"Nocturnal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... covering of wet weeds. Another bird rarely seen at any other spot than this was the painted snipe, a prettily-marked species with a green curved bill. It has curiously sluggish habits, rising only when almost trodden upon, and going off in a wild sacred manner like a nocturnal species, then dropping again into hiding at a short distance. The natives call it dormilon—sleepy-head. On one side of the lagoon, where the ground was swampy and wet, there was always a breeding-colony of these quaint birds; at every few yards one would spring up ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... Lepus Huxlei. This rabbit is much smaller than the European form, being described as more like a large rat than a rabbit. Its colour is very different from its European relatives; it has curious nocturnal habits; it is exceedingly wild and untamable. Most remarkable of all, and most conclusive as to specific difference, Mr. Bartlett, the highly skilled head keeper of the London Zoological Gardens, utterly ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... started from his silken couch, and without allowing himself time either to put on his armor, or to assemble his guards, he mounted on horseback, and rode full speed towards the supposed place of the attack. Encompassed by his declared or concealed enemies, he soon, amidst the nocturnal tumult, received a mortal dart from an uncertain hand. Before he expired, a patriotic sentiment using in the mind of Gallienus, induced him to name a deserving successor; and it was his last request, that the Imperial ornaments should be delivered to Claudius, who then commanded a detached army ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... admiringly checked by a father intent on siring a Rabbi, he relieved the dreary dialectics of the Talmud—so tedious to a child uninterested in divorce laws or the number of white hairs permissible in a red cow—by surreptitious nocturnal perusal of a precious store of Hebrew scientific and historical works discovered in an old cupboard in his father's study. To this chamber, which had also served as the bedroom in which the child slept with his grandmother, the young man's thoughts returned with wistful bitterness, and at the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... overgrowth of meticulousness in their peerings for an opinion, as if it were a cultivated habit in them to scrutinize the tool-marks and be blind to the building, to hearken for the key-creaks and be deaf to the diapason, to judge the landscape by a nocturnal exploration with a flash-lantern. In other words, to carry on the old game of sampling the poem or drama by quoting the worst line or worst passage only, in ignorance or not of Coleridge's proof that a versification of any length neither can be nor ought to ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... more of it seem to you too hard to take? Or have you taken amiss some words I said to you, which, I give you my word, were nothing but a purely friendly proceeding on my part? Whatever it may be, I don't want any explanations in writing, and only send you these few lines to intimate that your nocturnal flight was not a very agreeable surprise to me, and that you would have done better in every way to hear the "Fuite en Egypte" and the "Fantaisie ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of poetry, but had so strong an effect on my imagination, that to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp look out in suspicious places; and though nobody can be more sceptical than I am in such matters, yet it often takes an effort of philosophy to shake off these idle terrors. The earliest composition that I recollect taking pleasure in was "The Vision of Mirza," and ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... sort of nocturnal illumination, and shuffling away, in the loose shoes, to the keeping of which on her feet the better half of the best energies of her life were directed, gave out that she must ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... by her husband. This punishment prevented her, in the unhallowed life which, for such as she, begins after ordinary decease, from practising the horrible rites of a vampire. Her headless body could not serve her as a vehicle for nocturnal wanderings, but the evil spirit of the woman might hope to gain control of some ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... people do not find it so offensive, I suspect, but to me it was, and is, ten times worse than the more pungent but comparatively salubrious perfume which a certain handsome little black-and-white quadruped—handsome, but impolite—is given to scattering upon the nocturnal breeze ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... people could no longer feed and clothe their poorer guests. Families were unhappily divided. In the huge flock of exiles driven out by the cruel German Terror there were goats as well as sheep, and some of them bewildered and shocked the orderly Dutch homes where they were sheltered, by their nocturnal habits and negligible morals. Something had to be done to bring order and system into the chaos of brotherly love. Otherwise the neat Dutch mind which is so close to the Dutch heart could not rest in its bed. This vast trouble which the ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... seen, the dead are thought to return at |192| this season. It is believed that on the night between All Saints' and All Souls' the church is lighted up and the departed attend a nocturnal Mass celebrated by a phantom priest. All through the week, in one district, people are afraid to go out after nightfall lest they should see some dead person.{10} In Tyrol it is believed that the "poor souls" are present in the howling winds that ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... eleven and twelve, hours which had formerly matched his languid fancy. These energetic doings bred alarm in both Matzai and Mr. Pickwick, evoking snappish protests from the latter, who, being of a nocturnal turn, held that the day was meant for sleep. On the morning after he had been honored with the privilege of the veranda door, Richard was borne upon by something akin to gloom. This feeling went with him from bed to bath, and from bath to ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... uncorrupted, and for the encouragement of piety and virtue and the suppression of vice and immorality, it was provided that "no Stage Plays, Horse-racing, Cock-fighting, Balls and Assemblies, Profane swearing and cursing, Sabbath-breaking, Drunkenness, nocturnal revelling, whoredom, Cards, Dice, and all other games whatsoever, commonly called Games of Chance (Lotteries ordered by the Legislature to raise money for public uses excepted) ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... There, save for a few articles of old clothing strewn about, he found comparative order and neatness. The simple toilet articles were in their places, the narrow bed just as Jimmy Brunell had left it when he sprang up to admit his nocturnal visitor. ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... of all the loose, vagrant, and desperate people of that clan, in the west end of Perth and Stirling shires, and infested those whole countries with thefts, robberies, and depredations. Very few who lived within his reach (that is, within the distance of a nocturnal expedition) could promise to themselves security, either for their persons or effects, without subjecting themselves to pay him a heavy and shameful tax of black-mail. He at last proceeded to such a degree of audaciousness that he committed robberies, raised contributions, ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... confused and grotesque. As I drove home to my house in Kensington I thought over it all, from the extraordinary story of the red-headed copier of the "Encyclopaedia" down to the visit to Saxe-Coburg Square, and the ominous words with which he had parted from me. What was this nocturnal expedition, and why should I go armed? Where were we going, and what were we to do? I had the hint from Holmes that this smooth-faced pawnbroker's assistant was a formidable man—a man who might play a deep game. I tried to puzzle it out, but gave it up in despair and set the matter ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... wheels would startle her into wakeful terror. At half-past two in the morning she heard the opening and shutting of the front door, and her father's footsteps on the stairs as he came up to bed. There seemed to her something uncanny in these nocturnal habits. The life of a journalist, of a literary man, of anybody who did any definite work in the world at all, was quite unknown ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... memories for a lifetime. The intensive culture phase is very clear in my memory; it came near the end of his career and when I was between eleven and twelve. I was mobilised to gather caterpillars on several occasions, and assisted in nocturnal raids upon the slugs by lantern-light that wrecked my preparation work for school next day. My father dug up both lawns, and trenched and manured in spasms of immense vigour alternating with periods of paralysing distaste for the garden. And for weeks he talked about ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... that something was said of Grace being privy to the nocturnal advances of Senor de Mendoza. We are not to suppose that this implies in her anything worse than an aptness to indulge in romantic adventure: the young lady enjoyed the mystery of romance, and knew that serenades, and whisperings over star-lit balconies, were proper ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... find many of the phenomena which have been characteristic of later periods of Irish political agitation, already flourishing. Boycotting existed in fact, though the name was not yet invented; also nocturnal raids for arms, the sacking of lonely farmhouses, the intimidation of witnesses and the mutilation of cattle. Again, we see all through the history of Irish secret societies that their organization ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... attracted, fascinated by the image, lets itself fall. It falls, and this fall is life. I may compare to these detached souls the memories plunged in the obscurity of the unconscious. On the other hand, our nocturnal sensations resemble these incomplete bodies. The sensation is warm, colored, vibrant and almost living, but vague. The memory is complete, but airy and lifeless. The sensation wishes to find a form on which to mold the vagueness ...
— Dreams • Henri Bergson
... frequently disturbed. In the dense branches of the plane-trees a sudden sound rings out like a cry of anguish, strident and short. It is the desperate wail of the Cicada, surprised in his quietude by the Green Grasshopper, that ardent nocturnal huntress, who springs upon him, grips him in the side, opens and ransacks his abdomen. An orgy of ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... In the profound nocturnal silence broken only by the man's slow, regular breathing, she heard a sudden ring. It was the front-door bell ringing in the kitchen. The bell rang again and again obstinately. G.J.'s party was over, then, and he had arrived ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... we waited, the monotonous trench-life to accomplish the rapid nocturnal raids or the formidable exploits of the great days and weeks of offensive, required more than that brilliant quality of our fathers, the furia francese that was the synonym of overwhelming courage and the ardor which commands victory. Patience to wait, resignation ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... Loulia. He put his hand down to his hip-pocket. Yes, his revolver was safely there. He lit a cigar, then, moved by an after-thought, threw it away. Its tip hissed as it struck the river. He looked at that blue jewel, at the diaper of yellow below it, and he set out upon his nocturnal journey. ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... attention; he would go on reading. "Hush!" I'd say. (Why "Hush!" I don't know.) "What's all that for?" "Me," he'd say, turning to the personal column. And then I'd know that, seizing the opportunity of being unobserved, he'd been out for nocturnal stroll with a handful of bombs, seeking a little innocent pleasure. The gentlemen opposite, not being cricketers themselves or knowing anything about the slow bowler, had, as usual, mistaken him for a trench mortar and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... The action is exclusively nocturnal, and so large a place in it is taken by huge and portable candlesticks that it might be called the Tragedy of the Candelabra. Through the windows, on the landward side, a procession of mysterious visitors go by in the moonlight, one by one, ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... nights he experienced even greater uneasiness, and, without explaining to himself his motive, he stared longingly toward the farmhouse. The same light, the same appearance as ever—but he imagined that he could make out in the nocturnal silence, new sounds, the echo of songs, Margalida's voice. There would be the odious Ironworker, and that poor devil of a Minstrel, and the rude, barbarous youths, with their ridiculous dress. Gran Dios! How was it possible that these rustics had ever managed to ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... congealing mercury, their slumbers were beset with nightmare visions of Iroquois forays, scalpings, butcherings, and burnings. As dreams were their oracles, the camp was wild with fright. They sent out no scouts and placed no guard; but, with each repetition of these nocturnal terrors, they came flocking in a body to beg admission within the fort. The women and children were allowed to enter the yard and remain during the night, while anxious fathers and jealous husbands shivered in ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... be left to themselves, that no one would listen to their ravings, and that the glorious machinery of Justice need no more be used against them than a crusader's glittering battle-axe need be brought forward to exterminate the nocturnal pest of our couches. This indeed has been, I must say unfortunately, the view taken by our rulers till quite recently. But times have changed, gentlemen; for need I tell you, who in your character of shrewd and successful men of business understand ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... unnoticed as though it had never been done. Finally, Chichikov sniffed into his superior's family and domestic life, and learnt that he possessed a grown-up daughter on whose face also there had taken place a nocturnal, diabolical grinding of peas. HERE was a quarter whence a fresh attack might be delivered! After ascertaining what church the daughter attended on Sundays, our hero took to contriving to meet her in a neat suit and a well-starched ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... him in the lurch, for he was not the most ardent; in those nocturnal sports between two sheets, which so please women, he possessed but little merit. Get you gone, you are but an old fool. But you, young man, just consider a little what this temperance means and the delights of which it deprives ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... that they worship the genitalia of their