"Bats" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... boy be removed from her school—all this according to the earnest biographer. The facts are that the boy had so much energy and restless ambition; was so full of brimming curiosity, mischief and imagination—introducing turtles, bats and mice on various occasions—that he led the whole school a merry chase and wore the nerves of the ancient maiden ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... them. They know that bats and dormice and other things sleep all the winter; so why should not swallows sleep? They see the swallows about the water, and often dipping almost into it. They know that fishes live under water, and that many insects—like May-flies ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... ready on time, for a local tailor had agreed to make as many as were needed of various sizes, and to have them done with a rush. Already Mr. Leonard, being furnished with ample funds, had ordered bats and balls, bases, and all manner of necessary adjuncts that go with a well-organized baseball team. Meanwhile, they must make a virtue of necessity, and do the best they could with the stock ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... through this performance, and I am told found "plenty plenty" bats, and hedgehogs, and snakes. They could not tell me his name, which I much regretted. As we had no store of bush lights we went no further than the portals; indeed, strictly between ourselves, if I had ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... heard the cropping of the goats, the jaws' champ when they chewed the crisp leaves; the flicker of the bats' wings. In the marsh, half a mile away, the chorus of frogs, when it swelled up, drowned all nearer noise; but when it broke off suddenly, those others resumed their hold upon the stillness. It was a breathless night of suspense. Anything might ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... existence. For the sake of internal safety a wall has been built round the top of the precipice, and at certain points you may look over this parapet, sheer down some ten or twelve hundred feet, into an abyss fit only to be the habitation of the owls, bats, and birds of prey which frequent its solitudes. There seems no resting-place for any wingless creature: thus the strange birds which haunt the wild recesses of the rocks do so in perfect security, and their varied cries, along with the roar of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... The sounds which eddied the enveloping silence seemed to echo in his ears the tread of mediaeval warriors. In the wraith-like shadows he saw the armored forms of Conquistadores in mortal strife with vulpine buccaneers. In the whirring of the bats which flouted his face he heard the singing of arrows and the hiss of hurled rocks. In the moan of the ocean as it broke on the coral reef below sounded the boom of cannon, the curses of combatants, and the groans of the dying. Here and there moved tonsured ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... us that bats possessed the power of rendering the eggs of storks unfruitful. Accordingly, when once a stork's egg was touched by a bat it became sterile; and in order to preserve it from the injurious influence, the stork placed in its ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... to spend a great deal of money in giving a Halloween party. With a little time, some suitable paper and a pair of sharp scissors the witches, pumpkin faces, cats and bats, which are the distinctive features of this decoration, may be easily made at home. Yellow, red and black are the colors and the most fascinating crepe paper can be had for a few cents. This is the best material to use, as it lends itself ...
— Armour's Monthly Cook Book, Volume 2, No. 12, October 1913 - A Monthly Magazine of Household Interest • Various
... of the thing, and by way of paying off some old grudge for a black mark; but there was a strong spice of humanity at the bottom even of his frolics. It happened one day, that his friend Ben Johns told him that one of the bats which had done terrible execution on the tutor's windows had also played havoc on his table, breaking a bottle of ink, and deluging some half-dozen of the tutor's books; "and do you know," said Johns, "the poor man who has made such a loss ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... in one hand, a hatchet in the other, and a bundle of twigs under his arm, he entered the dark cavern. The dampness smote his cheek, bats flapped their wings in his face. Shivering with fear and cold, he pressed on through a long passage under an arched and blackened roof. As he passed along he dropped his twigs, one after another, so that they might guide ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... go and explore one of the islands that studded Cambridge Gulf, in search of a kind of shell mud-fish which I was very partial to. I also wanted to make the acquaintance of the bats or flying foxes I had seen rising in clouds every evening at sunset. I required the skins of these curious creatures for sandals. This would perhaps be a year after my advent amongst the blacks. As usual, Yamba was my only companion, ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... evolutionists that wings as organs of flight have been independently evolved in at least four different lines—namely, in insects, the fossil pterodactyls, birds and bats. That an organ so highly specialized as any one of these wings could be evolved seems improbable; while the evolution of the four different kinds, independently of each other, only increases the improbability. The difficulty, however, ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... bear and deer had avoided even when hard driven, and inviting only to copperhead, skunk, and fox. About it lay "laurel-hells" thick-matted and gnarled, briars that were like entanglements of barbed wire, and woods so black of recess that bats flew through their corridors of pine at midday. But these men had cut, and used familiarly, tortuous and hidden zig-zags of entry and exit, and they ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... Bats fly only at night. They soon become friendly with any one who is kind to them, and will come to be fed or stroked. One who has studied them says that the good they do is very great and that the value of one of the little animals might easily ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... swollen, lustful, unclean things; and it was whilst we staggered on through the swamp in agony of mind and body that we saw the light of many torches amid the trees ahead of us, and in their smoky glare witnessed the flight of hundreds of bats. The moonlight creeping dimly through the mist, and the torchlight—how do you say?—enflaming the vegetation, created a scene like that of Inferno, in which naked figures danced wildly, ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... of the hayfields and the honeysuckle in the hedges, owls hooted mysteriously, and the frogs croaked in some distant pond. Creatures never seen in the daytime were now awake and busy. As Lilac ran along, the bats whirred close past her face, and she saw in the grass by the wayside the steady little light of the glow-worms. It was certainly very late; there was hardly a glimmer of hope that anyone would be up at the farm. It ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... tropical one. We know that the neighbourhood of the Isle of Sheppey, at the mouth of the Thames, was covered with rich tropic vegetation; with screw pines and acacias, canes and gourds, tenanted by opossums, bats, and vultures: that huge snakes twined themselves along the ground, tortoises dived in the pools, and crocodiles basked on the muds, while the neighbouring seas swarmed with sharks as huge and terrible as those of a ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... so many fortresses. They were used formerly for mysterious and complicated rites, and in them, as everywhere else, there is no corner of the wall but is overloaded with figures and hieroglyphs. Bats are asleep in the blue ceilings, where the winged discs, painted in fresco, look like flights of birds; and the hornets of the neighbouring fields have built their nests there in hundreds, so that they ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... telling you. I couldn't chase her forever, could I? I tried to track her as soon as it got a little light and I could see where she'd been sliding and slipping along, and honestly, I've been nearly bats with worry till I got a trace of her again back in ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... the haste we could! The gentle scolding given and past, We bade each other good-night at last When floating in the stillness by Came sounds like "late," and "supper," and "bed;" And brighter through a deepening sky A million stars shone o'er my head, And bats ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... hopped about as frogs do; another time he thought he was dead, and then they had to bury him; not a year passed but he got some such hypochondriac notions into his head. At this season he imagined that he was a bat, and when he went abroad to take the air, he used to scream like bats in a high thin tone; and then he would flap his hands and body as though he were about to fly. The doctors, when they saw the fit coming on him, and his old servants, gave him all the distractions they could think of; and since they had noticed that he derived much pleasure ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... and writing paper and baseballs and bats and boxing gloves and chocolate and cigarettes and motion pictures and lectures and theatrical entertainments. Home comes with the hut, bringing all the love and care and cheer of the folks who have ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... that mammals appear and disappear at a quicker rate than other and lower animals. Though terrestrial mammals do not occur on oceanic islands, aerial mammals do occur on almost every island. New Zealand possesses two bats found nowhere else in the world: Norfolk Island, the Viti Archipelago, the Bonin Islands, the Caroline and Marianne Archipelagoes, and Mauritius, all possess their peculiar bats. Why, it may be asked, has the supposed creative force produced bats and no other mammals on remote islands? On ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... Temple's innermost Shrine is set, Where the bats and shadows dwell, The worn and ancient Symbol of Life, at rest In its oval shell, By which the men, who, of old, the land possessed, Represented their Great Destroying Power. I cannot forget That, just as my life was touching its fullest flower, Love came and destroyed ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... only blond-haired boy in the area building had something to do with it. Having to do housework had more. Then he had none of the possessions which the other boys of his own age treasured—bats, and balls, "scooters," roller skates, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... gold and silver plate. His dress, which he often changed, was composed of the wool of the vicuna wrought into mantles, so fine that it had the appearance of silk. He sometimes exchanged these for a robe made of the skins of bats, as soft and sleek as velvet. Round his head he wore the llautu, a woollen turban or shawl of the most, delicate texture, wreathed in folds of various bright colors; and he still continued to encircle his temples with the borla, the crimson threads ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... one of the Bats, who hang, head downwards, by their hind-legs from the roof of their caves. A special formation of the toes enables birds to sleep on one leg, which automatically and without fatigue clutches the swaying bough. The Empusa shows me nothing akin to their ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... factions.—God help poor Ireland! when its inhabitants are so pugnacious, that even the grave is no security against getting their crowns cracked, and their bones fractured! Well, any how, skulls and bones flew in every direction—stones and brick-bats were also put in motion; spades, shovels, loaded whips, pot-sticks, churn-staffs, flails, and all kinds of available ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... can a mortal weak, Pin faith on what he cannot comprehend? We grope for light,—but all in vain we seek, Oblivion seems poor mortal's truest friend. Like bats at noonday, blindly on we go, For ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... said Schuyler, "you and Archie are just now as blind as two bats. You don't see what you are doing, and you don't see what you ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... alone among the objects at which "Orion" Horne tilted. He also disapproved of cricket. "The mania," he says, "for bats and balls in the boiling sun during last summer exceeded all rational excitement. The newspapers caught the epidemic, and, while scarcely noticing other far more useful games, they devoted columns upon columns ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Monitors are awake, and some of the Eleven are not oiling their bats, some of the Scotch ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... games and frolics. Such as were played with balls, bats, and bags of beans, David thought he would like very much. But the boys only scoffed when he asked them to teach him how to play. They laughed when a dog chased a cat, and they thought it very, very funny when Tony, the old ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... opossums, and flying squirrels, which we took to be bats; and we occasionally caught sight of wild dogs or dingos,— hideous, savage-looking creatures, though they always ran away from us when we ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... and squirrels four pairs, cats and bears three pairs, most of the ruminants and many of the rodents two pairs, each provided with a teat or nipple (mastos). In the various genera of the half-apes (lemurs) the number varies a good deal. On the other hand, the bats and apes, which only beget one young at a time as a rule, have only one pair of mammary glands, and these are found at the breast, ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... impose my own terms; I have then conquered an HONORABLE peace for France—one that we can subscribe to without blushing. Ah, I see a brilliant future! It is time to begin. My eagles are ascending; they are not ravens or bats—they are soaring to the sun." As the emperor uttered these words his soul illuminated his face; he was again the ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... described in Historical Collections of Georgia, by the Rev. George White, 3d edition, New York, 1835, p. 670, which took place in Walker County, Georgia, between Chatooga and Chicamauga. The ball was thrown up at the centre. The bats were described as curiously carved spoons. If the ball touched the ground the play stopped and it was thrown up again. Rev. J. Owen Dorsey in a paper entitled "Omaha Sociology," printed in the Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, etc, 1881-1882, ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... stricken tree, and his face was as the face of a goblin, with a long, peaked nose, and loose, protruding lips, traitors to the few and evil teeth that interwalled his livid gums, and his ears stood out like bats' wings from his yellow, wrinkled cheeks. He was visibly punished by his journey; the sweat streamed from his leather and under his puckered eyelids his eyes flamed imprecations. His grotesque body was enveloped in yet ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... community, and boasted of a good nine, with whom the St. Louis team expected to cross bats a number of times during the training season. Then, too, in nearby towns, were other teams, some of them semi-professional, who would be called on to sacrifice themselves that the Cardinals might have something to bring out their own strong and ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... from you to Willoughby, Clara? You decree me to the part of ball between two bats. The Play being assured, the prologue is a bladder of wind. I seem to be instructed in one of the mysteries of erotic esotery, yet on my word I am no wiser. If Willoughby is to hear anything from you, he will ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... extreme end of the corridor, round a corner, so that it was in a manner shut off from the rest of the wing. It was an extraordinary place. Stretched on the walls, dried or drying, were specimens of every possible variety,—bats, frogs, snake skins, bird skins. Along the mantelpiece were jars and bottles, all containing other specimens preserved in spirits. In one corner stood part of a human skeleton. It stood on one leg, ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... into their hidden abode can see them there, those who were once men or women full of a terrible vehemence, and those who have never lived upon the earth, moving slowly and with a subtler malice. The dark powers cling about us, it is said, day and night, like bats upon an old tree; and that we do not hear more of them is merely because the darker kinds of magic have been but little practised. I have indeed come across very few persons in Ireland who try to communicate with evil powers, and ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... the imagination of the reader. Doris saw it as a safe and artistic home for earnest young girlhood; Nancy saw it as an open sesame to fun, rather wilder than school bats, but with the same delicious tang. Doctor Martin viewed the place as most dangerous, and those young people gathered there as perilous offsprings of a much-deplored departure ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... with a dull glow, like that which climbs The crater's sides from the red hell below. Birds ceased to sing, and all the barnyard fowls Roosted; the cattle at the pasture bars Lowed, and looked homeward; bats on leathern wings Flitted abroad; the sounds of labor died; Men prayed, and women wept; all ears grew sharp To hear the doom blast of the trumpet shatter The black sky, that the dreadful face of Christ ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Cave—a branch of Audubon Avenue,—is on the left as you advance, and not more than three-hundred yards from the great vestibule. It is but little more than a quarter of a mile in length, and is remarkable for its pit of two-hundred and eighty feet in depth; and as being the hibernal resort of bats. Tens of thousands of them are seen hanging from the walls, in apparently a torpid state, during the winter, but no sooner does the spring open, than ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... most part, living in the pleasant present, caring much less for the past or the future than their girl-companions, seldom taking trouble of any kind to heart, or if they did, up again like a cork at the first chance. But yet how dull the world, now as then, would be without them and their bats and balls, and pockets full of rubbish, and everlasting scrapes and mischief, and ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth
... left), the body is wingless and very hairy, and the proboscis is very long. The young are developed within the body of the parent, until they attain the pupa state, when she deposits the pupa case, which is nearly half as large as her abdomen. Other genera are parasitic on bats; among them are the singular spider-like Bat ticks (Nycteribia, Fig. 95), which have small bodies and enormous legs, and are either blind, or provided with four simple eyes. They are of small size, being only a line or ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... Germans leave this place so dirty? The rooms of Shakspeare are kept clean and in repair; the Catholics enshrine in gold and silver the relics of their saints, but this Protestant Mecca is left literally to the moles and the bats. ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... if the waters of Oblivion In dark Oblivion's Dale had touched his lips, Left thee; and thou didst writhe like a whole world Engulfed in sounds of woe: Hair-tearings and Breast-beatings, groans of sad despair, night-bats Wandering restlessly, unheeded prayers Of souls condemned, loud thunder peals, fierce glares Of lightnings, and the ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... next Chris'mas, I'll be mighty lucky. They sot me over ag'in the biggest fuss they could pick out, an' gimme a pa'r er cotton kyards. Here's what kin kyard when she gits her han' in, an' I b'leeve'n my soul I kyarded 'nuff bats to thicken all the quilts betwix' this an' Californy. The folks, they 'ud come an' stan', an' star', an' then they 'ud go some'rs else; an' then new folks 'ud come an' stan', an' star', an' go some'rs else. They wuz jewlarkers thar ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... understand, but he seemed very confident that they had comprehended him. Some of the party, armed with bows and arrows, started away into the woods, while the others collected sticks and lighted a fire. The hunters soon returned, bringing with them a tree kangaroo and a cuscus, with several large bats. The latter creatures I had seen before, and heard them called flying-foxes. They were very ugly, and one of them; which I took up had a rank, powerful, foxy odour. One of the natives who saw me thought I was going to eat it raw, I suppose, for he shouted out, and I quickly ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... sowing.—NOVEMBER. Stake up all trees planted for standards, or the winds will rock them at the bottom, and the frost will be let in and destroy them. Throw a good quantity of peas straw about them, and lay on it some brick bats or pebbles to keep it fast: this will mellow the ground, and keep the frost from the roots. Continue to prune wall fruit-trees, and prune also at this time the apple and pear kinds. Pull off the late fruit of ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... massive desks, the impressive chairs, the great majestic table portentously suggestive of power. Presto! the dim calm is broken; the air vibrates as when an ancient church is invaded by a swarm of vampire-bats. Into the great room enter a group of men and a flock of youths, who settle in the impressive chairs round the majestic table. You wonder what is the motive of the assemblage. These grave lawyers, whose names are weighty in the nation's councils, and ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... "He's awfully old and awfully hollow. Yes, he's like you in a way, but ever so much worse. There's nothing left of him but a very thin shell and just a wretched twig or two in his top. Almost all his roots are dead, too. And he's always full of owls and bats and other vermin. It's ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... and the underground stream was lit by a faint ruddy glow. The channel, covered by a semicircular arch, was just wide enough for one boat to pass through, with oars out. The black water flowed silently by in a sluggish, Stygian stream. Bats, startled by the light, fluttered in their faces, and then disappeared ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... attributed to the agency of selection. That beauty, according to our sense of it, is not universal, must be admitted by every one who will look at some venomous snakes, at some fishes, and at certain hideous bats with a distorted resemblance to the human face. Sexual selection has given the most brilliant colours, elegant patterns, and other ornaments to the males, and sometimes to both sexes of many birds, butterflies ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... said the Philosopher. "It has been suggested that we go to sleep at night because it is then too dark to do anything else; but owls, who are a venerably sagacious folk, do not sleep in the night time. Bats, also, are a very clear-minded race; they sleep in the broadest day, and they do it in a charming manner. They clutch the branch of a tree with their toes and hang head downwards—a position which I consider singularly happy, for the rush of ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... several backward-curving rows, fish commonly known by the name carpet shark; batfish, a sort of reddish isosceles triangle half a meter long, whose pectoral fins are attached by fleshy extensions that make these fish look like bats, although an appendage made of horn, located near the nostrils, earns them the nickname of sea unicorns; lastly, a couple species of triggerfish, the cucuyo whose stippled flanks glitter with a sparkling gold color, and the bright purple ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... an' goes caperin' off up hill with him. An' to give that parent b'ar full credit, she's gettin' along all right an' conductin' herse'f as though Bowlaigs don't heft no more than one of them gooseha'r pillows, when, accidental, she bats pore Bowlaigs ag'in the bole of a tree—him hangin' outen her mouth about three foot—an' while the collision shakes that monarch of the forest some, Bowlaigs gets knocked free of her grip an' goes rollin' ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... like of. But there is a court-yard inside; surrounded by prisons, oubliettes, and old chambers of torture; so terrifically sad, that death itself is not more sorrowful. And oh! a wicked old Grand Duke's bedchamber upstairs in the tower, with a secret staircase down into the chapel, where the bats were wheeling about; and Bonnivard's dungeon; and a horrible trap whence prisoners were cast out into the lake; and a stake all burnt and crackled up, that still stands in the torture-ante-chamber to the saloon of justice (!)—what tremendous places! Good God, the greatest mystery in all the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... come to an end. An ascending elevation began just in front of them. This they made out by the light of a match, which flickered uncertainly in the bad air. Bats dashed against the walls and every movement was followed by a cloud ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... old world is sometimes jealous of the chap who means to rise; It sneers at what he's doing or it bats him 'twixt the eyes; It trips him when he's careless, and it makes his way so hard What's left of him is sinew, not a walking tub of lard; But it's only wasting effort, for by George, the guy keeps on When his hopes have crumbled round him and you'd think his faith was gone, Till the world ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... by Vulcan in a net. Sol's love for Leucothoe, and her change to a tree of frankincense. Clytie transformed to a sunflower. Tale of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus. Transformation of Alcithoe and her sisters to bats. Juno's fury. Madness of Athamas; and deification of Ino and Melicertes. Change of the Theban women to rocks and birds. Cadmus and Hermione changed to serpents. Perseus. Transformation of Atlas to a mountain. Andromeda ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... heard no noise. The monastery was the picture of desolation and solitude; the doors were all open, those of the cells, the chapel, and the refectory. In the refectory, a vast hall where the tables still stood in their places, Roland noticed five or six bats circling around; a frightened owl flew through a broken casement, and perched upon a ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... fails, take the hat and lock it up, and let it stay locked-up, though the heavens fall. The same with a child's playthings, tennis racquets, base-balls, bats, etc. As a rule one application of the rule cures. This is immeasurably more sensible than nagging, for it produces the required result almost instantly, and there is little irritation to either person concerned, while nagging is never effective, and ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... breeches. Giacobbe hung over the body; all the rest waited around him; an auroral flush lighted up their perplexed faces; and at that moment of silence, from the river-bank arose the song of the frogs, and bats skimmed back and forth above the heads ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... a kind of Monroe Doctrine, has allotted the dry land to man, and various other animals; the water to fish, leeches, etc.; the air to birds, bats, flies, etc.; the fire to salamanders, imps, unbaptised babies, etc.; and she strictly penalises the trespass of each class on the domain of any other. Naturally then, about sixteen raids, within four days, on an alien element, had stewed every atom of vigour ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... say, that it was not for this noble knight that I drew the plan of an epic poem on King Arthur, in my preface to the translation of Juvenal. The guardian angels of kingdoms were machines too ponderous for him to manage; and therefore he rejected them, as Dares did the whirl bats of Eryx, when they were thrown before him by Entellus: yet from that preface, he plainly took his hint; for he began immediately upon the story, though he had the baseness not to acknowledge his benefactor, but, instead of it, to traduce me in ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... surreptitious midget you feel yourself to be, up those long and steep inclines of polished stone, watching the gloomy darkness of the narrow walls, the far-off pinpoint of light borne by the Bedouin who guides you, hear the twitter of the bats that have their dwelling in this monstrous gloom that man has made to shelter the thing whose ambition could never be embalmed, though that, of all qualities, should have been given here, in the land it dowered, a life perpetual. Now you know ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... gagner le combat et fut rudement secoue, de sorte que, regardant Smiley comme pour lui dire:—Mon coeur est brise, c'est to faute; pourquoi m'avoir livre a un chien qui n'a pas de pattes de derriere, puisque c'est par la que je les bats?—il s'en alla en clopinant, et se coucha pour mourir. Ah! c'etait un bon chien, cet Andre Jackson, et il se serait fait un nom, s'il avait vecu, car il y avait de l'etoffe en lui, il avait du genie, je la sais, bien que de grandes occasions lui aient manque; mais il est impossible de ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... did, is there nobody at the Abbey or near it that could give me a night's lodging?" The landlord stared with a keen expression of wonder,—and answered, with some reserve, "Why who should there be but the owls, and in summer time may be a few bats?" ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... the Mountain Side from the Ketosh Village to the Great Cave of Bats. A Dramatic Episode with the Finding of a Black Baby as ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... at almost every station now—men and women coming in for the Christmas Week, with racquets, with bundles of polo-sticks, with dear and bruised cricket-bats, with fox-terriers and saddles. The greater part of them wore jackets like William's, for the Northern cold is as little to be trifled with as the Northern heat. And William was among them and of them, her hands ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... in destroying insects. So of toads and bats. No one should ever be wantonly killed. Boys, old or young, should never be allowed to shoot birds, or disturb their nests, only as they would domestic fowls, for actual use. A wanton recklessness is ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... himself because his mouth fell open, After nearly an hour's hard riding, they found themselves uncaught at Winchester. Not a trace of Dangle nor any other danger was visible as they rode into the dusky, yellow-lit street. Though the bats had been fluttering behind thehedges and the evening star was bright while they were still two miles from Winchester, Mr. Hoopdriver pointed out the dangers of stopping in such an obvious abiding-place, and gently but firmly insisted upon replenishing the lamps and riding on towards ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... the first church, to the first child born. But there were no mines near, and the city never had an inhabitant. The half-dozen buildings put up by the proprietors are left for the nightly carnivals of bats and owls. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... nice, easy ball, and Buddy struck at it. He hit, too, which is better. Oh! such a hit as he gave that ball! It's a good thing balls don't have feelings, I think, or bats either, for that matter. ...
— Buddy And Brighteyes Pigg - Bed Time Stories • Howard R. Garis
... Far different there from all that charm'd before, 345 The various terrors of that horrid shore; Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray, And fiercely shed intolerable day; Those matted woods where birds forget to sing, But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling; 350 Those pois'nous fields with rank luxuriance crown'd, Where the dark scorpion gathers death around; Where at each step the stranger fears to wake The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake; Where crouching ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... their leaders awhile and cheered right lustily, they will scatter and that is the end of it, but when we interfere, there is no telling where the matter will end. In 1866, we once closed the park against them, and the consequence was a riot in which the police suffered severely from brick-bats, and the mob finally took hold of the iron fence and tore it away for a long distance along the park, made their entry, and took their own way." "Well could you not have punished those offenders according to due process ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... rebellious opinions of blind bats, deaf adders, meek lambs, and obstinate pigs, but said very gently and impersonally: "I hope you won't always allow your pipe to be your only companion;—you, with your children, your name and position, your home ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... wide resistless torrent that might have levelled the stoutest edifice;—yet was the mill unharmed by the attack. Then came shrieks and yells, mingled with the most horrid imprecations. Swift as thought, there rushed upon him a prodigious company of cats, bats, and all manner of hideous things, that scratched and pinched him, as he afterwards declared, until his flesh verily "reeked" again. Maddened by the torment, he began to lay about him lustily with a long whittle which he carried for domestic purposes. They gave back at so unexpected ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... damned things!" he breathed. "Jumping, they were, and leaping, and flying on their leather wings like a lot of black bats out o' hell! And I'm thinkin' that's where they've taken Chet Bullard, and never again will he hold a ship like 'twas in the hollow of his hand, and him settin' it down ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... Skin or Leather of them hath Ribs running along it, and draws up in 3 or 4 Folds; and at the joints of those Ribs and the Extremities of the Wings, there are sharp and crooked Claws, by which they may hang on any thing. [A further description of the great bats and their habits follows.] At this Isle also we found plenty of Turtle and Manatee, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... about that hour when the stars and the bats and the passions of rural life come out, there chanced to be a young couple "kissing each other a bit" in Love Lane, the deep hedged lane that runs out back towards the Upper Lodge. They were giving their little emotions play, as secure in the warm still twilight as any lovers ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... tree that contributes so largely to the conveniences of English life as the Willow. Putting aside its uses in the manufacture of gunpowder and cricket bats, we may safely say that the most scantily-furnished house can boast of some article of Willow manufacture in the shape of baskets. British basket-making is, as far as we know, the oldest national manufacture; it is the manufacture in connection with which we have the earliest record ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... breathed forth its sweetness; then, too, when the mountain-bee had crept into its blossomed bed, and the hum of every little insect, that had floated gaily in the sun-beam, was hushed, the sound of many streams, not heard till now, murmured at a distance.—The bats alone, of all the animals inhabiting this region, seemed awake; and, while they flitted across the silent path, which Blanche was pursuing, she remembered the following lines, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... Lord, what wait I for?" Enable me to say, "My hope is in thee." It seems as if the path would be a narrow one; but, oh, "make thy way straight before my face;" and, having enabled me, I trust, to give some things to "the moles and to the bats," leave me not till I have learned "to count all things but loss, for the excellency of ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... sir," stammered Lang, the second man, perspiring horror, "your bedroom is full of humming birds and bats, sir, and I ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... players arrived. He looked at them closely and his nerves jumped. Gosh! didn't they look big! And what big black bats! ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... in the darkness to an accompaniment of throbbing—throbbing of the eternal darabukeh which is like the pulsing of evil life through the arteries of the secret city. Harsh woman-voices cried out in the night and bizarre figures flitted like bats from the lighted dance halls into the shadows of nameless houses. We came to a long, narrow street entirely devoted to those dungeon-like chambers with barred windows whose occupants represent all the classified races of the East and all the unclassified sins of the Marquis ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... log huts daubed wid mud and de chimblys was made out of sticks and red mud. Mammy said dat atter de slaves had done got through wid deir day's work and finished eatin' supper, dey all had to git busy workin' wid cotton. Some carded bats, some spinned and some weaved cloth. I knows you is done seen dis here checkidy cotton homespun—dat's what dey weaved for our dresses. Dem dresses was made tight and long, and dey made 'em right on de body so as not to waste none ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... as it goes. Gives me beans upon occasion, for which Max always swears at me as if it were my fault. I'm not allowed to see by artificial light at all, so after sunset I join the bats. Lucky for me the sun sits up late just now. By the way, I had a positively gushing epistle from old Badgers this morning. He seems almost hysterical at the thought of getting me back again; says that married or single, I've got to go." Noel stopped ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... need some place to experiment with this," he suggested. He expected to be sent to the deepest, dankest cave of all the world as a laboratory, and to find it equipped with pedigreed bats, dried unicorn horns and whole rows of alembics ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... "Yes, the bats," she returned, with a little smile. "And my hands on the ropes!" She turned them over; the skin was torn cruelly from her delicate palms and the inside of her fingers. Little threads of blood marked the scores. "Then I came here," she repeated. "In all ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... conception of the world,—the world of course in the historical sense of that expression. In presence of that conception the petty nationalities lost their centre of gravity, brute fact dispelled their illusions, they flung their gods to the moles and to the bats (Isaiah ii.). The prophets of Israel alone did not allow themselves to be taken by surprise by what had occurred, or to be plunged in despair; they solved by anticipation the grim problem which history set before them. They absorbed into their religion that conception of ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... everything in it that could be laid hands upon was sent to the melting-pot, to pay the Assyrian tribute; and then the doors were shut, the lamps extinguished, the fire quenched on the cold altars, and the silent Temple left to the bats and—the Shekinah; for God still ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... health." The mate's voice grated with the rage he was suppressing. "I know your kind. You're dirt. D'ye get that? You're dirt. And on this ship you'll be treated as dirt. You'll do your work like men, or I'll know the reason why. The first time one of you bats an eye, or even looks like batting an eye, he gets his. D'ye get that? Now get out. Get along for'ard to ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... not, or would not free it from the trap. Shann dozed again, untroubled by any dreams, to awake hearing the shrieks of clak-claks. But when he studied the sky he was able to sight none of the cliff-dwelling Warlockian bats. ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... trees grew with their roots in the air and their load of leaves and blossoms underground, if the flowers closed at dawn and opened at sunset, if the sunflower turned towards the darkness, and the birds flew, like bats, by night. ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... gives some notes as to the country, and puts it down as "in every respect the most barren country we have yet seen." The animals were not numerous; he gives kangaroo, wolf (the dingo or native dog), bats (flying foxes), wild cats (dasyurus), and opossums. Amongst the birds, several kinds of duck, shags, pelicans, crows, and flock pigeons, all, with the exception of the last, difficult to shoot. Of the crow he says: "A crow in England though in general sufficiently ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... you too much of it you must forgive me. Now we are upon the subject of old castles, do you remember my retailing to you, at second hand, a description of my father's visit to the Marquis de la Poype's old chateau in Dauphiny, with the cavern of bats and stalactites? A little while ago my father received a letter in a strange hand, which I copy for my aunt and you, as I think it will please you as it did us, to see that this old friend of my father's remembers him with so much kindness through all the ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... within myself and not at all perhaps for that which is best for the public, I would have preferred a continuation of the Croker dynasty. As it is, good sooth! Mr. Croker is destroyed. And your ruin, of whatever character, the resort of owls, the habitat of bats, and all across it flung the melancholy ivy—that verdant banner of victorious decay!—is, at its loveliest, but a spectacle of depression; and one who has witnessed Mr. Croker in his vigor must be at least dimly affected as he beholds him take his sad and passive ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... from all the rest, Safely buttoned within his vest; And in the loft above the shed Himself he locks, with thimble and thread And wax and hammer and buckles and screws, And all such things as geniuses use; Two bats for patterns, curious fellows! A charcoal-pot and a pair of bellows; Some wire, and several old umbrellas; A carriage-cover, for tail and wings; A piece of harness; and straps and strings; And a big strong box, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... like 'Iron-armed Ike,' who took four villyuns, two in each hand, and swung them around his head till they got so dizzy that they swounded away, and then he threw one of 'em through a winder, and used the other three like baseball bats to knock down a gang of desperate ruffians that was comin' to the rescue. Oh, but I tell ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... brought all the playthings we left stored away in uncle's garret when we went abroad. The bows are in the long box where you found the mallets, fishing-rods and bats. The old quivers and a few arrows are there also, I believe. What is the idea now?" asked Miss Celia in her turn, as Thorny bounced ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... of us doing it. We were almost as badly scared as Peter. There we stood in a huddled demoralized group. Oh, what an eerie place that orchard was! What shadows! What noises! What spooky swooping of bats! You COULDN'T look every way at once, and goodness only knew what might be ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery |
