"Haystack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about a fortnight after the last-recorded events, an elderly tramp was sitting against a haystack upon some farm premises, at no great distance from the town of Cottonborough. His age might be sixty, or, allowing for the rough life he had led, something less. He looked jaded and unwell. The ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... Froissart it all seemed one magnificent pageant of knightly and kingly fortunes; he only murmurs a "great pity" for the death of a knight or the massacre of a town. It is rather the pity of it that Mr. Morris sees: the hearts broken in a corner, as in "Sir Peter Harpedon's End," or beside "The Haystack in the Floods." Here is a picture like life of what befell a hundred times. Lady Alice de la Barde hears of the ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... white stone gates which led from the yard to the fields, old-fashioned solid gates with lions on them, were standing two girls. One of them, the elder, a slim, pale, very handsome girl with a perfect haystack of chestnut hair and a little obstinate mouth, had a severe expression and scarcely took notice of me, while the other, who was still very young, not more than seventeen or eighteen, and was also slim and pale, with a large mouth and large eyes, looked at me with astonishment ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... hand with his own. "True son of Lilamani! But I fear he may have joined some secret society; and India is a large haystack in which to ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... his hat. "To-morrow," he said after farewells, "I or one of my staff will return to scour the immediate neighbourhood. It has been done, you tell me, but only by amateurs. The skilled detective, sir, will see a needle where the amateur cannot discern a haystack." ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... a mere tramp, clearly a man of no importance to you or me or anyone else in the world. The evening was warm, the place secluded and remote, and, other things being equal, he climbed over the hedge, chose a comfortable position against a haystack, pulled from his pocket a fragment of a newspaper and a fragment of a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... followed your trail to where we found the rig. After that it was guessing where the needle was in the haystack It just happened we were cutting across country to water when we ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... of sufferance were quite worn out, and he was about to implore them to leave him to his fate in the first cottage or shed—or under a haystack or a hedge—or anywhere, so he was left at ease, Collier, who rode ahead, passed back the word that they were at the avenue to Fairladies—'Was ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... by the fields, Dollops," whispered Cleek as they took to their heels up the rough road. "Got to pass him. This mist will help us. That was a near shave about the haystack. I nearly tripped us up there. Awful creature, ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... you were searching for rebels, you thought a man was concealed in a dairy-yard in the neighbourhood of my mother's house, major, in Stephen's Green; and you thought he was hid in a hay- rick, and ordered your sergeant to ask for the loan of a spit from my mother's kitchen to probe the haystack." ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... the extreme limits of improbability. The journalist who signs his letters from the front to Le Temps with the pseudonym d'Entraygues recalled a passage from Balzac in which some peasants at work on a haystack call to the postman on the road: "What's the news?" "Nothing, no news. Oh! I beg your pardon, people say that Napoleon has died at St. Helena." Work stops at once, and the peasants look at one another in silence. But one fellow standing ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... can I? I am a-growing, and I dare say I could hit a haystack as well as a good many of our chaps. They ain't all of them so clever because they are a bit ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... 'bout Gabr'el," continued Jimmy unabashed. "When folks called him to blow his trumpet he was under the haystack fast asleep." ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... Canty's house was stretched the body of Lieut. Edward K. Lonergan, of the 7th Irish Republican Regiment, of Buffalo. He had been killed at Ridgeway and the body brought back to Canty's barn and abandoned there. Several more Fenians were discovered under the barn, and more in a haystack near by, all of ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... to confirm these deductions by observation. In April I unpotted my plant of thyme for the third time. I broke up the mould and spread it under the magnifying-glass. It was like looking for needles in a haystack; but at last I recovered my little Cigales. They were dead, perhaps of cold, in spite of the bell-glass with which I had covered the pot, or perhaps of starvation, if the thyme was not a suitable food-plant. I give up the problem as too ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... tramp up the mountain road in which the two men had been shot down. A number of men under the direction of the sheriff were scouring the lofty timberland for the deadly marksmen. He knew it would turn out to be as futile as the proverbial effort to find the needle in the haystack. ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... like finding a needle in a haystack, and for a time Stoddard despaired of success. But those rugged mountains were an open book to the planes circling high overhead, and with Martin's Bluff once located, the rest was not ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... flames attacked the haystack, which was but a morsel to its fury, and then seizing the house devoured it more slowly, while the great volume of the fire swept around over the plain. Long did the light of the burning home blight the eye of the lone woman after the flames ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... blow your horn! The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn. Where's the little boy that looks after the sheep? Under the haystack, fast asleep! ...
— The Real Mother Goose • (Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright)
... pulsating earth. To the south the Brandon Hills shimmered in a pale gray mirage. Over the trees which sheltered the Stopping-House a flock of black crows circled in the blue air, croaking and complaining that the harvest was going to be late. On the wire-fence that circled the haystack sat a row of red-winged blackbirds like a string of jet beads, patiently waiting for the oats to ripen and indulging in low-spoken but pleasant gossip about all the other ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... sketch of the devil!" said this very angry and inconsiderate papa. "Why can't she do it some other day?—why the Twelfth? Good heavens! is everything conspiring to vex and annoy me so that I sha'n't be able to hit a haystack?" ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... way, in a few years, and there's nothing to it. Grant's a good son, and a good brother, and a good friend and neighbor, but"—the Doctor pounds his chair arm vehemently, "there are bats, my dear, bats in his belfry just the same. Don't get excited when you see Grant mount his haystack to jump into the crack o' doom ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... in doubt as to which of the two plans they should lend their support to. "Are you sure we'll catch 'em, Cap?" inquired one, doubtfully, "there are so powerful many forks to this river, it's like hunting for a needle in a haystack." ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... little farther and sit down in the fields, where an unfinished haystack offers us a couch. We can hardly distinguish the line of the horizon between the dark earth and the dark sky. A bat flits across our ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... haystack stood by the road-side, but over there in the field he saw a barn near a farm-house. He could find shelter in that. Waiting until it was dark, he crept cautiously through a small sheep door, and entered. He heard in another part of the building ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... step was to find out where Hugh Davidson was likely to be found, if alive. Dr. Hunter felt as though he were beginning to search for the proverbial needle in a haystack; but by Mrs. Forester's advice he entrusted the matter to his lawyers, and in an incredibly short space of time he heard from them that the man he wanted was now the manager of the A1 Shipping and Transportation Company at Skaguay, Alaska, the largest organization of its kind ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... could not, Win said: "Why shouldn't I?" She told herself that in a vast house of business which employed over two thousand salespeople she would be a needle in a haystack—a needle with a number, not a name. "I'll go and ask for a place," she ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... to her: "If you will go to yonder hay-stack, and fetch me a handful of hay, I'll give you the milk." So away went the old woman to the haystack and she brought ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... try to find that strange man, whoever he is," suggested Tom. "Although looking for him would be a good deal like looking for the proverbial pin in the haystack. I would rather dig up the whole of the Atlantic seacoast looking for Captain Kidd's treasure;" ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... along with me and you may have a piece of this pie for yourself. And you may stay with Grandpa Goosey Gander until summer comes, and then blow your horn for the sheep in the meadow and the cows in the corn. There is no need, now, for you to stay out in the cold and look for a haystack under which ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis
... heavy rumbling sound, like a very large old gentleman asleep after dinner; and there was a smaller sort of rumble going on at the same time; and there was a sort of crowing, clucking sound, such as a chicken might make if it happened to be as big as a haystack. ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... over that haystack," said Jack, "and then play out rope till we lower him. It'll make a nice soft ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... though it would burst. As I approached the little inn, I saw the stranger in a sloping meadow behind the house. She was seated at the foot of a sunny wall, against which the inhabitants of the place had piled a few stones. Her white dress shone out on the verdant meadow, and the shade of a haystack screened her face from the sun. She was reading in a little book that lay open on her lap, and every now and then interrupted her reading to play with the children from the mountain, who came to offer her flowers, or chestnuts. On seeing me, she attempted to rise as if to meet me ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... a person to shoot if he mayn't shoot in his own woods? Not that the Duke cares about the shooting for himself. He could not hit a pheasant sitting on a haystack, and wouldn't know one if he saw it. And he'd rather that there wasn't such a thing as a pheasant in the world. He cares for nothing but farthings. But what is a man to do? Or, rather, what is a woman to do?—for he tells me that I ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... clatterin' tongue. If she'll talk like that to us, you know she will about town, and it takes a powerful small spark to set a haystack of scandal afire. Folks think Hettie has driv' you pretty far, anyway, with her odd, graveyard notions, and it wouldn't take much to—to start a ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... to say "So?" then snuggled back into his wraps again, to chuckle contentedly. He was so wound up in furs that he looked like a sharp little needle in a fuzzy haystack. ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... at the appointed time I was behind the haystack awaiting my adversary, who did not fail to appear. "We may be surprised," he said; "be quick." We laid aside our uniforms, drew our swords from the scabbards, when Ignatius, followed by five pensioners, came out from behind ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... to her: "If you will go to yonder haystack and fetch me a handful of hay, I'll give you the milk." So away went the old woman to the haystack; and she brought the hay to ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... Louise bit her lips thoughtfully, turned and looked back at the haystack, at the long line of new, wire fence, and at the two heavy-set mares feeding contentedly along the creek. "There must be money in ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... the gaoler in such a manner that he afterwards died. The friend was caught at once, but David ran well—"never did a fox double the hounds in better style"—and got away in woman's clothes. As he was resting in a haystack after his run of ten miles in an hour, he heard a woman ask "if that lad was taken that had broken out of Dumfries Gaol," and the answer: "No; but the gaoler died last night at ten o'clock." He got arrested in Ireland ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... Our striped friend had the best of the start, and we gained not an inch upon him. To our unspeakable mortification, he reached the dense cover on ahead, where we might as well have sought for a needle in a haystack. Never, however, shall I forget that mad headlong scramble. Fancy an elephant steeple-chase. Reader, it was sublime; but we ached for it ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... the fools!" said an exasperated voice. "Off you go, with no cap, and a head like a haystack. Do you remember that they have a burra khana[1] on? Do you want to be turned back for a lunatic? Dress first and get there early, and then speak to her. Call your boy, can't you? Why I ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... ignorant soul, and settled down to stay. She said it over nights when she found a shelter in some unpleasant place or days when the road was rough or a storm came up and she was compelled to seek shelter by the roadside under a haystack or in a friendly but deserted shack. She thought of it the day there was no shelter and she was drenched to the skin. She wondered afterward when the sun came out and dried her nicely whether God had really been ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... choice between this pair of perfect twins: one is as exquisite as the other.... And yet you must take one and I the other... this or that, whichever you prefer.... You shall take it home with you to-night and practise thrusting at a haystack or at a bobbin, as you please... The sword is yours to command until you have used it against my unworthy person... yours until you bring it out four days hence—on the southern ramparts of Boulogne, ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... happened to meet a band of Chukchis who had seen them, we might wander over those desolate plains for a month without coming across the stove-pipe, which was the only external sign of their subterranean habitation. It would be far worse than the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack. ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... obvious. Robespierre, Danton, Tinville, Merlin, and the whole of the demmed murderous crowd, will be busy looking after me—a needle in a haystack. They'll put the abortive attempt down to me, and you may—ma foi! I only suggest that you may escape safely out of France—in the Daydream, and with the ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... wit and brilliancy, I had thought them to be hard and intellectual and lacking in all that broader base of humor which aims at truth. His writing—catching the bad habit of the time—is too ready to proclaim a paradox and to assert the unusual, to throw aside in contempt the valuable haystack in a fine search for a paltry needle. His reviews are seldom right—as most of us see the right—but they sparkle and hold one's interest for their perversity ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... hint at such a thing." He glared awfully, but his tone softened. "There's some milk yet about that moustache of yours, my boy. You don't know what a man like me is capable of. I would hide behind a haystack if . . . Don't grin at me, sir! How dare you? If this were not a private conversation I would . . . Look here! I am responsible for the proper expenditure of lives under my command for the glory of our country and the honour of ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... was not a palace. It stood, low and whitewashed, amid a medley of little tumble-down erections, and was guarded on one side by cowsheds and on the other by the haystack. You stepped across the threshold into the kitchen. A door on the right gave access to the bedroom. A ladder connected with a hole in the roof enabled you to reach the cockloft, the guest room of the establishment. That was all. What on earth could man want more? asked Paragot. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... half the way over. As he walked through Birkenhead, bound for Chester, he pricked himself on to note red-brick house-rows, almost shocking in their lack of high front stoops. Along the country road he reflected: "Wouldn't Morty enjoy this! Farm-yard all paved. Haystack with a little roof on it. Kitchen stove stuck in a kind of fireplace. Foreign ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... places as the Mansion House has to be met. The hall is so vast and the multitude so bewildering that, unless you know exactly where to look, it is as hopeless to expect to find any given partner at the right moment as to seek a needle in a haystack. The only safe expedient is to agree upon a pillar. A row of substantial pillars runs down either side of the hall, the base of each fringed with seats, apt head-quarters for chaperons, who, sitting there at ease, survey the fray and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... Here a haystack smoldered in what had been a farmstead yard; its thin blue smoke wavered up in the morning, incense over the dead hope of the humble heart that had dreamed it had found a refuge in that spot. At the roadside ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... three or four miles square, a network of crests, ridges, cups, and narrow valleys like ravines. He resolved that for the present, at least, he would make no attempt to break from it and pass the Indian lines. He would be for a day or two the needle in the haystack. One might move from cover to cover and evade pursuit for a long time in a tumbled and tangled mass of country fifteen or sixteen miles square, covered moreover with ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to give the milk unless the old woman first gave her a handful of hay. So away went the old woman to the haystack; and she brought the hay ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... chance like a good un. The boss still sprees and loafs about town till some one has to go and haul him home. I'm about full of him, and I'm going to leave home before next Christmas, or my name ain't what it is. Mother says the kiddies would starve if I leave; but Stanley is coming on like a haystack, I tell him, and he does kick up, and he ought to be able to plough next time. I ploughed when I was younger than him. I put in fourteen acres of wheat and oats this year, and I don't think I'll cut a wheelbarrow-load of it. I'm full of the place. I never have a single penny ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... threepence was exactly the price of a little book, The Tale of a Tub, which he spied in a bookseller's window. He bought it, took it into a field near Kew Gardens, and sat down to read; read on till it was dark, tumbled to sleep under a haystack, and woke to ask the head gardener for work. He was given work, but the gardener persuaded him to return home. Ten years later he ran away from Farnham again, and for the last time. He was out on the road to meet ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... operations on a large scale, of the Calaveras Copper Company, I found the little settlement crowded to its fullest capacity, and was perforce compelled to resort to genuine "hobo" methods—in short, I spent the night under the lee of a haystack. My original intention had been to walk thence to Sonora, twenty-four miles; but finding the road would take me again into the valley, I decided to make for Angel's Camp, only thirteen ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... Blue, come blow your horn, The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn. Is this the way you mind your sheep,— Under the haystack, fast asleep?" ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... have divined by the rhythm of my impromptu phrases, but it happened at that time that a play of mine had been accepted at the Grand Guignol, subject to an additional thrill being introduced, and I preferred pondering for a thrill in my garret to hunting for a pin in a haystack, ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... can they ever find it? Seems to me it'll be like hunting for the proverbial needle in a haystack, only more so!" ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... of the car and set off running at top speed for the scene of the blaze, which was in a haystack back of the main barn of the farmhouse. Several farm hands, under the direction of the disagreeable old man, whose name was Zenas Hutchings, were running about with buckets of water, which were about as effective as trying to sweep the sea back with a broom, so far as gaining any headway ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... squadrons had newly arrived at Saponay. Four machines of No. 5 Squadron were completely wrecked, and others damaged. Lieutenant L. A. Strange saved his Henri Farman machine, which had made a forced landing, by pushing it up against a haystack, laying a ladder over the front skids, and piling large paving-stones on the ladder, using hay twisted into ropes for tying down the machine. A diary of No. 3 Squadron records that when the machines of that squadron ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... right, sir; they couldn't hit a haystack. Their hands are all of a tremble with climbing. We're right enough. I hit ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... space, stole back to where he could hear any sound from the porch even if he could not see, and when he was certain that Baumberger had gone back to his bed, he got his horse, took him by a roundabout way to the stable, and himself slept in a haystack. At least, he made himself a soft place beside one, and lay there until the sun rose, and if he did not sleep it was not his fault, for ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... thing of real value; and, at last, wearied with the philosophical twaddle, I resolved to make a new search for the criterion. I confess it, to my shame, this folly lasted for two years, and I am not yet entirely rid of it. It was like seeking a needle in a haystack. I might have learned Chinese or Arabic in the time that I have lost in considering and reconsidering syllogisms, in rising to the summit of an induction as to the top of a ladder, in inserting a ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... come," said he, "without the praying for. When the fire came owre the hill the other day, I just put up a bit prayer to the Lord, that He'd spare the haystack, and He spared it. (I didna stop working, ye ken; I worked the harder; if ye dinna mean to work, ye should na pray.) But I never prayed for rain,—I didna, ye see, like to ask the Lord to upset all ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... exclaimed, springing to the ground beside me. "I've actually been praying for a week past that I might meet you. Holmes, of your service, told me you had pulled through, but everything is in such confusion that to hunt for you would have been the proverbial quest after a needle in a haystack. You have been ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... for myself, I am happy in this occasion to make a public avowal of my own."[48] Without the "Reliques," "The Ancient Mariner," "The Lady of the Lake," "La Belle Dame sans Merci," "Stratton Water," and "The Haystack in the Floods" might never have been. Perhaps even the "Lyrical Ballads" might never have been, or might have been something quite unlike what they are. Wordsworth, to be sure, scarcely ranks among romantics, and he expressly renounces the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... him). Old wives grumbled by their hearths when he did not look in to despair of their salvation. He told the maidens of his congregation not to make an idol of him. His session saw him (from behind a haystack) in conversation with a strange woman, and asked grimly if he remembered that he had a wife. Twenty were his years when he came to Thrums, and on the very first Sabbath he knocked a board out of the ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... in our great city with its constant removals and changes of population. The individual is like the proverbial needle in the haystack, unless we adopt a method of accounting not only for each family but for each individual down to the latest-born child.* *In order that I may not be as one that beateth the air, I venture to suggest a method of laying the foundation of records that has been helpful ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... remember that haystack over there," said the boy, with entire irrelevance, "but there's a house with a light in it, and—maybe we'd best ask if we're on the right road. ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... exclaimed. "Now I know! You're going to live in the haystack. A haystack is cozy and warm; it's wind-proof; it sheds water; and ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug • Arthur Scott Bailey
... bumping a few miles away—mostly at aeroplanes. I went to the trenches with a friend. Our last sight, as we came away from the region of them, was of a group of French boys and girls and a few elders around a haystack; and half a dozen big Australians, with rolled shirtsleeves, up on the farming machinery helping them to do ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... and we had to drive up the pigs, whose stye was threatened with submersion. The scene was truly one of desolation as we looked beyond our own homestead; trunks of trees and palings, and now and then a haystack, and barns, and parts of houses, and occasionally whole dwellings came floating by, showing what ravages the flood must have committed above us. Malcolm and I agreed that it was fortunate we had repaired our canoe. As the waters extended, ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... up the road distances from Denver, Cole. Your job's like lookin' for a needle in a haystack. I'll put a detective agency on James. He might take a notion to run out to the cache any fine evenin'. He likely will, to make ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... the visit of Mr. Lovejoy, Samson and Harry built a hollow haystack about half-way from the house to the barn. The stack had a comfortable room inside of it about eight feet by seven and some six feet in height. Its entrance was an opening near the bottom of the stack well screened by the pendant hay. But no ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... some cottagers were going to their day's labor, and saw, to their astonishment, that several acres of ground were strewn with black ashes. In the middle of a field there was a heap of whitened bones a great deal higher than a haystack. Nothing else was ever seen of the dreadful Chimera. And when Bellerophon had won the victory he bent forward and kissed Pegasus, while the tears stood ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... spectacle that inspired Pan as never before. The wagons were lined up near the lake, their big white canvas tops shining in the afternoon sun, and higher on a bench stood the "hoodelum" or bed wagon, so stocked with bedrolls that it resembled a haystack. Beyond the margin of the lake, four hundred fine saddle horses grazed and kicked and bit at one another. Beyond the saddle horses grazed the day herd of cattle. And over on the other side dinned the melee over the main herd, the incessant riding, ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... discovered. They had not walked far that day and now pressed forward north. They had filled their pockets with the remains of their supper, and after walking all night, left the road, and climbing into a haystack at a short distance, ate their breakfast and were soon ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... chameleon-like, Jerry reflected her tepor, her supineness and femininity. She recounted his virtues with pride, while I questioned her, hoping against hope to hear of some prank, the breaking of window-panes, the burning of a haystack or the explosion of a giant cracker under the cook. ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... to carry me down the river to Bhagulpore, whence I was to proceed to the Sikkim-Himalaya. The vessel, which, though slow and very shabby, had the advantage of being cooler and more commodious than the handsomer craft. Its appearance was not unlike that of a floating haystack, or thatched cottage: its length was forty feet, and breadth fifteen, and it drew a foot and a half of water: the deck, on which a kind of house, neatly framed of matting, was erected, was but a little above the water's edge. My portion of this floating residence was lined with a ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... children; or stopping to pull and tug at a snow-trapped steer and by main effort, drag him into a barren spot where the sweep of the gale had kept the ground fairly clear of snow; at times also, they halted to dig into a haystack, and through long hours scattered the welcome food about for the bawling cattle; or gathered wood, where such a thing was possible, and lighting great fires, left them, that they might melt the snows about a spot near a supply ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... would probably only stay a few hours. "We can't treat him like that; tell him to stay a week and send for his gun. For the matter of that he can have one of mine. I don't expect he will be able to hit a haystack," was his reply. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... to his twisted knees; he had long, yellow, overlapping horse's teeth in his mouth, with a fall-down under-lip and a drawn-back upper-lip; he had a matted rug of hair on his head. He was as high as a haystack. He carried in his twisted hand an iron spike pointed at the end. And wherever he was going he went as quickly ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... food they purchased by the way under some thick, tree, or beside a stream through whose limpid waters they could watch the trout glide and play. And they often preferred the chance shelter of a haystack, or a shed, to the less romantic repose offered by the small inns they alone dared to enter. They went in this much by the face and voice of the host or hostess. Once only Philip had entered a town, on the second day of their flight, and that solely for the purchase of ruder ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Lawd, child, ain't you in hahdship and dangeh enough? Not one o' you ain't goin' one step fu'ther this day. Do you want to git shot? Grant's men are a-marchin' into Bolton's Depot right now. Why, honey, you might as well go huntin' a needle in a haystack as to go lookin' fo' Brodnax's brigade to-night. Gen'al Pemberton himself—why, he'd jest send you to his rear, and that's Vicksburg, where they a-bein' shelled by the boats day and night, and the women and child'en a-livin' in caves. You ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... jumped on to the sledge (for he was running) having seen Stareek put his paws through. It was a nasty crevasse, about twenty feet across with blue holes on both sides. The sledge ran over and immediately on the opposite side was brought up by a large 'haystack' of pressure which we had not seen owing to the light. Meares' team, on our left, never saw any sign of pressure. The light was so bad that we never saw this cairn of ice until we ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... not—no telling what they'll do. However, by the time they can land and get checked up and ready to hunt for us, we'll be a mighty small needle, well hidden in a good big haystack." ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... beneath which his legs trembeled. "Name shis town's London. Shame name's big town 'cross ocean. Lots history c'nected wish name. Shtacks an' cords of it. Old times when King went out t'meet him, wish shtyle pile on bigger'n a haystack. Fact. Clothes finer'n a peacock. Tendered him keys, freed'm city. All shat short shing. Ver' impreshive shpectacle. Everybody felt better'n for improvin' sight. Undershtand? We'll be Lord Mayor and train for shis London. We can rig out right here. Our trouseau's here in shis ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... a haystack; but the speed at which he was going lodged his head several inches under the thatch, whence he projected horizontally into space, feet, arms, and wings gyrating furiously. The governess, however, soon released him with much laughter, ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... the street, surging this way and that, some eagerly joining in the chase, others, from ready sympathy with any rogue, doing their best to hinder and confuse us. There was no way to tell how he had gone. A needle in a haystack is easy found compared with him who loses himself in a ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... most venerable aspect. The note of welcome in his cheery voice was unmistakable and soon the maid who had spoken from the balcony had shown the way up a winding circular staircase to a welcome exchange to the shelter of a haystack which I had begun to fear would be my only ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... thank that rascally cousin of mine for having taught you," said Russell; "but seriously, isn't it a very moping way of spending the afternoon, to go and lie down behind some haystack, or in some frowsy tumble-down barn, as you smokers do, instead of playing ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... speak truth, the finding of the needle in the haystack would have been as easy as any hope of ever locating the machine in all those thousands ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... believe that in all the world there is only one woman specially created for each man, and that the order of the universe will be hopelessly askew unless these two needles find each other in the haystack? You believe it for yourself, perhaps; but do you believe it for Tom Johnson? You remember what a terrific disturbance he made in the summer of 189-, at Bar Harbor, about Ellinor Brown, and how he ran away with her in September. You have also seen them together (occasionally) at Lenox ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... whole water system of San Francisco was gone, or supposedly so, through the breaking of the mains. 'But I had a hunch, just a hunch,' said Lane, 'that there was water somewhere in the pipes.' He had learned that a fire company which had given up the fight was asleep on a haystack somewhere in the Western Addition. He went out and found them. They had been working for thirty-six hours; they lay like dead men. Lane kicked the soles of the nearest fireman. He returned only a grunt. The next fireman, ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... the family had assembled—some thirty or forty people, in fact, for Finland is famous for big families—and tables of cakes and coffee were spread at a point from which every one could see the enormous Kokko, as high as a haystack, standing on a lonely rock in the water. The boatmen went off and lighted it, having thrown turpentine over the dried branches, and stacked up tar-barrels, so that it might the more readily catch fire, and in a few moments huge volumes of smoke ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... been in action once and once only in the memory of man, and that time it was a haystack which had burnt itself out just as the rescuers had succeeded in fastening the hose to ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... on yonder haystack,' observed Charteris poetically, as he and Tony, accompanied by Swift and Daintree, made their way across the fields to Parker's Spinney. Each carried a bicycle lamp, and at irregular intervals each broke into piercing yells, to the ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... haystack with one grave beside it, and again there would be one, usually partly burned, almost encircled with the tiny flags which said: "Here ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... superstitious watchers might have supposed that they beheld some demoniac throng newly burst oat of the bowels of earth and to be presently re-engulfed; but seen nearer, the toiling creatures, fighting with all their hearts and souls to save a haystack from flood, had merely excited human interest and commiseration. Farmer Chirgwin and his men were girt as to the legs in old-fashioned hay-bands; some held torches while others toiled with ropes to anchor the giant rick against the gathering waters. There was no immediate fear, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... boys were examined as to their knowledge of Samuel Mills. "Where was he born?" asked the leader. "Under a haystack!" replied a small boy. Had the question been, Where was the American Board of Foreign Missions born? the answer would not have been so far from the way. Its baptismal naming came some years later, but under a ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker
... of "H. W." so that I may not have to correct them on a Sunday. I am not going over to the Sabbatarians, but like the haystack (particularly) on a ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... full of water that she steered like a haystack; and as any one in the waist got half-drowned every minute, long spells at the pumps ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... for the chef, there would be trouble in camp. You may be a good enough horse wrangler for a through Texas outfit, but when it comes to playing second fiddle to a cook of my accomplishments—well, you simply don't know salt from wild honey. A man might as well try to cook on a burning haystack as on a ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... many in perpetuating the lawlessness for which the Bad Lands had for years been famous. Geography favored the criminal along the Little Missouri. Montana was a step or two to the west, Wyoming was a haven of refuge to the southwest, Canada was within easy reach to the north. A needle in a haystack, moreover, was less difficult to lay one's finger upon than a "two-gun man" tucked away in one of a thousand ravines, scarred with wash-outs and filled with buckbrush, in the broken ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... to take a walk uptown, to get the outdoor exercise and also in hope of seeing something of the tramp who had taken the packet. He knew that looking for the tramp in the metropolis was a good deal like looking for a pin in a haystack, but imagined that even that pin could be found if one looked long ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill
... monstrous crow's nest, but on returning the second week in May I saw a pair of Ospreys coming and going to and fro from the nest. I hoped the birds might return another season, as the nest looked as if it might have been used for two or three years, and was as lop-sided as a poorly made haystack. The great August storm of the same year broke the tree, and the nest fell, making quite a heap upon the ground. Among the debris were sticks of various sizes, dried reeds, two bits of bamboo fishing rod, seaweeds, some old blue mosquito netting, and some rags of fish net, also about half ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... figurin' on two or three days' get-a-way, and so don't care a tinker's dam 'bout these yere marks. Once in the sand, an' thar won't be no trail anyhow. It's some kintry out thar, an' it would be like huntin' a needle in a haystack to try an' find them fellars after ter-night. This is my idea—we'll just mosey along slow, savin' the hosses an' keeping back out o' sight till dark. Them fellars ain't many hours ahead, an' are likely ter make camp furst part o' ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... can't do it. I know some people who always try to show themselves in public; but when they are home, they never have their collar on straight, and in the morning look like a whirlwind breakfasting on a haystack. As for me, I am practical, and winter is winter, and sleet is sleet, and ice is ice, and a tea-cup is a tea-cup; and if you will pass mine up to the hostess to be resupplied, I will like it a great deal better than all this sentimentalism. No sweetening, if you please. ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... and doubled again, and shifted and crept into holes; at last vanished up some dark crevice, and nothing was seen but his tail. One thought one was to see no more of him, when, on one of the polling mornings, he suddenly emerged, like a rat out of a haystack, and voted for Round. The Heads, in fact, have been thoroughly inefficient. The election has literally gone on without ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... lonely from the blue—brilliantly blue—waves; then a yellow crag of sandstone, looking like a haystack; and then a whole group of wild and fantastic islands, evidently of volcanic origin, and varying in rough peaks and abrupt cliffs of the strangest colours—brick-red, purple-black, grey, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... of meadow hay out in the meadow, with the tide-water all about them. Then his eyes were fixed on one particular haystack. On its top, with her yellow hair and smiling face in sight, was—it could not be, though—but it was—a little girl, and dangling by the side of the stack was a guitar with a yellow face. The man waded through the water that lay between the dry ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... surface of yonder all-mirroring pool? Do you know that, the appearance of nature is constantly varying with every change of light and every passing cloud? Do you know how Primrose Hill looks at night? Perhaps you think you know how a haystack looks in the sunlight; yet across the Channel the illustrious Monet devoted months to painting one haystack, making fresh discoveries daily. I do not believe you know how many Roman figures there are on your watch-dial. You probably think there ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill |
