"Pairing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lost without it. It was a little odd, if you came to think of it, that the thing he called his genius, and the thing he called his love, should have chosen the same moment to abandon him. Was it—was it possible—that there was some vital connection between them? As the singing of birds in the pairing season, was his genius merely a rather peculiar symptom of the very ordinary condition known as falling in love? So that, failing that source of inspiration—? That no doubt was what was the matter with him. His imagination languished because his passion for ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... monsters and marvels. In one of the latest examples, the inner splint-bone, answering to the second metacarpal of the pentadactyle foot, supported phalanges and a terminal hoof resembling the corresponding one in hipparion. And the pairing of horses with the meterpodials bearing, according to type, phalanges and hoofs might restore the ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... guests of whom his wife thought so much, and having also been acquainted himself with Mrs. Damer since her return to England. He led her up to the sofa whereon Bella sat; and, dinner being almost immediately announced, the little hostess was busy pairing off her couples. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... of large trees, both hard wood and pine, I had found a group of three summer tanagers, two males and one female,—the usual proportion with birds generally, one may almost say, in the pairing season. The female was the first of her sex that I had seen, and I remarked with pleasure the comparative brightness of her dress. Among tanagers, as among negroes, red and yellow are esteemed a pretty good match. At this point, too, ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... Willmore (Rover II), Gayman (The Lucky Chance), Wittmore (Sir Patient Fancy) end up without a thought of, save it be jest at, the wedding ring. But even this freedom can be amply paralleled. In the Duke of Buckingham's clever alteration of The Chances (1682), we have Don John pairing off with the second Constantia without a hint of matrimony; we have the intrigue of Bellmour and Laetitia in Congreve's The Old Bachelor (1693), the amours of Horner in The Country Wife (1675), of Florio and Artall in Crowne's City Politics ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... been convinced of the existence of distinct kinds ('species') in both the vegetable and animal worlds; he recognised that plants of definite kinds yielded particular fruits, and that different kinds of animals did not breed promiscuously with one another, but that, pairing each with its own kind, all gave rise to like offspring, and thus arose the idea of distinct 'species' of ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... where the grain is grown: I share my kopecks with the village priest, Who winnows peccadillos by the sheaf." Then Zanthon, laughing in his foxy beard: "When Amine meets me in the plane-tree walk (Where pairing little finches seek to build, We saw the cuckoo thieve their nests when boys), Shall I then tell her, in my peasant way, Your broken promise, and her troth denied?" And he was gone—gone, with the stud he bought From Schamyl's son, up by Caucasus way, Leaving me solitude to reason with. Around ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... what the hour was. Prayer meeting at the corner church was over; boys of his own age were ranging themselves along the curb, waiting for the girl of the moment. When she came, a youth would appear miraculously beside her, and the world-old pairing ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... spring rains had only recently set in, and all Nature was rioting in the refreshment of the welcome moisture and bursting forth into a joyous prodigality of leaf and blossom, of colour and perfume, of life and glad activity. The forest rang with the calls and cries of pairing birds; flocks of parrots, parrakeets, and love-birds were constantly wheeling and darting hither and thither; kingfishers flitted low across the placid water, or watched motionless from some overhanging branch for the passage of their unsuspecting ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... did not mean the measles, but that more serious malady called love, which is apt to ravage communities, spring and autumn, when winter gaiety and summer idleness produce whole bouquets of engagements, and set young people to pairing off like the birds. Franz began it, Nat was a chronic and Tom a sudden case; Demi seemed to have the symptoms; and worst of all, her own Ted had only the day before calmly said to her: 'Mum, I think I should be happier if I had a sweetheart, like the other boys.' If her cherished ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... believer in this doctrine of non-resistance, modified, however, by the fact that she also believed in the existence of earthly representatives of the heavenly matrimonial bureau, to whom is entrusted the pleasing duty of selecting and pairing. Of this glorious company, Mrs. Burrell believed herself a member in good standing, and one who stood high upon the honour roll. Therefore, having decided that Arthur should marry Martha Perkins she proceeded ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... stood grouped in corners and talked of their every-day affairs. The young people clustered together in little knots, governed more or less by natural selection— only the veterans of several seasons pairing off into the discreet retirement of stairs and hall angles. At the further end of the long drawing-room, Farnham's eyes at last lighted upon the object of his quest. Alice sat in the midst of a group ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... indeed it is, a tentative and prophetic prelude of something yet to come. With this conjoin the power and the tendency to acquire articulation, and to imitate speech; conjoin the building instinct and the migratory, the monogamy of several species, and the pairing of almost all; and we shall have collected new instances of the usage (I dare not say law) according to which Nature lets fall, in order to resume, and steps backward the furthest, when she means to leap forwards with the ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... couple of weeks later that Andre-Louis realized what had really happened to him, and he found himself at the same time an exhausted man, for during that fortnight he had been doing the work of two. If he had not hit upon the happy expedient of pairing-off his more advanced pupils to fence with each other, himself standing by to criticize, correct and otherwise instruct, he must have found the task utterly beyond his strength. Even so, it was necessary for him to fence some six hours daily, and every day he brought arrears ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... "The pairing-season commences about the end of March, when the males may be heard uttering a feeble kind of rambling song, which in reality is merely modified repetitions ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... of all peoples contains this physiological perversion. Birds do not sing hymns; the song of the male is simply to call the female and when the pairing-season ends all are ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Except in the pairing time, the old males usually live by themselves. The old females, and the immature males, on the other hand, are often met with in twos and threes; and the former occasionally have young with them, though the ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... clever statistical chaps Declare the numerical run Of women and men in the world Is Twenty to Twenty-and-one: And hence in the pairing, you see, Since wooing and wedding began, For every connubial score They've got ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... at marriage rises steadily; and so long as they remain celibate we are prepared with some sort of ideas about the future development of their social life, clubs, hostels, living-in, and so forth. But at present we haven't any ideas at all about the adaptation of the natural pairing instinct to the new state of affairs. Ultimately the employee marries; they hold out as long as they possibly can, but ultimately they have to. They have to, even in the face of an economic system that holds out no prospects of anything but insecurity ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... cohabitation. This, however, is not the only way, although perhaps the original one." (Jung, Jb. ps. F., IV, pp. 266 ff.) In another place it is said: The separation of the son from the mother signifies the separation of man from the pairing consciousness of animals, from the lack of individual consciousness characteristic of infantile archaic thought. "First by the force of the incest prohibition could a self-conscious individual be produced, who had before been, ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... a right to happiness almost as passionately as the men of the French Revolution and as the women in their late movement for enfranchisement felt for liberty. Very likely she has turned to other women and entered into innocent Platonic pairing-off relations with some one. There is a little more affectation, playing a role, and interest in dress and appearance is either less or more specialized and definite. Perhaps she has already begun to be a seeker who will perhaps find, lose, and seek again. ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... is a shaggy world, and yet studded with gardens; where the salt and tumbling sea receives clear rivers running from among reeds and lilies; fruitful and austere; a rustic world; sunshiny, lewd, and cruel. What is it the birds sing among the trees in pairing time? What means the sound of the rain falling far and wide upon the leafy forest? To what tune does the fisherman whistle, as he hauls in his net at morning, and the bright fish are heaped inside the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... are to be found, after pairing-time, single, and of each sex; but whether this state of celibacy is matter of choice or necessity, is not so easy discoverable. When the house-sparrows deprive my martins of their nests, as soon as I cause one to be shot, the other, be it cock or hen, presently ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... The pairing time is January, when after many battles with rivals, the strongest males attach themselves to the females. The female wolf prepares a warm nest for her young, of soft moss and her own hair, carefully blended together. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... Wordsworth who wrote the Excursion, When they know that whole reams of the verses recur in my authorized works Here and there, up and down! Why, such readers are infidels—heretics— Turks. And the pitiful critics who think in their paltry presumption to pay me a Pretty compliment, pairing me off, sir, with Keats—as if he could write Lamia! While I never produced a more characteristic and exquisite book, One that gave me more real satisfaction, than did, on the whole, Lalla Rookh. Was it there that I called on all ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... that they strongly discourage, as an evidence of sinful selfishness, what they call "exclusive and idolatrous attachment" of two persons for each other, and aim to break up by "criticism" and other means every thing of this kind in the community; that they teach the advisability of pairing persons of different ages, the young of one sex with the aged of the other, and as the matter is under the control and management of the more aged members it is thus arranged; that "persons are not obliged, under any circumstances, to receive the attentions of those whom they do not ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... incident to Evelyn. Evelyn, adoring her husband and adored by him, had been so much accustomed to men's admiration that she did not attach great value to it. She had seen long ago her old lovers pairing happily with somebody else: that side of life had been over for herself many years since. Her interest now was in her sons' possible marriages, and it was a little painful to her that Henrietta should be so much excited about what had ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... showy males, and the consequent hereditary transmission of their colors and other ornaments. When we bear in mind how unimportant a role the regard for personal beauty plays even among the females of the most advanced human beings, the idea that the females of the lower animals are guided in their pairing by minute subtle differences in the beauty of masculine animals seems positively comic. It is an idea such as could have emanated only from a mind ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... affectionate manner, and the next moment savagely gore her. Hate and cruelty for the most part rule in the animal world. A few of the higher animals are monogamous, but by far the greater number of species are polygamous or promiscuous. There is no mating or pairing in the great bovine tribe, and none among the rodents that I know of, or among the bear family, or the cat family, or among the seals. When we come to the birds, we find mating, and occasional pairing for life, as with the ostrich and perhaps ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... primitive law from which man only has freed himself. They frequently fight for the possession of the female, or measure their powers against each other; and she goes with the victor or the better man.[12] I don't know any case where the advance has been made by the female. Pairing may be for a season or for a period or for life. I don't think there is any rule; but in all cases of separation the children are invariably divided—the males to the father, the females to the mother. After initiation the children owe ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... determined in caucus to "sit out the bill," and whenever a Whig moved to adjourn his motion was promptly negatived. As darkness came on the lamps were lighted and trimmed, candles were brought into the hall, and the older and feebler members "pairing off," took their cloaks and hats and left. The House being in Committee of the Whole, whenever they found no quorum voting, were obliged by the parliamentary usage to rise and report that fact to the House. When this was done, and the House was again in session as a House, behold, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... thrushes hopped for joy, and that very day was begun the celebrated Building of the Boat. All their ordinary business fell into arrears. It was the time of year when they should have been pairing, but not a thrush's nest was built except this big one, and so Solomon soon ran short of thrushes with which to supply the demand from the mainland. The stout, rather greedy children, who look ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... haste, then, to get back for safety to the ornithological aspect of the subject. Here there can be no penalties for heresy. And here I make bold to avow my conviction that the pairing season is not the only point of interest in the life of the birds; nor is the instinct by which they mate altogether and beyond comparison the noblest passion that ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... necessary honesties and helps of a joint life, there springs the stoutest, nearest, most enduring and best of human companionship; perhaps only upon that root can the best of mortal comradeship be got; but it does not follow that the mere ordinary coming together and pairing off of men and women is in itself divine or sacramental or anything of the sort. Being in love is a condition that may have its moments of sublime exaltation, but it is for the most part an experience far ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... their five cards the hands are looked at, and the game begins. The object of the players is to play cards of equal value to those of their right-hand adversaries, and if they do so the player has to pay a penalty into the pool; one stake for Snip, which is the first pairing of a card; two stakes for Snap, the second pairing of the same card; and three stakes for Snorum, the third pairing. For instance, suppose there are five players, A, B, C, D, and E. A is the dealer, and, the cards having been ...
— Round Games with Cards • W. H. Peel
... organization, which have nothing to do with kinship. Sex, for instance, has a direct bearing on social status. The men and the women often form markedly distinct groups; so that we are almost reminded of the way in which the male and the female linnets go about in separate flocks as soon as the pairing season is over. Of course, disparity of occupation has something to do with it. But, for the native mind, the difference evidently goes far deeper than that. In some parts of Australia there are actually sex-totems, signifying ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... other two. Mary Ann Fothergill? She almost laughed at the thought of anybody missing Mary Ann. John Middleton? Hanford Weston? There was not a boy in the school she would miss for an instant, she told herself with conviction. Not one of them realized her ideal. There was much pairing off of boy and girl in school, but Marcia, like the heroine of "Comin' thro' the Rye," was good friends with all the boys and intimate with none. They all counted it an honor to wait upon her, and she cared not a farthing for any. She felt herself too young, of course, to think of such things, but ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... snow-birds, on a road over the heights of the Alleghanies. Its flight, like that of the Partridge, is laborious and steady. Though they collect their food from the ground, they are frequently shot on trees, their perch being either the main branches, or the topmost twigs. At the time of pairing, they exhibit a little of the jealous disposition of the tribe, but his character vindicated by his bravery, and the victory achieved, he retires from his fraternity to assist his mate in the formation of her nest. The flesh of the Meadow-Lark is white, and for size and delicacy, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... the name of all that's preposterous, do they persist in pairing me off with the least interesting man ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... running about with a pudding in his belly, and an apple in his mouth; the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a comfortable pie, and tucked in with a coverlet of crust; the geese were swimming in their own gravy; and the ducks pairing cosily in dishes, like snug married couples, with a decent competency of onion sauce. In the porkers he saw carved out the future sleek side of bacon, and juicy relishing ham; not a turkey but he beheld daintily trussed up, with its gizzard under its wing, and, peradventure, a necklace ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... watched the whole game, and saw how the young people were pairing, and talked them over ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... Bishop and the sister of the best man had already taken this course without saying anything about it. Nearly everybody murmured something about it being a lovely evening and a glorious sunset and a charming road, and, pairing off advisedly, adopted the same plan. The Bishop and Mrs. Bishop, Mrs. Dingley and Mr. Marcy decided on being driven over to the station in a light surrey ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... observer and the horizon, there is frequently a great deal of mirage, and the visible horizon may be miraged up several minutes. This will reduce the altitude observed, and corrections on this account are practically impossible to apply. This error may be counterbalanced to some extent by pairing observations as described above, but it by no means follows that the mirage effect will be the same in the two directions. Then again, during the summer months, no stars will be visible, and observations for latitude will have to depend on a single noon sight ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... he was inclined to relax when, from a group of pretty women, the bright gray eyes of Mrs. MacSpadden caught his, were suddenly diverted to the lapel of his coat, and then leaped up to his again with a sparkle of mischief. But the guests were already pairing off in dinner couples, and as they passed out of the room, he saw that she was on the arm of Kilcraithie. Yet, as she passed him, she audaciously turned her head, and in a mischievous affectation of ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... spring, when the songs of the pairing birds began, his sorrow only grew greater. "Let me go out, let me go out," he cried; "only a little way into the bright world before I die!" She kissed his feet, and took him up in her arms and carried him. But she could only go a very little way with her burden; presently ...
— The Blue Moon • Laurence Housman
... these young men are El-morani. They dwell in a separate manyatta. With them dwell promiscuously all the young unmarried women of the tribe. There is no permanent pairing off, no individual property, no marriage. Nor does this constitute flagrant immorality, difficult as it may be for us to see that fact. The institution, like all national institutions, must have had its origin in a very ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... not only an instinctive, but an artificial and reasoned, interest in sexual practices; and this resulted in a state of consciousness which made sexual life uninterruptedly interesting, in contrast with a pairing season among animals, and also in a constant tendency toward promiscuity, whether this state was ever actually reached or not. The widespread and various unnatural sex practices, the use of aphrodisiacs, the practice of drawing attention to the girl at puberty, ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... digested in the crop or upper part of the stomach of the parent. For the proper rearing of the brood there is required the assiduous care of both parents. Therefore quite naturally we find among these birds that the pairing habit is well developed, and as they rear several broods each season, that the mating is for life. Although there are numbers of birds in various orders which are accustomed to the monogamic habit, it happens that the pigeon is the ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... little anxious to know whether her ladyship would honour me with an agnomen. I could not learn this from Miss Bland, and I was too prudent to betray my curiosity: I afterwards heard it, however. Pairing me and Mr. M'Leod, whom she had seen together, her ladyship observed, that Sawney and Yawney were made for each other; and she sketched, in strong caricature, my relaxed elongation of limb, and his rigid rectangularity. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... much pother?" It grunted, as still it stayed. "One pairing is as good as another Where all is venture! Take each other, And scrap the oaths that you have aforetime made." . ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... The perfect sexes are winged on their first attaining the adult state; they alone propagate their kind, flying away, previous to the act of reproduction, from the nest in which they have been reared. This winged state of the perfect males and females, and the habit of flying abroad before pairing, are very important points in the economy of ants; for they are thus enabled to intercross with members of distant colonies which swarm at the same time, and thereby increase the vigour of the race, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... arrangements with Mrs. Hargreaves, and seeing that a dozen of claret which his orderly had at his orders brought across, with a basket of fruit, was properly secured on the roof, they sauntered off with the girls, soon insensibly pairing off. ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... crumbs of bread-and-milk too. Sun-birds visit the pomegranate flowers, and eat insects therein too, as well as nectar. The young whydah birds crouch closely together at night for heat. They look like a woolly ball on a branch. By day they engage in pairing and coaxing each other. They come to the same twig every night. Like children, they try and lift heavy weights ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... Endiapered with many a spiritual form Of blosmy-tinctured weed; But scarce itself is conscious of the store Suckled by it, and only after storm Casts up its loosened thoughts upon the shore. To this end my deeps are stirred; And I deem well why life unshared Was ordained me of yore. In pairing-time, we know, the bird Kindles to its deepmost splendour, And the tender Voice is tenderest in its throat; Were its love, for ever nigh it, Never by it, It might keep a vernal note, The crocean and amethystine ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... at the long tables by squads and tribes. Those who belong together sit together. There is no attempt at pairing off for conversation or mutual entertainment, at speech-making or toasting. The business in hand is to eat, and it is attended to. The bridegroom, at the head of the table, with his shiny silk hat on, sets the example; ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... to show a hint of spring, in pairing plovers and breaking eglantine, Senhouse, in a temporary dejection, ceased work upon his poem, and Glyde said that he must know the news. All through the winter they had had little communication with the world ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... object or to another insect protected by its unpalatableness. The cases are discussed in relation to the much greater importance (to the species as a whole) of the preservation of the female insect with her load of eggs than the male who may safely be sacrificed after pairing. See Letter 189, note.) Although it may be most for the welfare of the species that the female should be protected, yet it would be some advantage, certainly no disadvantage, for the unfortunate male to enjoy an equal immunity from danger. For my part, I should say that the female alone ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... the sea, else the natives believe that the fisheries would fail. Again, in Mabuiag, another of these islands, women who have their courses on them may not eat turtle flesh nor turtle eggs, probably for a similar reason. And during the season when the turtles are pairing the restrictions laid on such a woman are much severer. She may not even enter a house in which there is turtle flesh, nor approach a fire on which the flesh is cooking; she may not go near the sea and she should ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... end of the third set, supper was announced; and the party, pairing off like turtles, adjourned to the supper-room. The squire was now the happiest of mortal men, and the little butler the most laborious. The centre of the largest table was decorated with a model of Snowdon, ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... about with a pudding in his belly, and an apple in his mouth; the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a comfortable pie, and tucked in with a coverlet of crust; the geese were swimming in their own gravy, and the ducks pairing cosily in dishes, like snug married couples, with a decent competency of onion-sauce. In the porkers he saw carved out the future sleek side of bacon, and juicy relishing ham; not a turkey but he beheld daintily trussed up, with its gizzard under its wing, and, peradventure, ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... I, elated with my triumph; and pairing off with my brilliant partner, we were soon whirling ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... very gradual.[66] The true savage is only a little less unteachable than the beasts of the field. The savage family is at first barely discernible amid the primitive social chaos in which it had its origin. Along with polyandry and polygyny in various degrees and forms, instances of exclusive pairing, of at least a temporary character, are to be found among the lowest existing savages, and there are reasons for supposing that such may have been the case even in primeval times. But it was impossible for strict monogamy to flourish in the ruder stages of social development; ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... explain this "debility." It may be a myth explaining a Celtic use of the "couvade," though no example of a simultaneous tribal couvade is known, unless we have here an instance of Westermarck's "human pairing season in primitive times," with its consequent simultaneous birth-period for women and couvade for men.[457] Others, with less likelihood, explain it as a period of tabu, with cessation from work and warfare, at a funeral or festival.[458] In any case Macha's curse is a myth explanatory ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... Perhaps the pairing has not been altogether accidental. Whether or no, it is done; and the conversation, hitherto general, is reduced to the ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... parties. Blanche's ambition of tennis courts all over the lawn was fulfilled, and sundry dinners, which were crosses to Alice, who had neither faculty nor training for a leader and hostess, suffered much from the menu, more from the pairing of her guests, more again in catching her chief lady's eye after, and most of all from her husband's scowls and subsequent growls and their consequence, for Ursula broke out, 'It is not fair to blame my mother. How should she have all the savoir-faire, ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... domestic animals are concerned, it is true that they throw off their young in the spring. The reference to a similar interruption in the case of mankind (see above, p. 571) may embody the recollection of a period when a regular pairing season and breeding time existed among mankind. See Westermarck, The History of Human Marriage, ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... croquet and the flute, pleads guilty to having cultivated the Nine, and affects a simpering pooh-pooh when he is impeached with having inspired that wicked but so witty bit of scandal in the local paper. By singularity of pairing, his fast friend is the muscular sub, who walks against time, and can write his initials with a ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... the twitter of pairing birds, and the bursting of green leaves through the brown, downy husks, in the bounteous April weather, Madelon began to recover rapidly. She was nursed with kindness and care, if not exactly with tenderness, by Soeur Lucie; but ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... experience of Ledgar's incomprehensibility. Nor did the question of his semi-lunatic friend worry her, or the whole problem of what, if anything, was the motive of the book. Eventually he is shown pairing off with his earlier love, Winnie; and I am bound to say that she too has my sympathy. I should sum up by saying that the analysis of introspective egotism, however subtly done, can make at best ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... We used to get on to this lande by walking up the bed of a rivulet, and once on it we had perfect massacres of winged game, especially of that sort of gray grouse called ptarmigan by the English. It was these birds' pairing season. They never flew away, and when we killed one the other would ruffle up its feathers in a fury and fly pecking at our legs. The wooded sides of the island must have been full of reindeer, to judge by the quantities of tracks to be seen on every side. If we had had one or two hounds to send ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... her marriage having been the first. The roundness and neatness of the whole plan could not fail to recommend it to the mind which delighted in putting involved things straight, and such a mind Abner Power's seemed to be. In fact, the felicity, in a politic sense, of pairing the captain with the heiress furnished no little excuse for manoeuvring to bring it about, so long as that manoeuvring fell short of unfairness, which Mr. Power's could scarcely be said ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... all, was she to think? All the girls were pairing off with the boys for the after-chapel ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... alike. One notable peculiarity in the character of the woman is that she is capricious and coy, and has less straightforwardness than the man. It is the same in the female of every sex about the time of pairing, and there can be little doubt as to the origin of the peculiarity. If any race of animals existed in whom the sexual passions of the female were as quickly and as directly stirred as those of the male, each would mate with ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... tiger is quite different from that of the female. The male calls with a hoarse harsh cry, something between the grunt of a pig and the bellow of a bull; the call of the tigress is more like the prolonged mew of a cat much intensified. During the pairing season the call is sharper and shorter, and ends in a sudden break. At that time, too, they cry at more frequent intervals. The roar of the tiger is quite unlike the call. Once heard it is not easily forgotten, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... said Sir Richmond with conviction. "There was always a tremendous lot of variety in my mind. In fact the thing I liked least in the real world was the way it was obsessed by the idea of pairing off with one particular set and final person. I liked to dream of a blonde goddess in her own Venusberg one day, and the next I would be off over the ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... compared to a variety of objects, all of them with more or less aptness. When some one likened it to a potato, because it 'shoots from the eyes,' was it not Byron who was wicked enough to add, 'and because it becomes all the less by pairing'? One wretched swain tells us that he finds it ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... young, especially to those who swear they will die bachelors and old maids. "Love's Labour's Lost" is filled with the same energy, and there it falls even more definitely into the scope of our subject, since it is a comedy in rhyme in which all men speak lyrically as naturally as the birds sing in pairing time. What the love of love is to the Shakespearean comedies, that other and more mysterious human passion, the love of death, is to "L'Aiglon." Whether we shall ever have in England a new tradition of poetic comedy it is difficult ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... a remarkable mode of pairing, the details of which are beside our present subject, drops her eggs in the water, or lays them on water-weeds, perhaps cutting an incision where they can be the more safely lodged, or even goes down below the surface and ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... twice, and did a little shooting, but my superior officer appeared to enjoy the skating-parties most, when the frost would allow us to indulge in this pastime, and I could not help noticing how regularly we seemed to separate into two parties; the skipper invariably pairing off with Florrie, and leaving Amy ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... SELECTION the breeder chooses out for pairing only such individuals as possess the character desired by him in a somewhat higher degree than the rest of the race. Some of the descendants inherit this character, often in a still higher degree, and if this method be pursued throughout several generations, the ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... and wider than that of minstrelsy wrought in the favorable influence of chivalry on the condition of women, causes psychological, physiological, and social. The exalting effect of love is well known; its inciting and glorifying power is seen even in birds and beasts at the pairing-time, in a new brilliancy of plumage, and a wonderful increase of courage. Love produces a greater secretion of force in the brain and other nervous centres. This exuberance of spirit, or exaltation of function, is usually a transient phenomenon, the gratification of its impulses ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... been a sort of Midsummer Saturnalia answering to the real Saturnalia which fell at Midwinter. In modern Europe, as we shall learn later on, the great Midsummer festival has been above all a festival of lovers and of fire; one of its principal features is the pairing of sweethearts, who leap over the bonfires hand in hand or throw flowers across the flames to each other. And many omens of love and marriage are drawn from the flowers which bloom at this mystic season. It is the time of the roses and of love. Yet the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... me that these were a class of disappointments exceedingly common to the lot of young men; it was the way of the world. In the process of pairing off a generation, probably ninety-nine out of every hundred couples would secretly have preferred some other distribution; yet they made the best of it, and the world wagged on just the same as before. With all these and many other jarring commonplaces he essayed to soothe me—to the inevitable ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... previous to the important one arrived. Hitherto, all hands had contributed to make every thing in and about the house look "dacent"—scouring, washing, sweeping, pairing, and repairing, had been all disposed of. The boys got their hair cut to the quick with the tailor's scissors; and such of the girls as were not full grown, not only that which grew on the upper part of the ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... increased to four or five, and little children of three years old end by pairing of their own accord ten or a ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... development, and from the necessary suppositions as to the pre-existing stage which must have led to the later. Mr. Westermarck leads us straight to the evidence of the lower animals, from which he arrives at the small groups of humans headed by the male, and provides us with the theory of a human pairing season.[306] Mr. Morgan claims that no exemplification of mankind in his assumed lower status of savagery remained to the historical period,[307] presumably meaning the anthropo-historical period. And finally, Mr. Lang definitely claims that conjecture, and ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... balance one another in light and shadow, if the furniture is placed formally, if walls and furniture are free from mistaken ornament, the room will be serene and beautiful. In most other rooms we avoid the "pairing" of things, but here pairs and sets of things are most desirable. Two console tables are more impressive than one. There is great decorative value in a pair of mirrors, a pair of candlesticks, a pair ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... mud, the wolf scratches with his hind feet, and the bear tears the signal tree with tooth and claw. Since this is done from time to time, when the bear happens to be near the tree, it is kept fresh as long as the region is claimed. But it is especially done in midsummer when the bears are pairing, and helps them to find suitable companions, nor all are then roaming the woods seeking mates; all call and leave their mark on the sign post, so the next bear, thanks to his exquisite nose, can tell at ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... time that he lived among the Iroquois, that among them there existed a system of monogamy, easily dissolvable by both parties, and which he designated as the "pairing family." He also found that the terms for the degrees of consanguinity—father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister—although, according to our conception, there can be no doubt as to their application, were there, nevertheless, applied in quite ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... apartments, approached him with the eagerness of a three-year old cow brought up in the woods, approaching a powerful bull, in her first season, or of a she-crane living by the water-side approaching her mate in the pairing season. And the Princess of Panchala then embraced the second son of Pandu, even as a creeper embraces a huge and mighty Sala on the banks of the Gomati. And embracing him with her arms, Krishna of faultless features awaked him as a lioness awaketh a sleeping lion in a trackless ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... parlour opens into your room. But what priest could that be? Canonico Casini? He only comes when we have a roast of thrushes, or some such small matter, at table: and this is not the season; they are pairing. Plover eggs might tempt him hitherward. If he heard a plover he would not be easy, and would fain make her drop her oblation before she had settled ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... were my mates all the road, And who would wish surer delight for the eye Than to see pairing goldfinches gleaming abroad Or yellowhammers ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... number 2 weaver and slip the loop over the upper vertical group and with the pairing weave go around each group four times. Next, separate the spokes in groups of two and continue the pairing weave until four more rows have been woven in. Then separate the spokes by ones and weave until the ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... follow. For, in truth, there are few things of which the light is less to be hid than that of a good newspaper. "The Register," by degrees, won a general esteem, and began to prosper. And as, according to the discovery of Malthus, Prosperity is fond of pairing, it soon happened that our printer went to falling in love. Naturally again, being a printer, he, from a regard for the eternal fitness of things, fell in love with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... life of a country village all the lads and lasses grow up together, they meet together in religious associations, in daily employments, and in their amusements on the village green. They have learned their A, B, C and pothooks together, and when the time comes for pairing off they have had excellent opportunities of knowing the qualities and the defects of those whom they select as their partners in life. Everything in such a community lends itself naturally to the indispensable preliminaries of love-making, and courtships, which, however much they may ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... now a general movement down the corridor, headed by the Prince with one of the unknown ladies on his arm. There was no other formal pairing though Lady Ogilvie deftly snapped up the Duke as he was coming for Margaret, and ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... well why life unshared Was ordained me of yore. In pairing time, we know, the bird Kindles to its deepmost splendour, And the tender Voice is tenderest in its throat. Were its love, forever by it, Never nigh it, It might keep a vernal note, The crocean and amethystine In their pristine Lustre linger on its coat. [Footnote: Possibly ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... some time, altogether declined attempting either. But by and by it was the turn of the clanspeople to look on while the lady of the house and her sons danced a quadrille or two with their visitors; after which the chief and his brother pairing with the two elder girls, the ladies were astonished to find them the best they had ever waltzed with, although they did not dance quite in the London way. Ian's dancing, Christina said, was French; Mercy said all she knew was that the chief took the work ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... rafters can be quickly cut to shape. Another method is to cut one rafter out very carefully, making a notch for half the width of the ridge, and to use it as a pattern for the rest. In any case the chalked lines will prove useful in the next operation of pairing the rafters and uniting them by a tie just under the ridge notch. Cut a 4 by 1 inch notch at the bottom of each rafter, on the outside, for the base piece. The two end pairs have the B pieces (Fig. 14) nailed on to them, and r3 the tie t, which should be in line with the rafters. The other ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... were unpairing and pairing again with an ease and rapidity that encouraged Undine to bide her time. It was simply a question of making Van Degen want her enough, and of not being obliged to abandon the game before he wanted her as much as she meant he should. This was precisely ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... over. The cotillon itself was almost over; the maypole figure adding a flutter of bright ribbons to the array of flags and bunting, evening dresses, and uniforms. Twice, in the earlier figures, she had chosen him; but this time, the chance issue of pairing by colours gave her to Desmond. Roy saw a curious look pass between them. Then Lance put his arm round her, and they ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... abstain from pairing during the present Session." So The Times. "Birds in their little nests agree," quoth the eminent Dr. WATTS; but these Parliamentary Birds will belie their name of "Unionists" if ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 11, 1893 • Various
... the Twenty-sixth Congress opened in December. An organization of the House was at last effected by John Quincy Adams, who put a question to vote which the Speaker had refused to present. The Representatives indulged for the first time in the practice of "pairing off." Adams opposed this, declaring that it was a violation of the Constitution, of an express rule of the House which the Representatives owed to their constituents. Another event of the year in America was the failure of the United States Bank at Philadelphia, in consequence of speculations ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... any formal agreements. I am heartily glad to hear that your book is progressing. Could you find me some place, even a footnote (though these are in nine cases out of ten objectionable), where you could state, as fully as your materials permit, all the facts about similar varieties pairing,—at a guess how many you caught, and how many now in your collection? I look at this fact as very important; if not in your book, put it somewhere else, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Although the benefits are most evident in the first cross, after which, from pairing the cross-bred animals, the defects of one breed or the other, or the incongruities of both, are perpetually breaking out—yet, unless the characteristics and conformation of the two breeds are altogether averse to each ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... as tender to the core as a marrowfat dallying till its young duck should be ready; because Dan was podding into his first love. To the sympathetic telescope his heart was low, and his mind gone beyond astronomical range, and his hands (instead of briskly pairing soles) hung asunder, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... well-known definition of marriage, that he has not escaped its fascinations. "Schopenhauer ignores all phenomena which are not in support of his myth," says Lucka, who denies this instinct of philoprogenitiveness and would substitute for it a "pairing-instinct." "The experience of others," he argues, "not our own instinct, has taught us that children may, not necessarily must, be the result of the union of the sexes. Into the mediaeval ideal which reached its climax ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... clangor in glad tidings of great joy. The streets are flooded once more with eager multitudes, gay as in wedding garments. Christ has arisen! The heathen myth of the awakening of nature blends the old tradition with the new gospel. The vernal breezes sweep the skies clean and blue. Birds are pairing in the budding trees. The streams leap down from the melting snow of the hills. The brown turf takes a tint of verdure. Through the vast frame of things runs a quick shudder of teeming power. In the heart of man love and will mingle into hope. ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... taken off his blue smock and turned up his shirt-sleeves and now went to see to his birds. That was his great hobby and his work on Sunday every week. All the walls were hung with cages: in that big one were two canaries, pairing; in the next, a hen-canary sitting on her eggs; and in a little wire castle lived a linnet and a cock-canary and three speckled youngsters. The finches were in a long row of darkened cages and moulting-boxes. When he put out his hands, the whole pack started singing ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... separately each egg or two eggs, as soon as laid: but as the cuckoo stays a shorter time in this country than any other migratory bird, she certainly would not have time enough for the successive hatchings. Hence we can perceive in the fact of the cuckoo pairing several times, and laying her eggs at intervals, the cause of her depositing her eggs in other birds' nests, and leaving them to the care of foster-parents. I am strongly inclined to believe that this view is correct, from having been independently led (as we ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... with the spreading tail-feathers. Whether these eccentric gymnastics are performed as displays, with a view to impressing admiring females, or whether they are merely the result of excitement at the pairing season cannot be determined. It is safe to assume that they aim at one or other of these objects, and further no one can go with any certainty. The word "roding" is spelt "roading" by Newton, who thus gives the preference to the Anglo-Saxon description of the aerial ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... entertain his company? A clown can sometimes do so, and sometimes a dancer in short petticoats and stuffed pink legs; occasionally, perhaps, a singer. But beyond these, success in this art of entertaining is not often achieved. Young men and girls linking themselves kind with kind, pairing like birds in spring because nature wills it, they, after a simple fashion, do entertain each other. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... private ray: They overleapt the horizon's edge, Searched with Apollo's privilege; Through man, and woman, and sea, and star Saw the dance of nature forward far; Through worlds, and races, and terms, and times Saw musical order, and pairing rhymes. ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... to the house of lords, requesting a conference, at which the foregoing resolution might be communicated. Lord Stanley and Sir Robert Peel met Mr. Duncombe's arguments on the subject, by endeavouring to show that if voting by proxy was absurd, the custom of pairing off in the commons, or of coming in to vote at the division without having heard a syllable of the debate, was open to the same objection." Sir Robert went so for as to parody Mr. Duncombe's resolution, by drawing up a similar one ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... much more human than our four-footed kindred. I refer to the practice of courtship. The male of all birds, so far as I know, pays suit to the female and seeks to please and attract her.[2] This the quadrupeds do not do; there is no period of courtship among them, and no mating or pairing as among the birds. The male fights for the female, but he does not seek to win her by delicate attentions. If there are any exceptions to this rule, I do not know them. There seems to be among the birds something that is like what is called ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... parents and lacking in the other. The second are balanced, as all the characters are present in both parents, but are found in a different condition. Active in one of them, they are concealed or inactive in the other. Hence pairs of contrasting units result, while in unbalanced crosses no pairing of the particular character under consideration is possible. This leads to the principal difference between species and varieties, and to an experimental method of deciding between them in difficult and ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... street-lamps. Every one was talking, smoking, stamping cold feet upon the stones in the effort to keep warm, cracking jokes, both good and bad, craning necks to see the position of the standards, making agreements for pairing at the 'Landesvater,' and generally complaining that the town clocks were all slow that night in Schwarzburg. Occasionally, a roar of laughter arose in the distance, where some unlucky burgher had found his way into a group of students and was being made ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... the long-woolled Cotswold were improved by crosses with the Leicester, which latter again is believed to have been a cross between several long-woolled sheep. Mr. Spooner, after considering the various cases which have been carefully recorded, concludes "that from a judicious pairing of cross-bred animals it is practicable to establish a new breed." On the Continent the history of several crossed races of cattle and of other animals has been well ascertained. To give one instance: the King of ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... by Senators Trinkle of Wythe, Corbitt of Portsmouth, Paul of Rockingham, Layman of Craig, West of Nansemond, Parsons of Grayson. Supporting the measure by vote were also Senators Crockett, Haslinger and Profitt; and pairing in favor Pendleton and Gravatt. The Ratifying Resolution was defeated. The Rejection Resolution was adopted by 24 to 10 votes; in the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... sound like distant thunder. Sometimes one crow would lower his head, raise every feather, and coming close to another would gurgle out a long note like. What did it all mean? I soon learned. They were making love and pairing off. The males were showing off their wing powers and their voices to the lady crows. And they must have been highly appreciated, for by the middle of April all had mated and had scattered over the ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... had stalked in, and his high querulous voice was marshaling the party breakfastward. Ford manoeuvered skilfully in the pairing off, and so succeeded in securing Miss Adair for a companion on the short walk ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... the Lu Hsueeh pavilion, they vie with each other in pairing verses on the scenery. In the Nuan Hsiang village, they compose, in beautiful style, riddles for ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... delighted at the number of our minority, which is far greater than anybody expected the first time, and would have been greater still had not many members quitted the House, with or without pairing, in the expectation that the subject would not come on. But the greatest triumph of all was John ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the opportunity of insulting Fulk by pairing him with old Hall, the ex-agent; but Hall found it out in time, and refused to go, and when the moment came everybody fell back, and Fulk found himself close to poor little Trevor, who tried to get his hand out of Perrault's and cling to him; but Perrault held him tight till, at the moment when ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... constant throes of his malady. His bitter face recurred: he chewed the cud of horrid hallucinations. He told Richard he must give up going about with him: people telling of their ailments made him so uncomfortable—the birds were so noisy, pairing—the rude ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... which it contains; and a more effectual guard cannot well be: his manners during the day are very mild and gentleman-like, as if he acted as master of the ceremonies; and he generally steals in at supper-time, as if to inform you that all is safe, and to claim a pat of your hand, and a pairing of your fricandeau in acknowledgment of his professional care. The greasy landlord will stand staring at his kitchen door, the landlady will not be very attentive to your accommodation when you are once safely housed, and the dirty, bare-legged fille will ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... were incongruities—hopeless janglings of things married by increasing prosperity, but never meant to be bedfellows in the harmonious course of nature. One was the unblushing effrontery of the new brick pairing itself brazenly with the venerable gray stone manor-house on the adjoining knoll—impudence perceivable even to a hobbledehoy fresh from the school desk and the dormitory. Another was the total lack of sympathy between ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... a very early pairing off in the camp. Kent devoted himself to Olga, Gustus to Margery and Charlie to Lydia. Kent and Olga kept the camp supplied with fish. Excepting at meal time and the bathing hour, they spent the day in a birchbark canoe on the lake. Gustus ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... And again: "The Merino sheep and Heath sheep of Scotland, if two flocks are mixed together, each will breed with its own variety." Mr. Darwin has collected many facts illustrating this point. One of the chief pigeon-fanciers in England informed him that, if free to choose, each breed would prefer pairing with its own kind. Among the wild horses in Paraguay those of the same colour and size associate together; while in Circassia there are three races of horses which have received special names, and which, ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... teeth, this was often a perilous journey owing to the lovers close at hand on the pink path, from which the trees had been cleared, for lads and lasses must walk whate'er betide. Ronny-On's Jean and Peter Scrymgeour, little Lisbeth Doak and long Sam'l from Pyotdykes were pairing that year, and never knew how near they were to being dirked by Corp of Corp, who, lurking in the burn till there were no tibbits in his toes, muttered fiercely, "Cheep one single cheep, and it will be thy hinmost, ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... their convalescence could have been no more agreeable in the midst of civilization. And as Barry gained strength, yet before Jerry Rolfe was allowed in to worry him about the ship, he found himself and Natalie, Little and Mrs. Goring, pairing off in their slow rambles, and once more awkwardness of speech descended upon him like a wet blanket. He had caught a suggestive look on Little's face, and an answering smile on Mrs. Goring's, that told ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... sunsets, for the sounds of farm and byre, for the silently flowing little river, bordered with woodlands that became of gold and crimson in the autumn. She could again see the nesting swallows, the robins hopping over grasslands, the wild doves pairing in the poplars, the chirping chickadees whose tiny heads shone like black diamonds, as they flitted in the bushes. The memory of it all brought ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... completed, the young ladies sat down, and, Courtenay and I pairing off as before, an animated conversation ensued which lasted for the remainder of the afternoon, during which I am ashamed to say that ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... nice girl, named Delia. Fairly new, she was— cigarettes—liked me because I was human and original. Considered I was like Lamb—on the strength of the stutter, I believe. Father, an eminent authority on postage stamps. She read a great deal in the British Museum. (A perfect pairing ground for literary people, that British Museum—you should read George Egerton and Justin Huntly M'Carthy and Gissing and the rest of them.) We loved in our intellectual way, and shared the brightest hopes. (All gone now.) And her father liked me because I seemed ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... commonest situations in life. The events and the ideas which led to the marriage of Paul with Natalie Evangelista are an introduction to our real subject, which is to sketch the great comedy that precedes, in France, all conjugal pairing. This Scene, until now singularly neglected by our dramatic authors, although it offers novel resources to their wit, controlled Paul's future life and was now awaited by Madame Evangelista with feelings ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac |
