"Bird's-nest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... piece of rag, immediately make a fire. They sought beneath the tufts of grass and bushes for a few dry twigs, and these they rubbed into fibres; then surrounding them with coarser twigs, something like a bird's nest, they put the rag with its spark of fire in the middle and covered it up. The nest being then held up to the wind, by degrees it smoked more and more, and at last burst out in flames. I do not think any other method would have had a chance of succeeding ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... abate Crescenti; and the afternoon after their first meeting he had repaired to the librarian's dwelling. Crescenti was the priest of an ancient parish lying near the fortress; and his tiny house was wedged in an angle of the city walls, like a bird's nest in the mouth of a disused canon. A long flight of steps led up to his study, which on the farther side opened level with a vine-shaded patch of herbs and damask roses in the projection of a ruined bastion. This interior, the home of studious peace, was as cheerful and well-ordered as its inmate's ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... and two footmen going before, and in she comes—like as though Riches and Death had a' th' same right to enter a poor man's house without knocking. And saith she to me, saith she, a-filling up o' the room with her finery, like a cuckoo ruffling out its feathers in another bird's nest, ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... performer of the ceremony was the chief, who is also a witch- doctor, and I was told that he was about to destroy the witch-doctor who had caused the man's death. A fire was lit, and whilst the digging was in progress a stone and two pieces of iron were being heated. Two bones of a horse, a large bird's nest built of sticks, and various twigs were collected. The skin of a jaguar's head, a tooth, and the pads of the same animal were laid out. A piece of wax and a stone were also heated; and in a heap lay a hide, some skins for bedding, and a quantity of sheep's wool. The grave being finished, the ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... morning some one of the sailors picked up a branch of a strange tree, lodged in the midst of which was a tiny bird's nest. This was sure evidence that they were indeed near land; for branches of trees do ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... amongst others whom they had robbed they met a smooth-faced shoemaker, who said he was just married and going home to his friends. They persuaded him to turn out of the road to look in the hedge for a bird's nest, whither he was no sooner got, but they bound, gagged and robbed him, and afterwards turning back, barbarously clapped a pistol to his head and shot out his brains. After this Angier declared he would never drink in the company of Mead, and when Butler sometimes talked after the same manner, he ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... never made any movement to see the child. He went home to his aunt for Sundays and holidays; he soon knew every bird's nest about Queen's Crawley, and rode out with Sir Huddlestone's hounds, which he admired so on his first well-remembered ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... plainly the marks of Reason that some degree of intelligent adjustment to the environment must be allowed to the animal in the acquiring of these functions. For example, we are told that some of the muscular movements involved in the instincts—such, for example, as the bird's nest-building—are so complex and so finely adjusted to an end, that it is straining belief to suppose that they could have arisen gradually by reflex adaptation alone. There is also a further difficulty with the reflex theory which has seemed ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... Inundation of the Rhine, and Clara. Lewis, the Little Emigrant. The Easter Eggs, and Forget-me-not. The Cakes, and the Old Castle. The Hop Blossoms. Christmas Eve. The Carrier Pigeon, the Bird's Nest, etc. The Jewels, and the Redbreast. The Copper Coins and Gold Coins, etc. The Cray-Fish, the Melon, the Nightingale. The Fire, and the Best Inheritance. Henry of Eichenfels; or, the Kidnapped Boy. Godfrey, the Little Hermit. The Water Pitcher, and the Wooden Cross. The Rose Bush, and ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... caution they commenced their dangerous journey. Landless was no novice at such work. When a boy, he had often rounded the face of frowning white cliffs with the sea breaking in thunder a hundred feet below. Then a bird's nest had been the prize of high daring, death the penalty of dizziness or a misstep. Now, although not two yards below him was the solid earth, a misstep would send him crashing down to a more fearful doom—but the prize! ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... my thoughts! Your theme lies lowly as the ground-bird's nest; Why seek, with wings so feeble and unused, To soar above the clouds and front the stars? Descend from your high venture, and to scenes Of the heart's common history ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... found some fledg'd bird's nest may know At first sight if the bird be flown; But what fair Dell or Grove he sings in now, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... an engine made after any old and well-known pattern is now made with much more consciousness of design than we can suppose a bird's nest to be built with. The greater number of the parts of any such engine, are made by the gross as it were like screw and nuts, which are turned out by machinery and in respect of which the labour of design is now no more felt than is the design ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... Suppose that the old duffer were put out of the way? Could I then count on Justine, and my wary employer? There is a storm brewing, and breakers ahead. I must soon get my 'retaining fee' from the lady of the Silver Bungalow or I may lose it forever! And I will let her uncover the empty bird's nest herself! She must not suspect me!" And yet the curt letter of the old civilian wounded him to the quick. "What does this jugglery mean? He ought to fear me, by this time, just a little! He intends to crush Berthe Louison by some foul blow, and then will he ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... the roads, whistling as he went, and occasionally tossing his battered cap in the air. He often lingered on his way, now to cut down a particularly tempting switch from the hedge, now to hunt for a possible bird's nest. It was very nearly six o'clock when he reached the back avenue, swung himself over the gate, which was locked, and ran softly on the dewy grass in the direction of the laurel bush. Old Betty had given him most careful instructions, ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... the easiest way to go. Oh, no! He chose the very steepest places to slide down. And as he went slipping down the steepest cliff of all he came upon something that gave him a great surprise. For he saw, built right in the crack of a ledge, a big bird's nest made of sticks. It was the biggest bird's nest Cuffy had ever seen; and in it were two great white eggs. They were the greatest white eggs Cuffy ...
— The Tale of Cuffy Bear • Arthur Scott Bailey
... their light on yours to-day. All that you do, I have done; All your childish ways I've run, All your joys and pangs I've had— All that make you gay or sad; I have sported in the brook, Truant from my work or book; Chased the butterfly and bee, Robb'd the bird's nest on the tree; Damm'd the brook and built my mill; Flew my kite from hill to hill; Sported with my top and ball— Childish joys, I know them all. Childish sorrows, too I've felt— Anguish that my heart would melt; ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... farther significances of the title, may find one to lead him safely through richer labyrinths of thought than mine: and ladder enough also,—if there be either any heavenly, or pure earthly, Love, in his own breast,—to guide him to a pretty bird's nest; both in the Romances of the Rose and of Juliet, and in the Sermons of St. Francis and ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... him, "Hi! stop!" The prince looked round, and saw a tall man hastening after him. "Stop and take me with you, and take me into your service, and you won't regret it!" "Who are you," said the prince, "and what can you do?" "My name is Long, and I can extend myself. Do you see a bird's nest in that pine yonder? I will bring you the nest down ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... town. He sold me a set of Dickens when he was here last time, about six weeks ago. A year's subscription to two magazines throwed in. By gosh, these book-agents are slick ones. I didn't want that set of Dickens any more'n I wanted a last year's bird's nest. The thing I'm afraid of is that he'll talk me into taking a set of Scott before he moves on. He's got me ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... long as I." And then, O then, I know what soft blue clouds, What wavering rings, fragrant ascending wreaths Melted his prison walls to a summer haze, Through which I think he saw the little port Of Budleigh Salterton, like a sea-bird's nest Among the Devon cliffs—the tarry quay Whence in his boyhood he had flung a line For bass or whiting-pollock. I remembered (Had he not told me, on some summer night, His arm about my neck, kissing my hair) He used to sit there, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... advocated are correct, as to the various influences that have determined the specialities of every bird's nest, and the general colouration of female birds, with their action and reaction on each other, we can hardly expect to find evidence more complete than that here set forth. Nature is such a tangled web of complex relations, that a series of correspondences running through hundreds ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... they heard a mother-lion grunting among some reeds, and were nearly run over by the stampede of zebras that followed; they chased a rat that ran into a hole in which was a snake, and it never came out again; they went up a tree after a weaver-bird's nest, but, from the way the bottle-shaped structure was hung, could not get at it; they investigated a hare's hole, and found a six-foot mamba snake, with four-minute death-fangs, in possession; they risked the thousand spikes of a thorn-bush to get at a red-necked pheasant roosting, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... BIRD'S NEST. A round top at a mast-head for a look-out station. A smaller crow's nest. Chiefly used in whalers, where a constant look-out is kept for whales. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... that a bitch in pup, a mare roaming in a meadow with a foal at its side, a bird's nest full of young ones, squeaking, with their open mouths and enormous heads, made her quiver with ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... give too many details would spoil the intending-reader's pleasure. So, as Hamlet observes, "Breke, Breke my heart, for I must hold my tongue!" The Earth Girl first sees the light, such as it is, in a cavern, and is brought up on raw eggs fresh from the sea-bird's nest, uncooked herbs, and raw fish. No tea, coffee, milk, or liquors of any description, were within reach of this unhappy family of three, consisting of Pa, Ma, and the Infant Phenomenon. How they slaked their thirst is not clearly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... had a snow-storm. It was the first time I ever saw snow. We have a large garden, and there are a great many birds in it. Last summer there was a bird's nest in the ivy, and now the little birds which were born there are coming back. We have beautiful flowers in California, but I would like to see some of the Eastern flowers. I ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... she, pointing to a shapeless mass like a huge bird's nest in y'e corner of the field. "There bides poor Joan and I. Wilt come and looke within, mistress, and see how ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... instance, especially as manifested in our architecture. A purely native town in Italy, Arabia, or Africa, or Mexico, has its own atmosphere; no one could mistake one for the other any more than he could mistake a beaver dam for an ant hill or a bird's nest for ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... hath found some fledg'd bird's nest may know, At first sight, if the bird be flown; But what fair well or grove he sings in now, That is ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... of the finest twigs, which he rubs between his hands till they are reduced to a fine fibre and nearly dry. Rolling these into a rounded shape, resembling a bird's nest, click! goes his flint and steel—a piece of "punk" is ignited and slipped into the heart of the ball. This, held on high, and kept whirling around his head, is soon ablaze, when it is thrust in among the gathered heap of green plants. ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... new cap. Annie Bouman is there, too. Even Janzoon Kolp's sister has been admitted, but Janzoon himself has been voted out by the directors, because he killed the stork, and only last summer was caught in the act of robbing a bird's nest, a legal offence ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... I owed this entirely to the instruction and example of my sisters. I doubt indeed whether humanity is a natural or innate quality. I was very fond of collecting eggs, but I never took more than a single egg out of a bird's nest, except on one single occasion, when I took all, not for their value, but from a sort ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... and dissolved, the dark wash took them and carried them into streaks of lesser, more fluid light. Even so, if there could have been country silence for five minutes at a time, the running river, the hills so disturbed with light beyond, might have worn some aspect of peace. But even in the high bird's nest of the apartment there was no real silence, only a pretending at silence, like the forced quiet of a child told to keep still in a corner—the two people dining together could talk in whispers, if they wanted, and still be heard, but always at the back of the brain of either ran a thin ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... her father, "might as well climb back and finish your dinner. You can't find a bird's nest after dark—and you can see that it's almost dark now. You wait till morning and I'll show you ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson
... ealdorman kept what else he might have to say until we were at home, for it was time for us to be off. So we brushed Erpwald down and hid his cut under a cap that the good franklin of the house lent him, for his own was gone, as he said, to make a bird's nest somewhere on the cliffs; and then Elfrida came from the cottage, looking a little white and shaken with her fright, but otherwise none the ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... horses and only used ten of them for the stock we kept there. Very often all the rest were full, and I had to send horses off to another place. I have often sent a wagon-load of hay up to the stable, and the next morning there would not be enough left to make a bird's nest. I have killed a fine beef, and it would all be eaten up in a ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... went to see her cousin the hare. And there came a hunter, and the cat scrambled up the hill, further up, up a tree, and there she found a bird's nest. But the hare ran down the hill, far down ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... onwards in life by other means. The demand for exceptional ability, when combined with energy and good character, is so great that a lad who is gifted with them is hardly more likely to remain overlooked than a bird's nest in the playground of a school. But, by whatever means noteworthiness is achieved, it is usually after a course of repeated and half-unconscious testings of intelligence, energy, and character, which build ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster
... In one respect I think it's better—there are no snakes here. Now, Zillah, lead where you please, I'm in the following mood. Do you know where any of these birds live? Do you think any of them are at home on their nests? If so, we'll call and pay our respects. When I was a horrid boy I robbed a bird's nest, and I often have a twinge of remorse for it." "Do you want to see a robin's nest?" asked ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... Afterwards you will be tired, and no longer able to raise your arm; stay here, and sit down beside me." The son, however, went into the forest, ate his bread, was very merry and peered in among the green branches to see if he could discover a bird's nest anywhere. So he went up and down to see if he could find a bird's nest until at last he came to a great dangerous-looking oak, which certainly was already many hundred years old, and which five men could not have spanned. He stood still and looked at it, and ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... Bess, They all went together to seek a bird's nest. They found a bird's nest with five eggs in, They all took one, and left ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... and statues green with neglect and the stains of the weather. The garden I love more than any place on earth; it is a better study than the room inside the house which is dignified by that name. I like to pace its gravelled walks, to sit in the moss-house, which is warm and cosey as a bird's nest, and wherein twilight dwells at noonday; to enjoy the feast of colour spread for me in the curiously shaped floral spaces. My garden, with its silence and the pulses of fragrance that come and go on the airy undulations, affects me like sweet music. Care stops at the ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... been endowed with the faculty of thinking or reasoning about what he does, is enabled by patience and industry to correct the mistakes into which he at first falls, and to go on constantly improving. A bird's nest is, indeed, a perfect structure; yet the nest of a swallow of the nineteenth century is not at all more commodious or elegant than those that were built amid the rafters of Noah's ark. But if we compare the wigwam of the savage with ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Brown-tailed Moth Butterflies Bird's Nest Crow's Foot Chimney Swallows Cockscomb Dove in the Window Duck and Ducklings Four Little Birds Goose Tracks Goose in the Pond Honeycomb Honeycomb Patch Hen and Chickens King's Crows Peacocks and Flowers Spider's Den Shoo Fly Spider's ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... a woman was living who professed to have been down there. Her object had been to visit her brother, who had recently died. To do this she perfumed herself with water in which a dead rat had been steeped, so as to give herself a death-like smell. She then pulled up a bird's nest and descended through the hole thus made. Her brother, whom of course she found, cautioned her to eat nothing, and by taking his advice she was able to return. A similar tale is told of a New Zealand woman of rank, who was lucky enough to come back from the abode of ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... Horace, making a dash upon her; for her frock was unfastened, and slipping off at the shoulders, and her head looked like a last year's bird's nest. ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... monkeys grinned on the branches, golden flowers had sprung to life on the ends of the twigs, a lovely jewel-like lantern crowned the whole, and as to sweets, everybody- servants and all—had some delightful devices containing them, whether drum, bird, or bird's nest. ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... blossom now gyrated rapidly in a vertical plane. Concentrating observation on one rotating flower, it became a 'rotating haze,' as the rapid motion rendered the flower totally indistinct. The 'haze' now shaped itself into a circle of moss with a deep funnel-like cavity. This was suggestive of a bird's nest. It became lined with hair, but the nest was a deep, pointed cavity. A nest was suggestive of eggs. Hence a series appeared (4); the two rows meeting in one at the apex appears to have arisen from the perspective view of ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... of mystery as he replied: "I am not permitted to reveal everything concerning us, dear Leo. Our private life is of no public interest; but I may tell you that our children are bred entirely in the open air. Many an empty bird's nest is used as an elf cradle, for so highly do we esteem pure air, sunshine, and exposure as a means of making our children hardy, that we even accustom them to danger, and let them, like the birds, face the fury ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... toward me encouragingly, as though offering to help me down. But its top was many feet from the wall. There was an abandoned bird's nest in it; a little below that was a dead limb with a woodpecker's incision at its base. By leaning out I could see, a hundred feet or more below the bottom of ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... days they gamboled in the meadow, plucking the sweet wild grasses—and often and often they clambered up the mountain side, knee deep in the heather, searching for frechans and wild honey, and sometimes they found a bird's nest—but they only peeped into it, they never touched the eggs or allowed their breath to fall upon them, for next to their little mother they loved the mountain, and next to the mountain they loved the wild birds who made the spring ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... knows every bird's nest In the fields for miles around, Where the squirrels play in the sunshine, Where the prettiest flowers are found; When he knows a pair of robins That will fly to his hands for crumbs, He hates to be penned in a school-room, And he's ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... large barn, but being grown old, the wood was kept there. My sister and I used to peep about among the faggots to find the eggs the hens sometimes left there. Birds' nests we might not look for. Grandmamma was very angry once, when Will Tasker brought home a bird's nest, full of pretty speckled eggs, for me. She sent him back to the hedge with it again. She said, the little birds would not sing any more, if their eggs ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... should come under the yoke so early, but we must not approach such subjects with Western ideas. The exuberant spirits of boyhood are not indigenous to this country, and the dog-boy has none of them. He never does mischief for mischief's sake; he robs no bird's nest; he feels no impulse to trifle with the policeman. Marbles are his principal pastime. He puts the thumb of his left hand to the ground and discharges his taw from the point of his second finger, bending it back till it touches the back of the hand and then ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... no confidence in him, an' will lose. I want ter say ter yer right now that this hoss what looks like ther last rose o' summer, ther last run o' shad, an' ther breakin' up o' a hard winter in a last year's bird's nest, is all right, an' he can't lose this race. Ride him true, an' don't give him ther gad none. All yer got ter do is ter encourage him by a word now an' then, an' pilot him straight ter ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... escape his silent notice. It was pleasant for him, from whose life the early dew had been dried away by a well-risen sun, to recall its former freshness by glimpses of this pair of young beginners. It was like having a bird's nest under ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... To view the structure of this little work— A bird's nest. Mark it well, within, without; No tool had he that wrought; no knife to cut, No nail to fix, no bodkin to insert, No glue to join; his little beak was all; And yet how neatly finished!—What nice hand, And every implement and ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... this is not so. There are entire crow-folk who lead honourable lives—that is to say, they only eat grain, worms, caterpillars, and dead animals; and there are others who lead a regular bandit's life, who throw themselves upon baby-hares and small birds, and plunder every single bird's nest ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... determined a little child could see the force in it, and once he was radiant. That day the Swamp Angel was with him. I can't tell you what she was like. I never saw any one who resembled her. He stopped close here to show her a bird's nest. Then they went on to a sort of flower-room he had made, and he sang for her. By the time he left, I had gotten bold enough to come out on the trail, and I met the big Scotchman Freckles lived with. He saw me catching moths and butterflies, so he took me to the flower-room and ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... 'I was thinkin' 't I'd like to bet you two dollars to a last year's bird's nest,' I says, 'that if all them fellers we seen this afternoon, that air over fifty, c'd be got together, an' some one was suddinly to holler "LOW BRIDGE!" that nineteen out o' twenty 'd ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... at this juncture, while he looked over the edge of his cot on the stramash below, "saw ever any man the like of that? Why, see there—there, just under your candle, Tom—a bird's nest floating about with a mavis in it, as ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... The well formed brow should not be demoralized by ringlets, which are suggestive only of a wax doll, nor should it be disfigured by being surmounted by a kind of cushion or roll of hair which gives the idea of weight and size. Nor should the hair have the appearance of a bird's nest, and look tumbled and untidy. This was lately the "beau ideal" of a well dressed head. It was desired that it should appear unkempt and uncombed, as if it had been drawn through a quickset hedge. The back of the head, if well shaped, ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... returning from being prima donna in Mexico, in a packet called after the opera in which she was there a favourite, with her husband Senor V—— and her child. There is M. B—— with moustaches like a bird's nest; a pretty widow in deep affliction, at least in deep mourning; a maiden lady going out as a governess, and every variety of Spaniard and Havanero. So now we are alone, C—-n and I, and my French femme-de-chambre, with her air of Dowager Duchess, and ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... now began to haunt him continually; and his altered demeanour attracted the attention and excited the curiosity of the whole court, and even of the queen, who could only learn from the palmer's attendant that his melancholy seemed to originate in the discovery of something in a bird's nest. With this strange report she was compelled to be satisfied, till Sir Isumbras, with the hope of dissipating his grief, began to resume his usual exercises in the field, but no sooner had he quitted his chamber than the "squires" by her command broke open the door, discovered the treasure, and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... carpet. The straw coverings, which a gardener's foresight had wrapped round the azalea shrubs and the dwarf conifers, were enfolded in a thick white shroud. Like tufts of foam on a wave, the snow was tossed on the plumes of the bamboo clump, which hid the neighbour's dwelling, and made a bird's nest of ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... swung clear of the pointed fir tops and shone full upon a tall spruce tree in the wilderness, a dark object, looking not unlike a great bird's nest upon one of the branches, suddenly came to life. Kagh, the porcupine, had awakened from his dreamless slumber and, though scarce two hours had elapsed since his last satisfying meal upon tender poplar shoots, he decided that it was time to eat. With a dry rustling of quills and scratching ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... my expectations! Although the Square Tower was so ancient that in some places it was actually crumbling away—not the sign of a leaf, not the vestige of a bird's nest could I see anywhere; the walls were abominably, brutally bare. However, it was not long before my disappointment gave way to delight; for the air that blew in through the open window was so sweet, so richly scented with heather and honeysuckle, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... seems to me impossible to carry pictorial illusion to a higher pitch than he has attained. A sprig of hawthorn flowers, freshly plucked, lies before you, and you are half-tempted to take it up and inhale its fragrance; those speckled eggs in the bird's nest, you are sure you might, if you pleased, take into your hand; that tuft of ivy leaves and buds is so complete an optical deception, that you can hardly believe that it has not been attached by some ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... says (1 Cor. 9:9) that God does not "take care for oxen," and, therefore, neither of other irrational animals. Therefore without reason is it commanded (Deut. 22:6): "If thou find, as thou walkest by the way, a bird's nest in a tree . . . thou shalt not take the dam with her young"; and (Deut. 25:4): "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out thy corn"; and (Lev. 19:19): "Thou shalt not make thy cattle to gender with beasts of any ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... her life suffered from those doubts and fears as to her social position which spoil the manners of most middling people. She is tall, slender, and strong; has dark hair, dressed so as to look like hair and not like a bird's nest or a pantaloon's wig (fashion wavering just then between these two models); has unexpectedly narrow, subtle, dark-fringed eyes that alter her expression disturbingly when she is excited and flashes them wide ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... cell; There stays a husband to make you a wife: Now comes the wanton blood up in your cheeks, They'll be in scarlet straight at any news. Hie you to church; I must another way, To fetch a ladder, by the which your love Must climb a bird's nest soon when it is dark: I am the drudge, and toil in your delight; But you shall bear the burden soon at night. Go; I'll to dinner; hie you ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... daughter, little Mercy and poor Robin. The boat is there as bright as ever, scarlet within and white outside; but the name is painted off, because the little dears are in their graves. Two nicer children were never seen, clever, and sprightly, and good to learn; they never even took a common bird's nest, I have heard, but loved all the little things the Lord has made, as if with a foreknowledge of going early home to Him. Their father came back very tired one morning, and went up the hill to his breakfast, and the children got into the boat ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... fruit! Attack the fountain-head! Drown the child! Plunder the rich man who is happy, and who eats overmuch! Strike down the poor man who casts an envious glance at the ass's saddle-cloth, the dog's meal, the bird's nest, and who is grieved at not seeing others as miserable ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... a distinct sinkage, well laid over with office imperturbability, that she showed Mrs. Blair the note, saw her stab into her greenish-black bird's nest of a hat and depart alone. Then the office boy; the publicity man, whistling; a clerk or two, and finally a sixteen-year-old girl who pasted clippings into ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... said Nick-uts, "it's old Mother Mo-lo's. The nasty old wretch laid it in there while we were away from home. She's always sneaking around, the lazy old thing, to lay her eggs in some other bird's nest. She's cowardly too. She always picks out the nest of one smaller than herself. I wish I were big enough to give her a ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... a bird's nest stood a small house with windows that blinked out over the Channel. It rose to a tower room in the midst, and before the front there stretched a plateau whereon stood a flagstaff and spar, from the point of which fluttered a red ensign. Behind the house opened a narrow coomb and descended ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... some narrative of out-door observation which, so far as it goes, fulfils Milton's definition of poetry, "simple, sensuous, passionate." He may not write sonnets to the lake, but he will walk miles to bathe in it; he may not notice the sunsets, but he knows where to search for the black-bird's nest. How surprised the school-children looked, to be sure, when the Doctor of Divinity from the city tried to sentimentalize, in addressing them, about "the bobolink in the woods"! They knew that the darling of the meadow had no more personal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... to poke your finger into a bird's nest," observed Elsie, with a sapient shake of the head. "The eggs always addle if you do, or the young birds refuse to hatch out; and of course in the case of turtle-doves it would be all the more so. 'Lay low, Bre'r Fox,' and wait for what happens. It all promises delightfully, only I ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... determined to seize it, and rushed after it. Gradually I gained on it; with a final rush I made for it—and met unexpectedly bodily resistance. We fell on the ground, and a man became visible under me. I understood at once. The man must have had the invisible bird's nest, which he dropped in the struggle, thus becoming ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... nothing will happen to him, for I love him," said the child gravely. "He showed me a humming-bird's nest, the first ever I saw, ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... say that the Awakening of Appleboro began in that workroom; and in a way it did. But it really had its inception in a bird's nest John Flint had discovered and watched with great interest and pleasure. The tiny mother had learned to accept his approach, without fear; he said she knew him personally. She allowed him to approach close enough to touch her; she even ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... it,' said Douglas, rolling over on the grass and tickling Bobby's bare legs with a bunch of grass; 'I know the man, and he has an awful temper! Sam told me he thrashed a boy who was taking a bird's nest out of his orchard; and he has a large glass room with skeletons and bits of people's bodies lying all about. I think he likes to get children in there, and then he keeps them prisoners, and never ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... attentively, including the tray of coffee cups which MATEY had left on the table in a not unimportant moment of his history.) There have evidently been people here, but they haven't drunk their coffee. Ugh! cold as a deserted egg in a bird's nest. Jack, if you were a clever detective you could construct those people out of their neglected coffee cups. I wonder who they are and ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... yonder; she could squirm through the underbrush with the agility of a rabbit. She loved every crawling, hateful thing, such as all honest people despised, and she once fought with the son of an uphill farmer for robbing a bird's nest, making him give up the eggs and restoring them herself to the top of a pine tree in the fodder ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... and veal and pigeon eggs and soup and fish and little oysters that grow in the ground (very delicious and delicate) and nice little vegetables and bamboo sprouts mixed in with the others, and we had shrimps cooked, and shark's fin and bird's nest (this has no taste at all and is a sort of very delicate soup, but costs a fortune and that is its real reason for being). It is gelatine which almost all dissolves in the cooking. We had many more things than these, and the boy in a dirty white coat and an old cap on his ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... he is tempted to lie, to conceal his fault and avoid punishment; and here again we see how one sin leads to another. The temptations to cruelty are many. Sometimes they appear in the form of a bird's nest, placed by a fond and loving mother on the high bough of a tree, to secure her young brood ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... spiders whose troublesome webs were apt to come in contact with his spectacles. The gardeners had severest instructions not to approach their nests. It was one of the minor griefs of his life that, being so short-sighted, he could never discover a bird's nest; no, not even as a child. Memories of boyhood began to flit through his mind; they curled upwards in the scented wreaths of his Havana. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... They all ascended to the little projecting chamber, through the window of which her scarlet jacket caught the eyes of the boys paddling about on the river in those early days when Cyprian Eveleth gave it the name of the Fire-hang-bird's Nest. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... the head of the table looked on in dumb amazement, and he was still speechless when, after dinner, five children set upon him and dragged him out to see the bird's nest behind ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... my way to the town, after observing, to my great annoyance, that the castle could have been as easily taken as a bird's nest; and seeing a beer-glass painted on a sign-board, I guessed that here was the inn. Truth to say, my heart wanted strengthening sorely, and I entered. There was a pretty wench washing crabs in the kitchen, and as I made up to her, after my manner, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... but we will try to find something instead," said Kallolo, giving me his blowpipe and bow to hold. He then climbed up the tree till he reached the bird's nest, from which he extracted two eggs, and brought them down safety. They were considerably larger than a duck's egg, white and granulated all over, though the bird itself did not appear to be above the size of an ordinary duck. It was, I found, a crested curassow. ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... favorite amusement of a play upon words. There is a possible and a proper sense of the word "nature" that makes it include everything except the supernatural. Therefore man and all his works belong to the realm of nature. A tenement house in this sense is as "natural" as a bird's nest, a peapod ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... of spider bridges, ladders and balconies were laced like a metal network. The turret in which Dr. Frank and I now stood was perched here. Fifty feet away, like a bird's nest, Snap's instrument room stood clinging to the metal bridge. The dome roof, with the glassite windows rolled back now, rose in a mound peak to cover the highest ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... be thrilling to get something out of that bird's nest besides bills, fertilizer and incubator circulars, and the bulletins of the Department of Agriculture. Thank you very much. But if, after conferring with your aunts, you find that they don't approve of me, it will be ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... spirits, located and bounded, we must dismiss as dreams and cheats of the childish world's unripe fancy. There is no evidence for any thing of that coarse, crude sort. The fictitious theological Heaven is a deposit of imagination on the azure ground of infinity, like a bird's nest on Himalaya. What, then, shall we say? Why, in the first place, that, while there are reasons enough and room enough for an undisheartened faith in the grand fact of human immortality, it is beyond our present powers to establish ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... it was this way: if Tom was going to win a scout award by finding a certain bird's nest in a certain tree, when he got to the place he would find that the tree had been chopped down. Once he was going to win the pathfinder's badge by trailing a burglar, and he trailed him seven miles through the woods and found that ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... a recommendation in its own way. Tolstyakov, a friend of mine, is always obliged to take off his pudding basin when he goes into any public place where other people wear their hats or caps. People think he does it from slavish politeness, but it's simply because he is ashamed of his bird's nest; he is such a boastful fellow! Look, Nastasya, here are two specimens of headgear: this Palmerston"—he took from the corner Raskolnikov's old, battered hat, which for some unknown reason, he called a Palmerston—"or this jewel! ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... many of our youth. It was scarcely two weeks ago that I detected a boy (apparently about twelve years of age) climbing one of the willow trees in our old Schmittheimer place. I crept up on him unawares and speedily became satisfied that he was after the eggs in a bird's nest that nestled cozily in a crotch of the limbs. I shouted lustily at the young scapegrace, and his confusion convinced me that my suspicions were correct. I kept him in his uncomfortable position ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... I love the best, A little brown house like a ground-bird's nest, Hid among grasses, and vines, and trees, Summer retreat of the ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... went along with Uncle Wiggily to where the ferns grew in the wood, leaving her regular hat at the tailor bird's nest to ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis
... down on dandelion-balls woven together with horse-hair. In this dainty nest are laid four or five creamy white eggs, speckled with lilac tints and red-browns. The unwelcome egg of the Cow-bird is often found in the Yellow-bird's nest, but this Warbler builds a floor over the egg, repeating the expedient, if the Cow-bird continues her mischief, until sometimes a third story ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... eagerly after breakfast. On about the only tree in the plantation with a fork to it a nest balanced precariously. It had in it three pale-blue eggs splotched with light-brown. It appeared to be a black-bird's nest with another egg or two ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... dusk when the train reached the lovely little village of Lee, nestling like a bird's nest amid ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... Jeanne and Julien would look where he pointed, but see nothing, until at last they discovered something gray, like a mass of stones fallen from the summit. It was a little village, a hamlet of granite hanging there, fastened on like a veritable bird's nest and almost invisible on the ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... were to examine the boys were perched up in a high pulpit so profusely trimmed with evergreen that it looked like a bird's nest; they were remarkably pleasant-looking men, and their eyes twinkled merrily under their Christmas wreaths. Father Anselmus was a little the taller of the two, and Father Ambrose was a little the broader; and that was about all the difference between ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... niche, and he had been fortunate enough to light upon exactly the place that appealed to him. It would not have suited everybody. It was a long low house, made of three fishermen's cottages thrown into one, built so close to the edge of the cliff that it seemed like a sea-bird's nest, with windows overlooking the channel and the harbour, and a strip of stony garden behind. Inside, the accommodation was somewhat cramped, but the rooms, if small, were quaint, with an old-fashioned air about the ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... me the key," explained Mr. Sanford. "He said the castle was as empty as a last year's bird's nest, but I thought we might like to take a ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... also makes its home in barns and houses. Its back and sides are of a slate color, but the under part of its body, and its legs and feet, are white. It is sometimes called the white-footed mouse, or wood-mouse. It builds a round nest in trees, that looks like a bird's nest, and it lives ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... how can I let you go?" Says sweet Greane, weeping "Who will climb with me The rocks to find the bird's nest? who will play At arms, forgetting that I am a girl, And helping ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask
... mountain side overlooking the valley, hung a little camp like a bird's nest. It was hidden there in the densest wood, yet it looked out over the whole land. No bird, indeed no mother of her young, ever chose a deeper or wilder retreat, or a place more utterly apart from the ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller |
