"Rook" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a too intense consciousness of life,—to live in a sleepy country side, to have a garden to work in, to have a wife and children, to chatter quietly every evening over the details of existence. We must have the azaleas out to-morrow and thoroughly cleansed, they are devoured by insects; the tame rook has flown away; mother lost her prayer-book coming from church, she thinks it was stolen. A good, honest, well-to-do peasant, who knows nothing of politics, must be very nearly happy;—and to think ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... or roll them about like nine-pins—at once included in the education of "Izunsabe," which he took upon himself, a course of elemental doctrine in the one true game. And the boy fought his way up at such a pace that he jumped from odds of queen and rook to pawn and two moves in less than two years. And now he could almost give odds to his tutor, though he never presumed to offer them; and trading as he did with enlightened merchants of large Continental sea-ports, who had plenty of ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... out of many people of the lower sort that crowded the terrace before the garden. Now the rain fell, and all was desolation. A yeoman in brown fustian ran bending his head before the tempestuous rain. A rook, blown impotently backwards, essayed slowly to cross towards the western trees. Her eyes followed him until a great gust blew him in a wider curve, backwards and up, and when again he steadied himself he was no more than a blot on the wet greyness ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... tapes are dirtier and my white hat grows less "sea-going" every day and even you, Eli, are being forgotten. The company commander still carols sweetly in the morning about "barrackses" and fire "distinguishers," rookies still continue to rook about the camp in their timid, mild-eyed way, while week-old sailors with unwashed leggins delight their simple souls with cries of 'twenty-one days.' New goats have sprung up to take your place in the life of the camp and belittle your past achievements, but ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... gentleman who could not hit a hay-stack. My father, who had been used to carrying a gun in his younger days, was much amused, in his quiet way, at seeing Griff watch Chapman off on his rounds, and then betake himself to the locality most remote from the keeper's ears to practise on the rook or crow. Martyn always ran after him, having solemnly promised not to touch the gun, and to keep behind. He was too good-natured to send the little fellow back, though he often tried to elude the pursuit, not wishing for a witness to his attempts; and he never invited Clarence, ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... birthday. Next, his unmarried sister—nearly eighty. Next, his man-servant, Mr. Rook—well past sixty. And last, his man-servant's wife, who considers herself young, being only a little over forty. That is the household. Mrs. Rook is coming to-day to attend Emily on the journey to the North; and I am not at all sure that Emily ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... before the face of Even the Great. On this oak, whose leaves shine in the moon, the birds gather each night, the birds of the sea and the land, both of white and black feather. Among them is an old grey rook and a young crow. The birds sing such a beautiful song that the great sea keeps silence to hear it. All of them sing except the rook and the crow. Now the crow says: "Sing, little birds, sing; sing, little birds of the land, for when you die you will at least end your ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... exert their utmost ingenuity To discover the secret of this noble game. Let them learn the name of every piece. Its proper position, and what is its movement. Let them make out the foot-soldier of the army, The elephant, the rook, and the horseman, The march of the vizier and the procession of the King. If they discover the science of this noble game, They will have surpassed the most able in science. Then the tribute and ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... wrong; for Lewis, knowing me well, knew my habit of extravagant speech, and instantly his blue pop eyes were upon my miserable face, with suspicion sticking straight out of them. With trembling hand I made my move at chess, saying, "Queen to Queens rook four," and he added in aside, "Seems to me you're mighty quiet about this scent; I hope you ain't going to tell me ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... going on. It was evidently a wedding; and I was just in time to see it, for the procession was passing at that moment. First came a splendid cock-a-doodle, all in black and gold, like a herald, blowing his trumpet, and marching with a very dignified step. Then came a rook, in black, like a minister, with spectacles and white cravat. A lark and bullfinch followed,—friends, I suppose; and then the bride and bridegroom. Miss Wren was evidently a Quakeress; for she wore a sober dress, and ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... chiefly, but a few thrushes and hedge-sparrows; there were seven or eight turtle-doves, five jays, and, queerest of all companions for doves and pheasants, a carrion crow. I thought at first he must be a rook, but there was no doubt about it. I looked up as I walked away, and over me sailed five herring gulls, high ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... was without doubt the man who fired at you, looking to the type of gentleman he is, and the fact that you ran into him immediately afterwards, and especially the fact that he actually does possess an old rook rifle. He thinks he may have done it out of sheer Irish deviltry, you offering so convenient a target, just as they pot landlords in his own happy country. A man can hardly have drunk as heavily as he must have done without upsetting his brain a bit, ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... found. Vain things were plenty—there was the turkey, and the swan, and the blue jay, and the wood-duck, and the wakon bird; and noisy, chattering, singing creatures, such as the daw, and the thrush, and the rook, and the prairie-dog, abounded—indeed there were more of each than was pleasing to the ear—but of women, vain, noisy, laughing, chattering women, there were none. It was, indeed, quite a still world to what ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... rook, and the vast increase of these birds of late years in certain parts of Essex, has been productive of great mischief, especially in the vicinity of Writtle and of Waltham. Since February last, notwithstanding a vigilant watch, the rooks have stolen sets ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... cases include the remaining specimens of the spiny-finned fish. Among these are the wolf fish; the curiously formed tobacco-pipe fish; the big-headed dolphins or anglers; the hand fish, with its long fins; and the rook fish. ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... I said, "as Guest here leaves me to do all the talking, I'll tell you why we are so far up to the northward, out of our usual beat. We heard in Samoa that a big ship, named the Sarawak had run ashore and been abandoned at Rook Island, in Dampier Straits, between the west end of New Britain and the east coast of New Guinea, and both Guest and myself know her to be one of the largest ships out of Liverpool; she left Sydney for Hongkong about six months ago with a general cargo. And 'there ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... strange!" T'an Ch'un exclaimed. "Instead of bracing up your energies now to rook some money out of our venerable senior, you turn your ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... time I used to stand in the stable and my coat was brushed every day till it shone like a rook's wing. It was early in May, when there came a man from Squire Gordon's, who took me away to the hall. My master said, "Good-by, Darkie; be a good horse, and always do your best." I could not say "good-by", so I put my nose into his hand; he patted me kindly, and I left my first home. As I ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... They didn't leave you alone a single minute. God and Jesus stood beside the bed, and Jesus kept God in a good temper, and the Holy Ghost flew about the room and perched on the top of the linen cupboard, and bowed and bowed, and said, "Rook-ke-heroo-oo! Rook-ke-keroo-oo!" ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... ago—I can't say when exactly, but it was before I came down here—this unnatural son introduced to the parental abode (which I think is either No. 5 or No. 6 in a row of young chestnuts abutting on the high road) a rook of more than dubious reputation, whom he persuaded his unsuspecting sire to put up for the night. And there the rook has been ever since. As I said, I have neither heard nor seen him, but I'm positive he's there. I am unable to give the precise date on which he first ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... the beginning of March, coming back from a long walk on the hills, I heard the bleat of the lamb and the impatient cawing of the rook that could not put its nest together in the windy branches, and as I stopped to listen it seemed to me that something passed by in the dusk: the spring-tide itself seemed to be fleeting across the tillage towards the scant fields. As the spring-tide advanced I discovered a new likeness to you in ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... the breeding season assemble together and make their nests on tall firs or oak trees; sometimes they build on rocks near the sea coast. It is said, too, that they will occasionally build on the ground. The heron's nest is not unlike that of the rook, only larger and broader; it is made of sticks and lined with wool and coarse grass; the female lays four or five eggs of a green colour, her long legs are tucked under her. Rooks and jackdaws sometimes ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... allowed myself to speak of them by their generic or family name of Crow, this being a common country practice. The genus corvus, or Crow, includes the Raven, the Carrion Crow, the Hooded Crow, the Jackdaw, and the Rook. ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... and from "Un-gi doo-ruk" (big, huge) the transition down to "hunky-dory" is easy. Those who see a sort of complemental relation to each other of linguistic affinity and the conformity in physical characters may infer from "Mikey-doo-rook" (a term of endearment equivalent to "Mavourneen" and used in addressing little children) that the inhabitants within the Polar Circle have something of the Emerald Isle about them. But no, they are not Irish, for when they are about to leave the ship or any other place for ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... Readers contain many poems that may be used in connection with the Nature Study lessons. To supplement the observational studies of birds, read from the Third Reader, "The Robin's Song", "The Red-winged Blackbird", "The Sandpiper", "To the Cuckoo", "Bob White", "The Lark and the Rook", "The ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... on the wood in thuds, "God, God." The cry of the rook, "God," answers it The crack of the fire on the hearth, the voice of the brook, say the same name; All things, dog, cat, fiddle, baby, Wind, breaker, sea, thunderclap Repeat ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... yielded again to her distraught imagination, amid the pitiful ejaculations of the entire company, with the exception of one mundane, young man who, suddenly assailed by the wild fancy that he wasn't drinking, crept furtively to the Moorish rook, and ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... which was the marvel of Muirtown, into the river, in the hope that it might serve as a lifebelt. The second item, upon which Speug prided himself very much, was a climbing match, and for this he had selected a tree which seemed to be designed for the purpose, since it had a rook's nest on its highest branch, and no branches at all for the first twenty feet. The conditions were, that every boy above twelve should have his chance, and the boy who climbed to the top, put his hand into the rook's nest, and came down in the shortest ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... by no precocious rook, who Haunts the high hall garden calling "Maud;" Mine's no "blithe newcomer" like the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... that he was not alone in the air, and that he had all at once got himself, as it were, fixed in the public eye, and was "wanted." A swish in the sky made him look up, to see a rook, with a leering eye, coming down upon him. He cleverly "side-slipped" in mid-air, and let the rook, braking wildly, go diving by. Perhaps he wondered what had turned the rook hawk. As a matter of fact, the weather had, partly, and the rifle had, the rest; for the rook could see ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... island. Indeed, I doubt if a sweeping together of all the birds of the United States into any two of the largest States would people the earth and air more fully. There appeared to be a plover, a crow, a rook, a blackbird, and a sparrow to every square yard of ground. They know the value of birds in Britain,—that they are the friends, not the enemies, of the farmer. It must be the paradise of crows and rooks. It did me good to see them so much at home about the fields and even in the towns. I was glad ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... sleep very comfortably," the grasshopper says, "but I am in fear of being pounced upon by a hungry bird. What bird have I most reason to fear?" The ants answer: The rook, the lark, the ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... to a stranger, the little bushy-tailed animal rose from its place under the tree and came to him, and the rook, cawing once, flew down from its branch and ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... experiment also shows that they help comrades in distress. If a Wolf or a Rook be ill or injured, we are told that it is driven away or even killed by its comrades. Not so with Ants. For instance, in one of my nests an unfortunate Ant, in emerging from the chrysalis skin, injured ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... MacCulloch, who says he is very doubtful as to the occurrence of the Jay in the Island, and adds that the local name for the Mistletoe Thrush is "Geai." Mr. Gallienne, in a note to Professor Ansted's list, confirms the scarcity of the Jay, as he says the Rook and the Jay are rarely seen here, although they are indigenous to Jersey. The local name "Geai" may perhaps have misled him as to the occasional appearance of the Jay. I have never seen a real Jay in ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... who is going to play with you.' First you shall learn where to move the pieces and how to tell me what Grandy has moved—then, we shall tie a handkerchief over my eyes—as we do when you and I play hide the thimble—my hands shall not touch the men at all. I shall say 'Pawn to Queen's Rook's square' and you shall put this little man here—this is the Queen's Rook's square—" It must have been the oddest game in the world, really, between that stern old man and the blindfolded invalid and the ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... fond of walnuts as we are,'" read Miss Harson, "'and rob the trees without any mercy. Not only the little titmouse, but the grave and solemn rook'—a kind of crow, you remember—'is not above paying a visit to the walnut tree and stealing all he can find. There is a walnut tree growing in a garden the owner of which may be said to have planted it for the benefit of the rooks. Not that he had any ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... give it a thought that they could be after aught worse than rook-shooting," she would murmur, "for all I heard a sort of a sobbing on the stairs. It was hard on poor old Madam though, never to take any leave of her; but all her life has been hard for that matter, poor innocent old critter. Well, well, I hope it's not a sin to wish 'em happy, spite of that bad ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... the Forest. Such a torrent will not reach the lake without disporting itself into many little cataracts; and saw ye ever such a fairy one as that flowing through below an ivied bridge into a circular basin overshadowed by the uncertain twilight of many checkering branches, and washing the rook-base of a Hermitage, in which a sin-sickened or pleasure-palled man might, before his hairs were grey, forget all the gratifications and all the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... thy priests, Al Kahlminar, then would I confront them and thee with the two elephants which my brother sent me lately from Geestan, on each of which I can place a rook with a slave cunning with the javelin, before which thy priests will flee; for the animals see no difference between priests and other ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... drawn bills on you in favour of Messrs. Van Cash and Co. as per margin. I have taken up your note to Col. Piquet, and discharged your debts to my Lord Lurcher and Sir Harry Rook. I herewith enclose you copies of the bills, which I have no doubt will be immediately honoured. On failure, I shall empower some lawyer in your ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... mother going free. God would not let the mother-bird suffer in one day the loss of her young and her own liberty. And he who regarded in olden time the conduct of man toward the brutes, to-day looks down from heaven and is interested in every minnow that swims the stream, and every rook that cleaves the air.—DEWITT ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... way, bumping his head against a wall like a hooded rook as he was. So giddy had he become at the sight of this creature, even more enticing than a siren rising from the water. He noticed the animals carved over the door and returned to the house of the archbishop with ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... the Grand Duke. Chuchu, a setter crossed with spaniel, was the most unsuited for a rough life. He had been nurtured tenderly in the society of ladies; his heart was large and soft; he regarded the sofa-cushion as a bed-rook necessary of existence. Though about the size of a sheep, he loved to sit in ladies' laps; he never said a bad word in all his blameless days; and if he had seen a flute, I am sure he could have played ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... timeless death,— Shall rue the hour that ever thou wast born. The owl shriek'd at thy birth, an evil sign; The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time; Dogs howl'd, and hideous tempest shook down trees; The raven rook'd her on the chimney's top, And chatt'ring pies in dismal discord sung. Thy mother felt more than a mother's pain, And yet brought forth less than a mother's hope, An indigested and deformed lump, Not like the fruit of such a goodly tree. Teeth hadst thou in thy head ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... of David Pennycuick, goes to study singing at Milan. Mr. Harry Rook, Pennycuick's most intimate friend, meets her by chance in Milan, and she becomes his mistress, neither having the least idea that the other knows Pennycuick. Then Viscount Hintlesham, like Pennycuick, ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... a Rook" would make a capital story. They are long-lived birds, and could tell tales of the past that would entirely eclipse our modern rubbish,' said Lavinia, taking a last look at the solemn towers, and the shadowy birds that had haunted ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... them all, got up on a low post, and with wide-open beak poured forth a long series of most impressive caws. One always wonders at the meaning of such displays. Is the old bird addressing the others in the rook language on some matter of great moment; or is he only expressing some feeling in the only language he has—those long, hoarse, uninflected sounds; and if so, what feeling? Probably a very common one. The rooks appeared happy ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... number of non-analytical people who would be quite prepared to believe that an atom could be visible to the eye or cut in this manner. But any one at all conversant with physical conceptions would almost as soon think of killing the square root of 2 with a rook rifle as of cutting an atom in half with a knife. Our conception of an atom is reached through a process of hypothesis and analysis, and in the world of atoms there are no knives and no men to cut. If you have ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... Dana describes a laminated rook often formed by the infiltration of water into the sand dunes on the Hawaian islands.—Corals and Coral Islands, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... aitin' her, but I wouldn't hear of it; so she's at rest, an' so is old Molly Mallone. She wint away just two minutes be the clock before the pig, and wos buried the day afther. There's no more news as I knows of in the parish, except that your old flame Mary got married to Teddy O'Rook, an' they've been fightin' tooth an' nail ever since, as I towld ye they would long ago. No man could live wid that woman. But the schoolmaster, good man, has let me off the cow. Ye see, darlin', I towld him ye wos buildin' a palace in the say, to put ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... residential street lying to the west. It stopped before a large shaded lawn, where a number of white men and women were playing a game with cards. The cards used by the lawn party were not ordinary playing-cards, but had figures on them instead of spots, and were called "rook" cards. The party of white ladies and gentlemen were playing "rook." On a table in the middle of the lawn glittered some pieces of silver plate which formed the first, second, and third prizes for ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... circumstance of the owners as they drove up the pike. There was Rockwood, the summer home of the Stanleys, and The Dell, owned, and inhabited at intervals, by Mr. Young-Dickson, of the South Tredegar potteries. Farther along there was Fairmount, whose owner was a wealthy cotton-seed buyer; Rook Hill, which Tom remembered as the ancient roosting ground of the migratory winter crows; and Farnsworth Park, ruralizing the name of its builder. On the most commanding of the hillsides was a pile of rough-cut Tennessee marble with turrets and many gables, rejoicing in the classic ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... to hold the attention of the royalists, and, besides that depletion, had to suffer the loss of many of his plainsmen who refused to accompany him across the Andes. But Colonel Rook, the head of the British Legion, assured Bolivar that he would follow him "beyond Cape Horn, if necessary." After spending a month painfully wading through the flooded plains, he ascended the Andes and crossed them, in spite of inexpressible suffering. ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... go to the Horse Show, which she drove to with Mrs. Mannering in a hired fly. I don't call it very polite to the hostess, do you? This afternoon she amused herself from her bedroom window by shooting at rabbits just beyond the wire fence of the lawn with a rook rifle; she did not hit any rabbits, but she got a gardener in the leg, and the man was very angry, and bled a great deal, and had to be taken away, and I think it was very careless ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... prejudices and generous beliefs had been hers, but held loosely with a child's comprehension. But now this old world had been awakened to arms against a dazzling new world of love and pleasure. She was led captive by emotion, but the cold rook of scruple remained. She had read of women surrendering all for love, but she felt dismally that this happy gift had been denied her. Criticism, a fierce, vulgar antagonism, impervious to sentiment, not to be exorcised by generous impulse—such ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... their will. But Arthur and his knights, as we see them in the earliest French romances, have little in common with their Celtic prototypes, as we dimly catch sight of them in Irish, Welsh, and Breton legend. Chretien belonged to a generation of French poets who rook over a great mass of Celtic folk-lore they imperfectly understood, and made of what, of course, it had never been before: the vehicle to carry a rich freight of chivalric customs and ideals. As an ideal of social conduct, the code of ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... distance, when our smoke-sail yard was manned; we looked like a parcel of larks spitted, with one great goose in the midst of us. "Doey, get beyond me, zur; doey, Mr Rattlin," he would say. "Ah! zur, I'd climb with any bragger in this ship for a rook's nest, where I ha' got a safe bough to stand upon; but to dance upon this here see-sawing line, and to call it a horse, too, ben't ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... statement. "He's a strange mixture, is Mr. Hilton. He's a fair nailer with a revolver. I've seen him hit a penny three times straight off at twelve paces, and, when in the mind, he would bowl over running rabbits with a rook rifle. Yet he never joined the shooting parties in October. Said it made him ill to see graceful birds shattered by clumsy folk. All the same, he would ill-treat ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... rook by wearing a pied feather, The cable hat-band, or the three-piled ruff, A yard of shoe-tie, or the Switzers knot On his French garters, should affect a humour! O, it is ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... hostility, Sir James spared no pains to win their good will. He gave the Terror a rook-rifle and Erebus boxes of chocolate. If he chanced on them when motoring in the afternoon he would carry them off, bicycles and all, in his car and regale them with sumptuous teas at the Grange; and at Colet ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... of Rook, between New Guinea and New Britain, when any misfortune has happened, all the people run together, scream, curse, howl, and beat the air with sticks to drive away the devil, who is supposed to be the author of the mishap. From the spot where the mishap took place they drive him step ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... before that I had been looking on a map of the Rhine, and remarked to myself that this small island, little more than a mere rook in the stream, was so situated as to command the bridge between Eslar and the German bank, and I could not help wondering that the Austrians had never taken the precaution to strengthen it, or at least place a gun there, to enfilade the bridge. Now, to my extreme astonishment, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... two days and turn them against me? Oh, you! Did I say the 'root' had been striking then, or rather, that the seeds, whence the roots take leisure and grow, they had been planted then—and might not a good heart and hand drop acorns enough to grow up into a complete Dodona-grove,—when the very rook, say farmers, hides and forgets whole navies of ship-wood one day to be, in his summer storing-journeys? But this shall do—I am not going to prove what may be, when here it is, to my ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... being thus immediately filled up. But the original difficulty remains; for if your farmers had not killed your sparrows and rooks, what would have become of those which now immigrate into your parish? in the middle of England one is too far distant from the natural limits of the rook and sparrow to suppose that the young are thus far expelled from Cambridgeshire. The check must fall heavily at some time of each species' life; for, if one calculates that only half the progeny are reared ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... the Castle through the great door-way and were soon treading the walls that had once sustained the cannon and the sentinel, but were now covered with weeds and wild flowers. The drum and fife had once been heard within these walls—the only music now is the cawing of the rook and daw. We paid a hasty visit to the various apartments, remaining longest in those of most interest. The room in which Martin the Regicide was imprisoned nearly twenty years, was pointed out to us. The Castle of Chepstow is still a magnificent pile, ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... artillery was walking down Nassau Street, and a steam-boiler or something burst under the sidewalk and broke his leg? The first thing old Backbite said when he heard of it was, 'H'm! been drinking, I suppose.' Now here's Billings with a despatch. What is it, bully rook?" he hailed, as ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... William and Robert of Pickering, Adam de Bruce and Mathilda his wife." The two beautifully carved figures of a knight and his lady that lie in the Bruce Chapel are not Bruces for the surcoat of the man is adorned with the arms of the Rockcliffes—an heraldic chess-rook and three lions' heads. Both the knight and his lady wear the collar of SS, the origin of which is still wrapped in obscurity. Traces of gilding are visible in several places on the wings of the angels that support the heads of both figures, ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... ROOK PIE. Skin and draw some young rooks, cut out the backbones, and season with pepper and salt. Lay them in a dish with a little water, strew some bits of butter over them, cover the dish with a thick crust, and ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... vice and servility which they are most appropriately used to describe, are so unfamiliar to contemporary novel-readers that we think few will master two hundred pages of this dialect in the present edition. On the whole, after renewing our old acquaintance with Mr. Jeames, with Captain Rook and Mr. Pigeon, with Mr. Stubbs of the Fatal Boots, and others of the same kidney, we doubt whether these immature character sketches, which all belong to the author's first and most Hogarthian manner, do not range below the legitimate ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... next to Rio, the port of the greatest importance in the Brazils. On going into the harbour with a strong breeze blowing, the pilot from gross carelessness gave the Triton so hard a blow against a rook that an ugly hole was knocked in her bottom. It seemed for a moment that the masts would have gone by the board; but the ship, bounding off the rock, glided on as if nothing had happened. It was a great trial for the temper of Captain Frankland; but he uttered scarcely a ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... channel in less than an hour, we found the horses tethered among the bushes. House there was none, which must be inconvenient when the weather is too tempestuous for crossing the strait from Parao. We took shelter from the heat under a rook, making studies of a group of picturesque shepherds, and amusing ourselves with some luscious grapes,—baskets of which were waiting for the return of the passage-boat to La Madelena,—while a pack-horse was ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... him and ventured to go on: "I was witness for the police and Mr. Gillett, and he—Steele," with a curse, "had me on the stand. He knows every rook and welsher and every swell magsman, and all their haunts and habits. And he knows me—blame—" he made use of another expression more forcible—"if he don't know me as well as if he'd once been a pal. And now," ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... or he had rare discrimination of relative chances in the run of the cards, or the phenomenally bold hand he played disconcerted his adversaries, but his almost invariable winning began to affect injuriously his character. Indeed, he was said to be a rook of unrivalled rapacity. Colonel Duval was in the frame of mind that his wife called "bearish" one morning as his family gathered for breakfast in the limited privacy of their circle about the round table in ...
— The Lost Guidon - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Dwina, and the Bison eropea to the Bielovyezha forests. The sable has quite disappeared, being found only on the Urals; the beaver is found at a few places in Minsk, and the otter is very rare. On the other hand, the hare and also the grey partridge, the hedgehog, the quail, the lark, the rook, and the stork find their way into the coniferous region as the forests are cleared. The avifauna is very rich; it includes all the forest and garden birds which are known in western Europe, as well as a very ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... it till the hour of sunset that everything was in due order, the straps set fast, the keys duly turned in the locks—the labels—"Mr. Eustace Greyne: Passenger to Algiers: via Marseilles"—carefully written out in a full, round hand. Rook's tickets had been bought; so now everything was ready, and the last evening in England might be spent by Mr. Greyne in the drawing-room and by Darrell in the servants' hall ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... "the various world centres." The reading-room was well supplied with "commercial organs." The talk was that of Wall Street; and the pupils (from fifty to a hundred lads) were principally engaged in rooking or trying to rook one another for nominal sums in what was called "college paper." We had class hours, indeed, in the morning, when we studied German, French, book-keeping, and the like goodly matters; but the bulk of our day and the gist of the education centred in the exchange, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... up, they destroy them by covering them up in the interstices between the rows of rice, turning the mud over them with their hands. When they are to sow wheat, barley, pulse, or other grain, they grub up the surface of the ground superficially, earth, grass, and rook, and mixing this with some straw, burn all together. This earth, being sifted fine, they mix with the seed, which they sow in holes made in straight lines, so that it grows in tufts or rows like the rice. The field is divided into regular beds, well harrowed both before and after the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... rook-pie, and cares for nothing else but a sound digestion. The spiritualist also eats rook-pie, but after the repast he will sentimentalise over dead rooks, without losing his belief in an all-merciful Providence. He will assure you, indeed, and try ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... me the "Raw Recruit," The joke of the awkward squad, The rook of the rookies to boot, And a bumpkin, a dolt and a clod; But this much I'll plead in defense I seem popular with these chaps, For they keep me a'moving thither and ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... tobacco worse than hell of brimstone;" the coffee itself had the appearance of "Pluto's diet-drink, that witches tipple out of dead men's skulls;" and the company included "a silly fop and a worshipful justice, a griping rook and a grave citizen, a worthy lawyer and an errant pickpocket, a reverend non-conformist and a canting mountebank, all blended together to compose an oglio of impertinence." There is a delightful sketch of one named "Captain ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... unless he did so, he stood no chance of a second helping. A greedy man, that parson was, to be sure! I recollect his once eating up the whole of some little bird at dinner, and by way of diverting attention from his greediness, he told how he had heard that a rook soaked in vinegar and then dressed in a particular way, could not be distinguished from the bird he was then eating. I saw by the grim look of my grandfather's face that the parson's doing and saying displeased him; and, child as I was, I had some notion of what was coming, when, as ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... loud: Plain Truth was Pride; and, what was sillier, Easy and Friendly was Familiar. Or, if he tuned his lofty lays, With solemn air to Virtue's praise, Alike abusive and erroneous, They call'd it hoarse and inharmonious. Yet so it was to souls like theirs, Tuneless as Abel to the bears! A Rook[5] with harsh malignant caw Began, was follow'd by a Daw;[6] (Though some, who would be thought to know, Are positive it was a crow:) Jack Daw was seconded by Tit, Tom Tit[7] could write, and so he writ; A tribe of tuneless praters follow, The Jay, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... crowns of white Above slim bodies all black or flecked with snow. By the tossed foam of the not yet frozen brook Black pigs go straggling over fields of snow; The air is full of snow, and starling and rook Are blacker amid the myriad streams of light. Warm as old fire the Red House burns yet bright Beneath the unmelting snows of pine and larch, While February moves as slow, as slow As Spring might never ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... When his feet slipped and he fell in, his fishing-line somehow became twisted about his arms and legs, else most likely he would have scrambled out, as it was not very deep. This was the end; nor was he even remembered. Does any one sorrow for the rook, shot, and hung up as a scarecrow? The boy had been talked to, and held up as a scarecrow all his life: he was dead, and that is all. As for granny, she felt no twinge: ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... as she sits on her eggs. By and by, when they are busy with family cares, feeding the little ones, and teaching them to fly, there is not much time for singing. It is said that every bird has a different note or call. I wonder how many you know? I fancy I can guess: the cock, the rook, the swallow, the thrush, the blackbird, the lark; if you do not know the notes or calls of all these, try ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... close in front of the house; but being noisy, and not altogether cleanly in their habits, the ladies of the family grew weary of them and wished to remove them. Accordingly, the colony was driven away, and made their present settlement in a grove behind the house. Ever since that time not a rook has built in the ancient grove; every year, however, one or another pair of young rooks attempt to build among the deserted tree-tops, but the old rooks tear the new nest to pieces as often as it is put together. Thus, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... as ever, and, getting out of bed, he drew the curtains, seeking the landscape, still hidden in the mist, only a few tree-tops showing over the grey vapour—the valley filled with it—and over the hidden hill one streak of crimson. A rook cawed and flew away into the mist, leaving Owen to wonder what the bird's errand might be; and this rook was followed by others, and seeing nothing distinctly, and knowing nothing of himself or of this woman whom he had loved so long, he returned to his bed frightened, ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... if he were an eagerly ambitious man, surely we should see much more positive signs of this ambition; and surely too, with his great powers, he would already have risen high, instead of being a mere ensign, short of money, and playing Captain Rook to Roderigo's Mr. Pigeon. Taking all the facts, one must conclude that his desires were comparatively moderate and his ambition weak; that he probably enjoyed war keenly, but, if he had money enough, did not exert himself greatly to ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... opening a great mouth, until he looked like an old rook which is about to caw, the Councillor would stamp his foot several times, as though preparing to dance to the boys' shouting, and lower his head, grasp his umbrella like a bayonet, and charge at the lads with a panting ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... crows, keep well his comb, For the fox and the fulmart they are false both. When the raven and the rook have rounded together, And the kid in his cliff shall accord to the same. Then shall they be bold, and soon to battle thereafter. Then the birds of the raven rugs and reives, And the leal men of Lothian, are louping on their horse; Then shall the poor people be spoiled full near, And ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... which game he understood something of. I made an attempt, though almost against my inclination, and after several efforts, having learned the march, my progress was so rapid, that before the end of the first sitting I gave him the rook, which in the beginning he had given me. Nothing more was necessary; behold me fascinated with chess! I buy a board, with the rest of the apparatus, and shutting myself up in my chamber, pass whole days and ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... steel. How sublime and, indeed, almost dizzy is the thought of these veiled ladders on which we all live, like climbing monkeys! Many a black-coated clerk in a flat may comfort himself for his sombre garb by reflecting that he is like some lonely rook in an immemorial elm. Many a wealthy bachelor on the top floor of a pile of mansions should look forth at morning and try (if possible) to feel like an eagle whose nest just clings to the edge of some awful cliff. How sad that the word "giddy" is used ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... questions controversy still rages. These are: (a) how Greek utilized the four sibilants (Shin, Samech, Zain and Zade), which it rook over from the Phoenician; (b) what was the history of development in the symbols for f, ch, ps, o (the history of x belongs to both heads); (c) the history of the symbol for the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... looked out of the window, and then the vision of no short-sighted man could have got over the interval in the wall made by the narrow casement, which, after all, gave no other prospect than a Cumberland sky, with an occasional rook in it. But my father, I think I have said before, did not much care for scenery, and he looked round with great satisfaction upon the retreat ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... then blew his horn, To let the neighbors know, This was Robin's wedding-day, And they might see the show. And first came parson Rook, With his spectacles and band, And one of Mother Hubbard's books He held ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... occupied. Hugh seemed to have totally changed; he no longer absented himself from the family on mysterious errands; he went to church regularly, and appeared to take pleasure in the frequent calls of Mr. Rook, the minister. The neighbors began to say that there never was a more dutiful son or a more attentive and affectionate brother. Some half suspected the reason of the reformation,—no one so quick as Squire Clamp, who had reasons of his own, as the reader knows, for wishing delay. After ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... broad-bladed spears—wheeled and manoeuvred. By the Nile all the tops of the palm-trees were crowded with daring riflemen, whose positions were indicated by the smoke-puffs of their rifles, or when some tiny black figure fell, like a shot rook, to the ground. In the foreground the gunboats, panting and puffing up the river, were surrounded on all sides by spouts and spurts of water, thrown up by the shells and bullets. Again the flotilla drew near the narrow channel; again the ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... with a stimulant and irritant. On the morning following on Christian's return it was very evident that intelligence of unusual greatness seethed in the cauldron wherein fermented Mr. Evans' brew of news. His rook-like eye sparkled, his movements, even that walk for whose disabilities it may be remembered that the pantry boy had thanked his God, were ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... building time came, how kind they all were! indeed, though it was a busy season with every bird, each anxious to finish its work, yet I heard an old Rook one day ask little Jenny Wren 'if he should help her,' as he met her trying to drag a large wisp of straw with all ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... fire was made of turf cut from the neighboring heath; and her evening light was a rush dipped in grease."[31] His father was a small farmer, and one who did not allow his boys to grow up in idleness. "My first occupation," he tells us, "was driving the small birds from the turnip-seed, and the rook from the pease; when I first trudged a-field, with my wooden bottle and my satchel swung over my shoulders, I was hardly able to climb the gates and stiles; and at the close of the day, to reach home was a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... writers see vols. v. 122; vi. 16-49. I may remind the reader that the O. Egyptian "Rokh," or "Rukh," by some written "Rekhit," whose ideograph is a monstrous bird with one claw raised, also denotes pure wise Spirits, the Magi, &c. I know a man who derives from it our "rook" beak ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... ord'nary scarecrow, sir, wi' that eye a-glintin' in the sunshine. I cou'd see 't from where I sot—an' so the birds thought. Well, wan arter another, they steps up an' flies off as ef hurried for time, when by-'m-by 'long comes an ould rook. ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... persons of superior rank are in general versed in the game of chess, which they term main gajah, or the game of the elephant, naming the pieces as follows: king, raja; queen or vizir, mantri; bishop or elephant, gajah; knight or horse, kuda; castle, rook, or chariot, ter; and pawn or foot-soldier, bidak. For check they use the word sah; and for checkmate, mat or mati. Among these names the only one that appears to require observation as being peculiar is that for the castle or rook, which they ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... such a door, lived Colonel Warren, my host, and under his roof, the morning after my arrival, I first definitely felt that I had left the West behind me, when I found that a noise by which I had been just awakened, and which sounded like the cawing of a rook, was that of the muezzin borne from a neighboring minaret and requesting me to ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... because sometimes people do get hurt. Two years ago last Christmas your uncle Silas was coming up from Newrleans on the old Lally Rook, and she blowed out a cylinder-head and crippled a man. And I think he died afterwards. He was a Baptist. Your uncle Silas knowed a family in Baton Rouge that knowed his people very well. Yes, I remember now, he DID die. Mortification ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... or my wife, or servant Saurea—do your best, swindle us, rook us, I promise you your interests won't suffer, if ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... Far off on the clear gray sky appears a wavering speck which rises and falls and sways from side to side in an extraordinary way. Nearer and nearer the speck comes, until at last we find ourselves standing under a rook which flies with great difficulty. The poor rascal looks most disreputable, for his tail has evidently been shot away, and he is wounded. He drops on to a perch, but not before he has run the gauntlet of several lines of sharp ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... us, we gotta eat, and Jimmy—he can cook! (He makes a stew that tastes as good as mother used to make.) An' when he starts to flappin' cakes, why, every hungry rook Is droolin' at the mouth for them, ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... 1827, there was a rookery on some trees, neither very lofty nor very elegant, in the garden of the Royal Naval Asylum, at Greenwich; and although many very fine and lofty elms are in the park near, which one might naturally suppose the rooks would prefer, yet, such is the fact, there is not even one rook's nest in Greenwich Park. Possibly the company of so large a number of boys, and the noise which they make, determine these birds in the choice of such a place for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... own idea of it is that K. O. was trying you out on purpose. And I'll wager the K. O. was glad to find a rook sentry so thoroughly alive to his job. Though I doubt if you'll get commended in orders for just being awake. But that reminds me of something that happened to me, in the Philippines," laughed Brimmer. "I was sergeant of the guard out there, and one night the colonel of another ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... the gravel walk, in parties of two or three. East, still doing the cicerone, pointed out all the remarkable characters to Tom as they passed: Osbert, who could throw a cricket-ball from the little-side ground over the rook-trees to the Doctor's wall; Gray, who had got the Balliol scholarship, and, what East evidently thought of much more importance, a half-holiday for the School by his success; Thorne, who had run ten miles in two minutes over the hour; Black, who had ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... insects which the small birds, if alive, would have eaten. Gamekeepers ruthlessly shoot hawks and kites, or snare stoats and polecats, with the result that their game grows up too thick for its feeding ground, sickly specimens are allowed to linger on, and a destructive murrain follows. The rook, no doubt, is fond of eggs; but nevertheless he does the farmer good service when he devours the grubs which are turned up by the plow; and as the salmon disease, which of late has proved so destructive, is attributed by the best ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... must have fallen over the cliff, for there was nothing to be found of us, yet afterwards a farm-boy brought a tale of how he had come suddenly on men lurking under a wall, and how one had a bloody foot and leg, and how the other sprung upon him and after a fierce struggle wrenched his master's rook-piece from his hands, rifled his pocket of a powder-horn, and made off with them like a hare towards Corfe. And as to Maskew, some of the soldiers said that Elzevir had shot him, and others that ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... about it that evening, for the rooks held quite a parliament to vindicate the innocence of their order; and at last passed a vote of censure upon the sparrow for his false accusation; agreed to send him to Coventry; and, as one old rook said, it would have been much more to his credit to have had his shirt-front washed, for it was dreadfully dirty, than to have gone making the rooks out blacker than they really were. Then someone said it was the magpie; but he was dreadfully indignant about it, and his long tail trembled with ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... went in at one ear and out at the other, and were all cast upon the sea; and the poor King, seeing that his son was as immovable as a rook upon a belfry, gave him a handful of dollars and two or three servants; and bidding him farewell, he felt as if his soul was torn out of his body. Then weeping bitterly, he went to a balcony, and followed his son with his eyes until he ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... in '15, they sent me out next time to Salonica. I hadn't been there very long before the question of exchange cropped up. In the early days most of us had English money only, and the villagers used to rook us frightfully changing it. I remember sending my batman, MacGusgogh, to a place for eggs, and he came back with the change for my Bradbury in nickel. I had a good look at it, and on each coin was the mystic inscription, 'DIHAP,' ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... young rook goes without saying. An older bird would not have given a second glance to the thing. Indeed, one would have thought his own instinct might have told him that broken glass would be a mistake in a bird's nest. But its glitter drew him too strongly for resistance. I am inclined to suspect that ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... bundle of articles, crept down again, and went out of the house. She had a place of refuge in these cases of necessity, and her father knew it, and was less alarmed at seeing her depart than he might otherwise have been. This place was Rook's Gate, the house of her grandmother, who always took Margery's part when that young woman was particularly ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... A rook, taking a last look at the world before retiring to rest, watching from his leafless bough, saw a mortal spirit defying the universe, and ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... stepped upon the piazza, and saw the drooping head, the dangling arms, and the changed face of her husband. "Dead! dead!" she exclaimed. "My God! what has happened? Mildred, who was with him? Was the doctor sent for? or Squire Clamp? or Mr. Rook? What did he say to you, dear?" And she tried to lift up the sobbing child, who still clung to the stiffening knees where she had so often ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... that ripped out from the defenders of the camp. Half of the marksmen fired to the right of the rook, the others ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... least, mamma, thank you," said Fred, sitting up vigorously; "you do not know how strong I am growing." And then turning to the window, he made an effort, and began observing on her rook's nest, as she called it, and her lilac buds. Then came a few more cheerful questions and comments on the late notes, and then Mrs. Frederick Langford proposed that the reading of the service ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lord, who has the patience and prudence never to venture beyond small game, such as, at most, might crack the Christmas-box of a grocer's 'prentice, who vies with those that have little to hazard, and who therefore, having the larger stock, can always rook them by waiting for his good fortune, and by rising from the game when luck leaves him—such a one as he, my lord, I do not call a great gamester, to whatever other name ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... every one stiff, and speaking by rote, or talking politics. How glad I used to be to get on horseback again! But to see these—why, it is like the shepherd's glimpse at the pixies!—as one reads a new book, or watches what one only half understands—a rook's parliament, or a gathering of sea-fowl on the ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... And rook and daw and stare their pinions spread Incontinent; for, so they judged the matter, Some scowling foe stood there, and off they fled With ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... brushes. A useful collection of burnished bits and snaffles hung on a side wall. A couple of stuffed badgers held two wicker stands for sticks and umbrellas, and whips and hunting-crops were ranged on hooks beneath a 12-bore and a rook rifle. ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... doctor, presently. "Set this down, will you, Sammy? Rook to queen's fourth. Check. Now, knight—any move. No—hold on. Yes. Knight any move. ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... Jerkin, The Falcon and Tassel-gentle, The Laner and Laneret, The Bockerel and Bockeret, The Saker and Sacaret, The Merlin and Jack Merlin, The Hobby and Jack: There is the Stelletto of Spain, The Blood-red Rook from Turkey, The Waskite from Virginia: And there is of short-winged Hawks, The Eagle and Iron The Goshawk and Tarcel, The Sparhawk and Musket, The ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... so similar in their peculiar utterance. Or take as an example the web-footed Family,—do not all the Geese and the innumerable host of Ducks quack? Does not every member of the Crow Family caw, whether it be the Jackdaw, the Jay, the Magpie, the Rook in some green rookery of the Old World, or the Crow of our woods, with its long, melancholy caw that seems to make the silence and solitude deeper? Compare all the sweet warblers of the Songster ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... generous space Of undulant plain; the rook and crow Hush; 'tis as if a silent grace, By Nature murmured, calmed the face Of Heaven above ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... attachment to locality that since the incident alluded to in the following Poem took place the Rooks have, many of them, built in fir trees at a little distance from their former habitation. The habits of the Rook are well worthy the attention of all who delight in the ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... their Husbands, Orphans, for their Parents timeles death, Shall rue the houre that euer thou was't borne. The Owle shriek'd at thy birth, an euill signe, The Night-Crow cry'de, aboding lucklesse time, Dogs howl'd, and hiddeous Tempest shook down Trees: The Rauen rook'd her on the Chimnies top, And chatt'ring Pies in dismall Discords sung: Thy Mother felt more then a Mothers paine, And yet brought forth lesse then a Mothers hope, To wit, an indigested and deformed lumpe, Not like the fruit of such a goodly Tree. Teeth had'st thou in thy ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Green with the Wood Sandpiper The Stoat The Marsh Titmouse Creeper Wrens' Nests Alarm-note of one Bird understood by other Species of Birds Dates of the appearance of some Spring Birds in 1832, at Clitheroe The Rook Serviceable to Man.—Prejudice against it Sandpipers On Birds Dressing their Feathers with Oil from a Gland Mocking powers of the Sedge-warbler The Water Ouzel Scolopax, Sabines, Sabine's Snipe Fish and other River Phenomena Lampreys ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... rook has built, and the song-birds quire, And over the faded lea The lark soars glorying, gyre on gyre, And he is the bird ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... done wi' the long running, and lay on the rook floor with my head on my arms, and I felt as a hound feels after a long chase, till the caveman answered Dan. At the first I thought his tongue had been malformed as he stood in the light, for a growling and grumbling came from ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... find no grain; The cruel frost encrusts the cornland! Starling.—Aye: patient pecking now is vain Throughout the field, I find . . . Rook.—No grain! Pigeon.—Nor will be, comrade, till it rain, Or genial thawings loose the lorn land Throughout the field. Rook.—I find no grain: The cruel frost ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... speed over the very rough rails was excessive; it was, however, consolatory to feel that any little unpleasantness which might occur through the fact of the car leaving the track would be attended with some sense of alleviation. The rook is said to have thought he was paying dear for good company when he was put into the pigeon pie, but it by no means follows that a leap from an embankment, or an upset into a river, would be as disastrous as ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... dark. It was more sheltered there, too. How quiet the earth and air seemed now! The cold is beginning, there is rime on the ground; now and again a stalk of grass creaks faintly, a little mouse squeaks, a rook comes soaring over the treetops, then all is quiet again. Was there ever such fair hair as hers? Surely never. Born a wonder, from top to toe, her lips a ripened loveliness, and the play of dragonflies in her hair. ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... The "huge nameless rook" has no gloom in its shadow; It catches the sun, it has found it a name; And the mountain grass covers like the turf of the meadow The arms ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... prospects in every direction, while from the glen which surrounds the castle hill like a deep moat filled with a forest, the spring winds swell up as from a sea of woodland, and the snatches of bird-carolling and cawing rook-discourse float up to one from nests in the topmost branches of tall trees, far below one's feet, as one stands on the ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Makfadyane, Far north-wast in a neuck; Be he the coronach had done shout, Ersche men so gatherit him about, In hell great room they took. Thae tarmigants, with tag and tatter, Full loud in Ersche begoud to clatter, And roup like raven and rook. The Devil sae deaved was with their yell, That in the deepest pot of hell He smorit them ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... this head. And you think to steal a march upon a man like me? I see you through and through [I know you like the clock]; I read your thoughts like print. Brodie, you thought, has money, and won't do the job. Therefore, you thought, we must rook him to the heart. And therefore, you put up your idiot cockney. And now you come round, and dictate, and think sure of your Excise? Sure? Are you sure I'll let you pack with a whole skin? By my soul, but I've a mind to pistol ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... coming, The Sun sinks to rest; The rooks are all flying Straight home to their nest. "Caw!" says the rook, as he flies overhead: It's time little people were ...
— Fun And Frolic • Various
... dimmed by obscure expression, and even slightly staggering continuity of thought. The Rooks may be properly supposed to have taught men to dispute, but not to write. The Swallow teaches building, literally, and the Owl moping, literally; but the Rook does not teach pamphleteering literally. And the 'of old' is redundant, for rhyme's sake, since Rooks hold parliaments now as ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... foliage contrasted with the golden colour of the ripening fields, the whole surmounted by the lofty peaks of Mount Gloucester, and this variety still further enhanced by the undulating outlines of Rook Island, are the chief features of the picture here presented by ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... embracing the vicarage-house, a comfortable residence, surrounded by a large walled-in garden, well stocked with fruit-trees, and sheltered by a fine grove of rook-haunted timber, extended on the one hand over the village, and on the other over the Abbey, and was bounded by the towering and well-wooded heights of Whalley Nab. On the side of the Abbey, the most conspicuous objects were the great north-eastern ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... as if they were dainties, in the alamedas, loaf, scratch, pry where none should pry, go begging with his sores, trade his own soul for his mother's. His pride becomes insolence, his tragedy hideous revolt, his impassivity swinish, his rock of sufficiency a rook of offence. God in His mercy, or the Devil in his despite, ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... characteristic of Dick, too, to call himself Romulus and his friend Remus, meaning no slight, simply because he always took himself for granted as the leading spirit. It had always been so even in the days when they had gone birds'-nesting or rook-shooting together in the woods around John's Devonshire home. Always John had yielded the lead to this freckled Irish cousin (the kinship was, in fact, a remote one and lay on their mother's side through the Ranelagh family); and years had but ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... or political principle by the expenditure of physical force. Anyone at all conversant with philosophical thought, if I may adopt a simile used by Mr. H. G. Wells, "would as soon think of trying to kill the square root of 2 with a rook rifle." Physical violence can only solve purely physical problems. But as man no longer exists, if he ever did exist, in the completely unsocial "state of nature,"[86] the relations of one individual with another are no longer purely physical: their position ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato |
