"Weathercock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Lynne, the mile of road was very solitary, being much overshadowed with trees. One house alone stood there, and that was about three-quarters of a mile before you came to East Lynne. It was on the left hand side, a square, ugly, red brick house with a weathercock on the top, standing some little distance from the road. A flat lawn extended before it, and close to the palings, which divided it from the road, was a grove of trees, some yards in depth. The lawn was divided by a narrow middle gravel path, to which you gained access from the portico of ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... trees, with some extensive stabling and cart-sheds on the left, and on the right hand the entrance to the cellars. Facing us is an unpretending-looking edifice, where the firm has its counting-houses, with a little corner tower surmounted by a characteristic weathercock consisting of a figure of Bacchus seated astride a cask beneath a vine-branch, and holding up a bottle in one hand and a goblet in the other. The old Remish Commanderie of the Knights Templars existed until the epoch of the Great Revolution, and to-day a few ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... happily burlesques by describing Harvey under a yew-tree at Trinity-hall, composing verses on the weathercock of Allhallows in Cambridge:— ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Cai, and laughed in pure pleasure of heart. "Come along, man—or you'll be makin' me Prime Minister before we get to the Ship. . . Yes, yon's the church—Established. You can tell by the four spikes an' the weathercock; like-wise by the tombstones. But they bury folks up the hill nowadays." He paused—"That ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... convictions—such a man is a mere article of the world's furniture—a thing moved, instead of a living and moving being—an echo, not a voice. The man who has no inner life is the slave of his surroundings, as the barometer is the obedient servant of the air at rest, and the weathercock the humble servant of the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... animals, of exactly the same size, done in cross stitch, in such bright grass-green worsted that it quite set your teeth on edge to look at it. Besides these, there was a little round stove, with a long stove pipe, that came out on top of the caravan, and ended with a flourishing weathercock, representing a fat old woman in a high gale, with her umbrella turned inside out; which moved when the smoke came puffing up harder than usual, and had no connection whatever with any wind ...
— Funny Little Socks - Being the Fourth Book • Sarah. L. Barrow
... expense of truth, just as you now are, in your mad vindication of Romanism. A tool for others to work with, till you have found yourself in a condition to use such tools as you yourself have been, you are now a trimmer and weathercock, leading on men of less sense than yourself, to such distinction as interest and ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... Mr. Welch replied to the lawyer's attack, pronouncing him to be "destitute of delicacy, decency, good manners, sound judgment, honesty, manhood, and humanity; a poltroon, a cat's-paw, the infamous tool of a party, a partisan, a political weathercock, and a ragamuffin." ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... lost all her fears of John Jay's dying. Although the promise made to George on the haymow was faithfully kept, he could no more avoid getting into mischief than a weathercock can keep from turning when ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... compelled to scud along before the gale, shorn of all the impressiveness of their wonted solemn gait, holding, perchance, their shovel-hat firmly on with both hands; and finally, there is neither pathos nor glory in having your head broken by a chimney-pot, or volant weathercock. No, the wide sea is an emblem of all that is deceitful and false, smiling most blandly when preparing to devour you; and the wind is only one shade more respectable—nay, perchance the worse of the two; for the waters, in the self-justifying, neighbour-condemning spirit, apparently inherent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... always think—as I did think then—that the wisdom of its action and the wisdom of its abstinence from action were very good. And now again the fields in Ireland are green, and the markets are busy, and money is chucked to and fro like a weathercock which the players do not wish to have abiding with them; and the tardy speculator going over to look for a bit of land comes back muttering angrily that fancy prices are demanded. "They'll run you up to thirty-three years' purchase," says the tardy speculator, thinking, as ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... moment he was filled with his unworthiness and wonder that so noble a creature as a woman should bend her heart and lips from her heaven down to his earth. The next he could not conceive any man should be such a witless ass as to stake his happiness on the steadiness of so manifest a weathercock as a woman's favour. It was all very strange talk; it opened to me, just as when a fog lifts and rolls down again, a momentary vision of a world of colours in which I had no share; and to tell the truth it left me with a suspicion which has recurred again and ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... flesh and blood?" said Joe. "Sell? What's thy mare's nest now, thou weathercock? One wouldn't think that butter wad melt in thy mouth sometimes, and ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... indeed. "He is as beautiful as a weathercock," remarked one of the Town Councillors who wished to gain a reputation for having artistic tastes; "only not quite so useful," he added, fearing lest people should think him unpractical, which he really ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde
... up at him, a pygmy flashed with sun. A weathercock or scarecrow or both things in one? As bright as a jewelled crown hung ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... looked out of the carriage-window as the train whirled rapidly through the scarcely-awakened country, and she had seen the soft and beautiful landscapes of the South lit up by the early sunlight. How the bright little villages shone, with here and there a gilt weathercock glittering on the spire of some small gray church, while as yet in many valleys a pale gray mist lay along the bed of the level streams or clung to the dense woods on the upland heights! Which was the more beautiful—the sharp, clear picture, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... men and with seasons. What was infamy in Espartero and Zurbano, is heroism and glory in Narvaez and Prim. What is more infamous than all this is the press, that thus displays itself in the light of a moral weathercock, ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... the summer time I thrust back the curtain, to watch the sunrise stealing down a steeple, which stands opposite my chamber-window. First, the weathercock begins to flash; then, a fainter lustre gives the spire an airy aspect; next it encroaches on the tower, and causes the index of the dial to glisten like gold, as it points to the gilded figure of the hour. Now, the loftiest window gleams, and now the lower. The carved framework of the portal ...
— Sunday at Home (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Toby—would you believe it?—he turned round last holidays and said—'Look here, Tiny, if the wind changes when you're making that face it'll stay there, and remember you can't squint properly and keep your eye on the weathercock at the same time ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... American fowl, like the more domestic weathercock, may often be seen wheeling through the air on the approach of a storm, and exhibits unmistakable signs of exultation when it is going to thunder. It is not a bird of song, but is unsurpassed as a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... square; on the top of these place three more dove-cots, also back to back; above these set up two more dove-cots, and one on the top of all, with a short steeple above it, and a spire with an enormous weathercock on the top of that, and the building will not be a bad model of a Norwegian church, especially if you paint the sides white, and ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... whose heart With brave Allies has taken part, Be not a weathercock to change With these wild winds ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... his own belief. The primary question respecting men is this,—How far are they affected by the original axiomatic truths? Truths are like the winds. Near the earth's surface winds blow in variable directions, and the weathercock becomes the type of fickleness. So there is a class of little truths, dependent upon ever-variable relations, with which it is the function of cunning, shrewdness, tact, to deal, and numbers of men seldom or never lift their heads ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... Labrador. There, too, and in similar colors, is the long chapel, on the centre of whose roof there is a belfry, which looks like two thirds of immense red egg, drawn up at the top into a spindle, and this surmounted by a weathercock,—as if some giant had attempted to blow the egg from beneath, and had only blown out of it this small bird with a stick to stand on! Ah, yes! and there is the pig-sty,—not in keeping with the rest, by any means! It must be that they keep a pig only now and then, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... would have it, I could again set up the Church of God, willingly I would do it. But I see that there is not one man—save maybe some poor simple souls—that would have this done. Each man is set to save his skin and his goods—and you are such a weathercock that I should never blow you to a firm quarter. For what am I set against ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... for Mary's white hairs, the dinner-hour was as changeable as a weathercock. We dined anywhere from seven to nine, and soothed each other's irritation by calling ostentatious attention to the delicacy and perfection of each dish as it came on the table. Why shouldn't each be perfect, forsooth, when no amount of coaxing or persuading, ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... Weeds had started up between the stone slabs of the steps, and the roses blossomed out sweet and profuse, for it was the time of roses, amid convolvulus and campion. The quaint old dove-cot near the house had almost disappeared behind the trees that had crowded up round it, and held aloft its weathercock in silent protest at their encroachment. The stables close at hand, with their worn-out clock and silent bell, were tenantless. The coach-houses were full of useless old chariots and carriages. Into one splendid court coach the ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... old king, worn out with prayers and tears, perceived that it was easier to melt a leaden weathercock on its steeple than a spoiled child in pursuit of his whim, he heaved a deep sigh and determined to let Carlino go; and giving him counsels to which he scarcely listened, several bags filled with guineas, which were rather better received than the counsels, and two trusty servants, the ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... return to France and the throne of his ancestors. She had returned with authority to organize the conspiracy of the royalists, and to give them the king's sanction. Talleyrand, the minister of Napoleon, the glittering weathercock in politics, had already experienced a change in disposition, in consequence of the shifting political wind, and when Countess Ducayla, provided with secret instructions for Talleyrand from Louis XVIII., entered his cabinet and said in a loud voice, ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... Aylmer that almighty man, The county God—in whose capacious hall, Hung with a hundred shields, the family tree Sprang from the midriff of a prostrate king— Whose blazing wyvern weathercock'd the spire, Stood from his walls and wing'd his entry-gates And swang besides on many a windy sign— Whose eyes from under a pyramidal head Saw from his windows nothing save his own— What lovelier of his own had he than her, His only child, his Edith, whom he loved As heiress and ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... was one by the village clock, When he galloped into Lexington. He saw the gilded weathercock Swim in the moonlight as he passed, And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare, Gaze at him with a spectral glare, As if they already stood aghast At the bloody work they ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... just—aye, and a godly! He hath restored our church weathercock an' all an' set up a fine, large and fair pillory on the green. Lunnon couldn't show a finer, wi' stocks an' cucking-stool ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... stand there and look me in the face and tell me that you are false as that! You can confess to me that you will change like a weathercock;—be his one day, and then mine, and his again the next! You can own that you give yourself about first to one man, and then to another, just as may suit you at the moment! I would not have believed ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... may be added, that Dub-a-dub is found in Halliwell's Arch. Gloss. with the definition, "To beat a drum; also, the blow on the drum. 'The dub-a-dub of honour.' Woman is a weathercock, p. 21., there used metaphorically." Mr. Halliwell might also have cited ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... from carelessness, haste or want of revision. From the same causes may spring, too, sundry anachronisms of expression, such as "For God's sake;" vulgarisms like "Leave me alone" for "Let me alone;" extraordinary commonplaces, as in the comparison of popular favor to a weathercock, and of woman's love to a flower worn, then thrown aside; and a constant lapsing from the energy and spirit of the dialogue into flatness, familiarity and triviality. There is an occasional not unwholesome coarseness which recalls Mr. Story's Elizabethan masters, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... that beside them the writhing figures in Dore's illustrations of the Inferno would have straightened into tailor's dummies. The statue of Diana on the tower of the Garden—its constancy shown by its weathercock ways, its innocence by the coating of gold that it has acquired, its devotion to style by its single, graceful flying scarf, its candour and artlessness by its habit of ever drawing the long bow, its metropolitanism by its posture ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... help Heaven was to send him in this matter. There was, in the lower House, a young man by the name of Harper, a lawyer from Brighton, who was sufficiently eccentric not to carry a pass. The light of fame, as the sunset gilds a weathercock on a steeple, sometimes touches such men for an instant and makes them immortal. The name of Mr. Harper is remembered, because it is linked with a greater one. But Mr. Harper was the first man over ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... girl—may well call it a tangle. It is a diabolical cat's-cradle. My only hope, my dear, is in a new and practically untried man—Abraham Lincoln. The South is one in opinion—we are perplexed by the fears of commerce and are split. There you have all my wisdom. Read the news, but not the weathercock essays called editorials. Oh! I forgot to tell the Squire that Tom, my young doctor, has passed the Army Board and is awaiting ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... pushed into my hand by Hadji Ali just in time to take the shoulder of the last of the herd, who had already charged headlong after his comrades, and was disappearing in the jungle. Bang! went the "Baby;" round I spun like a weathercock, with the blood pouring from my nose, as the recoil had driven the sharp top of the hammer deep into the bridge. My "Baby" not only screamed, but kicked viciously. However, I knew that the elephant must be bagged, as the ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... brother! Brooding on fancy's eggs. God did not send The light that all day long gladdened the earth, Flashed from the snowy peak, and on the spire Transformed the weathercock into a star, That you should gloom within stone walls all day. At dawn to-morrow, take your staff, and come: We will salute the breezes, as they rise And leave their lofty beds, laden with odours Of melting snow, and fresh damp earth, and moss— Imprisoned spirits, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... reader, a glorious Latitudinarian, that can, as to religion, turn and twist like an eel on the hook; or rather like the weathercock ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... a hawthorn-bush, Watched on the fairies flaxen-tressed The fires of the morning flush. Till, as a mist, their beauty died, Their singing shrill and fainter grew; And daylight tremulous and wide Flooded the moorland through and through; Till Urdon's copper weathercock Was reared in golden flame afar, And dim from moonlit dreams awoke The towers and ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... half-petulantly. "Of course I know you are as changeable as a weathercock, Manuela. But as you were saying, if we had a few nails, we should do well enough here. I will go ask the ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... levity is incorrigible. France is beaten, discredited among nations, naked to her enemies. She lies here, between England and Prussia, as in a vise. God summons you, a Frenchman, to reign in Noumaria, and in addition affords you a chance to marry that weathercock of Badenburg's daughter. Ah, He never spoke more clearly, Louis. And you would reply with a shallow jest! Why, Badenburg and Noumaria just bridge that awkward space between France and Austria. Your accession would confirm the Empress,—Gaston de Puysange has it in her own ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... Dolly was blithe and bland, he grew radiant, exercised within an inch of his life as a vent for his emotions, and people went home declaring gymnastics to be the crowning triumph of the age; and when Dolly was capricious, Mr. Bopp, became a bewildered weathercock, changing as the wind changed, and dire was the confusion ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... all the while with cold, I opened my eyes. What then did I see? My first glance was upwards at the cold fleecy clouds, which as by some optical delusion appeared to stand still, while the steeple, the weathercock, and our two selves were carried swiftly along. Far away on one side could be seen the grassy plain, while on the other lay the sea bathed in translucent light. The Sund, or Sound as we call it, could be discovered beyond the point ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... Serve or not serve, I shan't ask license of you, sir, nor the weathercock your companion. I direct my discourse to the lady, sir. 'Tis like my aunt may have told you, madam? Yes, I have settled my concerns, I may say now, and am minded to see foreign parts. If an how that the peace holds, whereby, that ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... "The weathercock in the north tower, instead of turning in the wind with the others, will remain fixed ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... manner as to turn the bows in the direction of the arrow, as illustrated in Fig. 146, and the sail or sails abaft the mast turn the boat in the direction of the arrow A. The boat thus revolves upon the center of the mast much as a weathercock revolves upon its pivot. If there is more than one mast, all the sails carried abaft the mainmast serve to turn the boat in the direction A. The work of sailing depends greatly upon the skill in balancing these two effects so that the boat will progress in a straight line. To do this the sails ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... he saw the weathercock and one turret of a church tower peering over the edge of a small steep hill, close at hand, and turning toward it he went briskly on, under the lee of a short fir plantation, all the grass being pure and fresh with hoar-frost, which melted in every hollow and shadow as ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... than knocking down an old wife from a chimney-top—singeing a pair of worsted stockings that, knit in an ill-starred hour, when the sun had entered Aries, had been hung out to dry on a line in the backyard, or garden as it is called—or cutting a few inches off the tail of an old Whig weathercock that for years had been pecking the eyes out of all the airts the wind can blaw, greedy of some still ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... do you remember the dances, The dearest were those we sat out, How I frowned when detecting your glances On others, which caused you to pout? You are changeful and coy and capricious, A weathercock easily blown; But when shall I hear the delicious One word that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various
... eyes, a salient object in the heavens surpassing the stony eminences which surrounded it, rose the tall spire of the twin Houses of Parliament. Upon its top swung a gilded weathercock; while about a portion of its base stood a maze of scaffolding, the facade of the building having during the last few months been under repair. There seemed, however, for the moment, to be no workmen upon it. Presently, as he gazed vacantly and without intent, something that moved upon the upper ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... bearing unmistakable evidence of the mischievous character of its inmates. At the other end, farther up the river, on a rocky knoll open to all the winds, stood the meeting-house,—old, two story, and full of windows,—its gilded weathercock glistening in the sun. The bell in its belfry had been brought from France by Skipper Evans in the latter part of the last century. Solemnly baptized and consecrated to some holy saint, it had called to prayer the veiled sisters of a convent, and tolled heavily in the masses for the dead. At ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... to their homes, leaving the city open to occupation by the partisans of Stephen, who entered it under pretense of an alliance with the citizens. The Bishop of Winchester, who seems to have been something of a weathercock in his political faith, turned again to his brothers side, set Stephen's banner afloat on Windsor Castle and converted his bishop's residence into a fortress. Robert of Gloucester came with Maud's troops to besiege it. The garrison set ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... statement of his attitude: "Christ has declared war against the Christianity of the world, and it must down. There is no help for it. The church, that great bulwark of our practical paganism, must be reformed from foundation to weathercock."[12] These passages indicate his dissatisfaction with an external religion and with dogmatic theology. On the other hand, his letters and his poems prove that he was strongly grounded in the faith of the spirit. In that faith he lived and died; and, if in later years he gave recognition ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... Tom, in a tone of polite assent; "and there's a weathercock on the church-steeple but I never heard of either of 'em coming down to ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... watches for him, but because she is armed to catch him and is quick. So the observer finally gets the fact, not only because he has patience, but because his eye is sharp and his inference swift. Many a shrewd old farmer looks upon the milky way as a kind of weathercock, and will tell you that the way it points at night indicates the direction of the wind the following day. So, also, every new moon is either a dry moon or a wet moon, dry if a powder-horn would hang upon the lower limb, wet if it would not; forgetting the fact that, as a rule, when ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... "Ha, ha," crowed the Weathercock on the Big Red Barn. "Jack Frost is here, for I can see the silver frost upon the grass in the Sunny Meadow," and then that gilded rooster turned his head to the North and blew on his gilt toes to ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... projectile sparkled in the rays of the sun. Seeing it in its imposing shape with its conical top, it might easily have been taken for one of those extinguisher-shaped towers that architects of the Middle Ages put at the angles of their castles. It only wanted loopholes and a weathercock. ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... confounds its wisdom. Not only out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, but out of the mouths of fools and cheats, we may often get our truest lessons. For the fool's judgment is a dog-vane that turns with a breath, and the cheat watches the clouds and sets his weathercock by them,—so that one shall often see by their pointing which way the winds of heaven are blowing, when the slow-wheeling arrows and feathers of what we call the Temples of Wisdom are turning to all points ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... was monstrously hot and stuffy. Not a breath of wind ruffled the waters of the dock, around the head of which we trudged to a recently erected church on the opposite shore. I remember observing, on our way, the dazzling brilliance of its weathercock. ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... it would be impossible to describe. The white front gate, whose hinges had been so often tried by its being transformed into a sort of merry-go-round; the clumps of laurel bushes which had afforded such good hiding-places in games of "I spy;" even the long-suffering little brass weathercock above the stable roof, which had served as a mark for catapult shooting,—these, and a hundred other objects on which his eyes rested, recalled memories which softened his heart, and brought back more vividly than ever the recollection ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... bad shot. Mind you, he's a jolly good fellow and all that; I don't say a word against him. But he never learned to hold a gun when he was packing pork or whatever he did. They say he shot the cockade off his own servant's hat; just like him to have cockades, of course. He shot the weathercock off his own ridiculous gilded summerhouse. It's the only cock he'll ever kill, I should think. Are you coming ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... they will ever have affecting me. For, whatever course I take in public affairs in this country, I conceal nothing, I take it publicly, openly, and deliberately. If I err, I am satisfied to abide the consequences; and, whenever it may suit the weathercock judgment of Lord Mayo, and his vacillating law advisers, to characterise my acts or my opinion as illegal, seditious, heretical, idolatrous, or treasonable, I must, like every other subject, be content to take my chance of their being able to find a ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... show, and were noted for putting the best leg foremost. The house was always furnished with abundance of large doors and small windows on every floor, the date of its erection was curiously designated by iron figures on the front, and on the top of the roof was perched a fierce little weathercock, to let the family into the important secret which way the wind blew. These, like the weathercocks on the tops of our steeples, pointed so many different ways that every man could have a wind to his mind; the most stanch and loyal citizens, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... out, a crooked gable, and a husky old dog in the recess under the steps at the door. Behind the house a wide yard with nettles, wormwood, and burdocks in the corners, outbuildings with doors that stick, doves and rooks on the thatched roofs, a little storehouse with a rusty weathercock, two or three birch-trees with rooks' nests in their bare top branches, and beyond—the road with cushions of soft dust in the ruts and a field and the long hurdles of the hemp patches, and the grey little huts of the village, and the cackle of geese in the far-away rich meadows.... ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... he hears the Meeting means to disown us? It troubles me deeply. My father is trembling too, for since a month he is all for resisting oppression, and who has been talking to him I do not know. Miss Wynne called him a decrepit weathercock to me last month, and then was in a fury at herself, and sorry too; but she will talk with him no more. It cannot be because he has sold his Holland cloths so well to the clothier- general. I ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... our present Whitechapel Murder—a nasty thing, not at all to my liking. The Name of the Murderer—as no one doubts he is, whatever the Lawyers may disprove—is the same as that famous Man of Taste who wrote on the Fine Arts in the London Magazine under the name of Janus Weathercock, {90a} and poisoned Wife, Wife's Mother and Sister after insuring their Lives. De Quincey (who was one of the Magazine) has one of his Essays about ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... you mean, sir? Do you think I am a weathercock, to change with every wind? You have had your last cheque from me, Randal. Be sure of that. I shall no longer pander to your wicked ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford |
