"Quill" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one more example. The feather of a bird is a marvellous structure, and no one will deny that as a whole it depends upon adaptation. But what part of it DOES NOT depend upon adaptation? The hollow quill, the shaft with its hard, thin, light cortex, and the spongy substance within it, its square section compared with the round section of the quill, the flat barbs, their short, hooked barbules which, in the flight-feathers, hook into one another with just sufficient firmness to resist ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... Ferdinand Mendez Pinto, with his statistics of Dreamland, who makes no difficulty of impressing "fourscore thousand rhinocerots" to draw the wagons of the King of Tartary's army, or of killing eight hundred and fifty thousand men with a flourish of his quill,—for what were a few ciphers to him, when his inkhorn was full and all Christendom to be astonished?—but there is all the more need of voyagers who give us something better than a census of population, and who know of other exports from strange countries than can be expressed by $——. Give us ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... Unless obedient to an honest heart. And such a one is his, for whom, to-night, These walls are crowded with this cheering sight Ye love the poet—oft have conned him o'er, Knew ye the man, ye'd love him ten times more. Ye critics, spare him from your tongue and quill, Ye gods, applaud him; and ye ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... Spaulding did what he could to cheer me up, but by bed time I had reasoned myself out of the whole thing. However, in the morning I determined to have a look at it anyhow, so I bought a penny bottle of ink, and with a quill pen and seven sheets of foolscap paper I ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... was a stranger to its modes and dangers. I was qualified for no employment, compatible with a town life, but that of the pen. This, indeed, had ever been a favourite tool with me; and, though it may appear somewhat strange, it is no less true that I had had nearly as much practice at the quill as at the mattock. But the sum of my skill lay in tracing distinct characters. I had used it merely to transcribe what others had written, or to give form to my own conceptions. Whether the city would afford me employment, as a mere copyist, sufficiently lucrative, was a point ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... to handle the goose-quill," I laughed, leaving Jacques to fasten the gate, and returning ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cookes. Soft were my numbers; who could take offence While pure description held the place of sense? Like gentle Fanny's was my flowery theme, A painted mistress, or a purling stream. Yet then did Gildon draw his venal quill;— I wished the man a dinner, and sat still. Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret; I never answered—I was not in debt. If want provoked, or madness made them print, I waged no war with Bedlam or the Mint. Did some more sober critic come aboard; If wrong, I smiled; if right, I ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... certaine ill, Did not extinguish, but gaue honour fier, Th'amazing prodigie, (bane of my quill,) Bred not astonishment, but a strong desier, By which this heauen-adopted Knights strong will, Then hiest height of Fame, flew much more hier: And from the boundlesse greatnes of his minde, Sends back this ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... Presently the folding-doors are to be shut, the ladies are to descend from their chambers, the bar will be kept appropriated to our house, the male part of the company will get into good humour, dinner will be ready, and then I must lay aside the grey goose-quill. As a preliminary to these promised comforts, the servant is mopping the hearth, which is composed (like a tesselated pavement) of little bricks about two inches long by half an inch wide, set within a broad black stone frame. The fuel is of fire-balls, a mixture ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... a masculine hat with a quill in it and a woollen skirt that bagged at the knees like trousers. Her hair was thin at the temples, and she wore gold glasses astride her long, "foxy" nose. Although no average cake would have held the candles ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... placed pellmell in every corner of the room. Notwithstanding, there was space enough left to hold three or four chairs around a large oaken table, upon which last stood a large cork ink-stand, with several goose-quill pens; with some sheets of half dirty paper placed ostentatiously around it to awe the visitors, who might have ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... the sword, after the fashion of greater men, and requiring no secretary. I now take up the quill to set forth, correctly, certain incidents which, having been noised about, stand in danger of being inaccurately reported by some imitator of Brantome and De l'Estoile. If all the world is to know of this matter, let it know ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Camille Maupin, who shared the oriental taste of her illustrious sister-author, took a magnificent Persian narghile, given to her by an ambassador. She filled the nipple with patchouli, cleaned the bochettino, perfumed the goose-quill, which she attached to the mouthpiece and used only once, set fire to the yellow leaves, placing the vase with its long neck enamelled in blue and gold at some distance from her, and ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... your gallants resort. After dinner you may appeare againe, having translated yourselfe out of your English cloth cloak, into a light Turky-grogram (if you have that happiness of shifting) and then be seene (for a turn or two) to correct your teeth with some quill or silver instrument, and to cleanse your gummes with a wrought handkercher: It skilles not whether you dinde or no (thats best knowne to your stomach) or in what place you dinde, though it were with cheese (of your owne mother's making, in your chamber or study).... Suck this humour ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... up, looking scared and busy, a quill behind his ear, Hogarth now having the glass at his face, while his eyes struggled with the reek ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... yards away the handle of the boat-hook suddenly shot above the surface, and floated, bobbing gently up and down like a huge quill float, the metal on the end weighting it sufficiently to keep ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... severe punctured wound by a hook of the size of a crow-quill, which pierced into the flesh between the thumb and fore-finger on the outside of the hand; scarcely a drop of blood followed, but there was immediately severe pain and tumefaction. The lunar caustic was ...
— An Essay on the Application of the Lunar Caustic in the Cure of Certain Wounds and Ulcers • John Higginbottom
... boy?" was the reply, as the speaker held up a large white swan-quill pen on a level with his sun-browned and reddened ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... leagues her pennons broad expand, And twilight swims upon the shuddering sand; 465 Perch'd on her crest the Griffin Discord clings, And Giant Murder rides between her wings; Blood from each clotted hair, and horny quill, And showers of tears in blended streams distil; High-poised in air her spiry neck she bends, 470 Rolls her keen eye, her Dragon-claws extends, Darts from above, and tears at each fell swoop With iron fangs ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... action of an old man's arm. Sir, I have been a swordsman in my youth, and though the lank skeleton of my skill at fence is buried in disuse, it moves now in the grave of this right hand, that so long has wielded only the quiet quill. I do not bid you quail; not I,—but, by the angry devil of the duel, you answer me, either sword point to sword point; or from the pointing pistol, that shall speak both sharp and decisive, and the dotting bullet, perhaps, put a period to your ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... a Body, existing by purchase for ready-money, there could not be excess of public spirit; there might well be excess of eagerness to divide the public spoil. Men in helmets have divided that, with swords; men in wigs, with quill and inkhorn, do divide it: and even more hatefully these latter, if more peaceably; for the wig-method is at once irresistibler and baser. By long experience, says Besenval, it has been found useless to sue a Parlementeer at law; no Officer of Justice will ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... a new fur coat. Her beautiful black eyes looked out from under a saucy fur-trimmed hat with a scarlet quill on the side. Elviry wore black broadcloth with fox collar and muff. Lydia, in a remodeled coat of her mother's, and her old Tam and mended mittens, recovered from her ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... a small Quantity of Matter, though capable of containing near two Ounces each; one situated between the vesiculae seminales and Rectum, the other between the vesiculae and Bladder, which opened into the Urethra by one common Orifice, capable of admitting a large Quill, at the Side of the caput galinaginis. The rest of the Viscera ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... quillets, abstracts and briefs. But it was putting Pegasus in pound. Miles at a lawyer's task was as much out of place as Edgar Allan Poe was when mounting guard as a cadet at West Point, or Charles Lamb with a quill behind his ear balancing his ledger in India House. The Mountain and the Muses lured him back to Emmitsburg, where a short distance from the college gate, in the quiet retreat of Thornbrook, he settled to his ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... The quill-driver withdrew. The poor vicar, frightened at the persistence with which Mademoiselle Gamard pursued him, returned to the dining-room with his face so convulsed that everybody cried out when they saw him: "What ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... The phrase "mad as a hornet" has become a proverb. Think, then, of a brush loaded and tipped with this martial spirit of Vespa, this cavorting afflatus, this testy animus! There is more than one pessimistic "goose-quill," of course, "mightier than the sword," which, it occurs to me in my now charitable mood, might have been thus surreptitiously voudooed by the war-like hornet, and the ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... quill equip quit quell quite quiz quire quail queer quote quest quick squire squirt queen quince quake squint squaw quack squirm square quaint squeak squeal quench ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... paying little attention to the proceedings, but the mention of Calli's name in connection with the Swiss spies quickly roused him, and he hurriedly elbowed his way to the ducal throne. A page was handing Charles a quill and an ink-well ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... soldiers.' By no means has he shocked the Puritans. Though it is no secret that he prefers the society of ladies, not one breath of scandal has ever tinged his name. Of how many English princes could this be said, in days when Figaro, quill in hand, inclines his ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... bring joy to your lodges, or I shall live among the dogs and old women for the remainder of my days. My friends, you saw which way my feather flew. I shall hold my shield in that direction, and the lightning will draw a great cloud, and this arrow, which is feathered with the quill of the white swan will make a ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... stalk to be studied, though, except for particular plants, not needing to be used,—namely, the Latin cau-dex, and cau-lis, both connected with the Greek [Greek: kaulos], properly meaning a solid stalk like a handle, passing into the sense of the hilt of a sword, or quill of a pen. Then, in Latin, caudex passes into the sense of log, and so, of cut plank or tablet of wood; thus finally becoming the classical 'codex' of writings engraved on such wooden tablets, and therefore generally used for ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... a pert young thing, To divert her virgin Muse with, And pluck sometimes a quill from his wing. To indite her billet-doux with, Poor Cloe would give for a well-fledged pair Her only eye, if you'd ask it; And Tabitha begged, old toothless fair. For the youngest Love in the basket. Come ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... It is not his way. His quill flies like a thing possessed across the paper, and when he pauses it is to wipe the drops of perspiration ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... nearly two inches in length, rounded at the ends, and used by the Kyans and Dyaks of Borneo. Before coitus it is inserted into a transverse orifice in the penis, made by a painful and somewhat dangerous operation and kept open by a quill. Two or more of these instruments are occasionally worn. Sometimes little brushes are attached to each end of the instrument. Another instrument, used by the Dyaks, but said to have been borrowed from the Malays, is the palang anus, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... by pad and pencil is indeed an art worthy of admiration. The pen of an indictment clerk is oft mightier than the sword of a Lionheart, the brain behind the subtle quill far defter than said swordsman's skill. Moreover, the ingenuity necessary to draft one of these documents is not confined to its mere successful composition, for having achieved the miraculous feat of alleging in fourteen ways ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... knife the grinning Jules slashed his doublet from throat to thigh, to extract a folded paper the size of your palm. Vigo pondered the superscription slowly, not much at home with the work of a quill, save those that winged arrows. M. Etienne, coming forward, with a sharp exclamation snatched ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... and he could not find the note it contained. Her desk was locked, and it would not be safe to tamper with it. He had seen enough; the girl received books and notes from this fellow up at the school, this usher, this Yankee quill-driver;—he was aspiring to become the lord of the ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... looking meditatively into the fire, swinging her dogskin gloves in her hands. She wore a plain pearl grey walking dress and deerstalker hat with a single quill in it. The severe but immaculate simplicity of her toilette might have been designed to accentuate the barbarities of Blanche Moyat's ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a washing tub of ink on castors, which he pushes about with him wherever he goes, and in which, as in a Claude-Lorraine mirror, he contemplates everything that he can both on earth and above. He is constantly employed in fishing in it with a quill for ideas; and as often as he catches one, even if it is half drowned, my door-keeper ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... by my side, and we passed our leisure hours very pleasantly in communicating to each other our past adventures. His knowledge of life was limited, having resided in that inkstand, and performed all the writing of the family, ever since he was a quill. But his experience was wise and virtuous; and he could bear witness to many an industrious effort at improvement, in which he had been the willing instrument; and to many a hard struggle for honesty and independence, which figures of his writing had recorded. I liked to watch the good Pen ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... to the table as she spoke, and picking up a quill held it appealingly toward him. ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... this first volume served to make Jasmin's name popular beyond the town in which they had been composed and published. His friend M. Gaze said of him, that during the year 1825 he had been marrying his razor with the swan's quill; and that his hand of velvet in shaving was even surpassed ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... the world to laugh) who is there whom he has not satiriz'd by name? Fabius the great Talker, Tigellius the Fantastick, Nasidienus the Impertinent, Nomentanus the Debauchee, and whoever came at his Quill's end. They may answer that these are fictitious Names: an excellent Answer indeed! As if those whom he attack'd were no better known; as if we were ignorant that Fabius was a Roman Knight who compos'd a Treatise of Law, that Tigellius was a Musician ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... shepherdesses! Let garlands of sad yew Adorn your dainty golden tresses. I, that loved you, and often with my quill, Made music that delighted fountain, grove, and hill; I, whom you loved so, and with a sweet and chaste embrace. Yea, with a thousand rather favours, would vouchsafe to grace, I now must leave you all alone, of ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... another whistled softly to himself while he arranged his fishing tackle. From his book he had selected three flies and was attaching them to the leader. Nearest the rod he put a royal coachman, next to it a blue quill, and at the end a ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... numbers, with four or five thousand reserves some days behind. Generalship was given the go-by on both sides, the cul-de-sac of San Jacinto being closed at both ends. Thirty minutes of noise and smoke, and the empire of Cortez and Montezuma was split in two. Clio nibbed another quill, steel pens not having then been invented. The gray geese who might have supplied it recomposed themselves on the prairie, and all the rest of their feathered friends followed their example, as the military interlude melted away and left them ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... The quill travelled on, conveying to sheet after sheet the opinion upon certain vexed questions of a very able lawyer. The analysis was keen, the reasoning just, the judgment final, the advice sound. The years since ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... feather under the balls with its tip pointing to the northeast. (See Pl. CXIII). The young man facing west then filled the colored reeds, beginning with the one on the north end. He put into the hollow reed, first, one of the feather balls, forcing it into the reed with the quill end of the night-owl feather. (A night-owl feather is always used for filling the reeds after the corn is ripe to insure a warm winter; in the spring a plume from the chaparral cock, Geococcyx californianus, is used instead to bring rain). Then a bit of native ...
— Ceremonial of Hasjelti Dailjis and Mythical Sand Painting of the - Navajo Indians • James Stevenson
... this filled Van Laer with an actual physical hunger. He could have eaten that stuff that was wealth itself. He could have devoured those tusks. He was Gargantua as far as his appetite was concerned, and for the rest he was only Van Laer driving a quill in ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... the second. Nevertheless France does neither the one nor the other; she continues to recognize Eugenius IV, and derides the pope of Ripaille and of Basel, as she will declare in a new assembly of Bourges in 1440. Above certain laws which men write on sheets of paper, with a goose-quill and ink, they bear in themselves another law, written by the hand of God, and which is good sense. Happy the nations which never depart from this living and general law, or which, at least, know enough to return ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the geese had was Mrs. Freshett. My! she thought they were big and fine. Mother promised her a couple of eggs to set under a hen. Father said she was gradually coming down the scale of her feelings, and before two weeks she'd give Isaac Thomas, at least, a quill for a pen. Almost no one wrote with them any more, but often father made a few, and showed us how to use them. He said they were gone with candles, sand boxes, and snuff. Mother said she had no use for snuff, but candles were not gone, she'd make and use them ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... think it's a specimen. Put the same feather with a ribbon and an artificial flower and everyone will think it's for a lady's hat. Put the same feather with an ink-bottle, a book and a stack of writing-paper, and most men will swear they've seen a quill pen. So you saw that map among tropic birds and shells and thought it was a map of Pacific Islands. It was the map of ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... a sister-in- law, my mother. In a very small bag is deposited a little rolled up housewife, furnished with minikin needles and fine thread. In the housewife is a tiny pocket, and in the pocket is enclosed a slip of paper, on which, written as with a crow quill, are ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... accommodated to their habits of living. Accordingly, birds of prey, swallows, and such birds as are intended to hover long in the air, have much longer wings, in proportion to their size, than hens, ducks, quails, etc. In some, such as the ostrich, the cassiowary, and the penguin, the largest quill-feathers of ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... out down there in the narrow streets, who were neither princes, nor generals, nor even captains, and yet the people looked after them with respectful curiosity—mere quill-drivers! It ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Further, theft can be committed in small even as in great things. But it seems unreasonable for a man to be punished with eternal death for the theft of a small thing such as a needle or a quill. Therefore theft is not a ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... pen. Agamemnon had a steel one, but Solomon John said, "Poets always used quills." Elizabeth Eliza suggested that they should go out to the poultry-yard and get a quill. But it was already dark. They had, however, two lanterns, and the little boys borrowed the neighbors'. They set out in procession for the poultry-yard. When they got there, the fowls were all at roost, so they could look at ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... wrote always with a quill pen and blue ink, and never, I think, used a lead pencil. His handwriting was considered extremely difficult to read by many people, but I never found it so. In his manuscripts there were so many erasures, and such frequent interlineations that a special staff of compositors ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... braids, going to England," she heard some man on the steamer say. The ranch, the chickens, weeds, and preserving, the dusty roads and shabby stores of Los Lobos were gone; she was no longer a gawky child; she was a young lady in a loose, soft, rough blue coat, with a black quill in her soft ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... forming their type the German printers imitated the lettering made by copyists with a quill. Their type is called Gothic, and it is still widely used in German books. The Italian printers made their letters more round and simple in shape, imitating the handwriting of the best Italian copyists. This is the Roman type, in which many European peoples, as also the English and the ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... into their places I stole a look at my counsel. He paused for a moment from his task of trimming a quill, shot a quick glance at the foreman's face, and then went on cutting as coolly ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... occasionally to go to school in season to have a little fun with his mates, before the exercises commenced. One day, entering the school-room a little before the time, he put on an old coat which his teacher wore in-doors, stuck a quill behind his ear, and made a pair of spectacles from some pasteboard, which he perched upon his nose. Arranged, in this fantastical manner, he seated himself with great dignity in the teacher's chair, and began to "play school-master," to the amusement of several other ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... "The old man," he added, "makes so many traverses himself on a bit of paper, that he hardly knows at which end to begin to read it; and I shouldn't wonder if he just stationed this chap, with a quill behind his ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... is certain that it was either kept in a solid state, like India ink, or that it was of the consistency of glue, and needed the application of water before it could be used. For pens, the iron stylus, the reed, needle, and quill (though the last was not admitted without a struggle) were the common substitutes at ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... ensemble a grey which at night was a fathomless dusk, and by day that green which you perceive where the sea is a hundred fathoms deep. With the light upon her eye there was a glint of emerald, that witching glare which made Becky Sharpe irresistible. Now imagine an eyebrow, dark as the raven's quill, overarching such an eye, and contrasting itself with the burning gold of the hair, and a skin of Parian white and purity. Then contemplate a softness beside which the velvet upon the petal of a pansy would ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... With a brush or quill feather go all over the ham with beaten yolk of egg. Then cover it thickly with pounded cracker, made as fine as flour, or with grated crumbs of stale bread. Lastly go over it with thick cream. Put it to brown in the oven of a stove, or brown it on the spit of a tin roaster, set ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... comfort," said the Major, in his sarcastic way, "to have a fellow-soldier to talk to instead of a quill-driver, who as yet is not even a penny-a-liner. Eh, Derrick? Don't you feel inclined to regret your fool's choice now? You might have been starting off for the war with Lawrence next week, if you hadn't ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... laughing glance of the King with a somber gleam in his own dark eyes. "Does one steal from a robber?" he asked. "Not a quill of gold-dust nor an ingot of silver nor a seed-pearl comes honestly to Spain. It is all cruelty, bribery, slavery. Savonarola threatened Lorenzo de' Medici with eternal fires, prince as he was, for sins that were peccadilloes ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... there was silence. M. de Rivarol sat back in his chair, the feathered end of a quill between his teeth. Presently he cleared his throat and asked ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... pen makes an ideal substitute for a quill in the stopper of the draftsman's ink bottle. The advantage of this substitute is that there is always one handy to replace a broken or lost pen, while it is not so with the quill. —Contributed by George ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... is, they can't stand one another's company. She says as much, don't she? 'We get so dull when we are all together.' Well, that scarcely looks like goin' off on the strike together, does it? Don't you be alarmed, old quill-driver, they'll never run a strike of that kind for more than a day. They'll all come troopin' back, beggin' to be forgiven, and all that, and, by gum, we shall have to take 'em back too, just as we're all congratulatin' ourselves that we shan't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... unconfin'd, No politics disturb their mind; They eat their meals, and take their sport, 25 Nor know who's in or out at court; They never to the levee go To treat as dearest friend, a foe; They never importune his grace, Nor ever cringe to men in place; 30 Nor undertake a dirty job, Nor draw the quill to write for B—b. Fraught with invective they ne'er go To folks at Pater-Noster-Row; No judges, fiddlers, dancing-masters, 35 No pick-pockets, or poetasters, Are known to honest quadrupeds; No single ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... Sheltered from birth, their anxiety was chiefly how to make life pass the pleasantest. They occasionally showed a spasmodic excitement over the progress of a cricket or polo match. Their achievements were largely those of the stay-at-home warriors who fought with the quill what others faced death with the sword for. Their inertia disgusted her. Their self-satisfaction ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... might betray you and our friends there should you be arrested. I will give you a list of the gentlemen on whom you have to call, which you had best learn by heart and destroy before you cross the frontier. You shall have one paper only, and that written so small that it can be carried in a quill. This you can show to one after the other. If you find you are in danger of arrest you can destroy or swallow it. I will give them to you at the prince's levee this afternoon, and will send to your tent a purse of gold for ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... army of laborers—men, women, and even tender children—find no favor in the eyes of these Knights of the Quill. The Negro and the Indian, the footballs of slippery politicians and the helpless victims of sharpers and thieves, are wantonly misrepresented—held up to the eyes of the world as beings incapable of imbibing the distorted civilization in the midst of which ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... "literary historian," the moralising and quill-driving "historians," as conceived by Daunou and his school, that we have had in view; we are here only concerned with those scholars and historians who intend to deal with documents in order to facilitate or actually perform the scientific ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... a people. If he lose one, we are all beaten with him, we all fall down with our Caesar, and the grief glistens in every eye, the shame burns on every cheek. Moralize as we may about the victories of peace and the superiority of the goose-quill over the sword, there is no achievement of human genius on which a country so prides itself as on success in war, no disgrace over which it broods ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... to write a letter. Paper and ink were not things of common use, as they are with us. A pen had to be made from the quill of a goose. ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin
... will write him my petition, and thou shalt give it to Angel to give my lord, immediately upon his return." She sat down with parchment and quill and wrote rapidly; and as Janet noticed not, she wrote two letters instead of one. The first she folded evenly and put beneath a book, the other she gave to Janet, who took it and left the chamber ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... seven, Gauss went to the Catherine Parish School at Braunschweig, and remained at it for several years. The master's name was Buttner, and from a raised seat in the middle of the room, he kept order by means of a whip suspended at his side. A bigger boy, Bartels by name, used to cut quill pens, and assist the smaller boys in their lessons. He became a friend of Gauss, and would procure mathematical books, which they read together. Bartels subsequently rose to be a professor in the University of Dorpat, where he died. At the parish school the boys of fourteen ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... and seldom allows himself to be taken whole. Out of hundreds of specimens, three or four perfect ones were all that this collector could ever manage to extract, the molluscous wood-destroyer being very soft and fragile. His length is about three inches, his thickness that of a small quill; he lodges in a shell of extreme tenuity, and the secretion which he ejects is, it seems, the agent which destroys the wood, and pushes on bit by bit the winding tunnel. But his doings are nothing to the working of another ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... barely served its purpose, like most of the inexpensive objects about him, was a charming. Italian bronze ink-stand, over whose cover wrestled the infant Hercules in the act of strangling a goose—in friendly aid of "drivers of the quill." My father wrote with a gold pen, and I can hear now, as it seems, the rapid rolling of his chirography over the broad page, as he formed his small, rounded, but irregular letters, when filling his journals, in Italy. He leaned very much on, his left arm while writing, often holding the top of ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... attempt to form nests, merely laying their eggs on the shallow dirt. Each bird had one egg about the same size as that of a domestic fowl. Incubation was far advanced, and some difficulty was experienced in blowing the specimens with a blow-pipe improvised from a quill. Neither the Antarctic nor any other petrels offered any resistance when disturbed on their nests, except by the expectoration of large quantities of a pink or ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... 'country store' before I got my fall," he explained, "though if I have got to that I had better go back to England, where those fellows get a half-holiday on Saturdays and lots of bank holidays, and are in civilization at least. Perhaps if the governor saw me with a quill behind my ear, or riding down to the city on top of a 'bus, smoking a pipe, he'd do something for me for the honor of the family. But he's in a beastly humor now, and wouldn't send me a fiver to save ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... He remembered the "skiff" that belonged to young Cale, salvaged some years before on the abatement of a February flood. On more than one occasion he had taken Rosabel out on the river in this clumsy old boat, twice at least to the base of Quill's Window where she had refused to land because of the dread she had ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... a white unused quill, and a vellum scroll on which the names of all the members of the Society were written in ominous red. He handed ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... then, when his health permits, he is at his editorial work again, laboriously issuing his proclamations to the German people; he writes with a quill pen, and for a blotter prefers the old-time box of ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... asked, "a vessel of tin, standing below a little hole in the wall? Have a care that you move it not without you first stop the hole, for it runneth through into my mistress's chamber, and by a quill or reed therein laid can she minister warm drinks unto you, as broths and caudle. She can likewise speak to you through the hole, and be heard: but if you hear the noise of feet or strange voices in that chamber, ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... Bentham, "has decided the fate of many a friendship, and, for aught that we know, the fate of many a kingdom." So, when one is tempted to write a clever but harsh thing, though it may be difficult to restrain it, it is always better to leave it in the inkstand. "A goose's quill," says the Spanish proverb, "often hurts more than ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... iron railing and form a shower bath for the pedestrians who ventured from beneath the protecting shelter. Before him was paper, partly covered with well-nigh illegible versification, and a bottle of ink, while a goose-quill, tool of the tuneful Nine, was expectantly ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... ana were the Visitors' Book of "Watts' Charity," at Rochester, containing the signatures of "C. D." and Mark Lemon; the quill pen belonging to Charles Dickens, and used by him just previous to his death; a paper-knife formerly belonging to "C. D.," and the writing-desk used by "C. D." on his last American tour; silver wassail-bowl and stand presented to "C. D." by members of the Philosophical Institution ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... written on the stick. Around the dog's neck was tied a cravat of dirty buck-skin. Untying and opening it, Frank found the inner surface covered with writing, evidently traced in berry-juice with a quill or a ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... in my little den or confugium, where, as in a haven of rest, I love to hide myself from the distractions of the world, and concentrate my thoughts, and which has been to me the scene of many sad as well as pleasant hours, and dipped my goose quill (anathema maranatha on steel pens, which I cannot help fancying, impart a portion of their own rigidity to style, for if the stylus be made of steel is it not natural that the style by derivation and propinquity ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... the World among the Savages of the Continent of the Northern America: for it is used in all their most important Transactions. However, it is nothing else but a large Tobacco-pipe made of Red, Black, or White Marble: The Head is finely polished, and the Quill, which is commonly two Foot and a half long, is made of a pretty strong Reed, or Cane, adorned with Feathers of all Colours, interlaced with Locks of Women's Hair. They tie to it two wings of the most curious Birds they find, ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... poets speak of a quill dropped from an angel's wing. That is the kind of nib of which I feel in need to-night. If I could but have it just for to-night only,—I would willingly bequeath it to the British Museum to-morrow. As a rule I am very well satisfied with the ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... he was unwilling to have his children brought up on foreign soil and under foreign influences. But for himself he resolved to abandon literature. As soon as he had finished the manuscript he had in hand, he would give up all further thought of writing. "The quill and I are divorced," he wrote to Greenough in June, 1833, "and you cannot conceive the degree of freedom, I could almost say of happiness, I feel at having got my neck out of the halter." Longings for his ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... that stand before the active verb, may be called the agent."—Alex. Murray's Gram., p. 121. "Such seems to be the musings of our hero of the grammar-quill, when he penned the first part of his grammar."—Merchant's Criticisms. "Two dots, the one placed above the other [:], is called Sheva, and represents a very short e."—Wilson's Hebrew Gram., p. 43. "Great has been, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... by a muscular exertion, he is capable of ejecting upon his pursuer. This he carries in two small sacs that lie under his tail, with ducts leading outward about as large as the tube of a goose-quill. The effluvium itself is caused by a thin fluid, which cannot be seen in daylight, but at night appears, when ejected, like a double stream of phosphoric light. He can throw it to the distance of five yards; and, knowing ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... brick-red, about the thickness of a large quill, and five or six inches long, half protrudes its flat head from one of those enormous, perfumed calyces, in which it lies ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... goose-quill, and the ink was home-made. Paper was scarce, expensive, and, while of good material, poorly made. Newspapers were unknown in that virgin forest, and books were like angels' visits, few ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... alternately at the writing and the gray unknown. Meanwhile, with a new-cut quill he had taken up a drop of blood which flowed from a fresh thorn-scratch on my hand and presented ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... cover of which was closed and was thus made to serve for a desk. On this were several sheets of what was then called pro patria paper, or foolscap, and most of these were very much bescribbled. An ink-horn and a sand-box completed the outfit, except for a quill in the hands of the bond-servant, which had given rise to the sound the girl had heard. Now, however, it was not writing, for the man was chewing the feather end with a look of deep ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... in—not a very complicated operation in his case; his effects being confined to an old leather portfolio and a bundle of quill pens tied up with a bit of Aunt Nancy's white yarn. The following day he had nailed his visiting card above the firm's name in the corridor, hung his hat and coat on the proprietor's peg, selected a desk nearest the light, and was ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... from halt dupe hurl musk pomp malt tune turn rusk romp salt flute churn stung long waltz plume hurt pluck song swan glue curl drunk strong wasp droop deck chill for sheath gloom neck drill corn shell loop next quill fork shorn hoof text skill form shout roof desk spill sort shrub proof nest ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... water containing .000075 grm. of ammonia, or .00023505 grm. AmCl. With this caramel solution lines are drawn on strips of white filter paper (previously well washed with distilled water, to remove traces of bleaching matter, and dried) by means of a quill pen. When the marks thus produced are dry, the paper is cut into pieces of the same size as the test paper previously described, in such a way that each piece has a brown line across it near the middle of its length, ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... Then, although the Berkshire towns were active from the earliest days of 1774 in sharing with other towns the plans for resistance to royal authority, they were very jealous of any continuance of unnecessary power in the Provincial Congress. Pittsfield by the quill of a cousin of Ethan Allen, the Rev. Thomas Allen, asserted that the town would remain "in a state of nature" [see Note 1] (i.e., simple democracy without representative government) unless it obtained new privileges. If the right of nominating ...
— Colonel John Brown, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the Brave Accuser of Benedict Arnold • Archibald Murray Howe
... spirit Mahjahn, v. march on Mahzhenahegun, n. a book, paper, &c. Mahjemunedoo, n. an evil spirit, or the devil Mahzhenenee, n. an image Mahskemoodance, n. satchel Mahkahday, n. powder, or black Megwon, n. a feather, quill Mekun, n. a road Mejim, n. food Mezhusk, n. hay, weed, grass Menesis, n. hair, of the head Mequom, n. ice Metig, n. a tree Mesheh, n. fire-wood Metigmahkuk, n. a trunk Meowh, only, the one to whose Minjemeneshin, v. hold me Metigmahkezin, ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... like a cork-screw; hence, to a careless observer, it appears to move gradually backwards and forwards, being seen sometimes pointing eastward and sometimes westward. One of the Indian grasses, Panicum arborescens, whose stem is no thicker than a goose-quill, rises as high as the tallest trees in this contest for light and air. Spec. Plant a Reichard, Vol. I. p. 161. The tops of many climbing plants are tender from their quick growth; and, when deprived of their acrimony by boiling, are an agreeable article of food. ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... black veil that shielded her. Winnebago was scandalized to see that she wore no other black. Mrs. Brandeis had never wanted Fanny to wear it; she hadn't enough color, she said. So now she was dressed in her winter suit of blue, and her hat with the pert blue quill. And the little rabbi's voice went on and on, and Fanny knew that it could not be true. What had all this dust-to-dust talk to do with any one as vital, and electric, and constructive as Molly Brandeis. In the midst of the service there was a sharp cry, and a little stir, and the sound ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... easy to get a footing in a magazine where one would care to appear. There are not many authors whose sole dependence is a goose-quill. Call over the well-known men; they are all something else before they are authors. Your pot-boilers are sure of a market; pictures have become articles of furniture, indispensable to people of taste, ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... with quill pens, which he trimmed himself; he had often trimmed them for his son James. He recalls this detail about the quill pens at ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... cantonments. It is the fashion of the natives of India to wear large earrings of gold. When they travel, the rings are laid aside, lest the precious metal should tempt some gang of robbers; and, in place of the ring, a quill or a roll of paper is inserted in the orifice to prevent it from closing. Hastings placed in the ears of his messengers letters rolled up in the smallest compass. Some of these letters were addressed to the commanders of the English troops. One was written to assure ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Norroy and Chelverton Roads, have been made as far as the High Street through the grounds of The Lawn, an old house which stood next the Spotted Horse. To the west short roads have been pushed out into the market-gardens, and north, at the angle, stands the Quill Inn, behind which Quill Alley, a narrow paved passage skirting the backs of the houses, leads into a labyrinth of small streets set at all angles and of all degrees of respectability. There are many newly-built flats on either side of Quill Alley. Every foot of ground is taken up, and ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... him; for he was fond of joking, and was often absent-minded. It is said that his wife was skilled in embroidery, and would decorate his moccasins with fine porcupine quill work; and it disturbed her to see him put them on to go out of a morning when the dew was on the grass. So she took him to task for ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... dancing. In this respect and in another they differ very widely from most of the other aborigines of North America. I allude to their kind treatment of the women. The men do the laborious work whilst their wives employ themselves in ornamenting their dresses with quill-work and in other occupations suited to their sex. Mr. Wentzel has often known the young married men to bring specimens of their wives' needlework to the forts and exhibit them with much pride. Kind treatment of the fair sex being usually considered as an indication of considerable ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... over, he smoked his pipe before the cabin fire of blazing logs, while she cleared the wooden dishes. He watched her get the paper, goose-quill pen and ink as a prisoner sees the scaffold building ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... crow as he related the story to me. "The friend who had promised to create a vacancy for me in his office ordered his chief clerk to lock the safe and send for the police when he heard of my antecedents. He invited me to dinner, but candidly told me that a rifle was more in my line than a quill." ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... done? How does the Shamrock sail? Watch, and you will see. When the wind is behind, each stiff quill at the end of the wing stands out by itself and is caught and driven by the blast; but as the bird turns round to face the gale, they all close up and form a continuous mainsail, close-hauled. And all the while the expanded tail is in play, dipping first at one side and then at ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... successful woman, lucky in everything, lucky even in her husband; for he died. He did not only die; he left his whole fortune to his wife. Some said that his relations were going to set aside the will, on the plea that it was written with a crow-quill on pink paper; but this was false; it ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... are cousins in the flesh, In mind I think we're nearer still, Your genius leads you to the brush, But mine inclines me to the quill. ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... the discussion of a few points, chiefly technical, connected with his art as a poet. I knew Patmore only during the last ten years of his life, and never with any real intimacy; but as I have been turning over a little bundle of his letters, written with a quill on greyish-blue paper, in the fine, careless handwriting which had something of the distinction of the writer, it seems to me that there are things in them characteristic enough to ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... jerkily, a quill between his teeth. His scarlet beak blazes within the aureole of his straw hat. He dangles a hank of Spanish onions in one hand and holds with the other hand a telephone receiver ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... indeed that I give any attention to insulting letters, but I cannot refrain from paying my respects to one Byron Jassack Wales, who, with gray goose-quill for Pelian spear, charges down on the ICONOCLAST as blithely as a gay moss-trooper making an English swine-herd hard to catch. Such insults usually come unsigned—are simply crass insolence which their cowardly authors fear to father; but Byron sets down all the ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... quill and laboriously wrote a few lines on a leaf torn from the back of a sea-stained log-book. Jack tucked it carefully away and thus they parted company, perhaps to meet no more in life. Through the waning afternoon, Jack stowed himself ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... animal appetites, but to vent the joy of a supernal intelligence. In all poetry, Pindar's rule holds,—[Greek: synetois phonei], it speaks to the intelligent; and Hafiz is a poet for poets, whether he write, as sometimes, with a parrot's, or, as at other times, with an eagle's quill. ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... man, and, in return, gave him more than he could relish of the genuine dead knowledge. In short, I have plucked the old baronet as never baronet was plucked before; I have scarce left him the stump of a quill. I have got promissory notes in his hand to the amount of ——; if you like round numbers, say five-and-twenty thousand pounds, safely deposited in my portable strong box, alias, double-clasped pocket-book. I leave this ruinous old rat-hole ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Continental Congress and a jurist of distinction. Beside him on a table were some papers, obviously of the first importance, for they were plastered with seals, a copy of Coke on Lyttleton, and an inkpot with a quill sticking out of it. His arm was lying lightly on the table, his cherubic face smiling back at its observer wherever he stood; and Tom imagined that his next move would be, after the manner of his ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... disappoint him after his being so kind to me—Mrs. Skene had made as much of me as if I was her own son. What could I do but take my bread as it came to me? I was fit for nothing else. Even if I had been able to write a good hand and keep accounts I couldn't have brought myself to think that quill-driving and counting other people's money was a fit employment for a man. It's not what a man would like to do that he must do in this world, it's what he CAN do; and the only mortal thing I could do properly was to fight. ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... of a valley, the noble bird sprang from the top of a dry tree above me and came sailing directly over my head. I saw him bend his eye down upon me, and I could hear the low hum of his plumage as if the web of every quill in his great wings vibrated in his strong, level flight. I watched him as long as my eye could hold him. When he was fairly clear of the mountain, he began that sweeping spiral movement in which he climbs the sky. ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... the pen, and, with the air of complying exactly and courteously with her demand, folded the quill into three or four lengths, and placed it weltering in ink within my waistcoat pocket. I was looking ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... brow of grief and care, Writ with a quill from Time's feathered wing. There are silver threads in the chesnut hair, The blossoms white of a ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... our Weekly Papers, the poor Review [by DANIEL DEFOE] is quite exhausted, and grown so very contemptible, that though he has provoked all his Brothers of the Quill round, none of them will enter into a controversy with him. This fellow, who had excellent natural parts, but wanted a small foundation of learning, is a lively instance of those Wits who, as an ingenious author says, "will endure but ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... don't know why, but I am more happy at the change than usual. I am not working hard, and it is what I ought to do, and must do. Every hour of laziness cries fie upon me. But there is a perplexing sinking of the heart which one cannot always overcome. At such times I have wished myself a clerk, quill-driving for twopence per page. You have at least application, and that is all that is necessary, whereas unless your lively faculties are awake and propitious, your application will do you as little good as if you strained your ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... themselves to be completely dressed, till they have tinged their hair and edges of their eyelids with the powder of lead ore. Now, as this operation is performed by dipping first into the powder a small wooden bodkin of the thickness of a quill, and then drawing it afterwards through the eyelids over the ball of the eye, we shall have a lively image of what the Prophet (Jer. iv. 30) may be supposed to mean by rending the eyes with painting. This practice is no doubt of great antiquity; ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... fellows who imagine they know every thing and are able to criticise every thing, and who feel called upon to give their opinion about all things and on all occasions because they know how to wield a goose-quill. The best thing we could do would be to suppress all newspapers and periodicals. Shaping the course of politics ourselves, we do not need any newspapers, which after all are nothing but ruminating oxen of ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... watching a child playing with a popgun, made of bamboo, similar to that of quill, with which most English children are familiar, which propels pellets by means of a spring-trigger made of the upper part of the quill. It is easy to conclude such resemblances between the familiar toys of different countries to be accidental, but I question their being really so. On the ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... newcomer seated himself, hitched his sword-belt round so that he could lean both hands upon the hilt, and sat, stiff and immovable, awaiting the Lord Seneschal's pleasure. From his desk across the room the secretary, idly chewing the feathered end of his goose-quill, took silent stock of the ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... the beak: the individual feathers then stand out something like the down-bearing seeds of the dandelion. Besides this, there is another ornamental appendage on the breast, formed by a fleshy tubercle, as thick as a quill and an inch and a half long, which hangs down from the neck, and is thickly covered with glossy feathers, forming a large pendant plume or tassel. This also the bird can either press to its breast, so as to be scarcely visible, or can swell out, so ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... hand, she set her face firmly against the mustard-coloured tweeds affected by so many women for country wear, choosing instead a soft dull blue, a hundred times more becoming. For headgear there was a little cap of the same material, with a quill feather stuck jauntily through a fold at the side, while neat, strong little boots and a pair of doeskin gloves gave a delightfully business-like air to the costume. In the rug-strap was a capacious golf cloak, displaying a bright plaid lining. This was waiting in readiness ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... so," answered John; "and if rest is what thou needest for thy recovery, it will not be lacking to thee here. It is well that the sword is not the only weapon thou lovest, but that the quill and the lore of the wise of the earth have ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the quill in the ink, and, with her head on one side, and her lips set very firmly together, carefully ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis
... for a while thoughtfully biting the top of her quill pen and looking out dreamily into the street. Her little sitting-room faced Knightsbridge and the trees and grass of the Park. Often when some problem of the domestic economy of the hotel caused her a passing perplexity, ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... would answer any questions, whereupon Mr. Greeley said in his drawling monotone: "Miss Anthony, you know the ballot and the bullet go together. If you vote, are you ready to fight?" Instantly she retorted: "Yes, Mr. Greeley, just as you fought in the late war—at the point of a goose-quill!" After the merriment had subsided, he continued: "When should this inalienable right of suffrage commence for young men and foreigners? Have we the right to say when it shall begin?" Miss Anthony replied: "My right as a human being is as good as that of ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... in the midst of the noise and fashion of the city, and presenting altogether a most singular contrast to the teeming life around him, stared at, smiled at, wondered at, yet respectfully greeted by all who knew him; or as finally standing on the rostrum, playing with a goose-quill which his amanuensis had always to provide; constantly crossing and recrossing his feet, bent forward, frequently sinking his head to discharge a morbid flow of spittle, and then again suddenly throwing it on high, especially when aroused to polemic zeal against pantheism ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... to-night. Almost by accident I met him out there in the timber. I delivered the telegram you sent him. After he had read it I showed him mine. He scribbled something on a bit of paper, folded it, and pinned it with a porcupine quill. I've been mighty curious, but I haven't pulled out that quill. ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... Independence; or with rapiers, as I defended the name of our admired enemy, Washington, against a certain defamer, one morning in Hyde Park, after I had come to London. But it has occurred to me that I can better serve Winwood's reputation by the spilling of ink with a quill than of blood with a sword or pistol. This consideration, which is far from a desire to compete with the young gentlemen who strive for farthings and fame, in Grub Street, is my apology for profaning with my unskilled hand the implement ennobled by the use of a ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... peculiarities of its structure from all existing members of the class of Birds. This extraordinary Bird (fig. 182) appears to have been about as big as a Rook—the tail being long and extremely slender, and composed of separate vertebrae, each of which supports a single pair of quill-feathers. In the flying Birds of the present day, as before mentioned, the terminal vertebrae of the tail are amalgamated to form a single bone ("ploughshare-bone"), which supports a cluster of tail-feathers; and the tail itself is short. In the embryos of existing ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... truth; his satisfaction was manifest, for I never have seen him rub the tip of his nose with the feathers of his quill pen so often as he did that afternoon, which was with him the sign of exuberant joy, all his gestures having subdued themselves long since to the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... have heard that on a day Mine host's sign-board flew away, Nobody knew whither, till An Astrologer's old quill To a sheepskin gave the story, Said he saw you in your glory, Underneath a new-old sign Sipping beverage divine, And pledging with contented smack The Mermaid in ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... himself like a simple Teuton, on the wonderful learning and eloquence of his Greek-Roman secretary? Or did he laugh a royal laugh at the whole letter, and crack a royal joke at Cassiodorus and all quill-driving schoolmasters and lawyers—the two classes of men whom the Goths hated especially, and at the end to which they by their pedantries had brought imperial Rome? One would like to know. For not only was Dietrich no scholar himself, but he had a contempt ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... thirty-six pigeons. These pigeons were of various colors, and all named. They were expected to return soon to their homes, unless cold, fog, a hawk, or a Prnssian bullet should stop them on the way. Each would bring back a small quill fastened by threads to one of its tail-feathers and containing a minute square of flexible, waterproof paper, on which had been photographed messages in characters so small as to be deciphered only by a microscope. Some of these would be official ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... upon a mountain-top, our dogs treed a porcupine. At my suggestion the young man climbed the tree—not a large one—to shake the animal down. I wished to see what the dogs would do with him, and what the "quill-pig" would do with the dogs. As the climber advanced the rodent went higher, till the limb he clung to was no larger than one's wrist. This the young man seized and shook vigorously. I expected to see the slow, stupid porcupine drop, but ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... to whir with their red-green wings. Gradually the ground in the forest also began to show signs of life. A hedgehog crept sleepily through the underbrush; a little weasel dragged his supple body forth from a crevice in the rocks no broader than a quill. Little hares darted with cautious leaps out from the bushes, stopping in front of each to crouch down and lay their ears back, until finally, growing more brave, they mounted the ridge by the cornfield and danced and played together, using their fore paws to strike one another in sport. The ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... narrow chip of a quill was fixed with shellac to the apex of a radicle. After 9 h. no effect; after 24 h. moderate deflection, but now the quill had ceased to touch the apex. Removed quill and gummed a little square of card to apex, ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... down before the desk, took a quill, and awaited the king's pleasure. After a moment's ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... in the morning betimes, plum your ground, gage your line, bait your hook with a red knotted worme; but I hold a Menow better: put the hook in at the back of the Menow, betwixt the fish and the skin, that the Menow may swim up and down alive, being boyed up with a Cork or Quill, that the Menow may have liberty to swimme a foot off the ground: there is no doubt ...
— The Art of Angling • Thomas Barker
... in your last a goose; I lay my life on't you are wrong, To raise me by such foul abuse; My quill you'll find's a woman's tongue; And slit, just like a bird will chatter, And like a bird do something more; When I let fly, 'twill so bespatter, I'll change you to ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... a large sheet of paper, man, and make a new pen, with a sharp neb, and a fine hair-stroke. Do not slit the quill up too high, it's a wastrife course in your trade, Andrew. They that do not mind corn pickles never come to forpits. I have known a learned man write a thousand pages ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... days, the artists of the pen and the brush ferreted patrons, instead of aiming to be indispensable to the public, the only patron worth a single gesture of the quill. ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... feather from his own headdress, the scout pinched the quill and bent it over, holding it in ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... rise; Not there the wise alone their entrance find, Imparting useful light to mortals blind; But, blind themselves, these erring guides hold out Alluring lights to lead us far about; Screen'd by such means, here Scandal whets her quill, Here Slander shoots unseen, whene'er she will; Here Fraud and Falsehood labour to deceive, And Folly aids them both, impatient to believe. Such, sons of Britain! are the guides ye trust; So wise their counsel, ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... were ground; and then in sufficient quantities pressed out the juice, and put it over the sand in the cask, (having previously bored a gimlet hole in the side of the cask), between the true and false bottoms, in which I introduced a large goose-quill, stopped with another. The pipe was placed so high, as to admit of a cask under it, to receive the liquor as it ran from the quill, which, if rightly managed, will be perfectly fine, and being put away in a cool cellar, and stopped close, ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry
... withhold it from his own people. It will be just, therefore, and best for the reputation of him who in his Subitanes hath thus censured, to recall his sentence. And if, out of the abundance of his volumes, and the readiness of his quill, and the vastness of his other employments, especially in the great Audit for Accounts, he can spare us aught to the better understanding of this point, he shall be thanked in public, and what hath offended in the ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... my pen were of the quill of the swan that sings for future days! then shouldst thou, my friend, receive the fulness of thy fame. The fathers, of the years to come, should talk of thy noble deeds; and the youth yet unborn should rise up and call thee blessed. Fired at ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... comforter to all the birds of the garden by singing—ah, so plaintively and sweetly!—of the dismal days of frost and snow, he "preened"—i.e. went over and combed every feather, and tested and retested, cleaned and recleaned, each vital quill. Then, in one single, watery, weak stab of apology for sunshine, on the top of a fowl-shed, he surrendered himself to what, in wild-bird land, is known as the "sunning reaction," which really consists of giving body and mind utterly to the sun and ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... I have written is almost as illegible as that famous one of yours: in which however only [paper] was in fault: {88b} and now I shall scarce mend the matter by taking a steel pen instead of that old quill, which certainly ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... diameter. The precipitate is removed from the filter as completely as possible by rubbing the sides gently together, or by scraping them cautiously with a feather which has been cut close to the quill and is slightly stiff (Note 1). In either case, care must be taken not to rub off any considerable quantity of the paper, nor to lose silver chloride in the form of dust. Cover the precipitate on the glazed paper with ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot |
