonshined" occasionally by way of diversion. Once the "revenues" had dragged him from his lair, fighting silently and desperately like a terrier, ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... my bottle drink, And cease this scurvy rune." But the raven flapped its wings and laughed Loud as the water loon. ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... names, and it fully justified that fantastic method of choosing our route by the sound of the names of places, which I confessed to the reader on an earlier page: Wayland—Patchin's Mills—Blood's Depot—Cohocton. And to north and south of our route were names such as Ossian, Stony Brook Glen, Loon Lake, Rough & Ready, Doly's Corners, and Neil Creek. I confess that there was a Perkinsville to go through—a beautiful spot, too, for which one felt that sort of aesthetic pity one feels for a ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... calm and without concern, and give his dying messages with the composure of an every day occurrence; while others, if the tip of the finger is touched, or his shin-bone grazed, will "yell like a hyena or holler like a loon," and raise such a rumpus as to alarm the whole army. I saw a man running out of battle once (an officer) at such a gait as only fright could give, and when I asked him if he was wounded, he replied, "Yes, my leg is broken in two places," when, as a matter of fact, he had only a slight ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... expect. Why! do you remember the old chap I told you about—that old prospector who lives at Loon Lake?—you will come across him, unless he has gone to the mountains. For thirteen years that man has hunted the gulches for mines. There are your mines," waving his hand again, "and you are our prospector. Dig them up. Good-bye. God bless ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... S.—The loon is found in all the Northern States. It is a very awkward bird on land, but a graceful and rapid swimmer. It is a remarkable diver, and it is thought that no other feathered creature can dive so far beneath the surface or remain so long a time under water. A specimen was once found attached to the ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... a body sick, such mullet-headed ignorance! If either of you'd read anything about history, you'd know that Richard Cur de Loon, and the Pope, and Godfrey de Bulleyn, and lots more of the most noble-hearted and pious people in the world, hacked and hammered at the paynims for more than two hundred years trying to take their land ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... you may depend, when they see'd me; they didn't like the curlin' tongs, as much as some folks do, and pigs' tails kinder curl naterally. But there was lawyer a-standin' up by the grove, lookin' as peeked and as forlorn, as an onmated loon. ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... wanders up the mere With opiates for idleness to quaff, And while she ministers, far off I hear The owl's uncanny cry, the wild loon's laugh. ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... print of the wastrel loon, sir; but the lads will bide out the night. They've whusky ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... yesterday, going down street. Thinks I, 'Who can that be?' There was something kind of queer about the way he dragged his feet. What you going to do about it, Judge? Have we got to put up with having a jailbird, as crazy as a loon into the bargain, living right ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley |
