"Peacock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Moon's surface are the crater mountains: they are very numerous on certain portions of the lunar disc, and give the Moon the freckled appearance which it presents in the telescope, and which Galileo likened to the eyes in the feathers of a peacock's tail. They are believed to be of volcanic origin, and have been classified as follows: 'Walled plains, mountain rings, ring plains, crater plains, craters, craterlets, and crater cones.' Upwards of 13,000 of these mountains have been enumerated, and 1,000 are known to have a diameter ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... place a half globe, which is to signify our hemisphere, in the form of a world; on which let there be a peacock, richly decorated, and with his tail spread over the group; and every ornament belonging to the horse should be of peacock's feathers on a gold ground, to signify the beauty which comes of the grace bestowed on him who is ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... King Solomon, Haroun al Raschid, and the thousand and one nights, we shall not be disappointed. The very name of Rothschild fills us with awe and bewilderment! We prepare ourselves to be dazzled with gold and gems, to tread on carpets gorgeous as peacock's tails, softer than eider-down, to pass through jasper and porphyry columns into regal halls where the acme of splendour can go no farther, where the walls are hung with rich tapestries, where every chair looks like a throne, and where on all sides mirrors reflect ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... weep; do you not hear it said That Love is dead? His death-bed, peacock's folly; His winding-sheet is shame; His will, false-seeming holy; His sole executor, blame. From so ungrateful fancy, From such a female franzy, From them that use men ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... strangers from London," said the sexton, presently—"who do know anything o' them two chaps that were at church last Sunday? Two such peacock chaps I never see'd afore in my time—and ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... dimensions are about 200 feet by 100 feet over all. In its centre is a highly ornamental niche, in which on a platform of marble richly inlaid with previous stones, and directly facing the entrance, once stood the celebrated peacock throne, the most gorgeous example of its class that perhaps even the East could ever boast of. Behind this again was a garden-court; on its eastern side was the Rang Mahall, or painted hall, containing ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... a sudden he up and spoke. Says he: ''Tis God's truth I never expected in all my life to be an evening in the company of such a lot of scurvy rat-eaters,' he says to them. 'And,' says he, 'I have only one word for that squawking old masquerading peacock that sits at the head of the table,' says he. 'What little he has of learning I could put in my eye without going blind,' says he. 'The old curmudgeon!' says he. And with that he arose and left the room, afterward becoming the King of Galway ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... changed into a peacock—I wonder into what animal I shall be changed, since this sort of transformation is the retribution attendant on negligent scouts—I think the character of a jackal would suit me best, for I certainly lead the lion to his prey. But now, Sir, leaving jesting aside, I have a little piece ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... precisely English—-nor will we insult a great nation by calling them Kickapoo; perhaps they are Channingese. We may convey some general idea of them by two foreign terms not in common use—-the Italian pavoneggiarsi, "to strut like a peacock," and the German word for "sky-rocketing," Schwarmerei. They are more preposterous, in a word, than any poems except those of the author of "Sam Patch;" for we presume we are right (are we not?) in taking it for granted ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... will. Many during the war of the Boxers were "gathered" unto Him, emulating the zeal and courage and faith of the martyrs of the early days of the Church. As the hen is sacred in the eyes of the Chinaman, sacred as the peacock to Juno or the ibis to the Egyptians, they swear by her head, and an oath thus taken may not ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... alone all the time to scrub and polish and wash—the things they set me to at first—I thought I should have been quite happy. To see my table full of glasses without a spot, and my brass-taps shining, made me as proud as a peacock! But then of course I had to learn the real work, and that was very ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... child to gather flowers and fruit, followed by her little dog Fretillon, who was as green as a parrot, and had long ears, but who danced most admirably. But when the princess caught sight of a peacock, she thought it the most beautiful creature in the world, and asked her brothers what it was. On being told that it was a bird that was occasionally eaten, she replied that it was a sin and a shame to eat such a beautiful bird, and added, that she would never ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous
... goes about rubbing his hands when he thinks no one is looking. He's as proud as a peacock with ten tails because he operated on Russell's head and lifted up something, and now the poor fellow's going ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... traffic. A big submersible breaks water suddenly. Another and another follow with a swash and a suck and a savage bubbling of relieved pressures. The deep-sea freighters are rising to lung up after the long night, and the leisurely ocean is all patterned with peacock's eyes ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... on the slag dump, is going to die if he has to do it another year on a ten-hour shift. He's been up and down for two years now—the Hogans live neighbors to Laura's school and I've been watching him. Well," and here the Doctor thumped on the floor with his cane, "this Judge—this vain, strutting peacock of a Judge, this cat-chasing Judge that was once my son-in-law, has gone and knocked the law galley west so far as it affects the slag dump. I've just been reading his decision, and ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... when the late Mr. Burckhardt Barker came to the rescue. Falconicide is popularly attributed, not only to the vulture, but also to the crestless hawk-eagle (Nisaetus Bonelli) which the Hindus call Morangapeacock slayer. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... understand that a pigeon might in the course of ages grow to be a peacock if there was a persistent desire on the part of the pigeon through all these ages to do so. We know very well that this has not probably occurred in nature, inasmuch as no pigeon is at all likely to wish to be very different from what it is now. ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... House—then in session—lay down upon his desk his cap and whip, and then slowly remove his gloves. If the matter before the House interested him, and he desired to be heard, he would fix his large, round, lustrous black eyes upon the Speaker, and, in a voice shrill and piercing as the cry of a peacock, exclaim: "Mr. Speaker!" then, for a moment or two, remain looking down upon his desk, as if to collect his thoughts; then lifting his eyes to the Speaker would commence, in a conversational tone, an address that not unfrequently extended ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... may rise; discovering a large Gothic Hall, decorated in the 1880 taste. Allegories by Watts on the wall—'Time cutting the corns of Eternity,' 'Love whistling down the ear of Life,' 'Youth catching Crabs,' &c. Windows by Burne-Jones and Morris. A Peacock Blue Hungarian Band playing music on Dolmetsch instruments by Purcell, Byrde, Bull, Bear, Palestrina, and Wagner, &c. Various well-known people crowd the Stage. Among the LIVING may be mentioned Mr. George Street; Mr. Max Beerbohm ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... backit like a peacock, She's breisted like a swan, She's jimp about the middle, Her waist ye weel micht span; Her waist ye weel micht span, And she has a rolling ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... great grown person who had brought Bessie Bell to the pretty house said: "Oh, Bessie Bell! Why, Bessie Bell! For shame, Bessie Bell! How could you do so to the beautiful peacock-feather-fly-brush!" ...
— Somebody's Little Girl • Martha Young
... the south. The blue sky grew pale under the heat, and became pearl-gray. A hawk in seemingly effortless flight was soaring, and describing larger and larger circles as it rose. At a distance of several hundred yards lay the peacock-blue, shimmering surface of a river, and lazily carried onward the mirrored reflection of the alders; from their viscous leaves exuded a bitter perfume, and their intense blackness cut sharply the pale luminousness of the water. Near the dam fish glided past in swarms. An angelus beat ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... smile and answered: "You always please me, my golden peacock, and the king would admire you too if he could see you as you were a moment ago. You were really beautiful when you called out, 'Will he admire me?' for passion had turned your blue eyes black as night, and your ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... others frolicsome and lively as the monkey." This quaint story may be found more fully detailed in the Midrash Tanchuma (see Noah) and the Yalkut on Genesis. The Mohammedan legend is somewhat similar. It relates how Satan on the like occasion used the blood of a peacock, of an ape, of a lion, and of a pig, and it deduces from the abuse of the vine the curse that fell on the children of Ham, and ascribes the color of the purple grape to the dark hue which thenceforth tinctured ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... rest, or some of them, I continued to wage war for more than a year. And yet, for a word spoken with kindness, how readily I would have resigned (had it been altogether at my own choice to do so) the peacock's feather in my cap as the merest of bawbles. Undoubtedly, praise sounded sweet in my ears also; but that was nothing by comparison with what stood on the other side. I detested distinctions that were connected with mortification to others; and, even if I could have got over that, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... "discordant," make a note of the two colours, and put them together whenever you can. I have actually heard people say that blue and green were discordant; the two colours which Nature seems to intend never to be separated and never to be felt, either of them, in its full beauty without the other!—a peacock's neck, or a blue sky through green leaves, or a blue wave with green lights though it, being precisely the loveliest things, next to clouds at sunrise, in this coloured world of ours. If you have a good eye for colours, you will ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... servant in his dark-blue suit, high collar, and stiff white waistcoat. A wave of revulsion passed over Mostyn. He was thinking of the crude dining-room in the mountains; Drake, without his coat, his hair unkempt; Mrs. Drake in her soiled print dress and fire-flushed face, nervously waving the peacock fly- brush over the coarse dishes; Ann and George, as presentable as Dolly could make them, prodding and kicking each other beneath the table when they thought themselves unobserved; John Webb, with his splotched face in ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... self-applauding bird, the peacock see:— Mark what a sumptuous pharisee is he! Meridian sun-beams tempt him to unfold His radiant glories, azure, green, and gold: He treads as if, some solemn music near, His measured step were governed by his ear: And seems to say—'Ye meaner ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... wherein the water and rocks appear of an emerald hue, contrasting strangely with the opaque blue of the sea beyond, and suggesting in its dual colouring the marvellous combination of dark blue and iridescent green in the peacock's tail. ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... before, even at noon-tide in summer, and the world had outlived the omen! Nevertheless the sound, especially so loud and grating a one, in which the bray of the donkey was so evenly mixed with the hideous scream of the peacock before rain, was an inopportune and impudent one; and the Colonel would have been very likely to wring chanticleer's neck if it had happened to come within the clutch of his fingers. As it was, he determined to cause an immediate abandonment ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... listening intently to the warring echoes. Before the confusion was half ended he would get excited again, and swim about in small circles, spreading wings and tail, showing his fine feathers as if every echo were an admiring loon, pleased as a peacock with himself at having made such a noise in ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... wits, these subtle critics, these refined geniuses, these learned lawyers, these wise statesmen, are so fond of showing their parts and powers as to make their consultations very tedious. Young Ned Rutledge is a perfect bob-o-lincoln,—a swallow, a sparrow, a peacock; excessively vain, excessively weak, and excessively variable and unsteady, jejune, inane, and puerile." Sharp words these! This session of Congress resulted in little else than the interchange of opinions between Northern and Southern statesmen. It was a mere advisory body, useful, however, in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... like the thoughts of a lady, Haunted it in and out; With a train of green and blue comets, The peacock went marching about. ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... long-necked Chinese jars; and odd little carven tables bore strangely fashioned vessels of silver. There was a cabinet of ebony inlaid with jade, there were black tapestries figured with dragons of green and gold. Curtains she saw of peacock-blue; and in a tall, narrow recess, dominating the room, ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... last sheet on the 19th and your father went on that day to Cambridge to be present at the tri- centennial celebration of Trinity College . . . He went also the day after the anniversary, which was on our 22nd December, to Ely, with Peacock, the great mathematician, who is Dean of Ely, to see the great cathedral there . . . While he was at Cambridge I passed the evening of the 22nd at Lady Morgan's, who happened to have a most agreeable set . . . Lady Morgan's ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... man, and try it agin, and it's look at the stable and hosses with Sir Host, and the dogs, and the carriages, and two American trees, and a peacock, and a guinea hen, and a gold pheasant, and a silver pheasant, and all that, and then lunch. Who the plague can eat lunch, that's ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... very employment of the gods for mere decoration bears this stamp. The remarkable vision, with which the poem opens, tells in good Pythagorean style how the soul now inhabiting Quintus Ennius had previously been domiciled in Homer and still earlier in a peacock, and then in good physicist style explains the nature of things and the relation of the body to the mind. Even the choice of the subject serves the same purpose—at any rate the Hellenic literati of all ages have found an especially suitable handle for their Graeco-cosmopolite ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... behind a counter in a southern city, we used to derive some fun from the man[oe]uvres of a dandy-jack of a fellow in the same establishment. He was of the bullet-headed, pimpled and stubby-haired genus, but dressed up to the nines; and had as much pride as two half-Spanish counts or a peacock in ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... they threaded was so narrow and shut in by shadows that when they came out unexpectedly into the void common and vast sky they were startled to find the evening still so light and clear. A perfect dome of peacock-green sank into gold amid the blackening trees and the dark violet distances. The glowing green tint was just deep enough to pick out in points of crystal one or two stars. All that was left of the daylight lay ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... folded and pressed against one another on the thorax, open to their full extent, forming a cross with the body, and exhibiting the axillae ornamented with rows of pearls, and a black spot with a central point of white. These two eyes, faintly recalling those of the peacock's tail, and the fine ebony embossments, are part of the blazonry of conflict, concealed upon ordinary occasions. Their jewels are only assumed when they make themselves terrible and superb ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... structures he erected. He rebuilt the ancient City of Delhi upon a new site, adorned it with public buildings of unparalleled cost and beauty, and received his subjects seated upon the celebrated peacock throne, a massive bench of solid gold covered with mosaic figures of diamonds, rubies, pearls and other precious stones. It cost L6,500,000, which is $32,500,000 of our money, even in those times, when jewels were cheap compared with the prices of today. In ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... and no flesh; all show, and no substance; all fashion, and no feeding; and fit for no service but masks and May-games. The citizens have dealt with them as it is said the Indians are dealt with; they have given them counterfeit brooches and bugle-bracelets for gold and silver;[A] pins and peacock feathers for lands and tenements; gilded coaches and outlandish hobby-horses for goodly castles and ancient mansions; their woods are turned into wardrobes, their leases into laces; and their goods and chattels into ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... is intended for a mock shield of Scotland. The shield is perforated with holes for eyes and a mouth so as to represent a mask, and it is charged with a crowned thistle; the supporters are an ass's head, plaided and wearing a Scotch bonnet, and a peacock. Motto, ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... Francis, Frances; Jesse, Jessie; bachelor, maid; beau, belle; monk, nun; gander, goose; administrator, administratrix; baron, baroness; count, countess; czar, czarina; don, donna; boy, girl; drake, duck; lord, lady; nephew, niece; landlord, landlady; gentleman, gentlewoman; peacock, peahen; duke, duchess; hero, heroine; host, hostess; Jew, Jewess; man-servant, maid-servant; sir, madam; wizard, witch; marquis, marchioness; widow, widower; heir, heiress; ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... Benson, snatching them up with transport; "and, chief, the sad-yellow-fly, in which the fish delight in June; the sad-yellow-fly, made with the buzzard's wings, bound with black braked hemp, and the shell-fly, for the middle of July, made of greenish wool, wrapped about with the herle of a peacock's tail, famous for creating excellent sport." All these and more were spread upon the table before the sportsmen's ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... are gone into the Kaiser's palace To eat the peacock fine, And they are gone into the Kaiser's palace To drink the ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... about? Inverting one swart foot suspensively, And wagging his dread jaw at every chirp Of bird above him on the olive-branch? Frighten him then away! 'twas he who slew Our pigeons, our white pigeons peacock-tailed, That fear'd not you and me ... alas, nor him! I flattened his striped sides along my knee, And reasoned with him on his bloody mind, Till he looked blandly, and half-closed his eyes To ponder on my lecture in the shade. I doubt his memory much, his heart a little, And in some minor matters ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... Bat was here to give you girls a good shaking. Do let someone else have a chance at the glass, you peacock!" exclaimed Molly Loo, pushing Susy aside to arrange her own blue turban, out of which she plucked the pink pompon to ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... would like to have such a watch as that hung around your neck, wouldn't you, and to walk in the streets of Porto-Vecchio proud as a peacock? People would ask you what time it was, and you would say: 'Look at ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... to say, Till he had got four hundred pound, All ready for to pay. He p-urveyed him an hundred bows, The string-es well ydight, An hundred sheaf of arrows good, The heads burn-ished full bright, And every arrow an ell-e long, With peacock well ydight, I-nock-ed all with white silv-er, It was a seemly sight. He p-urveyed him an hundred men, Well harneysed in that stead, And h-imself in that sam-e set, And clothed in white and red. He bare a launsgay ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... treasures in an ornamented iron-chest, old, battered, of simple mechanism. It had been his father's and his father's father's; it had been in the family since the days of the Peacock Throne, and most of the jewels besides. Night and day the chest was guarded. It lay upon an ancient Ispahan rug, in the center of the bedroom, which no hotel servant was permitted to enter. His five servants saw to it that ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... matron of Peloponnesus presented to the emperor Basil, her adopted son, were doubtless fabricated in the Grecian looms. Danielis bestowed a carpet of fine wool, of a pattern which imitated the spots of a peacock's tail, of a magnitude to overspread the floor of a new church, erected in the triple name of Christ, of Michael the archangel, and of the prophet Elijah. She gave six hundred pieces of silk and linen, of various use and denomination: the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... us honour the grammarian in his place; and, among others, these old grammarians of Alexandria; only being sure that as soon as any man begins, as they did, displaying himself peacock-fashion, boasting of his science as the great pursuit of humanity, and insulting his fellow- craftsmen, he becomes, ipso facto, unable to discover any more truth for us, having put on a habit of mind to which induction is impossible; and is thenceforth to be passed by with a kindly ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... you go, each with a book of prayer: Then up the street and down the aisles, everywhere you'll see Of all the honours paid around, how small is Virtue's share. How large the share of Vulgar Pride in peacock finery. ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... the world with me—for I suppose it is that—has wrought some profound changes in my mood: for gone now apparently are those turbulent hours when, stalking like a peacock, I flaunted my monarchy in the face of the Eternal Powers, with hissed blasphemies; or else dribbled, shaking my body in a lewd dance; or was off to fire some vast city and revel in redness and the chucklings of Hell; or rolled in the drunkenness of drugs. It was ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... times, as bards indite, (If clerks have conn'd the records right.) A peacock reign'd, whose glorious sway His subjects with delight obey: His tail was beauteous to behold, Replete with goodly eyes and gold; Fair emblem of that monarch's guise, Whose train at once is rich and wise; And princely ruled he many regions, And ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... the precipice fell suddenly and almost sheer over one arm of Lugano Lake. Sullenly outstretched asleep it lay beneath us, coloured with the tints of fluor-spar, or with the changeful green and azure of a peacock's breast. The depth appeared immeasurable. San Salvadore had receded into insignificance: the houses and churches and villas of Lugano bordered the lake-shore with an uneven line of whiteness. And over all there rested a blue mist of twilight and of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... fish was simply elegant. The boys used up all the available adjectives at their command in order to do the subject ample justice. Never had a fish been better baked. Steve looked as proud as any peacock that strutted along a wall in self-admiration. He even promised to repeat the prize supper, if only Toby could duplicate ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... near at hand, and Mrs Turnbull entered the drawing-room in full dress. She certainly was a very handsome woman, and had every appearance of being fashionable; but it was her language which exposed her. She was like the peacock. As long as she was silent you could but admire the plumage, but her voice spoilt all. "Now, Mr Turnbull," said she, "I wish to hexplain to you that there are certain himproprieties in your behaviour which I cannot put hup with, particularly that ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... when they had recovered their gravity. "To think of all the dangers you have gone through. Aunt was as proud as could be when she saw your names over and over again in despatches, and I have been like a little peacock. Your doings have been the talk of every one round here, and I am sure that if they had known you had been coming, the village would have put up a triumphal arch, and presented you with ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... passed at the close of the last session for the appointment of four paid members of the Privy Council. They were Sir James Colvile, Sir Barnes Peacock, Sir Montague Smith, and Sir Robert Collier. These judges began to sit on November 6th of this year. The Court, from that time, sat continuously. I obtained an additional clerk, and also an addition of 300 L a year to my own salary, which was ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... sacrament; Shaftesbury, early in the eighteenth century, spoke of human nature being "sublimated by a sort of spiritual chemists" and Welton, a little later, of "a love sublimate and refined," while, finally, and altogether in our modern sense, Peacock in 1816 in his Headlong Hall referred to "that enthusiastic sublimation which is the source of ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... honours, among others with a triple-eyed peacock's feather, a decoration introduced, together with the "button" at the top of the hat, by the Manchus, and classed as single-, double-, and triple-eyed, according to merit. A few years later, his son married the sister of the Emperor; and a few years later still, he was appointed ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... them Injian temples to admire when you see, There's the peacock round the corner an' the monkey up the tree, An' there's that rummy silver grass a-wavin' in the wind, An' the old Grand Trunk a-trailin' like a rifle-sling be'ind. While it's best foot ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... or Peacock, also called Esrar or Mohur, according to the language of the tribe which uses it, is met with chiefly in Upper India, and is a favourite instrument of ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... knife in a quarrel was to be punished with a heavy fine and six months imprisonment. If a wound was inflicted the penalty was trebled. Great faults accompanied this development of energy. The new governor assumed "state and pomp like a peacock's." He kept all at a distance from him, exacted profound homage, and led many to think that he would prove a very austere father. All his acts were characterized ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... do but give the world a fair challenge, and tell it, 'There—you know the worst of me: come on and try a fall, for either you or I must down.' Slander? Ask Leigh here, who has but known me a fortnight, whether I am not as vain as a peacock, as selfish as a fox, as imperious as a bona roba, and ready to make a cat's paw of him or any man, if there be a chestnut in the fire: and yet the poor fool cannot help loving me, and running of my errands, and taking all my schemes and my dreams for gospel; and verily believes now, I think, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... had nothing to do with the making of that scarecrow. Though you wouldn't think there was much there to be jealous about! But I might have been a farmer's wife at this moment and had a nice husband too, if that high and mighty peacock up there hadn't seduced me. Would you believe that, you cracked old piece of shoe-leather?" she asked with a laugh, slapping his knee ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... species of plants and animals would (so far as we know) be impossible, if the changes (however caused) that adapt some individuals better than others to the conditions of life were not inherited by, and accumulated in, their posterity. The eyes in the peacock's tail are supposed to have reached their present perfection gradually, through various stages that may be illustrated by the ocelli in the wings of the Argus pheasant and other genera of Phasianidae. Similarly the progress of ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... of his piteous speech, So that their lives, prisoned in the shape of ape, Tiger or deer, shagged bear, jackal or wolf, Foul-feeding kite, pearled dove or peacock gemmed, Squat toad or speckled serpent, lizard, bat, Yea, or fish fanning the river waves, Touched meekly at the skirts of brotherhood With man, who hath less innocence than these: And in mute gladness ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... half-closed.[L] There is something also in them that might remind us of the variegated and spotted angel wings of Orcagna, only the Venetian sail never looks majestic; it is too quaint and strange, yet with no peacock's pride or vulgar ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... exquisitely in harmony with herself and her white or black horse as the case might be; a rich cloth of gold backdrop carefully suffused with rose. There could be nothing handsomer, for example, than young and graceful trapezists swinging melodically in turquoise blue doublets against a fine peacock background or it might be a rich pale coral—all the artificial and spectacular ornament dispensed with. We are expected to get an exceptional thrill when some dull person appears before a worn velvet curtain to expatiate ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... constituted young man is entirely devoid of the desire to "show off" in the presence of timid and interesting ladies. Without that spirit of "show-off," what would induce our knights to meet in glorious tournaments? Without it, what would our chivalry amount to? Without it, why should a peacock spread its tail? I do not belittle it, since from this spirit of "show-off" arises one great good—respect for the opinion of our fellow-man. So Max, with a dash of "show-off" in his disposition, laughed at Yolanda's fears ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... mistress herself, so wise at the outset, finally flung prudence to the winds, and skirmished through the coppices with enthusiasm equal to that of her pupils, lured from the pathway by the glimpses of kingcups, or the pursuit of a peacock butterfly. ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... and be clanked open to admit an officer who had brought a number of friends to see the latest sensation—the English spies. The friends, who were brother-officers, regarded us with a strange interest, while the officer who had charge of me strutted to and fro like a peacock drawn to his full height, at the unique greatness thrust upon him, and dwelling at great length upon the enormity of our offence related a ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... come, and Judge McGowan made a fine speech, and Harvey carried him off in his new buggy, as proud as a peacock. I ricollect when I set down to my table that day I said to myself: 'I know Judge McGowan's havin' a dinner to-day that'll make him remember Kentucky as long as he lives.' And it wasn't till years afterwards ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... not be true; but when I came to the birds, I found those which frequented the island so correctly described, that I had no longer any doubt on the subject. Perhaps what interested me most were the plates in which the barn-door fowls and the peacock were described, as in the background of the first were a cottage and figures, representing the rural scenery of England, my own country; and in the second there was a splendid mansion, and a carriage and four horses driving up to the door. In short, it is impossible to convey to the ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... beautiful, though some might have thought that it fell short of their expectation, or that other things were still finer. I believe no man thinks a goose to be more beautiful than a swan, or imagines that what they call a Friesland hen excels a peacock. It must be observed too, that the pleasures of the sight are not near so complicated, and confused, and altered by unnatural habits and associations, as the pleasures of the taste are; because the pleasures of the sight more commonly acquiesce in themselves; ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... peculiar species; other kinds lodge under birds' feathers, and some birds have two or three sorts of parasites. There is one belonging to the turkey, to the peacock, to the sparrow, to the vulture, to the magpie, etc. I don't think there is a bird or animal which does not, like Gringalet, ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... during my four years of study I imbibed some slight information concerning the English classics, music, modern history and metaphysics. I could talk quite wisely about Chaucer, Beaumont and Fletcher, Thomas Love Peacock and Ann Radcliffe, ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... people's taste: and one may admit that, for anything like frequent enjoyment, it wants a certain admixture of the fantastic in its various senses—after the method of Voltaire in one way, of Beckford in another, of Peacock in a third, of Disraeli in a fourth—to make it acceptable to more than a very few. But it shows, even from our present limited point of view, of what immense and exalted application the novel-method was capable: and it shows also the astonishing powers of its author. "Genial," in the usual ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... back in return describing Reading festivities, 'an agreeable dinner at Doctor Valpy's, where Mrs. Women and Miss Peacock are present and Mr. J. Simpson, M.P.; the dinner very good, two full courses and one remove, the soup giving place to one quarter of lamb.' Mrs. Mitford sends a menu of ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... a tradesman, who, it is supposed, must live by his business, a young man who sets up a shop, or warehouse, and expects to get money; one that would be a rich tradesman, rather than a poor, fine, gay man; a grave citizen, not a peacock's feather; for he that sets up for a Sir Fopling Flutter, instead of a complete tradesman, is not to be thought capable of relishing this discourse; neither does this discourse relish him; for such men seem to be among the incurables, and are rather fit for an hospital of fools (so the ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... disciplined are these than zion—towns, but nearer the happiness of insensibility—the white—marbled and jeweled Taj Mahal, Agra on the Jumna, and Delhi, making immortal Jehan the builder, with his pearl mosque and palace housing the thirty-million-dollar peacock throne; Benares, on the Ganges, a series of terraces and long stone steps extending upward from the holy water, while rising yet higher in the background are temples, towers, mosques, and palaces, all in oriental splendor. Algiers, likewise, an amphitheatre in form, might give San Francisco lessons ...
— Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam • Hubert Howe Bancroft
... to town with a family of children who ate without intermission from Market Harborough, where they got into the coach, to the Peacock at Islington, where they got out of it. They breakfasted as if they had fasted all the preceding day. They dined as if they had never breakfasted. They ate on the road one large basket of sandwiches, another of fruit, and a boiled fowl; besides which ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... what I say. The next time you see a tree waving in the wind, recollect that it is the tail of a great underground, many-armed, polypus-like creature, which is as proud of its caudal appendage, especially in summer-time, as a peacock of his gorgeous ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... poultry programme. First fiddle is the 'gallo Ingles,' or English rooster. Then come the double-bass pigs, who have free access to the balcony and parlour. A chorus of hens, chickens, and guinea-fowls, varies the entertainment; while the majestic 'perjuil,' or peacock, perched on his regal box, the guano roof, applauds the performance below in plaintive and heart-rending tones. Before I am up and stirring, a dark domestic brings me a tiny cup of boiling coffee and a paper cigarette, and waits for further orders. Don Severiano proposes a stroll ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... Rosamond's Bower, With it's peacock hedges of yew, One could never find the flower Unless one was given the clue; So take the key of the wicket, Who would follow my fancy free, By formal knot and clipt thicket, And smooth greensward ...
— A Floral Fantasy in an Old English Garden • Walter Crane
... he told Bagheera, his stomach was changed in him. Ever since the bamboo shoots turned spotty-brown he had been looking forward to the morning when the smells should change. But when the morning came, and Mor the Peacock, blazing in bronze and blue and gold, cried it aloud all along the misty woods, and Mowgli opened his mouth to send on the cry, the words choked between his teeth, and a feeling came over him that began ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... lady, A buskit, lady's owre fine; I cam out o' a bottle o' wine, A bottle o' wine's owre dear; I cam out o' a bottle o' beer, A bottle o' beer's owre thick; I cam out o' a gauger's stick, A gauger's stick's butt and ben; I cam out o' a peacock hen." ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... including the gold vase or bath for wine, valued at ten thousand pounds. The Crimson drawing-room and the Octagon-room were dismantled. The plate-rooms were considered fireproof, but the Jewelled Armoury was emptied of its treasures, among them the famous peacock of Tippoo Sahib. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... heartily, adding, "How ridiculous!" We laugh at their sable beauties adorning their necks and bosoms with trumpery glass-beads, and they laugh at our red and white beauties adorning their heads with ostrich feathers. The Chinese have their peacock's feather as a set-off against our button-hole ribbon; "Ainsi va le monde." One of the Aheer Touaricks, who, unlike my Ghat friends, return presents, brought me to-day a damaged ostrich skin and feathers. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... itself is said to be [4523]fair or foul: fair buildings, [4524]fair pictures, all artificial, elaborate and curious works, clothes, give an admirable lustre: we admire, and gaze upon them, ut pueri Junonis avem, as children do on a peacock: a fair dog, a fair horse and hawk, &c. [4525]Thessalus amat equum pullinum, buculum Aegyptius, Lacedaemonius Catulum, &c., such things we love, are most gracious in our sight, acceptable unto us, and whatsoever else may cause this passion, if it be superfluous or immoderately ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... winter quarters at the poor-house, wore a black satin vest brocaded with huge blue roses, which had appeared at his wedding forty years before, and "Marm Bony" had adorned herself with a skimpy green satin skirt and three peacock-feathers standing upright in her little knob of back hair. And Jo Briscoe was tuning his violin, evidently in preparation for an ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... Francisco was proud of the reputation of being the Paris of America. Its women were beautiful, and they knew it. They liked to adorn their beauty with fine clothes and peacock along the streets on matinee days. If you asked a San Francisco girl why she wore such expensive clothes, she would say, frankly, "Because I like to have the men admire me," and she would see no harm in saying it. There was very little sham about the San Francisco ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... dreadful, but, do you know, I designed a gown last winter in peacock blue like that paper, and it was a tremendous success. Poor mother, I wish she could have seen it—peacock blue ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... my blue eyes go see? Shall it be pretty Quack-Quack to-day? Or the Peacock upon the Yew Tree? Or the dear little white Lambs at play? Say Baby. For Baby is such a young Petsy, And Baby is such a sweet Dear. And Baby is growing quite old now— She's just getting ...
— Marigold Garden • Kate Greenaway
... the surfaces of the fair and exquisitely modelled neck and bosom have been less cruelly treated; the superb costume retains much of its pristine splendour. With its combination of brownish-purple velvet, peacock-blue brocade, and white lawn, its delicate trimmings of gold, and its further adornment with small knots, having in them, now at any rate, but an effaced note of red, the gown of La Bella has remained the type of what is most beautiful ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... all her flesh shook and her ornaments jangled like old iron. With it all a very shrill little voice and a beautiful red face which a little negro boy kept fanning all the time with a fan of white feathers as big as a peacock's tail. ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... entered an avenue of tall trees, the tops of which formed a triumphal arch to the entrance of a forest. A deer sprang out of the thicket and a badger crawled out of its hole, a stag appeared in the road, and a peacock spread its fan-shaped tail on the grass—and after he had slain them all, other deer, other stags, other badgers, other peacocks, and jays, blackbirds, foxes, porcupines, polecats, and lynxes, appeared; in fact, a host of beasts that grew more and more numerous with every step he took. ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... have long lost it. Thus, the crown and the laurel were the emblems of victory; the palm, of triumph; the olive, of peace; the vine loaded with grapes, of the joys of heaven. The dove was at once the figure of the Holy Spirit, and the symbol of innocence and purity of heart; the peacock the emblem of immortality. The ship reminded the Christian of the harbor of safety, or recalled to him the Church tossed upon the waves; the anchor was the sign of strength and of hope; the lyre was the symbol of the sweetness of religion; the stag, of the soul thirsting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... laughter joined Mother Bab's at one paragraph: "Do you remember the blue sailor suits you used to make for me when I was a tiny chap? And once you made me a real tam and I was proud as a peacock in it. Well, since I'm here and wearing a sailor suit I feel like a masculine edition of Alice in Wonderland when she felt herself growing bigger and bigger and I wonder sometimes if I'll shrink back again and ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... also a fine bird. It is very addicted to peafowl. The hillmen call it the Mohrhaita, which, being interpreted, is the peacock-killer. It utters a loud cry, which Thompson renders whee-whick, whee-whick. This call is uttered by the bird both when on the wing and at rest. Another cry of this species has been syllabised ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... interesting in reference to the problem of his style. And there is more to be said concerning his parentage than the smug propriety of print has revealed while he lived. We know, too, that his marriage with the daughter of Thomas Love Peacock proved unhappy, and that for many years he has resided, almost a recluse, with his daughter, in the idyllic retirement of Surrey. The privacy of Boxhill has been respected; next to never has Meredith spoken in any public way and seldom visited London. When he was, ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... for once before she had accused Malcolm of making Elizabethan speeches. But her laugh died away when she saw Malcolm's face. It was too sudden, and he was not prepared; but the next moment he was hanging over the parapet trying to catch a peacock butterfly, and was actually joining ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... me, and now he looks at the peacock, and now at me again, and now, with a smile, at the peacock, and now—O Rachel! this is too bad. I know what he ...
— The Nursery, No. 109, January, 1876, Vol. XIX. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Unknown
... canst not so soon have forgotten the gift I bought, with the hard earnings of a wheel that turned at night. The tail of yon peacock is not finer than thou then wast—But I will make thee such another garment, that thou mayst go with the trainers to ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... a fellow! Look! there's a fellow!" cried the young sparrows, as the old one approached the nest. "That, for certain, is a young peacock; all sorts of colors are playing in his feathers: it quite hurts one's eyes to look at him, just as our mother told us. Chirp! chirp! That is the beautiful!" And now they began pecking at the bird with ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... Wren, if you will but be mine, You shall feed on cherry pie and drink new currant wine, I'll dress you like a goldfinch or any peacock gay, So, dearest Jen, if you'll be mine let ...
— Mother Goose - The Original Volland Edition • Anonymous
... Augustus Peacock and Julius Candy (this enviable duo) were two such young men as may be met with in herds any fine afternoon publishing their persons to the frequenters of Regent-street. They did credit to their tailors, who were liberal enough to give them credit in return. Their coats were guiltless of a wrinkle, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various
... book is more or less fashioned on some model or models. My own models in the case of The New Republic were The Republic of Plato, the Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter, and the so-called novels of Peacock. All these books introduce us to circles of friends who discuss questions of philosophy, religion, art, or the problems of social life, each character representing some prevalent view, and their arguments being so arranged as to have, when taken together, ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... had begun to dress very carefully in the fashion of the moment. He lived in a little house at Chelsea that the architect Godwin had decorated with an elegance that owed something to Whistler. There was nothing mediaeval, nor Pre-Raphaelite, no cupboard door with figures upon flat gold, no peacock blue, no dark background. I remember vaguely a white drawing room with Whistler etchings, 'let in' to white panels, and a dining room all white: chairs, walls, mantlepiece, carpet, except for a diamond-shaped ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... David Patridge Edward Patterson Hance Patterson John Patterson (2) Peter Patterson W. Patterson William Patterson William Paul Pierre Payatt James Payne Josiah Payne Oliver Payne Thomas Payne (3) William Payne (2) William Payton John Peacock Benjamin Peade Benjamin Peal Samuel Pealer William Peals John Pear Amos Pearce Benjamin Pearce John Pearce Jonathan Pearce Edward Pearsol John Pearson George Peasood Elisha Pease Estrant Pease Guliel Pechin Andrew Peck (2) Benjamin Peck James Peck Joseph Peck (2) Simon Peck William ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... as you will, O singers all Who sing because you want to sing! Sing! peacock on the orchard wall, Or tree-toad by the trickling spring! Sing! every bird on every bough— Sing! every living, loving thing— Sing any song, and anyhow, But ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley
... is a "conventionalized" creation, as we say of ornamentation. The theory is that, fly-fishing being a high art, the fly must not be a tame imitation of nature, but an artistic suggestion of it. It requires an artist to construct one; and not every bungler can take a bit of red flannel, a peacock's feather, a flash of tinsel thread, a cock's plume, a section of a hen's wing, and fabricate a tiny object that will not look like any fly, but still will suggest the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... aids the simplification of a many-sided question. The public, as Mr. Hamerton declares, hates to burden itself with names; to which might be added that it also hates to differentiate with any single name. A good portraitist in England one year exhibited at the Royal Academy a wonderfully painted peacock. The people raved and thereafter he was allowed to paint nothing else. Occasionally it is shown that this discrimination is without reason, as many men rise above the restriction. The Gainsborough portrait and landscape are equally strong, the works of painters in marble, and sculptors ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... resplendent in a striking shade of magenta. Along the edge of each panel of Chinese brocade a narrow band of absinthe velvet ribbon gives the necessary contrast. The furniture is painted in dull ivory with touches of gold and beryl and the bed cover is peacock blue. Four round cushions of a similar shade repose on the floor at the foot of the bed. The fat manufacturer's wife as she enters this triumph of decoration which might satisfy Louise de la Valliere or please Doris Keane, is an anachronistic ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... (one farthing), even if economically expended, will hardly go far to satisfy the claims of his legal advisers. But he has only to paint, or, as we believe he expresses it, 'knock off,' three or four 'symphonies' or 'harmonies'—or perhaps he might try his hand at a Set of Quadrilles in Peacock Blue?—and a week's labor will set ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... may be his wife, she has no right to go Before your wife and my wife, as she would have gone last night Had they not caught at her dress, and pulled her as was right; And she makes light of us though our wives do all that they can. She spreads her tail like a peacock and ...
— The Green Helmet and Other Poems • William Butler Yeats
... rather ignominious in his detection at Osborne's Hotel. He is a very colourless being. As to his being a Poet, it would seem to be that he merely gave himself out for one and persuaded his friends that he was such. His remarks at the "Peacock" are truly sapient: "Show me the man that says anything against women, as women, and I boldly declare he is not a man!" Which is matched by Mr. Winkle's answer to the charge of his being "a serpent": "Prove it," said Mr. Winkle, warmly. It is to be suspected that the marriage ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... architect is not definitely known, but the design is supposed to have been made by Ustad Isa, a Persian, who was assisted by Geronino Verroneo, an Italian, and Austin de Bordeaux, a Frenchman. They are credited with the mosaics and other decorations. Austin designed and made the famous peacock throne at Delhi. Governor La Fouche of that province, who has carefully restored the park that surrounds the building, and is keeping things up in a way that commands hearty commendation, has the original plans and specifications, which were discovered among the archives of the Moguls in Delhi ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... January. Instead of the pink calico frock and blue checked pinafore, to which his eyes were accustomed, the little figure was clad in a robe of dark green velvet with a long train, which spread out on the staircase behind her, very much like the train of a peacock. The body, made for a grown woman, hung back loosely from her shoulders, but she had tied a scarf of gold tissue under her arms and round her waist, while from the long hanging sleeves her arms shone round and white as sculptured ivory. ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... to be a pool at the side of which the stranger should seat himself, and discover the air of the place so quiet and enchanted that he could hear no sound of birds or beasts or men; only, perhaps, the melodious drip of the rain-heavy boughs into the clear peacock-green depths of water. And, in fact, the disappointment is that this is precisely what the Silent Pool might be. It is what it used to be, I think; but so many people have heard of it and have come on bicycles ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... flooring all the way round; a few stained chairs and a pembroke table. A pink shell was displayed on each of the little sideboards, which, with the addition of a tea-tray and caddy, a few more shells on the mantelpiece, and three peacock's feathers tastefully arranged above them, completed the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... two old shirts of my husband's, which John received with an ecstacy of delight. He retired instantly to the stable, but soon returned, with as much of the linen breast of the garment displayed as his waistcoat would allow. No peacock was ever prouder of his tail than the wild Irish lad was ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Smith had provided for Susannah was large and high. On its Brussels carpet immense vases of flowers and peacock's feathers sprawled; stiff and gaudy furniture was ranged round the painted walls; stiff window curtains fell from stiff borders of tasteless upholstery. Susannah, long ignorant of anything but deal and rag carpets, knew hardly more than Smith how to criticise, and her taste ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... disgust of Khan Cochut, who had to move further down the table. Several nobles and other courtiers were present. As soon as the party had taken their places, a curtain behind them was drawn on one side, when half-a-dozen young females issued forth, each carrying large fans of peacock's feathers, and noiselessly placed themselves behind the rajah's chair. The hue of their skins was scarcely darker than that of the women of Southern Europe; their hair, black as jet, drawn over the forehead, was twisted in rolls behind, and ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... here. This lady is my pal. There are times when a man has to tell things to a woman. That's what women are for. When you feel you've got to tell things to a woman, you come and tell them to H lne. Don't be afraid of that peacock of a doorman; push him over. He's so stiff he'll ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... hoped that there was real feeling among politicians. But no; we are put off with a fast day. There, an end! I begin to think that nothing will do for England but a good revolution, and a 'besom of destruction' used dauntlessly. We are getting up our vainglories again, smoothing our peacock's plumes. We shall be as exemplary as ever by next winter, you ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... the little hamlet, exchanging the grassy path for a sidewalk of planks laid lengthwise, and the peace of nature for such signs of civilization as a troop of geese, noisily promenading across the thoroughfare, and a peacock—in its pride of pomp as a favored bird of old King Solomon—crying from the top of the shed and proudly displaying its gorgeous train. Barnes wiped the perspiration from ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... coach-houses, which had no windows upon this inner enclosed side. The old buildings were low and irregular, one portion of the roof thatched, another tiled. In the quadrangle there was an old-fashioned garden, with geometrical flower-beds, a yew tree hedge, and a stone sun-dial in the centre. A peacock stalked about in the morning light, and greeted the newly risen sun with a discordant scream. Presently a man came out of a half glass door under a verandah which shaded one side of the quadrangle, and strolled about ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... see whether any one could identify it with the fair original. After many disappointments he met with an old hermit, who at once recognised it as the portrait of the princess of Rum,[46] who, he informed the vazir, had an unconquerable aversion against men ever since she beheld, in her garden, a peacock basely desert his mate and their young ones, when the tree on which their nest was built had been struck by lightning. She believed that all men were quite as selfish as that peacock, and was resolved never to marry. ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... years, all might have been well. But there came a time when unneedfully he declared once more that he would never desert Marmaduke, and declaring it, hiccoughed so horribly and stared so glassily, that Doggie feared he might be ill. He had just lurched into Doggie's own peacock-blue and ivory sitting-room when he was ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke |
