"Vermin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... answer the same purpose. The tube is pierced with holes to admit the water. In wet meadows, these tubes laid deep would be durable and efficient, and far more reliable than brush or even stones, because they may be better protected from the admission of sand and the ruinous working of vermin. Their economy depends upon the price of the wood and the cost of tiles—which are far better if they can ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... stimulated, without any absolute violence to his sense of reality. On the plane of everyday life, then, the Rat-Wife is a crazy and uncanny old woman, fabled by the peasants to be a were-wolf in her leisure moments, who goes about the country killing vermin. Coming across an impressionable child, she tells him a preposterous tale, adapted from the old "Pied Piper" legends, of her method of fascinating her victims. The child, whose imagination has long dwelt on this personage, is in fact hypnotised by her, follows ...
— Little Eyolf • Henrik Ibsen
... said in reprimanding Bishos Salazar about "natives sold by some encomendoros to others, those flogged to death, the women who are crushed to death by their heavy burdens, those who sleep in the fields and there bear and nurse their children and die bitten by poisonous vermin, the many who are executed and left to die of hunger and those who eat poisonous herbs ............ and the mothers who kill their children in bearing them," and you will understand how in less than ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... as death, With beating hearts and bated breath We hurried; far away we heard A dreadful hissing, fierce as fire When rain begins to quench a pyre; And where the smoky torch-light flared Strange vermin beat their bat-like wings, And the wet walls dropped ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... her children. She was resolved that everything was going to the dogs because Goarly's case had been refused. "And what will all those sporting men do for you?" she repeated. "I hate the very name of a gentleman;—so I do. I wish Goarly had killed all the foxes in the county. Nasty vermin! What good are the ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... Prussian infidel, who sends us an ambassador, Allah only knows why; for we are in no need of such vermin: but, you well know, that the Imperial Gate is open to the dog as well as the true believer; for the rain of ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... whack the corruption out o' thee. Master Anthony, indeed! he be another guess sort of thing to thee, I trow. Thee be'st hankering after the good things hereabout; but I'll spoil thy liquorish tooth for tasting. Come, unkennel, vermin!" ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... summer or winter. These beds change their occupants, perhaps, every night; for a tramper seldom sleeps two consecutive nights in the same place. Do not approach too near, for they are alive with loathsome vermin. There are twenty-five beds in a room thirty feet by fourteen, and in each bed two and sometimes three persons are placed. When the landlord is doing a good business, he puts three lodgers in each bed. Seventy-five sleepers in that confined space! For such accommodation the charge is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of course, all right to trap bears when they are followed merely as vermin or for the sake of the fur. Occasionally, however, hunters who are out merely for sport adopt this method; but this should never be done. To shoot a trapped bear for sport is a thoroughly unsportsmanlike proceeding. A funny plea sometimes advanced in its favor is that it is "dangerous." ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... sides of some rough-barked or thorny tree. This leathery pouch also protected him from the many leeches, small aquatic lizards, or other animals that infested the marshes or rivers through which he had at times to wade or swim; or served as a protection from the bites of ants or other vermin when, tired, he rested on his haunches on ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... things were moving toward their crisis for Larry and Ruth another drama was progressing more or less swiftly to its conclusion down in Vera Cruz. Alan Massey had found his cousin in a wretched, vermin haunted shack, nursed in haphazard fashion by a slovenly, ignorant half-breed woman under the ostensible professional care of a mercenary, incompetent, drunken Mexican doctor who cared little enough whether the dog of an American lived ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... normal life of humanity for nearly immemorial years, a life of homely economies in the most intimate contact with cows and hens and patches of ground, a life that breathes and exhales the scent of cows and finds the need for stimulants satisfied by the activity of the bacteria and vermin it engenders. Such had been the life of the European peasant from the dawn of history to the beginning of the Scientific Era, so it was the large majority of the people of Asia and Africa had always been wont to live. For a time it had seemed that, by virtue of machines, ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... always been fruitful of demagogues. Such vermin find the soil of democratic government the most fertile and congenial for their operations, because the audiences to which they speak, the passions to which they appeal, are not always of the most ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... death. These men have learned warfare fighting against the heathen in Africa, and now they practise on poor harmless English folk the devil's tricks which they have picked up amongst the savages. The Lord help Monmouth's men should they be beaten! These vermin are more to be feared than hangman's cord or ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a fact that all our more pernicious weeds, like our vermin, are of Old World origin. They hold up their heads and assert themselves here, and take their fill of riot and license; they are avenged for their long years of repression by the stern hand of European agriculture. ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... these: that he regarded Servetus's defence as no better than the braying of an ass, and that the prisoner was like a villainous cur wiping his muzzle. Servetus answered in the same tone, his spirit unbroken by abuse and by his confinement in a horrible dungeon, where he suffered from hunger, cold, vermin, and disease. He was found guilty of heresy and sentenced to be burnt with slow fire. Calvin said that he tried to alter the manner of execution, but there is not a shred of evidence, in the minutes of the trial or elsewhere, that he did so. Possibly, if he made the request, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... an Englishman,—or a colonist, if you like the term better. I was in a village on the Connecticut frontier, when your savages came down upon us. No, I am wrong. They did nothing so manly as to come down upon us boldly. They slid among us like foul vermin afraid of the light. They achieved a notable victory, monsieur. I see that you recognize their prowess, and that the feast you have prepared for them is lavish. It was a noble battle. I regret you could not have seen it. There were ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... among whom we find scavengers, vermin-eaters, executioners, basket-makers, musicians, and professional burglars, probably represent the remnants of a Dravidian tribe crushed out of recognition by the invading Aryans and condemned to menial and degrading ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... her and her children—don't you recognise the beast? married for rank—could you expect otherwise from him? invites my Lord Highgate to his house in consideration of his balance at the bank;—sir, unless somebody's heel shall crunch him on the way, there is no height to which this aspiring vermin mayn't crawl. I look to see Sir Barnes Newcome prosper more and more. I make no doubt he will die an immense capitalist, and an exalted Peer of this realm. He will have a marble monument, and a pathetic funeral sermon. There is a divine in your family, Clive, that ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a boy of his antecedents. He even questioned the right and expediency of killing animals for food, although he never objected to partaking thereof when it was set before him. Fish, only, seemed to him legitimate prey in the way of sport; and for all noxious insects, snakes, or vermin of any description, he had a perfect hatred, setting at naught the principles of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty, and really taking a most reprehensible delight in tormenting them, altogether at variance with his ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... one of the cases that you sometimes meet, even in this country where we marry by Code, of a really blind attachment all on one side, without the faintest possibility of return. Miss Hollis looked on Pack as some sort of vermin running about the road. He had no prospects beyond Captain's pay, and no wits to help that out by one anna. In a large-sized man, love like ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... build up their huts or houses very handsomely, raddling or working it up like basket-work all the way round. This piece of ingenuity, although it looked very odd, was an exceeding good fence, as well against heat as against all sorts of vermin; and our men were so taken with it that they got the Indians to come and do the like for them; so that when I came to see the two Englishmen's colonies, they looked at a distance as if they all lived like bees in ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... The plant is sometimes attacked by a disease, the origin of which is unknown, when it suffers severely from certain noxious insects. [77] It is also attacked by rats and other predatory vermin; the former sometimes falling upon it in such numbers that they destroy the entire harvest in a single night. Travellers in America say that a well-kept cacao plantation is a very picturesque sight. In the ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... operation was completed just before dawn on the 25th, Battalion Headquarters being in a dug-out in the high ground South of Pontru. Fortunately we were there only two days, for the discomfort was very great, the dug-outs and cellars swarming with flies and vermin, and there was little other protection from the enemy shelling, which was fairly frequent. On September 26th we were relieved on an intensely dark night by the 1st Black Watch and went back to bivouacs just off the Vendelles-Bihecourt ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... youths In other days led frequent to the chace Of wild goat, hart and hare; but now he lodg'd A poor old cast-off, of his Lord forlorn, Where mules and oxen had before the gate Much ordure left, with which Ulysses' hinds Should, in due time, manure his spacious fields. There lay, with dog-devouring vermin foul 360 All over, Argus; soon as he perceived Long-lost Ulysses nigh, down fell his ears Clapp'd close, and with his tail glad sign he gave Of gratulation, impotent to rise And to approach his master as of old. Ulysses, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... while talking. The filth from the stalls of the mules and oxen had been piled there by slovenly servants, who should have removed it day by day to fertilize the fields. There, on the unwholesome heap, a poor, neglected dog was lying, devoured by noxious insects and vermin. It was Argus, whom Odysseus himself had raised before he went to Troy. In times gone by, the young men of Ithaca had made him most useful in the chase. He had scented the stag, the hare, and the wild goat for them many a time. But now that he was old no one cared for him, and ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... considered impossible. Normal health depends on right doing and being. Eternal vigilance is the price to be paid for the attainment and maintenance of the goal of normal life and progress. Eliminate all waste material from the body and all shifty vermin from the mind, and the millennium for all things in ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... shoes; that is a baser occupation than any trade in Hillsborough, I think. This is not as politely written as I could wish; but I am a blunt fellow, and I hope you will excuse it. I am not ungrateful to you for shooting those vermin, nor for your offer, though I can not ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... Beyond the vermin that infest the skin and the hair, tapeworm, and a few other intestinal worms, little if anything was known of morbific parasites before the Nineteenth Century; but the labors of Van Beneden, Kuechenmeister, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... and exhaustion she keeps up this schedule until she has walked a Marathon around the fine white marble building devoted to charity. At last she gets a ticket for a meal, or a sort of trading stamp by which she can get a room for the night in a vermin-infested lodging house, upon the additional payment of thirty cents. Now, this may seem exaggerated, but honestly, my boy, I have given you just about the course of action of these scientific philanthropic enterprises. They are ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... praise shall be expressed, Inoffensive, welcome guest! While the rat is on the scout, And the mouse with curious snout, With what vermin else infest Every dish, and spoil the best; Frisking thus before the fire, Thou hast ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... the captives were coming home. Prison after prison had given up its starving, vermin-eaten inmates, while all along the Northern lines loving hearts were waiting, and friendly hands outstretched to welcome them back to "God's land," as the poor, suffering creatures termed the soil over which waved the Stars and Stripes, ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... stood before his father. "Have the Dakoon's vermin fastened on the young bull at last?" asked Pango Dooni, his eyes glowering. "They crawled and fastened, but they have not fed," answered Tang-a-Dahit in a strong voice, for his wounds had not sunk deep. "By the Old Well of Jahar, which has one side to the mountain wall, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... vermin, only made to be exterminated; and they have, I think, considerable reason for their hatred. The pigs are capable of doing a great deal of damage. Fences must be strongly and closely put up to keep them out, and they must be continually examined and carefully repaired when necessary; ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... nothing but the bare ground, and a mass of indescribable filth, as may be imagined. Here, lying on the earth, were five men, with little or no clothing, covered with dirt and vermin. Two of them were in fairly good condition, an evidence that they had not ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... Spanish force on the Isthmus and nearly taken Nombre de Dios itself. These Maroons were the descendants of escaped negro slaves intermarried with the most warlike of the Indians. They were regular desperadoes, always, and naturally, at war with the Spaniards, who treated them as vermin to be killed at sight. Drake put the captured negroes ashore to join the Maroons, with whom he always made friends. Then with seventy-three picked men he made his dash for Nombre de Dios, leaving the rest under Ranse to guard ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... thinking of that realm of Love, See, oft, a dove Tangled in frightful nuptials with a snake; The tortured knot, Now, like a kite scant-weighted, flung bewitch'd Sunwards, now pitch'd, Tail over head, down, but with no taste got Eternally Of rest in either ruin or the sky, But bird and vermin each incessant strives, With vain dilaceration of both lives, 'Gainst its abhorred bond insoluble, Coveting fiercer any separate hell Than the most weary Soul in Purgatory On God's sweet breast to lie. And, in this sign, I con The guerdon of that golden Cup, ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... and tenderness is the description; it has a modernity of touch which will be often noticed in this second half of the Odyssey. Much comment has been bestowed upon the incident; but its most striking characteristic is its symbolism. The old dog, neglected now, full of vermin, hardly able to crawl, yet loyal in his heart; why should he not receive the praise of Eumaeus, who tells of his former skill in the chase! The dog Argo images the House of Ulysses at present; to such straits has fidelity come. A ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... see, amid the mimic rout A crawling shape intrude! A blood-red thing that writhes from out The scenic solitude! It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs The mimes become its food, And the angels sob at vermin fangs ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... comforted through God's spirit, then we must show also and prove our faith by such good works which God hath commanded. But so long as we live in this vale of misery, we shall be plagued and vexed with flies, with beetles, and with vermin, etc., that is, with the devil, with the world, and with our own flesh; yet we must press through, and not suffer ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... unrequited toil, and unspeakable hardship in convict camps,—five years of slaving by the side of human brutes, and of nightly herding with them in vermin-haunted huts,—Ben Davis had become like them. For a while he had received occasional letters from home, but in the shifting life of the convict camp they had long since ceased to reach him, if indeed they ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... my body! man, she's a witch—a witch! d'ye ken that?" cried the King, with a look of abhorrence; "a mischievous and malignant vermin, with which this pairt of our realm is sair plagued, but which, with God's help, we will thoroughly extirpate. Sae the lass is a daughter of Alice Nutter, ha! That accounts for your grewsome looks, lad. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... beast! Born among vermin in a black man's kraal! Allah give thee to the crows! Weary? What of it? What of my back, thou awkward earthquake! Thou plow-beast! A devil sit on thee! A devil drive thee! ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... is accomplished solely by knowledge. There are hundreds of women behind our lines who make clean and repair the dirty clothes of the troops. Afterwards, they are baked in very hot ovens which utterly destroy the vermin and also, it is said, diseases. We have, too, been issued iron helmets to protect the head against falling shots. It was asked of us all if any had an objection. The Sikhs reported that they had not found any permission ...
— The Eyes of Asia • Rudyard Kipling
... wrists were very much swollen. From Leghorn in the S.S. Derna he was shipped to Sardinia, where he had experience of several prisons, including that of Terranuova-Pausania, where water flows down the walls and vermin are everywhere. He received 2.75 lire a day with which to buy his food, and although he is a doctor they refused to let him read any medical books. When I asked him of what he had been guilty, he began by recounting his war work. Over 6000 Italian ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... with fever, and etiolates them; their multiplication becomes a plague of Egypt. We cannot think without affright of those lands where fakirs, bonzes, santons, Greek monks, marabouts, talapoins, and dervishes multiply even like swarms of vermin. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... were dried up. The grinning jaws disclosed teeth of ivory under the bluish lips; in place of the stomach there was a mass of earth-coloured flesh which seemed to be palpitating with the vermin that swarmed all over it. It writhed, with the sun's rays falling on it, under the gnawing of so many mouths, in this intolerable stench—a stench which was fierce and, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... marked advantages over the outside or the attic tank. In these, water gets warm in summer and freezes in winter. Vermin and dust get into the tank, and the water stagnates. In the pressure tank, water is ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... situation was normal, in Rotten Row Alley gnawing was heard, and it is thought that the enemy are sapping towards us." Then they have articles about the bad conditions of their trenches, and write home to say that the human vermin simply swarm there, and are swollen to a huge size ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... knife or dagger, From the puma and the jaguar, From the horrid boa-constrictor That has scared us in the pictur', From the Indians of the Pampas, Who would dine upon their grampas, From every beast and vermin That to think of sets us squirming, From every snake that tries on The traveller his p'ison, From every pest of Natur', Likewise the alligator, And from two things left behind him, (Be sure they'll try to find him,)— The tax-bill and assessor,— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... Hitchcock sneered. "But go ahead. I'm willing. And hurry up. I can't get out of this camp and away from its vermin any ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... protected by a layer of gravel and pitching, has been advocated as preventing any portion of the dam from becoming saturated. There are, however, evident objections to this method, as the puddle being comparatively unprotected would be more liable to damage by vermin, such as water rats, etc.; and in case of the earthwork dam at the back settling, as would certainly be the case, unless its construction extended over a very lengthened period, the puddle would be almost certain to become fissured and leaky; in addition, the comparative amounts of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... fewer people in each, than in former years. On the walls of the rooms paint and paper were taking the place of tapestry, and light colors, with brightness and cleanliness, were displacing soft dark tones, dirt, and vermin.[Footnote: Babeau, Les Bourgeois, ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... slaves might here and there be seen sleeping against the walls, or gossiping languidly on the faults of their respective lords. Sometimes an old beggar might be observed hunting on the well-stocked preserves of his own body the lively vermin of the South. Sometimes a restless child crawled from a doorstep to paddle in the stagnant waters of a kennel; but, with the exception of these doubtful evidences of human industry, the prevailing characteristic ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... view of the author, suspended from (to use the phrase of a late celebrated auctioneer) a hanging wood; and a very elaborate treatise on the Art of Rat-catching. In the advertisement of the latter work, the author engages it will enable the reader to "clear any house of these noxious vermin, however much infested, excepting only a certain great House in the neighbourhood of St. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... low on account of these new fields. It is possible that we may sell our lot at some small profit but it won't be the royal road to a fortune that you prophesied, nor will it help the firm out of the rut into which you have shoved it. My only regret in leaving Africa like this is that that vermin Williams will have no one to prosecute him. My head is almost ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... if we were to let them out, would soon be at him. No, no, John, sit still and put down your rifle; we can't afford to hurt wolves; their skins won't fetch a half-dollar, and their flesh is not fit for a clog, let alone a Christian. Let the vermin howl till he is tired; he'll be off to the woods ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... the neighbourhood of Bigbear Gully had committed numerous depredations at the diggings, and had murdered several white men, so that the latter had begun to regard the Red Men as their natural enemies. Indeed some of the more violent among them had vowed that they would treat them as vermin, and shoot down every native they chanced to meet, whether he belonged to the guilty tribe or not. The Indian who now approached the camp-fire of the white men knew that he had good ground to fear the nature of his ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne
... and in sickening specialty in some of the Hindu and Persian sacred books.1 Here worlds of nauseating disgusts, of loathsome agonies, of intolerable terrors, pass before us. Some are hung up by their tongues, or by their eyes, and slowly devoured by fiery vermin; some scourged with whips of serpents whose poisonous fangs lacerate their flesh at every blow; some forced to swallow bowls of gore, hair, and corruption, freshly filled as fast as drained; some packed immovably in red hot iron chests and laid in raging ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... rakish angles. Their officers would nod, glance enviously at the apple-trees and tents in our pleasant little orchard, and pass on to the front of the Front, and all that this implied in the way of mud, vermin, sudden death, suspense, and damnable discomfort. And returning to the orchard we offered selfish thanks to Providence in that we were not as the millions who hold and ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... disadvantages of the land, which cannot be allowed to remain, have been removed. Gorse and rocks may have to be cleared, and it is essential that at this stage an effort should be made to rid the course of rabbits and other undesirable vermin if any should infest it. Rabbits help to keep the grass nice and short; but they make too many holes in the course, and there is no alternative but to regard them as the enemies of golf, and to make out the death warrants of them all accordingly. The quickest and surest way of getting ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... on his feet; and a pair of ragged pantaloons, and the shreds of a striped shirt without sleeves, secured around the waist with a string, made his only clothing. In truth, he had scarce enough on to cover his nakedness, and that so filthy and swarming with vermin, that he kept his shoulders and hands busily employed; while his skin was so incrusted with dirt as to leave no trace of its original complexion. In this manner he was kept closely confined, and was more like a wild beast who saw ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... a tour through this magnificent land, must make up his mind to submit to much fatigue, some danger, and innumerable annoyances; such as filth, bad fare, the continual torment of vermin; lodgings, to which a stable with clean hay would be in comparison a paradise; knavish attempts at imposition of various kinds, etc. He must mount on a mule whose saddle is of rude and of abominable construction; ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... that near broke Orth'ris's heart, we set ut in the ravine for a night; an' a thief av a porcupine an' a civet-cat av a jackal roosted in ut, as well we knew in the mornin'. I put ut to you, sorr, is an elegint palanquin, fit for the princess, the natural abidin' place av all the vermin in cantonmints? We brought ut to you, afther dhark, and put ut in your shtable. Do not let your conscience prick. Think av the rejoicin' men in the pay-shed yonder— lookin' at Dearsley wid his head tied up in a towel—an' well knowin' that they can dhraw their ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... the propriety of having no shrubs or flowers or even a grass-plot immediately under the windows and about the doors of the house. A well exposed gravel or brick walk should be laid down on all sides of the house, as a necessary safeguard against both moisture and vermin. ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... before, I think, had I spent so absolutely uncomfortable a night. What with the rats, cockroaches, fleas, and other vermin with which the ship was overrun, to say nothing of the complication of stenches which poisoned the atmosphere, the midshipmen's berth aboard the Psyche was by no means an ideal place to sleep ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... that," the woman said. "Is there anything else you will want? What are you going to do with him if you get him free? They will hunt you down like vermin." ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... though I shall give you but a homely one: suppose a family to be troubled with vermin, and one or two of the family to be in chief the breeders, the way, the quickest way to clear that family, or at least to weaken the so swarming of those vermin, is, in the first place, to sweeten the skin, head, and clothes of the chief breeders; and then, though ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan
... quarters. As the bogs of Ireland by tradition expel toads and reptiles, he may well defy these small deer in his fastnesses. It seems the latter had not arrived at the exquisite policy adopted by the human vermin "between ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... house was built within the circuit for the Adelantado; meantime their strength began to fail for want of food. Rats, snakes, and vermin of every eatable size were soon exterminated from the environs. Three men stole a horse and ate it; they were tortured to make them confess the fact and then hanged for it; their bodies were left upon the gallows, and in the night all ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... reserve. He complained of the constantly increasing numbers of sectaries in his kingdom, and protested that his conscience would never be easy, nor his state secure until his realm should be delivered of "that accursed vermin." A civil revolution, under pretext of a religious reformation, was his constant apprehension, particularly since so many notable personages in the realm, and even princes of the blood, were already tainted ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... morning I found the bird again sitting motionless on the rim of the nest and gazing into it. I found one of the birds dead and the other nearly so. What had brought about the disaster I could not tell; no cause was apparent. I at first suspected vermin, but could detect none. The silent, baffled look of the mother bird I shall not soon forget. There was no demonstration of grief or alarm; only a brooding, ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... always poisoning out disease, as we smoke out vermin, is now seeking its last refuge behind the wooden cannon and painted port-holes of that unblushing system of false scientific pretences which I do not care to name in a discourse addressed to an audience devoted to the study of the laws of nature in the light ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... my stand for freedom, I'll jackal to no autocrat; But rogues with hands as red as Edom, Nihilist snake, Anarchist rat, I'd crush, and crime's curst league determine. I have no sympathy with vermin. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various
... touch on the method of concocting the poison: 'Then stole this Monk into the Garden and under a certain herb found out a Toad, which, squeezing into a cup,' &c. something to that effect. I suspect, par parenthese, you have found out by this time my odd liking for 'vermin'—you once wrote 'your snails'—and certainly snails are old clients of mine—but efts! Horne traced a line to me—in the rhymes of a ''prentice-hand' I used to look over and correct occasionally—taxed me (last week) with having altered the wise line 'Cold as a lizard in a sunny ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... life. 'The man they called Dizzy' can despise a miserable creature having the honour to be as heartily as Carlyle himself, and, if his theories are serious, sometimes took our blessed Constitution to be a mere shelter for such vermin as the Tapers and Tadpoles. Two centuries of a parliamentary monarchy and a parliamentary Church, says Coningsby, have made government detested, and religion disbelieved. 'Political compromises,' says the omniscient Sidonia, 'are not to be tolerated ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... lord, how that can be," said Allan Redmain scornfully, "for the kingdom of which you boast is but a barren rock in the mid sea, and methinks your beasts of the chase are but vermin rats ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... group of men broke up. "He's got the 'coppers,'" said one. Nobody else spoke, and they began to melt away. They disappeared through a door at the back which led into a yard, for, like rats, the human vermin always have a second way out of ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... about the mail—the guard, the coachman, and myself being allowed for—except only one—a horrid creature of the class known to the world as insiders, but whom young Oxford called sometimes "Trojans," in opposition to our Grecian selves, and sometimes "vermin." A Turkish Effendi, who piques himself on good breeding, will never mention by name a pig. Yet it is but too often that he has reason to mention this animal; since constantly, in the streets of Stamboul, he has his trousers deranged or polluted by this vile creature running between ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... the Sabbath, not even insects. Speaking of the Christian monks, Jortin says that "Some of them, out of mortification, would not catch or kill the vermin which devoured them; in which they far surpassed the Jews, who only spared them upon the Sabbath day." This interesting fact is supported by the authority of a Kabbi, who is quoted in Latin to the effect that cracking a flea and ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... eyes, and yet he seemed to see them as if reflected in a brilliant mirror. He could distinguish even the hairs on the rat and suddenly another impulse came over him—the impulse to stoop down and catch the long-tailed vermin in his beak and claws. Wendelin had been changed into a falcon, and the rat struggled in vain to escape ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... other hand, is a necessity of the human nature, without seeing and doing which a man can never attain to the truth and blessedness of his own being. It was the duty of the early hermits to encourage the growth of vermin upon their bodies, for they supposed that was pleasing to God; but they could not fare so well as if they had seen the truth that the will of God was cleanliness. And there may be far more serious things done by Christian people against ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... France are said to be extremely careful as to what they eat, betraying a great fear of being poisoned. It is, of course, a fact that one grain of vermin-killer would dispose of ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various
... Poet to learned critics does submit, But scorns those little vermin of the pit, Who noise and nonsense vent instead ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... through the dire retribution which had fallen on that monstrous European society which so many of us had thought eternal, abjured and abused the common sort whose efforts were all that could save us. What did they call the Nobodies? Slackers, cowards, rabbits, and field vermin; mean creatures unable to leave their football and their drink. I recall one sombre winter's day of the first November of the War, when a column of wounded Belgian soldiers shambled by me, coming out of the Yser line, on the way to succour which I knew they would not find. The doctors ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... down to sleep" is but the bitter protest from the heart of the woman who, after putting the little white children piously repeating this child prayer, "Now I lay me down to sleep," in their immaculate beds, herself retired to a vermin infested cabin with no time left for cleaning it. It was a tirade against the oppressor but the comic, good-natured "It means nothing" was there to be held up to those calling the one repeating it to task. The parody on "Reign, Master Jesus, Reign!" ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... is a sketch of the ground-plan of the house and fowl-yard. H is the fowl house. No. 1 is a small pit filled with dry sand and ashes, in which the fowls may roll to free themselves from vermin. No. 2 is another small trench or pit, containing horse-dung and rubbish of various kinds, to be frequently renewed, in which they may amuse themselves in scraping for corn and worms. No. 3 is a square of turf, on which they may pasture and amuse ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... 'Travels in Tartary':—"We had now been travelling for nearly six weeks, and still wore the same clothing we had assumed on our departure. The incessant pricklings with which we were harassed, sufficiently indicated that our attire was peopled with the filthy vermin to which the Chinese and Tartars are familiarly accustomed; but which, with Europeans, are objects of horror and disgust. Before quitting Tchagan-Kouren, we had bought in a chemist's shop a few sapeks'-worth of mercury. We now made with it a prompt and specific ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... many members of the terrier tribe, nor will he be found quarreling with other dogs. From the bull terrier side he inherits a lively mood, the quality of taking care of himself if attacked by another dog, and of his owner, too, if necessary, the propensity to be a great destroyer of all kinds of vermin if properly trained, and an ideal watch dog at night. No wonder he is popular, he deserves to be. The standard describes ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... cried the former. "You two halt to cover us just at the water's edge. That'll give the boys time to get aboard, and then we can laugh at the copper-skinned vermin. Look sharp and ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... pleasures of different breeds vary, thus the shepherd-dog delights in chasing the sheep, but has no wish to kill them,—the terrier (see Knight) delights in killing vermin, and the spaniel in finding game. But it is impossible to separate their mental peculiarities in the way I have done: the tumbling of pigeons, which I have instanced as a consensual movement, might ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... Varuna. Vatea. Vaterland. Vaterschacht. Vaterstadt. Vaticanus. "Velvets." Venilia. Venus. Vermin. Veronica. Vestice. Vera madre. Violet. Viracocha. "Virginia Reel." Virginity. Virgin Mary. Virgin-Mother. Virgins. Vishnu. Vision-seers ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... my journey, and I also observed the path which I took was a beaten one. At length, having reached the top, I went to a little distance from the road, to shake my long beard, which was constantly filled with vermin, notwithstanding all my care. Having lain near an hour quiet behind a bush, without seeing any of the travellers appear, I returned again to the edge of the hill. My God, what was my astonishment when I could see no ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... England they were regarded as cruel barbarians because they refused to permit Hottentot herds, swarming with vermin, to be seated in their front rooms at the time of family prayer. They found themselves pictured as the harshest of taskmasters, as unfeeling violators of native rights. And of late years it had become plain to them that the views of their opponents were being acted ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... year. There was no spiritual discipline to which this pretraille was amenable.[148:1] It was the constant effort of good citizens, in the legislature and in the vestries, if not to starve out the vermin, at least to hold them in some sort of subjection to the power of the purse. The struggle was one of the antecedents of the War of Independence, and the vestries of the Virginia parishes, with their combined ecclesiastical and civil functions, became a training-school for ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... The very building itself was radically defective. Huge sewers underlay it, and cesspools loaded with filth wafted their poison into the upper rooms. The floors were in so rotten a condition that many of them could not be scrubbed; the walls were thick with dirt; incredible multitudes of vermin swarmed everywhere. And, enormous as the building was, it was yet too small. It contained four miles of beds, crushed together so close that there was but just room to pass between them. Under such conditions, ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... a regard for her far warmer than my professed friendship, and, remembering my suit to Jennie Burton, is she learning to despise me as fickle, or, worse, as a hypocritical specimen of that meanest type of human vermin—a male flirt?" and his face grew so white that Ida in her turn was not ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... was next examined; it was new, but not of a costly material. Removing this, the man went out with his portion of the spoils, and locked the door, leaving the half-clothed, unconscious girl lying on the damp, filthy straw, that swarmed with vermin. It was cold as well as damp, and the chill of a bleak November day began creeping into her warm blood. But the stupefying draught had been well compounded, ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... assist in carrying him, and after a time two gentlemen from Richmond stepped forward and helped convey him to her house. There she watched over him for hours, as he was in a terrible state from neglect, having had blisters applied to his chest which had never been dressed and were full of vermin. ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... they must be envelopped in oil cloth, and then put on board ship in such place as will be likely not to be disturbed till their arrival, and as far from the heat and vermin as possible. ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... makes up my mind to arsk for a day out; which, has the cold mutting was jest enuf for mastur and missus without me, was grarnted me. I soon clears up the kitshun, and goes up stares to clean mysef. I puts on my silk gronin-napple gownd, and my lase pillowrin, likewise my himitashun vermin tippit, (give me by my cussen Harry, who keeps kumpany with me on hot-dinner days), also my tuskin bonnit, parrersole, and blacbag; and i takes mysef orf to South-street, but what was my felines, wen, on wringing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various
... No one could wonder at this who had for a moment looked upon the scene. The poor fellows just arrived had perhaps not had their clothes off since they were wounded or were seized with cholera, and they were steeped in blood and filth, and swarming with vermin. To obtain shirts and towels was hard work, because it had to be proved that they brought none with them. They were laid on the floor in the corridors, as close as they could be packed, thus breathing and contaminating the air which was to have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... shifting over to another hedgerow he shot a jay and gloried in its splendour. The keeper, however, moderated any secret intentions there might have been as to the plumage by one sentence: "That's another for the vermin book. I gets a ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... divested myself of prejudice as much as possible. If store cattle of the Aberdeen and Angus breed out of our best herds can be secured, I believe no other breed of cattle will pay the grazier more money in the north for the same value of keep. But there is a race of starved vermin which is known by some in the north by the name of "Highland hummlies," which I consider the worst of all breeds. No keep will move them much. At the top of these I must place those with the brown ridge along the back. They can be made older, but it takes more ability ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... zone, like things of larger size, as serpents, basilisks, crocodiles, scorpions, rats, and so forth. Every one knows that swamps, stagnant ponds, dung, fetid bogs, are full of such things; also that noxious insects fill the atmosphere in clouds, and noxious vermin walk the earth in armies, and consume its herbs to the very roots. I once observed in my garden, that in the space of a half yard, nearly all the dust was turned into minute insects, for when it ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... trouble. But this was the calm of exhaustion merely. The unvarying impression produced by the Irish letters of the time is that Englishmen regarded the native chiefs as a low type of savage, and the common folk as a noxious kind of vermin; and it is painfully clear that the standard of civilisation was of that debased type which must prevail where the governing powers have habitually set the example of distorting the first four commandments of the decalogue ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... back to the door and looked around from one to another, a scorching contempt in his eyes. "Rats—that's what you are, vermin that feed on offal. You haven't got an honest fight in you. All you can do is skulk behind cover to take a man when ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... spurn'd, yet plied with England's gold, Till every scoundrel's stock of oaths was sold; Then hither sent by hirelings vile as they, To pass for sterling truth in open day. Monstrous fatuity! and British peers Have lent these vermin not unwilling ears; For new-born lies have barter'd ancient law, Broke public faith, to patch a private flaw, And made a court that freemen never saw. ACCUSERS, JURY, JUDGES, all in ONE! O England! ...
— The Ghost of Chatham; A Vision - Dedicated to the House of Peers • Anonymous
... and once fairly on the line they will give plenty of music and get over the ground at a pace almost incredible. Dachshunds hunt well in a pack, and, though it is not their recognised vocation, they can be successfully used on hare, on fox, and any form of vermin that wears a furry coat. But his legitimate work is directed against the badger, in locating the brock under ground, worrying and driving him into his innermost earth, and there holding him until dug ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... trimmed, trained, and free from blemish, the walks clean and smooth and graveled. But that day is gone by. Our descendants have forgotten us. My grandson lives in a stately house built with money made by these old hands of mine, and I sleep in a neglected grave with invading vermin that gnaw my shroud to build them nests withal! I and friends that lie with me founded and secured the prosperity of this fine city, and the stately bantling of our loves leaves us to rot in a dilapidated cemetery which neighbors curse and strangers scoff at. See ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... accumulations of sewerage, refuse scattered in all directions, and often flowing beneath your feet; courts, many of them, which the sun never penetrates, which are never visited by a breath of fresh air. You have to ascend rotten stair-cases, grope your way along dark and filthy passages swarming with vermin. Then, if you are not driven back by the intolerable stench, you may gain admittance into the dens in which these thousands of beings herd together. Eight feet square! That is about the average size of many of these rooms.... Where ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... two forces in life—the destructive and constructive. On the one side greed, selfishness, materialism: on the other generosity, sacrifice, and idealism. Which of them builded for the future? She saw men as wolves, sharks, snakes, vermin, and opposed to them men as lions and eagles. She saw women who did not inspire men to fare forth to seek, to imagine, to dream, to hope, to work, to fight. She began to have a glimmering of what a ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... you ashamed of yourself. Nor is it any good to curse you for corrupting England; nor are you the right person to curse. It is the English who deserve to be cursed, and are cursed, because they allowed such vermin to crawl into the high places of their heroes and their kings. I won't dwell on the idea that you're Verner, or the throttling might begin, after all. Is there anyone else you could be? Surely you're not some servant of the other rival organization. I can't believe ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... long, owing to the absence of cutting facilities. Mine had almost reached my shoulders, but I was extremely careful to submit it to a thorough wash every morning because I shared the fear of many of my companions that, owing to the congestion of the camp, we should be overrun with vermin. Undoubtedly Major Bach also anticipated such a state of affairs, because one morning he appeared upon parade with a pair of clippers which he had unearthed from somewhere and curtly commanded every man ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... shadows; across a gorse-grown common, sacred home of an old dog-fox that had defied the South Meadshire hounds for five seasons; and so, out of her father's property on to that of Jim Graham, in which blood relations of the Kencote game and vermin were protected with equal care, in order that the Grahams might fulfil the destiny appointed for them and the Clintons and the whole race of ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... a cultured French prelate, took a different view. He inveighed against the "foolish poems, the lies of the poets, the sing-song of the women, the coarse innuendoes of the jesters." "Such vermin flourishes on the stream of temporal abundance; it literally crawls over all food, for, as a rule, the meal is followed by a deluge of idle talk." A reconciliation of the ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... understander of these mysterious ebbs and flows is Tolstoi. They throb all through his novels. In his 'War and Peace,' the hero, Peter, is supposed to be the richest man in the Russian empire. During the French invasion he is taken prisoner, and dragged through much of the retreat. Cold, vermin, hunger, and every form of misery assail him, the result being a revelation to him of the real scale of life's values. "Here only, and for the first time, he appreciated, because he was deprived of it, the happiness of eating when he was hungry, of drinking when he was thirsty, of sleeping when ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... the charitable lady passed by them, which when the old woman saw, she rose to her and offered up prayers for her, saying, 'O my daughter, O thou to whom pertain goodness and beneficence and charity and almsdoing, know that this young man is a stranger, and indeed want and vermin and hunger and nakedness and cold slay him.' When the lady heard this, she gave her alms of that which was with her; and indeed her heart inclined unto Selim, [but she knew him ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... under an unlucky star," interrupted the old woman who was imprisoned for incendiarism. "Only think, to entice the lad's wife and lock him himself up to feed vermin, and me, too, in my old days—" she began to retell her story for the hundredth time. "If it isn't the beggar's staff it's the prison. Yes, the beggar's staff and the prison don't wait for ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... away floors and sometimes cause the collapse of houses by wearing away the wooden supports. Another frequent guest is the driver ant, which travels in armies and frequently takes complete possession of a house. It destroys all the vermin but the human inmates must beat a retreat ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... such vermin are used to being stared at. In London, Newgate and Bridewell are theatres as well as the Cockpit or the King's House, and the world of mode flock to the one spectacle as often as to the other. But see! the sloop has passed the marsh and has a clean ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... that unsteady bridge," said I, "see, where the caiman lies ready to devour us! If, by the least divergence from the path, we should be snared in a morass, see, where those myriads of scarlet vermin scour the border of the thicket! Once helpless, how they would swarm together to the assault! What could man do against a thousand of such mailed assailants? And what a death were that, to perish ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the watering-places of Europe, excepting that, in the latter, the hammock is suspended by the chair in the reading-room and coffee-house, or the bench on the promenade. The sultry nights in Chorillos are rendered doubly unpleasant by the swarms of vermin which infest the houses. Fleas, bugs, mosquitoes and sancudos, combine to banish rest from the couch of even the ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... bull-dog, and a bullfinch, and an ermine, All private favourites of Don Juan;—for (Let deeper sages the true cause determine) He had a kind of inclination, or Weakness, for what most people deem mere vermin, Live animals: an old maid of threescore For cats and birds more penchant ne'er displayed, Although he was not old, nor ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... month before they are wanted for use; but if this cannot be conveniently done, be particular in washing them with boiling water, in which some unslacked lime must be mixed. This will in some measure answer the purpose of paint in effectually destroying the vermin, or the eggs which may have been deposited in the crevices ...
— The art of promoting the growth of the cucumber and melon • Thomas Watkins
... the finest fellows in the land!' So they said when they saw the poor devil dragging himself on foot after their horses' heels, shivering in winter and sweating in summer, rusting and decaying in old age. Well, what has happened? That flea, that vermin, has kept them in the memory of men longer than their castles stood, long after their arms and their armour had rusted in the ground. I love those old parchments. I respect and revere them. Like ivy, they clothe the ruins and keep ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... of German origin fought and died with the Americans, but nobody thought of them as Germans now, and least of all did they so think of themselves. In the mind of the Allied nations, German and vermin were linked in rhyme ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... bottom. To these two groups let us add the social parasites, represented by thieves, drunkards, and persons of the baser sort whose business it is to trade in human passion. We revolt from the red aphides upon the plant, the caterpillar upon the tree, the vermin upon bird or beast. How much more do we revolt from those human vermin whose business it is to propagate parasites upon the body politic! The condemnation of life is that a man consumes more than he produces, taking out of society's granary that which other hands ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... therefore somewhat resembles the spent or gas lime of the coal-gas industry. This sulphur, together, no doubt, with the traces of acetylene clinging to it, renders the residue a valuable material for killing the worms and vermin which tend to infest heavily manured and under-cultivated soil. Acetylene lime has been found efficacious in exterminating the "finger-and-toe" of carrots, the "peach-curl" of peach-trees, and in preventing cabbages from being "clubbed." It may be applied to the ground alone, or after ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... added, "is what's the good o' bein' born at all if ye've got ter die so soon! An' more'n all that, if life's the Lord's blessin', as the widder b'lieves, why are so many only born to suffer, or be crippled all their lives? An' why are snakes an' all sorts o' vermin, to say nothin' o' cheatin' lawyers, like ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... plantains, and turnips of oranges. Bamboo sheds have given way to neatly whitewashed villages, and the fields are fenced with rows of aloe. But, drawing nearer, we find the habitations are in reality miserable mud hovels, without windows, and tenanted by vermin and ragged poverty. There are herds of cattle and fields of grain; yet we shall not find a quart of milk or a loaf of bread for sale. The descent into the valley is very precipitous, and, after a rain, alarmingly slippery. Mules, drawing their legs together, slide down with startling velocity, ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... nothing else the matter with him. It was just this: "You haven't given me what I want; now I'll kill you." For months after each presidential inauguration the hotels of Washington are roosts for these buzzards. They are the crawling vermin of this nation. Guiteau was no rarity. There were hundreds of Guiteaus in Washington after the inauguration, except that they had not the courage to shoot. I saw them some two months or six weeks after. They were mad enough to do it. I saw ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... ever we slew stoat or wild-cat,' cried the other, slipping under the waggon. 'We are keeping the Lord's preserves now, brother Wat, and truly these are some of the vermin ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... option, by which he had it in his power to regain immediate freedom."—"What!" cried the painter, in despair, "become a singer? Gadzooks! and the devil and all that! I'll rather be still where I am, and let myself be devoured by vermin." Then thrusting out his throat—"Here is my windpipe," said he; "be so good, my dear friend, as to give it a slice or two: if you don't, I shall one of these days be found dangling in my garters. What an ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... Normally he is in the front line trenches for a week, in the reserve trenches for a week, and in rest for a week. This means that he cannot get a bath for at least two weeks, and he doesn't. So that though a soldier goes back into the trenches clean and free from vermin he is sure to become reinfected from lice left in the dugouts; or some lice eggs on his clothes perhaps have escaped destruction, and he may be as lousy as ever when he comes out of the trenches again. The old straw in the barns and the billets is ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... whatever remaining space there may be in the patios not taken up by the cisterns. The risk of contaminating the water is very great, and in dry seasons the supply is entirely exhausted. Epidemics are frequent, and the town is alive with vermin, fleas, cockroaches, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... ankles were in stocks, a chain about his waist was looped in a ring that hung from the wall. About his body were tattered furs, his hair was tangled, the face drawn and yellow. Vermin were visible on his person. His lips twitched, and his gums, discolored, were as those of a camel that has journeyed too far. A tooth projected, green as a fresh almond is; the chin projected too, and from it on one side a rill ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... Andy thought idle and childish. For the rest, he had thought little about her, except that she was a strangely clean and silent woman, and kind, even to tenderness,—to him; but to the very bats in the barn, or old Wart, or any other vermin, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... were made in those days, and knight or noble, companion or grand master, basha or boy, was, if caught, condemned to the rowers' bench to slave at the oar beneath the boatswain's lash, perchance alongside some degraded criminal, filthy and swarming with vermin. While Dragut was employed as a galley slave there came on board the craft in which he rowed Monsieur Parisot, Grand Master of the Knights of Malta. This high officer, recognising his old enemy, called ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... to appointment. The cleansing process was carried into effect most thoroughly, and no vermin were left to tell the tale of suffering they had caused. Straightway the passengers were made comfortable in every way, and the spirit of freedom seemed to be burning like "fire shut up in the bones." The appearance alone of these men indicated their manhood, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... place, this was the time of the year when the flies and manifold sort of vermin, flying, crawling, hopping, hungry, and ever biting, were in the full rampancy of their young vigor. It was not only spiteful enemies in human form, that sent crashing shells and piercing bullets, but every kind of nipping, boring, sucking, and stinging creatures ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... Ganlesse, "I will say that for thee, thou hast a set of the most useless, scoundrelly, insolent vermin about thee, that ever ate up ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... British horses refuse to eat the meal ground from the mixture of wheat, barley, oats, lentiles, millet, and a hundred unknown seeds of weeds and collections of filth, which forms the produce of their fields. For poverty, vermin, and disease, Egypt is proverbial. Let us hear a scoffer's testimony, however: "In Egypt there is no middle class, neither nobility, clergy, merchants, nor landholders. A universal air of misery in all the traveler meets points ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... rain of shells that may smash to pieces any village on the line of retreat; gas may be used, creeping into the refuges where the non-combatant population has taken shelter, and choking them there like vermin in a hole. War is no longer a civilly organized affair of pitched battles; it is a wild fury of destruction, raging across the ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... no prisoners took after this," he says grimly whenever he hears of a new outrage. "Vermin—that's what they are," he says, "and ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... that's in the trenches Writers make a solemn fuss; For the vermin 'n' the stenches Little ladies pity us; But the yearn that's honest dinkum, 'N' the prayer what ain't a sham Is that Fritz may bust 'n' sink 'em Ships of jam, jam, JAM! For we bolt 'em, chew 'em, drink 'em, Million billion bar'ls of beastly, cloyin' ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... there you are sure to find some kind of habitation; looking as if it had grown there, like a fungus. Against the Government House, against the old Senate House, round about any large building, little shops stick close, like parasite vermin to the great carcass. And for all this, look where you may; up steps, down steps, anywhere, everywhere; there are irregular houses, receding, starting forward, tumbling down, leaning against their neighbors, crippling themselves or their friends by some means or other, until one, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... dream of little pigs, but unfortunate to dream of big bullocks. If you dream you have lost a tooth, you may be sure that you will shortly lose a friend; and if you dream that your house is on fire, you will receive news from a far country. If you dream of vermin, it is a sign that there will be sickness in your family; and if you dream of serpents, you will have friends who, in the course of time, will prove your bitterest enemies; but, of all dreams, it is most fortunate if you dream that you are wallowing up to ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... with the nastiness of their persons, which often smell disagreeably from the quantity of grease about them, and their clothes never being washed. We have seen them eat the vermin, with which their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr |
