"Gull" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sea. I had walked since the morning on the close clipped grass, as smooth and as yielding as a carpet. Singing lustily, I walked with long strides, looking sometimes at the slow and lazy flight of a gull, with its short, white wings, sailing in the blue heavens, sometimes at the green sea, or at the brown sails of a fishing bark. In short, I had passed a happy day, a day ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... had betrayed much more of his true self to his wife than to others, it would make no difference to the contrast between his true self and the self he presented to the world in general. But he never did so. Only the feeble eyes of the poor gull Roderigo were allowed ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... came from—it was that surprised me," said Macleod, who seemed to have rather enjoyed the adventure. "It was like one of our sea-lochs in the Highlands—you look all round and cannot find any gull anywhere but throw a biscuit into the water, and you will find them appearing from all quarters at once. As for the door, I forgot that; but I gave the man half a sovereign to console him for his ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... calm to put a boat in the water, and shot several birds, on which we feasted the next day. One of these birds was of that sort which has been so often mentioned in this journal under the name of Port Egmont hens. They are of the gull kind, about the size of a raven, with a dark-brown plumage, except the under-side of each wing, where there are some white feathers. The rest of the birds were ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... mere boy, a slim lad, on my cart now," he said, "that's going with us; he's no more froightened than a gull is ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... it appeared about as large as a gull; and the boys might have taken it for one—not knowing any other white bird likely to be flying about at such a height—but as there were several buzzards near it, and evidently below it, and as these looked no bigger than swallows, what must be its size? It was ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... Sears and his wife, Sue, white as a ghost, Tip Elder and I, with Roger and Margarita leaning over the rail. She had on a long, tight-fitting travelling coat of slate grey and a quaint, soft little felt hat with a greyish-white gull that sprawled over the top of it. She looked taller than I had ever seen her, and her hair, drawn up high on her head, made her face more like a cameo than ever, for she was pale from the excitement and fatigue of shopping. On her hand, as she waved ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... "perhaps you're right. I'm not good at birds. I know a gull or a goose or turkey ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... inventions of the galleys, spring forth from the peaceable things which surrounded him, and mingle with what he called the "petty course of life in the convent," caused Fauchelevent as much amazement as a gull fishing in the gutter of the Rue Saint-Denis ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... to Siberia. There now! Yes, the Russian is what might be called a 'lightweighted' individual, an individual who, unless he holds himself down by the head, is soon carried off by the wind like a chicken's feather—for we are too self-confident and restless. Before now, I myself have been a gull, a man lacking balance: for never does youth realise its own insignificance, ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... whose face was shrouded, and whose fight was done. Sometimes I stopped to watch the passers in the street, the moonlight shining on the spire opposite, or the gleam of some vessel floating, like a white-winged sea-gull, down the broad Potomac, whose fullest flow can never wash away the red stain of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... days I was a man, the most wedded to his idols of my generation. I was a dweller under roofs; the gull of that which we call civilisation; a superstitious votary of the plastic arts; a cit, and a prop of restaurants. I had a comrade in those days, somewhat of an outsider, though he moved in the company ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Indians has a different coat of arms, or symbolical sign by which they are known to one another. The emblem of the Ottawas is a moose; of the Chippewas, a sea gull; of the Backswoodsmen, a rabbit; that of the underground tribe, to which I belong, is a species of hawk; and that of the Seneca tribe of Indians is a crotch of a tree. The Ottawa Indians are very nearly extinct in the state of Michigan ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... that it was palpably a blow in the face. Something swept by with a shrill cry into the darkness. It was impossible to prevent jumping to one side and raising an arm by way of protection, and I was only just quick enough to catch a glimpse of the sea-gull as it raced past, with suddenly altered flight, beating its powerful wings over my head. Its white body looked enormous as the mist swallowed it. At the same moment a gust tore my hat from my head and flung the flap of my ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... the wild din, Fierce o'er the linn, The sea-gull, affrighted, soars seaward away, And dark on the shores falls the wind-driven spray; Lilith ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... creates on either side Tinkle, as through their fresh-sparred grots they shiver In grass-arched channels to the sun denied; 165 High flaps in sparkling blue the far-heard crow, The silvered flats gleam frostily below, Suddenly drops the gull and breaks the ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... grass by the roadside is the flawless triumph of art. If you have looked on him who has achieved it you have looked on one of the masters of the artists of all nations and times. You shall not contemplate the flight of the gray gull over the bay or the mettlesome action of the blood horse or the tall leaning of sunflowers on their stalk or the appearance of the sun journeying through heaven or the appearance of the moon afterward with any more satisfaction ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... starling in a long gown, who heard it from a jay-pie, who heard it from a magpie, who heard it from a popinjay; or will you believe what I, a man with nought to gain by looking awry, nor speaking false, have seen; nor heard with the ears which are given us to gull us, but seen with these sentinels mine eye, seen, seen; to wit, that fevered and blooded men die, that fevered men not blooded live? stay, who sent for this ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Prey pursued me when I was in the Water, and if I betook my self to my Wings, it was ten to one but I had a flock of Birds aiming at me. As I was one day flying amidst a fleet of English Ships, I observed a huge Sea-Gull whetting his Bill and hovering just over my Head: Upon my dipping into the Water to avoid him, I fell into the Mouth of a monstrous Shark that swallow'd me down in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... jape on me, thou sodden-brained gull?" answered Lambourne, nothing daunted. "Why, dark and muddy as thou think'st thyself, I would engage in a day's space to sec as clear through thee and thy concernments, as thou callest them, as through the filthy horn of an ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... the wind blew through the fields of grass like countless angels in the courts of heaven. Shadow and color and light and movement dancing before the first syllable of the Name. A gull flew down almost to my hand, and the sunlight thundered in my ears. Last night the sea was sadly purifying the earth. I now understand the Washer of the Ford. Majesty lies in darkness, and grief is only the privilege of seeing ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton
... chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman. With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... separately or in conjunction with the men's dance, but has a different and distinctly feminine movement. The feet are kept on the ground, while the body sways back and forth in graceful undulations to the music and the hands with outspread palms part the air with the graceful stroke of a flying gull. Some of their dances are performed seated. Then they strip to the waist and form one long line of waving arms and swaying shoulders, all moving ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... came to pass one day that as Lox sat on a log a bear came by, who, being a sociable fellow, sat down by him and smoked a pipe. While they were talking a gull flew over, and inadvertently offered to Lox what he considered, or affected to consider, as a great insult. And wiping the insult off, Lox cried to the Gull, "Oh, ungrateful and insolent creature, is this the way you reward me for having ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... sure," I answered. "I think with white-wash. At any rate, they gave them a good careening. But since then these solitudes are only the home of the sea-gull, the sea-mew, ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... passionately felt, and set down as it was felt. And so with his sense for nature, with that which seems like style in him; it is a wonderful way of trusting instinct, of trusting the approaches of natural things. He says, quite simply: 'I was told by a sea-gull that had come a great way,' as a child would tell you now. And when he tells you that 'Cynon rushed forward with the green dawn,' it is not what we call a figure of speech: it is his sensitive, literal way of seeing things. More definite, more concrete, closer ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... approaching end of this first stage of their journey. A few hundred yards south of their goal they seemed about to alight, but Droop slightly inclined the aeroplanes and speeded up the propeller a little. Their vessel swept gently upward and northward again, like a gull rising from the sea. Then Droop let it settle again. Just as they were about to fall rather violently upon the solid mass of ice below them, he projected a relatively small volume of gas from beneath the structure. Its reaction eased their descent, and they settled ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... bearing one apiece, they came forth again. As they did so, something like a shadow seemed to shoot through the trees, and, looking toward the lagoon, they saw the cause. The proa had entered the quiet waters within, and was coming to rest as gracefully as a sea gull ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... past the first line, soaring over the bar on a foamy roller-crest like a storm-driven gull winging in towards the land. The wiry figure of Bill Wheaton crouched in the stern while two sailors fought with their oars. As they gathered for their rush through the last zone of froth, a great comber rose out of the sea behind them, rearing high above their heads. The ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... and in one corner of the dirt floor, a crackling fire of drift wood, and nearly always enough applejack for all, and now and then hot soup. Marianne wrenches these luxuries, so to speak, out of the sea, often alone and single-handed, working as hard as a gull to feed ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... him, in a momentary tenderness, and continued: "When I was young I never doubted that I would conquer life. I pictured myself rising in triumph over circumstance, as a gull leaves the sea.... When I was young.... If I was afraid of the dark then I thought, of course, I would outgrow it; but it has grown deeper than my courage. The night is terrible now." ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... possible in this world and century! None of the people who had appeared in the transaction had resembled his previous conceptions of such people! And confidence-thieves always operated in the grandest hotels! He immediately decided that if the sequel should prove him to be a simpleton and gull, he would at any rate be a silent simpleton and gull. He would stoically bear the loss of two hundred pounds and breathe ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... to be vain and false; and Nature, who with all her faults is at least not a liar, had spoken over and over again. She had raised a fine storm of argument, but Nature had laughed. So had the Literary Man from London. She had a salutary vision of herself as the common geck and gull of the queerly assorted pair. She recognized that in order to work out any problem of life one must accept life's postulates and axioms. Even her mother, from whose gentle lips she rarely expected to hear wisdom, had said: "I don't see how ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... pale lightning, there now burst a heavy peal of thunder that shook the ground under our feet. A sudden squall struck the sea, ploughing deep white furrows into it, and at the same instant a single piercing shriek rose above the tempest—the frightened cry of a gull swooping over the ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... sturgeon) will we light the evening fire and lie down to rest, lulled by the ceaseless thunder of the torrent; the lone lake shore will give us rest for the midday meal, and from your frail canoe, lying like a sea-gull on the wave, we will get the "mecuhaga" (the blueberry) and the "wa-wa," (the goose) giving you the great medicine of the white man, the the and suga in exchange. ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... pleasantly upon this route. But the wind blew so fiercely in our teeth that we experienced little pleasure in looking at them. When we reached the channel we found it white with foam, and soon our little boat was tossed upon the waves like a gull. In my experience crossing the Atlantic, I had seen nothing so disagreeable as this. The motion was so quick and so continual, the boat so small, that I very soon found myself growing sick. The rain was disagreeable, and the ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... as unconscious of the fate that Mrs. Durlacher had so deftly woven for him as is the unwieldy gull that, tumbling down the wind, strikes into the meshes of the fowler's net and finds itself enchained within the web. Coralie, herself, set to the task of winning him, was as unconscious of the subtly diaphonous mechanism ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... kingfisher poising in the air over a shoal, his head bent downward, his wings vibrating swiftly. He drops like a shot and comes up out of the water with a fish held crosswise in his bill. With measured wing-strokes he flits to the top of a rock to eat his supper, and a robber-gull flaps after him to take it away. But the industrious kingfisher is too quick to be robbed. He bolts his fish with a single gulp. We eat ours in more leisurely fashion, by the light of the candles in our ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... Death-pale, bloody red, Like a dying sea-gull gleaming White with blood o'erspread. Purple tides the wounds are showing From thy faith in justice flowing; Denmark, bear the cross, thy burden Honor is ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like a whetted knife; And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover, And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... wind of dawn blows on my face As in the sun's raw heart I swiftly fly, And watch the seas glide by. Scarce human seem I, moving through the skies, And far removed from warlike enterprise— Like some great gull on high Whose white and gleaming wings ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... bookseller. This epoch-making revelation, briefly and modestly outlined in a letter to The Daily Chronicle, will be set forth in detail in a massive volume of 1,000 pages, with a portrait of the author, to be issued shortly by the House of Swallow and Gull. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... Faustus still doth hold, Nought is now said, but hath been said of old; Well, Faustus, say my wits are gross and dull, If for that word I give thee not a Gull: Thus then I prove thou holdst a false position; I say thou art a man of fair condition, A man true of thy word, tall of thy hands, Of high descent and left good store of lands; Thou with false dice and cards hast never play'd, Corrupted never widow, wife or ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... lonely brickfields. The fog was lighter here, and he could see the strange bottle-shaped kilns with their orange fan-like tongues of fire. A dog barked as they went by, and far away in the darkness some wandering sea-gull screamed. The horse stumbled in a rut, then swerved aside, and ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... sail moved very slowly. The tide was in, and the water lapped with a cooling sound against the dark green piles. In the distance the blue of the bay melted into the blue of the sky, while the nearer waters mirrored every passing gull, the masts of the fishing boats, the tall marsh grass, the dead twigs marking oyster beds—each object had its double. On a point of marshy ground stood a line of cranes, motionless as soldiers on parade, until, taking fright as the great sail glided past, they whirred off, ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... a sea-gull," remarked Lord Lathon, who wanted his luncheon very badly indeed. "We'd better not wait for him. He'll turn up all ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... turning suddenly to watch a sea gull, which had made a great swoop toward us, as if attracted by the odors of our meal; "that will be an ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... What a gull they must have thought me! I might have known that, with my lost papers on the way to France, they must hold me tight here till I had been tried, nor permit me to escape. But I was sick of doing nothing, thinking with horror on a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... made out, coasting on the air, a sea gull, balancing upon its black-tipped wings. Swallowing a lump in his throat that proved bothersome, Chris jerked at one oar and deftly coiled the magic rope over his arm, holding to the ship's ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... shops, behind the big glasses, and to know that they are not intended for one. Many's the time I have been tempted to make a dash at them; but I bethought myself that by so doing I should cut my hands, besides being almost certain of being grabbed and sent across the gull's bath to ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... he wanted most to bamboozle me into having a picture made, not half so good as I can get for a few dollars a dozen at any good photographer's, and pay him the price of a good team of horses for it. He thought he could gull old Jake Vandemark! If I would pay for it, I could get printed in the book a few of my remarks on the history of the township, and my two-hundred-and-seventy-five-dollar picture. Others would write about something else, and get their pictures in. In that way this smooth ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... backs, so that the dazzled eye lost sight of them from the contrast; while the prolonged cry of the titterel,[2] and the melancholy note of the peewit from the distant swamp, have mingled with the scream of the tern and the taunting laugh of the gull. ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... his manuscript, and we thought him better, when at the end of July, in London, he was struck down by the first attack of the head, which robbed him of all after power of work, although the intellect remained untouched. Sir William Gull sent him to Cannes for the winter, where he was seized with a violent internal inflammation, in which I suppose there was again the indication of the lesion of blood-vessels. I am nearing the shadow now,—the time of which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... one which, fortunately, was too sluggish to escape before I had time to shoot it, and ascertain it to be the well-known black snake of the Australian colonists (Acanthophis tortor) a very poisonous species. Among the seafowl, a large gull (Larus pacificus) was exceedingly plentiful, together with a smaller one (Xema jamesonii) and a few penguins (Spheniscus minor.) A fine flock of wild geese (Cereopsis novae hollandiae) was seen, but they were too wary to allow of close approach. ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... Bonaparte, who we knew was the first Lieutenant of Satan. We believed all that was said about "Free trade and sailors' rights," was all stuff and nonsense, brought forward by the Republicans, whom we called Democrats and Jacobins, to gull the people out of their liberty and property, in order to surrender both to the Tyrant of France. We believed entirely that the war was "unnecessary" and "wicked," and declared with no other design but to injure England and gratify France. We believed also that the whole of the administration, ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... the scream of gull, or piercing cry of some spirit of the air, that rang through his brain? or was it, indeed, the agonizing shriek of a woman? He heard it plainly; but Harry never knew whether she had shrieked or not. She was aware of nothing except that this unhappy man was perishing—had, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... here? Shall I wake at thy side and smile at my dream? The dream that grips me so hard that I cannot wake nor stir! O love! O my own love, found but to be lost! My soul sends over the waters a wild inarticulate cry, Like a gull's scream heard ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... be lots of ducks and gull and tern eggs out on the islands, and puffin and auk eggs on the cliffs along the shore. It's lots ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... with my back to the Russian shot. For we knew he had it in mind to run before us, that he might get away while we were caught. And they knocked our masts out of us till we dragged into the wind like a wounded gull; but he went on over the edge of the sky line—he ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... Sparrow Hawk, is so characteristic in each case that I have often been able to name the bird for a student upon being told its approximate size and the character of its flight. Who can see a Wild Duck swimming, or a Gull flying, without at once referring it to the group of birds to which it belongs? Thus the first step is taken toward learning the names of the species, and the grouping of ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... eceellenza floated like a swan, and swam faster than a gull. Forgotten! Signore, no,—I think of it every time I hear a plash in the canals, and every time I think of it I curse the Ancona-man in my heart. St. Theodore forgive me if it be unlike a Christian to do so. But, though we all tell marvels of what our Lord ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... if she needed Vee," I goes on. "She's just got in the habit of havin' her 'round. That might be all right, too, if she didn't have the travel bug so bad. But with her keepin' on the wing so constant— Well, I'm no bloomin' sea-gull. And when you're engaged, this long-distance stuff ought to be ruled out. ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... "Rosette," and sail from Boston to Calcutta; Lula, the steamer "North Star," from New York for Liverpool; Mary shall take the "Sea-Gull," from Philadelphia to San Francisco; and Nina is owner of the "Racer," that makes voyages up the Mediterranean. Are we all ...
— The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children • Jane Andrews
... and look at those lights bobbing up and down out there. I never feel any interest in ships in the daytime, but at night, when they lie at anchor, and I can see nothing but their lonely eyes, I would give anything to be able to fly round them like a gull and peep into their cabins. Do they ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... piece of wood off the water as he skims along, just like them Wild West riders do on horseback, when they throw their hats down. Why! Something must a-busted—they dropped splash on the lake; and look at the old biplane sitting right there like a great big gull! Ain't that too bad, though; I'm sorry ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... bręnnu sōtti margs konar þjōð: fyrst at sęgja frā Ōðni, at með honum fōr Frigg ok valkyrjur ok hrafnar hans; en Freyr ōk ī kęrru með gęlti þeim er Gullin-bursti heitir eða Slīðrug-tanni; en Heimdallr reið hesti þeim er Gull-toppr heitir; en Freyja kǫttum sīnum. Þar kömr ok mikit fōlk hrīmþursa, ok berg- risar. Ōðinn lagði ā bālit gullhring þann er Draupnir heitir; honum fylgði sīðan sū nāttūra, at hina nīundu hvęrja nātt drupu af honum ...
— An Icelandic Primer - With Grammar, Notes, and Glossary • Henry Sweet
... A Sea-gull, who was more at home swimming on the sea than walking on the land, was in the habit of catching live fish for its food. One day, having bolted down too large a fish, it burst its deep gullet-bag, and lay down on the shore to die. A Kite, seeing him, and thinking him a land ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... the missile of death between its giant floats, climbs the skies in search of an enemy ship. From a distance of miles, perhaps, the seaplane looks like a gull. To the observer in the plane, however, sweeping the horizon with his binoculars, a ship ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... return, for it was a warning that the weather was about to change, and the procession pulled back to Aberbrothwick, and landed in good time; for in one hour more, and the rocky coast was again lashed by the waves, and the bell tolled loud and quick, although there were none there but the sea-gull, who screamed with fright as he wheeled in the air at this unusual noise upon the rock, which, at the ebb, he had so often made ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... expect to find sea-gulls in Kansas. And in this connection let us observe another instance of Nature's wisdom. The islands in the lake being merely huge masses of lava, coated over with ashes and pumice-stone, and utterly innocent of vegetation or anything that would burn; and sea-gull's eggs being entirely useless to anybody unless they be cooked, Nature has provided an unfailing spring of boiling water on the largest island, and you can put your eggs in there, and in four minutes you can boil them as hard as any statement I have made during ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... my lips that day, and no bitter ones his. I saw he was set on the frolic, and I hoped no harm would come of it. How I watched the sky that day, Miss, no mortal knows; how I started when I saw a sea gull skim across the waves! how I listened for the least sound of a squall! Snap was just as fidgetty seemingly, and we kept stealing down to the beach, long before it was likely they should be back. As I stood watching there in the evening, where ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... the waves, heard the sea-gull's cry, In and out the ocean caves, underneath the sky, All above the wind-washed graves where ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... June so clear that a sea gull loomed mammoth against the sky; a day when a sail against the horizon was visible for miles; a day when the whole world seemed swept and garnished as for a festival, Zenas Henry Brewster drew rein before the Spence cottage, hitched the ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... the white semaphore glistened like a gull's wing—too far for me to see the balls and cones hoisted or the bright signals glimmering along the halyards as I followed a trodden path winding south through the gorse. Then a dip in the moorland hid the semaphore and at the same moment brought a house into full ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... with a chisel—banks, boats, little islands, and all. Beside the margin a derelict barrel would be turning over and over in the water; a switch of laburnum, with yellowing leaves, would go meandering through the reeds; and a belated gull would flutter up, dive again into the cold depths, rise once more, and disappear into the mist. How I would watch and listen to these things! How strangely good they all would seem! But I was a mere infant in ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... was looking over the side and noting this fact, while watching the gull's circling in our wake, uttering their plaintive screams at intervals that sounded like the ghost cries of drowned sailors buried beneath the sea, Mr Quadrant, the master, who was on the poop, sextant in hand, reported it was twelve o'clock; whereupon, the ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... given him a home, clothed him, felt for him after that the condescending, curious affection which a rough barn-yard hen might feel for its adopted poult, not yet sure if it will turn out an eagle or a silly gull. It was a strange affinity between the lank-limbed, cloudy-brained enthusiast at one end of the porch and the shallow-eyed, tobacco-chewing old Scofield at the other,—but a real affinity, striking something deeper in their natures than blood-kinship. Whether Dode shared ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... Captain Cy scratched his chin. Asaph, gazing open-mouthed at the trumpet, stirred in his chair. Mrs. Beasley swooped down upon him like a gull ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... follows. The two for a while wend their way in opposite directions. Shakib still cherishing and cultivating his bank account, shoulders his peddling-box and jogs along with his inspiring demon, under whose auspices, he tells us, he continues to write verse and gull with his brummagems the pious dames of the suburbs. And Khalid sits on his peddling-box for hours pondering on the necessity of disposing of it somehow. For now he scarcely makes more than a few peddling-trips each month, and when he returns, he does not ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... who practice the fraud of dropping a ring or other article, and picking it up before the person intended to be defrauded, they pretend that the thing is very valuable to induce their gull to lend them money, or to purchase the article. See FAWNY RIG, and ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... turned. We put out into the surf not knowing what else to do, and called for Harrie; we leaned on our oars to listen, and heard the water drip into the boat, and the dull thunder beyond the bar; we called again, and heard a frightened sea-gull scream. ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... hospitalities. He comes again by and by, and the house is vacant. He infers that his host has moved. A while afterward, in another town, he sees the man enter a house; he infers that that is the new home, and follows to inquire. Here, now, is the experience of a gull, as related by a naturalist. The scene is a Scotch fishing village where the gulls were kindly treated. This particular gull visited a cottage; was fed; came next day and was fed again; came into the house, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the nightingale; they were Unfit to mix in these thick solitudes Call'd social, haunts of Hate, and Vice, and Care: How lonely every freeborn creature broods! The sweetest song-birds nestle in a pair; The eagle soars alone; the gull and crow Flock o'er their carrion, just like ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... of the King's Park—could now watch the red sunset burnishing miles on miles of waving heather, and the full moon hanging above the restless tide. She could listen to the surf in the storm, and the ripple in the calm, to the cry of the gull and the wh-r-r of the moorcock; pull wild thyme, and pick up rose-tinted shells and perforated stones; and watch shyly her hardy cottar servants cutting peats and tying up flax, and even caught snatches of their rude Border ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... have been able to visit these great breeding warrens, and none have determined how the albatross lives and feeds its young during its absence from the ocean. It is certain that the great bird rarely leaves its nest, for there is a wicked little robber gull ever on the watch to break and eat the egg, should the mother-bird desert it for ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... speak, and for several minutes there was no sound but the sigh of the wind and the lapping of the tide. A white-winged gull flew by, with the flash of sunshine on its silvery breast. Beth watched it till it vanished, and her eyes were full of sadness. A little gray-coated sand bird came tripping over the beach 'peeping' softly to itself, as if enjoying the sun and sea. It came quite close to Beth, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... promise to herself and took Jon up the hill. They had a long talk, sitting above an old chalk-pit grown over with brambles and goosepenny. Milkwort and liverwort starred the green slope, the larks sang, and thrushes in the brake, and now and then a gull flighting inland would wheel very white against the paling sky, where the vague moon was coming up. Delicious fragrance came to them, as if little invisible creatures were running and treading scent out of the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... still more weird by reason of the tall pollards that lean over them like spectres. Far away are the rising grounds, between which and the marshes there appears no sign of life except here and there in the foreground a melancholy gull. The course which the boat bearing the hunted man took from Mill Pond stairs through the crowded shipping of the Pool, past the floating Custom House at Gravesend, and onwards, skirting the little creeks and mudbanks ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... he replied. "Salt water skims off Archie same's if he was a white bellied gull; can't drown him no more'n ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... father an adventurer, then?" she said. "You think him a sharper and your cousin a gull, and you came to warn him that if he tried to get anything more in future it was you with whom he would have to deal. And the money—you were going to say the money was not what you came for because you never expected to see it again? But you ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... an aeroplane at an angle of three to five degrees to each other is perhaps the oldest way of securing lateral balance. This way readily occurs to anyone who watches a sea gull soaring. The theory of the dihedral angle is that when one wing is lifted by a gust of wind, the air is spilled from under it; while the other wing, being correspondingly depressed, presents a greater resistance to the gust and is lifted restoring the balance. A fixed angle of three ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... "Adventures of a Carpet." "Raphael's Witch; or, Oracle of the Future" (ten coloured designs). "The London Stage" (a collection of about 180 plays, with a cut to each play; 4 vols.). Portrait of Mr. Oxberry as "Humphrey Gull" in the "Dwarf ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... When a great ship is being lured to its fate on Black Gull Rock, some one suddenly fires the beacon on Beacon Hill, and the ship is saved. ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... alongside, and he imagined a woman being helped into it and rowed to the landing-place. But the yacht did not cast anchor; her helm was put up, her boom went over, and she went away on another tack. He was glad of his dream, though it lasted but a moment, and when he looked up a great gull was watching him. The bird had come so near that he could see the small round head and the black eyes; as soon as he stirred it wheeled and floated away. Many other little adventures happened before the day ended. A rabbit crawled ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... Far out on the lowest further strip of sand, which appeared to be on a level with the sea, gulls were seen standing in twos and threes and small groups and in rows; but they did not look like gulls—familiar birds, gull-shaped with grey and white plumage. They appeared twice as big as gulls, and were of a dazzling whiteness and of no definite shape: though standing still they had motion, an effect of the quivering dancing air, the "visible heat"; at ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... as one follows idly one gull out of a flock, he could look with interest, and without emotion. He saw them drift, touch and part, and each be blown its way, helpless mote in the dust of the great plain. From one to the other he turned his eyes. The Manvers gnat flew the straighter course, holding to an upper current; ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... flew and made for the sea like a gull that has flown too far from its nesting place. He watched and saw the two planes spiraling upward, climbing to a higher altitude where it would be easy to dart down at him if he swung north. ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... they set the eagles upon the Fox, which immediately took refuge in a lake and there changed himself into a gull with six wings. But the falcons gave battle to the gull and drove him thence. He flew high amid the clouds, the falcons ever following. In a trice the gull changed himself into a fox again and tried to escape into the earth; but, falling into the power of the ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... resolves upon some fatal step but the gods turn these errors into her greatest gain. Do you wish that this election should even now be a success for you? 'Tis a very simple thing to do; condemn this rapacious gull named Cleon[524] for bribery and extortion, fit a wooden collar tight round his neck, and your error will be rectified and the commonweal will at once regain its ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... "Gull Lup," the monster—said wasn't the right word, but it was not a bark, growl, mew, cheep, squawk or snarl. Gulp was as close as Stern could come, a dry and almost painful gulping noise that expressed devotion in some totally foreign ...
— Martians Never Die • Lucius Daniel
... critical reading of the manuscript, acknowledgment should be made to Mr. Robert J. Sim. Certain events in the lives of Eve and Petro and little Solomon Otus are told with reference to his observations of eave-swallows and screech owls; his trip to an island off the Maine coast for gull-sketches added greatly to an acquaintance with Larie; and but for his six-weeks' visit with the loons of "Immer Lake," much of the story of Gavia could not have been told. Since Mr. Sim contributed not only the pictures to the book, ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... may here tell the reader that although not naturally superstitious, I have a way of peopling my island with beings during the solitary walks I take in the day, that at night I almost fancy these spirit-forms hover round me—perhaps watching me. It may be that I have mistaken the flight of a sea-gull or night-bird for something superhuman, but on several occasions I have been warned of approaching danger by something outside myself; not tangible to the touch, nor definable to the eye, but still noticeable to the ear and to the mind. Put it down a bird, as your opinion, reader, and enjoy ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... very sweet to me. And when the drinking-hall is set out in Almhuin, and the cup-bearers give out the bright cups to the chief men of the Fianna, that is very sweet to me; and it is sweet to me to be listening to the voice of the sea-gull and the heron, and the noise of the waves of Traig Liath, the song of the three sons of Meardha, the whistle of Lugaidh's Son, and the voice of the cuckoo in the beginning of summer, and the grunting of the pigs on the Plain of Eithne, and the shouting ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... never-changing vesture of gloom despise the bright garniture of Spring, and where, instead of the joyous carolling of little birds awakened anew to gladness, nothing is heard but the ominous croak of the raven and the whirring scream of the storm-boding sea-gull. A quarter of a mile distant Nature suddenly changes. As if by the wave of a magician's wand you are transported into the midst of thriving fields, fertile arable land, and meadows. You see, too, ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... could distinguish all the children—Jenny, Julia, and little Ethel. She lost sight of their faces as the ship cleared the harbour. Soon after the ship was far away on the great round of waters, again a little while and all the streaming canvas not larger than a gull's wing, again a little while and the last speck on the ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... quite angry at the insubordination, and pondered over a way of making himself respected; for to-day he had had the other big boys against him. He dashed over the playground like a circling gull, his body inclined and his arms stretched out like a pair of wings. Most of them made room for him, and those who did not move willingly were made to do so. His position was threatened, and he kept moving incessantly, as if to keep the question undecided until a possibility ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... were they taken in a strict embrace, Seen with both eyes, and pinion'd on the place; All they shall need is to protest and swear, Breathe a soft sigh, and drop a tender tear; Till their wise husbands, gull'd by arts like these, Grow gentle, ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... the beach and collected the stores of the wrecked vessel. While thus employed, Carreo shot a gull with his musket; which so astonished the natives that they regarded him with fear and respect amounting almost to veneration. A considerable quantity of powder and shot was saved from the wreck, so ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... weight. Consequently the wing must lie flat (comparatively) upon the air, and be kept straight out, economizing its vertical pressure; and hence the noticeable stiffness and toilsomeness of its progression. The gull, less concerned to sustain itself, uses the wing more flexibly, bending it slightly at the elbow, and pressing back the outer portion with each stroke. So a heavy swimmer must keep his hands flat, pressing down upon the water to hold up his head; while one who swims very lightly handles ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... old dismal haunt by the seashore. The cry of the drowning girl would not have come to him as it would to the more finely nervous constitution of Mr Cupples; but the cry of a sea-gull, or the wash of the waves, or even the wind across the tops of the sand-hills, would have been enough to make him see in every crest which the wind tore white in the gloamin, the forlorn figure of the girl he loved vanishing from ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... danger he fears is a harsh school-master, to whom he is alledging still the weakness of the boy, and pays a fine extraordinary for his mercy. The first whipping rids him to the university, and from thence rids him again for fear of starving, and the best he makes of him is some gull in plush. He is one loves to hear the famous acts of citizens, whereof the gilding of the cross[90] he counts the glory of this age, and the four[91] prentices of London above all the nine[92] worthies. He intitles himself to all the ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... skirting the piece of old ordnance dragged from the sea in 1775, near the Goodwin Sands, by some fishermen who were sweeping for anchors in the Gull-stream, you reach the conclusion, that politeness may sometimes be carried too far. "Deale," notes LELAND, in his interesting Itinerary, "is half a myle fro the shore of the sea, a Finssheher village iii myles or more above Sandwich." That is all very well ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... 'How so?' saies one. 'It is like a witty scold meeting another scold, knowing that scold will scold, begins to scold first. So,' says he, 'the mustard being lickt up, and knowing that you will bite it, begins to bite you first.' 'I'll try that,' saies a gull by, and the mustard so tickled him that his eyes watered. 'How now?' saies Tarleton; 'does my jest savour?' 'I,' saies the gull, 'and bite too.' 'If you had had better wit,' saies Tarleton, 'you would have bit first; so, then, conclude with me, that dumbe ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... banks, or rocks, a considerable quantity of spawn, which of course comes to nothing. Escaping the above perils and causalities, and arrived at maturity, they become the prey and food of the otter and heron, king's fisher, gull, &c., who emulate man in their destructive propensities. The larger fish also prey upon the smaller. Luckily otters are not so numerous in any English river as they used to be. Night lines, shackle, rake and flood nets, and other devices not at all creditable ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... [Illustrated] Thanksgiving The Devil and the Monk [Illustrated] The Draft The Dying Veteran The Feast of the Virgins [Illustrated] The Legend of the Falls [Illustrated] The Minstrel The Old Flag The Pioneer [Illustrated] The Reign of Reason The Sea-Gull [Illustrated] The Tariff on Tin [Illustrated] To Mollie To Sylva Twenty Years Ago ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... a hurry; there will be some hard pulling. I am a jolly good fellow, a good soul with no prejudices, and I will put things plainly to you. You want to do as Valerie does—very good. But that is not all; you must have a gull, a stockholder, a Hulot.—Well, I know a retired tradesman—in fact, a hosier. He is heavy, dull, has not an idea, I am licking him into shape, but I don't know when he will do me credit. My man is a deputy, stupid and conceited; the tyranny of a turbaned wife, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... if you make the deception as clear as day to it. Mrs. Evelegh was, fortunately, of the rarer class. Next morning, Dr. Fortescue-Langley arrived, by appointment. As he walked up the path, I glanced at him from my window. It was the Count, not a doubt of it. On his way to gull his dupes in Switzerland, he had tried to throw in an incidental trifle of a ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... satisfaction, experienced only by a boat man, my own little craft floating safely at her moorings. The officers gave me a sailor's hearty farewell, the boat's crew bent to their oars and were soon far in the offing, growing each moment more indistinct while I gazed, until a white speck, like a gull resting upon the sea, was the only visible sign left me of Mr. ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... English in me that loves the soft, wet weather— The cloud upon the mountain, the mist upon the sea, The sea-gull flying low and near with rain upon each feather, The scent of deep, green woodlands where the buds are ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Toby, be patient for to-night; since the youth of the count's was to-day with my lady, she is much out of quiet. For Monsieur Malvolio, let me alone with him: if I do not gull him into a nayword, and make him a common recreation, do not think I have wit enough to lie straight in my bed. I ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... of 'The sea! the sea!' to make every thing seem more nautical and ship-shape. Hoist jib and mainsail, and venture out. After you have drifted a mile or two, it will fall a dead calm, and the boat (Gazelle? Wave? Gull?) will float two or three hours, the sun flashing back from the glassy surface of the water, burning your face to the color of bricks, and almost frying the eyes out of your head. Then is the time to sing 'The sea! the sea!' and to take ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... mere exaggeration of the "Gull-fairs" noted by travellers in sundry islands as Ascension and the rock ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... my lover, My friends are the Oceans four, The Heavens have roofed me over, And the Dawn is my golden door. I would liefer follow a condor, Or the sea-gull soaring from ken, Than bury my Godhead yonder, In the dust and ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper |
