"Ant-hill" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... square foot of it. Seven hundred miles of rice- and millet-fields and vegetable gardens unbroken by wall or hedge; nothing to cast a shadow on the dead level except an occasional walled town or temple grove! And the horrible land was all alive with swarming, toiling, ant-hill humanity. It was ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... trouble his head about the water; little water in the world could have given him a moment's fear. He was looking at the gorge on either side and sniffing uneasily, for there was a sweetish-sourish smell in the air, very like the smell of a big ant-hill on a hot day. Instinctively he lowered himself in the water, only raising his head to breathe from time to time, and Kaa came to anchor with a double twist of his tail round a sunken rock, holding Mowgli in the hollow of a coil, while ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... reedbuck, which I had been told were to be found there. I wounded a buck; it hobbled away with difficulty. I ran after it, but the grass was long, and I had a difficulty in keeping the animal in sight. In my course stood an ant-hill about four feet high. Endeavoring to get within view of the buck, I sprang to the top of the ant-hill, but it was hollow, and the crust collapsed under me. I looked down and found that several snakes ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... of his seizure. I had directed his removal, and grudged him no professional attention that it was in my power to bestow. But afterwards, locked into my room, my whole nervous system broke up like a trodden ant-hill, leaving me conscious of nothing but an aimless scurrying terror and the black swarm of thoughts, so that I verily fancied my reason would give under ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... exchanged in good time for practical pity. There was to be another high tide that evening, and how would the village stand this second storm of its broken defences? So the order was given to assemble in the street after dinner, and work at the repair of the breaches. The street looked like an ant-hill, as the workers, divided into gangs by houses, with the housemaster at the head of his gang, swarmed on the roadway, clearing it from the debris with pickaxe, spade, and a multitude of hands; re-stacking the cottagers' store of peat-sods, which the waves had sown broadcast; forming ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... Gwythyr the son of Greidawl was walking over a mountain, he heard a wailing and a grievous cry. And when he heard it, he sprang forward, and went towards it. And when he came there, he drew his sword, and smote off an ant-hill close to the earth, whereby it escaped being burned in the fire. And the ants said to him, "Receive from us the blessing of Heaven, and that which no man can give we will give thee." Then they fetched ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... 100 and 200 miles from them, but something always interposed to prevent his going to see them. According to those who have seen them, they rise on either side of a mound or level, which contains no stones. Some have called it an ant-hill. One of these fountains is said to be so large that a man, standing on one side, cannot be seen from the other. These fountains must be discovered, and their position taken. The Doctor does not suppose them to be south of the feeders of Lake Bangweolo. In his letter to ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... beautiful gold circle round its eyes, its curious webbed feet, its leaping power arising from the long hind legs; she told me also of its wonderful tongue, so long and flexible that it folded back in its mouth, and that the frog would sit at the edge of an ant-hill and throwing out the tongue with its sticky point, would pick off the ants one by one as they came out. When I learnt all this, I began to watch such a curious reptile; my fears vanished, and like Kingsley's little daughter, who had been wisely led to care for all living things and came ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... It lies fourteen to fifteen miles (which the chart has diminished to seven) west of the French settlement, of old Fort Joinville. The latter shows a tiled and whitewashed establishment, the property of M. Verdier, outlying the normal ant-hill of brown huts. In 1868 Winwood Reade here found a poste and stockade, a park of artillery, a commandant, a surgeon, and a detachment of tirailleurs senegalais levied amongst the warlike Moslem tribes of Senegambia. Like Grand Bassam it was under the ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... town a tiny bird, A shining speck at sleepy dawn, Forgets the ant-hill so absurd, This self-important Buffalo. Descending twenty miles away He bathes his wings at break of day— ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... them up. But the yacht showed no intention of righting herself. She continued to careen in the position of a cab going round Piccadilly Circus on one wheel. The sailors were all running around like ants on an ant-hill, and the captain was shouting orders, and even lending a hand with the ropes himself. I don't know the nautical terms, but they were taking down the middle sail—the mainsail, that's it. It did not look dangerous, because the sun kept shining, and I never thought ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... a large stone, beat them with another, in hopes of killing hundreds at once, for it was endless work to pick them off. What we suffered from this was ten times worse even than hunger. But we were clean in comparison to Captain Cheap, for I could compare his body to nothing but an ant-hill, with thousands of those insects crawling over it; for he was now past attempting to rid himself in the least from this torment, as he had quite lost himself, not recollecting our names that were about him, or even his own. His beard was as long as a hermit's; that and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... ant-hill until the stick has been thrust into it. Mr. Gladstone's Bill for helping to the wiser government of Ireland has brought forth our busy citizens on the top-rubble in traversing counterswarms, and whatever may be said against a Bill that deals ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... forty-seven an' traject'ry an' muzzle v'locity an' fours right an' holler squares—to wish the Boh offen the hilltop so he could march us through the pass accordin' to Hoyle, Fronte McKim was off ahead among the rocks, layin' on his belly behint a ant-hill studyin' the hillside through ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... municipal guard passed me with a suspicious glance. The clocks of the city struck six in a solemn jangle of tones. The boats were moving on the river—the great unwieldy barges as big as a ship. The streets were now astir. Paris seemed huge and as populous as an ant-hill. I felt the hopelessness of seeking unaided one who purposely hid himself ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... his forest solitudes. Having reached a secluded spot, I have remarked that full-grown bulls lie down on their broad-sides, about the hour of midnight, and sleep for a few hours. The spot which they usually select is an ant-hill, and they lie around it with their backs resting against it; these hills, formed by the white ants, are from thirty to forty feet in diameter at their base. The mark of the under tusk is always deeply imprinted in the ground, proving that they lie upon their sides. I never remarked that ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... mile away. He came down and circled the field. It was Titherington's Farman biplane. He hoped that the kindly Englishman had not been injured. He made out Titherington, talking to a group about the machine. Relieved, he rose again, amused by the ant-hill appearance as hundreds of people, like black bugs, ran toward the stalled biplane, from neighboring farms and from a trolley-car standing ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... This English community, with its squabbles about rituals, its four Chief Rabbis all in love with one another, its stupid Sephardim, its narrow-minded Reformers, its fatuous self-importance, its invincible ignorance, is but an ant-hill, a negligible quantity in the future of the faith. Westward the course of Judaism as of empire takes its way—from the Euphrates and Tigris it emigrated to Cordova and Toledo, and the year that saw its expulsion from Spain was the year of the Discovery of America. Ex Oriente lux. Perhaps it ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Virgin, not to invoke their names, and to have no fear of them. He then conducts him to the wood, glen, cave or field where the pact with the Devil is concluded, which they call 'the agreement' or 'the word given' (in Tzental quiz). In some provinces the disciple is laid on an ant-hill, and the Master standing above him calls forth a snake, colored with black, white and red, which is known as 'the ant-mother' (in Tzental zmezquiz).[19-[]] This comes accompanied by the ants and other small snakes of the same kind, which enter at the joints of the ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... man," like the British Tar—good all round. Its great soft paw is a very serviceable tool and weapon, armed with claws which will take the face off a man or grub up a root with equal ease. When a black bear has found an ant-hill it takes but a few minutes to tear up the hard, cemented clay and lay the deep galleries bare; then, putting its gutta-percha muzzle to the mouth of each, it draws such a blast of air through them that the industrious labourers are sucked into its gullet in drifts. Afterwards ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... Beside every ant-hill I behold a monster crouching: This is the ant-lion Death, He thrusteth forth his tongue ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... swish of a comet's tail wiping out organic life on the planet, and we see, as a matter of fact, great natural convulsions, such as the earthquake of Lisbon or the eruption of Mont Pelee, treating human communities just as an elephant might treat an ant-hill. It is this sense of the immeasurable disproportion in things that a pessimist poet has expressed in the ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... modern dreamers say that ants and bees have a society superior to ours. They have, indeed, a civilization; but that very truth only reminds us that it is an inferior civilization. Who ever found an ant-hill decorated with the statues of celebrated ants? Who has seen a bee-hive carved with the images of gorgeous queens of old? No; the chasm between man and other creatures may have a natural explanation, but it is a chasm. We talk of wild animals; but ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... was ever lonely. What I called "things" were an unfailing resource to me. An ant-hill was entertainment for a whole forenoon; I watched bees and their hives by the hour; my vault kept me busy and happy all day. If Cousin Molly Belle suspected what I was about, she asked no questions, and refrained from spying upon me. When dressed clean in the afternoon, for the ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... a red brick structure with long windows. From the joints of its walls the mortar was falling. It lay all around the building in a girdle of gray, like an encircling ant-hill, upon the green lawn. Splendid sugar-maples grew all about the square, in the center of which the court-house stood, and ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... order the earth will be transformed into a swarming ant-hill of thickly crowded inhabitants, that complete control over the elemental forces will lead to a destruction of all primitive natural fertility, there is therefore no reason whatever to fear. On the contrary, ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... listening, tense and still, Are sailing on a midget ball of dust We call our planet; will have sailed through space Ten thousand leagues before this music ends. What does it mean? Oh, God, what can it mean?— This weird hushed ant-hill with a thousand eyes; These midget periwigs; all those little blurs, Tier over tier, of faces, masks of flesh, Corruptible, hiding each its hopes and dreams, Its tragi-comic dreams. And all this throng Will be forgotten, ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... how the soorma wasteth, seeing how the ant-hill grows, Little adding unto little—live, give, learn, as ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... swarmed like an ant-hill with savages. The shore was lined with canoes; the forests and the fields were alive with busy camps. The trade was brisk; and in its attendant speeches, feasts, and dances, there was ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... saw an ant-hill With no ants about; So I said, "Dear little ants, Won't you please come out?" Then as if the little ants Had heard my call— One! two! three! four! five came out! And that ...
— Finger plays for nursery and kindergarten • Emilie Poulsson
... fixed, that is about the end of July or beginning of August. All previous application will clean the tree or plant only for a time, and does not prevent a more or less numerous immigration from the neighboring vegetation, especially if an ant-hill is not ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... into a doorway, and thought she would wait till the people had passed, but she waited and waited, and still they kept on coming backwards and forwards, just for all the world like a number of busy ants swarming about an ant-hill. There was no end to them. They hustled and jostled, and ran and pushed, and talked till Phyllis was utterly bewildered, and said to herself she had better go ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... crackle of fires which seemed widespread everywhere. The cook's moans had now subsided. On two sides black curling clouds of smoke rose and spread from the fires. Through the streets soldiers in various uniforms walked or ran confusedly in different directions like ants from a ruined ant-hill. Several of them ran into Ferapontov's yard before Alpatych's eyes. Alpatych went out to the gate. A retreating regiment, thronging ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... at 800 metres! Men resemble insects! See, I think it is from this height that we should always look at them, to judge correctly of their moral proportions! The Place de la Comedie is transformed to an immense ant-hill. Look at the crowd piled up on the quays. The Zeil diminishes. We are above the church of Dom. The Mein is now only a white line dividing the city, and this bridge, the Mein-Brucke, looks like a white thread thrown between the ...
— A Voyage in a Balloon (1852) • Jules Verne
... people there were greatly alarmed because a murderer, liberated under the amnesty, had returned and was prowling about in that vicinity. This man had a rather unique record. He had captured one of his enemies, and after stripping him completely had caused the top of an immense ant-hill to be dug off. The unfortunate victim was then tied, laid on it, and the earth and ants which had been removed were shovelled back over his body until only his head projected. The ants did the rest! Another rather unusual ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... out at the toiling sweltering human ant-hill Comus marvelled how missionary enthusiasts could labour hopefully at the work of transplanting their religion, with its homegrown accretions of fatherly parochial benevolence, in this heat-blistered, fever- scourged wilderness, ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... obvious, sir. We are like ants constructing an ant-hill. We have our work to do, and not much time to spare for love and women. That is all very well for those who cannot work, or who do not want ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... of the mole-hill or ant-hill, in which place you shall find them in the month of June; or if that be too early in the year, then, doubtless, you may find them in July, August, and most of September. Gather them alive, with both their wings: and then put them into a glass that will hold a quart or a pottle; but first put into ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... reconnoitering the enemy; but I still kept my place on deck; and at length, tired out, the ragged little crew took to their oars, and rowed into a shallow bay at the lower extremity of the glebe, with a cottage, in size and appearance much resembling an ant-hill, peeping out at its inner extremity among some stunted bushes. I had marked the place before, and had been struck with the peculiarity of the choice that could have fixed on it as a site for a dwelling: it is at once the most inconvenient and picturesque on this side the island. A semi-circular ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Mr. Meredith, of a calamity which destroys an ant-hill and half its inhabitants. Does the Power that runs the universe think us of more importance ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... corn-cakes did a great deal for him, and he made out to pretend to help Pablo in getting the fat pony ready for the road. Then, however, he was willing to see Pablo walk away, and he bravely led the pony to the side of what may have been an old and apparently abandoned ant-hill. ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... night the expectation took the colour of my fears. In that darkling calm my senses seemed preternaturally sharpened. I fancied I could even feel the hollowness of the ground beneath my feet: could, indeed, almost see through it the Morlocks on their ant-hill going hither and thither and waiting for the dark. In my excitement I fancied that they would receive my invasion of their burrows as a declaration of war. And why had they taken my ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... "The exodus from the ant-hill takes place annually at the commencement of the rainy season, and the collection of the insects is considered to be an important harvest throughout all Central Africa. The white ant, in this stage of its existence, ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... human nature. The fire, indeed, cleanses the city from the last dregs of the plague which are still lingering there, but it also stirs up the city until its inhabitants present the appearance of ants upon a disturbed ant-hill. And not the least busy among them, continually fussing about in all directions, is the diarist himself, eagerly planning for the preservation of his money, dragging it hither and thither from hiding-place to hiding-place in the city, and finally burying it in bags at dead of night in ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... Origin of Species had come into the theological world like a plow into an ant-hill. Everywhere those thus rudely awakened from their old comfort and repose had swarmed forth angry and confused. Reviews, sermons, books, light and heavy, came flying at the new thinker from all sides." (White, A. D., The Warfare of Science and ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... at eight hundred yards. Men are like insects. See! I think we should always contemplate them from this height, to judge correctly of their proportions. The Place de la Comedie is transformed into an immense ant-hill. Observe the crowd which is gathered on the quays; and the mountains also get smaller and smaller. We are over the Cathedral. The Main is only a line, cutting the city in two, and the bridge seems a thread thrown between the two banks of ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... whack, step, leap.... Each leap seemed to last ages. With each, the cave opened out and the number of Selenites visible increased. At first they seemed all running about like ants in a disturbed ant-hill, one or two waving hatchets and coming to meet me, more running away, some bolting sideways into the avenue of carcasses, then presently others came in sight carrying spears, and then others. I saw a most extraordinary thing, ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... powers of his heart. The moon began to be now eclipsed by twilight; a golden band surrounded the horizon, announcing the approach of day. Athos threw his cloak over the shoulders of Raoul, and led him back to the city, where burdens and porters were already in motion, like a vast ant-hill. At the extremity of the plateau, which Athos and Bragelonne were quitting, they saw a dark shadow moving uneasily backward and forward, as if in indecision or ashamed to be seen. It was Grimaud, who, in his anxiety, had tracked his master, and was ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... leaf of the lily is supposed to have curative virtues in cases of cuts and wounds, and Gerarde, the old herbalist, even says that 'the flowers of lily-of-the-valley, being close stopped up in a glass, put into an ant-hill, and taken away again a month after, ye shall find a liquor in the glass, which being outwardly applied, helpeth the gout.' One hears, perhaps, of no modern experiments having been made with this remedy. But if not to cure gout, the ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... and shot more birds, and made expeditions in the neighbourhood of the grove; but Natty continued so weak that I did not like to leave him for any length of time by himself. I was one day attracted by a mound a little way off, which I suspected to be an ant-hill. On approaching it, I found that such was the case; but it was ornamented in such a way as I had never seen one of those curious nests adorned before. It was covered with enormous mushrooms. They were perfectly white, their tops nearly eighteen inches in diameter. They looked very tempting; ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... Gold will buy all things, even a sweet husband, Else only Heaven is left and—farewell youth! Yet, strangely, in that money-haunted head, The sad, gemmed crucifix and incense blue Is childhood once again. Her memory Is like an ant-hill which a twig disturbs, But twig stilled never. And to see her face, Broad with sleek homely beams; her babied hands, Ever like 'lighting doves, and her small eyes— Blue wells a-twinkle, arch and lewd and pious— To darken all sudden into Stygian gloom, And paint disaster with uplifted ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... quick alarm, Curved with their leader round The ant-hill's peopled mound, And left ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... This piece of embroidery was probably suggested by the fact that, after the signing and sealing was completed, Carl had taken the lantern and had walked circumspectly to the little hollow to examine his ant-hill. The others had gone quietly into ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... raged, the little girl fled out of the school-house toward the pinto and pulled up the picket-pin. The teacher did not see her go, but, in retreating from an unusually vicious blow of the Swede boy's fist, caught sight of her just as she was leading her horse to an ant-hill to mount. With a hoarse call for her to return, he started after her, bearing in his train the two boys, who, still ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... called Simpleton, set out to seek his brothers, but when at length he found them they mocked him for thinking that he with his simplicity could get through the world, when they two could not make their way, and yet were so much cleverer. They all three travelled away together, and came to an ant-hill. The two elder wanted to destroy it, to see the little ants creeping about in their terror, and carrying their eggs away, but Simpleton said, "Leave the creatures in peace; I will not allow you to disturb them." Then they went onwards and came to a lake, on which a great number ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... wrong conception, and hence that the person who has reached true knowledge is free from his body even while still alive. The same is declared in the /S/ruti passages concerning him who knows Brahman: 'And as the slough of a snake lies on an ant-hill, dead and cast away, thus lies this body; but that disembodied immortal spirit is Brahman only, is only light' (B/ri/. Up. IV, 4, 7); and 'With eyes he is without eyes as it were, with ears without ears as it were, with speech without speech ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... possible to seize him suddenly by the tail, as I have often done, without being stung. Apes employ this method, pull out his sting, and crunch the now inoffensive Arachnid. They also like ants, but fear being bitten by them; when they wish to enjoy them, they place an open hand on an ant-hill and remain motionless until it is covered by insects. They can then absorb them at one stroke ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... barrier, and Constans grasped helplessly at half a hundred out-stretched hands. A babel of voices arose; the arena, filled to overflowing with excited men and women, was comparable only to some gigantic ant-hill. ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... strange ride that was for Joan! The slope resembled a magnified ant-hill with a horde of frantic ants in action. As she drew closer she saw these ants were men, digging for gold. Those near at hand could be plainly seen—rough, ragged, bearded men and smooth-faced boys. Farther on and up the slope, along the waterways and ravines, were ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... time several millions of years—to our own geologic age—and we find the earth swarming with the human species like an ant-hill with ants, and with a vast number of forms not found in the Mesozoic era; and the men are doing to a large part of the earth what the ants do to a square rod of its surface. Where did they come from? We cannot, in our day, believe that a hand reached ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... numbers dead upon the field. The prince himself, as soon as he was taken, was disarmed on the field, and all the leaders of the queen's army, including, as the most authentic accounts relate, the queen herself, gathered around him in wild exultation. They carried him to a mound formed by an ant-hill, which they said, in mockery, should be his throne. They placed him upon it with taunts and derision. They made a crown for him of knotted grass, and put it upon his head, and then made mock obeisances before him, saying, "Hail! ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... climates have no idea what ants can do in the tropics. The Kafirs of South Africa used to stake down their prisoners (among them a poor friend of mine) upon an ant-hill and they were eaten atom after atom in a few hours. The death must be the slowest form of torture; but probably the nervous system soon becomes insensible. The same has happened to more than one hapless invalid, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... as ever, said he found 'no fault'—but that he wanted 'a change.' I quite understood that. The fact is I knew too much—that's all. I had saved a bit, and so, with a few good letters of introduction, went on from Glasgow to London. There, in that great black ant-hill full of crawling sooty human life, I knocked about for a time from one newspaper office to another, doing any sort of work that turned up, just to keep body and soul together,—and at last I got a fairly good berth in the London branch of a big press syndicate. It was composed ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... crested with scarlet geraniums, rows of whited cobbles along the walk or drive like a cannibal's skulls around his hut, purple paint-kegs of petunias on the scanty door-steps, crimson wash-kettles of verbenas, ant-hill rockeries, and well-sweeps and curbs where no wells are, steal modestly ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... He is not born to tread a certain track of conduct or behaviour because others have trodden it before him, following it without thought like the sheep on the mountain, or like the ants as they travel from one ant-hill to another. ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... Inn was stirring like an ant-hill, with firefly lanterns flitting up and down, and a cheery glow about the open door. The horses of the company, scrubbed unreasonably clean, snorted and stamped in little bridled clumps about the courtyard, and ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... the summit of the nearest hill they paused and looked over a restless welter of foliage that glittered in the sun, far down into the highway. It bustled like an unroofed ant-hill, for the road was alive with men who seemed from this distance very small. Duke Alessandro's attendants had found him and were clustered in a hubbub about their reviving master. Dwarfish Lorenzino de Medici was ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... felt like the locust turned away from ant-hill after ant-hill. She walked the streets disconsolately. Her feet from old habit led her past her father's door. She paused to gaze at the dear front walk and the beloved frayed steps, the darling need of paint, the time-gnawed porch furniture, the empty hammock ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... received reinforcements, and the nearest ant-hills were nearly all occupied, so that only three men could go at a time. Such a shower of bullets fell that it was a miracle that we came out of it alive. Fortunately I found a free ant-hill. My brother had to share one ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... Glora close. And suddenly he was laughing—a madness, half hysteria. "Why, this, all this—why look, Glora, it's funny! This little world all excited, an ant-hill, outraged! Look! ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... Christian religion, for which people are always making apologies that it doesn't want! Two years! Patience! It will be very good for Robin, and four-and-twenty is quite soon enough to bite off one's wings, and found an ant-hill. As to being bullied into being kissed, pitied, pardoned, and trained by Honor, I'll never sink so low! No, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... subterranean galleries. Thus there existed beneath the county of Stirling a vast tract, full of burrows, tunnels, bored with caves, and perforated with shafts, a subterranean labyrinth, which might be compared to an enormous ant-hill. ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... furniture which had come from Holland; all the community, great and small, black and white, man, woman and child, was in commotion, forming lines from the houses to the water-side, like lines of ants from an ant-hill; everybody laden with some article of household furniture, while busy housewives plied backward and forward along the lines, helping everything forward by the nimbleness of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... were still talking, a carriage rattled up to the door of the hotel, and then another. There began, in a word, that hushed confusion—that running to and fro as of ants upon a disturbed ant-hill—which follows hard upon the footsteps of the grim messenger, who himself is content to come so quietly and unobtrusively. Roden arrived to make inquiries, and Mrs. Vansittart, and a messenger from more than one embassy. ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... had to diverge and look close to find it. These delays fretted me. 'See, a stone loosed from its bed—he must have passed by here.... That twig is newly snapped; no doubt he caught at it.... Ha, the moss there has been crushed; a foot has gone by. And the ants on that ant-hill, with their eggs in their mouths—a man's tread has frightened them.' So, by some instinctive sense, as if the spirit of my savage ancestors revived within me, I managed to recover the spoor again and again by a miracle, till at last, round a corner by a defiant ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... away that followed his arrival in London. He spent them for the most part within doors, writing for the Prior in the mornings, or keeping watch over the door as his Superior talked with prelates and churchmen within, for ecclesiastical London was as busy as a broken ant-hill, and men came and went continually—scared, furtive monks, who looked this way and that, an abbot or two up for the House of Lords, priors and procurators on business. There were continual communications going to and fro among the religious houses, ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... has been the evolution of the globe itself! What myriads of ages between the first cooling of its mass and the beginnings of life![3112] Of what consequence is the turmoil of our ant-hill compared to the geological tragedy in which we have born no part, the strife between fire and water, the thickening of the earth's crust, formation of the universal sea, the construction and separation of continents! Previous to our historical ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... into open glades; and, after passing through several of these, came upon a large ant-hill that stood in the middle of one of the openings. The elephant had passed close to the ant-hill—he had stopped there a while—stay, he must have ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... a bit directly, and turning the cob's head, began to ride slowly in the direction of Kopfontein, whose granite pile lay like an ant-hill far away, low down on ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... out from their bivouacs. They move stiffly from their wet rest, and hurry to and fro like ants in an ant-hill. The tens of thousands of moving specks are largely of a brick-red colour, but the foreign contingent ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... surrounded by people, they felt as if they lived in an ant-hill. The day was full of happenings, all equally exciting—and the most exciting of it all was their fear of the "ogre." Suddenly, when they were playing hide-and-seek amongst the boats, or sat riding on the roof of the engine-house, he would appear, his long arms ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... no more of the crowds going their different ways like ants on an ant-hill, but I could not let a perambulator pass without peering under the lace of the hood at the little cherub face whose angel eyes looked up ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... agreed upon, and there awaited Godfrey. He did the same, only chose another gully, equally sure that he was right. And there we sat, each impatiently blaming the other. At last, to pass the time, I fired some shots at an ant-hill; these had the effect of bringing Godfrey over the rise, and we had a good laugh at each other when we discovered that for nearly half an hour we had sat not two hundred yards apart—and each remained firmly convinced that he was right! Godfrey had shot a kangaroo and carried part of the ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... the singular characteristics of English people, the distance and coldness of their own Channel which they put between them and whoever has not been presented to them in a proper manner. Humanity seems to be an ant-hill on which they tread; they know none of their species except the few they admit into their circle; they ignore even the language of the rest; tongues may move and eyes may see in their presence but neither ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... and as the angry ants swarmed on to it she licked them up with one lick, and got a good rich mouthful to crunch without a grain of sand or a cactus-stinger in it. The cubs soon learned. Each put up both his little brown paws, so that there was a ring of paws all around the ant-hill, and there they sat, like children playing "hands," and each licked first the right and then the left paw, or one cuffed his brother's ears for licking a paw that was not his own, till the ant-hill was cleared out and they ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Thompson Seton
... a community of ants working together in perfect harmony, it is impossible not to ask ourselves how far they are mere exquisite automatons; how far they are conscious beings. When we watch an ant-hill tenanted by thousands of industrious inhabitants, excavating chambers, forming tunnels, making roads, guarding their home, gathering food, feeding the young, tending their domestic animals—each one fulfilling ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... them chaps at work," he said. "It reminds me for all the world of an ant-hill. Never did see so many chaps before. What be they a-doing? Digging a big drain or ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... though they affected people who were a long distance off. One day, when for the thousandth time word came that the advance-guard of the Relief was in sight, when the commotion visible in the enemy's laagers suggested a poked-up ant-hill, and seemed to confirm the report, there was a brief flicker of excitement. Mounted men rode out in force, guns were limbered up and galloped out north and west, to divert General Huysmans' attention, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... you!" said Mother Snail; "our son shall not go into an ant-hill; if you know nothing better than that, we shall give the commission to the white gnats. They fly far and wide, in rain and sunshine; they know the whole forest here, both within ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... ant-hill, dear reader? What a wonderful little cosmos it is—what an epitome of a great city—of the human race! See how the little fellows run bustling along upon their several businesses—see how some get out of each other's way, how others ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... the Bank of New Guinea had finally dispensed with Dad's services as manager at Billabong. His wife had picked on this obscure suburb of working men to hide her shame, and Dad who could make himself at home on an ant-hill, had cheerfully acquiesced. He had started in business as a house-agent, and the family of three lived from hand to mouth on the profits that escaped the publican. Not that Dad was idle. He was for ever ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... taken by young d'Etaples and Isabelle Ray, the company, as it ate ices, was glibly discussing the real drama which had produced in their own elegant circle much of the effect a blow has upon an ant-hill— fear, agitation, and a tumultuous rush to ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... extending in a level plain beyond the visible horizon, and in which he beheld a structure that appeared to have been raised by human industry. M. de Prefontaine, who accompanied him in the expedition, informed him that it was an ant-hill, which they could not approach without danger of being devoured. They passed some of the paths frequented by the labourers, which belonged to a very large species of black ants. The nest they had constructed, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... perfectly true,' replied my friend. 'Never have the workmen on buildings had such a fete. Since Paris has become a vast ant-hill in which the work of preparation for 1900 goes on without ceasing, the workmen make magnificent working-days and have no fear of being "laid off." They have before them three magnificent years. But you are not aware of the conditions of a workman's life in Paris. ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... big black snake that lived in the ant-hill at the back of the house whose movements Jim and the piccanin had been discussing. The snake ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... been working very hard for it, and wanted it. But Jimmie couldn't see any use in lying with your nose on an ant-hill. As for Peter, he giggled whenever ants were mentioned to him, and seemed not to care much one way or another. Hope, however, was often with Betty, and the two girls, flat on the grass, tried to discover as many ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... towards the orb Of the meridian sun, immovable As a tree's stem, his body half-concealed By a huge ant-hill. Round about his breast No sacred cord is twined, but in its stead A hideous serpent's skin. In place of necklace, The tendrils of a withered creeper chafe His wasted neck. His matted hair depends In thick entanglement about his shoulders, And ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... sliding, whirling worlds of snow swept through valleys large enough to have furnished sites for cities, without a check, and bore down or over-leaped all obstacles, as easily as a man would walk over an ant-hill, or some hollow where a toad had burrowed. Finally they were lost to sight, passing behind intervening spurs or ridges of the mountain, or becoming hidden in the cloud-mists which lay heavily about its base; but the sound continued to roll back upon us for some time, like the roar of distant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... took to doing business in towers, has become interesting to look at from the sea; nor is it possible to walk through the overshadowed streets without feeling a pleasing wonder. A city, when enough people swarm in it, is as fascinating as an ant-hill, and its buildings, whatever other charms they may have, are at least as curious and delightful as sea-shells or birds' nests. The purpose of improvements in modern structures may be economic, just as the purpose of castles was military; but both may incidentally please ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... had held up better than his masters, crawled out of the ant-hill into which he had crept; and as soon as the rain descended, he contrived to pull the heads of the Major and Alexander, who still remained senseless, from out of the ant-hills, and to turn their blackened ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... don't care to make a public proclamation that I'm not able to support you and run our domestic establishment in a way that we find natural and agreeable;—and that I've been a fool to try. The situation doesn't call for it. You've made a mountain out of an ant-hill. When our lease is up, if we think this house is more than we want, we can find ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... like an ant-hill in commotion, there is so much scurrying around; but I know that is what you thoroughly enjoy. You shall have a finger in every pie if you will come out and help me to make this ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... am sure, even with their sagacity, did not think of it; but bearing the common nuisance towards the boundary of their country, they were only bent upon ejecting it summarily. The little finger of my glove first reached the side of the ant-hill, and falling, like a paralyzed limb, suddenly over the brink, cast some forty excellent folks, head over heels, with rapidity and great force to the long grass beneath. Unconscious of this accident at the other extremity, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... the Temple at this moment can only be described by comparing it to an ant-hill on which persons have thrown stones, or which has been disturbed by a sick being driven into its centre. The ants in those parts on which the stones have fallen, or which the stick had disturbed, are ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... beggar's rags—died in a hovel!' I muttered with rage as the equipages and coarse splendours of the West End rolled insolently by. 'Died in a hovel!—and this London, this vast, ridiculous, swarming human ant-hill, whose millions of paltry humdrum lives were not worth one breath from those lips—this London spurned her, left her to perish alone in her squalor ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... concern us, for this reason—men with a narrow horizon and no wings must accept all apparent disproportions between cause and effect. A railway collision has other results besides wrecking an ant-hill, but the wise ants do not pursue these in the Insurance Reports. So it only concerns us that the destruction of the schooner led in time to a lovers' difference between Ruby and young Zeb—two young people of no eminence outside of these pages. And, ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... some publisher reprint. . . . Egad! At the present moment literature is a vile trade. It leads to nothing, and I itch to go a-wandering and risk my existence in some living drama. . . . Since I have seen the real splendours of this spot, I have grown very philosophic, and, putting my foot on an ant-hill, I exclaim, like the immortal Bonaparte: 'That, or men, what is it all in presence of Saturn or Venus, or the Pole Star?' And methinks that the ocean, a brig, and an English vessel to engulf, is better than a writing-desk, a ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... at home, Some longish, brownish, buzzing creatures, Much like the bees in wings and features. But what of that? for marks the same, The hornets, too, could truly claim. Between assertion, and denial, The wasp, in doubt, proclaim'd new trial; And, hearing what an ant-hill swore, Could see no clearer than before. "What use, I pray, of this expense?" At last exclaim'd a bee of sense. "We've labour'd months in this affair, And now are only where we were. Meanwhile the honey runs to waste: 'Tis time the judge should show some haste. The parties, sure, have had sufficient ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... The bear man again pursued the yelling and retreating mob, and was dealt with unmercifully by the swift-footed. He became much excited as he desperately chased a middle-aged man, who occasionally turned and fired off his gun, but was suddenly tripped by an ant-hill and fell to the ground, with the other on top of him. The excitement was intense. The bear man returned to his companion, and the dancers gathered in little ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman |
