"Oyster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... week old. The rations since then had evidently been stolen from the helpless man by those around him. The place where he lay was indescribably filthy, and his body was swarming with vermin. Some good Samaritan had filled his little black oyster can with water, and placed it within his reach. For a week, at least, he had not been able to rise from the ground; he could barely reach for the water near him. He gave us such a glare of recognition as I remembered to have seen ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... blue-fish with the black-fish swam; Who knows the joy each felt? The perch was escort to the clam, The oyster to the smelt. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... nomination in this state's just about as good as the election. That's a cinch. He's a standpatter of the gilt-edged variety. The only issue on which he hasn't shot his mouth off is on votes for women. Nobody quite knows how he stands on that issue, because he keeps dumb as an oyster on that point. But—I'm telling you all this so you can see that in a way it's unlucky you look so ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... its skipper, a bachelor, who kept house all alone. I found him a very sociable, comfortable old fellow, who had an eye to having things cozy around him. It was in the evening; and he invited me down into his sanctum to supper; and there we sat together like a couple in a box at an oyster-cellar. ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... in pledging him at table, an amphora of wine at a draught [343]. He presented Asellius Sabinus with two hundred thousand sesterces, for writing a dialogue, in the way of dispute, betwixt the truffle and the fig-pecker, the oyster and the thrush. He likewise instituted a new office to administer to his voluptuousness, to which he appointed Titus Caesonius ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... day in day out in Turk-fashion on a table level with the barred window, made about twelve or fourteen francs a week. He worked still, though he was fifty-eight years old, but fifty-eight is the porter's golden age; he is used to his lodge, he and his room fit each other like the shell and the oyster, and "he is known ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Page,—for, formerly, a boy Was a mere dunce who did not understand The doctrines of Sir Pandarus, of Troy,— Slipp'd the Dame's note into the Friar's hand, As he was walking in the cloister; And, then, slipp'd off,—as silent as an oyster. ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... I think, it will be granted easily, that if a child were kept in a place where he never saw any other but black and white till he were a man, he would have no more ideas of scarlet or green, than he that from his childhood never tasted an oyster, or a pine-apple, has of ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... very common throughout the Province on apple and pear trees. Observe the unhealthy appearance of the leaves of the infested trees, the inferior quality of the fruit, and the gray scales shaped like tiny oyster-shells. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... the sheep. The soil was interspersed with rocks and swamps, but at the head of the bay appeared richer. A few natives were seen, who ran away when observed, and though one or two spears were thrown no damage was done to any one. Large heaps of oyster, mussel, and cockle shells were found, amongst them, says Cook, "being some of the largest oyster shells I ever saw." An account, said to have been obtained from the blacks, published in a work on Australian discovery (anonymous, Sydney), agrees as far ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... I have only stayed here with the hope that I may find out from her ladyship who and what my parents were, and she will not tell me. I shall live by my wits, never fear; 'the world's my oyster,' as Shakespeare says, and I think I've wit enough to ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... undeceived when they started. The two sturdy oxen trotted along at a good pace in obedience to the driver's goad, and the shigram rattled across Bombay Green, past the church and the whitewashed houses of the English merchants, their oyster-shell windows already lit up; and in some forty-five minutes entered a long avenue leading to Mr. Bourchier's country house. Twice during the course of the journey Desmond was interested to see the shigramwallah {wallah is ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... and I occupied adjacent seats for three years, but we did not walk arm in arm, nor call each other nicknames, nor share our lunch, nor correspond in vacation time. Florence was quiet as a mouse, and I was reserved as an oyster; and perhaps we two had no more in common fundamentally than those two creatures in their natural state. Still, as we were both very studious, and never strayed far from our desks at recess, we practised ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... tea for ladies, serve first an oyster cocktail in glasses, fruit punch or brandied peaches. Then serve sweetbread salad, with bread and butter sandwiches. Frozen eggnog and fig cake are a change from the regulation ice cream. ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... found herself crying one night, and called it homesickness, yet the small items of news contained in the latest letter from the spectacled youth had irritated her, and she had realized that she no longer regarded church fairs, choir practice, and oyster suppers ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... part," replied H., "because the more you enlarge a person's general capacity of feeling, and his quantity of being, the more you enlarge his capacity of suffering. A man can suffer more than an oyster. Christianity, by enlarging the scope of man's heart, and dignifying his nature, has deepened ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... oyster directly I get anywhere near it," replied the captain; "sticks to it that it is a yachting trip and that Tredgold is studying the formations of islands. Says he has got a list of them he is going ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... the skull, "Say, pard, what is it, Yank or Reb?" The house appreciated the point and was instantly in an uproar, and General Grant said we had better leave, so we went quietly out, no one discovering Grant's or Sherman's presence. Sherman immediately suggested that we should find an oyster-house and get something to eat, and General Rawlins was put forward as guide and spokesman. He led us to a very inviting place. We went in and found there was but one large table in the place. There was one man sitting at it, and Rawlins, in his modest way, without informing the ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... those present. And between the smoke and the delay and your waitress' manners, you are already thoroughly mortified by the time you reach the table. But you hope that at least the dinner will be good. For the first time you are assailed with doubt on that score. And again you wait, but the oyster course is all right. And then comes the soup. You don't have to taste it to see that it is wrong. It looks not at all as "clear" soup should! Its color, instead of being glass-clear amber, is greasy-looking brown. You taste it, fearing the worst, and the worst is realized. ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... people's porter and shrimps; crawled contemptibly near to the rich people's rare wines and luxurious dishes; exposed their poverty in imitation by chemical champagne from second-rate wine merchants, by flabby salads and fetid oyster-patties from second-rate pastry-cooks; were, in no one of their festive arrangements, true to their incomes, to their order, or to themselves; and, in very truth, for all these reasons and many ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question.... Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" Let us go and ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... the store with plenty of cheese, a slice of boiled ham and some cute little oyster crackers. Silver Ears and the twins had set the table. At each place they had laid a stick of red ...
— The Graymouse Family • Nellie M. Leonard
... natural oyster beds, rocks and shoals, in the waters of this State, shall not be leased, rented or sold, but shall be held in trust for the benefit of the people of this State, subject to such regulations and restrictions ...
— Civil Government of Virginia • William F. Fox
... some plump alderman, and suck the blood Enriched by generous wine and costly meat; On well-filled skins, sleek as thy native mud, Fix thy light pump and press thy freckled feet. Go to the men for whom, in ocean's halls, The oyster breeds, and ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... still flatters herself that she has lungs; that she can still breathe a little? Or is it that the poor creature, driven into mere blind industrialisms; and as it were, gone pearl-diving this long while many fathoms deep, and tearing up the oyster-beds so as never creature did before, hardly knows,—so busy in the belly of the oyster chaos, where is no thought of "breathing,"—whether she has lungs or not? Nations of a robust habit, and fine deep chest, can sometimes take in ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... of this bay, known as Oyster Harbour, a naturalist, named M. Faure, discovered a large river, named after the French, the mouth of which was as wide as the Seine at Paris. He undertook to ascend it, and thus penetrated as far as possible into the interior of the country. About two leagues from the entrance of the river his ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... kept in motion to prevent the water from freezing, and to attract the fish to the spot. Immediately they take a fish, they scoop out the eyes and swallow them, thinking them as great a delicacy as the European does the oyster. ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... cakes. Very often the older men would linger after the ladies had departed, and even reassemble with those, and discuss the wines ad libitum, if not ad nauseam, while the young men, after having escorted the ladies to their respective homes, would meet again at some oyster-house or go out on a lark, in imitation of the young English bloods in the favorite play of Tom and Jerry. Singing, or rather shouting, they would break windows, wrench off knockers, call up doctors, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... seem to have died out and left their manners with their wardrobes to narrow-breasted children, whom neither clothes nor courtesies will fit. So in every department we find the snail freezing in an oyster-shell. The judges do not know the meaning of justice. The preacher thinks religion is a spasm of desire and fear. A young man soon loses all respect for titles, wigs, and gowns, and looks for a muscular master-mind. Somebody wrote the laws, and set the example ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... word shell implied that the Colonel knew what was what. To the New England inland native, beyond the reach of the east winds, the oyster unconditioned, the oyster absolute, without a qualifying adjective, is the pickled oyster. Mrs. Trecothick, who knew very well that an oyster long out of his shell (as is apt to be the case with the rural bivalve) gets homesick and loses his sprightliness, ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and then sat down to dinner, and to long stories of the imposture and villany of the Italians. One of them chiefly bewailed himself that the day before, having unwisely eaten a dozen oysters without agreeing first with the oyster-man upon the price, he had been obliged to pay this scamp's extortionate demand to the full, since he was unable to restore him his property. We thought that something like this might have happened to an imprudent man in any country, but we did not the less join him in abusing ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... himself: "People do not read all those books, and they may read mine." He compares himself to a drop of water who complains of being lost in the ocean and ignored: a genius had pity on it; he caused it to be swallowed by an oyster; it became the most beautiful pearl in the Orient, and was the chief ornament in the throne of the Great Mogul. Those who are only compilers, imitators, commentators, splitters of phrases, usurious critics, in short, ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... "H'm!" said a fat oyster, opening her shell to peep at them, "I should think they had never seen a pearl before. My necklace also is worth looking at, if they only knew enough ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... an ancient, but poor town of Kent, in the Isle of Sheppey, situated at the mouth of the river Medway. The chief employment of the inhabitants is oyster-dredging. Walker's ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... The oyster takes no exercise; I don't believe she really tries; And since she has no legs I don't see why she should, do you? Besides, she has a lot to do— She lays a million eggs. At any rate she doesn't stir; Her food is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 29, 1920 • Various
... cultivation of the sense of beauty is treated as of little worth, compared with the culture of what are styled the practical faculties. Our wealth is spent in the erection of extravagant stores and shops,—in the decoration of oyster-saloons, hotels, and steamboats,—in the lavish and selfish adornment of drawing-rooms and chambers. In the whole breadth of the continent there is not a single building of such beauty as to be an object of national pride, and few which will have any value in future times, except as historic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... asked William to go and ride, or to visit the oyster saloons, or the bowling alley, or the theatre. To all invitations of this kind, William had but one answer. He always said he had no time, or money to spare for such things. After the day's work was done, he loved to get back to his chamber to read. ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... to the editor of L'Union Pharmaceutique the prospectus of an oyster dealer who, besides dealing in the ordinary bivalves, advertises specialties in medicinal oysters, such as "huitres ferrugineuses" and "huitres au goudron." The "huitres ferrugineuses" are recommended to anaemic persons, and the "huitres ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... eight to ten Patten's Greening trees that had been attacked by a disease called by some "oyster scale." The trees abnormally lost their foliage early in the season, and I had about decided they were dead when, after a dormant spray the following spring, they entirely revived and are now as healthy as any ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... very nice for the twins and the little boys in the neighborhood." Fairy smiled with relish as she saw the twins wince at this thrust. "But Babbie and I— Oh, never! It wouldn't do at all. Now, oyster stew ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... "pass" for the present, though he reserved the right to order it up at any time. Thereupon the astute DAWES moved to postpone it indefinitely, to the huge disgust of Mr. SCHENCK, who said he ought to be ashamed of himself. Here was the oyster pining for protection, the peanut absolutely shrivelling on its stalk under the neglect of Congress, and the American hook-and-eye weeping for being overrun by the imported article. He hoped the pig-iron, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... free moral agent. If the purple grackle does not like the sunflower seeds in my garden, lo! he is up and away across the Sound to Oyster Bay, Long Island, where his luck may be better. Failing there, he gives himself a transfer to Wilmington, or Richmond, via his own ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... present system of organized beings equally dispensed with the agency of a creative mind, and could be referred to molecules formed in the water by the power of attraction, till by modifications of cellular tissue in the gradual lapse of ages, one monad became an oyster and another a Man,—would you not say this cosmogony could scarce have misled the human understanding even in the earliest dawn of speculative inquiry? Yet such are the hypotheses to which the desire to philosophize away that ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for her too," said Eleanor; "if she had had more to occupy herself with this summer, she wouldn't have busied herself so disastrously with our affairs. I am afraid she made you very unhappy while you were there, and I, like a selfish oyster, sat tight here and kept you out ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... kind; and between them, they had soon—in imagination—captured the post. Then, said Falloden, it would be for Constance to clinch the matter. No man could do such a thing decently. Pryce would have to be told—"'The world's your oyster—but before you open it, you will kindly go and propose to my cousin!—which of course you ought to ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not at first great; and though his ambition was perhaps high, it was not of an impatient nature. The world was his oyster; but, circumstanced as he was, he knew that it was not for him to open it with his lancet all at once. He had bread to earn, which he must earn wearily; he had a character to make, which must come slowly; it satisfied his soul that, in addition to his immortal ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... to our custom; only they told us that she was faggot's tripe. (Tripe de fagot means the smallest sticks in a faggot.) Another, complimenting his convenient, said, Yours, my shell; she replied, I was yours before, sweet oyster. I reckon, said Carpalin, she hath gutted his oyster. Another long-shanked ugly rogue, mounted on a pair of high-heeled wooden slippers, meeting a strapping, fusty, squabbed dowdy, says he to her, How is't my top? She was short upon him, and arrogantly replied, Never the better for you, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... six-foot man is a fragile blossom likely to be nipped by any wintry blast. Come, come, Mrs. Halliday, your husband mustn't discover that I've been making you cry when he comes home. He may be home early this evening, perhaps; and if he is, we'll have an oyster supper, and a chat ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... the tale is: Bah! Nous avons change tout cela. No clear idea I hope to strike Of what your nicest girl is like, But she whose best young man I am Is not an oyster, nor ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... including the present lakes Vener, Hjelmar and Malar. During this period the waters of the northern Baltic were sufficiently salt for oysters to flourish. The subsequent upheaval restricted direct communication with the open sea to the Danish channels, and the Baltic waters became fresher: the oyster disappeared, but a number of cold salt-water fishes and crustaceans, and even seals, became acclimatized. It has been suggested that the presence of the remains of these animals indicates a communication to the north with the Arctic Ocean; but in view of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... small men, men of different spheres and occupations, men in prominently defined positions, men in doubtful calls of life, and men most disreputably employed, most do congregate. At one end of the saloon is a large oyster counter, behind which stand two coloured men, with sauces, savories, and other mixtures at hand, ready to serve customers who prefer the delicacy in its raw state. Men are partaking without noting numbers. Mr. O'Brodereque has boys ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... for she smiled as she wrote his name and bed number in a small notebook, with the added entry: "Oyster soup, cigarettes, ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... with medical certificate; Nebraska[l2] and New York,[12] the usual absolute prohibition under fourteen, or under sixteen without employment certificate; North Carolina, under twelve, with an exception of oyster industries; North Dakota,[12] fourteen, or from fourteen to sixteen without employment certificate. In Ohio,[12] Oklahoma, Oregon,[12] Pennsylvania,[12] and Rhode Island,[12] the laws are practically identical, ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... income seem to us curious. The bulk was, of course, derived from manors or estates, but we find also that the bishop was entitled to a share of the whales killed on the shores of his diocese and that the monks of the priory of St. Andrew owned oyster fisheries. Out of the estates assigned to them the monks had to make an annual contribution, in kind, called the Xenium, to the bishop's income, and this, due on St. Andrew's Day, was on several occasions a subject of dispute. In Henry VIII.'s ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... of the Main." The letters were reprinted in San Francisco and widely read. Now and then some one had the temerity to answer them, but most of his victims maintained a discreet silence. In one of these letters he told of the Mexican oyster, a rather tough, unsatisfactory article of diet, which could not stand criticism, and presently disappeared from the market. It was a mistake, however, for him to attack an Alta journalist by the name of Evans. Evans was a poet, and once composed ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... be twenty again,' said the old man, sighing. 'Twenty years hence you will wonder where the magic came from. Never mind—just now, anyway, the world's your oyster.' ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thirsty or not, which went on. Worse still, spirits were sometimes introduced. The frequenters of Slam's spent all their pocket-money at that place in one way or another; and the pity of it was, that most of them would much rather, certainly at starting, have laid it out in oyster-patties, strawberry messes, and ices, than in forming habits which they would very probably give their right arms to be rid of in after-life. The best hope for them, next to being found out, was that their course of boxing lessons would ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... security—for the London radiations have dwindled to inconsiderable proportions—it is possible to trace in nearly every one of these gardens some effort to make. Here it is a poor little plank summer-house, here it is a 'fountain' of bricks and oyster-shells, here a 'rockery,' here a 'workshop.' And in the houses everywhere there are pitiful little decorations, clumsy models, feeble drawings. These efforts are almost incredibly inept, like the drawings of blindfolded men, they are only ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... exist in various parts of Europe, which are found to consist of the bones, shells, and other refuse thrown out by these later Palaeolithic men, who had no reverence for the dead, casting out the bodies of their relations to decay with as little thought as they threw away oyster-shells or reindeer-bones. Traces of Palaeolithic men of this type have been found as far north as Derbyshire. Their descendants are no longer be met with in these islands. The Eskimos of the extreme north of America, however, have the same artistic faculty and the same disregard for the ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... always to take familiar instances, wherein the mind is not likely to be biassed by any elevated associations or favorite theories. Let us ask therefore, first, what kind of ideal form may be attributed to a limpet or an oyster, that is to say, whether all oysters do or do not come up to the entire notion or idea of an oyster. I apprehend that, although in respect of size, age, and kind of feeding, there may be some difference between them, yet of those which are of full size and healthy condition there will be found many ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... of these persons at a greater disadvantage than before they are provided with their cue for the day. They ask with a face of dreary vacuity, 'Have you anything new?'—and on receiving an answer in the negative, have nothing further to say. (They are like an oyster at the ebb of the tide, gaping for fresh tidings.) Talk of the Westminster Election, the Bridge Street Association, or Mr. Cobbett's Letter to John Cropper of Liverpool, and they are alive again. Beyond the last twenty-four hours, or the narrow round in which they move, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... to marry—ah! I do not envy Oswald Carey. He simply gives his name up to have a Mrs. put before it. By the way, our hostess is an interesting girl. I like the old man, too. It is refreshing to see a man who has opened his oyster after living among such a broken-down lot as we all are. I wish that he could give me a point or two; they say that he can make a million by turning over his hand. Think of it. There are a lot of fellows who can lose one by the same ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... three days off the squalid shores of Wapping and Rotherhithe, whereby opportunity was afforded of "tasting a delicious mixture of the air of both these sweet places," and of enjoying such a concord of the voices of seamen, watermen, fishwomen, oyster women and their like as Hogarth indicated "in that print of his which is enough to make a man deaf to look at." This delay, moreover, threatened to bring Fielding within need of a surgeon when none should be procurable. His friend Mr William ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... (not too fine). Put in a pan a layer of crumbs, some bits of butter, a little pepper and salt; then a layer of oysters, and repeat until the dish is full. Have cracker crumbs on top; turn a cup of oyster liquor over it; add good sweet milk sufficient to thoroughly saturate it, and bake ...
— Recipes Tried and True • the Ladies' Aid Society
... Oyster Cocktail Snowed Potatoes Roast Turkey Turkey Filling Cranberry Sauce Celery Peas Oranges Apples Candy Cake Nuts Bread Butter Coffee Mince Pie ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... own liquor until they curl, cut in small pieces. Chop brains and mix with oysters; two tablespoonfuls melted butter; a few drops onion juice; four tablespoonfuls bread crumbs; one-half cup cream. If too dry add a little of the oyster juice. ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various
... laying out the grounds. East of the house was an avenue of splendid poplars leading to the county road, and the view of the buildings through these trees was most attractive and beautiful. One side of the lawn was laid out in rectangular walks paved with brick and covered over with burnt oyster shells, and being perfectly level was used as a bowling green. In addition to the buildings already mentioned there were close to the mansion a wash house and a kitchen, both the same size as the school house, a bake house, a dairy, a store house ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... tell people who come here that while I undoubtedly am a bear, I have not yet lost my womanly taste, and I don't want to be fed all the time on buns. If anybody asks you what you think I'd like, tell them that an occasional omelette soufflee, or an oyster pate, or a platter of petits ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... here, if you will," he said. "I have much to ask, and, I doubt not, you to tell. That worthy physician of yours is dumb as any oyster. Were it not for my boy bringing me scraps of news now and again, I should indeed feel out of touch ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime on his head, and on his ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... here, Hal, where a fellow can get an oyster fry," Benson explained, returning to his chum. "With that information came the discovery that I have an appetite. Come and ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... a hen-pecked husband, who is roused at last to be somewhat more manly, but could never be better than "a boiled rabbit without oyster sauce." (See PLIANT.) ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Gulf of Mexico does not ebb and flow above two feet, except at the springs, and the ends of the drooping branches of the mangrove—trees, that here cover the shore, are clustered, within the wash of the water, with a small well—flavoured oyster. The first thing the seamen did when they got ashore, was to fasten an oakum tail to the rump of one of the most lubberly of the cutter's crew; they then gave him ten yards' law, when they started in chase, shouting amongst the bushes, and ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... all a mistake. So now don't you go and make a mistake into a misunderstanding. It was I made every word of the song out o' the face*—that about the back that never was bent, and the ancestors of the oyster, and all. He did not waste a word of it; upon my conscience, I wrote it all—though I'll engage you didn't think I could write a good thing. (Lord John turns away.) I'm telling you the truth, and not a word of a lie, and yet ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... passed, drawn by four powerful tugs. Six hundred people inhabited this floating village and they stood on the decks of their migratory houses, going north with the spring, like the ducks, and hurrahed, and each tug screamed a salute. The oyster dredgers cheered and schooners changed their ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... waiting, he forgot to attend to my guests first, but always came to me. The parlor-maid, a new one, and not a great favorite with Joe, made matters worse by correcting him in an audible voice; and once, when somebody wanted oyster-sauce, she told Joe to hand it. The poor boy, wishing to obey quickly, forgot to give the bear-skin a wide berth, slipped on it, and in a moment had fallen full length, having in his fall deposited the contents of the sauce- tureen partly into a blue ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... oysters, on account of the interesting modern custom of planting them in bays and harbors near the mouths of sewers to fatten them. The cheerful motto of the oysterman is, "The muddier the water the fatter the oyster." And nowhere do the bivalves plump up more quickly than near the mouth of ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... was very cunning in setting traps. He used to bury himself in the mud, just under a nice morsel of a clam or an oyster; and when the silly fish came to make a dinner of this dainty morsel, he would catch him in ...
— The Diving Bell - Or, Pearls to be Sought for • Francis C. Woodworth
... by dem words, and I don't want no tanks. Jes lub me, and come sometimes to see me ef you can, it's so hard livin' in dis yere place. I don't tink I'll bar it long. I wish I was a bird to fly away, or a oyster safe in de mud, and free to ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... we have any speed, for the sun is sinking.... Poor Margaret, that is a strange tragedy that history of hers; and has many traits of the Heroic in it, though it is wild as the prophecy of a Sibyl. Such a predetermination to eat this big Universe as her oyster or her egg, and to be absolute empress of all height and glory in it that her heart could conceive, I have not before seen in any human soul. Her "mountain me" indeed:— but her courage too is high and clear, her chivalrous nobleness indeed is great; her veracity, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... to keep tab of things for Her, we'd have done a deal better. Those poor blamed sea-gulls, or whatever they are, would have been squatting around on elegant beds of moulted feathers, laid out on steam-heat radiators, feeding on oyster cocktails and things, and handing out the instructive dope of a highbrow politician working up a press reputation, and learning their kids the decent habits of folk who're yearning to keep out of penitentiary as long as the police'll let 'em. No. It's no use. Nature got busy. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... low clustered sheds rose out of the darkness against a deeper black beyond, and they came to the river. The bank was marshy, but a track of pounded oyster shells, visible against the mud, led to a wharf extending into the solid, voiceless flow of the water. Jasper Penny stood with Susan gazing into the blanketing gloom. A wan, disintegrated radiance shone from a riding light in ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... day, being in the horse-market, I purchased a horse and wagon; and, taking in my wife and some of the younger children, I went to pay a visit to the neighborhood in which I was born. Here I traded for half of a bay-craft, of about sixty tons burden, in which I engaged in the oyster-trade, and other small bay-traffic. Having met at Baltimore the owner of the other half, I bought him out also. The whole craft stood me in about seven hundred dollars. I then purchased three hundred bushels of ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... the materials of the typical ball-supper? There is a family likeness about those turned out by Gunter that the experience of one season is enough to make one recognize. And, on the whole, the Gunterian supper is as good, in its way, as; need be. Nothing hot, of course, except oyster soup (specially adapted for deserving chaperons), and, maybe, some delicately browned cutlets; but cold meats of every shade of substantiality, from boars' heads and chickens and raised pies to the most delicate of sandwiches, tempting ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... you are both right. But I may as well tell you that I can find nothing the matter with Mr Merdle. He has the constitution of a rhinoceros, the digestion of an ostrich, and the concentration of an oyster. As to nerves, Mr Merdle is of a cool temperament, and not a sensitive man: is about as invulnerable, I should say, as Achilles. How such a man should suppose himself unwell without reason, you may think strange. But I have found nothing the matter with him. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... united simply, I can safely assert, in my own humble person. Gintlemen, I have the honor of being able to write 'Philomath' after my name—which is O'Finigan, not Finigan, by any means—and where is the oyster in his shell could do that? Yes, and although they refused me a sizarship in Trinity College—for what will not fear and ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... flower, or a sprig, or even a root sometimes fell out of the back of the cart; and these two little children were sitting there in hope, with their hands full of soil, ready to plant anything which might by some golden chance fall that way, in their secret garden of oyster shells. ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... the guidance of his trusty attendant, Colonel Mannering, after threading a dark lane or two, reached the High Street, then clanging with the voices of oyster-women and the bells of pie-men, for it had, as his guide assured him, just 'chappit eight upon the Tron.' It was long since Mannering had been in the street of a crowded metropolis, which, with its noise and clamour, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... around the dusky, piquant, Arlesian sausages, and lobsters in their dazzling red cuirasses, prawns of large size and brilliant color, the echinus with its prickly outside and dainty morsel within, the clovis, esteemed by the epicures of the South as more than rivalling the exquisite flavor of the oyster,—all the delicacies, in fact, that are cast up by the wash of waters on the sandy beach, and styled by the grateful fishermen "fruits of ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... found consult the bridal pair as to their preferences. The choice may be made of one or more, as the money permits. The particular gift will still be a surprise and yet of permanent value. Lace and embroideries are always good, but let the waste of money on the "latest" in orange-knives, oyster-plates, go up higher, that is, to the class with money for conspicuous waste, if it must still exist, but let sensible people be sensible, and not require the young folks to live up to their hopes for future advancement. Wedding ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... the Stour, the banks of which are richly wooded; and we also pulled up to Ipswich, where the Orwell may be said to commence, for the river above the town is confined in a narrow canal-like channel. On our return, while at anchor in the harbour, an oyster-dredging vessel brought-up close to us, and papa, who was always on the look-out for information, invited the skipper ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... I know," the Gadfly answered, looking up with wide, innocent blue eyes. "And you s-s-swallowed everything whole; just as if it had been an oyster. It was very wrong; but oh, ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... Breitmann came Ash he at table end, Dere's right goot fisch at Blankenberghe, Und oysters in Ostend. Denn to Ostland ve will reiten gaen, To Ostland o'er de sand, Dou und I mit pridle drawn For dere ish de oyster land. ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... childishness of the question, yet he came up to London with all the confidence and certainty which the old childish belief could have inspired. He was coming to make his fortune. That went without saying. He was brim-full of belief in himself, to begin with. 'The world's mine oyster,' he thought, as the cheap parliamentary train crawled from station to station. The world is my oyster, for that matter, but the edible mollusc is hidden, and the shell is uninviting. Christopher found the mollusc ...
— Cruel Barbara Allen - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... Christmas eve. One of the hymns always sung at this Christmas eve festival begins, "It's Christmas eve on the river, it's Christmas eve on the bay." All good natives of the village firmly believe that this hymn was written here, and with direct reference to Oyster Bay; although if such were the case the word "river" would have to be taken in a hyperbolic sense, as the nearest approach to a river is the village pond. I used to share this belief myself, until my faith was shaken by a Denver ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... grounds are situated in the Persian Gulf and off the coast of Ceylon," answered Mildmay. "And I believe," he added, "that in both cases they are Government property, and strictly preserved. But I have no doubt there are plenty of oyster-beds which are beyond the reach of the ordinary pearl-diver; and it is one of those that we must seek. We shall not be poaching on anybody's preserves if we do this; and shall also stand a better chance of ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... calculated to induce self-pity in the breast of an oyster. But Joy, though she liked it mildly, did not feel moved to tears. Clarence was an interruption, even if a ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... not help smiling. 'How they got Heathcock to fall in love is what puzzles me,' said his lordship. 'I should as soon have thought of an oyster's falling in ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... ogled an owl and oyster. Did Oliver Oglethorp ogle an owl and oyster? If Oliver Oglethorp ogled an owl and oyster, where are the owl and ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... on that principle for hundreds of years. Fishermen join in building, rigging, and manning a boat; the proceeds of the fish they catch at sea is divided amongst them—so much to the boat, so much to the fishermen. The company of oyster-dredgers of Whitstable "has existed time out of mind,"[2] though it was only in 1793 that they were incorporated by Act of Parliament. The tin-miners of Cornwall have also acted on the same principle. They have mined, washed, and sold the tin, dividing the proceeds among ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... take a few of the deepest of these oyster-shells, we may get water more quickly," I answered. The thought that they would be of use ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... At Oyster Point, Maryland, lived Paddy Dabney, who recognized Kidd from an old portrait on meeting him one evening in 1836. He was going home late from the tavern when a light in a pine thicket caused him to turn from the road. In a clearing among the trees, pervaded ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... and took his degree brilliantly; registered as a student at St. Stephen's Hospital; won an Entrance Scholarship in Science, and secured the William Brown Exhibition in his second year. Thenceforward the world was an oyster, to be opened with scalpel and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... proprietor's business is to reconcile farmers by robbing them. O logic! O justice! O the marvellous wisdom of economists! The proprietor, if they are right, is like Perrin-Dandin who, when summoned by two travellers to settle a dispute about an oyster, opened it, gobbled it, and ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... a serious loss of income to the colony, and great doubts are entertained as to the probability, of the oyster-banks ever recovering ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... all, unless there's some children at the dinner." "What'll we do?" says Pat. "Invite the Mulligans," says I. And Pat was tickled to death. We've potatoes and squash and cabbage from me own garden, and we've oyster dressing and cramberries and stewed corn and apple fritters, and it's meself that has made eight mince pies, and four punkin ones—and I think we'll be after having a dinner on Christmas Day that would do credit ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... 'An oyster may be cross'd in love,'—and why? Because he mopeth idly in his shell, And heaves a lonely subterraqueous sigh, Much as a monk may do within his cell: And a-propos of monks, their piety With sloth hath found it difficult to dwell; Those vegetables of the Catholic creed ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... learned from them how and where they fished for these pearls, and they gave us many oysters in which they grew. We procured one oyster in which a hundred and thirty pearls were growing, but in others there were less number. The one with the hundred and thirty the queen took from me, but the others I kept to myself, that she might not see them. Your excellency must know that ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... more elevated, they found deeper water and a harbor, into which they entered in five or six fathoms. They were welcomed by three Indian canoes. They found oysters in such quantities in this bay, and of such excellent quality, that they named it Le Port aux Huistres, [54] or Oyster Harbor. After a few hours, they weighed anchor, and directing their course north, a quarter northeast, with a favoring wind, soon doubled Cape Cod. The next day, the 2d of October, they arrived off Nauset. ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... a fire by means of a small burning-glass, with which, in happier times, he had been wont to light his pipe. Very soon he had several roots, resembling small potatoes, baking in the hot ashes. With these, a handful of plums, a dozen of oyster-like fish, of which there were plenty on the shore, and a draught of clear cold water, he made a hearty repast, Cuffy coming in for a large share of it, as a matter of course. Then he turned all his pockets inside out, and examined them as carefully as ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... me a bit that, if the north pole were ever found and could be thawed out, we should find embedded in that great sea of ice evidences of a former civilization, just as in the Saharan waste evidences of the same thing have been found. I know of a place out West that is literally strewn with oyster-shells, and yet no man living has the slightest idea how they came there. It may have been the Massachusetts Bay of a pre-historic time, for all we know. It may have been an antediluvian Coney Island, for all the world knows. Who shall say that this little upset of mine found ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... I have scarcely held speech with anyone but the Algonquin chief since we took to the water. Cassion has but given orders, and Chevet is mum as an oyster. I endeavored to find you in Montreal, but you were safely locked behind gray walls. That something was wrong I felt convinced, yet what it might be no one would tell me. I tried questioning the pere, but he only shook his head, and left me unanswered. Tell me then, Mademoiselle, by ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... sitting in solitary state upon his glass tripod,—in the middle of a crowd of excited fellow-beings, hurried to and fro by their passions and sympathies,—like an awkward country-bumpkin caught in the midst of a gay crowd of polkers and waltzers at a ball,—or an oyster bedded on a rock, with silver fishes playing rapid games of hide and seek, love and hate, in the clear briny depths above and beneath! If the angels ever look out of their sphere of intense spiritual realities to indulge in a laugh, methinks such a lonely tripod-sitter, cased over ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... the business of the "Gobernadorcillo" to watch the divers, and take from them all the pearls large enough to become the perquisite of the Sultan. The men were allowed to go out to the water over the oyster beds only on certain days, and then the Sultan's representative went with them, and sat in his boat to keep watch that no shells were opened there. After the boats had returned to the land every oyster shell was opened under his watchful eye, ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... extremely popular in court circles during the corrupter periods of the Empire. Suetonius (Tib. 42) tells us that Tiberius gave one Asellius Sabinus L1400 for a dialogue in which the mushroom, the beccaficoe, the oyster, and the thrush advanced their respective claims to be considered the prince of delicacies. To this age also belong the collection of epigrams on Priapus called Priapea, and including many poems attributed to Virgil, Tibullus, and Ovid. They are mostly ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... see before you," she went on, "is an oyster stew. The true hostess, you see, studying her guest's special tastes. It is very nearly cooked and if you do not pronounce it the most delicious thing you ever ate in your life, I ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... wonderful supper that was! There was oyster soup; there were sea bass and barracuda; there was a gigantic roast goose stuffed with chestnuts; there were egg-plant and sweet potatoes—Miss Baker called them "yams." There was calf's head in oil, over which Mr. Sieppe went into ecstasies; there was lobster salad; there were rice ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... Seated at his parlour table he ordered his wife and children out of the room and addressed himself to business. While clambering wearily up a column of figures he felt upon his cheek the touch of something that seemed to cling clammily to the skin like the caress of a naked oyster. Thoughtfully setting down the result of his addition so far as he had proceeded with it, he turned about ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... the secretary was the daughter's husband all along, and he heard what the president said right there?" Nelly panted, stopping outside Miggleton's, in the light from the oyster-filled window. ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... had something facetious to say to the people with whom he traded. The oyster-men, the coal-men, and the women at the fruit-stalls in his neighborhood, all knew him as a pleasant old gentleman, always ready for a joke. One day, when he was buying some peaches, he said to the woman, "A serious accident happened at our house last night. I killed ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... saying to her daughter, "Ah, my dear! Let this be a lesson to you never to lose your temper!" "Hold your tongue, Ma!" said the young Crab, a little snappishly. "You're enough to try the patience of an oyster!" ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. With a Proem by Austin Dobson • Lewis Carroll
... eastern end, and may be said to have two extremities. One of these, which is much the shortest of the two legs thus formed, goes by the name of Oyster Pond Point; while the other, that stretches much farther in the direction of Blok Island, is the well-known cape called Montauk. Within the fork lies Shelter Island, so named from the snug berth it occupies. ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... champagne-glasses reminded him of the cow-bells in the rocky old pastures of New England. In 1836 he printed his first collection of poems. The volume contained, among a number of pieces broadly comic, like the September Gale, the Music Grinders, and the Ballad of the Oyster-man—which at once became widely popular—a few poems of a finer and quieter temper, in which there was a quaint blending of the humorous and the pathetic. Such were My Aunt and the Last Leaf—which Abraham Lincoln found "inexpressibly touching," and which ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... would rather be an oyster than a man, and rather be dead than either!" was the reply of Le Gardeur. "How soon, think you, will brandy kill a man, De Pean?" asked he abruptly, after a ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... young woman that he ain't likely to get. One of the biggest swells in England—a little un with a face like the inside of a oyster-shell, that he met down at Wiltstoken, where I trained him to fight the Flying Dutchman. He went right off his training after he met her—wouldn't do anything I told him. I made so cock-sure that he'd be licked that I hedged ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... Shelleys, its effect might have been permanent and overwhelming. The mistake lay in supposing that a people whom the poet himself described as "of scarcely greater elevation in the scale of intellectual being than the oyster," were qualified to take the remedy of their grievances into their own hands, or were amenable to such sound reasoning as he poured forth. He told Godwin that he had "wilfully vulgarized the language of this pamphlet, in order to ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... hucksters, and greengrocers, are now established in the mansions of the old peers; small children are yelling at the doors, with mouths besmeared with bread and treacle; damp rags are hanging out of every one of the windows, steaming in the sun; oyster- shells, cabbage-stalks, broken crockery, old papers, lie basking in the same cheerful light. A solitary water-cart goes jingling down the wide pavement, and spirts a feeble refreshment over the dusty, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... bay was still bordered by extensive marshes, with here and there the habitation of man located upon some slight elevation of the surface. Having rowed twenty-six miles, and being off the mouth of Murderkill Creek, a squall struck the canoe and forced it on to an oyster reef, upon the sharp shells of which she was rocked for several minutes by the shallow breakers. Fearing that the paper shell was badly cut, though it was still early in the afternoon, I ascended the creek of ominous name and associations to the landing of an inn ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... I need not say) Two travellers found an oyster in their way; Both fierce, both hungry; the dispute grew strong, While, scale in hand, Dame Justice pass'd along. Before her each with clamour pleads the laws, Explain'd the matter and would win the cause. Dame Justice, ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... her master had found it roasted in the very middle of the turkey, and was going to ask her if she thought she was cooking for an ostrich, which, as everybody knows, prefers a dinner of iron spikes, pebble stones, and oyster ...
— Red, White, Blue Socks, Part First - Being the First Book • Sarah L Barrow
... did, I'd wait till I saw a man bullying a weaker one, and I'd stand up to him—" Fran leaped impulsively to her feet, and doubled her arm—"and I'd let her land! Punching's a good thing, and, oh, how it's needed....Except at school—you mustn't do anything human here, you must be an oyster ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... Decidedly, if the oyster did not absolutely replace bread and meat, it furnished an aliment in no whit less nutritive and in a condition capable of being absorbed in large quantities. But as this mollusk is of very easy digestion, it is somewhat dangerous ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... a very light gray, white under the arms, and his quartz-specks would run from white to pale yellow. The retinue of nobles behind Gurgurk ran through the whole spectrum, from a princeling who was almost oyster-gray to old Ghroghrank, the Keegarkan Ambassador, who was even blacker and more red-speckled than Gurgurk. All of them carried about as much ironmongery as the Prime Minister—the pistols were all Terran, and the swords ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... equally moved by fear, anger, repulsion, tender emotion, or sympathy. Nor do all men find the same things the objects of their fear, anger, repulsion, and the rest. The desire for food is an abstraction; in the concrete, this man eagerly accepts an oyster, and that one turns from it in disgust. In order to deal successfully with our fellow-man, we must not merely know ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... in that virgin venture naturally spurred him to further effort. It was, for one thing, the pleasantest way he had ever earned so much money, even if it lacked the element of physical prowess and danger that had marked those purple days with the oyster pirates, and, later, equally exciting passages with the Fish Patrol. He only waited to catch up on sleep lost while hammering out "Typhoon Off the Coast of Japan," before applying himself to new fiction. That was what was the matter with it: it was sheer ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... without him. In itself it is a pigmy world compared with the rest of the solar system of which it is a part. Nevertheless, the fact cannot be denied that his material surroundings are of a quality tending to either impress or to deceive Man with a sense of his own value. The world is his oyster which he, with the sword of enterprise, will open,—and all his natural instincts urge him to perpetuate himself in some form or other incessantly and without stint. Why? Why is his existence judged to be necessary? ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... thought that by bringing the conversation to the Crimea I might squeeze out something important. But no! he is always as close as an oyster." ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... to find some traces of the wreck of the Undine, or of anyone having lived there, but we found nothing beyond a great heap of oyster shells that had been thrown into one corner. But Carver Kinlay might very well have existed comfortably in this immense place, for, besides the dried fish that he was said to have found among the wreckage, there was a fine bed of oysters within easy reach ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... Hal. "He can be as mum as an oyster when he wants to. Well, old boy, I'll leave you alone now and go out and look around a bit. Maybe I can stumble on this conspiracy Stubbs ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... is an egg, of which the white part is the ocean, the yolk is the earth, and the arched shell is the sky. In India this is the mundane egg of Brahma; and it reappears among the Yorubas as a pair of calabashes put together like oyster-shells, one making a dome over the other. In Zulu-land the earth is a huge beast called Usilosimapundu, whose face is a rock, and whose mouth is very large and broad and red: "in some countries which were on his body it was winter, and in others it was early ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... it noiselessly together—that is, Sarah Walker did, with deft womanliness—carried it darkly along the hall to No. 27, and deposited it in Peters' bed, where it lay like a freshly opened oyster. We then returned hand in hand to my room, where we looked out of the window on the sea. It was observable that there was no lack of ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... therefore I exist.' I almost think those Emersonians are right at times, when they crave the 'life of plants, and stones, and rain.' Stangrave said to me once, that his ideal of perfect bliss was that of an oyster in the Indian seas, drinking the warm salt water motionless, and troubling himself about nothing, while ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... interesting. Differently from Europe, where the tertiary formations appear to have accumulated in bays, here along hundreds of miles of coast we have one great deposit, including many tertiary shells, all apparently extinct. The most common shell is a massive gigantic oyster, sometimes even a foot in diameter. These beds are covered by others of a peculiar soft white stone, including much gypsum, and resembling chalk, but really of a pumiceous nature. It is highly remarkable, from being composed, to at least one-tenth of its bulk, of Infusoria. Professor Ehrenberg ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... that are made out of the pith and heart of sciences—he did not know it was of any value! That is his history. That is the sum of it, and surely it is enough. Who, that is himself at all above the condition of an oyster, will undertake to say, deliberately and upon reflection, that it is not? So long as we have that one fact in our possession, it is absurd, it is simply disgraceful, to complain of any deficiency in this person's biography. There is enough of it and to spare. With that fact in our ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... a tidal one, of no great breadth, and the margin was covered by a thick growth of the mangrove shrub, on the boughs of which the sharp-edged shells of the tree-oyster stuck in strings and clusters in great numbers. The best time to catch the hippopotamus is when the tide is out and the banks are bared, for then you find him wallowing in the mud or basking on the sand (when there is any), like jungle-hog, and with a well-directed ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... mer[Fr], barbecue, beefsteak; beet root; blackberry, blancmange, bloater, bouilli[obs3], bouillon, breadfruit, chop suey [U.S.]; chowder, chupatty[obs3], clam, compote, damper, fish, , frumenty[obs3], grapes, hasty pudding, ice cream, lettuce, mango, mangosteen, mince pie, oatmeal, oyster, pineapple, porridge, porterhouse steak, salmis[obs3], sauerkraut, sea slug, sturgeon ("Albany beef"), succotash [U.S.], supawn [obs3][U.S.], trepang[obs3], vanilla, waffle, walnut. table, cuisine, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... head, corselet, all are correctly in place; the abdomen only has a gaping wound through which its contents have been removed. What remains is a kind of golden shell, formed of the two conjoined elytra. The shell of an oyster emptied of its inmate is not ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... feeders stoop To plates of oyster soup. Let pap engage The gums of age And appetites that droop; We much prefer ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... rather be in Philadelphia," said he, in a voice but little louder than a, whisper, and unconscious of giving utterance to his thoughts—"a great deal rather be there—in some comfortable oyster-cellar—than standing out here in the lone wilderness, up to my knees in snow, and expecting every minute to have a poisoned arrow shot through my head. Hang it all! I wonder what pleasure Mr. Glenn can enjoy here? ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... your bunk," interposed Dan hastily; "put your things in there, and when you are in yourself you'll be as comfortable as a oyster ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... the Abbe D'Array, or the Professor of the Humanities, at the mess. Well, the only thing I could do, was just to take an opportunity to drop in at the College in the evening, where we had a quiet rubber of whist, and a little social and intellectual conversation, with maybe an oyster and a glass of punch, just to season the thing, before we separated; all done discreetly and quietly—no shouting nor even singing, for the 'superior' had a prejudice about profane songs. Well, one of those nights it was, about the first week in ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever |
