"Finny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... farther. The smooth-haired maids, neat in their simple wrappers, knew they were on their trial, and that it behoved them to be wary. They had not compassed twenty winters without knowing that Marget Todd lost Davie Haggart because she "fittit" a black stocking with brown worsted, and that Finny's grieve turned from Bell Whamond on account of the frivolous flowers in her bonnet: and yet Bell's prospects, as I happen to know, at one time looked bright and promising. Sitting over her father's peat-fire ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... course a deep hole close to the bank; these holes remain full of water, as the little stream continues to flow through them; and the water, in its entrance and exit being too shallow for a large fish, all the finny monsters of the river are compelled to imprison themselves in the depths of these holes. Here the crocodiles have fine feeding, as they live in the ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... high poised, and steady hand, The centre of that fiery ray, Behold the Indian fisher stand Prepared to strike the finny prey; Hurrah! the shaft has sped below— Transfix'd the shining prize I see; On swiftly darts the birch canoe; Yon black rock shrouding from my view ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... comes to us variously prepared for the table. In short, we Americans are fairly friendly with a number of the aristocrats of the water, but on analyzing the situation we come to realize that as for knowing the "finny tribe" as a whole well enough to get complete gastronomic joy out of the situation, it remains that it is only the French people ...
— Twenty-four Little French Dinners and How to Cook and Serve Them • Cora Moore
... biped and quadruped, the earth, the air, and all that therein is. By its high decree, the beast may no longer bask in the noon tide of its nature, the birds must forsake their pure ether, and the piscatory dwellers in the vasty deep may spread no more their finny sails towards their caves of coral. The fruits, the herbs, and the other upgrowings of the habitable world, and all created things, by one wave of the mighty wand are brought together into this their ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... fishes. Swanhilda for a while watched in silence the disport of the happy creatures, then snatched up a hazel wand lying at her feet, round the end of which a worm had coiled, and, half maddened by the joyance of the finny tribe, struck with it into the water. A greedy fish snapped at the switch. The famishing Swanhilda clutched hungeringly at it, but found in her hand a piece of offensive carrion, and nothing more; whilst around, from every side, there rang such a clatter of commingled mockery and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... you know what you are about. You go "down North"; and your friend is not bound for Labrador. She is going to "the Labrador," or, to be more of a purist still, "the Larbadore." Having put you right on these rudiments—oh! I forgot another: "Fish" is always codfish. Other finny sea-dwellers may have to be designated by their special names, but the unpretentious cod is "t' fish"; and the salutation of friends is not, "How is your wife?" or, "How is your health?" But, "How's t' fish, B'y?" I like it. It is friendly and different—a ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... fish into the nets, and for this purpose one is taken in every boat that puts to sea. The method is extremely simple. As soon as the net surrounds a shoal, the dog is put in the centre, and by beating the water with his paws he effectually drives the finny creatures into the meshes. It was one of this same species of dogs that attracted so much attention at the Port Vieux by leaping after a stick from the mound—a distance of some fifty feet—into the sea. He would do it as often ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... shallow bays and open lakes. As surely as the natives disappear under the surface of the water, so surely will they reappear with a fish writhing upon the point of their short spears; and even under water their aim is always correct. One traveller, Sturt, is of opinion that they seldom eat the finny tribes when they can get anything else, but this idea seems scarcely to agree with the report of others. At all events, whether from choice or not, a large proportion of their subsistence is derived from the waters. With regard to the cookery of their ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... was particularly well placed to keep the larder of an epicure amply supplied. Fish of various sorts abounded in its river, and the sportsman had only to cast his line to haul in a bass or some other member of the finny tribe, which then peopled the waters, as the air above the swamps of this fruitful latitude are known to be filled with insects. Among others was the salmon of the lakes, a variety of that well-known species, that is scarcely inferior to the delicious salmon of northern Europe. ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... the copy again, I saw that it purported to be the work of "Rudentia Jones, Fellow of the Palaeontologic Society, Entomologist to the Institute for Harmonizing the Universes, and Ruler of Subaqueous Creation, excepting the Finny Mammalia." ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... brain. On bleak divides, Where Sleep grew niggardly for nipping cold That twinged blue lips into a mouthed curse, Not back to Seville and its sunny plains Winged their brief-biding dreams, but once again, Lords of a palace in Tenochtitlan, They guarded Montezuma's treasure-hoard. Gold, like some finny harvest of the sea, Poured out knee deep around the rifted floors, Shiny and sparkling,—arms and crowns and rings: Gold, sweet to toy with as beloved hair, — To plunge the lustful, crawling fingers down, Arms elbow deep, and draw them out again, And watch the glinting metal ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... and idly winks at the distant crags and patches of snow from under his cap-brim; when the boat drifts shoreward to the white water, and he lolls over the gunwale and gazes by the hour down through the crystal depths and notes the colors of the pebbles and reviews the finny armies gliding in procession a hundred feet below; when at night he sees moon and stars, mountain ridges feathered with pines, jutting white capes, bold promontories, grand sweeps of rugged scenery topped ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sometimes embayed, sometimes running out into little headlands, but everywhere clothed with timber almost to the water's edge. Wild fowl skimmed over its glassy surface, or dipped in search of its finny prey, and here and there a heron might be detected standing in some shallow nook, and feasting on the smaller fry. A flight of cawing rooks were settling upon the tall trees on the right bank, and the voices of the thrush, ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... be doubted whether Sannazarius's Piscatory Eclogues are equal to the scenes described by Walton on the banks of the river Lea. He gives the feeling of the open air: we walk with him along the dusty roadside, or repose on the banks of a river under a shady tree; and in watching for the finny prey, imbibe what he beautifully calls 'the patience and simplicity of poor honest fishermen.' We accompany them to their inn at night, and partake of their simple, but delicious fare; while Maud, the pretty milkmaid, at her mother's desire, sings the classical ditties of the poet Marlow; 'Come ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... after the river was frozen over above Poughkeepsie, it was discovered that immense numbers of fish were retreating up stream before the slow encroachment of salt water. There was a general exodus of the finny tribes from the whole lower part of the river; it was like the spring and fall migration of the birds, or the fleeing of the population of a district before some approaching danger: vast swarms of cat-fish, white and yellow perch and striped ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... Reformation had the effect of wooing the finny tribe back to their old haunts. At all events, whatever may have been the cause, it is the fact that there is not at present a less plentiful supply in this spot than there is in any other part of that ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... glad of another and final opportunity to pay my respects to the finny tribes of the Neversink. At this point it was one of the finest trout streams I had ever beheld. It was so sparkling, its bed so free from sediment or impurities of any kind, that it had a new look, as if it had just come from ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... in the season, the blueback and spring salmon swim in vast schools across the end of Squitty. They feed upon small fish, baby herring, tiny darting atoms of finny life that swarm in countless numbers. What these inch-long fishes feed upon no man knows, but they begin to show in the Gulf early in spring. The water is alive with them,—minute, darting streaks of silver. The salmon follow ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... shore. Since the great Pan expired, and through the roar Of the Ionian waters broke a dread Voice which proclaimed "the Mighty Pan is dead." How much died with him! false or true—the dream Was beautiful which peopled every stream With more than finny tenants, and adorned The woods and waters with coy nymphs that scorned Pursuing Deities, or in the embrace Of gods brought forth the high heroic race 10 Whose names are on the hills ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron |
