"Swarm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... starship Star of Fire collided with a meteor swarm six parsecs stellar north of the galactic hub in the year A.D. 2278, it lost its atmosphere within forty-five minutes. At first it was thought that every man, woman and child of the four thousand, one hundred and sixty-six aboard were lost, in this the greatest of all interstellar ...
— A World Called Crimson • Darius John Granger
... buried in Egypt for several reasons. He knew that the soil of Egypt would once swarm with vermin, and it revolted him to think of his corpse exposed to such uncleanness. He feared, moreover, that his descendants might say, "Were Egypt not a holy land, our father Jacob had never permitted himself ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... kind, it was an aggregation of buildings irregular in form and style, and more or less ornate and imposing. A garden stretched around it. The founder, wanting private harborage for his galleys and swarm of lesser boats, dug a basin just inside the city wall, and flooded it with pure Marmoran water; then, for ingress and egress at his sovereign will, he slashed the wall, and of the breach made the Port of Julian. [Footnote: Only a shallow depression in the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... they say, the vision appeared again to Brutus, in the same shape that it did before, but vanished without speaking. But Publius Volumnius, a philosopher, and one that had from the beginning borne arms with Brutus, makes no mention of this apparition, but says that the first eagle was covered with a swarm of bees, and that there was one of the captains whose arm of itself sweated oil of roses, and, though they often dried and wiped it, yet it would not cease; and that immediately before the battle, two eagles falling upon each other fought ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the first time we gave them a volley, checking the advance for a few seconds, while we retreated loading, to turn again, and give them another volley, which checked them again; but only for a few seconds, when they came down upon us like a swarm of bees, right upon our bayonets; and as fast as half-a-dozen fell, half-a-dozen more were ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... Doctor, Isabel, Leander, Come, for you shall add, in a motley swarm, The farce Italian to this ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... will buzz there for three days, for it can contend with the spider in single combat. All this the Seneschal had carefully observed, and he argued further that these gentry flies produce the smaller folk, corresponding among flies to the queen bee in a swarm, and that with their destruction the remnant of those insects would perish. To be sure, neither the housekeeper nor the parish priest had ever believed these deductions of the Seneschal, but held quite different views as to the nature of flies; ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... suitable for anchorage, bathing, night-lines, and what-not, shall have what description is necessary as the story proceeds; but, so far as paying rent was concerned, we might equally well have pitched our tents on any one of a hundred others that clustered about us as thickly as a swarm of bees. ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... waiting brought the climax nearer. The hum of the motors of the airships rose louder on the quiet air, broken only by the faint and distant mutter of the battle that was still being fought miles away. It sounded now like the buzzing of a swarm of bees, magnified a thousand times. And then the field was full of men, rushing from the inn. He wondered how they could have been concealed there. But such wonder was idle, and he did not think of it. Instead ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... truth of our religion in this life is in the steady increase of our secret sinfulness. Christiana had no trouble with her own wicked heart so long as she was a woman of a wicked life. But directly she became a new creature, her heart began to swarm, such is her own expression, with sinful memories, sinful thoughts, and sinful feelings; till she had need of some one ever near her, like Greatheart, constantly to assure her that those cruel and deadly swarms, instead of being a bad sign of her salvation, ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... a stellar missile would not be stopped by them, though its direction of flight might be altered. It would drag the small stars lying close to its course out of their spheres, but the ultimate tendency of its attraction would be to sweep them round in its wake, thus producing rather a star-swarm than a vacancy. Those that were very close to it might be swept away in its rush and become its satellites, careering away with it in its flight into outer space; but those that were farther off, and they would, of course, greatly outnumber the nearer ones, would ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... hornets buzz—and they did swarm and buzz and sting. As long as his wrath lasted he was proof against their assaults—in fact their attacks only confirmed him in his position. It was when all this ceased, for few continued to remonstrate with him after they had heard his final: "I decline to discuss it with you, madame," or ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... "I must help them find his Majesty or they will swarm here like bees. Yet I must see my Nell again to-night. You have bewitched me, wench. Sup with me within the hour—at—Ye Blue Boar Inn. ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... This, it is whispered, is to be a chef-d'oeuvre, enriched by a chronological arrangement, by a celebrated oriental scholar, of all the anecdotes in the Arabian Nights relating to the Caliph. It is, of course, the sun of Madame's patronage that has hatched into noxious life the swarm of sciolists who now infest the Court, and who are sapping the husband's political power while they are establishing the wife's literary reputation. So much for Madame Carolina! I need hardly add that during your short stay at Court you will be delighted with her. If ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... the black horses, and wondering what could be done in the situation in which he found himself, when suddenly the scene changed, and Squire Wenzel Tronka, returning from hare-hunting, dashed into the courtyard, followed by a swarm of knights, grooms, and dogs. The castellan, when asked what had happened, immediately began to speak, and while, on the one hand, the dogs set up a murderous howl at the sight of the stranger, and, on the other, the knights sought to quiet them, he gave the Squire a maliciously ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Their neighbour owls saunter from tree to tree, Or in the hushing half-light mouse the lane Long-winged and lordly. But when those hours wane, Indoors they ponder, scared by the harsh storm Whose pelting saracens on the window swarm, And listen for the mail to clatter past And church clock's deep bay withering on the blast; They feed the fire that flings a freakish light On pictured kings and queens grotesquely bright, Platters and pitchers, faded calendars And graceful hour-glass ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... the Titanic Store, the morning following, her laughter was ready enough. But when the midday hour arrived she slipped into her jacket, past the importunities of Hattie Krakow, and out into the sun-lashed noonday swarm of Sixth Avenue. ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... Radford's indifferent health had caused him to lie in bed so much, it had been impossible to use the room off the store as schoolroom, and so for two hours every evening the family living-room had been invaded by a swarm of more or less unwashed men, whose habits were not always of the ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... o'clock the next morning, and in the mean time, and until the sun shall rise, the steamer is moored before a small island. In that balmy and odorous night myriads of insects cloistered in the leafy shades fill the air with murmurs and drowsy noises. Behind the dark foliage a swarm of fireflies illumines the gloom, until to the looker-on in the river the depths of the solitary island take to themselves the fantastic guise of a great city far away, with its gaslights ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... some of the tools of his trade about. Once he broke a window at the back of Sinning's Hardware Store. In the alley the grey cat crouched behind barrels filled with torn paper and broken bottles above which flew a black swarm of flies. Once when she was alone, and after watching a prolonged and ineffectual outburst on the part of the baker, Elizabeth Willard put her head down on her long white hands and wept. After that she did not look ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... body will be its amazing capacity of speed. Along this line we have even now and here suggestions of wonderful possibilities. You have noticed when on the train the swarm of insects that keep easy pace with your rapid flight. Those insects not only seem to enjoy a race with the train, but to show how easily they could leave you behind, they indulge in all sorts of airy gymnastics, at the same time whirling to and fro, and up and down. What marvellous power ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... I worked as if for a wager, a swarm of amused waiters came buzzing about the garage, bringing chairs, a table, clattering dishes, clinking knives and forks, and silver pails wherein tinkled ice embedding ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... like another. So many avenues, wide or narrow, where the little creatures swarm in strange confusion; these bustling by, important; these halting to pow-wow with one another. These struggling with big burdens; those but basking in the sun. So many granaries stored with food; so many cells where the little things sleep, and eat, and ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... monads nor comprehend why they are in such a perpetual fidget. I declare I know no more why the minds of human beings should be so restlessly agitated about things which, as most of them own, give more pain than pleasure, than I understand why that swarm of gnats, which has such a very short time to live, does not give itself a moment's repose, but goes up and down, rising and falling as if it were on a seesaw, and making as much noise about its insignificant alternations ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... stood; As two spent swimmers that do cling together And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald,— Worthy to be a rebel,—for to that The multiplying villainies of nature Do swarm upon him,—from the Western isles Of kerns and gallowglasses is supplied; And fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling, Show'd like a rebel's whore. But all's too weak; For brave Macbeth,—well he deserves that name,— Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel, Which smok'd ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... fled: upon the river lay a boat: She rowed it on through forests many a mile; A month had passed since then. Midsummer blazed On all things round: the vast, unmoving groves Stretched silent forth their immemorial arms Arching a sultry gloom. Within it buzzed Feebly the insect swarm: the dragon-fly Stayed soon his flight: the streamlet scarce made way: In shrunken pools, panting, the cattle stood, Languidly browsing on the dried-up sprays: No bird-song shook the bower. Alone that maid Glided light-limbed, as though some Eden breeze, Hers only, charioted the songstress on, ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... eye; to study chemistry, and not learn how his bread is made, or mechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to discover new satellites to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes, or to what vagabond he is a satellite himself; or to be devoured by the monsters that swarm all around him, while contemplating the monsters in a drop of vinegar. Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month—the boy who had made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this—or the boy who had attended ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... the verandahs, the green lawn, the picture moved with life. A half-haze, precursive of the twilight, lent scenic softness to the forms of old men puffing their pipes before the doors, a maiden listlessly strolling on the sward, a swarm of children playing near the road, a distant toiler making his way home, bearing his scythe. The visitors went down into the place and Chrysler saw that the artistic shapes and ideal colors were worn with daily use, the men and women, serene-looking, were still the every day mortals ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... at best, the wife of one of her husband's subalterns, or some sister or aunt or widow kept by charity. Round this lady—the stately, proud lady perpetually described by mediaeval poets—flutters the swarm of young men, all day long, in her path: serving her at meals, guarding her apartments, nay, as pages, admitted even into her most secret chamber; meeting her for ever in the narrowness of that castle life, where every unnecessary woman is a burden usurping the place of a soldier, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... had no more than time to turn her head when a thick swarm of bees surrounded her, angry because they had caught her stealing their honey and intent on stinging the girl as a punishment. She knew her danger and expected to be badly injured by the multitude of ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... surprise at the scarlet little figure before him. "I profess, I have never seen the like since my days of vanity, in old King James's time, when I was wont to esteem it a high favour to be admitted to a court mask! There used to be a swarm of these small apparitions in holiday time, and we called them children of the Lord of Misrule. But how gat such a ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lava thrusts onward its wall, One mass down the valley they tramp; Fascine-fill the marsh and the stream; Like hornets they swarm up the ramp, Lancing a breach through the long palisade, Where the rival swarms of the stubborn foe, While the sun goes high and goes down o'er the fight, Sting them back, blow answering blow:— O life-blood lavish as ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... the height of eight or ten feet, and so thick in places that it is difficult to pass through, in the low, swampy grounds in this part of California. These tuile swamps are traversed by a net-work of small, sluggish streams and sloughs, that fairly swarm with wild ducks and geese, and justly entitle them to their local title of "the duck-hunters' paradise." Ere I am through this swamp, the shades of night gather ominously around and settle down like a pall over the half-flooded flats; the road is full of mud-holes and ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... in many parts of the world where there are pools of water. They swarm along the rivers of the sunny south and by the lakes of the far north. The life of one of these troublesome little fellows ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... be crowded into them, and the horrible conditions of their lives. The worst about it is that the facts are all taken from historical records, and are absolutely true. There are some of these places in which the inhabitants of the buildings as they used to swarm in them are reproduced in wax or plaster with every detail of garments, furniture, and all the other features based on actual records or pictures of the time. There is something indescribably dreadful in going through the buildings fitted out in that way. The dumb figures seem to appeal to you ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... sixteen or seventeen doctors; in 1694 that swarm had increased to forty-four. In 1595 there were but five proctors; in 1694 there were forty-three. Yet even in Henry VIII.'s time the proctors were complained of, for being so numerous and clamorous that neither judges nor advocates could be heard. Cranmer, to remedy this evil, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... was never up-stairs in the house in my life," said Maria. Again she gazed away from Lily at the snow-covered hills. Her face wore an expression of forced patience. It really seemed to her as if she were stung by a swarm ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and thoughtful all that day, and performed no miracles except certain provisions for Winch, and the miracle of completing his day's work with punctual perfection in spite of all the bee-swarm of thoughts that hummed through his mind. And the extraordinary abstraction and meekness of his manner was remarked by several people, and made a matter for jesting. For the most part he was thinking ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... victor, mighty lord! Low on his funeral couch he lies!{22} No pitying heart, no eye, afford A tear to grace his obsequies. Is the sable warrior{23} fled? Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead. The swarm, that in thy noontide beam were born, Gone to salute the rising morn. Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,{24} While proudly riding o'er the azure realm In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes; Youth on the prow, and Pleasure ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... A swarm of robber-porters invaded the steamer the moment we came alongside the pier. The bustle, the loud shouting, the pushing, seemed most irritating. Ill as I was, for a few moments I almost contemplated the idea of turning back toward the virgin forest. ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... cause, let us not be an injury to it. Let us view this Continent as a country marked out by the great God of nature as a receptacle for distress, and where the industrious and virtuous may range in the fields of freedom, happy under their own fig trees, freed from a swarm of petty tyrants, who disgrace countries the most polished and civilized, and who more particularly infest that region from ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... the enchantments of fairyland and its illusions there united. The temple, situated in the midst of the lake, was splendidly illuminated, and the water reflected its columns of fire. A multitude of beautiful boats furrowed this lake, which seemed on fire, manned by a swarm of Cupids, who appeared to sport with each other in the rigging. Musicians concealed on board played melodious airs; and this harmony, at once gentle and mysterious, which seemed to spring from the ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... east of town. Big swarm of combat contragravity working on something on the ground. And ...
— Oomphel in the Sky • Henry Beam Piper
... directly opposite me, its flame seeming like a red-hot knife rending the mist. This had barely vanished when a sudden cheer rang out upon my left, and I turned in time to behold a thin, scattered line of gray-clad infantrymen swarm down the steep slope into the valley. With hats drawn low, and guns advanced, they plunged at a run into the mist and disappeared. Our skirmishers had gone in; the ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... Lots of chickens get lost, too, an' you find them wanderin' about in the woods, belongin' to nobody, an' there's plenty of nests that hens lay astray that the farmers never could find. If you watch the bees closely, there's nearly always some swarm that's got away an' made a nest in a dead tree. The trouble is that most people are too busy to lie still all day an' watch, an' those that ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... shore, had been attacking them in the water; and had caught three large ones, and broken my harpoon. They had also been scratching out some of the holes, of which the upper part of the sandy beach was full; from one they filled a hat with turtles eggs, and from another took a swarm of young ones, not broader than a crown piece, which I found crawling in every part of the boat. It was then past sunset, and numbers of turtle were collected, waiting only for our departure to take the beach; I therefore hastened to the ship, and ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... the tunnel," said Ozma, pointing to a part of the ground just before the Forbidden Fountain, "and in a few moments the dreadful invaders will break through the earth and swarm over the land. Let us all stand on the other side of the Fountain and watch to see ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... that, upon the whole, and taking the operations in their entirety, such formations were an error. In case after case, a swarm of Germans advancing against inferior numbers got home after a third, a half, or even more than a half of their men had fallen in the first few minutes of the rush. But in many, many more cases this tactical experiment failed. Those who ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... irregularly, sometimes two and three abreast, masking each other's fire. On the other hand, even this irregularity had some compensations, for a British vessel, attempting to pass through at such a place, fell at once into a swarm of enemies. From horn to horn was about five miles. Owing to the lightness of the breeze, the allies carried a good deal of sail, a departure from the usual battle practice. This was necessary in ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... "Some managed to swarm up by the cable on to the bows, but three men who were stationed there disposed of them before enough could gain a footing to be dangerous. The captain had been keeping the guns in reserve in case the ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... What do you think of that? We'll teach these magnates that they cannot ride roughshod over the rights of the commoners, confound them! And I've closed the wood where the Fernworthy folk used to picnic. These infernal people seem to think that there are no rights of property, and that they can swarm where they like with their papers and their bottles. Both cases decided, Dr. Watson, and both in my favour. I haven't had such a day since I had Sir John Morland for trespass because he ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... fording a certain river, found his body covered all over by a swarm of small leeches, busily sucking his blood. His first impulse was to tear the tormentors from his flesh: but his servant warned him that to pull them off by mechanical violence would expose his life to danger. They must not be torn off, lest portions remain in the wounds and become a poison; they ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... the cautious, restrictive, limiting nature of this advice! Observe the lack of largeness, freedom and generosity in it. Dr. Wayland, I am sure, has never specialized just such a regimen for the poor Italians, Hungarians or Irish, who swarm, in lowly degradation, in immigrant ships to our shores. No! for them he wants, all Americans want, the widest, largest culture of the land; the instant opening, not simply of the common schools; and then an easy passage to the bar, the legislature, and even the ...
— Civilization the Primal Need of the Race - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Paper No. 3 • Alexander Crummell
... latter being itself binary; Nova Andromedae, a "new'' star, discovered in the nebula by C. E. A. Hartwig in 1885, and subsequently spectroscopically examined by many observers; R Andromedae, a regularly variable star; and the Andromedids, a meteoric swarm, associated with Biela's comet, and having their radiant in this constellation ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... this time thou hast been going about with me thou hast never found out that all things belonging to knights-errant seem to be illusions and nonsense and ravings, and to go always by contraries? And not because it really is so, but because there is always a swarm of enchanters in attendance upon us that change and alter everything with us, and turn things as they please, and according as they are disposed to aid or destroy us; thus what seems to thee a barber's basin seems to me Mambrino's helmet, and to another it will seem something else; ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... contributed prizes to thousands of the scholars; and let no one omit to call to mind what these children were, whence they came, and whither they were going without this merciful intervention. They would have been added to the perilous swarm of the wild, the lawless, the wretched, and the ignorant, instead of being, as by God's blessing they are, decent and comfortable, earning an honest livelihood, and adorning the community to which they ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Belliform, Her Og, Her Monstrous. Fled what force she had To buckle the jaw-gape, wide agog For the Preconcerted One, The Anticipated, ripe to clinch the whole; Queen-bee to hive the hither and thither volant swarm. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... preparation, severed the limb and carefully lowered it within the deacon's reach. I was surprised, and felt repaid for my trouble, to see with what ease and unconcern Dea. Hubbard, with his bare hands, scooped and brushed the swarm of bees into a sheet he had prepared, and how readily he got them into a vacant hive. Many thanks did the deacon proffer me for my timely assistance, and moreover insisted on my staying with him to dine. It seemed to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... must go! We must not have a riot here to-day. There's no telling what will happen. A disturbance now, and my men will swarm into town to-night. For God's sake go, until ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... to you, unpermitted, from those who cajole each other, and I show you my heart. Love me! love me! leave this keeper, who is but an old woman, and you shall be a priestess in Carthage, and the people shall swarm around and cast their jewels and wealth before you, for the deity—that shall be you alone; and we shall feast and love and love and feast again in such splendour as not even Carthage ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... horse-shoe arch at the entrance to a lovely cloistered court, with a sparkling fountain surrounded by orange trees with fruit of all shades from green to gold. Servants in white garments and scarlet fezzes, black, brown, or white (by courtesy), seemed to swarm in all directions; and one of them called a youth in European garb, but equally dark-faced with the rest, and not too good an English scholar. However, he conducted them through a still more beautiful court, lined with brilliant mosaics in the spandrels of the exquisite arches ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... about three o'clock on Thursday morning; the air was full of the strange, dim light of the foam and the stars, and I could very plainly see the black swarm of men in the top and rigging of the mizzenmast. I was looking that way, when a great sea fell upon the hull of the ship with a fearful crash; a moment after, the mainmast went. It fell quickly, and ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... are the opportunities of Kensington Gardens—the Round Pond, the winding Serpentine, the mysterious seclusion of the Dutch brick Palace! Genii swarm there. One jostles possibilities. It is a land of romance, bounded on the north by the Abyss of Bayswater, and on the south by the Amphitheatre of the Albert Hall. But for a centre of adventure I choose the Long Walk; it beckoned me somewhat as the North-West ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... intelligence, sometimes of exceptional ability, who do not labour under the above disadvantages. These are the people of whom we hear: "He works badly, he has the genius of inaccuracy." Their catalogues, their editions, their regesta, their monographs swarm with imperfections, and never inspire confidence; try as they may, they never attain, I do not say absolute accuracy, but any decent degree of accuracy. They are subject to "chronic inaccuracy," a disease of which the English historian Froude is a typical and celebrated ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... may be bought new for a few shillings, has swamped English makers of cheap instruments, of which there are by this time five times as many in the market as there is any occasion for. Hence it is that Fiddles meet us everywhere; they cumber the toy-shop; they house with the furniture dealer; they swarm by thousands in the pawnbrokers' stores, and block out the light from his windows; they hang on the tobacconists' walls; they are raffled at public-houses; and they form an item ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... and the new colony, pitching on the window-sill, was making its way into the room when the horrified nurse shut down the sash. If that well-meaning woman had only abstained from her ill-timed interference, the swarm might have settled on my lips, and I should have been endowed with that mellifluous eloquence which, in this country, leads far more surely than worth, capacity, or honest work, to the highest places in Church and State. But ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... to see the commanding general the oldest person in the party. I was then forty-one years of age, while my medical director was gray-haired and probably twelve or more years my senior. The crowds would generally swarm around him, and thus give me an opportunity of quietly dismounting and getting into the house. It also gave me an opportunity of hearing passing remarks from one spectator to another about their general. Those remarks were apt to be more complimentary to the cause than to the appearance ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... "A swarm of bees came singing through the room last night, my mother. It was dark and I could not see, but there was a sweet smell, and I ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... church, the men go away; the women swarm out more grudgingly and come to a standstill together; then all the ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... lightly, and with ever so kindly an intention, and he is sure to wince. The skin of the man of letters is peculiarly sensitive to the bite of the critical mosquito; and he lives in a climate in which such mosquitoes swarm. He is seldom stabbed to the heart—he is ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... became aware of a curious humming sound in the air. The cause was soon apparent and the mystery that had puzzled them was solved when they reached the beast. The carcase was covered with bees while close above it hummed a swarm of others watching for an exposed place to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... the top of the ridge where his den was, and killing as he went. He had tasted too much; his feet grew heavier than they had ever been before. He thought angrily that he would have to sleep another whole day. And to sleep a whole day, while the wilderness was just beginning to swarm with life, filled ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... endless groves of date palms, with masses of yellow dates. The creeks are embanked with brick and lined with popular cafe's where incredible numbers of Arabs squat and eat or drink huggas and hacshish and the like. The creeks and river swarm with bhellums and mahilas. A bhellum is a cross between a gondola and a Canada canoe: and a mahila is a barge like the ones used by King Arthur, Elaine or the Lady of Shallott: and its course and destination are ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... M. Annaeus Mela, brother of Seneca the philosopher and dramatist, and son of Seneca the rhetorician. Mela was a wealthy man,[246] and in 40 A.D. removed with his family to Rome. His son (whose future as a great poet is said to have been portended by a swarm of bees that settled on the cradle and the lips of the bard that was to be[247]) received the best education that Rome could bestow. He showed extraordinary precocity in all the tricks of declamatory rhetoric, ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... my cabin yesterday before dinner, I observed a swarm of white flies with long wings, by the side of one of my open ports. I found out that they were white ants which had burst through the wood- work, and which seem to be provided with wings under such circumstances, in order that they may migrate. The wood-work inside near the place from which ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... were strewn roses and lotus-lilies. On either side of her, seated on the ground, were young girls gorgeously clad and veiled to the eyes in the Egyptian fashion, and as the staring, heated and impetuous swarm of "travelling" English and Americans came face to face with her in her marvellous beauty, they were for the moment stricken spellbound, and could scarcely summon up the necessary assurance to advance and take the hand she outstretched to them in ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... general survey of the world's past history, we see that, by a species of fatality—by a law, that is, whose workings we cannot trace—there issue from time to time out of the frozen bosons of the North vast hordes of uncouth savages—brave, hungry, countless—who swarm into the fairer southern regions determinedly, irresistibly; like locusts winging their flight into a green land. How such multitudes come to be propagated in countries where life is with difficulty ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... circles of the' abyss, Spirit, that swell'd so proudly 'gainst his God, Not him, who headlong fell from Thebes. He fled, Nor utter'd more; and after him there came A centaur full of fury, shouting, "Where Where is the caitiff?" On Maremma's marsh Swarm not the serpent tribe, as on his haunch They swarm'd, to where the human face begins. Behind his head upon the shoulders lay, With open wings, a dragon breathing fire On whomsoe'er he met. To me my guide: "Cacus is this, who underneath the rock Of Aventine spread oft a lake of blood. He, from his ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Frewen, and know what desperate cut-throats are those of the Western Pacific Groups. Two small trading vessels of my own have been cut off within the last five years, and every soul massacred, and the vessels looted and then burnt. It is a most difficult matter to keep a swarm of natives off the decks of a vessel with a low freeboard, all they have to do is to step out of their canoes over the rail, and if they are bent on mischief they can simply overpower a small vessel's company by mere weight of numbers. You will be surprised to hear that, ...
— John Frewen, South Sea Whaler - 1904 • Louis Becke
... had served them other things beside clam chowder. There were pork chops and apple sauce, there were muffins and honey and apple pie, and when they had finished, the once full table looked as if a swarm of locusts had ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... enter the insanely stupid official head to doubt whatever excuse we may choose to give. Not only are we German women and therefore sheep, but we are Red Cross nurses.... And remember that nearly all the men who are still in the factories are Socialists—and that women swarm in ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... the maelstroom of an overgrown metropolis, to glide into scenes of "calm contemplation and poetic ease;" although much of the journey lies through avenues of bricks and mortar, and trim roads that swarm with busy toil. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... was stillborn. The turf did not burn well and the swallows shunned the eaves, feeling, in nature's occult way, that the essential rhythm was wanting. Nor would bees be happy in the skips, but must swarm otherward. One would have said the house was built ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... place of capture is not given, nor any data sufficient to fix it, it is probable that quite one third belonged to this trade. This evidences the scale, both of the commerce itself and of its pursuers, justifying a contemporary statement that "the West Indies swarm with American privateers;" and it suggests also that many of the seizures were local traders between the islands, or at least vessels taking their chance on short runs. On the other hand, the stringency with which the local officials enforced the Convoy Act was shown, generally, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... offices of the "Boston Transcript" the way was long, strange, and full of perils; but I kept resolutely on up Hanover Street, being familiar with that part of my route, till I came to a puzzling corner. There I stopped, utterly bewildered by the tangle of streets, the roar of traffic, the giddy swarm of pedestrians. With the precious manuscript tightly clasped, I balanced myself on the curbstone, afraid to plunge into the boiling vortex of the crossing. Every time I made a start, a clanging street car snatched up the way. I could not ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... water, the well-kept lawns, the deep vistas of the pathways, and the broad open spaces, all lent an air of luxurious grandeur to the panorama. A few carriages, very few at that early hour, were ascending the avenue, while a stream of bewildered, bustling people, suggesting a swarm of ants, plunged into the huge archway of the ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... awaits the crisis of the night. Led by the gallant young Muiron, the reserve sweeps into the gorge of death; Muiron, Buonaparte, and Dugommier hack their way through the same embrasure: their men swarm in on the overmatched red-coats and Spaniards, cut them down at their guns, and the redoubt ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... swearing," he wrote the copyist in reference to the A minor Quartet. Elsewhere he complains about the carelessness of the publishers of his earlier quartets, which are "full of mistakes and errata great and small. They swarm like ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... beyond doubt, a dozen, and coming this way, and these, too, have a couple of horses. Can they have overpowered his men, ambushed and murdered them, then secured their mounts? Is the whole Chiricahua tribe, reinforced by a swarm from the Sierra Blanca, concentrating on him now? The silence about him is ominous. Not an Indian has shown along the range for half an hour, and now these fellows to the east are close to the copse. In less than twenty minutes there will be five times his puny force around him. ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... which British aviators are prepared to swarm to the attack has been responsible for a display of commendable ingenuity on the part of the German airman. Nature has provided some of its creatures, such as the octopus, for instance, with the ways and means of ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... politeness, genteel and graceful address, and that 'exterieur brilliant' which they cannot withstand. There is a sort of men so like women, that they are to be taken just in the same way; I mean those who are commonly called FINE MEN; who swarm at all courts; who have little reflection, and less knowledge; but, who by their good breeding, and 'train-tran' of the world, are admitted into all companies; and, by the imprudence or carelessness of their superiors, pick up secrets worth knowing, which are ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... devour us! If, by the least divergence from the path, we should be snared in a morass, see, where those myriads of scarlet vermin scour the border of the thicket! Once helpless, how they would swarm together to the assault! What could man do against a thousand of such mailed assailants? And what a death were that, to perish alive under ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... road agents?" suggested a bystander; "they just swarm on galloper's Ridge, and they 'held up' the down stage only ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... Exposing the poor trick of earth and star With worshipp'd snouts oracular; Prophets to whose blind stare The heavens the glory of God do not declare, Skill'd in such question nice As why one conjures toads who fails with lice, And hatching snakes from sticks in such a swarm As quite to surfeit Aaron's bigger worm; A nation which has got A lie in her right hand, And knows it not; With Pharaohs to her mind, each drifting as a log Which way the foul stream flows, More harden'd the more plagued with fly and frog! How should sad Exile sing in such a Land? How ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... north and south, the procession was without break or pause. They told us they could bring into the field 100,000 fighting men, and their people, they said, was "like the sand of the sea." Never before or since have I seen such a swarm of human beings—"a multitude that no man could number." Any trans-Jordanic colony would have to calculate on the proximity of this horde, whose power has never been broken, not even by Joshua nor Ibrahim Pasha, and whose rule in their own land is supreme in virtue of their resistless ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... seven first years of his pacific reign, Made him and half his nation Englishmen. Scots from the northern frozen banks of Tay, With packs and plods came whigging all away, Thick as the locusts which in Egypt swarm'd, With pride and hungry hopes completely arm'd; With native truth, diseases, and no money, Plunder'd our Canaan of the milk and honey; Here they grew quickly lords and gentlemen, And all ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... inclined; many were holiday seekers out for the day. The gates of Novy Afon are open to all, even to the Mahometan or the Pagan. It was a beautiful cloudless morning when I arrived at this most wonderful monastery in the Russian world—a cluster of white churches on a hill, a swarm of factories and workshops, cedar avenues, orchards, vineyards, and, above all, tree-covered mountains crowned by grey towers and ancient ruins, the whole looking ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... and the population fluctuates from place to place with a facility surprising to Europeans. It is only necessary to make a clearing in the jungle, and erect barracks for a few soldiers, and—as water rushes at once into hollows scooped in the damp sea-sand—so do the natives of India swarm into the clearing, and create a city.' To this new city of Amherst Mr. and Mrs. Boardman came in the spring of 1827, and joined Mr. and Mrs. Wade and Mr. Judson. It was bitterly painful to them to learn that the wife of the latter, that noble ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... of 'em worth a mint o' money. Bad luck!" he continues, in a tone of spiteful vexation. "A mine o' wealth, an' no chance to work it! Ef we only had the ship by us now, we could put a good thousan' dollars' worth o' thar pelts into it. Jest see how they swarm out yonder! An' tame as pet tabby cats! There's enough of 'em to supply seal-skin jackets fur nigh all the ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... had undergone more dull days than they had, contrived to get through it by torturing Adeline with utter silence of all tidings from the East, and by a swarm of suitors, with the fantastic Viscount foremost. She never was awake from her dream until Mr. Holdsworth came to dinner, and was so straightforward and easy that he thawed ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... invitation was likely to bring half London within his doors appears from Fielding's own description of the condition of the capital at the time. "There is not a street," he declares, speaking of Westminster, "which doth not swarm all day with beggars, and all night with thieves. Stop your coach at what shop you will, however expeditious the tradesman is to attend you, a beggar is commonly beforehand with him; and if you should directly face his door the tradesman must often turn his ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... by a swarm of men in evening dress, sat a grey-haired woman, watching the fight with interest through a gold-rimmed lorgnette. Her eyes twinkled as heavy blows were delivered, and when one of the men began to bleed copiously from the nose, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... and success. He attacked Swift, as he used to do upon all occasions. The Tale of a Tub is so much superiour to his other writings, that one can hardly believe he was the authour of it[934]: 'there is in it such a vigour of mind, such a swarm of thoughts, so much of nature, and art, and life[935].' I wondered to hear him say of Gulliver's Travels, 'When once you have thought of big men and little men, it is very easy to do all the rest.' I endeavoured to make a stand for Swift, and tried to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... no time to think of the questions, even. He ducked into the thin swarm of a few people leaving a theater just as the pursuing group rounded the corner, with the slim young man ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... evening some of the soldiers went down to our little town (then called Belmont, afterwards Windsor), brought back to the camp with them the hollow trunk of a tree containing a swarm of bees, and laid it down to take out the honey. Mrs. Hammond, the wife of our nearest neighbor on the east, who lived but a short distance from the camp, thinking that they were planting a cannon, became frightened and came over to our house with her two little children. She was afraid ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... in turning his back on the world of people and flying to commune with God, nature, and himself, in solitude, can he attain the mystical peace he longs for. The social world which becomes an obsession to Trafford, his hero, is made to swarm about him through the inevitable net of marriage—although it is marriage to a fascinating woman whom he still loves. At first he had sacrificed his scientific ideal to the domestic and material needs. He had abandoned research in order to make Marjorie ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... east through the ruins. Here and there little shops had opened; eating houses for the army of rehabilitation. They seemed to Frank symbols of renewed life in the blackened waste, like tender, green shoots in a flame-ravaged forest. Sightseers were beginning to swarm through the burned ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... the regatta—noon—the sun just overhead. The boats draw up in line on the sparkling river, before a tent gaudy with streamers. On the bank the mayor with his staff of office, gendarmes in yellow shoulder-belts, and a swarm of summer dresses, open parasols, and straw hats. Bang! the signal-gun is fired. The Marsouin shoots ahead of all her competitors and easily gains the prize—and no fatigue! We go around Marne, and, returning, dine at Creteil. How cool the evening ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... made it the theme of many an Indian story. Only one legend now survives. The lake has always been, and is now, well stocked with fish, and it is in places so deep that the Indians thought it unfathomable. With a curious kind of veneration they believed that the Great Spirit brought the fish that swarm in its waters, and kept them under his special care. Even when the whites came upon the scene the red men clung to their superstition, and would not catch nor eat the fish, believing them ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... of the discoveries of their predecessors, our late navigators have enriched geographical knowledge with a long catalogue of their own. The Pacific Ocean, within the south tropic, repeatedly traversed, in every direction, was found to swarm with a seemingly endless profusion of habitable spots of land. Islands scattered through the amazing space of near fourscore degrees of longitude, separated at various distances, or grouped in numerous ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... thoughtful eyes, and he and Meryl had talked much together during her short stay. "The nobility of the bee is not found much among humans. In all the annals of the race, is there anything to compare with their service to the coming swarm?" ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... of hell and show themselves in such ugly shape as damned wretches shall see them; and if, with that hideous howling that those hell-hounds should screech, they should lay hell open on every side round about our feet, so that as we stood we should look down into that pestilent pit and see the swarm of poor souls in the terrible torments there—we would wax so afraid of the sight that we should scantly remember that we saw ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... out of a room or building and keeps the atmosphere within pure and sweet. The excessive vital force which radiates from the body drives out poisonous gases, deleterious microbes and effete matter thus tending to preserve a healthy condition. It also prevents armies of disease germs, which swarm about in the atmosphere, from entering; upon the same principle that a fly cannot wing its way into a building through the exhaust fan. Thus it serves a most beneficent purpose even after it has been utilized in our body and is returning to the ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... come And Khiva, and ferment the milk of mares.[177-9] Next, the more temperate Toorkmuns of the south, The Tukas, and the lances of Salore, And those from Attruck and the Caspian sands; Light men and on light steeds, who only drink The acrid milk of camels, and their wells. And then a swarm of wandering horse, who came From far, and a more doubtful service own'd; The Tartars of Ferghana, from the banks Of the Jaxartes, men with scanty beards And close-set skullcaps; and those wilder hordes Who roam o'er Kipchak and the northern waste, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester |
