"Battening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... everywhere. The loaded cabinets and the glazed cases were one long procession of faked Dresden and bogus faience, of Egyptian enamels that had been manufactured in Birmingham, and of sixth-century "treasures" whose makers were still plying the trade and battening ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
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... and brown, spread weird life abroad. With fleshy gills, squat and lean, fat and thin, bursting through the grass in companies and circles, lurking livid, gigantic and alone on the trunks of forest trees, gemming the rotten bough with crimson, twinkling like topaz on the crooked stems of the furze, battening upon death, rising into transitory vigor from the rack and rot of a festering earth, they flourished. Heavy mists now stretched their draperies over the high lands; and exhalations from the corpse of the summer hung bluish under ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
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... cost of their production, devoted himself to the increasing of their natural food, by principles well known to all breeders he had developed a breed of frogs as monstrous among their kind as African geese are among theirs. By these huge batrachians was an extensive marsh inhabited, and battening upon the succulent nutriment thus afforded, the African geese gained a size and flavor which was rapidly making the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
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... took dead men's souls And pinned them on their breasts for ornament; Their cuff-links and tiaras Were gems dug from a grave; They were ghouls battening on exhumed thoughts; And I took a green liqueur from a servant So that he might come near me And give me the comfort ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
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... to enter the realm of bliss, where he will pass the time with other happy souls smoking and eating and enjoying other sensual delights. But if he left little or no money, he is banished the earthly paradise and sent home to roam like a wild beast in the forest, battening on leaves and filth. With bitter sighs and groans he prowls about the villages at night and seeks to avenge himself by scaring or plaguing the survivors. To stay his hunger and appease his wrath relatives or friends will sometimes set forth food for him ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
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... remainder of his lease, the suite of bachelor apartments he had occupied, and he stored his furniture and books. One might have imagined that he was taking in all possible sails; close reefing the others; battening down the hatches; and preparing to run before a storm; and yet his demeanor did not indicate that he expected any violent commotion of the elements. On the contrary, his friends and acquaintances thought him particularly ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
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... the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill; Together both, ere the high lawns appeared Under the opening eyelids of the Morn, We drove a-field, and both together heard What time the grey-fly winds her sultry horn, Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night, Oft till the star that rose at evening, bright, Toward heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel. Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute, Tempered to the oaten ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
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... which he was engaged, from the time when the old Duke of Newcastle tried to make the Marquis of Rockingham dismiss his new private secretary as an Irish Jesuit in disguise (1765), down to the time when the Duke of Bedford, himself battening "in grants to the house of Russell, so enormous as not only to outrage economy, but even to stagger credibility," assailed the Government for giving Burke a moderate pension, we may almost imagine that if Johnson had imitated the ...
— Burke • John Morley
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... work, some at caulking, others at battening the seams with strips of canvas, and pieces of pine nailed over, to keep the oakum in. Having found a suitable pole for a mast, the rest went about making a sail from the one we had used for a covering, also fitting oars of short pieces of boards, in form of a paddle, tied on a pole, ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
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... is a fresh and graceful composition. The murals are on the faces of the corridor arches. No one can mistake their meaning. Springtime shows her first blossoms, and the happy shepherd pipes a seasonal air to his flock, now battening on new grass. In the companion picture, Seedtime, are symbols of the ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
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... more. Thus stood the Power of the Seas during the years in which the French historians tell us that their cruisers were battening on her commerce. The English writer admits heavy losses. In 1707, that is, in the space of five years, the returns, according to the report of a committee of the House of Lords, "show that since the beginning of the war England had lost ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
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... were at hand, and he had the privilege of going to see them almost as often as he wished, through some invidious distinction which was denied to us. The present treasurer of the Inner Temple can explain how it happened. He had his tea and hot rolls in the morning, while we were battening upon our quarter of penny loaf—our 'crug' moistened with attenuated small beer in wooden piggins, smacking of the pitched leathern jack it was poured from. On Monday's milk porritch, blue and tasteless, and the pease-soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, were enriched for him with a slice of 'extraordinary ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
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... the control room, and LeConte banged the outer door shut and jammed huge catches, battening it down ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
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... was now constructed by battening together a number of slabs. In place of a hinge a hole was drilled into the sill and another into the lintel directly in line with it. Two sticks of wood were then whittled to fit snugly, but without jamming, into these holes. ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
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... slender young bush that it was killing. The thick, juicy green stems and succulent green leaves, the greedily embracing tendrils and great fleshy-white, hanging flowers revolted her. The creeper seemed the symbolisation of Lust battening upon Innocence. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
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... in the parlour together. For the Cut-rate had not cut his salary, which, sordidly speaking, ranked him star boarder at the Peek's. And he thought of Captain Peek, Katie's father, a man he dreaded and abhorred; a genteel loafer and spendthrift, battening upon the labour of his women-folk; a very queer fish, and, according to repute, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
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... "pickings" was, alas! the cause of Paul-Louis Carter's assassination; he committed the mistake of advertising the sale of his estate and allowing it to be known that he should take away his wife, on whom a number of the Tonsards of Lorraine were battening. Fearing to lose Madame des Aigues, the marauders on the estate forbore to cut the young trees, unless pushed to extremities by finding no branches within reach of shears fastened to long poles. In the interests of robbery, they did as little harm as they could; although, during the ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
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