pontiff and priest, and adore the nature, as it were, of their parent. I know not whether these things be false; certainly suspicion has place in the case of secret and nocturnal rites; and he who explains their ceremonies by reference to a man punished by extreme suffering for wickedness, and to the deadly wood of the cross, bestows fitting altars upon reprobate and wicked men, that they may worship what they deserve. Now the story of their initiation ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... forty feet of water, and twenty or thirty rods from the shore, surrounded sometimes by thousands of small perch and shiners, dimpling the surface with their tails in the moonlight, and communicating by a long flaxen line with mysterious nocturnal fishes which had their dwelling forty feet below, or sometimes dragging sixty feet of line about the pond as I drifted in the gentle night breeze, now and then feeling a slight vibration along it, indicative of some life prowling about its extremity, of dull ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... visible were they to the naked unassisted eye. In encamping our ghafalah carried on its delightful system of confusion, and the night fires of the various groups glared wildly in every direction. I had not yet become familiar with these nocturnal lights of Saharan travelling, and my senses were confounded. I felt tormented as with an enchanter's delusive fire-works in ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... call the universal logic of women, the logic of English women as it is that of Italian women, of the women of Normandy and Brittany (ah, these last are unsurpassed!), of the women of Paris, in short, that of the women in the moon, if there are women in that nocturnal land, with which the women of the earth have an evident understanding, angels that ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... in the act of pressing their horses' sides to urge them on when there was a flash of light from the position of the man who had uttered the challenge, and almost immediately the humming, buzzing sound as of a large beetle whizzing by them in its nocturnal flight, and at the same moment there was the sharp ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... passed. There was hardly a sound from my vehicle. The buggy was rubber-tired, and the horse selected a smooth ribbon of grass to run on. But from the black forest wall there came the soughing of the wind and the nocturnal rustle of things unknown. And suddenly there came from close at hand a startling sound: a clarion call that tore the veil lying over my mental vision: the sharp, repeated whistle of the whip-poor-will. And with my mind's eye I saw the dusky bird: shooting slantways upward ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... Wilson justice, her nocturnal harangues upon such occasions not unfrequently terminated with this sage apophthegm, which always prefaced the producing of some provision a little better than ordinary, such as she now placed before him. In ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... aid, Rebecca found herself in the midst of a thicket of bushes, many of which were thorny and all of which seemed bent upon repelling nocturnal adventurers. ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... by the similarity in dissimilarity of this devotee of a woman, who could worship her at a distance, and talk of her to everybody. Not till he beheld Raiser's tall figure cutting the bridge-parapet, with a star over his shoulder, did he reflect on the views the other might entertain of the nocturnal solicitation to see 'justice done' to a lady's new book in a particular Review, and the absurd outside of the request was immediately smothered by the natural simplicity and pressing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of incendiarism, as for their hatred towards the human race. And mockery was added to their death; for they were covered in the skins of wild beasts and were torn to death by dogs, or crucified, or set apart for burning, and after the close of the day were reserved for the purpose of nocturnal illumination. Nero lent his own gardens for the spectacle, and gave a chariot-race, mingling with the people in the costume of a charioteer, or driving among them in his chariot; by which conduct he raised a feeling of commiseration towards the sufferers, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... himself, had boldly promised his followers an easy victory over their enemies. A battle was fought—the Indians were defeated—and the gory form of many a gallant, but credulous "brave," attested that the renowned Prophet had lost, amid the carnage of that nocturnal conflict, ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... Alytes is nocturnal and slow in its movements. It is thoroughly terrestrial, selecting for its retreat in the daytime holes made by small mammals, or interstices between stones. Towards evening it reveals its presence by a clear whistling note, which has often been compared to the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... dozen wounds afresh, giving last doses, and making them cozy for the long hours to come, till the nine o'clock bell rang, the gas was turned down, the day nurses went off duty, the night watch came on, and my nocturnal ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... i' faith: and had a villa and a steam launch at Surbiton: and was versed in the esoteric humours of the House. Who could have thought that the Hunter lay hid in him? Yet, after many weeks, they found him in a wild nook of Hampshire. Ragged, sun-burnt, the nocturnal haystack calling aloud from his frayed and weather-stained duds, his trousers tucked, he was tickling trout with godless native urchins; and when they would have won him to himself with honied whispers ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... believe," thought Edwin, and the wonder of this nocturnal adventure sent tremors down his spine. He faced the probability that at the next bout his father would be worsted. Should he fetch Maggie and then go for the doctor? Heve had told him that it would be 'pretty bad,' and ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... of pilgrimages or holy fairs, which were celebrated with festivity, with noisy music, with illuminations, and with license. There were mysteries, which were not, in Egypt at least, initiations into any thing different from the popular religion; but merely representations—celebrated amidst nocturnal gloom—of the sufferings of Osiris. If strangers in Egypt underwent painful initiation, it was an initiation into the knowledge of the priests, and not into their mysteries. The Egyptians believed in the existence of the soul after death; they believed that it would be judged in Amenthe by Osiris ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... not seem possible that anyone had passed through for a dozen years. Finding no sign of habitation, either human or spiritual, I finally turned back to the house with a philosophic shrug and the reflection that Cat-Eye Mose's nocturnal vagaries ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... an important adjunct of the old Nymph had not been used on the Good Turn, for the reason that the boys had not run her at night. It was an acetylene light of splendid power and many a little craft Harry Stanton had picked up with it in his nocturnal cruising. Pee-wee had polished its reflector one day to pass the time, but with the exception of that attention it had lain in one ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... indeed, the farmers took the precaution of carefully guarding their sheep. On one night of October they killed three calves in a farmer's field, four miles from the Frost farm. Several parties set off to hunt them, but they escaped and lived as outlaws, subsisting from nocturnal forays until snow came, when they were tracked to a den beneath a high crag, called the "Overset," up in the ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... this nocturnal loitering, lasted for about an hour. It was a halt for breath before ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... treatment from pillage, for the purpose of erecting public and private buildings at Dieppe. At present (in the language of the author of the Rouen Itinerary) "it is the abode of silence—save when that silence is interrupted by owls and other nocturnal birds." The view of it in Mr. Cotman's work is ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... appeared of a much less innocent nature; they were illegal in their principle, and in their consequences might become dangerous; nor were the emperors conscious that they violated the laws of justice, when, for the peace of society, they prohibited those secret and sometimes nocturnal meetings. The pious disobedience of the Christians made their conduct, or perhaps their designs, appear in a much more serious and criminal light; and the Roman princes, who might perhaps have suffered themselves to be disarmed by a ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... his party home. Not infrequently his day's work was protracted far into the night. If there was a midnight country dance the tinkle of his triangle could be heard until near sunrise, and often he was seen returning by daylight from some nocturnal festivity, fast asleep ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... some days after this nocturnal decision that the knouting had taken place at which our readers have assisted. It was for some slight fault, and Gregory had been the victim; Vaninka having complained to her father about him. Foedor, who as aide-de-camp ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... hotel, I was a little surprised to find the streets of this gay city so meanly lighted. Lamps placed at gloomy distances from each other, suspended by cords, from lofty poles, furnish the only means of directing the footsteps of the nocturnal wanderer. ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... on the staircase struck two as Mr. Hammond returned to his room, even less inclined for sleep than when he left it. Strange, that nocturnal disturbance of a mind which seemed so tranquil in the day. Or was that tranquillity only a mask which her ladyship wore before the world: and was the bitter memory of events which happened forty years ago still a source of anguish to ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... her custom, after these grand entertainments, to make nocturnal surveys of the kitchen, to assure herself that none of the delicacies had been secreted by the servants for their personal use and refreshment. Charlie, aware of this, took his measures for an ample revenge for the beating he had received at her ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... found in Ceylon is the little loris[1], which, from its sluggish movements, nocturnal habits, and consequent inaction during the day, has acquired the name of the "Ceylon Sloth." There are two varieties in the island; one of the ordinary fulvous brown, and another larger, whose fur is entirely black. A specimen of the former was sent to me from Chilaw, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... and tearing our clothing, with the thick tangled brush through which we had to pass, but considering this of minor importance we hurried on in silence, save when we intruded too near the nest of the nocturnal king of the forest, when a wild hoot made us start and involuntarily grasp our rifles. "Sit on this log and eat," said our red guide. Finding our appetites sharpened by vigorous exercise, we sat on the log and commenced our repast, when our guide suddenly sprang from his seat, and with a hideous ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... Vocabulario de la lengua Tagala (Manila, 1860) defines tictic as the "song of a nocturnal bird called apira, whence the name was transferred to the bird itself. It is also known by the names ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... the intimacy between William and the count, may be gathered from the fact that Augustus was the invariable and sole companion of the emperor in that species of Haroun-al-Raschid nocturnal expeditions which his majesty was wont to undertake in the slums of his capital, for the purpose of learning what his people were saying about him. At that time, his features were far less familiar ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... blood and terror assembled in society in the evening, and discussed their nocturnal expeditions as if ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... silence; but Rosalind could not remain in her position, and arising and stepping softly over the sleeping form beside her, seated herself in the center of the lodge. Here she remained until morning, when she made the inmates understand the nature of her nocturnal fright. All treated it lightly, and she began to entertain a suspicion that they knew more of ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... the hand of the justice suddenly began to waver as the hand trembled. Then Brown dropped it, squared away his chair, and looked grimly at his nocturnal visitor. For some moments his gaze was concentrated on Rathburn's face. Then he slowly read the poster offering a reward of five hundred dollars for The Coyote. He wet ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... more difficult for us to communicate with the people of Mars than to receive signals from them, because of our position and phases. It is the nocturnal terrestrial hemisphere that is turned toward the planet Mars in the periods when we approach most nearly to it, and it shows us in full its lighted hemisphere. But communication ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... as the eye could reach, one of those nocturnal landscapes in bluish lines, studded with slim trees, the shadows of which seemed to have been drawn with a black crayon. The blooming brier and broom perfumed the air with a rather sharp odor, and the frogs of a neighboring swamp sang their oily anthem, interspersed with silences. But all ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... to the dark, silent house—the grave of the fairest hopes of all his life. Then he set out upon long, dreary, aimless wandering through the endless, nocturnal streets. ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... insolent pedantry. The sixth book of the AEneid is the most pleasing and perfect composition of Latin poetry. The descent of AEneas and the Sibyl to the infernal regions, to the world of spirits, expands an awful and boundless prospect, from the nocturnal gloom of ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... sighed. "Poor little thing! Rich and poor, young and old, how soon the world's poison reaches us!" Then, throwing a tiger-skin over the slender body, he turned out the lights and left the room. Summoning Norgate, he gave instructions that his nocturnal visitor should not be disturbed in the morning by the housekeeper, but should be allowed to sleep on. Then he made his way to his own room, not long before the ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... nocturnal youth, and her eyes are warranted to kill across a supper-table, yet she is no longer young, and sometimes betrays herself by her anecdotes of familiar associations with "boys" who have long since passed into respectability and middle-age. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... inheritance. And self-preserving laws, severe in show, May guard their fences from the invading foe. Where birth has placed them, let them safely share The common benefit of vital air. Themselves unharmful, let them live unharm'd; Their jaws disabled, and their claws disarm'd: 300 Here, only in nocturnal howlings bold, They dare not seize the hind, nor leap the fold. More powerful, and as vigilant as they, The Lion awfully forbids the prey. Their rage repress'd, though pinch'd with famine sore, They stand aloof, and tremble ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... front door of one is always kept closed, and the other open. In this particular instance the matter admitted of no discussion, for there was no front door. The one that originally hung under the fan-shaped Colonial arch had long since been kicked in during some nocturnal raid, and ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... Italiens, formerly known as the boulevard de Gand, as he lounged past the long line of chairs before the Cafe de Paris, where, mingled with a few women of the Chaussee d'Antin accompanied by their husbands and children, may be seen toward evening a cordon of nocturnal beauties waiting only a gloved hand to gather them, la Peyrade's heart received a cruel shock. From afar, he thought ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... loose, and don't go to bed; we have work to do together. At eleven o'clock Cornoiller will be at the door with the chariot from Froidfond. Listen for him and prevent his knocking; tell him to come in softly. Police regulations don't allow nocturnal racket. Besides, the whole neighborhood need not know that I am starting on ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... watch over the patron without seeming to do so, to be the clear-sighted Telemachus of that blind Mentor, to point out the pitfalls to him, to defend him against the brigands, in short to assist him to fight in that swarm of nocturnal ambuscades which he felt to be lurking savagely about the Nabob and ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... keeping lock, bolt, and hinges well oiled. Having secured the key, blown out the candle, and noiselessly closed the door behind him, he left the house, and started for the Haymarket, Covent Garden, or the Strand, a little before midnight—or, in other words, set forth on a nocturnal tour of amusement, just at the time when the doors of respectable places of public recreation (which his father prevented him from attending) were all closed, and the doors of ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... butterflies and of some moths are specially arranged for display, so that they may be readily seen. During the night colours are not visible, and there can be no doubt that the nocturnal moths, taken as a body, are much less gaily decorated than butterflies, all of which are diurnal in their habits. But the moths of certain families, such as the Zygaenidae, several Sphingidae, Uraniidae, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... confer an inestimable boon upon his brother Saints and brother Sinners. "You are all," said he, "victims to an exacting and fierce mania—a madness that is unremitting in the despotism directing every thought and practice in your waking hours, and filling your brains with gilded fancies during your nocturnal periods of repose. (Applause.) Many of you are so advanced in this mania that the mania itself has become seemingly your very existence—(cheers)—and the feet of others are fast taking hold upon that path which leads down into the hopeless depths of this insanity. (Prolonged ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... when the curtain fell at the Empire, we both went forth and strolled along to St. James's Street to get a drink at the club. The later we went forth on our nocturnal ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... puzzled him not a little, as he knew that they lived very harmoniously together. Sally had been very useful to her father; and, if fame did not belie her, was sometimes worthy Foodie's assistant in his nocturnal exploits. She was certainly reputed to be "light-handed;" an imputation which caused the young men of her acquaintance to avoid, in their casual conversations with her, ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... painful—very painful and terrible," said Mr. Scott Eccles in a querulous voice, "but it is really uncommonly hard on me. I had nothing to do with my host going off upon a nocturnal excursion and meeting so sad an end. How do I come to be mixed ...
— The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge • Arthur Conan Doyle
... shape they were like horrible toads, and moved in a succession of springs, but in size they were of an incredible bulk, larger than the largest elephant. We had never before seen them save at night, and indeed they are nocturnal animals save when disturbed in their lairs, as these had been. We now stood amazed at the sight, for their blotched and warty skins were of a curious fish-like iridescence, and the sunlight struck them with an ever-varying rainbow bloom ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... be pulled onward, but remembering Molly's previous encounter upon the same spot, was curious enough to demand an explanation of Rupert's nocturnal rambles when they had reached the haven of Sophia's bedroom. It was very simple, but it struck her as exceedingly pathetic and confirmed her in her opinion of the unreasonableness of ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... this point, to usurp the office of reason, and she accounted for the strangeness of Miss Halliday's illness as she might have done had she lived in the sixteenth century, and been liable to the suspicion of nocturnal ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... recurrence of similar scenes to that of the thunderstorm, or the royal oak, had a variety of indispositions ready prepared; and, thanks to them, she was unable to go out, and her maids of honor were obliged to remain indoors also. There was not the slightest chance or means of paying a nocturnal visit; for, in this respect, the king had, on the very first occasion, experienced a severe check, which happened in the following manner. As at Fontainebleau, he had taken Saint-Aignan with him one evening, when he wished to pay La Valliere a visit; but he had found no one but Mademoiselle ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... and vast cellars where cargoes were stored on their way to London. In many cases, in the old days, these houses were "haunted," to put forth the legend of a ghost being the simplest way not only of accounting for such nocturnal noises as might be occasioned by the arrival or departure of smugglers and tubs, but also of keeping inquisitive folks at bay. Only a little while ago, during alterations to an old cottage high on the hills ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... fear of some unknown calamity that might spring upon us from the dark made me so concerned that I lay pretty nearly all day on top of the parapet covered with sand-bags searching every inch of No Man's Land for a sign of the cause of their nocturnal activity. The setting sun revealed something shining that looked like the barrel of a Lewis gun. I determined to go out and get it after dark. When I went out I found I could not get near the place, for a machine-gun was playing ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... cured of his nocturnal visits to the "Black Horse," and his love of whisky toddy. Some months afterwards he espoused the temperance cause, and I've heard him tell the tale myself, many a time, and laugh heartily at the ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... the direction in which he might best hope to find what he sought, and not wishing to arouse suspicion by further hesitation, he turned to the left and stepped briskly along the pavement with the intention of placing himself as quickly as possible beyond the observation of those nocturnal watchers. He knew that the night must be far spent; and so he could not but wonder why people should sit upon their balconies when they should have been asleep among their silks and furs. At first ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... along the opposite wall. Instantly he grabs a boot and hurls it with ferocious force at the goblin. A roar was heard followed by a salvo of blue profanity. It was a fellow-traveller—a lumber-dealer—who was to occupy the other bed in the room. He had undressed and was disporting himself in nocturnal attire before reposing, when Jonas Lie's well-aimed missile hit him in the stomach and doubled him ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... to be joined by two of his friends and punchers, Mr. Hopalong Cassidy and Mr. Red Connors, both of whom were at Cactus Springs, seventy miles to the east. Mr. Cassidy and his friend had just finished a nocturnal tour of Santa Fe and felt somewhat peevish and dull in consequence, not to mention the sadness occasioned by the expenditure of the greater part of their combined capital on such foolishness as faro, roulette ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... portions of the island. The late Mr. C. Barlow says that it is found in deserted rabbit burrows and in all probability often excavates its own burrows. It also nests among the cliffs placing its eggs among the rocks in any crevice or tunnel which may offer a dark retreat during the day for they are nocturnal in their habits. The single egg which they lay is dull white in color, the inside of the shell being a pale green, which color can only be seen by holding the egg to the light. They are generally slightly nest stained. Size 1.80 x 1.30. Data.—Coronado Islands, ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... O Catiline, abuse our patience? How long shall thy madness outbrave our justice? To what extremities art thou resolved to push thy unbridled insolence of guilt! Canst thou behold the nocturnal arms that watch the palatium, the guards of the city, the consternation of the citizens; all the wise and worthy clustering into consultation; this impregnable situation of the seat of the senate, and the reproachful ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... Lake. The otter and mink live along the larger streams and on the Lake shore where they feed chiefly on fish. They may sometimes catch a wild fowl asleep. The martin and fisher live in pine trees usually in the deepest forests, and they probably prey on squirrels, mice and birds. They are usually nocturnal in their habits. The martin is the size of a large tree squirrel; the fisher is about twice that size. The foxes are not often seen, but the coyote is everywhere, a scourge to the few bands of sheep. Often at night his long-drawn, doleful ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... alighted, shadowed by the black-coated eunuch. The same thing for several days, then a device to let the lady know his name, then a little note half in Arabic, half in French, so mysterious, so fascinating—William Sowerby walked on air! Then, a nocturnal going forth, followed by his frightened servant, who dared not give a warning, for fear of the ever-ready belt which had scarred his back erstwhile; the palace wall, an opening door, the figure of his master passing ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Now it chanced that the same inflexible landlady ruled at Number 5 Exeter Place, and remembering his former experience, Mr. Watson felt something must be done to stifle the shouting he foresaw he would be compelled to do at that nocturnal hour. So he gathered together all the blankets and rolled them into a sort of cone and to the small end of this he tied his telephone. Then he crept into this stuffy, breathless shelter, the ancestor of our sound-proof telephone booth, and for nearly three hours shouted to Mr. ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... who frightened you so much, must surely have belonged to the band; that they had forced the trap-door, after a nocturnal expedition, on which they had been pursued as far as a subterranean entrance, which without ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... have done nothing blameworthy," returned Fraisier. Evidently he meant to deny his nocturnal visit to ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Anaho, was condemned to ride to Hatiheu on a moonless night. He borrowed a lantern, sat a long while nerving himself for the adventure, and when he at last departed, wrung the Cascos by the hand as for a final separation. Certain presences, called Vehinehae, frequent and make terrible the nocturnal roadside; I was told by one they were like so much mist, and as the traveller walked into them dispersed and dissipated; another described them as being shaped like men and having eyes like cats; from none could I obtain the smallest clearness as to what they did, or wherefore they were dreaded. ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... them, making the darkness denser and more impenetrable. Not a star was to be seen. The shore-line was only a vague, uncertain black bulk. As they huddled silently in the bottom of the little boat, they became conscious of the voices of the night; but these voices were different from the nocturnal whisperings of field and forest which they knew so well. Now they heard only the lisping of water. Little wavelets broke gently against their slender craft. And all about them rose the musical whisper, the liquid murmur of waters gently lapping the rocks ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... guns and pistols. The rest carried scythes and hatchets. As they approached the village, they sang Marot's version of the seventy-fourth Psalm. The archpriest heard the unwonted sound as they came marching along. Thinking it was a nocturnal assembly, he cried to his soldiers, "Run and see what this means." But the doors of the house were already invested by the mountaineers, who shouted out for "The prisoners! the prisoners!" "Back, Huguenot canaille!" cried Chayla from the window. ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... Montmartre. He postponed visiting this abode, however, until the morrow, partly because it would not be prepared for him, and partly in order to give Henry the full advantage of his society. They sat on the terrace of the Cafe de la Paix, after a very late dinner, and drank bock, and watched the nocturnal life of the boulevard, and talked. Henry gathered—not from any direct statement, but by inference—that Tom must have acquired a position in the art world of Paris. Tom mentioned the Salon as if the ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... the hothouse roof which he could see from a distance was what he noticed first. In his two nocturnal visits this had not been apparent. Now that he saw it he stood stock-still. It was something like a gash within himself, a gash in his courage perhaps, or a gash in the dream of a reconstituted self. He knew vaguely that his father ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... Nocturnal though the beetles had been, they no longer feared the light of the sun. In fact, it was ascertained later that they were blind. An opacity had formed over the crystalline lens of the eye. Blind, they were no less formidable than with their sight. They existed only to devour, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... there was a resounding knock at the inner door, even as I flung it open upon a special evening edition of Mr. Daniel Levy, a resplendent figure with a great stud blazing in a frilled shirt, white waistcoat and gloves, opera-hat and cigar, and all the other insignia of a nocturnal vulgarian ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... would seem that nocturnal pollution is a sin. For the same things are the matter of merit and demerit. Now a man may merit while he sleeps, as was the case with Solomon, who while asleep obtained the gift of wisdom from the Lord (3 ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... affairs in the capital. Dark clouds of the enemy were seen throughout the day mustering along the heights, which by night were illumined with a hundred fires. Ferdinand's utmost vigilance was required for the protection of his camp against the ambuscades and nocturnal sallies of his wily foe. At length, however, El Zagal, having been foiled in a well-concerted attempt to surprise the Christian quarters by night, was driven across the mountains by the marquis of Cadiz, and compelled to retreat on his capital, completely baffled in his enterprise. There ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... evenings in Greenwich and Peckham. But playing a one-stringed violin at fairs and public-houses could not be more than a relaxation to a man of Peace's active temper, who had once tasted what many of those who have practised it, describe as the fascination of that particular form of nocturnal adventure known by the unsympathetic name of burglary. Among the exponents of the art Peace was at this time known as a "portico-thief," that is to say one who contrived to get himself on to the portico of a house and from that point of vantage make his entrance ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... Consul at Barcelona, where he died in 1873. Mr. Holman Hunt, one of the band of wits and youthful geniuses of whom Hannay was the wittiest of all, writes to me of him as "a contributor of great power who might with self-control have gained a great position—a friend who used to come on our nocturnal boating expeditions up the river. He was one of the dear crew who in different capacities and with varied powers once manned life's ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... sides, full of tablets and scrolls, the number of which he could not in one moment ascertain. He however discriminated in numerous places the inscriptions: The Board of Lustful Love; the Board of contracted grudges; The Board of Matutinal sobs; the Board of nocturnal tears; the Board of vernal affections; and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Associated Words: nocturnal, noctuary, noctidial, noctilucous, belated, benight, benighted, noctivagant, noctivagation, noctivagous, nocturne, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... came out that Phil's books were not neglected, either. The speed with which his candles burnt down, and required renewal, told of nocturnal studies in his garret. As these did not perceptibly interfere with his activity the next day, they were viewed by Mr. Faringfield rather with commendation than otherwise, and so were allowed to continue. My mother thought it ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... in the morning, secure your bait to-night. Worms are nocturnal, and they come out of their holes at night, provided it is not too dry on top. The ideal time for scooping them in is about dusk, after a long warm rain. Get a lantern and with it carry your bait can half filled with wet moss or soft moist earth. You will find, if the conditions are right, swarms ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... his own spiritual wrestlings were almost exclusively nocturnal. During his spells of insomnia he led a curiously double existence. In the daytime he was largely the self he had always been, able, assured, ecclesiastical, except that he was a little jaded and irritable or sleepy instead of being quick and ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... places, widely scattered, the twelve good and true men were snoring snugly in bed. To-morrow they would send Angelo to his death without a quiver. He shuddered, striding on, he knew not whither, into the night. His brain no longer worked. He had become a peripatetic automaton self-dedicated to nocturnal perambulation. ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... sides, for at least fifty feet from the water's edge, is one impassable morass nourishing rank reeds and rushes, where the hippopotamus' ponderous form has crushed into watery trails the soft composition of the morass as he passes from the lake on his nocturnal excursions; the lesser animals; such as the "mbogo" (buffalo), the "punda-terra" (zebra); the " twiga" (giraffe), the boar, the kudu, the hyrax or coney and the antelope; come here also to quench their thirst by night. The surface ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... Authentic f. Continual and intermitting f. Worthy f. Rebasing and roundling f. Precious f. Prototypal and precedenting f. Fanatic f. Prating f. Fantastical f. Catechetic f. Symphatic f. Cacodoxical f. Panic f. Meridional f. Limbecked and distilled f. Nocturnal f. Comportable f. Occidental f. Wretched and heartless f. Trifling f. Fooded f. Astrological and figure-flinging f. Thick and threefold f. Genethliac and horoscopal f. Damasked f. Knavish f. Fearney f. Idiot f. Unleavened f. Blockish f. Baritonant f. Beetle-headed ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... to him to go and see the boatman and order him away so that afterward the man could say he had been sent off duty, and the story of a nocturnal river trip would not appear too incredible. It was a small concession to stop ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... in silence, while I lay gradually recovering my equanimity, and congratulating myself on the fact that my nocturnal visitor had been a serpent of the boa kind, and not a deadly cobra, when the man suddenly held up his finger, and pointed to a spot beyond the lamp, where the roof and canvas ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... words: his answers seemed to bring out a latent significance in her phrases, as the sculptor draws his statue from the block. Glennard, under his wife's composure, detected a sensibility to this manoeuvre, and the discovery was like the lightning-flash across a nocturnal landscape. Thus far these momentary illuminations had served only to reveal the strangeness of the intervening country: each fresh observation seemed to increase the sum-total of his ignorance. Her simplicity of outline was more puzzling than a complex surface. One may conceivably ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... The fangs with which the spider seizes its prey are hollow, and emit a venomous fluid into the body of the victim, which speedily benumbs and kills it. In Palestine and other countries a kind of spider is found which is entirely nocturnal in its habits, and never either hunts or feeds in daylight, but makes itself a little home, where it abides safely till sunset. It is called the trap-door spider, from the curious way in which it protects the entrance to its nest. ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... corners. She smoothes the hair of the grass. The moon has lost her memory. A washed-out smallpox cracks her face, Her hand twists a paper rose, That smells of dust and old Cologne, She is alone With all the old nocturnal smells That cross and cross across her brain. The reminiscence comes Of sunless dry geraniums And dust in crevices, Smells of chestnuts in the streets, And female smells in shuttered rooms, And cigarettes in corridors And ...
— Prufrock and Other Observations • T. S. Eliot
... the Tasmanian quadrupeds are nocturnal in their habits, or, when not strictly so, feed principally during the morning and evening twilight: and as few of our mountains exceed four or five thousand feet of elevation above the sea level, most of the animals are distributed over the whole island, being merely influenced in ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... quantity of hikuli, and the trees dance before his eyes, he maintains the balance of his body even better than under normal conditions, and he will walk along the edge of precipices without becoming dizzy. At their nocturnal feasts, when drinking heavily of both tesvino and hikuli, many persons may be seen to weep and laugh alternately. Another marked effect of the plant is to take away temporarily all sexual desire. This fact, no doubt, is the reason why the Indians, ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... intermerging sweep of earth and sky. The sweetness of wild peppermint rose through the coolness of the dew, and the voices of the wilderness were part of the silence that was but the perfect balance of the nocturnal harmonies. The two who knew and loved the prairie could pick out each one of them. Nor did it seem that there was any need of speech on such a night, but at last Winston turned with a little smile to his companion, ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... friends, he annexed a bibulous following of loafers whose time hung heavy and who were at all times eager to applaud a loose tongue so long as it was accompanied by a loose purse. Toward midnight "Fingerless" Fraser, cruising in a nocturnal search for adventure and profit, found him in a semi-maudlin state, descanting vaporously to his train; and, upon catching mention of the Kalvik fisheries, snatched him homeward and put him to bed, after which he locked him into his ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... like. They all possess long front teeth for gnawing, and constitute the Order of Rodents. Some species destroy fruit trees by gnawing away the bark near the ground, others attack the grain stacked in the field or stored in the granary. As these little sharp-eyed creatures are chiefly nocturnal in their habits, we seldom see them; we see only the ruin they have wrought. In some of the American ports incoming vessels are systematically fumigated to kill the rats for fear they may bring with them the bubonic plague. In April, 1898, while ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... is cursed with the pestilent habit of conjuring up all manner or odd fancies when his head touches the pillow, instead of dismissing the workmen who hammer on the forges of the brain. The majority of the men will rather suffer nocturnal horrors than be laughed at for wearing nightcaps; just as the majority of women will prefer to wear shoes that are instruments of disease and torture rather than have their feet shod comfortably and sensibly. I have a clear idea as to which is the course of wisdom and which ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... after his death, in 638, the second of the khalifs, his successors, Omar, sent two of his generals, Khaled and Abou-Obeidah, to take Jerusalem. For to the Mussulmans, also, Jerusalem was a holy city. Mahomet, it was said, had been thither; it was thence, indeed, that he had started on his nocturnal ascent to heaven. On approaching the walls, the Arabs repeated these words from the Koran: "Enter we the holy land which God hath promised us." The siege lasted four months. The Christians at last surrendered, but only to Omar in person, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... and Anton are equipped in their gala attire for church, Moidel and the maids, in spite of their nocturnal labors, following them briskly; so that they have not only said their prayers and endeavored to understand the sermon, but actually joined in a procession before the guests arrive. The sweet notes of a processional hymn still float on the silent, balmy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... and pointing to the clock, "Mercy, Mr. Archie!" she would say, "whatten a time o' night is this of it! God forgive me for a daft wife!" So it befell, by good management, that she was not only the first to begin these nocturnal conversations, but invariably the first to break them off; so she managed to retire and not to ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... beautiful daughters. Araw, the elder daughter, was very amiable, and had a kindly disposition; but Buwan, unlike her sister, was disobedient, cruel, and harsh. She was always finding fault with Araw. One night, when the fairy came home from her nocturnal rambles and saw Buwan badly mistreating her elder sister, she asked God for help ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... scroll of lighted pictures. He would be aware of the great field of lamps of a nocturnal city; then of the figure of a man walking swiftly; then of a child running from the doctor's; and then these met, and that human Juggernaut trod the child down and passed on regardless of her screams. Or else he would see a room in a rich house, where his friend ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... pensive, to see a cart drawn by oxen pass at a great distance above him. The cowboy who drove the slow team sang also; through a bad and rocky path, they descended into a ravine bathed in shadows already nocturnal. ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... into the nocturnal Mysteries of Osiris and Serapis: and afterward into those of Ceres at Rome: but of the ceremonies in these initiations, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... bags of earnest-money, Pratinas parted with the lanista, and he and Lucius Ahenobarbus found themselves again in the now entirely darkened Campus Martius. Lucius again feared brigands, but they fell in with no unpleasant nocturnal wayfarers, and reached the city without incident. Ahenobarbus seemed to himself to be treading on air—Cornelia, villas, Drusus's money—these were dancing in his head in a delightful confusion. He had ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... go at all in that direction. At the sight of her my nocturnal eloquence became preposterous and all the moral values altered altogether. I had waited for her outside the door of the Parsian-robe establishment in Kensington High Street and walked home with her thence. ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... daughter! What of her, with Francisco de Lara drawing nigh as one of the nocturnal ravagers? His grand-daughter, too, Faustino ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... line; neither did the cautious Wolfert care to disturb his thoughts on that point. His only wish was to secure the old fisherman as a pilot to the spot, and this was readily effected. The long time that had intervened since his nocturnal adventure had effaced all Sam's awe of the place, and the promise of a trifling reward roused him at once from his ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... change in the tableau described. The buzzards, obedient to their customary habit—not nocturnal—take departure from the spot, and wing their way to their usual roosting place. Different do the coyotes. These stay. Night is the time best suited to their ravening instincts. The darkness may give them a better opportunity to assail that thing of spherical shape, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... me in fate, So were I equalled with them in renown, Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides, And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old: Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird Sings darkling, and, in shadiest covert hid, Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year Seasons return; but not to me returns Day or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But cloud instead and ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the cheerful ...
— Milton • John Bailey |
