"Geese" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by his tricks, fools that you are? Yes, no doubt there was a fire in the cellar last night, no doubt his creditors will be geese enough to let him off paying his debts! But what you don't know is, that he didn't really ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 'Wild geese' in the morning sky had been forerunners; very heavy clouds were sweeping up from the west, and rain beginning to fall. He passed an old man leaning on the gate of a cottage garden and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... groaning windmills, with tattered sails, guard the shore and torture the Indian corn into bread-stuff. Now for the first time the traveler begins to realize what it is to see wild fowl. The water seems black with ducks and geese, and dazzling white with the graceful swans. The latter sit in great flocks on the shoals, for miles in length. As the steamer approaches, they arise in such vast numbers as to nearly blacken the heavens with a rushing sound like the coming tornado. Arriving ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... gander he was makin' up above? On de lake dey call Two Mountain is de place dey 're goin' fly, But only spen' de night-tam, for dey 're alway on de move; Jus' see de shadder dancin' up an' down, up an' down, You t'ink dem geese was passin' in an' out between de tree W'en de branch is bendin' over on de water all aroun' Now you see de place I 'm talkin', dat 's de ...
— The Voyageur and Other Poems • William Henry Drummond
... boy was watching Uncle Remus broil a piece of bacon on the coals, he heard a great commotion among the guinea-fowls. The squawking and pot-racking went on at such a rate that the geese awoke and began to scream, and finally the dogs added their various voices to the uproar. Uncle Remus leaned back ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... quails, and other game, besides water-fowl, but in the chase of hares; and in all of these pursuits the falconers were assisted by dogs. Game, of course, could only be killed at particular seasons of the year; and wild-geese, wild-ducks, woodcocks, and snipes in the winter; but spring and summer pastime was afforded by the crane, the bustard, the heron, the rook, and the kite; while, at the same periods, some of the smaller description ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... the windows dimmed with colored panes or curtains, he had often seen women who walked about like geese; others, on benches, rested their elbows on the marble tables, humming, their temples resting between their hands; still others strutted and posed in front of mirrors, playing with their false hair pomaded by hair-dressers; others, again, took money from their purses ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate-de-foie-gras. But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? and that is adding insult to injury, is it? Look at your knife-handle, there, my civilized and enlightened gourmand dining off that roast beef, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... matter, ma'am. Hope twenty live geese inside it's enough-eh? Bed, do you call it? It's the rack! It's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... off to the farmhouse, which could be seen in the distance across the meadows, full of assurance; but misfortunes began at once. No sooner was he well in the first meadow than a flock of geese suddenly appeared from nowhere and approached him. There is something very horrid about the approach of a flock of geese. They are not really dangerous, but they lower their heads and hiss and come on so steadily ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... Long Island country with here a group of small untidy shacks and there a farm and outhouses with stone walls and scrap heaps, clothes drying on a line, chickens on the ceaseless hunt and a line of geese prowling aimlessly, easily set acackle,—a primitive end-of-everywhere sort of country just there, with sometimes a mile of half burned trees, whether done for a purpose or by accident it would be difficult to say. At any rate, no one seemed ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... Jo[h]n, goal, magistrate, majesty, geese, fleece, sig[h]ed, [h]ead, sadled, glad, titled, clad, battled, know, frenh, wensh, good, blood, wort[h], [h]unt, gentl, jear, rih, wit[h], city, sit, scituate, year, ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... are very numerous. Of the parrot tribe alone I could, while I am writing, count up from memory fourteen different sorts. Hawks are very numerous, so are quails. A single snipe has been shot. Ducks, geese and other aquatic birds are often seen in large flocks, but are universally so shy, that it is found difficult to shoot them. Some of the smaller birds are very beautiful, but they are not remarkable for either sweetness, or variety of notes. To one of them, not bigger than a tomtit, we ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... and salads were during eight months of the year the only vegetable. And on the dresser, and before the fire, whole hecatombs of fragrant victims, which needed neither frankincense nor myrrh; Clovelly herrings and Torridge salmon, Exmoor mutton and Stow venison, stubble geese and woodcocks, curlew and snipe, hams of Hampshire, chitterlings of Taunton, and botargos of Cadiz, such as Pantagruel himself might have devoured. And Jack eyed them, as a ragged boy eyes the cakes in a ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... to proceed on her way. That the danger had been real enough the deserted river proved; terror of these same revolutionaries had swept the usually busy waterway clean of craft, and nothing further disturbed the quiet but the hoarse honk of wild geese and ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... apex of a rocky promontory that contained the little group, Christian Indians, muleteers and soldados crossed themselves and looked up questioningly. In a dozen litters sick men tossed and moaned. A mule brayed raucously, startling flocks of wild geese to flight from nearby cliffs, a herd of deer on ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... in the east—had been brought all the way from Phasis upon the southern shores of the Black Sea; and woodcock from the valleys of Ionia, and the watery plains of Troas, to load the tables of the luxurious masters of the world. Livers of geese, forced to an unnatural size by cramming the unhappy bird with figs; and turbot fricasseed in cream, and peacocks stuffed with truffles, were on the board of Catiline that day, as on the boards of many another noble Roman; and the wines by which these rare dainties were diluted, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... "this screeching will profit us nothing. Even if we must die, let us die becomingly, not shrieking like butchered geese." ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... wash'd—the world Is flesh and shadow—I have had my day. The dirty nurse, Experience, in her kind Hath foul'd me—an I wallow'd, then I wash'd— I have had my day and my philosophies— And thank the Lord I am King Arthur's fool. Swine, say ye? swine, goats, asses, rams and geese Troop'd round a Paynim harper once, who thrumm'd On such a wire as musically as thou Some such fine ...
— The Last Tournament • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... side of the tall fence that looks as if it were made of crocheted wire. Sometimes Jehosophat's father opens the gate in the fence and lets the geese wander down to the pond. A silly way they have of stretching out their long white necks and crying, "Hiss, hiss!" This frightens Hepzebiah who always runs away. Then the geese waddle along in single file, that is one by one, like fat old ladies crossing ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... "Do you think I can't escape you all—if I want to? Of course I can. What geese you are! None of you will ever prevent me from doing what I want to do. It really would save such a lot of time and trouble if you would ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... on which we regaled ourselves was a sheep or goat with the skin left on,—as in the way I have described,—and with the inside filled with turkeys, fowls, ducks, wild geese, pieces of pork, plantains, yams, calvanasses, cassava, bread powdered, boiled maize, oranges, lemons, and such other ingredients as could be obtained; the whole being cut up into small pieces, and duly seasoned. The animal thus stuffed is skewered together, and baked ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... which their dim-seen white inspired. Only the songs of birds distinguished the noonday from the night, unless when the flail was heard in the barn, through the open doors of which, coloured by mosses, the river glistened, and the green, with its geese, gleamed the more ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... Market-place, to the House of the Capulets, now degenerated into a most miserable little inn. Noisy vetturini and muddy market-carts were disputing possession of the yard, which was ankle-deep in dirt, with a brood of splashed and bespattered geese; and there was a grim-visaged dog, viciously panting in a doorway, who would certainly have had Romeo by the leg, the moment he put it over the wall, if he had existed and been at large in those times. The orchard fell into other hands, and was ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... profound effect on the rural population. Many persons had habitually used the common pastures and open fields for pasture purposes, when they had in reality no legal claim whatever to such use. A poor man whose cow, donkey, or flock of geese had picked up a precarious livelihood on land of undistinguished ownership now found the land all enclosed and his immemorial privileges withdrawn without compensation. Naturally there was much dissatisfaction. A popular piece of doggerel ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... White Geese were taking their morning waddle, and Reddy ran plump into them. Now there was nothing that he liked better to eat than nice fat goose. Still, he didn't wait, but left them beating their wings and stretching their long necks to hiss, hiss, hiss, as they scattered ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... half an hour afterward. And, oh, we had such a grand, funny time getting supper. It was as good as a party. I poured the tea. And he called me Miss Adams, like a grown lady. And, then, what do you think? We played fox and geese! And do you know I thought the geese were dumb to let the fox get them all. And then he took the geese and soon penned my fox in a corner. Then he told me about the fox and the goose and the measure of corn and the man crossing the stream. It was just ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... themselves in preparation for their flight sooner than usual; but when the winter is going to be mild, they will either not migrate at all, or travel only a small distance southward. When a hard winter is coming, tortoises will make their burrows deeper. If wild geese, cranes, etc., soon return from the countries to which they had betaken themselves at the beginning of spring, it is a sign that a hot and dry summer is about to ensue in those countries, and that the drought will prevent their ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... King killed all her geese the twentieth of December. We all helped pick them. We had one Christmas Day and will have one every fortnight the rest ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... heads to their hoofs to keep them from straying, in a way that must cause horrible pain, and sometimes when I go into a cottage I find all the women of the place down on their knees plucking the feathers from live ducks and geese. ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... picked up an enormous young Plantagenet and threw it at him They were all over the field Then the king knighted him on the spot There never was anything like the fun at the mayor's Christmas ball Their parents stared in great distress "I will go and tend my geese!" She sang it beautifully A strange sad state of things Nan returns with the umbrellas Such frantic efforts to get away Dame Elizabeth stared with astonishment The count thinks himself insulted The snow was quite deep Two by two The snow man's house Puss-in-the-corner To the rescue "I'll put ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... I wuz born in this country an' me daddy before me. I like it here. I like the feel of the air in the fall. There's a flock o' ducks now circlin' over that bend o' the river. The geese are comin'. I heard 'em honk high up in the sky last night. I like my oysters and terrapin. I like to shoot ducks and geese, rabbits and quail. I like the smell o' the water. I like the smell o' these fields. I like the way the sun shines and ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... again in the power of Tarhe," said the chief in his native tongue. "Though he had the swiftness of the bounding deer or the flight of the eagle it would avail him not. The wild geese as they fly northward are not swifter than the warriors of Tarhe. Swifter than all is the vengeance of the Huron. The young paleface has cost the lives of some great warriors. What ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... night as to whether the normal healthy child is at heart a mystic or a realist; whether he likes fairy tales because they show him a magical world where flowers can talk and umbrellas are turned into black geese, or because they tell of strange romantic things happening to a real human boy like himself; but there can be no shadow of doubt that much of the verse intended for children is either too clever in its humour ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... going: or 'tis sweet to note The delver, when his toothed rake hath stirred The stubborn clod, his hoe the glebe hath smote; Barefoot the country girl, with loosened zone, Spins, while she keeps her geese 'neath yonder stone. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... hain't the same sass. The geese have to get the same strength from it,—strength to swim in the same water, fly over the same fences, from the same pursuers and avengers; and they have to grow the same feathers out of it; but the sass, the sass ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... a perpetual layer of cow dung, in which I sank to my knees, broken up with shimmering puddles of dark brown liquid manure, the farmyard also boasted a numerous population. Here the lambs skipped, the geese trumpeted, the fowls scratched the ground and the sow grunted with her swarm of little pigs ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... bell, with its mediaeval inscription, familiar to the vicar, if to no one else who heard it, I to the grave do summon all, kept on its heavy booming monotone, with which no other sound from land or sea, near or distant, intermingled, except the cackle of the geese on some far-away farm on the moors, as they were coming home to roost; and that one noise from so great a distance seemed only to deepen the stillness. Then there was a little movement in the crowd; a little pushing from side to side, to make a path for the corpse and its bearers—an aggregate of ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... and the price of house-rent. The price of provisions at Saumur, as I learned from this girl, was very cheap: beef, not very good, that is, not very fat, about 1-1/2d. (English) per pound; mutton and veal about 2d.;—two fowls 8d.; two ducks 10d.; geese and turkies from 1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d..;—fuel, as much as would serve three fires for the year, about 5l.;—a house of two stories and garrets, two rooms in front and two in back in each story, such being the manner in which they are built, a passage running through ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... is given to exaggeration. "All their geese are swans." A Peruvian assured us that Cuzco contained 200,000 souls. It is, in fact, about as large as ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... indeed tired, and the little wooden shoes grew heavier and heavier, and the little bare feet ached dully; but her heart was light and her mind sweet with happiness. Day after day she had tended the geese in the valley and trudged back at evening alone, all told a matter of twelve miles; and now she was bringing them into the city to sell in the market on the morrow. After that she would have little to do save an hour or two at night in a tavern called the Black Eagle, ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... about the little German girls in their funny black-silk caps, short-waisted gowns, and wooden shoes, whom she used to see watering long webs of linen bleaching on the grass, watching great flocks of geese, or driving pigs to market, knitting or spinning as ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... 1s.; children 6d.; luggage 1s. per cwt.; wheat or shelled maize 6d. per bushel; maize in cob 4d. per bushel; each chair 6d.; sheep and goats 6d. each; pigs and packages, according to their size; liquids 1d. per gallon; porter 3s. per hhd.; planks 2s. 6d. per 100 feet; fowls and ducks 1s. per dozen; geese and turkies 1s. 2d. per dozen; parcels weighing 2lbs. 3d.; and private letters 2d. each. The hire of the whole ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... is the well-known "Goose Man" fountain, by Labenwolf. Every traveller has seen the quaint half-foolish little man, as he stands there holding his two geese who politely turn away their heads in order to produce the ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... "That kind of apples is best." It is truly remarkable that many persons who can justly lay claim to the possession of considerable culture use this barbarous combination. It would be just as correct to say, "Those flock of geese," or "Those drove of cattle," as to say, "Those sort or kind ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... symphonic contingent of Szegzard is limited to half a dozen gypsies with instruments out of tune and harmonising in pell mell fashion one with the other; the choruses are free and performed in the open air, namely: soprano and alto- -flocks of geese; tenor and bass—cattle;—so that a conductor like O.B. would have nothing further to do than to pose as a ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... mind is a magnificent, terrible machine. He has the imagination of a mathematician and a logician developed beyond all conception, he has not one spark of the imagination of a poet. And so he cannot deal with men; he can't understand their weaknesses and limitations; they are geese and hens to him, creatures to be scared out of his vicinity. However, I will see what I can do. Could you arrange for the members of the Authority ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... we have a clew to the degree of civilization attained by the Greeks before they arrived in Europe. Thus it appears that they brought from Asia a familiarity with oxen and cows, horses, dogs, swine, goats, geese; that they could work in metals; that they built houses, and were acquainted with the elements of agriculture, especially with farinaceous grains; they used salt; they had boats propelled by oars, but not sails; they divided the year by moons, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... right, then; there are two of us, and I guess you look as silly as I do. But there's that fellow, Will, getting his work in, as usual. A nice pair of geese we'll look like in ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... a brogue; "arrah and is't wisdom the two geese are gabbling about all this while? To bed with ye, ye divils, and don't be after burning your fingers ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... What geese we are!" said Sahwah, coming to herself with a start. "Worrying about something that's miles off! Cheer up. We may all get drowned and never have to go home at all. You always want to look on the ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... other religious services they perform (one may almost say) of infinite number. 41 They enjoy also good things not a few, for they do not consume or spend anything of their own substance, but there is sacred bread baked for them and they have each great quantity of flesh of oxen and geese coming in to them each day, and also wine of grapes is given to them; but it is not permitted to them to taste of fish: beans moreover the Egyptians do not at all sow in their land, and those which grow they ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... we accompany Charley up the south branch of the Saskatchewan, where his utmost expectations in the way of hunting were more than realised, and where he became so accustomed to shooting ducks and geese, and bears and buffaloes, that he could not forbear smiling when he chanced to meet with a red-legged gull, and remembered how he and his friend Harry had comported themselves when they first met with these birds ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... indemnified himself for any undue abstinence demanded of him when in camp. I remember being on the wharf, with some naval officers, when he came down from his first trip. The steamer seemed an animated hen-coop. Live poultry hung from the foremast shrouds, dead ones from the mainmast, geese hissed from the binnacle, a pig paced the quarter-deck, and a duck's wings were seen fluttering from a line which was wont to sustain duck trousers. The naval heroes, mindful of their own short rations, and taking high views of one's duties in a conquered country, looked ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... left, and the weeds and the grasses Sprout up as juicy as can be, and posies o' loveliest colors Blossom as brightly as wink, and bees come and suck 'em. Water-wagtails come tiltin',—and, look! there's the geese o' the village! All are a-comin' to see you, and all want to give you a welcome; Yes, and you're kind o' heart, and you prattle to all of 'em kindly; "Come, you well-behaved creeturs, eat and drink what I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... stood in the row of the reapers in the August afternoon, Who have sat by the frozen water in the high day of the moon, When the lights of the Christmas feasting were dead in the house on the hill, And the wild geese gone to the salt-marsh had left the winter still. Yea, I am fair, my firstling; if thou couldst but remember me! The hair that thy small hand clutcheth is a goodly sight to see; I am true, but my face is a snare; soft and deep are my eyes, And they seem for men's beguiling fulfilled ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... found in this county; the great-crested grebe is a very handsome bird and frequents lakes and rivers; but of the five British grebes, the little dabchick is by far the most common. The feet of these birds are peculiar, the toes are not connected together by a web, as you see in ducks and geese; they are, however, united at the base, and each of the three front toes is surrounded by a broad continuous membrane; the lower part of the leg is also very flat; the legs are placed very far backwards, so that these birds stand almost upright; the ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... hung heavy with the people on the mountain, who had come from Coserow, from Zitze, from Gnitze, etc., to see my child burnt, and they all came running down the hill in long rows like geese, one after the other, to see what had happened. And among them was my ploughman, Claus Neels. When the worthy fellow saw and heard what had befallen us, he began to weep aloud for joy; and straightway he too told what he had heard the Sheriff ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... U. No peace of mind I e'er shall know again Till I have cooked the geese of TOM and JANE! But—though a naughty—I'm a nervous nunky, For downright felonies I feel too funky! I'd hire assassins—but of late the villains Have raised their usual fee to fifteen shillin's! Nor, to reduce their rates, will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... the sonorous name; for, after all, it is but a commonplace street of shops running from the quays into the heart of the town. It is also deformed by tramcars. I strolled leisurely up, thinking of the many swans that were geese, and Paradises that were building-plots, and heroes that were dummies, and solidities that were shadows, in short, enjoying a gentle post-prandial mood, when my eyes suddenly fell on a scene which brought me down ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... Then Pa was mad, and said all he brought me along for was to carry game, and I had come near shooting his hind leg off, and now I wouldn't carry ducks. While he was coaxing me to go in the cold water without my pants on, I heard some wild geese squawking, and then Pa heard them, and he was excited. He said you lay down behind the muskrat house, and I will get a goose. I told him he couldn't kill a goose with that fine shot, and I gave him a large cartridge the gun store man ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... her with the stocks and Bridewell won't make her confess, I have a warrant in my pocket, just made out by the magistrates' clerk, for the apprehension of the gang, on suspicion of their stealing Mrs Fowler's turkey, and Farmer Groves' geese. We'll first see what can be done there; and then I'll come back, and we'll ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... several elevations which give a fine view over the plain, and upon one of these our future home will stand. A small stream falls into the larger one, and will, I think, be useful. There is an abundance of game; ducks, geese, and swans swarm upon the river. I saw a good many ostriches out on the plains. And, lastly, the soil appears to be excellent. A great point is, that it is only distant twenty miles from Rosario, a most rising town; so that the value of the land is sure to increase yearly, ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... and exploits, which indicate character and assume high interest, when they relate to a person like the subject of this narrative. These hunters, unerring in their aim to prostrate the buffalo on his plain, or to bring down the geese and swans from the clouds, thought little of any other use of the gray goose quill, ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... "current epoch" of the geologist. But by way of compensation, reindeer and elks, brown and black bears, foxes and squirrels, abound; there are also wolves, and the isatis or polar fox; there are swans, and geese, and ducks, partridges and snipes, and in the rivers abundance of fish. And yet, though the population be now so scanty, and the date of the peopling of Kolimsk is known, there was once a numerous race in these regions, the ruins of ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... "Great among geese," I faltered, "Is she who grew that quill!" And, Deathless Bird, unalter'd Is mine opinion still. Yet sometimes, as I view my three Stones with a thoughtful brow, I think there possibly might be ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... 5 Geese are swans, and swans are geese. Let them have it how they will! Thou art tired; ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... time to Dublin, or to France, and maybe we won't be in the place at all when you come back. There's no fences to the bit of farm I have, the way I'm destroyed running. The calves do be straying, and the geese do be straying, and the hens do be straying, and I'm destroyed running after them. We've no man in the place since himself died in the winter, and he ailing these five years, and there's no one to give us a hand drawing the hay or cutting the bit ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... the banks of a small stream, and the tents are evidently pitched directly upon the roosting ground of wild geese, for during the snowstorm thousands of them came here long after dark, making the most dreadful uproar one ever heard, with the whirring of their big wings and constant "honk! honk!" of hundreds of voices. They circled around so low and the calls were so loud that ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... a man out several days before to find out how many camps there were and where they were located. There were twelve camps and that means twenty-four men. We roasted six geese, boiled three small hams and three hens. We had besides several meat-loaves and links of sausage. We had twelve large loaves of the best rye bread; a small tub of doughnuts; twelve coffee-cakes, more to be called fruit-cakes, and also a quantity of little ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... decently with cabbage soup and groats, on feast-days with rye and mutton; at Christmas geese and pigs were roasted. She allowed nothing out of the common on the servants' table or in their dress, but she gave the surplus from her own table now to one woman, now ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... the matter as being extremely difficult. At length they showed us a farm near the British camp, and recommended our going thither, as the people there would be able to give us all possible help. We reached the farm just after sunset to the accompaniment of barking dogs and hissing geese. The door was opened by a feeble old man, who, with his equally aged wife, were apparently the only occupants of the place. As soon as it was evident that we were friends, however, two strapping ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... gables and lightning-rods to his sight in their reverse, the partly stripped trees allowing that manorial pile to stand forth in much of its length and imposing proportions. Lest he might not be suspected of curiosity, Levin continued on to the bridge at Manokin landing, and counted the geese come out of a lawn on a willowy cape there, and take to water like a fleet of white schooners. He ascended the rise beyond the bridge, and looked over to see if Meshach might have taken a walk down ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... and some snow fell before sunrise. A little time ago, Dr. Russ, who was walking in the garden, came in a great haste to the window where Rebecca and I were sitting, bidding us come forth. So, we hurrying out, the good man bade us look whither he pointed, and to! a flock of wild geese, streaming across the sky, in two great files, sending down, as it were, from the clouds, their loud and sonorous trumpetings, "Cronk, cronk, cronk!" These birds, the Doctor saith, do go northward in March to hatch their broods in the great bogs ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... to live like that, catching fish, and shooting wild ducks and geese, and cooking 'em, and eating 'em. Then you have a 'paulin and spread it over the boat of a night, and sleep under ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... verbenas, scattered over the prairie, morning-glories and sunflowers in the arroyos and along the creeks, and many a flower nameless to the general, abounded. So, it should be added, did in their season plover, snipe, ducks, and geese. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... trip to Crocky's Island, situated on the opposite side of the Strait. On landing at Hellgate, within Fools' Inlet my surprise was much excited by the prodigious flocks of gulls, pigeons, and geese, which were directing their flight towards the Great Fish Lake, whither I, too, was making my way. I concluded their object was to procure food, of which a profusion was here spread before them, consisting of every thing which such birds most delight to peck at; but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... is this, upon my word! Great Juno's geese saved Rome her citadel. Another drowsy Manlius may be stirred And the State saved, if I but ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... de gosen water sen, dan willen se drinken. [When the geese (i.e. children) see ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... friends, vociferous though they were, and heated with anticipated triumphs, wine and wassail, heard the glorious din, learned its cause, and came reeling forth to embrace their puissant ally. Quitting as they did the fumes of buttocks and sirloins, gammons and hams, turkies and geese, wines, brandies, beers and tobacco, they all came reeking; each involved in his ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... And this is done when they observe that the constellation Archer is in favourable conjunction with Mars and Jupiter. For the oxen they observe the Bull, for the sheep the Ram, and so on in accordance with art. Under the Pleiades they keep a drove of hens and ducks and geese, which are driven out by the women to feed near the city. The women only do this when it is a pleasure to them. There are also places enclosed, where they make cheese, butter, and milk-food. They also keep capons, fruit and other things, and for all these ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... they are forerunners of its ruin, we never were in a more flourishing situation. My Lord Rockingham and my nephew Lord Orford have made a match of five hundred pounds, between five turkeys and five geese, to run from Norwich to London. Don't you believe in the transmigration of souls? And are not you convinced that this race is between Marquis Sardanapalus and Earl Heliogabalus? And don't you pity the poor Asiatics ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... winter came on, and with it immense numbers of swans, geese, and ducks, which covered the rivers and afforded delightful food to the settlers. They daily feasted upon them, and enjoyed in abundance the peas, pumpkins, persimmons, and other vegetable treasures which the season matured. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... me out, for that's not all. I went ashore to-day and shot five geese, and here they are, all of them, not one spared, though I could have well fancied a bit of goose to my supper, but I brought all to you, and more than that, even, for here is the better half of a buck we found in the wood ready shot to our hand. The Indians had cut off his ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... north-west, on the way back to Horley. Outwood Common is delightful. Two great windmills, black and white, spread sails to the blowing air; below them, black and white like the mills, pigs nose quietly over the short grass, and geese strut cackling. To the north, beyond rich and tranquil fields, lie the grey-green wooded hills by ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... Tush Nimphe his Swannes will prove but Geese, His Barge drinke water like a Fleece; A Boat is base, I'le thee prouide, A Chariot, wherein Ioue may ride; In which when brauely thou art borne, Thou shalt looke like the gloryous morne Vshering the Sunne, and such a ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... time there was always good hunting, for great flocks of ducks, geese, and other birds flew to the rice ...
— Two Indian Children of Long Ago • Frances Taylor
... Turkey I saw very few beautiful women. The lords of creation in that part of the world treat the opposite sex as you would geese—stuff them to make them fat. Through the politeness of Sir Stratford Canning, English Ambassador at Constantinople, I was kindly permitted to visit the Sultan's harem as often as I pleased and there look upon the 'lights of the world.' These 'lights of the world' consisted of five hundred bodies ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... "Wild geese are very good things in their way," said Edmund; "water and land, precipice and moor, 'tis all the same ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... reached a smaller lake which was swarming with birds—geese, ducks, divers, and other wild-fowl. Among them were several swans, beautifully white, with black necks, which kept swimming gracefully about like the great lords of the feathered population among whom they moved. Jerry and I were very hungry, ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... the fox, with many geese running before him, and the old man drove them into the pen; and then came the rabbit with cabbages and turnips and carrots and other good things, and the old woman took them and put them into ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... Mr Whitteraick, a dealer in hens and hams in the poultry market, that had been fallen in with, when her gudeman was riding out on his bit sheltie in the Lauder direction, bargaining with the farmers for their ducks, chickens, gaislings, geese, turkey-pouts, howtowdies, guinea-hens, and other barn-door fowls; and, among his other calls, having happened to make a transaction with her father, anent some Anchovy-ducks, he, by a warm invitation, was kindly pressed to remain ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... as warm, maybe, if you were as pestered as I am. When I pay good money for a good article there should be an end of the business; but it's 'Where are the geese?' and 'Who did you sell the geese to?' and 'What will you take for the geese?' One would think they were the only geese in the world, to hear the fuss ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... and farm, Striking their inmates with sudden alarm; And they ran out like bees in a midsummer swarm. There were dames with kerchiefs tied over their caps, To see if their poultry were free from mishaps. The turkeys they gobbled, the geese screamed aloud, And the hens crept to roost in a terrified crowd; There was rearing of ladders, and logs laying on, Where the thatch from the roof threatened soon to be gone. But the wind had passed on, and had met in a lane With a schoolboy, who panted and ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... now and then to see what the farmers' men were about, who were plowing up the stubbles to prepare for another year's crop. He paused, also, at this and that farm-house, evidently having a pleasure in the sight of good fat cattle, and in the flocks of poultry—fowls, ducks, geese, and turkeys, busy about the barn-door, where the sound of the flail, or the swipple, as they there term it, was already heard busily knocking out the corn of the last bountiful harvest. Our old friend—a Friend—for though you, dear reader, do not know him, he was both at the time we speak ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... part of a flock of R———r geese, who have afforded fine plucking for the Greeks. Parson Ambrose, the high priest of Pandemonium, had a leg of one and a wing of the other devilled for supper one night at the Gothic Hall. They have cut but a lame ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... turning leaves. Grape-vines grew thickly on every hand, laden with their clustered fruit. The shore and forest abounded with animal life. The woods were loud with the chirruping of thrushes, goldfinches, canaries, and other birds. Countless flocks of wild geese and ducks passed overhead, while from the marshes of the back waters great cranes rose in their heavy flight over the bright surface of the river that reflected the cloudless blue ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... Most of the talk that afternoon had naturally been connected with his first wife, but now everything along his path reminded him of Maria. Her prosperous flock of young turkeys were heading northward at a little distance out across the high grass land; and below, along the brook, went the geese and goslings in a sedate procession. The young pear-trees which she had urged him to set out looked thrifty and strong as he passed, and there were some lengths of linen bleaching on a knoll, that she had found yellowing in one of the garret chests. She took care of everything, and, ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... catching a quick glint of silver on their scales before they splashed again into the water. Half a dozen sea-pyes, with their beautiful black and white plumage and scarlet beaks and feet, flew screaming out from the rocks and swept in rapid circles above the boat. A long flight of solan geese could just be seen slowly sailing along the western horizon. As the small craft got out toward the sea the breeze freshened slightly, and she lay over somewhat as the brine-laden winds caught her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... our circulator, is very much disturbed because our country circulation has dropped about 1,000 in less than a fortnight; he has been hobnobbing with Ballantyne about it to-day. Mr. Stone is still in Kansas City hunting wild geese. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... filth even when in the midst of a flower-garden, so the wicked always choose the evil out of both evil and good that others speak. Those, however, that are wise, on hearing the speeches of others that are intermixed with both good and evil, accept only what is good, like geese that always extract the milk only, though it be mixed with water. As the honest are always pained at speaking ill of others, so do the wicked always rejoice in doing the same thing. As the honest always feel pleasure in showing regard for the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... times and other birds! Other birds and other songs! What a chattering as of geese That had saved ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... men and a sergeant placed hors de combat—a dozen more unfit to be seen—an officer dismounted, and his whole company scattered like a flock of geese! I am seriously annoyed, sir. What is ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... senseless jingle-jangle of verse-jargon as to-night! Strange it is that the so-called 'poetical' trick of confusedly heaping words together regardless of meaning, should so bewilder men and deprive them of all wise and sober judgment! By my faith! ... I would as soon listen to the gabble of geese in a farmyard as to the silly glibness of such inflated twaddle, such mawkish sentiment, such turgid garrulity, such ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... had gone, Jonas remarked to Cynthy Ann, "Where the carcass is, there the turkey-buzzards is gethered. That shinin' example of early piety never plays but one game. That is, fox-and-geese. He's gone after a green goslin' now, and he'll find him when ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... other birds are here to be found, among which may be mentioned sea-hens, blue peterels, teal, ducks, Port Egmont hens, shags, Cape pigeons, the nelly, sea swallows, terns, sea gulls, Mother Carey's chickens, Mother Carey's geese, or the great peterel, and, lastly, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the brighter, by the way, for the leaves that Chick had saved. The Bob-o-links, in traveling suits, had already left for the prairies of Brazil and Paraguay, by way of Florida and Jamaica. The strange honk of geese floated down from V-shaped flocks, as if they were calling, "Southward Ho!" The red-winged blackbirds gave a wonderful farewell chorus. Flock by flock and kind by ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... hills, and along the banks of little streams towards the west. The autumn reigned in golden splendor—and not alone in gold: in purple, and azure and crimson, with a wealth of slowly falling leaves which soon would pass away, the poor perished glories of the fair golden year. The wild geese flying South sent their faint carol from the clouds—the swamp sparrow twittered, and the still copse was stirred by the silent croak of some wandering wild turkey, or the far forest made most musical with that sound which the master of Wharncliffe Lodge delighted in, the "belling ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... an explanation full, 625 Translating hieroglyphics into Greek, How the God Apis really was a bull, And nothing more; and bid the herald stick The same against the temple doors, and pull The old cant down; they licensed all to speak 630 Whate'er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese, By pastoral letters ...
— The Witch of Atlas • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... right," said Mr Rawlings; "you will have a varied choice there likewise: grouse, partridge, prairie-fowl, wild geese, ducks—these two, however, are more to be met with in the winter months, and will be off to the Arctic regions soon—all sorts, in fact. And as to fishing, the salmon and trout—the latter of which you'll find in every stream in ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... miracle is thus mentioned by Camden: "It is also ascribed to the power of her sanctity, that these wild geese, which, in the winter, fly in great flocks to the lakes and rivers unfrozen in the southern parts, to the great amazement of every one, fall down suddenly upon the ground, when they are in their flight over certain 'neighbouring fields hereabouts: a relation I ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... "For heaven's sake, thank them both and have done with it!" said she, a bit hysterically. "God alone knows how they managed, but this thing lies between them, the two great geese. Did one ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... long way down the valley, miles from Lobourne, in a country of sour pools, yellow brooks, rank pasturage, desolate heath. Solitary cows were seen; the smoke of a mud cottage; a cart piled with peat; a donkey grazing at leisure, oblivious of an unkind world; geese by a horse-pond, gabbling as in the first loneliness of creation; uncooked things that a famishing boy cannot possibly care for, and must despise. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was not by any means so sharply differentiated from rural life as is implied in our modern idea of a town. Even in the larger commercial towns, such as Frankfurt, Nuernberg, or Augsburg, it was common to keep cows, pigs, and sheep, and, as a matter of course, fowls and geese, in large numbers within the precincts of the town itself. In Frankfurt in 1481 the pigsties in the town had become such a nuisance that the Rath had to forbid them in the front of the houses by a formal decree. In Ulm there was a regulation of the bakers' guild to the effect that no single ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... inmates with sudden alarm; And they ran out like bees in a midsummer swarm. There were dames with their kerchiefs tied over their caps, To see if their poultry were free from mishaps; The turkeys, they gobbled, the geese screamed aloud, And the hens crept to roost in a terrified crowd; There was rearing of ladders, and logs laying on, Where the thatch from the roof threatened soon to be gone. But the wind had passed on, and had met in a lane With a schoolboy, who panted and struggled in vain, For it tossed him, ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... domestic animals, states, in 1805, that this was the case; and Bechstein had previously, in 1793 observed the same fact. This latter author has carefully described the effects on the skull of a crest not only in the case of fowls, but of ducks, geese, and canaries. He states that with fowls, when the crest is not much developed, it is supported on a fatty mass; but when much developed, it is always supported on a bony protuberance of variable size. He well describes the peculiarities of this protuberance; he attended ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... of hot corn-meal, scraps of bacon, and pods of red pepper will all but bring about a variation of species; and so if the assumed rate at which I am now going were kept up a hundred years, my cedar-trees might be full of a race of red-birds as large and as fat as geese. ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... great extent here, which diminishes the quantity of beef used, though not so much as the kindly feeling towards the creature that is so useful in tilling the soil. Pork is the most common in use for meat, and the number of pigs raised is enormous. Geese and ducks are abundant, artificially hatched as in ancient Egypt, and to a considerable extent in America, and ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... ortolans whom destiny puts into Potel's plate of honour! Most fortunate of geese, whose liver is fattened by a slow fire to figure presently here with the daintiest and noblest of viands! The pig who hunts the truffle would have his reward could he know that presently the fragrant vegetable ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... angrily. "Even that you can't do! The fact is you are a stupid peasant, a wooden-head! You ought to be grazing geese and not making a Jordan! Give the compasses here! ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... stood back from the road. Fleda picked her way to it along a little footpath which seemed to be the equal property of the geese. Her knock brought an invitation ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... poor, rough, ungentlemanly sort of shire, as far as I have seen it; and however they got on with the things I found that they called hounds I can't for the life of me imagine. I understand they went stringing over the country like a flock of wild geese. However, I have rectified that in a manner by knocking all the fast 'uns and slow 'uns on the head; and I shall require at least twenty couple before I can take the field. In your official report of what ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... there struck upon my ears a whistling of pinions as the shadow of a bird flitted across the brilliant, dew-bespangled green of the forecourt, and five cocks crowed in succession, and a flock of geese announced the fact of their awakening, and a cow lowed, and the gate ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... spouting from every window, but masses of brickwork and blazing beams were falling in various places, rendering the service full of danger. A London crowd is usually well-behaved, but there are sometimes a few forward geese in it who think they can do things better than other people. One such, a huge man with a foreign accent, became excited, shouted, "Oh! vy don't you put 'im hout?" broke through the crowd, and rushed ...
— The Thorogood Family • R.M. Ballantyne
... the greatest pleasures which November has to give us is the joy of watching for the long lines of wild geese from the Canada lakes. Who can help being thrilled at the sight of these strong-winged birds, as the V-shaped flock throbs into view high in air, beating over land and water, forest and city, as surely and steadily as the passing of the day behind them. ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... stories of this class is perhaps found in the Jatakas, or Buddhist Birth Stories: A pair of geese resolve to migrate to another country, and agree to carry with them a tortoise, their intimate friend, taking the ends of a stick between their bills, and the tortoise grasping it by the middle with his mouth. As ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... before his eyes). The monarch heard also melodious strains of vocal music and the agreeable voices of preceptors engaged in lecturing to their disciples on the Vedas and the scriptures. And the monarch also heard the harmonious cackle of the geese sporting in the lakes. Beholding such exceedingly wonderful sights, the king began to reflect inwardly, saying, 'Is this a dream? Or is all this due to an aberration of my mind? Or, is it all real? O, I have, without ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... convenient study, and as good a bed and as good board as I should have had if I had remained in Connecticut. I know of no place in the State of New York so healthy as this, I believe the water and the air as pure here as in any part of New England, and I have never been before where venison and wild geese and ducks were so plenty, or where there was such a rich variety of fresh-water fish. There were many Indians in the vicinity. Mr. Harson encouraged the establishment of a mission, and Mr. Bacon deemed it a most favorable opening. Bernardus Harson, a son of Jacob, was engaged as interpreter. ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... small right of pasturage on the common lands, and in the forests: but the number of their cattle and live-stock was strictly limited by the earliest laws relating to the Cagots. They were forbidden by one act to have more than twenty sheep, a pig, a ram, and six geese. The pig was to be fattened and killed for winter food; the fleece of the sheep was to clothe them; but if the said sheep had lambs, they were forbidden to eat them. Their only privilege arising from this increase was, that they might choose out the strongest and finest in preference to keeping the ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the absence of currents left them yet hidden under a porous crust, which, saturated with the fluid, barely retained enough strength to preserve the continuity of its parts. Large flocks of wild geese were seen passing over the country, which hovered, for a time, around the hidden sheet of water, apparently searching for a resting-place; and then, on finding them selves excluded by the chill covering, would soar away to the north, filling ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... admirable;—you see a slight streak in the background of this one: we remember seeing just such a streak from the castle itself, and being told that it was the Rhine, just visible, afar off. The man with the geese in the goose-market at Nuremberg gives stone, iron, and bronze, each ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... one of the men. "Rains geese!" and there was a cheer and a roar of laughter, as one by one five geese fell with a splash in the river, two to lie perfectly still while they were retrieved—the others, poor birds, to make desperate efforts to ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... upon this old, cool peace, This painted peace of ours, With harsh dress hissing like a flock of geese, With garish flowers? Why do you churn smooth waters rough again, Selfish old Skin-and-bone? Leave us to quiet dreaming and slow pain, Leave ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... was flatly contradicted. An unfortunate burgher at Amsterdam was scourged at the whipping-post, because he mentioned it as matter of common report. The Duke of Alva refused to credit the tale when it was announced to him. "Is the army of the Prince of Orange a flock of wild geese," he asked, "that it can fly over rivers like the Meuse?" Nevertheless it was true. The outlawed, exiled Prince stood once more on the borders of Brabant, with an army of disciplined troops at his back. His ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... "headers" burn as fuel, and farmers stack this straw for cattle to nibble at. The stock feed in the stubble fields, too, and strange visitors also come to these ranches to pick up the scattered grains of wheat. These strangers are wild white geese, in such large flocks that when feeding they look like snow patches on the ground. They eat so much that often they cannot fly and may be knocked over with clubs. In the spring these geese must ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... only for not being drown'd, And some for sitting above ground Whole days and nights upon their breeches, And feeling pain, were hang'd for witches; And some for putting knavish tricks Upon green geese or turkey chicks; Or pigs that suddenly deceased Of griefs unnatural, as he guessed; Who proved himself at length a witch, And made a rod ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... he did?" questioned Mary. "I can always smell it. A little later, when the sap begins to run in all the trees, and the buds swell, and the ice breaks up, and the wild geese go over, I always scent spring; and when the catkins bloom, then it comes strong, and I just love it. Spring is my happiest time. I have more ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... joined the marketing expedition next morning and even Frances was impressed with the holiday spirit overhanging the place. They left Nurse carefully inspecting fat geese in a poulterer's stall and started ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... "It is very cold on the floor, and this is warm like the badger hole. I like for sleep there," she insisted eagerly. "My mamenka have nice bed, with pillows from our own geese in Bohemie. See, Jim?" She pointed to the narrow bunk which Krajiek had built against the wall for himself ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... hunted and had many a mishap and fell from their horses when they pursued hare and deer and bustard in the wide open stretches of sandy country; and in the autumn and winter months when they were wild-fowling in the great level flooded lands where the geese and all wild-fowl came in clouds and myriads. And now he laughed and now his eyes grew moist at the recollection of the ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... fun of her doll when Jamie lugged it out; and I called her 'baby bunting' when she cried over the dead kitten. Girls are such geese sometimes, I can't help it," said Steve, confessing his transgressions handsomely, and feeling quite ready to atone for them if he ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... like anything in the world, it looked like a large collection of farm out-buildings without a farm-house. Muddy little lanes intersecting each other at every possible angle; rickety little cottages turned about to all the points of the compass; ducks, geese, cocks, hens, pigs, cows, horses, dunghills, puddles, sheds, peat-stacks, timber, nets, seemed to be all indiscriminately huddled together where there was little or no room for them. To find the inn amid this confusion of animate and inanimate objects, was no easy matter; and when we at length ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... son! If I do not beat thee out of thy kingdom with a dagger of lath, and drive all thy subjects afore thee like a flock of wild geese, I'll never wear hair on my face more. ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... were no coins for money, or bank bills. So they established markets or fairs, to which the girls and boys liked to go and sell their eggs and chickens, for when the wolves and foxes were killed off, sheep and geese multiplied. ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... policy of defamation. For human nature being more prone to believe evil than good of others, it generally happens that the original traducers are at length joined by a host of kindred spirits almost as eager and venomous as themselves, "the long-neck'd geese of the world, who are ever hissing dispraise because their natures are little;" while a multitude of others, not so much malignant as foolish and given to scandal, lend their cowardly assistance, and help to vilify characters far beyond the reach of their emulation. And should such characters ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... (of that ilk) had a house and garden upon the island of Inch-Tavoe. Here James VI. was on one occasion regaled by the chieftain. His majesty had been previously much amused by the geese pursuing each other on the loch. But when one, which had been brought to table, was found to be tough and ill fed, James observed, 'That Macfarlane's geese liked their play better than their meat,'—a proverb which has been current ever ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... street of Sylvandale one day, she had been chased by a flock of geese, and as she was hurrying along as fast as her age and infirmities permitted—anything in the shape of dignity she had cast to the winds before such foes—she encountered some of Dr. Leacraft's scholars returning from an afternoon ramble. Most of them had laughed at the predicament ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... children jeered at him, and the curs snapped at his heels. In another place a lion was seen half dressed in a fox's hide, while a wolf in a sheep's mask was conversing very amicably with a young lamb. Here again might be seen the geese stretching out their necks from the Roman Capitol in full cackle, while the stout invaders were beheld in the distance, running off as hard as they could. In short, in all these quaint entablatures some ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lively pictures among the snow-laden mistletoe bushes. Flocks of pigeons are often seen, and about six species of ducks, as the river is never wholly frozen over. Among these are the mallard and the beautiful woodduck, now less common on account of being so often shot at. Flocks of wandering geese used to visit the Valley in March and April, and perhaps do so still, driven down by hunger or stress of weather while on their way across the Range. When pursued by the hunters I have frequently seen them try to fly over the walls of Lee Valley until ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... right royally in the great halls of their ancestral mansions, roast goose forming a standing dish of the repast. This is probably the origin of the custom which prevails at the present time of eating geese at Michaelmas. ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... makes me no more adoe, but whips me out of the chamber: how many Masters would doe this for his Seruant? nay, ile be sworne I haue sat in the stockes, for puddings he hath stolne, otherwise he had bin executed: I haue stood on the Pillorie for Geese he hath kil'd, otherwise he had sufferd for't: thou think'st not of this now: nay, I remember the tricke you seru'd me, when I tooke my leaue of Madam Siluia: did not I bid thee still marke me, and doe as I do; when did'st thou see ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... by no means monopolizes the honour of concealing the heroine's form. In a Finnish tale from OEsterbotten, a dead father appears in dreams to his three sons, commanding them to watch singly by night the geese on the sea-strand. The two elder are so frightened by the darkness that they scamper home. But the youngest, despised and dirty, watches boldly, till at the first flush of dawn three geese fly thither, strip ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... party caught and shot 5 pairs of swans, out of which 3 pairs were young, and brought on board alive, the others were old and we made some fresh meals from them; they also brought on board a pair of young geese which however are very scarce, but few parrots—the ducks are as shy as ever...At 3 P.M. sent the second mate to Churchill's Island to cut down the wheat on purpose to feed the young swans with it, at sundown they returned on board ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... windows nothing was to be seen except the village green with its flocks of geese and its tall sign post; the river describing a sort of horseshoe curve round it, and spanned by two picturesque bridges. In the distance was a small church and a little cluster of houses, the "village" being completed ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... flight of doves or swallows, A muster of peacocks, A siege of herons, A building of rooks, A brood of grouse, A plump of wild fowl, A stand of plovers, A watch of nightingales, A clattering of choughs, A flock of geese, A herd or bunch of cattle, A bevy of quails, A cast of hawks, A trip of dottrell, A swarm of bees, A school of whales, A shoal of herrings, A herd of swine, A skulk of foxes, A pack of wolves, A drove of oxen, A sounder of hogs, A troop of monkeys, A pride of lions, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... This lady my father called 'the angel with the moulting wings,' because she was always in an ecstatic tremor over the second coming of the Messiah. She would go to the housetop at least once every six months, and there, with a band of pious deluded geese dressed in white flowing robes, would inspect the firmament for favourable signs. Nothing ever happened, as we know, yet the predictions sown about the borders of that strange-looking chart have in a ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... everyone being in the cour, it was well filled, not only from the point of view of space but of sound. A barnyard crammed with pigs, cows, horses, ducks, geese, hens, cats and dogs could not possibly have produced one-fifth of the racket that emanated, spontaneously and inevitably, from the cour. Above which racket I heard tout a coup a roar of pain and surprise; and looking up with some interest and also in some alarm, beheld The ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... dinner, mother or father or both with the children were off to buy the last of the presents, visit the shops or buy their Christmas dinner, for many left it till then. Turkey might not have been within their reach, but geese, wild or tame, took their place. Sucking pig was my favorite dish. Wild duck and grouse (fifty cents per pair), with fine roasts of beef. Of course plum pudding was in evidence with poor as well as rich, although eggs at Christmas were one dollar ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... every movement of troops, the enemy artillery is helped in every way through signals, so that it can direct upon us a fire that falls like lightning. Light signals, smoke signals, positions of church tower clocks, herds of cows, flocks of geese, imitations of the noises of animals, yellow and black flags, etc. etc., have indicated the strength ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... in the west, Lord of Abydos: may he allow funereal gifts: bread, liquor, oxen, geese, clothes, incense, oil, ...
— Egyptian Literature
... of the day was: tolerably good news about the Kara Sea; forty birds, principally geese and long-tailed ducks; one seal; and a disabled boat. Amundsen and I, however, soon put this in complete repair again—but in so doing I fear I forfeited forever and a day the esteem of the Russians and Samoyedes in these parts. Some of them had been on board ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... argue the question, although I had no more thought of being called up to pay a dog tax than a hen tax or cat tax. I trembled, lest I should be obliged to enumerate my entire menagerie—cats, dogs, canaries, rabbits, pigs, ducks, geese, hens, turkeys, pigeons, peacocks, ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... court leet was held in Manchester, when eleven meat-sellers were fined for having sold tainted meat. Each of them had a whole ox or pig, or several sheep, or from fifty to sixty pounds of meat, which were all confiscated in a tainted condition. In one case, sixty-four stuffed Christmas geese were seized which had proved unsaleable in Liverpool, and had been forwarded to Manchester, where they were brought to market foul and rotten. All the particulars, with names and fines, were published at the ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... since it is a clean beast; seven reindeer, likewise; the white fox, the polar hare, the lemming, and seven of each species of cormorant, gannet, penguin, petrel, and gull, some of which are as large as eagles, as well as mergansers, geese, and ducks, certain species of which are only found in the frigid zone. Noah or his agents must have discovered Greenland and North America thousands of years before Columbus was born: they must have preceded Behring, Parry, Ross, Kane, and Hayes in exploring ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton
... Clanns, a large Sort of Cockles. These Parts being very well furnish'd with Shell-Fish, Turtle of several Sorts, but few or none of the green, with other Sorts of Salt-water Fish, and in the Season, good Plenty of Fowl, as Curleus, Gulls, Gannets, and Pellicans, besides Duck and Mallard, Geese, Swans, Teal, ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson |
