"Ostrich" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Turning triumphant to the wilderness? Lead to thy crib the unicorn, and bind His unbow'd sinews to the furrowing plough, And trust him if thou canst to bring thy seed Home to the garner. Who the radiant plumes Gave to the peacock? or the winged speed That bears the headlong ostrich far beyond The baffled steed and rider? not withheld By the instinctive tenderness that chains The brooding bird, she scatters on the sands Her unborn hopes, regardless though the foot May trampling crush them. Hast thou given the Horse His glorious strength, and ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... he fumbled among the meshes of ostrich plume wound around her hat. The head of the pin eluding him there, he tried beneath the brim, his fingers tangling in thick waves of hair. They were soft waves, softer and silkier than the ostrich plume. No man with blood in ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and as their parents are aware that the little birds cannot run so fast as they themselves can, they endeavour, when an enemy comes near, to draw him away from their charges. The female generally undertakes this office, while the cock bird leads the brood in an opposite direction. Now the hen ostrich flies off before the horseman, spreading out or drooping her wings. Now she will throw herself on the ground before the foe, as if wounded, again to rise when he gets too near; and then, wheeling about, she tries to induce him to follow her. Thus she will ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... reminiscences. Olim—her name was chronicled on Patrick's night, by every Castle reporter. They made, it is to be lamented, as Irish reporters will make, sad mistakes at times. The once poor injured lady had been attired in canary-colored lute-string, and an ostrich plume remarkable for its enormity while she, the libeled one, had been becomingly arrayed in blue bombazine, and of any plumage imported from Araby the blest, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... spirit found expression also in the clothes he wore. Listen to this description of him: "His fighting jacket shone with dazzling buttons and was covered with gold braid; his hat was looped up with a golden star and decorated with a black ostrich plume; his fine buff gauntlets reached to the elbow; around his waist was tied a splendid yellow sash, and his spurs were pure gold." These spurs, of which he was immensely proud, were a gift from Baltimore ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... occupied a large niche in my heart. The desire to gaze upon a bird capable of digesting food to which even the ostrich never aspired, pursued me by day and tinctured my dreams by night. "What you seek for all your life you will come upon suddenly when the whole family is at dinner," says Thoreau. I met the cassowary at dinner. He ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... fossil species are extinct, is by no means confined to the mammalia. New Zealand, when first examined by Europeans, was found to contain no indigenous land quadrupeds, no kangaroos, or opossums, like Australia; but a wingless bird abounded there, the smallest living representative of the ostrich family, called the Kiwi by the natives (Apteryx). In the fossils of the Post-pliocene period in this same island, there is the like absence of kangaroos, opossums, wombats, and the rest; but in their place a prodigious number of well-preserved specimens of gigantic birds of the struthious order, ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... arbitrary. By the way, your editorial friends must think a great deal of you, or else you are valuable to them, for your chief writes to Mr. Yocomb every day about you; so do some others; and they've sent enough fruit and delicacies to be the death of an ostrich." ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... and delicate, with a shrivelled skin and disagreeable, greyish-green eyes, the expression of which contradicted the unnaturally suave look of the rest of her face. Underneath her velvet bonnet, adorned with an ostrich feather, was visible some reddish hair, while against the unhealthy colour of her skin her eyebrows and eyelashes looked even lighter and redder that they would other wise have done. Yet, for all that, her animated movements, small hands, and peculiarly dry features communicated something aristocratic ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... admitted on sufferance. Royal visits, dinners, dances, receptions followed one another in dazzling succession; behind her chair, at dinner or reception, always stood two gigantic negroes, crowned with ostrich plumes. She was now "sister of the Emperor," and all the world should ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... debauch. His short purple manteline, trimmed with ermine, was embroidered with his grandfather's favourite device, "the silver swan;" he wore on his breast the badge of St. George; and the single ostrich plume, which made his cognizance as Prince of Wales, waved over a fair and ample forehead, on which were even then traced the lines of musing thought and high design; his chestnut hair curled close to his noble head; his eye shone dark and brilliant beneath the deep-set ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Bob. He is like an ostrich. He has digestive organs which are peculiarly his own. It will only serve him as it served me—and Pugh—it will knock him over. It is all done in the Pursuit of Truth and for ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... pleasure of entertaining an old friend. Our worthy doctor here informs us you will soon get strong again, and become more of a tax on my hospitality than you have yet been. No doubt, after your illness, you'll have the appetite of an ostrich. Well, in one way, that will be fortunate, since we are living, as you may see, in a somewhat Homeric fashion. Carrambo! you will be deeming my manners quite as rude as the roughest of Homer's heroes. I am ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... no reply, and Lady Frances, who was, at the same time, pulling to pieces a superb fan of ostrich feathers, proceeded to open her ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... indeed, had been one which was peculiarly calculated to throw him on his own resources, sharpen his wits, and render him fertile in expedients. He had been a foundling, and knew no more of his parentage than a young ostrich, that springs from the deserted egg in the sand. He was left, when an infant, at the door of a poor mechanic, in Boston, by the name of Burt, and by him transferred to the almshouse, where he was called after the name of his finder, with the pet name of Barty, given ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... also, but at too great a distance to shoot them, buffalos, stags, and ostriches, and from a single nest they obtained ten ostrich eggs. Captain Jacob Jansz Huy de Cooper, died during the stay at this place, and was interred at Port Desire. On the 23rd November, the fleet entered the Strait of Magellan. During a visit to the shore three Dutchmen were killed by some Patagonians, and their death was ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... whole of which the hair had been permitted to grow, the pursuits of war having so long been abandoned, was encircled by a sort of plated diadem, which, in its turn, bore lesser and more glittering ornaments, that sparkled amid the glossy hues of three drooping ostrich feathers, dyed a deep black, in touching contrast to the color of his snow-white locks. His tomahawk was nearly hid in silver, and the handle of his knife shone like ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... source of the river near Orion. Topaz yellow in color, and culminates January 13th. This star is also known as Dhalim (Tha'lim) ("the ostrich"). ...
— A Field Book of the Stars • William Tyler Olcott
... other countries, such natural objects as cocoanut shells, and ostrich eggs are used in ...
— Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. • William Henry Holmes
... he says, "was all the way in an open plain bounded by hillocks of sand and fine gravel—perfectly hard, but without trees, shrubs, or herbs. There are not even the traces of any living creature, neither serpent, lizard, antelope, nor ostrich—the usual inhabitants of the most dreary deserts. There is no sort of water—even the birds seem to avoid the place as pestilential—the sun was burning hot." In a few days the scene changed, and Bruce is noting that in four days ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... trimmed with silver, and white silk high-heeled shoes, embroidered with silver, and a light-blue sash with silver and tassel, tied at the left side. My watch was suspended at the right, and my hair was in its natural curls. Surmounting all was a small white hat and white ostrich feather, confined ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... Jim," said another. "This way, sir." There was a little scuffling about, and the next minute, half fearing that he was playing ostrich and had only concealed his head, Syd was listening. He had hardly ceased moving when he heard the first lieutenant saying something to Lieutenant Dallas, who was evidently ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... destroy each year, almost as much in money value as all the national banks in the country have on deposit, and this wholesale destruction might largely be prevented if every woman and girl took (and kept) a pledge not to use wings, breasts, or birds on her hats. There is no objection to the use of ostrich feathers, which are carefully plucked from the live birds. The feathers grow again, just as the wool grows on sheep that have been sheared. Neither is there any objection to using the feathers of the barn-yard fowls which are killed ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... Joseph Banks; and they are now enjoying their freedom in the Earl of Exeter's park at Burleigh. These birds have been pronounced by Sir Joseph Banks, of whose judgment none can entertain a doubt, to come nearer to what is known of the American ostrich, than to either the emu of India, or the ostrich of Africa. (The subjoined engraving is from a drawing made in New South Wales, and shows the height to which ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... declared the Fans were "bad men too much," which was impolitic under existing circumstances, and inexcusable, because it by no means arose from a courageous defiance of them; but the West African! Well! "'E's a devil an' a ostrich an' a ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... which hung the scabbard of a light sword, with a straight and pointed blade, without edge and without guard; large amaranth-colored pantaloons embroidered in gold on the seams, and nankeen boots; a large hat embroidered in gold with a border of white feathers, above which floated four large ostrich plumes with an exquisite heron aigrette in the midst; and finally the king's horse, always selected from the strongest and handsomest that could be found, was covered with an elegantly embroidered ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Eagle's or hawk's feathers were usually worn by the gentlemen, in the Highlands, while the bonnets of the common people were ornamented with a bunch of the distinguishing mark of the clan or district. The ostrich feathers in the bonnets of the soldiers were a ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... admiration for her person which he openly displayed. During the whole time he stood there his eyes seldom rose to her face; they lingered mainly-and this was what aroused my curiosity—on the great fan of ostrich plumes which this opulent beauty held against her breast. Was he desirous of seeing the great diamond she thus unconsciously (or was it consciously) shielded from his gaze? It was possible, for, as I continued to ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... him such a topper for this," he muttered; and then as he struggled on another foot, he suddenly stopped short, looked straight ahead, and exclaimed loudly, "There, I can see you. Don't be stupid, you old ostrich, hiding there. Now then, ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... that teachers should have sought to lessen the unpleasant surprise for the listener caused by the break. Some have looked on registers as almost an invention of the Evil One, and forbidden the use of the term to their students; but such ostrich-like treatment of the subject—such burying of the head in the sand—does not do away with a difficulty, much less can such a plain fact as the existence of registers be ignored without the most detrimental results, as we shall endeavor to make plain. Some, feeling that ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... drawing-room table. It has done this to perfection, not with its flowers, which, in their modesty, continue intractable, but with its curly and variegated leaves, which have the undulating grace of Ostrich-feathers and the rich colouring of a mixed bouquet. None who beholds it in this magnificence will recognize the near relation of the vulgar "greens" that form ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... abounded with cassowaries, the East Indian ostrich, and wild hogs. They also captured a fish with a head resembling that of a hog, having two horns and something like a saddle on its back. After leaving this place, they encountered a tremendous storm, when, in their alarm, they vowed to set free ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... present to us, to the man who claims to be His Vicegerent on earth. See him go, crowned three times over, on a throne borne on men's shoulders, with the silver trumpets shrilling before him and the ostrich fans coming on behind, and you will understand why the world cannot take the Church seriously. Look at the court that is about him, all purple and scarlet, and set by that the little band ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... the day, expose them to the sun, and bury them again in the hot-beds towards evening. Several intermediate steps may also be found between this early stage of communal nesting by proxy and the true hatching instinct; a good one is supplied by the ostrich, which partially buries its eggs in hot sand, but sits on them at intervals, both father and mother birds taking shares by turn in ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... some respects quite as remarkable, bore not the slightest resemblance to this of Mistress Madison's. It was a Turkish turban of white satin and velvet, with a jeweled crescent in front clasping a bunch of nodding white ostrich-plumes. Her gown, of pale pink satin, was heavily trimmed with ermine, and she wore gold chains about her waist and wrists, and carried a jeweled snuff-box in her hand. She was truly regal-looking, and I did not wonder that people sometimes ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... other allied forms, which are strictly monogamous, the affection of the female for the male is so great that she is said never to mate again if the male dies, and both watch over and care for the young with extreme solicitude. The ostrich male form, though perhaps larger than the female, shares with her the labour of hatching the eggs, relieving the hen of her duty at a fixed hour daily: and his care for the young when hatched is as tender as hers. Among song-birds, in which the male and female ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... when, if there's no objections, I speak pretty freely. Heard your man had been hankering about my servant—didn't know myself what was going on until Miss Fotheringay and Miss Rouncy had the row about the ostrich feathers, when ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... business, an' tried to make things nice, an' please, an' here I've got to fail. Oh, dear!" Suddenly she made a weak rush across the room, her silk petticoat giving out a papery rustle, her frizzes vibrating like wire under her hat, crested with ostrich plumes. She danced up to Carroll and looked at him with indescribable piteousness of accusation. "Why couldn't you, if you had to cheat, cheat a man an' not a woman like me?" she demanded, ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and wondering what in the world is the matter with the men to-day, and why they don't come along with the buns and sugar. Once within the zareba, once you have pushed your way between the giraffes and got their noses out of your jacket-pockets, you have really only to be wary of the ostrich. He, mincing delicately around you with his little wicked red eye blinking like a camera shutter, may try with an ill-assumed air of indifference to slip up unnoticed close behind you. If he succeeds he will land you one. ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... declared themselves in favour of the continuance of Spanish rule, no serious endeavour has been made to discover the identity of the conspirators. The fact is, that the Spanish Government is acting precisely like the fabled ostrich; it is burying its head in the sand and refusing to see the coming trouble. Even now, although two armed risings have very recently taken place, one in the province of Santiago and the other in that of Mantanzas—the latter, by the way, having been promptly suppressed—the official mind persists ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... guess you must mean an ostrich," retorted the shipowner's son, and at this sally there was a general laugh in which ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... peace war is inevitable." The ostrich may avoid seeing the approach of the fierce simoon by hiding his head in the sand, but cannot stay its onward march. The craze for slaughter, the lust for blood, is abroad in the land. The stars are evil, and Ate, ranging hot from Hell, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... loose character who looked much like the Queen. Whether her name was d'Essigny or Gay d'Oliva, is uncertain; she is usually called by the latter. She was hired and taught; and with immense precautions, this ostrich of a cardinal was one night introduced into the gardens of the Trianon, and shown a little nook among the thickets where a stately female in the similitude of the Queen received him with soft spoken words of kindly greeting, allowed him to kneel ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... nobody's expense but his own. However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... Lyttelton wavered. On the whole, he recognised the need of fighting; and his main idea was that, as fight we must, we should organise our forces well, and fight with our heads as well as with our hands. He disdained the policy of the ostrich. The Americans were in active rebellion; it could not be blinked. He praised Chatham while he opposed him. He was 'fighting for his own hand.' Ministers felt the advantage of his aid; they knew his unscrupulous ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... reins of his bridle to be tied on each side to the horses of two gentlemen of his train; and his dead body, and those of his attendants, were afterwards found among the slain, with their horses standing by them in that situation.[***] His crest was three ostrich feathers; and his motto these German words, Ich dien,—"I serve;" which the prince of Wales and his successors adopted in memorial of this great victory. The action may seem no less remarkable for the small loss sustained by the English, than for the great slaughter of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... are the miserablest people in the world. The Hodmadods of Monomatapa, though a nasty people yet for wealth are gentlemen to these, who have no houses and skin garments, sheep, poultry, and fruits of the earth, ostrich eggs etc. as the Hodmadods have; and setting aside their human shape, they differ but little from brutes. They are tall, straight-bodied and thin, with small long limbs. They have great heads, round foreheads and great brows. Their eyelids are ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... said Marija, reaching for her hat, which was big enough to be a drum major's, and full of ostrich feathers. She went out into the hall and Jurgis followed, the policeman remaining to look under the bed and ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... nothing whatever to fear from group interests so long as it doesn't try to play the ostrich in regard to them. So the burden of national crises is squarely upon the dominant classes who fight so foolishly against the emergent ones. That is what precipitates violence, that is what renders social co-operation ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... delightful to say. Like all women of forty, Isabelle liked the night, tempered lights and becoming settings, and the dignity of formal entertaining. Last but not least, she had a new toy to-night, a great black fan of uncurled wild ostrich plumes whose tumbled beauty she waved about her slowly as Harriet came in, watching the effect in ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... long talking about an old pair of gloves, without saying scarcely a word about my new uniform? Well, the young Sweepstakes and Lady Diana will talk enough about it; that's one comfort. Is not it time to think of setting out, sir?" said Hal to his uncle. "The company, you know, are to meet at the Ostrich at twelve, and the race to begin at one, and Lady Diana's horses, I know were ordered to be at ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... Nevill, the Commander-in-Chief of the Nizam's troops, and Sir Salar Jung, the Prime Minister. They rode through the town on elephants, saw the Nizam's palace, which was "a mile long and covered with delicate tracery," an ostrich race, an assault-at-arms, and fights between cocks and other creatures. At "Hyderabad," says Mrs. Burton, "they fight every kind of animal." "A nautch," which Sir Salah gave in their honour, Mrs. Burton found tame, for the girls did nothing but eat sweetmeats ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... mean the Adjutant; but he'll always be the Captain to me—would he take it amiss, think you, little one, if I sent him a bit of the joint, for the sake of old times? He'll like be eating truffled ostrich and locust sauce at the mess; but Paddy'd like to have a hand in his Christmas dinner. It's all I can do for him, and he's done much ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... of flint as to render its exterior like a sieve, diducit scopulos aceto. What solvent can the chemist prepare in his laboratory comparable to one which, while it dissolves silex, neither harms the insect nor injures its shell. Amongst the fossils we notice cockles as big as ostrich eggs, clam-shells twice the size of the largest of our Sussex coast, and those of oysters which rival soup-plates. We had indeed once before met with them of equal size in the lime-beds at Corneto. Judging by the oysters, there must indeed have been giants in those days. But this collection ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... drawing a chair to the railing, looked over at Roger below. He had hastily opened a small cupboard, and caught up a broad black hat of Adele's, with a long, willowed ostrich plume. He put it on, so that the feather hung straight down his face, and he kept blowing it out of his eyes. Daisy had offered him a gay, flowered chiffon scarf as he passed her, and he tied it round his waist ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... the ostrich was having the feathers that were not falling. He did use something. He saw the difference when it was a turkey. He needed all that inclination. He said some were useful. He did not mind irreligion. ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... old Eternal Powers do live forever; nor do their laws know any change, however we in our poor wigs and church-tippets may attempt to read their laws. To steal into Heaven,—by the modern method, of sticking ostrich-like your head into fallacies on Earth, equally as by the ancient and by all conceivable methods,—is forever forbidden. High-treason is the name of that attempt; and it continues to be punished as such. Strange enough: here once more was a kind of Heaven-scaling Ixion; ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... me the idea of a poet's genius to deem myself other than a very humble poet; but in the very possession of the idea, I know myself so far a poet as to feel assured that I can understand and interpret a poem in the spirit of poetry, and with the poet's spirit. Like the ostrich, I cannot fly, yet have I wings that give me the feeling of flight; and as I sweep along the plain, can look up toward the bird of Jove, and can ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... out the iron to him which he snaps at, and it fastens in his mouth, keeping his jaws open like a gag. The female lays about 100 eggs at a time, as large as goose eggs; but quite spherical, and having shells as thick almost as those of an ostrich. The flesh of the alligator is not fit to be eaten, being very strong and musky; and the very water of the rivers they frequent was so strong of musk that a draught of it was like to suffocate us, yet there are no instances of its being ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... sitting in the endmost chair just across the aisle in line with them. She had a pale face and looked worn and middle-aged. The effect of "refinement" made on Miriam by the congregation seemed to radiate from her. There was a large ostrich feather fastened by a gleaming buckle against the side of her silky beaver hat. It swept, Miriam found the word during the Psalms, back over her hair. Miriam glancing at her again and again felt that she would like ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... ostrich, I believe that the wings have been reduced, and are not in course of development, because the whole structure of a bird is essentially formed for flight; and the ostrich is essentially a bird. You will see at page 182 of the "Origin" a somewhat analogous discussion. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... curtains that tempered the light admitted through the gorgeously stained glass windows, were of Tuscan satin, blending, like the skies under which they were manufactured, a most happy conceit of rich and rosy colors. Pendant from the hoops in which both were gathered, hung a bunch of ostrich feathers of showy whiteness belieing, as it were, the country of their nativity-swarthy Africa. They were more for fancy than for use, though they did sometimes serve to chase ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... began to congeal. Third picture: in shallow seas have sprung up isles of madrepore; a cluster of palm trees overhangs them here and there. There are shells like carriage wheels, tortoises three metres in length, lizards of sixty feet; amphibians stretch out amid the reeds their ostrich necks and crocodile jaws; winged serpents fly about. Finally, on the large continents, huge mammifers make their appearance, their limbs misshapen, like pieces of wood badly squared, their hides thicker than plates of bronze, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... Livia. Once the barrier of her stately manners overcome, she proved to be a talkative, affable woman of the world, with a huge experience thereof. I can see her now, dressed in a scarlet satin robe and glittering with jewels. She wore a headdress of diamonds with two long ostrich feathers in it, one of which, a white one, got out of its place and stood bolt upright, as if it was frightened, until some charitable hand laid it down. This was, I fancy, the last ball Princess Letitia ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... summer, the woodwork, painted yellow with an artificial graining, and a stiff set of ebonized chairs, their dingy crimson plush backs protected by elaborate thread antimacassars, seemed to hold and reflect the misfortunes of their owner. Jeremy picked up an ostrich egg, painted with a clump of viciously green coconut palms and a cottony surf; he put it down with an absent smile and impatiently fingered a volume of "The Life of Harriet Atwood Newell." She was one of the missionaries who had gone out on the Caravan, ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... as soon as my wounds were healed, I went out to battle. In three fights I had gained five skulls, and when I returned they weighed me out gold. I then had a house and wives, and my father appointed me a Caboceer. I wore the plume of eagle and ostrich feathers, my dress was covered with fetishes, I pulled on the boots with bells, and with my bow and arrows slung on my back, my spear and blunderbuss, my knives and my double-handed sword, I led the ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... passage, and an infinite amount of giggling. Good heavens! What were they going to do? I clutched the bed clothes with frantic hands and drew them around my head, to the utter neglect of the rest of my body, probably believing, like the ostrich, that so long as I saw nobody, nobody would ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... have low huts formed of reed mats, or occupy a hole in the earth; in the mountain districts they make a shelter among the rocks by hanging mats on the windward side. Of household utensils they have none, except ostrich eggs, in which they carry water, and occasionally rough pots. For cooking his food the Bushman needs nothing but fire, which he obtains by rubbing hard and soft ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... spoken Shibli Bagarag considered her words, and the knowledge that he was selected by destiny as Master of the Event inflated him; and he was a hawk in eagerness, a peacock in pride, an ostrich in fulness of chest, crying, 'O Noorna bin Noorka! is't really so? Truly it must be, for the readers of planets were also busy with me at the time of my birth, interpreting of me in excessive agitation; and the thing they foretold is as thou foretellest. I am, wullahy! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... mother's darling in the third race! Oh, it's a ladybug for certain! You guys play 'Perhaps' to win and you'll go home looking like Pierp Morgan after a busy day. It can't lose, this clam can't! Say, that horse 'Perhaps' wears gold-plated overshoes and it can kick more track behind it than any ostrich you ever see! Why,| it's got ball-bearing castors on the feet and it wears a naphtha engine in the forward turret. Get reckless with the coin, boys, and go the limit, and if the track happens to cave in and it does lose, I'll drag you down to Elmhurst ...
— Get Next! • Hugh McHugh
... he was just alive, and his wound was closed. The attitude in which he had been dumped down upon the cargo (the ostensible and upper strata thereof, consisting of hides and salt, with a hint of ostrich-feathers, coffee, frankincense and myrrh) had favoured his chance of recovery, for, thanks to a friendly bundle, his head was pressed forward to his chest and the lips of the gaping wound in his ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... every direction, as far as the eye could reach. We had seen many guanicoes at a distance, but we could not get near enough to have a shot at them; we tracked beasts of several kinds in the soil, near a pond of salt water, and among them a very large tyger: We found also a nest of ostrich's eggs, which we eat, and thought very good. It is probable that all the animals which had left marks of their feet near the salt pond, drank the water, and indeed we saw no fresh water for them. The spring that we had found, which was not perfectly fresh, was the only one ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... Chinese, is employed in caricature—who hears of the grand entertainment he gives at Christmas in the principal dining-room, the hundred wax-candles, the waggon-load of plate, and the ocean of wine which form parts of it, and above all the two ostrich poults, one at the head, and the other at the foot of the table, exclaims, "Well! if he a'n't bang up, I don't know who be; why he beats my lord hollow!" The mechanic of the borough town, who sees him dashing through the streets in an open landau, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... was coming to this conclusion, Daniel entered the room. He greeted Benda, and said to Dorothea: "There is a girl outside who says she has some ostrich feathers for you. Did you ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... a business document as Irene's was the crossed and interlined product of a feminine pen overflowing with gossip. Stump was leaning on the railing of the veranda, contemptuously heedless of the efforts of half a dozen vendors of carpets, ostrich feathers, fruit, sweets, and Abyssinian curios, who had gathered in the street beneath and were endeavoring vociferously to secure his patronage for their wares. So Dick had leisure to think out a line of action, and he saw no reason to dispute the soundness ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... cassowary, would, of course, be called an ostrich, and here we have for the first time in history a picturesque ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... after this, two ships came into port direct from England, the Ostrich and Active. Each of them had left a lieutenant behind them; and Sir Peter appointed two of ours to fill up the vacancies, and in their steads my friends Delisle and O'Brien obtained their commissions. I was beginning to feel somewhat jealous of them, when the Chameleon ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... a First Lietenant of Infantry, with such additions as had been suggested by his exuberant fancy. His blue broadcloth was the finest and shiniest. Buttons and bugles seemed masses of barbric gold. From broad-brimmed hat floated the longest ostrich feather procurable in the shops. Shining leather boots, field-marshal pattern, came above his knees. Yellow gauntlets covered his massive hands and reached nearly to his elbows, and on his broad shoulders were great glittering epaulets—then ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... pretences," continued he; "if a wench wants a good gown, do not give her a fine smelling-bottle, because that is more delicate: as I once knew a lady lend the key of her library to a poor scribbling dependant, as if she took the woman for an ostrich that could digest iron." He said, indeed, "that women were very difficult to be taught the proper manner of conferring pecuniary favours; that they always gave too much money or too little; for that they had an idea of delicacy accompanying their gifts, so that they ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... of past history only an ostrich with its head in the sand can profess to believe that there will be no calamities in the future to reduce the population of the earth. And apart from cataclysms of disease or of war, empires have perished by moral catastrophe. A disbelief in God results in selfishness, ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... said, never use them except in defence of their young. They are said always to choose ant-hills for their nests. The ants cannot hurt the eggs, and the material of which the hills are composed assists probably in hatching the eggs, as the sand does those of the ostrich. ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... cheerily; 'I think I'm going to be expelled. I should be quite certain, only my booby-trap came down on Bessie Jayne's head instead of Miss Whatshername's, and Bessie's no sneak, though she has got a lump like an ostrich's egg on her forehead, and soaked through as well. But I think I'm certain to ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... white-headed eagle, the black and the grey, the falcon, the common hawk, the epervier, the black and red-headed vulture, the raven and the crow. Among the granivorous, the turkey, the wapo (a small kind of prairie ostrich), the golden and common pheasant, the wild peacock, of a dull whitish colour, and the guinea-fowl; these two last, which are very numerous, are not indigenous to this part of the country, but about a century ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... behind him came six standard-bearers riding abreast. The populace arose with a mighty cheer. King Harry had entered the arena. He bestrode a fine white charger and was clad in a rich dark suit of slashed velvet with satin and gold facings. His hat bore a long curling ostrich plume of pure white and he doffed it graciously in answer to the shouts of the people. By his side rode Queen Eleanor, looking regal and charming in her long brocade riding-habit; while immediately behind them ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... aspiration to be independent of foreigners: A French cook dresses his dinner for him, and a Swiss valet dresses him for his dinner. He hands down his lady, decked with pearls that never grew in the shell of a British oyster, and her waving plume of ostrich-feathers certainly never formed the tail of a barn-door fowl. The viands of his table are from all countries of the world; his wines are from the banks of the Rhine and the Rhone. In his conservatory, he regales his sight with the blossoms of South American flowers; in his smoking-room, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... mantle of blue samite, fastened on the right shoulder with a golden fermail set with a large ruby; and red hose, crossed by golden bands all up the leg. The mantle was lined with grey fur; golden lioncels decorated the fronts of the black boots; and a white samite cap, adorned with ostrich feathers, and rising out of a golden fillet, reposed ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... preoccupations. You may take up what attitude you like towards it or, with the majority, you may take up no attitude towards it but immerse yourself in the stupendous importance of your own affairs and disclaim any connection with life. It doesn't matter tuppence to life. The ostrich, on much the same principle, buries its head in the sand; and just as forces outside the sand ultimately get the ostrich, so life, all the ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... deal of ambiguity about the stereotyped phrase "ahead of one's time." Rightly apprehended, great geniuses do live for the future rather than the present, but where the public have the vastness of appetite and scantness of taste peculiar to the ostrich, there it is impossible for a composer to be ahead of his time. It is only where the public are advanced to the stage of intelligent discrimination that a Ninth Symphony and a Nibelung Tetralogy are ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... be after this bout. Now you come straight into the sittin'-room an' set down in the corner underneath the ostrich egg, where I can see you good an' plain. An' if I come to anything you want to bid in, you hold up your finger, an' I'll knock it down to you. You ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... Public Garden with A.; saw a black ostrich with long pink legs, who pranced and looked so like an opera dancer that we sat on the fence and ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... dissected, and substitute in our ideas the neatness of mechanical contrivance for the pleasure of the animal; the moment we reduce enjoyment to ingenuity, and volition to leverage, that instant all sense of beauty disappears. Take, for instance, the action of the limb of the ostrich, which is beautiful so long as we see it in its swift uplifting along the desert sands, and trace in the tread of it her scorn of the horse and his rider, but would infinitely lose of its impressiveness, if we could see the spring ligament playing backwards and forwards in alternate ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... respecting their daughter's prospects and future arrangements. Miss Teresa went to bed, considering whether, in the event of her marrying a title, she could conscientiously encourage the visits of her present associates; and dreamed, all night, of disguised noblemen, large routs, ostrich plumes, bridal favours, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... interior of the desert. The people, as we have said, call themselves Trasas, and profess the Mahometan religion; they hunt lions, tigers, leopards, and all other ferocious animals, which abound in this part of Africa. Their commerce is in furs or skins, and ostrich feathers: they manufacture the leather called basil, in french, basane, which they prepare very well;[A11] they make this leather into pocketbooks, to which they give different forms, but in general, that of a sabretache. They also dress goats skins, and join several together to give them ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... throat with a decisive snap. But the crowning graces remained in the shape of two other ornaments that lay in a small China box. It had a head on the cover, beautifully painted, of some queen,—perhaps of the Empress Josephine, the girl thought. The hat had great ostrich-feathers, that seemed proper to royalty, and it was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... sat in his studio, the victim of his false pride, wrapped in his own ego while this vile plot was brewing. He might have done something if he had had his wits about him, instead of hiding his head like an ostrich and imagining himself unseen. Olga—he did not dare to think of Olga Tcherny or of De Folligny. He had given his word to Mrs. Hammond to leave the entire matter in her hands. Even while she had given him her word not to speak she had been planning this refined vengeance, probably knew ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... the ridge to my left, which ran down till it lost itself in the open bottom of the valley along which Sandho gently cantered? Some white-feathered and familiar birds, displaying their soft plumes, which looked ostrich-like in the distance. What could it be? I knew no bird, in spite of my wanderings, that ever looked like that. Still, a bird was a bird, and game, and the thought of game at such a time was glorious; but my spirits sank again, for I had no weapon, and then the grapes ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... sakes!' I says, 'don't say any more about it. If that last egg hadn't been boiled 'twould have hatched out an—an ostrich, or somethin' or other, by this time. And it's stone cold, of course. Have this—this jumpin'-jack of yours bring me a hot egg—a hen's egg—opened, in a cup big enough to see without spectacles, and tell him to bring some cream with the coffee. At any rate, if there ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to make my observation right, I place a statesman full before my sight, A bloated minister in all his gear, With shameless visage and perfidious leer: Two rows of teeth arm each devouring jaw, And ostrich-like his all-digesting maw. My fancy drags this monster to my view, To shew the world his chief reverse in you. Of loud unmeaning sounds, a rapid flood Rolls from his mouth in plenteous streams of mud; With these the court and senate-house ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... digesting your last production; not being an ostrich, it goes rather hard. For all that, it may be worth thinking of. Perhaps I shall be converted by the time the subject is fully shown up. I suppose we've always looked upon these loose rocks and stones sprinkled about the country as a part of the original curse, and ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... This was a counterpart of {14} the earthly life, but was reserved for the worthy. All the dead belonged to Osiris and were brought before him for judgment. The protest of being innocent of the forty-two sins was made, and then the heart was weighed against truth, symbolised by the ostrich feather, the emblem of the goddess of truth. From this feather, the emblem of lightness, being placed against the heart in weighing, it seems that sins were considered to weigh down the heart, and its lightness required to be proved. Th[o]th, the god ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... interfere with it. That, thought Farwell, must be one of the earmarks of genius. Mere men like himself, when they choose to fracture what rules have been laid down for them, do it as blindly as possible, with an ostrich-like hiding of their heads in the sand; but genius sees exactly what it is about, and does it just the same.—So ran the cogitations ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... you have played the hermit?" inquires her ladyship indifferently, unfurling her fan of ostrich feathers and waving ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... afraid I can. The secret—which is no secret to me or to anyone else in the world, any more than the place where the ostrich has put his head is a secret when his body is sticking up out of the sand—the secret is that, after being for seventeen happy honourable years the wife of the best and tiniest of men—the kindest, most devoted, and most generous of husbands—you are going to take another ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... opportunities of ascertaining that the stomachs of the Tibetans are seldom in good working order. But how could they be when you consider the gallons of filthy tea which they drink daily, and the liquor to which they are so partial? This poisonous concoction is enough to destroy the gastric juices of an ostrich! The tongue, as I have mentioned already, is invariably thickly furred with a whitish coating, and Tibetans have often complained to me of tumours as well as of painful burnings in the stomach, the latter undoubtedly caused by ulcerations. It is to be regretted that, even in the high ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... widely asserted. The character of the Lights is as varied as it is possible to imagine. Faint, cloudy, indefinite luminous appearances—brilliant stars which move or hover among the sitters—globes or balls of light, like illuminated ostrich eggs, or spheres of mother-of-pearl lit up from within—pillars of light—are some of the many forms which this manifestation takes. But anything approaching to scientific evidence of the reality of the phenomenon ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... from one of the narrow, reed-hedged passages, and after him came no executioner, but a young white man, who, as I knew from the look of him, was English. He saluted the king by taking off his hat, which I remember was stuck round with black ostrich feathers, then ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... might have been found to avert the calamity that was coming towards them with swift feet. But among the uneducated—the partially educated—nay, even the weakly educated—the feeling exists which prompted the futile experiment of the well-known ostrich. They imagine that, by closing their own eyes to apprehended evil, they avert it. The expression of fear is supposed to accelerate the coming of its cause. Yet, on the other hand, they shrink from acknowledging the long continuance of any blessing, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the appointment of the Cabalists of Sanlouand. As for the rings which his father would have him to wear, to renew the ancient mark of nobility, he had on the forefinger of his left hand a carbuncle as big as an ostrich's egg, enchased very daintily in gold of the fineness of a Turkey seraph. Upon the middle finger of the same hand he had a ring made of four metals together, of the strangest fashion that ever was seen; so that the steel did not crash against ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... effective entrance through the wide gates that swung apart to let in her outriders in their green livery, and the royal coaches, with powdered coachmen and footmen in blazing red and gold. A charming young woman she looked, too, in her blowing white cloud of chiffon and lace, and ostrich-plumes. While she circled round the drive with her suite, I heard the Dutch National Hymn for the first time, and also a soft and plaintive air which is the Queen's own—a kind of "entrance music" which follows her about through life, like the music ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... plain stretches away in a succession of rice paddys and fields of sugar cane interspersed with patches of graceful bamboo, their summits drooping like enormous clusters of ostrich plumes; the air is warm and fragrant and the change from the surrounding hills is delightful. However, we were disappointed in the shooting for, although it appeared to be an ideal place for ducks and other water birds, we killed only five teal, and the great ponds were almost devoid ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... that the mud might be only damp dirt, and the children could play without tormenting other people! But it was not to be; slowly, and by the aid of songs, stories, an improvised menagerie, in which I personated every animal, besides playing ostrich and armadillo, and a great many disagreements, the afternoon wore to its close, and my heart slowly lightened. Only an hour or two more, and the children would be in bed for the night, and then I would enjoy, in unutterable measure, the peaceful hours which would be mine. Even now they were inclined ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... silver and made into a cup, perhaps a century or more ago, is by no means to be despised. Some are beautifully polished and ornamented with incised work. Contemporary with the earlier specimens are pots made of ostrich eggs, mounted in silver, regarded of great value in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Some of the university colleges possess fine examples, and there are many in the hands of London silversmiths. Figs. 23 and 24 represent ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... resembling a group of pines. These again formed themselves into festoons of white feathery smoke, in the most fanciful manner imaginable, intermixed with the finest particles of falling ashes; which at one time assumed the appearance of innumerable plumes of black and white ostrich feathers surmounting each other; at another, that of the light wavy ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... and dark mahogany tables shone like mirrors; andirons, with their accompanying shovel and tongs, glistened from their covert of asparagus tops; mock oranges and conch shells decorated the mantelpiece; strings of various-colored birds' eggs were suspended above it; a great ostrich egg was hung from the centre of the room, and a corner cupboard, knowingly left open, displayed immense treasures of old silver ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... not espoused the cause of any of his competitors, and latterly had referred in acquiescent terms to his election as a foregone conclusion. He had not happened to run across Elton during these intervening weeks, and preferred not to encounter him. He cherished an ostrich-like hope that Elton was in no haste regarding the bill, and that consequently it might not pass the legislature until after his election as Senator. If he were to come in contact with Elton, the meeting might jog the busy magnate's memory. It was a barren hope. Immediately after the ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... thankful to repair it, but he could only put the difference between himself and the early evolutionists clearly before his readers at the cost of seeing his own system come tumbling down like a pack of cards; this was more than he could stand, so he buried his face, ostrich-like, in the sand. I know no more pitiable figure in either literature ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... should take them; for whatever number he should get, he would gain souls, because the negroes might be converted to the faith, which could not be managed with the Moors." Goncalvez obtained ten black slaves, some gold-dust, a target of buffalo-hide, and some ostrich eggs in exchange for two of the Moors, and, returning with his cargo, excited general wonderment on account of the color of the slaves. These, then, we may presume, were the first black slaves that had made their appearance in the peninsula ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... am I?" It was going to wring tears from me, I felt, the way she hid her head, ostrich-like, ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... to Medina's house, He taught me first the A-B-C of war. E'er I was truncheon high, I had the stile on beardless Captain, writing then but boy, and shall I now turn slave to him that fed me with Cannon- bullets and taught me, ostrich-like to digest iron and steel! No! Yet I yielded with willow-bendings ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... but foresaw many other important consequences of an extensive trade in a country, which, over and above the gum senega, contains many valuable articles, such as gold dust, elephants' teeth, hides, cotton, bees' wax, slaves, ostrich feathers, indigo, ambergris, and civet. Elevated with a prospect of an acquisition so valuable to his country, this honest quaker was equally minute and indefatigable in his inquiries touching the commerce of the coast, as well as the strength and situation ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... her litter upon their shoulders, and another waved a fan of black ostrich plumes over her. The litter was of glittering ebony, hung with purple, tasseled with gold. At her right, was Unas; at her left, Nari. Behind her were dusky ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... had not understood. She thought Beatrice had gone mad, and knowing that with madness, reasoning is in vain, she shut herself up in her room, pulled down the blinds, and believed by this ostrich-like proceeding that she could keep off the inevitable moment when they would have to be pulled up again and the cold, ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... that she belonged to the Governor's set there; and she spoke in terms of easy familiarity of the first families of her native city, deceiving no one save herself, poor lady. How fondly do we believe, with the ostrich, that our body is hidden when our head is tucked under our wing! Not a visitor in Philadelphia but knew Terence Flaven, Mrs. Grafton Carvel's father, who not many years since sold tea and spices and soap and glazed teapots over his own counter, and still advertised ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... with goldenrods, sunflowers, daisies, and liatris of different species, while around the shady margin of the meadow many ferns in beds and vaselike groups spread their beautiful fronds, especially the osmundas (O. claytoniana, regalis, and cinnamomea) and the sensitive and ostrich ferns. ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... has button gaiter boots of chocolate cachmere; trowsers and undersleeves of white embroidered cambric; frock of plaided cachmere; paletot of purple velvet; hat of a round shape, of white satin, the low crown adorned with a long white ostrich feather. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... has abolished these wings in spite of the opposition of use-inheritance, it must clearly be fully competent to reduce wings without its aid. In considering the rudimentary wings of the apteryx, or of the moa, emu, ostrich, &c., we must not forget the frequent or occasional occurrence of hard seasons, and times of drought and famine, when Nature eliminates redundant, wasteful, and ill-adapted organisms in so severe and wholesale a fashion. ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... sometimes spoken of as the order Struthiones from the ostrich (Struthio), which is its typical form. Sometimes these keelless birds are called Ratitae. Besides the ostrich, the rhea, cassowary, and emeu are included within the group; also the small and nocturnal Apteryx of New Zealand and those giants of featherdom, the huge ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... Woman leaned forward and surveyed the approaching men with some interest. They were four in number. Three were naked, their bodies oiled until they glistened with a high polish. One of them carried a battered old canvas steamer chair; one a fan of ostrich plumes; and one a long gourd heavily decorated with cowrie shells. The fourth was an impressive individual in middle life, hawkfaced, tall and spare, carrying himself with great dignity. He wore a number of anklets and armlets of polished wire, a broad beaded collar, ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... made up of bundles of strong fibres The brain and nerves, too, we shall find are made up of fibres, and these queer-looking things that are called ganglionic corpuscles. If we take a slice of the bone and examine it, we shall find that it is very like this diagram of a section of the bone of on ostrich, though differing, of course, in some details; and if we take any part whatsoever of the tissue, and examine it, we shall find it all has a minute structure, visible only under the microscope. All these parts constitute microscopic anatomy or "Histology." These parts ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... would reach it with the produce of Africa in twenty-four hours, returning with British and Indian produce in the same time. All the exports of Hanall, and other large interior towns on the opposite coast, consisting of coffee, gums, myrrh, hides, elephants' teeth, gold dust, ostrich feathers, &c, would be conveyed to Aden, to be exchanged for piece goods, chintzes, cutlery, and rice; all of which would find a ready market. The manufactures of India and of Great Britain would thus be very extensively introduced, there being good reason to believe that ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... is running at full speed—a very dried poppy-head of the garden of tales. On the other hand, the very short and very early Le Crocheteur Borgne, which, curiously enough, Voltaire never printed, and the not much longer Cosi-Sancta, which he printed in his queer ostrich-like manner, are, though a little naughty, quite nice; and have a freshness and demure grace about their naughtiness which contrasts remarkably with the ugly and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... incident, interest, action: to the devil with your philosophy. When we are well again, and have an easy mind, we shall peruse your important work; but what we want now is a drug. So I, when I am ready to go beside myself, stick my head into a story-book, as the ostrich with her bush; let fate and fortune meantime belabour my ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... holidays. Their dress is very becoming, and they wear sometimes jewellery to a large amount on their persons; a very common ornament among them is a collar of gold around their necks. Their usual head-dress is either a white straw hat, or a black round beaver hat, with black ostrich feathers. I prefer the straw hat; it is more tasteful than the round hat which always seems to me too masculine for a woman. At the inn at Le Maschere we were waited on by three smart females. The whole road from Le Maschere to Florence is very beautiful and ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... separated from one another. There is a great similarity in South America and Australia between still living and extinct species of animals. In New Holland, fossil remains of the kangaroo have been found, and in New Zealand the semi-foxxilized bones of an enormous bird, resembling the ostrich, the dinornis of Owen,* which is nearly allied to the present spteryx, and but little so to the recently extinct dronte (dodo) of ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... habit of dark blue summer-cloth, fastened with small gold buttons, fine, tiny white linen cuffs and collar, dark blue gloves, dark blue velvet hat with a short, white ostrich plume secured by a small gold butterfly, and she carried in her hand a slender ivory-handled riding-whip, set with a sapphire. Her dress was neat, elegant, and appropriate; and her face was for the moment radiant and beautiful from ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... saluting sun, and flames superb, As once he flamed it on his ocean round. The dingy dreariness of the picture-place, Turned very nearly bright, Takes on a luminous transiency of grace, And shows no more a scandal to the ground. The very blind man pottering on the kerb, Among the posies and the ostrich feathers And the rude voices touched with all the weathers Of the long, varying year, Shares in the universal alms of light. The windows, with their fleeting, flickering fires, The height and spread of frontage shining sheer, The quiring signs, the rejoicing roofs and spires - 'Tis El Dorado—El ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... she said hastily. 'I felt just a little faintish for a moment—but it's nothing. I am not a bit of a fainting girl, Mr. Ericson, I can assure you—never fainted in all my life. I have the nerves of a bull-dog and the digestion of an ostrich.' ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... lowest practice of the worst class rooms. To define a tendency so sharply that it cannot flow without breaking the definition, is a lecturer's trick for which audiences should stone him. Solemn generalizations which squat upon a book like an ostrich on a goose egg and hatch out vast moral philosophies are to be dreaded like the devil, as are, equally, the critics with pet theories, who, having defined them, make everything from a squib to an epic fit ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... ended and met and mingled, whither the camel of the desert brought the weapons and merchandise of Europe as well as salt, that indispensable commodity, and where the pirogues of the Niger landed the precious ivory, the surface gold, the ostrich feathers, the gum, the crops, all the wealth of the fruitful valley. He spoke of Timbuctoo the store-place, the metropolis and market of Central Africa, with its piles of ivory, its piles of virgin gold, its sacks of rice, millet, and ground-nuts, its cakes of indigo, ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... wondered what she was doing in that fantastic rabble. Madame, as the mother, was also dressed with splendour, but exaggerated to achieve the ridiculous. Her headdress was a monstrous structure adorned with flowers, and superimposed by little ostrich plumes. Columbine sat facing them, her back to the horses, falsely demure, in milkmaid bonnet of white muslin, and a striped ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... and endeavored to establish with him a modus vivendi. The mallard and the graylag goose are the ancestors of our domestic ducks and geese. The jungle fowls have given us the domestic chickens. The wild turkey, the pheasants, the guinea fowl, the ostrich, the emu and the peacock ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... lightly through a string of stories in which both missionaries and converts played parts which were either grotesque or worse. Madame de Netteville thought the stories amusing, and as one ceased she provoked another, her black eyes full of a dry laughter, her white hand lazily plying her great ostrich fan. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... which was formerly possessed by the Carthaginians, besides corn, sent to Rome, honey, drugs, marble, the eggs and feathers of the ostrich, ostriches, elephants, and lions; the last for the amphitheatre. From Mauritania, there were exported to the capital, timber of a fine grain and excellent quality, the exact nature of which is not known; this was sold at an enormous rate, and used principally for making ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... and covering his head a black Milanese bonnet, and his snow-white beard fell below his girdle. He carried no arms whatever, nothing but a rosary of beads bigger than fair-sized filberts, each tenth bead being like a moderate ostrich egg; his bearing, his gait, his dignity and imposing presence held me spellbound and wondering. He approached me, and the first thing he did was to embrace me closely, and then he said to me, 'For a long time now, O valiant knight Don Quixote of ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... with some kind inquiry, on which she went on to speak of the events and personages of the Revolution as matters of the present day. She repeated rapidly the names of the English officers whom she had known, "described her lofty head-dress of ostrich feathers, which caught fire at the theatre, and repeated the verses of her admirer who was so fortunate as to extinguish it." She dwelt upon the majestic bearing of Washington, the elegance of the French, the dogmatism of the British officers; the by-words, the names ...
— A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin - Verplanck • William Cullen Bryant
... not destined to fall into the hands of justice. As we rolled into Eyford Station we saw a gigantic column of smoke which streamed up from behind a small clump of trees in the neighbourhood and hung like an immense ostrich ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... stairs and placed in an easy-chair there. Lady Weybourne, who was on the point of leaving with her husband, hastened back. She stood there while the usual restoratives were being administered, fanning the unconscious woman with a white ostrich fan which hung from her waist. Presently Violet opened her eyes. She recognised Lady Weybourne ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had cleaned and pressed with so much care. Often he swore that his folly should end—that she should be affianced to him, or go shabby; but, lo! in a day or two she would make her appearance again, to coax for the loan of a smart blouse, or "that hat with the giant rose and the ostrich plume"—and Touquet would be as weak ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... glowed up in her the moment her eyes opened. Whether the lawn below were a field of bright dew, or dry and darkish in a shiver of east wind, her eyes never grew dim all day; and her blood felt as light as ostrich feathers. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... dress the children up as street singers are dressed. The boy had on a turban made of something red and white to look like a Turk. There had been no costume for Lida; she simply had a red knitted cap, or rather a night cap that had belonged to Marmeladov, decorated with a broken piece of white ostrich feather, which had been Katerina Ivanovna's grandmother's and had been preserved as a family possession. Polenka was in her everyday dress; she looked in timid perplexity at her mother, and kept at her ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... flowers woven in all the natural colors. This overskirt was deeply flounced with costly white lace, caught up with bunches of feathers of bright colors. About her shoulders was thrown a fifteen-hundred dollar shawl. She had a head-dress of white ostrich feathers, white lace, gold pendants, and purple velvet. Add to all this a fan, a bouquet of rare flowers, a lace handkerchief, and jewelry almost beyond estimate, and you see Mrs. Judge —- as she appears when ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... HOPPING BAER. He is a lank fellow with a vulture's neck and goitre. His feet and head are bare. His breeches, badly ravelled at the bottom, scarcely reach below the knee. The top of his head is bald. Such hair as he has, brown, dusty, and clotted, hangs down over his shoulders. His gait is ostrich-like. By a cord he draws behind him a child's toy waggon full of sand. His face is beardless. His whole appearance shows him to be a god-forsaken peasant lad ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... doubtless aided by the efforts of some pacifists, who believe that, ostrich-like, we should hide our heads in the sand, to avoid acknowledging the existence of something we do not like. "Why war?" asks a recent pamphlet. Why, indeed? But we may ask in turn "Why fire?" "Why flood?" I cannot answer ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... loose in the theatre, by accident, the sparrows preserved to show the rapidly fatal action of choke-damp upon life; turns the bladders, which have been provided to tie over bottles, into footballs; and makes daily contributions to the plate of pebbles taken from the stomach of the ostrich, and preserved in the museum to show the mode in which these birds assist digestion, until he quadruples the quantity, and has the quiet satisfaction of seeing exhibited at lecture, as the identical objects, the heap of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... satin, with side panels embroidered in gold and silver; General Sheridan and Mrs. Endicott, who wore a court train of black velvet over a pink satin petticoat, with point lace flounces; Secretary Bayard and Mrs. Whitney, who wore white cut velvet, trimmed with clusters of ostrich tips. Postmaster-General Vilas and Mrs. Sheridan, who wore sky-blue silk, with front brocaded in roses; Mr. Speaker Carlisle and Mrs. Edmunds, who wore black velvet; Mr. McCullough and Miss Weddell, who wore white brocaded satin; Secretary Lamar and ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... very bottom—to find out why, for example, in Uganda, whoever appears before the king must appear stark naked, while in England, whoever appears before the queen must wear a tailor's sword or a long silk train and a headdress of ostrich-feathers; why, in Morocco, when you enter a mosque, you must take off your shoes and catch a violent cold, in order to show your respect for Allah; while in Europe, on entering a similar religious building, ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... desert ostrich, had soon outstripped all but Peter, when several more dark figures sprang out of doorways and corners and joined, or seem to join, the pursuit. Suddenly, however, after running a hundred yards, they drew up opposite the mouth of a side street; the assassin stopped also. ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... with stores to barter, which he always did with great advantage, going away afterwards pretty well laden with palm-oil and sundries, which the blacks always had waiting for his annual visit, these sundries including, he said, with a meaning laugh, ostrich feathers, choice dye woods, ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... growing and important stress the broker became suddenly aware of a high-rolled fringe of golden hair under a nodding canopy of velvet and ostrich tips, an imitation sealskin sacque and a string of beads as large as hickory nuts, ending near the floor with a silver heart. There was a self-possessed young lady connected with these accessories; and Pitcher ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... the invertebrate bees and silk-moths must not be forgotten. It is not very easy to draw a line between domesticated animals and animals that are often bred in partial or complete captivity. Such antelopes as elands, fallow-deer, roe-deer, and the ostriches of ostrich farms are on ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... incisor tooth to a rodent, and a claw bone to a carnivore. The tooth of a Hesperornis would have given him no possible hint of the rest of the skeleton, nor its swimming feet the slightest clue to the ostrich-like sternum or skull. And yet the earnest belief in his own methods led Cuvier to some of his ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... it might have served the purpose of an emetic had not the digestion of the boys been ostrich-like, but, on hearing how it came into existence, Charlie put it a third time to his lips, took a good gulp, and then, nodding his head as he wiped his mouth with his cuff, declared ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... rich. You with a sure income beyond your needs, in your own right, with youth and health and beauty, with all your life before you, wishing to revert to what you used to say was a living burial? That's equivalent to holding that the ostrich philosophy is the true one—what you cannot see does not exist. That ignorance is better than knowledge—that—that—Hang it, my dear, are you going to turn reactionary? But that's a ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... pier-glass at the other end of the room. It was a quite unfamiliar presentment she saw. This Mary was dressed in soft dove-grey. She had a little white muslin folded fichu about her shoulders. She had a wide black hat, with one long white ostrich feather. Her good hand was gloved in delicate grey kid. There was something quaint about her aspect; for that artist, Simmons, had discovered that Mary, for all her fifteen years, looked her best with her soft fine brown hair piled ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... the Boer war Germany was showered with post-cards and caricatures of the English. British soldiers with donkey heads marched past Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales; the venerable Queen Victoria is pictured plucking the tail feathers from an ostrich which she holds across her knees; the three generals, Methuen, Buller, and Gatacre, take off their faces to discover the heads of an ass, a sheep, and a cow; Chamberlain is depicted as the instigator of the war, with his pockets and hands full of African shares; ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... his speed; Strong in pursuit the rapid glede, Which makes at once his game: Strong the tall ostrich on the ground; Strong through the turbulent profound Shoots ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... the elephant and the camel, and in the ostrich cart. Then Charlie tumbled down in the monkey-house. Oh, how funny the monkeys are! and he" (pointing to Lord de Burgh) "took us to dinner. Such a beautiful dinner in a lovely room! He says he will take us to ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... another, seen a partridge run; and consequently know that there is no man whatever able to keep up with it; and it is easy to imagine, that if this bird had a longer step, its speed would be considerably augmented. The ostrich moves like the partridge, with this advantage; and I am satisfied that those I am speaking of would have distanced the fleetest racehorses that were ever bred in England. It is true they would not hold out so long as a horse; but they would undoubtedly go over ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... god of good, in contradistinction to Set, the god of evil. He is the god of the Nile and the guardian and preserver of the human body after death. His symbol is a mummy wearing a royal crown and ostrich plumes. The god of the sun is the soul of Osiris. The white linen gowns of the priests of Osiris have a figured border of mummies in black, wearing crowns and ostrich plumes. Nefermat, chief priest, in addition wears the ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt |
