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More "Feather" Quotes from Famous Books



... down here on the coast of Africa, and we know that the Englishman must be somewhere to leeward of us; though, I will confess, I had believed him much farther, if not plump up among the Mohammedans, beginning to reduce to a feather-weight, like Captain Riley, who came out with just his skin and bones, after a ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... gay pride of blooming May, The Lily fair and blushing Rose, To thee their early honours pay, And all their heav'nly sweets disclose. The feather'd Choir on ev'ry tree To hail thy glorious dawn repair, While the sweet sons of harmony With Hallelujahs fill ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey

... to stand up beside his cousin Julia and shoot his arrows directly after she had shot hers. Nor could he refrain from acknowledging that though she was awkward in a drawing-room, she was a buxom young woman dressed in green with a feather in her hat and a bow in her hand; and then she could always shoot her arrows straight into the bull's-eye. But he was well aware that the new hat had been bought specially for him, and that the sharpest arrow from her quiver was intended to be lodged in his heart. ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... going!" cried one stout man to Sam. "Stop pushing me!" And then as the youngest Rover dodged out of his way he ran his ear into the big feather on a young lady clerk's immense hat. The girl glared at him and murmured something under her breath, which was far from complimentary. By the time he had reached the front end of the car half a dozen passengers ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)

... it is the fashion to praise mattresses and to depreciate the feather-bed. Nothing so healthy as a mattress, nothing so good in every way. Mattresses are certainly cheaper, and there it ends. I maintain that no modern invention approaches the feather-bed. People try to ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... had nearly come. It required, comparatively, little beyond the weight of a feather to give preponderance to the scale of evil influences. Cara's reception, as shown in the last chapter, was no worse than he had anticipated, yet it hurt him none the less; for unkind words from her were always felt as blows, ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur

... the luncheon," laughed Susie Sharp, "and you'll be sure to think we might as well have skipped that meal. It will be light and shadowy, I promise you. Toast, lettuce salad, moonbeam soup, sprites' cake, feather pudding and ghost fruit." ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock

... little negro, his arms and feet thrust into the legs of a pair of Pierre Grignon's trousers, and the capacious open top fastened upon his back. Doubled over, he waddled and hopped as well as he could. A feather duster was stuck in for a tail, and his woolly head gave him the uncanny look of a black harpy. To see him was to shed tears of laughter. The pouched turkey enjoyed being a pouched turkey. He strutted and gobbled, and ran at the girls; tried to pick up corn from the floor with his thick lips, ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... Winnebagoes. They, for the most part, remove a portion of their hair, the remainder of which is drawn to the back of the head, clubbed and ornamented with beads, ribbons, cock's feathers, or, if they are so entitled, an eagle's feather for every scalp taken from ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie

... about a woman's sphere as though it had a limit; There's not a place in earth or heaven, There's not a task to mankind given, There's not a blessing or a woe, There's not a whispered yes or no, There's not a life, or death, or birth, That has a feather's weight of worth— Without a woman ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara

... exercised on the part of the young trapper, there is every probability that the next morning will reward him with his fox. But if a day or two elapse without success, it is well to resort to the "scent baits" described on page 149. Take the trap out of the bed, and with a feather smear it with melted beeswax, or rub it with a little Oil of Rhodium, Assafoetida, or Musk. Oil of Amber, and Lavender water are also used for the same [Page 157] purpose by many professional trappers. These are not always necessary but are often ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson

... know not what you swear. Look, as I blow this feather from my face, And as the air blows it to me again, Obeying with my wind when I do blow, And yielding to another when it blows, Commanded always by the greater gust, Such is the lightness of you common men." (Ib., ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy

... climate; but he had heard enough of the signs preceding a hurricane to make him somewhat anxious about the state of the weather. Gradually a thick mist seemed to be overspreading the sky, while there was not a breath of wind sufficient to move a feather ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... git the law on him an' I'll tell what I know. What did I find out about you? The money stole out o' the box after they had the raffle for the War, the deed under old lady Blaisdell's feather bed, because it wa'n't recorded an' it left you with the right an' title to that forty feet o' land. Five counts!" She held up her left hand and told off one finger after the other. "I've got 'em all down in my mind, an' there they've been ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... Were as a carrion's cry To lullaby Such as I'd sing to thee, Were I thy bride! A feather's press Were leaden heaviness To my caress. But then, ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert

... the midst of these commonplace exercises which Miss Darley read over so carefully were two or three that had something of individual flavor about them, and here and there there was an image or an epithet which showed the footprint of a passionate nature, as a fallen scarlet feather marks the path the wild flamingo ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... view of a village of Apache Indians, who were then, as they nearly ever since have been, at war with the Americans. He had been discovered by these Indians, and there was but one true way to act, which was not to show the white feather by attempting to evade them. Fremont's dispatch bearer had not the least idea of that; he was too well schooled in Indian stratagem to be out-manoeuvered, so he rode on as if nothing had happened until he came to some timber that lay within one hundred yards of their village, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... cold rapacity and fear. The Boer War, for instance, was colored not so much by the creed that we were doing something right, as by the creed that Boers and Germans were probably doing something wrong; driving us (as it was said) to the sea. Mr. Chamberlain, I think, said that the war was a feather in his cap and so it was: a ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... on that evening, not unlike an aurora borealis, in brilliant rays of light radiating from a central point. The sun had already disappeared behind the blue mountain chain, and each bright vermilion ray had like a fish bone or like a peacock's feather, myriads of cross off-shoots in the shape of lighter sprays of light. There was a brilliant yellow glow which tinted the blue sky and made it appear of various gradations, from bright yellow at the lower portion to various delicate ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... somehow. The story of his exploit had been told, of course, to his Indian friends, and he could but see that it had made him an object of respectful admiration. There was not a warrior among them who would not have been proud of such a feather as that victory, but the effect upon Two Arrows was peculiar. He had regarded himself as Sile's superior in all things which did not belong especially to a young pale-face. It had not occurred to him that Sile was or ever could become ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard

... "I'm feather-legged Ned, with ther consumptive corf," said Nickie. "Would you please give me a shillin' t' pay fer ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson

... that the little man with a jeweled feather in his cap and sword by his side, who had one day spoken to him was the King, ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... hammock-nettings, some tossing over ropes, others madly flinging overboard the hammocks; but I was too far out from them immediately to reach what they threw. I essayed to swim toward the ship; but instantly I was conscious of a feeling like being pinioned in a feather-bed, and, moving my hands, felt my jacket puffed out above my tight girdle with water. I strove to tear it off; but it was looped together here and there, and the strings were not then to be sundered by hand. I whipped ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... section preserve the memory of their comparatively illustrious descent by refusing to eat pork. Instances of sections called after a title or nickname of the reputed founder are Maladhari, one who wears a garland; Machhi-Mundia or fly-headed, perhaps the equivalent of feather-brained; Hathila, obstinate; Baghmar, a tiger-killer; Mangaya, a beggar; Dhuliya, a drummer; Jadkodiha, one who digs for roots, and so on. There are numerous territorial groups named after the town or village where the ancestor of the clan may be supposed to have lived; and many names ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... hills at back. He carries a pair of water-jars slung over his shoulders, and seems to be in high feather. ...
— The Piper • Josephine Preston Peabody

... days of the reign of William II war was prominent in his utterances. He was the War Lord in full feather, and the world at that time looked with dread upon this new and somewhat blatant apostle of militarism. Yet year after year passed until the toll of almost three decades was achieved, without his drawing the sword, and the world began to regard him ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... a hat, Humphrey," said Edward: "I hate those steeple-crowned hats, worn by the Roundheads; yet the hat and feather is not ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... to darken oak, walnut, beech, or mahogany, but if applied to ash it renders it of a greenish cast. If a sappy piece of walnut should be used either in the solid or veneer, darken it to match the ground colour, and then fill in the dark markings with a feather and the black stain (see pp. 10, 11). The carbonate solutions are generally used for dark surfaces, such as rosewood represents, and a still darker shade can be given to any one by oiling over after the stain ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead

... have made mince meat of Mr. Robin. There would not have been so much as a feather left. I tell you what I mean to do. Nurse him up till he ...
— Baby Pitcher's Trials - Little Pitcher Stories • Mrs. May

... feather or a piece of absorbent cotton drawn out thin and held near the nose by some one will indicate by its movements whether or not there is a current of air going and coming with each forced expiration ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department

... harbor—swarthy, bronzed sailors and fishermen of Spain, Portugal, and France, in the costumes of the sixteenth century. Soon a circle formed round one commanding figure—a man of noble presence, wearing the richly slashed and laced doublet, velvet cloak, trunk-hose, and gay hat and feather which constituted the dress of gentlemen in the days of Queen Elizabeth. This was no other than Sir Humphrey Gilbert, one of the gallant knights of Devonshire. He unrolled a parchment scroll, and proceeded to read the royal patent authorizing him to take possession ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... a natural history, and the cougar, mountain lion, puma, panther, and painter are all the same beast. Years ago they were common all over the United States, but now they are to be found only in the Far West and in the South. I think we can count it a big feather in our cap that we ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer

... amid the surrounding ocean of glittering waste, came into view. A veteran of the air could not have made a more accurate or an easier landing that did Peggy. The big machine glided to the ground as softly as a feather, just at the edge of the patch of shade and verdure ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham

... as fine as Lord Harry, With breast-pins and cravats as white as old sail; That I'm a strange creature, a know-nothing ninny, But fit for the planks for to walk in foul weather; That I ha'n't e'er a notion of the worth of a guinea, And that you, Poll, can twist me about as a feather,— Lord love you!! ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat

... Molly, in a carefully modulated tone. "You are killing those poor crocuses that have done you no harm. And you are killing me too, and what harm have I done you? Just as I began to see some chance of happiness before us, you ran away (you a soldier, to show the white feather!), and thereby ruined all the enjoyment I might have known in my good ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... feather"), a magician, and the Man[)i]to of wealth. It was Megissogwon who sent the fiery fever on man, the white fog, and death. Hiawatha slew him, and taught man the science of medicine. This great Pearl-Feather slew the father of Niko'mis (the grandmother of Hiawatha). Hiawatha all day long fought with the magician without effect; at nightfall the woodpecker told him to strike at the tuft of hair on the magician's head, the only vulnerable ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... the teeniest, weeniest sound, Longlegs lifted one foot to wade out into the Smiling Pool. Grandfather Frog pretended to yawn and opened his big goggly eyes. Longlegs stood on one foot without moving so much as a feather. Grandfather Frog yawned again, nodded as if he were too sleepy to keep awake, and half closed his eyes. Longlegs waited and waited. Then, little by little, so slowly that if you had been there you would hardly have seen him move, he drew his long ...
— The Adventures of Grandfather Frog • Thornton W. Burgess

... upon the house, and were soon heard descending through the capacious flue of the chimney. The wife still stood with the axe to guard the door. The father, bleeding and fainting, called upon one of the little children to roll the feather bed upon the fire. The burning feathers emitted such a suffocating smoke and smell that the Indians were almost smothered, and they tumbled down upon the embers. At the same moment, another one ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... Tsar is too much occupied with Bonaparte to give more than a passing thought to his colonies. But I have a free hand. Can I arrange the preliminaries of a treaty, I have only to return to St. Petersburg to receive his signature and highest approval. It would be a great feather in my cap I can assure your excellencies," he added, with a quick human glance and a sudden curve of ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... Chamber on the North Side of the said Parlour A painted hanging. Item, a bedstedyll with a feather bed, one bolster, two pillows, one blanket, one roulett of rough tapestry, a testner of green and red saye. Item, two forms. Item, one jack to set ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... mildly surprised Fat Joe had he not been accustomed to putting two and two together to make six or eight or more. And Fat Joe's thin tenor was just drifting faintly off down the hill—a mournful rendition of "Home, Sweet Home"—when the girl stepped noiselessly forward and put a hand, feather-light, upon ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... Ganymede was hardly more than that of Earth's moon, but the way the man picked up the limp Motwick with one hand and tossed him over a shoulder was startling: as though he lifted a feather pillow. He followed Trella out the door of the Golden Satellite and fell in step beside her. Immediately she was grateful for his presence. The dimly lighted street was not crowded, but she didn't like the looks ...
— The Jupiter Weapon • Charles Louis Fontenay

... their number beheaded—seemed to revive under the spirituous influence of sherry, sack, and burgundy; and soon they were laughing, and chatting, and hobnobbing, as animatedly as any dinner-party Sir Norman had ever seen. The musicians, too, appeared to be in high feather, and the merriest music of the day assisted the noble ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming

... of house-dust should be avoided. The dust should be removed—not by the old-fashioned feather duster which scatters the dust into the air—but by a damp or oiled cloth. Dust-catching furniture and hangings of plush, lace, etc., are not hygienic. A carpet-sweeper is more hygienic than a broom, and a vacuum cleaner ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk

... the English in me that loves the soft, wet weather— The cloud upon the mountain, the mist upon the sea, The sea-gull flying low and near with rain upon each feather, The scent of deep, green woodlands where the ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... any feather He rolled its dainty wheels, Humming and whirring like a spindle After his ...
— The Nursery, April 1878, Vol. XXIII. No. 4 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... Camerados! I salute you, Also I salute the sewing-machine, and the flour-barrel, and the feather duster. What is an aborigine, anyhow? I see a paste-pot. Ay, and a well of ink. Well, well! Which shall I do? Ah, the immortal fog! What am I myself But a ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells

... unworthy to be so assisted, that I went out of my room here to ask him what he would take once for all not to do it for life when I found him in the custody of two gentlemen that I should have judged to be in the feather-bed trade if they had not announced the law, so fluffy were their personal appearance. "Bring your chains, sir," says Joshua to the littlest of the two in the biggest hat, "rivet on my fetters!" Imagine my feelings when I pictered him clanking up Norfolk ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy • Charles Dickens

... the Kent estate, Bess," said he, "which is by far too good for him. Never doubt but that the rogue can feather his own nest far better than can I, as indeed he hath already done. And by the Lord," cried Mr. Carvel, bringing his fist down upon the card-table where they sat, "he shall never get another farthing of my money while I live, nor afterwards, if I can help it! I ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... is not sure, or doubts, whether he have a gracious God. And this fruit is bitter in proportion to the weakness of one's faith. Nay, when rightly considered, this weakness alone, being spiritual, far outweighs every weakness of the body, and renders it, in comparison, light as a feather. ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... to call us great men, painters, artists, poets,—mixing us up gratuitously with a set of fools who have neither house nor home, nor sous nor sense? Why should we put up with a rascal who comes here and wants us to feather his nest by subscribing to a newspaper which preaches a new religion whose first doctrine is, if you please, that we are not to inherit from our fathers and mothers? On my sacred word of honor, Pere Margaritis said things a ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac

... room and brought in a large bundle of laces and silks and other valuable goods. "I want you," said he, "to open your feather bed and put all these things into it; they are rightly mine, but I have my reasons for wishing to hide them; some goods have been stolen, and the constables are after them, and if they were to see these they might seize them instead of those they are searching for, and it would ...
— Conscience • Eliza Lee Follen

... interesting—as we have said, he never for a moment forgot his role. As he drew near he looked up, as by a sudden inspiration, to the very window where the marquise stood watching him, and instantly taking off his hat with a grand flourish, so that its long feather swept the ground, made a very low obeisance, such as courtiers make to a queen; then drew himself up proudly to his full height, and darting an ardent glance of admiration and homage at the beautiful unknown, put on his broad felt hat again and went composedly on his way. It was admirably ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... encircled her waist, and the body of her dress was a mass of puffs, with narrow black velvet between. On her head was a pink wreath, with long ribbon ends hanging down her back; and tied fast to her wrist was a pink feather fan with gold sticks. In fact, Miss Isabella looked rather as if she were going to a party than coming down to dinner; but the children thought the pink silk so charming, that she must ...
— Funny Little Socks - Being the Fourth Book • Sarah. L. Barrow

... sects of believers in any ruling spirit—Hindoos, Turks, Feather Idolaters, and Mumbo Jumbo, Log and Fire worshippers, who want churches, your modern English Evangelical sect is the most absurd, and entirely objectionable and unendurable to me! All which they might very easily have found out from my books—any other sort of sect would!—before bothering ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... signalling to me that I was not to grasp Winifred. Then I saw Sinfi suddenly and excitedly point to the sky over the rock beneath which we sat. I looked up. The upper sky above us was now clear of morning mist, and right over our heads, Winifred's and mine, there hung a little morning cloud like a feather of flickering rosy gold. I looked again towards the corner of jutting rock, but Sinfi's ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... cliff, than they would in shooting a sparrow. Well, this is an important piece of news. The authorities have for a long time been trying to lay their hands on this scoundrel and his gang, and if we can catch him it will be a feather in our caps, for he has defied all their efforts for the last three years. Now, we must arrange the line of battle, how it is ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty

... a feather's weight, A hair's breadth only held you from the gates That Oldham entered. Almost they sufficed Your spirit; yes, a moth's wing could have blown You toward them! 'Twas so nearly I fulfilled All that I promised. Therefore when I speak, You ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke

... quickness was the change in position effected, that the onrushing shell scarcely lessened its headway. The trapper seized the oars on the instant, while Herbert supported him with equal swiftness with the paddle and the light craft raced along like a feather ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... loss to know what to do, whether to proceed to Soudan, or return and finish my tour of the Mediterranean. Sometimes I fancy I'll toss up, and then, checking my folly, I'll try the sortes sanctorum; a feather would turn the scale. On such miserable indecision hangs ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... of hoofs upon the road, came the clash of steel on steel and the harsh roar of Walkyn and Black Roger as they plied axe and sword— "Arise! Ha, arise!" Then, as Beltane glanced up, the leaves near by were dashed aside and Giles came bounding through, his gay feather shorn away, his escalloped cape wrenched and torn, his broadsword a-swing ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... indeed he was, especially on state occasions, when he appeared in all the radiance of rosy health, overflowing spirits, and the richest crapes and satins,—decorated with the high order of the peacock's feather, the red button, and numberless glittering ornaments of ivory and lapis-lazuli. Beloved or envied by all the men, and with all the women dying for him, he was fully able to appreciate the comforts of existence. Considering ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... Painter, in his art to shine, A human head and horse's neck should join; From various creatures put the limbs together, Cover'd with plumes, from ev'ry bird a feather; And in a filthy tail the figure drop, A fish at bottom, a fair maid at top: Viewing a picture of this strange condition, Would you not laugh at such an exhibition? Trust me, my Pisos, wild as this may seem, The volume such, where, ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace

... kiss a Mississippian gal she'll flare-up like a scorched feather, and return the compliment by bruising your sky-lights, or may-be giving the quid pro quo in the shape of a blunder-buss. Baltimore girls, more beautiful than any in the world, all meet you with a half-smiling, half-saucy, ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... within. The divine inebriation of spiritual truth comes with the realization of this fact. The flame within man, which is above his consciousness, is not to be touched by the acts of the body. These things which men call sin are not of the slightest feather-weight to the soul in the innermost tabernacle. It is of no real consequence," the speaker went on, warming with his theme until his velvety eyes shone, "what the outer man may do. We waste our efforts in this childish care about apparent righteousness. The real purity ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... intelligible explanations of its bearings on the subjects that most interest me in science. I quite see all its importance in investigations of the mechanism of colours, but there is so much still unknown that it will be very hard to convince me that there is no other possible explanation of the peacock's feather than the "continued preference by the females" for the most beautiful males, in this one point, "during a long line of descent"—as Darwin says! I expect, however, great light from your new book....—Believe me ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... Opposed to love, 'twill strike the beam: Kindred, friendship, beauty, talents?— All to love as nothing seem; Weigh love against all else together, And solid gold against a feather. ...
— Poems • George P. Morris

... well have represented one at the point before having to choose whether to go up or down hill. He was dressed a little showily in a short coat of dark tartan, and a highland bonnet with a brooch and feather, and carried a lady's riding-whip—his mother's, no doubt—its top set with stones—so that his appearance was altogether a contrast to that of the girl. She was a peasant, he a gentleman! Her bare head and yet more her bare ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald

... had to make confession to these avengers of sin that he had not been guilty of the sins which they had power to punish; then, when he had made his confession, his heart was taken, and weighed in the scales against a feather, which was the Egyptian sign for truth. If it was not of the right weight, the man was false, and his heart was thrown to a dreadful monster, part crocodile, part hippopotamus, which sat behind the balances, and devoured the hearts of the unjust; but if it was right, then ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie

... the feathers from all the fowl to make feather beds. She doesn't remember when women stopped wearing hoops in their skirts nor when bed springs replaced bed ropes. She does remember, however, that ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... softly, as magic-makers should. Faint and far across the desert sounded the intriguing rhythm long before the three dark faces were caught by the firelight. When they finally appeared, Jonas was bearing an eagle's feather. ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... pole-star could scarcely be desired. Long shall I retain the impression made on my mind by the awful echo, so loud and long and tremulous, of the deep- toned clock within this church, which awoke me at two in the morning from a distressful dream, occasioned, I believe, by the feather bed, which is used here instead of bed-clothes. I will rather carry my blanket about with me like a wild Indian, than submit to this abominable custom. Our emigrant acquaintance was, we found, an intimate friend of the celebrated ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... and standing on the threshold they leaned upon their lances like herdsmen resting themselves. Narr' Havas was the handsomest of all; his slender arms were bound with straps ornamented with pearls. The golden circlet which fastened his ample garment about his head held an ostrich feather which hung down behind his shoulder; his teeth were displayed in a continual smile; his eyes seemed sharpened like arrows, and there was something observant and ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert

... please to bestow their idle time upon me. I know nothing of the war-egg, but that sometimes it is to be hatched and sometimes to be addled.(16) Many folks get into the nest, and sit as hard upon it as they can, concluding it will produce a golden chick. As I shall not be a feather the better for it, I hate that game-breed, and prefer the old hen Peace and her dunghill brood. My compliments to my lady ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... importance, whether morally or politically considered—it is the act of maintaining men in idleness, who might be more profitably employed, that makes the keeping a great number exceptionable; nor is a man more degraded by going behind a carriage with a hat and feather, than with a bonnet de police, or a plain beaver; but he eats just as much, and earns just as little, equipped as a Carmagnole, as though glittering in ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... quaint old town. We may be sure that the authorities made the most of what the discoverer had brought back; the Indians were ordered to decorate themselves with every kind of color and every kind of feather. The tropical plants were borne aloft, and it was rumored that merely to touch them would heal ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley

... the delight of the half-starved colonists. Refreshed by a good meal, they slept heavily in the still forest, and early the next morning went to pay their respects to Powhatan, who was in his "Chief Place of Council" awaiting their visit in his gala robe of luxurious skins and elaborate feather head-dress. His greeting was courteous, but he at once turned ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... photographs. Josephine watched it. When it came to mother's photograph, the enlargement over the piano, it lingered as though puzzled to find so little remained of mother, except the earrings shaped like tiny pagodas and a black feather boa. Why did the photographs of dead people always fade so? wondered Josephine. As soon as a person was dead their photograph died too. But, of course, this one of mother was very old. It was thirty-five years old. Josephine remembered standing on a chair and pointing out that feather ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield

... cover your lounge. Make two large, square pillows of the same substance as the mattress, and set up at the back. If you happen to have one or two feather pillows that you can spare for the purpose, shake them down into a square shape and cover them with the same print, and you will then have for pillows for your lounge—one at each end, and two at the back, and you will find it answers for all the ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... mistaken. Three women were got to help; and such scrubbing, such brushing, such washing of paint and beating of carpets, such taking down and putting up of pictures, such polishing of mirrors and lustres, such lighting of fires in bedrooms, such airing of sheets and feather-beds on hearths, I never beheld, either before or since. Adele ran quite wild in the midst of it: the preparations for company and the prospect of their arrival, seemed to throw her into ecstasies. She would have Sophie to look over all her "toilettes," as she called frocks; to ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... their guest. In those ages the daughters of the tribe were wont to ride before the host in their Hawadig ('camel-litters'), singing the war-song to make the warriors brave. As Salamah was the chief Mubariz ('champion in single combat'), the girls begged him to wear, when fighting, a white ostrich feather in his chain-helmet, that they might note his deeds and chant in his name. Hence his title, Abu Rish—the 'Father of a Feather.' The Sherifs, being beaten, made peace, taking the lands between Wady Damah and El-Hejaz; whilst the Beni 'Ukbah occupied Midian Proper (North Midian), ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... was frequently taken to his mother by some of the domestics, who pitied her forlorn condition. When he came to an age to go to school, he was sent to several well-known seminaries, and was attended by a servant both on his way to them and from them; "was clothed in scarlet, with a laced hat and feather;" and was universally recognised as the legitimate son and heir ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... Megaera[1] takes A periwig of twisted snakes: Which in the nicest fashion curl'd, (Like toupees[2] of this upper world) With flower of sulphur powder'd well, That graceful on his shoulders fell; An adder of the sable kind In line direct hung down behind: The owl, the raven, and the bat, Clubb'd for a feather to his hat: His coat, a usurer's velvet pall, Bequeath'd to Pluto, corpse and all. But, loath his person to expose Bare, like a carcass pick'd by crows, A lawyer, o'er his hands and face Stuck artfully a parchment case. No new ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... look at scared me every time I saw it. It was a big, tall lady dressed in yellow and she had a feather fan. ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks

... swan-maiden story.[FN439] A king steals the feather-dress of a bathing maiden, who will only marry him on condition that she shall tear out the eyes of his forty women (39 white slaves and a princess). The king answers, "C'est bien, il n'y a pas d'inconvenient." The forty blind women are shut up in a room under the kitchen, where they give ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... "I am full of forebodings!" But she was held back by the thought, "Shall I fail in resolution at the last moment, show the white feather when he is so cool, so master of himself? I who have been such a courageous wife, who have urged him on, who ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... investigation and bending over a moist spot, when the entire mass of earth gave way and the waters burst into the drain with a gush and a roar quite indescribable. Konar was swept away instantly as if he had been a feather. Arkal and Beniah sprang down the bank to his assistance, and were themselves nearly swept into the flood which had swallowed up the hunter, but Konar was not quite gone. Another moment and his legs appeared above the flood, ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne

... they? and, calling loudly, I bade them watch whilst I threw it from the window. In the lantern's circle of light it went rushing down; and I'm sorry to tell that in its fall it grazed an angel's wing of marble, striking off one feather from its protecting mission above ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... ascended above the scattered dwellings and had passed the tasteful mausoleum, with two tall Kahilis, {28} or feather plumes, at the door of the tomb in which the last of the Kamehamehas received Christian burial, the glossy, redundant, arborescent vegetation ceased. At that height a shower of rain falls on nearly every day in the year, and the result is a green sward which England can hardly rival, a perfect sea ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... great respect, by the shoulders, as he sat, shook him in cadence with the thumping of the drum. They then placed two girls close beside him, as his wives; while, at the same time, an old chief tied a painted feather in his hair. These proceedings so scandalized him, that, pretending to be ill, he broke off the ceremony; but they continued to sing all night with so much zeal, that several of them were reduced to a ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... "I s'pose you didn't know there was a basket of fine hickory nuts up there in the corner? Was it you or Miss Fortune that hid them away so nicely? I s'pose she thought nobody would ever think of looking behind the great blue chest and under the feather bed, but it takes me! Miss Fortune was afraid of your stealing 'em I ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... she entered the room, and took a box out of the casket. I stripped myself and smeared the ointment over my body. But never a feather appeared! Every hair on me changed into a bristle; my hands turned into hoofed forefeet; a tail grew out of my backbone; my face lengthened; and I found, to my horror, that I ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... William of Brandenburg. From the very beginning of his reign Frederick III. was resolved upon a rupture at the first convenient opportunity, while the nation was, if possible, even more bellicose than the king. The apparently insuperable difficulties of Sweden in Poland was the feather that turned the scale; on the 1st of June 1657, Frederick III. signed the manifesto justifying a war which was never formally declared and brought Denmark to the very verge of ruin. The extraordinary details of this dramatic struggle will be found elsewhere (see FREDERICK ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... even the stars as they came on the studio lot in their everyday costumes. Indignant as she was she could appreciate this delicate seal-brown cloth, with its bits of gold braid, and darling glimpses of sage-green wherever the lining showed indiscreetly. The hat was a darling too, brown with a feather between brown and green, the one color or the other according as ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... that its muscles might enable him to get some extra hold of the rough ground; he dug his toes deep into the icy snow. His hat fell from his head, rested for a moment in a ridiculous fashion upon the swinging body beneath, then floated off composedly into space, the tall feather in it sticking upwards and fluttering a little. He heard voices approaching, and above them the shouts of the guide, though what these said conveyed no meaning to him. He must loose his hold and go too. No, he would ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... they very quietly submitted, and were then suffered to depart. Upon inquiring his motive for what appeared to me a wanton act of cruelty, he told me his intention was to stuff his bed with the feathers; 'or,' added he, 'if you vill, to feather my nest.' Being myself an admirer of a soft bed, I saw no reason why I should not employ myself in the same way; but owing, perhaps, to my being a novice in the art, and not knowing how to manage the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various

... Grecio, where, one night, when he intended to lay himself down to sleep, he felt a severe headache, and a shivering over his whole body, which quite impeded his resting. Thinking that this might be caused by a feather pillow which his friend Velita had compelled him to accept, in consequence of his infirmities, he called his companion, who was near his cell, and said: "Take away this pillow: I believe the devil is in it." His companion, who took it away, ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... nursing the Duke of Cumberland, and Princess Louisa sitting in a chaise drawn by a favourite dog, the scene in Kew Gardens, painted in 1746. Queen Elizabeth was there as a child aged seven, A.D. 1540—three-quarters, with a feather-fan in her hand. Did the guide of the little unconscious Princess pause inadvertently, with a little catch of the breath, by words arrested on the tip of the tongue, before that picture? And was he or she inevitably arrested again before another ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... and unknown makes men pale, But the darkness of the twilight noon is cloven Still with shrill sweet moan of many a nightingale. Closer clustering there they make sweet noise together, Where the fearful gods look gentler than our fear, And the grove thronged through with birds of holiest feather Grows nor pale nor dumb with sense of dark things near. There her father, called upon with signs of wonder, Passed with tenderest words away by ways unknown, Not by sea-storm stricken down, nor touched of thunder, To the dark benign ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... Gutierrez were not hungry for it—not yet. These two became the head and front of ill, encouraging every insubordinate, infuriating all who suffered penalties, teaching insolence, self-will and license. They drew their own feather to them, promising evil knows what freedom ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... whether I wear my heart upon my sleeve for those pleasant daws to peck at. At any rate they do it gently, and both Mrs. Barnett and this young lady are birds of a very fine feather. ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick

... the iron railing, looking down into the lower waiting room, he was conscious that a woman had stepped to his side. Glancing up sideways, he saw that close to him was a very beautiful young girl, who wore a traveling cloak of pearl gray, and a long feather boa, which the draft had ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor

... she whispered, in awe-stricken accents, "you could have knocked me down with a feather when they came here and told me. He was that well—and ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... him conducting a lady in to dinner and sitting at table awaiting the arrival and removal of the various courses, strange to see him walking the streets with his medals on his breast, his skunk skin and leggings and feather in his hat, or riding in the same attire on the top of an omnibus; and yet amid it all he bore himself with such perfect grace and self-possession that every one admired and wondered at him. People thought he had a very pleasant expression and agreeable manner, and ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson

... that none of her kin could have anticipated. And to the rest of the family, clucking and scratching in their own retired and restricted barn-yard, there came the day when they discovered that their little flock contained at least one bird of a different feather—a bird that could paddle about the social pond with the liveliest, and could quack, if need be, ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... swing, and Miss Howard, in high feather over the very evident impression the book had made, was congratulating herself upon her choice of that particular volume, when one ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... years later, and in the meantime Miss Willis kept her secret. When he was nominated, and the details of his career were eagerly sought for, it was announced by the press that in early life he had attended the Glendale grammar-school, and the fact was regarded by the authorities as a feather in the school's cap, and was commemorated during the campaign by the display in the exhibition hall of a large picture of the candidate festooned with an American flag. It was vaguely remembered that he had been under Miss Willis, among other teachers, but the whole ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... her daughter's appearance—a little perhaps, by her loveliness; more, belike, by her air of distinction and her fine dress (though this was simple enough—a riding suit of grey velvet, with a broad-brimmed hat and one black feather)—withdrew behind her back the hand she had been wiping, and stood irresolute, ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... the crown prince of Egypt. He stood in a sumptuous chariot drawn by white horses and driven by a handsome charioteer. The princely person was barely visible for the pair of feather fans borne by attendants that walked beside him. Through continuous cheering he passed on. Seti, the younger, followed, driving alone. His eyes wandered in pleased wonder over the multitude which howled ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... because the first mate was a criminal himself and had once served a term in a Michigan jail for knocking down a passenger on a boat and robbing him of his pocketbook. As the old saying goes, "Birds of a feather flock together." ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield

... his eyes as if from a distant prospect, and they dropped to the stove, where I had corn parching. He nodded, as if amused, but did not answer at once, and taking from my hand the feather with which I stirred the corn, softly whisked some off for himself, and smiled at the remaining kernels as they danced upon the hot iron. After a little while he said, "Women? Women should have all that men can give them. Beautiful things should adorn them; no man should set his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... if in winter, shaded and cool if in summer; let there be every convenience for bath and change of dress, and writing materials and stamps ready to write if desired before unpacking. Have always a feather bed and mattress, both feather and hair pillows upon the bed, that your guest may have the choice. Many prefer feathers in the warmest weather, others a mattress even in winter. Let the fire, in winter, be made every morning before your guest rises, and ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost

... Sea—every superb variety of coral, and in short, every species of these unusual polyparies that congregate to form entire islands that will one day turn into continents. Among the echinoderms, notable for being covered with spines: starfish, feather stars, sea lilies, free-swimming crinoids, brittle stars, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, etc., represented a complete collection of the individuals ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... the Bavarian peasants,—an institution got up for the purpose of frightening the women and children, and keeping them in order. While the ordinary dances are going on, there suddenly stalks forth "an ugly apparition in the shape of a man, wearing a feather mantle on his back, reaching from the arm-pits down to the mid-thighs, zebra-painted on his breast and legs with black stripes, bear-skin shako on his head, and his arms stretched out at full length along a staff passing behind ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... imaginative and passionate, but our imaginations and passions are carefully balanced by reasons and calm reflections. We are kindly, but not to the extent of saintlike self-sacrifice; also we are selfish, but again not to the extent of brutal egoism. Our exclusiveness makes "Birds of a feather flock together" and at the same time fosters our ignorance of, and indifference to, the existence of any other species of bird. Thus the good know nothing of the bad; the people who drink, play bridge, ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... the door, and two ladies had entered the room. The first was tall and graceful, with a smiling face, and an affable though dignified manner. She was dressed in a black velvet cloak with white lace at the neck and sleeves, and she wore a black hat with a curling white feather. Her companion was shorter, with a countenance which would have been plain had it not been for the alert expression and large dark eyes, which gave it charm and character. A small black terrier dog had followed them in, but the first lady turned and handed the thin ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle

... that a rook by wearing a pied feather, The cable hat-band, or the three-piled ruff, A yard of shoe-tie, or the Switzers knot On his French garters, should affect a humour! O, it is more ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson

... quarreled with her mother over her extravagance in buying a feather boa with the proceeds of her last small check, was seated by the window, industriously concocting a new hat. The Swedish "girl", whose unfortunate fate it was to minister to the wants of Mrs. Olberg's lodgers, gave a kind of ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter

... who killed the eagle!" he went on. "Probably he threw it in the river and let it float over the falls. Maybe some section hand stuck a feather of that eagle in his hat and called it macaroni! For me, I'm never going to shoot at an eagle again, not in ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough

... tree and watched Tommy Fox you would have said that he was playing with something. But you never could have told what it was, because you couldn't have seen it. And you may have three guesses now, before I tell you what it was that Tommy Fox was playing with. ... It was a feather! Yes—Tommy had found a downy, brownish feather in the woods, which old Mother Grouse had dropped in one of her flights. And Tommy was having great sport with it, tossing it up in the air, and slapping ...
— The Tale of Tommy Fox • Arthur Scott Bailey

... was a man of under forty, clean-shaven, clad in a smock, and evidently used to a quiet life, seeing that his face was of that puffy fullness, and the skin encircling his slit-like eyes was of that sallow tint, which shows that the owner of those features is well acquainted with a feather bed. In a trice it could be seen that he had played his part in life as all such bailiffs do—that, originally a young serf of elementary education, he had married some Agashka of a housekeeper or a mistress's favourite, and then ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... years ago "benzine collas" was introduced, and the taxidermists were not long in finding out its valuable properties for feather cleaning. "Benzoline" (Benzol, or Benzine C6H6), then came into more general use, and was, of course, found to have all the properties of the so-called "benzine collas." This discovery, we may say, completely revolutionised ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... Chatteris, was great in the character of the 'Stranger.' He was attired in the tight pantaloons and Hessian boots which the stage legend has given to that injured man, with a large cloak and beaver and a hearse feather in it drooping over his raddled old face, and only partially concealing his great buckled brown wig. He had the stage jewellery on too, of which he selected the largest and most shiny rings for himself, and allowed his little finger to quiver out of ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... their backs to him at the time of Mr Campbell's exclamation, turned round and beheld the Indian. He was an elderly man, very tall and muscular, dressed in leggings and deer-skin coat, a war-eagle's feather, fixed by a fillet, on his head, and a profusion of copper and brass medals and trinkets round his neck. His face was not painted, with the exception of two black circles round his eyes. His head was shaved, ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat

... beaten; you might have knocked him down with a feather. He had never been so badly worsted in his professional capacity. Madame Langai would have besieged him with questions, but he avoided her, put on his hat ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... White-coat and Blue-feather, lived in a dovecote. They were brothers and were very fond of each other. White-coat was a great home body, but Blue-feather ...
— Fifty Fabulous Fables • Lida Brown McMurry

... room suddenly opened, and the woman of the breakfast table disclosed herself. She was dressed for going out, wearing a hat that seemed a yard in diameter, and a feather boa, from which her hen-like face and neck rose to the ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... the water with the softness of a feather, yet so quickly that the double blades emitted constant flashes of light intermittently on either side. His arms moved with consummate ease. His kayak made a dark blurred line as it sped forward over the yellow waters. Soon he had outdistanced ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre

... clear," he mutters, "but I've seen a hundred Indians spring up out of a flatter plain than that. They'll skulk behind the smallest kind of a ridge, and not show a feather until one runs right in among them. There might be dozens of them off there beyond the Chug at this moment, and I not be able to see ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... knowledge of the meaning of words! When a bright light shines in your eyes, you see nothing else. When thunder rolls in your ears, you do not hear the ticking of a clock. When you suffer pain, you do not notice a feather's tickle. If my she-dog had linked her mind to yours, she would have experienced something which is knowledge more firmly fixed and more continuously known than anything else in your conscious life. This ...
— The Leader • William Fitzgerald Jenkins (AKA Murray Leinster)

... I wouldn't save a feather for that 'ere old rascal, Harry. If the devil don't have he, I don't see no use in keeping no devil. But I minds them as has mercy on me, though my name is Crawy. Ay,' he added, bitterly, ''tain't so many kind turns as I gets in this life, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... myself, Major Sandars," said the young captain, quietly; "and I hope I shall never show the white feather; but when there are women ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... early in the evening. When he drew near to the village, or rather to the hall, which was a mile from the village, he overtook a slim, quick-eyed woman, sauntering along at a leisurely pace. She was fashionably dressed in a green spencer, with 'Mameluke' sleeves, and wore a velvet Spanish hat and feather. ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... robin mounted to a spruce-spire and acted as Job's comforter to all the birds of the garden by singing—ah, so plaintively and sweetly!—of the dismal days of frost and snow, he "preened"—i.e. went over and combed every feather, and tested and retested, cleaned and recleaned, each vital quill. Then, in one single, watery, weak stab of apology for sunshine, on the top of a fowl-shed, he surrendered himself to what, in wild-bird ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... the Barcoo was the last feather in the cap of the Surveyor-General. He was doomed to learn soon that it was not the river of his dreams, but only the head waters of that central stream discovered by Sturt, Cooper's Creek; but meanwhile the delusion must ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc

... and stronger than many a laborer. She often lifted up, with scarcely more than the strength of her hand, a skin of oil or of wine, weighing nearly ninety pounds, and placed it on the back of a mule, or carried a bag of wheat up to the garret where the grain was kept. Although Pepita was not a feather, Antonona now lifted her up in her arms from the floor as if she had been one, and placed her carefully on the sofa, as though she were some delicate and precious piece of porcelain that she feared ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera

... see here,' said she, 'you must get finished before I come home in the evening, otherwise you shall be set to harder work.' He started to the feathers, and picked and picked until there was only a single feather left that had not passed through his hands. But then there came a whirlwind and sent all the feathers flying, and swept them along the floor into a heap, where they lay as if they were trampled together. He had now to begin all his work over again, but by this time it only wanted an ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various

... on their line of march there is abundant water at this season of the year. He knows well that not until they had crept up to and cautiously peered over that ridge, without showing so much as a feather of their war-bonnets, would they venture so boldly down into the "swale." He knows well that both in front and rear they are watching for the coming of cavalry, and that now they are dashing over to the Platte to peer across the skirting bluffs until satisfied ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King

... be, since it could afford to make light of his abilities. "You need n't in general attach much importance to anything I tell you," he pursued; "but you may believe me when I say this,—that I am little better than a good-natured feather-head." ...
— The Europeans • Henry James

... away from him and went back to the drawing-room again, where she began to dust the furniture with a feather-broom. ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc

... Who that heard it can ever forget the peroration, slightly profane perhaps, but entirely enthusiastic, of his speech on salmon fishing at a Tweedside dinner? "When I die," he exclaimed in a fine rapture, "should I go to heaven, I will fish in the water of life with a fly dressed with a feather from the wing of an angel; should I be unfortunately consigned to another destination, I shall nevertheless hope to angle in Styx with the worm that never dieth." To his editorial successor Spey was a trifle more gracious than she had been to Russel; but she did not wholly ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... ready for church at the usual time, plainly, but well dressed. As she and Archibald were leaving their house, they saw something looming up the street, flashing and gleaming in the sun. A pink parasol came first, a pink bonnet and feather came behind it, a gray brocaded dress ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... changes may appear more terrific at a distance perhaps than when grown familiar by practice: what is it to us, whether we eat well made pastry, or pounded alagriches; well roasted beef, or smoked venison; cabbages, or squashes? Whether we wear neat home-spun or good beaver; whether we sleep on feather-beds, or on bear-skins? The difference is not worth attending to. The difficulty of the language, fear of some great intoxication among the Indians; finally, the apprehension lest my younger children should be caught by that singular charm, ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... with the utmost kindness and respect, especially the rattlesnakes, a dozen of which will frequently be squirming on the ground at once. It is noticeable that the Indians never pick up a rattlesnake when coiled, but always wait until it straightens itself out under the feather stroking, for it is claimed that the rattlesnake cannot strike uncoiled. At all events, when one is at its full length, the Indians not only catch it up fearlessly, but carry it with impunity in their mouths and hands. As might be supposed, ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard

... my father galloping up the street," said Helena, turning to the oriel window. "That should be his feather and his brown Turkey horse. But the sun dazzles my eyes! I ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... and even now, I think, I could not sleep in the room with that strange bird-mouse-creature, as it glides round the ceiling silently, silently as its shadow does on the floor. If you listen or look, there is not a wave of the wing—the wing never waves! A bird without a feather! a beast that flies! and so cold! as cold as a fish! It is the most supernatural-seeming of natural things. And then to see how when the windows are open at night those bats come sailing ... without a sound—and go ... you cannot guess ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... then; it is in the midst of such labors that we pass our lives. Before we fell comfortably asleep on feather beds, those formidable bones which you see in our museum were flying in the air; the cup which I now hold in my hand was a portion of the clay on which you sit; the canoe with which you ran away the other day was a live seal; the hats that we wear, were running about the fields in the form of angola ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... the reverse of his assertion was true. "But" it was rejoined: "you have forgotten." We have it written down on paper. "The paper then tells a lie," was the confident answer; "I have it written down here;" he added, placing his hand with great dignity on his brow. "You Yankees are born with a feather between your fingers, but your paper does not speak the truth. The Indian keeps his knowledge here. This is the book the Great Spirit gave them; it does not lie." A reference was immediately made to the treaty in question, when to the astonishment of all present, and the ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard

... shall send it to him tomorrow with many proposed alterations. In the second box came Gaily [Footnote: H. Gaily Knight. Best known for his works on the Normans in Sicily, and Ecclesiastical Architecture in Italy.] Knight's letter to Aberdeen; which is a poor, flimsy production. A peacock's feather in the hilt of a ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)

... comparatively short arms. Besides the "stalked" Crinoids, the Jurassic rocks have yielded the remains of the higher group of the "free" Crinoids, such as Saccosoma. These forms resemble the existing "Feather-stars" (Comatula) in being attached when young to some foreign body by means of a jointed stem, from which they detach themselves when fully grown to lead an independent existence. In this later stage of their life, therefore, they closely resemble ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson

... he never glimpsed more than an occasional flitting of shadows. No bow-strings twanged that he could hear; but every little while, whence discharged he knew not, tiny arrows whispered past him or struck tree-boles and fluttered to the ground beside him. They were bone-tipped and feather shafted, and the feathers, torn from the breasts of ...
— The Red One • Jack London

... added to the audible slumbers of the guests of the Hinds House and of the Snow family, who were not so musical when asleep. Accustomed to stillness, as he was, the chorus that echoed through the corridor had helped to keep him awake, this and the uncommon softness of a feather pillow and a cotton mattress that Mr. Dill in carping criticism had ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... the peacocks fed together He would join them at their lunch, Culling here and there a feather Till he'd gathered quite a bunch; Then this bird, of ways perfidious, Stuck them on him most fastidious Till he looked uncommon hideous, Like a Judy ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl

... a desolate bit of the Cresswell manor, a tiny cabin, new-boarded and bare, in front of it a blazing bonfire. A white man was tossing into the flames different household articles—a feather bed, a bedstead, two rickety chairs. A young, boyish fellow, golden-faced and curly, stood with clenched fists, while a woman with tear-stained eyes clung to him. The white man raised a cradle to dash it into the flames; the woman cried, and the yellow man raised his arm threateningly. ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... the trade and allegiance of the people of Kentucky were to be secured to Virginia and to the Union. "The western States," he wrote to Governor Harrison of Virginia, "stand as it were upon a pivot. The touch of a feather would turn them any way." The situation in Kentucky became more acute as intimations reached the people that John Jay was proposing to renounce the free navigation ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... gave an arm to each of his friends, and walked off in high feather; but, he immediately came hurrying back alone, as if he had ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... when Fleetfoot saw a bison frightened by a feather that he thought of making things do the work ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp

... pl. scientific name assigned to the Australian group of birds called the Bower-birds (q.v.). (Grk. ptilon, a feather, rhunchos, ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... the road, and affords shelter to the careless wight who has forgotten his umbrella, keeping him dry and warm under an impenetrable water-proof and winter-proof canopy. Of all trees that bloom, (especially when as now in full feather,) few can rival the acacia in delicacy of white, or in profusion of blossoming. Nodding their heavy plumes and parting their leafy tresses in the breeze, they are the charm of every spot where they grow; whether as here, alternating in beautiful relief by the lofty wall of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... plod—plod—plod—plod, and directly after Morgan came into sight laden with the guns and ammunition, followed by Hannibal with a box on his shoulder; and lastly there was Sarah, red-faced and panting, as she bore a large white bundle that looked like a feather-bed ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn

... there was a phoenix in it."—"A phoenix!! Well, how did he describe it?"—"Like a poulterer," answered Sheridan: "it was green, and yellow, and red, and blue: he did not let us off for a single feather." And just such as this poulterer's account of a phoenix is Cowper's stick-picker's detail of a wood, with all its petty minutiae of this, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... on that island several weeks, and from the time we were flung unceremoniously upon its miserable shores to the day we left it we never saw a sail nor a wisp of smoke from a steamer. And it may be that this, and our privations, made us still more birds of a feather than we were. Anyway, you, Middlebrook, know how men, thrown together in that way, will talk—nay, must talk unless they'd go mad!—talk about themselves and their doings and so on. We all talked—we used to tell tales of our doubtful pasts as we huddled together ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... the reader, as to the bystanders, that scene brings one unbroken pain, it is not so with Lear himself. His shattered mind passes from the first transports of hope and despair, as he bends over Cordelia's body and holds the feather to her lips, into an absolute forgetfulness of the cause of these transports. This continues so long as he can converse with Kent; becomes an almost complete vacancy; and is disturbed only to yield, as his eyes ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... death if he goes at such a preposterous speed. It must have been nearly two hundred miles an hour: the Brennan mono-rail is nothing to it. At any rate, it's rather a feather in our cap—this record, I mean, after so many have been made by the French and the Americans—and if he has more recording to do we mustn't let Oriental sluggishness stand in ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang

... silk stockins that he seems farly crazy. He's daown from the iron-works with his gang ev'ry night, eggin on the fellers tew burn fences, an stone houses, an he wuz akchilly tryin tew git the boys tew tar and feather Squire, t'uther night. They didn't quite dasst dew that, but thar ain't no tellin what they'll ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... of blue (top), red (triple width), and blue; the red band is edged in yellow; centered in the red band is a large black and white shield covering two spears and a staff decorated with feather tassels, ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... not know enough or I was so much scared that I did not call to my mother, but I think that she heard me when I rolled out of the bed, and she was out of the bed quick as could be and getting the feather beds she threw them out of the door and got the children and threw them out, and she, finding that she did not have them all, said, "My God! I have not all of my little ones;" and she ran in the house to look and she found me under the bed, for I saw so much ...
— A Slave Girl's Story - Being an Autobiography of Kate Drumgoold. • Kate Drumgoold

... well known in the world of fashion both sides of the Atlantic, slender and very tall, has at times deliberately increased that height with a small high-crowned hat, surmounted by a still higher feather. She attained distinction without becoming a caricature, by reason of her obvious breeding and reserve. Here is an important point. A woman of quiet and what we call conservative type, can afford to wear conspicuous clothes if she wishes, whereas a conspicuous type must be reserved in her ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank

... to the ball on his hat he wore a plume or feather that stood in a horizontal position. His chief of staff was the most elaborately dressed man of the party, his robes being more gaily decorated than the governor's. The members of the staff wore mandarin balls of different colors, and all had feathers in their hats. The governor's hair was carefully ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... you have written a devilish fine composition, and I rejoice in it from my heart; because 'the Douglas and the Percy both together are confident against a world in arms.' I hope you won't be affronted at my looking on us as 'birds of a feather;' though on whatever subject you had written, I should have been very ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... painstaking care and attention. Camilla's earnestness and life seems to inspire them to greater effort, and their playing gains in vigor and precision. "Not too much fire, gentlemen." This is the slow movement, and she gently represses their enthusiasm. The feather like touch, the airy delicacy of her own playing, spurs them on to unwonted care and restraint. At the end comes another long cadenza, that for soft, whispering tones, sweetness, grace, and vanishing ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard

... talk scandal and politics. And the Generals come through the streets with their guards behind them; and the magistrates come in their chairs with their stiff guards behind them; and you meet fortune-tellers, and goldsmiths, and merchants, and philosophers, and feather-sellers, and ultra-Roman Britons, and ultra-British Romans, and tame tribesmen pretending to be civilised, and Jew lecturers, and—oh, everybody interesting. We young people, of course, took no interest in politics. We ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling

... browbeat the press. He next narrated the plans he had adopted, and was adopting, for the benefit of all who became Chartists. He anticipated great results from his scheme of labour palaces—denied the propriety of being placed in the election returns as a feather in the quill of Whiggery—was an earnest advocate for the amelioration of Ireland, and still willing and determined to agitate for their cause. He would go to parliament, and record his first motion for 'The people's charter, and no ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... to me. If this curse were removed, thou wouldst marry her. She knows thou never wilt whilst it remains. I have not power to undo what my goddess binds. Had I, Saronia would never be the one to feather an arrow for Nika. No, no; go thy way! Choose ye whom ye will love. I will never force thee to love me, neither will I help thee to love another. Farewell!' and, turning sharply, she went, and as she passed away turned again, and gave one look of ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short

... I salute you, Also I salute the sewing-machine, and the flour-barrel, and the feather duster. What is an aborigine, anyhow? I see a paste-pot. Ay, and a well of ink. Well, well! Which shall I do? Ah, the immortal fog! What am I myself But a meteor In ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells

... his mouth, and his hair, of a curious mixed pepper-and-salt-color, descended far over his shoulders. He was about four-feet-six in height, and wore a conical pointed cap of nearly the same altitude, decorated with a black feather some three feet long. His doublet was prolonged behind into something resembling a violent exaggeration of what is now termed a "swallowtail," but was much obscured by the swelling folds of an enormous black, glossy-looking cloak, which must have been very ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... like a flood of lava through Europe. I am not going to criticize Macpherson's Ossian here. Make the part of what is forged, modern, tawdry, spurious, in the book, as large as you please; strip Scotland, if you like, of every feather of borrowed plumes which on the strength of Macpherson's Ossian she may have stolen from that vetus et major Scotia, the true home of the Ossianic poetry, Ireland; I make no objection. But there will still be left in the book a residue with the very soul of the Celtic genius ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... with whom I have to do are so widely different from this!" she said, presently. "Hearts of gold, heads of feather! you must have ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

... there is, first, the Girls' Club. The girls of Ratcliff are all working-girls; as might be expected, a rough and wild company, as untrained as colts, yet open to kindly and considerate treatment. Their first yearning is for finery; give them a high hat with a flaring ostrich feather, a plush jacket, and a 'fringe,' and they are happy. There are seventy-five of these girls; they use their club every evening, and they have various classes, though it cannot be said that they are desirous of learning anything. Needlework, ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant

... o' Sunday, when you're lyin' at your ease, To watch the kites a-wheelin' round them feather-'eaded trees, For although there ain't no women, yet there ain't no barrick-yards, So the orficers goes shootin' an' the men ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... settled this subject long ago, Mr. Wilde," says Vera, tranquilly unfolding her large, black, feather fan—for it is hot—and slowly folding ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... and though the Laird really appeared to have, and probably had, some delight in her company, it was only in contemplating that certain indefinable air of resemblance which she bore to the sole image impressed on his heart. He bought her a white gauze frock, a green bonnet and feather, with a veil, which she was obliged to wear thrown over her left shoulder, and every day after, six times a day, was she obliged to walk over a certain eminence at a certain distance before her lover. She was delighted to oblige him; but still, when he came up, he looked disappointed, and ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... her best feather that night; the suave chatelaine, the dutiful consort; the tactful warder of the interesting pair whose movements she had not ceased to watch from the moment they took their places with the party about the fire-place in the hall until she, alone of all the company, ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... science! Toussenel, in his day, asked the naturalists an insidious question. (Alphonse Toussenel (1803-1885), the author of a number of learned and curious works on ornithology.—Translator's Note.) Why, he enquired, have Ducks a little curly feather on the rump? No one, so far as I know, had an answer for the teasing cross-examiner: evolution had not been invented then. In our time the reason why would be forthcoming in a moment, as lucid and as well-founded as the reason why of ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... is that book he brought me Sweets of Sin by a gentleman of fashion some other Mr de Kock I suppose the people gave him that nickname going about with his tube from one woman to another I couldnt even change my new white shoes all ruined with the saltwater and the hat I had with that feather all blowy and tossed on me how annoying and provoking because the smell of the sea excited me of course the sardines and the bream in Catalan bay round the back of the rock they were fine all silver in the fishermens baskets old Luigi near a hundred they said came from Genoa and the ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... soon evident that the machine was badly crippled, for it came on downward like a feather floating in the still air. Only a few minutes elapsed until it had settled on ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll

... soldiery was now, in truth, heard on the landing-place. A heavy blow was given on the panels of the door; and, without waiting for permission to enter, a man in the military accoutrements of the period, whose head was crowned with a high hat, adorned with a short red feather, advanced into the room with an air which betrayed at once a strange mixture ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... assigned to the Duke of Mecklenburg and aide, and another to Count Bismarck-Bohlen and me, reserving the remaining one for himself. Each bed, as is common in Germany and northern France, was provided with a feather tick, but the night being warm, these spreads were thrown off, and discovering that they would make a comfortable shakedown on the floor, I slept there leaving Bismarck-Bohlen unembarrassed by companionship—at least of ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan

... tube regularly, and your amber mouthpiece with a feather dipped in spirits of lavender. Never suffer the conduit to ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... much of the bread and butter and jam and cream that they could not eat the cake.) And they swam every day.... Mary was like a sea-bird: she seemed to swim on the crest of every wave as lightly as a feather, and was only submerged when she chose to thrust her head into the body of some wave swelling higher and higher until its curled top could stay no longer and it pitched forward and fell in a white, spumy pile on the shore. She ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... fact of a man being unfortunate perhaps arises from him not being so good a fisherman or so good a man of business as the others?-Yes. He just gets into association with men of the same class as himself, on the principle of birds of a feather. ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... a funny dream the Nodding Donkey had! He imagined that he was tumbling around a feather bed and that a Blue Dog was chasing him with ...
— The Story of a Nodding Donkey • Laura Lee Hope

... nature of the drink by the price of a license, the kind of a place in which it is sold or the character of the man who sells it. Put a pig in a parlor; feed him on the best the marflet affords, give him a feather bed in which to sleep, keep him there till he's grown and he'll be a hog. You don't change the nature of the pig by the elegant surroundings; you may change the condition ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... hen; "Don't ask me again, Why I haven't a chick Would do such a trick. We all gave her a feather, And she wove them together. I'd scorn to intrude On her and her brood. Cluck! Cluck!" said the hen, ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various

... interesting part of the business. This change, to the passing female eye, robbed the shop window of its chief attraction; and when painful experience had convinced the regular customers of the Bunner Sisters of Ann Eliza's lack of millinery skill they began to lose faith in her ability to curl a feather or even "freshen up" a bunch of flowers. The time came when Ann Eliza had almost made up her mind to speak to the lady with puffed sleeves, who had always looked at her so kindly, and had once ordered a hat of Evelina. Perhaps the lady with puffed sleeves would be able to get her ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton

... a glimpse of the wretch who had fired the shot. But that seemed about impossible. He could detect something moving now and then, and once or twice there was a twinkle of something red, like the eagle feather in the hair of the warrior, but he ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)

... difficult to explain. So much happened on that drive to the Wenatchee valley. In the end, during an electrical storm, he saved me from a falling tree. What he asked of me was so very little, the weight of a feather, against all I owe him. Still, a woman does not allow even such a man to finance her affairs; people never would have understood. Besides, how could I have hoped, in a lifetime, to pay the loan? It was the most barren, desolate ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... manner at the burning of the Charity Bazaar in the Rue Jean Goujon, when the nerves of the luxurious gentlemen present, debilitated by close intimacy with the haute cocotterie in and out of society, betrayed them, and they displayed the white feather of vice by fighting their own way out, not only leaving the ladies to their fate, but actually beating them back with their sticks and trampling on them in their frantic efforts to save themselves, as many a bruised white arm or shoulder ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... telegram to meet a personal friend at Savannah, he would go there. In September, Lincoln, assisted by the French under D'Estaing, attacked Savannah. One thousand lives were lost, and D'Estaing showed the white feather to advantage. Count Pulaski lost his life in this fight. He was a brave Polish patriot, and his body was buried in the ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American eagle in order to feather their ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... voiced themselves the people of God, did prosecute the God of all people, with one common voice, "He is worthy to die." I will not, therefore, ambitiously beg their voices for my preferment; nor weigh my worth in that uneven balance, in which a feather of opinion shall be moment enough to turn the scales and make a light piece go current, and a current piece ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various

... small. As far as I know by personal experience and by hearsay, the rooms in these inns are always clean. The bedding all over Germany is most scrupulously kept and aired. In country places you see the mattresses and feather beds hanging out of the windows near the pots of carnations every sunny day. The floors are painted, and are washed all over every morning. The curtains are spotless. In each room there is the inevitable sofa with the table in front of it, a most sensible and comfortable addition ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... the old house and wished she might donate them. She did pick out some laces from her store, and two pretty scarfs, one of which Polly declared would be just the thing to trim her wedding hat, which was of fine Leghorn. So she would only have to buy the feather. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... said a middle-aged individual in a dingy Kossuth hat with a feather in it, and who had a very you-can't-fool-me look. "I've been to the State Fair before, I want yer to understan, and knows my bizniss aboard a propeller. Here's MY money," he exultingly cried, slapping ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne

... him first of all, un homme,"—he said to Glafira Petrovna:—"and not only a man, but a Spartan." Ivan Petrovitch began the execution of his intention by dressing his son in Highland garb: the lad of twelve began to go about with bare knees, and with a cock's feather in his crush-cap; the Swede was superseded by a young Swiss man, who had learned gymnastics to perfection; music, as an occupation unworthy of a man, was banished forever; the natural sciences, international law, mathematics, the carpenter's trade after the advice of ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff

... are arranged: one falling over the other in nicest order; and that where this charming harmony is interrupted, the defect, though not noticed by an ordinary spectator, will appear immediately to the eye of a naturalist. Thus a bird not wounded and in perfect feather must be procured if possible, for the loss of feathers can seldom be made good; and where the deficiency is great, all the skill of the artist will avail him little in his attempt to conceal the defect, because in order to hide it he must contract the skin, bring down the upper ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... oversleep myself on that morning, for from the memorable journey that followed, I date my advancement in the Church. But," he continued, with an expression that betokened some tender recollection, "if I ever should require you to wake me for an early train again, would you mind placing a mattress or feather-bed on the floor?" ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... he used to joke with you upon it, and even to tear your clothes. Now, I must tell you, that at your age it is as ridiculous not to be very well dressed, as at my age it would be if I were to wear a white feather and red-heeled shoes. Dress is one of various ingredients that contribute to the art of pleasing; it pleases the eyes at least, and more especially of women. Address yourself to the senses, if you would please; dazzle the ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... Hastings field. "We were gentlemen, Esmond," he used to say, "when the Churchills were horseboys." He was a very tall man, standing in his pumps six feet three inches (in his great jack-boots, with his tall, fair periwig, and hat and feather, he could not have been less than eight feet high). "I am taller than Churchill," he would say, surveying himself in the glass, "and I am a better made man; and if the women won't like a man that hasn't a wart on his nose, faith, I can't help myself, and Churchill ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... foreshortenings, shallow colourings, ill-studied forms, and motiveless agitation suited the taste that cared for gaudy brightness and sensational effects. The painters, for their part, found it convenient to adopt a mannerism that enabled them to conceal the difficult parts of the figure in feather beds of vapour, requiring neither effort of conception nor expenditure of labour on drawing and composition. At the same time, the Caracci made Correggio's style the object of more serious study; and the history of Bolognese painting shows what was to be derived from this ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... we were going to Princeton; the latter proved to be right. We went by a bye road on the right hand which made it about 16 miles. During this nocturnal march I with the Dover Company and the Red Feather Company of Philadelphia Light Infantry led the van of the army and Capt. Henry with the other three companies of Philadelphia Light Infantry brought up the rear. The van moved on all night in the most cool and determined order, ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

... bubbles of gas issuing from the extremity of the tube, in consequence of the decomposition of the water, noted. Without moving the plates, the acid between the copper and zinc was agitated by the introduction of a feather. The bubbles were immediately evolved more rapidly, above twice the number being produced in the same portion of time as before. In this instance it is very evident that agitation by a feather must have been a very imperfect ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday

... for them, and they went in a body to Crawford Keep to bid the chief "farewell." It was a hard hour, after all, to Crawford. The great purpose that he had kept before his eyes for years was not at that moment sufficient. He had dressed himself in his full chieftain's suit to meet them. The eagle's feather in his Glengary gave to his great stature the last grace. The tartan and philibeg, the garters at his knee, the silver buckles at his shoulder, belt, and shoon, the jewelled mull and dirk, had all to these poor fellows in this last hour a proud and sad significance. As he stood on the ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... without canvas on the ship? Split me, but I thought you knew how to sail a boat when you signed on as mate. Don't come any of these grandmother tricks on me, hey? I won't have it. Don't make a fool of yourself before these men. Get that topsail up again quicker'n hell can scorch a feather, or I'll be taking a hand, see! I'll be taking a hand. Jump lively, you dogs!" he roared, as ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains

... into the bedroom which opened off the kitchen. His father lay on the feather bed, his eyes closed. O how worn—O how changed! Young Jason was hardened to suffering and death. He had not realized that to the sickness and death of one's own, nothing can harden us. He stood breathing hard while his mother stooped over ...
— Benefits Forgot - A Story of Lincoln and Mother Love • Honore Willsie

... to all the balls and fancy fairs, and archery, that Shinglebay produced; and there was no going to shop there without her barouche coming clattering down the street with the two prancing greys, and poor little Trevor inside, with a looped-up hat and ostrich feather exactly like Alured's; for by some intention she always dressed him in the exact likeness of his little uncle's. I used to think Miss Prior told her, and sedulously prevented her ever seeing his lordship out of his brown holland pinafores, but the ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge

... assures me that some of his birds had eleven primaries in both wings. I have seen eleven in one wing in two Pouters. I have been assured by three fanciers that they have seen twelve in Scanderoons; but as Neumeister asserts that in the allied Florence Runt the middle flight-feather is often double, the number twelve may have been caused by two of the ten primaries having each two shafts to a single feather. The secondary wing-feathers are difficult to count, but the number seems to vary from twelve to fifteen. The ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason, and traversing its work. The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane, like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars. The inviolate spirit turns that spite against the wrong-doers. The martyr cannot ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter

... to Tiverton Manor through a darkness black as the lining of Baalzebub's oldest cloak. The storm had passed, but clouds yet hung heavy as feather-beds between mankind and the stars; as I crossed the bridge the swollen Exe was but dimly visible, though it roared beneath me, and shook the frail timbers hungrily. The bridge had long been unsafe: ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... Oxford with its many towers, and the cry of the coach along the tow-path as the eight swings homeward up-stream, in the grey of a winter afternoon, to the regular click of the rowlocks as the men pluck their blades from the water, feather and come forward for the next stroke, making ready to drive back their slides as one man with their legs? He was certain that whatever happened, and however he should go out of life, did God spare him a moment's consciousness, it would be the vision of Oxford with its domes and spires, ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... teasing all the rest With her sharp wit; often she dropped her work— The threading of bright flowers into wreaths— To look across the waves, and suddenly She called, "A sail, a little sail," and all Followed her pointing fingers. Far away, Tossed like a feather, black against the sky, Hovered a tiny craft, its unknown lines Marked it as stranger, and the maidens all Curiously watched its ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay

... youth should go with a feather in his cap, that spring should garland herself with blossom, and love's vows make light of death. He is a bad companion for young people. But for older folk the wisdom of that knocker in Gray's ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... you'll pay him then! That's a perilous shot out of an elder gun, that a poor and private displeasure can do against a monarch. You may as well go about to turn the sun to ice, with fanning in his face with a peacock's feather. ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... crafty intriguer like Crispi, therefore, easily inflamed Italian indignation, so recently excited by the seizure of Tunis and by Clerical intrigues, and he counted it a gay feather in his cap when, in 1889, he declared a tariff war on France. Hard times for Italy followed; the commerce of the country was dislocated, and although Crispi tried to get compensation by negotiating special terms for trade with Germany and Austria, ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... excited. And Mr. Pelly and Mrs. Dudley had their first fight this year over their chickens. Mr. Pelly swears she lets them out a-purpose before he's awake in the morning and Mrs. Dudley says that if he don't mend his fence and hurts a feather of a single one of her animals she'll have ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... military class of ambitious soldiers and their fighting machine. Behind these men walks the Napoleonic ambition all the time, just as in the United States we lie down every night in George Washington's feather-bed of no ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick

... hour later, deliciously caressed by garments of soft white silk beneath a feather-weight robe-de-chambre, she sat before the dressing-table, drying her hair in the warm draft of an electric fan and anointing face, hands, and arms with creams ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... fields, men, women, and children, and in one hayfield I saw the baby's cradle—baby, of course, concealed from view under a small avalanche of a feather bed, as the general fashion in these parts seems to be. The women wore broad, flat hats, and all appeared to be working rather lazily, as ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... well-known garden plants, such as love-lies- bleeding (A. caudatus), a native of India, a vigorous hardy annual, with dark purplish flowers crowded in handsome drooping spikes. Another species A. hypochondriacus, is prince's feather, another Indian annual, with deeply-veined lance-shaped leaves, purple on the under face, and deep crimson flowers densely packed on erect spikes. "Globe amaranth'' belongs to an allied genus, Gomphrena, and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... up an eagle's feather in his walk; and he now pointed with it to the tiny cove in which Erlingsen's farm might be seen, looking no bigger than an infant's toy, and said, "Do you leave an enemy there, or ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau

... meal in the finest cigars in my shebang. Alf, you are my friend. Let's go down where she's at. To tell you the God's holy truth, man to man, I don't feel half as good as I make out. It wouldn't take the weight of a hair to make me show the white feather. I have a sort of forewarning that I ain't agoing to walk straight into this thing. If she'd 'a' driv' right up to the front, and got out and gone back to the rear and set down and looked about like she was taking stock of my belongings, I'd have knowed how ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... Senior, invited me into his room. He is exceedingly kind and generous, though, I am sorry to say it, a friend of oppression. He gave me a splendid apple, the first which I had seen for the season. He dusted my coat with his feather-duster, and he even dusted my boots. He asked me how far I had been walking. I told him all which I had said and done, thinking that it would profitably remind him of the great subject. He roared with laughter. "Three ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... Mississouri [sic] river and the highlands on the opposite bank to the cultivated fields of which I often turned a "lingiring look" which is the last I have as yet seen, or may see for some time, with one exception which I shall soon relate. We met two or three indians, saw a fresh made grave, a feather bed lying upon it, we afterwards learned that a man & his wife had both died a few days before, & were burried together here, they left 2 small children, which were sent back to St. Joseph by an indian chief. We now came to Wolf ...
— Across the Plains to California in 1852 - Journal of Mrs. Lodisa Frizzell • Lodisa Frizell

... amongst us before I knew for the life of me where-abouts I was, in a gig or some of them things, with another spark along with him, and led horses, and servants, and dogs, and scarce a place to put any Christian of them into; for my late lady had sent all the feather-beds off before her, and blankets and household linen, down to the very knife cloths, on the cars to Dublin, which were all her own, lawfully paid for out of her own money. So the house was quite bare, and my young master, the moment ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... other do Frenchmen herd together in exile, and Deulin knew all his fellow-countrymen and women in Warsaw, in whatsoever station of life they happened to move. He had a friend behind the counter of the small feather-cleaning shop in the Jerozolimska. This lady was a French Jewess, who had by some undercurrent of Judaism drifted from Paris to Warsaw again and found herself once more among her own people. The western world is ignorant of the strength ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman

... to button her gloves, and to readjust her feather boa with which she had been knocking the Easter cards off the counter. Then she suddenly ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock

... myself, I did not think it amiss to yield to his request; considering that I was deprived of the advantages I might have reaped by going to Bantam; and that your worships would send another in my place after half a dozen years, while in the mean time I might do you service and feather my own nest. Then, because my name was somewhat harsh for his pronunciation, he gave me the name of Ingles Khan, which is to say English lord: though in Persia khan is equivalent to duke. Being now in the height of favour, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... the most wonderful manner. An officer named Tucci was carried by the whirlwind like a feather high into the air, where he was for a moment suspended, and then dropped into the river, where he saved himself by swimming. Another was taken up by the force of the blast from the Flanders shore and deposited on that of Brabant, incurring merely ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... beginning of his reign Frederick III. was resolved upon a rupture at the first convenient opportunity, while the nation was, if possible, even more bellicose than the king. The apparently insuperable difficulties of Sweden in Poland was the feather that turned the scale; on the 1st of June 1657, Frederick III. signed the manifesto justifying a war which was never formally declared and brought Denmark to the very verge of ruin. The extraordinary details ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... the way the Chief Woman had arranged it. All the men who came down to the ships were poorly dressed and the women wrinkled, though she was the richest Cacica in the country, and had four bearers with feather fans to accompany her. All this time she sat in the Silences and sent her thoughts among the Spaniards so that they bickered among themselves, for they were so greedy for gold that no half-dozen of them would trust another half-dozen out of their sight. They would ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al

... said she would like to go up-stairs now. He went up-stairs with her and opened the door. The chamber fronted the west; the sun was just setting, and the red light fell full upon the bed, where Milly lay with the hand of death visibly upon her. The feather-bed had been removed, and she lay low on a mattress, with her head slightly raised by pillows. Her long fair neck seemed to be struggling with a painful effort; her features were pallid and pinched, and her eyes were closed. There was no one in the room but ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... anointed of God, the utterer of His name to His brethren, the King of Israel,—and whose path to His dominion should be thickly strewn with solitary sorrow, and reproach, and agony, to whose far more exceeding weight of woe all his affliction was light as a feather, and transitory as a moment. And when the psalmist had learned that lesson, besides all the others of trust and patience which his wanderings taught him, his schooling was nearly over, he was almost ready for a new discipline; and the ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren

... waters shiver, Laughing in the sibilance of the silver spray. Yea, and up the woodlands, staunch in moonlit weather, Go the ghostly horsemen, adventuresome to ride, White as mist the doublet-braize, bandolier and feather, Fleet as gallant ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls

... retire and take some breakfast; for I declared that I was ashamed to kill any more. I had had twenty shots, and had bagged nine brace and a half of cocks and one hen pheasant; having been lucky enough, as my dogs brought all their game, to save every bird without a feather being scarcely rumpled. My friends had thirty shots between them, and had killed one bird; in fact, they were altogether as bad shots as I was a good one.—Though, during the whole time, we had not been a quarter of a mile from the ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... himself. It says:—'Of the most remarkable masks upon this occasion was James Boswell, Esq., in the dress of an armed Corsican chief. He entered the amphitheatre about twelve o'clock. On the front of his cap was embroidered in gold letters, Viva La Liberta; and on one side of it was a handsome blue feather and cockade, so that it had an elegant, as well as a warlike appearance. He wore no mask, saying that it was not proper for a gallant Corsican. So soon as he came into the room he drew universal attention.' Cradock (Memoirs, i. 217) gives ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... nearly come. It required, comparatively, little beyond the weight of a feather to give preponderance to the scale of evil influences. Cara's reception, as shown in the last chapter, was no worse than he had anticipated, yet it hurt him none the less; for unkind words from her were always felt as blows, and coldness as ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur

... hawks and ponies tired; and the boys put up the birds on the cadge, and leashed them to it securely; and jogged slowly homewards together up the valley road that led to the village, talking in technical terms of how the merlin's feather must be "imped" to-morrow; and of the relative merits of the "varvels" or little silver rings at the end of the jesses through which the leash ran, and the Dutch swivel that Squire ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... it," and Tom, stooping, picked up some small object. "See, here's a feather that was sticking to that dead weed. It's from a bird of the same color as the pigeon, perhaps from the very one ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach

... for granted that the Parish Church will yet outlive many of the minor raving academies in which they are absent. There is touch more generalisation than there used to be as to the sittings in our Parish Church; but "birds of a feather flock together" still. The rich know their quarters; exquisite gentlemen and smart young ladies with morrocco-bound gilt-edged Prayer Books still cluster in special sections; and although it is said that the poor have the best part of the church ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... marvelous latter-day statesmanship has invented universal suffrage. That is the finest feather in our cap. All that we require of a voter is that he shall be forked, wear pantaloons instead of petticoats, and bear a more or less humorous resemblance to the reported image of God. He need not know anything whatever; he may be wholly useless ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... Sardis was under sore sickness, insomuch that some of her things were quite dead, and they that were not so were yet ready to die (Rev 3:2). Yet 'life is life,' we say, and as long as there is a pulse, or breath, though breath scarce able to shake a feather, we cast not away all hope of life. Desires, then, though they be weak, are, notwithstanding, true desires, if they be the desires of the righteous thus described, and therefore are truly good, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... their hands were made of brass, and their bodies were all over scales, which, if not iron, were something as hard and impenetrable. They had wings, too, and exceedingly splendid ones, I can assure you, for every feather in them was pure, bright, glittering, burnished gold; and they looked very dazzling, no doubt, when the Gorgons were flying about in ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... awoke. Above the eastern fells scarlet feather-clouds were hovering; the sun rushed upon them as she looked; and in that blue dimness ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... moored, nearly all the officers went on shore for sight-seeing and enjoyment. We landed at a wharf opposite which was a famous French restaurant, Farroux, and after ordering supper we all proceeded to the Rua da Ouvador, where most of the shops were, especially those for making feather flowers, as much to see the pretty girls as the flowers which they so skillfully made; thence we went to the theatre, where, besides some opera, we witnessed the audience and saw the Emperor Dom Pedro, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... the Raven, sitting lonely On that placid bust, spoke only That one word, as if his soul in That one word he did outpour. Nothing farther then he uttered, Not a feather then he fluttered, Till I scarcely more than muttered, "Other friends have flown before— On the morrow he will leave me, As my Hopes have flown before." Then ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... rosemary are very tempting, and those fine muscat grapes, swollen with sugar, which line the banks of the Rhone, are wonderfully appetising... yes, but there is Tarascon in he distance, and in the world of fur and feather Tarascon is bad news. The birds of passage seem to have marked it with a cross on their maps, and when the long wedges of wild duck, heading for the Camargue, see far off the town's steeples, the whole flight veers away. In short there is ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... furnish plumage worth from twenty-five to thirty dollars each year. A Hottentot told Paul that many of the ostriches that then stood around in sight had been hatched by fat old Hottentot women who took two or three eggs away from the hens and lay with them in feather bed until they were hatched. The truthfulness of ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... Vera added her shriller cries; but all in vain, and the outgoing tide was carrying them, not towards the quay and marble rocks, but farther to sea. The waves grew rougher and had crests of foam, and discomfort began. Once the feather of a steamer was seen on the horizon. They waved handkerchiefs and redoubled their shouts, and Hubert had to hold his companion to prevent her from leaping up; but they never were within the vessel's ken, and she went on her way, while the sea bore ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... dusk, when she, the last of all the flyers, hauled down her kite to earth, there she found a heron's feather fastened among the strings. Katipah knew who had sent that, and kissed it a thousand times over; nor did she mind for many days afterwards what Bimsha might say, because the heron's feather lay so close to her heart, warming it with the ...
— The Blue Moon • Laurence Housman

... green, and would not burn, so the giant began to blow. At the first puff Ashpot found himself flying up to the ceiling as if he had been a feather, but he managed to catch hold of a piece of birch-bark among the rafters, and on reaching the ground again he told the giant that he had been up to get something to make ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman

... if, in sharpening your knife, you hold the little whetstone between the thumb and middle finger of the left hand you are less likely to put a feather edge on it. A feather edge is something to clip the sprouting wings of any budding saint of a grafter. When you get the right edge on your knife often you can use it the whole day without resharpening, or at most with simply a stropping on a piece of wood or leather. But improper use of the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various

... necks to see the meaning of the strange hand upon the reins,—the slender weight in the chariot. They turned their wild eyes upon Phaethon, to his secret foreboding, and neighed one to another. This was no master charioteer, but a mere lad, a feather riding the wind. It was holiday for the horses of the Sun, ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... communication, so I can report nothing. I have read the whole with great pleasure; the work will do you everlasting honour. I have said the whole, forgetting, in that contemplation, my feelings upon one part, where you have tickled with a feather when you should have branded with a red-hot iron. You will guess I mean the Convention of Cintra. My detestation, I may say abhorrence, of that event is not at all diminished by your account of it. Buonaparte had committed ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... Clara consumed her impatience in working at a silk purse while her aunt was trying to clean up the traces of the former night's revelry by swinging a feather duster about. Capitan Tiago was busy looking over some papers. Every noise in the street, every carriage that passed, caused the maiden to tremble and quickened the beatings of her heart. Now she wished that she were back in the quiet convent among her friends; there she could have seen him ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... was formerly the object of much persecution, since it was believed that it received three drops of the devil's blood on its feather every May morning, and never appeared without presaging ill luck. Parrots do not appear to be very susceptible to the influence of the Unknown, and indicate little or no ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... of Squaw Creek, and reaches to within 10 miles of the eastern bank of the Sacramento at Redding. From Redding to Chico Creek the boundary is about 10 miles east of the Sacramento. From Chico downward the Pujunan family encroaches till at the mouth of Feather River it occupies the eastern bank of the Sacramento. The western boundary of the Copehan family begins at the northernmost point of San Pablo Bay, trends to the northwest in a somewhat irregular line till it reaches John's ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell

... part of the business. This change, to the passing female eye, robbed the shop window of its chief attraction; and when painful experience had convinced the regular customers of the Bunner Sisters of Ann Eliza's lack of millinery skill they began to lose faith in her ability to curl a feather or even "freshen up" a bunch of flowers. The time came when Ann Eliza had almost made up her mind to speak to the lady with puffed sleeves, who had always looked at her so kindly, and had once ordered a hat of Evelina. Perhaps the lady with puffed sleeves would ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton

... way of attire, Onoah was simply dressed, consulting the season and his journey. He had a single eagle's feather attached to the scalp-lock, and wore a belt of wampum of more than usual value, beneath which he had thrust his knife and tomahawk; a light, figured and fringed hunting-shirt of cotton covered his body, while leggings of deerskin, ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... of 1831 Samson Traylor and his wife, Sarah, and two children left their old home near the village of Vergennes, Vermont, and began their travels toward the setting sun with four chairs, a bread board and rolling-pin, a feather bed and blankets, a small looking-glass, a skillet, an axe, a pack basket with a pad of sole leather on the same, a water pail, a box of dishes, a tub of salt pork, a rifle, a teapot, a sack of meal, sundry small provisions and a violin, in a double wagon drawn by oxen. It is a pleasure ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller

... feet high, at one end there was a house for hens. I noticed that they all went to roost just before totality. At the same time a slight wind arose, and at the moment of totality the atmosphere was filled with thistle-down and other light articles. I noticed one feather, whose weight was at least one hundred and fifty milligrams, rise perpendicularly to the top of the fence, where it floated away on the wind. My apparatus was entirely too sensitive, and I got no results." It was found that the heat from the corona of the sun was ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... housemaid in strong hysterics and her best clothes. That was why the best hat was found, later on, to be completely ruined, and why the best blue dress was never quite itself again. And as they were burning bits of the feather dusting-brush as nearly under Eliza's nose as they could guess, a sudden spurt of flame and a horrible smell, as the flame died between the quick hands of Gerald, showed but too plainly that Eliza's feather boa had ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit

... darling," said her father. He bent over her, and pressed a light kiss upon her cheek. Feather touch as it was, it aroused the child. She ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade

... looked around him, but nothing suitable was to be seen, and he was about to attempt the all but hopeless task of tearing up the soil with his fingers in search of a worm, when his eyes fell on a small bright feather that had been dropped by some passing bird. "Happy thoughts" occurred to people in the days of which we write, even as now, though they were not recognised ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne

... just in front of us, the woman in the pinky-yellow feather and the pompadour. You must remember her; she was casting sheep's-eyes at Mr. Brenton, all the time he was preaching. That was the way I found out who she was. My curiosity led me to ask Dolph Dennison about ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... with that poor feather-headed, vain Absalom, were on the one side, and David and these foreigners were on the other. Years of quiet uneventful life would never have brought out such magnificent heroism of devotion and self-surrender, as ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... from his pocket, Levi greased the running parts of the machine, hoisted the gate, and away went the saw as briskly as a bee after its years of rest in the attic, to the intense delight of Bessie, who was quite ready to vote another feather for the cap of the hero. A piece of board was adjusted on the carriage, and the saw began to whisk, whisk, whisk through it, when a series of yells in the direction of the road attracted the attention of ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic

... and he, Nnanaji, and Rogero, were the only three sons left in line of succession to the crown, a small mystic drum of diminutive size was placed before them by the officers of state. It was only feather weight in reality, but, being loaded with charms, became so heavy to those who were not entitled to the crown, that no one could lift it but the one person whom the spirits were inclined towards as the rightful successor. Now, of ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... landed. He was in full dress. His uniform was almost entirely covered with gold braid. Gold cords with tassels at their ends hung in festoons across his chest and down his back. He carried a large sword in a highly gilt sheath. On his head was a cocked hat with a tall pink feather in it, perhaps a plume from the tail ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham

... to my pocket; and that British consul's using the infernalest means to destroy our business, that ever was. He's worse than the vilest abolitionist, because he thinks he's protected by that flag of their'n. If he don't take care, we'll tar-and-feather him; and if his government says much about it, she'll larn what and who South Carolina is. We can turn out a dozen Palmetto regiments that'd lick any thing John Bull could send here, and a troop o' them d—d Yankee abolitionists besides. South Carolina's got to show her ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... was to be raised from the Colonies themselves—from which the King would pay his officers and provide for his army that enforced his laws. The eagle is to feather the arrow which shoots him in ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... We will pound the front knocker in the name of the King. A feather in our cap when we ride him down to the Bowling Green and ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... tongues. The main streets are crowded with bright, wide-awake lawyers, ministers, merchants, agents for everything under the sun; ox drivers and loggers in stiff, gummy overalls; back-slanting dudes, well-tailored and shiny; and fashions and bonnets of every feather and color bloom gayly in the noisy throng and advertise London and Paris. Vigorous life and strife are to be seen everywhere. The spirit of progress is in the air. Still it is hard to realize how much good work is being done here of a kind that makes for civilization—the enthusiastic, exulting ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... in the parlour, and no less a personage than Miss Le Pettit of Ignores was seated on the best horsehair armchair, her bonneted head, with its drooping feather, leaning gracefully against the lace antimacassar, and her small prunella boots elegantly crossed on the smiling cheeks of the beadwork cherub that adorned the footstool, and that seemed to be puffing the harder, as though to try and puff those little ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse

... project almost staggered Morvyth, but as a member of the Mystic Seven she was pledged to follow her leader, and would not for worlds have displayed symptoms of the white feather, though her more cautious soul began to calculate consequences if caught. There were so many pitfalls in the path—servants, monitresses, and mistresses must be outwitted, both in going and returning, to ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... athletic young men. After the ship was made fast at the wharf, and the decks cleared up, the crew received permission to go ashore; and, neatly rigged and headed by the boatswain, a splendid looking, symmetrically built native of Connecticut, who stood six feet two inches in his stockings, and wore a feather in his hat like a Highland chieftain, they paraded through several of the streets of Savannah, singing, laughing, and cheering, bent on a regular frolic. They occasionally stopped at hospitable houses, where "for a consideration" they could ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... chanting softly, as magic-makers should. Faint and far across the desert sounded the intriguing rhythm long before the three dark faces were caught by the firelight. When they finally appeared, Jonas was bearing an eagle's feather. ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... Feather," called back Tom, who did not seem to be so much taken by surprise as did the others. "Come and have ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Big Woods • Laura Lee Hope

... Jesu Christ! St. Peter and St. Paul! Ferdinand and Isabella, and St. George and the Dragon, and all the rest! And ires dire glories in excellence, and deuces tecum vademecum Christ Jesu, and birds of a feather, and now I lay me down to sleep, and a child is born for you to keep—Amen! Amen!—Who's stepping ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg

... person enormous—she looked like a feather-bed standing on end; her cheeks were as large as a dinner-plate, eyes almost as imperceptible as a mole's, nose just visible, mouth like a round O. It was said that she was once a great Devonshire beauty. Time, who has been denominated Edax ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat

... deserve the Sanitary Fair! A man who will desert his country in its hour of trial would drop Faro checks into the Contribution Box on Sunday. I hain't got time to tarry—I hain't got time to stay!—but here's a gift at parting: a White Feather: wear it in your hat!" and She was Gone from his gaze, like a ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne

... came to reside at ——, she had often watched that little boat dancing over the waves, carried onward by a stiff breeze,—now hiding in the green valleys of the sea, now mounting aloft, like a feather floating on the ridge of some toppling surge. The old man seemed to bear a charmed life; for at all seasons, and in almost all weather, the little wiry seaman, with his short pipe in his mouth, and his noble Newfoundland dog, Neptune, in the bow of his boat, might ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... Charley, really. What I meant to point out was, that there are only twelve of us belonging to the ship on whom we could rely— indeed only eleven, for that matter, as I don't count on Tompkins; a bully like him would be sure to show the white-feather in a scrimmage— while these Greek chaps muster eight strong, all of them pretty biggish men, too, and all armed with them beastly long knives of theirs, which I've no doubt they know how ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... went in not at all for personal ornamentation, any more than he allowed his dignity to be broken by anything resembling emotionalism. No tattoo marks, no ear ornaments, no rings nor bracelets. He never even picked up an ostrich feather for his head. On the latter he sometimes wore an old felt hat; sometimes, more picturesquely, an orange-coloured fillet. Khaki shirt, khaki "shorts," blue puttees, besides his knife and my own accoutrements: that was all. In town he was all white ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... night, and he at once said he would send four men, to come in if they heard a rumpus; and he was, indeed, rather glad of an opportunity for breaking up the place, concerning which he had had several complaints of young men being plucked to the last feather. Well, it was lucky they came. I don't say that it would have made any difference, because I think our side was a great deal stronger than they were, still it would have led to a nasty row, and perhaps to half a dozen duels afterwards. Well, I will ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty

... in at the top of my stiff hat and whizzed out through the legs of my thin Sunday pants till I felt for all the world like the ventilating pipe on an ice-chest. I could see why Phil was wearing the bed-clothes; what I was suffering for just then was a feather mattress on ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln

... truth, she thought herself somewhat deeper in the mysteries than she was; and she has often said to me, as we went down in the lift together, that if one's will were strong enough, one could float down as harmlessly as a feather. I solemnly believe that in some ecstasy of noble thoughts she attempted the miracle. Her will, or faith, must have failed her at the crucial instant, and the lower law of matter had its horrible revenge. There ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... it up as if it had been a feather, and, after whirling it round his head, flung it lightly three miles away, telling Stan to beat that ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various

... opened the door smiled. He was a man of thirty-five, or thereabouts, with cheerful blue eyes, a brown moustache and pink cheeks. He wore a blue cotton apron and had a feather duster in his hand; ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... health served at least to release her from those forced efforts of gaiety which had recoiled so heavily on her feelings. Her day for vivacity was gone.—In an atmosphere whose buoyancy is exhausted, the feather falls as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various

... bailiff—"sure Harry Wakefield, the nattiest lad at Whitson Tryste, Wooler Fair, Carlisle Sands, or Stagshaw Bank, is not going to show white feather? Ah, this comes of living so long with kilts and bonnets—men forget the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various

... many more tricks done by the boys in the tent, and the circus was a great success. Ben and the other clowns made lots of fun. They threw water on one another, beat each other with cloth clubs, stuffed with sawdust, which didn't hurt any more than a feather. ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Playing Circus • Laura Lee Hope

... the ball on his hat he wore a plume or feather that stood in a horizontal position. His chief of staff was the most elaborately dressed man of the party, his robes being more gaily decorated than the governor's. The members of the staff wore mandarin balls of different ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... without seeing a change in the popular taste that the occasional man I have spoken of comes on. When the work of the school is legitimately in line with the public taste, the merely eccentric dramatist is like Lord Dundreary's bird with a single feather that goes in a corner and flocks all by itself. He may be a strong enough man to attract attention to his individuality, and his plays may be really great in themselves, but his work has little influence on the development of the art. In fact, there is no development ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard

... fellows," interposed Frank; "for my part, I am glad the Butterfly had it all to herself. She has just come out, and it will be a feather ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic

... specimen of the genus homo. The consequence is a series of pleasant results, people usually showing him whatever of good may be in them, and esteeming him proportionately. As Uncle David was discussing the amount of furniture required for his intended caravansary, he paused to ask if feather beds would be thought a necessity. Diogenes replied that 'every goose needing feathers could bring them on his own back,' which shaft took immensely, as proved by the loud guffaws and low chuckles that echoed through the beautiful forest whose branches shaded us from the August ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... When I am dead, my dearest Christina G. Rossetti 186 When I was young, I said to Sorrow Aubrey de Vere 74 When Spring casts all her swallows forth George Walter Thornbury 223 When the snow begins to feather Lord de Tabley 66 Where winds abound Michael Field 97 Who is the baby, that doth lie Thomas Lovell Beddoes 36 Winds to-day are large and free Michael Field 94 With deep affection Francis Mahoney 149 Woo thy lass while May is ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various

... handled it. Some he placed in his pocket, some he returned to its place. He stood thinking, as it were weighing a possibility. While lingering thus, he noticed the reflected image of his own face in the glass—pale and spectre-like in its indistinctness. The sight seemed to be the feather which turned the balance of indecision: he drew a heavy breath, retired from the room, and passed downstairs. She heard him unbar the back-door, and go out ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... dinner, we met him as one meets any passer-by among the rest. He was walking alone, covered by a great gray waterproof. His felt hat was adorned with a short feather. He displayed the characteristic features of his race—a long turned-down ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... the dews upon my forehead light:— From off the oars, perchance, as feather'd spray, They drop, while some fair skiff bends on her way Across the Heav'nly Stream[157] ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various

... top at last, they turned into a sort of lobby—a rather bare room with several plain desks by the windows and many hooks along the inner wall. There the father took off both his coats and armed himself with a huge feather duster and a rag. ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman

... spasm of pain. But the face bore no trace of pain. The moan that wakened Daisy was probably that sigh with which mortal parts with mortality—the parting breath between life and death, which will scarcely stir a feather and yet will awaken the soundest sleeper. To my mind Eugene Field died as his father, "of physical exhaustion, a deterioration of the bodily organs, and an incapacity on their part to discharge the vital functions—a wearing out of the machine before the ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... absence. You want to tell somebody something; but he or she is not, as they used to say "by," or perhaps there are circumstances (and circumstanders) which or who make speech undesirable; so you "write." At first no doubt, you used signs or symbols like the feather with which Wildrake let Cromwell's advent be known in Woodstock—a most ingenious device for which, by the way, the recipients were scantly grateful. But when reading and writing came by nature, you availed yourself of these Nature's gifts, not always, it is to be feared, regarding ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury

... met all the pigeons the other day,' said he. 'Those trees were more like the inside of a feather-bed than anything else, so covered were they with fluttering masses of birds; you couldn't see a bit of the foliage; and 'twas quite amusing to watch some of them lighting on the rice, which wasn't strong enough to support ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... teeth of the Gorgons were terribly long tusks, their hands were made of brass, and their bodies were all over scales, which, if not iron, were something as hard and impenetrable. They had wings, too, and exceedingly splendid ones, I can assure you, for every feather in them was pure, bright, glittering, burnished gold; and they looked very dazzling, no doubt, when the Gorgons were flying about in ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... bands of blue (top), red (triple width), and blue; the red band is edged in yellow; centered in the red band is a large black and white shield covering two spears and a staff decorated with feather tassels, all placed horizontally ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... out of the yard again. She was carrying a huge feather duster over her head as if it ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin

... great wheels whirl up clouds of spray, and leave a foaming path. She carries a silver train sparkling in the morning light. She ploughs a furrow, which rolls the width of the river. Our boat dances like a feather on the waves. She gains the intervening space between the fleets. Never moved a Queen so determinedly, never one more fleet,—almost leaping from the water. The Stars and Stripes stream to the breeze beneath the black ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin

... he was again frightened by a young warrior, who was playing on the flute. Being afraid of music, he passed around the village, and soon after falling to the earth, released his burden. The Indian then asked the meteor to give him his head strap, which he refused. The Indian offered him a feather of honor for it, and was again refused. The Sioux, determined to gain his point, told the meteor if he would give him the strap, he would kill a big enemy for him. No reply from the meteor. The Indian then offered to kill a wigwam full of enemies—the meteor still mute. The last offer was six ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman

... great blisters which puffed up two and three inches high on their extremities were opened with a knife, and they were put to bed in a forlorn condition. Mr. Wheeler then took the dory and rowed two miles dead to windward with extreme difficulty, the wind blowing very hard, and the sea feather-white with foam, till he reached Cape Elizabeth, where he purchased rum, liniment, corn-meal and coffee. He got back to the island about dark, bringing with him Mr. Andrew J. Wheeler. The rescued ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat

... the blue unclouded weather Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather, The helmet and the helmet-feather Burn'd like one burning flame together, As he rode down to Camelot. [12] As often thro' the purple night, Below the starry clusters bright, Some bearded meteor, trailing light, Moves over ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... appeared in a fragmentary condition, with a bodice of the time of Elizabeth, and a petticoat of that of Victoria. Sir Walter Raleigh wore the old felt hat belonging to his dressing-room, and pathetically appealed to the spectators to imagine it adorned with a white feather and jewelled clasp. ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... jewelled crown, coat of distinctive colour, or any excessive superfluity of pearl or metal buttons; who went forth surrounded by a retinue, sat publicly in a chair or allegorical chariot, spoke loudly in the highways and places in a tone of official pronouncement, displayed any feather, emblem, inscribed badge, or printed announcement upon a pole, or in any way conducted themselves in what we should esteem to be fitting to a position of high dignity. From this arose the absence of outward enthusiasm with which I at first received Sir Philip's extended favour; for ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah

... mortal longing for a rose-coloured hat, and Madame wouldn't let her have it. Madame, who understood Mr. Tanqueray's thoughts better than if he had expressed them, insisted on a plain black hat with a black feather. ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... was led into the sawdust ring, and a peculiar saddle like a little platform was strapped to his back. This the monkey was to dance on, dressed as a ballet girl, with yellow, spangled skirts, a satin bodice and a blue cap with a feather in it ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery

... could not. You would catch crabs, and you would feather in the air, and you would run into the banks, and go aground on the shallows, and be carried over ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison

... were, their white spats flashing in time with their step, their kilts swaying free over their tartan hose and naked knees, their white tunics gleaming through the dusk of the evening, and over all the tossing plumes of their great feather bonnets nodding rhythmically ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor

... with respect to the objectionable feature of my original instructions, and of course relieved me also from the anxiety growing out of the letter received at Hancock Station the night of the 28th; so, notwithstanding the suspicions excited by some of my staff concerning the Virginia feather-bed that had been assigned me, I turned in at a late hour ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 4 • P. H. Sheridan

... don't see any particular need of breaking your neck or limbs by making the attempt; and it would be a feather in your cap to manage the colt. Suppose we try;" and this proposition was made by George's ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... with a glance at the tall retiring figure, 'that is a nice friend for a bishop to have. He's a jail-bird if I mistake not; and he is afraid of my finding out his business with Pendle. Birds of a feather,' sighed Mr Cargrim, entering the hotel. 'I fear, I sadly fear that his lordship is but a whited sepulchre. A look into the bishop's past might show me many things of moment,' and the fat living ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... it all now; even then my heart smote me heavily at times when I thought of the pride and pleasure he took in all my scientific appliances, and the money they cost him—twenty guineas for a pair of scales! Poor dear old man! he loved to weigh things in them—a feather, a minute crumb of cork, an ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... and thus a draught of hot air constantly passed beneath the floors in cold weather. On warm nights Yung Pak would pile his mats upon the floor and sleep as comfortably as ever you did on the softest feather bed your grandmother ...
— Our Little Korean Cousin • H. Lee M. Pike

... knowledge of affairs. All of these were responding more or less sincerely to the cry of the people of Kentucky (every day more passionate) that something be done about Louisiana. But Gignoux seemed of a different feather. Moreover, he had been too shrewd to deny what Colonel Clark would have denied in a soberer moment,—that St. Gre and Nick had gone to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... people to be found who are willing to read and listen to the readings for three days, not because the subject is dealt with more eloquently than before, but because it is treated with greater freedom, and therefore the work is more willingly undertaken. This will be another feather in the cap of our Emperor, that those speeches which used to be as odious as they were unreal are now as popular as they ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger

... been framed. This determination will, I am confident, be approved by my constituents. I have, indeed, studied their character to but little purpose if the sum of 25,000,000 francs will have the weight of a feather in the estimation of what appertains to their national independence, and if, unhappily, a different impression should at any time obtain in any quarter, they will, I am sure, rally round the Government of their ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson

... had camped, and a motley crowd they were—Mohammendans, Chinese, I-pien, Hua Miao, and other hooligans. Mobilization was effected by spies taking round secret cases (the ch'uandan) containing two pieces of coal and a feather—a simile meaning that the rebels were to burn like fire and fly like birds. Meanwhile, military forces had been dispatched from Yuen-nan-fu, the capital (twelve days away), and from Ch'u-tsing-fu (seven or eight days away), and these, to the strength of a thousand, now came to the city, and ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... while she is talking to you, and if she stops every time she says a word and only pretends to be working. I tell you that industry is everything in a woman. My mother always used to say: 'A girl should never go about empty-handed, and should be ready to climb over three fences to pick up a feather.' And yet she must be calm and steady in her work, and not rush and rampage about as if she were going to pull down a piece of the world. And when she speaks and answers you, notice whether she is either too bashful or too bold. You may not believe it, but girls are quite different when they see ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... to be the leader of the band. He had a feather in his bonnet, and I saw a steel corslet gleam under his cloak, when some one held up a lanthorn to examine me the better. His trunk-hose were striped with black, white, and green—the livery as I learned afterwards ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman

... continuous and low sounds of my pleading voice, worked progressively and powerfully on her heart, and perhaps not less so on my own. For these spells are double-edged. The silly birds may be charmed with the pipe of the fowler, which is but a tube of reeds. Not so with a bird of our own feather! As I went on, and my resolve strengthened, and my voice found new modulations, and our faces were drawn closer to the bars and to each other, not only she, but I, succumbed to the fascination, and were kindled by the charm. We make love, and thereby ourselves fall ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... all parts of the body, especially the neck and feet, tucked under the shoulders, side of the trunk, leg and foot; then the opposite side of the blanket is folded and tucked under in the same manner, till the blanket and sheet cover the whole body smoothly and tightly. Then comes a feather-bed, or a comforter doubled up, and packed on and around the patient, so that no heat can escape, or air enter in any part of the pack, if the head be very hot, it may be left out of the pack, or the sheet may be doubled around it, or a cold wet compress, not too much wrung out, be ...
— Hydriatic treatment of Scarlet Fever in its Different Forms • Charles Munde

... are almost as well preserved as they would be if they had been imbedded in so much plaster of Paris. They have yielded the Archaeopteryx, the existence of which was first made known by the finding of a fossil feather, or rather of the impression of one. It is wonderful enough that such a perishable thing as a feather, and nothing more, should be discovered; yet, for a long time, nothing was known of this bird except its feather. But, ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley

... Ledes Castle. Three interesting Wardrobe Accounts are extant, showing her expenses at this time (31/17 to 31/19); but the last is almost illegible. "Divers decoctions and recipes" made up at Northampton for the young Prince, came to 6 shillings, 9 pence. "Litter for my Lady's bed" (to put under the feather bed in the box-like bedstead) cost 6 pence. Either her Ladyship or her royal charge must have entertained a strong predilection for "shrimpis," judging from the frequency with which that entry occurs. Four quarters of wheat, we are told, made 1200 loaves. There is evidence of a good deal of company, ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... chaotic night in which he was drifting, light as a feather floating on the wind, John Aldous experienced neither pain nor very much of the sense of life. And yet, without seeing or feeling, he seemed to be living, All was dead in him but that last consciousness, which is almost the spirit; he might have ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... trimmed hedges, butterflies, posies, and nightingales of the English poets, but the whole orb, with its geologic history, the Kosmos, carrying fire and snow, that rolls through the illimitable areas, light as a feather though weighing billions ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... tall grey alders where, in the sudden twilight of the leaves, woodcock after woodcock fluttered upward twittering, only to stop and drop, transformed at the vicious crack of Siward's gun to fluffy balls of feather whirling earthward ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... and encouragement. But he had barely extended his limbs from under him and stretched out his hands to grasp the edge of Nell's saddle, when the giant hand of Idris grabbed him. The Sudanese snatched him like a feather, laid him before him and began to tie him with a palm rope, and after binding his hands, placed him across the saddle. Stas pressed his teeth and resisted as well as he could, but in vain. Having a parched throat and a mouth ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... as it lay in a jewelled cradle in the chancel. Another child by Miss Preece, christened "Power,'' was born on the 20th of August 1908. The publicity given to this event renewed the scandal, and in November an attempt to "tar and feather'' Mr Pigott resulted in two men being sent to prison. Later in the month proceedings were instituted against him by the bishop of Bath and Wells under ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... glorious storm Of inspiration—what will it perform? Spring claims the verse that with his influence glows, And shall be paid with what himself bestows. Thou, veil'd with op'ning foliage, lead'st the throng Of feather'd minstrels, Philomel! in song; Let us, in concert, to the season sing, Civic, and sylvan heralds of the spring! With notes triumphant spring's approach declare! To spring, ye Muses, annual tribute bear! 30 The Orient ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton

... faint descent from the standing of the Quinceys. But the old lady had completely identified herself, not only with the Moons, but with the higher branch, which she always spoke of as "my family." In fact she had worn her connection with the Quinceys as a feather in her cap so long that the feather had grown, as it were, into an entire bird of paradise. And once a bird of paradise, always a bird of paradise, though it had turned on the world a somewhat ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair

... secretive habit holding good to the final fathom of the slipping hawser of events. "But you must bear with me once more, and whatever you hear between now and the time you go to press, don't comment on it. I have one more chance to win out, and it hangs in a balance that a feather's weight might tip the wrong way. I'll be with you between ten and twelve to-night, and you can safely save two columns of the morning paper for the sensation ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... of poor Hunchie lying white and moaning in the bed rose in Betty's memory. She could not return and report that it was impossible for her to reach the doctor's office. Afraid as she was of the crossed wires, she was more afraid of showing the white feather. ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson

... on, and a moment later the girl was slain and scalped by his companions. And why did the gallant and self-sacrificing lover touch her with his spear before he left her to be murdered? Because touching an enemy—male or female—with his spear entitles the noble red man to wear a feather of honor as if he had taken a scalp! Yet he "would have died to save ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... cannot but admire it, even in a savage. The prepossession which our sex is supposed to entertain for the character of a soldier is, I know, a standing piece of raillery among the wits. A cockade, a lapell'd coat, and a feather, they will tell you, are irresistible by a female heart. Let it be so. Who is it that considers the helpless situation of our sex, that does not see that we each moment stand in need of a protector, and that a brave one too? [Formed of the more delicate materials of nature, ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler

... the plans he had adopted, and was adopting, for the benefit of all who became Chartists. He anticipated great results from his scheme of labour palaces—denied the propriety of being placed in the election returns as a feather in the quill of Whiggery—was an earnest advocate for the amelioration of Ireland, and still willing and determined to agitate for their cause. He would go to parliament, and record his first motion for 'The people's charter, and no surrender.' The meeting ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... Olivia; but her I had only known as it were a child, and I looked back on those as on childish days. The lovely creature was clothed in a sky-blue riding-habit with embroidered button-holes, and a green hat and feather, with suitable decorations. She had a delicate twisted cane-whip in her hand, a nosegay in her bosom, and a purple cestus round her waist. There were beside two gentlemen in the coach, genteelly dressed; and they all appeared ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... Secessionists. One of them, who was a militia officer in Keitt's own district, had just returned from a muster arrayed in faded regimentals of blue jeans, with a dragoon's sword trailing at his side and a huge fore-and-aft chapeau surmounted with a long feather. He was full of enthusiasm for the cause and descanted with particular eloquence upon what he called the wrongs of the South. "'I tell you, sah,' said he," continued Breckinridge, "'we cannot stand it any longer; we intend to fight; we are preparing to fight; it ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... soaked with our blood he burned his banners and his eagles—his poor eagles, ever victorious, who cried 'Forward' in the battles, and had flown the length and breadth of Europe, they were saved the infamy of belonging to the enemy: all the treasures of England couldn't get her a tail-feather of them. No more eagles—the rest is well known. The Red Man went over to the Bourbons, like the scoundrel that he is. France is crushed; the soldier is nothing; they deprive him of his dues; they discharge him to make room for broken-down nobles—ah, 'tis pitiable! They seized ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... if she likes. There's nothing strange in that, when there's not wind enough to fly a feather;" and after a few moments more, in which we resumed our way to the ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston

... the pots of "the Forty" do boil before the Lord, and the flames of the chosen were unfanned by the feather of 'Arry's goose-quill. ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler

... man of the people of West Africa who had journeyed far and wide and traversed many a desert and a tide. He was once cast upon an island, where he abode a long while and, returning thence to his native country, brought with him the quill of a wing feather of a young Rukh, whilst yet in egg and unhatched; and this quill was big enough to hold a goat skin of water, for it is said that the length of the Rukh chick's wing, when he cometh forth of the egg, is a thousand fathoms. The folk marvelled at this quill, when they saw it, and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... anything else in his world. It was quite impossible to get his feet off the solid earth: and apparently his mind was anchored firmly to his feet. But Ruth had the attractiveness of all young things—she was fresh and cheerful, with a heart as light as a feather—and, by the law of contrast, she suited him to a nicety, more especially as she was an excellent little housewife to boot. So the courting prospered sunnily; and he let ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce

... replied Dave with a cheerful smile, such as he always wore in the presence of his superiors. "I found something in this berth I did not like to see about a bed in which a gentleman is to sleep, and I have been through it with poison and a feather; and I will give you the whole southern Confederacy if you find a single redback in the ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic

... compare notes. The number of birds each has secured, the good and bad shots, with other events of the day, are all pleasant topics at supper. After the evening meal, we plan the next day's business, and then, wearied, we seek our feather beds and sleep too soundly even to dream. So we pass the days in a sort of luxurious vagabondism. How very pleasant it is to be a vagabond, when one may return to starched linen and the trammels of ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff

... duty-walk, he still barks a little at the outset, but thereafter begins at once to lag, and is found in an armchair when the party returns. It is vain to remind him that in the old days he was called the little black feather for the lightness of his gait when puffed along by the gusts of a fierce nor'-easter. Here is one of the complimentary stanzas that were lavished upon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 12, 1919 • Various

... might have knocked me over with a feather, for coming down the 'ill arm in arm I see the Honorable Mr. Brunow and that there Sacovitch. They was talking together that interested they didn't notice me. Now Mr. Brunow, 'e knows me, sir, if Sacovitch doesn't, ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray

... banners droop; and will not wave, but lazily flap, as if metamorphosed into painted tin-banners! Worse, far worse, these hundred thousand, such is the Historian's testimony, of the fairest of France! Their snowy muslins all splashed and draggled; the ostrich feather shrunk shamefully to the backbone of a feather: all caps are ruined; innermost pasteboard molten into its original pap: Beauty no longer swims decorated in her garniture, like Love-goddess hidden-revealed in her Paphian clouds, but struggles in disastrous imprisonment in it, for ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... and are very manageable beasts. There are plenty of fowls like those of Castilla, and others very large, which are bred from fowls brought from China. They are very palatable, and make fine capons. Some of these fowls are black in feather, skin, flesh, and bones, and are pleasant to the taste. [77] Many geese are raised, as well as swans, ducks, and tame pigeons brought from China. There is abundance of flesh of wild game, such as venison, and wild boars, and in some parts porcupines. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair

... suit much too large for him, with high white collar and red tie, while near by sat a tall, unnaturally rosy-cheeked spinster dressed in a trailing white gown, with orange blossoms covering a white veil hung over her hair, and an immense feather fan in her white-gloved hand. Around the room, decorated with some Christmas greens and lit by a red-hot stove, was gathered a group of interested observers of all descriptions—some evidently invited guests, some ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher

... William Darling, the light-keeper. "Ah, yes, we must go to the rescue," exclaimed his daughter, pleading tearfully with both father and mother, until the former replied: "Very well, Grace, I will let you persuade me, though it is against my better judgment." Like a feather in a whirlwind the little boat was tossed on the tumultuous sea, but, borne on the blast that swept the cruel surge, the shrieks of those shipwrecked sailors seemed to change her weak sinews into cords of steel. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... the fact of a man being unfortunate perhaps arises from him not being so good a fisherman or so good a man of business as the others?-Yes. He just gets into association with men of the same class as himself, on the principle of birds of a feather. ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... of a derrick for laying the blocks proved a considerable item of economy in this work. This derrick cost $50 and two men could mount and move it on the floor beams. It had a boom reaching out over the wall and was operated by a windlass. A plug and feather to fit the center 6-in. hole in the block was used for hoisting the blocks. By this means blocks only seven days old were laid without trouble. It may be noted that the walls were kept drenched with ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette

... feeling now no pains, Leans o'er the boat's advancing end; And aided by her lord reclaims, The present of her feather'd friend. ...
— Ballads - Founded On Anecdotes Relating To Animals • William Hayley

... now totally taken in love's true arrow from the point up to the feather, in that part, where making no new wound, the lips or the original one of nature, which had owed its first breathing to this dear instrument, clung, as if sensible of gratitude, in eager suction round it, whilst ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... landlord woke, and, leaving his feather-bed, began washing himself; but when he took the towel to dry himself he drew the pin all across his face, and made a red streak from ear to ear. Then he went into the kitchen to light his pipe, but when he stooped towards the hearth to take up a coal the ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm

... produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... infant daughter, Charlotte, to do justice to Jean d'Albret in the matter of Navarre, and to surrender Naples, Navarre, and Artois, if he failed to keep his engagement. Such a treaty was not likely to stand; but, for the time, it was a great feather in Francis's cap, and a further step towards the isolation of England. It was the work of Charles's Gallicised ministry, and Maximilian professed the utmost disgust at their doings. He was eager to come down to the Netherlands ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... thou wast, What were the proud one's scorn to thee? A feather which thou mightest cast Aside, as idly as the blast The light ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... angel. I was afraid you would show the white feather. It's a go, then—Manila! We can start next week and get there in ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon

... is possible for one of these waq[|c]exe[|c]aze to reach a man about 6 feet distant; and even mounted men have been killed by them. Spears are used also in some of the dances. Around the shaft is wrapped the skin of a swan or brant. The end feather at the top is white; the other feathers are white or spotted. The bent spear is no longer employed by the Omaha, though the Osage, Pawnee, and other tribes still use it to a greater or ...
— Omaha Dwellings, Furniture and Implements • James Owen Dorsey,

... the horses and guns in the front yard of a Chatto. It looked more like Central Park to me. The fello that owned the place was standin at the gate when we came in. He had on a green felt hat with the edges curled up like a derby an a feather stuck in it. I wouldnt have been surprised if hed started to yodel. I bet he was as glad to see us as the meesels. A regiment of field artilery walkin around your front yard aint ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter

... they will care for your society. I never go where I am not wanted, and I do not choose to have you. Understand, I am not saying anything against the Morrisons. Frances is a nice child, and her mother is very pleasant and kind, but you can't change the world; birds of a feather will flock together." ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard

... ne'er so lightly, into song he broke: Soil so quick-receptive,—not one feather-seed, Not one flower dust fell but straight its fall awoke Vitalizing virtue: song would song succeed Sudden as spontaneous—prove a poet-soul!" Indeed? Rock's the song-soil rather, surface hard and bare: Sun and dew their mildness, storm and frost their rage Vainly both expend,—few flowers ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... Serjeant Saunders that got maltreated: first one judge had a peck at him: then another: till they left him scarce a feather to fly with; and, when Alfred's counsel rose to reply, the judges stopped him, and the chief of the court, Alfred's postponing enemy, delivered his judgment after ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... only at a late period that the Italians gave their attention to this kind of composition. In the eighteenth century we find only two specimens of romance, "The Congress of Citera," by Algarotti, of which Voltaire said that it was written with a feather drawn from the wings of love; and the "Roman Nights," by Alexander Verri (1741-1816). In his romance he introduces the shades of celebrated Romans, particularly of Cicero, and an ingenious comparison of ancient and modern ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... art, as we have already seen, antedates silk weaving. The youngest of the three arts is tapestry. The oldest embroidery stitches are: "the feather stitch," so called because they all took one direction, the stitches over-lapping, like the feathers of a bird; and "cross-stitch" or "cushion" style, because used on church cushions, made for kneeling when at prayer or to ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood

... the men were poachers, whose aim was to net this reach of a famous trout-stream. One and all were idle rascals whose boast was that they never did a stroke of honest work while there was 'fish, fur, or feather' to be stolen from ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore

... divinity of the Church, his passionate nature could not help execrating the human element that would weaken her influence. "He teaches that the mystical Vine of the Church still grows and Peter and Paul who died for it, still live. He holds by that Church. He begs Christians not to be moved feather-like by every wind of doctrine. 'You have' he tells them 'the Old Testament and the New. The Pastor of the Church guides you, let this suffice for your salvation'" (Brother Azarias). In his devotional life Dante is just as ardent ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery

... is excellent, that a man, who is henpecked till he has not a decent feather left, should be jealous about such a woman. But I feel assured that Etheridge will make all right. I shall take the advice of the old gentleman, and walk about the grounds, perhaps, as he says, I may fall in with Lady Etheridge and improve my ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... must now examine some of the-forms which Aryan roots are supposed to take in Quichua. In the first place, Quichua abhors the shock of two consonants. Thus, a word like ple'w in Greek would be unpleasant to the Peruvian's ear, and he says pillui, 'I sail.' The plu, again, in pluma, a feather, is said to be found in pillu, 'to fly.' Quichua has no v, any more than Greek has, and just as the Greeks had to spell Roman words beginning with V with Ou, like Valerius—Ou?ale'rios—so, where Sanscrit has v, Quichua has ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... bright lookout ahead. The emu will run from human beings, especially from blacks. It is not, however, afraid either of horses or drays. It greatly resembles, in size and shape, the ostrich; but its colour is of a uniform brownish-black with feather-like hairs in lieu of feathers, and it has no wings, but its legs being very strong it can run at a rapid rate. As its head reaches seven feet or more from the ground it can obtain a ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston

... until they came to a small outhouse, long and low. On the sheltered side of it they paused to take breath, and Feather Victor explained: "This is his hour in the gymnasium. To make the body strong required thought and care. Mere riding and running and swinging of the ax will not develop every muscle. So I made this gymnasium, and here Pierre works ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick

... and gallant youth there was, however, a quality which partook of earlier times. He should, we felt, have worn a feather in his cap—and a cloak instead of his Norfolk coat. He walked with a little swagger, and stood with his hand on his hip, as if his palm pressed the hilt of his sword. If he ever fell in love, we told one another, he would, without a doubt, sing ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey

... or cheese cloth to dust it with. Never wipe it with a dry chamois skin or silk cloth. Silk is not as soft as cotton and will scratch. A dry chamois skin picks up the dust and grit and gradually scours off the fine finish. In dusting never use a feather duster, nor rub the piano hard with anything. The dust should be whipped off, and not rubbed into the varnish. If the piano is dingy, smoky or dirty looking, it should be washed carefully with lukewarm water ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... retarding influence of air in the way which became familiar a generation or two later; he could not put a feather and a coin in a vacuum tube and prove that the two would there fall with equal velocity, because, in his day, the air-pump had not yet been invented. The experiment was made only a generation after ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... strange and funny words to the ring of yellow light, and instantly it stands still, and quivers its bushy tail, and pants. Then the peddler speaks to the cunning mungooz, which immediately leaps to the ground, and sitting quite erect, with its broad tail curled over its back, like a marabout feather, holds its paws together in the quaint manner of a squirrel, and looks attentive. More of the peddler's funny conjuration, and up springs the mungooz into the air, like a Birman's wicker football, and, alighting on the kitten's back, clings close and fast. Away fly kitten and mungooz,—away ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... button, sometimes black velvet. He wore always a vest of cloth, or of red, blue, or green satin, much embroidered. He used no ring; and no jewels, except in the buckles of his shoes, garters, and hat, the latter always trimmed with Spanish point, with a white feather. He had always the cordon bleu outside, except at fetes, when he wore it inside, with eight or ten millions ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... kind," replies the wig-man, pityingly. "The Patent Ventilating Anticalvitium. You'll find it as light as a feather, almost. Made of superfine 'orse-'air." He says this as if he never got his material from anything below the value of a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various

... open country. O nature! nature! I love thee so, but I came forth from thy womb good for nothing—not fit even for life. There goes a cock-sparrow, hopping along with outspread wings; he chirrups, and every note, every ruffled feather on his little body, is ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... and simple beauty, The fruitful cocoa and the fragrant palm Excell'd the wilding daughters of the wood, That stretch'd unwieldy their enormous arms, Clad with luxuriant foliage, from the trunk, Like the old eagle, feather'd to the heel; While every fibre, from the lowest root To the last leaf upon the topmost twig, Was held by common sympathy, diffusing Through all the complex frame unconscious life. Such was the locust with its hydra boughs, A hundred heads on one stupendous trunk; And such the mangrove, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various

... was fairly broad daylight, and not an Indian feather had shown nor an Indian shot been heard. Slowly, sleepily, at the gruff summons of their sergeants, the troopers were crawling out of their blankets and stretching and yawning by the fires. No stirring trumpet-call had roused them from their dreams. ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King

... comparatively early date that I saw Jim in the exercise of his public functions. His Majesty entered the office—a portly, rather flabby man, with the face of a gentleman, rendered unspeakably pathetic and absurd by the great sabre at his side and the peacock's feather in his hat. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... yellow incline; a great curling wave whirled back on Lane; a heavy shock sent him flying from his seat; a gurgling demoniacal roar deafened his ears and a cold eager flood engulfed him. He was drawn under, as the whirlpool sucks a feather; he was tossed up, as the wind throws a straw. The boat bobbed upright near him. He grasped the gunwale ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... among these people than among any of the inhabitants of Europe, for they powder not only their heads but their beards too. Their heads however were decorated with more showy ornaments, for I observed that most of them had, just above one ear, stuck a feather, which appeared to have been taken from the tail of the common dunghill cock; so that these gentlemen are not without poultry for their table. They were armed with spears, and long sticks or poles, like the quarter-staff; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... various experiments that they had just one. Scientists know how many trillions of electrons flow through an incandescent electric lamp in a second and how many quadrillions of them it would take to weigh as much as a feather. They know what the electrons do when they move, how fast they can move, and what substances let electrons move through them easily and what substances hold them back; and they know perfectly well how to set them in motion. How the scientists came to know all these things you will learn ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne

... down any weeds that might injure it. This is all that is done till the cob is beginning to form, when the blind and weak shoots are broken off, leaving four or five of the finest bearing shoots. The feather, when it begins to turn brown and dead, should also be taken off; that the plant may have all the nourishment to ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... so on. Why he said so nobody knows. He cannot have tried. He was not above trying experiments, like his smaller disciples; but probably it never occurred to him to doubt the fact. It seems so natural that a heavy body should fall quicker than a light one; and perhaps he thought of a stone and a feather, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... see what's happened all you men to talk so odd. Here's Jim Pettijohn been here a-offerin' his services to help Eunice look after a gold mow, or somethin'. An' me that surprised you could knock me down with a feather, just to see him walkin' up our front path. We ain't never had no 'casion for visits from the Squire—not sence he got to be one. Before then, years ago, when he was a humbly little barefoot shaver runnin' ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond

... sort, in his battered steeple-hat and cloak of rusty black. The other was closely wrapped in a red mantle, uptilted behind by a sword of prodigious length, and for all that his broad, grey hat was unadorned by any feather, it was set at a rakish, ruffling, damn-me angle that pronounced him no likely comrade for the ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... BUTTON SNAKEROOT, BLUE BLAZING STAR, or GAY FEATHER (L. scariosa), may attain six feet, but usually not more than half that height; and its round flower-heads normally stand well away from the stout stem on foot-stems of their own. The bristling scales of the involucre, often tinged with purple at the tips, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... chains are only strong While slaves submit to wear them; And, who could bind them on the strong, Determined not to wear them? Then clank your chains, e'en though the links Were light as fashion's feather: The heart which rightly feels and ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark

... element of fear of the consequences of displeasing is perhaps more important than the responsiveness to the praise and blame itself. To the praise and blame of close associates most men are also highly suggestible, not less so when there is equality in social status. "Birds of a feather flock together," but humans tend to become similar because they flock together. There are few men who can withstand the pressure of doing what their group approves, and refraining ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... life of me whereabouts I was, in a gig or some of them things, with another spark along with him, and led horses, and servants, and dogs, and scarce a place to put any Christian of them into; for my late lady had sent all the feather-beds off before her, and blankets and household linen, down to the very knife-cloths, on the cars to Dublin, which were all her own, lawfully paid for out of her own money. So the house was quite bare, and my young master, the moment ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth

... Elector" Frederick William of Brandenburg. From the very beginning of his reign Frederick III. was resolved upon a rupture at the first convenient opportunity, while the nation was, if possible, even more bellicose than the king. The apparently insuperable difficulties of Sweden in Poland was the feather that turned the scale; on the 1st of June 1657, Frederick III. signed the manifesto justifying a war which was never formally declared and brought Denmark to the very verge of ruin. The extraordinary details ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... rumors continued to come. Citizens, fearing ridicule, perhaps, slipped unobtrusively out of town, to test their truth. Kemble was back from a trip to the so-called gold fields. Editorially, he made sport of his findings. He had seen feather-brained fortune-seekers gambling hopelessly with fate, suffering untold hardships for half the pay they could have ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... Dick, I suppose! You fuss over him like a hen with one chick. Let him run riot if he thinks it'll amuse him. You can whip a young pup off feather, but you can't ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... last with the utmost kindness and respect, especially the rattlesnakes, a dozen of which will frequently be squirming on the ground at once. It is noticeable that the Indians never pick up a rattlesnake when coiled, but always wait until it straightens itself out under the feather stroking, for it is claimed that the rattlesnake cannot strike uncoiled. At all events, when one is at its full length, the Indians not only catch it up fearlessly, but carry it with impunity in their mouths and hands. As might be supposed, however, the Moquis are said to possess an antidote against ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard

... Strassburg is an example; the detail of workmanship is infinite; even the striking apparatus and the dials showing planetary motions are far beyond our own means, or perhaps our taste. When Peter Henlein invented the watch, using as the mainspring a coiled feather, he may not have made chronometers as exact as those turned out nowadays, but the "Nuremberg eggs"—so called from their place of origin and their shape, not a disk, but a sphere—were marvels of chasing and incrustation ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... was a group of which the center was a young and very pretty girl. A simple white gown became her youth and freshness, and a large white hat with a long white ostrich-feather curled over the brim, shading her piquant face, added to her charm. A few pink roses fastened in her dress were the only color about her, except the roses in her cheeks. Most of those with her were men considerably older ...
— Bred In The Bone - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page

... stands alone. Have ready the powdered sugar, and then beat it hard into the white of egg, till it becomes thick and smooth; flavouring it as you proceed with a few drops of oil of lemon, or a little extract of roses. Spread it evenly over the cake with a broad knife or a feather; if you find it too thin, beat in a little more powdered sugar. Cover with it thickly the top and sides of the cake, taking care not to have it rough and streaky. To ice well requires skill and practice. When the icing is about ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie

... I did come to save Ruth Chester from a dancing death, for she is as light as a feather and sails on the air like thistle-down. I felt sorry for Tom, for when he danced with me he could see her, and when he danced with her I pouted at him, even over Judge Wade's arm. I verily believe it was from being really rattled ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess

... "Old Suetonius describes, for example, an instrument that accompanied dinner-parties during the reigns of the last few Caesars. It was a device that accomplished, two thousand years ago, the function of our proud Bureau of Seasonal Gratuities. A feather, my ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang

... acts pleased God; and this act seems to have been particularly satisfactory. These men were "angels of God" who required this infamy for their protection! If it takes all the honor out of a man when he gets to be an angel, they may use my wings for a feather-duster. ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener

... them—Jehanneton, the fair helm-maker; Denise, Blanche, Isabeau, and Guillemette, the landlord's daughter, who consorted gaily enough with these brightly-plumaged birds of a rogue's paradise. But the sixth woman was a bird of quite another feather. ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... therefore, occurred to the squire to show the white feather upon this unpleasant occasion. The next day, feigning excuse to attend the sale of a hunting stud at Tattersall's, he ruefully went up to London, after taking a peculiarly affectionate leave of his wife. Indeed, the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... quills. Also a pair of red leggings worked with beads. Moccasins worked with colored hair. A fine otter skin robe. White weasel skins to intertwine with his beautiful long black locks. A magnificent center eagle feather. A rawhide covered bow, accompanied by a quiver ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin

... end overlapped the ice for a breadth of scarce two feet, and it seemed a wonder that so huge a weight could be sustained by such an apparently fragile prop. But there it rested; and had done so for years—perhaps for ages—suspended over the beetling chasm, as if the touch of a feather would precipitate ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... the improvement of wages and of conditions, possibly to be won by combined effort. There is a stage, familiar in the East End of London, when there is no hope for anything, except, perhaps, a hired feather and the off-chance of an outing. Yet even the roughest trades employing women and children in factories or large workshops, to be found in the East End or in the outskirts of Glasgow, have in them the remote possibility of organization. Home ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... Some he placed in his pocket, some he returned to its place. He stood thinking, as it were weighing a possibility. While lingering thus, he noticed the reflected image of his own face in the glass—pale and spectre-like in its indistinctness. The sight seemed to be the feather which turned the balance of indecision: he drew a heavy breath, retired from the room, and passed downstairs. She heard him unbar the back-door, and go out ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... four-poster where once heavy draperies had shut in the slumbers of dead and gone Contessas, and she watched the square of moonlight travel over the painted cherubs on the ceiling. There was always a lump in her throat to be swallowed, and often the tears soaked into the big feather pillows, but there were no sobs ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley

... from all the fowl to make feather beds. She doesn't remember when women stopped wearing hoops in their skirts nor when bed springs replaced bed ropes. She does remember, however, that ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... every boy to pretend to write a love letter to every girl. Jack could get nothing better than a feather from the Indian headpiece that hung on the wall. This he dipped in Belle's shoe dressing, and wrote a note on the back of Cora's best piece of sheet music. Walter sat on the floor poking his whittled stick into the dead embers in the fire-place, and ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose

... seemed to be the leader of the band. He had a feather in his bonnet, and I saw a steel corslet gleam under his cloak, when some one held up a lanthorn to examine me the better. His trunk-hose were striped with black, white, and green—the livery as I learned afterwards ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman

... there was a sad patient look on his face, as though he was a martyr. He had no wish to be a martyr; but he had a feeling that for want of other means of expressing their sympathy with Jean Jacques, these rough people might tar and feather him at least; though it was only his misfortune that those sprung from his loins had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars. The inviolate spirit turns their spite against the wrongdoers. The martyr ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... that as the volley ceased, A low sob call'd them where They found an Indian maiden dead, Clasping in death's despair One feather from a Highland plume And ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... showed as unsubstantial as a dream, with the wooden reality of the two sticks making itself miserably apparent through the holes. Lastly, she put her dead husband's wig on the bare scalp of the pumpkin, and surmounted the whole with a dusty three-cornered hat, in which was stuck the longest tail feather of a rooster. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... I asked to be enlightened on so important a subject, and soon heard all the details from very willing lips. She was very simple in dress, and often came to call upon us in a fresh cotton-print gown and straw hat, with only the feather of a heron or a woodcock in it. Her husband, Captain Clifton, retired from the army, spoke French fairly well, and although he had little in common with Gilbert—being an enthusiastic sportsman—soon became his most constant ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... the feather in gasoline to which has been added a few spoonfuls of cornmeal. Draw the feather through the hands several times until it is clean; rinse in clear gasoline and shake in the fresh air till dry. A very light-colored or white feather may be tinted by dissolving ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin

... the priests, and we went into one; a very pretty little room, very clean, hung with pictures, set with books. The Priest was in his cell, with his hair clothes to his skin, bare-legged, with a sandal! only on, and his little bed without sheets, and no feather bed; but yet, I thought, soft enough. His cord about his middle; but in so good company, living with ease, I thought it a very good life. A pretty library they have. And I was in the refectoire, where every man his napkin, knife, cup of earth, and basin of the same; and a place for one ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... against the island of Ares all day long; for at dusk the light breeze left them. At last they spied above them, hurtling through the air, one of the birds of Ares which haunt that isle. It shook its wings down over the ship as she sped on and sent against her a keen feather, and it fell on the left shoulder of goodly Oileus, and he dropped his oar from his hands at the sudden blow, and his comrades marvelled at the sight of the winged bolt. And Eribotes from his seat hard by drew out the feather, ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... the way, was still wearing his old Janissary uniform, the blue dolman with the salavari reaching to the knee, leaving the calves bare. The only difference was that he now wore a white heron's feather in his hat instead of a black one, and by his side hung the sword of the Grand Vizier, whose palace in the Galata suburb he had levelled to the ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai

... with beautifully carved flowers and resting on lions' feet, I saw the princess, covered only by a thin silken petticoat, half sunk into a soft white feather-bed, like lightning on an ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob

... The crowd was so tremendous that we were nearly squeezed to a jelly in getting to our places. I was carried off my feet between two fat Seoras in mantillas and shaking diamond pendants, exactly as if I had been packed between two moveable feather-beds. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... when the rains ceased, and three or four weeks of clear and delightful weather left them without employment. The richest localities are very thickly populated, the miners having built themselves log-cabins and organized communities for the winter. On parts of Feather river, the American Fork, and the Mokelumne, Tuolumne, and Mariposa rivers, the diggings were still yielding a good return. New discoveries of rich veins of quartz-bearing gold continue to be made. A mine of silver ore, of a very rich quality, is reported to have been discovered in the neighborhood ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... side to side, the whole inclosed by a cap of fine network, fastened with a silver band. From the crest, like the plume of a Roman knight, a cluster of pure white feathers hung, and on the side of it a white feather of uncommon size projected upward and backward, the end of the feather set in a little tube which revolved with the wind, the whole imparting a further air of distinction to ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler

... left followed by a servant with a couple of sporting dogs in leash. ULFHEIM is in shooting costume, with high boots and a felt hat with a feather in it. He is a long, lank, sinewy personage, with matted hair and beard, and a loud voice. His appearance gives no precise clue to his age, but he ...
— When We Dead Awaken • Henrik Ibsen

... came in state. He was mounted on a small horse, as were two of his attendants; the rest of the cavalcade were on foot. His dress was most grotesque, consisting of a ragged red coat, with yellow facings, and a military cap and feather, apparently Portuguese. He came curvetting and leaping his horse, until within the distance of a hundred yards, when he dismounted, and, approaching the travellers, seated himself down on the ground. Captain Clapperton, by the hand of Lander, sent him his umbrella, as a token that he wished ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... her father's iron will too well to attempt any further protests. She wiped her eyes, and, while she put on a hat adorned with an aggressive white feather, she bade the family good-night in an unsteady voice. Thaddeus, anxious only to escape notice, sidled towards the door, and stood waiting for her, with a deprecating look ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland

... was his answer. "Go ahead an' smash the boats. You can hang some of them. But you can't touch me with the law. 'Tis me that's a crippled creature of circumstance, too weak to raise a hand against any man—a feather blown about by the windy contention of men strong in their back an' ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... that crowd the side chapels are subject to the accumulation of dirt as everything else in buildings sacred or lay, and at certain times of the day, a woman may be seen vigorously flapping the brass candlesticks and countless altar ornaments with a big feather broom. On the north side of the chancel some of the windows have sections of old painted glass, and in one of them there is part of a ship with men in crow's nests backed by clouds, a really ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home

... gasping, all. Force, courage, cunning, all were plied; Intrepid troops on either side No effort spared to populate The dusky realms of hungry Fate. This woful strife awoke compassion Within another feather'd nation, Of iris neck and tender heart. They tried their hand at mediation— To reconcile the foes, or part. The pigeon people duly chose Ambassadors, who work'd so well As soon the murderous rage to quell, And stanch the source of countless woes. A truce ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine

... times of silver mining, she seemed prettier than ever to Robert Fairchild, more girlish, more entrancing. The big eyes appeared bigger now, peeping from the confines of a poke bonnet; the little hands seemed smaller with their half-length gloves and shielded by the enormous peacock feather fan they carried. Only a moment Fairchild hesitated. Maurice Rodaine, attired in a mauve frock suit and the inevitable accompanying beaver, had stopped to talk to some one at the door. She stood alone, looking about the ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... below his chin. The village tailor had made the sleeves so tight that he could not put his little arms together. And how proud he was! He had a round hat with a black and gold buckle and a peacock's feather protruding jauntily from a tuft of Guinea-hen's feathers. A bunch of flowers larger than his head covered his shoulder, and ribbons floated down to his feet. The hemp-beater, who was also the village barber and ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... color of his cloak, and his shoes were russet leather, with rosettes of plum, and such high heels as Nick had never seen before. His bonnet was of tawny velvet, with a chain twisted round it, fastened by a jeweled brooch through which was thrust a curly cock-feather. A fine white Holland-linen shirt peeped through his jerkin at the throat, with a broad lace collar; and his short hair curled crisply all over his head. He had a little pointed beard, and the ends of his mustache were twisted so that they stood up fiercely on either ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett

... with yellow rolling eyes set in a countenance of extraordinary ugliness and I may add, extraordinary humour. His big, wide mouth with thick lips ran up the left side of his face towards an ear that was also big and projecting. His hair, that had a feather stuck in it, was real nigger wool covering a skull like a cannon ball and I should imagine as hard. This head, by the way, was set plumb upon the shoulders, as though it had been driven down between them by a pile hammer. They were very broad shoulders suggesting enormous ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... traveled West beyond the march of fresh oysters (though by the way, these have been seen in Detroit), and yet thinks he can penetrate the shadows and darkness of the wilderness. They put a hatchet in his hand, and stick a feather in his cap, and call him 'Nitche Nawba.' If I recollect right, in Yamoyden a soup was made of some white children. Indians have not been over dainty at times, and no doubt have done worse things; but on such occasions their modus operandi was not likely to be so much ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... would believe it, that my predominant misery during this night, was a feather bed and a pillow, rendered uneasy because it was soft as down! Yes, astonished reader! I felt about as uneasy in a feather bed, as Mr. Beasly, or any other fine London gentleman would, at laying on a plank, or the ballast of a transport. Such is the power of habit, and such the effect ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse

... happiness in her own name and that of all his friends in her part of the country. Her good will to Mary was practically expressed by an invitation to her house and a present of eggs, together with an offer of a feather-bed. Her motherly warning and ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... in the world may one see such great picturesqueness, variety, and brilliancy of color in the costumes of the masses as then still prevailed in Mexico. Largely of more or less pure Indian blood, come of a race Cortez found habited in feather tunics and head-dresses brilliant as the plumage of parrots, great lovers of flowers, three and a half centuries of contact with civilization had not served to deprive them of any of their fondness for bright colors. ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... a brooch and a cabinet beyond both foretell the unexpected development of good fortune. If the consultant is married, the thimble in the centre would show future changes in the household; that they will be advantageous is shown by the large feather which gives ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent

... me down with a feather!" she resumed. "He telephones me awhile ago and says to be outside the back door at ten to-night, because he'd something he wanted to tell me. Of course he couldn't come in and tell it me here, because he'd been fired and everything. ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... to Schirene; fifty plants of roses from Rocnabad;[71] a white shawl of Cachemire fifty feet in length, which folded into the handle of a fan; fifty screens, each made of a feather of the roc;[72] and fifty vases of crystal full of exquisite perfumes, and each sealed with ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli

... Sprinkle on them. Believe me, ladies, you will find In that sweet light more solid joys, More true contentment to the mind Than all town-toys. Nor Cupid there less blood doth spill, But heads his shafts with chaster love, Not feather'd with a sparrow's quill, But of a dove. There you shall hear the nightingale, The harmless syren of the wood, How prettily she tells a tale Of rape and blood. The lyric lark, with all beside Of Nature's feather'd ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... therefore he had no credit, and his temper must pass as not proven. But if you had taken from the mother her piece of work—she was busy embroidering a lady's pinafore in a design for which she had taken colors and arrangement from a peacock's feather, but was disposing them in the form of a sun which with its rays covered the stomacher, the deeper tints making the shadow between the golden arrows—had you taken from her this piece of work, I say, and ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... was Don Juan's earliest scrape; but whether I shall proceed with his adventures is Dependent on the public altogether; We 'll see, however, what they say to this: Their favour in an author's cap 's a feather, And no great mischief 's done by their caprice; And if their approbation we experience, Perhaps they 'll have some ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... might be seen about the place, hunting insects and taking their ease on the fence as if no thought of nesting ever stirred their wise little heads. The last addition to the domicile was curious: a soft white feather from the poultry yard, which was fastened up on the edge, and stood there floating in the breeze; a white banner of peace flung out to the world ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller

... Then Garuda, the lord of birds, struck with thunderbolt, spake laughingly unto Indra engaged in the encounter, in sweet words, saying, 'I shall respect the Rishi (Dadhichi) of whose bone the Vajra hath been made. I shall also respect the Vajra, and thee also of a thousand sacrifices. I cast this feather of mine whose end thou shalt not attain. Struck with thy thunder I have not felt the slightest pain.' And having said this, the king of birds cast a feather of his. And all creatures became exceedingly glad, beholding that excellent feather of Garuda so cast off. And seeing that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... the interchange of looks, the letters she had written and received, the words which had been spoken, tingled and smarted unbearably in her recollections. Their lips had touched—she recalled it with horror. She desired never to see Harry Feversham after this night. Therefore she added her fourth feather to the three. ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason

... upon its wings descended, And every golden feather gleamed therein— Feather and scale inextricably blended The serpent's mailed and many-colored skin Shone through the plumes, its coils were twined within By many a swollen and knotted fold, and high And far, the neck ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... cleared most of his canvas and boatswain's stores out of the ship. Perhaps a new 3 1/2-inch hawser found its way to the "Terra Nova"; anyway, if the "Invincible's" stores came on board the exploring vessel she made good use of them and saved them their Jutland fate. We left the Solent in high feather ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans

... where Starlight an' Hawkins was enjoyin' their evenin' meal, an' I was mortal proud of the condition they was in. I reckon the' wasn't another pair in the territory 'at could 'a' covered their ante that day, an' it was a feather in Uncle Happy's ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... the white feather she had given him, and looked at it. Yes, that was what she thought of him. A coward! And all the time he would have given anything to be able to offer himself for ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking

... obey her. The chorus were in the next room. The room in which they had been sitting till that moment was too small, and was divided in two by cotton curtains, behind which was a huge bed with a puffy feather mattress and a pyramid of cotton pillows. In the four rooms for visitors there were beds. Grushenka settled herself just at the door. Mitya set an easy chair for her. She had sat in the same place to watch ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... explaining to her in low tones that ten thousand francs from one party and fifteen thousand from the other came to twenty-five thousand. A splendid deal! Muffat was getting rid of her in every sense of the word; it was a pretty trick to have plucked him of this last feather! But Rose in her anger vouchsafed no answer. Whereupon Mignon in disdain left her to her feminine spite and, turning to Bordenave, who was once more on the stage with Fauchery ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... Think that pugnosed driver did it out of spite. Who is this she was like? O yes! Mrs Miriam Dandrade that sold me her old wraps and black underclothes in the Shelbourne hotel. Divorced Spanish American. Didn't take a feather out of her my handling them. As if I was her clotheshorse. Saw her in the viceregal party when Stubbs the park ranger got me in with Whelan of the Express. Scavenging what the quality left. High tea. Mayonnaise I ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... White Cloud saw a feather lying on the grass. It was painted, as if it had fallen from a ...
— Two Indian Children of Long Ago • Frances Taylor

... rudimentary red eye-specks of the star-fish. After examining the eyes, I next laid open, in all its length, from the neck to the point of the sack, the dorsal bone of the creature—its internal shell, I should rather say, for bone it has none. The form of the shell in this species is that of a feather, equally developed in the web on both sides. It gives rigidity to the body, and furnishes the muscles with a fulcrum; and we find it composed, like all other shells, of a mixture of animal matter and carbonate of lime. ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... dinner he met Russ Brissenden. How he chanced to come there, whose friend he was or what acquaintance brought him, Martin did not know. Nor had he the curiosity to inquire about him of Ruth. In short, Brissenden struck Martin as anaemic and feather-brained, and was promptly dismissed from his mind. An hour later he decided that Brissenden was a boor as well, what of the way he prowled about from one room to another, staring at the pictures or poking his nose into books and magazines ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... night. I could hear the water hammering into something that rang like a gong; and each time I rolled over in the musty trough of my feather-bed I fractiously asked myself why the mischief they had left the tap running all night. Next morning the matter was explained when, on demanding a bath, I was told that "there wasn't but one in the house, and 'twas undher the rain-down. But sure ye can have it," with which it was dragged ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... hardly more than that of Earth's moon, but the way the man picked up the limp Motwick with one hand and tossed him over a shoulder was startling: as though he lifted a feather pillow. He followed Trella out the door of the Golden Satellite and fell in step beside her. Immediately she was grateful for his presence. The dimly lighted street was not crowded, but she didn't like the looks of the ...
— The Jupiter Weapon • Charles Louis Fontenay

... and the enforcement of constant practice by all young men and apprentices. The monk's mixture of brimstone, charcoal, and salt-petre, however, in course of time left the old English clothyard shaft with its grey goose feather and the accompanying six-foot bow of yew to be playthings only, or but fit to use in shooting squirrels or other small deer. The "Woodmen of Arden" is the oldest society (in this county) of toxopholites as the modern drawers of the long bow ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... rocky block of El-Bab. I mounted the rock, and saw Sebhah in the north, where we were to rest in the afternoon. There was a huge stone balancing on a ledge of the rock, which apparently wanted but a feather's weight to throw it down. Bent on mischief, I was going to heave it down, when the people called to me to desist. On descending, they told me the stone had fallen from the clouds and caught there; it was unlucky to touch it. A demon sits upon ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... No doubt they thought they had brought her to bay, and expected her to make some sort of confession. They would find there was no getting around her that way. There was no danger of discovery, so long as she kept her head, and she would never show the white feather. She would write another story—she could do it and she would, too, that very night. But first she would go back to the Students' Building. The Dramatic Club was giving a reception to Mr. Blake and the members of the ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde

... the site of the Holy Well, Palestine; but the admiration excited thereby for the excellent good taste of the printer is too soon alas! dispelled, for between the second and third stanzas we see another woodcut representing a feather-clad-and-crowned negro seated on a barrel, smoking—a veritable ornament ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... in the dress of an armed Corsican chief. He entered the amphitheatre about twelve o'clock. On the front of his cap was embroidered in gold letters, Viva La Liberta; and on one side of it was a handsome blue feather and cockade, so that it had an elegant, as well as a warlike appearance. He wore no mask, saying that it was not proper for a gallant Corsican. So soon as he came into the room he drew universal attention.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... evening long to be remembered by the boys. Steve's turn to occupy the extra bunk had come around, and he felt in high feather in consequence, while the other boys had to select ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie

... below and Bertie, and some tea was coming in. They were looking at a picture of Cecil's just returned from being mounted as a screen. It was a group of brilliant autumn leaves—the gorgeous maple, with its capricious hues, an arrow-shaped leaf, half red, half green, like a parrot's feather, contrasting with another "spotted like the pard," and then one blood-red. The collecting of them had been an interest to the children in their daily walks, and Cecil had arranged them with ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... reference to the tolerance which "John Company" wisely conceded to Hindoo religious ceremony, so long as its traditions were found consistent with the ordinary dictates of humanity. "The Story of a Feather" in this volume has five illustrations, two of which are very clever. Among the other cartoons we find The Modern Macheath (the Captain being Sir Robert Peel). The fifth volume contains eight of his illustrations, six being cartoons; among them, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... was sustained. The troops mustered operated in two armies, which started from Rhuddlan and Worcester, and enclosed Llewelyn, as before, from north and south. Meanwhile the ships of the Cinque Ports reduced Anglesey, "the noblest feather in Llewelyn's wing," as Edward joyfully observed. But the King was faithful to his old policy of a blockade. A bridge of ships was thrown across the Menai Straits, and the forests between Wales proper and the English ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... done had I been beheaded yesterday at Hertford,"[667] and goes back to his prison to suffer death. Every detail is found there, even the simple picturesque detail; the rebels arm themselves as they can, with staves, rusty swords, old bows blackened by smoke, arrows "on which only a single feather remained." The account of the death of Edward III. in the same annals is gloomy and tragic and full of grandeur. In the "Chronicon Angliae,"[668] the anonymous author's burning hatred for John of Gaunt inspires him with some fiery pages: all of which would count among the ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... a portly person in the half-light of the corridor. There was a shimmer of (what appeared to my inexperienced eyes as) costly stuffs, a huge hat crowned the shadow itself, "topped by nodding plumes," which seemed to account for the depleted condition of my feather duster. ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... was a little robin's Egg, all speckled blue and brown; F was a fluffy Feather that was white and ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells

... out at the door, and while the pair descended the stairs with remarkable agility, she ran to the dining-room, and there beheld Pons, in his shirt, stretched out upon the tiles. He had fainted. She lifted him as if he had been a feather, carried him back to his room, laid him in bed, burned feathers under his nose, bathed his temples with eau-de-cologne, and at last brought him to consciousness. When she saw his eyes unclose and life return, she stood over ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... Chancellorsville, while Austerlitz and Friedland pleased our Federalists about as well as Donelson and Pulaski please the English of these times. A few months after Eylau, Benningsen repulsed an attack which Napoleon imprudently made on his intrenched camp at Heilsberg, which placed another feather in his cap; nor did the smashing defeat he met with four days later, at Friedland, lessen his reputation. The world is slow to think poorly of a man who has done some clever things. We have seen how it was with the late Stonewall Jackson, concerning whom most men spoke as if he had never known ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... heap more valuable than that toothache in that wuthless Dabney's jaw, which he could er wropped up, and hunted out all the old sheets for you instid of that petticoat with them real lace ruffles," was Mammy's firm rejoinder, while she passed a feather duster over the table and rolled her ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... or baste on oil-cloth and weave together with tape needle, making it as nearly like the original weaving as possible. By studying Turkish rugs and curtains one can learn how to put strips together with a fancy stitch somewhat like our feather stitch. ...
— Hand-Loom Weaving - A Manual for School and Home • Mattie Phipps Todd

... of Tomo Chichi, on presenting the feather of an Eagle to Oglethorpe, is very expressive in his own laconic explication. By a little paraphrase it may be understood to import: "The Eagle has a sharp beak for his enemies, but down on his breast for his ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris

... upon him it was more by virtue of his natural grace than by that of tailoring. His stockings were of cotton, harsh and plain, and the broad castor, which he respectfully doffed as he came up with her, was an old one unadorned by band or feather. What had seemed to be a periwig at a little distance was now revealed for the man's own lustrous coiling ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... throne in evil hour, And, step by step, intrudes to power. When at the royal eagle's ear. He longs to ease the monarch's care. The monarch grants. With proud elate, Behold him, minister of state! Around him throng the feather'd rout; Friends must be served, and some must out: Each thinks his own the best pretension; This asks a place, and that a pension. The nightingale was set aside: A forward daw his room supplied.[14] This bird (says he), for business fit Has both sagacity and wit. With all his turns, and shifts, ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... I growed up in de quarters. De houses was clean an' snug. Us was better fed den dan I is now, an' warmer, too. Us had blankets an' quilts filled wid home raised wool an' I jus' loved layin' in de big fat feather bed a-hearin' de rain ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... an' didn't I see four o' thim the day o' the fair in Ennis whin O'Dougherty was laid out? An' whin O'Riley cut his arrum wid a bill-hook, an' the blood was runnin', didn't she tie a shtring on the arrum an' dip a raven's feather into the blood av a black cat's tail, an' shtop the bleedin'? An' didn't she bid me take care o' meself the day I met a red-headed woman afore dinner, an' it wasn't six months till I met the woman in the mornin', it a-rainin' an' ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.

... ill to banish hope and let the mind Drift like a feather. I have had my share Of what the world calls trial. Once a fire Came in the darkness, when the city lay In a still sea of slumber, stretching out Great lurid arms which stained the firmament; And when I woke the room was full of sparks, And red tongues smote the lattice. ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... streets with their guards behind them; and the magistrates come in their chairs with their stiff guards behind them; and you meet fortune-tellers, and goldsmiths, and merchants, and philosophers, and feather-sellers, and ultra-Roman Britons, and ultra-British Romans, and tame tribesmen pretending to be civilised, and Jew lecturers, and—oh, everybody interesting. We young people, of course, took no interest in politics. ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling

... adjoining the burning street. The inhabitants, fully expecting the fire to reach their houses, were hauling out their belongings, but had not yet left their dwellings, and were waiting meanwhile sitting on their boxes and feather beds under their windows. Part of the male population were hard at work ruthlessly chopping down fences and even whole huts which were near the fire and on the windward side. None were crying except the children, who had been waked out of their sleep, though the women who had ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... Norway, taking their wives with them. For the women could not be torn from the side of their husbands, either by distance of journey or by dread of peril, but declared that they would stick to their lords like a feather to something shaggy. They found that Ragnar was dead, and that Kraka had already married one Brak. Then they remembered the father's treasure, dug up the money, and bore it off. But Erik's fame had gone before ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... eyes and black lashes and black hair; but she too was greatly sunburnt, with the haymaking (as her father presently told me again; for she spoke very little after we had saluted one another). She was in a green skirt and a skirted doublet of the same colour, and wore a green hat with a white feather; but those things I did not remember till I was gone to bed and was thinking of her. It is a hard business for a lover to speak as he should of the maid who first taught him his lessons in that art; but I think it was her silence, and the look in her eyes, that embodied ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... better sense—of a fancy easily turned into impulse, but with no strenuous and determinate strength in them. What they comprehend best in the 'Italian League' is probably a league to wear silk velvet and each a feather in his hat, to carry flags and cry vivas, and keep a grand festa day in the piazzas. Better and happier in this than in stabbing prime ministers, or hanging up their dead bodies to shoot at; and not much more childish than these French patriots and ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... thank you, good Dame Barbara," said the Earl, very courteously taking off the close-fitting black cap with the red feather in it which was upon his head. "I must bide but a moment for your husband to set right certain nails in the hoofs of Darnaway here, to ready me for the morrow. Do you come to see the sport? So buxom a dame as the mistress of Carlinwark should not be ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... want to hear your rowlocks ring Like a good volley, all together." "Hands up (or 'Kamerad') as you swing Straight from the hips. Don't sky your feather, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various

... big yard of the farm were placed articles to be sold at public auction. It was a miscellaneous collection. A cradle with miniature puffy feather pillows, straw tick and an old patchwork quilt of pink and white calico stood near an old wood-stove which bore the inscription, CONOWINGO FURNACE. Corn-husk shoe-mats, a quilting frame, rocking-chairs, ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers

... a night in the rain under the pines, with my bag for a pillow, would be endurable; but no mortal with a white skin could dare those bloated and odorous feather-beds, where other things—in the shape of ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... I've got consideration for my seniors. I was raised that way. I honored your age, Jerry. I knew you was about all in, but I never CALLED you old. I wouldn't hurt your feelings. What did you do? You set around on your bony hips and criticized and picked at me. But you've picked my last feather off and I'm plumb raw. Right here ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... burthen, as he clasped his hands in ecstasy and performed a caper which, in spite of all his master Eyoub's respect for the Marabouts, brought a furious yell of rage, and a tremendous blow with the cudgel, which Lanty, in his joy, seemed to receive as if it had been a feather. ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge

... ready to cry; but behold, that handy little Adelaide had meantime picked out a nice black silk cape, with hat and feather, gloves and handkerchief, which, if not what Kate had intended, were nice enough for anything, and would have—some months ago—seemed to the orphan at the parsonage like robes of state. Kind Adelaide held them up so triumphantly, that Kate could not pout at their being only everyday things; and ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge

... little enough whether the dog of an American lived or died so long as he himself continued to get the generous checks from a certain newspaper in New York City. The doctor held the credulity of the men who mailed those checks in fine contempt and proceeded to feather his nest valiantly while his good luck continued, going on many a glorious spree at the paper's expense while Dick Carson went down every day deeper into the valley of the ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... hillside covered with very handsome red pines eleven years of age, some of them grow nearly two feet per year. The soil is sandy and gravelly glacial till which will raise little else beside feather grass and sumac. The red pines are not nut pines, and attention is called to them incidentally because of their value for growing upon this sort ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various

... gazed with wonder upon these actions, now approached timidly but with every sign of friendship, offering Columbus gifts of flowers and fruits and gay colored parrots, and lances tipped with bone and feather belts. They seemed to have no difficulty in understanding the sign language that the Spaniards used to make their wants understood, and they worshipped the newcomers as though they were more than human, and indeed ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards

... Jonas Ramus records, as a matter difficult of belief, the anecdotes of the whales and the bears; for it appeared to me, in fact, a self-evident thing that the largest ship of the line in existence coming within the influence of that deadly attraction could resist it as little as a feather the hurricane, and must disappear ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... done, and the darkness Drops from the wings of night As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... holiday, With bag and sack and basket, great and small, Went nutting to the hazels. Philip stay'd (His father lying sick and needing him) An hour behind; but as he climb'd the hill, Just where the prone edge of the wood began To feather toward the hollow, saw the pair, Enoch and Annie, sitting hand-in-hand, His large gray eyes and weather-beaten face All-kindled by a still and sacred fire, That burn'd as on an altar. Philip look'd, And in their eyes and faces read his doom; ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson

... least understood Italian, besides being clearly in the servants' eyes the one of the party marked down by age and appearance to pay the bills; and to her, while Mrs. Fisher put the final touches to her toilette, for she was preparing, by means of putting on a hat and veil and feather boa and gloves, to go for her first stroll in the lower garden—positively her first since her arrival—she explained that unless she was given money to pay the last week's bills the shops of Castagneto ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim

... his body. Where undraped, tight-fitting hose terminating in red shoes, flashed their elongated black and yellow stripes with stunning effect. A red cap, pointed at top, and rolled up behind, but with a long visor-like peak shading the eyes, and a white heron feather slanted in the band, brought the head into negligent harmony with the rest of the costume. The throat and left arm were bare, the latter ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... had adopted, and was adopting, for the benefit of all who became Chartists. He anticipated great results from his scheme of labour palaces—denied the propriety of being placed in the election returns as a feather in the quill of Whiggery—was an earnest advocate for the amelioration of Ireland, and still willing and determined to agitate for their cause. He would go to parliament, and record his first motion for 'The people's charter, and no surrender.' ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... wind and hidden sun, Wild November weather, Muddy field and leafless tree Bare of fur or feather. Sweeps there be who scorn the game, On them tons of soot fall! All Alleynians here ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... away," he said to De Mauleon; "I don't want to hear that girl repeat the sort of bombast the poets indite nowadays. It is fustian; and that girl may have a brain of feather, but she ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... I had gained seemed worthless. Those quiet, sneering words of his almost crushed me. On the load I had struggled to bear without falling they laid one feather too much. ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson

... seven mills on the dollar. Buxton is rich; we are poor. Buxton has few paupers; we have many. Consequently, Buxton may maintain its paupers in what may almost be regarded as a state of affluence. It may go as far as feather-beds and winter fires for the aged; nay, it may advance to some economical form of teeth-brushes, and still demand no more sacrifice from its people than is constantly demanded of us to maintain our poor in a humbler way. Then there are certain prudential considerations—certain, ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... early dawn in the great square to greet the rising of the Sun. They were dressed in their gayest apparel, and the Indian lords vied with each other in the display of costly ornaments and jewels on their persons, while canopies of gaudy feather-work and richly tinted stuffs, borne by the attendants over their heads, gave to the great square, and the streets that emptied into it, the appearance of being spread over with one vast and magnificent awning. Eagerly they watched the coming of their ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... lifters begin to draw a long and full breath, and when the inhalation is completed, or the lungs filled, the second signal is given, for raising the person from the chair. To his own surprise and that of his bearers, he rises with the greatest facility, as if he were no heavier than a feather. On several occasions I have observed that when one of the bearers performs his part ill, by making the inhalation out of time, the part of the body which he tries to raise is left as it were behind. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various

... shall see. Tell me now, they mean to revive La Curieuse at the Comedie, I hear—what part in it have you been assigned?" "Ah," exclaimed mademoiselle Hilairet, "is it not always the same thing? I dust the same decayed furniture with the same feather brush, and I say 'Yes,' and 'No,' and 'Here is a letter, madame.' That ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick

... now; even then my heart smote me heavily at times when I thought of the pride and pleasure he took in all my scientific appliances, and the money they cost him—twenty guineas for a pair of scales! Poor dear old man! he loved to weigh things in them—a feather, a minute crumb of cork, an infinitesimal wisp of ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... down with the windward ones and formed farther off. Howard then led in pursuit. But seeing the capitana of the renowned Italian galleasses in distress near Calais, he became a medieval knight again, left his fleet, and took the galleasse. For the moment that one feather in his cap seemed better worth ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood

... said Nick, and laughed at her softly. "I'm the happiest man on earth. I shall go Home now without a pang, and so will you. We have got to feather the nest, you know. That'll be ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell

... the advice of Gen. Hatton, a year ago, I removed the feather bed with which my predecessor, Deacon Hayford, had bolstered up his administration by stuffing the window, and substituted glass. Finding nothing in the book of instructions to postmasters which made the feather ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... upon the arrow. He started, a flush of excitement rushed across his face, and his hands and lips trembled as he closely examined the feather. ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty

... but the atmosphere was full of bagpipes. It was an unremitting storm of bagpipes—silent, but assailing me bodily from all quarters—now small as motes in the sun, and hailing upon me; now large as feather-beds, and ready to bang us about, only they never touched us; now huge as Mount AEtna, and threatening to smother us beneath their ponderous bulk; for all the time I was toiling on with little Davie on my back. Next day I was a little better, but very weak, and it was many ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald

... minutes had passed, John Claverhouse came plodding up the bed of the stream. Bellona was ambling about him, and they were in high feather, her short, snappy barks mingling with his deeper chest-notes. Arrived at the pool, he threw down the dip-net and sack, and drew from his hip-pocket what looked like a large, fat candle. But I knew it to be a stick ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London

... poisoned well, defiling where she meant to clean. Youth does not save the buxom lass, who has been filling herself, as girls will do, with unripe fruit: nor innocence the two fair children who were sailing their feather-boats yesterday in the quay-pools, as they have sailed them for three years past, and found no hurt; piety does not save the bed-ridden old dame, bed-ridden in the lean-to garret, who moans, "It is the Lord!" and dies. It is "the Lord" to her, though Baalzebub himself ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... gossiped over their fruit-baskets, heaped with purple-brown figs, little mountain-born strawberries, sweet, watery grapes, green almonds, and stupendous pears. At rare intervals a steamboat, bright and neat as a new toy, trailed a long feather of smoke from the foot of the Rigi, shed a small and dusty crowd into the sleepy town, and then bustled back, shearing the silken flood and ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... the mustard-coloured tweeds affected by so many women for country wear, choosing instead a soft dull blue, a hundred times more becoming. For headgear there was a little cap of the same material, with a quill feather stuck jauntily through a fold at the side, while neat, strong little boots and a pair of doeskin gloves gave a delightfully business-like air to the costume. In the rug-strap was a capacious golf cloak, displaying a bright plaid lining. This was waiting in readiness for the six-mile ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... victorious, who cried 'Forward' in the battles, and had flown the length and breadth of Europe, they were saved the infamy of belonging to the enemy: all the treasures of England couldn't get her a tail-feather of them. No more eagles—the rest is well known. The Red Man went over to the Bourbons, like the scoundrel that he is. France is crushed; the soldier is nothing; they deprive him of his dues; they discharge him to make room for broken-down nobles—ah, 'tis pitiable! They ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... occasion for them? Was it for their guns? The bows and arrows which we used, were sufficient to make us live well. Was it for their white, blue, and red blankets? We can do well enough with buffalo skins, which are warmer; our women wrought feather-blankets for the winter, and mulberry-mantles for the summer; which indeed were not so beautiful; but our women were more laborious and less vain than they are now. In fine, before the arrival of the French, we lived like men who can be satisfied with what they have; whereas ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... landsmen are figged out as fine as Lord Harry, With breast-pins and cravats as white as old sail; That I'm a strange creature, a know-nothing ninny, But fit for the planks for to walk in foul weather; That I ha'n't e'er a notion of the worth of a guinea, And that you, Poll, can twist me about as a feather— Lord love you!! ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat

... as I bid thee; but see thou, sweet playmate, for all thou art a chieftain's son, thou wert but feather-brained to ask me why I shot at thee. I shoot at thee! that were a fine tale to tell her this even! Or dost thou think that I could shoot at a big man on the snow at two hundred paces and miss him three times? Unless I ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... pretend to, that can think any Woman innocent who requires Liberty. Therefore, Patch, to your Charge I give her; Lock her up till I come back from Change: I shall have some sauntring Coxcomb, with nothing but a Red Coat and a Feather, think, by Leaping into her Arms, to Leap into my Estate—But I'll prevent them, she shall be ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre

... John," continued Jeffries, signing even more rapidly. "A gunman shoots his best when there's somebody shooting at him—otherwise he wouldn't be a gunman—he would be just an ordinary, every-day marksman, with a Schuetzenverein medal and a rooster feather in his hat. That's why you shoot well, John—because you're a gunman, ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... interposition of Philip, who seized his brother's arm as he was raising his hand to deal the blow. In a box-tree they found the pretty covered-in nest of a bottle-tit, beautifully compact, with its tiny opening or doorway—feather-eaved—at the side. It was a great temptation, and hard to resist was the sight of that nest; it was only about five feet from the ground, and they could have cut off the branch and brought it away with the nest ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn

... schoolmen fathered on St. Thomas Aquinas an imaginary work in sundry folio volumes entitled De Omnibus Rebus, adding an equally bulky and imaginary supplement—Et Quibusdam Aliis. This is as often used to feather a piece of unfledged wit, as the speculation concerning the number of angels that could dance on the point of a needle, and yet I have never been able to trace out the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various

... excellent. At this moment the gentlemen are going to the right; now they promenade all; in a minute more the ladies will be in the center, and four hands round. That broth of an Irish boy, Conway, wears a rooster's feather in his cap, and has for a partner a soldier twice as big as himself, whom he calls Susan. As they swing Conway yells at the top of his voice: ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... shade and shivered in the sun? I have seen those who have run from the smell of a mellow apple with greater precipitation than from a harquebuss-shot; others afraid of a mouse; others vomit at the sight of cream; others ready to swoon at the making of a feather bed; Germanicus could neither endure the sight nor the crowing of a cock. I will not deny, but that there may, peradventure, be some occult cause and natural aversion in these cases; but, in my ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... forenoon soliciting Otto Bork to take the poor orphan home with him, and there to treat her as a faithful and kind brother, in compensation for her father's harsh and unnatural will; but it was all in vain, as she indeed had prophesied. "Not the weight of a feather more should she get than the two farmhouses in Zachow; and never let her call him brother, for ancient as his race was, never had one of them borne the brand of ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... straight from the bow. I tighten the reins on Prince Charlie's great son— He is off like a rocket, the race is begun. Half-way down the furlong, their heads are together, Scarce room 'twixt their noses to wedge in a feather; Past grand stand, and judges, in neck-to-neck strife, Ah, Salvator, boy! 'tis the race of your life. I press my knees closer, I coax him, I urge, I feel him go out with a leap and a surge; I see him creep on, inch by inch, stride by stride, While backward, still backward, ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... or praise, or trust Some clod like those that here we spurn; Some thing that sprang like thee from dust, And shall like thee to dust return? Dost thou rate statesmen, heroes, wits, At one sear leaf, or wandering feather? Behold the black, damp narrow pits, Where they and thou must ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... to Ivor," she said, petulantly. "I've had enough of camping out. It's all very well in its way for a week but when they begin to talk about cutting your throat and all that, it ceases to be a joke and becomes a wee bit uncomfortable. I want my feather bed. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... severe one, came in the afternoon. Before it was fairly upon them, Lucy, herself pale with terror, had collected her children in a darkened room and seated them all on a feather-bed, where they remained during the storm, half stifled by the heat, the little ones clinging to their mother, hiding their heads in her lap ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley

... Onoah was simply dressed, consulting the season and his journey. He had a single eagle's feather attached to the scalp-lock, and wore a belt of wampum of more than usual value, beneath which he had thrust his knife and tomahawk; a light, figured and fringed hunting-shirt of cotton covered his body, while leggings of deerskin, with a plain ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... souls which vice's moody mists most blind, Blind Fortune, blindly, most their friend doth prove; And they who thee, poor idle Virtue! love, Ply like a feather toss'd by ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... "but suppose we could? Suppose there came a night when it was just dark enough to hide us, and yet light enough to show us the track? Wouldn't it be a feather in our caps if we could ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... bedrooms, and the proprietor proudly announced that as many as sixty couples had danced here at once; there must have been some hearty bumps during the process. There are three bedrooms tucked away in recesses at the rear. It was my lot to sleep in a feather bed under a mountain of patchwork quilts with never a care for Jack Frost sitting on the window ledge outside. But, oh! what a difference in the morning, when I must climb out of that nice, warm nest to ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine

... Jim shamelessly turned feather. "Oh, no," he cried. "I'm very ill. I'm not able to go to Lynn. Besides, my time isn't up ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger

... yesterday Edward looked at the wind and decided that if Donald was not in the Thames then, he would have no chance of being here this week. We had not been here an hour when in he walked in high feather and gave me more reasons than I can remember for leaving his ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... narrated the plans he had adopted, and was adopting, for the benefit of all who became Chartists. He anticipated great results from his scheme of labour palaces—denied the propriety of being placed in the election returns as a feather in the quill of Whiggery—was an earnest advocate for the amelioration of Ireland, and still willing and determined to agitate for their cause. He would go to parliament, and record his first motion for 'The people's charter, and no surrender.' ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... the committeemen, and several I'd never laid eyes on before. Well, there in a corner, looking like a hired mourner at a nigger funeral, sat that fellow Higginson. You could have knocked me flat with a pin feather. I'm as sure as I stand here that it was he who worked up that mob for Ryan, and the whole dirty scheme—and then coming around with his tongue in his cheek to inquire after the victim! Can ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... I'll be tickled to death not to; just like I'd swallowed an ostrich feather. Back to ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith

... we ever have heard Uttered by bat or beast or bird— Hide or fin or scale or feather— Jabber it quickly and all together! Excellent! Wonderful! Once again! Now we are talking just like men. Let's pretend we are ... never mind, Brother, thy tail hangs down behind! This is ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling

... and plaintive chant to Kiwassa, sung by women and floating to us from the woods beyond the hollow. The singing grew nearer, and the rustling of the leaves beneath many feet more loud and deep; then all noise ceased, and Opechancanough entered the hollow alone. An eagle feather was thrust through his scalp lock; over his naked breast, that was neither painted nor pricked into strange figures, hung a triple row of pearls; his mantle was woven of bluebird feathers, as soft and sleek ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... any event, the proverb was attested that birds of a feather make strange bedfellows. There was a dispute concerning some petit larceny—some slight discrepancy, we will imagine, since all this is pure romance, in ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... condition, with a bodice of the time of Elizabeth, and a petticoat of that of Victoria. Sir Walter Raleigh wore the old felt hat belonging to his dressing-room, and pathetically appealed to the spectators to imagine it adorned with a white feather and jewelled clasp. ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... examining the weapons as they went, they ran down into a dry gully, to follow which would bring them unperceived almost as directly to the cabin as by the regular trail. As noiselessly as possible, the boys ran up the gully trail, their hearts beating high with expectation. It would be a big feather in their caps if they could only have a gray wolf's skin to show their elders ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks

... ought to be packed on a hoss. I weigh two hundred and thirty, son, and it busts the back of a horse in the mountains. Now, you ain't a flyweight yourself, and El Sangre takes you along like you was a feather." ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand

... pride to a piece of naked folly. I flew at his throat, and since I had stood on a little eminence, the force of my assault toppled him over. My victory lasted scarcely a minute. He flung me from him like a feather, then picked me up and laid on to me with the flat ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... green tent over their heads. The sunlight that came through was green, as if you were in a house made of green glass. All up the slender stems of these tall tree-ferns were the most beautiful little plants, and many stems were twined, from the earth to their feather-like fronds, with tender creeping ferns—the fronds of which were so fine and close, that it seemed as if the tree-fern were wrapped up in a lovely little fern coat. Even crumbling dead trees, and decaying ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley

... night in the room that Lancy occupies, at the head of the stairs, and, do you know, I never enter it but I feel cold shivers running up my back as I think of that night. You see, Mrs. McDonald's feather-beds are wonderful for size; they are her pride and joy; but we were not used to them, so, during the night, we rolled over too near the front of the bed, when suddenly out we both went, and the feather-bed fell out on top of us! I ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... don't intend to try. I have been sight-seeing all the afternoon, interviewing cathedrals, and walls, and rows, and places, until I give you my word you might knock me down with a feather. If you have anything preying on your mind—and I see you have—out with it. Suspense ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... with Colonel Fremont. He saw one solitary warrior separate from the rest. Spurring upon the savage at the distance of not ten paces he endeavored to shoot him, when his gun missed fire. He was now apparently at the mercy of the Indian, who had already with sinewy arm, drawn an arrow to the feather to pierce the body ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott

... over the neck, sleeves tight-fitting, waist narrow. All this is perfection, and the chief who can array himself in this ancient garb struts out of the fort the envy and admiration of all beholders. Sometimes the tall felt chimney-pot is graced by a large feather which has done duty in the turban of a dowager thirty years ago in England. The addition of a little gold tinsel to the coat collar is of considerable consequence, but the presence of a nether garment is not at all requisite to the completeness of the general get-up. For this most ridiculous-looking ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... away and presently returned, followed by a lady Loon wearing huge, puffed-up rubber skirts. Also she had a purple feather fastened to a wart on the top of her head, and around her waist was a sash of fibre-like vines, dried and ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... interest; and as to trying him on the tack of delicacy—"imposition on an unprotected woman,—degrading dependence on her exertions," and so forth—I knew the thick skin and indomitable self-conceit of the cannonier would repel such feather-shafts without feeling them, or that the utmost effect I could expect to produce would be to get myself into a quarrel with the redoubtable native of the Netherlands, a predicament in which, as a man of peace, I was by no means anxious to find ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... one of the largest hotels at Rome waiting for her husband to come in. The day was so balmy and genial that it was almost impossible for Hilda to believe that the time of year was early February. Dressed in dark-green velvet, with a creamy feather boa lying by her side, Hilda sat amidst all her unaccustomed surroundings, her eyes looking straight down the lofty room and her thoughts far away. The bride was thinking of her English home—she was an intensely happy bride—she loved her husband devotedly—she looked ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... a signal for every boy to pretend to write a love letter to every girl. Jack could get nothing better than a feather from the Indian headpiece that hung on the wall. This he dipped in Belle's shoe dressing, and wrote a note on the back of Cora's best piece of sheet music. Walter sat on the floor poking his whittled stick into the dead embers in the ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose

... eminence. In Berlin you have both—the absolute monarch and the military class of ambitious soldiers and their fighting machine. Behind these men walks the Napoleonic ambition all the time, just as in the United States we lie down every night in George Washington's feather-bed of ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick

... is made of money," repeated Poppy, "and L17 10s. would be no more than a feather's weight to her. All the same, I can't make out what you're driving at, ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade

... in positions of great peril from whizzing shot and bursting shell, but was never harmed during these dangerous visits. On one occasion, she was probably by reason of her black hat and feather, mistaken for an officer, as she for a moment carelessly showed the upper part of her person, from a slight eminence near the rifle pits, and was fired at by one of the enemy's sharp-shooters. The ball lodged ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... droop—and, thank heaven, I have never been absolutely deprived of that alternative in Mr. Saltram's company. I saw, however—I hasten to declare it—that compared to this specimen their other phoenixes had been birds of inconsiderable feather, and I afterwards took credit to myself for not having even in primal bewilderments made a mistake about the essence of the man. He had an incomparable gift; I never was blind to it—it dazzles me still. It dazzles me perhaps even more in remembrance than ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James

... with your hair nicely shaved, except a little which was caught up into a knot like a cock's comb, on top to hold an eagle's feather," said the laughing Anne. "How elegantly you must have looked after having made your toilette, preparatory to wooing some Indian Princess, with your face beautifully painted in all the colors of the rainbow, only handsomer. How I should have liked to see ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... ye fall among thieves, my precious,—that is a Scripture phrase, if ye will hae ane—the bauldest of them will ken a scart o' my guse feather. And now awa wi' ye—and stick to Argyle; if onybody can do the ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... R.N., of the Mantelpiece; adored by all his crew. They had feather-beds, warm slippers, hot-water cans, brown Windsor soap, and a valet to every four, for Captain Reece said, "It is my duty to make my men happy, and I will." Captain Reece had a daughter, ten female cousins, a niece and a ma, six ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... straight-grained ash was split and split until it yielded enough pieces. These were shaved down to one fourth of an inch thick, round, smooth, and perfectly straight. Each was notched deeply at one end; three pieces of split goose feather were lashed on the notched end, and three different kinds of arrows were made. All were alike in shaft and in feathering, but differed in the head. First, the target arrows: these were merely sharpened, and the points hardened by roasting to a brown ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... policemen, they never are when needed. The officers were at a loss how to get Palmer into his bed. Dr. Frost was fidgeting around in a nervous manner, when suddenly with a muffled "damn" and a few other qualifying adjectives, he stooped down, and took the man in his arms like a baby,—he was no feather either,— and staggered down the ward with him, put him in bed, and undressed him. A low murmur of approval came from the patients. Dr. Frost got very red and as soon as he had finished undressing Palmer, hurriedly left ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey

... of Life we walked together, I and my darling, unafraid; And lighter than any linnet's feather The burdens of Being on us weighed. And Love's sweet miracles o'er us threw Mantles of joy outlasting Time, And up from the rosy morrows grew A sound that seemed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... the Indian, at the same time touching a red feather in his black hair. "Me look for papoose. ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Uncle Fred's • Laura Lee Hope

... irritation coincides with sensation to produce the same catenations of motion, as in inflammatory fevers, they are excited with still greater energy than by the irritation alone. So when children expect to be tickled in play, by a feather lightly passed over the lips, or by gently vellicating the soles of their feet, laughter is most vehemently excited; though they can stimulate these parts with their own fingers unmoved. Here the pleasureable idea of playfulness coincides ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... their bellies on the top of a steep rock, just over the vessel, peeping with their heads over the hill. As soon as we discover'd them, we made motions to them to come down; they then rose up, and put on their heads white feather'd caps; we then hoisted a white sheet for an ensign: At this they made a noise, pronouncing Orza, Orza, which we took for a signal to come ashore. We would not suffer above two men to go ashore, and those disarm'd, lest we should put them in fear. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... Harrison, and tried to enlist him in their favor by repeating how well James had been treated, and how happy he was in slavery. Friend Harrison replied, in his ironical way, "O, I know very well that slaves sleep on feather beds, while their master's children sleep on straw; that they eat white bread, and their master's children eat brown. But enclose ten acres with a high wall, plant it with Lombardy poplars and the most beautiful shrubbery, build a magnificent castle in the midst of it, give thee pen, ink, ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... his friends declared that he might have been high up in office long since if he would have taken the trouble to work. He was a welcome guest at the houses of the very best people, and was a friend of whom any one might be proud. It had for two years been a feather in the cap of Phineas that he knew Laurence Fitzgibbon. And yet people said that Laurence Fitzgibbon had nothing of his own, and men wondered how he lived. He was the youngest son of Lord Claddagh, ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... of hope. North, and east, and west he looked with wild questioning eyes, and then he realised that his wanderings had come to an end, and that there, on that barren crag, he was about to die. "Why not here, as well as in a feather bed, twenty years hence," he muttered, as he seated himself in ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle

... One large feather decked the brow of the chief; which with his nose, was tinged with yellow ochre. Having presented the boy to me, he next advanced with much formality towards the camp, having Tackijally on his right, the boy walking between, and rather in advance of both, ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... now no pains, Leans o'er the boat's advancing end; And aided by her lord reclaims, The present of her feather'd friend. ...
— Ballads - Founded On Anecdotes Relating To Animals • William Hayley

... a rook by wearing a pied feather, The cable hat-band, or the three-piled ruff, A yard of shoe-tie, or the Switzers knot On his French garters, should affect a humour! O, it is more than ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... not reach you. I wrote, but knew that they might not. There is the smoke from Mother Binning's cot." He stood still to watch the mounting feather. "I remember when first I saw that, a six-year-old, climbing the glen with my father, carried on his shoulder when I was tired. I thought it was a hut in a fairy-tale.... ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... life with good patrimonies; but he, my father, at the time he became associated with them, was the only one, as I say, who, to use a phrase I have heard myself from his lips concerning them, had got a feather to fly with. ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... you," replied Mrs. Murray. "If you feel yourself fit, you are the best person in the world for it. You would be a brand saved from the burning, and it will be a great feather in Mr. Hazard's cap to convert you into a strong church-woman. He could then afford to laugh at Mrs. Dyer, and all the parish would ...
— Esther • Henry Adams

... stumbled as he walked. Othello mislays his handkerchief, and there remains nothing for him but death. Hamlet gets hold of the wrong foil, and the rest is silence. Edmund's runner is a moment too late at the prison, and the feather will not move at Cordelia's lips. Salisbury a moment too late at the tower, and Arthur lies on the stones dead. Goneril and Iago have on the whole, in this world, Shakespere sees, much of their own way, though they come to a bad end. It is a pin that Death pierces the king's fortress ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... There, there, girl, I don't blame any of you for feathering your nest." He was flushed now and above the soft collar, his face had relaxed into a not easily controllable smile. "Feather your nest, girl; you got the looks to do it. It's a far cry from Flamm Avenue to where a classy girl like you can land herself if she steers right. And I wish it to you, girl; ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... warfare on bird and beast. It is a growing evil, and threatens the total extinction of sport in some districts. I can remember when nearly every tank was good for a few brace of mallard, duck, or teal, where never a feather is now to be seen, save the ubiquitous paddy-bird. Jungles, where a pig was a certain find, only now contain a measly jackal, and not always that; and cover in which partridge, quail, and sometimes even florican were numerous, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... at seeing Paul look so brisk and joyous, "our young cock is in full feather; last night he ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau

... a Tuscan Sonnet And many humming birds were fastened on it. Caught in a net of delicate creamy crepe The dainty captives lay there dead together; No dart of slender bill, no fragile shape Fluttering, no stir of radiant feather; Alicia looked so calm, I wondered whether She cared if birds were killed to trim her bonnet. Her hand fell lightly on my hand; And I fancied that a stain of death Like that which doomed the Lady of ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson

... and went upstairs with my candle directly, before they came in. It appeared to my childish fancy, as I ascended to the bedroom where I had been imprisoned, that they brought a cold blast of air into the house which blew away the old familiar feeling like a feather. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... But little did I t'ink of it till I saw the movables on the ground, some burnt, and some broke, and other some as good as new. It would be convanient to have one feather bed in the ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... the park was made angry by a boy throwing a feather boa up into the air outside the cage. The condor raised himself from the ground, and hurled himself against the heavy wire netting so that the whole, big cage shook. And the breeze caused by the flapping wings blew off the hats of several spectators. ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton

... bosoms, and looked as if they were attired at a very small expense. Only the general—the captain-general (Pooch, they told us, was his name: I know not how 'tis written in Spanish)—was well got up, with a smart hat, a real feather, huge stars glittering on his portly chest, and tights and boots of the first order. Presently, after a good deal of trumpeting, the little men marched off the place, Pooch and his staff coming into the very inn in which ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... that he had not felt very well for a day or two back, and all at once a kind of shiver took him, till he lay fourteen days perfectly insensible, and could eat nothing but a little pounded ice—and his wife- -a small woman, too—used to lift him back and forth between the bed and sofa like a feather, and the neighbors did not know half the time whether he was dead or alive. This history, from which not the smallest particular or the least significant symptom of the case was omitted, occupied an hour in recital, and was told, as it seemed, for the entertainment ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... fishermen of Spain, Portugal, and France, in the costumes of the sixteenth century. Soon a circle formed round one commanding figure—a man of noble presence, wearing the richly slashed and laced doublet, velvet cloak, trunk-hose, and gay hat and feather which constituted the dress of gentlemen in the days of Queen Elizabeth. This was no other than Sir Humphrey Gilbert, one of the gallant knights of Devonshire. He unrolled a parchment scroll, and proceeded to read the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... are keen; they have heard a feather fall in the storm; now they hear a soft-voiced thrush. Wingenund thunders to his people, to his friends, to the chiefs of other tribes: 'Do not bury the hatchet!' The young White Father's tongue runs smooth like the gliding brook; it sings as the ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... a strange procession met their eyes unawares, coming down the zig-zag path that led from the hills to the shore of the lagoon, where their huts were situated. At its head marched two men—tall, straight, and supple—wearing huge feather masks over their faces, and beating tom-toms, decorated with long strings of shiny cowries. After them, in order, came a sort of hollow square of chiefs or warriors, surrounding with fan-palms a central ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen

... days were back. I don't see how that inventor or his inventions ever helped us workers. Dad was right about him. He said an inventor wouldn't do nothing for workers. He said it would be better to tar and feather that telegraph operator. I guess ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson

... the beholder, or to become objects of human interest and affection. The kingbird is the best dressed member of the family, but he is a braggart; and, though always snubbing his neighbors, is an arrant coward, and shows the white feather at the slightest display of pluck in his antagonist. I have seen him turn tail to a swallow, and have known the little pewee in question to whip him beautifully. From the great-crested to the little green flycatcher, their ways and general habits are the ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs

... would;—and her shelves kept always dusted down; they could see her way of doing that, as they happened in at different times, when she whisked about, lightly and nicely, behind and between her jars and boxes and parcels with the little feather duster that she kept hanging over her table where she made her change and sat at ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... a certain still and steely watchfulness. In the August afternoon, Jeb Stuart, feather in hat, around his horse's neck a garland of purple ironweed and yarrow, rode into the lines and spoke for ten minutes with General Jackson, then spurred away to the Warrenton turnpike. Almost immediately Ewell's ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... show all the world that he was the rightful successor to the throne:—When Dagara died, and he, Nnanaji, and Rogero, were the only three sons left in line of succession to the crown, a small mystic drum of diminutive size was placed before them by the officers of state. It was only feather weight in reality, but, being loaded with charms, became so heavy to those who were not entitled to the crown, that no one could lift it but the one person whom the spirits were inclined towards as the rightful ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... Harris, when I stood in the railways office that morning with my bundle on my arm and one patten in my hand, you might have knocked me down with a feather, far less porkmangers which was a lumping against me, continual and sewere all round. I was drove about like a brute animal and almost worritted into fits, when a gentleman with a large shirt-collar and a hook nose, and a eye like one of Mr. Sweedlepipes's hawks, and long locks ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... being of herculean size and strength, sly, and possessing an upper lip so large that when it is thrown back it completely covers the demon's face. The Bungisngis can lift a huge animal as easily as if it were a feather. ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... Bavarian peasants,—an institution got up for the purpose of frightening the women and children, and keeping them in order. While the ordinary dances are going on, there suddenly stalks forth "an ugly apparition in the shape of a man, wearing a feather mantle on his back, reaching from the arm-pits down to the mid-thighs, zebra-painted on his breast and legs with black stripes, bear-skin shako on his head, and his arms stretched out at full length along a staff passing behind his neck. Accoutred ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... said, saluting. "I know it would be a feather in your cap if you could land these fugitives, and I have come to ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes

... patience and perseverance when they expect to accomplish something of great importance to their interests. The same is true if they expect to gratify their vanity. In hair dressing or tattooing they submit to very irksome restraint prolonged through a long time. Also in feather work, partly useful and partly ornamental, they assorted feathers piece by piece, and enlaced the feathers in the meshes of their hats and caps, or fastened them into scepters with pitch. They could make houses, etc., with their axes only by long-continued industry.[231] South American ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... But this gentleness, this abominable solicitude, this brainless worship of an idiot, persistent, sickly, horribly physical, I cannot endure. What does it want of me? What would it demand of me? It nestles to me. It leans against me. I feel its touch, like the touch of a feather, trembling about my heart, as if it sought to number my pulsations, to find out the inmost secrets of my impulses and desires. No privacy is left to me." He sprang up excitedly. "I cannot withdraw," he cried, "I cannot be alone, untouched, unworshipped, unwatched ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens

... 'Well, I am, and I'm not.' And if you send her a note, imploring a straight answer to a direct question, the answer comes back: 'Yes AND no.' Miss Champion used to say she would like to take her up by the scruff of her feather boa, and shake her, asking at intervals: 'Shall I stop?' so as to wring from Mrs. Do-and-don't a definite ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... streets were all of mosaic, thousands of little stones being packed together like corn on a cob. Over this the heavy sledge was drawn by the bullocks while a small boy ran ahead through the narrow streets to clear the way— He had a feather duster made of horse's tail as a badge of authority and he yelled some strange cry at the empty streets and closed houses. Another little boy in a striped jersey ran beside and assured us he was a guide. It was like a page out of a fairy story. ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis

... that spread Barren and desert, all things drooped in sickness; And I, with palsy stricken, lay in pains! Vainly my hands shook feather-like with fever; Methought my feet were nailed upon the ground; The river, wide and wild; and far beyond, As far as eyes could see, the other bank Revelled in lusty growth and endless mirth With leafy slopes and forests ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas

... uncle's in high feather with the government party," said Sir Harry, "and that he only votes against them as a ruse de guerre, as the ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... the blacks, who seemed to be a chief by the big rings he wore in his nose and ears, and the long feather stuck on the top of his head, came forward, waving a green bough, and then, putting out his hand, took mine, which he rubbed on his flat nose. It was a sign that he wished to be friends; and by this time, as I ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... pile, no matter how many dead dogs, cats, and donkeys in a village street, no matter how unspeakable the offal, it all vanishes as completely as though it had been burned. Not a piece of bone, not a single chicken feather remains. The natives have no fear of the hyena; a small child armed with a stick can put to flight a dozen of them. They are the lowest of cowards, and will flee ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... So she plucked a feather from Koorookh and laid the quill downward, letting it drop. Then said she, 'Now for the awakening ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... for trial. Great 'citement 'bout it, over de whole county. Court house packed dat day. Solicitor rise and say: 'Please your honor, de 'fendant, Lindsey, put in a plea of guilty.' You might have heard a breast feather of a chicken fall, so very still was de people in dere, though de niggers and 'publicans was a grinning wid joy. Then Judge Mackey 'low: 'Let de 'fendant stand up.' Wid a solemn face and a solemn talk, him wound up wid: 'Derefore, de court sentence you to de State ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration

... of the Corks," both men and women, all went to see a grand series of Spanish dances at the theatre, got up for their delectation and amusement. No band of enthusiastic pilgrims ever started in such high feather to see a dramatic and terpsichorean feast as did we. There was an expression of mystery and expectancy on every face. Mary Garden and all she does would be a mere flea bite to what we should see of pure and simple naughtiness. But alack and alas for our blasted hopes and the human weakness ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne

... We have this day had a splendid sight of ostriches—eleven feeding in a troop near us, quietly like so many sheep—eccentric birds of their species, showing no tendency to scud away. Perhaps I shall never see so many again together. They were all black, with maybe a white feather or ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson

... travelled towards the east, and the second went to the west, both making fun of poor Dummling, who was obliged to stay where his feather had fallen. Then Dummling, sitting down and feeling rather miserable after his brothers had gone, looked about him, and noticed that near to where his feather lay was a trap-door. On lifting this up he perceived a flight of steps, ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm

... my way through the country-side selling what maids most love—a bit of ribbon, a tie, a good serviceable apron, a feather for the hat, and many a pretty gown; but on my way from the village I met a friend from my own part of the country, which is not in this county, but two counties up north, who tells me that my wife is lying dangerously ill. If I wish to see her alive I must needs travel ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... the rest of the way. After arriving, we girls went by ourselves into one of Mrs. Sampson's sloping chambers, where there was a low bedstead, and a thick feather-bed covered with a patchwork-quilt of the "Job's Trouble" pattern, a small, dim looking-glass surmounted by a bunch of "sparrow-grass," and an unpainted floor ornamented with home-made rugs which were embroidered with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... hated. Sometimes she floated above, as a still, unobservant angel, her gaze turned upward, dreaming along, careless as a white summer cloud, across the blue. If she looked down on the scene below, it was only that the beholder might see that she saw and did not care—that not a feather of her outspread pinions would quiver at the sight. Sometimes she would stand in the crowd, as if she had been copied there from another picture, and had nothing to do with this one, nor any right to be in it at all. Or when the red blood was trickling drop by drop from ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... a creeping cove the wave unshocked Lays itself calm and wide, Over a stream two birds of glancing feather Do woo each other, carolling together. Both alike, they glide together Side by side; Both alike, they sing together, Arching blue-glossed ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... feminine inconsistency, a decided return to the world of fashion and conventionality apparently just as she was effectually excluded from it. She had not only discarded her white dress as a concession to the practical evidence of the surrounding winter, but she had also brought out a feather hat and sable muff which had once graced a fashionable suburb of Boston. Even Falkner had exchanged his slouch hat and picturesque serape for a beaver overcoat and fur cap of Hale's which had been pressed upon ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte

... prudence of conforming in one's costume to the native habits. After the first feeling of awkwardness is over, nothing can be better adapted to the Polar Winter than the Lapp dress. I walked about at first with the sensation of having each foot in the middle of a large feather bed, but my blood preserved its natural warmth even after sitting for hours in an open pulk. The boellinger, fastened around the thighs by drawing-strings of reindeer sinew, are so covered by the poesk that one becomes, for ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... Creatures has its different Notions of Beauty, and that each of them is most affected with the Beauties of its own Kind. This is no where more remarkable than in Birds of the same Shape and Proportion, where we often see the Male determined in his Courtship by the single Grain or Tincture of a Feather, and never discovering any Charms but in ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... daughter Matilda, whom, as she was now a widow, he married to the eldest son of the Count of Anjou, GEOFFREY, surnamed PLANTAGENET, from a custom he had of wearing a sprig of flowering broom (called Genet in French) in his cap for a feather. As one false man usually makes many, and as a false King, in particular, is pretty certain to make a false Court, the Barons took the oath about the succession of Matilda (and her children after her), twice over, ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens

... burned his banners and his eagles—his poor eagles, ever victorious, who cried 'Forward' in the battles, and had flown the length and breadth of Europe, they were saved the infamy of belonging to the enemy: all the treasures of England couldn't get her a tail-feather of them. No more eagles—the rest is well known. The Red Man went over to the Bourbons, like the scoundrel that he is. France is crushed; the soldier is nothing; they deprive him of his dues; they discharge him to make room for broken-down nobles—ah, 'tis pitiable! They seized ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... to was to pick feathers. 'The heap of feathers that you see here,' said she, 'you must get finished before I come home in the evening, otherwise you shall be set to harder work.' He started to the feathers, and picked and picked until there was only a single feather left that had not passed through his hands. But then there came a whirlwind and sent all the feathers flying, and swept them along the floor into a heap, where they lay as if they were trampled together. He had now to begin all his work over again, but by this time it only ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various

... triangle, Set three mussel-pearls of purple, Smooth and polished with much rubbing. To an arrow of witch-hazel, New, and fashioned very slender, Set the shark's tooth, long and narrow, With its pearl-inlaid triangle. From the wing of living heron Pluck one feather, white and trusty; With this feather wing the arrow, That it swerve not as it flyeth. Fashioned thus with care and caution, Let no mortal eye gaze on it; Tell no mortal of your purpose; Secretly at sunset place it In ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten

... of canoeing which rewarded the white men for their faith in their disreputable henchman. Charley played with the light craft in the great volume of stream as a feather might yield to a gentle breeze. The canoe sidled in to the shore through a threatening shoal of rocky outcrop, and the first stage of the ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... had had his martial plaid wrapped around him, and had worn a Scottish cap with a feather in it and a long ribbon hanging down his back, with his claymore girded to his side, I wouldn't have been surprised; for this is Scotland, and that would have been like the pictures I have seen of Highlanders. But to see a man with the upper half of him dressed like a clerk in a dry ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton

... busy part of the nation are not more busy about Whig and Tory; than these idle-fellows of the feather, about Mr. Tickell's and my translation. I (like the Tories) have the town in general, that is, the mob on my side; but it is usual with the smaller part to make up in industry, what they want in number; and that is the case with the little senate of Cato. However, if our ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... length of his rooms to and fro, staring down at his bare feet, his arms hugging his sides tightly. He would dream of Father Beron sitting at the end of a long black table, behind which, in a row, appeared the heads, shoulders, and epaulettes of the military members, nibbling the feather of a quill pen, and listening with weary and impatient scorn to the protestations of some prisoner calling heaven to witness of his innocence, till he burst out, "What's the use of wasting time over that miserable nonsense! Let me take him outside for a while." And Father Beron would ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... in beating their feather antagonists off by the aid of clubs which they wielded with vigor; and after the eagles learned that no harm was intended to their young by these bold navigators of the upper air currents, they came to have more respect for the strange winged thing that came humming up ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy

... murdering my fellowman to get his property," Hugo answered, so soberly that it did not seem to his comrades that he was joking this time. Pilzer's snarling exclamation of "White feather!" came in the midst of ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... man has come, post haste, from the plantations above Paspahegh. Three days ago, Morgan, the trader, was decoyed into the woods by that Paspahegh fool and bully, Nemattanow, whom they call Jack of the Feather, and there murdered. Yesterday, out of sheer bravado, the Indian turned up at Morgan's house, and Morgan's men shot him down. They buried the dog, and thought no more of it. Three hours ago, Chanco the Christian went to the commander and ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... And now—the frivolous, feather-headed little wife, whom he had held so cheap and wronged so lightly, urging her folly as almost a justification of the wrong, she too—She appalled him with the terrific eternity of her love. Was it possible that this feeling, which he had despised as the blind craving ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair

... makes me sick. Papa doesn't want me to stay for good. And no wonder. Shall I go back? I hate to show a white feather. ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey

... traveller on commercial morality may well be held as a feather-weight in the balance. Such as mine is, it is gathered mainly from the tone of casual conversation, from which I should conclude that a considerable proportion of Americans read a well-known proverb as "All's fair in love or business." Men—I will not say of a high character and ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... corners of Agricola's pillow, the great Grandissime family were ignorant of how they could have come there. Let us examine these terrible engines of mischief. In one corner was an acorn drilled through with two holes at right angles to each other, a small feather run through each hole; in the second a joint of cornstalk with a cavity scooped from the middle, the pith left intact at the ends, and the space filled with parings from that small callous spot near the knee of the ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... still vigorous in spite of fatigue and suffering, closed round Marguerite's poor, weary body, and lifted her as gently as if she had been a feather. ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... than a match for three Englishmen, did he chance to meet them. Men called him an outlaw, but we thought little of that; most of the brave men on our side had been outlawed at one time or another, and it did them little ill: indeed, it was aye thought to be rather a feather in ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... as the Mexicans, the Crows, or the Eastern Indians do; they think that the natural grace and beauty of the animal are such that anything gaudy would break its harmony; the only mark of distinction they put upon their steeds (and the chiefs only can do so) is a rich feather or two, or three quills of the eagle, fixed to the rosette of the bridle, below the left ear; and as a Shoshone treats his horse as a friend, always petting him, cleaning him, never forcing or abusing him, the animal is always in excellent ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... overwhelming conclusion of the story. If to the reader, as to the bystanders, that scene brings one unbroken pain, it is not so with Lear himself. His shattered mind passes from the first transports of hope and despair, as he bends over Cordelia's body and holds the feather to her lips, into an absolute forgetfulness of the cause of these transports. This continues so long as he can converse with Kent; becomes an almost complete vacancy; and is disturbed only to yield, as his eyes suddenly fall again on his child's corpse, to an agony which at once ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... on page 81 purporting to show the undersigned leaping head first into a German feather-bed does the undersigned a cruel injustice. He has a prettier figure than that—oh, ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... lace. One velvet end was slightly long and concealed a wire which lifted one side of the brim a trifle, beneath which was fastened a smashing big, pale-pink velvet rose. There was an ostrich plume even longer than the other, broader, blacker, as wonderful a feather as ever dropped from the plumage of a lordly bird. Mrs. Jardine shook the hat in such a way as to set the feather lifting and waving after the confinement of the box. With slender, sure fingers she set the bow and lace ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter

... escaped had its silver lips opened as if in a broad grin of derision, reveling in the plight of the chamois. The guide's hand was at once firm and gentle, his stride bold, yet easy. His rakish hat, with its aggressive red feather, towered a full head ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... if you are caught there you are caught in the brambles, and won't get out without damage. John Ploughman feels a cold sweat at the thought of getting into the hands of lawyers. He does not mind going to Jericho, but he dreads the gentlemen on the road, for they seldom leave a feather upon any goose ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... Burton, "but payer d'audace, [156] and, throwing all forethought to the dogs, to rely upon what has made many a small man great, the good star. I addressed my companions in a set speech, advising a mount without delay." [157] The End of Time, having shown the white feather, was left behind, but the rest courageously consented to accompany their leader. "At 10 a.m. on the 2nd January," says Burton, "all the villagers assembled, and recited the Fatihah, consoling us with the information ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... ornithology is a first-rate pursuit for men, but a bad one for cats. I suspect that she studies the birds with greater care than I do; for now I can get all I want of a bird and let him remain in the bush, but Silly Sally is a thorough-going ornithologist; she must engage in all the feather-splittings that the ornithologists do, and she isn't satisfied until she has thoroughly dissected and digested her material, and has all the dry bones ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... brisk little man, clad in brindle jeans of ancient cut, resplendent with brass buttons. Two small piercing eyes, deep-set beside a hawk's-beak nose, twinkled from under the rim of his brown straw hat, whose crown was defiantly surmounted by a cock's feather. But he was exceedingly jolly withal, and welcomed the Yankees with pompous good-humor, despatching a sergeant for a jug of applejack, which was doubtless as inexpensive to the major as his other hospitality. Having been a prisoner at Chicago, he prided himself on his ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various

... a wind? Tap... tap... Night pads upon the snow with moccasined feet... and it is still... so still... an eagle's feather might fall like a stone. Could there have been a storm... mad-tossing golden mane on the neck of the wind... tearing up the sky... loose-flapping like a tent ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge

... said nothing of all this, only telling of her visit to Mrs. Shelley, who had received her kindly, and to the tomb of Shakespeare, whose painted effigy she especially derided. "It looks indeed like a man who would cut his wife off with an old feather-bed and a teakettle," was one of her characteristic remarks, I remember; but there was a little postscript that told the whole story of her life, on a separate scrap of paper meant only for my eye I clearly saw, and committed instantly ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... is indeed carried farther among these people than among any of the inhabitants of Europe, for they powder not only their heads but their beards too. Their heads however were decorated with more showy ornaments, for I observed that most of them had, just above one ear, stuck a feather, which appeared to have been taken from the tail of the common dunghill cock; so that these gentlemen are not without poultry for their table. They were armed with spears, and long sticks or poles, like the quarter-staff; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... personal beauty sacrificed! his body clad in dark and sombre vestment, his manner natural and plain, his unadorned appearance; his circumspection as he looked upon the earth in walking! "He who ought to have had held over him the feather-shade," they said, "whose hands should grasp 'the reins of the flying dragon,' see how he walks in daylight on the dusty road! holding his alms-dish, going to beg! Gifted enough to tread down every enemy, lovely enough to gladden woman's heart, with glittering ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... morning Andrea called at the Engineering Offices. He wore his Italian shooting-dress; an eagle's feather ornamented his hat, and a gun and a knapsack were slung across his shoulder. His face and his ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg

... her own. He had undertaken certain work at Belton which required his presence, and he would go down and do his work as though nothing had occurred to disturb him. To remain away because of this misfortune would be to show the white feather. It would be unmanly. All this he recognized as the pictures he had painted faded away from their canvases. As to Captain Aylmer himself, he hoped that he might never be called upon to meet him. He still hoped that, even ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope

... are prone to drop to sleep and breathe with a low death rattle, like the exhaust of a bath tub, it would be a good plan to tie up your head in a feather bed and then insert the whole thing in the linen closet; or, if you cannot secure that, you might stick it out of the window and get it knocked off against a tunnel. The stockholders of the road might get mad about it, but you could do it in such a way that they wouldn't ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... to this place that when between a hundred and seventy and a hundred and eighty strange boys have been put into your cottages and homes, there has not arisen a single difficulty for the whole year? I say it is quite as much a feather in your caps as in ours. I am proud of it—very proud of it. (Applause.) I would also refer to the extensive power which lies in a great school. It is quite true that some few years hence, these boys whom you have looked on with interest will be ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine

... are French beds. The one great advantage that our new system possesses over the old is, indeed, the sleeping accommodation. The 'skimpy' mattress, the sheet that used to come untucked through shortness, leaving the feet tickled by the blanket, and the thin, limp thing that called itself a feather bed, are only to be ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... hosts bade their visitors be seated, and they ranged themselves around the fire, one at each of the cardinal points. Each held an arrow made of the cliff rose (Cowania mexicana) in his extended right hand. The head of the arrow was of stone, the fletching of eagle feathers, and the "breath feather" of the downy plume of the Tsenáhale (the Harpy of Navajo mythology). As they held the arrows they ejaculated, "ai', ai', ai', ai'," as they who dance the kátso-yisçà u do in the ceremonies to this day, and after the fourth ai' each one swallowed his arrow, head foremost, until ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews

... his finned quarry, who, if other bait be wanting, can by a bare bit of white rag at the end of a string captivate those foolish fishes. Such piscatorial oratory is Satan cunning in. Before one he trails a hat and feather, or a bare feather without a hat; before another, a Presidential chair, or a tidewaiter's stool, or a pulpit in the city, no matter what. To us, dangling there over our heads, they seem junkets dropped out of the seventh heaven, sops ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell

... also throw to the surface men who had neither genius nor force, but who were as wild and dangerous as their betters. No one, surely, could have been prepared to meet in the person of the minister of a great nation such a feather-headed ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge

... other hand, were in high feather, and their boasts went up and down the river to add to our discomfiture. Among all classes of them we became aware of a growing insubordination. We were beaten, and they were losing respect for us. With the loss of respect, contempt began to arise. Charley began to be ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London

... earnestness and life seems to inspire them to greater effort, and their playing gains in vigor and precision. "Not too much fire, gentlemen." This is the slow movement, and she gently represses their enthusiasm. The feather like touch, the airy delicacy of her own playing, spurs them on to unwonted care and restraint. At the end comes another long cadenza, that for soft, whispering tones, sweetness, grace, and vanishing lightness, is almost ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard

... that? Why tell me this stuff? Of course I can guess as well as you that it's a feather-bed, since I see a flock of geese in the yard ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... candle from his pocket, Levi greased the running parts of the machine, hoisted the gate, and away went the saw as briskly as a bee after its years of rest in the attic, to the intense delight of Bessie, who was quite ready to vote another feather for the cap of the hero. A piece of board was adjusted on the carriage, and the saw began to whisk, whisk, whisk through it, when a series of yells in the direction of the road attracted the attention of ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic

... the Zulu—I always called him a Zulu, though he was not really one—"great swelling words fit to fill the mouth of a man. Thou art right, my father Incubu. Listen! what is life? It is a feather, it is the seed of the grass, blown hither and thither, sometimes multiplying itself and dying in the act, sometimes carried away into the heavens. But if that seed be good and heavy it may perchance travel a little way on the road it wills. ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard

... since," said the captain, pointing complacently to his own composition with the feather end of his pen, "I had the honor of suggesting a pious fraud on Mrs. Lecount. ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... at length; a simple operation in which I exhibited—I believe that is the medical term—a strong solution of caustic applied with a feather. ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard

... had made no slightest move, realizing that a feather's weight might snap the gambler's nervous tension and bring the involuntary twitch that would put him out swifter than a ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... night when we arrived at the house in Knigstrasse. I expected to find all quiet there, my uncle in bed as was his custom, and Martha giving her last touches with the feather brush. ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... explain how matters stood, and in a few more everything was ready. The coach-box was strapped on the komatik. The bearskin rug and a feather bed were lashed inside it, with all the restoratives loving care could think of, and with the music of the wild barking of the dogs echoing from the mountain and valley, the sledge went whirling back over the crisp snow—the team no less excited than Malcolm himself at this ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... their good-natured "joshing" of Tom, they, quite as much as he, were eager for excitement and adventure. In the fullest sense they were "birds of a feather." In earlier and ruder days they would have been soldiers of fortune, cutting their ways through unknown forests, facing without flinching savage beasts and equally savage men, looking ever for ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield

... "Whether they take me for a gineral or an old woman, it won't much matter, for they'll find that an old woman can fight as well as many a gineral. Let thim come on as fierce as they may, I'll not be after showin' the white feather." ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston

... squarely at the blue monstrosity's hideous face. Arlok made no attempt to dodge. The heavy revolver struck him high on the forehead, then rebounded harmlessly to the floor. Arlok paid no more attention to the blow than a man would to the casual touch of a wind-blown feather. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... see no reason," said Major Proctor smoothly, "you are going to leave, Shelton. You are going to leave in one hour. If you delay a minute later, we will come with friends who will know how to handle you. We will come in an hour with a tar pot and a feather mattress." ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand

... Pollard came in and stood with her elbow resting on the showcase as she flirted a small feather duster. She had just released her hair from curl paper, and it hung in golden ringlets over her forehead. Her face was ripe and red, like a well-sunned peach, and the firm curves of her bosom swelled the gathers of ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow









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