"Bird's nest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from the rain. I smoke my pipe, smoke one pipe after another; and every time I light it, the tobacco curls up like little worms crawling from the ash. So also with the thoughts that twirl in my head. Before me, on the ground, lies a bundle of dry twigs, from the ruin of a bird's nest. And as with that nest, so ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... a leafy dell we found, When early Summer wove her crown, A bird's nest on the mossy ground, ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... round the laurel path and to the walk where the ivy grew so thickly. Dickon followed her with a queer, almost pitying, look on his face. He felt as if he were being led to look at some strange bird's nest and must move softly. When she stepped to the wall and lifted the hanging ivy he started. There was a door and Mary pushed it slowly open and they passed in together, and then Mary stood and waved her hand ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... how to understand the languages of the creatures that we have long been accustomed to call "dumb," and the sign language of the lower orders of these dependent beings. The church owes it to her mission to preach and to teach the enforcement of the "bird's nest commandment;" the principle recognized by Moses in the Hebrew world, and echoed by Cowper in English poetry, and Burns in the "Meadow Mouse," and by our own Longfellow in ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... nothing will happen to him, for I love him," said the child gravely. "He showed me a humming-bird's nest, the first ever I saw, and ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... analyzes a pensile nest which he found in the woods—doubtless one of the vireo's—and fills ten pages with a minute description of the different materials which it contained. Then he analyzes a yellow-bird's nest, filling two pages. That Journal shall not go hungry, even if there is nothing to give it but the dry material ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... yonder," quoth she, pointing to a shapeless mass like a huge bird's nest in y'e corner of the field. "There bides poor Joan and I. Wilt come and looke within, mistress, and see how a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... seems to me impossible to carry pictorial illusion to a higher pitch than he has attained. A sprig of hawthorn flowers, freshly plucked, lies before you, and you are half-tempted to take it up and inhale its fragrance; those speckled eggs in the bird's nest, you are sure you might, if you pleased, take into your hand; that tuft of ivy leaves and buds is so complete an optical deception, that you can hardly believe that it has not been attached by some process to the paper on which you see it. A servant girl, in a calico gown, with a broom, ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... the Epeirae are displayed to even better purpose in the industrial business of motherhood than in the art of the chase. The silk bag, the nest, in which the Banded Epeira houses her eggs, is a much greater marvel than the bird's nest. In shape, it is an inverted balloon, nearly the size of a Pigeon's egg. The top tapers like a pear and is cut short and crowned with a scalloped rim, the corners of which are lengthened by means of moorings that fasten ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... the train reached the lovely little village of Lee, nestling like a bird's nest amid ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... that bird class. I like that! It's a great idea to learn from colored pictures the names of our birds, for by so doing you will be able to identify them readily when you meet them in the fields and woods. No lover of birds need fear that one of you will rob a bird's nest or use a sling-shot on a feathered neighbor. You show by your stories about the birds that a proper regard and appreciation for them has been fostered in you by your teacher. You all know that it has long ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... who dares to take a bird's nest is occasionally fined and severely reproved. The ruffian-like crew who go forth into the pastures and lanes about London, snaring and netting full-grown birds by the score, are permitted to ply their trade unchecked. I mean to say that there is no comparison between the two things. An egg has ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... said she; "I have such a prize;" and she held in her hand a bird's nest, with its three little white eggs ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... let you go?" Says sweet Greane, weeping "Who will climb with me The rocks to find the bird's nest? who will play At arms, forgetting that I am a girl, ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask
... mercies extend to a bird's nest," or, "for goodness be Thy name remembered," or he who says, "we give thanks, we give thanks,"(29) is to be silenced. If a man pass up to the ark (where the rolls of the Law are kept) and make a mistake, another must pass up in his stead; nor may he in such a moment refuse. "Where ...
— Hebrew Literature
... is a house, if one lives in it. If residence constitutes houseness, because style of architecture does not, then a bird's nest is a house: and human occupancy is not the standard to judge by, because we speak of dogs' houses; nor material, because we speak of snow houses of Eskimos—or a shell is a house to a hermit crab—or was to the mollusk that made it—or things seemingly so positively different as the White ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... is tempted to lie, to conceal his fault and avoid punishment; and here again we see how one sin leads to another. The temptations to cruelty are many. Sometimes they appear in the form of a bird's nest, placed by a fond and loving mother on the high bough of a tree, to secure her young ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... also makes its home in barns and houses. Its back and sides are of a slate color, but the under part of its body, and its legs and feet, are white. It is sometimes called the white-footed mouse, or wood-mouse. It builds a round nest in trees, that looks like a bird's nest, and it lives upon grain, seeds, ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... on the second day rushes recently torn up were seen floating near the vessels. A plank hewn by an axe, a carved stick, a bough of hawthorn in blossom, and lastly a bird's nest built on a branch which the wind had broken, and full of eggs on which the parent-bird was sitting, were seen swimming past on the waters. The sailors brought on board these living witnesses of their approach to land. They were like a message ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... gaily along the roads, whistling as he went, and occasionally tossing his battered cap in the air. He often lingered on his way, now to cut down a particularly tempting switch from the hedge, now to hunt for a possible bird's nest. It was very nearly six o'clock when he reached the back avenue, swung himself over the gate, which was locked, and ran softly on the dewy grass in the direction of the laurel bush. Old Betty had given him ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... better—there are no snakes here. Now, Zillah, lead where you please, I'm in the following mood. Do you know where any of these birds live? Do you think any of them are at home on their nests? If so, we'll call and pay our respects. When I was a horrid boy I robbed a bird's nest, and I often have a twinge of remorse for it." "Do you want to see a robin's ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... Banana, Wholemeal Pudding Barley (Pearl) and Apple Pudding Barley Soup Batter, Celery Batter, Jam Pudding Batter, Potato Batter, Pudding Batter, Sweet Batter, Vegetable Bean, French, Omelet Bean Pie Beans, Butter, with Parsley Sauce Belgian Pudding Bird's Nest Pudding Biscuits— Butter Chocolate Cocoanut Blackberry Cream Blancmange Blancmanges Blancmange, Chocolate Blancmange, Eggs Blancmange, Lemon Blancmange— Orange Mould (1) Orange Mould (2) Blancmange, Semolina Blancmange, Tartlets Boiled Onion Sauce Bread and Cakes— Barley Bannocks Buns Bun Loaf ...
— The Allinson Vegetarian Cookery Book • Thomas R. Allinson
... my fears. See,' and she held up a bunch of purple pasque-flowers and wood-sorrel, 'this is what I found in the wood, growing out of a rugged old dead root; and just by, sheltered by the threefold leaves of the alleluia-flower, was a bird's nest, the mother-bird on her eggs, watching me with the wise black eye that saw I would not hurt her. And it brought back the words I had heard long ago, of the good God caring for the sparrows; and I knew He would care the more for me and mine, because I have ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... daughter, asleep in the churchyard of Feldkirche. Suddenly, on turning the corner of an ancient, gloomy church, his attention was arrested by a little chapel in an angle of the wall. It was only a small thatched roof, like a bird's nest; under which stood a rude wooden image of the Saviour on the Cross. A real crown of thorns was upon his head, which was bowed downward, as if in the death agony; and drops of blood were falling down his cheeks, and from his hands and feet and side. The face ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... nothing more than a tinder-box and a piece of rag, immediately make a fire. They sought beneath the tufts of grass and bushes for a few dry twigs, and these they rubbed into fibres; then surrounding them with coarser twigs, something like a bird's nest, they put the rag with its spark of fire in the middle and covered it up. The nest being then held up to the wind, by degrees it smoked more and more, and at last burst out in flames. I do not think any other method would have had a chance of ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... rotating flower, it became a 'rotating haze,' as the rapid motion rendered the flower totally indistinct. The 'haze' now shaped itself into a circle of moss with a deep funnel-like cavity. This was suggestive of a bird's nest. It became lined with hair, but the nest was a deep, pointed cavity. A nest was suggestive of eggs. Hence a series appeared (4); the two rows meeting in one at the apex appears to have arisen from the perspective ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... They met with no special adventures by the way, except that when they reached the great pine-tree, Phonny proposed to climb up, for the purpose of examining a small bunch which he saw upon one of the branches, which he thought was a bird's nest. It was the same pine-tree that marked the place at which a road branched off into the woods, where Mary Bell had lost her way, several years before. Malleville was very unwilling to have Phonny climb up upon such a high tree, but Phonny himself ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... door, if dangerous, would be superfluous; the moment it was suspected that Beck had something worth guarding, that moment all the picklocks and skeleton keys in the neighbourhood would be in a jingle. And a cracksman of high repute lodged already on the ground-floor. So Beck's treasure, like the bird's nest, was deposited as much out of sight as his instinct could contrive; and the locks and bolts of civilized men were equally dispensed with ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... at the quarry. She went for pennyroyal long ago and then Phares came and he went over after her, but I saw him go on the way to town a bit ago, so I guess she's still over there. Guess she's stumbling around after a bird's nest or picking some weeds that ain't no good. I don't see why ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... at his manner of putting it, and, without further ado, we all went down to the bird's nest in the hollow, and there we lighted a fire in the shelter of the pit, and old Clair-de-Lune going away in search of rations, he returned presently with victuals enough to feed a missionary, and more than that, as pretty a trio to serve them as any seaman could ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... not so. There are entire crow-folk who lead honourable lives—that is to say, they only eat grain, worms, caterpillars, and dead animals; and there are others who lead a regular bandit's life, who throw themselves upon baby-hares and small birds, and plunder every single bird's nest they set eyes on. ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... he pointed, but see nothing, until at last they discovered something gray, like a mass of stones fallen from the summit. It was a little village, a hamlet of granite hanging there, fastened on like a veritable bird's nest and almost invisible on ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... but we will try to find something instead," said Kallolo, giving me his blowpipe and bow to hold. He then climbed up the tree till he reached the bird's nest, from which he extracted two eggs, and brought them down safety. They were considerably larger than a duck's egg, white and granulated all over, though the bird itself did not appear to be above the size of an ordinary duck. It was, I found, a crested curassow. ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... little boy, who was trying in vain to scramble up one of the posts of the piazza, in order to reach a humming-bird's nest, which hung in the tendrils of a creeper overhead, and which a light puff of wind now set swinging, so as to attract the child's eye. What child ever saw a humming-bird thus rocking—its bill sticking out ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... as he said this, to a little tuft floating round and round in a small eddy, made by a turn of the brook, just above where they had crossed. He turned his horse towards it. "It is a bird's nest," said he. ...
— Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott
... said Nick-uts, "it's old Mother Mo-lo's. The nasty old wretch laid it in there while we were away from home. She's always sneaking around, the lazy old thing, to lay her eggs in some other bird's nest. She's cowardly too. She always picks out the nest of one smaller than herself. I wish I were big enough to give ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... chicken and duck and pigeon and veal and pigeon eggs and soup and fish and little oysters that grow in the ground (very delicious and delicate) and nice little vegetables and bamboo sprouts mixed in with the others, and we had shrimps cooked, and shark's fin and bird's nest (this has no taste at all and is a sort of very delicate soup, but costs a fortune and that is its real reason for being). It is gelatine which almost all dissolves in the cooking. We had many more things than these, and the boy in a dirty ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... that appealed to him. It would not have suited everybody. It was a long low house, made of three fishermen's cottages thrown into one, built so close to the edge of the cliff that it seemed like a sea-bird's nest, with windows overlooking the channel and the harbour, and a strip of stony garden behind. Inside, the accommodation was somewhat cramped, but the rooms, if small, were quaint, with an old-fashioned air about the panelled parlour and raftered dining- room that suggested bygone days ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... little vega, that some village wag had once referred to her as "Annie Laurie." Because of its happy absurdity the name long clung to Jane; but despite such small jests every one respected her sterling traits,—every one, that is, except Senora Vigil, who lived hard by in a mud house like a bird's nest, and who cherished a grudge ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... at the head of the table looked on in dumb amazement, and he was still speechless when, after dinner, five children set upon him and dragged him out to see the bird's nest ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... boy he would cry at a beautiful view in Nature, at a tale of heroism, or at any sentimental ditty sung excruciatingly in the streets. Seeing a bird's nest that had been robbed of its eggs he burst into tears; but when he came upon the bleeding, broken shells in the path, the tears turned to fierce wrath and mad rage, and he snatched up a gun out of his father's room and went out to take the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... morning I took my way to the town, after observing, to my great annoyance, that the castle could have been as easily taken as a bird's nest; and seeing a beer-glass painted on a sign-board, I guessed that here was the inn. Truth to say, my heart wanted strengthening sorely, and I entered. There was a pretty wench washing crabs in the kitchen, and as I made up to her, after my manner, to have a little pastime, she drew back ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... Frowenfeld contrasted the women with their painfully humble dwelling. But therein is where your true Creole was, and still continues to be, properly, yea, delightfully un-American; the outside of his house may be as rough as the outside of a bird's nest; it is the inside that is for the birds; and the front room of this house, when the daughter presently threw open the batten shutters of its single street door, looked as bright and happy, with its candelabra glittering on the ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... lowering his tone. "I tell you the boy has gone back home and the hut is as empty as a last year's bird's nest. I'll stake my oath on it. The place is shut and locked tight as a drum. You'll see ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... certain: a mare roaming in a meadow with a foal at its side, a bird's nest full of young ones, squeaking, with their open mouths and enormous heads, made her quiver ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... rude dwelling indeed; but this had a pleasant parlor and drawing-room, and chambers with lattice-windows, opening close beneath the thatched roof; and the thatch itself gives an air to the place as if it were a bird's nest, or some such simple and natural habitation. The occupants are an elderly clergyman, retired from professional duty, and his sister; and having nothing else to do, and sufficient means, they employ themselves in beautifying this sweet little retreat,— ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... admiration To view the structure of this little work— A bird's nest. Mark it well, within, without; No tool had he that wrought; no knife to cut, No nail to fix, no bodkin to insert, No glue to join; his little beak was all; And yet how neatly finished!—What nice hand, And every implement and means of art, ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... deepened round us. Still and black The great woods climbed the mountain at our back; And on their skirts, where yet the lingering day On the shorn greenness of the clearing lay, The brown old farm-house like a bird's nest hung. With home-life sounds the desert air was stirred: The bleat of sheep along the hill we heard, The bucket plashing in the cool, sweet well, The pasture-bars that clattered as they fell; Dogs ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... are doing."—"No, indeed, ma'am, I don't—what am I doing?" She took the wreath of cotton wool from my passive hand and showed me, wrapped up in it, a humming-bird, luckily unhurt, unsquelched. The humming-bird's nest is more beautiful than the creature itself. Poor Lord Liverpool—no one ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... dates. They then squat round this repast in groups. The slaves save from their previous day's supper, or from the morning, a few dates for this time of the day, and are allowed each a drink of water. Noticed a bird's nest on a furze of The Desert. This is only the second I have ever seen in Sahara. A few small birds are now hopping about on the line of route. But I have observed the colour of the birds to vary with the region through which we pass. Now they are yellow, now ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... the bird's nest under the roof, and to a faded garland of flowers, hung upon the rough bark of the old hemlock, against which Barton had reclined, and another upon the rock just over where she had rested. In some way these brought to Bart's ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... with large flies. As Davy took this out of his pocket, the cork came out with a loud "pop!" and the flies flew away in all directions. Then came, one after another, a tart filled with gravel, two chicken-bones, a bird's nest with some pieces of brown soap in it, some mustard in a pill-box, and a cake of beeswax stuck full of caraway seeds. Davy remembered afterward that, as he threw these things away, they arranged themselves in a long row on the curb-stone of the street. ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... little balls within it, which were spotted, and of an oval shape. They lay close to each other, on something very soft. "Bless me," said Gregory, "this must be certainly what I have heard some people call a bird's nest, and the balls must be eggs. They are indeed less than our eggs, but then our hens are larger ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... thrill of pleasure, a sudden emotion, that gave a moment's happiness. The delight caused by the discovery of a fine argol may be compared to that of a sportsman finding the trace of his game—of a child contemplating the long sought for bird's nest—of an angler, who sees a fish quivering at the end of his line; or, if we may be allowed to liken great things to small, we would compare it to the enthusiasm of a Leverrier finding a planet at the tip of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... cruelty of too many of our youth. It was scarcely two weeks ago that I detected a boy (apparently about twelve years of age) climbing one of the willow trees in our old Schmittheimer place. I crept up on him unawares and speedily became satisfied that he was after the eggs in a bird's nest that nestled cozily in a crotch of the limbs. I shouted lustily at the young scapegrace, and his confusion convinced me that my suspicions were correct. I kept him in his uncomfortable position in the tree until I had lectured him severely for the cruelty he contemplated and until ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... culinary department of a newspaper we find a recipe for making "bird's nest pudding," which would surely make the pigtail of a JOHN Chinaman stick straight up on end. The component parts of the pudding are apples, sugar, milk, five eggs, and vanilla. Perhaps the inventor of the pudding once ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... birds, and they were unmistakably at home, we naturally had hope of finding one of the nests. We made several random attempts, and one day I devoted an hour or more to a really methodical search; but the wily singer gave me not the slightest clue, behaving as if there were no such thing as a bird's nest within a thousand miles, and all my endeavors ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... piece of old-fashioned lawn, dotted with wee blue flowers, and always carried it in her bosom. But this was not all. She had a dainty little glass salt-cellar, scarcely larger than the inside of a humming-bird's nest, and, what was more precious than this, a tiny, wooden doll. This doll had been her constant companion. It had black eyes and hair, and was indeed very pretty. At Woodworth's camp, Patty told "Dolly" all her joy and gladness, and who can not pardon the little girl for thinking her dolly ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... they rankle, thy blood as it runs, But make thee more painfully dear to thy sons— Whose hearts, like the young of the desert-bird's nest, Drink love in each life-drop that flows ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... instance, especially as manifested in our architecture. A purely native town in Italy, Arabia, or Africa, or Mexico, has its own atmosphere; no one could mistake one for the other any more than he could mistake a beaver dam for an ant hill or a bird's nest ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... further impeded by a wood-pigeon dwelling impressively on the notes "Take two cows, Taffy; Taffy take TWO!" and then dashing out, flapping and grey, in their faces, rather to Barbara's alarm, and then by Armine's stumbling on his first bird's nest, a wren's in the moss of an old stump, where the tiny bird unadvisedly flew out of her leafy hole full before their eyes. That was a marvel of marvels, a delight equal to that felt by any explorer the world has seen. Armine and Barbara, who lived in one perpetual fairy tale, were saying ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the staircase, and his lodger's private apartment, Poll Sweedlepipe's house was one great bird's nest. Gamecocks resided in the kitchen; pheasants wasted the brightness of their golden plumage on the garret; bantams roosted in the cellar; owls had possession of the bedroom; and specimens of all the smaller fry of ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... superstition as to lightning-stroke is its photographic properties. In this connection Stricker of Frankfort quotes the case of Raspail of a man of twenty-two who, while climbing a tree to a bird's nest, was struck by lightning, and afterward showed upon his breast a picture of the tree, with the nest upon one of its branches. Although in the majority of cases the photographs resembled trees, there was one case in which it resembled a horse-shoe; another, a cow; a third, a piece of furniture; ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... the days of their mother before them, when she came here to lay her eggs, like a cuckoo in another bird's nest—I wish they had been addled, I do indeed—we may expect to have the whole place turned topsy-turvy, I suppose. It is a pretty assortment, faith (as Tanty says herself); an old papist, and two ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... "thistle-down" and cover it all over with grayish or greenish lichens, those flakes of "moss" we see growing on the bark of trees. Generally they place it on a limb of a large tree. There it looks so much like a knot that it takes sharp eyes to find a humming-bird's nest. ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... play upon words. There is a possible and a proper sense of the word "nature" that makes it include everything except the supernatural. Therefore man and all his works belong to the realm of nature. A tenement house in this sense is as "natural" as a bird's nest, a ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... orange-tree,—till my hands were full. It is too bad I have forgotten how many pecan-trees he had planted, and how many sheep he kept. A well-regulated memory would have held fast to such figures: mine is certain only that there were four eggs in the mocking-bird's nest. Mr. G. was a man of enterprise, at any rate; a match for any Yankee, although he had come to Florida not from Yankeeland, but from northern Georgia. I hope all his crops are still thriving, especially his white roses ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... some narrative of out-door observation which, so far as it goes, fulfils Milton's definition of poetry, "simple, sensuous, passionate." He may not write sonnets to the lake, but he will walk miles to bathe in it; he may not notice the sunsets, but he knows where to search for the black-bird's nest. How surprised the school-children looked, to be sure, when the Doctor of Divinity from the city tried to sentimentalize, in addressing them, about "the bobolink in the woods"! They knew that the darling of the meadow had no more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... hailed Sargon as its deliverer, while he on his part was actively engaged in organising his conquest. The voluntary submission of Upiri, King of Dilmun, who lived isolated in the open sea, "as though in a bird's nest," secured to Sargon possession of the watercourses which flowed beyond the Chaldaean lake into the Persian Gulf: no sooner had he obtained it than he quitted the neighbourhood of Dur-Yakin, crossed the Tigris, and reinforced the garrisons which lined his Elamite frontier on this ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... identification. I could also give several instances of various birds which have been known occasionally to lay their eggs in other birds' nests. Now let us suppose that the ancient progenitor of our European cuckoo had the habits of the American cuckoo, and that she occasionally laid an egg in another bird's nest. If the old bird profited by this occasional habit through being enabled to emigrate earlier or through any other cause; or if the young were made more vigorous by advantage being taken of the mistaken instinct of another species than when reared by their own mother, ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... queer appearance; scarred by deep gashes on chest and arms, his body was daubed with red ochre, and his ribs picked out with white; on his head a kind of chignon formed of grass, hair, and string held his matted locks in place, like a bird's nest on his crown; he had neither beard nor whiskers, and was not blessed with any article ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... 1. Behead a bird's nest, and leave a lake in North America. 2. Behead a marine map, and leave a wild animal. 3. Behead a sail vessel, and leave a small narrow opening. 4. Behead a plant, and leave space. 5. Behead a basket or hamper, and leave standard or proportion. 6. Behead a sharp bargainer, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... mushrooms and other English fungi* [One of great size, growing in large clumps, is the English Agaricus comans, Fr., and I found it here at 12,500 feet, as also the beautiful genus Crucibulum, which is familiar to us in England, growing on rotten sticks, and resembling a diminutive bird's nest with eggs in it.] grew amongst ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... of our subject, let us remind ourselves of the many parables and pictures and sayings which put God himself before us. Here is the bird's nest, and one little sparrow fallen to the ground—and God is there and he takes notice of it; he misses the little bird from the brood (Matt. 10:29; cf. Luke 12:6). Here again is quite another scene—the rich and middle-aged man, who has prospered in everything ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... authority of his example to the exodus from the Old Town, and took up his new abode in a street which is still (so oddly may a jest become perpetuated) known as Saint David Street. Nor is the town so large but a holiday schoolboy may harry a bird's nest within half a mile of his own door. There are places that still smell of the plough in memory's nostrils. Here, one had heard a blackbird on a hawthorn; there, another was taken on summer evenings to eat strawberries and cream; and you have seen a waving wheatfield on the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... little bird's nest all broken with the wind and torn with the storm, and two or three little eggs, with a few wet leaves over them, addled and cold and forsaken, and my little gipsy heart cried over those poor little motherless things, for I was motherless too. And up in a tree I have heard a thrush singing ...
— Your Boys • Gipsy Smith
... 357. Bird's Nest Pudding.— Peel 6 good sized greening apples, remove the cores with an apple corer without breaking the fruit, put them in a long, shallow tin pan, pour over 2 cups boiling water, cover with a pan of same size and let ...
— Desserts and Salads • Gesine Lemcke
... himself that he would call upon Abiboo in the morning, to explain the matter of a choked gutter, for Abiboo had sworn, by the Prophet and certain minor relatives of the Great One, that he had cleared every bird's nest from ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... must be a field-mouse's nest that some birds had stolen. But in the fall I took the nest home and I saw it was a real bird's nest, all woven round of strong grass with finer kinds for a lining; and there were dead leaves on the outside, so that the top looked like all the rest of the ground. I had often heard that loud singing before, but this was the first time I had a good look at the bird and his nest, ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... a tree, of course, picking apple-blossoms, for which he ought to have been whipped. Indeed, the old tree did its best, for it caught him by the leg, and tore a hole in his new trousers, which was shocking to think of. Then he found an old bird's nest; and on the whole, the tree seemed so very "jolly" that he decided to stay there; so that was why Uncle Jack did not see him when he looked round. Brighteyes, after seeing her brother safely up in the tree, flew off like a ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... a specimen of the taylor bird's nest, composed of a single large leaf, of a fibrous rough, texture, about six inches long independent of the stalk, five inches and a half in breadth, and ending in a point. The sides of this leaf are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... young rook goes without saying. An older bird would not have given a second glance to the thing. Indeed, one would have thought his own instinct might have told him that broken glass would be a mistake in a bird's nest. But its glitter drew him too strongly for resistance. I am inclined to suspect that at some time, during the growth of his family tree, there must have occurred a mesalliance, perhaps worse. Possibly a strain of magpie ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... when He lived here, except that the slopes of the hills were more cultivated, and there were more houses. Jesus came here as a small child and lived here until He was thirty. You know, of course, every tree and hole and stream and almost every stone and bird's nest about your own home in the country; you will never get to know any other place so well again in your life, for when one is grown up one can't climb trees and dabble in streams and build huts and root about in the earth. Jesus was just a natural ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... by a spot for the hundredth time, he found a bird's nest. It must have been there for long, and yet he had not seen it; and so he learned how blind he was, and he exclaimed: "Oh, if only I could see, then I might understand these things! If only I knew! If I could see but for once, how many there are, and how near! If only every bird ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... dust. He noticed with a pang that the ivy had been torn from the church and that the glazed brick walls flaunted a nudity that was almost immodest. He had remembered it as a bower of shade—a gigantic bird's nest. He saw that ancient elms were rapidly decaying, and when he reached the judge's garden he found that the syringa and the lilacs had vanished. The garden had faced the destroyer in the plough, and trim vegetables thrived where ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... This bird's nest, as well as his song, is unlike that of our wood-pewee. Instead of a delicate, lichen-covered saucer set lightly upon a horizontal crotch of a dead branch,—our bird's chosen home,—it is a deeper cup, fastened tightly ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... and Bess, They all went together to seek a bird's nest They found a bird's nest with five eggs in; They all took one, ...
— The Song of Sixpence - Picture Book • Walter Crane
... savage-looking a trio as you would want to avoid. The shepherd looked as if he had been dug up, a dirty ruffian with matted hair and a beard like a bird's nest. The two soldiers stood staring with sullen faces, fingering their guns, while the other chap raved and stormed and kept pointing at Peter, whose mild eyes stared unwinkingly ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... and saw a tall man hastening after him. "Stop and take me with you, and take me into your service, and you won't regret it!" "Who are you," said the prince, "and what can you do?" "My name is Long, and I can extend myself. Do you see a bird's nest in that pine yonder? I will bring you the nest down without ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... evident that I have laboured under a mistaken idea! Had I not made this discovery the other day, I wouldn't be speaking like this to your very face to-day. You told me a few minutes back to take bird's nest congee; but birds' nests are, I admit, easily procured; yet all on account of my sickly constitution and of the relapses I have every year of this complaint of mine, which amounts to nothing, doctors have had to be sent for, medicines, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... sweet. Then the raccoon loves to prey upon it. Whole troops at night visit the corn-fields and commit extensive havoc. These mischievous habits make the creature many enemies, and in fact it has but few friends. It kills hares, rabbits, and squirrels when it can catch them, and will rob a bird's nest in the most ruthless manner. It is particularly fond of shell-fish; and the unios, with which many of the fresh-water lakes and rivers of America abound, form part of its food. These it opens as adroitly with its claws as an oyster-man could with his knife. It is partial to the "soft-shell" ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... grew faint at the thought of the sacrifice, his resolution was immediately taken, and as soon as he was released from duty in the morning he made his way directly round the church to the bird's nest. He was tall now and had no need of the box Paolo had placed so long ago for use as a step: thrusting his hand through the aperture, he firmly grasped Chico who happened at that time to be taking his turn with the eggs while his mate enjoyed a ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... bird's nest it clung to the side of the hill, and, across a valley, looked at a sister hill a quarter of ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... Betsy, and Bess, They all went together to seek a bird's nest. They found a bird's nest with five eggs in, They all took one, and left ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... above the moon? Nay, by the mass, then should I fall soon; Yet I keep not to climb so high; But to climb for a bird's nest, There is none between east and west, That dare thereto venter better than I: But to venter to heaven—what, and my feet slip? I know well then I should break my neck, And, by God, then had I the worse side; Yet had ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... feet, "Peter! Peter! everything is on fire! All the rocks are burning, and the great snow mountain and the sky! O look, look! the high rock up there is red with flame! O the beautiful, fiery snow! Stand up, Peter! See, the fire has reached the great bird's nest! look at the rocks! look at the fir trees! Everything, ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... Death, the jewel of the just. Shining nowhere but in the dark, What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust, Could men outlook that mark! He that hath found some fledged bird's nest, may know, At first sight, if the bird be flown; But what fair field, or grove, he sings in now, ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... bird's nest stood a small house with windows that blinked out over the Channel. It rose to a tower room in the midst, and before the front there stretched a plateau whereon stood a flagstaff and spar, from the point of which fluttered a red ensign. ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... praying daily that you may be as happy with Dr. Grant as to remember the sad past only as some dream from which you have awakened. I thank you for your invitation to visit Linwood, and when my work is over I may come for a few weeks and rest in your bird's nest of a home. Thank God the war is ended; but my boys need me yet, and until the last crutch has left the hospital, and the last worn figure gone, I shall stay where duty lies. What my life will henceforth be ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... highest merit. They take the utmost care of our Gothic cathedrals for us. They put our dearest racial possessions into museums and admire them very much indeed. They teach our young men to fly kites and eat bird's nest soup. They do all that a well-bred people can do to conceal their habit and persuasion of a racial superiority. But they keep up their "prestige." ... You know, we shouldn't love them. It really isn't a question of whether they rule well or ill, but that the position is against ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... Apple and Lady Finger Pudding Apple Slump Apple Snow Apple Tapioca Pudding Auflauf Bird's Nest Pudding Black Bread Pudding Blanc Mange Bohemian Cream Boiled Custard Bread Pudding Brown Betty Caramel Custard Cherry Pudding Chestnut Pudding Chocolate Cornstarch Pudding Chocolate Custard Corn Pudding Cornmeal Pudding Cup Custard for Six ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... say that the Awakening of Appleboro began in that workroom; and in a way it did. But it really had its inception in a bird's nest John Flint had discovered and watched with great interest and pleasure. The tiny mother had learned to accept his approach, without fear; he said she knew him personally. She allowed him to approach close enough to touch her; she even took ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... daigh, daigh; tshe daigh, daigh, daigh!" At the same time, from amidst the green foliage which twined about the dead tree, they heard a feeble, plaintive cry from several little throats, "te-derry, te-derry." Frank and Fanny were much amused. They had never seen a bird's nest so low before, and they had been forbidden to climb the trees; but now Frank saw, that by placing one large stone upon another, he could reach up, so as to look into the nest. He did so, and found there were six little birds in it. But Fanny begged him to get ...
— Frank and Fanny • Mrs. Clara Moreton
... beautiful and clever," said Susanna, "I could wish he were as virtuous. This, of course, is sheer play-acting. He 's simply waiting till our backs are turned, to renew his designs upon the bird's nest." ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... directions, the boy attracts notice from some more congenial source, and is helped onwards in life by other means. The demand for exceptional ability, when combined with energy and good character, is so great that a lad who is gifted with them is hardly more likely to remain overlooked than a bird's nest in the playground of a school. But, by whatever means noteworthiness is achieved, it is usually after a course of repeated and half-unconscious testings of intelligence, energy, and character, which build up repute ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster
... 1792, I was attending some labourers on my farm, when one of them said to me, "There is a bird's nest upon one of the Coal-slack Hills; the bird is now sitting, and is exactly like a cuckoo. They say that cuckoo's never hatch their own eggs, otherwise I should have sworn it was one." He took me to the spot, it was in an open ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... sons, the eldest perhaps getting a little more than the others. The girls divide the old beads, cloth, bead-boxes, and various trifles. The male slaves go to the sons, the female slaves to the daughters. Bird's nest caves and bee trees might be divided or ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... where my Bactrian Collection is now. Certainly I never sold it; indeed, I never sold anything; not only because nobody would buy, but because, after all, one is a Collector, not a tradesman. Birds' eggs I would have collected if I could, but you had first to find the bird's nest (almost an impossible quest for a born Duffer), and to blow the eggs, which, let me tell you, needs nicety of handling. I did once find a thrush's nest, and tried blowing an egg, but it was not wholly a success, and the egg (the contents of ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 13, 1892 • Various
... to conceal her design. She brings down her bonnet and shawl by stealth, and before the chaise comes to the door she sends Mary out into the garden with her sister, under pretense of showing her a bird's nest which is not there, trusting to her sister's skill in diverting the child's mind, and amusing her with something else in the garden, until the chaise has gone. And if, either from hearing the sound of the wheels, or ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... says to himself, he is weighed down by years. He lifts the cares of the whole world on a "loaded branch" for which a bird's nest were a "superfluous burthen." Yet this strong man cries to him for life: and he alone has the power to grant it. How easy to reprieve! How hard to deny to this trembling sinner the moment's respite which may save his soul. He wants precedent for such a deed; and he seeks ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... which the Roumanians are wont to unload their hay, with a long pole sticking up in the midst of the hay ricks to prevent the wind from carrying it away, or else the hay was piled up on the branch of a living tree like a bird's nest. ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... though Riches and Death had a' th' same right to enter a poor man's house without knocking. And saith she to me, saith she, a-filling up o' the room with her finery, like a cuckoo ruffling out its feathers in another bird's nest, ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... probably extolled enough. These bare, gray shrub masses are not wholly bare or gray and have other and most pleasingly visible advantages over unplanted, pallid vacancy, others besides the mere lace-work of their twigs and the occasional tenderness of a last summer's bird's nest. Here and there, breaking the cold monotone, a bush of moose maple shows the white-streaked green of its bare stems and sprays, or cornus or willow gives a soft glow of red, purple or yellow. Only here and there, insists my dream, lest when winter at length gives way to the "rosy time of ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... in the Island of Breke—but to give too many details would spoil the intending-reader's pleasure. So, as Hamlet observes, "Breke, Breke my heart, for I must hold my tongue!" The Earth Girl first sees the light, such as it is, in a cavern, and is brought up on raw eggs fresh from the sea-bird's nest, uncooked herbs, and raw fish. No tea, coffee, milk, or liquors of any description, were within reach of this unhappy family of three, consisting of Pa, Ma, and the Infant Phenomenon. How they slaked their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... it touched her hair. For her hair was unbound and loose; it was dark, and finer than the finest spun silk, and fell all over her shoulders and down her back to the stone she sat on. He let his fingers stray in and out among it; and it felt like the soft, warm down that lines a little bird's nest to his skin. Finally, he touched her neck and allowed his hand to rest there, it was such a soft, warm neck. At length, but reluctantly, for his little rebellious heart was not yet wholly subdued, he raised ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... ascended to the little projecting chamber, through the window of which her scarlet jacket caught the eyes of the boys paddling about on the river in those early days when Cyprian Eveleth gave it the name of the Fire-hang-bird's Nest. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... yer won't hev no confidence in him, an' will lose. I want ter say ter yer right now that this hoss what looks like ther last rose o' summer, ther last run o' shad, an' ther breakin' up o' a hard winter in a last year's bird's nest, is all right, an' he can't lose this race. Ride him true, an' don't give him ther gad none. All yer got ter do is ter encourage him by a word now an' then, an' pilot him straight ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... the breath of startled antelopes Which speed before them over swelling slopes. Now like a serpent writhing o'er the moor, The column curves and makes a slight detour, As Custer leads a thousand men away To save a ground bird's nest ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... This seems to be a proverbial expression, used when a man sees himself wronged and makes no resistance. Its original, or precise meaning, I cannot find, but I believe it means, will you be a cuckold for hire. The cuckow is reported to lay her eggs in another bird's nest; he therefore that has eggs laid in his nest, is said to be cocullatus, cuckow'd, ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... expressions of love for the absent giver." This is very beautiful and, doubtless, very true, but at the presumable age of the reader—anywhere from eighteen to eighty—one would kiss a miniature rather than a bird's nest or an apple, however rosy the latter ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... look on her face and envy him, Misty Eyes hid his companion in a little hut among the trees, as secret and secure as a bird's nest, and sometimes they would go together to a cave, opening from the sea, opposite Pupehe's Rock, to ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... thinkin' 't I'd like to bet you two dollars to a last year's bird's nest,' I says, 'that if all them fellers we seen this afternoon, that air over fifty, c'd be got together, an' some one was suddinly to holler "LOW BRIDGE!" that nineteen out o' twenty 'd duck ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... of spider bridges, ladders and balconies were laced like a metal network. The turret in which Dr. Frank and I now stood was perched here. Fifty feet away, like a bird's nest, Snap's instrument room stood clinging to the metal bridge. The dome-roof, with the glassite windows rolled back now, rose in a mound-peak to cover this highest ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... in the extreme to see Henry Knight, to whom Elfride was but a child, who had swayed her as a tree sways a bird's nest, who mastered her and made her weep most bitterly at her own insignificance, thus thankful for a sight of her face. She looked down upon him, her face glistening with rain ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... pick out the easiest way to go. Oh, no! He chose the very steepest places to slide down. And as he went slipping down the steepest cliff of all he came upon something that gave him a great surprise. For he saw, built right in the crack of a ledge, a big bird's nest made of sticks. It was the biggest bird's nest Cuffy had ever seen; and in it were two great white eggs. They were the greatest white eggs ...
— The Tale of Cuffy Bear • Arthur Scott Bailey
... begin. Did you ever see the little village of Newbury, in New England? I dare say you never did; for it was just one of those out of the way places where nobody ever came unless they came on purpose: a green little hollow, wedged like a bird's nest between half a dozen high hills, that kept off the wind and kept out foreigners; so that the little place was as straitly sui generis as if there were not another in the world. The inhabitants were all of that respectable old standfast ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... they were contented. She united her industry with that of her husband, and her good management gave a neat and almost an elegant appearance to their little cottage home, which peeped out like a bird's nest from the trees that surrounded it. Charles Abbot was a happy man, happy in the consciousness of well doing, happy in the love of his wife, and in the caresses of two little boys, the pledges ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... Wilkinsons, they are sittin' there on the sofa keepin' a close eye on each other, and Alex is givin' 'em everything he's got in the line of chatter. They're both payin' the same undivided attention to him that the Board of Aldermen in Afghanistan pays to the primaries in Bird's Nest, Va. Them babies is too busy gazin' on each other and bein' happy, and while that stuff gets silly at times—they is worse ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... troublesome webs were apt to come in contact with his spectacles. The gardeners had severest instructions not to approach their nests. It was one of the minor griefs of his life that, being so short-sighted, he could never discover a bird's nest; no, not even as a child. Memories of boyhood began to flit through his mind; they curled upwards in the scented wreaths of his Havana. . ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... and only used ten of them for the stock we kept there. Very often all the rest were full, and I had to send horses off to another place. I have often sent a wagon-load of hay up to the stable, and the next morning there would not be enough left to make a bird's nest. I have killed a fine beef, and it would all be eaten up in a day ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... moon was getting low now, and the shadows she cast out across the corn were long and weird. But the downpour of her light was still mysterious in its clarity, and in its sheen the porcupine, rolled up like a bird's nest, ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... very often merry with me upon my passing so much of my Time among his Poultry: He has caught me twice or thrice looking after a Bird's Nest, and several times sitting an Hour or two together near an Hen and Chickens. He tells me he believes I am personally acquainted with every Fowl about his House; calls such a particular Cock my Favourite, and frequently complains that his Ducks ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... that an engine made after any old and well-known pattern is now made with much more consciousness of design than we can suppose a bird's nest to be built with. The greater number of the parts of any such engine, are made by the gross as it were like screw and nuts, which are turned out by machinery and in respect of which the labour of design is now no more felt than is the design of him who first invented the wheel. ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... you weed, I guess, by appearances. How many times have you peeked into that humming bird's nest? Why don't you work all to once and play all to ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... their first meeting he had repaired to the librarian's dwelling. Crescenti was the priest of an ancient parish lying near the fortress; and his tiny house was wedged in an angle of the city walls, like a bird's nest in the mouth of a disused canon. A long flight of steps led up to his study, which on the farther side opened level with a vine-shaded patch of herbs and damask roses in the projection of a ruined bastion. This interior, the home of studious peace, was as cheerful ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... who professed to have been down there. Her object had been to visit her brother, who had recently died. To do this she perfumed herself with water in which a dead rat had been steeped, so as to give herself a death-like smell. She then pulled up a bird's nest and descended through the hole thus made. Her brother, whom of course she found, cautioned her to eat nothing, and by taking his advice she was able to return. A similar tale is told of a New Zealand woman of rank, who was lucky enough to come back from the abode of ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... closely adhered to when the conditions permit. But under other circumstances the rudest and most primitive shelters are constructed, some of them certainly not so high in the scale of construction as an ordinary bird's nest. There is a certain interest that attaches to these rude attempts, as they exhibit the working of the human ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... my thoughts! Your theme lies lowly as the ground-bird's nest; Why seek, with wings so feeble and unused, To soar above the clouds and front the stars? Descend from your high venture, and to scenes Of the heart's common ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... as it is in most creatures; and I am convinced that every spring a large number of those which have survived the Southern campaign return to their old haunts to breed. A Connecticut farmer took me out under his porch, one April day, and showed me a phoebe bird's nest six stories high. The same bird had no doubt returned year after year; and as there was room for only one nest upon her favorite shelf, she had each season reared a new superstructure upon the old as a foundation. I have heard ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... entirely to the instruction and example of my sisters. I doubt indeed whether humanity is a natural or innate quality. I was very fond of collecting eggs, but I never took more than a single egg out of a bird's nest, except on one single occasion, when I took all, not for their value, but ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... gutta-percha monkeys grinned on the branches, golden flowers had sprung to life on the ends of the twigs, a lovely jewel-like lantern crowned the whole, and as to sweets, everybody- servants and all—had some delightful devices containing them, whether drum, bird, or bird's nest. ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lingers still, that will urge me to stop— (What heart can such fancies withstand?) Where Susan once saw a bird's nest on the top, And I reached her the eggs with my hand: And so long since the day I remember so well, It has stretched to a sizable tree, And the birds yearly come in its branches to dwell, As far from a giant ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... fire. The old cookee, with his queue tied neatly up about his shaven head, takes a variety of mixtures from the drawers,—bits of dried fish, seaweed, a handful of spaghetti, possibly a piece of shark's fin, or better still a lump of bird's nest, places them in the kettle, as he yells from time to ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... plaguey near to gittin' that claim. He got Shamberson on his side, and if Shamberson's brother-in-law hadn't been removed from the Land Office before it was tried, he'd a got it. I'm going to pre-empt and build the cutest little bird's nest for you. ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... as on a prison or—the simile made me smile—an orphan asylum. There was no hint of the comely roughness of untidy ivy on a ruin. Clipped, trained, and precise it was, as on a brand-new protestant church. I swear there was not a bird's nest nor a single earwig in it anywhere. About the porch it was particularly thick, smothering a seventeenth-century lamp with a contrast that was quite horrible. Extensive glass-houses spread away on the farther side of the house; ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... thrilling to get something out of that bird's nest besides bills, fertilizer and incubator circulars, and the bulletins of the Department of Agriculture. Thank you very much. But if, after conferring with your aunts, you find that they don't approve of me, it ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... light canoes; In one placed Christian and his comrades twain— But she and Torquil must not part again. She fixed him in her own.—Away! away! They cleared the breakers, dart along the bay, And towards a group of islets, such as bear The sea-bird's nest and seal's surf-hollowed lair, They skim the blue tops of the billows; fast They flew, and fast their fierce pursuers chased. 230 They gain upon them—now they lose again,— Again make way and menace o'er the main; And now the two canoes in chase divide, And follow different courses ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... drift over our way. The one that spoke first is a redhead. The one who seems to be the leader is a big blonde in a real short skirt and hair piled up high in a bird's nest. Maybe that's what started Nick bird-watching. The third girl is sort of quiet-looking, with ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville
... toy, His sisters' sport, his wild bird's nest; And climbing to his mother's breast, Enjoys yet ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... of the childish world's unripe fancy. There is no evidence for any thing of that coarse, crude sort. The fictitious theological Heaven is a deposit of imagination on the azure ground of infinity, like a bird's nest on Himalaya. What, then, shall we say? Why, in the first place, that, while there are reasons enough and room enough for an undisheartened faith in the grand fact of human immortality, it is beyond our present powers to establish ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... significances of the title, may find one to lead him safely through richer labyrinths of thought than mine: and ladder enough also,—if there be either any heavenly, or pure earthly, Love, in his own breast,—to guide him to a pretty bird's nest; both in the Romances of the Rose and of Juliet, and in the Sermons of St. ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... if those birds were really fooled by those flowers or whether, in these niches, they merely found a comfortable place to rest. "There's an intimate relation, by the way, between birds and architecture. It's said that the first architectural work done in the world consisted in the making of a bird's nest. Some critics think that architecture had its start in the making of a bird's nest. Have you ever watched birds at work on their nests? If you have, you must know that they go about the job like artists. In our profession we like to insist, you know, that there's a big difference between architecture ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... must have felt these angry vibrations: they ceased from singing, and together we climbed out of the wood, to see Schlingen below us, tucked in a circle of hills, the white houses shining in the sunlight, "for all the world like eggs in a bird's nest", as Herr Erchardt declared. We descended upon Schlingen and demanded sour milk with fresh cream and bread at the Inn of the Golden Stag, a most friendly place, with tables in a rose-garden where hens and chickens ran riot—even ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... about whose marges spring Thick bulrushes to hide the reed-bird's nest; Where the shy ousel dips her glossy wing, And balanced in the water takes her rest: While under bending leaves, all gem-arrayed, Blue dragon-flies sit panting in ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... I saw all the finest part of it. I happened to be looking after a bird's nest in a field next to the garden: I heard the young ladies in high chat: but, as the sound did not seem to be very harmonious, curiosity led me to see what they were at. I instantly climbed up into a tree, and scarce had I taken my seat, when the engagement began. I saw Sally Delia strike Anne Graceful ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... determined to seize it, and rushed after it. Gradually I gained on it; with a final rush I made for it—and met unexpectedly bodily resistance. We fell on the ground, and a man became visible under me. I understood at once. The man must have had the invisible bird's nest, which he dropped in the struggle, thus becoming ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... fathers who were to examine the boys were perched up in a high pulpit so profusely trimmed with evergreen that it looked like a bird's nest; they were remarkably pleasant-looking men, and their eyes twinkled merrily under their Christmas wreaths. Father Anselmus was a little the taller of the two, and Father Ambrose was a little the broader; and that was about all the ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... it was this way: if Tom was going to win a scout award by finding a certain bird's nest in a certain tree, when he got to the place he would find that the tree had been chopped down. Once he was going to win the pathfinder's badge by trailing a burglar, and he trailed him seven miles through the woods and found ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... distinction of shape and size and color sharply present, and accurately to portray it in the absence of the original. If one should ask him, "What's the shape of the milkweed butterfly's wing, and the color of the spice-bush swallowtail, Peter Champneys? What does the humming-bird's nest look like? What's the color of the rainbow-snake and of the cotton-mouth moccasin? What's the difference between the ironweed and the aster?"—Ask Peter things like that, and lend him a bit of paper and a pencil, and he literally had the answers ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... 27a), each of which contains his Ku, being double in the former and single in the latter. I am as yet unable to trace these two symbols to their origin; we might suppose, from Landa's figure of the latter, that it was intended to represent a bird's nest containing eggs, but an examination of the symbol as found in the manuscript ...
— Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices • Cyrus Thomas
... as he had hunted with his ape people in the past, as Kala had taught him to hunt, turning over rotted logs to find some toothsome vermin, running high into the trees to rob a bird's nest, or pouncing upon a tiny rodent with the quickness of a cat. There were other things that he ate, too, but the less detailed the account of an ape's diet, the better—and Tarzan was again an ape, the same fierce, brutal anthropoid ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... preferred the icy wind to the stinking cattle-stalls and insect-infested straw below. We were packed in like sardines. Men were retching and groaning, cussing and growling. At last I found a coil of rope. It was a huge coil with a hole in the centre—something like a large bird's nest. I got into this hole and curled up like a dormouse. Here I did not feel the cold so much, and lying down I didn't feel sick. The moon glittered on the great gray billows. The cattle-boat heaved up and slid down the mountains. She pitched and rolled and slithered ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... the butterflies' wings, they sipped the honey with the bees from the flowers. Still, they could find nothing to do. The sunbeams bade the dimples good-by and silently crept home. "Oh," said the dimples, "what shall we do? We have no place to rest tonight." "Here is a bird's nest; let us rest in this," said one dimple. "No, that will never do," said the other dimple, "for there is the mother bird, who rests in her nest ...
— A Child's Story Garden • Compiled by Elizabeth Heber |
