"Weathercock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... man with the tent! I see Mrs. Barker doing up the lunch in a hamper and a great basket. Now Mr. Laurence is looking up at the sky and the weathercock. I wish he would go too. There's Laurie, looking like a sailor, nice boy! Oh, mercy me! Here's a carriage full of people, a tall lady, a little girl, and two dreadful boys. One is lame, poor thing, he's got a crutch. Laurie didn't tell us that. Be quick, girls! ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... back to back so as to form a sort of square; on the top of these place three more dove-cots, also back to back; above these set up two more dove-cots, and one on the top of all, with a short steeple above it, and a spire with an enormous weathercock on the top of that, and the building will not be a bad model of a Norwegian church, especially if you paint the sides white, and the gabled ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... weathercock, and goes whichever way the wind blows, monsieur—today he is with the Admiral, tomorrow he may ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... can't understand her, for she acts like a weathercock, and I never know how I 'm going to find her. I hate to have her mope so, but, upon my life, I don't know what to do," said Tom; but as he uttered the words, something was suggested by the sight before him. Chairs were few, and Polly had taken half ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... fears of John Jay's dying. Although the promise made to George on the haymow was faithfully kept, he could no more avoid getting into mischief than a weathercock can keep from turning ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Weathercock whirled around on his big toe and, pointing at the little hen, shouted through ...
— Little Jack Rabbit's Adventures • David Cory
... he, a touch of irony in his accent, himself looking a droll figure, hunched round his books and turning like a weathercock jerkily to keep the umbrella between him and the wind that strained its whalebone ribs till they ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... the village-clock When he galloped into Lexington. He saw the gilded weathercock Swim in the moonlight as he passed, And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare, Gaze at him with a spectral glare, As if they already stood aghast At the bloody ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... this crimson pageant, meet inauguration of England's bloodiest reign. Of other pageants there was no lack; but I pass them by, as also the airy gyrations of Peter the Dutchman on the weathercock of ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... serious kind of perseverance that requires a more firm support than emotions, however lively and true to nature. To give an example of order, the soul of virtue, some austerity of behaviour must be adopted, scarcely to be expected from a being who, from its infancy, has been made the weathercock of its own sensations. Whoever rationally means to be useful, must have a plan of conduct; and, in the discharge of the simplest duty, we are often obliged to act contrary to the present impulse of tenderness or compassion. Severity is frequently the most certain, ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... down an old wife from a chimney-top—singeing a pair of worsted stockings that, knit in an ill-starred hour, when the sun had entered Aries, had been hung out to dry on a line in the backyard, or garden as it is called—or cutting a few inches off the tail of an old Whig weathercock that for years had been pecking the eyes out of all the airts the wind can blaw, greedy of some still ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... senseless stuff he now produces, and grieve. His John Knox—ill placed for effect, as relates to its height from the ground, I admit; but look at that—flat as a teaboard—neither depth nor brilliancy. Knox himself strongly resembling in attitude the dragon weathercock on Bow steeple painted black. Has Wilkie become thus demented in compliment to Turner, the Prince of Orange (colour) of artists? Never did man suffer so severely under a yellow fever, and yet live so long. I dare say it is extremely bad taste to object to his efforts; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... "The weathercock in the north tower, instead of turning in the wind with the others, will remain fixed ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... some others of his countrymen, an improper share of pride and spirit. Fired by the lady's coldness, he poured forth a volley of reproaches; and ended by wishing, as he said, a good morning, for ever and ever, to one who could change her opinion, point blank, like the weathercock. "I am, miss, your most obedient; and I expect you'll never think no more of poor Brian ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... hinges had been so often tried by its being transformed into a sort of merry-go-round; the clumps of laurel bushes which had afforded such good hiding-places in games of "I spy;" even the long-suffering little brass weathercock above the stable roof, which had served as a mark for catapult shooting,—these, and a hundred other objects on which his eyes rested, recalled memories which softened his heart, and brought back more vividly than ever the recollection of that faithful friend, whose last request ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... General Alexandre de Girardin; took to stockbroking, but quitting it for journalism he soon established a reputation as a ready, vivacious writer, and in 1836 started La Presse, the first French penny paper; his rapid change of front in politics earned for him the nickname of "The Weathercock"; latterly he adhered to the Republican cause, and founded La France in its interest; he published many political brochures and a few plays, and was for some years editor of La Liberte (1806-1881).—His wife, DELPHINE GAY, enjoyed a wide celebrity both as a beauty and authoress; her poems, plays, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... tense interest held us all spellbound. We could see nothing but some stray glimpses of an ivy-clad wall. A weathercock, that had once been gilded, stood out black against the evening sky. The Grey Lady in the rustling silk, through whom you could see the rain drops splash on the gravel stones, was by no means on ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... weathercock you are! It's impossible. I'm dining with the Grand Duke on Monday. You must make up your mind to ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... without us, d'you think? Like fish out of water! And yet we're reckoned as outcasts and all that. Devil take all your society women, I say. There's one I see pass by every day, a judge's wife, haughty and stuck up as a weathercock on a church spire. Think she'd look at one of us? But ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... sovereign judge of the world is not so independent that it is not liable to be disturbed by the first din about it. The noise of a cannon is not necessary to hinder its thoughts; it needs only the creaking of a weathercock or a pulley. Do not wonder if at present it does not reason well; a fly is buzzing in its ears; that is enough to render it incapable of good judgment. If you wish it to be able to reach the truth, chase away that animal which holds its reason in check ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... of your opinion, and have been vexed at myself for two or three hours together, for not sticking as constantly to one object, as doubtless I shall, when age (touching his forehead) shall make this same weathercock too rusty to turn with the changing breeze. But as yet, while I have spirit and action, let it whirl like the vane at the mast-head, which teaches the pilot how to steer his course; and when I shift mine, think I am bound to follow Fortune, and ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... oak-beams, And roofs of yellow tile and purplish slate. That is The Falcon, with the swinging sign And rustic bench, an ancient hostelry; Those leaden lattices were hung on hinge In good Queen Bess's time, so old it is. On ridge-piece, gable-end, or dove-cot vane, A gilded weathercock at intervals Glimmers—an angel on the wing, most like, Of local workmanship; for since the reign Of pious Edward here have carvers thrived, In saints'-heads skillful and winged cherubim Meet for rich abbeys. From yon crumbling tower, Whose ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... hinges, were placed, Caroline led the way towards the building. At this point of view it presented a large bay window that by a flight of four steps led into the garden. On one side rose a square, narrow turret, surmounted by a gilt dome and quaint weathercock, below the architrave of which was a sun-dial, set in the stonework; and another dial stood in the garden, with ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... expression came into Joan's eyes, and she turned her shoulder to Palgrave, who was giving her his most amorous glances. "It doesn't matter," she said, "but I notice that you are all beginning to treat me like a sort of moral weathercock. I wonder why?" She gave no more thought to the matter which just for the most fleeting moment had rather piqued her, but sat drinking in the music of Mascagni's immortal opera entirely ignoring the fact that Palgrave's face was within an inch of her shoulder and that Alan ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... From which number if you, Sir, have kept yourself clear, the less blood of the damned will fall upon your head: I know you not by face, much less your personal practice; yet I have heard as if blood might pursue you, for your unstable weathercock spirit, which doubtless could not but stumble the weak, and give advantage to the adversary to speak vilifyingly ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... false to his God can be expected to remain faithful to his Sovereign? When a man, as a Catholic Bishop, marries, and, under the mask of patriotism, becomes the declared tool of all work to every faction, and is the weathercock, shifting to any quarter according to the wind,—such a man can be of no real service to any party: and yet has a man of this kind been by turns the primum mobile of them all, even to the present times, and was one of those great Church fomenters of the troubles of which we speak, who disgraced ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... unto. vane, a weathercock. too, also. vain, proud; empty. two, one and one. vein, a blood-vessel. trey, three at cards. waste, to consume; loss. tray, a shallow vessel. waist, part of the body. vale, a valley; a dell. ware, ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... Cuts represent a few of the recent improvements in the Zoological Gardens, as, the addition of the clock-house and weathercock[5] to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... than she had intended, and then, perceiving by subtle but unmistakeable signs that she would wiselier go, went. To Wanless that had been a week of strain; the air was charged with trouble. One could not have pointed to anything—it was beyond the range of weathercock or glass; but everybody felt it. Sanchia, graver than she was wont to be, pushed herself sharply from duty to duty, and avoided sympathy by a dry manner. Or she was obtuse, affecting a foolish interest in trivialities. She never went into the ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... invisible, As a nose on a man's face, or a weathercock on a steeple! My master sues to her; and she hath taught her suitor, He being her pupil, to become her tutor. O excellent device! Was there ever heard a better, That my master, being scribe, to ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... mast that are placed nearest the stern of the yacht act in such a manner as to turn the bows in the direction of the arrow, as illustrated in Fig. 146, and the sail or sails abaft the mast turn the boat in the direction of the arrow A. The boat thus revolves upon the center of the mast much as a weathercock revolves upon its pivot. If there is more than one mast, all the sails carried abaft the mainmast serve to turn the boat in the direction A. The work of sailing depends greatly upon the skill in balancing these two effects so that the boat will progress in a straight ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... was she that she failed to notice that her horse had suddenly become very alert. His large, low-bred ears, that weathercock of the horseman, were pricked up, and he looked inquiringly from side to side as he picked his way. Once he gave ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... The weathercock on the ancient stronghold at Cleve is a swan, and in olden times the dynasty that ruled over the lovely country round Cleve had also a swan in their crest. A legend, tragic and beautiful, preserved to posterity ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... of another, and stripping the two corner chestnuts of several branches in its fall. This is not all. One large elm out of the two on the left-hand side as you enter what I call the elm walk, was likewise blown down; the maple bearing the weathercock was broke in two, and what I regret more than all the rest is, that all the three elms which grew in Hall's meadow, and gave such ornament to it, are gone; two were blown down, and the other so much injured that it cannot stand. ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... pride exalts Thyself in other's eyes, And hides thy folly's faults, Which reason will despise? Dost strut, and turn, and stride, Like a walking weathercock? The shadow by thy side Will be ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... by describing Harvey under a yew-tree at Trinity-hall, composing verses on the weathercock of ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... as a woman should bend her heart and lips from her heaven down to his earth. The next he could not conceive any man should be such a witless ass as to stake his happiness on the steadiness of so manifest a weathercock as a woman's favour. It was all very strange talk; it opened to me, just as when a fog lifts and rolls down again, a momentary vision of a world of colours in which I had no share; and to tell the truth it left me with a suspicion which has recurred again and again, that all my solitary ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church jumped over its own weathercock. Then, he held me by the arms, in an upright position on the top of the stone, and went on ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... shall abandon me for ever." Saying this, he silently stole out of the room, as if intent upon some extraordinary resolution. His father observed his motions, and smiling, said to Mr Barlow, "What can this portend? This boy is changeable as a weathercock; every blast whirls him round and round upon his centre, nor will he ever fix, I fear, in any direction." "At least," replied Mr Barlow, "you have the greatest reason to rejoice in his present impressions, which are good and estimable; and I fear it is the lot of most human beings to exhaust ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... "Baby" was pushed into my hand by Hadji Ali just in time to take the shoulder of the last of the herd, who had already charged headlong after his comrades and was disappearing in the jungle. Bang! went the "Baby;" round I spun like a weathercock, with the blood pouring from my nose, as the recoil had driven the sharp top of the hammer deep into the bridge. My "Baby" not only screamed, but kicked viciously. However, I knew that the elephant must be bagged, as the half-pound shell had been aimed directly ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... heart is profoundly rooted a passion for long journeys; each and all of them, old and young, healthy and sickly, would if they could take not merely the grand tour, but circulate round the two hemispheres with all the pleasure imaginable. At a certain period of the year, when the weathercock points the right way, the sun burns in the sign of the Lion, and the husbandman bends his weary form to gather in the golden corn, the legs of the rich Englishman begin to be nervously agitated, he feels ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... Griffiths Wainewright contributed various fantasies, on Art and Arts; all or most of which may be recognized by his assumed name of Janus Weathercock. ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... George had been concerned in the robbery, and possibly Lady Eustace herself. Men had been sent down from London, of course at considerable expense, and Portray Castle had been searched, with the consent of its owner, from the weathercock to the foundation-stone,—much to the consternation of Miss Macnulty, and to the delight of Andy Gowran. No trace of the diamonds was found, and Lizzie had so far fraternised with the police. But when Mr. Bunfit called upon her, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... Goro, with snout upward, like a pig under an oak-tree. And as for Lorenzo—dead and gone before his time—he was a man who had an eye for curious iron-work; and if anybody says he wanted to make himself a tyrant, I say, 'Sia; I'll not deny which way the wind blows when every man can see the weathercock.' But that only means that Lorenzo was a crested hawk, and there are plenty of hawks without crests whose claws and beaks are as good for tearing. Though if there was any chance of a real reform, so that Marzocco [the stone Lion, emblem of the Republic] might shake his ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... operate on public sentiment. Such a paper as the London "Times," having nothing higher than avaricious commerce and national pride to consult, in a conspicuous centre of affairs has thus become the great weathercock of the world, splendidly gilded, lifted very high in the air, but, like some other stupid chanticleers, crowing at false signals of the dawn, and well called the "Times," as in its columns nothing eternal was ever evinced. Everywhere ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... great Garden were out; the benches in the Square were filled with sleepers in postures so strange that beside them the writhing figures in Dore's illustrations of the Inferno would have straightened into tailor's dummies. The statue of Diana on the tower of the Garden—its constancy shown by its weathercock ways, its innocence by the coating of gold that it has acquired, its devotion to style by its single, graceful flying scarf, its candour and artlessness by its habit of ever drawing the long bow, its metropolitanism by its posture of swift flight to catch a Harlem train—remained poised with its ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... crooked gable, and a husky old dog in the recess under the steps at the door. Behind the house a wide yard with nettles, wormwood, and burdocks in the corners, outbuildings with doors that stick, doves and rooks on the thatched roofs, a little storehouse with a rusty weathercock, two or three birch-trees with rooks' nests in their bare top branches, and beyond—the road with cushions of soft dust in the ruts and a field and the long hurdles of the hemp patches, and the grey little huts of the village, and the cackle of geese in the far-away rich ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the maple- trees. All these signs of an early spring Miss Lavender noted as she picked her way down the wooded bank. Once, indeed, she stopped, wet her forefinger with her tongue, and held it pointed in the air. There was very little breeze, but this natural weathercock revealed from what direction ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... daughter of Peter Alrichs, the late great director's son, whose father slept in the graveyard of the little log church on Sand Hook, beside Dominie Welius, the holy psalm-tune leader. Nanking believed that when the weathercock on the church tingled in the wind, it was Dominie Welius in the grave striking his tuning-fork to catch the key-note. Peter Alrichs inherited the well-cleared farm of his papa, and had the best estate in all New Amstel except Gerrit Van Swearingen, who was accused of getting ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... by a well remembered lane, and soon approached a mansion of dull red brick, with a little weathercock-surmounted cupola, on the roof, and a bell hanging in it. It was a large house, but one of broken fortunes; for the spacious offices were little used, their walls were damp and mossy, their windows broken, and their ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... weathercock provided with datum points may, in the majority of cases, suffice for the observation of the wind during the day; but recourse has to be had to different means to obtain an automatic transmission of the indications of the vane to the inside of a building. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... show, and were noted for putting the best leg foremost. The house was always furnished with abundance of large doors and small windows on every floor, the date of its erection was curiously designated by iron figures on the front, and on the top of the roof was perched a fierce little weathercock, to let the family into the important secret which way the wind blew. These, like the weathercocks on the tops of our steeples, pointed so many different ways, that every man could have a wind to his mind;—the most staunch and loyal citizens, however, always went according to the weathercock ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... and the other for the English. The first was the oldest. It stood at the point where the two principal streets crossed each other, and in the centre of the street, leaving sufficient passages all round it. The building was square, with a high pointed roof, having a belfry and weathercock on its apex; windows, with diamond panes and painted glass, and a porch that was well suited both to the climate ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... the feudal army had nearly exhausted their forty days' stock of provisions; knight and man-at-arms murmured, and the Duke was continually going to pray in the Church of St. Valery, looking up at the weathercock every time he ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Didn't the weathercock look handsome, with his gilt feathers shining brightly in the rays of the morning sun as he turned to and fro with every little ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory
... turning away half-petulantly. "Of course I know you are as changeable as a weathercock, Manuela. But as you were saying, if we had a few nails, we should do well enough here. I will go ask ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... Fame, who never cared a jot Whether she was admired or not, And never blush'd to show her face At any time in any place, In her own shape, without disguise, And visible to mortal eyes, On 'Change exact at seven o'clock Alighted on the weathercock, 570 Which, planted there time out of mind To note the changes of the wind, Might no improper emblem be Of her own mutability. Thrice did she sound her trump, (the same Which from the first belong'd to Fame, An old ill-favour'd instrument, With which the ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... as preferring truffles to potatoes, but putting the knife into requisition whilst eating green peas. But in his case Mother Nature had intermingled elements so cleverly that Rochefort could be republican and royalist, catholic and atheist, without being accused for all that of being a political weathercock. ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... instant, night or day, but when she was packing up to leave us. Had she meant to make any stay in Ireland, I stood a great chance of being a great favourite with her; for when she found I understood the weathercock, she was always finding some pretence to be talking to me, and asking me which way the wind blew, and was it likely, did I think, to continue fair for England. But when I saw she had made up her mind to spend the rest of her days upon her own income and jewels in England, ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... rise, he saw the weathercock and one turret of a church tower peering over the edge of a small steep hill, close at hand, and turning toward it he went briskly on, under the lee of a short fir plantation, all the grass being pure and fresh with hoar-frost, ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... Labrador. There, too, and in similar colors, is the long chapel, on the centre of whose roof there is a belfry, which looks like two thirds of immense red egg, drawn up at the top into a spindle, and this surmounted by a weathercock,—as if some giant had attempted to blow the egg from beneath, and had only blown out of it this small bird with a stick to stand on! Ah, yes! and there is the pig-sty,—not in keeping with the rest, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... gale, shorn of all the impressiveness of their wonted solemn gait, holding, perchance, their shovel-hat firmly on with both hands; and finally, there is neither pathos nor glory in having your head broken by a chimney-pot, or volant weathercock. No, the wide sea is an emblem of all that is deceitful and false, smiling most blandly when preparing to devour you; and the wind is only one shade more respectable—nay, perchance the worse of the two; for the waters, in the self-justifying, neighbour-condemning ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... verge of her haven of peace without disturbing. There she had been what none had known of her: an ambitious girl, modest merely for lack of intrepidity; paralyzed by her masterful lord; aiming her highest at a gilt weathercock; and a disappointed creature, her breast a home of serpents; never herself. She thought and hoped she was herself now. Alarm lest this might be another of her moods, victim of moods as she had latterly been, was a shadow armed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was monstrously hot and stuffy. Not a breath of wind ruffled the waters of the dock, around the head of which we trudged to a recently erected church on the opposite shore. I remember observing, on our way, the dazzling brilliance of its weathercock. ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... girl, or two, or three— The more the merrier for my weathercock whim; And one shall be like Juno, large of limb And large of heart; and Venus one shall be, Golden, with eyes like the capricious sea; And my third sweetheart, Dian, shall be slim With a boy's slimness, flanks and bosom trim, The green, sharp apple of the ancient tree. ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... affecting me. For, whatever course I take in public affairs in this country, I conceal nothing, I take it publicly, openly, and deliberately. If I err, I am satisfied to abide the consequences; and, whenever it may suit the weathercock judgment of Lord Mayo, and his vacillating law advisers, to characterise my acts or my opinion as illegal, seditious, heretical, idolatrous, or treasonable, I must, like every other subject, be content to take my chance of their ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... church with its tower, yellow spire, old clock and weathercock, seems to me as I look back on it to have been a very attractive piece of architecture. It was that church which suggested to Emerson the leading thought in one of his most famous poems, ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... days, or even years ago, since he had quitted them. There, indeed, was each former trace of the street, as he remembered it, and all the peculiarities of the houses, with the due multitude of gable-peaks, and a weathercock at every point where his memory suggested one. Not the less, however, came this importunately obtrusive sense of change. The same was true as regarded the acquaintances whom he met, and all the well-known shapes of human life, about the little town. They ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I doubt whether I should take them. But if it should come to pass that she should wish to send them back, you may be sure that others will come. In such a matter she is very good as a weathercock, showing how the wind blows." In this way the dinner-party at the palace was in a degree comforting ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... of centuries, but by the near vicinage of Irving's grave. In its little twelve-inch counterpart, every point of the ancient structure is preserved in exact detail. The dull red walls, the beetling roof, the narrow pointed windows and low, arched door; the quaint Dutch weathercock, and odd-shaped tower—aye, even the bell within, no bigger than a doll's thimble—and upon all a sentimental traveler in the person of a china figure perhaps three inches in height, is gazing half pensively, half curiously, as we suppose, at this ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... little face hidden under the clothes comes to the surface again. On the roof the weathercock creaks. The rain-pipe gurgles; the Angelus sounds. When the wind comes from the east, the distant bells of the villages on the other bank of the river give answer. The sparrows foregathered in the ivy-clad wall ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... of the household, though she visited it occasionally. The household consisted of old Caiaphas, bedridden, and his two daughters and Goldie. Goldie was the tomcat, so termed by reason of his splendid tawniness. Goldie had more to do with the Ebag marriage than anyone or anything, except the weathercock on the top of the house. This may sound queer, but is as naught to the queerness about to ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... that of all who buy, and renovate, and build. The farm had on it a small stone Dutch cottage, built about a century before, and inhabited by one of the Van Tassels. This was enlarged, still preserving the quaint Dutch characteristics; it acquired a tower and a whimsical weathercock, the delight of the owner ("it was brought from Holland by Gill Davis, the King of Coney Island, who says he got it from a windmill which they were demolishing at the gate of Rotterdam, which windmill has been mentioned in 'Knickerbocker'"), ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... which at once prevented the Prince's armament from sailing and brought fresh Irish regiments from Dublin to Chester, were bitterly cursed and reviled by the common people. The weather, it was said, was Popish. Crowds stood in Cheapside gazing intently at the weathercock on the graceful steeple of Bow Church, and praying for a ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... morality changes, it seems, with men and with seasons. What was infamy in Espartero and Zurbano, is heroism and glory in Narvaez and Prim. What is more infamous than all this is the press, that thus displays itself in the light of a moral weathercock, shifting ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... like the more domestic weathercock, may often be seen wheeling through the air on the approach of a storm, and exhibits unmistakable signs of exultation when it is going to thunder. It is not a bird of song, but is unsurpassed as a screamer. To the common Kite, a plebeian member of the genus, has been ascribed an attribute ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... opine. greno grain (wheat, corn, etc.). orienta east, eastern. ke that (conjunction). pluvo rain. kontraux against. suda south, southern. montri to show, to point out. velki to wilt, to wither. norda north, northern. vento wind. nova new. ventoflago weathercock. okcidenta west, western. ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... rock shone bright, the kirk no less, That stands above the rock: The moonlight steeped in silentness The steady weathercock. ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... sun. Seeing it in its imposing shape with its conical top, it might easily have been taken for one of those extinguisher-shaped towers that architects of the Middle Ages put at the angles of their castles. It only wanted loopholes and a weathercock. ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... of the town is in front of you; Forrest's shop is next door as you stand in the gateway of the old inn, and after a glance at the sky and at the weathercock on the top of the market house you look in there. A local fisherman was coming out, and in reply to the inevitable question as to the state of the river, he said, "Weel, she's awa' again." Pithy and characteristic, and full of information was this. ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... Abruptly Kirkwood's weathercock humor shifted—amusement yielding to intrigued interest. After all, why not oblige the fellow? What did anything matter, now? What harm could visit him if he yielded to this corpulent adventurer's insistence? Both from ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... then, good reader, a glorious Latitudinarian, that can, as to religion, turn and twist like an eel on the hook; or rather like the weathercock ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... ugly seat at the canter is a sight that would spoil the finest landscape in the world, so a lady who desires to ride well should not be satisfied if she can merely stick on, like the lady in Fig. 101, but should try to ride correctly. Her head will perhaps at first be jerked to and fro like a "vexed weathercock," but practice will enable her to overcome the tendency to fix the muscles of her neck and to allow her head to follow the motion of her body. She should take care that her elbows do not flap up and down like the pinions of an awkward nestling learning to fly, but should ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... schemes has he been as Romish King—how will it be with him as Kaisar? It is but of his wonted madness that he is here at all, when his Austrian states must be all astray for want of him. No, no; I would rather make a weathercock guardian to my daughter. You yourself are the only guard to whom I can ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... through a number of years he has never known this fail. The month in which the change on a Sunday has occurred has been fine until the last day, when the flood came. The other saying is, "Look at the weathercock on St. Thomas's day at twelve o'clock, and see which way the wind is, and there it will stick for the next quarter," that is, three months. Can any of your readers confirm the above, and add any ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 187, May 28, 1853 • Various
... the north," said Colline, gravely, pointing to a weathercock on a neighboring roof. "We shall not breakfast today, the elements are opposed ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... had been mine. Heaven is large, and affords space for all modes of love and fortitude. Why should we be busybodies and superserviceable? Action and inaction are alike to the true. One piece of the tree is cut for a weathercock and one for the sleeper of a bridge; the virtue of the ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... a salient object in the heavens surpassing the stony eminences which surrounded it, rose the tall spire of the twin Houses of Parliament. Upon its top swung a gilded weathercock; while about a portion of its base stood a maze of scaffolding, the facade of the building having during the last few months been under repair. There seemed, however, for the moment, to be no workmen upon it. Presently, as he gazed vacantly and without ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... shake hands in such a manner as to win hearts, how to say "My dear friend" in a certain tactful way to people he knows the least, to change his mind without suspecting it, to be carried away by each new idea, to be sincere in their weathercock convictions, to let themselves be deceived as they deceive others, to forget the next morning what he ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... yet who this old weathercock is," cried Whipcord, turning again to my uncle. "What do they call you at home, old Stick- in-the-mud?" and he nudged him in the ribs ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... arm's length. Serve her well right. I never heard of such impudence. But these red-haired ones are the devil. It's the same with horses. I had a chestnut filly one time—a neat little tit in her way—but she'd kick the weathercock off the top of the church steeple whenever she was a bit fresh. Never trust anything red. A red dog will bite you, a red horse will kick you, a red wench will kiss you, besides being a damned unlucky thing to meet first thing in the morning, ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... few trees, with some extensive stabling and cart-sheds on the left, and on the right hand the entrance to the cellars. Facing us is an unpretending-looking edifice, where the firm has its counting-houses, with a little corner tower surmounted by a characteristic weathercock consisting of a figure of Bacchus seated astride a cask beneath a vine-branch, and holding up a bottle in one hand and a goblet in the other. The old Remish Commanderie of the Knights Templars existed until the epoch of the Great Revolution, and to-day ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... grass-green worsted that it quite set your teeth on edge to look at it. Besides these, there was a little round stove, with a long stove pipe, that came out on top of the caravan, and ended with a flourishing weathercock, representing a fat old woman in a high gale, with her umbrella turned inside out; which moved when the smoke came puffing up harder than usual, and had no connection whatever ...
— Funny Little Socks - Being the Fourth Book • Sarah. L. Barrow
... not much to see at Vordingborg. There are the ruins of King Valdemar's castle; the portion most prominent is called the Goose Tower, because the figure of a goose was used as a weathercock," said the Pastor. "If I might suggest, a drive in a carriage in the neighbourhood would, I think, interest you. The scenery is the same type as ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... flexibility and dexterity of the Hindoos. We were most surprised and amused by the exploits of a lady of forty, which is considered a very old age in that climate, who ran up the pole more like a monkey than a human being, and then sticking herself on the top horizontally like a weathercock, whirled herself round, to the great astonishment of the European beholders. What tickled us particularly on this occasion was the good lady accompanying her strange movements with a noise so exactly like that of our old and respected friend Punch, when drubbed by his faithful wife ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... slang word usually means a milksop, but here it is equivalent to 'a butterfly', 'a weathercock'—a man of ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... thing composes as if composition were the chief end of human institutions. The charming architectural promontory of the Dogana stretches out the most graceful of arms, balancing in its hand the gilded globe on which revolves the delightful satirical figure of a little weathercock of a woman. This Fortune, this Navigation, or whatever she is called—she surely needs no name—catches the wind in the bit of drapery of which she has divested her rotary bronze loveliness. On the other side of the Canal twinkles and glitters the long ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... a good pattern of the real old-fashioned New England meeting-house. It was a large barn with windows, fronted by a square tower crowned with a kind of wooden bell inverted and raised on legs, out of which rose a slender spire with the sharp-billed weathercock at its summit. Inside, tall, square pews with flapping seats, and a gallery running round three sides of the building. On the fourth side the pulpit, with a huge, dusty sounding-board hanging over it. Here preached the Reverend Pierrepont Honeywood, D.D., successor, after a number of generations, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... cocks crowed, Then only heard. Ages ago the road Approached. The people stood and looked and turned, Nor asked it to come nearer, nor yet learned To move out there and dwell in all men's dust. And yet withal they shot the weathercock, just Because 'twas he crowed out of tune, they said: So now the copper weathercock is dead. If they had reaped their dandelions and sold Them fairly, they could ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas
... Bagration, it would have been necessary to invent him," said the wit Shinshin, parodying the words of Voltaire. Kutuzov no one spoke of, except some who abused him in whispers, calling him a court weathercock and an old satyr. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... possessor of the Roost! I have repaired and renovated it with religious care, in the genuine Dutch style, and have adorned and illustrated it with sundry reliques of the glorious days of the New Netherlands. A venerable weathercock, of portly Dutch dimensions, which once battled with the wind on the top of the Stadt-House of New Amsterdam, in the time of Peter Stuyvesant, now erects its crest on the gable end of my edifice; a gilded horse in full gallop, once the ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... shall always think—as I did think then—that the wisdom of its action and the wisdom of its abstinence from action were very good. And now again the fields in Ireland are green, and the markets are busy, and money is chucked to and fro like a weathercock which the players do not wish to have abiding with them; and the tardy speculator going over to look for a bit of land comes back muttering angrily that fancy prices are demanded. "They'll run you up to thirty-three ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... &c (irresolution) 605; fluctuation, vicissitude; alternation &c (oscillation) 314. restlessness &c adj.. fidgets, disquiet; disquietude, inquietude; unrest; agitation &c 315. moon, Proteus, chameleon, quicksilver, shifting sands, weathercock, harlequin, Cynthia of the minute, April showers^; wheel of Fortune; transientness &c 111 [Obs.]. V. fluctuate, vary, waver, flounder, flicker, flitter, flit, flutter, shift, shuffle, shake, totter, tremble, vacillate, wamble^, turn and turn about, ring the changes; sway to and fro, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... upon the wonderful city. And as I watched, the pearly east changed little by little, to a varying pink, which in turn slowly gave place to reds and yellows, until up came the sun in all his majesty, gilding vane and weathercock upon a hundred spires and steeples, and making a glory of the river. Far away upon the white riband of road that led across Blackheath, a chaise was crawling, but save for that ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... the young man answered; "I will forth and pay my duty. The rusty-weathercock, my lord, is often too ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... that. Men were blind fools; men were fickle children. Neville almost wished now that Barry would give up Gerda and go out to Rome and fetch Nan back. But, to do that, Barry would have to fall out of love with Gerda and into love again with Nan; and even Barry, Neville imagined, was not such a weathercock as that. And Barry would really be happier with Gerda. With all their differences, they were both earnest citizens, both keen on social progress. Nan was a cynical flibberty-gibbet; it might not have been a happy union. Perhaps happy unions were not for such as Nan. But at the thought ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... to hot, from calm to storm, and this changeability of climate extends to the persons. Thus, from earliest infancy, they are wont to shift with every wind. The head of a Langrois stands on his shoulders like a weathercock on the top of a church-steeple; it is never steady at one point, and, if it comes round again to that which it had left, it is not to stop there. As for me, I am of my country; only residence of the capital and constant application have corrected ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... says Alan, "I am nae weathercock. Thirty guineas, if ye land me on the sea-side; and sixty, if ye put me in the ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... building—a stone quadrangle, heavily topped off by a dark slate roof, and a dejected-looking weathercock that rebelled against the wind ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... Lord Brooke and his soldiery treated poor St. Chad[1] with so little ceremony, that it is in a most naked condition. In a niche at the very summit they have crowded a statue of Charles the Second, with a special pair of shoe-strings, big enough for a weathercock. As I went to Lord Strafford's I passed through Sheffield, which is one of the foulest towns in England in the most charming situation; there are two-and-twenty thousand inhabitants making knives ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... 1879. Sir Henry's object, like Mr. Berry's, was to strengthen the hands of the Assembly, but unfortunately for his scheme he had a very different class of electors at his back. As happened over the Land Act, his weathercock failed to point in the right direction. When the Council rejected his Bill, he indulged in threats and fulminations which would have done credit to a Berryite of the Berryites. But the country utterly refused to back him up. It would not be ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... the danger, confused and distressed by the hair that came wildly flapping about her head and face, and by the puffs of wind at her hoop, had sunk down in the centre of the little leaden square, clinging with all her might to the staff of the weathercock, and feeling as if the whole tower were rocking with her, absolutely seeing the battlements dance. How was she ever to be safely got down the rickety ladder leading to the crumbling stone stair? Ethel knelt by her, twisted ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of inert flesh, and where the small eyes glisten with concentrated cunning, and remind us of the watchful, angry eyes of a gorilla, at the same time, into ridicule. I knew that he was selfish, without any affection, unreliable, full of whims, turning like a weathercock with every wind that blows, and caring for nothing in the world except ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... you remember the dances, The dearest were those we sat out, How I frowned when detecting your glances On others, which caused you to pout? You are changeful and coy and capricious, A weathercock easily blown; But when shall I hear the delicious One word that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various
... of tune with them, especially with Zeb, who, at least, might have understood her better. Some angry tears gathered in her eyes at the callous indifference of her father, who just now was revolving in the porch like a weathercock, and shouting orders east, west, north, and south for axes, hammers, ladders, cart-ropes, in case the vessel ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Spring is yea and nay; Autumn is a weathercock, Blown every way: Summer days for me, When every leaf is ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various |
