"Hornet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you met in the woods east of the big river, and whom you tried to persuade to line a yellow hornet to his nest: as if my eye was not too true to mistake any other animal for a honey-bee, in a clear day! We tarried together a week, as you may remember; you at your toads and lizards, and I at my high-holes and hollow trees: and a good ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... quietly, as we did when we were boys? I expect I had a rather comfortable time of it then, though I did get whipped for tearing my clothes, and killing flies, which I used to do worse than any bald hornet. ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... with Mr. Gibbons, Captain Vanderbilt soon found that he had put his head into a hornet's nest. The State of New York had granted to Fulton and Livingston the exclusive right of running steamboats in New York waters. Thomas Gibbons, believing the grant unconstitutional, as it was afterwards declared by the Supreme Court, ran his boats in defiance of it, and ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... legion. Of brethren he's a false accuser; A slanderer, traitor, and seducer; A fawning, base, trepanning liar; The marks peculiar of his sire. Or, grant him but a drone at best; A drone can raise a hornet's nest. The Dean had felt their stings before; And must their malice ne'er give o'er? Still swarm and buzz about his nose? But Ireland's friends ne'er wanted foes. A patriot is a dangerous post, When wanted by his country most; Perversely comes ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... in France; Everywhere men bang and blunder, Sweat and swear and worship Chance, Creep and blink through cannon thunder. Rifles crack and bullets flick, Sing and hum like hornet-swarms. Bones are smashed and buried quick. Yet, through stunning battle storms. All the while I watch the spark Lit to guide me; for I know Dreams will triumph, though the dark Scowls above me where I go. You can hear me; you can ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... obeyed in silence had not Miss Fenshawe thought fit to help him. She had found Mrs. Haxton's airs somewhat tiresome during the long journey from London, and she saw no reason why that lady should be so ready to bring a hornet's ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... SINGETH] John, Master of the Temple of God, 10 Falling to sin the Unknown Sin, What he bought of Emperor Aldabrod, He sold it to Sultan Saladin: Till, caught by Pope Clement, a-buzzing there, Hornet-prince of the mad wasps' hive, And clipt of his wings in Paris square, They bring him now to be burned alive. [And wanteth there grace of lute or clavicithern, ye shall say to confirm him who singeth— We bring John now to be ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... Sith. Hornet-like monster. Bald-faced and about the size of a Hereford bull. Has frightful jaws in front and mighty poisoned sting behind. The eyes, of myriad facets, cover three-fourths of the head, permitting the creature to see in all ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... in the lobby of the theatre, and at the same time took the very particular pleasure of introducing the Captain to several of the young bloods, as he called them, while they walked to and from the boxes. At length the Captain found himself in a perfect hornet's nest, surrounded by vicious young secessionists, so perfectly nullified in the growth that they were all ready to shoulder muskets, pitchforks, and daggers, and to fire pistols at poor old Uncle ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... my old age, like a mouse into a pot of pitch. You say, Come to Rome; you might as well say to the crab, Fly. The crab says, Give me wings; I say, Give me back my health and my youth. If I write calmly against Luther I shall be called lukewarm; if I write as he does, I shall stir a hornet's nest. People think he can be put down by force. The more force you try, the stronger he will grow. Such disorders cannot be cured in that way. The Wickliffites in England were put ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Captain Grantham, who exclaimed, "I am delighted to see you, Fleetwood. From the accounts we received we thought it was all up with you; and I came more with the hope of avenging you, than of seeing you alive; but now you shall have that satisfaction yourself. By Jove! we must blow up the hornet's nest without delay. When did you ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... carried the Emmet, his friend, on his back; And there was the Gnat, and the Dragon-fly too, And all their relations, green, orange, and blue. And then came the Moth, with her plumage of down, And the Hornet, in jacket of yellow and brown; Who with him the Wasp, his companion, did bring, But they promised that evening to lay by their sting. Then the shy little Dormouse peeped out of his hole, And led to the feast his ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... limitations of the Convention were disregarded. Short of armed intervention there was no machinery for enforcing them, and the Boers knew perfectly well that there was no real desire on the part of an embarrassed Government to raise a hornet's nest by making the attempt. The British resident, with his nominally autocratic powers, was a mere impotent laughing stock. The ruined loyalists left the country, or remained to become the most embittered enemies of the British Government. In three years a new Convention was ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... Bart. "Those fellows will wake up after a while to the fact that they've tackled a hornet's nest. Even a thick German head can take in ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... something for these hornet stings," added Tad Sobber. "If I don't get something soon I'll go crazy ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... you been? The old man's been as mad as a hornet since he found you had quit without leave. He was asking ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow, Where the ground-nut trails its vine, Where the wood-grape's clusters shine; Of the black wasp's cunning way, Mason of his walls of clay, And the architectural plans Of gray hornet artisans! For, eschewing books and tasks, Nature answers all he asks, Hand in hand with her he walks, Face to face with her he talks, Part and parcel of her joy,— Blessings ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the estate on which he had a lien was a joint family possession, with the shares so inextricably mixed up that he could neither trace the property mortgaged to him nor discover who was liable for the proportion of profit derived from it. As well poke one's fingers into a hornet's nest as into a joint family estate! Sham Babu was glad to accept an offer of Rs. 5,000 from Gopal's co-sharers, in return for a surrender of his claims. Despite his heavy loss, enough remained to preserve him from penury; and he was even ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... the man, taking a firm hold of Donald and looking at both his captives in evident amusement. "Well, Philip Scott, what sort of a hornet's nest have you here?" he called out, and Faith turned around to see her Uncle Philip standing in the doorway. "I'll not let go these men until you promise to defend me," continued ...
— A Little Maid of Ticonderoga • Alice Turner Curtis
... literary creations have been adopted to be the humanities of Christian universities. A writer has recently proposed to account for their success in the arts from the circumstance that the features of Nature around them were small,—that their hornet-shaped peninsula was cut by mountains and inlets of the sea into minute portions, which the mind could easily compass, the foot measure, and the hand improve,—that therefore every hillock and fountain, every forest and by-way was peopled with mythological ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... King's liberality: but it is enough to have been chargeable to you when in France. I have never done you any service, though I made an offer of myself. But it would not be proper that I should now live like a hornet on the goods of other men. I shall never forget, however, the kindness of so great a King, and the good offices of so ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... Thomas. As if a man what's been stung by a wasp would care to sit himself down on a hornet's nest. ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... the Wolf, should be our fellows in arms, and they have good will thereto; and they shall show us the way to Silver-dale by blind paths, so that we may fall upon these felons while they dwell there tormenting the poor people of the land, and thus may we destroy them as lads a hornet's nest. Or else the days shall be hard ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... once an excited buzzing could be heard outside the closed window, and a huge hornet ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... was only too glad that I had laid this question to sleep, and was reflecting how fortunate I was in your acceptance of what I then said, you ask me to begin again at the very foundation, ignorant of what a hornet's nest of words you are stirring. Now I foresaw this gathering trouble, ...
— The Republic • Plato
... noise! Gholson, hold the horses. Come. Lieutenant, come Smith, maybe he's killed himself, but it seems too good to be true. Here, girl, go cram what you can get into a pillow-case, and mount behind my saddle again; be quick, we're going to burn this hornet's nest too." Harry and I had already run to the old man's room, and, sure enough, there lay the aged assassin hideous in his fallen bulk, with his own bullet in ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... loss of the United States Sloop-of-War Hornet, in the Gulf of Mexico, 1829, suggested this passage. She was supposed to have gone down in a hurricane, but as nothing is positively known on the subject, it is not beyond lawful poetical license to ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... we didn't say anything, Rawlins having heard it was to be Flynn from Toronto. And I hadn't forgotten the Grand Trunk case we put down to you last week without exactly askin'. Your old man was as mad as a hornet—wanted to stop his subscription; Rawlins had no end of a time to get round him. Little things like that will creep in when you've got to trust to one man to run the whole local show. But I didn't want the Mercury to have ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... just where the rowboat lay rocking abreast the hay cutters, Haswell saw an Indian snatch at the cutlass of Lopez, the black, who had carelessly stuck it in the sand. With a wild halloo, the thief dashed for the woods, the black in pursuit, mad as a hornet. ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... Ghent are typical in their greed for empire, in their readiness to strike a blow for their own profit whenever war is in the land. If the seigneurs of such cities gave cause for dissatisfaction, they found that they had brought a hornet's nest about their ears. In the struggle for liberties the popular party displayed a high courage which rose superior to defeat, though in the hour of triumph it was too often sullied by ferocious acts of vengeance. They threw themselves with intelligence and energy into the feuds of other interests ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... burning on the shore, and its bright flames lighted both sides of the river. The boatmen in their sheepskin coats and hats walked slowly to and fro, and gave animation to the picture. While I wrote my journal the horses above me danced as though frolicking over a hornet's nest, and reduced sentimental thoughts to a minimum. To render the subject more interesting two officers and the priest grew noisy over a triple game of cards and a bottle of vodki. I wrote in my overcoat, as the thermometer was at 30 deg. with ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Martin wrote back to inquire if the transportation was transferable. It was not, and so, being prevented from peddling it, he asked for the return of the poem. Back it came, with the editor's regrets, and Martin sent it to San Francisco again, this time to The Hornet, a pretentious monthly that had been fanned into a constellation of the first magnitude by the brilliant journalist who founded it. But The Hornet's light had begun to dim long before Martin was born. The editor promised Martin fifteen dollars for the poem, but, when it was published, seemed ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... in Germany, when the physio-philosophy of Oken had invaded every centre of scientific activity; and yet, what is there left of it? I trust to outlive this mania also. As usual, I do not ask beforehand what you think of it, and I may have put my hand into a hornet's nest; but you know your old friend Agass, and will forgive him if he hits a ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... I jes' caught yer Brer Hornet a-loafin' around in the wood. 'Come wi' me,' says I, 'and bottled him in this yer pasteboard box,'" showing one which had held Turkish tobacco. "When I saw that Hebrew Jew wouldn't stir his pencil, I jes' crept ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... Brutestants believe alike. They reject all those sacred traditions which lead back to Christ. Their only union is in hatred of the Church. They exist for themselves alone, to the hurt of others, just like stinging insects. And Allah alone knows why they were ever created, unless it be as a kind of hornet to molest the faithful. Consider, O my dear, how transient this life is; its prosperity departs with the breath. Think on the anguish of those who, attracted by the wealth and luxury of these missionaries, forsake the truth of God, ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... of Pailon, in Esmeraldos, Ecuador, i.e. on the Pacific Coast, and also up more than one of the rivers, he has heard a similar sound, attributed by the natives to a fish which they call 'The Siren,' or 'Musico.' At first, he says, he thought it was produced by a fly, or hornet of extraordinary size; but afterwards, having advanced a little farther, he heard a multitude of different voices, which harmonised together, imitating a church organ to great perfection. The good people of Trinidad believe that the fish which makes this noise ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... which always appeals to a cavalryman's strongest sympathies; they might at any moment, he feared, be attacked by overwhelming forces, for he did not know what was upon the other side, or how large a swarm Hines had stirred up in the hornet's nest. He himself might be attacked, if delayed too long, by the enemy that he well knew must be following his track. Independently of all considerations of immediate danger, he was impatient at delay and anxious to try his fortune in the new field he had ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... Mr. Pitt, "the day for me to buck agin you is past. I don't mind markin' yearlin' calves and I don't hold off when it comes to breakin' up a hornet's nest, but I stand ready and willin' to fling up my hands when it comes to pullin' agin you. I have been kept busy many a time in my life; I have been woke up at mornin' and kept on the stretch pretty nigh till midnight, ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... ravished eyes a portrait.—Fatal image!—It planted a thorn in a till then insensible heart, and sent a new kind of a knight-errant into the world. But even this was nothing to the catastrophe, and the circumstance on which it hung, the hornet settling on the sleeping lover's face. What a heart-rending accident! She planted, in imitation of those susceptible souls, a rose bush; but there was not a lover to weep in concert with her, when she watered ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... been set in on the siding, and the engine, uncoupled, had disappeared, but she could see shifting lights moving near. One, the bright, green-hooded light, her eyes followed. She watched the furious snow drive and sting hornet-like at its rays as it rose or swung or circled from a long arm. Her straining eyes had watched its coming and going every moment since he left her. When his figure vanished her breath followed it, and when the green light flickered ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... ordinary way," Tony admitted, swallowing heavily again. "But you see that fearful row on the hill where the guns are might—must have set a hornet's nest buzzing over there. The chaps were likely to think we were potting at them—out of a clear sky, and—er—they might have begun potting back at us in a minute or two, in their excitement. So, to save the situation, Vandyke scooted across ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the Hornet and Penguin, as well as those of the Reindeer and Avon, showed that the excellence of American gunnery continued till the close of the war. Whether at point-blank range or at long-distance practice, the Americans used guns as they had never ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... How do I know that? By the light av pure reason. Here are three companies av us ever so far inside av the enemy's flank an' a crowd av roarin', tarin', squealin' cavalry gone on just to turn out the whole hornet's nest av them. Av course the enemy will pursue, by brigades like as not, an' thin we'll have to run for ut. Mark my words. I am av the opinion av Polonius whin he said, 'Don't fight wid ivry scutt for the pure joy av fightin', but if you do, knock the nose av him first ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... little pride. But after surveying the result a moment he seemed to feel that he had insulted a helpless object, for he took the hat off, spat into it, and kicked it into shapeless pulp. Then he came back to the house and grimly asked his wife if she had anything handy to take the poison out of hornet stings. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... made himself known to the liberal leaders, and with great tact exhibited his abilities. He was instantly offered employment of various kinds, and chose that of editor. He took charge of the Constitutionel, and plunged into the heat and strife of party politics. His witty, hornet-like nature fitted him well for the position. He attained great influence and power, and the great men of the time, even Talleyrand, came to him, while he exclaimed bombastically and blasphemously, "Suffer little children to come ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... How the robin feeds her young, How the oriole's nest is hung; Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow, Where the groundnut trails its vine, Where the wood grape's clusters shine; Of the black wasp's cunning way, Mason of his walls of clay, And the architectural plans Of gray hornet artisans!— For, eschewing books and tasks, Nature answers all he asks; Hand in hand with her he walks, Face to face with her he talks, Part and parcel of her joy,— Blessings on thee, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... ahead, breakers ahead. precipice; maelstrom, volcano; ambush &c. 530; pitfall, trapdoor; trap &c. (snare) 545. sword of Damocles; wolf at the door, snake in the grass, death in the pot; latency &c. 526. ugly customer, dangerous person, le chat qui dort[Fr]; firebrand, hornet's nest. Phr. latet anquis in herba [Lat][Vergil]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... weird cry of plover comes Across the marshy ways, And here the hermit hornet hums, And here ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... said he to Perez, "that I always speak of them with respect, which is more than they do of me. But God forgive them all. In times like these, one must hold one's tongue. One must keep still, in order not to stir up a hornet's nest." ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... he no less drily, "but hornet's nests are exactly what I happen to like. Before, however, I begin to stir up this particular one I propose to travel for a few years, with the especial object of finding out what nations now existing are the best, comeliest and most lovable, and also what nations have been so in times ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... quarrelled with one another just as usual, and when I parted from them there was not one of the company who could be said to be the worse for liquor. Probably there is no more steady- headed insect than the wasp, unless it be his noble cousin and prince, the hornet, who has a quite humanlike unquenchable thirst for ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... "Intellectual activity in women is liable to be diminished after marriage by that antagonism between individuation and reproduction everywhere operative throughout the organic world." I don't know why, but that passage made me as hot as a hornet. In the background of my brain I carried some vague memory of George Eliot once catching this same philosophizing Spencer fishing with a composite fly, and, remarking on his passion for generalizations, declaring that he even ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... than a hornet, his eyes were as red as a burning fire and he rode on a tall horse six spans across and more than 20 long with six giants tied up to his saddle-bow and one in his hand which he gnawed with his teeth. And behind him came boars with tusks sticking out ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... with the idea of barging in on the main office of the company but I figured that might be too much like poking my head into a hornet's nest. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... humming-bird episode, and the mocking-bird digression, to say nothing of the doings of the hornet and the sparrow." ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Mike,—why, he got so he'd go down to Hawkins' undertakin' shop every time he could get a minute off and bark till Lem would let him in, and then he'd lay down in a corner and go to sleep, and Lem always swore the poor dog was as mad as a hornet when he woke up and found ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... wounded, though he was not, as usual, for all his seven feet of perpendicular target. But "the Doc," of Benton, was, of course. Getting wounded was the greatest trouble with Doc. If he attacked a hornet's nest, he would contrive some way to get a leg shot off. But with him such things had become to be a matter of course, so now he crated himself together enough to move around and attend to the others. Driscoll was most innumerably barked, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... and faint, at length, From lack of food and loss of strength He couched him in a thicket hoar And thought his toils and perils o'er:— 'Of all my rash adventures past, This frantic feat must prove the last! Who e'er so mad but might have guessed That all this Highland hornet's nest Would muster up in swarms so soon As e'er they heard of bands at Doune?— Like bloodhounds now they search me out,— Hark, to the whistle and the shout!— If farther through the wilds I go, I only fall upon the foe: I'll couch me here till ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... pervaded the upper table on Sir Francis's appearance; and something was said which, though he could not gather its precise import did not sound agreeably to his ears. He felt he had unwittingly brought his head near a hornet's nest, and might esteem himself lucky if he escaped without stinging. However, there was no retreating now; for though his fear counselled flight, very shame ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... Chester, where she was prepared for a long and distant cruise directed against British commerce, the suggestion of which Porter believed came first from himself. By this a squadron consisting of the Constitution, Essex, and Hornet sloop-of-war, under the command of Commodore Bainbridge in the first-named frigate, were to proceed across the Atlantic to the Cape Verde Islands, thence to the South Atlantic in the neighborhood of Brazil, and finally to ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... in inflicting a good deal of pain. A very low, vulgar, petty, and uncultivated nature may cause much suffering to a lofty, noble, and refined one,—particularly if the latter be in a position of dependence or subjection. A wretched hornet may madden a noble horse; a contemptible mosquito may destroy the night's rest which would have recruited a noble brain. But without any evil intention, sometimes with the very kindest intention, there are those who worry and torment ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... seven sea miles distant from the Dean Tail Buoy. Within ten minutes of the receipt of the wireless she was on the spot—one of the very first of a regular hornet flotilla bent upon adding yet another of Von Tirpitz's pets to ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... 13th US Infantry, Late Commanding Gatling Guns at Santiago. (Frontispiece) Map—Santiago and Surrounding Area. Skirmish Drill at Tampa. Skirmish Drill at Tampa. Field Bakery. Awaiting Turn to Embark. Baiquiri. The "Hornet." Waiting. Wrecked Locomotives and Machine Shops at Baiquiri. The Landing. Pack Train. Calvary Picket Line. San Juan Hill. Cuban Soldiers as They Were. Wagon Train. Gatling Battery under Artillery Fire at El Poso. Gatling Gun on Firing-Line ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... ruler, enthroned at Delhi, shall endure. Hence the dismay of many loyal Indians when the British Government deserted Calcutta for the Queen of the North. And here, already, were her endless, secretive byways rivalling Calcutta suburbs as hornet-nests of sedition ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... to flatter for its living, represents its patrons, as do some portrait-painters, not as they are but as they would like to be. In the eyes of Andalusian journalists their compatriots are for ever making a magnificent gesture; and the condition would be absurd if a hornet's nest of comic papers, tempering vanity with a lively sense of the ridiculous, did not save the situation by abundantly ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... whole cut of his jib told you at once that he was a regular man-of-war's man—one of a class whose faults I can hardly recall while remembering their sense of duty, their utter disregard of danger, and the reliance with which you can lead them on to attack anything, from a hornet's nest to ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... nature never saw a hornet's nest until she had put her head into it, was seriously alarmed. She came and slipped her arm through his. Not convinced that he was right, and she herself wrong, because that was not natural to her, she was yet profoundly impressed by the obvious fact that the subject was very bad for him. She ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... this youth, and so have a blood-feud with Gospatrick, I have a hornet's nest about my ears. Not only he and his sons,—who are masters of Scotch Northumberland, [Footnote: Between Tweed and Forth.]— but all his cousins; King Malcolm, and Donaldbain, and, for aught I know, Harold ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... in tones like a hornet stinging slowly and often. "Mr. Diggs, I have put up with many things, and am expecting to put up with many more. But you'd behave better if ...
— Philosophy 4 - A Story of Harvard University • Owen Wister
... my hearty!' replied the young leader; 'but we must be moving—the blue jackets will be after us; that shot of yours will bring the whole hornet's ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... the dogs; fall, fall from one's high estate; decay, sink, decline, go down in the world; have seen better days; bring down one's gray hairs with sorrow to the grave; come to grief; be all over, be up with; bring a wasp's nest about one's ears, bring a hornet's nest about one's ears. Adj. unfortunate, unblest[obs3], unhappy, unlucky; improsperous[obs3], unprosperous; hoodooed [U.S.]; luckless, hapless; out of luck; in trouble, in a bad way, in an evil plight; under a cloud; clouded; ill off, badly off; in adverse circumstances; poor &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... in my study, with the windows open, the occasional incident of the visit of some winged creature,—wasp, hornet, or bee,— entering out of the warm sunny atmosphere, soaring round the room in large sweeps, then buzzing against the glass, as not satisfied with the place, and desirous of getting out. Finally, the joyous, uprising curve with which, coming to the open part of the window, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... pembroke table in an unused room. A maid in dusting lifted up the flap, and down fell a quantity of fine, dry mud with young grubs in it which would soon have hatched into wasps, and revealed their rather strange nesting-place. I have in my collection a very interesting hornet's nest, which was being constructed in the hollow of an old tree. I happened to notice a hornet fly into the opening, and, looking in, there was a small beginning of a nest. It hung from a kind of stalk and consisted of only eight cells, each ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... at once, as a dull, ugly hornet-hum rose through the wood, they knew the moment for ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... and as the wasps and hornets claimed to be their cousins Wakonda was good-natured enough to give them the same sort of weapons. Some people, especially boys, think this was a, great mistake, and would be very glad if Wakonda had refused to give stings to the yellow wasp and the black hornet." ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... later she had secreted the packet, along with Pobloff's revolver, which she picked up from the floor. Then she ran to the door, and locked it. She would fight like a hornet, now, she inwardly vowed, for ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... laughing at me!" he cried. But as a matter of fact, it was a hornet and its unmistakable sting that injected ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... Presho as mad as a hornet. The Milwaukee railroad had taken the turntable out, and special trains coming in from Chicago and other points east must thus go on to the next town to turn around. This was bound to cut into Presho's share of the crowds. As long as the town had been the turning point of the road, it was one of ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... wherein, on the 20th of October, A. D. 1827, thirty-two sail of Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Russians, attacked and vanquished in the Levant an Ottoman fleet of three ships-of-the line, twenty-five frigates, and a swarm of fire ships and hornet craft. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... garrison. On making enquiries, I find there is a garrison of seven men. It is getting dusk and mosquitoes are coming out by hundreds, they have not annoyed me before, but I think I must use my net to-night. I lie on my bed after dinner smoking with a lighted candle by my side. A hornet flies in and settles on my hand, then a large beetle comes with a buzz and a thud against me, making me start. Sundry moths, small flies, and beetles, are playing innocently round the flame. In half an hour I shall be able ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... returned to America, and applied for admission to the New-York bar. This started a hornet's nest. He had been 'sarving up' too many newspaper and other scribblers, to be left in peace any longer. With an excellent opinion of himself, his contempt was often quite as large, to say the least ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Facing about, he turned upon the President and opposed the attack. "Mr. President," he said, "at this time, it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountains to ocean, and legions, now quiet, will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal." He clung to the idea expressed in his dispatches to the commissioners, that "So long ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... is a radiant morning in June, and they are in the dining-room; the balcony door is open wide, and a large hornet buzzes loudly in the vine. Louise is still at the piano; she is singing this time, and trying to reach the low tones of a dramatic romance where a Corsican child is urged on to vengeance by ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... us. But when I had fouled the trail so that I myself hardly knew it again, Mang, the Bat, came hawking between the trees, and hung up above me." Said Mang, "The village of the Man-Pack, where they cast out the Man-cub, hums like a hornet's nest." ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... posterity. Stocks and shares have I translated into Hebrew, with new words which will at once be accepted by the Hebraists of the world and added to the vocabulary of modern Hebrew. Oh! I am terrible in satire. I sting like the hornet; witty as Immanuel, but mordant as his friend Dante. It will appear in the Mizpeh to-morrow. I will show this Anglo-Jewish community that I am a man to be reckoned with. I ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... caught in too firm a grip, but a gilt-sheathed arm passed before her eyes, and a huge head with dreadful pincers suddenly thrust itself above her face. She took it at first to belong to a gigantic wasp, but then realized that she had fallen into the clutches of a hornet. The black-and-yellow striped monster was surely four times ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... sombre-visaged old mill-hand called 'Lije Vandine, whose office it was to trim square the ragged ends of the "stuff" before it went down the slide. At the very back of the table hummed the saw, like a great hornet; and whenever Vandine got two or three deals in place before him he would grasp a lever above his head, and forward through its narrow slit in the table would dart the little saw, and scream its way in a second ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the Scientist, then at David, its glance curious but without understanding. Paralyzed with fear, David remained on his knees as the Scientist reached an open place and threw the gun up to his shoulder. The bullet went whining by with an ugly hornet-noise, and the report of the gun echoed ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... shattered and almost useless, at any rate so far as any effort which we could make for the defence of Paris was concerned. In fact, believing the capital to be practically at its mercy, the right wing of the German Army was blindly marching into a veritable hornet's nest, in spite of the backward condition ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... Priestley; and that those who play at bowls must look out for rubbers. Porson is to be detested for his letters to Travis, though De Quincey does not dare to defend the disputed text. He has, however, a pleasant insinuation at command. Porson, he says, stung like a hornet; 'it may chance that on this subject Master Porson will get stung through his coffin, before he is many years deader.' What scholarlike badinage! Political heretics fare little better. Fox's eloquence was 'ditch-water,' with a shrill effervescence of 'imaginary gas.' Burnet was a 'gossiper, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Like a hornet, who is said to leave his sting in the wound, and afterwards to languish away, Pope felt so greatly exhausted by the efforts connected with the Dunciad, (which are far greater, in fact, than all his Homeric labors put together,) that he prepared his friends to expect ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... on the Decalogue is a case in point. The Presbytery of Glasgow woke up one fine morning to find that the minister of the Barony recommended in almost so many words that the Decalogue, inasmuch as it was a Judaical institution, was not for modern Christians. Of course the rev. gentleman brought a hornet's nest about his ears; and he had to explain away, as best he could, the "damnable and pernicious doctrine." There are more learned men in the Church of Scotland, but none have a greater share of sagacity, penetration, and strong, pungent, mother wit. Another distinguishing trait in the doctor's ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... as soon as she entered the forest, and the hornets gave the attack, she drew out her tail and swished it about, and swept down all the trees with as much ease as a mower cuts grass. And since then there has been neither a forest nor a hornet's nest in that place, for all the country was thereby reduced ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... there is no knowing what new proceedings they may be concocting against me. I must take Sir William's advice, and get out of this hornet's nest as soon ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... nowhere. He was not a revolutionist,—not even a socialist,—but there were times when he could have taken the neck of the Prince between his strong fingers and choked out his worthless life. These attacks of envy were short-lived—he could not ascribe them to the reading of the little hornet-like anarchist sheet, Pere Peinard, which the other waiters lent him; rather was it an excess of bile provoked by ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... answered Bakunjala humbly and departed swiftly with the hornet in his clenched fist. Zu Pfeiffer smiled, again stared reflectively at the violet shadows creeping lazily across the square, sipped some brandy and picking up his book, began ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... don't you see, he tried to make a play to the masses of protecting the city's property and the city's law and order, but he jumped into a hornet's nest? We managed to keep it all out of the morning paper but something is sure to creep in. Hadn't we better have a conference with the editors?" Tom was a solid quantity to be reckoned with in a stress that called for keenness of ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... interesting. But if he has accumulated beautiful and interesting things, I shall gladly go to his house and see them. Now, my dear Mrs. Grundy, that is very different from going to his house to see the Plutuses. They are not the possessions that make his house desirable. My young friend Hornet says that if the only way to drink Midas's gold-seal Johannisberger is to take Mrs. Plutus down to dinner, he will not hesitate to pay the price, as he is willing to pay the price of sea-sickness if he wishes to see the Vatican. Does my dear ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... Paul, thrusting his fingers through his shaggy locks, "I have lined many a loaded bee into his hole, and know something of the nature of the woods, but this is robbing a hornet of his ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... we read in ancient sages, Have been like cobwebs in all ages: Cobwebs for little flies are spread, And laws for little folks are made; But if an insect of renown, Hornet or beetle, wasp or drone, Be caught in quest of sport or plunder, The flimsy fetter flies in sunder. Your simile perhaps may please one With whom wit holds the place of reason: 10 But can you prove that this ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... various races of his proposed empire he is utilizing an enormously effective agency—the fanatical faith of all Moslems in the future of Islam. Neither England nor France have any desire to stir up this hornet's nest, which would probably result in grave disorders among their own Moslem subjects and which would almost certainly precipitate widespread massacres of the Christians in Asia Minor, for the sake of dismembering Turkey and ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... uneek to cook one, or a hornet's nest, and would be a rarity for the Jonesvillians, and in the winter, if we run out of bird's-nest, you ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... an odd expression. They were aground on Sirene VIII, on which no human ship had ever landed before them, and they had stirred up a hornet's nest on Sirene IV, which had orbital eighty-gee rocket missiles in orbit around it with bust bomb heads and all the other advantages of civilization. The Aldeb was on the way with a fifteen-man crew. And seventeen men, altogether, ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... unknown and myself pointed to the fact that I was usurping the place of my cousin, and in that case I had stepped into a hornet's nest. However, I was in poor condition for reasoning clearly; the supper and fatigue had made me so sleepy that my head nodded, my eyes closed, and I had much ado to keep from falling asleep in ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... those five Misses Hornet—dreadful old maids!—as full of spite as they can live. You may be sure they will every one come, and be looking about to make spiteful remarks. Put down ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... were swimming round and round in it. I guess coming in from the cold, and the pain in my finger and all, it made me a bit sick. At any rate, I threw open the window and blew out the light, as mad as a hornet. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... simply; "but I'll get myself into a hornet's nest. These young people don't like to be told what's good for them," he added with a laugh, rising from his seat. "And after that you'll permit me to slip away without telling anybody, won't you? My last minute has come," and he glanced at ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... winged flash, goes by; And tawny wasp and hornet Seem gleams that drone; The beetle, like a garnet, Slips from the stone; And butterflies float there, Spangling ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... continued to gain in numbers, their natural increase was not proportionate to the growing power of their adversaries. Little by little the Doomsmen began to lose ground; already they had been defeated several times in pitched battle, and it looked as though the hornet's-nest would soon be ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... country store in Horsford in a day than I've heard here in Eupolia in a year—and we've got ten thousand people here, too. I moved here last year, and am doing well. I wouldn't go back and live in that d—d hornet's nest that I felt so bad about leaving—not for the whole State, with a slice of the next ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... over the cliffs. We had caused to be made for Hartog, Janstins, and me dresses of sail-cloth, with masks like those worn by Inquisitors, the eye-holes being filled with glass. The sleeves of the jacket were made long, so as to cover our hands. Our sea boots and breeches we knew to be impervious to hornet stings, and, thus equipped, we hoped to succeed in carrying away the treasure which the ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... Walter, mopping his brow as he stood at the little gate of Mrs. Elmer's yard, returning thither, after his fruitless searching, in the hope of finding his brother among the familiar faces. "Mad ez a hornet, I'll be bound, an' lef' me in the lurch. Beat ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the straggling Azores fleet as it staggered into various ports. Every continent already was buzzing with alarm and rage. In less than eighteen hours the calm and peaceful ways of civilization had received an epoch-making jar. All civilization was by the ears—it had become a hornet's nest prodded by a pole no one could understand ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... They got pretty miserable, all sticking to just the one knife and fork and spoon. And Jessie got so rattled that she just about forgot to use the stuff too. And finally old Mrs. Vingie, that Jessie asked just to have the news spread, got up mad as a hornet and marched out, saying she was too old ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... from crashing into the mole. Then, still floating, and with smoke, steam, and flame billowing along her decks and blinding her gallant skipper, the maimed little vessel staggered forward. But escape was not for her. The Union had a smart man for captain, and he did not intend the little Chilian hornet to go clear. The forward 8-inch gun bellowed out, and its shell struck the Chilian fair and square on her stern, exploding as it passed into her hull, and literally blowing the after-part ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... man, but there is some circumstance or other attends it that makes it, when charged home by God's law, bigger and sharper and more venomous and poisonous to the soul, than if it could be committed without them; and this is the sting of the hornet, the great sting. I sinned without a cause, to please a base lust, to gratify the devil: here is the sting. Again, I preferred sin before holiness, death before life, hell before heaven, the devil before God, and damnation before a Saviour: here is the sting. Again, I preferred moments before ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... secretions, sweet or bitter, in which the artificial flowers of Mars are peculiarly abundant, and make their nests in the calyx or among the petals. These lovely little birds—about the size of a hornet, but perfect birds in miniature, with wings as large as those of the largest Levantine papilio, and feathery down equally fine and soft—are perhaps the most shy and timid of all creatures familiar with the presence of Martial humanity. The varied colours of their plumage, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... across de fiel', A rattlesnake bit me on de heel. I rears an' pitches an' does my bes', An' I falls right back in a hornet's nes'. ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... part of the horse and is equally as troublesome. the silkworm is also found here. a great variety of beatles common to the Atlantic states are found here likewise. except from this order the large cow beatle and the black beatle usually alled the tumble bug which are not found here. the hornet, the wasp and yellow wasp or yellow jacket as they are frequently called are not met with in this quarter. there is an insect which much resembles the latter only a vast deel larger which are very ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... our right. The fire at last reached a lot of shells, which had been thrown from the wagons, to keep them from falling into the hands of the Yankees. They went off with a frightful clatter. The captain bounced from the ground as if a hornet had lifted him. "FALL IN!" he shouted, grasping his sword. Of course, all who were awake comprehended the situation, and prudently lay still, to avoid the flying fragments. As the truth dawned upon him, the captain at first looked "sold" and disgusted, and then joined ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... wrong, Mrs. Barrett,' he says, lookin' like th' meek puppy he is, 'an' you'll have t' look some place else for th' person that done it.' But she wouldn't talk no longer—jus' walked out, as mad as a hornet." ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... Fern Dillon bounced off the grass like an angry hornet, then collapsed beside the baby brother, who evidently was not given much to talking, for he had not said a word, but simply stared in round-eyed surprise at the pretty stranger child. "Oh, dear, everybody is ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... the profound ignorance of Congress concerning men and affairs abroad, Lee was able for a long time to run his mischievous career without discovery or interruption. He buzzed about Europe like an angry hornet, thrusting his venomous sting into every respectable and useful servant of his country, and irritating exceedingly the foreigners whom it was of the first importance to conciliate. Incredible as it seems, it is undoubtedly true that he did not hesitate to express in Paris his deep antipathy ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... declined, the Dominican government stated that it could not consider the negative as final and appealed to the French sentiments of humanity. In 1854 another strong attempt was made to secure a Spanish protectorate. Neither France nor Spain was anxious to annex a hornet's nest, and Spain was fearful that any uprising against her authority would find an echo in Cuba and Porto Rico. In 1855 negotiations were opened with General William L. Cazneau, special agent of President ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... like a hornet! And what a scene there, through the door! The forest behind and the garden before, And midway an old man of threescore, With a wife and children that caress him. Let me try still further to cheer and adorn it With a merry, ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... of it, ma? I tell you 't was queer, the way that mare's pain stopped. Of course I ain't going to believe—but," firmly, "I can't get away from a notion that those Christian Science folks know something that we don't. Busby was madder'n a hornet. I didn't scarcely know ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... not to have noticed any signaling, and if she did she certainly ignored it. Perhaps she believed that her hornet's nest of women could stand off any invasion or interference from without. At any rate, she went on unfolding her instructions to destiny ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... active; now I heedlessly stepped among the outliers of a small party of the carnivorous foraging ants; now, grasping a branch as I stumbled, I shook down a shower of fire- ants; and among all these my attention was particularly arrested by the bite of one of the giant ants, which stung like a hornet, so that I felt it for three hours. The camarades generally went barefoot or only wore sandals; and their ankles and feet were swollen and inflamed from the bites of the boroshudas and ants, some being actually ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... same he heard, "As rocks hear murmuring waves. But still he moan'd "For his lost child; but when the flames he saw "Ascending, four times 'mid the funeral fires "He strove to plunge; four times from thence repuls'd, "His rapid limbs address'd for flight, and rush'd "Like a young bullock, when the hornet's sting "Deep in his neck he bears, in pathless ways. "Ev'n now more swift than man he seem'd to run: "His feet seem'd wings to wear, for all behind "He left far distant. Through desire of death, "Rapid he gain'd Parnassus' loftiest ridge. "Apollo, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... row in Silver Street—the regiments was out, They called us "Delhi Rebels", an' we answered "Threes about!" That drew them like a hornet's nest—we met them good an' large, The English at the double an' the ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... mole and crown batteries, while within range were ten other batteries, mounting, all told, a hundred and fifteen guns. Between the Philadelphia and the shore lay a number of Tripolitan cruisers, galleys and gunboats. Into this hornet's nest, Decatur steered his little vessel of sixty tons, carrying four small guns, and having a crew ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... Clay street where the killing had taken place. Perchance if he had stopped as he was minded, the tragedy might have been averted. Nobody seemed to know just how it came about. The thing was most unfortunate politically. King would stir up a hornet's nest of public opinion. Broderick reached his lodgings and at once retired. His sleep was fitful. He dreamed that Alice Windham and Sheriff Scannell were ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... "For a minute she was like an industrious hornet. Then I made her see she wouldn't have been here at all if I hadn't opened it. That made, her come down from the top of her nest on the church-spire, and she said that, considering my opportunities, I was not such ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a-devil has set this hornet's nest of theirs abuzz so suddenly?" I whispered, when the smoke-choke gave us liberty to speak ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde |
