"Oyster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... numbered only sixty. The spade showed a substratum of thick old wall, untrimmed granite, and other hard materials. Further down were various shells, especially bnitiers ( Tridacna gigantea) the harp (here called "Sirinbz"), and the pearl-oyster; sheep-bones and palm charcoal; pottery admirably "cooked," as the Bedawin remarked; and glass of surprising thinness, iridized by damp to rainbow hues. This, possibly the remains of lachrymatories, was very different from the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... to be visited with signs of resentment are no more fit for brilliant talk than they are fit for life and its vicissitudes. "Whoso keepeth his mouth and his tongue keepeth his soul in peace," it is true; but he also keeps himself dead to all human intercourse and as colorless in the world as an oyster. "Too great a desire to please," says Stevenson, "banishes from conversation all that is sterling.... It is better to emit a scream in the shape of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities of life and take everything as it comes ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... those turned out by Gunter that the experience of one season is enough to make one recognize. And, on the whole, the Gunterian supper is as good, in its way, as; need be. Nothing hot, of course, except oyster soup (specially adapted for deserving chaperons), and, maybe, some delicately browned cutlets; but cold meats of every shade of substantiality, from boars' heads and chickens and raised pies to the most delicate of sandwiches, tempting translucent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... prisoners were tried, business transactions executed, and the general affairs of the city carried on. On the other side of the square were the shops, where the butchers, bakers, or fishmongers plied their trade. You can find plenty of oyster shells, the contents of which furnished many a feast to the Romans who lived there seventeen hundred years ago. The objects which have been found tell us how the dwellers in the old city employed themselves, and how skilful they were ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... years of the Revolution had been stated by a true statesman and sound financier, Du Pont de Nemours, at the very beginning. He had shown that using the same paper as a circulating medium and as a means for selling the national real estate was like using the same implement for an oyster ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... prescribes, viz., every salt-fish vessel, for groundage, 8d. per day, and 20d. per voyage; a lobster boat 2d. per day groundage, and 13d. the voyage; every dogger boat, or smack with sea-fish, 2d. per day groundage, and 13d. the voyage; every oyster vessel, 2d. per day groundage, and a halfpenny per bushel metage. And that it should be lawful for any person who should buy fish in the said market to sell the same in any other market or place in London, or elsewhere, by retail." And because the fishmongers used to buy up great part ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... surprised to find one who is what is popularly known as a drunkard not so much ashamed of as interested in himself; isn't that it? Well, that comes of the introspective literary temperament. It is only the oyster fascinated by the pearl that is ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... of beauty is treated as of little worth, compared with the culture of what are styled the practical faculties. Our wealth is spent in the erection of extravagant stores and shops,—in the decoration of oyster-saloons, hotels, and steamboats,—in the lavish and selfish adornment of drawing-rooms and chambers. In the whole breadth of the continent there is not a single building of such beauty as to be an object of national pride, and few which will have any value in future times, except as historic records ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... the citadel is very steep, and we proceeded rather slowly. But there were matters of interest about us. In one place, five hundred feet above the sea, the perpendicular bank on the upper side of the road was ten or fifteen feet high, and the cut exposed three veins of oyster shells, just as we have seen quartz veins exposed in the cutting of a road in Nevada or Montana. The veins were about eighteen inches thick and two or three feet apart, and they slanted along downward for a distance of thirty feet or more, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... say so then? I never saw such a block! I say you shall learn Greek!—Why do you stand there looking like a dead oyster?" ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... "that I have ministered occasion to none; but I would I were equally certain of the good meaning of this sullen- browed Thomas Dickson towards the English soldiers, for I seldom go to bed in this dungeon of a house, but I expect my throat will gape as wide as a thirsty oyster before I awaken. Here he comes, however," added Anthony, sinking his sharp tones as he spoke; "and I hope to be excommunicated if he has not brought with him that mad animal, his son Charles, and two other strangers, hungry enough, I'll be sworn, to eat up ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... barred window, made about twelve or fourteen francs a week. He worked still, though he was fifty-eight years old, but fifty-eight is the porter's golden age; he is used to his lodge, he and his room fit each other like the shell and the oyster, and "he is known ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... between the shells, wriggled it about a little, and then, mastering the opposition offered by the singular creature within, he wrenched the two shells apart and used his knife to scrape out the flesh of the oyster, felt it well over and then thrust it into the bucket, which he half filled with the ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... is life, and a sponge is just as much alive as a herring; a nettle is just as much alive as an oak-tree; and an oak-tree is just as much alive as you are. What becomes of its vital spark when you eat an oyster?" ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... kneading bread on the kitchen table. Toomey had sold a pair of silver sugar tongs to a cowpuncher who opined that they were the very thing he had been looking for with which to eat oysters. The slipperiness of a raw oyster annoyed and embarrassed him, so he purchased the tongs gladly, and the sack of flour which resulted gave Mrs. Toomey a feeling of comparative security while ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... grimness in his face was accentuated of late. She found herself crying one night, and called it homesickness, yet the small items of news contained in the latest letter from the spectacled youth had irritated her, and she had realized that she no longer regarded church fairs, choir practice, and oyster ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... a long reverberation, and the workmen pouring out of the doors and down the stairs. Ellen had moved quickly, for she had an errand at the grocery-store before she went home. She was going to get some oysters for a hot stew for supper, of which her father was very fond. She had a little oyster-can in her hand when she met the two gentlemen. She had grown undeniably thinner since summer, but she was charming. Her short black skirt and her coarse gray jacket fitted her as well as if they had been tailor-made. There was nothing tawdry or slatternly about her. She looked every inch a lady, ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Persian nobleman obtained from a cow gipsy a small oyster. Holding him up by the beard, ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... the mind;—but yet, I think, it will be granted easily, that if a child were kept in a place where he never saw any other but black and white till he were a man, he would have no more ideas of scarlet or green, than he that from his childhood never tasted an oyster, or a pine-apple, has of those ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... and London, in his Cerebri Anatome (1659) recognised the necessity for comparative study of the structure of the brain. He found out that the brain of man is very like that of other mammals, the brain of birds, on the contrary, like that of fishes![15] He described the anatomy of the oyster and the crayfish. He had, however, ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... bear, I have not yet lost my womanly taste, and I don't want to be fed all the time on buns. If anybody asks you what you think I'd like, tell them that an occasional omelette soufflee, or an oyster pate, or a platter of petits fours would please ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... months of the flock of holiday makers, Arcachon makes money in quite another way. Just as suddenly as it bloomed forth a fashionable watering-place, it has grown into an oyster park of world-wide renown. Last year the Arcachon oyster beds produced not less than three hundred million oysters, the cultivators taking in round figures a million francs. The oysters are distributed through various markets, but the greatest customer is London, whither there come every year ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... perceive any thing but the perceptions. It is the composition of these, therefore, which forms the self. We can conceive a thinking being to have either many or few perceptions. Suppose the mind to be reduced even below the life of an oyster. Suppose it to have only one perception, as of thirst or hunger. Consider it in that situation. Do you conceive any thing but merely that perception? Have you any notion of self or substance? If not, the ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... do janitor work for a B'nai B'rith lodge that was holding meetings there, and it had made him gloomy and dissolute—and, while I was waiting, who should come tripping along but Egbert Floud, all sunned up like a man that knows the world is his oyster and every month's got an "r" in it. Usually he's a kind of sad, meek coot, looking neglected and put upon; but now he was actually giggling to himself as he come up the stairs two ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... the diet. On the fourth day, and from this on, the patient will have regular meals, but the diet must be a plain one. For breakfast, stale bread, a soft-boiled egg, fruit, and a cup of tea, not too strong. For dinner, which should always be given in the middle of the day, an oyster-stew or clam broth, a lamb chop, or a very small piece of beefsteak or chicken; but with these there must be no gravies or dressings; a potato baked in the skin; raw tomatoes, if in season; apple sauce or cranberry; celery; junket, plain corn-starch, lemon jelly, plain cup-custard. ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... unheard of! There was nothing which Solomon, who had a keen relish for good things to eat, and would even have been extravagant in this one particular had his firm-willed wife permitted, enjoyed more than an oyster stew, or which he had a chance to taste less often. Oysters could be had in town for sixty cents a quart, a sum that seems not large; but in Mrs. Peaslee's mind they were associated with the elegance and luxury of church "sociables," and with the dissipation ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... Hal, where a fellow can get an oyster fry," Benson explained, returning to his chum. "With that information came the discovery that ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... pledging him at table, an amphora of wine at a draught [343]. He presented Asellius Sabinus with two hundred thousand sesterces, for writing a dialogue, in the way of dispute, betwixt the truffle and the fig-pecker, the oyster and the thrush. He likewise instituted a new office to administer to his voluptuousness, to which he appointed Titus Caesonius Priscus, a ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... all a mistake. So now don't you go and make a mistake into a misunderstanding. It was I made every word of the song out o' the face*—that about the back that never was bent, and the ancestors of the oyster, and all. He did not waste a word of it; upon my conscience, I wrote it all—though I'll engage you didn't think I could write a good thing. (Lord John turns away.) I'm telling you the truth, and not a word of a lie, and yet you ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... man's shop you do not go straight to the point but you ask him to sell you something, and if it is anything with which he can supply you he hands it you and wishes you good-morning. It is his way. And many have been deceived by asking for some unlikely thing, such as the oyster-shell from which was taken one of those single pearls that made the gates of Heaven in Revelations, and finding that the old man had ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... tragedy which God has inwoven into the laws of Nature, show us that it is with no slavish dread, no cowardly shrinking, that we should approach her divine mysteries. What are the natures that cannot suffer? Who values them? From the fat oyster, over which the silver tide rises and falls without one pulse upon its fleshy ear, to the hero who stands with quivering nerve parting with wife and child and home for country and God, all the way ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... had promised to cooperate, now he, too, had closed up like a clam; he was as mute as an oyster. ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... had another prayer from another layman, and then the invariable announcement, "the meeting is now open," and the invariable result, a long, dead pause. In fact, the meeting would not open. Like an oyster, it remained pertinaciously shut. Occasionally some good elder would rise to break the painful silence, by repeating some thought from the previous Sunday's sermon, or by telling some incident or some idea which he had seen in a previous number of "The ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... cool breeze from the east, for when Betty Leicester stepped from a hot car to the station platform in Riverport the air had a delicious sea-flavor. She wondered for a moment what this flavor was like, and then thought of a salt oyster. She was hungry and tired, the journey had been longer than she expected, and, as she made her way slowly through the crowded station and was pushed about by people who were hurrying out of or into the train, ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... those two loving ones! she waked not from her swound, And he was taken with the cramp, and in the waves was drowned; But Fate has metamorphosed them, in pity of their woe, And now they keep an oyster-shop for ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of Europe: a phalanx of thinkers, artists, men of business, and travellers, who, like Homer's hero, have arrived in their intellectual country after beholding "many peoples and cities;" but of the settled Parisian, who keeps his appointed place, and lives on his own floor like the oyster on his rock, a curious vestige of the credulity, the slowness, and the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... gold in the gutter, a-playing at making dirt-pies: I wonder he left the court, where he was better off than all the other young boys, With two bricks, an old shoe, nine oyster-shells and a dead kitten by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... falling on their boneless little cocos! I might even have married Theobald Gustav von Brockdorff and turned into an embassy ball lizard and ascended into the old family landau of his aunt the baroness, to disport along the boulevards therein very much like an oyster on the half-shell. I might have done all that, and I might not. But it's all for the best, as the greatest pessimist who ever drew the breath of life once tried to teach in his Candide. And in my career, as I have already written, ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... MAN WHO ATE AN OYSTER.—The most widely circulated account of this feat is that which ascribes it to the notorious Roman epicure Publius Esurius Gulo, who was nicknamed Bellipotens from the rotundity of his figure. According to the account given in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various
... Streetite defines a relative as a person to whose house you go uninvited, to stay as long as you like. If you hear that Lym Cass on his journey East has spent all his time "visiting" in Oyster Center, it does not mean that he prefers that village to the rest of New England, but that he has relatives there. It does not mean that he has written to the relatives these many years, nor that they have ever given signs of a desire to look upon him. But "you wouldn't expect a man to go and ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... plate into soil, and opened the door for the remote Flora, Fauna, Ceres, and Pomona to come in. How far off yet is the trilobite! how far the quadruped! how inconceivably remote is man! All duly arrive, and then race after race of men. It is a long way from granite to the oyster; farther yet to Plato and the preaching of the immortality of the soul. Yet all must come, as surely as the first ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... not help smiling. 'How they got Heathcock to fall in love is what puzzles me,' said his lordship. 'I should as soon have thought of an oyster's falling in love as ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... us that that rare spectacle, a smile on the face of an oyster, may now be seen. It has been decided that the Whitstable oyster feast shall not be held ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... I am young for my age, Aunt Miranda is afraid that I will never really "grow up," Mr. Aladdin says that I don't know the world any better than the pearl inside of the oyster. They none of them know the old, old thoughts I have, some of them going back years and years; for they are never ones that ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to our own generation, so interested in all that relates to the past, to recognize their true significance. Steenstrup noticed, in the north of Europe, that these mounds consisted nearly entirely of the shells of edible species, such as the oyster, mussel, and LITTORINA LITTOREA; that they were all those of adult specimens, but not all subject to similar conditions of existence or native to the same waters. The kitchen-middings, or heaps of kitchen refuse ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... by a reader of canoe books, and next day we inspected the oyster-beds, and a curious corn-mill driven by tide-water confined in a basin—one of the few mills worked by the power of the moon. Also we wandered over the new sea fortifications, which are built and hewed by our Government one week, and the week afterwards if there comes a shower ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... opinions are afloat. Some believe that Santa Anna has started from his retreat at Manga de Clavo, and will arrive to-day—will himself swallow the disputed oyster (the presidential chair), and give each of the combatants a shell apiece; some that a fresh supply of troops for the government will arrive to-day, and others that the rebels must eventually triumph. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... in rocks are of this nature; and if no such conception is at present held to be admissible, it is because long and varied experience has now shown that mineral matter never does assume the form and structure we find in fossils. If any one were to try to persuade you that an oyster-shell (which is also chiefly composed of carbonate of lime) had crystallized out of sea-water, I suppose you would laugh at the absurdity. Your laughter would be justified by the fact that all experience tends to show that ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... The oyster takes no exercise; I don't believe she really tries; And since she has no legs I don't see why she should, do you? Besides, she has a lot to do— She lays a million eggs. At any rate she doesn't stir; Her food is always brought ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 29, 1920 • Various
... there the habitation of man located upon some slight elevation of the surface. Having rowed twenty-six miles, and being off the mouth of Murderkill Creek, a squall struck the canoe and forced it on to an oyster reef, upon the sharp shells of which she was rocked for several minutes by the shallow breakers. Fearing that the paper shell was badly cut, though it was still early in the afternoon, I ascended the creek of ominous name and associations to the landing of an inn kept by Jacob Lavey, where I ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... What can he say to them? He knows nothing of human nature, of its struggles and sins, its temptations in the shop and the street. Men do not curse at him, nor try to cheat him, nor entice him into bar-rooms, oyster-cellars, billiard-rooms, and theatres. He cannot speak to men of their vices, their stony and hard hearts, their utter unbelief, their crying selfishness, for he knows nothing of it. He must speak of sin in the ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... time, to Ralph, before the man came back, but when he did come, he carried in his hands a tray, on which were bowls of oyster soup, very thin, a few crackers, and two little plates of dirty butter. He placed them on a round table at one side of the room, and Ralph and Joe drew up their ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... from Rozel Bay, who lived in hourly enmity with the oyster-fishers of Carteret, gashed his cheek with the shell of an ormer. A potato-digger from Grouville parish struck at his head with a hoe, for the Granvillais had crossed the strait to the island the year before, to work in the harvest fields for a lesser wage than the Jersiais, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... broth, mutton broth, chicken broth, bouillon, consomme, oyster broth, clam broth, oyster soup, clam soup, beef tea, and ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... engaged in this half-cannibalistic deed, "what's the difference between raw grouse and raw oyster?" ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... with such scant provision for his sons. For Oliver he had no fear. It was as if with the prescience that comes to men in his pass he had perceived that Oliver was of those who must prevail, a man born to make the world his oyster. His anxieties were all for Lionel, whom he also judged with that same penetrating insight vouchsafed a man in his last hours. Hence his piteous recommendation of him to Oliver, and Oliver's ready promise to be father, mother, ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... brandy and castor-oil in a tumbler. Am told it slips down like an oyster that way—bad oyster, I should think. Lieut. True Born jibbed. Reminded him that England expects that every man will take his castor-oil. Reply unprintable. Apologized a moment later. Said that his mind was wandering and that he thought he ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... body, heart and soul, to Freedom, sir—to Freedom, blessed solace to the snail upon the cellar-door, the oyster in his pearly bed, the still mite in his home of cheese, the very winkle of your country in his shelly lair—in her unsullied name, we offer you our sympathy. Oh, sir, in this our cherished and our happy land, her fires burn bright and clear and smokeless; once lighted ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... thrills of delight overwhelmed her, she would not ever admit even to herself that he was any better than her father—her poor father who had been hurt and whom everybody was blaming and accusing. Directly after Mrs. Anderson and the maid had gone, she began making the oyster-stew. It would not be quite so good as if she had waited until her father had really arrived, and Mrs. Anderson had told her so, but Charlotte could not bear to wait. She wished him to have something nice and hot the minute he came in. The water boiled and she made the tea. Mrs. Anderson ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... oyster may be cross'd in love,'—and why? Because he mopeth idly in his shell, And heaves a lonely subterraqueous sigh, Much as a monk may do within his cell: And a-propos of monks, their piety With sloth hath found ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... on all sides, the tongs used by the oyster dredges suggested themselves to Horace, and thus grasped, the prickly pears were safely moved and pegged in their new quarters with long pieces of bent wire, the giant equivalents of the useful hairpins that I recommended ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... of salt water Fish, are best fresh from the water, tho' the Hannah Hill, Black Fish, Lobster, Oyster, Flounder, Bass, Cod, Haddock, and Eel, with many others, may be transported by land many miles, find a good market, and retain a good relish; but as generally, live ones are bought first, deceits are used to give them a freshness of appearance, such as peppering ...
— American Cookery - The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables • Amelia Simmons
... was droning "Old Hundred" with improvisations of his own, the said improvising having the effect of slowing down the already extremely deliberate anthem until the result compared to the original was for speed, as an oyster scow compared to an electric launch. This musical crawl he used as an accompaniment to the sorting and piling of various parts of an order just received from a Southern resort. Barbara was helping him, at least she called ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... three miles north of the village of Kayal, and a mile and a half inland; the whole plain is covered with broken tiles and remnants of pottery, chiefly of China manufacture, and several mounds are apparent, in which, besides the shells of the pearl-oyster and broken pottery, mineral drugs (cinnabar, brimstone, etc.), such as are sold in the bazaars of sea-port towns, and a few ancient coins have been found. I send you herewith an interesting coin discovered in one of those mounds by Mr. R. Puckle, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... that I can piece together at leisure into a sort of mnemonic mosaic. Well, so I stroll through Swansea, trying to forget the only two facts which I know concerning it—that Beau Nash was born here and Savage died here. They are like bits of grit in the oyster of my content. I will turn ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... guess I know. And when you come next time, remember you're not going to play all the time, nor talk book nor Church matters; you're going to talk to me. I've got a whole string of questions I want to ask you, and this afternoon I've had to be as mum as an oyster." ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... any one else in the company. Couldn't she give him some "points"? Alas! she had no "points" to give, for, however expansive Brinton may have been under Cupid's influence, he was as close as an oyster in what related to his profession, as has already been said. There was but one course left for Rounders to pursue, which was to play a close ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... Page,—for, formerly, a boy Was a mere dunce who did not understand The doctrines of Sir Pandarus, of Troy,— Slipp'd the Dame's note into the Friar's hand, As he was walking in the cloister; And, then, slipp'd off,—as silent as an oyster. ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... including the present lakes Vener, Hjelmar and Malar. During this period the waters of the northern Baltic were sufficiently salt for oysters to flourish. The subsequent upheaval restricted direct communication with the open sea to the Danish channels, and the Baltic waters became fresher: the oyster disappeared, but a number of cold salt-water fishes and crustaceans, and even seals, became acclimatized. It has been suggested that the presence of the remains of these animals indicates a communication to the north with the Arctic Ocean; but in view of the severe climatic conditions still prevailing ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... are some good oyster-beds, and many are the picnics got up for the purpose of visiting them. The oysters cling to the rocks, and great numbers ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... her about his intentions, which made her dance with joy. Besides, she had a little money, left her by a female oyster-dealer, who had picked her up when she had been left on the quay at Havre by an American captain. This captain had found her, when she was only about six years old, lying on bales of cotton in the hold of his ship, some hours after his departure from New York. On his ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... without schooling certificate. In New Jersey, under fourteen, or sixteen with medical certificate; Nebraska[l2] and New York,[12] the usual absolute prohibition under fourteen, or under sixteen without employment certificate; North Carolina, under twelve, with an exception of oyster industries; North Dakota,[12] fourteen, or from fourteen to sixteen without employment certificate. In Ohio,[12] Oklahoma, Oregon,[12] Pennsylvania,[12] and Rhode Island,[12] the laws are practically identical, fourteen, or sixteen with ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... bed which you will generally find upon the water-worn surface of the chalk is a layer of green-sand and green-coated flints. Among these are met with in many places beds of a great oyster, now unknown in life. I cannot say whether there are any here; but at Reading, to the east of Farnham, at Croydon, and under London, they are abundant. There must have been miles and miles of oyster-bed at the bottom of that Eocene sea; among the oyster-beds, ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... Where's your mind in these matters? Why haven't you tackled these things? Why do you leave it to me to dig these questions into you—like opening a reluctant oyster? Aren't they patent? You up and answer them, Stephen—or this correspondence will ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... relic of Versailles, he had the place of honor and the prestige of a lord among them. When he dined with Madame Mutel, a former baker, who had forty thousand francs a year, the hostess left the table, silk dress and all, to go and fry the oyster plants herself: Monsieur de Varandeuil did not like them except as she cooked them. But Monsieur de Varandeuil's decision to go into retirement at L'Isle-Adam was mainly due, not to the pleasant surroundings there, but ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... there are some things I should think she'd be glad to send back. After all, twelve dozen oyster forks are too many for a small family like a newly ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch
... or sympathy. Nor do all men find the same things the objects of their fear, anger, repulsion, and the rest. The desire for food is an abstraction; in the concrete, this man eagerly accepts an oyster, and that one turns from it in disgust. In order to deal successfully with our fellow-man, we must not merely know man. We ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... ask Gipsy a word about her father," said Hetty Hancock. "She shuts up like an oyster if one throws out ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... gaze at her with that same light in their eyes. They had all been young men, she reflected. Others, in Paris and London, had looked with less of pure bewitchment and more of desire in their eyes. She was not ignorant of her charms, her power, her equipment to pluck the pearl from the oyster of the world. She could marry wealth; she could win wealth and more fame with her voice and beauty on the concert-stage; she could do both. But in spite of her knowledge of the great world, her heart was neither blinded to the true things of worth ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... Penobscot and the Kennebec proceeded with enthusiasm to destroy the English settlements which lay within their reach. In the course of successive raids which extended from 1692 to 1694 they descended upon York, Wells, and Oyster Bay, always with the stealth and swiftness which marked joint operations of the French and Indians. The settlements of the English were sacked, the inhabitants were either massacred or carried into captivity, ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... as it was quite out of sight. And an old Crab took the opportunity of saying to her daughter, "Ah, my dear! Let this be a lesson to you never to lose your temper!" "Hold your tongue, Ma!" said the young Crab, a little snappishly. "You're enough to try the patience of an oyster!" ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... does not cover all the ground. Men want to know what life spiritually means and they want to know that it "means intensely, and means good." Facts alone are like pieces of irritating grit that get into the oyster shell; the pearl of life is created by the interpretations which the ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... drifting down the tide,— The waters gurgling along her side,— Down where the bay glows vast and wide,— A beautiful sheet of water; With scarce a ripple about her prow, The oyster-smack floated, silent and slow, With Keyport far on her starboard bow, And South Amboy ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... be done that evening. The main hatch was just forward of the gun-room bulkhead; we seized a handspike apiece and went to work to prize the cover open. It was desperate tough labour; as bad as trying to open an oyster with a soft blade. The Frenchman broke out into many strange old-fashioned oaths in his own tongue, imagining the hatch to be frozen; but though I don't doubt the frost had something to do with it, its obstinacy was mainly owing to time, that ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... tone of doubtful enjoyment. She was shielding her face with a paper and making self-sacrificing efforts to persuade a large oyster-shell to stand so on the coals as to keep ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... into an oyster stake that went rasping aft along her side, and at the same moment the searchlight from Fort Schuyler beamed with dazzling playfulness in his face, and then having half blinded him wheeled heavenward, ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... of meat and all flesh foods should be decreased and that of fruit and vegetables, especially those of bulky character and low food value, such as lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, turnips, salsify, oyster-plant, watercress, celery, ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... "Shuts up like an oyster directly I get anywhere near it," replied the captain; "sticks to it that it is a yachting trip and that Tredgold is studying the formations of islands. Says he has got a list of them he ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... Flat-fish, oyster, and fruit vendors linger hopelessly in the kennel, in vain endeavouring to attract customers; and the ragged boys who usually disport themselves about the streets, stand crouched in little knots in some projecting doorway, or under the canvas blind of a cheesemonger's, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... to novel hypotheses is only the natural and healthy one. A change of a wonted line of thought is not made without an effort, nor need be made without adequate occasion. Some courage was required of the man who first swallowed an oyster from its shell; and of most of us the snail would still demand more. As the unaccustomed food proves to be good and satisfying, and also harmless, we may come to like it. That, however, which many good and eminent naturalists find to be healthful and reasonable, ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... Pyrrhonists he is the prince. Can a creedless soul aid me in my search? Verily, no. He exclaims, 'To fill the hour—that is happiness; to fill the hour, and leave no crevice for repentance or an approval. We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them.' Now this sort of oyster existence does not suit me, Cornelia Graham, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... With the blow given by Peter the aim of Cyril was reached, but his merciless adherents had not glutted their vengeance. They outraged the naked corpse, dismembered it, and incredible to be said, finished their infernal crime by scraping the flesh from the bones with oyster-shells, and casting the remnants into the fire. Though in his privacy St. Cyril and his friends might laugh at the end of his antagonist, his memory must bear the weight of ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... an ancient, but poor town of Kent, in the Isle of Sheppey, situated at the mouth of the river Medway. The chief employment of the inhabitants is oyster-dredging. Walker's Gazetteer, ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... my love. Some may say the tale of Venus loving Mars is a fable, but he that is a true soldier and a Gent. as Dick Bowyer is, & he do not love some varlet or other, zounds he is worse then a gaping Oyster without liquor. There's a pretty sweet fac't mother[122] that waits on the princesse that I have some mind to; but a whorson Architophel, a parasite, a rogue, one whose face looks worse then a Tailors cushen of old shreds and colours, zounds like a weavers leg in an old ditch feeding ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... cautious trout ventured out of his dark hole to seek his mate, the roach and the dace rose up to the surface of the brook to bask in the sunshine, and the amorous frog piped from among the rushes. If ever an oyster can really fall in love, as has been said or sung, it must be on ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... sausage, pork sausage, black pudding, Welsh mutton, and all kinds of rare and exquisite feeding. There are ever so many cases of this kind of thing. We saw, for instance, further along, several good specimens of the common oyster shell (Ostrea edulis), cockle shells, and whelks, both "almonds" and "whites," and then came breadstuffs. The breadstuffs are particularly impressive, of a grey, scientific aspect, a hard, hoary antiquity. We always ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... his eyes in the Third Avenue oyster house before which the touring car Norman had been using was drawn up. At a long table, eating oysters as fast as the opener could work, sat Norman and his friend Gaskill, a fellow member of the Federal Club, and about a score ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... the depth of the green chrysolite looks up the eye of its gold. The "goings on of life" hidden for ages under the rough bark of the patient forest-trees, are brought to light; the rings of lovely shadow which the creature went on making in the dark, as the oyster its opaline laminations, and its tree-pearls of beautiful knots, where a beneficent disease has broken the geometrical perfection of its structure, gloom out ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... purely adventitious, or accidental. Nor need we be afraid to make this admission, if only we take a sufficiently wide view of the facts. For, when we do take such a view, we find that beauty here is by no means of invariable, or even of general, occurrence. There is no loveliness about an oyster or a lob-worm; parasites, as a rule, are positively ugly, and they constitute a good half of all animal species. The truth seems to be, when we look attentively at the matter, that in all cases where beauty does occur ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... like the owl, the stupidest of birds, comes to be considered the very type of wisdom. This, by the way, is a casual remark, which I would not for the universe have it thought I apply to Governor Van Twiller. It is true he was a man shut up within himself, like an oyster, and rarely spoke except in monosyllables; but then it was allowed he seldom said a foolish thing. So invincible was his gravity that he was never known to laugh or even to smile through the whole course of a long and prosperous life. Nay, if a joke were uttered in his ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... endeavour to revenge. But, as I have said, he continually makes pretensions to an offensive superiority. You may think I do not fail to humble the youth, whenever opportunity offers. But no! Humble him, indeed! Shew him boiling ice! Stew a whale in an oyster-shell! Make mount Caucasus into a bag pudding! But do not imagine he may be moved! The legitimate son of Cato's eldest bastard, he! A petrified Possidonius, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... (i.e. creatures of the mussel, cockle, and oyster class, which receive their name from the body being protected by a double shell, one valve of which is placed on each side) have their two shells united by one or two powerful muscles, which pass directly across from one shell to the other, and which are termed "adductor muscles" because ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... She'd engaged you an' me to keep tab of things for Her, we'd have done a deal better. Those poor blamed sea-gulls, or whatever they are, would have been squatting around on elegant beds of moulted feathers, laid out on steam-heat radiators, feeding on oyster cocktails and things, and handing out the instructive dope of a highbrow politician working up a press reputation, and learning their kids the decent habits of folk who're yearning to keep out of penitentiary as long as the police'll let 'em. No. It's no use. Nature got busy. Look ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... had gone, he thought: 'I should have liked an oyster—too late now!' and going over to his bureau, he fumblingly pulled out the top drawer. There was little in it—Just a few papers, business papers on his Companies, and a schedule of his debts; not even a copy of his will—he had not made one, nothing to leave! Letters he had never kept. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... finest water. The King, paid him great attention, and so did Madame de Pompadour. It was from her I learnt what I have just related. M. Queanay said, talking of the pearls, "They are produced by a disease in the oyster. It is possible to know the cause of it; but, be that as it may, he is not the less a quack, since he pretends to have the elixir vitae, and to have lived several centuries. Our master is, however, infatuated by him, and sometimes talks of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... day Joe had an accident; he was dreadfully nervous, as usual, and when waiting, he forgot to attend to my guests first, but always came to me. The parlor-maid, a new one, and not a great favorite with Joe, made matters worse by correcting him in an audible voice; and once, when somebody wanted oyster-sauce, she told Joe to hand it. The poor boy, wishing to obey quickly, forgot to give the bear-skin a wide berth, slipped on it, and in a moment had fallen full length, having in his fall deposited the contents of the sauce- tureen ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... and at its business of eating oysters or other shell animals in the sea, is not at all this shape. Instead, it assumes the form of a sack, spreading its five radiating arms around the object of its meal. It then proceeds to suck the oyster out of its shell, and so powerful a suction organ has the starfish that he can pull an oyster through its shell, by forcing the bivalve ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... our mind, of the existence of this law of life, we instance the case of the mango-tree growing in the West India Islands, especially along the sea-shore, where it becomes the natural habitat of the oyster. It is the belief of some ignorant persons that the oyster climbs these trees and deposits its spawn or "spat" upon the extreme limbs of the same as they bend down toward the water. This is manifestly an error, and belongs to the same class of ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... which has been kept too long, as I have been told, is commonly supposed to have its cause from putrefaction; but is nevertheless most probably of phosphoric origin, like that seen in the dark on oyster-shells, which have previously been ignited, and afterwards exposed to the sunshine, and on the Bolognian stone. See Botan. Gard. Vol. I. Cant. I. line 1 and ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... if she could talk, but she only knows about fifty words. Harriet Gladden's rooming with her, as limp and mournful as an oyster, and Evalina Smith's at the end of the corridor. You know what ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... they come from mussels, as well, and clams occasionally. But you ought to remember," the Deputy Commissioner continued, "that the finding of an occasional pearl in an oyster or a mussel is of comparatively little importance, because it's an irregular sort of thing. The mother-of-pearl industry, however, is of big importance, it has an economic value to the country, and consequently it's our business to see ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... [Footnote 26: Oyster shells were plentifully strewed on the sea-beach before the Caesareum. I may therefore prefer the literal sense, without rejecting the metaphorical version of tegulae, tiles, which is used by M. de Valois ignorant, and the assassins were ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... in Queensland to the sea-weed Ulva lactuca, Linn., N.O. Algae. From being frequently found attached to oysters, this is sometimes called "Green Oyster." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... Wilderness might not be very attractive. There were, of course, no flowers now, and Dickie had tumbled a barrowful of leaves on to the middle of Pennie's border, which was further adorned by a heap of oyster shells, with which David intended some day to build a grotto. It looked more like a rubbish heap than a garden, and the close neighbourhood of the well did not improve it. There was only one cheerful object in the Wilderness just now, and that was a little monthly rose-bush ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... like a mountain-pasture in the horizon. I was completely deceived by it, and I could then understand why mariners sometimes ran ashore in such cases, especially in the night, supposing it to be far away, though they could see the land. Once since this, being in a large oyster-boat two or three hundred miles from here, in a dark night, when there was a thin veil of mist on land and water, we came so near to running on to the land before our skipper was aware of it, that the first warning was my hearing the sound of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... filled with little keys, but nothing to tell Dick which way to steer. He tried to keep to a southeast course, but ran into shallows which soon ended in a pocket from which they had to back out. Often they followed a good channel for a mile, only to have it end in an oyster reef, and again they had to turn back. A pair of dolphins lifted their heads above the surface in front of the canoe and with a sniff of fright started away across the bay like an express train. They were great creatures, nearly nine feet long, ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... the parish of Dinder, near Hereford, are yet remaining the vestiges of a Roman encampment, called Oyster-hill, as is supposed from this Ostorius. Camden's Britain, by ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... to give unmistakable evidence of being sunk in deepest barbarism. These are the Juri and the Cayriri, who use the same word for man and for 5. The former express 5 by ghomen apa, 1 man,[115] and the latter by ibicho, person.[116] The Tasmanians of Oyster Bay use the native word of similar meaning, ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... greengrocers, are now established in the mansions of the old peers; small children are yelling at the doors, with mouths besmeared with bread and treacle; damp rags are hanging out of every one of the windows, steaming in the sun; oyster- shells, cabbage-stalks, broken crockery, old papers, lie basking in the same cheerful light. A solitary water-cart goes jingling down the wide pavement, and spirts a feeble refreshment over the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... called "just," but he has had every other good quality attributed to him by countless biographers and eulogists with an almost painful iteration, and the natural result has followed. Many persons have felt the sense of fatigue which the Athenians expressed practically by their oyster shells, and have been led to cast doubts on Washington's perfection as the only consolation for their own sense of injury. Then, again, Washington's fame has been so overshadowing, and his greatness so immutable, that he has been very inconvenient to the admirers and ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... codling moth, to be destroyed by paper bands, or with Paris green showered in water. The round-headed apple-tree borer is to be cut out, and the eggs excluded with a sheet of tarred paper around the stem, and slightly sunk in the earth. For the oyster-shell bark louse, apply linseed oil. Paris green, in water, will kill the canker worm. Tobacco water does the work for plant lice. Peach-tree borers are excluded with tarred or felt paper, and cut out with ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... Directors to occupy the same. Much timber is cut here to carry to the Fatherland, but the vessels are too few to take much of it. They are making a windmill to saw lumber and we also have a gristmill. They bake brick here, but it is very poor. There is good material for burning lime, namely, oyster shells, in large quantities. The burning of potash has not succeeded; the master and his laborers are all ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various |
