"Mouse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... great number of widely different words which are almost or quite similar in pronunciation. A vast number of absurd pitfalls are thus prepared for the unwary user of English. He must remember that the plural of "mouse" is "mice," but that the plural of "house" is not "hice," that he may speak of his two "sons," but not of his two "childs"; he will indistinguishably refer to "sheeps" and "ships"; and like the preacher a little unfamiliar with English who had ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... of old, when the lady of the Holt had struck him for his cruelty to the mouse, or expelled him for his bad language. The same temper remained, although self-revenge had become the only outlet. He knew what it was that he had taken ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a dim light penetrates, and so many have come that they grow thin and haggard with the constant toil of getting food and warmth. Behind the walls the mice scamper about in droves, and there is much squealing and chattering. Now and then a bold mouse stands upon his hind legs and addresses the others. He declares he will force his way through the walls and conquer the gods who have built the house. "I will kill them," he declares. "The mice shall rule. You shall live in the light and the warmth. There shall be food ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... retreat was altogether wrong. Like a cat with a mouse, it induced them to follow. Escape in this manner was impossible. I halted, and just at that moment came a parting yell from ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... have I, Monsieur? I've hit you!" And mocking him, "Has he—married her?" she lisped. "No; but he will marry her, have no fear of that! He will marry her. He waits but to get a priest. Would you like to see what he says?" she continued, playing with him as a cat plays with a mouse. "I had a note from him yesterday. Would you like to see how welcome you'll be at the wedding?" And she flaunted a piece ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... heard. If he were to be hanged unless he could be saved by his book, he cannot for his heart call for a psalm of mercy. He is a law-trap baited with parchment and wax. The fearful mice he catches are debtors, with whom scratching attorneys, like cats, play a good while, and then mouse them. The bally is an insatiable creditor, ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... of a cat and two kittens: in the same situation is one stocking, the other is half immersed in the washing-pan. The broom, bellows, and mop, are scattered round the room. The open door shows us that their cupboard is unfurnished, and tenanted by a hungry and solitary mouse. In the corner hangs a long cloak, well calculated to conceal the threadbare wardrobe of its ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... going-away dress" had materially assisted this decision. Miriam was frankly tearful, and so indeed was Annie, but with laughter as well to carry it off. Mr. Polly heard Annie say something vague about never getting a chance because of Miriam always sticking about at home like a cat at a mouse-hole, that became, as people say, food for thought. Mrs. Larkins was from the first flushed, garrulous, and wet and smeared by copious weeping; an incredibly soaked and crumpled and used-up pocket handkerchief never left the clutch of her plump red hand. "Goo' girls, all ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... pig is screaming like a hundred railway engines; kicking, plunging, stamping, tearing, twisting from side to side in a vain endeavour to rid herself of us, or to get at us with those formidable jaws; shaking Katipo—a big mastiff-like cur—about, as a cat would shake a mouse. But still we two men hold on to that hind leg of hers, careless of our hurts, prone on our faces, but straining every muscle to keep the grip. Presently we get a chance; together we get our knees upon a log, ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... chaplain, my grandmother owned there had been a time when her grace had not handled him over-wisely. For, according to Nencia, it seems that his reverence, who seldom approached the Duchess, being buried in his library like a mouse in a cheese—well, one day he made bold to appeal to her for a sum of money, a large sum, Nencia said, to buy certain tall books, a chest full of them, that a foreign pedlar had brought him; whereupon the Duchess, who could never abide a book, breaks ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... reach the city soon after it left their station, she said, so Sonny Boy covered his mouse-cage with a newspaper, too, and prepared to say good-bye ...
— Sonny Boy • Sophie Swett
... yes; and as they passed in, looked at Paul as if he were a little mouse, and the house were a trap. He was a weak-eyed young man, with the first faint streaks or early dawn of a grin on his countenance. It was mere imbecility; but Mrs Pipchin took it into her head that it was impudence, and made a snap ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... acknowledgment; but she took it for a friendly message between them, and though the laughter in his eyes brought a mist over hers she was content. Prosper dropped asleep. Through the soft veil of her happiness she watched him patiently and still as a mouse. She was serving him at last; she could dare look tenderly at him when he was asleep—and she did. Something of the mother, something of the manumitted slave, something of the dumb creature brought up against a crisis which only speech can make tolerable,—something of these three ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... in return for the solemn wink Billy Barton bestowed upon him across the aisle. Ten minutes of this decorous demeanor made it absolutely necessary for him to stir; so he unfolded his arms and crossed his legs as cautiously as a mouse moves in the presence of a cat; for Mrs. Allen's eye was on him, and he knew by experience that it ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... the small boy, returning to his goblet; "but I've no end of aliases—such as Mouse, Monkey, Spider, Snipe, Imp, and Little 'un. Call me what you please, it's all one to me, so as you don't call ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... time I breathe. I knew you were stupid, but I did not think you were as stupid as that.' And giving the poor frog a blow on her head, which knocked her straight into the water, he walked off in a rage to his younger sister the mouse. ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... generally believed among the Northern nations that the soul escaped from the body in the shape of a mouse, which crept out of a corpse's mouth and ran away, and it was also said to creep in and out of the mouths of people in a trance. While the soul was absent, no effort or remedy could recall the patient to life; but as soon as it had come ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... Jim was silent, turning the thing over with his cigar. Maria Angelina sat still as a mouse, fearful to breathe lest the bewildering revelations cease. Cousin Jane, over her second cup of coffee, had the air of a humorous and ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... it was a sutler's establishment, and crammed with sutler goods. The panic-struck individual who had just vacated it was of course the proprietor. He had adopted ostrich tactics, had buttoned himself up in the tent, and was in there keeping as still as a mouse, thinking, perhaps, that as he could see nobody, nobody could see him. That cannon ball must have been a rude surprise. In order to have plenty of "han' roomance," we tore down the tent at once, and then proceeded to appropriate the contents. There were barrels of apples, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... to be seen, and rode fearlessly into the forest. When he had ridden onward a little he heard a rustling in the bushes, and heard voices speaking together. From one side came cries of, "There is one," but from the other, "Let him go, 'tis an idle fellow, as poor and bare as a church-mouse, what should we gain ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... a wife and family already. Neither of them knew anything at all about him. He might be a battered old traveller, or an Anglo-Indian nabob, or a needy haunter of Continental pensions, or a convict just emerged from a term of penal servitude. He might be as rich as Midas, or as poor as a church-mouse. But on one thing Austin was determined—Aunt Charlotte must be saved from herself, if necessary. They wanted no interloper in their peaceful home. And he, Austin, would go forth into the world, wooden leg and all, rather than submit to ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... I said in exasperation, "you haven't the spirit of a mouse! Why on earth did you write him such ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the flow of conversation slacked, Zoe turned to Evelyn, remarking with a winning smile, "What a quiet little mouse you are! I have been wanting to make your acquaintance, and I hope you ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... pointing at Mr. Wenzel and his unfortunate companions, who vainly tried to hide themselves in their corner. "But that is unnecessary, inasmuch as they have given us their names already, and informed us of their wishes Then, sir, the whole honorable meeting of the people is caught in my house as in a mouse-trap?" ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... live ourselves to death too quickly. In my schooldays I watched a mouse in a jar of oxygen do that;" ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... beings; the more he saw them, the happier he felt. He glided by them like a human child. I was very proud of him and his behavior. As we went on our way, a mouse ran out of a hole in the foundations of a house in front of us. Kari turned around, curled up his trunk, put it in his mouth and ran. You see elephants are not afraid of anything except mice, for a mouse can ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... had cried. "Now your hair, I don't know what it IS like! It's as bright as copper and gold, as red as burnt copper, and it has gold threads where the sun shines on it. Fancy their saying it's brown. Your mother calls it mouse-colour." ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... the first hour, and he was so much on the alert that old Mr. Stone, from his high stool before the desk, had frequently to put his pen behind his ear and watch him. It was quite a scene in a play to see how Fred would start at the least sound. A mouse nibbling behind a box of iron chains made him beside himself until he had scared the little gray thing from its hole, and saw it scamper away out of the shop. But after the first hour the watching FOR NOTHING became a little tedious. There was a "splendid" game of base ball to ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... creation humanity is, then!" said Santoris, with a smile—"How astonishing that it should exist at all for no higher aims than those of the ant or the mouse! My dear Harland, if your beliefs were really sound we should be bound in common duty and charity to stop the population of the world altogether—for the whole business is useless. Useless and even cruel, for it is nothing but a crime to allow people to be born for no other end than extinction! ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... said, "I can't help imposin' on ye, no more 'n a cat could help ketchin' a mouse, if't made a nest down her throat. Why, I see ye comin' round the corner! But when folks thinks you're a witch, it ain't in human natur' not to fool 'em. I am a witch, ain't ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... fence. Woods full up with cow. Cattle loose—free. When you want beef have to hunt for 'em like we hunts deer now. I member some ox I helped broke. Pete, Bill, Jim, David. Faby was a brown. David kinder mouse color. We always have the old ox in the lead going to haul rail. Hitch the young steer on behind. Sometimes they 'give up' and the old ox pull 'em by the neck! Break ox all the time. Fun for us boys—breaking ox. So much of ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... of a Frog" is perhaps chiefly interesting as showing the influence of Burns upon Yorkshire poets at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In idea, and in the choice of verse, it is directly modelled on the famous "To a Mouse." ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... ran till he came to a certain land, and in this land the hare saw a spring, and close to the spring grew an apple-tree with the apples of youth, and this spring and this apple-tree were guarded by a Muscovite, oh! so strong, so strong, and he waved his sabre again and again so that not even a mouse could make its way up to that well. What was to be done? Then the little hare had resort to subtlety, and made herself crooked, and limped toward the spring as if she were lame. When the Muscovite saw her he said, "What sort of a little beast is this? I never saw the like of it ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... in high spirits by Rosalino Pilo's death; the discomfiture of Calatafimi was forgotten; they represented Garibaldi as a mouse that was obligingly walking into a well-laid trap. In fact, his position could not have been more critical, but he had recourse to a stratagem which saved him. He succeeded in placing the enemy upon a completely false scent. Abandoning the idea of reaching Palermo from the east (Monreale), he ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... Holy Pink-Toed Prophet! I smell a mouse. Hum-m-m! That simplifies matters. We-l-l! If you are in position, Mister Consul, to give me your word of honor as a gentleman and an officer of your king that the British Navy will turn its blind side to the Bavarian when she puts to sea, I'll buy the Bavarian so fast it'll make your head swim. ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... manages to deny a man not only liberty, but every accidental comfort of bondage. In the old filthy dungeons men could carve their prayers or protests in the rock. Here the white and slippery walls escaped even from bearing witness. The old prisoners could make a pet of a mouse or a beetle strayed out of a hole. Here the unpierceable walls were washed every morning by an automatic sluice. There was no natural corruption and no merciful decay by which a living thing could enter in. Then James Turnbull looked up and saw the high invincible hatefulness ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... already tipped with a golden colour here and there; flocks of purple grackle and red-winged blackbirds rose, drifted, and settled, chattering and squealing among the cat-tails just as they used to do when I was a child; and the big, slow-sailing mouse-hawks drifted and glided over the pastures, and when they tipped sideways I could see the white moon-spot on their backs, just as I remembered to look for it when I was a little, ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... it pleased him to play at cat and mouse. She had not "hit him to the life", or she would have marvelled in acknowledging ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... which, for the chastening of his soul, he now played with the Devil, it were best to choose stars whose charms could excite to little but conduct of a saintlike seemliness. The fat, dumpy figure of this woman, therefore, and her round, flat, moonlike face, her mouse-coloured wisps of hair cut squarely off at the back of her neck, were points of a merit that was in its whole effect nothing less ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... knew who he was. No, says she. But she knew. It terrified her soul to think he was Alvan. She feared scarcely less that it might not be he. Between these dreads of doubt and belief she played at cat and mouse with herself, escaped from cat, persecuted mouse, teased herself, and gloated. It is he! not he! he! not he! most certainly! impossible!—And then it ran: If he, oh me! If another, woe me! For she had come to see Alvan. Alvan and she shared ideas. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was one day brought to the dispensary whose mother said: "Doctor, I didn't bring him 'cause he's sick, but 'cause he looks so pale; he's as quiet as a mouse; he never cries any more since I got to giving him medicine." On examination of the baby and on inquiring about the medicine, we found that the baby was dead drunk all the time. Some "neighbor friend" ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... recent addition to Maud's inner circle. She had interested herself in him some two months back in much the same spirit as the prisoner in his dungeon cell tames and pets the conventional mouse. To educate Albert, to raise him above his groove in life and develop his soul, appealed to her romantic nature as a worthy task, and as a good way of filling in the time. It is an exceedingly moot point—and one which his associates of the servants' hall ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... being egotistical," I replied, "when I see no one, and am shut up in the 'little world of me,' as closely as mouse in trap. And with myself for a subject, what can my ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... longer in the castle itself, where the Earl had been giving a banquet to his guests, of the best that his estates could afford. Nevertheless, it was yet long before midnight when the cheep of the mouse in the wainscot, the restless stir or muffled snore of a crowded sleeper in the guardroom, was the only sound to be heard from dungeon to banner-staff of the ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... mammoth for so small an animal as the wolf puts one in mind of the reports that the modern elephant will occasionally exhibit much alarm when a mouse appears in its exclosure. ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... real steamboating on this coast any longer. It is—I don't know what the devil it is," snarled the veteran. "I have been sniffing and scouting. I'd like to be a mouse in the wall of them New York offices and hear what it is they're trying to do to us poor cusses. Ordered one day to keep the law; ordered the next day to break the law; hounded by owners and threatened by the government! I'm glad I'm out of it and glad you've got a good job. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... as still as a mouse, so Ben turned over again. "I guess Joel wanted a drink of water, and he's gone to sleep and forgot all about it. Now, that's good," and off he ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... mouse, stealing out, followed by a second. They sniffed at the fir-tree, and then crept between its boughs. 'It's frightfully cold,' said the little mice. 'How nice it is to be here! Don't you think ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... raising the lids. In him the dimensions of the family nose were made still more remarkable by an inordinately tiny chin and thin compressed lips. His moustache was shaved down to the very corners of his mouth, only a little mouse-tail sort of arrangement being left on each side, which was twisted upwards and dyed black with infinite skill. His costume was elegant and ultra-refined, and only differed from the fashion in being extra stiff and tight-fitting. Moreover, all the buttons of his shirt ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... of the whistle which he knew was McLean's paen of victory; he was smiling a little wistfully over the memory which, with McLean, always recurred to him, when he turned and saw her standing on the threshold. She had come on diffident, mouse-like feet. She was watching him. And before he believed it really was she, Barbara faltered ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... had a stock of names for his servant, none of which he employed unless he felt in a good humour. Owl-pig, hog-mouse, ape-dog, rat-weasel, and cat-fish were the highest expressions of his amiability toward the man who had been his ill-tempered, dishonest, impudent, and treacherous attendant all ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... a stiffer crop on it, you'll know better than to take your nap in street-corners with a ring like that on your forefinger. By the holy 'vangels! if it had been anybody but me standing over you two minutes ago—but Bratti Ferravecchi is not the man to steal. The cat couldn't eat her mouse if she didn't catch it alive, and Bratti couldn't relish gain if it had no taste of a bargain. Why, young man, one San Giovanni, three years ago, the Saint sent a dead body in my way—a blind beggar, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... Spinach Mr. Stewart Orr has produced a picture-book unique of its kind. Nothing could be more droll than the situations in which he represents the frog, the pig, the mouse, the elephant, and the other well-known characters who appear in his pages. Little folk will find in these pictures a source of endless delight, and the artistic skill which they display will have a special appeal to children ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... value of brothers and cousins was very apparent. However, it was fixed that Anna should attend the Mouse-trap, and hear and contribute as ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... laughing at? That's not right a bit. No, you just blush, and go on nibbling at a crust of bread, just like a tiny mouse.... ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... dated "poem" was written a month before little John Ruskin reached the age of seven. It is a tale of a mouse, in seven octosyllabic couplets, "The Needless Alarm," remarkable only for an unexpected correctness in ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... said, 'O my princes, surely it is a silly matter to crown a mouse! Humility hath depressed my stature! Wullahy, I have had warning in the sticking of this crown to my brows, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... grasped him and lifted him up to the top of the wall as a cat might have lifted a mouse. Both men were breathing heavily as a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... my yearling boarders seize the Flies which I provide for them. In vain does the Fly take refuge a couple of inches up, on some blade of grass. With a sudden spring into the air, the Spider pounces on the prey. No Cat is quicker in catching her Mouse. ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... then! She rushed right along, 'n' on the first bridge was Mrs. Macy. She was standin' wonderin' what was to pay up the road, 'n' then she see it was a cow. Well, Mrs. Lathrop, you know what Mrs. Macy is on cows. I hear her say one day as she 'd rather have a mouse run up her skirts any day 'n a cow. She told me 't she often go 'way round by Cherry Pond sooner 'n be alone with one in the road, 'n' such bein' the case, you can't suppose but what she was mortal scared. Her story is 's she only had time to see its horns 'n' the wildness ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... drop of water in the wide canal, save where a living spring trickled into it. The ordinary fall rains could scarcely more than cover the broad, pebbly bottom, and the unsophisticated laughed and said that I reminded them of a general who trained a forty-pound gun on a belligerent mouse. I remembered what I had ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... of the wonderful event, one expecting her to be delivered of a giant, another of some enormous monster, and all were in earnest expectation of something grand and astonishing; when, after waiting with great impatience a considerable time, behold, out crept a Mouse. ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... vines twining up the neighbouring trees and shrubs like hop tendrils,—and peas and beans, in all their endless variety of blossom and of odour, from the Lima bean, with a stalk as thick as my arm, to the mouse pea, three inches high,—the pineapple, literally growing in, and constituting, with its prickly leaves, part of the hedgerows,—the custard—apple, like russet bags of cold pudding,—the cocoa and coffee bushes, and the devil knows what all, that is delightful in nature besides; while aloft, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... stuck pig I gaping stare, And eye her o'er and o'er; Lean as a rake, with sighs and care, Sleek as a mouse before. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... he thought he had scaled her side as noiseless as a mouse; and he was amazed to see the pirates cowering from him, with Hook in their midst as abject as if he ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... was boasting before a companion of his very strong sight. "I can discern from here a mouse on the top of that very high tower."—"I don't see it," answered, his comrade; "but ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... the cricket, The wheat stack for the mouse, When trembling night winds whistle And moan all round the house. The frosty ways like iron, The branches plumed with snow,— Alas! in winter dead and dark, Where can poor Robin go? Robin, Robin Redbreast, O Robin dear! And a crumb ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... but I don't like the cold, calculating expression in his eyes. He is the rich man of this neighborhood. Do you suppose he acquired a fortune honestly in this forsaken district, where everyone else is poor as a church mouse?" ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... as meek as a mouse, with the looking-glass held behind his back.] — She's above on the cnuceen, seeking the nanny goats, the way she'd have a sup of goat's milk for to ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... the Child sat there, a little Mouse rustled from among the dry leaves of the former year, and a Lizard half glided from a crevice in the rock, and both of them fixed their bright eyes upon the little stranger; and when they saw that he designed them no evil, they ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... replied Leonine. "Why would she have me killed?" said Marina: "now, as I can remember, I never hurt her in all my life. I never spake bad word, nor did any ill turn to any living creature. Believe me now, I never killed a mouse, nor hurt a fly. I trod upon a worm once against my will, but I wept for it. How have I offended?" The murderer replied, "My commission is not to reason on the deed, but to do it." And he was just going to kill her, when ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... recall it later. The girl's gay voice went on: "It would be wicked to waste the tickets. City people aren't going to the theater as late as this, so we won't see any one we know. I think it's a dispensation of Providence, and I'd be a poor-spirited mouse to waste the chance. I think I'll go ...
— A Good Samaritan • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... did my hard, dour, ungrateful nature so sport with his leal loving heart? Will he spurn me the now? Geordie, Geordie, I shall never see your like! It would but be my desert if I were left behind to that treacherous spiteful prince,—I wad as soon be a mouse in a cat's claw!' ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... but sometimes I wonder whether it wouldn't help you a little, at the same time. I'd love to feel it did; you have been so good to me. I know you worry about Allyn. You watch him as a cat watches a mouse, and you always seem to understand his queer ways and know just how to manage him. I wish I could do ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... threatened. The serpent failed not to come at the usual hour, and went round the tree, seeking for an opportunity to devour me, but was prevented by the rampart I had made; so that he lay till day, like a cat watching in vain for a mouse that has fortunately reached a place of safety. When day appeared he retired, but I dared not to leave my fort until the ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... was neatly written with red chalk: "For the lovely and dear Marietta." But Monsieur Hautmartin well knew that this was some of Colin's mischief, and that some knavish trick lurked under the whole. He therefore opened the box carefully for fear that a mouse or rat should be concealed within. When he beheld the wondrous cup, which he had seen at Vence, he was dreadfully shocked, for Monsieur Hautmartin was a skilful casuist, and knew that the inventions and devices of the human heart are evil from our youth upward. He saw at once that Colin designed ...
— The Broken Cup - 1891 • Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke
... first realization of the extent of the case against us and the nature of the evidence. But we did not find it difficult. We were all three startled by the fear that in some way he had got wind of our plans, and that he meant to play with us cat-and-mouse fashion. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... we had our cave of straw to creep into now," said Harry. "I felt exactly like the little field-mouse you read to me about in Burns's poems, when we went in that morning, and found it all torn up, and half of it carried away. We have no place to go to now for a peculiar own place; and the consequence is, you have not told me any stories about the ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... thought, preserved my treasure, by putting it in one of my drawers, but a wicked little thief of a mouse found it out and tore it to pieces for the sake of the drops of honey contained in one or two of the cells. I was much vexed, as I purposed sending it by some favourable opportunity to a dear friend living in ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... and sometimes vi'lent, And when he squeaked he ne'er was silent: Though ne'er instructed by a cat, He knew a mouse was not ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... golden-haired type of beauty, and that she thus escaped a world of flattery and nonsense. She was silent too in company, as a rule, keeping her chatter and laughter, for the most part, till she was alone with her father, and content sometimes to sit as quiet as a mouse for a whole evening, watching what was going on around her; she was too much accustomed to strangers ever to feel shy with them, but she cared little for them, unless, as in Horace Graham's case, they happened ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... red, "she is. She gave me a rag when I cut me knee, and one day she lifted the cup down for me when Mary Deane stuck it up on a high nail, so that none of us could get drinks, and when Sister Rose said, 'Who is talking?' she said Alanna Costello wasn't 'cause she's sitting here as quiet as a mouse!'" ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... The mouse paused in his walk And dropped his wheaten stalk; Grave cattle wagged their heads In rumination; The eagle gave a cry From his cloud station; 50 Larks on thyme beds Forbore to mount or sing; Bees drooped upon the wing; The ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... yes, I will! but don't talk to me, mamma, for fear. So saying, she screwed up her lips, and taking her work, sat for about five minutes as still as a mouse. She then looked up, smiled and nodded at her mother, as much as to say, "See how well I can hold my tongue," still screwing her lips very tight for fear she should speak. Soon, however, she began ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... although we always pick it up as soon as possible, it may cause another horse to shy. A dropped handkerchief is also dangerous, for a horse is a suspicious creature and fears anything novel as a woman dreads a mouse." ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... bother them any more than was absolutely necessary. The two Red Foxes stayed a while longer. They said that they would light out early in the morning, if the major had a good night, in time to catch the train all right. But they didn't; we might have smelled a mouse, if we hadn't been so anxious about the major. They were good as gold, those two ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... Matilda," cried Grace, getting between Matilda and the closet, "it's nothing in life but a mouse." ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... of the diocese of Exeter. In another pamphlet, published at this time, the rural clergymen are said to have seen with an evil eye their London brethren refreshing themselves with sack after preaching. Several satirical allusions to the fable of the Town Mouse and the Country Mouse will be found in the pamphlets ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... known! to have more o' the divil than the man in you—beggin' your pardon, sir, for the freedoms, I'm takin'—but it's all for your own good I'm doin' it. Have you e're a mouse-hole about ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Time, you are not going to fool me into making myself ridiculous this New Year's Eve with a lot of bonny but impossible resolutions. I know that you are playing with me just as a cat plays with a mouse; yet even the most piteous mousekin sometimes causes his tormentor surprise or disappointment by getting under a bureau or behind the stove, where, for the moment, she cannot paw him. Every now and then, with a little luck, I shall pull off just such a scurry into temporary immortality. ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... old thane to me as the king went on before us with the chaplain. "On my word, we have been dream-ridden like a parcel of old women on this journey, till we shall fear our own shadows next. There is Hilda as silent as a mouse today, and I suppose she has been seeing more portents. I mind that a black cat did look at us out of ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... upon the glass floor, made a pass with his hand, and then removed the hat, displaying a little white piglet no bigger than a mouse, which began to run around here and there and to grunt and squeal ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... forgot to mention during this conversation with his master that in most cases when Watch captured a rabbit he took it to his master and gave it into his hands, as much as to say, Here is a very big sort of field-mouse I have caught, rather difficult to manage—perhaps you can do ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... give him a merciless mental 'third degree.' I told him if he refused I was going to Sorenson with the same offer, who would jump at the chance. And, my dear man, we haven't, in reality, enough proof to convict a mouse since you lost that paper. So now, so far as he's concerned, you must bend a little, a very little—and you'll be able ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... sort of quiet civility, not unlike that which a cat assumes when she is aware of a mouse, and yet does not perceive that the moment is come to pounce upon it. Dymock drew near to the table, and accosted Mr. Salmon with his usual courteous, yet careless manner, and having apologized for coming at all on such an errand, wishing that there was no such thing as money in the world, he ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... they had broken under my weight. My heart was a great, cold, dead thing within me. My mouth was dry as if I had lost myself for days in the desert. I am not a small woman, yet it seemed that I was no bigger than a mouse under the stare of those big men who leaped off their horses, and made as if to pass me at the door. But I did not let them pass. I knew I could stop them long enough at least to kill me and then the sisters, one by one, before they reached our wounded! We backed ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... bread and water," cried a voice through the keyhole; and Mell, opening her eyes, found herself in the dark and alone. She knew very well where she was,—in the closet under the attic stairs; a place she dreaded, because she had once seen a mouse there, and Mell was particularly afraid ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... back to you." And with this he fell weeping so bitterly, that Don Quixote said to him, sharply and angrily, "What art thou afraid of, cowardly creature? What art thou weeping at, heart of butter-paste? Who pursues or molests thee, thou soul of a tame mouse? What dost thou want, unsatisfied in the very heart of abundance? Art thou, perchance, tramping barefoot over the Riphaean mountains, instead of being seated on a bench like an archduke on the tranquil stream of this pleasant river, from which in a short space we shall come out ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... bat kind there is an extraordinary variety: the churi-churi is the smallest species, called vulgarly burong tikus, or the mouse-bird; next to these is the kalalawar; then the kalambit; and the kaluwang (noctilio) is of considerable size; of these I have observed very large flights occasionally passing at a great height in the air, as if migrating ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... the only sound. Now distinctly, in a remote corner of the room, could be heard a little scratch, scratch. Then across the floor, serene and fearless, "right where I had been sweeping," Catherine said later with a shiver, ran a small gray mouse. ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... whiskers that lives in the brook, Is an ugly old beast with the wickedest look. I suppose there were mouse-fish one time in brook town Till that ugly old cat-fish ...
— Songs for Parents • John Farrar
... sloped and slanted to a great amphitheater that was walled on the opposite side by a mountain of bare earth, of every hue, and of a thousand ribbed and scalloped surfaces. At its base the golds and russets and yellows were strongest, but ascending its slopes were changing colors—a dark beautiful mouse color on one side and a strange pearly cream on the other. Between these great corners of the curve climbed ridges of gray and heliotrope and amber, to meet wonderful veins of green—green as the sea in sunlight—and ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... Reuben brought her every day, wet from the clear stream where they grew, shining with the drops of bright water, and generally sprinkled too with some of the spring flowers. To-day the plate on which the bowl stood had a perfect wreath or crown of mouse-ear,—the pale pink blossoms saying all sorts of sweet things. The room was well off for flowers in other respects. Dr. Harrison's hothouse foreigners looked dainty and splendid, and Mrs. Stoutenburgh's periwinkle ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... commonplace bantling, when it is finally born, and we are rather inclined to wonder over it as a prodigy. No doubt the generation of men who witnessed the mountain in labor, regarded the sickly, hairy little mouse, finally brought forth, as ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... from whose mouth protruded on either side a tusk, as in a boar, made him feel how one of them rips. Among evil cats the mouse had come; but Barbariccia clasped him in his arms, and said, "Stand off, while I enfork him," and to my Master turned his face. "Ask," said he, "if thou desirest to know more from him, before some other undo him." The Leader, "Now, then, tell of the other sinners; knowst ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... then what I thought. I don't think I am a particular fellow myself about money and rank and that sort of thing. I am as poor as a church mouse, and so I shall always remain; and for myself I don't care about it. But for one's sister, Owen—you never had ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... animals assembled to bring down the little boys from the top of the great rock. Each animal sprang up the face of the rock as far as he could. The mouse could only spring a hand's breadth, the rat two hands' breadths, the raccoon a little more, and so on. The grizzly bear made a great leap up the wall, but fell back like all the others, without reaching the top. Finally ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... and chatted, and did one curious thing after another to amuse us. He made a tiny toy squirrel out of clay, and it ran up a tree and sat on a limb overhead and barked down at us. Then he made a dog that was not much larger than a mouse, and it treed the squirrel and danced about the tree, excited and barking, and was as alive as any dog could be. It frightened the squirrel from tree to tree and followed it up until both were out of sight in the forest. He made birds out of clay and ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... snow was crusted over with hoar frost, and the bare forest trees were hung with icicles. The cunning fox, the 'possum and the 'coon, crept shivering from their dens; but the shy, gray rabbit, and the tiny, brown wood-mouse, still nestled in their holes. And none of nature's small children ventured from their nests, save the hardy and courageous little snow-birds that came to seek their food even at the very ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... is going to be a great one!" Mrs. Carne exclaimed playfully. "Well, I was surprised to hear it! I know I am not flattering to my own discernment when I say so; but there! I should never have supposed you were a genius. You are such a quiet little mouse, you know, you don't give yourself away much, if you will excuse the expression! I ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... from the box I had seen, and with a needle injected the serum. The mouse did not even wince, so lightly did he touch it, but as we watched, its life seemed gently to ebb away, without pain and without struggle. Its breath ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... equal weights which go through the smaller exertion of moving about over solid surfaces. The extreme infertility of the bat is most striking when compared with the structurally similar but very prolific mouse; a difference in the rate of multiplication which may fairly be ascribed to the difference ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... interleaved copy of Halliwell's Nursery Rhymes, I have the original song of the "Frog and Mouse" with three different melodies, and nonsense burthens, as sung by my excellent nurse, Betty Richens, whose name I hope to see ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... and not at all musical. We keep him quiet by giving him sticks to break, and knotted cord to untie; and when he has been good I take him on my lap, and rub his head and wings, which he greatly likes. I never yet saw the animal, down to a little mouse, that would not be fond of those who treated it tenderly; and the pleasure of being loved is so great, that I only wonder how anybody can neglect to win the love of the creatures which were made for man's use and benefit. There is a wonderful deal of happiness among them, ...
— Kindness to Animals - Or, The Sin of Cruelty Exposed and Rebuked • Charlotte Elizabeth
... feel the heat more than I do," she answered, demurely, which was true, for she looked as cool as a cucumber and as comfortable as a mouse in a cheese, while I was mopping my face every other minute ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... and when there's anything that bothers you, ask Mother, but not the servants. A girl of good family must not be too familiar with servants. Promise me." And then, though I'm so big he took me on his knee like a child and petted me because I was crying so. "It's all right, little Mouse, don't worry, you must not get so nervous as Dora. Give me a nice kiss, and then I'll come with you to your room and stay with you till you go to sleep." Of course I stayed awake on purpose as long as I could, till a quarter ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... conversation. Who would not be astonished at Demophons complexion, chiefe steward of Alexanders household, who was wont to sweat in the shadow, and quiver for cold in the sunne? I have seene some to startle at the smell of an apple more than at the shot of a peece; some to be frighted with a mouse, some readie to cast their gorge [Footnote: Vomit.] at the sight of a messe of creame, and others to be scared with seeing a fether bed shaken: as Germanicus, who could not abide to see a cock, or heare his crowing. There may haply be some hidden propertie of nature, which in my judgement ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... scanty and imperfectly supplied with the social apparatus demanded by the theory of ceremonial purity." There is no reason why the origin of the Bari from the Banmanush (wild man of the woods) or Musahar (mouse-eater), a forest tribe, as suggested by Mr. Nesfield from his observation of their mutual connection, should be questioned. The making of leaf-plates is an avocation which may be considered naturally to pertain to the tribes frequenting jungles from which the leaves are gathered; and in the Central ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... the Bois de Boulogne that I looked for my principal recreation. There I took my solitary walk, morning and evening; or, mounted on a little mouse-colored donkey, paced demurely along the woodland pathway. I had a favorite seat beneath the shadow of a venerable oak, one of the few hoary patriarchs of the wood which had survived the bivouacs of the allied armies. It stood upon the brink of a little glassy pool, whose tranquil bosom was ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... a condition that God has invented and arbitrarily imposed. The necessity of it is lodged deep in the very nature of the case. Air cannot get to the lungs of a mouse in an air-pump. Light cannot come into a room where all the shutters are up and the keyhole stopped. If a man chooses to perch himself on some little stool of his own, with glass legs to it, and to take away his hand from the conductor, no electricity will come ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... theory is—I've been reading up on it—that these spook brethren of ours attack their doubters in different ways. Knowing you to be a man of materialistic and rather methodical habit of mind, the powers essayed a material test. Perhaps it was a mouse?" ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... demolished castle, refill the chests of gold that have been emptied by the conquerors, and restock the farms that have been pillaged and devastated. In the absence of Aladdin, however, she is almost as poor as the ancient church-mouse. But she has a fortune of her own. Two of the most glorious rubies in the world represent her lips; her eyes are sapphires that put to shame the rocks of all the Sultans; when she smiles, you may look upon pearls that would make the Queen of Sheba's trinkets look like chinaware; her skin is of ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... signs of failing attention (and, therefore, of growing appetite), tendering them, from beneath the desk, a roll of pudding or a piece of gingerbread, and charging according to degree of appetite and size of portion. He also spent a couple of months in training a mouse, which he kept confined in a little wooden cage in his bedroom. At length, when the training had reached the point that, at the several words of command, the mouse would stand upon its hind legs, lie down, and get up again, he sold the creature for a respectable sum. Thus, in ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... how closely he was watched, and remembering certain dreadful rumours which he had heard of prisoners secretly drugged with belladonna that notes might be taken of their ravings, he gradually became afraid to sleep or eat; and if a mouse ran past him in the night, would start up drenched with cold sweat and quivering with terror, fancying that someone was hiding in the room to listen if he talked in his sleep. The gendarmes were evidently trying to entrap him ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... the touch of the finger would sweep away, others in ink rotted into holes, others eaten away by damp and mildew, and falling into dust at the edges, in cases and bags of fragile decay, others worm-eaten, some mouse-eaten, many torn halfway through, numbers doubled (quadrupled I should say) into four, being Turner's favourite mode of packing for travelling; nearly all rudely flattened out from the bundles in which Turner had finally rolled them up and squeezed them into his drawers in Queen Anne Street' ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... to build a monastery like Findelkind of Arlberg, and to help the poor," said our Findelkind valorously, though his heart was beating like that of a little mouse caught in a trap, for the horses were trampling up the dust around him and the orderly's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... singular and plural, of: Actor, king, fairy, calf, child, goose, lady, monkey, mouse, ox, woman, deer, eagle, princess, elephant, man, witness, prince, fox, farmer, countess, mouth, horse, day, year, lion, wolf, thief, Englishman. 2. Write the possessive case of: James, Dickens, his sister Mary, ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... noted that the habit of attention is the first step in intellectual education. With it we have found the point of separation between the animal intellect and the human. Not attention simply—like that with which the cat watches by the hole of a mouse—but attention which arrives at results of abstraction, is the distinguishing characteristic ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... said was sucked by a Toad'.[323] Widow Coman, an Essex witch, died a natural death in 1699: 'Upon her death I requested Becke the midwife to search her body in the presence of some sober women, which she did and assured me she never saw the like in her life that her fundament was open like a mouse-hole and that in it were two long bigges out of which being pressed issued blood that they were neither piles nor emrods for she knew both but excrescencies like to biggs with nipples which seemed as if they had been frequently sucked.'[324] Elinor Shaw and Mary Phillips were executed ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... Tachas the kyng of Egipt, to aide him in his wars: Tachas beholdyng Agesilaus to bee a man of so litel stature and smal personage tauntyng hym with this scoffe, sayde: The mountayne hath trauayled, Iupiter forbode, but yet hee hathe broughte forth a mouse.[334] Agesilaus beynge offended wyth hys saying, answered: and yet the tyme wyl come, that I shall seeme to the a Lyon. And not longe after, it chaunced through a sedycion that arose amonge the Aegypcyans, whan Agesilaus was gone from him, the king was constreyned ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... has lifted up his robes and fled. The loitering shadows move along the walls; Then silence very slowly lifts his head. The starling with impatient screech has flown The chimney, and is watching from the tree. They thought us gone for ever: mouse alone Stops in the middle of the floor to see. Now all you idle things, resume your toil. Hearth, put your flames on. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... in her bedroom chewing her penholder, finally wrote this: "Watts McHurdie went sailing by the house to-night, coming home from the Wards', where he was making his regular call on Nellie. You know what a mouse-like little walk he has, scratching along the sidewalk so demurely; but to-night, after he passed our place I heard him actually break into a hippety-hop, and as I was sitting on the veranda, I could hear him clicking clear down to the ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... cat of Egypt, where history records its being "domesticated" at least thirteen centuries B.C. From there it was taken throughout Europe, where it appeared at least a century B.C., and was kept as a pet in the homes of the wealthy, though certain writers, speaking of the "mouse-hunters" of the old Romans and Greeks, state that these creatures were not the Egyptian cat, but a carniverous, long-bodied animal, after the shape of a weasel, called "marten," of the species the "beech" ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... book of Herodotus. When Darius advanced into the Moldavian desert, between the Danube and the Niester, the king of the Scythians sent him a mouse, a frog, a bird, and five ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... you'd cast affection's glance on this poor but honest soger! George Lord S. is not the nobleman to cut the object of his flame before the giddy throng; nor to keep her boxed up in an old mouse-trap, while he himself is revelling in purple splendours like these. He didn't know you, Jean: he was afraid to. Do you call that a man? Try a ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... the mountain to Haifa, to accompany a traveler, was attacked and seized by a panther on his return. The panther, however, instead of putting his victim immediately to death, began to play with him as a cat plays with a mouse which she has succeeded in making her prey-holding him gently with her claws, for a time, and then, after drawing back a little, darting upon him again, as if to repeat and renew the pleasure of capturing ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... little violet had been the first to tell them; the house-cats had noticed it, to be sure, for their parents' homes stood near each other. When, therefore, Hyacinth was standing at night at his window and Roseblossom at hers, and the pussies ran by on a mouse-hunt, they would see both standing, and would often laugh and titter so loudly that the children would hear them and grow angry. The violet had confided it to the strawberry, she told it to her friend, the gooseberry, and she never stopped taunting when Hyacinth passed; ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... but you did not think of that when you jumped in; and no more must I in thanking you. God knows how a poor miner's son will ever reward you; but the mouse repaid the lion, says the story, and, at all events, I can pray for you. By the bye, gentlemen, I hope you ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... of the old story about the cat who was transformed into a princess: she played the role with admirable decorum, until one day a mouse ran across the floor of the royal saloon, when immediately the old instinct and the hereditary hatred proved too much for the artificial nature, and her highness vanished over a six-barred gate in a furious mouse-chase. Pope, treading in the steps of this model, fancies himself ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... Tacks answered, solemnly. "I happened to find a poor, little dead mouse under the gas range and I thought I'd farewell the ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... charging Mary to "tread on tiptoe, and keep as still as a mouse, for Miss Mason's ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... the ground, Ben Bolt advanced upon him, creeping slowly like a cat stalking a mouse. When he came to his next pause, which was within certain leaping distance, he crouched lower, gathered himself for the leap, then turned his head to regard the men at his back outside the cage. The trailing rope in their hands, to ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... evening—But how dull this is, this historical fiction! It doesn't interest me at all. I wish I could hit upon a pleasant track of thought, a track indirectly reflecting credit upon myself, for those are the pleasantest thoughts, and very frequent even in the minds of modest mouse-coloured people, who believe genuinely that they dislike to hear their own praises. They are not thoughts directly praising oneself; that is the beauty of them; they are thoughts ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... suppose it just to show you what I mean,) even in such a case you needn't do anything. Keep your mouth shut and your head from bobbin', and there a'n't lawyers, nor squires, nor parsons, nor parsons' wives either for that matter, enough in all Connecticut to marry you to a mouse, let alone a man. Humph!" added Miss Blake, with scornful accent, "I should like to see 'em set out to marry me to anybody I didn't want ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... of it to these clamorous boys, and, what was worse, had stipulated with considerable forethought for payment in advance. For the first time he repented his paternal harshness. Like the netted lion, a paltry white mouse or two would have set him free; but, less happy than the beast in the ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... fear. "It was very surprising," said the cat; "you are of such a grand size that I do not wonder you could become a lion—but could you change yourself into some very small animal?" "You shall see," said the stupid vain ogre, and he turned into a mouse. Directly puss saw him in that shape, he darted at him and eat him up. The ogre quite deserved it, for he had eaten many men himself. Then puss made haste back to his master, and said, "Come and bathe in the river, and when the king comes ...
— Aunt Friendly's Picture Book. - Containing Thirty-six Pages in Colour by Kronheim • Anonymous
... a mouse. In less than two minutes there was another burst of thunder, and then another. The third gun was a tremendous fellow and ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... folded each dainty blue morocco slipper in its separate piece of fine paper, and straightened out her ribbons, and wrapped her pale blue robe in its holland covering, and put every comb and pin in its proper place, all the time treading as softly as a mouse. And by and by the street was dark and still, and her room in the most perfect order. These things gave her the comfort of a good conscience; and she said her prayers, and fell calmly asleep, to the flattering thought, "I would not much wonder if, at this moment, Lieutenant Hyde ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... business. Seraphina told me that she was going to the opera with some of her relations, and asked me if I would be there; that the captain of the frigate, and all the other officers were going, and that she wished me to go with her. You see, Mr Simple, although Seraphina's father was so poor, that a mouse would have starved in his house, still he was of good family, and connected with those who were much better off. He was a Don himself, and had fourteen or fifteen long names, which I forget now. I refused ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... I can remember I've had to keep as still as a mouse the minute Father comes into the house; and I know that I never could imagine the kind of a mother that Nurse tells about, if it wasn't that sometimes when Father has gone off on a trip, Mother and I have romped all over the house, and had the most beautiful time. I know ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... on his jacket was the head of some animal. The top button was a bear's head and the next button a wolf's head; the next was a cat's head and the next a weasel's head, while the last button of all was the head of a field-mouse. When Dorothy looked into the eyes of these animals' heads, they all nodded and said in a chorus: "Don't believe ...
— Little Wizard Stories of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the whole family simply adored Ridiklis and could not possibly have done without her. Meg and Peg and Kilmanskeg could have married any minute if they had liked. There were two cock sparrows and a gentleman mouse, who proposed to them over and over again. They all three said they did not want fashionable wives but cheerful dispositions and a happy, home. But Meg and Peg were like Ridiklis and could not bear to leave their families—besides ...
— Racketty-Packetty House • Frances H. Burnett |
