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More "Haystack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 'divarsion' in the country, and when there were big races at a distance Mick generally took the road a day beforehand, sleeping out in the soft spring night if it was dry weather, trusting to a convenient haystack or barn if it wasn't. He was known so widely that at every farmhouse along the road he was sure of a bite. And on the race-course every one was his friend; and the various parties picnicking were greeted by Mick with uproarious shouts and a flinging of his caubeen in the air, ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... "There's a haystack out there by the barn," said Hawley, pointing to a stack of some kind that could be seen in the rear of the nearest barn. "If you could only get behind that you could ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... said to her: "If you will go to yonder hay-stack, and fetch me a handful of hay, I'll give you the milk." So away went the old woman to the haystack and she brought the ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... road in which the two men had been shot down. A number of men under the direction of the sheriff were scouring the lofty timberland for the deadly marksmen. He knew it would turn out to be as futile as the proverbial effort to find the needle in the haystack. ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... the youngsters, of course, and not of much account, but he'd made a lot of friends. They've got a wreath as big as a haystack for the poor little man. They've made him into a hero; and they're all here—good fellows!" Thus the manager to the physician, as ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... Ma Fewkes was looking up at him, as if what he said must be the law and gospel. He had them all hypnotized, or as we called it then, mesmerized—so I thought as I went out of sight of them. After a while, Rowena came around the end of a haystack, and ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... he moaned. "The Laird doesn't know where she is, and neither do I. I induced her to go away, and she's lost somewhere in the world. To find her now would be like searching a haystack for a needle." ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... an' he 's cock-sure that nobody 's chasin' him yet. He 's figurin' on two or three days' get-a-way, and so don't care a tinker's dam 'bout these yere marks. Once in the sand, an' thar won't be no trail anyhow. It's some kintry out thar, an' it would be like huntin' a needle in a haystack to try an' find them fellars after ter-night. This is my idea—we'll just mosey along slow, savin' the hosses an' keeping back out o' sight till dark. Them fellars ain't many hours ahead, an' are likely ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... who knows about ginger cookies and winter underwear, and whose Monday washing is fragrant with the clean-smelling scent of green grass and sunshine. But it was remarkable that she could pick this one needle from the haystack of socks and shirts that towered above her. She ran her hand through hundreds of garments in the day's work. Some required her attention. Some were guiltless of rent or hole. She never thought of mating them. That was the sorter's work. But with Eddie's socks it was ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... repair shop and round-house all by himself. He and I run this railway. It keeps us pretty busy, but we've always got time to stop and eject a sassy passenger. So you want to behave yourself and go through with us, or you will have your baggage set off here by the haystack!" ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... English," (from the first settlers being of that illustrious nation,) a distance of two miles from where we then lived. Our house was a good one. We did not like to leave it. Selling was out of the question: so we e'en resolved to take it with us, wishing, as the Highland robber did of the haystack, that it had legs to walk. A substitute for this was found in the universal resource of New Brunswickers for all their wants, from the cradle to the coffin, "the tree, the bonny greenwood tree," that gives the young life-blood of its sweet ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... may as well give the hunt up," answered his brother. "It would be worse than looking for a pin in a haystack, for we wouldn't know ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... a laugh, "to be chiefly occupied in sending flowers to Madame Blumenthal. That is, I went with him the morning of his arrival to choose a nosegay, and nothing would suit him but a small haystack of white roses. I hope it ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... just going off and forgetting to come back. Once—dear, dear! it gives me a turn to think of it!—she had been reading 'Neighbor Jackwood,' and was much delighted with the idea of the heroine's hiding in the haystack to escape her cruel pursuers. So she went out to the great haystack in the barnyard, pulled out a quantity of hay, crept into the hole, and found it so comfortable that she fell fast asleep. You may imagine, my dears, what my feelings were when dinner-time came, ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... there is any thing I dislike, it is an attempt at poetry when you can't do it. I know some people who always try to show themselves in public; but when they are home, they never have their collar on straight, and in the morning look like a whirlwind breakfasting on a haystack. As for me, I am practical, and winter is winter, and sleet is sleet, and ice is ice, and a tea-cup is a tea-cup; and if you will pass mine up to the hostess to be resupplied, I will like it a great deal better ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... horse. I had now a chance of escape; but I was weary, wounded, and overcome with vexation. It happened, as I took my last view of my keeper outside, nodding on his horse's neck, that I glanced on a huge haystack in the stable-yard. The thought struck me, that helpless as I was, I might contrive to give an alarm to some of the British videttes or patroles, if your gallant countrymen should condescend to employ such things. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... dark, and often I must needs arise at night to run forth to the fold when there was an alarm of wolves. Day after day my head grew heavier from want of sleep, until at last I could keep my eyes open no longer. I stole under the haystack to snatch a few extra winks, and when I was discovered my shame and disgrace were heralded forth to all the world." And again the ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... I could have hoped on board our floating menagerie; stallions and monkeys and matches made our cargo; and the vast continent of the incongruities rolled the while like a haystack; and the stallions stood hypnotized by the motion, looking through the port at our dinner table, and winnied when the crockery was broken; and the little monkeys stared at one another in their cages ... and the big monkey, Jacko scoured about the ship and rested willingly ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... and had a villa and a steam launch at Surbiton: and was versed in the esoteric humours of the House. Who could have thought that the Hunter lay hid in him? Yet, after many weeks, they found him in a wild nook of Hampshire. Ragged, sun-burnt, the nocturnal haystack calling aloud from his frayed and weather-stained duds, his trousers tucked, he was tickling trout with godless native urchins; and when they would have won him to himself with honied whispers of American Rails, he answered but with babble of green fields. He is back in his wonted ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... soft shawls in the lee of the rocks, and gather their shells and anemones vicariously at the expense of your tendon achilles. We know it, for we have suffered. We calculate, and are prepared to prove, that the successful collection of a single ribbon of ruffled seaweed, procured in a slimy haystack of red dulse at the beck of one inconsiderate girl, who is keeping her brass heels dry on a safe and sunny ledge of the Purgatory at Newport, may require more mental calculation, involve more anguish of equilibrium, and encourage more heartfelt secret profanity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... a burden on his mind as big as a haystack," grinned Jack Bates. "Watch the way his jaw hangs down, will yuh? Bet ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... remonstrated. "No more of that; if you want to knock the brains out of that haystack on the back of your head, why, knock away; but spare my bones, if ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... a little farther and sit down in the fields, where an unfinished haystack offers us a couch. We can hardly distinguish the line of the horizon between the dark earth and the dark sky. A bat flits across our faces; and ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... lucky!" he exclaimed, springing to the ground beside me. "I've actually been praying for a week past that I might meet you. Holmes, of your service, told me you had pulled through, but everything is in such confusion that to hunt for you would have been the proverbial quest after a needle in a haystack. You have ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... took a high dive from the top. Down tumbled the others, over and over. But fortunately for all, there was a great haystack below, and upon this they landed in a jumbled heap close to the magic bean pole. As it happened, there was no one in sight. Up they jumped in a trice, and while the Comfortable Camel and Doubtful Dromedary munched contentedly ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... for employment in the ever-changing variety of landscape, which even on the least picturesque lines will be found constantly coming into view. The most ordinary objects have then a fresh interest imparted to them. You catch a distant glimpse perhaps of a haystack on the brow of an eminence miles away before you. As you proceed, a farm-house, with its out-buildings and granaries to follow, marches right out of the haystack, and takes up its position at the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... good," he returned gloomily. "The only thing that can help me now is for me to git the fellow myself, and I might just as well look for a needle in a haystack." ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... something like this always 'appens on my birthday. Last time it was a fish. I fell into the stream and went right under. When I got out on to the bank again I found a trout in my pocket. The time before I slept beside a haystack, and when I awoke at sunrise I felt something warm and soft against my face like feathers. It was feathers. There was a 'en's nest two inches from my nose, and six nice eggs in it all ready for my birthday breakfast. I only ate four of them. You should never take all the heggs ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... as she was wrapping it up in paper, and Hugh, pointing to his purchase with a melancholy air, said, in an aggrieved tone: "It's a terrible quantity they're about givin' me—yards and yards—enough to rope round a haystack; and it's an ojis colour. Troth, now, if she takes the notion to be stickin' the whole of it on top of the little black head of her, it's an objec' she'll make of herself, she will so. It's a pity. I'd liefer there hadn't been the ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... to his twisted knees; he had long, yellow, overlapping horse's teeth in his mouth, with a fall-down under-lip and a drawn-back upper-lip; he had a matted rug of hair on his head. He was as high as a haystack. He carried in his twisted hand an iron spike pointed at the end. And wherever he was going he went as quickly as a ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... my friends, it would be like hunting for a needle in a haystack. You certainly do not understand the ways of the Indians. If the Indians have killed those men, they will take the bodies with them if they have to carry them a hundred miles. They will take them ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... France. In the fields were endless rows of vegetables—beans, turnips, cabbages, and garden truck of all sorts. This was the sort of country that had made Belgium known for years as the vegetable garden of Europe. Finally they stopped near a dark house, and made themselves comfortable in the lee of a haystack. And there they slept until the light of the sun came to rouse them. They awoke to see a peasant boy staring ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... eyes, for he had been asleep in the straw when Bunny jumped on him. "Yes, I've come back. I stayed in the field, under a haystack all night, but I couldn't stand it any longer. ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Playing Circus • Laura Lee Hope
... Here is located Williams College, one of the most famous of the smaller New England institutions; also Thompson Memorial Chapel, which is considered by architectural authorities to be one of the finest in this country. In Mission Park is located the famous haystack monument, marking the birthplace of foreign missions, a spot visited by pilgrims from ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... come all the way for this, To part at last without a kiss? Yea, had she borne the dirt and rain That her own eyes might see him slain Beside the haystack in the floods? ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... under my orders here, and my instructions are to send you all directly back to the ford and across the river; and then the army is already on the march, and you might as well attempt to find a needle in a haystack as undertake to find your regiment in these woods in this darkness." If his first reason had not been sufficient, the latter one was quite convincing. I realized at once the utter madness of any attempt to reach the regiment, at the same time ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... haystack stood by the road-side, but over there in the field he saw a barn near a farm-house. He could find shelter in that. Waiting until it was dark, he crept cautiously through a small sheep door, and entered. He heard ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... was to find out where Hugh Davidson was likely to be found, if alive. Dr. Hunter felt as though he were beginning to search for the proverbial needle in a haystack; but by Mrs. Forester's advice he entrusted the matter to his lawyers, and in an incredibly short space of time he heard from them that the man he wanted was now the manager of the A1 Shipping and Transportation Company at Skaguay, Alaska, the ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... his voice became gentle. "There's some milk yet about that moustache of yours, my boy. You don't know what a man like me is capable of. I would hide behind a haystack if... Don't grin at me, sir. How dare you? If this were not a private conversation, I would... Look here. I am responsible for the proper expenditure of lives under my command for the glory of our country and the honour of the regiment. Do you understand that? Well, then, what ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... snake or two. Then, toward evening, they jolted home again, hot, dusty, and weary, but supremely content in having lived up to the traditions of Menlo Park. Tiny alone came out triumphant on these trying occasions. Dressed in cool white, she seated her diminutive self in the very middle of the haystack and talked little. The others, undaunted by the sun, started in high spirits, flirted with energy, and changed their positions many times. Upon the return journey, Tiny, again, sat serene and white; the rest ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... boat came up 2,000 meters in one jump. The rest of the formation had gone on, dropped their bombs on Rombach and were beating it for Ludwigshafen. By the time I got back to my right altitude I could see the effects of their bombs. The railroad station was burning like a haystack and smoke was coming from the munitions plant. I circled the town and the observer ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... though they are not half as airy, Samoan huts being very open; but in most of the Fijian huts I visited the only openings were the doors, and, as can be imagined, the interior was rather dark and gloomy. In shape they greatly resembled a haystack, the sides being composed of grass or bunches of leaves, more often the latter. They are generally built on a platform of rocks, with doors upon two or more sides, according to the size of the hut; and a sloping sort of rough plank with notches ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... you believe it? the Russians burned their own city! 'Twas a haystack six miles square, and it blazed for two days. The buildings crashed like slates, and showers of melted iron and lead rained down upon us, which was naturally horrible. I may say to you plainly, it was like a flash ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... food? Other things that people strive for in the main? They were nothing to Roberto. He could sleep under a haystack, crunch a crust of bread, and wear his garments until they ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... of boys were examined as to their knowledge of Samuel Mills. "Where was he born?" asked the leader. "Under a haystack!" replied a small boy. Had the question been, Where was the American Board of Foreign Missions born? the answer would not have been so far from the way. Its baptismal naming came some years later, but under a stack of hay in a meadow, ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker
... really a little walking haystack, and scared at his condition, because he thought he would probably never be a bear any more. He was so scared that he wanted his father to come and do something for him, and started to meet him, as fast as he could, with all that load of hay and molasses. He was crying, ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... with his own. "True son of Lilamani! But I fear he may have joined some secret society; and India is a large haystack in which to ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... to a huge haystack and to several barns which stood on some high ground, and by the light of the flames I could easily distinguish the enemy column, consisting of Grodno Hussars. I had with me about a thousand brave men, and with ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... together for about half a mile, till they came to a barn. There was a haystack close by, and they dragged some of the dry ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... hostel of some scattered hamlet: though, more often, they loved to spread the simple food they purchased by the way under some thick, tree, or beside a stream through whose limpid waters they could watch the trout glide and play. And they often preferred the chance shelter of a haystack, or a shed, to the less romantic repose offered by the small inns they alone dared to enter. They went in this much by the face and voice of the host or hostess. Once only Philip had entered a town, on the second day of their flight, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... minutes to recall what had happened and his whereabouts. Then he made his way to the canal, which was close by, washed the blood from his face, and set out to walk to Birmingham. He was too shaken and bruised to make much progress, and after walking for a while crept into the shelter of a haystack, and went off to sleep for many hours. After it was dusk in the evening he started again, and made his way to his lodgings at ten o'clock that night. It was a fortnight before he could leave his room, so bruised ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... have promised to go to the woods with the children, all of whom are as brown as Indians. My room is all aflame with two great trees of maple; I never saw such a beautiful velvety color as they have. We have just had a very pleasant excursion to a mountain called Haystack, and ate our dinner sitting round in the grass in view of a splendid prospect.... I have thus given you the history of our summer, as far as its history can be written. Its ecstatic joys have not ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... and I said that as he was walking for amusement he would probably only stay a few hours. "We can't treat him like that; tell him to stay a week and send for his gun. For the matter of that he can have one of mine. I don't expect he will be able to hit a haystack," was ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... "Now I know! You're going to live in the haystack. A haystack is cozy and warm; it's wind-proof; it sheds water; and ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug • Arthur Scott Bailey
... treeless causey burn beyond, Halts to unroll his bundle of strange food 210 And munch an unearned meal. I cannot help Liking this creature, lavish Summer's bedesman, Who from the almshouse steals when nights grow warm, Himself his large estate and only charge, To be the guest of haystack or of hedge, Nobly superior to the household gear That forfeits us our privilege of nature. I bait him with my match-box and my pouch, Nor grudge the uncostly sympathy of smoke, His equal now, divinely ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... day at the appointed time I was behind the haystack awaiting my adversary, who did not fail to appear. "We may be surprised," he said; "be quick." We laid aside our uniforms, drew our swords from the scabbards, when Ignatius, followed by five pensioners, came out from behind a haystack. ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... choice of weapons. The privilege, however, was not worth much to him. He had never handled cold steel, while his adversary was an expert fencer, and he was also such a poor marksman that he could not have made sure of hitting a haystack at twenty yards. Still, he reflected that, although de Beauvallon was unlikely to miss him with a rapier, he might possibly do so with a bullet. Accordingly, he ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... round his neck and kissed him till they were both out of breath. From that moment the eternal story of love began between them. They plagued one another in corners; they met in the moonlight beside the haystack and gave each other bruises on the legs, under the table, with their heavy nailed boots. By degrees, however, Jacques seemed to grow tired of her; he avoided her, scarcely spoke to her, and did not try any longer to meet ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... stop to look; for, after the restive kick at the chair, he had broken into a canter, dashed down the garden and through the gate into the meadow, across which he now galloped straight for the new haystack, for only a week before that meadow had been forbidden ground and full of long, waving, ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn
... roofed, by a rude structure of rough boards, which was open at the sides, and sustained on a number of pine poles about thirty feet in height, and bore a strong resemblance to the usual covering of a New England haystack. ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... what they'll do. However, by the time they can land and get checked up and ready to hunt for us, we'll be a mighty small needle, well hidden in a good big haystack." ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... creep into the thick branches of an evergreen tree, close up to the trunk. Some crawl under the edge of a haystack, others into thick vines or thorny bushes. All these are meant for hiding-places, so that beasts that prowl about at night, and like to eat birds, will not ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... a sketch of the devil!" said this very angry and inconsiderate papa. "Why can't she do it some other day?—why the Twelfth? Good heavens! is everything conspiring to vex and annoy me so that I sha'n't be able to hit a haystack?" ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... his bare feet. His eyes were heavy with sleep, and to his cloudy gaze the familiar objects of the barnyard assumed grotesque and distorted shapes. The manure heap near the doorway presented an effect of unreality, the pig-pen seemed to have suffered witchery since the evening before, and the haystack, looming vaguely in the drab distance, appeared to be woven of ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... rest of the army came up and helped in the search, but 'twasn't any use. That general's head had disappeared as if by magic. At first it was thought they might trace it by the cuss-words it was uttering, but you see by this time everybody was swearing, so it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. They kept on hunting for nearly a week, because Grandpa wanted to send that feller's head to his widow, so's she could give it a decent burial and also get ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... the Brandon Hills shimmered in a pale gray mirage. Over the trees which sheltered the Stopping-House a flock of black crows circled in the blue air, croaking and complaining that the harvest was going to be late. On the wire-fence that circled the haystack sat a row of red-winged blackbirds like a string of jet beads, patiently waiting for the oats to ripen and indulging in low-spoken but pleasant gossip about all the other birds in ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... favours; but she could not afford to buy cows, and she did not wish to be beholden to any one for her living. And Lenny was well off at Mr. Rickeybockey's, and coming on wonderfully in the garden way, and she did not doubt she could get some washing; at all events, her haystack would bring in a good bit of money, and she should ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with the exception of Mr. McGraw" replied Donna. "Following a clew like that in San Pasqual would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. But I think I could name the man who wrote ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... active, that he did not wait until daylight, when conditions would be best, but began the search in the face of apparent impossibility, brought her immediate confidence. She liked a man who would, without quoting the old saw, hunt for a needle in a haystack. ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... nothing but translation—this simple statement into English. The perplexity which first seizes the hapless school-boy over his "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres" is nothing to it. Like him, he must go hunting, as if for a needle in a haystack, for the word to put first. It is the last idea in his sign-sentence. Then he slowly learns to pick out the words and arrange them in English order—an order, as I said before, not founded on philosophical principles, but in most instances wholly arbitrary. This ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... dry, (or ripen, as it is called,) it is the custom in some dairy-farms, to place the cheeses in the haystack, and keep them there among the hay for five or six weeks. This is said greatly to improve their consistence and flavour. Cheeses are sometimes ripened by putting them every day in ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... come blow me thy horn, The sheep in the meadow, The cow's in the corn. Where is the boy that looks after the sheep? Under the haystack fast asleep." ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... that day was employed in piling up the cocoa-nut branches and wood. Ready made a square stack, like a haystack, with a gable top, over which he tied the long branches, so that the rain would ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... my horse had not fallen and caused me to break my shoulder bone, the pain of which was so extreme that I nearly fainted several times. Not being able to continue my journey, I was lodged, with only one of my gentlemen, in a great haystack, while MM. de Brissac and Joly went straight to Beaupreau, to assemble the nobility, there, in order to rescue me. I lay hid there for over seven hours in inexpressible misery, for the pain from my injury threw me into a fever, during which ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... was not a palace. It stood, low and whitewashed, amid a medley of little tumble-down erections, and was guarded on one side by cowsheds and on the other by the haystack. You stepped across the threshold into the kitchen. A door on the right gave access to the bedroom. A ladder connected with a hole in the roof enabled you to reach the cockloft, the guest room of the establishment. That was all. What on earth could man want more? ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... he came to a city where a dreadful elephant came daily to make a meal off the inhabitants. Many mighty warriors had gone against it, but none had returned. On hearing this the valiant little weaver thought to himself, 'Now is my chance! A great haystack of an elephant will be a fine mark to a man who has shot a mosquito with a shuttle!' So he went to the King, and announced that he proposed single-handed to meet and slay the elephant. At first the King thought the little man was mad, but as he persisted in his words, ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... till we get over that haystack," said Jack, "and then play out rope till we lower him. It'll make a nice soft ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... goose she ran round the haystack, Oh, ho! said the fox, you are very fat; You'll grease my beard and ride on my back From this into yonder ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... place has since been called the Dancing Chamber. It is on the west side of the river, just through the Highlands. Boterberg (Butter Hill), and Hoyberg (Hay Hill), the one because it is like the rolls of butter which the farmers in Holland take to market, and the other because it is like a haystack in Holland; 't Claver Rack (Clover Reach), from three bare places which appear on the land;[365] and Kinder Hoeck (Children's Point), Noten Hoeck (Nut Point), Potlepels Eylant (Potladle Island), ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... lost their wheels. Wheelbarrows, too heavy to trundle, had been tilted up, with all their household goods spilt into the roadway, and the children had been carried further, until at last darkness came, and their only shelter was a haystack in a field ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... were posted beseeching the inhabitants to bring in all weapons they might possess. We found the Signal Company, and rode ahead of it out of the town to some fields above a village called Castres. There we unharnessed and took refuge from the gathering storm under a half-demolished haystack. The Germans didn't agree to our remaining for more than fifty minutes. Orders came for us to harness up and move on. I was left behind with the H.Q.S., which had collected itself, and was sent a few minutes later to 2nd Corps H.Q. at Ham, ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... obvious. Robespierre, Danton, Tinville, Merlin, and the whole of the demmed murderous crowd, will be busy looking after me—a needle in a haystack. They'll put the abortive attempt down to me, and you may—ma foi! I only suggest that you may escape safely out of France—in the Daydream, and with the help of your ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... I have said any one might infer that I had not read, or had not appreciated, that volume called "The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems," in which are to be found things of pure beauty, "Summer Dawn," "In Prison," "The Wind," "The Haystack in the Floods"; any one might suppose that I did not know "Love is Enough." These are the poems which, with "Sigurd," give William Morris his place amongst the poets. Mr. Clutton Brock feels this surely enough, because he possesses, besides intellect, that other ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... the elephant, each time holding down with his foot a separate bough, until he has secured it by the weight of another, placed in the same position opposite. This plan enables him to build up a load like a small haystack, which is then secured by ropes, and almost hides the animal that carries it. My mighty beast was condemned to this useful but degrading employment, instead of being honoured by a place in the line of shikari's elephants, and we started into the valleys among ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... been in action once and once only in the memory of man, and that time it was a haystack which had burnt itself out just as the rescuers had succeeded in fastening ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... had forgotten. I jammed my foot down hard, and the car seemed to lift out of the air. We went across the ditch, through a stake and rider fence, through a creek and up the other side of the bank, and brought up against a haystack with ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... doing this one little difficulty peculiar to such places as the Mansion House has to be met. The hall is so vast and the multitude so bewildering that, unless you know exactly where to look, it is as hopeless to expect to find any given partner at the right moment as to seek a needle in a haystack. The only safe expedient is to agree upon a pillar. A row of substantial pillars runs down either side of the hall, the base of each fringed with seats, apt head-quarters for chaperons, who, sitting there at ease, survey the fray ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... May I saw a pair of Ospreys coming and going to and fro from the nest. I hoped the birds might return another season, as the nest looked as if it might have been used for two or three years, and was as lop-sided as a poorly made haystack. The great August storm of the same year broke the tree, and the nest fell, making quite a heap upon the ground. Among the debris were sticks of various sizes, dried reeds, two bits of bamboo fishing rod, seaweeds, some old blue mosquito netting, and some rags ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... night to come; the horses, ruffled and shivering, with their tails to the wind, as they snap their frosted fodder, or paw through the rime to the frozen grass underneath, causing their icy fetlocks to rattle about their hoofs; the cattle, crowded to leeward of some deep-buried haystack, the exposed side of the outermost of them white with whirling flakes; the sheep, turning their pitiful, trusting eyes about them over the fields of storm in ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... information seemed at first sight valueless. A man takes an unknown cab from an unknown house in an unknown suburb to an unknown terminus, when he buys a ticket for an unknown destination. Sheer waste of energy to hunt for a needle in that haystack! ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... hauled it up. Then, as coolly ascending the bank, he approached one of the haystacks, and drew from it a few handfuls of fodder which he spread upon the ground, continuing to do so, as the cattle assembled around, until he had gained the outermost haystack bordering immediately upon the wood. This reached, he gave a loud yell, which was promptly answered by the Indians, who had continued to watch his movements up to the very moment of his disappearance; and darting along a narrow path which skirted the wood, ran with all ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... is a person to shoot if he mayn't shoot in his own woods? Not that the Duke cares about the shooting for himself. He could not hit a pheasant sitting on a haystack, and wouldn't know one if he saw it. And he'd rather that there wasn't such a thing as a pheasant in the world. He cares for nothing but farthings. But what is a man to do? Or, rather, what is a woman to do?—for he tells me that I must ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... rhythm of my impromptu phrases, but it happened at that time that a play of mine had been accepted at the Grand Guignol, subject to an additional thrill being introduced, and I preferred pondering for a thrill in my garret to hunting for a pin in a haystack, ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... along the road, and occupied every exit from the castle. One detachment he hid behind a haystack, with another he seized the beehives, and with a third the distillery. The servants who lived outside he overcame after a short resistance, and then bound them tightly and locked ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... control her tears. After she had dashed a drop or two from her eyes, she said: "I cannot tell what it's all about. He's always in a ponder, ponder, with his mouth open—except when he's grindin' his teeth. I hate to see a man walking about like a haystack. And Robbie used to have so much fun once on ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... were searching for rebels, you thought a man was concealed in a dairy-yard in the neighbourhood of my mother's house, major, in Stephen's Green; and you thought he was hid in a hay- rick, and ordered your sergeant to ask for the loan of a spit from my mother's kitchen to probe the haystack." ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... this, how many a father of a family is there who goes to church for the sake of example? Does not the Church admit prayers for change of weather? Ask the clergyman on his way from church what he is doing with his own haystack, and his answer will let you know whether he believes in his own prayers. He has lent all the sanctity of his voice to the expression of words which had been written when the ignorance of men as to the works of nature ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... small haystack at the west end of the inn, which Donald marked out as his resting-place for the night. Thither he made his cautious way—the piobaireachd sounding ever more clearly ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... A variant of the usual form, which is kaupaku, the ridgepole of a house, its apex. The pa-ti when, worn takes the shape of a grass house, which has the form of a haystack.] ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... confirm these deductions by observation. In April I unpotted my plant of thyme for the third time. I broke up the mould and spread it under the magnifying-glass. It was like looking for needles in a haystack; but at last I recovered my little Cigales. They were dead, perhaps of cold, in spite of the bell-glass with which I had covered the pot, or perhaps of starvation, if the thyme was not a suitable food-plant. I give up the problem ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... remember the Breeds cleared away from their old settlement lately. We've never found them. Once they take to the hills, it's like a needle in a haystack. Maybe friend ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... merely a question of destroying an organization it might be managed, for an organization presents a big front. But it's a question of destroying this one man, and his front is a razor edge. How are you going to find him? It's like looking for a needle in a haystack, and such a needle! A needle which can become a piece of straw or ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... with a long whistle, "and you want Will Fletcher—which shows what a very pretty sheriff you would make. Well, if you're so strong on his scent that you can't turn aside, most likely you'll find him sleeping off his drunk under my haystack. But if you're looking for the man who killed Bill Fletcher, then that's a different matter," he added, taking down his hat, "and I reckon, boys, I'm ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... up and down in them. None of them were like the one he was looking for, neither could he see anything that looked like the colonel's straight slim figure and soldierly bearing. He was weary, but he persevered. A man in his position was not open to the charge of looking for a needle in a haystack, such as would now be justly brought to him. New York was not quite so large then as it is now. It is astonishing to think what a little place it was in those days; when Walker Street was not yet built on its north side, and there was a pond at the corner of Canal ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... the highest peak, Mt. Marcy (called by the Indians Tahawus or "cloud-splitter''), is near the eastern part of the group and attains an elevation of 5344 ft. Other noted peaks are M'Intyre (5210 ft,), Haystack (4918), Dix (4916) and Whiteface (4871). These mountains, consisting of various sorts of gneiss, intrusive granite and gabbro, have been formed partly by faulting but mainly by erosion, the lines of which ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... very slowly, they never would appear as distinct objects. By the time the cloud of decoys entered the atmosphere, its more than two dozen members would appear to the finest radar available on the ground as a single echo twenty-five miles across. It would be a giant haystack in the sky, concealing the most deadly needle of all time. No ground-controlled intercept scheme had any hope of selecting the warhead from among that deceptive cloud and ...
— Pushbutton War • Joseph P. Martino
... church, by-the-by, of course - a hideous temple of flint, like a great petrified haystack. Our chief clerical dignitary, who, to his honour, has done much for education both in time and money, and has established excellent schools, is a sound, shrewd, healthy gentleman, who has got into little occasional difficulties with the neighbouring farmers, but has had a pestilent ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... the fence after the escaping man, but in that heavy undergrowth he knew it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. After a time he gave it up and returned to the ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... cash; hay, too, as long as there was still some remaining in his lofts. He would also sell hay against promises of lambs, especially wethers, once it was certain that the cold of winter was past. But his old haystack he refused to touch ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... th' air 'ith them air joemightyful big sabres, tew," D'ri went on. "Hed a purty middlin' sharp edge on us. Stuck out luk a haystack ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... that such is not his intention, papa?' said Kate merrily. 'Old Catty had a dream about a piebald horse and a haystack on fire, and something about a creel of duck eggs, and I trust that every educated ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... dropped on the floor—the other fell asleep on his horse. I had now a chance of escape; but I was weary, wounded, and overcome with vexation. It happened, as I took my last view of my keeper outside, nodding on his horse's neck, that I glanced on a huge haystack in the stable-yard. The thought struck me, that helpless as I was, I might contrive to give an alarm to some of the British videttes or patroles, if your gallant countrymen should condescend to employ such things. I stole down into the yard, lantern in hand; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... smoking (and got him). Old wives grumbled by their hearths when he did not look in to despair of their salvation. He told the maidens of his congregation not to make an idol of him. His session saw him (from behind a haystack) in conversation with a strange woman, and asked grimly if he remembered that he had a wife. Twenty were his years when he came to Thrums, and on the very first Sabbath he knocked a board out of the pulpit. Before beginning ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... up at him, as if what he said must be the law and gospel. He had them all hypnotized, or as we called it then, mesmerized—so I thought as I went out of sight of them. After a while, Rowena came around the end of a haystack, and spoke ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... necessary in our great city with its constant removals and changes of population. The individual is like the proverbial needle in the haystack, unless we adopt a method of accounting not only for each family but for each individual down to the latest-born child.* *In order that I may not be as one that beateth the air, I venture to suggest a method of laying the foundation ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... their grand attempt to drown King James, they did not meet with the devil after cruising about, but that he had accompanied them from the first, and that she had seen him dimly in the distance, rolling himself before them over the great waves, in shape and size not unlike a huge haystack. They met with a foreign ship richly laden with wines and other good things, which they boarded, and sunk after they had drunk all the wine and made ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... perpetuating the lawlessness for which the Bad Lands had for years been famous. Geography favored the criminal along the Little Missouri. Montana was a step or two to the west, Wyoming was a haven of refuge to the southwest, Canada was within easy reach to the north. A needle in a haystack, moreover, was less difficult to lay one's finger upon than a "two-gun man" tucked away in one of a thousand ravines, scarred with wash-outs and filled with buckbrush, in the broken country ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... presence." She laughed and finished her coffee. "If I'd happened to meet you when I was young—and not bad-looking. It's only my age that keeps you from falling in love with me. The other one's the Queen of your suit, poor lady, that you sent the haystack of sunflowers to. Well—Good-bye. Come and see me when you're in ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... they couldn't hit a haystack. Their hands are all of a tremble with climbing. We're right enough. I ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... accustomed to fighting in the woods, while our men have no idea of it. Their rifles are infinitely superior to these army muskets, and every man of them can hit a deer behind the shoulder at the distance of 150 yards, while at that distance most of our men would miss a haystack." ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... to me I permit myself to preserve in a note[95] for what it relates of his own sad experiences and solemn beliefs and hopes. The journey southward began on the 20th January, and five days later I had a letter written from La Scala, at a little inn, "supported on low brick arches like a British haystack," the bed in their room "like a mangle," the ceiling without lath or plaster, nothing to speak of available for comfort or decency, and nothing particular to eat or drink. "But for all this I have become attached to the country and I don't care who knows it." They had left Pisa that morning ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... charmin' a burd out iv a three; 'tis a way I have,' says I, shovin' in a fresh cartridge from my waistcoat pocket, fair an' aisy, an' kapin' me back to the haystack. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... without showing any inclination to give it up. Sometimes he lived at the flat, and sometimes he was lost for a week at a time somewhere east of St. Paul's, where one might as well have looked for him as for the proverbial needle in a haystack. ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... gaze the familiar objects of the barnyard assumed grotesque and distorted shapes. The manure heap near the doorway presented an effect of unreality, the pig-pen seemed to have suffered witchery since the evening before, and the haystack, looming vaguely in the drab distance, appeared to be woven ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... of the rocks, and gather their shells and anemones vicariously at the expense of your tendon achilles. We know it, for we have suffered. We calculate, and are prepared to prove, that the successful collection of a single ribbon of ruffled seaweed, procured in a slimy haystack of red dulse at the beck of one inconsiderate girl, who is keeping her brass heels dry on a safe and sunny ledge of the Purgatory at Newport, may require more mental calculation, involve more anguish of equilibrium, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... children suddenly discovered that they had not been snowflakes at all but only a cloud of white feathers sent whirling through the house, out of the windows, and up the chimney by some disturbance in the midst of a great heap in one corner of the room as high as a haystack. From the middle of this heap of feathers stuck up two very thin yellow legs with shabby boots that gave one last despairing kick and then were still. Near by at a counter a Gentleman Goose in a long apron was weighing feathers on a very small pair ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... down, all troopers lately afield in search of 'Tonio were again at Almy, discomfited, disheartened. "Hunting for a needle in a haystack without a magnet," said Turner, "is no more fruitless than scouting for Apaches in these mountains without Apache scouts. There is only one way," said he, "to capture 'Tonio. 'Set a thief to catch a thief; set an Indian to catch an Indian.'" But the few Indian scouts assigned ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... to me in this way one drowsy August afternoon. We had been fishing down on the river, and now on our way home up the long hot slope of the meadow we had stopped to cool ourselves in the shadow of a haystack. It was fragrant there. Presently, from the top of the stack close over our heads, a bird poured forth a ravishing song. And Eleanore with a deep "Oh-h" of delight threw both her hands behind her head, sank back in the hay and lay there close beside me. Her eyes were shut and she was smiling ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... drifted into her lonesome, ignorant soul, and settled down to stay. She said it over nights when she found a shelter in some unpleasant place or days when the road was rough or a storm came up and she was compelled to seek shelter by the roadside under a haystack or in a friendly but deserted shack. She thought of it the day there was no shelter and she was drenched to the skin. She wondered afterward when the sun came out and dried her nicely whether God had really been speaking the ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... trail ended. Now we struck out over a trackless land that grew rougher the farther we went. To look for a quarter-section here was like looking for a needle in a haystack. It was late summer and the sun beat down on the hot prairie grass and upon our heads. We had driven all day without sign of shade—and save for that brief interval at noon, without sight of water. Our faces and hands were blistered, ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... travelled to San Francisco, where he interviewed presidents of banks and other magnates. All and sundry were civil to Uncle Jap, but they refused to look for a needle in a haystack. Uncle Jap confessed, later, that he was beginning to get "cold feet," as he expressed it, when he happened to meet an out-of-elbows individual who claimed positively that he could discover water, gold, or oil, with no tools or instruments other than a hazel ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... habitations. It was the loneliest land he had ever seen, and one of the loveliest. Here Earth, the Woman, rounded and beautiful, reclined at her ease before him, naked as God had made her. How different she was from that savagely shaggy man-land in the North whence he sprang! But for a haystack like a hive on a far ridge, a fold in a hollow, and the hillsides patched here and there with plough, it might have been an ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... person to shoot if he mayn't shoot in his own woods? Not that the Duke cares about the shooting for himself. He could not hit a pheasant sitting on a haystack, and wouldn't know one if he saw it. And he'd rather that there wasn't such a thing as a pheasant in the world. He cares for nothing but farthings. But what is a man to do? Or, rather, what is a woman to do?—for he tells me that I must ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... a large scale, of the Calaveras Copper Company, I found the little settlement crowded to its fullest capacity, and was perforce compelled to resort to genuine "hobo" methods—in short, I spent the night under the lee of a haystack. My original intention had been to walk thence to Sonora, twenty-four miles; but finding the road would take me again into the valley, I decided to make for Angel's Camp, only thirteen ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... said any one might infer that I had not read, or had not appreciated, that volume called "The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems," in which are to be found things of pure beauty, "Summer Dawn," "In Prison," "The Wind," "The Haystack in the Floods"; any one might suppose that I did not know "Love is Enough." These are the poems which, with "Sigurd," give William Morris his place amongst the poets. Mr. Clutton Brock feels this surely enough, because he possesses, besides intellect, ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... some—that it had produced any thing of real value; and, at last, wearied with the philosophical twaddle, I resolved to make a new search for the criterion. I confess it, to my shame, this folly lasted for two years, and I am not yet entirely rid of it. It was like seeking a needle in a haystack. I might have learned Chinese or Arabic in the time that I have lost in considering and reconsidering syllogisms, in rising to the summit of an induction as to the top of a ladder, in inserting a proposition between the horns of a dilemma, in decomposing, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... they walked their sorry looking horses on, "while we'd like to find some sort of respectable beds to-night, if the worst comes, we can always make shift with a haystack. It wouldn't be the first time we've curled up in the hay and snatched a few ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... and do exactly as we do. I've got this fellow under my thumb. He knows he'll get a good long term for smuggling, but I can get some of it taken off if he pilots us out, and I've promised him to do my best for him. It'll be as hard as finding a needle in a haystack to get a pilot and we have him, so ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... with a laugh, "to be chiefly occupied in sending flowers to Madame Blumenthal. That is, I went with him the morning of his arrival to choose a nosegay, and nothing would suit him but a small haystack of white roses. ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... over that haystack," said Jack, "and then play out rope till we lower him. It'll make a nice ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... shimmered in a pale gray mirage. Over the trees which sheltered the Stopping-House a flock of black crows circled in the blue air, croaking and complaining that the harvest was going to be late. On the wire-fence that circled the haystack sat a row of red-winged blackbirds like a string of jet beads, patiently waiting for the oats to ripen and indulging in low-spoken but pleasant gossip about all the ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... the "Dogger Bank" to-day, on the "Swarte Bank" or the "Great Silverpits" to-morrow. With hundreds of miles of open sea around, and neither milestone nor finger-post to direct, a lost fleet is not unlike a lost needle in a haystack. Fortunately Jim discovered a brother smacksman looking, like himself, for his own fleet. Being to windward the brother ran down ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... Rogers thought that they might extract some interesting anecdotes of the great author from the now celebrated poet. Burke, as we know, was a man whom you would discover to be remarkable if you stood with him for five minutes under a haystack in a shower. Crabbe stayed in his house for months under circumstances most calculated to be impressive. Burke was at the height of his power and reputation; he was the first man of any distinction whom the ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... almost unconsciously, as toads yield moisture; but Mark paid only a moderate degree of attention to it as they spun past the low dim edges; he hardly noticed what could be seen along the road even, which was not much—a gable-end or a haystack starting out for an instant from the fog, or a shadowy labourer letting himself through a gate—he was thinking of the girl whose eyes had met his ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... is not that it is scarce with him, or that he is unkind, but that he does not value it himself. And if he sent his own son to be not merely brought up in the house of the carpenter of a little village, but to be born in the stable of a village inn, we need not suppose because a man sleeps under a haystack and is put in prison for it next day, that God does ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... spectacle that inspired Pan as never before. The wagons were lined up near the lake, their big white canvas tops shining in the afternoon sun, and higher on a bench stood the "hoodelum" or bed wagon, so stocked with bedrolls that it resembled a haystack. Beyond the margin of the lake, four hundred fine saddle horses grazed and kicked and bit at one another. Beyond the saddle horses grazed the day herd of cattle. And over on the other side dinned the melee over the main herd, the incessant ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... had been shot down. A number of men under the direction of the sheriff were scouring the lofty timberland for the deadly marksmen. He knew it would turn out to be as futile as the proverbial effort to find the needle in the haystack. ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... see far from where he stood. The level stretch along the margin of the pool showed clear enough, but around him the vegetation was so dense that, unless he had some clue to guide him, to prosecute a search within it was like trying the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack. ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... to feel annoyed at their trivial persecutions, and so continued to gather the fallen nuts to throw at them. It amused and piqued me at the same time to see how wide of the mark my missiles went. I could hardly have hit a haystack at a distance of ten yards. After half an hour's vigorous practice my right hand began to recover its lost cunning, and I was at last greatly delighted when of my nuts went hissing like a bullet through the leaves, ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... this planet and built a city and hunted for us, it might still be a hundred years before anybody happened to come into this valley. Looking for us would be worse than looking for a needle in a haystack. I don't think we're going ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... lie down outside,' said Little Klaus; and the farmer's wife shut the door in his face. Close by stood a large haystack, and between it and the house a little out-house, covered with a flat ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... high dive from the top. Down tumbled the others, over and over. But fortunately for all, there was a great haystack below, and upon this they landed in a jumbled heap close to the magic bean pole. As it happened, there was no one in sight. Up they jumped in a trice, and while the Comfortable Camel and Doubtful Dromedary munched contentedly at the hay, Sir Hokus and the Scarecrow placed ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... a haystack in the farmyard, that is at the corner, and when he heard the boy come whistling along, he jumped out at him and caught ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... take a sketch of the devil!" said this very angry and inconsiderate papa. "Why can't she do it some other day?—why the Twelfth? Good heavens! is everything conspiring to vex and annoy me so that I sha'n't be able to hit a haystack?" ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... a space, stole back to where he could hear any sound from the porch even if he could not see, and when he was certain that Baumberger had gone back to his bed, he got his horse, took him by a roundabout way to the stable, and himself slept in a haystack. At least, he made himself a soft place beside one, and lay there until the sun rose, and if he did not sleep it was not his fault, for ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... good horse in his stable, and never a bad one. He kept his horses in old barns and farm-stables, turning them out on to the chalk Downs in all seasons of the year with little shelter but the lee of a haystack ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... take a walk uptown, to get the outdoor exercise and also in hope of seeing something of the tramp who had taken the packet. He knew that looking for the tramp in the metropolis was a good deal like looking for a pin in a haystack, but imagined that even that pin could be found if one looked long and ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill
... "my husband has been acting as Sub-Warden. It is too long! It is much too long!" My Lady was a vast creature at all times: but, when she frowned and folded her arms, as now, she looked more gigantic than ever, and made one try to fancy what a haystack would look like, if out ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... grey beard gave him a most venerable aspect. The note of welcome in his cheery voice was unmistakable and soon the maid who had spoken from the balcony had shown the way up a winding circular staircase to a welcome exchange to the shelter of a haystack which I had begun to fear would be my only resting-place ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... this, I will tell you something like it. Do you remember the big, black cat in Hinneryd's parish house? She was dissatisfied because they always took the new-born kittens from her, and drowned them. Just once did she succeed in keeping them concealed, and that was when she had laid them in a haystack, out doors. She was pretty well pleased with those young kittens, but I believe that I got more pleasure out ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... the Breeds cleared away from their old settlement lately. We've never found them. Once they take to the hills, it's like a needle in a haystack. Maybe friend ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... with your revolver at these great birds, for they are ignorantly brave, and will sometimes allow you to approach within twenty or thirty yards. At last you perceive—most pleasant sight of all—a group of haystack-shaped tents in the distance; and you hurry on to enjoy the grateful shade, and quench your thirst with "deep, deep ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... moonlight, pursued by them in turn; and looking herself, with her white night-dress over her clothes, and her tousled hair, the weirdest little elfin figure in the world. Finally, to escape capture, she ran up a ladder that had been left against a haystack. Blocks of hay had been cut out, leaving a square shelf half way down the stack, on to which Beth scrambled from the ladder. There was room enough for her to lie at her ease up there and recover her breath. The hay and the night-air smelt deliciously sweet. The stack ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... this particular effect of light, this sudden inweaving of gold thread through the texture of the haystack, and the poplars, and the grass, gives the scene artistic qualities, that it is like a picture. And such tricks of circumstance are commonest in landscape which has little salient character of its own; because, in such scenery, ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... today," said George modestly. "Sometimes I slice as if I were cutting bread and can't putt to hit a haystack." ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... discarded them as fast as they arose. He must in some manner get away from their company before arriving in the neighborhood of Fayette; because if they were as desperate as they appeared the chances were they might see fit to tie him up, and leave him under some farmer's haystack, where he would not be found ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... but his impatience did not let him even cross the threshold. It drove him out to the park with the assurance that it was better to hunt for a needle in a haystack than to sit down and wait for the needle to crawl out to him. For a while he stood at a point of vantage and watched the long procession of private motor-cars and carriages, but he watched in vain. ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... impromptu phrases, but it happened at that time that a play of mine had been accepted at the Grand Guignol, subject to an additional thrill being introduced, and I preferred pondering for a thrill in my garret to hunting for a pin in a haystack, ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... on yonder haystack,' observed Charteris poetically, as he and Tony, accompanied by Swift and Daintree, made their way across the fields to Parker's Spinney. Each carried a bicycle lamp, and at irregular intervals each broke into piercing yells, to the marked discomfort of certain birds roosting ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... trail to where we found the rig. After that it was guessing where the needle was in the haystack It just happened we were cutting across country to water when we heard ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... more than I could have hoped on board our floating menagerie; stallions and monkeys and matches made our cargo; and the vast continent of the incongruities rolled the while like a haystack; and the stallions stood hypnotized by the motion, looking through the port at our dinner table, and winnied when the crockery was broken; and the little monkeys stared at one another in their cages ... and the big monkey, Jacko scoured about the ship and rested ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... course to the left, and consequently farther away from her fawn. Going now slower, and now faster, as the pursuit seemed more distant or nearer, she kept to the southwest, crossed the stream again, left Panther Gorge on her right, and ran on by Haystack and Skylight in the direction of the Upper Au Sable Pond. I do not know her exact course through this maze of mountains, swamps, ravines, and frightful wildernesses. I only know that the poor thing worked her way along painfully, with sinking heart and unsteady limbs, lying ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... If she'll talk like that to us, you know she will about town, and it takes a powerful small spark to set a haystack of scandal afire. Folks think Hettie has driv' you pretty far, anyway, with her odd, graveyard notions, and it wouldn't take much ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... in all the world there is only one woman specially created for each man, and that the order of the universe will be hopelessly askew unless these two needles find each other in the haystack? You believe it for yourself, perhaps; but do you believe it for Tom Johnson? You remember what a terrific disturbance he made in the summer of 189-, at Bar Harbor, about Ellinor Brown, and how he ran away with her in September. You have also seen them together (occasionally) ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... of the family had assembled—some thirty or forty people, in fact, for Finland is famous for big families—and tables of cakes and coffee were spread at a point from which every one could see the enormous Kokko, as high as a haystack, standing on a lonely rock in the water. The boatmen went off and lighted it, having thrown turpentine over the dried branches, and stacked up tar-barrels, so that it might the more readily catch fire, and in a few moments huge volumes of smoke began ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... as though it would burst. As I approached the little inn, I saw the stranger in a sloping meadow behind the house. She was seated at the foot of a sunny wall, against which the inhabitants of the place had piled a few stones. Her white dress shone out on the verdant meadow, and the shade of a haystack screened her face from the sun. She was reading in a little book that lay open on her lap, and every now and then interrupted her reading to play with the children from the mountain, who came to offer her flowers, or chestnuts. On seeing me, she attempted to rise as if to meet me half-way, ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... small enough to pass through the eye of a needle, there would be comparatively little trouble in swallowing him. And, speaking of needles, it has been a constant regret that my collection is still without a needle found in a haystack." ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... elephant came daily to make a meal off the inhabitants. Many mighty warriors had gone against it, but none had returned. On hearing this the valiant little weaver thought to himself, 'Now is my chance! A great haystack of an elephant will be a fine mark to a man who has shot a mosquito with a shuttle!' So he went to the King, and announced that he proposed single-handed to meet and slay the elephant. At first the King thought the little man was ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... morning paralyzed by dread of what the day may bring. Why, there is a perfect panic among them. They are falling about like a set of ten-pins. This morning I sent for Wash (best hand on the place) to see about setting out tobacco plants, and behold Wash curled up under a haystack getting ready to die! It is enough to—So as soon as you came this morning a plan entered my head for putting a stop to the thing. It will be necessary to acknowledge that two or three of them are under the spell, and it is better to select those who already fancy themselves ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... soil, give the notion of a very fine crop of stones. Now, this locality gave to Andy the opportunity of exercising a bit of his characteristic ingenuity; for when the hay was ready for "cocking," he selected a good thumping rock as the foundation for his haystack, and the superstructure consequently cut a more respectable figure than one could have anticipated from the appearance of the little crop as it lay on the ground; and as no vestige of the rock was visible, the widow, when she came out to see the work completed, wondered and rejoiced at the size ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... beyond one's depth, beyond one's reach, beyond one's grasp; too much for; ultra crepidam [Lat.]. Phr. the grapes are sour; non possumus [Lat.]; non nostrum tantas componere lites [Lat.] [Vergil]; look for a needle in a haystack, chercher une aiguille dans une botte de foin [Fr.]; il a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... support. The 5th Leicesters were attacking on our right, and the 19th Division on the left. There was little or no time to make any reconnaissance. Zero was 5.15 a.m. on September 4th, and the barrage came down on the stroke 200 yards East of a line through "Haystack," "Orchard," "Albert," "Dogs" and "Edward's" Posts. Having remained on this line four minutes it moved forward at the rate of 100 yards in two minutes, closely followed by the leading troops. The enemy made ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... first settlers being of that illustrious nation,) a distance of two miles from where we then lived. Our house was a good one. We did not like to leave it. Selling was out of the question: so we e'en resolved to take it with us, wishing, as the Highland robber did of the haystack, that it had legs to walk. A substitute for this was found in the universal resource of New Brunswickers for all their wants, from the cradle to the coffin, "the tree, the bonny greenwood tree," that gives the young life-blood of its sweet sap for sugar—and even when consumed by fire its white ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... fellows you are, all of you! I suppose you couldn't hit a haystack at twenty yards? Why, the man wasn't three feet from the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... danced about and laughed vociferously at the hail bouncing off Dad. Once Dad staggered—a hail-boulder had struck him behind the ear—and he looked like dropping. Paddy hit himself on the leg, and vehemently invited Dave to "Look, LOOK at him!" But Dad battled along to the haystack, buried his head in it, and stayed there till the storm was over—wriggling and moving his feet as though he ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... employment in the ever-changing variety of landscape, which even on the least picturesque lines will be found constantly coming into view. The most ordinary objects have then a fresh interest imparted to them. You catch a distant glimpse perhaps of a haystack on the brow of an eminence miles away before you. As you proceed, a farm-house, with its out-buildings and granaries to follow, marches right out of the haystack, and takes up its position at the side. Then the angles all change as the line of vision ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... Cliff and his passengers that although their chase after the steamer might reasonably suggest a needle and a haystack, still, if the Dunkery Beacon kept down the coast in as straight a line as she could for Cape St. Roque, and if the Summer Shelter also kept the same line, and if the yacht steamed a great deal faster than the other vessel, it stood to reason that it could not be ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... the appointed time I was behind the haystack awaiting my adversary, who did not fail to appear. "We may be surprised," he said; "be quick." We laid aside our uniforms, drew our swords from the scabbards, when Ignatius, followed by five pensioners, came out from behind a haystack. He ordered us to repair to the presence of the Commandant. ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... other for half an hour, one of our infantry regiments emerged from the woods a short distance to our right and stood in line of battle most needlessly exposed. In less than five minutes a shell burst among them, killing and wounding eleven men. This over, we moved to a haystack nearby, where our horses had more than one refreshing feed during lulls in the battle. It seemed, also, an attractive place for General Jackson, as he was seldom far from it till the close of the battle on the ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... morning. Then at last the choice is made, and approved by all. At a given moment the entire mass stirs, disunites, sets in motion, and then, in one sustained and impetuous flight, that this time knows no obstacle, it will steer its straight course, over hedges and cornfields, over haystack and lake, over river and village, to its determined and always distant goal. It is rarely indeed that this second stage can be followed by man. The swarm returns to nature; and we lose the track ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... had the choice of weapons. The privilege, however, was not worth much to him. He had never handled cold steel, while his adversary was an expert fencer, and he was also such a poor marksman that he could not have made sure of hitting a haystack at twenty yards. Still, he reflected that, although de Beauvallon was unlikely to miss him with a rapier, he might possibly do so with a bullet. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... formation had gone on, dropped their bombs on Rombach and were beating it for Ludwigshafen. By the time I got back to my right altitude I could see the effects of their bombs. The railroad station was burning like a haystack and smoke was coming from the munitions plant. I circled the town and the observer released ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... full of water that she steered like a haystack; and as any one in the waist got half-drowned every minute, long spells at the pumps ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... not—no telling what they'll do. However, by the time they can land and get checked up and ready to hunt for us, we'll be a mighty small needle, well hidden in a good big haystack." ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... Robespierre, Danton, Tinville, Merlin, and the whole of the demmed murderous crowd, will be busy looking after me—a needle in a haystack. They'll put the abortive attempt down to me, and you may—ma foi! I only suggest that you may escape safely out of France—in the Daydream, and with the help of your ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... country were extended farther. They were panic-stricken by the shadow of a haystack, or by the forms of branches. On one occasion the entire National Guard turned and ran. In the moonlight they had observed, under an apple tree, a man with a gun, taking aim at them. At another time, on a dark night, the patrol halting under the beech trees, heard ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... garrison of Shirley and Pelham. Archibald Powell held watch and ward on the heights of Heath and George Hall on the lofty meadow in Rowe. Each drew his pay from the treasury of the colony; and each had a magnificent lookout from his solitary sentry-box. Monadnock is in plain sight to the east, and Haystack to the north from the site of Fort Shirley and the Hoosacs to the west and Greylock overtopping them greeted the roving gaze of George Hall from the picketed enclosure ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... paused. Whether, at this drowsy time, to knock for admission, to alarm the peaceful tenants and take from them the rest which their daily toils and their rural innocence had made so sweet, or to retire to what shelter a haystack or barn could afford, was ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... said I, "would be, to use an entirely new simile, like looking for a needle in a haystack. There must be some honest lawyers at the New York bar, and some impartial judges on the New York bench, but I should not like to be set ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... had grown a moustache or a beard, a needle in the haystack would have been soft work. To stumble upon the trail through the agency of a bottle of whisky! Drank queer; so his bottle had rendered him conspicuous. And now, only twenty-four hours behind him ... that is, if he wasn't paddling by on the return route to Hong-Kong ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... worthy O'Rapley, "you will certainly see the inside of a jail before you set eyes on the outside of a haystack, if you go on like that. It's contempt of court to speak of Her ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... same style, but much smaller. Of the rest of the habitations, a few are stone sheds, but the greater part are huts made of the dry stalks of the fine herb called bou rekabah, in the form of a conical English haystack, and are very snug, impervious alike to rain and sun. There are not more than one hundred and fifty of these huts and sheds, scattered over a considerable space, without any order; some are placed two or three ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... with ague. His nostrils felt choked. His mouth was wide open in his efforts to breathe. His heart pounded like a sledge-hammer. With that mumbling brute advancing upon him, he felt as if he couldn't fire so as to hit a haystack or a flock ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... log, and allowing the flakes to cover him. The hare in her form, too, was being warmly sepulchred with the rest. I thought of the young cattle and the sheep huddled together on the lee side of a haystack in some remote field, all enveloped in ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... Other things that people strive for in the main? They were nothing to Roberto. He could sleep under a haystack, crunch a crust of bread, and wear his garments until they fell ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... ill; Nor estimates alone one blessing's worth, From changeful seasons, or capricious earth; But views the future with the present hours, And looks for failures as he looks for show'ers; For casual as for certain want prepares, And round his yard the reeking haystack rears; Or clover, blossom'd lovely to the sight, His team's rich store through many a wint'ry night. What tho' abundance round his dwelling spreads, Though ever moist his self-improving meads Supply his dairy with a copious flood, And seem ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... the traditional needle in the haystack," muttered Orne. "How come you suspect High ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert
... is so we may as well give the hunt up," answered his brother. "It would be worse than looking for a pin in a haystack, for we wouldn't know what direction he ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... at Winchester Cathedral. ''Might as well try to electrify a haystack. And to think that the World would take three columns and ask for more—with illustrations ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... the morning named he was at the station, a false beard and spectacles shielding his identity from the public eye. If you had asked him he would have said that he was a Scotch business man. As a matter of fact, he looked far more like a motor-car coming through a haystack. ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... having come in all thirty miles. At the bishop's house we were welcomed and there got some supper, putting our three animals in his corral. We did not care to sleep in the house, choosing for our resting-place the last remains of a haystack, where we spread our blankets, covering the whole with a paulin, as the sky looked threatening. I never slept more comfortably in my life, except that I was half-aroused in the stillness by water trickling down my neck. Half-asleep we pulled the canvas clear up over our heads and were troubled ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... 'twasn't any use. That general's head had disappeared as if by magic. At first it was thought they might trace it by the cuss-words it was uttering, but you see by this time everybody was swearing, so it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. They kept on hunting for nearly a week, because Grandpa wanted to send that feller's head to his widow, so's she could give it a decent burial and also ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... the service and my duty to my country required it from me. But that's unthinkable, so don't you even hint at such a thing." He glared awfully, but his tone softened. "There's some milk yet about that moustache of yours, my boy. You don't know what a man like me is capable of. I would hide behind a haystack if . . . Don't grin at me, sir! How dare you? If this were not a private conversation I would . . . Look here! I am responsible for the proper expenditure of lives under my command for the glory of our country and the honour of the regiment. Do you understand that? Well, then, what the devil ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... needle, but so long as the haystack stays thick enough I guess we needn't worry!" remarked Captain Candage, cocking his ear to listen ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... large old gentleman asleep after dinner; and there was a smaller sort of rumble going on at the same time; and there was a sort of crowing, clucking sound, such as a chicken might make if it happened to be as big as a haystack. ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... cows and the sheep. Once they were about to wander away (among the aisles), but Little Boy Blue blew the horn, and they immediately returned. He soon grew tired of watching them; they seemed to be content to graze quietly where they were. He leaned against a haystack (a chair) and fell asleep. The cows were soon in the corn and the sheep in the meadow, where the farmer saw them as he was driving home. But he could not see Little Boy Blue. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... Macgillivray. 'If it were merely a question of destroying an organization it might be managed, for an organization presents a big front. But it's a question of destroying this one man, and his front is a razor edge. How are you going to find him? It's like looking for a needle in a haystack, and such a needle! A needle which can become a piece of straw or a tin-tack when ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... wagons advanced in order to collect the wounded. An order to cease firing was consequently given to our guns, which were firing on this particular section of ground. The German battery commanders at once took advantage of the lull in the action to climb up their observation ladders and on to a haystack to locate our guns, which soon afterward came under a far more accurate fire than any to which they had been subjected up to ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... as well as the name (attempt) no doubt tends to affect the whole doctrine. Some acts may be attempts or misdemeanors which [67] could not have effected the crime unless followed by other acts on the part of the wrong-doer. For instance, lighting a match with intent to set fire to a haystack has been held to amount to a criminal attempt to burn it, although the defendant blew out the match on seeing that he was watched. /1/ So the purchase of dies for making counterfeit coin is a misdemeanor, although of course the ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... were forgotten in the face of this distressing catastrophe; there was no time to be lost if the desperadoes were to be headed before they succeeded in reaching the Dawsbergen passes with their lovely captive. Once there, it would be like hunting a needle in a haystack; they could elude pursuit for days among the wild crags of upper Dawsbergen, where none but outlaws lived, and fierce ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... do you do, Deacon Jones? I am awfully surprised. It's like two needles meeting in a haystack for us to meet here. Isn't it now! It's a long time since I saw you back in old Barnville, Sage county, Indiana; but I remembered you the minute I clapped my eyes on you. I suspect you'd like to hear from ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... "something wet. I told my wife, when I saw the fire, to make plenty of coffee, for fighting fire's hungry work, let me tell. Come on—no hanging back, you know. There'll be lots of coffee, and I've got a quart of something better cached in the haystack!" ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... blame slow fer me," said Ricks, one chilly night in late September, as he and Sandy huddled against a haystack and settled up their ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... western mountains, when suddenly he felt one of those long grasping claws on his arm. "Now, Rufe, bubby," a most insinuating tone, Crann had summoned, "all them fool fellers air diggin' up the face of the yearth, wharever they kin find a Chilhowee lily—like sarchin' fur a needle in a haystack. But we uns will do a better thing than that. I drawed the idee ez soon ez I seen you an' Pete hyar this evenin' so onexpected. 'Them's my pardners,' I sez ter myself. 'Pete ter holp dig an' tote ef the box be heavy. ...
— A Chilhowee Lily - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... give the milk unless the old woman first gave her a handful of hay. So away went the old woman to the haystack; and she brought ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... crawled into a haystack to sleep one night, because it was warmer, and along comes a village constable and arrests me for being a tramp. At first they thought I was a runaway, and telegraphed my description all over. I told them I did n't have any people, but they would n't believe me ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... portly man, i' faith: and had a villa and a steam launch at Surbiton: and was versed in the esoteric humours of the House. Who could have thought that the Hunter lay hid in him? Yet, after many weeks, they found him in a wild nook of Hampshire. Ragged, sun-burnt, the nocturnal haystack calling aloud from his frayed and weather-stained duds, his trousers tucked, he was tickling trout with godless native urchins; and when they would have won him to himself with honied whispers of American ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... Some deep power in his youthful heart, akin to the wondrous sympathy of women, had been touched. Like a shock of fire it came home to him. He, too, might lose his dearest possession thus, and be unable to climb trees, jump ditches, risk his neck along the edge of the haystack or the roof. 'That might happen to me too!' was the terrible thing he realised, and had burst ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... flung himself upon a pile of hay. There he gave way to a storm of sobs. One of the group, who had been watching him more closely than the others, soon withdrew from the game, and going in the opposite direction from that taken by Bud Perkins, came tiptoeing around the haystack. ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... he, "without the praying for. When the fire came owre the hill the other day, I just put up a bit prayer to the Lord, that He'd spare the haystack, and He spared it. (I didna stop working, ye ken; I worked the harder; if ye dinna mean to work, ye should na pray.) But I never prayed for rain,—I didna, ye see, like to ask the Lord to upset all his gran' laws of electricity and evaporation, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... of a haystack, and in the morning dug up the packet, sewed it up in its hiding place again, and re-entered the city as soon as the gates were opened, going in with a number of market people who had congregated there awaiting the opening of the ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... Catriona and Barbara Grant, is even better than, the original. To think of it is to wish to take it from the shelf and read it again. It is all excellent, from the scenes where Alan is hiding under a haystack (suggested by an adventure of the Chevalier Johnstone after Culloden), and the first meeting with that good daughter of Clan Alpine ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... no friendly haystack stood by the road-side, but over there in the field he saw a barn near a farm-house. He could find shelter in that. Waiting until it was dark, he crept cautiously through a small sheep door, and entered. He heard in another part of the building the ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... him to leave that haystack for me to slide on," complained the boy, "and he said he wouldn't, and began to pull it down. I wish you'd ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... for a needle in a bloomin' haystack," he said to himself. "I might as well go back to Clankwood. 'E's a ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... causey burn beyond, Halts to unroll his bundle of strange food 210 And munch an unearned meal. I cannot help Liking this creature, lavish Summer's bedesman, Who from the almshouse steals when nights grow warm, Himself his large estate and only charge, To be the guest of haystack or of hedge, Nobly superior to the household gear That forfeits us our privilege of nature. I bait him with my match-box and my pouch, Nor grudge the uncostly sympathy of smoke, His equal now, divinely unemployed. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... returned in a few minutes laden with bread and cheese, and a bottle of beer. Prison fare cures a man of daintiness, and the two fugitives dined on these homely viands with considerable complacency. They then resumed their journey, and at length, wearied with exertion, they arrived at a lonely haystack, where they resolved to repose for an ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to be in," ruminated Andy with a sigh of real distress. "If ever it was up to a fellow to cut stick and run, it's up to Andy Wildwood at this minute. Expelled from school, burning up a man's haystack and then—Aunt Lavinia! The rest is bad enough, but when I think of her it sends the cold chills ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... study were lined with books, reports from Congress; everything pertaining to the business of the government at Washington. Certainly finding that old-time needle in a haystack was an easy duty compared with locating the city directory in such a wilderness ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... his chums were every one of them entered for several events; indeed, it would have been like looking for a needle in a haystack to try and find a single Scranton boy above the age of ten, and sound of wind, who had not taken advantage of the generous invitation to place his name on the records, and go in for training along a certain ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... unable to beat back the suffocating horror and terror which lies cheek to cheek with us. No more wakings in hell. No more mornings like that. But instead, the cool, sweet waking in the crystal light in the open air. And to see the sun come up, and to lie still against the clean, fragrant haystack and let it warm you! And to watch the quiet, friendly beasts rise up in the long meadows! And to wake hungry, instead of that dreadful, maddening thirst! And to like to eat—how good that is, even if you go fasting half the day! But I never ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... of Old Claybury church tower, when the sight of a haystack immediately inside a meadow gate suggested a likely hiding place for the racer; and, having run the car under cover, Harley proceeded on foot to the little railway station. He approached a porter who leaned in the doorway. "Could you ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... hundred and seventy-five blanks. Once I almost saw a big grain-elevator burn in a Western town. That is, I would have seen it, if I had looked out of my hotel window. But I'd run two miles to see a burning haystack in the afternoon, and I was so dead tired that I slept right through the performance that night. And once I did see a row of stores burn, back in Homeburg—at the distance of a mile. I was in school, and the teacher wouldn't dismiss us. By stretching my neck several ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... were those times now, that, seeing their events more as they really were, she looked upon them with incredulous horror, as things in which she could hardly have had any part or lot. Then returned her wanderings and homeless miseries, when often a haystack or a heap of straw in a shed was her only joy—whisky always excepted. Last of all came the dread perils, the hairbreadth escapes of her too adventurous voyage on the brander;—and after all these things, here she was, walking in peace by the side of wee Sir Gibbie, a friend as strong ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... bigger than grasshoppers and mice, and a very little well as big as my mug to draw up my water from, and a little green paddock the size of my pocket-handkerchief, and another of yellow corn, and another of crimson trefoil. And I would have a blue farm-wagon no larger than Hobb's shoe, and a haystack half as big as a seed-cake, and a duckpond that I could cover with my platter. And I'd live there and play with it all day long, if only I knew where the wind lives, and could ask ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
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