"Speckled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tiny shell, A feather by wild bird cast, Gay flowers gathered in forest dell, Already withering fast, Four speckled eggs in a soft brown nest, Thy last and thy greatest prize, Such the things that fill with joy thy breast, With laughing ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... speckled the misty wharf and a broad road of silver lay stretched across the moving water to the other bank that, under the moonlight, lay like a line of cotton-wool. It was the mist tangled by and tangling ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... was very early that year. The apple-trees were in blossom at an unusual time. There was a tiny orchard back of the Edgham house. Maria used to steal away down there, sit down on the grass, speckled with pink-and-white petals, and look up through the rosy radiance of bloom at the infinite blue light of the sky. It seemed to her for the first time she laid hold on life in the midst of death. She wondered if she could always feel as she did then. She had a premonition that this ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Instantly there came tumbling into the hut, until it nearly overflowed, a strange medley of creatures,—hares, mice, birds, kittens, squirrels. Last of all peered into the doorway a deer and her little speckled fawn. ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... Peter—a speckled, drab-coloured, prick-eared creation, a few sizes larger than a fox-terrier—could be kept in order with a little discretion, and by keeping hands off Happy Dick; but all the discretion in the Territory, and a unanimous keeping ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... presumably similar to that built a little later to crown the mausoleum of Itimad-ud-daula. Finch, the traveller, who was at Agra about 1611, was informed that the cenotaph was 'to be inarched over with the most curious white and speckled marble, and to be seeled all within with pure sheet gold, richly inwrought.' The reason for omitting the dome is ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... and laughed aloud. "Oh, we have had such fun!" she cried. "Top-knot was very cross at first, and would not let the young speckled hen eat out of the dish with her. So I took one under each arm, and sang and talked to them till they were both in a good humor. That made the Plymouth rooster jealous, and he came and drove them both away, ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... his place till Lingard went aboard for the night. The police peons on duty looked disdainfully at the phantom of Captain H. C. Jorgenson, Barque Wild Rose, wandering on the silent quay or standing still for hours at the edge of the sombre roadstead speckled by the anchor lights of ships—an adventurous soul longing to recross the waters ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... with Octavian's presence. As he became depressingly aware of the aloofness of their gaze he also noted a strange variegation in the herbage at his feet; the greensward for a considerable space around was strewn and speckled with a chocolate-coloured hail, enlivened here and there with gay tinsel-like wrappings or the glistening mauve of crystallised violets. It was as though the fairy paradise of a greedyminded child had taken shape and substance in the vegetation ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... said: "White Cap (Bald Eagle), thou art passing stout of heart and strong of will. Therefore make I thee the younger brother of the Wolf, the guardian and master of the Upper regions, for thou fliest through the skies without tiring, and thy coat is speckled ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... connected with outdoor sport so thoroughly and exhaustively written up as Fly-fishing and all that pertains thereto. Fly-fishing for speckled trout always, and deservedly, takes the lead. Bass fishing usually comes next, though some writers accord second place to the lake trout, salmon trout or land-locked salmon. The mascalonge, as a game fish, is scarcely behind the small-mouthed ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... much beyond the average in its individual members, but weak to powerlessness in the diversity of its composition. Burke, in a memorable passage of a memorable speech, has described this "chequered and speckled" administration with great humour, speaking of it as "indeed a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch and unsure to stand on." Pitt chose for himself the office of lord privy seal, which necessitated his removal to the House of Lords; and in August he became ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... the Pegnitz, at Nuremberg. Time, afternoon. The shadows of the old gabled and balconied houses are thrown sharply on the reddish-yellow water. Above the steep speckled roofs, the spires of St. Lorenz glitter against the blue sky. CULCHARD is leaning listlessly upon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... was a jolly chap, and he seemed to stand out among all the other toys on the counter. He wore calico trousers of which one leg was red and the other yellow. He had a calico shirt that was spotted, speckled and striped in gay colors, and on each of his hands was a round piece of brass. These pieces of brass were called "cymbals," and the Calico Clown could bang them together as the drummer bangs ...
— The Story of Calico Clown • Laura Lee Hope
... Lords Answer was, in Mat. 16.23. Get thee behind me Satan. The Devil will say to a man, I would have thee to Consult thy own Interest, and I would have Trouble to be far from thee. He speaks these Fair Things, by the Mouths of our professed Friends unto us, as he did by the Tongue of a Speckled Snake unto our Deluded Parents at the first. But all this while, 'tis a Direction that has been wisely given us; When he speaks fair, Believe him not, for there are seven Abominations in ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... left the train it was just as she had thought it would be. There was grandpa waiting to meet them, the ride through the green fields behind Prince, the big white house with dear grandma waiting at the door, Tobias the gray cat, the speckled hens; all her friends, for grandpa had even opened the pasture gate and let Jenny, the pretty Jersey cow, come on the lawn ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37, No. 34, August 23, 1914 • Various
... Pretty creatur'," said Dave, stroking the hare's brown speckled fur, and laying its long black-tipped sensitive ears smoothly ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... breezes, that great mass of death floats on and on, till lost in infinite perspectives. There's a most doleful and most mocking funeral! The sea-vultures all in pious mourning, the air-sharks all punctiliously in black or speckled. In life but few of them would have helped the whale, I ween, if peradventure he had needed it; but upon the banquet of his funeral they most piously do pounce. Oh, horrible vultureism of earth! from which not the mightiest whale is free. Nor ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... And scarce it pushes Its gentle way through strangling rushes Where the glossy kingfisher Flutters when noon-heats are near, 105 Glad the shelving banks to shun, Red and steaming in the sun, Where the shrew-mouse with pale throat Burrows, and the speckled stoat; Where the quick sandpipers flit 110 In and out the marl and grit That seems to breed them, brown as they. Naught disturbs its quiet way, Save some lazy stork that springs, Trailing it with legs and wings, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... tarantella and tarantismo has been gravely discussed by old Italian writers, and a certain learned prelate of the fifteenth century, Niccolo Perotto, Archbishop of Siponto, alludes to the malignant cause of this dance-cure as "a species of speckled spider, dwelling in rents of the ground caused by excessive heat. It was not known in the time of our fore-fathers, but now it is very common in Apulia ... and is generally called Tarantula. Its bite seldom kills ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... swing of the sun speculatively. The shadows, thrown shoreward, lengthened and slithered on the small ripples. The small noises of the day died out; the small noises of the coming night began to multiply. The green-bodied flies went away and big mosquitoes, with speckled gray legs, came to take the places of the flies. The sleepy lake sucked at the mud banks with small mouthing sounds as though it found the taste of the raw mud agreeable. A monster crawfish, big as a chicken lobster, crawled out of the top of his dried ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... many hours, and at length grew hungry, so the young woman was sent home to bring them food, and also to give the horses their dinner. When she went into the stable, she suddenly saw the heavy pack-saddle of the speckled mare just over her head, and she ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... Truth's eternal measures mark the bound Of circle, cube, or sphere. The third ascent Unites this varied symmetry of parts With colour's bland allurement; as the pearl Shines in the concave of its azure bed, And painted shells indent their speckled wreath. Then more attractive rise the blooming forms Through which the breath of Nature has infused Her genial power to draw with pregnant veins Nutritious moisture from the bounteous earth, 460 In fruit ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... speckled by spotted cows, and bound by a gray frontier of windmills; shining canals stretching through the green; odors like those exhaled from the Thames in the dog-days, and a fine pervading smell of cheese; little trim houses, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was speckled with men returning in a disorderly fashion to the river front. Behind them marched a small but very compact body of men who had filed out of the stockade. These last dragged ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... collar and held it up to view. "You call this a clean, white, shiny collar? Well, it's not. Fawn-colour, if you like; speckled—yes; but white—clean? No! Believe me," continued Mr. Bingley-Spyker, warming to his subject, "it's years since I've had a genuinely clean collar from my laundry. Mostly they are speckled. And the specks ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... 'winter bird,' or 'winterer'—I suppose, because it is one of the few that stay in these parts all the year round, and is therefore often noticed by them in winter time. The traders sometimes call it the 'speckled partridge-hawk,' for there are some of them more spotted than this ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... noiselessly to and fro, taking up the various articles on the table, and offering them to the guests in a peculiarly quiet manner. One of the dishes brought to me was a plover's nest, precisely as the plover made it, with five little blue speckled eggs in it. This mode of serving plover's eggs, as I understand it, is one of the fashions of-the day, and has something quite sylvan and picturesque about it; but it looked so, for all the world, like a robin's nest ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... you've panned the speckled sand and seen the bonny dust, Its peerless brightness blinds you like a spell; It's little else you care about; you go because you must, And you feel that you could follow it to hell. You'd follow it in hunger, and you'd ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... and "sabias," black as crows; all united in a deafening concert of shrieks and whistles. The long beak of the toucan stood out against the golden clusters of the "quiriris," and the treepeckers or woodpeckers of Brazil wagged their little heads, speckled all over with their purple spots. It was ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... Woods crowding upon woods, hills over hills; A surging scene, and only limited By the blue distance. Wearily my way Downward I dragged, through fir groves evermore Where bright green moss moved in sepulchral forms, Speckled with sunshine; and, but seldom heard, The sweet bird's song become a hollow sound; And the gale murmuring indivisibly, Reserved its solemn murmur, more distinct From many a note of many a waterbreak, And the brook's chatter; on whose islet stones ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... the cow-bird in our walks, her merciless ubiquity is astonishing. It occasionally happens that almost every nest I meet in a day's walk will show the ominous speckled egg. In a single stroll in the country I have removed eight of these foreboding tokens of misery. Only last summer I discovered the nest of a wood-sparrow in a hazel-bush, my attention being attracted thither by the parent bird bearing food in her ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... great quantity of tame pigs, some reddish, others black, white, or speckled. We saw tusks 11/4 palmos in length, and a porker was killed weighing 200 lbs. The natives roast them on hearths, wrapped up in plantain leaves. It is a clean way, which gives the meat a good colour, and none of the ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... drives, in fair June mornin's, through the old lane alder and willow fringed, with the brook runnin' along on one side of it; where the speckled trout broke the Sunday quiet by dancin' up through the brown and gold shadows of the cool water, and the odor of the pine woods jest beyend comin' ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... of them spoke. It was a dark, cold morning; far below them stretched the cheerless expanse of snow-covered roofs; from countless chimneys smoke was rising heavily to the lowering sky, and soot was sifting down; the snow on the window- sill was speckled with black. Below, in the courtyard of the hotel, ice-carts rumbled in and out, and milk-cans were banged down on the cobblestones; a dull day, an empty sky, a futile interview, up here in this wretched little room under the eaves. David ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... degrees 42 minutes 51 seconds and longitude 119 degrees 32 minutes 4 seconds, without seeing any signs of it for ten miles on either side of our course, we hauled to the wind for the night and sounded in one hundred and forty-five fathoms speckled ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... thickly speckled with ferruginous red. Palpi long, hardly ascending, almost straight; third joint linear, obtuse at the tip, rather shorter than the second. Antennae bare. Abdomen conical, extending rather beyond the hind wings; apical tuft small. Legs rather long and slender, almost bare; spurs ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... and grasses where the world of the stream-side sent forth a warm, living smell. The wildness of the upland moors stretched down into the valley below them. There glimmered blue-green patches of bracken, speckled with the red and white hides of calves which fed and scampered dew-lap deep; and the fern was all sheened with light where the sunshine brightened its polished leaves. The stream wound through the midst, bedecked and adorned with purple bugle flowers, bridged with dog-roses and ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... Europe, having been purchased by the earl at large expense for this royal occasion. As the noble steed chafed at the slow speed of the procession, and, arching his stately neck, champed on the silver bits which restrained him, the foam flew from his mouth and speckled his well-formed limbs as if with spots of snow. The rider well became the high place which he held and the proud animal which he bestrode, for no man in England, or perhaps in Europe, was more perfect than Dudley in horsemanship and all other exercises belonging ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... THE speckled hen walked all around the house, and saw the front-door open. So she walked right ...
— The Nursery, November 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 5 • Various
... calves And then hit the trail for Canaan in the night, There has been a taste for battle 'mong the men that follow cattle And a love of doin' things that's wild and strange. And the warmth of Laban's words when he missed his speckled herds Still is useful in the language of ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... glint of the trout's flanks through the green water. She brought him nearer. Swimming parallel with the boat, he was plainly visible from his wide-opened mouth—the hook and fly protruding from his lower jaw—to the red, quivering flanges of the tail. His sides were faintly speckled, his belly white as chalk. He was almost as long as ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... small turkey, whose cousin he is, and his plumes are like those on a field-marshal's helmet. Near here are two curious sorts of nests—one the Norfolk plover, or, as he is called, thick-knee; the eggs are just laid on the sand, and are so much the same colours as the speckled stones around that you have to look hard to find them, and at a little distance they seem to vanish altogether. The funny little wee birds, too, are just like rough sand, and have two black lines down their ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... spotted fawn, Nimble, kept close beside her. Slowly as his mother moved, he found the traveling none too easy. And he was glad when she stopped in a pocket-like clearing. There she spoke to a proud speckled bird who was sitting on a log and amusing himself by spreading his tail feathers into ...
— The Tale of Nimble Deer - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... left his prisoning pane at last, and came over to the Mayflowers, which were in full bloom, although the season was very late, and deep in the woods there were still some graybacked snowdrifts, speckled with bits of bark and moss from ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the twelve zodiacal signs—to Aries, white and red; to Taurus, white and lemon; to Gemini, white and red (the same as Aries); to Cancer, green or russet; to Leo, red or green; to Virgo, black speckled with blue; to Libra, black, or dark crimson, or tawny colour; to Scorpio, brown; to Sagittarius, yellow, or a green sanguine (this is as strange a colour as the gris rouge of Moliere's L'Avare); Capricorn, black or russet, or a swarthy brown; ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... never seemed to like children, had said she did not want a child. She turned her head and saw him. He went in. She made a faint motion toward the baby, and her eyes smiled. Winton looked at that swaddled speckled mite; then, bending down, he kissed her hand and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... A "speckled bear," without any spectacles. A "nelephant" like a great hill of stone, and a baby "nelephant," with ears ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... too heavy for his strength, for in lowering it, it came down on the ground with some little violence. Instantly there broke from the grey parcel a little moaning cry, and from it there protruded a small, scared face, with very bright brown eyes, and two little speckled, dimpled fists. ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Mary Burton went to show that a Negro by the name of Caesar Varick, but called Quin, on the night in which the burglary was committed, entered Peggy's room through the window. The next morning Mary Burton saw "speckled linen" in Peggy's room, and that the man Varick gave the deponent two pieces of silver. She further testified that Varick drank two mugs of punch, and bought of Hughson a pair of stockings, giving him a lump of silver; and that ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... you think became of the unmotherly hen? She lost all her friends. She was despised and hated by everybody on the farm. She was pointed at as "that cruel, speckled hen," until life became a burden to her. She was not permitted to have any more chickens. When the cold weather came, she was sent to a poor woman for a thanksgiving dinner; and it is to be hoped that all the hens in the barnyard ...
— The Nursery, No. 106, October, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... a speckled trout, Pull your hair to make it sprout; Though you grumble, also pout, One, two, ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... least idea of what warm weather is in Vermont. Why, if one of your mountain trout streams could have run through New York, it would have boiled over and cooked the poor little speckled creatures that live in its waves. You never saw anything like it in your born days. The sea breezes at Long Branch seemed to come over an ocean of melted lead, blasted up by some old furnace of ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... edges, in the center of each a sunken pool that was all plum, bearing on its bosom a snowy sifting of powdered sugar. There were others whose centers were apricot, pure molten gold in the sunlight. There were speckled expanses of cheese kuchen, the golden-brown surface showing rich cracks through which one caught glimpses of the lemon-yellow cheese beneath—cottage cheese that had been beaten up with eggs, and spices, and sugar, and lemon. Flaky ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... old speckled gray horse and a queer basket phaeton, left by the eccentric Englishman in The Dale stables years before. Mr. Gordon used them to convey him to the town hall, some miles distant, where the township council meetings were held, but Miss Gordon always drove to church in this family ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... deep holes filled with water, in which were abundance of fishes and some molluscs. Some of these cavities also contained sea-snakes from four to five feet long, which were described as having the head "hooded like the cobra de capello, and of a light grey colour, slightly speckled. They coiled themselves like serpents on land, and darted at poles thrust in among them. The Singhalese who accompanied the party, said that they not only bit venomously, but crushed the limb of any intruder ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... creature with speckled neck builds in bushes lower than the wood-pigeon, and the mournful note ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... with horses, others laboriously going over their fields, foot by foot, with a spade; once we passed half a dozen men dragging a harrow. Every tree in this country, where wood is grown like any other crop, was speckled with white spots where branches had been trimmed away, and below the timber was piled— heavy logs for lumber, smaller ones cut into firewood—the very twigs piled as carefully as so ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... speckled eggs were in the nest, and his mate said: "Is there anything in all the world as pretty as my eggs?" Then they both looked down on some people that were passing by and pitied them because they were ...
— A Child's Story Garden • Compiled by Elizabeth Heber
... she walked into the garden. The silence and damp of the earth revived her, and the sensation of the cold stone, against which she was leaning, was agreeable. Little stars speckled a mauve and misty sky, and out of the mysterious spring twilight there came a strange and ultimate yearning, a craving which nothing she had ever known could assuage. But those stars—could they tell her nothing? One, large almost ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered—flushed, but smiling proudly—with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... stretch of rapid water in front of the house. The Saranac River, breaking from its first resting-place in the Upper Lake, plunged down through a great bed of rocks, making a chain of short falls and pools and rapids, about half a mile in length. Here, in the spring and early summer, the speckled trout—brightest and daintiest of all fish that swim—used to be found in great numbers. As the season advanced, they moved away into the deep water of the lakes. But there were always a few stragglers left, and I have taken them in the rapids at the very end of August. What could be more delightful ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... Struggling with terror, turn'd to view the straits, That none hath pass'd and liv'd. My weary frame After short pause recomforted, again I journey'd on over that lonely steep, The hinder foot still firmer. Scarce the ascent Began, when, lo! a panther, nimble, light, And cover'd with a speckled skin, appear'd, Nor, when it saw me, vanish'd, rather strove To check my onward going; that ofttimes With purpose to retrace my steps I turn'd. The hour was morning's prime, and on his way Aloft the sun ascended with those stars, That with him rose, when Love divine ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Count Buffon and Baron Cuvier, came those dogs that I saw in Typee? Dogs!—Big hairless rats rather; all with smooth, shining speckled hides—fat sides, and very disagreeable faces. Whence could they have come? That they were not the indigenous production of the region, I am firmly convinced. Indeed they seemed aware of their being ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... do hold your tongue; as though indeed the difference was so trifling. A young man was brought to our house to-day, whom, really, Phaedria, you would have liked to look upon. This is a withered, antiquated, lethargic, old fellow, with a speckled complexion.[91] ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... put into effect the proposed stroll of yesterday. And first to the farm-yard, where the poultry-maid supplied them with corn: and with this enticement, the fowls and ducks were called together and numbered, and the various beauties of both enumerated. This speckled hen had been such a good mother, and a good handful of grain was tossed to her;—then the beautiful little bantam had been nursed in a stocking, and was so tame that it would come and eat out of the hand;—then there was the fine old cock that crowed so loud he might be heard ...
— Christmas, A Happy Time - A Tale, Calculated for the Amusement and Instruction of Young Persons • Miss Mant
... usual the islet was covered with seabirds, only two species, however, of which were breeding. The Brown Booby (Sula fusca) and a large tern (Thalasseus pelecanoides) existed in about equal numbers; the latter, in one great colony, had laid their solitary large speckled eggs in a slight excavation in the sand, the former were scattered all over the island, and had regular nests of weed, containing either two eggs, or a single young bird covered with white down. Well does the booby deserve its name. The grotesque and stupid look of the old bird standing ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... poisonous breath, and, if I had lain a little longer, had certainly died; I had recourse to bezoar, a sovereign remedy against these poisons, which I always carried about me. These serpents are not long, but have a body short and thick, and their bellies speckled with brown, black, and yellow; they have a wide mouth, with which they draw in a great quantity of air, and, having retained it some time, eject it with such force that they kill at four yards' distance. I only escaped by being somewhat farther from him. This danger, however, ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... flew Professor Jim Crow to read his little Black Book to somebody else, and the little rabbit hopped along and by and by he came to the Bubbling Brook where the speckled trout swam in and out among the rocks and the little fresh water crabs played in the quiet pools. All of a sudden down fell ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... a black-faced ewe, so peculiarly speckled about the face that no one, least of all a Border shepherd, could possibly make any mistake as to her identity. She had been missing for some days, and was given up as lost for good and all. Yet here she was suckling her lamb as if ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... cackled. Like all empty-headed people, she was quick to lose her temper. "Spots indeed! I'd have you know that I haven't any spots. I'm a speckled beauty—that's what I am. And if you don't believe it you can ...
— The Tale of Miss Kitty Cat - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... of the big nursery sofa there was sudden silence. It was a chilly evening in early spring. Between the bars across the windows the wisteria leaves sifted the setting sunlight. The railway train lay motionless upon the speckled carpet. A cat, so fat it couldn't unroll, lay in a ball of mystery against the high guard of wire netting before the fire. Outside ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... I was unfit to assemble with the congregation with whom I had gathered, and had sometimes been made to rejoice in the Lord. I felt that I was despised on account of this gracious calling, and was looked upon as a speckled bird by the ministers to whom I looked for instruction, and to whom I resorted every opportunity for the same; but when I would converse with them, some would cry out, "You are an enthusiast;" and others said, "the Discipline did not allow of any such division ...
— Memoir of Old Elizabeth, A Coloured Woman • Anonymous
... man's pudding came in, smoking like a Turk, and speckled in every direction with great black raisins, oh! then was the time for bright looks! and when one little girl clapped her hands, and exclaimed, 'My! that looks good!' all the rest laughed, and whisked their heads round so, that it was quite fortunate their braids were fast ...
— The Little Nightcap Letters. • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... of the beast of prey, the speckled skin, and the dishevelled locks of the investigator, the searcher, ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Instead of frozen game and winter vegetables, were the products of summer gardens, and fruits, and berries. The color scheme was dazzling with great heaps of tomatoes, and long, emerald ears of corn, and baskets of apples, and gold crooks of summer squashes, and speckled pods ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... every degree obtain for a day "Dolls' Rights." In every Japanese household all the dolls of the present and previous generations are, on that festival, set out to best advantage. Beside them are sweets, green-speckled rice cake, and daintily gilt and lacquered dolls' utensils. For some time previous, to meet the increased demand, the doll shopman has been very busy. He sits before a straw-holder into which he can readily stick, to dry, the wooden supports of the plaster ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... aw remember that big Christmas puddin, That puddin mooast famous ov all in a year; When each lad at th' table mud stuff all he could in, An ne'er have a word ov refusal to fear. Ha its raand speckled face, craand wi' sprigs o' green holly Seem'd sweeatin wi' juices ov currans an plums; An its fat cheeks made ivvery one laff an feel jolly, For it seem'd like a meetin ov long parted chums, That big Christmas pudding,—That rich steamin puddin,— That scrumptious plum ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... The speckled cones of the scarlet berries [58] Lie red and ripe in the prairie grass. The S-yo [59] clucks on the emerald prairies To her infant brood. From the wild morass, On the sapphire lakelet set within it, Mag [60] sails forth with her wee ones daily. They ride on the ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... the cathedral; the fourteenth on Saint Pierre; and a few examples—unfortunately broken up and used in a medley mosaic—of painted glass of the sixteenth century in Saint Aignan, another church where the vaulted roof had been washed of the colour of gingerbread speckled with anise-seed, by painters of our ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... habits affecting my special senses followed in rapid succession. The visitors began pouring in to see me on the second day, and I think it was a morbid interest that any one could work up over such a red, speckled mite of humanity as I must have been. They all insisted on digging me out of my nest, taking me up and rolling me about, when it was my natural inclination to want to sleep nearly all the time. From this procedure I soon grew restless and ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... cattle formed tribes hereabout; there only families. These myriads of cows stretching under her eyes from the far east to the far west outnumbered any she had ever seen at one glance before. The green lea was speckled as thickly with them as a canvas by Van Alsloot or Sallaert with burghers. The ripe hue of the red and dun kine absorbed the evening sunlight, which the white-coated animals returned to the eye in rays almost dazzling, even at the distant elevation ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... had fled, now rested broad and quiet as a shallow lake, burnished faintly, brooded over by a floating, increasing light, not yet compounded into day. Tussocks, innumerable clods and crumbs of vivid green, speckled all the nearer water. On some of these storks meditated,—sage, pondering heads and urbane bodies perched high on the frailest penciling of legs. In the whole expanse, no movement came but when a distant bird, leaving his philosophic pose, ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... Pebble Temptation Slander Woman Sympathy Love and Wine. How Nature's Beauties Should be Viewed To a Canary The School-Taught Youth A Dream A Snow Storm To Nova Scotia The Huntsman and His Hound The Maple Tree The Pine Tree A Sabbath Morning in the Country Catching Speckled Trout A Protestant Irishman to his Wife Memories of School Days ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... been very busy," continued Frank, pointing to the buoys, that speckled the waters. I am afraid the ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... toddy palm (Borassus flabelliformis) and was unlined save for a wad of human hair, on which the eggs, two in number, lay; these I found hard-set (on the 13th March); in colour they were a pale greenish blue, boldly blotched, spotted, and speckled with brown." ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... and streams Of stagshorn for their hats; anon, with screams Of mad delight they drop their spoils, and bound Among the holly-clumps and broken ground, Racing full speed, and startling in their rush The fell-fares and the speckled missel-thrush Out of their glossy coverts;—but when now Their cheeks were flush'd, and over each hot brow, Under the feather'd hats of the sweet pair, In blinding masses shower'd the golden hair— Then Iseult call'd them to her, and the three Cluster'd under the holly-screen, and ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... did not cease their sport because of what had befallen Master Brookes, but continued at the hunting until they had brought down two wild boars and also an animal fashioned like unto nothing I had ever seen before. It was something after the manner of a serpent, but speckled on the stomach as is a toad, and Captain Smith believed the true name of it to be Iguana, the like of which he says that he has often seen in other countries and that its flesh makes ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis
... mighty burden slid to the rug, and establishing itself on carpet or stool just at "papa's" feet, the white work-box and the scarlet-speckled handkerchief came into play. This handkerchief, it seems, was intended as a keepsake for "papa," and must be finished before his departure; consequently the demand on the sempstress's industry (she accomplished about a score of stitches ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... song Inwrap our fancy long, Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold; And speckled vanity Will sicken soon and die, And leprous sin will melt from earthly mould; And hell itself will pass away. And leave her dolorous ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... a drink of water; though with carnivorous eyes he saw the pretty speckled trout glide through the brown pool where he dipped his hand; and he crossed the creek over a fallen tree, ascending to the eastward. He could not be insensible to the beauty of nature this morning—to the majesty ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... and lined with wool, From which it tenderly shook the dew Over our heads, when we came to play In its handbreadth of shadow, day after day. Afraid to go home, Sir; for one of us bore A nest full of speckled and thin-shelled eggs,— The other, a bird, held fast by the legs, Not so big as a straw of wheat: The berries we gave her she wouldn't eat, But cried and cried, till we held her bill, So slim and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... still, being astonished, and became aware that this tumult was divinely guided, for as in a trance he saw and heard marvellous things. For the war-steeds of the Ultonians neighed loudly in their stables, and from the Tec Brac, the Speckled House of the Red Branch, rose a clangour of brass, the roar of the shield called Ocean, and the booming of the Gate-of-Battle, and the singing of swords long silent, and the brazen thunder of the revolution of wheels; and he saw ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... rustling is a snake on his way to a sunny spot where he can bask and sleep. Very slender brown speckled snakes, or blind-worms, are quite harmless, and so are the large grass-snakes, which are something like a mackerel in lines and markings. The adder, however, which is yellowish brown in color with brown markings ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... The cream-tinted level is speckled with white incrustations and sombre tufts of desert herbs; here and there, where the winter's rain lingers underground, are spots of brilliant green; short-lived crops of corn, sown by the nomads. The hills to the ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... think this is a new and strange doctrine, and that they who preach it are speckled birds. But let me tell you that most of the spiritual men in the pulpits of Great Britain are firm in this faith. Spurgeon preaches it. I have heard Newman Hall say that he knew no reason why Christ might not come before he got through with his sermon. ...
— That Gospel Sermon on the Blessed Hope • Dwight Lyman Moody
... chimney; immediately under which is an excavation in the floor, burned away by a large fire of turf, loosely heaped together. This is surrounded by a circle of urchins, sitting on the bare earth, stones, and hassocks, and exhibiting a series of speckled shins, all radiating towards the fire, like sausages on a Poloni dish. There they are—wedged as close as they can sit; one with half a thigh off his breeches—another with half an arm off his tattered coat—a third without breeches at all, wearing, as a substitute, a piece of his mother's ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... and squatting himself down on the summit, was designed as you see. The vast flat landscape stretches behind him; the great winding river; the purple city, with forts, and domes, and spires; the green fields, and palm- groves, and speckled villages; the plains still covered with shining inundations—the landscape stretches far far away, until it is lost and mingled in the golden horizon. It is poor work this landscape-painting in print. Shelley's two ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... charming. Bibury is indeed a pretty village. As you walk along the main street which runs parallel with the river, an angler is busy "swishing" his rod violently in the air to "dry" the fly, ere he essays to drop it over the nose of one of the speckled fario which abound; so be careful to step down off the path which runs alongside the stream, in case you should put the fish "down" and spoil the sport. And now on our left, beyond the green, may be seen a line of gabled cottages called "Arlington Row," a picture of which by G. Leslie was ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... if I can help it; only you do look so like a fat, speckled frog, I may not be able to hold in. I'll pull you out pretty soon; but first I'm going to talk to you, Sam," said Ben, sobering down as he took a seat on the little point of land nearest ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... ain't pizen bad, an' that prejudice, you got to know, was just along o' his being loco on that one subjeck. 'Twa'n't as if he had any real principles or convictions about the thing. It was just a loco prejudice. Just as some gesabes has feelin's agin cats an' snakes, or agin seein' a speckled nigger. It was just on-reasonable. So what I'm aimin' to have you understand is the fact that it was extremely appropriate that Peg-leg should die, that it was a blame good thing, and somethin' to be celebrated ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... brier. And it was Ellen who had discovered that the bottom of the stream was flagged and she had five feet of mud taken out of it, and now the stream was as bright and clear as in the time of the monks, and as full of trout. She had just caught two which lay on the grass panting, their speckled bellies ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... summer they come abroad, and lie either round in heaps or at length upon some hillock, or elsewhere in the grass. They are found only in our woodland countries and highest grounds, where sometimes (though seldom) a speckled stone called echites, in Dutch ein atter stein, is gotten out of their dried carcases, which divers report to be good against their poison.[5] As for our snakes, which in Latin are properly named ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... her hiding place. "And take that," she cried, "for a present, you father of a speckled toad!" And seizing the heavy quarto Bible from the table, she flung it with all her might full in his face. It happened to hit him on the bridge of his nose, which ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... celebrating their latest additions to their nests, and the exultant call of a cock to his feathered harem to come, admire and partake of some especially fat worm, which he had just unearthed. Farther away speckled Guinea chickens were clamoring their satisfaction at the improvement in the weather. Still farther, gentle tinklings hinted of ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... three at Romsey. Then I sat in front for a little while to talk to my Malachi. When I looked back, Shend was solidly asleep, and stayed so for the next two hours, while Leggatt chased Attley's fat Daimler along the green-speckled hedges. He woke up when we said good-bye at Mittleham, with promises to ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... observe, as distinguished from merely symbolical visions. For instance, when Jeremiah has the vision of the seething pot with its mouth to the north, you know that this which he sees is not a real thing; but merely a significant dream. Also, when Zechariah sees the speckled horses among the myrtle trees in the bottom, you still may suppose the vision symbolical;—you do not think of them as real spirits, like Pegasus, seen in the form of horses. But when you are told of the four riders in the Apocalypse, a distinct sense of personality begins to force ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... level. Some didn't wait for a turn at that. They slid down one upright, swung around the crosspiece on the level below, and slid down another vertical pipe. For a minute or more it looked as if the scaffolds oozed black droplets which slid down its pipes. But the drops were men. The floor became speckled and spotted with dots running for ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... bad thing—and particularly at his time of life. I lost a beautiful hen only yesterday from rheumatism in the legs; one of the best sitters I ever had. You remember her?—the speckled one that I got from Tetleigh, four years ago come Michaelmas. But that's the way in this world; the most missed are ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... this trip so often, I know. St. Petersburg to Paris, a few weeks on the Riviera, then back by Constantinople and the Crimea. It is nothing. I remember last year—" He pushed a large pearl pin more deeply into his speckled tie and began a story that proved chiefly how luxuriously he traveled. His eyes tried to draw the whole end of the table into his circle, but while the Armenian listened politely, with smiles and bows, Dr. Stahl ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... rest of its life the Plaice will remain flat, with two eyes looking up, and a twisted head. But its colour alters. The side on which it lies is white; the upper side becomes brown and speckled, dotted over with red marks. This is a good disguise. Its enemies cannot distinguish the Plaice from the pebbles and sand around it. They might swim over it, and yet not see the thin, flat, brownish body pressed down on the bed ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... Snow Hill that greets me back To this old loamy cul-de-sac? Spread on the level river shore, Beneath the bending willow-trees And speckled trunks of sycamore, All moist with airs of rival seas? Are these old men who gravely bow, As if a stranger all awoke, The same who heard my parents vow, —Ah well! in simpler days than now— To ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... days, Eustace Daintree thought of her thus, and remembered with a pang the sole sad gift that she had craved at Heaven's hands. Often and often the scene came back to him; the sunny garden, the scarlet geraniums flaring in the borders, the smooth green lawn, speckled with shadows from the trees, the wide open windows of his pleasant vicarage beyond, and the beautiful figure of the girl at his side, with her bent head, and her low broken voice—the girl who, at twenty-three, sighed ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... summer. The winter winds frequently blow over dead trees and roll them as far as the equatorial seas. Other dead vegetation, because of the highly silicious water, always gets petrified unless it is eaten first. What with the quartz-speckled hides of the living vegetation and the solid quartz of the dead, a ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... and pink-veined, rise everywhere above the moss, a rufous-colored bird flies quickly past, and, alighting on a low limb a few rods off, salutes me with "Whew! Whew!" or "Whoit! Whoit!" almost as you would whistle for your dog. I see by his impulsive, graceful movements, and his dimly speckled breast, that it is a thrush. Presently he utters a few soft, mellow, flute-like notes, one of the most simple expressions of melody to be heard, and scuds away, and I see it is the veery, or Wilson's thrush. He is the least of the thrushes in size, being ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... corporal-gunner of his own car. The other fifty-odd were Ullrans. They stood erect on stumpy legs and broad, six-toed feet. They had four arms apiece, one pair from true shoulders and the other connected to a pseudo-pelvis midway down the torso. Their skins were slate-gray and rubbery, speckled with pinhead-sized bits of quartz that had been formed from perspiration, since their body-tissues were silicone instead of carbon-hydrogen. Their narrow heads were unpleasantly saurian; they had small, double-lidded ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... charms every shepherd, Spotted over like a leopard! And thy freckled neck, display'd, Envy breeds in every maid; Like a fly-blown cake of tallow, Or on parchment ink turn'd yellow; Or a tawny speckled pippin, Shrivell'd with a winter's keeping. And, thy beauty thus dispatch'd, Let me praise thy wit unmatch'd. Sets of phrases, cut and dry, Evermore thy tongue supply; And thy memory is loaded With ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... daughter left no doubt as to the value of all petty talk. It was her custom of summer evenings to walk to the pool, and with her daughter Berenice she would sit on the broad wall and watch the moon rise, or acknowledge the respectful salutations of the country folk with their bran-speckled faces. In those days Villiers-le-Bel was a dull town a half-hour from Paris on the Northern Railway, and about two miles from ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... to deliver a letter of introduction I had to one of the members. Here, on a beautiful bank, with a delightful beach in front, and the entrance of the bay open to them, the clear and blue expanse of water speckled over with fertile islands, reside these comfortable teachers of the Gospel. The name they have given this spot is "Marsden Vale." They very soon gave us to understand they did not wish for our acquaintance, and their coldness and inhospitality (I must ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... Andy at last, when they came up to a gate set across the trail, "right here is where we drawed the line—and held it. Now, half of those shacks you see speckled around are empty. The rest hold nesters too poor to get outa the country. One or two, that had a little money, have stuck and gone into sheep. But from here on to Dry Creek there's nothing ranging but the Flying U brand. Not much—compared ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... places for obtaining the speckled prey is under a Waterfall—but you needn't mention this fact ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... game was ended, and another begun. And as they were beginning the first move of the game, they beheld at a small distance from them a tent speckled yellow, the largest ever seen, and the figure of an eagle of gold upon it, and a precious stone on the eagle's head. And coming out of the tent, they saw a youth with thick yellow hair upon his head, fair and comely, and a scarf of blue satin upon him, and a brooch ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... sure-footed Polly until both reached the top. To their surprise, the girls found a cleft between two great rocks with a quiet pool resting at the base. The current passed, rushing onward to the Falls, but the water circulating in the nook scarcely rippled. Even as the two girls watched, a flash of a speckled back flounced up in play and ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... the casual character of modern literature: everything about it is temporary and fragmentary. Look at a railway stall: you see books of every color,—blue, yellow, crimson, "ring-streaked, speckled, and spotted,"—on every subject, in every style, of every opinion, with every conceivable difference, celestial or sublunary, maleficent, beneficent—but all small. People take their literature in morsels, as they take sandwiches ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... hear him expatiate upon the trout. He seems to follow Mr. Graham up and down every stream; and he explains to me with the utmost minuteness just how the flies are cast and just where they were probably thrown to snare the speckled beauties. By the way, Mr. Graham puzzles me. He seems to be the most indefatigable sportsman I ever heard of. But I should never have suspected it from the tranquil weeks he spent with us. He seemed above all things a student of the most quiet and intellectual ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... One of this species was sent to me from California, and lived for a few weeks, but as nothing would induce it to eat, to my great regret it pined and died. It was about as large as an ordinary full-grown toad, of a speckled grey colour, with rich brown markings, its head something like a lizard, with large thorny projections which extended all along the spine. The feet were very remarkable, each toe being furnished with a sucker which ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... "And thus we are guided, almost forced, by the laws of nature, to do right in art. Had granite been white and marble speckled (and why should this not have been, but by the definite Divine appointment for the good of man?), the huge figures of the Egyptian would have been as oppressive to the sight as cliffs of snow, and the Venus de Medicis would have ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... fine view of several rose-bushes, a tree, and one window of the "missionary man's" house. She had longed for another peep since the flower-stand was gone, and climbing trees forbidden; now with joy she slipped into the damp nook, regardless of the speckled gentlemen who stared at her with dismay, and took a good look at ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... have turned at the sound of the carving-knife voice to look ashore, and to notice that at its first note there were twenty little pocket-knife answers from over the pond, and that in a twinkling twenty pairs of red satin boots were running as fast as they could go to meet the great speckled mother-hen, whose blady voice was the sweetest music in all the ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... water-bird. Untaught a deadly foe to fear They fly not when a man is near, And fat as balls of butter they Will, when you list, your hunger stay. Then Lakshman with his shafts will take The fish that swim the brook and lake, Remove each bone and scale and fin, Or strip away the speckled skin, And then on iron skewers broil For thy repast the savoury spoil. Thou on a heap of flowers shalt rest And eat the meal his hands have dressed, There shalt thou lie on Pampa's brink, And Lakshman's hand shall give thee drink, Filling a lotus leaf with cool Pure ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... deformed a monster that fat woman must have seemed to it! The terror of a timid little child at the sight of a hippopotamus, robed in flowing bed-curtains and walking erect on its hind legs, would perhaps be comparable to the panic possessing the shallow brain of the poor speckled thing when that huge woman ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... opposite to that on which lay the town of Huajapam. The horseman, guided by these dragoons, was costumed as a vaquero—that is, he wore a jacket and wide calzoneros of brick-coloured deerskin, with a huge sombrero of black glaze on his head, and a speckled blanket folded over the croup of his saddle. He had already reported himself to the dragoons as the bearer of a message to the colonel—Don Rafael Tres-Villas. Furthermore, in addition to the horse on which he rode, he was leading another—a noble ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... the sky, the freshness of the air puffing up off the blue twinkling Bay of Biscay, the hum or song of the wind as it made rich music among the pines which stood like a green uplifted wave on the East, the beauty of the sand-hills speckled with golden cistus, or patched with gentian-blue, by the low growing Gremille couche, the charm of the forest-skirts, tinted variously with the foliage of cork-trees, pines, and acacia, the latter in full bloom, a pile of rose-coloured ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... made our way, comparatively unmolested, past the base of Mount Kenia, which the Masai call 'Donyo Egere', or the 'speckled mountain', on account of the black patches of rock that appear upon its mighty spire, where the sides are too precipitous to allow of the snow lying on them; then on past the lonely lake Baringo, ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... your messengers, Mr. Meyer?" she asked, when the men had lit their pipes, and the square-face—as Hollands was called in those days, from the shape of the bottle—was set upon the rough table of speckled buchenhout wood. ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... If cuckoos are slaty coloured here and have breasts striped like a hawk, that is no reason why in the hot climates, where the sun burns your skin brown, they should not be brightly coloured in scarlet and green. You have seen that the modest speckled thrush of England has for relatives thrushes of yellow and orange. What has the poor cuckoo done that his hot country friends ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... brook or speckled trout, for it has no speckles, and it's not a relative of the late William Basse, for it isn't deep enough in the body, nor a perch, for it's too big and has no stripes. It's either a salmon ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... Next Anger rushed, his eyes on fire. The moping Owl doth to the Moon complain. True Hope is swift and flies with swallow's wings. Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, as to be hated needs but to be seen. Speckled Vanity will ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... Arabic words, meaning "Sweet are the corn-ears! Praised be the Lord!" In India, Baber tells us, the call of the Black Partridge was (less piously) rendered "Shir daram shakrak," "I've got milk and sugar!" The bird seems to be the [Greek: attagas] of Athenaeus, a fowl "speckled like the partridge, but larger," found in Egypt and Lydia. The Greek version of its cry is the best of all: "[Greek: tris tois kakourgois kaka]" ("Threefold ills to the ill-doers!"). This is really like the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... with caution, the merest profile, indeed, of her tense and noiseless advance up the narrow gravel path, would have convinced the most casual observer that she was bent upon arson, at the least. At the occasional crunch of the gravel she scowled; the well meant effort of a speckled gray hen, escaped from some distant part of the grounds, to bear her company, produced a succession of pantomimic dismissals that alarmed the hen to the point of frenzy, so that her clacks and cackles resounded far beyond the trim ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... coming, Dick was bending over a low fire, watching a frying pan in which four speckled beauties, well dipped ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... was quiet. A stealthy glance round, and I had out the key. To draw back now was to write myself craven all my life; and with a shaking hand I thrust the wards into the lock, turned them, and in another moment stood on the other side of the door in a neat garden, speckled with sunshine and shade, and ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... Five speckled thrushes, In leafy bushes, Singing sweet songs to the hot summer sky. In and out twitting, Here and there flitting, Happy in life as the ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... their patrons are the worst enemies in every way that good women can have. If there were any virtue in vice, if black were white or even speckled, doubtless the supreme book of morals, the guide of the race, would have some word in praise of moral rottenness—some few lines in prose or verse in laudation of lewd women. But the whole Bible keeps the distinction sharp and clear between black and white, ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... a chance to fight, an opportunity to loot, and they rose to the bait as a speckled trout to ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... around this, for many miles, seem actually speckled, in distance and in every direction, with herds of grazing buffaloes; and for several days, the officers and men have been indulged in a general license to gratify their sporting propensities; and a scene of bustle and cruel slaughter ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... torrent In each rushing, roaring torrent There a cataract is foaming, Foaming in the silver sunlight; From the cataract's commotion Rise three pillared rocks in grandeur; From each rock, upon the summit, Grow three hillocks clothed in verdure; From each hillock, speckled birches, Three in number, struggle skyward; On the summit of each birch-tree Sits a golden cuckoo calling, And the three sing, all in concord: "Love! O Love! the first one calleth; Sings the second, Suitor! Suitor! And the third ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... know if you studied your history, has been tried many times and always with disaster. The bomb-torn soil of that black land is speckled white with the bones of World armies who were sent on landing invasions before you or I was born. But it was only heroic folly, one gun popping out of a tunnel mouth can slay a thousand men. To pursue the gunners into their ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... speech and bravely said, and the crowd responded to it as bravely, for it fairly rained dimes and quarters and pennies, not only into the carter's hat until it sagged, but into his cart, too, until the bottom of it was speckled all over with copper and silver coin, and the honest fellow held up his hands for the crowd to give ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... grass. Yang Oerlang, when he saw the water-snake creep from the water, turned into an eagle and spread his claws to seize the snake. But the water-snake sprang up and turned into the lowest of all birds, a speckled buzzard, and perched on the steep edge of a cliff. When Yang Oerlang saw that the ape had turned himself into so contemptible a creature as a buzzard, he would no longer play the game of changing form with him. ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... will receive is the curiously Biblical character of their life, which constantly suggests the Old Testament stories; the shepherds watching their flocks, ring-streaked and speckled; the cattle ploughing in the fields; the women grinding at the handmill, or grouped about the village well, all recall incidents in the lives of Isaac and Rebekah, and episodes of patriarchal times. Their ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... that flew around In flocks to be fed: No shelter in holly or brake they found, The speckled thrush on the frozen ground ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... and all his coloured touches of nature. If we are not repelled by the absurd subject, we have to admit that none of the immediate imitators of Venus and Adonis has equalled the juvenile Barnfield in the picturesqueness of his "fine ruff-footed doves," his "speckled flower call'd sops-in-wine," or his desire "by the bright glimmering of the starry light, to catch the long-bill'd woodcock." Two months later, in January 1595, Barnfield published his second volume, Cynthia, with certain Sonnets, and this time signed the preface, which was dedicated, in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... Of speckled eggs the birdie sings And nests among the trees; The sailor sings of ropes and things In ships upon ...
— Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading - Selected from English and American Literature • Horace Elisha Scudder, editor |
