"Moth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ragged yellow cover, was astride his knee, but now he was content to sit and think. He made a prosperous and comfortable figure, reflected in the dim, dark mirror over the mantel, where the candles shone back like stars in a pool at night. A white moth had found its way into the house, and fluttered back and forth between the candles, its little white ghost following it in the glass. The rector watched it placidly. Even his thoughts were tranquil and comfortable, for he was equally indifferent both to the bishop ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... I three times idly flicked that corner of the pool with a synthetic moth. Again for the fourth time I cast, more from habit than hope. Then ensued that terrific rush from ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... of pale gold. Overlaying the flush of rose in her cheeks, seen only when she stood against the sunlight, was a faint sheen of down, a lustrous floss, delicate as the pollen of a flower, or the impalpable powder of a moth's wing. She was moving to and fro about her work, alert, joyous, robust; and from all the fine, full amplitude of her figure, from her thick white neck, sloping downward to her shoulders, from the deep, feminine swell of her breast, the vigorous maturity of her hips, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... the moth of the silkworm borrowed from Hokusai. Otto H. Bacher thought the addition of a sting to the signature came from this incident at Venice: In 1880 he found a scorpion and impaled it on his etching needle. As the little ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... humour; he, alas! can be dirty like the rest, when necessary: but humour he has of the highest quality. 'The Ordinary' is full of it; and Moth, the Antiquary, though too much of a lay figure, and depending for his amusingness on his quaint antiquated language, is such a sketch as Mr. Dickens need not ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... what I thought this young fellow might have come to; and now I have let him go off into the country with my certificate, that he is fit to teach in a school for either sex! Ten to one he will run like a moth into a candle, right into one of those girls'-nests, and get tangled up in some sentimental folly or other, and there will be the end of him. Oh, yes! country doctor,—half a dollar a visit,—drive, drive, drive all day,—get ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... my son-in-law will never be what Dora deserves—I said, or let you see as much, no matter which; I am no equivocator, nor do I now unsay or retract a word. You have my secret; but remember when first I had the folly to tell it you, same time I warned you—I warned you, Harry, like the moth from the candle—I warned you in vain. In another tone I warn you now, young man, for the last time—I tell you my promise to me is sacred—she is as good as married to White Connal—fairly tied up neck and heels—and so am I, to all intents and purposes; and if I thought it were possible you could ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... or the most unromantic of nights; though everything is charming, there is no attempt at idealization, little of the higher faculty of imagination; but great realism, and much play of fancy. Herrick's verses were written by Cobweb and Moth together, Drayton's by Puck. Granting, however, the initial deficiency in subtlety of charm, the whole poem is inimitably graceful and piquant. The gay humour, the demure horror of the witchcraft, the terrible seriousness of the battle, wonderfully ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... "chir-up" in the same tone. It was a very funny sight. They could fly nicely, but never seemed to think of looking for food, and it was plain that the busy little mother had no time to teach them. It was interesting to see her deal with a moth which she found napping on a fence. She ran at once to a crack or some convenient hole in the rough rail, thrust it in and hammered it down. When it was quiet she snipped off the wings, dragged it out, and beat it on the fence till it ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... since this world is vain, And volatile, and fleet, Why should I lay up earthly joys, Where rust corrupts, and moth destroys, And cares and sorrows eat? Why fly from ill With anxious skill, When soon this hand will freeze, this ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... or moth collection is very simple and inexpensive. We shall need an insect net to capture our specimens. This can be made at home from a piece of stiff wire bent into the shape of a flattened circle about a foot across. Fasten the ring ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... not what men call love; But wilt thou accept not The worship the heart lifts above And the Heavens reject not: The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar From the sphere of ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... said aloud; "solid from dome to neck! That's James Boyle in the family group. And if I hadn't been thirsty, that poor boob would have made a sure getaway and left James Boyle high and dry among the moth-balls! Oh, the old dome works once every so often. Fancy, as they ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... thin crack of light from the wood fire and torches of the hall. The crack made on the earthen floor a line like a golden river. Biorn, cuddled up on a bench in his little bear-skin, was drawn like a moth to that stream of light. With his heart beating fast he would creep to it and stand for a moment with his small body bathed in the radiance. The game was not to come back at once, but to foray into the farther darkness before returning ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... woman under the queen, duly to despatch him back again to his native land, where the young fellow's heart, she saw, was lost to a noble lady, whom, from his inferior station, he could woo only as a moth might woo the moon. He subsequently returned to Great Britain, and rode about on horseback gathering materials of history. He visited Italy under excellent auspices, and, together with Chaucer and with Petrarch, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... O Madelaine, Moth that murmurs 'gainst your pane, Peering at your rest, As, so like its woolly wing, Ceasing scarce its fluttering, Heaves ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... the city a little Swallow. His friends had gone away to Egypt six weeks before, but he had stayed behind, for he was in love with the most beautiful Reed. He had met her early in the spring as he was flying down the river after a big yellow moth, and had been so attracted by her slender waist that he had ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde
... of water, and still be as good a book as ever. It can be boiled; it can be baked in an oven hot enough to cook a turkey; it can be soaked in brine, lye, camphene, turpentine, or oil; it can be dipped into oil of vitriol, and still no harm done. To crown its merits, no rat, mouse, worm, or moth has ever shown the slightest inclination to make acquaintance with it. The office of a Review is not usually provided with the means of subjecting literature to such critical tests as lye, vitriol, boilers, and hot ovens. But we have seen enough ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... left to me; my pipe was in my pocket. I made shift to load it in the dark, and, having lit it with a wax match, took the opportunity to inspect the interior of my prison. It was a shabby affair. The moth-eaten state of the blue cloth cushions seemed to suggest that it had been long out of regular use; the oil-cloth floor-covering was worn into holes; ordinary internal fittings there were none. But the appearances suggested that the ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... of mind, fostered and increased by reading the fictitious writings of the day, who have pictured to themselves for companions in life unreal forms and angelic characters, instead of beings who dwell in 'houses of clay,' and are 'crushed before the moth.' Such 'exalted imaginations' must sooner or later be brought down: happy will it be with those who are chastened ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... not common; it is occasionally caught in plantain gardens, as it resorts to the leaves of that tree for shelter during the night, and may sometimes be discovered in the folds of a leaf. As Jerdon remarks, it looks more like a butterfly or a moth when disturbed during the day time. Dr. Dobson pertinently observes that the colours of this bat appear to be the result of the "protective mimicry" which we see so often in insects, the Mantidea and other genera, the colours ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... blossoms filled their nostrils. The reek of feverishly growing green things saturated the air. A steady wind blew down the Tube, and it bore innumerable unfamiliar odors into the laboratory. Once a gigantic moth bumped and blundered into the Tube, and finally crawled heavily out into the light. It was scaled, and terrible because of its monstrous size, but it had broken a wing and could not fly. So it crawled with feverish haste toward a brilliant electric light. ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... countries ambition gets the better of discretion, but fortunately soon finds its natural level: the violent ultra-tory, and the violent ultra-demagogue sink alike, after a few years of excitement, into the moth-eaten receptacle of newspaper renown, alike unheeded, and alike forgotten, by a newer and more enlightened generation, who find that, to the cost of the real interest of the people, the mouthing orator, the agitator, the exciter, is not ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... use of this habit when they imagine themselves in danger. For instance, the "fever worm," the larva of one of our common moths,—the Isabella tiger-moth,—is a noted death-feigner, and will "pretend dead" on the slightest provocation. Touch this grub with the toe of your boot, or with the tip of your finger, or with a stick, and it will at once curl up, to all appearances ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... enough, most of them paid or promised to do so. For instance, she had started a grove of paper-shelled pecans, which was soon due to bear; the ranch house and its clump of palms was all but hidden by a forest of strange trees, which were reported to ripen everything from moth-balls to bicycle tires. Blaze Jones was perhaps responsible for this report, for Alaire had shown him several thousand eucalyptus saplings and some ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... his sister, Madame Mancini, was the wife of a petty Italian baron, who was struggling to bring up her five daughters on a pathetically scanty purse—as far removed from her magnificent brother as a moth from a star. There was, on the face of things, every reason why the great and all-powerful Cardinal should leave his nieces to their genteel poverty; and we can imagine both the astonishment and delight with which Madame Mancini received the summons to Paris which meant such a revolution in ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... of him. Night-jars, sounding their mechanical rattle, made him think that the wood was full of searching warders, closing in on him. An owl, swooping noiselessly towards him, brushed his shoulder with its wing, making him jump with the horrid certainty that it was a hand; then flitted off, moth-like, laughing its low ho! ho! ho! which Toad thought in very poor taste. Once he met a fox, who stopped, looked him up and down in a sarcastic sort of way, and said, "Hullo, washerwoman! Half a pair of socks and a pillow-case short this week! Mind it doesn't occur again!" and swaggered off, sniggering. ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... taken from us; treasure laid up in heaven where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt and thieves break not ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... their bowls of water, while against her leaned Noie, who stirred like one awaking from sleep. Ages and ages ago when she started on that dread journey, the dwarf to her left was stretching out her hand to steady the bowl at her feet, and now it had but just reached the bowl. A great moth had singed its wings in the lamp, and was fluttering to the ground—it was still in mid-air. Noie was placing her arm about her neck, and it had but begun ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... "'—where moth and rust doth corrupt and where thieves break through and steal.' H'm," read Mr. Carlyle with weight. "This is a most important ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... and the verger, Mr Dutton, and Critchett, and the gardener, and Ada, and the whole vague populous host that keep one as definitely in one's place in the world's economy as a firm-set pin the camphored moth. What his place was to be only time could show. Meanwhile there was in this ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... dirt, leaving the skin soft and pliable, in which condition it is ready to absorb the skin food when the finger massage is given, making it possible for the gentle electric current to force the ointment into the deeper layers of the skin, thus effecting the removal of moth patches, tan, freckles and other discolorations and imperfections. The vibratory massage should follow, the purpose of which is to stimulate the tissues, throwing off worn-out particles and increasing the circulation of the blood ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... and her love fulfilled itself in death and many a mysterious way. Yet it was hard to believe that this passion of hers was more than a spoken part, for how can the star seek the moth although the moth may seek the star? Though the man may worship the goddess, for all her smiles divine, how can the ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... spray teeter, or catch the flit of a wing. I watch and watch till my head grows dizzy and my neck is in danger of permanent displacement, and still do not get a good view. Presently the bird darts, or, as it seems, falls down a few feet in pursuit of a fly or moth, and I see the whole of it, but in the dim light am undecided. It is for such emergencies that I have brought this gun. A bird in the hand is worth half a dozen in the bush, even for ornithological purposes; and no sure and rapid progress ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... and other utensils, harps, and divers other musical instruments (it being a very sonorous wood, and therefore employ'd for organ-pipes, as heretofore for supporters of vines, poles, rails, and planks, (resisting the worm, moth, and all putrefaction to eternity) the Venetians sufficiently understood; who did every twenty year, and oftner (the Romans every thirteen) make a considerable revenue of it out of Candy: And certainly, a very gainful commodity it was, when the fell of a cupressetum, was heretofore reputed ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... credit other people with them, that it does not occur to him to depict those qualities. I am not sure that the best equipment for an artist is not that he should see and admire great and noble and beautiful things, and feel his own deficiency in them acutely, desiring them with the desire of the moth for the star. The best characters in my own books have been, I am sure, the people least like myself, because the creation of a character that one whole-heartedly admires, and that yet is far out of one's reach, is the most restful and delightful thing in ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... tellin' him every Sunday 'n' prayer-meetin' how 'Liza Em'ly is shootin' up. He says Gran'ma Mullins is forever referrin' to his youth, 'n' Mrs. Macy is forever smilin'. He says he could easy keep his house alone,—he says he understands a house from moth-balls to quicklime,—but they won't let him. He says he 's not only town property, but he 's town talk 's well. He says Mrs. Craig stopped him in the square 'n' asked him point-blank if he'd remembered to put on his flannels ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... a night bird out on the prairie told that it, too, was preying, or being preyed upon; and, as if being stirred by this, a panther sent his wail across the night. I listened for a mate to answer, but she did not. A large, whitish moth flying out of the shadows passed clumsily within a few inches of my face, its wings swishing as a bird's; and it, ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... "I am the first to acknowledge that. I was merely following out our theory to what seemed its logical conclusion. But perhaps we are on the wrong track altogether. Perhaps d'Aurelle, or whatever his name is, just blundered in, like a moth into a candle-flame. As for the plot—well, I can only guess at it. But suppose you and I had pulled off some ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... too, that are wont to cover the leaves with their white threads, a thing observable by husbandmen, change their forms into that of the deadly moth.[41] Mud contains seed that generate green frogs; and it produces them deprived of feet;[42] soon it gives them legs adapted for swimming; and that the same may be fitted for long leaps, the length of the hinder ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... should he bring forth now? I love a teeming wit as I love my nourishment: 'Pray God he have not kept such open house, That he hath sold my hangings, and my bedding! I left him nothing else. If he have eat them, A plague o' the moth, say I! Sure he has got Some bawdy pictures to call all this ging! The friar and the nun; or the new motion Of the knight's courser covering the parson's mare; Or 't may be, he has the fleas that run at tilt Upon a table, or some dog to dance. When ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... a spruce I espied a white-breasted, blue-headed, gray-backed little bird at work on a pine tree. He walked head first down the bark, pecking here and there. I saw a moth or a winged insect fly off the tree, and then another. Then I saw several more fly away. The bird was feeding on winged insects that lived in the bark. Some of them saw or heard him coming and escaped, but many of them he caught. He went about this death-dealing business ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... bugs. But Seth used to study them over, and talk about them with his teacher, who told him all she knew, and helped him to find books about them. And it was when she was leaning over a beautiful specimen of a night-moth that Oscar had performed his most remarkable feat of keeping three balls in the air for a second and a half. This was ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... upon such a statement. But then it was necessary to have a word to rhyme with "view," and what could be easier than to make a white egg "blue"? Again, one of our later poets has evidently confounded the hummingbird with that curious parody upon it, the hawk or sphinx moth, as in his poem upon the subject he has hit off exactly the habits of the moth, or, rather, his creature seems a cross between the moth and the bird, as it has the habits of the one and the plumage of the other. The time to see the hummingbird, he says, is after sunset in ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... (The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place, The bright suns I see and the dark suns I cannot see are in their place, The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... believe, is the first country in the world to use the threads of a moth or worm for fabrics. The patience and care and inventive skill required in first making silk were very great. But it gives us an index to invention when we hear that Confucius regarded the making of linen, using the fiber of a plant, as a greater feat than utilizing the strands ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... are surrounded their lives parallel those of demi-mondaines. Indeed, save for the marriage ceremony, there is small difference between them. The social butterfly flutters to the millionaire as naturally as the night moth of the Tenderloin. Hence the tendency to marry money is greater than ever before in ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... of loyally carrying out a law inflicted upon him by Nature—a law purposely inflicted upon him to get him into trouble—a law which was a trap; in pursuance of this law he made the proper preparations for turning himself into a night-moth; that is to say, he dug a little trench, a little grave, and then stretched himself out in it on his stomach and partially buried himself—then Nature was ready for him. She blew the spores of a peculiar fungus through the air with a purpose. Some of them fell into a crease in the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... place to place inviting his friends to come to the torchlight procession that night, he found that a good many felt as Buster Bumblebee did. They declined to break their life-long rule of going early to bed. But there were others, such as Mr. Moses Mosquito, Kiddie Katydid, and Mehitable Moth, who said at once that they were glad he asked them and that they wouldn't miss the ...
— The Tale of Freddie Firefly • Arthur Scott Bailey
... full of Socialism. Indeed, so was the house of almost every intellectual family among our immigrants. I hated and dreaded that world as much as ever and I dreaded Miss Tevkin more than ever, but, moth-like, I was drawn to the flame with greater and greater force. I went to the Tevkins' with the feeling of one going ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... the green eminence slowly, and at first in silence. The bats, emerging from the ivied ruins they left behind, flitted and skimmed before them, chasing the insects of the night. A moth, escaping from its pursuer, alighted on Cecilia's breast, as ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... up and down the street on his horse, then started for the dam site. As he cantered up the road, Billy Underwood, mounted on a moth-eaten pony, saluted with dignity. ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Will, shaking his head backward somewhat after the manner of a spirited horse. And then, the old irritable demon prompting him to give another good pinch at the moth-wings of poor Mr. Casaubon's glory, he went on, "And I have seen since that Mr. Casaubon does not like any one to overlook his work and know thoroughly what he is doing. He is too doubtful—too uncertain of himself. I may not be good for much, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... about twenty females. We have had a great real of difficulty in propagating these pistache trees. We have five different species of stock on which to grow them, and we ought to learn all the best varieties in the world. But unfortunately some of the best varieties in Sicily are infested with a moth which lays its eggs in the twigs just below the leaf scar and it is impossible for the entomologist to detect these eggs without destroying the buds. That apparently trivial circumstance has made it impossible for us to get these cuttings in from ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... dull a night that she stood for a while at a window, leaning a little out, trying to fancy that there was rain in the fantastic mass of clouds that rose on either side of the evening star. The smell of the box at the gate was strong. She thought of Fontenoy, of Major Edward, and of Deb. A grey moth touched her; she looked once again at the bright star between the clouds, then, turning back into the room, drew a chair to the table and, sitting down, took into her lap the papers that lay beside ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... for early next morning. "I shall want to know how Mont Blanc looks from my window, so I won't waste my time in bed," said he. "Besides, I'm rather keen to see the chamois, aren't you? The only one I've ever met was stuffed, and rather moth-eaten. He was in a dime museum ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... made up her mind not to tell her secret to any one at present, Adelle could not refrain from looking up the stone mason the first thing in the morning. She seemed to be attracted to him as the moth is to the proverbial flame, all the more after her new understanding of the situation between them. And she was also apprehensive of what Archie might be up to. If he were violent, and the two men had another ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... considering that he was such an interested party in these proceedings; Bildad never heeded us, but went on mumbling to himself out of his book, "LAY not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth—" ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... of his body were attached the tail and flukes of a shark. To conceal these monstrous appendages he wore over his shoulders a kihei of kapa and allowed himself to be seen only while in the sitting posture. He sometimes took the form of a worm, a moth, a caterpillar, or a butterfly to escape the hands of his enemies. On land he generally appeared as a man squatting, after the manner of a Hawaiian gardener while weeding his ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... beautiful little moth which flew on your table while you were writing, and which you inclose, resembles the Deiopeia bella, which lives on the mouse-ear of our Northern fields. The size and markings are precisely the same, but the cross-bars on the fore-wings of the Northern moth are buff, while those of ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Then there won't be any missed faces or any letter writing to do, for that matter. David and Reddy can run the business of the colony and see that we aren't cheated when we trade glass beads and other little trinkets with the savages. Of course there will be a few moth-eaten old cannibals. Tom can classify the trees of the forest and make the obstreperous beasts and reptiles behave. I will represent the law. I will settle all disputes and administer justice. I'll be a regular old Father William, like the one in 'Through the Looking Glass,' I always ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... to shake your purse, the sound of the gold will bring me to you in an instant. In this world every one consults his own advantage; but you see I have thought of yours, and clearly confer upon you a new power. Oh this purse! it would still prove a powerful bond between us, had the moth begun to devour your shadow. But enough: you hold me by my gold, and may command your servant at any distance. You know that I can be very serviceable to my friends, and that the rich are my peculiar care—this you have observed. As to your shadow, allow me to say, you can only redeem ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... Our treasures moth and rust corrupt, Or thieves break through and steal, or they Make themselves wings and fly away. One man made merry as he supped, Nor guessed how when that night grew dim, His soul would be ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... saw some Indians below, talking with one of the men, who was shaking his head and motioning to them that they must go on, that this was no place for them to stop. The Indian motioned to his squaw, sitting on a dilapidated little moth-eaten burro with a small papoose in her arms and looking both dirty and miserable. He muttered as though ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... familiar with the main facts of such a life-story as that of a moth or butterfly. The form of the adult insect (fig. 1 a) is dominated by the wings—two pairs of scaly wings, carried respectively on the middle and hindmost of the three segments that make up the thorax or central region of the insect's body. ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... daybreak is not come yet, nor the pleasure of seeing the way again, the lifting of the darkness leaves heaviness beneath it, and if a rashly early bird flops down upon the grass, he cannot count his distance, but quivers like a moth. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... which she had fled that very morning, she could not bring herself to seek his charity or ask his pity. She realised well enough that one such as she could never hope to win a look of love from him; but like the moth that hovers round the flame which brings it danger she nevertheless determined to see ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... Akbar. Mr. Beveridge holds, and I think rightly, that Jodh Bai is not a proper name. It seems to mean merely 'princess of Jodhpur'. The only lady really known as Jodh Bai was the daughter of Udai Singh (Moth Raja) of Jaipur, who became a consort of Jahangir. Sleeman's notion that Jahangir's mother also was called Jodh Bai ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... course," Carleton assented politely, though he was disappointed; for in giving the invitation he had been following his friend's lead in trying to save the moth from the candle. "Shall we say three ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... lived unto this day. You understand . . . [He waits as if for some reply] You know what men they are. And what have they to do with such as these? Think of those old as death, in body and heart, Hugging their wretched hoardings, in cold fear Of moth and rust!—While these miraculous ones, Like golden creatures made of sunset-cloud, Go out forever,—every day, fade by With music and wild stars!—Ah, but You know. The hermit told me once. You loved them, too. But I know more than he, how You must love them: Their laughter, and ...
— The Piper • Josephine Preston Peabody
... him, My downright violence and storm of fortunes May trumpet to the world: my heart's subdu'd Even to the very quality of my lord: I saw Othello's visage in his mind; And to his honors and his valiant parts Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate. So that, dear lords, if I be left behind, A moth of peace, and he go to the war, The rites for which I love him are bereft me, And I a heavy interim shall support By his dear absence. Let me ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... dazzled their sight for a minute or two; it caused Faith to move forward with her eyes on the floor, and filled Christopher with an impulse to turn back again into some dusky corner where every thread of his not over-new dress suit—rather moth-eaten through lack of feasts for airing it—could be counted ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... varying in size, their length being from one-half to three-quarters of an inch. To all appearances they were dead, but more careful observation revealed signs of slight vitality. Recognizing the species as one which I had long known, from its larva to its moth, it was not difficult to understand how my brushes might thus have been expeditiously packed with them. Not far from my studio door is a small thicket of wild rose, which should alone be sufficient to account for all those victimized caterpillars. This species ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... Wen's ire was actually stirred up, and her beautiful moth-like eyebrows contracted, and her lovely phoenix eyes stared wide like two balls. So she immediately ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... seen this man but who fluttered to him like a white moth to a fire, you who cowered from your husband's hand but who turned to follow this strange dog into the streets—there will be care taken of you later. But now—you complained of fatigue. Surely this scene is overtaxing for your delicacy. If you will ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... seen, and if people asked him how they were possible, he answered simply, "I can no more explain these phenomena than I can explain the law of gravitation, or the transformation of a caterpillar into a moth. The first principles of everything are inexplicable. The difference in our surroundings is only that some things are frequently observed, and others ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... look of age about it, from the glittering oak beams of the floor to the faded ghostly hangings on the wall. There was a bed at one end—a great spectral ark of a thing, like a mausoleum, with drapery as old and spectral as that on the walls, and in which she could no more have lain than in a moth-eaten shroud. The seats and the one table the room held were of the same ancient and weird pattern, and the sight of them gave her a shivering sensation not unlike an ague chill. There was but one door—a huge structure, with shining panels, ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... with exhausted strength. But Rama, like a lion, when A trembling deer comes nigh his den, Feared not the demon mad with hate,— Of lion might and lion gait. Then in his lofty car that glowed With sunlike brilliance Khara rode At Rama: madly on he came Like a poor moth that seeks the flame. His archer skill the fiend displayed, And at the place where Rama laid His hand, an arrow cleft in two The mighty bow the hero drew. Seven arrows by the giant sent, Bright as the bolts of Indra, rent ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... inside a cupboard full of old lumber. The dust was thick, and surely had not been disturbed for years. Some broken chairs with moth-eaten seats were piled together, and some ancient boxes lay full of rubbish. Straw, old books, hanks of rope, and other miscellaneous things occupied the corner. There was a door opposite, without either latch or ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... whatever has been discovered by persevering labour, or created by inventive genius. The wise of all ages have heaped up a treasure for him, which rust doth not corrupt, and which thieves cannot break through and steal. I must leave out the moth, for even in this climate care is ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... abdomen begins by the eighth or twelfth week, and a dark band about 1/8 of an inch wide extends from the pubis (bone) to and around the navel or even higher. This shows plainer in brunettes, where it is quite conspicuous. Discolorations also appear on other parts of the body, especially on the face, "moth patches." ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... now, the caterpillar transformed into the butterfly. He had shuffled off the grog-shop, and fluttered into one of the brightest of Cleveland hotels. The bright-winged moth singes itself in the brilliant gaslight sometimes where ...
— Three People • Pansy
... looks absurd for a man at my years to be running after a moth. I used to think it was absurd, but I am wiser now. However, I cannot stop to talk; I shall lose the sunshine. The first time you are anywhere near me, come and have a look. You will alter ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... beetle with deer's horns," he repeated as he walked on, and then the gathering gloom of the wood suggested an addition: "And some day I shall find in the wood that moth of which I have dreamed since childhood—the dark moth with the face of death between ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... are a rude tribe north of Mexico. Yet even they have an allegory to the effect that when the first man came up from the ground under the figure of the moth-worm, the four spirits of the cardinal points were already there, and hailed him with the exclamation, "Lo, he is of our race."[79-1] It is a poor and feeble effort to tell ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... baobab-tree, in a perpendicular position, by lines the thickness of coarse thread. The fibres of which it was composed radiated from a central point, where the creature was lying in wait for its prey, when it found the tip of my nose instead of an unwary moth or butterfly. The web was about a yard in diameter, so that it completely enveloped my face and head. Though very disagreeable to me, the occurrence, I really believe, did Natty good. It was pleasant to hear even a faint shout of ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... sun before the door. His mother's gown showed proofs of his genius by sundry little round holes, which were considerably increased each time that it returned from the wash. Nay, heretical and damnable as is the fact, his father's surplice was as a moth-eaten garment from the repeated and insidious attacks of this young philosopher. The burning-glass decided his fate. He was bound apprentice to an optical and mathematical instrument maker; from which situation he was, if possible, to ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... the last two years some marvellous 'finds' have been made at this wonderful fortress from time to time. It is intended to continue excavation work for a moth." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... pleasure than he had in carving them, into wedged hexagons—reminiscences of the honeycomb of Venus Erycina. His ingenuity plays around the framework of all the noblest things; and yet the brightness of it has a lurid shadow. The spot of the fawn, of the bird, and the moth, may be harmless. But Daedalus reigns no less over the spot of the leopard and snake. That cruel and venomous power of his art is marked, in the legends of him, by his invention of the saw from the serpent's tooth; and his seeking refuge, under blood-guiltiness, with Minos, who ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... everything gained in sanctity by its age: the moth-eaten furniture was hallowed by tradition. The rheumatic old dog of uncertain breed, to which he had never vouchsafed a caress became now, when banished to the stable, a tried and faithful ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... with comforts: we have too many rooms, too many carpets, too many vases and knickknacks, too much china and silver; she has too many laces and dresses and bonnets; the children all have too many clothes;—in fact, to put it Scripturally, our riches are corrupted, our garments are moth-eaten, our gold and our silver is cankered,—and, in short, Marianne is sick in bed, and I have come to the agency-office for-distressed-women to take you out to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... peddler," said Mrs. Fleming; "it was full of moth holes, and soiled besides. He gave me two ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... people like them will be lost in the chammers of that wandering place!' satirized Dairyman Jinks. 'They will be bound to have a randy every fortnight to keep the moth out of the furniture!' ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... away from grace. This very day I call heaven and earth to witness that I taught you the truth. Abide in it, and ye are God's, and He is yours, and ye are blessed. Fall away from it, and ye are children of wrath, and God is far from you; ye are wretched orphans, and will flee before the moth. O how ardent and joyful have I been, since I came from you! Verily, I have not wept, but sung. O how glad I will be, if God suffers me to return to you again! When I had gone some distance, Christ came ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... him, and presently he started on the play he had devised. He took a tuft of the white down, and gently shook it free of his fingers close to the whirl of the wheel. The wind of the swift motion took it, spun it round and round in widening circles, till it floated above like a slow white moth. Little Rol's eyes danced, and the row of his small teeth shone in a silent laugh of delight. Another and another of the white tufts was sent whirling round like a winged thing in a spider's web, and floating clear at last. ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... realize until too late what it meant, but, you see, I was tired of working, tired of ambition, and I wanted to come home. Thank God I have no people! I save all the money I can, and when I get enough I'm going to take Agnes Smith out of the moth- balls, dust her off tenderly, and go to ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... strength, against a monster who racked him in a fierce embrace. A thousand scenes flashed through Valmond's brain, before his eyes, while the great wheel of torture went round, and he was broken, broken-mended and broken again, upon it. Spinning—he was for ever spinning, like a tireless moth through a fiery air; and the world went roaring past. In vain he cried to the wheelman to stop the wheel: there was no answer. Would those stars never cease blinking in and out, or the wind stop whipping the swift ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... here alone of realm and wealthy dower, O'er which aye turns the restless wheel, I say: I speak of what it is not in the power Of Fortune to bestow, or take away. Much fame is here, whereon Time and the Hour, Like wasting moth, in this our planet prey. Here countless vows, here prayers unnumbered lie, Made by us sinful men to God ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... finished—and the sheets of manuscript were printed, eighteen months later, almost without change—he caught a sudden fever of entomology: hunted daily for specimens, but preserved, eventually, only six of his captures: a moth, silver and green; a butterfly of steely, iridescent blue; a solemn, black-coated cricket; a bee bound round with the five golden rings of Italy; a tiny, rainbow-hued humming-bird, found dead in a ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... frail, fretful little creature, with a very red face just fading into yellow, about as much golden down on his little pate as would furnish a moth with plumage, and eyes like sloe-berries. It was fortunate rather than otherwise that he was so ailing for some weeks that the good wife's anxieties came over again, and, in the triumph of being this time successful, much of the bitterness of the old ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Lord has again most kindly helped us. It came to my mind that there were some new blankets in the Orphan-Houses, which had been given some time since, but which are not needed, and might therefore be sold. I was confirmed in this by finding that the moth had got into one pair. I therefore sold ten pairs, having a good opportunity to do so. Thus the Lord not only supplied again our present need for the three houses, but I was also able to put by the rent for this week and the next, ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller
... me, a moth-eaten desiccated tortoiseshell; its eyes are closed and a red tongue hangs out of the mouth. I drop a small pebble. It wakes up and regards me stoically for a ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... emerging at the foot of the bridge, they stood still in amazement, for in the very centre was something vibrating rapidly, surrounded by a perfect halo of gold and scarlet. It was like a gigantic humming- bird moth at first, but it presently resolved itself into a little girl, clad in something dark purple below, and above with a bright scarlet cloaklet, which flew out and streamed back, beneath the floating locks of glistening gold that glinted in the sun, as ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... suitable shape and size. Take whatever you wish to protect—your furs, your flannel, or your clothes—and pack each article carefully in a newspaper, joining the edges with a double fold, well pinned. If this joining is properly done, the Moth will never get inside. Since my advice has been taken and this method employed in my household, the old damage has no ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... and crippled moth vainly trying to rise once again to the alluring yet deadly flame, Rene de Ronville essayed to break out of his embarrassment and resume equal footing with the girl so suddenly become his commanding superior; ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... not force his way all at once through the palpable perfumes, but he returned to the light again and again, like the singed moth. At last he discovered that the various smells did not entirely mix, no fiend being there to stir them round. Odour of family predominated in two corners; stewed rustic reigned supreme in the centre; and garlic in the noisy group by the window. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... abandoning the pretensions to youth for many a year. In dress he was as spick and span as a tailor at the trade's annual convention. But he had evidently been "going some" for several days; the sour, worn, haggard face rising above his elegantly fitting collar suggested a moth-eaten jaguar that has been for weeks on ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... greed. What was he in this world of contending ambitions? A child sacrificing everything to the pursuit of pleasure and the gratification of vanity; a poet whose thoughts never went beyond the moment, a moth flitting from one bright gleaming object to another. He had no definite aim; he was the slave of circumstance—meaning well, doing ill. Conscience tortured him remorselessly. And to crown it all, he was penniless and exhausted with work and emotion. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... who admired her own facile adjectives said to a casual acquaintance: "How can you go about with that moth-eaten, squint-eyed, bag of a girl!" "Because," answered the youth whom she had intended to dazzle, "the lady of your flattering epithets happens to be ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... interchange of emotions, thoughts, sentiments,—a living, and palpable, and vivid contact of mind with mind, of heart with heart. They see others whose leisure ministers to grace, accomplishments, piquancy, and attractiveness, and the moth flies towards the light by his own nature. Because he is a wise, and virtuous, and honorable moth, he does not dart into the flame. He does not even scorch his wings. He never thinks of such a thing. ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... fluttering moth gave the excuse her heart longed for, and her fingers rested for a moment, light as the moth itself, on his hair. There was something in the touch which made him open his eyes—uncomprehending at first, and then filled with a ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... piles of yellow and musty account-books in parchment covers, wherein creditors long dead and buried had written the names of dead and buried debtors in ink now so faded that their moss-grown tombstones were more legible. He found old moth-eaten garments, all in rags and tatters, or Peter would have put them on. Here was a naked and rusty sword—not a sword of service, but a gentleman's small French rapier—which had never left its scabbard till it lost it. ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the nuts?" Weevil, by long odds. Next come husk maggots or "shock worms", codling moth larvae, borers, stink bugs on filberts, butternut curculio. No cure is given for this trouble except the very valuable one of keeping chickens, or, better still, turkeys running freely in the plantation. Clean cultivation will, of course, destroy many ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... with some curiosity round the gloomy oak-paneled chamber, where the fire-light flashed on the carved four-poster, with its faded yellow damask curtains, and lit up the moth-eaten tapestry that adorned a portion of the upper part of the walls, but scarcely illumined the dark corners which lay beyond. There were quaint old presses and chests roomy enough to hide a dozen ghosts in, ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... darkest night, even as the Purple Emperor said, if you will stand on the bridge across the freightyard, looking down upon the four-track way, at 2:30 A. M., neither before nor after, when the White Moth, that takes the overflow from the Purple Emperor, tears south with her seven vestibuled cream-white cars, you will hear, as the yard-clock makes the half-hour, a far-away sound like the bass of a violoncello, and then, a hundred feet to ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... which, deep purple in color, was fifty-one feet in length, and mentioned a white creature, supposed to be mammalian, which gave forth well-marked phosphorescence in the darkness; also a large black moth, the bite of which was supposed by the Indians to be highly poisonous. Setting aside these entirely new forms of life, the plateau was very rich in known prehistoric forms, dating back in some cases to early Jurassic times. Among these he mentioned the ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... When dry, fold it up the size of a bedstead, and pin a coarse sheet round it. In this way they will be secure from moths, and the addition of a few quilted comforts on the top, makes a very pleasant bed in summer. The small moth-fly appears early in the summer, and should always be destroyed when seen, as the moth is produced from the eggs which they deposit in woollens; by being careful to kill them when they first come, a house may be kept nearly clear of them. Select the softest brooms for ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... I'm beginning to feel like those old ghosts about it. The same moth-eaten tune for three or four thousand years. ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... "gude neighbours"; the Gaels[39] term a fairy "a woman of peace"; and Professor Child points out the same fact in relation to the neo-Greek nereids.[40] Hence also "sweet puck."[41] The names of the four attendant fairies, Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustard-seed, are Shakespeare's invention, chosen perhaps to typify grace, lightness, speed, ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... fit. It seems a color night, for I now have small silver moths, all of a size but with different beautiful markings. There are also large salmon-colored moths that Louis cannot bear the sight of because they are marked like a skeleton. Perhaps they are a variety of the death's head moth. They are almost as large as a humming-bird, and have beautiful eyes that glow ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... creature as no Pan-American of the twenty-second century had ever beheld until my eyes rested upon this lordly specimen of "the king of beasts." But what a different creature was this fierce-eyed demon, palpitating with life and vigor, glossy of coat, alert, growling, magnificent, from the dingy, moth-eaten replicas beneath their glass cases in the stuffy ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... were late in arriving and found a company of neighbours already assembled in the big general room. It was panelled with cedar from the Pacific slope, and about the doors and windows were rich hangings of tapestry, but the dust was thick upon them and their beauty had been wasted by the moth. Tarnished silver candlesticks and lamps which might have come from England a century ago, and a scarred piano littered with tattered music, were in keeping with the tapestry; for signs of taste were balanced by those of neglect, while here and there a roughly patched piece of ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... of the whole matter. You dream like mad, you love like tinder, you aspire like a star-struck moth—for what? That you may hive little lyrics, and sell to a publisher for thirty pieces ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... with enormous suns and systems, and among the inconceivable numbers and magnitudes and velocities of the heavenly bodies. So that he concludes by striking into us some sense of that disproportion of things which Shelley has illuminated by the ironical flash of these eight words: The desire of the moth for the star. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had a moment's respite from canvassers this day. I have bought a sewing-machine which I did not want; I have bought a map which is mistaken in all its details; I have bought a clock which will not go; I have bought a moth poison which the moths prefer to any other beverage; I have bought no end of useless inventions, and now I have had enough of this foolishness. I would not have one of your echoes if you were even to give it to me. I would not let it stay on the place. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Page, gazing out of the window on the thousands of lights below, which were fluttering in the velvety darkness like a vast army of fireflies. "Without it, what is life to the smallest—moth!" ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... be hoped," I said, sipping the Haut-Brion, whose fine and brittle smack contrasted rarely with the delicious juiciness of the fruit, "that you have laid in a supply of this treasure that neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, before parting with that little ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... nervous, and uneasy. I took a horseback ride one morning and would not admit to myself that I cared less for the ride than to feel that I could go where I could get liquor. I did not want to drink, but like the moth which returns by some fatal charm again and again to the flames which eventually consume it, I could not resist the temptation to go where I could lay my hands on the curse. There was on the farm, among the horses, one that was unusually wild, which had hitherto ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... lot in the attic," replied the oldest girl, smiling happily at the children's appreciation of her labor; but she did not explain that a gorgeous, moth-eaten, old afghan had been raveled to provide all ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... quite simple. This man's wits were sound, save on one point. He believed—why, God alone knows, who enabled him to drive that horrible journey without a tremor of the hand—that his wife's soul haunted him in the form of a white butterfly or moth. The superstition that spirits take this shape is not unknown in the West; and I suppose that as he steered his train out of the station, this fancy, by some odd freak of memory, leaped into his brain, and held it, hour after hour, while he and his engine flew forward and ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... snow, though not thick, was sufficient to deaden any noise, and the frost held things pretty tight besides. No sound but their voices and the soft roar of the flames made itself heard. Only, from time to time, something soft as the flutter of a pine moth's wings went past them through the air. No one seemed anxious to go to bed. The ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... voice, Anne turned toward him. A change of expression appeared in her face, as she slowly advanced from the back of the summer-house, which revealed a likeness to her moth er, not perceivable at other times. As the mother had looked, in by-gone days, at the man who had disowned her, so the daughter looked at Geoffrey Delamayn—with the same terrible composure, and the ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... you ever taken your best coat to an "invisible mender" and paid him ten dollars to have him mend two moth holes? ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... outfit in the twinkling of an eye. In an incredibly short time, the five youngsters were dressed, each to satisfy his own peculiar taste: Joseph as an Indian in blanket and beads, with a crimson band about his head; Jacob, carrying a sword, wore a moth-eaten smoking jacket, a bright sash and crimson Turkish turban; Rachel and Matilda were two dainty ladies in full skirts of blue and pink, with deep bonnets; while Rebecca was rather splendid in a yellow silk ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... suddenly increase in brightness, and are told that a satellite has fallen into it and is burning up, its career finished, its capacities exhausted? Curious, is it not; but what does it matter? Just as much as the burning up of a moth ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... seemest the mother of all, Dear Ceres-Aphrodite, with every lure That draws the bee to honey, with the call Of moth-winged night to sinners, yet as pure As the white nun that counts the stars for beads; Thou blest Madonna of all broken needs, Thou Melusine, thou sister of sorrowing man, Thou wave-like laughter, thou dear sob in the throat, Thou all-enfolding ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... —whereby the moth was kept hovering round the flame. Till, in a flash, Kitty awoke to the fact that while she had been listening happily to her own voice, taking no notice whatever of the signals which William endeavored to send her from the other end of the table—while she had been tripping gayly through one indiscretion ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... waste. Such minute attention must be given the wardrobe to preserve it that I have learned to darn like an artist. Making shoes is now another accomplishment. Mine were in tatters. H. came across a moth-eaten pair that he bought me, giving ten dollars, I think, and they fell into rags when I tried to wear them; but the soles were good, and that has helped me to shoes. A pair of old coat-sleeves saved—nothing is thrown away now—was ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... else, more welcome than the moth would have been; for Rose appeared, bearing a mug in one hand, and in ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... as the tightness of the ropes allowed, were the cause of the booming sound we had heard. Something alive was tearing frantically about inside, banging against the stretched canvas in a way that made me think of a great moth dashing against the walls and ceiling of a room. The tent bulged ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... been all unconsciously looking out for love, and she had fancied that she was falling in love with the Dictator. She was an enthusiast for his cause; and for his cause because of himself. With her it was the desire of the moth for the star—of the night for the morrow. She knew this quite well. She knew that that was the sole and the full measure of her feeling towards the Dictator. But all the same, up to this time she ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... indignant imagination. When she told Joe Barron "that the bears was gittin' so sassy there wasn't no livin' with 'em," she had little notion that what she referred to was just one, solitary, rusty, somewhat moth-eaten animal, crafty with experience and years. This bear, as it chanced, had had advantages in the way of education not often shared by his fellow-roamers of the wilderness. He had passed several seasons in captivity in one of the settlements far south of the Quah-Davic ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... that his features remained contracted, his lips parted, and his eyes fixed. He did not move an inch, nor articulate a sound. Nothing could be heard in that large chamber but the wing-whisper of a little moth, which was fluttering to its death about the candles. Aramis, without even deigning to look at the man whom he had reduced to so miserable a condition, drew from his pocket a small case of black wax; he sealed the letter, and stamped it with a seal suspended at ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... slipped away. As she did so, she looked exactly like a crushed brown moth. In the passage she stopped, glanced furtively around her, and then, shocking to relate, put her ear to the key-hole. She felt both sore and angry; they were saying horrid things of Beatrice, and Miss ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... form. In accordance with this observation I found that the two kinds of pollen, which could easily be recognised under the microscope, adhered in this manner to the proboscides of the two species of humble-bees and of the moth, which were caught visiting the flowers; but some small grains were mingled with the larger grains round the base of the proboscis, and conversely some large grains with the small grains near the extremity of the proboscis. Thus pollen will be regularly carried from ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... free, was falling, falling earthward, but could not reach the surface. Leaning her shoulder a little forward, she placed the finger-tip against it, but lightly, scarcely touching, and moving continuously, with a motion rapid as that of a fluttering moth's wing; while the spider, still paying out his line, remained suspended, rising and falling slightly at nearly the same distance from the ground. After a few moments she cried: "Drop down, little spider." Her finger's motion ceased, and the ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... that I understand about you what you cannot fathom with me. You are not a moth, but your self-sacrifice, and bravery in this case are professional: you worked on this case as you have on a hundred others: you are a very original and successful expert in criminology. And I am not more than half bad at observation and deduction, ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... and in and out, from one side to the other, through the openings between the stories, with all the nimbleness of a squirrel. He is on the ridge of the barn-roof, he is peeping into the dove-cote, he is in the garden under the currant-bushes, or chasing a spider or a moth under a cabbage-leaf; again he is on the roof of the shed, warbling vociferously; and all these manoeuvres and peregrinations have occupied hardly a minute, so rapid and incessant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various |
