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More "Perch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rouses himself from time to time with a testy twitch and noisy chirrup that urge the poor beast into a faster gait. All the while the little wife sits beside him, as if a twittering sparrow had nestled itself upon the same perch with some grave owl, and sat with him side by side, watching for the big eyes to turn upon her, and chirping some pretty response for every solemn utterance of the wise old ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... potestate, La somma sapienza e'l primo amore. Dinanzi a me non fur cose create Se non eterne, ed io eterno duro: Lasciate ogni speranza voi che'ntrate. Queste parole di colore oscuro Vid'io scritte al sommo d'una porta; Perch'io: maestro, il senso lor m'e duro. Ed egli a me, come persona accorta: Qui si convien lasciare ogni sospetto, Ogni vilta convien che qui sia morta. Noi sem venuti al luogo ov'io t'ho detto Che vederai ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... he muttered, 'but 'twere pity thou wert knocked off the perch before seeing a little more of the sweet and sour of this world—though, faith, if thou hast the usual luck of it, the best way were to leave thee to the ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... then old Sport he hangs around, so solemn-like an' still, His eyes they seem a-sayin': "What's the matter, little Bill?" The old cat sneaks down off her perch an' wonders what's become Of them two enemies of hern that used to make things hum! But I am so perlite an' 'tend so earnestly to biz, That mother says to father: "How improved our Willie is!" But father, havin' been a boy hisself, suspicions me ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... in danger of falling out of this tree," he sneered aloud. "He doesn't know that I can handle myself in a tree as well as he can." As he spoke, Master Robin all but tumbled off his perch. But he caught himself just in time, then looked around hastily to see if ...
— The Tale of Grumpy Weasel - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... premises was a fine stream of water, varying from three to seven yards in width. It was supplied with dace, trout, roach, and perch. Its plaintive, monotonous murmur sometimes impressed the mind with sadness. This was soon dispelled, however, by the twittering, the glee, and the sweet notes of the birds, that hopped from spray to spray, or quietly perched themselves ...
— Charles Duran - Or, The Career of a Bad Boy • The Author of The Waldos
... at her uncertainly. "Come round in your own way," he said at last. "I don't want to hurry you. I suppose every bird has its own way of dropping from a perch." ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... the perch. You spend five thousand a year provided for you by a husband that you only see on Sundays. We'd all be ...
— The Master of Mrs. Chilvers • Jerome K. Jerome
... perch, Eugene," he said, "and tell us how you came to drive Count Vassilan's taxi, and ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... himself to remain there on his precarious perch; indeed, only that he did not wish to seem to be interfering with Jack's plans Joel certainly would have ventured across the window sill. Unable to beep silent any longer, he ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... and a sly normal lurch, The owl, very gravely, got down from his perch, Walked round, and regarded his fault-finding critic (Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance analytic, And then fairly hooted, as if he should say: "Your learning's at fault this time, anyway; Don't ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... eye, and an excellent fowling-piece, to bring down the black gentleman from his lofty perch. I have heard that you, Mr. Hurdlestone, are accounted a capital shot, far before your cousin Godfrey. I wish you would just give me ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... indulgences, or that mankind expect from elevated genius an uniformity of greatness, and watch its degradation with malicious wonder; like him who, having followed with his eye an eagle into the clouds, should lament that she ever descended to a perch. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... given to him to pose on," said Mr. Doremus. "However, I must say for the gentleman,—though I've only seen him dripping wet, and shaking himself like a big dog,—he didn't give me the impression of being the sort of chap to say 'thank you' for the perch." ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the words with the suddenness of a monkey swinging off a bough, leaving behind him a silence so marked that the fall of an unripe apple from the tree immediately above them caused Columbus to start and jump from his perch ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... end of the seat, swung high on its gilded spring, danced the dome-topped cage of her canary. Presently she raised her face to him. He was traveling tirelessly from perch to cage-floor, from floor to trapeze again. His wings were half lifted from his little body—the bright yellow of her own hair. It was as if he were ready for flight. His round black eyes were constantly turned toward the world beyond the ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... and we pursued this programme. Like birds seeking a new nesting-place we flitted hither and thither, alighting wheresoever the perch seemed inviting. We alighted in many places, but in most of them we tarried but briefly. It was not that the apartments were inattractive—they were almost irresistible, some of them, but even hasty reflection convinced ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... to understand, too, for it was not long after this that Hippity-Hop, Jan and Cheepsie ate out of the same dish. At times the bird would perch on the dog's head and sing to them all. Jan always sat as still as he could, until the song ended and Cheepsie had flown over to the captain's shoulder. Often the old man took his violin from the corner, and ...
— Prince Jan, St. Bernard • Forrestine C. Hooker
... by the gate, and from my perch on the back of the off-wheeler, I smiled down on her with boyish self-assurance. The idea of my tumbling into the water! The idea of my drowning even did I meet with so ludicrous a mishap! But I was accustomed to my mother's anxious care, for as an only child ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... cry, the quarry sought every shelter possible; but within an hour of striking the scent, the pack came to bay in the encinal. On coming up with the hounds, we found the animal was a large catamount. A single shot brought him from his perch in a scraggy oak, and the first chase of the day was over. The pelt was ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... boy picked up a young sparrow, which he brought home. His father put it in a big cage, and in course of time it became thoroughly domesticated. It used to fly about the garden and perch upon the heads and hands of the family. After a while it would venture upon an oak and carry on a very voluble conversation with its fellows who also patronised the tree. It soon grew as impudent and pugnacious ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... on remarkably well. The country soft; not likely to shoe them for a time; appear in good condition; bullocks tender-necked. Rather a strange circumstance occurred while staying here. A pelican, in an attempt to swallow a perch about a foot long by about five inches in diameter or twelve inches in circumference, was choked after getting it halfway down his throat, and found in the morning quite fresh and the tail of the fish out of its mouth. A considerable quantity of clover or trefoil on this lake; and ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... sleepy cocks at Dubechnia were crowing, and the corncrakes were trilling in the meadow; it was very, very early.... My wife and I walked down to the pool and drew up the bow-net that Stiepan had put out in our presence the day before. There was one large perch in it and a crayfish ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... by the arm and went out, having entirely confounded her mother-in-law, who meant to have wished her children good-morning, and then have left them to their embarrassment. But victory seemed to perch upon Fanny's standards ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... urged him to give up the wild life he was leading, return East, and find another calling. This was precisely what Will himself had in mind, and persuasion was not needed. In his reply he asked that the wedding-day be set, and then he handed Trotter his resignation from the lofty perch of a stage-driver. ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... the king of the pack fasten in her skirt, and she knew that she was being pulled out of her perch when, through the woods came Ted and Bud and Ben, and the rest of her friends, yelling like mad and amid a perfect fusillade of ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... him now: all narrow jealousies Are silent; and we see him as he moved, How modest, kindly, all-accomplished, wise, With what sublime repression of himself, And in what limits, and how tenderly; Not swaying to this faction or to that; Not making his high place the lawless perch Of winged ambitions, nor a vantage-ground For pleasure; but through all this tract of years Wearing the white flower of a blameless life, Before a thousand peering littlenesses, In that fierce light which beats upon a throne, And blackens every ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... point where he might have halted to make sure of his scent. He was circling on the trail of the stallion, with cunning intent of ambush. The end of this slow, careful stalk of the lion, as told in his tracks, came upon the edge of a knoll where he had crouched to watch and wait. From this perch he had made a magnificent spring—Slone estimating it to be forty feet—but he had missed the stallion. There were Wildfire's tracks again, slow and short, and then deep and sharp where in the impetus of ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... the Great Supper also is fish, which may be of any sort and served in any way—in our case it was a perch-like variety of dainty pan-fish, fresh from the Rhone. A third course of fish sometimes is served, but the third course usually is snails cooked in a rich brown sauce strongly flavoured with garlic. The Provencal snails, which feed in a gourmet fashion upon vine-leaves, ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... leaped down from her high perch, and was now taking a drink from a little sparkling mountain rill ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... you, as with a sword, from all the dear little safe things that have made up your life in the past. She glanced from the helmet which the airman held toward her to the monoplane spread-eagling on the ground. I saw her big eyes dilate as they fixed themselves anxiously on the passenger's perch, to which the honoured guest must climb, above the conductor's seat, crawling through the wire stays, or whatever you call them, which were like a spider's web inviting a fly. Diana turned pale. Even her lips were white. The ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... being liable to this last construction, men seem to have thought that the species should follow; consequently, the regular plurals of some very common names of fishes are scarcely known at all. Hence some grammarians affirm, that salmon, mackerel, herring, perch, tench, and several others, are alike in both numbers, and ought never to be used in the plural form. I am not so fond of honouring these anomalies. Usage is here as unsettled, as it is arbitrary; and, if the expression of plurality is to be limited to either ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... celebrated for its oratorical talents among all the neighbors, had gradually become the terror of the nearest. Hung out on the balcony, it made a pulpit of its perch and spouted interminable harangues from morning to night. It had learned certain parliamentary topics from some political friends of the mistress, and was very strong on the sugar question. It knew all the actress's repertory by heart, ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... Iago's part by much so well as Clun used to do; nor another Hart's, which was Cassio's; nor, indeed, Burt doing the Moor's so well as I once thought he did. Thence home, and just at Holborn Conduit the bolt broke, that holds the fore-wheels to the perch, and so the horses went away with them, and left the coachman and us; but being near our coachmaker's, and we staying in a little ironmonger's shop, we were presently supplied with another, and so home, and there to my letters at the office, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... opening was left, so as to relieve the pressure when the water began to rise. Some few hundred yards further up were a chain of water-holes, some of which were deep, and in all of which, as I knew by experience, were plenty of fish—bream, perch, and a species of grayling. As soon as the dam was complete, the whole mob, except some "gins" and children, who were stationed to watch the opening before mentioned, sprang into the water, carrying with them ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke
... an idle wing; The snake sunned all his jewels in the beam With deadly fangs in sheath; the shrike let pass The nestling finch; the emerald halcyons Sate dreaming while the fishes played beneath, Nor hawked the merops, though the butterflies— Crimson and blue and amber-flitted thick Around his perch; the Spirit of our Lord Lay potent upon man and bird and beast, Even while he mused under that Bodhi-tree, Glorified with the Conquest gained for all And lightened by ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... them with him. He was in his shirt-sleeves again, and his sanguine person seemed to radiate the heat with which he suffered. He did not go out to lunch, but had it brought to him in his office, where Corey saw him eating it before he left his own desk to go out and perch on a swinging seat before the long counter of a down-town restaurant. He observed that all the others lunched at twelve, and he resolved to anticipate his usual hour. When he returned, the pretty girl who had been ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... scenery of Pulcher must have been regularly painted, since the birds are said to have attempted to perch on the tiles (Plin. H. N. xxxv. 4, 23; Val. Max. ii. 4, 6). Hitherto the machinery for thunder had consisted in the shaking of nails and stones in a copper kettle; Pulcher first produced a better thunder by rolling stones, which was thenceforth named "Claudian thunder" (Festus, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... tranquillity. The rivulet Sends forth glad sounds, and tripping o'er its bed Of pebbly sands, or leaping down the rocks, Seems, with continuous laughter, to rejoice In its own being. Softly tread the marge, Lest from her midway perch thou scare the wren That dips her bill in water. The cool wind, That stirs the stream in play, shall come to thee. Like one that loves thee nor will let thee pass Ungreeted, and ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... rapidity, hands, eyes, and mouth were bound once more; the parson was led down-stairs, out into the wet night, and back to his seat in the carriage. The masked man took his place beside him. John Jones mounted to the driver's perch, and they were ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... She made them perch about her in a great circle, some on the lower branches of the trees, some on the bushes, and some on the ground among the grass and flowers. And where each bird perched, there it was to build its nest. Then Mother Magpie found clay and bits ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... sounds, which might be mistaken by the wayfarer for the cries of hawks and crows, or the bleating of the mountain flocks. After they had reconnoitred the neighborhood, and finished their singular discourse, they descended from their airy perch, and returned to their prisoners. The captain posted three of them at three naked sides of the mountain, while he remained to guard us with what appeared his ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... cheered the boy orator, and hauled him from his perch with such hearty thumps that he feared they ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... upon the liver of Prometheus. There was likewise the sacred ibis of Egypt, and one of the Stymphalides which Hercules shot in his sixth labor. Shelley's skylark, Bryant's water-fowl, and a pigeon from the belfry of the Old South Church, preserved by N. P. Willis, were placed on the same perch. I could not but shudder on beholding Coleridge's albatross, transfixed with the Ancient Mariner's crossbow shaft. Beside this bird of awful poesy stood a gray goose of ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... an eagle's, and close to the knees, for legs he had none. His royal robes were not above half a yard long, and trailed one-third part upon the ground. His head was as big as a peck, and his nose long enough for twelve birds to perch on. His beard was bushy enough for a canary's nest, and his ears reached a foot above his head.—Comtesse D'Aulnoy, Fairy Tales ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Executive Mansion." He ran constantly in and out of his father's office, interrupting his gravest labors. Mr. Lincoln was never too busy to hear him, or to answer his bright, rapid, imperfect speech, for he was not able to speak plainly until he was nearly grown. "He would perch upon his father's knee, and sometimes even on his shoulder, while the most weighty conferences were going on. Sometimes, escaping from the domestic authorities, he would take refuge in that sanctuary for the whole evening, ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... was a large number of places for him to choose from. So one night, when everything was still and silent, and even the chattering parrots were asleep on one leg, the monkey stole down softly from his perch, and washed off the honey and the leaves, and came out from his bath in his own proper skin. On his way to breakfast he met a rabbit, and ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... Clement was determined to wait no longer. He would go to the Abbey at once, and ascertain the cause of Margaret's delay. He rang the bell, went into the park, and ran along the avenue to the perch. Lights were shining in Mr. Dunbar's windows, but the great ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... heroes, jungle prowlers 'mid them stray, On their brow and mailed bosoms heedless perch ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... flash of his oars in the sunlight that dazzled her so! She would swim to him through the crystal water, and he would stretch out his hands to her, and she would go up to him like a bird from the sea, and perch upon the stern. He would scold her a little for swimming out so far, but what of that? She liked being ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... true," announced a Monkey on a Stick, as he climbed up to the top of his perch and looked over the top of a Noah's Ark. "I don't see the Sawdust Doll anywhere, nor the White Rocking Horse, nor the Lamb on Wheels. It isn't any of our former friends who have come back to ...
— The Story of a Bold Tin Soldier • Laura Lee Hope
... for pet pigeons, and the birds used to come at his call, perch on his shoulder and take dainty ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... back they brought three little sunfish, two perch, and one funny-looking fish with horns, which Frank said ...
— Uncle Robert's Geography (Uncle Robert's Visit, V.3) • Francis W. Parker and Nellie Lathrop Helm
... from perch to spray, They sport along the meads; In social bliss together stray, Where ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... light a match, and maybe you'll hit it by accident!" Assuming with an innocent look that I had spoken seriously, he took me at my word, jumped off his perch, lit a match and peered all round him. Then I got "real" angry, and told him De Cosson Bey kept a professional torture chamber, and that I would have him ground to sausage meat if he trifled with me another moment. Well knowing the impotence ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... your perch off, und gone took a fall to yournseluf!" cried Hans, in disgust. "You gif ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... then lost himself in one of those meditative moods which ravish and elevate the soul, soothe it, and comfort it. His reverie had no doubt lasted a long time. Night fell. Whether he meant to come down from his perch, or whether he made some ill-judged movement, believing himself to be on the floor—the event did not allow of his remembering exactly the cause of his accident—he fell, his head struck a footstool, he lost consciousness and lay motionless during a space of time of ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... vext No war-field to find; The speech she knew well Of the wild feather'd kind, And thus she bespake him Who bears the brown bill, So proud as he perch'd on The peak of ...
— The Nightingale, the Valkyrie and Raven - and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... the Golden Blackbird standing on a wooden perch, but as stiff and rigid as if he was dead. And beside the beautiful cage ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... his eyes with his hand, scrutinized the small, melancholy figure, and then, hopping from his perch, sped toward him with a nimble and ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... in the sunshine, ruffling up his feathers until he is twice his real size. The light partly blinds him, but toss him into the air and he will fly without difficulty and select with ease a secluded perch. The instant he alights a wonderful transformation comes over him. He stiffens, draws himself as high as possible, and compresses his feathers until he seems naught but the slender, broken stump of some bough,—ragged topped (thanks to his "horns"), gray and lichened. It is little short of a miracle ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... Though Sir Hubert is delighted to see her, the mention of dinner throws him into a state of great perplexity, as he has nothing in the house which they can make a meal of. Going out of doors, "he espies his hawk upon the perch, which he seizes, and finding it very fat, judges it might make a dish not unworthy of such a lady. Without further thought, then, he pulls his head off, and gives it to a girl to dress and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... live had thrown to the ground. The outlines of Pauline's dress, hanging from a cheval glass, appeared like a shadowy ghost. Her dainty shoes had been left at a distance from the bed. A nightingale came to perch upon the sill; its trills repeated over again, and the sounds of its wings suddenly shaken out ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... and seems very happy and contented, swinging there on his perch. He likes to be talked to, and can answer very plain. If you say to him, "How do you do, Poll?" he will answer you, "Quite well, thank you, and how are you?" Poll is quite a companion, he is ...
— Child-Land - Picture-Pages for the Little Ones • Oscar Pletsch
... seized by an officer and dragged off his perch, and choked into silence—surrounded meanwhile by a crowd of indignantly protesting citizens. It was quite clear by this time that the crowd had come to hear Samuel's speech, and was angry at being balked. There ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... and Yankee had fairly ensconced themselves on their perch, the latter looked carefully round to make sure that no one was in the way, and then he tuned the valve, which let on a full ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... long narrow buckboard looked small for Barb, who cautiously clambered into the seat and gingerly distributed his bulk upon it. Laramie had taken the reins from McAlpin; he passed them to Barb who, as he squared himself so as not to fall off his slender perch, was huskily demanding when Laramie and Kate would be out. At the last minute, Kate insisted on and was given, a good-by kiss. She and Jim promised to go out next day. Barb spoke to the horses. They jumped half-way out of the barn. ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... but a backbone—a shad! She's about the shape of a single rose vase! Damn her! Damn Lotta Munn and Daisy Snow, yes and May Young! They think they can charm my Bill off his perch with their revolting artistic propaganda, and their schools ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... dog. The biggest of these amiable companions had to take their chance of seeing what they could through the forest of human legs; but every one that was portable was snugly lodged in the bend of an elbow, and from this safe perch scores and scores of small serious muzzles, blunt or sharp, smooth or woolly, brown or grey or white or black or brindled, looked out on the scene with the quiet awareness of the Paris dog. It was certainly a good sign that they had ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... not fall, and after a moment or two, he proceeded carefully to pick his steps along the ledge. The ball had touched him, grazing his cheek, and cutting through the light whiskers that he wore; but he had not felt it, though the blow had nearly knocked him from his perch. And then four or five shots were fired from the rocks into the mouth of the cavern. The man's arm had been seen, and indeed one or two declared that they had traced the dim outline of his figure. But no sound was ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... and his eyebrows fixed at the perch of Colney's famous 'national interrogation' over vacancy of understanding, as if from the pull of a string. He had his audience with him; and the satirist had nothing but his inner gush of acids at sight of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to torment thy friend? Nay, if thou wilt listen at all, child, to me, that am thine elder, happier thereby wilt thou be, and some day thou wilt thank me. Build one nest in one tree, where no fierce snake can come; for now thou dost perch on one branch to-day, and on another to-morrow, always seeking what is new. And if a stranger see and praise thy pretty face, instantly to him thou art more than a friend of three years' standing, while him that loved thee ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... never see them in a concert-room without heartily wishing they and their tatooer might tumble, helter-skelter, from their topmost perch into the very lowest depth, if there be one lower than another, of the orchestra; and thereby sustain such a compound fracture, attended by loss of substance, as should put it out of their power, for that night at least, to torture our fastidious ears. Being of a melancholy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... therefore no option but to pass the night well above the jungle perils in the suapattah hut, like a cockatoo screeching defiance at a cat from the safety of its perch; and to which safety you climb almost flat on your face by means of a rocking, slender bamboo ladder, and with about as much grace as ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... From their perch on this rocky wall these great birds would soar away, looking like a cloud in the sky, to seize a reindeer from a passing herd and bring it to their young. Or, again, they would circle out with a noise like thunder from their ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... the husband and wife from each other. Cora full of fresh young life joined in the conversation every instant, telling her father how they used to get the eggs of the sea birds and the honey from the wild bees' nest, and how they caught the sea perch from off the rocks, and how she found a jar of gold coins near the Vikings' tomb, which her mama said were pesos, and all about the fibula which ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... bird is in her manner. There's something tranquilly alert in her manner that's like a bird; like a bird that lingers on its perch, looking at you over its shoulder, if you come up behind. That trick of the heavily lifted, half lifted eyelids,—I wonder if it's a trick. The long lashes can't be; she can't make them curl up at the edges. Blood,—Lurella Blood. And she wants to know." ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... Reaching his perch again, Jack cast his despairing eyes toward the fatal hill. It was now clear of smoke, and there wasn't a regiment left on it. His heart leaped for an instant, the next it was lead, for the ranks that had disappeared were down on the brow of the hill—in the ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... made the man's heart ache. What wouldn't he give for an hour of Roger once more—or Belle—or Lightfoot! Anything—even one of the old plantation mules would do if he could only perch her up on its back and take her into Richmond like a lady and not like the daughter of poor white trash, tramping, poverty stricken, along a ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... all five to instantly get out of the car and lift the latch on the gate. The girl never budged from her perch, but permitted the visitors to swing her back as ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... Richmond. That, no doubt, would be a great advantage, but the loss of a recognized seat of government, with its diplomatic and other traditions, would have been of vastly more fatal consequence to us than the capture of their provisional perch in Virginia would have been to the Rebel authorities. It would have brought foreign recognition to the Rebels, and thrown Maryland certainly, and probably Kentucky, into the scale against us. So long as we held Washington, ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... no one said a word. Then Blacky the Crow leaned down from his perch in the Big Hickory-tree and looked very hard at Little Joe as ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess
... home or a camp, the Grand Canon for a spectacle. I have spoken of the robin I saw in Yosemite Valley. Think how forlorn and out of place a robin would seem in the Grand Canon! What would he do there? There is no turf for him to inspect, and there are no trees for him to perch on. I should as soon expect to find him amid the pyramids of Egypt, or amid the ruins of Karnak. The bluebird was in the Yosemite also, and the ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... in pyjamas accosted me, and the thread of the other's talk was lost. When I moved off to dress he had already left his perch among the sand bags. I climbed the ladder, and had my coffee. Soon after came the scurry to stations. We were coming into the bay in the glory of that morning under hangings of amber and rose and feathery grey. The four-inch gun's crew were in their places. ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... O'ertop the lofty wood that skirts the wild. A vagabond and useless tribe there eat Their miserable meal. A kettle, flung Between two poles upon a stick transverse, Receives the morsel—flesh obscene of dog, Or vermin, or, at best, of cock purloined From his accustomed perch. Hard-faring race, They pick their fuel out of every hedge, Which, kindled with dry leaves, just saves unqueuched The spark of life. The sportive wind blows wide Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawny skin, The vellum of the livery ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... about the rubber tree with its white, milk-like sap, and everyone seemed interested in the great bales of dried raw rubber, while questions, opinions, and discussions were many regarding this little known raw product. Even the great scarlet and blue macaw, from his high perch overhead, joined in with wild screeches when the crowds got ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... door of the closet, gave a low whistle, and stood listening. A moment after, I heard, or seemed to hear, a soft whir of wings, and, looking up, saw a white dove perch for an instant on the top of the shelves over the portrait, thence drop to Mr. Raven's shoulder, and lay her head against his cheek. Only by the motions of their two heads could I tell that they were talking ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... have turkeys and geese this summer. I lost several of my best fowls, not by the hawk but a horrid beast of the same nature as our polecat, called here a scunck; it is far more destructive in its nature than either fox or the hawk, for he comes like a thief in the night and invades the perch, leaving headless mementos of his barbarity and ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... long summer evenings about sundown to fish, and on Sundays an hour or two to sail quietly without fishing-rod or gun when the lake was calm. Therefore we gradually learned something about its inhabitants,—pickerel, sunfish, black bass, perch, shiners, pumpkin-seeds, ducks, loons, turtles, muskrats, etc. We saw the sunfishes making their nests in little openings in the rushes where the water was only a few feet deep, ploughing up and shoving away the soft gray ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... and incontinently remarking: "Time alone can disclose what may be the end of this frivolity and talk!" After the flowery season of summer was gone, and the black time of winter was come, thorns took the station of the Rose, and the raven the perch of the Nightingale. The storms of autumn raged in fury, and the foliage of the grove was shed upon the ground. The cheek of the leaf was turned yellow, and the breath of the wind was chill and blasting. The gathering cloud poured down hailstones, like pearls, ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... third day of his fasting By the lake he sat and pondered, By the still, transparent water; Saw the sturgeon, Nahma, leaping, Scattering drops like beads of wampum, Saw the yellow perch, the Sahwa, Like a sunbeam in the water, Saw the pike, the Maskenozha, And the herring, Okahahwis, And the Shawgashee, the crawfish! "Master of Life!" he cried, desponding, "Must our lives ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... these are very cleverly executed. Huge conventional trees grow from a green strip of earth carrying every variety of leaf and flower done in many stitches. The individual leaf or flower is often very beautiful. On the bank below, small deer and lions disport themselves, and birds twice their size perch on the branches (plate 84).[611] But even where the work is finest, the incongruities are too annoying. The modern excuse for it, "that it is quaint," does not reconcile us to its extravagant effect. To be quaint in art is, as I have said before, to be funny without intending it; and these curtains ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... declared Mona. "It was awful for you to perch on one toe for a hundred million mile ride! And I reclined at ease on a Roman trident, or whatever you call it!" "Tripod, you mean," said Adele, laughing, "or is ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... over the little promenade place, and running about the floor of the saloon; and then the Goldfields gave a lurch and a shiver, and settled down in the mud, with a foot-and-a-half of dirty water downstairs, and nothing but the roof left us to perch upon. ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... broke off the elder man, anxiously, from his perch on the stepladder, "would you put the rifle over ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... in the most rigorous exercise of all our lawful and proper powers, contending against Treason, Rebellion, and the public Enemies, and, whether in public life or in private station, supporting the arms of the Union, until its Cause shall conquer, until final victory shall perch upon its standard, or the Rebel foe will yield a dutiful, rightful, and unconditional submission. And, impressed with the conviction that an Army of reserve ought, until the War shall end, to be constantly kept ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... the old fishing hole lies," laughed the stranger, pleasantly. "Quite a collection too—black bass, perch, 'slickers,' as we used to call the pickerel, and even some big fat sunfish. Many a happy hour have I spent just as you've been doing. And I'll never forget how fine those same fish tasted after I'd cleaned them myself ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... giant perch, king, bonito, rhoombah, sweet-lips, parrot-fish, sea-mullet, and the sting-rays (brown and grey)—a harpoon and long line are used. When iron is not available a point is made of one of the black ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... closely. plumb, perpendicular. prize, to value. plum, a fruit. pray, to supplicate. place, site; spot. prey, a spoil. plaice, a fish. pore, a small opening. please, to gratify. pour, to cause to flow. pleas, excuses. poll, the head. bell, a sounding vessel. pole, a rod; a perch. ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... of all who knew her, save her father and Myra Longman, Tessibel was full of eccentric traits; for who but Tess would feel the "mollygrubs," as Ben Letts had said, at the wriggling of the agonized perch and pickerel, as they flopped painfully upon the sands; or who but Tess would mind the squeaking of the mother-bird calling for her own. It was something of this "mollygrub" feeling that hastened her dirt-caked feet, as she rounded the mud cellar near her father's hut, ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... following day was spent "resting in the centre of the Sea of Marmara." That was their favourite preening perch between operations, because it gave them a chance to tidy the boat and bathe, and they were a cleanly people both in their methods and their persons. When they boarded a craft and found nothing of consequence they "parted with many expressions of ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... arrived in London, at the palace, when the King was at his dinner. The butlers and lackeys wanted to keep them out, but the merry monarch gave orders to let them in at once. He made the owl perch over the mantel piece, but told Puck to stand upon the dinner table and walk over the tablecloth. The pepper box was put away, so that he should not sneeze and the King carefully removed the mustard pot, ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... research, to which he devoted all the energies of his mind. When he had achieved this task, he applied himself to the acquisition of stable language, in which he soon became such an adept, that he would perch outside my window and drive imaginary horses with great skill, all day. Perhaps even I never saw him at his best, for his former master sent his duty with him, 'and if I wished the bird to come out very strong, would I be so good as to show him a drunken ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... Street with a rush, the figure of their chief swaying over them on his high perch, while their shouting was drowned in the louder roar of greeting from the crowd, into which they plunged as a diver into the water, swirls and eddies of people marking the wake. A moment later a section of the roof ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... figure of a tiny child in the organ loft. Was it possible, they asked themselves, that a child could produce such beautiful music? They remained rooted to the spot, till Wolfgang happened to see them and crept meekly down from his perch. ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... made her downright speech, Nan looked down from her lofty perch, and held out her ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... unusual melodiousness, these days, (last of April and first of May) from the blackbirds; indeed all sorts of birds, darting, whistling, hopping or perch'd on trees. Never before have I seen, heard, or been in the midst of, and got so flooded and saturated with them and their performances, as this current month. Such oceans, such successions of them. Let me make a list of those I ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... seemed to have learned the rare art of giving way at all points without yielding an inch, saw his daughter slowly disappearing in the engulfing slush, her smeared face further distorted with the contortions of whimpering wonder, while from their perch on the pigsty roof the three children looked down with the cold unpitying detachment of ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... across and over, spinning a web through which God himself—hush, don't think of God! How firm the stitches are! You must be proud of your darning. Let nothing disturb her. Let the light fall gently, and the clouds show an inner vest of the first green leaf. Let the sparrow perch on the twig and shake the raindrop hanging to the twig's elbow.... Why look up? Was it a sound, a thought? Oh, heavens! Back again to the thing you did, the plate glass with the violet loops? But Hilda will come. Ignominies, humiliations, oh! Close ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... each perch upon the trees! The family estates of those in official positions will fade! The gold and silver of the rich and honoured will be scattered! those who will have conferred benefit will, even in death, find the means of escape! ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... it seems I cannot pray— For doubt, and pain, and anger, and all strife. Yet some poor half-fledged prayer-bird from the nest May fall, flit, fly, perch—crouch in the bowery breast Of the large, nation-healing tree of life;— Moveless there sit through all the burning day, And on my heart at night a fresh ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... coincidence: three grosbeaks—two males and a female—had dropped out of a tree into the undergrowth; and then, five minutes later, three crossbills—two males and a female—had risen out of the same undergrowth, and taken almost the very perch which the others had quitted! Had this strange thing happened? Or had my eyes deceived me? This was my dilemma, on the sharp horns of which I tried alternately for the next eight days ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... thought of it as it is. I've been already invited to go to Natal, and if I hear anything more of these accusations, I shall certainly make up my mind to go." Then he left the house, before Camilla could be down upon him from her perch ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... head as he drew near the group, for by now the eager boys had left their lofty perch, and gathered in an excited bunch to learn what was in ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... twinkling of an eye they had made a complete volte-face, the waggon was lying on its side across the fairway, and its burden of logs had been distributed with a dull crash upon about a square perch of cobbles. ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... the well; and there, to be sure, sat Melindy, on a prostrate flour-barrel that was rolled to the foot of the big apple-tree, twirling her fingers in pretty embarrassment, and held on her insecure perch by the stout arm of George Bemont, a handsome brown fellow, evidently very ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... good is well worth notice (if any meaning can be assigned to goot), as the direction to beware of good strawberries is not obvious; on p. 153, we should note lesynge for lessynge, and hange for ren, the latter being an improvement, though ren makes sense, as basins hung by cords on a perch may, like curtains hung on a rod, be said to run on it. The word ren was probably caught up from the line above ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... note was a woman of rank, celebrated for her beauty; and not undeservedly, for a lovely creature she was. The body of her travelling coach had been, as usual, unslung from the "carriage," (by which is technically meant the wheels and the perch,) and placed upon deck. This she used as a place of retreat from the sun during the day, and as a resting-place at night. For want of more interesting companions, she invited us, during the day, into her coach; and we taxed our abilities to make ourselves ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... great draught, but that is just what made the bells ring, and one could not hear oneself speak. In the middle of the great hall where the Emperor sat, a golden rod had been set up on which the Nightingale was to perch. The whole Court was present, and the little kitchen-maid was allowed to stand behind the door, for she had now the actual title of Court Kitchen-Maid. All were there in their smartest clothes, and they all looked toward the little gray bird to which ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... vonsohn there? And how could you get away from the dinner? You must be a brazen-faced fellow! I am that myself, but I am surprised at you, brother! Jump in, jump in! Let him pass, Ivan. It will be fun. He can lie somewhere at our feet. Will you lie at our feet, von Sohn? Or perch on the box with the coachman. Skip on to the box, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... spoke he was climbing down from his perch; now he threw the reins over the brown horse's neck, and walking to the edge of the empty cellar-place, sat down on one of the ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... little coaxing on the part of both Toby and Mrs. Treat to induce Mr. Stubbs to come down from his lofty perch; but the task was accomplished at last, and by the gift of a very large doughnut he was induced to resume his seat ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... appetite. When the meal was over, she ran down to the willows and read it there, then went straight to the favourite lounging-place of an old vaquero who had adored her from the days when she used to trot about the rancho holding his forefinger, or perch herself upon his shoulder and command him ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... sermons. By this method I had a treasury of texts from which I could draw every week. Let my readers be careful to notice that word "Text." I have known men to prepare an elaborate essay, theological, ethical or sociological, and then to perch a text from the ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... depend on these things?" On the third day of his fasting By the lake he sat and pondered, By the still, transparent water; Saw the sturgeon, Nahma, leaping, Scattering drops like beads of wampum, Saw the yellow perch, the Sahwa, Like a sunbeam in the water, Saw the pike, the Maskenozha, And the herring, Okahahwis, And the Shawgashee, the crawfish! "Master of Life!" he cried, desponding, "Must our lives depend on these things?" On the fourth day of his fasting In his lodge he lay exhausted; From his couch of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... our backs upon our winged concepts altogether, and bury ourselves in the thickness of those passing moments over the surface of which they fly, and on particular points of which they occasionally rest and perch. ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... his box, he gathered up his reins and shouted a good-natured farewell to the crowd. A quick and vigorous application of the whip awakened the dozing horses so suddenly that they started up with a spasmodic jerk which nearly threw the old fellow from his perch. By a desperate effort, however, he maintained his seat, but his broad-brimmed hat went flying from his bald head and rolled to the ground, scattering in its fall his snuff-box, spectacles and a monstrous red bandanna ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... served as a perch for a colony of gray parrots, prattling, quarrelsome, ferocious birds, which set upon living birds, and those who would judge them from their congeners which Europe keeps in cages, would be ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... at home when she came into their little apartment. The parrot greeted her, flapping his brilliant wings and shrieking from his perch; the goldfish goggled his eyes and swam 'round and 'round. She stood still in the centre of her room looking vacantly about her. An immense, overwhelming sense of loneliness came over her; she turned as the rush of tears blinded her and flung herself full length ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... bronzed at the tips. Their singularly long legs are of a pale flesh colour, while the web on the foot is very much arched near the toes, giving greater pliability to the foot and a power of grasping, which enables them to perch on trees. The head and bill, the latter of a pale ash colour, are both large. When on the wing they make a peculiar though pleasing whistling sound, that can be heard at a great distance,* and which changes as they alight, into a sort of chatter. Their perching on ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... dollar." Crosby drew a silver dollar from his trousers pocket, almost falling from his perch in the effort. ...
— The Day of the Dog • George Barr McCutcheon
... by the side of the willowy stream; And he talked and told me tales of the war unwaged as yet, And the victory never won, and bade me never forget, While I walked on, still unhappy, by the home of the dark-striped perch. Till at last, with a flash of light and a rattle and side-long lurch, I woke up dazed and witless, till my sorrow awoke again, And the grey of the morn was upon us as we sped through the poplar ...
— The Pilgrims of Hope • William Morris
... beds; Bade on your sands no night-born dews distil, 460 Stay'd with vindictive hands the scanty rill.— Loud o'er the camp the Fiend of Famine shrieks, Calls all her brood, and champs her hundred beaks; O'er ten square leagues her pennons broad expand, And twilight swims upon the shuddering sand; 465 Perch'd on her crest the Griffin Discord clings, And Giant Murder rides between her wings; Blood from each clotted hair, and horny quill, And showers of tears in blended streams distil; High-poised in air her spiry neck she bends, 470 Rolls ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... have in England these three vulgar sorts; one of little worth, being brittle, and very much resembling the fore-mentioned sallow, with reddish twigs, and more greenish and rounder leaves: Another kind there is, call'd perch, of limber and green twigs having a very slender leaf; the third sort is totally like the second, only the twigs are not altogether so green, but yellowish, and near the popinjay: This is the very best for use, tough and hardy. But the most usual names by which basket-makers ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... stud the darkness; light-houses of the mind or of the wearied optic nerve, solemnly shining and winking as we passed. At length the mate himself despaired, scrambled on board again from his unrestful perch, and announced that we had missed our destination. He was the only man of practice in these waters, our sole pilot, shipped for that end at Tai-o-hae. If he declared we had missed Takaroa, it was not for us to quarrel with the fact, but, if we could, to explain it. We had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... King did look And of them all good heed he took; To see if they would tell him aught About the matter that he sought, But all were of the times long past; So going all about, at last When grown nigh weary of his search A falcon on a silver perch, Anigh the dais did he see, And wondered, because certainly At his first coming 'twas not there; But 'neath the bird a scroll most fair, With golden letters on the white He saw, and in the dim twilight By ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... give Selifan some directions as to the way, a necessary proceeding in view of the fact that Selifan could hardly maintain his seat on the box. Twice Petrushka, too, had fallen headlong, and this necessitated being tied to his perch with a piece of rope. "What a clown!" had ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... transpired, I might have taken it for such. Far different, however, was the impression it made upon me. I knew well why was that gathering around the house of Gayarre. I knew well the game they were about to pursue. I lingered but a moment upon my perch—long enough to perceive that the hunters were all ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... nut in his paw, which was almost like a hand, and then, as squirrels often do, he looked for a high place on which he might perch himself to eat. Frisky saw the shelf over Joe's couch, the same shelf on which stood ...
— The Story of a Nodding Donkey • Laura Lee Hope
... offender, and in a moment the whole gathering was in a state of confusion. The majority of those present siding with "Rats," began to hustle Fletcher, while two gentlemen having dragged Bibbs from his perch, jumped up in his stead, and began to ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... wid um. No matter 'bout dat, de 'simmon patch 'uz dar des like I tell you, en ole Brer Possum mouf 'gun ter water soon's he year talk un um, en mos' 'fo' Brer Rabbit done tellin' 'im de news, Brer Possum, he put out, he did, en 'twa'n't long 'fo' he wuz perch up in de highes' tree in Brer B'ar 'simmon patch. But Brer Rabbit, he done 'termin' fer ter see some fun, en w'iles all dis 'uz gwine on, he run 'roun' ter Brer B'ar house, en holler en tell 'im w'ich dey wuz somebody 'stroyin' un his 'simmons, en ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... baulks of timber that cumbered the deck of the brig on either side of the caboose. An ideal perch. The sun was setting over Australia way, in a sea that seemed like a sea of boiling gold. Some mystery of mirage caused the water to heave and tremble as if ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... bid thee do some great thing, wouldst thou not have done it?' Yes! Of course he would, and the greater the better. Men will stand, as Indian fakirs do, with their arms above their heads until they stiffen there. They will perch themselves upon pillars, like Simeon Stylites, for years, till the birds build their nests in their hair: they will measure all the distance from Cape Comorin to Juggernaut's temple with their ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... seemed to the curious without, and to the agitated, nervous witnesses peering through the unchinked logs of the wall, they sat on their comfortless perch, half crouching forward, and chewed, and discussed the testimony. There were frequent intervals of silence, and in one of these Con Hite was disturbed to see the sketch of the "witch-face" once more passed from hand to hand. They grew to have a harried, baited look; and after a ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... fertility and elegance of distance may compete with most Italian landscapes.' The district is densely peopled—at least twelve large villages are situated on the road itself between Belgodere and Lumio, a distance of 21 miles—and picturesque hamlets with lofty campanili perch high up on the mountain slopes or crown the summits of the lower hills, whilst everywhere there is the richest culture and most varied produce, and the charm of the picture is completed by continually varying views over 'bowery hollows ...
— Itinerary through Corsica - by its Rail, Carriage & Forest Roads • Charles Bertram Black
... cocks at Dubechnia were crowing, and the corncrakes were trilling in the meadow; it was very, very early.... My wife and I walked down to the pool and drew up the bow-net that Stiepan had put out in our presence the day before. There was one large perch in it and a crayfish angrily stretched ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... sufficed for all five to instantly get out of the car and lift the latch on the gate. The girl never budged from her perch, but permitted the visitors to swing her back as the gate ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... stood by the wheel, a splendid figure of matchless energy and courage. Aloft the topmasts bent like whips; Stumpy's voice came down in ever-increasing fear as his perch grew shakier; the great expanse of canvas, which should have been treble-reefed even in a floating ship going forward, tore at boom-tackles and earrings, tacks, and mast-hoops, shaking the vessel to the keel and ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... said the lady. "I expected as much. Well Daisy—I will take you. I might perch you up on a foot-cushion to give you a little more altitude. However—I don't know but it will do. Theresa will be ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... Who, though he winks awhile, Is not with your black deeds in love, He hates your damned guile. And though a time you perch upon The top of Fortune's wheel, You shortly unto Acharon (Drunk with ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... half a dozen perch, two onions, and a bunch of parsley. Put them into three quarts of water, and boil them till the fish go entirely to pieces, and dissolve in the water. Then strain the liquor through a sieve, and put it into a kettle or stew-pan. Have ready a few more fish ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... driver, who sat all day long on the box, and controlled his four horses with his whip. Now he saw this happy creature nearer; for the post-wagon stopped, and the lad never once removed his eyes from the wonderful man, as he came down from his perch, stepped into the inn, and came out again with an enormous piece of black bread in his hand, upon which lay a large piece ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... hardly control the surprise in her voice, when, after waiting a little, she asked: "Are there any further nominations?" "I nominate Miss Sampson," called a small pale girl from her perch in the window seat, with a fond smile in the direction of her roommate. Another girl seconded the nomination, and it was then moved and seconded that the nominations for president be closed. The nomination for vice-president, secretary ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... out the sight. John Girdlestone caught his son by the wrist and dashed away into the darkness, flying wildly, madly, with white faces and staring eyes, as men who have looked upon that which is not of this world. In the meantime, Tom had sprung down from his perch, and had clasped Kate in his arms, and there she lay, sobbing and laughing, with many pretty feminine ejaculations and exclamations and questions, saved at last from the net of death which had been closing upon ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lieutenant, as the Indian came down from his perch, and advanced to a point midway between the hidden Mexicans and the equally concealed troopers. In the rear was another band of soldiers, so, if it had been necessary, the Indians could have been withered by ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... times he would hide a piece just beyond the length of the dog's chain, and then, with a cunning look, perch ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... spreads her hand, th' aerial guard Descend, and sit on each important card: First Ariel perch'd upon a Matadore, Then each, according to the rank they bore; For Sylphs, yet mindful of their ancient race, 35 Are, as when women, wondrous fond of place. Behold, four Kings in majesty rever'd, With hoary whiskers and a forky beard; And four fair Queens whose hands sustain ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... moment he caught sight of Osches lying straight ahead of them, its few poor hovels climbing in straggling fashion up the hillside, and the yellow church, embowered in trees, looking down on them from its perch upon the summit. ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... halting for a moment to look back. The bird-like tamias frisked about my feet everywhere among the pine-needles and seedy grass-tufts; cranes waded the shallows of the river-bends, the kingfisher rattled from perch to perch, and the blessed ouzel sang amid the spray of every cascade. Where may lonely wanderer find a more interesting family of mountain-dwellers, earth-born companions and fellow-mortals? It was afternoon when I joined them, ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... impossible to believe that the feathers really grow like that; it seems as if someone must have taken a big paintbrush and daubed on the colours. If it is warm and fine the parrots are out of doors, each sitting on a perch, and tied by a little thin chain to one leg. What must it be to see them in their own native forests flying about among the green trees? Fancy, if we came across a great bird, as large as the largest doll, brilliantly coloured, flying about in the garden at home! ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... the River Aparito some time before the battle, many men, including a number of Englishmen, had actually perished from the attacks of that terrible fish, the perai. Mention has already been made of this fish, which, no bigger than a perch, is provided with teeth which will tear the flesh from the bones in a few seconds. It was from the attacks of flocks of these that the unfortunate ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... That, no doubt, would be a great advantage, but the loss of a recognized seat of government, with its diplomatic and other traditions, would have been of vastly more fatal consequence to us than the capture of their provisional perch in Virginia would have been to the Rebel authorities. It would have brought foreign recognition to the Rebels, and thrown Maryland certainly, and probably Kentucky, into the scale against us. So long as ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... therefore the little girl who kept the geese hastened to drive her charges away from the bridge, before the hunting company should come gallopping up. They drew near with such speed that the girl was obliged to climb up in a hurry, and perch herself on the coping-stone of the bridge, lest she should be ridden down. She was still half a child, and had a pretty light figure, and a gentle expression in her face, with two clear blue eyes. The noble baron took no note of this, but as he gallopped past ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... glorious sport—eight roach, six dace, three eels, seven perch, and a young pike, but he was so very young the miller asked us to put him back, and of course we did. 'He'll live to bite another ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... tarry, weather-beaten boat. But air is pitiless: it dries and stiffens all outline, and bleaches all color away, so that you can hardly tell whether these ribs belonged to a ship or an elephant; and yet there is a certain cold purity in the shapes it leaves, and the birds it sends to perch upon these timbers are a more graceful company than lobsters or fishes. After all, there is something sublime in that sepulture of the Parsees, who erect near every village a dokhma, or Tower of Silence, upon whose summit they may bury ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... years. Men will be fickle, and I expected no otherwise. What I required was the dominion over the mind; I cared little about the sultan's attentions to other women. Like the tamed bird which flies from its cage, and after wandering a short time, is glad to return to its home and reassume its perch, so did I consider it would be the case with the sultan. I never, therefore, wearied him with tears or reproaches, but won him back with smiles and good humour. I expected that this new face would detach him for a short time, and for a fortnight he never came into my apartment. He ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... saw their cabman sitting idly on his perch and waiting for his quarter of an hour to pass. The Mansions looked on to a square, a long narrow strip of gardens, filled with lofty bushes rather than trees. The spy's cab had taken a sweep round these gardens and was now drawing up on the other side, exactly opposite ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... been an excellent idea, Tom Hunter thought to himself, and it had worked perfectly, exactly as he had planned it ... so far. But now, as he clung to his precarious perch, he wondered if it had not worked out a little too well. The first flush of excitement that he had felt when he saw the Scavenger blow apart in space had begun to die down now; on its heels came the unpleasant truth, the realization ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... a second time," said he to his wife. At dawn Oh took the horse by the bridle and led it away to the river to water it. But no sooner did the horse get to the river and bend down its head to drink than it turned into a perch and began swimming away. Oh, without more ado, turned himself into a pike and pursued the perch. But just as the pike was almost up with it, the perch gave a sudden twist and stuck out its spiky fins and turned its tail toward the pike, so that the pike could not lay hold of ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... that on the day when dinner should really be served at the appointed hour, the cook would drop dead of apoplexy and she of fright. She said it to-day, shutting her arms down to her side, closing her eyes with her eyebrows raised, and dropping into her chair at the table like a dead bird from its perch. Not that she felt particularly hungry; but there is a certain desultoriness allowable at table more than elsewhere, and which suited the hither-thither movement of her conflicting feelings. This is why she had wished ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... lofty perch, in painful suspense, he carefully examined his trusty gun and hunting knife, which he sheathed in his boot in readiness for the combat, should the panthers attempt to attack him by ascending the tree. After resting on one of the branches of his chosen ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... I should have retained my perch till daylight, but with the consciousness of escape from the jaws of the ferocious brute came a sense of overpowering weakness which almost palsied me, and made my descent from the tree both difficult and dangerous. Incredible as it may seem, I lay down in my old bed, and was soon lost in ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... a perch when the click of a pistol was heard, but no report; the fact having been, that the pistol missed fire, and did ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... good, for at that moment Nelson opened furiously on the quarter-master at the conn. 'I'll knock you off your perch, you rascal, if you are so inattentive.—Sir Ed'ard, send your best quarter-master to the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... constant jet of water or perpetual fountain. Another curious application of the principle furnishes us with an elaborate toy, consisting of a group of birds which alternately whistle or are silent, while an owl seated on a neighboring perch turns towards the birds when their song begins and away from them when it ends. The "singing" of the birds, it must be explained, is produced by the expulsion of air through tiny tubes passing up through their throats from a tank below. The owl is made to turn ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... witness from a neighbouring battlement of the scene betwixt Rebecca and Bois-Guilbert, when she was upon the point of precipitating herself from the top of the tower. Not to be behind his companion, this fellow stated, that he had seen Rebecca perch herself upon the parapet of the turret, and there take the form of a milk-white swan, under which appearance she flitted three times round the castle of Torquilstone; then again settle on the turret, and once ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... the above the muskelonge—a large and delicious variety—black and white bass, rock bass, perch, sturgeon, and at least twenty other kinds, abound in our waters; a minute description of which we are compelled to forego. Whitefish are taken both spring and fall, chiefly the latter; spring is the season for pickerel; trout ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... dace or perch? Said Alderman Birch; I take it for herring, Said Alderman Perring. This jack's very good, Said Alderman Wood; But its bones might a man slay, Said Alderman Ansley. I'll butter what I get, Said Alderman Heygate. Give me some stewed carp, Said Alderman Thorp; The roe's ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... forty game-chickens are kept for training and fighting. These chickens occupy two good-sized rooms, whose walls are entirely covered with compartments, some two feet square, in each of which resides a cock, with his little perch and drinking-vessel. They are kept on allowance of water and of food, lest they should get beyond fighting-weight. Their voices are uplifted all day long, and on all moonlight nights. An old woman receives us, and conducts us to the training-pit, pointing out ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... dramatic sense that her life was very busy. She paused on her way back to talk to old Master Bunney who was putting in some garden-seeds, and discoursed wisely with that rural sage about the crops that would make the most return on a perch of ground, and the result of sixty years' experience as to soils—namely, that if your soil was pretty mellow it would do, but if there came wet, wet, wet to make it all ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... say, that I believe the boys thought of nothing else then, but of getting the finest red worms, and those marked with yellow rings round the body, as being especial favourites with the perch at ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... a descent. But the animal did not even meditate such a thing. Though the palm was not one of the highest, it was tall enough to keep him out of the reach of any weapon the hunter could lay hands upon; and the bear, seemingly conscious of this fact, kept his perch with a confident air—that showed he had no intention ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... hand in mine and sang— "Oh! who would fight and march and counter-march, Be shot for sixpence in a battle-field, And shovell'd up into a [5] bloody trench Where no one knows? but let me live my life. "Oh! who would cast and balance at a desk, Perch'd like a crow upon a three-legg'd stool, Till all his juice is dried, and all his joints Are full of chalk? but let me live my life. "Who'd serve the state? for if I carved my name Upon the cliffs that guard my native land, I might as well have traced it in the sands; The sea wastes all: ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... up!" called Dan Anderson from his perch on the fence of Whiteman's corral, from which he was observing what was probably the first game of croquet ever played between the Pecos and Rio Grande rivers. There were certain features of the contest in question which were perhaps not usual. Indeed, I do not ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... water, many of them having lost their balance and subsided into the lake, being supported in a horizontal position by their branches. The islands and the swampy margins form secure breeding-places for the countless water-fowl, and the lake abounds with pike, perch, eel, and roach. ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... were disclosed as they climbed. In that direction there lay an undiscovered country, and they might well reflect that few even had looked out across it as they themselves now were doing from their lofty perch. They knew well enough that the old traders who passed through here rarely left the trail except for necessary hunting, but passed on through as rapidly as they might, this being merely their highway, and not ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... eloquent gesture, and dismounting from his perch made his way along the passage to a door which opened into the shed. Thence he looked out on the quay, and along the crowded ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... overcome with the cold, that they no longer looked upon exposure as the worst thing that could happen to them. They had made up their minds that it could not be avoided, and told themselves that the sooner it was over and they were allowed to leave their airy perch the sooner they would breathe easily again. They could not talk now. They could only sit and gaze in the direction in which the hostler had disappeared, and wait for somebody to come and call off the dogs. Bob hoped that somebody would be Bert. ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... mansions under ground.... Some make a short journey from the womb to the grave; they rise from nothing at the creative fiat of the Almighty, and take an immediate flight into the world of spirits.... Like a bird on the wing, they perch on our globe, rest a day, a month, or a year, and then fly off for some other regions. It is evident these were not formed for the purposes of the present state, where they make so short a stay; and yet we are sure they are not made in vain by an all-wise Creator; and therefore we conclude ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... streams, though in the lakes they grow too gross to take the fly. Many attempts have so far failed to acclimatise the salmon. The ova may be hatched out successfully, but the fish when turned out into the rivers disappears. The golden carp, however, the perch, and the rainbow trout take readily to New Zealand. The hare increases in size and weight, and has three and four leverets at a birth. The pheasant has spread from end to end of the Colony. The house-fly drives back the loathsome flesh-fly or blue-bottle, to the salvation of ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... pet of her own she had ever had, and she loved it. At night it was chained to a perch stuck in the wall of the stable-yard. On the other side of that wall was the yard of Murphy the farrier. The magpie soon became tame enough to be let loose by day, and Beth always went to release it the first thing in the morning ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... vehicles, laden with heavy merchandise, tear up the soil into ruts. No cab-drivers cast sarcastic remarks at you from their high perch. The only annoyance comes from the cast-off nail of a horse-shoe or the sharp splinter of a macadamised stone. The air is as fresh as on Creation's morn. Up hill and down again one can hurry on without ever touching the brake. For the first ten miles, the stately bulk of Tinto dominates ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... whole passage. What an accurate picture does the creative pencil of our great poet present to the mind's eye! The epithet lofty has fallen through the sieves of all the commentators excepting Theobaldus Secundus. It obviously alludes to the high roosting perch of that valiant bird; nor is the mythological imagery in this sentence to be passed by without its merited eulogium. Lingo, by way of agreeable surprise, informs us that the cock is the bird of Pallas—Pallas is the goddess of wisdom, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... one of deep-blue sky and bright sunshine, the soft spring air vocal with the song of birds. As soon as early drill ended I had left the fort-enclosure, and sought a lonely perch on the great rock above the mouth of the cave. It was a spot I loved. Below, extended a magnificent vista of the river, fully a mile wide from shore to shore, spreading out in a sheet of glittering silver, unbroken in its vast sweep toward the sea except for a few small, ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... you want to do, really?" Nancy dropped from her perch beside Joan and came close, leaning against the swinging feet as if to stay ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... already overcome, but this was not the case. Berwick, who was an excellent swimmer, had a plan of his own, for he was not bewildered or frightened and he had noted one or two things even as the wave caught him. He would not catch the rope flung to him because of the chance of dragging Jim off his perch in spite of the latter's great strength, and then, too, he was liable to be hurled against the cliff and be badly injured, so he let the wave carry him back, exerting himself so as to be brought nearer the beach on the return. Being a splendid swimmer, as has been said, ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... feather'd people you might see, Perch'd all around, on every tree, In notes of sweetest melody They hail the charming Chloe; Till painting gay the eastern skies, The glorious sun began to rise, Out-rivall'd by the radiant eyes Of youthful, charming ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... into the room, closed the shutters, lighted the candles, and ate and drank till hunger and thirst were gone. Then they lay down to rest;—Jack in the bed, the ass in the stable, the dog on the door-mat, the cat by the fire, and the cock on the perch. ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... laying this garden waste when he was forced out of his stolen lair in the convent! Little remains of the house, and in the rubbish heap of fallen walls and beams and plaster, narrow iron bedsteads, where nuns slept or young girls dreamed, perch timidly among stones and blackened bricks. But in the garden all is flowery peace: and the chapel, though ruined, is a strange vision of beauty framed ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... pitching headforemost down into the trough of a calamitous sea under the bows—but I will not have him put on his legs again, till I get on my own; for between him and me there is a secret sympathy; and my sisters tell me, even yet, that he fell from his perch the very day I left home to go to sea ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... his nest, but, with the appearance of two eggs under Pepita's breast, he found it difficult to leave, even on necessary flights. He was a devoted husband and was content to perch by her side the whole day long, softly cooing in his efforts to entertain her, and always ready to relieve her in keeping the eggs warm when she wished to take a turn around the Square for exercise or in search ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... and further bestowed a sweet smile on us in return for our franc. Flocks of the soft-plumed and ever-hungry St. Mark's pigeons would greet us, espying us from afar, circling round and almost burying us in their midst, delighted to perch on our hands and peck the grain we brought ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... specialized forms—that is, those in which the special class distinctions were more sharply and universally marked—were of later geological origin. Thus the oldest fish were most like our present ganoids and sharks, though differing much from both. Our common teleost fish, like perch and cod, appeared much later. The oldest bird, the archaeopteryx, had a long tail like that of a lizard, and teeth; and thus stood in many respects almost midway between birds and reptiles. And most of the earliest forms were ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... and wanted to use his limbs, I put him into a large wicker bonnet-basket, having taken out the lining; it made him a large cheerful airy cage. Of course I had a perch put across it, and he had plenty of white sand and a pan of water; sometimes I set his bath on the floor of the room, and he delighted in bathing until he looked half-drowned; then what shaking of his feathers, ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... pray you pardon the young man's transgression.' But Angelo replied: 'We must not make a scare-crow of the law, setting it up to frighten birds of prey, till custom, finding it harmless, makes it their perch, and not their terror. ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Withered at eve. From scenes of art which chase That thought away, turn, and with watchful eyes Feed it 'mid Nature's old felicities, Rocks, rivers, and smooth lakes more clear than glass Untouched, unbreathed upon. Thrice happy guest, If from a golden perch of aspen spray (October's workmanship to rival May) The pensive warbler of the ruddy breast That moral teaches by a heaven-taught lay, Lulling the year, with ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... maiden delight to bring at all seasons, and under all circumstances, whether of peace or war between the heads of the two opposite houses; and whenever there chanced to be a lull in the storm, she availed herself of the opportunity to add to her simple tribute a dish of eels from the mill-stream, or perch from the river. That the thought of Edward ("dear Edward," as she always called him,) might not add somewhat of alacrity to her attentions to his wayward aunt, I will not venture to deny, but she would have done the same if Edward had not been in existence, from the mere effect of ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... come, too," said Edna, jumping into the cart; "you jog along behind. Don't you want to?" And off started the little cavalcade, with Cricket driving, because she was the smallest, and could perch up on the others' knees, while old Billy, all beam, jogged after, making almost as good time, with his long legs and shambling gait, as ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... and ripe-ear'd hopes. With not one tinge Of sanctuary splendour, not a sight Able to face an owl's, they still are dight By the blue-eyed nations in empurpled vests, And crowns, and turbans. With unladen breasts, Save of blown self-applause, they proudly mount To their spirit's perch, their being's high account, Their tiptop nothings, their dull skies, their thrones— Amid the fierce intoxicating tones. Of trumpets, shoutings, and belaboured drums, And sudden cannon. Ah! how all this hums, In wakeful ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... on which the glittering body hangs suspended, which contributes most to give the humming-bird its wonderful sprite-like or extra-natural appearance. How strange, then, to find bird-painters persisting in their efforts to show the humming-bird flying! When they draw it stiff and upright on its perch the picture is honest, if ugly; the more ambitious representation is a ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... many a time and oft I've seen the man's great heart stare from his eyes, Just like a girl's, out at the crowing boy: And yesterday it was he perch'd him fair Upon his broad rough shoulder, like a lamb Laid on the topmost reaches of a hill, And so he bore him, all his face a-glow, When heralds came with war-notes from the king; At which he turn'd him soft—the startled babe Still set astride, ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... ornament what would be a contradiction in fact. You don't walk upon flowers in fact; you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. You don't find that foreign birds and butterflies come and perch upon your crockery; you cannot be permitted to paint foreign birds and butterflies upon your crockery. You never meet with quadrupeds going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds represented upon walls. You must use," said the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... of hurrying feet only urged the boy on. He had caught hold of the bucket and was leaning far over the dark opening when he felt a heavy hand upon his shoulders, and himself lifted from his high perch, only to be dropped sprawling on the ground with a shower of tin pans rattling about his devoted head. Then the women, half fainting from fright, fell upon him, each in a desperate effort to first embrace him in thankfulness over his rescue from ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... remarks as to firmness and clear fresh eyes apply to this variety of fish, of which there are carp, tench, pike, perch, &c. ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... young stream, that trod on moss, Prettily rimpled the court across. And in the pool's clear idleness, Moving like dreams through happiness, Shoals of small bright fishes were; In and out weed-thickets bent Perch and carp, and sauntering went With mounching jaws and eyes a-stare; Or on a lotus leaf would crawl, A brinded loach to bask and sprawl, Tasting the warm sun ere it dipt Into the water; but quick as fear Back his ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... that same!" cried the good Brother, brokenly, as, after close examination, Brother Timothy agreed to this opinion. "And it wasn't the fault of the rapscallions wid ye that ye're not killed outright. To be swinging like monkeys from a perch, and ye half sick and lightheaded! Put him in the bed, Brother Timothy; and keep him there till we see what comes ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... ladies in the House of Commons is really a disgrace to a country ruled by an Empress. This dark perch is the highest gallery immediately over the speaker's desk and government seats, behind a fine wire-work, so that it is quite impossible to see or hear anything. The sixteen persons who can crowd in the front seat, by standing with their ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... present limits of the forest are three considerable lakes, Hogmer, Cranmer, and Wolmer, all of which are stocked with carp, tench, eels, and perch: but the fish do not thrive well, because the water is hungry, and the bottoms are ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... and the tiny victim, hurled from its high perch—after making several somersaults in the air—falls right into the jaws of that hungry savage at the bottom of the tree. Wolf makes ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... pretty creature, and let him perch on her finger, when he said, 'Kiss, kiss, little birdie,' which she gladly did, petting and stroking ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... the West Indies. They rest ashore at night, and therefore we never see them far at sea, not above twenty or thirty leagues, unless driven off in a storm. When they come about a ship they commonly perch in the night, and will sit still till they are taken by the seamen. They build on cliffs against the ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... the right one after all—at any rate the only one available. Old alligator rolled off his perch and started for me. Yussuf timed his own assault to correspond. They would have landed on me simultaneously, if Suliman had not reminded me that madness is a safe passport nearly ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... skulker took advantage of the cessation of firing to tumble down from his perch and fly for his life. The indefatigable Smith broke away from Thurstane, dashed after the pitiful fugitive, leaned over him as he ran, and shot ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... but he didn't like it when the worshiper began to criticize. He admitted the justness of the criticism, but it hurt him just the same. Perching on a pedestal had been uncomfortable but a little thrilling; sitting on the ground and gazing up at his perch was rather humiliating. The fall had bruised him; and Norry, with the best intentions in the world, was ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... vertu—choice paintings adorn the walls—flowers, rare and beautiful, lift their heads proudly above the works of art which surround them, and in splendid Chinese cages, birds of gorgeous plumage have learned to caress the rosy lips of their young mistress, or perch triumphantly on her snowy finger. Here are books, too, and music—a harp—a piano—while through a half open door leading from a little recess over which a multaflora is taught to twine its graceful tendrils, a glimpse may be caught of rosy silken hangings shading the couch where ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... divers pious pilgrims, with a sprinkling of fashionable ladies from Strasburg, and tourists generally, we sat down to a very fair menu for a fast-day, to wit: rice-soup, turnips and potatoes, eggs, perch, macaroni-cheese, custard pudding, gruyere cheese, and fair vin ordinaire. Two shillings was charged per head, and I must say people got their money's worth, for appetites seem keen in these parts. The mother-superior, a kindly old woman, evidently belonging to the working class, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Bornio, quelli Che diedi al re Giovanni i ma' comforti I' feci'l padre e'l figlio in se ribelli Achitofel non fe pir d'Absalone E di David co' malvagi pungelli Perch' i' parti cosi giunte persone Partito porto il mio cerebro, lasso Dal suo principio ch'e n questo troncone cosi s'osserva in me ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... moments ago it had seemed to beckon. Now she depended on it the white folds eluded her hand. If the wind dropped, she was lost. She couldn't help thinking of all the things she wished not to think of. She thought of that immense depth below her narrow perch. She didn't believe the man or woman lived ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... holiday time, and volunteer work; besides, she was waiting for you, and I could not help doing this.' She held out a hand, which was scarcely needed, and Mary sprang lightly to share her perch upon the wall. ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the parrot. It had got up on its perch and, with one foot uplifted in an impressive, almost benedictory, manner, was gazing steadily ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Louis grew so sleepy and tired, from the length of the journey, as well as the imperfect slumber obtained inside the preceding night, that he preferred changing his quarters, to the risk of falling from his perch above. It so happened that the coach was empty inside, and Louis indulged himself by stretching at full length on one of the seats, and soon lost the recollection of his troubles in sleep. How long he had slept he could not tell, when the stopping of the coach disturbed him, ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... out and stands on that there sill under the clock; he's a little old man with a long white beard; and he stands there and puts his hand to his mouth and calls down here to Mr. Punch, and Mr. Punch climbs down off his little perch and goes over to that church, and climbs up the inside of that tower to the very top and meets his father! And I've heard tell that they have regular high jinks up there all by theirselves, and vittles! more vittles and drink than you ever seen at one time; ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... see him quite plainly now. Below the ape-man Bara was about to pass. Could he do it? But even as he asked himself the question the hungry man launched himself from his perch full upon the back of ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... beauties!—that I'd caught with a string and a crooked pin; and that seemed to finish Mr. Packard entirely. Next day he had rheumatism in his joints, and stayed in camp all day, watching Marks making snow-shoes. The day after that he tried again, and fished all the morning, and caught one yellow perch and an eel. The eel danced right up in his face,—it did, sure as I'm alive, Pink!—and scairt him so, I'm blessed if he didn't sit down again—ho! ho! ho!—on a point o' rock, and slid off into the water, and lost his spectacles. Oh, dear! it ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... were large, of gallon size, and his numbed arms were almost strengthless. But at last he plucked one out and canted it over the edge of the box. It struck the deck with a thud. He scrambled down from his perch, croaking excitedly— ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... long, pointed at one end. While these were preparing, our other men dug a trench all round, of three feet deep, in which the palisades were to be planted; and, our waggons, the bodies being taken off, and the fore and hind wheels separated by taking out the pin which united the two parts of the perch,[105] we had ten carriages, with two horses each, to bring the palisades from the woods to the spot. When they were set up, ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... cream mottled, carp, turbot, tench, perch, fresh sturgeon with whelks, porpoise roasted, memis fried, crayfish, prawns, eels roasted with lamprey, a leche called the white leche flourished with hawthorn leaves and red haws, and a march pane, garnished with figures of angels, having ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... disappeared from the boudoir. But the dove still kept her desolate perch on the peak of ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... stone pay grateful orisons, And we till noonday bar the splendor out, Lest it reproach and chide our sluggard hearts, Warm-nestled in the down of Prejudice, And be content, though clad with angel-wings, Close-clipped, to hop about from perch to perch, In paltry cages of dead men's dead thoughts? Oh, rather, like the skylark, soar and sing, And let our gushing songs befit the dawn And sunrise, and the yet unshaken dew 90 Brimming the chalice of each full-blown hope, Whose blithe front turns to greet the growing ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Threading slant rains that flash and sing, Or under the water-lily's cup, From darkling depths, roll slowly up The bronze flanks of an ancient bream Into the hot sun's shattered beam, Or over a sunk tree's bubbled hole The perch stream in a golden shoal: Come, ye sorrowful; our deep Holds ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... heard HIM (indicating the corpse by a jerk of his head) tell about that job. G-d, how he used to laugh when he showed us how he fetched him off the perch!' ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... fall, both the Emperor and his admirer and would-be successor have had their chance of re-establishing it. "Fly from steeple to steeple" the eagles of the former did actually, and according to promise perch for a while on the towers of Notre Dame. We know the event: if the fate of war declared against the Emperor, the country declared against him too; and, with old Lafayette for a mouthpiece, the representatives of the nation did, in a neat speech, pronounce themselves in permanence, but ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pleasure of knocking him down. She is like a little songbird, sir,—a tremulous, fluttering little linnet that you would take into your hand, pavidam quaerentem matrem, and smooth its little plumes, and let it perch on your finger and sing. The Sherrick creates quite a different sentiment—the Sherrick is splendid, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Salette" and elsewhere he eyed askance with the expression of a very sound Protestant indeed. The lovely luxuriant architecture, the foliated carvings, were dim in the evening light. A young sculptor, who was engaged in the work of restoring some of these rich carvings, came down from his perch while the strangers stood to ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... scarcely settled himself on his perch, when half-a-dozen beavers—thinking from what they had seen that he must have gone clear off—climbed out upon the breastwork, flapping their great tails as they came. They were soon under the very branch, and I saw the wolverene with ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... instant she hesitated, reluctant. Not even the staff of the commanding officer had set foot on that sacred perch since the voyage began, only when especially bidden or at boat or fire drill did that magnate himself presume to ascend those stairs. As for her sister nurses, though they had explored the lower regions and were well ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... "this cockerel crows gallant, to come from a Scotch roost; but I would know well enough how to fetch the youngster off the perch, if it were not for the cure he has done ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... Mrs. Phillipetti's booth was the Ethiopian Dip. Here, some thirty feet back from a counter and shielded by a net, a negro sat on an elevated perch just over a canvas tub full of water. In front of the net was a small target, and if a patron of the game hit the target with a baseball, the negro suddenly and unexpectedly dropped into the tub of water. The price was three ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... 110. Perch Willow (Salix amygdaloides) (Almond-leaf Willow). Small to medium-sized tree. Heartwood light brown, sapwood lighter color. Wood light, soft, flexible, not strong, close-grained. Uses similiar to the preceding. ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... resolved, that the ell ought to contain one yard and one quarter, according to the yard mentioned in the third resolution of the former committee upon the subject of weights and measures; that the pole, or perch, should contain in length five such yards and a half; the furlong two hundred and twenty; and the mile one thousand seven hundred and sixty: that the superficial perch should contain thirty square yards and a quarter; the rood one thousand ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... and the butchers, everybody, embraces him with enthusiasm; Weber is greeted again and again for more than a hundred yards; they cheer to excess. Each wants to escort the prisoner; the cab of Mathon de la Varenne is invaded; "they perch themselves on the driver's seat, at the doors, on top, and behind."[3196]—A few even display strange fits of tact. Two of the butchers, still covered with blood, who lead the chevalier de Bertrand home, insist on ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... snatched the child from the flames and from the womb of his mother, and carried him into the cave of the two-formed Chiron. And he forbade the raven, expecting for himself the reward of his tongue that told no untruth, to perch any longer among ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... his perch on the parapet, had drunk in greedily every word of this conversation. Directly the bridge was clear he crept down and followed the deacon like a shadow. They passed over the silver Eden and up the main street of the city, paved with rough, uneven stones, and with an open sewer ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... which is to be held in this town tomorrow; therefore the houses are so full. When they shall all have gathered, there will be a great stir to-morrow; for in the presence of all the people there will be set upon a silver perch a sparrow-hawk of five or six moultings—the best you can imagine. Whoever wishes to gain the hawk must have a mistress who is fair, prudent, and courteous. And if there be a knight so bold as to wish to defend the worth ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... blaze of glory. We had walked on in silence for the last half hour; but I could sometimes hear my companion muttering as he went; and when, in passing through a thicket of hawthorn and honeysuckle, we started from its perch a linnet that had been filling the air with its melody, I could hear him exclaim, in a subdued tone of voice, "Bonny, bonny birdie! why hasten frae me?—I wadna skaith a feather o' yer wing." He turned round to me, and I could see that his eyes ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... lofty wood that skirts the wild. A vagabond and useless tribe there eat Their miserable meal. A kettle slung Between two poles upon a stick transverse, Receives the morsel; flesh obscene of dog, Or vermin, or, at best, of cock purloined From his accustomed perch. Hard-faring race! They pick their fuel out of every hedge, Which, kindled with dry leaves, just saves unquenched The spark of life. The sportive wind blows wide Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawny skin, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... buildings was erected as a series of model cottages for laborers. Whether these found their intended homes too fine, too phalansterian, or what not, I cannot tell, but the group of houses was made over to the tired workers in the London slums, and the laborers perch upon all sorts of inaccessible places upon the down, scratching great unsightly places in the chalk, erecting therein the tiniest houses of red brick; and though the one or two windows may be filled ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... and we—well, we were getting all the water we wanted. We filled our canteens with it, and after making necessary preparations started to strike the river again, which we could plainly see from our mountain perch, also slow moving trains, as they plod their ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... the parrot on the back with the perch which he used as a baton. Blinking and muttering, the bird performed his tricks, and was duly rewarded and returned to his home of iron. "She'll be wanting to take you home with her, but you're not ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... very much indeed. It is a little wider, and it may be it is a little deeper, but it flows along very placidly between its low banks. It is doubtful if we should find any trout in it now, but there may be cat-fish and perch, and some ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... the rider on the springs, slipping from her perch and stepping out beside the buggy. So we journeyed for half a mile. The horse, under constant urging, jogged along, while the spring rider and I trotted side by side over the well-made pike. Then Miss Belle drew rein in front ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... watched the soldiers cooking on the green opposite. The half-spent balls, coming all the way from those lines, were flying so thick that they were obliged to dodge at every turn. At all the caves I could see from my high perch, people were sitting, eating their poor suppers at the cave doors, ready to plunge in again. As the first shell again flew, they dived; and not a human being was visible. The sharp crackle of the musketry-firing was a strong contrast to the scream of the bombs. I think all the dogs and cats ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... pole is set between the pair, With crystal perch above its emerald bands As green as young bamboo; at sunset there Thy friend, the blue-necked peacock, rises, stands, And dances when she claps her ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... or Sea Eagle is very fond of fish. Well, he is not a very good fisherman and from his lofty perch he watches for the Fish Hawk or Osprey. Do you ask why? Well, when he sees a Fish Hawk with his prey, he is sure to chase him and take it from him. It is for this reason that Ospreys ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... are connected with the existence of a single plant. The winds, losing their velocity when in contact with the foliage and the branches, accumulate sand around the trunk. The smell of the fruit and the brightness of the verdure attract from afar the birds of passage, which love to perch on the slender, arrow-like branches of the palm-tree. A soft murmuring is heard around; and overpowered by the heat, and accustomed to the melancholy silence of the plains, the traveller imagines he enjoys ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... than London; oh, To sit on the bough that zigzags low By the woodland pool, And loudly laugh at man, the fool That vows to the vulgar sun; oh, rare, To wheel from the wood to the window where A day-worn sleeper is dreaming of care, And perch on the sill and straightly stare Through his visions; rare, to sail Aslant with the hill and a-curve with the vale, — To flit down the shadow-shot-with-gleam, Betwixt hanging leaves and starlit stream, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... fourth boudoir, a handsome blue parrot sat on a blue perch and began barking as if it were nearly starved. Then it ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... reinforcements seemed very real to me, for I have a wholesome respect for Boer military enterprise; and after the security of a great camp the dangers of our lonely unsupported perch on the hills came home with extra force. 'No Boers this side of the Tugela.' How did we know? We had not seen any, but the deep valleys along the river might easily conceal two thousand horsemen. I said to myself, the Boer has always a reason for everything ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... solitary aerial perch, saw my islands rise bare and massive first from the water's edge, the earliest idea that occurred to me as an investigator of nature was simply this: how will they ever get clad with soil and herbage and living creatures? So naked and barren were their black crags and rocks of volcanic ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... had rushed out she thought: "There, now she's gone to get God; and I mustn't disturb Him with all He has to see to. I shall get up and do for myself." When they came back with the doctor they found her half-dressed, trying to feed a perch in the empty cage with a spoon, and saying: "Kiss Granny, Polly. God is coming; kiss Granny!" while the parrot sat away over on the mantelpiece, with his head on one ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... dim perception of something pleasant in the view which his thought took no cognizance of. In fact, for the last minute or two, his gaze had been a silent one; and any observer might have pondered, considering the sharpness of the perch beneath him, whether he might not be making up his mind to descend from it as soon as his slow-working mentality had had time to convey the decision of ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... Opera Colonnade; and Sir Walter Scott celebrating the Field of Waterloo, not in the broad-margined octavos of Paternoster-row, but about the purlieus of the Horse Guards. Wordsworth would be his own Skylark. The laureate, Southey, would perch himself on the dome of the New Palace. Campbell would step out of New Burlingtonstreet into the Park; Miss Mitford would keep a Covent-Garden audience awake with her own tragedies, and Planche would no longer ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... the Bluebottle and the Flesh-fly perch on the trellis-work, make a short investigation and then decamp. Throughout the summer season, for three whole months, the apparatus remains where it is, without result: never a worm. What is the reason? Does the ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... officer's permission and later a precarious perch on the broken roof of the barn, while Private Robinson extended himself in ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... the pompous Crevel. "Madame la Baronne, I throw myself at your feet! Good Heavens, how the children grow! they are pushing us off the perch—'Grand-pa,' they say, 'we want our turn in the sunshine.'—Madame la Comtesse, you are as lovely as ever," he went on, addressing Hortense.—"Ah, ha! and here is the best of good money: ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... of the Lord. Meet them in the green room at the close of the "Black Crook" and secure them. They will come to church with opera-glasses, which will bring the minister so near to them they can, from their high perch, look clear down his throat and see his sermon before it is delivered. They will make excellent poetry on Deacon Goodsoul as he carries around the missionary box. They will write dear little notes to Gonzaldo, asking him how ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... wing — a habit that they may have learned by association with the kingbirds, for they have also adopted the habit of perching upon some conspicuous lookout and then suddenly launching out into the air for a passing fly and returning to their perch. Long after their associates have gone southward, they linger like the last leaves on the tree. It is indeed "good-bye to summer" when the bluebirds withdraw their touch of brightness from ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... with our fish! Or would you seriously set your perch and carp against our mackerel, herrings, haddocks, flounders, and all our unparalleled ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... before her would permit, her feet restlessly dancing up and down in the limited space; and now that she was upon the solid wharf to which the steamer was moored she bore them along with her by an arm linked to each, eager to be free of that throng and in some quiet spot where she could perch upon her father's knee ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... drew near Bristol, Louis grew so sleepy and tired, from the length of the journey, as well as the imperfect slumber obtained inside the preceding night, that he preferred changing his quarters, to the risk of falling from his perch above. It so happened that the coach was empty inside, and Louis indulged himself by stretching at full length on one of the seats, and soon lost the recollection of his troubles in sleep. How long he had slept he could not tell, when the stopping of the coach disturbed him, and ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... steady wing: Then the Volsung followed his flight, for he looked to see him fall On the fluttering folk of the doves, and he cried the backward call Full oft and over again; but the falcon heeded it nought, Nor turned to his kingly wrist-perch, nor the folk of the pigeons sought, But flew up to a high-built tower, and sat in the window a space, Crying out like the fowl of Odin when the first of the morning they face, And then passed through the open casement as an ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... and the perch—Let us see—Mr. Mordicai, ask him, ask Paddy, about Sir Terence," said the foreman, pointing back over his shoulder to the Irish workman, who was at this moment pretending to be wondrous hard at ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... flying is a luxury, a fine art; not merely a quicker and safer means of transit from one point to another, but a gift so free and spontaneous that work becomes leisure and movement rest. They are not so much going somewhere, from this perch to that, as they are abandoning themselves to the mere pleasure of riding ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... Hugh at Lincoln is an attractive early Gothic work. In 1743 he was removed from his precarious perch on the top of a stone pinnacle, and was placed more firmly afterwards. In a letter from the Clerk of the Works this process was described. "I must acquaint you that I took down the antient image of St. Hugh, which is about ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... beyond his depth, and we were at once alarmed and diverted at seeing his rider, with surprising adroitness, draw her feet from the stirrups and perch herself upon the top of the saddle, where she held her position, and navigated her little ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... or Fistularia—a beast strange enough in shape to be credited with strange actions: but ichthyologists say positively no: that the noise (at least along the coast of the United States) is made by a Pogonias, a fish somewhat like a great bearded perch, and cousin of the Maigre of the Mediterranean, which is accused of making a similar purring or grunting noise, which can be heard from a depth of one hundred and twenty feet, and guides ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... in silence their pipes, and the young To the pike and the white-perch their baited lines flung; There the boy shaped his arrows, and there the shy maid Wove her many-hued baskets and bright ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... me," laughed Waring.—"Take the front seat, Jeffers.—Now, Nin Nin, ma fleurette, up with you!" And the delighted child was lifted to her perch in the stylish trap she had so often admired. "Now, madame," he continued, extending ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... boy, don't forget it was you made me a soldier," Roscoe said soberly. "Come on back to my perch with me," he added, "and tell me all about your adventures. This is better than taking Berlin. There's only one person in this little old world I'd rather meet in a lonely place, and that's the Kaiser. Come ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... both undone," said Varney. "She has of late been casting many a backward look to her father's halls, whenever her lordly lover leaves her alone. Should this preaching fool whistle her back to her old perch, we were but ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... same word, according to its different significations, often has a different origin; as, to bear a burden, from fero; but to bear, whence birth, born, bairn, comes from pario; and a bear, at least if it be of Latin original, from fera. Thus perch, a fish, from perca; but perch, a measure, from pertica, and likewise to perch. To spell is from syllaba; but spell, an inchantment, by which it is believed that the boundaries are so fixed in lands that none can pass them against the master's ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... tells; and the tiny victim, hurled from its high perch—after making several somersaults in the air—falls right into the jaws of that hungry savage at the bottom of the tree. Wolf makes his breakfast ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... see nothing from her perch but the sea, and the opposite cliff upon which Ripon House stood. A few wheeling sea-gulls, and a small fishing-boat, beating out of the harbor, were the only living objects in the view. The waves, crest over crest, hurried toward the headland, and beat into ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... now, Mick?" she said, observing that, instead of drawing himself up to level ground, he stood poised on an uncomfortable perch, and looked back the steep ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... experiences before the night was over. He was the tallest horse I ever saw outside of a show, with a very short back and exceedingly long legs, which he handled peculiarly, going several gaits at one time. Many a cannoneer had sought rest on his back on the march, but none had ventured on so high a perch when going into battle. When half-way up the mountain we heard to our left oblique the distant mutter of a cannon, then in a few moments the sound was repeated, but we thought it was safely out of our course and felt correspondingly comfortable. At intervals ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... had been eating up young ducklings on a certain pond; how he had baited for this fellow with a live duckling, the hook through the tips of its wings, got him in twenty minutes, and he turned the scale at four-and-twenty pounds. Roach and perch were afterwards discussed. In Mr. Sparkes' opinion the best bait for these fish was a bit of dough kneaded up with loose wool. Chaffey's—at all events, Chaffey's of to-day—would not have known its head waiter could it have seen and heard him as he thus held forth. The hostess showed a fear lest ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... the leaf as it fluttered to the ground, and carrying it carefully in his mouth, deposited it at the feet of the little girls, seating himself before them with an air of deep interest. Bab and Betty picked it up and read it aloud in unison, while Ben leaned from his perch to listen and learn. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... to the other shoulder. Then, reaching far around past the Boy's face, she fixed the stranger piercingly with her unwinking gaze, and emitted an ear-splitting shriek of laughter. The little coon's nerves were not prepared for such a strain. In his panic he fairly tumbled from his perch to the floor, and straightway fled for refuge to the broad back of ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... them had been pricked the whole affair might have ended differently. For then perhaps only one of them would have lost his temper. As they drew apart they were growing more angry every instant. And when they wheeled and glared at each other old Mr. Crow, who was watching them from his perch in the pine tree, called out: "Don't stop! Make it ...
— The Tale of Nimble Deer - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... "It was awful for you to perch on one toe for a hundred million mile ride! And I reclined at ease on a Roman trident, or whatever you call it!" "Tripod, you mean," said Adele, laughing, "or ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... which mantleth on her perch, Whether high tow'ring or accousting low, But I the measure of her flight doe search, And all her prey and ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... impatiently, while he waited opposite a sort of portable platform higher than the horse's back, and gaily cushioned and decorated. A great tawny male lion was in the act of leaping from the ground to this high perch. I had seen many exhibitions of animal intelligence and training, but when this king of lions, uttering a second mighty roar, leaped to the back of the waiting horse and rode about the ring like a trained rider, leaped through a hoop held in the mouth of a big spotted ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... the Little Colonel, laughing hysterically now that her temper had spent itself. "You girls look too funny for any use. Come down off your perch on that wardrobe, Joyce. It was only an old pet that the boys bought from a tramp one time. They keep it up at 'Fairchance,' the home that Mr. MacIntyre founded for little waifs and strays. I s'pose ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... rill.— Loud o'er the camp the Fiend of Famine shrieks, Calls all her brood, and champs her hundred beaks; O'er ten square leagues her pennons broad expand, And twilight swims upon the shuddering sand; 465 Perch'd on her crest the Griffin Discord clings, And Giant Murder rides between her wings; Blood from each clotted hair, and horny quill, And showers of tears in blended streams distil; High-poised in air her spiry neck she bends, 470 Rolls her keen eye, her Dragon-claws ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... her hymn, and vainly trying to stop her ears from hearing and her eyes from seeing all the pleasant sights and sounds around her. But the birds were so busy singing, and the fish kept springing up from the stream, and every now and then a bright butterfly would flit across, or a little bird perch on a spray close to her, and everything around seemed trying so mischievously to take her attention from her book, so that they had reached the gate at the end of the wood before Kitty had learned two ...
— Amy Harrison - or Heavenly Seed and Heavenly Dew • Amy Harrison
... of an eye they had made a complete volte-face, the waggon was lying on its side across the fairway, and its burden of logs had been distributed with a dull crash upon about a square perch of cobbles. ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... quello 'mperador che la su regna Perch' i' fu'ribellante a la sua legge, Non vuol che 'n sua citta per ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... seemed, the two belligerent forces paused to get their second breath. Up to that time, the battle had raged with varying fortune. Victory, that appeared about to perch first on one banner, and then on the other, held aloof, as if disdaining to favor either. The odds, indeed, had been rather with the confederates than against them, for Stuart managed to out-number his adversary at every critical point, though Gregg forced the fighting, ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... elbow. He had been on the brink of tears for a moment, but meeting Bellew's quizzical gaze, he manfully repressed the weakness, and, lifting the small, and somewhat weather-beaten cap that found a precarious perch at the back of his curly head, he ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... are alluded to by Arthur Wilson as "monstrous satires against the king's own person, that haunted both court and country," when, in the wantonness of the times, "every little miscarriage, exuberantly branched, so that evil report did often perch on them." Fuller has designated these suspicious scribes as "a generation of the people who, like moths, have lurked under the carpets of the council-table, and even like fleas, have leaped into pillows of the prince's bed-chamber; and, to enhance the reputation of their knowledge, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... this noise and bustle came Miss Easton and Jack. The groom scrambled down from his perch, and the two got out. In an instant she was surrounded by three or four men, all talking at the same time and upon the same subject: "Was not the day superb?" "Did she know which way the hounds were to run?" "Was she going to ride Midnight?" "What a beauty ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... most elevated seat, was nearest to the moon, and undeniably went foremost, it was resolved by acclamation that the box was the imperial throne, and, for the scoundrel who drove,—he might sit where he could find a perch. The horses, therefore, being harnessed, solemnly his imperial majesty ascended his new English throne under a flourish of trumpets, having the first lord of the treasury on his right hand, and the chief jester on his left. Pekin gloried in the spectacle; and in the whole flowery people, constructively ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... should have retained my perch till daylight, but with the consciousness of escape from the jaws of the ferocious brute came a sense of overpowering weakness which almost palsied me, and made my descent from the tree both difficult and dangerous. ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... precarious perch—one foot on the back of a chair, the other on an oak chest—Blake surveyed the unfurnished salon of the fifth-floor appartement. His coat was off, in one dusty hand he held a hammer, in the other a picture, while from between his lips ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... Caterina, the wife of the Count, entered into the room where those noblemen were, together with one of her sons, who had on his wrist one of those green birds—called in Verona "terrazzani,"[7] because they make their nests on the ground—which learn to perch on the wrist, like hawks. It happened, then, that, while she stood with the others contemplating the picture, the bird, seeing the extended arm and wrist of the painted Child, flew to perch upon it; but, not having ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... very prolific fish, and will thrive in ponds with a very small stream running into them, and in sluggish rivers. Other coarse fish are as a rule easy to introduce into a water. Though perch fry form excellent food for trout, perch, and of course pike, should be kept out ...
— Amateur Fish Culture • Charles Edward Walker
... excited the writer during its progress, it fades almost instantly from the mind, and leaves, by some benevolent arrangement of nature, a tabula rasa—a blank space for the next one. Everyone must recollect that anecdote of Walter Scott, who, on hearing one of his own poems ('My hawk is tired of perch and hood') sung in a London drawing-room, observed with innocent approbation, 'Byron's, of course;' and so it is with us lesser folks. A very humorous sketch might be given (and it would not be overdrawn) of some prolific novelist getting hold, under some strange roof, of the 'library edition' ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... Tilly's companionship; for it was a melancholy fact: if you were not in the same class as the girl who was your friend, your interests and hers were soon fatally sundered. On their former companions, Tilly and Laura, from their new perch, could not but look down: the two had masters now for all subjects; Euclid loomed large; Latin was no longer bounded by the First Principia; and they fussed considerably, in the others' hearing, over the difficulties of the little blue books that began: GALLIA EST ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... repetitions, and getting up a dramatic sense that her life was very busy. She paused on her way back to talk to old Master Bunney who was putting in some garden-seeds, and discoursed wisely with that rural sage about the crops that would make the most return on a perch of ground, and the result of sixty years' experience as to soils—namely, that if your soil was pretty mellow it would do, but if there came wet, wet, wet to make it all of a mummy, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... expedition, which quieted me much. Towards ten in the morning the wind changed; immediately an appalling cry was heard, concerning which the passengers, as well as myself, were equally ignorant. The whole crew were in motion. Some climbed the rope ladders, and seemed to perch on the extremities of the yards; others mounted to the highest parts of the mast; these bellowing and pulling certain cordages in cadence; those crying, swearing, whistling, and filling the air with barbarous and unknown sounds. The officer on duty, in his turn, roaring out these ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... all the vicissitudes of the Civil War; and glimmered, however faintly, during the subsequent period of Sir Geoffrey's depression. But he was often heard to say, and sometimes to swear, that while there was a perch of woodland left to the estate, the old beacon-grate should not lack replenishing. All this his son Julian well knew; and therefore it was with no ordinary feelings of surprise and anxiety, that, looking in the ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... the terrible duty-calls flashed through her mind Toni slipped down from her perch on the balustrade and made her way down to the towing path beneath. She often walked beside the river in these quiet morning hours, alone unless her dog Jock, an Airedale terrier of unimpeachable ancestry and cheerful disposition, was at ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... clinging to the post, she slept. The other children looked up and said to each other, "Look at Hatt, she's done gone off agin!" Tired of their present play ground they trooped off in another direction, but the girl slept on heavily, never losing her hold on the post, or her seat on her perch. Behold here, in the stupid little negro girl, the future deliverer of hundreds of her people; the spy and scout of the Union armies; the devoted hospital nurse; the protector of hunted fugitives; the eloquent ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... ease of the gentry that thus ride. Changing horses, they travel night and day, so that they bring the fowls seventy, eighty, or, one hundred miles in two days and one night. The horses in this new-fashioned voiture go two abreast, as above, but no perch below, as in a coach, but they are fastened together by a piece of wood lying crosswise upon their necks, by which they are kept even and together, and the driver sits on the top of the cart like as in the public carriages ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... mad)—if I said, 'I am in love. I can't go. Send some one who is not in love!'" She glanced down from her perch on the footboard at the olive profile bent over the next car. The driver was sitting on his step with his open hand outstretched to hold a dozen bright washers which he was stirring with his forefinger. The hand with the washers ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... fourscore thousand spectators. After all the depredations of all the Goths, and afterwards of the Farnese family, the ruin is gloriously beautiful; possibly more beautiful than when it was quite whole; there is enough left now for Truth to repose upon, and a perch for Fancy beside, to fly out ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... When she is naughty the case is exactly reversed. This baby's proper name is Lullitha, which means Playfulness, and illustrates a side of her character undiscovered by the visitor who only sees the Owlet sitting on her perch with serious, watchful, unblinking eyes, regarding the intruder. But most babies are complex characters, and are not known ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... my perch I found that we were still in deep water, no sign whatever of the bottom being visible through the depths of the exquisitely beautiful, clear, crystalline blue; but ahead, at the very fringe of the breakers that were dashing themselves into diamond and pearl-white spray ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... The latter is a common summer resident with us,—a bird of the groves and bushy fields, where his bright song may be heard all through the long summer day. I hear it in the dry and parched August when most birds are silent, sometimes delivered on the wing and sometimes from the perch. Indeed, with me its song is as much a midsummer sound as is the brassy crescendo of the cicada. The memory of its note calls to mind the flame-like quiver of the heated atmosphere and the bright glare of the meridian sun. Its color is much ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... all the Year. Pickled Walnuts. Ditto Cucumbers. Ditto for Mangoes. Ditto Kidney-Beans. Ditto Nasturtium-Seeds. Partridges stew'd with Sallery. Ditto roasted. Pheasants, their Sauces. Ditto to dress. Potatoes. Perch, with Mushrooms. ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... and rapidity, hands, eyes, and mouth were bound once more; the parson was led down-stairs, out into the wet night, and back to his seat in the carriage. The masked man took his place beside him. John Jones mounted to the driver's perch, and they were off ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... that swam in the rivers of the Weald (they be coarse and small) was there; perch, roach, carp, tench (pike not come into England yet). And of sea fish—herrings, mackerel, soles, ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... where she came up. Migwan leaned over and put a streak of soap on her face, Sahwah promptly caught Migwan by the feet and pulled her off the rock into the water. Struggling, they both went under and came up choking and giggling. Hinpoha, from her airy perch in the tree, cheered the combatants on. "Good work, Migwan, hang on to the rock! That's the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... lumbering vehicles, laden with heavy merchandise, tear up the soil into ruts. No cab-drivers cast sarcastic remarks at you from their high perch. The only annoyance comes from the cast-off nail of a horse-shoe or the sharp splinter of a macadamised stone. The air is as fresh as on Creation's morn. Up hill and down again one can hurry on without ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... the servants go away in a body?" asked the Baroness, descending from her social perch by the inviting ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... who was versed in book-lore, but, worse luck to him, he could not bind a wheat-sheaf or weed a perch of parsnips, and the result—bankruptcy; failure. That's ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... they settled on a plan. Tie donkey was to place himself with his forefeet on the window-sill, the dog to climb on the donkey's back, and the cat on the dog's, and, at last, the cock was to fly up and perch himself on the cat's head. When that was done, at a signal they began their music all together: the donkey brayed, the dog barked, the cat mewed, and the cock crowed; then, with one great smash, they dashed through the window into the room, so that ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... ballads themselves. There is in them a still more original cast of thought, a more romantic imagery— the thistle's glittering down, the gilliflower on the old garden-wall, the horseman's silver bells, the hawk on its perch—a closer intimacy with nature, a firmer reliance on it, as the only stock of wealth which the mind has to resort to, a more infantine simplicity of manners, a greater strength of affection, hopes longer cherished ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... their casements. Over all rose the keep, a square solid tower apparently not much injured by wars or weather, and darkened with ivy on one side, wherein wings could be heard flapping uncertainly, as if they belonged to a bird unable to find a proper perch. Hissing noises supervened, and then a hoot, proclaiming that a brood of young owls were residing there in the company of older ones. In spite of the habitable and more modern wing, neglect and decay had set their mark upon the outworks of the pile, unfitting them for a more positive light ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Richard was all but penniless. The pious, nonconformist soul of Sir Geoffrey Lupton—the wealthy uncle from whom he had had great expectations—had been so stirred to anger by Richard's vicious and besotted ways that he had left every guinea that was his, every perch of land, and every brick of edifice to Richard's half-sister Ruth. At present things were not so bad for the worthless boy. Ruth worshipped him. He was a sacred charge to her from their dead father, who, knowing the stoutness ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... anxiety his heart was continually clamoring at what he considered the intolerable slowness of the generals. They seemed content to perch tranquilly on the river bank, and leave him bowed down by the weight of a great problem. He wanted it settled forthwith. He could not long bear such a load, he said. Sometimes his anger at the commanders reached an acute stage, and he grumbled ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... all to no purpose. Suddenly the strain would cease, and while waiting for him to commence again, I would see him dart off to a lower tree, or into a thick undergrowth of Witch-Hazel. When I had withdrawn, he would resume his perch and again take up his song. At other times I have come abruptly upon him while singing on a low stump, without his seeming to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... beautiful work possible to the sculptor's art, portraying Audubon in the garb he wore when he was proud and happy to be called the "American Woodman," and at his feet should stand the Eagle which he named the "Bird of Washington," and near should perch the Mocking Bird, as once, in his description, it flew and fluttered and sang to the mind's eye and ear from the pages of the ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II., No. 5, November 1897 - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... and fished with the sun beaming down On the tops of our heads through hats minus crown, And when I got a bite or you caught a perch We'd just give our lines a thundering lurch, And land him high up on the bank in the weeds, Then string him along with the pumpkin seeds! O don't you remember the hot, dusky walk, Along the white pike to the ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... to be terribly excited about something, and many of them are running back and forth," said Harry, from his perch ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... form, colour, life, in the whole place, crushed me down, without my being able to analyse my feelings as I can now; and then came over me that dream of Pacific Islands, and the free, open sea; and I slid down from my perch, and bursting into tears threw myself upon my knees in the court, and prayed aloud to God to let ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... off her perch of reticence. She set before him the dish she was carrying. "I'm sure wherever your Lordship ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... hopes. With not one tinge Of sanctuary splendour, not a sight Able to face an owl's, they still are dight By the blue-eyed nations in empurpled vests, And crowns, and turbans. With unladen breasts, Save of blown self-applause, they proudly mount To their spirit's perch, their being's high account, Their tiptop nothings, their dull skies, their thrones— Amid the fierce intoxicating tones. Of trumpets, shoutings, and belaboured drums, And sudden cannon. Ah! how all this hums, In wakeful ears, like uproar past ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... preferred her cage, gilded or otherwise. Each afternoon the cage was placed out on the lawn so Pollymckittrick could have her sun bath. One day a big redtail hawk sailed by. Pollymckittrick fell backward off her perch, flat on her back. The sorrowing family gathered to observe this extraordinary case of heart failure. After an interval Pollymckittrick unfilmed ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... nickname too, "minnies." Out farther, once in a while, the children saw a fish shining like gold. It was a sunfish or "sunny" as they sometimes called it. And the Toyman told them all about these fishes and the perch, too, and the long pickerel and the wicked carp, who hunts the other ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... to Holden's heart. It was utterly helpless and very soft. He scarcely dared to breathe for fear of crushing it. The caged green parrot that is regarded as a sort of guardian-spirit in most native households moved on its perch ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... Shade came back to us, brought thither by an irresistible force which condemned him to perch on the verge of Hell. My divine Guide, guessing my curiosity, touched the unhappy Shade with his palm-branch. He, who was perhaps trying to measure the age of sorrow that divided him from that ever-vanishing ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... the narrow perch, Shann could sight no other movement in the nearest line of rooms, those connected by corridors with his own. He got to his feet to walk the tightrope of the upper walls toward that inner chamber which was the heart of the Warlockian—palace? town? ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... bare heels together and thinking idly of Major Dabney and certain disquieting rumors lately come to Paradise, when the tinkling drip of the spring into the pool at the foot of his perch was interrupted by a ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... of the vessel, the masts hung far out over the water, and from my perch on the cross-trees I had nothing below me but the surface of the bay. Hands, who was not so far up, was in consequence nearer to the ship and fell between me and the bulwarks. He rose once to the surface in a lather of foam and blood ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thought away, turn, and with watchful eyes Feed it 'mid Nature's old felicities, Rocks, rivers, and smooth lakes more clear than glass Untouched, unbreathed upon. Thrice happy quest, If from a golden perch of aspen spray (October's workmanship to rival May) The pensive warbler of the ruddy breast That moral sweeten by a heaven-taught lay, Lulling the year, with all its cares, ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... slumber, "Now, see yere, Massa Job, yoh ain't no mo' sleepier'n I is." Uncle Noah poked the turkey with his finger, and Job arched his neck with a threatening flap of his wings and descended from his perch. "Fight me, will yoh?" demanded Uncle Noah in secret delight, "yoh is de touchiest bird! Yere, fight wid ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple
... moonlight as she stretched her hands towards him; she was dressed in wretched tattered garments that yet became her mightily; rue and vervain twined about her temples; her eyes glittered with unholy light. He only just controlled the wild impulse to take her in his arms and leap with her from their giddy perch into the valley below. ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... watercourses, gliding with a glassy current over swaying reeds. Through this we pass, and leave Bevagna to the right, and ascend one of those long gradual roads which climb the hills where all the cities of the Umbrians perch. The view expands, revealing Spello, Assisi, Perugia on its mountain buttress, and the far reaches northward of the Tiber valley. Then Trevi and Spoleto came into sight, and the severe hill-country above Gubbio ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... John Ellery and Grace had halted in their walk. It was full tide and the miniature breakers plashed amid the seaweed on the beach. The mist was drifting in over the bay and the gulls were calling sleepily from their perch along the breakwater. A night hawk swooped and circled above the tall "feather grass" by the margin of the creek. The minister's face was pale, but set and determined, and he ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a whole day," said Amy, who had taken possession, as a matter of course, of her old perch on Katy's knee. "Chicago is the biggest place you ever saw, Tanta; but it isn't so pretty as Burnet. And oh! don't you think Car Forty-seven is nice,—the one we are going out West in, you know? And this morning Mr. Dayton took us to see it. It's the cunningest place that ever was. There's ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... on Brooklyn Bridge watched the suburbanites going home, crowding surface-car and elevated. From their perch on the giant spider's web of steel, they saw the Long Island Sound steamers below them, passing through a maelstrom of light on waves that trembled ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... straight toward Jack, who was too vigilant to be caught unprepared. Leaping backward a couple of steps, he brought his gun to his shoulder, like a flash, and fired almost at the moment the animal left his perch. There could be no miss under the circumstances, and the "painter" received his death wound, as may be said, while in mid-air. He struck the ground with a heavy thump, made a blind leap toward the youthful hunter, who ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... Slogger, on resuming his perch, "d'you know I've found traces o' that young gal as you took such a interest in, as runned away from the old 'ooman, an' was robbed by ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... canary and hemp seed. Robbie gave them bits of his cookies and cakes. Anything that the children liked to eat, these little chickens liked also; and when they heard the little boots coming towards them they would perch on the edge of their yard and chirp and peep ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... the dome Of Christ, the sparrows find a home; And on his olives perch: The swallow also dwells with thee, O man of God's humility, Within his ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... hero-worship had always embarrassed him, but he didn't like it when the worshiper began to criticize. He admitted the justness of the criticism, but it hurt him just the same. Perching on a pedestal had been uncomfortable but a little thrilling; sitting on the ground and gazing up at his perch was rather humiliating. The fall had bruised him; and Norry, with the best intentions in the world, was ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... second mate, when I pointed this out to him; "they say that the birds come down from the skies and live in the air, and as they never perch, they don't want feet. That's why they're ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... shrugged his decrepit shoulders. "I have been expecting to hear you say you'd settled with the jackass that gave you that licking that day. I don't want to see you get into more trouble, but that fellow ought to be pulled down from his lordly perch. I never see him without feeling his hands on my throat. He's the one man that has always stood in my way. And now, just look at him! He's in big luck again, and can sneer in his high and mighty way ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... all. Well, just as they were on | | stronger wing. But the eagle | the hinges of being off, what | | went up beyond them all, and | does the little rogue of a wren | | was ready to claim the victory, | do but hop up and perch himself | | when the gray linnet, a very | unbeknown on the eagle's tail. So | | small bird, flew from the | they flew and flew ever so high, | | eagle's back, where it had | till the eagle was miles above | | perched unperceived, and, being | all the rest, and ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... "He's on a perch, and crowing like a rooster, is the bart. You need not look for flies on Barraclough, doctor. He's his own chauffeur this trip. I don't fancy the joy myself, but the bart. is rorty, and what would you say ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... several at a time. They remain under the Mole for a considerable while. Those outside wait, but go repeatedly to the threshold of the cavern to take a look at what is happening within and see whether the earlier ones have finished. These come out at last, perch on the animal and wait in their turn. Others at once take their place in the recesses of the cave. They remain there for some time and then, having done their business, make room for more mothers and come forth into the sunlight. This going in and ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... Fire away, and don't miss!" cried Seth, hastily following Sol, who had climbed to the top of the dresser as a good perch from which ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... after the half-hour of exercise, and sitting on the uncomfortable wooden seat without a back that was her perch by day, "it's no good staying here in a sort of maze. I've got nothing to do for a month but think. I may as well think. I ought to be ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... the snow from the horses' hoofs. The driver, stupid or dazed, sat on the box, helpless as a parrot on a swinging perch. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... an excellent idea, Tom Hunter thought to himself, and it had worked perfectly, exactly as he had planned it ... so far. But now, as he clung to his precarious perch, he wondered if it had not worked out a little too well. The first flush of excitement that he had felt when he saw the Scavenger blow apart in space had begun to die down now; on its heels came the ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... been altogether discarded by birds as superfluous. The germ, or bud, must be there, for the Dorking fowl has produced a fifth toe under some influence of the poultry-yard, but no natural bird has more than four. Except in swifts, which never perch, but cling to rocks and walls, one is turned backwards, and, by a cunning contrivance, the act of bending the leg draws them all automatically together. So a hen closes its toes at every step it takes, as if it grasped something, and, of course, when it settles down on its roost, ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... of flood, when they get washed out of their holes, and the water being no longer clear, their very sharp eyes are of little use to them. Then a lucky throw will sometimes bring out two or three carp weighing several pounds each. The fish commonly caught are mullet, perch, barbel, gudgeon, bream, and chub. As a food-supplying river, the Dordogne is one of the most valuable in France, and, owing to the rapid current and the purity of the water, the fish is ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... then, have not my winged neighbors picked up the crumbs I have scattered for them before my window? I see them fly away, come back, perch upon the ledges of the windows, and chirp at the sight of the feast they are usually so ready to devour! It is not my presence that frightens them; I have accustomed them to eat out of my hand. Then, why this fearful suspense? In vain I look around: the roof is clear, the windows near ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... "The house will perch on top of this little hill. Back of it, you see, on top of the ridge, it's quite flat and the garden will be there. I was talking about it ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... the sun had gone half through the day did the weight reach the bottom. Then he hauled up the line a little way, and almost before it was still, he felt a pull. And he hauled it up, and it was a mighty sea perch. This he killed, but did not let down his line a second time, for in that way it would become evening. He cut a hole in the lower jaw of the fish, and put in a cord to carry it with. And when he took it on his head, it was so long that the ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown
... enter. By the dim light I make out the form of the lady in my bunk; but that is surely not the brother in the one opposite? It is! The impudence of it! They have turned you out and made you go into the upper one. As I climb to my own perch, internally wrathful and debating whether I shall not poke the man up and make him restore you to your place, I hear your sleepy voice in a ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... he had no intention, after finding himself again in civilised society, of returning to savage life. The noise he made awoke his new friend Kallolo, however, who began to talk to him in the language which he seemed to understand, and presently the monkey came down from his perch and nestled in ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... she would be as gay and bright as a June rose, tripping up and down through the house with a song on her lips, and the old laugh rippling like sunbeams about her. Then she would deftly perch herself on the arm of Mr. Stewart's chair, and dazzle us both with the joyous merriment of her talk, and the sparkle in her eyes—or sing for us of an evening, up-stairs, playing the while upon the lute (which young Cross had given her) instead of the discarded piano. Then she would wear ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... behind the ear where a curl curves and neck and garments meet, there comes a little fragrance born of sweet flesh and new flannel, and the only motion is that of the half-open hand that seems to recognize and closes about your fingers as a vine to its trellis, or as a sleeping bird clings to its perch. ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... but if she had I felt she would not shrink—only give me the same sharp, indifferent look she was giving all else. The policeman on the step behind had disappeared at once, and the driver now got down from his perch and, coming round, began to gossip with her. I saw her slink her eyes and smile at him, and he smiled back; a large man; not unkindly. Then he returned to his horses, and she stayed as before, with her forehead against the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... make much difference to my eight horses, I expect," said the driver, looking at Joey; "so come along, youngster: you may perch yourself on top of the ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... repeated her answer to my lady herself, with a great deal more which need not be recorded. Suffice it to say, my lady thought it necessary to pull up the glass, against which Matty threw a handful of mud; the servant jumped up on his perch behind the carriage, which was rapidly driven away by the coachman, but not so fast that Matty could not, by dint of running, keep it "within range" for some seconds, during which time she contrived to pelt both coachman and footman with mud, and ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... not venture to descend from his elevated perch until the two men had ample time to get ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger
... voice stopped with a suddenness that made the woman in the door fear for Elly Precious; it seemed that he must be jolted from his narrow perch. ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... refulgent and revolving lights began to stud the darkness; light-houses of the mind or of the wearied optic nerve, solemnly shining and winking as we passed. At length the mate himself despaired, scrambled on board again from his unrestful perch, and announced that we had missed our destination. He was the only man of practice in these waters, our sole pilot, shipped for that end at Tai-o-hae. If he declared we had missed Takaroa, it was not for us to quarrel ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... are some perils connected with this method of lion slaying. Mosquitoes may bite you, causing a dreadful fever that may later result in death in some lingering and costly form. Also the biting ants may pursue you up to your aery perch and take small but effective bites in many itchable but unscratchable points. These elements of danger are about the only ones encountered in the tree method of lion hunting, but then who could expect to kill lions without some degree of ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... old Sport he hangs around, so solemn-like an' still, His eyes they seem a-sayin': "What's the matter, little Bill?" The old cat sneaks down off her perch an' wonders what's become Of them two enemies of hern that used to make things hum! But I am so perlite an' 'tend so earnestly to biz, That mother says to father: "How improved our Willie is!" But father, havin' been a boy ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... among them the white ibis, the white heron, the snake-bird, and vulture. We found a bluff, with deep water below it, into which we had scarcely thrown our lines when we each hooked a large black bass; after which we caught several bream, cat-fish, and perch, until we had as much as we ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... side by side, the brigand holding Chiquita by the hand, so as to give her all the aid and support he could, and they quickly passed out of sight. No sooner had they departed than the crows came swooping down from their perch in the nearest tree, and fell to fiercely upon their horrible feast, in which they were almost directly joined by several ravenous wolves—and they made such good use of their time, that in a few hours nothing ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... curtain? A few moments ago it had seemed to beckon. Now she depended on it the white folds eluded her hand. If the wind dropped, she was lost. She couldn't help thinking of all the things she wished not to think of. She thought of that immense depth below her narrow perch. She didn't believe the man or woman lived strong-minded enough ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... scrambled down from his high perch and raced across the garden to the stables where he had settled to meet Dudley; whilst Rob descended more slowly, muttering to himself, "'Tis a good thing not to be afraid of God like Master Roy, but I doubt if I should ever ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... room is much too small, but it is the best we have. The wide doors are left open. So are the wide windows, and the boys are even allowed to perch on the wall opposite the entrance, from which place ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... the high bough. All the time the Snake was held in the bird's beak, writhing and coiling in agony; for he knew that the Kookooburra had won the battle. But, when the noble bird had reached its perch, it did a strange thing; for it dropped the Snake right down to the ground. Then it flew down again, and brought the reptile back to the bough, and dropped it once more—and this it did many times. Each time the Snake ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... mouth was already open to speak. He waved her aside. She adhered to her post. He shouted to the postilion, and the huge, lumbering vehicle was set in motion. At the first turn of the wheels, Jean slipped from her perch, her dress caught in the spokes, and she was crushed ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... conduct and the progress of my system to them. One night, after we had entertained a party of visitors, whom I had made instruments of torture to my wife by their common-place eulogies of Frank's contributions, I ascended my perch in the conservatory. She was sitting in her apartment, her hands, listlessly clasped, resting on her knees, her form bowed with the most profound dejection, coupled with that indescribable aspect of cold, desperate defiance which I have previously ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Do you think to change and to crow over me. You will not or I'll lay my curse upon you, unless you would change me into an eagle would be turning his back upon the whole of ye, and facing to his perch upon the right hand of the master of ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... man, and tallest of the lot. Give him a cheer, auntie: he sees us, and remembers!" cried Tom, nearly tumbling off his perch, as he waved his hat, and pointed out ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... species; the larva of Echinorhynchus proteus lives in Gammarus pulex and in small fish, the adult is common in many fresh-water fish: E. polymorphus, larval host the crayfish, adult host the duck: E. angustotus occurs as a larva in Asellus aquaticus, as an adult in the perch, pike and barbel: E. moniliformis has for its larval host the larvae of the beetle Blaps mucronata, for its final host certain mice, if introduced into man it lives well: E. acus is common in whiting: E. porrigeus in the fin-whale, and E. strumosus in the seal. A species ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to Olga, smiling with supreme ease, lowered Peggy from her perch, and dropped into the vacant seat beside her. Daisy passed on with a smile to join the Bradlaws. Peggy remained, ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... with delight as I saw the huge body rolling to the earth; and, dropping down from my perch, I ran toward the spot. On reaching it, I found the elk panting in the throes of death, while Cudjo stood over ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... down from his perch on the ambulance. His legs were stiff from the long ride, so he carefully shook them one after the other, and spoke pleasantly to a dog that was wandering about the Grand Place in a forlorn panic. Then he remembered ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... up and said to each other, "Look at Hatt, she's done gone off agin!" Tired of their present play ground they trooped off in another direction, but the girl slept on heavily, never losing her hold on the post, or her seat on her perch. Behold here, in the stupid little negro girl, the future deliverer of hundreds of her people; the spy and scout of the Union armies; the devoted hospital nurse; the protector of hunted fugitives; the eloquent speaker in public meetings; the cunning eluder of pursuing ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... poor bird would be lonesome; and Anne, feeling that she could forgive everybody and everything, offered him a walnut. But Ginger's feelings had been grievously hurt and he rejected all overtures of friendship. He sat moodily on his perch and ruffled his feathers up until he looked like a mere ball ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... kept the geese hastened to drive her charges away from the bridge, before the hunting company should come gallopping up. They drew near with such speed that the girl was obliged to climb up in a hurry, and perch herself on the coping-stone of the bridge, lest she should be ridden down. She was still half a child, and had a pretty light figure, and a gentle expression in her face, with two clear blue eyes. The noble baron took no note of this, but as he gallopped past the little goose-herd, he reversed the ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... every eye and bewilder every passer-by, they fancy they are in the upper-ten of womanhood. Vain! The peacock, whose little heart is one beating pulse of vanity, is not half so vain as they. Giddy, trifling, empty, vapid, cold, moonshine women, whose souls can perch on a plume, and whose only ambition is to be a traveling advertisement for the men and women who traffic in what they wear, are many who flaunt in satins and glitter in diamonds. How many such there are we would not say. But I doubt ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... breath quickened. It was as if she had been engaged in a contest of wills, very fierce; nay, in a contest physical, a wrestling. She had not known, she told herself, that it was possible to hate so. That man! These men! She put her eye upon the bus driver, strapped on his perch so near to her that she could have touched him, and absurdly in her repugnance of his sex hated him and ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... rose and bowed quite gravely. She deliberately put down thimble, scissors, work; descended with precaution from her perch, and curtsying with unspeakable seriousness, said, "How do ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... child, returned the father. After musing on the scene for an hour, with a mingled feeling of pleasure and desolation, I left my perch and descended the mountain. My horse was left to browse on the twigs that grew within his reach, while I explored the shores of the lake and the spot where Templeton stands. A pine of more than ordinary growth stood where my dwelling is now placed! A windrow had ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Evidently another ship, or perhaps more, had joined the Archer and accompanied her boats up the river. He could not help also turning round to see what the old Spaniard was doing. There he stood on his perch surveying his motley crew—the impersonation of an evil spirit—so Jack thought. Yet he looked quite calm and quiet, with a smile—it was not a pleasant one, however—playing on his countenance. In a moment afterwards his whole manner changed; ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... held aloft in John Fairmeadow's big, kind, sensitive hands, and from this safe perch softly smiled upon the crowd of flushed and bearded ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... hill, with its spreading wings, its stuccoed offices, its massive white columns at the rear, which presided solemnly over the terraced hill-side. A moment later he led me up to the high, spiked wall, and swung me from the ground to a secure perch on his shoulder. With my hands clinging to the iron nails that studded the wall, I looked over, and then caught my breath sharply at the thought that I was gazing upon an enchanted garden. Through ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... took us to his crow-hut, which was a hole in the ground covered with boughs and pieces of turf, where the hunters lay concealed. The owl, which lured the crows and other birds of prey, was fastened on a perch, and when they flew up, often in large flocks, to tease the old cross-patch which sat blinking angrily, they were shot down from loop-holes which had been left in the hut. The hawks which prey upon doves and hares, the crows ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... least touch is enough to hold the object. I find Midges, Plant-lice and Ants caught in it, as well as tufted seeds which have blown from the capitula of the Cichoriaceae. A Gad-fly, as big as a Blue bottle, falls into the trap before my eyes. She has barely alighted on the perilous perch when lo, she is held by the hinder tarsi! The Fly makes violent efforts to take wing; she shakes the slender plant from top to bottom. If she frees her hinder tarsi she remains snared by the front tarsi and has to begin all over ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... response, turned towards the lane and highway. Some, with keen eyes, fancied they could detect a horseman through the wood. Presently Giles, from his perch at the door of ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... I'm in danger of falling out of this tree," he sneered aloud. "He doesn't know that I can handle myself in a tree as well as he can." As he spoke, Master Robin all but tumbled off his perch. But he caught himself just in time, then looked around hastily to see if anybody ...
— The Tale of Grumpy Weasel - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... he reached the bend of the road he turned and looked back. The two girls had returned to their perch on the fence, and were deeply absorbed in something one of them held ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... the elevated trains and the vision of the Brooklyn Bridge towers. "Era la stagione nella quale la rivestita terra, piu che tutto l' altro anno, si mostra bella," he said, without other salutation, throwing his soft gray hat on a heap of magazines and newspapers in the corner, and finding what perch he could for himself ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... manager of the household affairs, for all that he paid the bills. Some day she would marry a proper man; but heaven keep that day as far off as possible. What would he do without Kitty? Always ready to perch on his knee, to smooth the day-cares from his forehead, to fend off trouble, to make laughter in the house. He was not going to love the man who eventually carried her off. He was always dreading that day; young men about the ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... jerk to tighten the lasso almost pulled the bear from her perch. She grasped the trunk of the tree with her paws to avoid falling, and that gave Charley an opportunity to tighten and secure his rope. To keep from falling, the bear had to maintain her hold on the tree. Thus she could not claw or ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... and bears them along. With them flying is a luxury, a fine art; not merely a quicker and safer means of transit from one point to another, but a gift so free and spontaneous that work becomes leisure and movement rest. They are not so much going somewhere, from this perch to that, as they are abandoning themselves to the mere pleasure of riding upon ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... woman with herself for a husband, than the wife of a fool; and Solomon more than hints that all men are fools; and every wise man knows himself to be one. When playing the sempstress, Jarl's favorite perch was the triangular little platform in the bow; which being the driest and most elevated part of the boat, was best adapted to his purpose. Here for hours and hours together the honest old tailor would sit darning and sewing ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... some eggs. True, they were only water-hen's eggs, and not so large as the duck's eggs, but then she must not be too particular. And she was just as lucky with her fishing. With a red worm on the end of her line, she managed to catch a fine perch, which was quite sufficient to satisfy hers and Rosalie's appetite. Yet, however, she wanted a dessert, and some gooseberries growing under a weeping willow furnished it. True, they were not quite ripe, but the merit of this fruit is that ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... being taken from the ceiling, and its bottom drawn out, the bird began to tremble, and turned quite white about the root of his bill: he then opened his mouth as if for breath, and respired quick, stood straighter up on his perch, hung his wings, spread his tail, closed his eyes, and appeared quite stiff and cataleptic for near half an hour, and at length with much trembling and deep respirations came gradually ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... his true vocation asserted itself. He was wont, too, to hide in the belfry, and revel in the roaring orchestra of metal, when the chimes were rung. On one occasion a stroke of lightning precipitated him from his dangerous perch to the floor below, and the history of music nearly lost one of its great lights. The bias of his nature was intractable, and he was at last permitted to study music, at first under the charge of his uncle Joseph, the cure ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... has him," answered the Little Colonel, laughing hysterically now that her temper had spent itself. "You girls look too funny for any use. Come down off your perch on that wardrobe, Joyce. It was only an old pet that the boys bought from a tramp one time. They keep it up at 'Fairchance,' the home that Mr. MacIntyre founded for little waifs and strays. I s'pose that is what Malcolm meant by a travellin' ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Following the finger with his eye David caught a fantastic sign swinging above him: a thin iron crescent, and sitting up between its two tips a lean black rat, its sharp nose in the air, its tail curled round its iron perch, while two other creatures of the same kind crept about him, the one clinging to the lower tip of the crescent, the other peering down from the top on the king-rat in the middle. Below the sign, and heavily framed by the dark overhanging ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... came with questions; so when the page advanced to gather up the money the load was almost more than he could carry. Then Tommie jumped down from his perch, and another page lifted him safely on to the big warm back of Lord Mountfalcon's horse, which felt fine and comforting to poor Tommie's feet. He was so tired that he took forty winks after he had told the Princess how to reach the cottage of ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... men seem to have thought that the species should follow; consequently, the regular plurals of some very common names of fishes are scarcely known at all. Hence some grammarians affirm, that salmon, mackerel, herring, perch, tench, and several others, are alike in both numbers, and ought never to be used in the plural form. I am not so fond of honouring these anomalies. Usage is here as unsettled, as it is arbitrary; and, if the expression of plurality is to be limited to either form exclusively, the regular plural ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... and the contests are decided by the birds themselves. If, for instance, a dozen are entered, they all begin to sing lustily, but as they sing, one after another recognizes that it is outclassed and gets down off its perch, puts its head under its wing and will not sing any more. At last there is just one bird left singing, and it sings with enthusiasm as if ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... 87 at 16,000 feet on Antisana. De Saussure says that a draught of liquor which would inebriate in the lowlands no longer has that effect on Mont Blanc. This appears to be true on the Andes; indeed, there is very little drunkenness in Quito. So the higher we perch our inebriate asylums, ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... of the air, Never did bird a spirit so mean and sordid bear As to exchange his native liberty Of soaring boldly up into the sky, His liberty to sing, to perch, or fly When, and wherever he thought good, And all his innocent pleasures of the wood, For a more plentiful or constant food. Nor ever did ambitious rage Make him into a painted cage Or the false forest of a well-hung room For ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... grand landscapes with their lakes and streams, plants and animals, all were dear to him. In particular he was fond of the birds that nested near his cabin, watched the young, and in stormy weather helped their parents to feed and shelter them. Some species were so confiding they learned to perch on his shoulders and take crumbs from ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... we walked out on to the projecting arm of rock, and I must confess to having felt an intolerable sense of terror as I looked down from that dizzy perch into the unknown depths below us—into the deeps from which there rose ever the thunder of the falling water and the ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... hung over the trellis, there never were such flaming sunflowers, or pure white lilies as looked in at the sides. Squirrels don't frequent garden bowers unless they are tamed and chained by the leg. Our robin redbreasts are in the fields in summer, and do not perch on boughs opposite speckled thrushes when they can get abundance of worms and flies among the barley. We have not little green lizards at large in England; the only one ever seen at Redwater was in the apothecary's bottle. Still what a bower ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... do it, I give you leave," answered Ben, sparring away derisively as the other tottered on his perch and was forced to hold tight ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... he espied the dryad. From one point he could see a girl, sitting in superb unconcern. Was it the one he had been searching for diligently the last hour? How had she been able to perch herself ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... in her way and the conversation was by no means banal. I fancy that if your late parrot had heard it, he would have fallen off his perch. For after all, in that Allegre Pavilion, my dear Rita, you were but a crowd of ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... fingers. "I did have a good time, I did remember to take my tonic, and this heavenly coat has kept me as warm as pie—Nina Atherton taught me that. That nice family considerably enlarged my vocabulary," she added with enjoyment, slipping out of a heavy fur coat and coming back to perch on the arm of Miss ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... tower and tree and pasture hills aboon; The stars were quenched, and vanished was the moon; Loud lowed the herds and the glad partridge' cry Made corn-fields musical as groves at noon; Birds left the perch, bee following bee hummed by, And gladness reigned on earth and brightness ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... lively listener. The bird in sable plumage flaps heavily along his straightforward course, while the other sails round him, over him, under him, leaves him, comes back again, tweaks out a black feather, shoots away once more, never losing sight of him, and finally reaches the crow's perch at the same time the crow does;' but the comparison goes on after this at needless length, with explanations. Again: 'That blessed clairvoyance which sees into things without opening them: that glorious licence which, having shut the door and ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... was closer than she realized. The throng hung breathless upon each move of the players, while there was no sound but the noise of shifting chips and the distant jangle of the orchestra. The lookout sat far forward upon his perch, his hands upon his knees, his eyes frozen to the board, a dead cigar clenched between his teeth. Crowded upon his platform were miners tense and motionless as statues. When a man spoke or coughed, a score of eyes stared at him accusingly, then ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... name given in Australia to Pseudoscarus pseudolabrus; called in the Australian tropics Parrot-perch. In Victoria and Tasmania, there are also several species of Labricthys. In New Zealand, it is ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... soon as I perceived it, I sprang to my feet, and seizing my bow, in the use of which I had become quite expert, I quickly sent an arrow through the unsuspecting animal, and it tumbled headlong from its lofty perch and fell dead at my feet. Wakometkla, who had been rather taken by surprise by the suddenness of my movements, now came up to me, and praised my skill and quickness; he then condescended to assist me in skinning and cutting up the carcass. ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... unavoidable duty to live on this perch, Heller?" demanded Father Higgins. "Me opinion is that in that case I shall get mightily tired av me mission. I'd about as lave be a parrot, an' ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... were chained once more; and although my mistress had kindly covered the rings I wore round my ankles with soft flannel, the chain was still a dreadful burden. When I was at last left alone on my perch, I gave way to ...
— Harper's Young People, November 25, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... tussocks, and weighing anything from a pound to half a hundredweight. He scarred his hands and broke his fingernails to pieces over them, but, on the whole, considered it not a bad employment, except when old Joe took it into his head to perch on the fence and spur him on to greater efforts by disparaging remarks about England. Whatever his work, there was never any certainty that old Joe would not appear, to sit down, light his short, black pipe, and make caustic remarks about his methods or his country—or both. Bob took it all ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... exceptional," Susy intervened. She longed to add: "Not in your way, at any rate—" but a few minutes earlier Mrs. Vanderlyn had told her that the palace was at her disposal for the rest of the summer, and that she herself was only going to perch there—if they'd let her!—long enough to gather up her things and start for St. Moritz. The memory of this announcement had the effect of curbing Susy's irony, and of making her shift the conversation ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... the heads of the two opposite houses; and whenever there chanced to be a lull in the storm, she availed herself of the opportunity to add to her simple tribute a dish of eels from the mill-stream, or perch from the river. That the thought of Edward ("dear Edward," as she always called him,) might not add somewhat of alacrity to her attentions to his wayward aunt, I will not venture to deny, but she would have done the same if Edward had not been in existence, ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... colonize; take root, strike root; anchor; cast anchor, come to an anchor; sit down, settle down; settle; take up one's abode, take up one's quarters; plant oneself, establish oneself, locate oneself; squat, perch, hive, se nicher[Fr], bivouac, burrow, get a footing; encamp, pitch one's tent; put up at, put up one's horses at; keep house. endenizen[obs3], naturalize, adopt. put back, replace &c. (restore) 660. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... to her companion turnip-diggers. Her cry soon brought all the women into sight upon a near-by ridge, and they immediately gave a general alarm. Mato saw them, but appeared not at all concerned and was still intent upon dislodging the girl, who clung frantically to her perch. ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... stratagem of the old gentleman's to deceive me. Poor old man," continued Jasper, in a tone that positively betrayed feeling, "I don't wonder that he dreads and flies me; yet I would not hurt him more than I have done, even to be as well off as you are—blinking at me from your mahogany perch like a pet owl with its crop full of mice. And if I would take the girl from him, it is for her own good. For if Darrell could be got to make a provision on her, and, through her, on myself, why, of course the old man should share the benefit of it. And now that these infernal pains ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... these proved an attractive bait. The line was no sooner cast into the water than the hook was seized, and many were the brilliant specimens of sun-fish that our eager fishermen cast at Catharine's feet, all gleaming with gold and azure scales. Nor was there any lack of perch, or that delicate fish commonly known in these waters ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... a berth for you," he answered. "I'm from The Waif. The mate died on the run down from Sydney, and Captain Newmarch sent me ashore to hunt up some one for his perch. Do you want it?" ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... one thing of me thou wottest not, to wit, that I have a gift that wild things love and will do my bidding. The house-mice will run over me as I lie awake looking on them; the small birds will perch on my shoulders without fear; the squirrels and hares will gambol about quite close to me as if I were but a tree; and, withal, the fiercest hound or mastiff is tame before me. Therefore I feared not this lion, and, moreover, I looked to it that if I might tame him thoroughly, he would both help ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... elbow-room" was the phrase. It does not necessarily follow that the widest lands breed the finest people; and there is worthless territory enough in the United States to cut up into two or three Englands. Yet no patriotic American would wish one rod, pole, or perch of it away, whether of the Bad Lands, the Florida Swamps, the Alkali Plains of the Southwest, or the most sterile and inaccessible regions of the Rockies. If of no other use, each, merely as an instrument of discipline, has contributed something ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... said he to me 'that Campbell does not give full sweep to his genius. He has wings that would bear him up to the skies, and he does now and then spread them grandly, but folds them up again and resumes his perch, as if afraid to launch away. The fact is, he is a bugbear to himself. The brightness of his early success is a detriment to all his future efforts. He is afraid of the shadow that his own fame casts ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... and Stream a few years ago, in which he stated that in the salmon no less than sixteen kinds of parasitic worms have been discovered, and undoubtedly many others remain unknown; four species were tapeworms, and four, roundworms. The yellow perch is known to be infested with twenty-three ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... sent home, and hung upon a nail over against my table. He lived outside a counterfeit dwelling- house, supposed (as I argued) to be a dyer's; otherwise it would have been impossible to account for his perch sticking out of the garret window. From the time of his appearance in my room, either he left off being thirsty—which was not in the bond—or he could not make up his mind to hear his little bucket drop back into his well when he let it ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... snake's tongue, struck, and the horses sprang forward. It curled again, hung suspended for the fraction of a moment, then licked along the sweating flanks, and horses and mules, bowed in a supreme effort, wrenched the wagon upward. Susan slid from her perch, feeling a sudden apathy, not only as from a tension snapped, but as the result of a backwash of disillusion. David was no longer the proud conqueror, the driver of man and brute. The tide of ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... he flew down from his perch and said, "Cock-a-doodle-do" three times and a half, and after that the owl flew away. "That was very kind of you," said the little rabbit. "Oh, don't mention it," said the red rooster, "but there is one thing you can do for me." "What's ...
— Billy Bunny and Uncle Bull Frog • David Magie Cory
... an ancient bird, who tried his pipe in better days, and then was scared by random shots, he is fain to lift the migrant wing once more towards the humble perch, among the trees he loves. All gardeners own that he does no harm, unless he flits into a thicket of young buds, or a very choice ladies' seed-bed. And he hopes that he is now too ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... is aneuch to repay half an hour's draggle through the dirt; and he can lick himsel' clean at his leisure, far ben in the cranny o' the rock, and come out a' tosh and tidy by the first dawn o' licht, to snuff the mornin' air, and visit the distant farm-house before Partlet has left her perch, or Count Crow lifted his head from beneath his oxter ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... not libel nature, we must conclude that the prepuce is a near relative to the fast-disappearing climbing-muscle; very useful in our primitive, arboreal days, when we needed such a muscle to reach our perch for the night, and a prepuce or something of the kind, in default of a breech-cloth, to protect the glans penis from being scratched by the briars or thorny and rough bark of the trees in our ascent. The prepuce was well enough in our ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... the great bridges, over which the procession was to pass on its long march from Kingstown to the house of Mr. Walker, Q.C., in Rutland Square, where the distinguished visitors were to meet the liberated Lord Mayor, with Mr. Dwyer Gray, and other local celebrities. A friendly citizen let us perch on ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... Select fresh perch of medium size. Clean, bone and wipe dry as possible. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, dip in flour, egg, and crumbs (be sure fish are well coated with crumbs). Lay three at a time in a croquette basket and fry a golden brown in deep hot Cottolene. Cottolene should ...
— Fifty-Two Sunday Dinners - A Book of Recipes • Elizabeth O. Hiller
... gardens, each afternoon, A little old man comes walking along: Now watch what happens! for just as soon As they see him, the birds begin their song, And flutter about his hands and head, And perch on his shoulder quite at their ease, For he fills his pockets with crumbs of bread To feed his friends who live in the trees, And well they know he loves them so That into ...
— Abroad • Various
... beauty was what Matilda thought of at first; then she began gradually to notice how its branches were laden with other things besides lights, and how the little company was all on tiptoe with eagerness. With a certain faint flutter at her own heart, Matilda stood on her perch and watched. ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... The flying birds each perch upon the trees! The family estates of those in official positions will fade! The gold and silver of the rich and honoured will be scattered! those who will have conferred benefit will, even in death, find the means of escape! those devoid of human feelings will reap ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... ends. The whole, as is often the case, was painted a dull red. This torii, or "birds' rest," is said to be so called because the fowls, which were formerly offered but not sacrificed, were accustomed to perch upon it. A straw rope, with straw tassels and strips of paper hanging from it, the special emblem of Shinto, hung across the gateway. In the paved court there were several handsome granite lanterns on fine granite pedestals, ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... to time the Bluebottle and the Flesh-fly perch on the trellis-work, make a short investigation and then decamp. Throughout the summer season, for three whole months, the apparatus remains where it is, without result: never a worm. What is the reason? Does the stench of the meat not spread, coming from that depth? Certainly ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... the cemetery, or sit on a bench in the sun. The Pere Michel, who was my predecessor, had some doves, and had left them behind in a little house by my bench. I took care of and fed them. They were tame, and used to flutter to my shoulders and perch on my hands. To birds and animals I was always a friend. At El-Largani there are all sorts of beasts, and, at one time or another, it had been my duty to look after most of them. I loved all living things. Sitting in the cemetery I could see a great stretch of country, ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... nor The boding raven, nor chough hoar, Nor chattering pye, May on our bride-house perch or sing, Or with them any discord ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... The Prince always had a piece of white bread and butter, with an apple, a pear, or other fruit, while the teacher was as regularly provided with something warm—chop, a cutlet, a slice of fish, salmon, perch, trout, or whatever was in season, accompanied by salad and potatoes. The smell of the meat never failed to appeal to the olfactory nerves of the Prince, and he often looked, longingly enough, at the luxuries served to his tutor. The latter noticed it and felt sorry ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... shape of an hour-glass, the northern and southern portions being connected by a winding strait, so crooked that it requires the constant effort of the pilot to prevent the little steamer from running aground. There used to be fine fishing in it,—large perch, bass, and a species of fresh-water salmon often weighing from ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... this windy upland perch, Mine eyes have seen the forest break in bloom, The rose-red maple and the golden birch, The dusty yellow of the elms, the gloom Of the tall poplar hung with tasseled black; Ah, I have watched, till eye and ear and brain Grew full of dreams as they, the moted plain, The sun-steeped ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... they saw their cabman sitting idly on his perch and waiting for his quarter of an hour to pass. The Mansions looked on to a square, a long narrow strip of gardens, filled with lofty bushes rather than trees. The spy's cab had taken a sweep round these gardens and ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... time came that I had to sleep in the crosstrees again, I found, on waking, that Barnes had followed me, and in some way had got my gun out of my pocket. I knew he had it by the insane way he laughed as I came down from my perch. I hunted through the cabin for pistols or rifles, but he had been ahead of me; and as I came up and he stood near the wheel—the wheel, like everything else, was neglected now—there was a crazy look in his eyes that ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... becomes affectionate toward its owner, but will rarely accept civilities from any other person. One of these birds, which had been tamed by a lady, was accustomed to perch on the shoulder of its mistress, and eat from her hand. It was intensely jealous, and would fly savagely at any one to whom its mistress showed the least favor. This particular pet proved as troublesome as a ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... more quickly than we had ascended; but I felt very tired before we got back to the gharries, and was only too glad to 'rest and be thankful' until the others arrived and were ready to start. They had had a delightful afternoon, and had caught several walking-fish (a kind of perch), after seeing them both walk and swim; besides gathering more lotus-flowers, and enjoying several ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... building in Hall Place had left a workman lying on a shaky piece of wall, helpless, with a broken leg. It could not bear the weight of a ladder, and it seemed certain death to attempt to reach him, when Banta, running up a slanting beam that still hung to its fastening with one end, leaped from perch to perch upon the wall, where hardly a goat could have found footing, reached his man, and brought him down slung over his shoulder, and swearing at him like a trooper lest the peril of the descent cause him to lose his nerve and with ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... and saw how well her smiles became her. "Yes," said she to herself, "yes, I will recall this truant merlin, and he shall return to perch upon the hand he used to love! I will be mistress of his heart and mistress of his realms. She foretold it all, and gave me the charm wherewith to work ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... Mona. "It was awful for you to perch on one toe for a hundred million mile ride! And I reclined at ease on a Roman trident, or whatever you call it!" "Tripod, you mean," said Adele, laughing, "or ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... she thought, "my—faithful cat!" In another instant she had slipped from the table, extracted poor Puss from a clutter of pans in the back of a cupboard, stripped the last shred of masquerade from her outraged form, and brought her back growling and bristling to perch on one arm of the ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... softly vocal, and it, too, smelled of leaves. After a time I reached a point which jutted out directly over the tops of the trees growing on the debris pile below. These trees were as tall as masts, and as straight, though they were hardwoods, and from my rocky perch I looked through their upper tracery of budding twigs, as through a veil of faint green and red, out on the brown and green plains of Tennessee shining in the sun, or left and right across the canyons of the coves to the stately procession of receding headlands. ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... the cuckoo, in the nests of other birds. Several of them may be seen standing together on the back of a cow or horse. They also perch on low boughs: and while pluming themselves in the sun, attempt to sing; but their voice is rather like a hiss, resembling that of bubbles of air passing rapidly from a small orifice under water, so as to produce an ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... will stand below to catch her I think I shall be able to release her," called Harriet from her perch in ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... shuddering with one of the hot chills, the needle and little glass piston out of the hand-bag and with a dry little insuck of breath, pinching up little areas of flesh from her arm, bent on a good firm perch, as it were. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... fragrant coffee; the gleaming damasks, china and silver of the breakfast table; the trim, fresh-looking maid, with her white cap, apron, and cuffs, who came and went; the thoroughbred setter dozing in the sun, and the parrot dozing and chuckling to himself on his perch upon the terrace ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... to curse and jibber at each other, their fierce, bestial faces not an inch apart as they crouched there on hands and knees. The water rose a little, they were kneeling in it now, and the man, putting down his bald head, butted at the woman, almost thrusting her from her perch. But she was strong and active, she struggled back again; she did more, with an eel-like wriggle she climbed upon his back, weighing him down. He strove to shake her off but could not, for on that heaving, rolling surface ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... the heavy machine spring and quiver with every stroke; while the mignon grey figure with the laughing face, and the golden curls blowing from under the little pink-banded straw hat, simply held firmly to her perch, and let the treadles whirl round beneath her feet. Mile after mile they flew, the wind beating in her face, the trees dancing past in two long ranks on either side, until they had passed round Croydon and were approaching Norwood once more from ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... us from Santa Barbara, coming slowly in with a light sea-breeze, which sets in towards afternoon, having been becalmed off the point all the first part of the day. We took several fish of various kinds, among which cod and perch abounded, and F——, (the ci-devant second mate,) who was of our number, brought up with his hook a large and beautiful pearl-oyster shell. We afterwards learned that this place was celebrated for shells, and that ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... in the House of Commons is really a disgrace to a country ruled by an Empress. This dark perch is the highest gallery immediately over the speaker's desk and government seats, behind a fine wire-work, so that it is quite impossible to see or hear anything. The sixteen persons who can crowd in the front seat, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Orange and Alexandria road, below Bull Run. For aught that I knew, some concealed observer might now be watching me from the pine-tops on the nearest knoll. Some rifleman might be running his practised eye down the deadly groove, to topple me from my perch, and send me crashing through the boughs. The uncertainty, the hazard, the novelty of my position had at this time an indescribable charm: but subsequent exposures dissipated the romance and taught me the folly of ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... proposition opisthotis turtle's "occipital externe" Perch's Rocher (Cuvier) as the one thing needful to clear up the unity of structure of the bony cranium; and it shall be counted unto me as a great sin if I have helped to keep you back from it. The thing has been dawning upon me ever since I read Kolliker's ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... passages of it with great delight. "What a pity it is," said he, "that Campbell does not write more and oftener, and give full sweep to his genius. He has wings that would bear him to the skies; and he does now and then spread them grandly, but folds them up again and resumes his perch, as if he was afraid to launch away. He don't know or won't trust his own strength. Even when he has done a thing well, he has often misgivings about it. He left out several fine passages of his Lochiel, but I got him to restore some of them." Here Scott ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... Ursuline convent. Yet, regardless of the keen air, soldiers, Jesuits, servants, officials, women, all of the little community who are not cloistered, are abroad and astir. Despite the gloom of the times, an unwonted cheer enlivens this rocky perch of France and the Faith; for it is New-Year's Day, and there is an active interchange of greetings and presents. Thanks to the nimble pen of the Father Superior, we know what each gave and what each received. He thus writes in his private journal:—"The soldiers went with ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... supplying water. Suet for woodpeckers and others, grain and crumbs for other kinds, and taking care not to frighten or molest them, will soon win the confidence of the birds. A slowly running or dripping fountain, with a good rim on which they may perch, will also attract them, and it is no mean enjoyment to watch the birds at bathing. Or, if one does not care to go to the expense of a bird fountain, he may supply their wants by means of a shallow dish of ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... And clipped her wings, and tied her beak, Would it cause you any great surprise 275 If, when you decided to give her an airing, You found she needed a little preparing? —I say, should you be such a curmudgeon, If she clung to the perch, as to take it in dudgeon? Yet when the Duke to his lady signified, 280 Just a day before, as he judged most dignified, In what a pleasure she was to participate— And, instead of leaping wide in flashes, Her eyes just lifted their long lashes, As if pressed by fatigue even he could not ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... certainly deserves to be called kingly. Although he will not allow any large bird to dwell in peace too near him, yet he never harms the little warblers who flutter round his nest. He will let them perch in safety upon it, and if they are attacked by any bird of prey, he is said even to ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")
... beautiful, lift their heads proudly above the works of art which surround them, and in splendid Chinese cages, birds of gorgeous plumage have learned to caress the rosy lips of their young mistress, or perch triumphantly on her snowy finger. Here are books, too, and music—a harp—a piano—while through a half open door leading from a little recess over which a multaflora is taught to twine its graceful tendrils, a glimpse may be caught of rosy silken hangings shading the couch where the queen ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... time the channel of the river, which, as if in anger at its being opposed, inundates and devastates the whole country round; and as soon as it forces its way through its former channel, plants in every direction the uprooted monarchs of the forest (upon whose branches the bird will never again perch, or the raccoon, the opossum, or the squirrel climb) as traps to the adventurous navigators of its waters by steam, who, borne down upon these concealed dangers which pierce through the planks, very often have not time to steer for and gain the shore before they ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... her head that she is too wise for the station which Providence or the settled order of society has assigned her. She would therefore neither hide her light under a bushel, that others may not see by it, nor perch it aloft in public, that others may see it; but would simply set it on a candlestick, that it may give light to all in her house. With her noble intellect she has gathered in the sweets of poetry and the solidities of philosophy, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... from each other. Cora full of fresh young life joined in the conversation every instant, telling her father how they used to get the eggs of the sea birds and the honey from the wild bees' nest, and how they caught the sea perch from off the rocks, and how she found a jar of gold coins near the Vikings' tomb, which her mama said were pesos, and all about the fibula ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... the fence. Up, all of you! jump!" said Tom, picking up a switch. Now, indeed, all the culprits knew what was before them. That fence was a well-known penance,—for when they did anything wrong this was their punishment. Old Turk felt the touch of the switch first, and mounted heavily to his perch, his great legs curved inward to keep a footing on the narrow top; then came Pete, and, last of all, Grip, who, being a heavy-bodied cur, crouched himself down as low as he could, and crawled along with extreme caution. The fence was high, with ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... hardihead And craft, Ulysses won her bed. Long upon these the King did look And of them all good heed he took; To see if they would tell him aught About the matter that he sought, But all were of the times long past; So going all about, at last When grown nigh weary of his search A falcon on a silver perch, Anigh the dais did he see, And wondered, because certainly At his first coming 'twas not there; But 'neath the bird a scroll most fair, With golden letters on the white He saw, and in the dim twilight By diligence ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... throughout Provence, where (still according to my information) it is the usual pastime of a Sunday afternoon. At Arles and Nimes it has a characteristic setting, but in the villages the patrons of the game make a circle of carts and barrels, on which the spectators perch themselves. I was surprised at the prevalence, in mild Provence, of the Iberian vice, and hardly know whether it makes the custom more respectable that at Nimes and Arles the thing is shabbily and imperfectly done. The bulls are rarely killed, and indeed often ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... and another went away. In a few minutes only three hungry animals remained, gnawing at the bones of the white wolves and some of their own nearer relatives whom I had shot. These I did not fear to encounter. Killing one from where I sat, and then reloading, I jumped down from my perch. The brutes snarled, and one of them made a spring at me; but I shot him, and knocked the other over with the butt of my rifle, thereby saving a ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... for the eagle, and this unlucky purchase was the cause that endless ridicule was cast on the expedition. It has always been supposed that the eagle was one of the "properties" provided for the occasion, and that it was intended to perch on the Napoleon Column at Boulogne. It may well be supposed that this is not far from the truth, and that Major Parquin had the eagle waiting for him at Gravesend. Eagles are so very uncommon in England that it is unlikely that a boy, without set purpose, ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... of whom are my friends. Even the beasts are happier than they, for they require less to make them content. And the birds are the luckiest creatures of all, for they can fly swiftly where they will and find a home at any place they care to perch; their food consists of seeds and grains they gather from the fields and their drink is a sip of water from some running brook. If I could not be a Scarecrow—or a Tin Woodman—my next choice would be to ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... are taking a little tour in Scotland to see the curiosities, and to breathe the sea air, and to get some fishing whenever we can. I'm the fat cashier who digs holes in a drawerful of gold with a copper shovel, and you're the arithmetical young man who sits on a perch behind me and keeps the books. Scotland's a beautiful country, William. Can you make whisky-toddy? I can; and, what's more, unlikely as the thing may seem to you, I can actually ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... Mattie, laughing. "Look at the size of us! I defy any man in the village, with an arm only the length of mine, to do more than I! Of course I can't measure myself with the neighbours. To handle Farmer Fairweather's pitchfork would break my back, and to hook a great perch, like Miller Mealy, in the mill-race, might be the capsizing of me. Still, what does that matter? I can catch little sprats for my little wife's dinner; I can dig in our patch of garden, and mend our tiny roof, so that we live ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... whose statue now stands on the Thames Embankment. Lord Randolph Churchill made that night what I suppose was the great speech of his life, for some two hours facing the Irish members waging a forensic battle, memorable for even the House of Commons. From my perch I looked directly into his face at a distance of not many feet as he confronted the Irish crowd. Rather short of stature, he was a compact figure, and his face had in it combative energy as the marked ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... one vast blotch by smoke; to collect the art wonders of Pigtail Place; to make the lions in Trafalgar Square lie like cats on a hearth-rug, instead of supporting themselves on a slope by muscular action, like the lions at Genoa; to perch a colossal equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington, arrayed in his waterproof cape, and mounted on a low-shouldered hack instead of a charger, on the top of an arch, by way of perpetual atonement to France for Waterloo; and now to think of planting an obelisk of the Pharaohs on a cab-stand. ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... great ocean was but a Spanish lake, as much the king's private property as his fish-ponds at the Escorial with their carp and perch. No subjects but his dared to navigate those sacred waters. Not a common highway of the world's commerce, but a private path for the gratification of one human being's vanity, had thus been laid out by the bold navigators of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... it seems me many multiplied of fishes. Let us amuse rather to the fishing. Here, there is a wand and some hooks. Silence! there is a superb perch! Give me quick the rod. Ah! there is, it is a lamprey. You mistake you, it is a frog! dip again it ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... times, however, her eyes seemed filled with a tender fear lest he should fall from that exceedingly dangerous platform. As for the young man, it was plain that these glances filled him with valor, and he stood carelessly upon his perch, as if he deemed it of no consequence that he might fall from it. In all the complexities of his daily life and duties he found opportunity to gaze ardently at ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... the first clerk, descending from his perch with an air of good-will, and requesting the visitor's ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... necks or their limbs by overthrows or breaking down." In the winter season stage-coaches were laid up like so many ships during Arctic frosts, since it was impossible for any number of horses to drag them through the intervening impediments, or for any strength of wheel or perch to resist the rugged and precipitous inequalities of the roads. "For all practical purposes," as Mr. Macaulay remarks, "the inhabitants of London were further from Reading than they are now from Edinburgh, and further from Edinburgh than ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... they had reached the farmyard—"now I'll hide in this oak here and you can hide in that one there." He pointed to a tree a little further from the chicken house than the one where he intended to perch. Naturally, it was not like Jasper Jay to give the best seat ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... through the empty round, and covered this stone with a thick mat, more black than green. Though ready enough to step on this myself, I could not think it fit for Mlle. de Ste. Valerie, and took the liberty to say so; but she laughed, and told me she had climbed to this perch a hundred times. She was light as a leaf, and when I saw her set her foot in her brother's hand and spring across the empty space from the stair to the shelf, it seemed no less than if a wind had blown her. Soon we were all three ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... in my eyes to hear this avowal of his dependence; just as if a royal eagle, chained to a perch, should be forced to entreat a sparrow to become its purveyor. But I would not be lachrymose: I dashed off the salt drops, and busied myself with ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... so, and it is true," said the alchemist. "This effect will it produce, and the bird who partakes of it in such proportion shall sit for a season drooping on her perch, without thinking either of the free blue sky, or of the fair greenwood, though the one be lighted by the rays of the rising sun, and the other ringing with the newly-awakened song of all the feathered inhabitants ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... the water, and of the flashing play of boats across its surface; but the crowd in the street was under their immediate view, and seemed to Selden, on the whole, of more interest than the show itself. After a while, however, he wearied of his perch and, dropping alone to the pavement, pushed his way to the first corner and turned into the moonlit silence of a side street. Long garden-walls overhung by trees made a dark boundary to the pavement; an empty cab trailed along the deserted ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... marsh he strode, with steadier gait Than Satan trod the Syrtis, at his fall, And perch'd himself, with his monastick weight, Upon ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... was good, for at that moment Nelson opened furiously on the quarter-master at the conn. 'I'll knock you off your perch, you rascal, if you are so inattentive.—Sir Ed'ard, send your best quarter-master to ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... performance only occurred after the bird had acquired an initial velocity of at least fifteen or eighteen miles per hour, either by industrious flapping or by descending from a perch. ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... gerfalcon, the Bishop's bird was none the less a swift and beautiful creature. From her perch upon his wrist she had watched with fierce, keen eyes the birds in the heaven, mantling herself from time to time in her eagerness. Now when the button was undone and the leash uncast the peregrine dashed off with a ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cam'st thou hither. Tell me, and wherefore? The Orchard walls are high, and hard to climbe, And the place death, considering who thou art, If any of my kinsmen find thee here, Rom. With Loues light wings Did I ore-perch these Walls, For stony limits cannot hold Loue out, And what Loue can do, that dares Loue attempt: Therefore thy kinsmen are ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... experiment. The cage being taken from the ceiling, and its bottom drawn out, the bird began to tremble, and turned quite white about the root of his bill: he then opened his mouth as if for breath, and respired quick, stood straighter up on his perch, hung his wings, spread his tail, closed his eyes, and appeared quite stiff and cataleptic for near half an hour, and at length with much trembling and deep respirations came gradually ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... said—(it is mad)—if I said, 'I am in love. I can't go. Send some one who is not in love!'" She glanced down from her perch on the footboard at the olive profile bent over the next car. The driver was sitting on his step with his open hand outstretched to hold a dozen bright washers which he was stirring with his forefinger. ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... has been altogether discarded by birds as superfluous. The germ, or bud, must be there, for the Dorking fowl has produced a fifth toe under some influence of the poultry-yard, but no natural bird has more than four. Except in swifts, which never perch, but cling to rocks and walls, one is turned backwards, and, by a cunning contrivance, the act of bending the leg draws them all automatically together. So a hen closes its toes at every step it takes, as if it grasped something, and, of course, when it settles down ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... the House of Commons is really a disgrace to a country ruled by an Empress. This dark perch is the highest gallery immediately over the speaker's desk and government seats, behind a fine wire-work, so that it is quite impossible to see or hear anything. The sixteen persons who can crowd in the front seat, by standing with their noses partly through some open work, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... more distinct view, the lad crept back to his perch, where he tremblingly awaited the moment when it was to bound up among the limbs and attack him. After gaining his former position, he sat for a few minutes shivering like one with the ague, forgetting even to think of the revolver with ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... streak of soap on her face, Sahwah promptly caught Migwan by the feet and pulled her off the rock into the water. Struggling, they both went under and came up choking and giggling. Hinpoha, from her airy perch in the tree, cheered the combatants on. "Good work, Migwan, hang on to the rock! That's the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... friends around him—the red-beaked sea-pyots whirring along the rocks; and the startled curlews, whistling their warning note across the sea; and the shy duck swimming far out on the smooth lochs; to say nothing of the black game that would scarcely move from their perch on the larch-trees as he approached, and the deer that were more distinctly visible on the far heights of Ben-an-Sloich when a slight sprinkling of snow ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... will around a balked automobile. They have the furor rubberendi. They are optical gluttons, feasting and fattening on the misfortunes of their fellow beings. They gloat and pore and glare and squint and stare with their fishy eyes like goggle-eyed perch at the ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... one nor acknowledge speech from any one. Vainly striving to paint, he would suddenly burst into violent rage, tear up his attempt, stamp it into the deck, then get out his large- calibred automatic rifle, perch himself on the forecastle-head, and try to shoot any stray porpoise, albacore, or dolphin. It seemed to give him great relief to send a bullet home into the body of some surging, gorgeous-hued fish, arrest its glorious flashing motion for ever, and turn ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... fastened a condenser over the boss; descended; sent Larry up to watch it, and, ascending the second ladder, rapidly fixed the other in its place. Then, with O'Keefe watchful on his perch, I on mine, and Olaf's eyes fixed upon the moon door, we began our vigil. Suddenly there was ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... gentleman whom I would save had an honourable father, for whose sake I pray you pardon the young man's transgression." But Angelo replied, "We must not make a scare-crow of the law, setting it up to frighten birds of prey, till custom, finding it harmless, makes it their perch, and not their ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... away his nervous excitement, I happened to go into the room very softly, and the black beads had disappeared. The tiny head had disappeared, too, and only a little round ball of feathers was balanced on his perch. Then I remembered that chickens have a way of putting their heads in their pockets when they go to sleep, and poetry yielded to poultry, Cheri stepped out of Chaucer, and took his place ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... I'll go, too," said another young Swallow, springing away from his perch. He was a handsome fellow, with a glistening dark blue head and back, a long forked tail which showed a white stripe on the under side, a rich buff vest, and a deep blue collar, all of the finest feathers. He loved the young Swallow whom he was following, ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... a few days later. With a merry, jingling chorus they perch in the leafless trees. We know now that soon there will be leaves and blossoms, and the thought ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... er hurry," squeaked "Little Jim," from his perch in the window, "fer Mandy Calline's ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... came down from his perch rather dubiously, as if he feared that the danger might not ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... climbed to the tower of the church, Up the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, To the belfry-chamber overhead, And startled the pigeons from their perch On the sombre rafters, that round him made Masses and moving shapes of shade— Up the light ladder, slender and tall, To the highest window in the wall, Where he paused to listen and look down A moment on the roofs of the quiet town, And ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... that all was lost, when the conquering Ngapuhi had forced their way into the pa, and were mercilessly slaughtering men, women, and children, he did the only thing left to be done. He took from its perch the palladium of the tribe, an heitiki ponamu, or greenstone image, and, summoning around him the remnant of his men, together with some of the women, they fled from the western side of the pa, ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... work! rare doings! a merry Vauxhalling, with pistols at all your noddles! thought as much! thought he'd tip the perch; saw he wasn't stanch; knew he'd go by his company,—a set of jackanapes! all blacklegs! nobody warm among 'em: fellows with a month's good living upon their backs, and not sixpence for the ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... part by much so well as Clun used to do; nor another Hart's, which was Cassio's; nor, indeed, Burt doing the Moor's so well as I once thought he did. Thence home, and just at Holborn Conduit the bolt broke, that holds the fore-wheels to the perch, and so the horses went away with them, and left the coachman and us; but being near our coachmaker's, and we staying in a little ironmonger's shop, we were presently supplied with another, and so home, and there to my letters at the office, and so ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Bredernitz often took us to his crow-hut, which was a hole in the ground covered with boughs and pieces of turf, where the hunters lay concealed. The owl, which lured the crows and other birds of prey, was fastened on a perch, and when they flew up, often in large flocks, to tease the old cross-patch which sat blinking angrily, they were shot down from loop-holes which had been left in the hut. The hawks which prey upon doves and hares, the crows and magpies, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... know where the old fishing hole lies," laughed the stranger, pleasantly. "Quite a collection too—black bass, perch, 'slickers,' as we used to call the pickerel, and even some big fat sunfish. Many a happy hour have I spent just as you've been doing. And I'll never forget how fine those same fish tasted after I'd cleaned ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... seated on the baulks of timber that cumbered the deck of the brig on either side of the caboose. An ideal perch. The sun was setting over Australia way, in a sea that seemed like a sea of boiling gold. Some mystery of mirage caused the water to heave and tremble as if troubled ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... man had apparently recognised the impossibility of producing any impression unless he descended from his perch. He threw the whip to the ground and slid off the sacks. He stood looking at the mule for a moment, and then kicked it in the back with all his might. Then, just as Johnstone and Clare came up, he went round to the back of the cart, walking unsteadily, ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... that the widest lands breed the finest people; and there is worthless territory enough in the United States to cut up into two or three Englands. Yet no patriotic American would wish one rod, pole, or perch of it away, whether of the Bad Lands, the Florida Swamps, the Alkali Plains of the Southwest, or the most sterile and inaccessible regions of the Rockies. If of no other use, each, merely as an instrument of ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... one, Hal's friends went down—"Big Jack" David, and Wresmak, the Bohemian, Klowoski, the Pole, and finally Jerry Minetti. Little Jerry waved his hand from his perch on Hal's shoulder; while Rosa, who had come out and joined them, was clinging to Hal's arm, silent, as if her soul were going down in the cage. There went blue-eyed Tim Rafferty to look for his father, and black-eyed "Andy," the Greek boy, whose ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... occasionally useful in determining the fresh-water origin of strata. Certain genera, such as carp, perch, pike, and loach (Cyprinus, Perca, Esox, and Cobitis), as also Lebias, being peculiar to fresh- water. Other genera contain some fresh-water and some marine species, as Cottus, Mugil, and Anguilla, or eel. The rest are either common to rivers ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... entered, and pausing in her song, climbed on to the side of the couch. She held out one little hand for the dove to perch upon, placed the other lightly on Antonina's shoulder, and pressed her fresh, rosy lips to girl's faded cheek. 'I and my bird have come to make Antonina well ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... but not dying, received Henry's sympathy with a terrible apathy. "I'm twenty-eight," said he; "and a fork-grinder is an old cock at thirty. I must look to drop off my perch in a year or two, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... biggest of these amiable companions had to take their chance of seeing what they could through the forest of human legs; but every one that was portable was snugly lodged in the bend of an elbow, and from this safe perch scores and scores of small serious muzzles, blunt or sharp, smooth or woolly, brown or grey or white or black or brindled, looked out on the scene with the quiet awareness of the Paris dog. It was certainly a good sign that they had not ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... know of the good work of the Republican party, that it has a powerful constituency behind it, we dare not do anything wrong, or they will push us from our positions, if we do not behave ourselves. Let us, then, do our part; work as Republicans of Ohio know how to work, and victory will perch ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... He can spend an hour at a meal without ever flying more than ten yards from his bough. Still, one rejoices in the energy of the swift. One wishes the greenfinch had a little of it. The yellow splashes on his wings are undoubtedly delightful, but why will he perch so long in the acacia wailing like a sick cricket? And why did Wordsworth write a poem in praise of him? Probably he mistook some other bird for him. Poets are like that. Or perhaps he liked a noise like the ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... Nothing but a backbone—a shad! She's about the shape of a single rose vase! Damn her! Damn Lotta Munn and Daisy Snow, yes and May Young! They think they can charm my Bill off his perch with their revolting artistic propaganda, and their schools and ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... people to the boy's perch; every one was silent, waiting anxiously to catch his words, as if their ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... not wholly escape injury. This fragment of wood which I now exhibit to you struck him. It drew blood. Wherever he is, he bears the telltale mark. I picked it up where he stood when he fired the fatal train." He looked out over the house from his high perch, and his countenance began to darken; he slowly raised ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... job. But some years afterwards (Sept. 10, 1850), the reviews, etc. having been just placed at the disposal of readers in the old reading-room of the Museum, I made a tour of inspection, came upon my critic on his perch, and took a look at him. I was very glad to remember this, for, though expecting only second-hand, yet even of this there is good and bad; and I expected to find some hints in the good second-hand of a respectable clerical ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... good-natured farewell to the crowd. A quick and vigorous application of the whip awakened the dozing horses so suddenly that they started up with a spasmodic jerk which nearly threw the old fellow from his perch. By a desperate effort, however, he maintained his seat, but his broad-brimmed hat went flying from his bald head and rolled to the ground, scattering in its fall his snuff-box, spectacles and a monstrous red bandanna handkerchief. This little episode called ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... between 1820 and 1920 had given what we call civilization a chance to make many changes in the wild world of birds. During that time lifeless hummingbirds had been made to perch upon the hats of fashionable women; herring gulls had been robbed of their eggs and killed for their feathers; shooting movements had been organized to kill crows with shotgun or rifle, in order that more gunpowder might ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... about that time given me some good sport with pike, large perch, chub, and tench, and I had long been an angling enthusiast. Out of the fullness of my heart I spoke. I told him that fishing was my best subject; that if he would accept a series of contributions the direct ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... ornamental against the walls of my study, at all the portraits of the friends of my life of active service above the shelves, and the old sixteenth-century Buddha, which Oda Neilson sent me on my last birthday, looking so stoically down from his perch to remind me how little all these things counted. I could not help remembering at the end that my friends at Voulangis had gone—that they were at that very moment on their way to Marseilles, that almost ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... not gone a perch when the click of a pistol was heard, but no report; the fact having been, that the pistol missed fire, and did ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... brightness, though not the light of day, would then be shut off from a landscape in which all life appeared to be suspended, while the little village of Roussainville carved in relief upon the sky the white mass of its gables, with a startling precision of detail. A gust of wind blew from its perch a rook, which floated away and settled in the distance, while beneath a paling sky the woods on the horizon assumed a deeper tone of blue, as though they were painted in one of those cameos which you still find decorating ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... cant of the vessel, the masts hung far out over the water, and from my perch on the cross-trees I had nothing below me but the surface of the bay. Hands, who was not so far up, was, in consequence, near to the ship, and fell between me and the bulwarks. He rose once to the surface in a lather of foam and blood, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... novelty. Some mischievous sailor had given an overgrown ape a mirror, and the poor wretch spent its time staring at its image, neglecting its food and snarling at its companions. The beast would catch the reflection of another ape in the glass and quickly bound to a more remote perch. The keeper told me that for a week his charge had barely eaten. It slept with the mirror held tightly in its paws. Now, what did the mirror mean to the animal! I believe"—here she became very vivacious—"I really believe that it was developing self-consciousness, and in time it would ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... the turtles upon the shore became visible. A water turkey, though the boat was past, fell clumsily off its perch into the water and after frantic efforts flopped away. Alligators lay here and there along the banks; and a wild hog plowed about in the matted water-hyacinths, unconcernedly seeking food, not alarmed by the alligators or the boat or by the fierce brown Mexican buzzards—the killing variety—which ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... that I will commend to your consideration is, that the trout is of a more sudden growth than other fish. Concerning which, you are also to take notice, that he lives not so long as the perch and divers other fishes do, as Sir Francis Bacon hath observed in his "History of Life ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... landscape—which from Trot's high perch seemed like a magnificent painted picture—was a rosy glow such as we sometimes see in the west at sunset. In this case, however, it was not in the west ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... pushed up out of reach for the day. The St. Clair ran off, and Miss Macy followed; but the two others consulted, and Lansing ran down to waylay the chambermaid and beg a broom. By the help of the broom handle my cap was at length dislodged from its perch, and restored to me. But I was angry. I felt the fiery current running through my veins; and the unspeakable saucy glance of St. Clair's eye, as I passed her to take my place in the procession, threw fuel on the fire. I think for years I had not been angry in such a fashion. The indignation ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... not budge an inch out of their way for buffalo or boar; nay, they have been known to face the terrible tiger himself, and fairly beat him away from the quivering carcase of some unlucky member of their herd. They have generally some favourite buffalo on whose broad back they perch themselves, as it browses through the jungle, and from this elevated seat they survey the rest of the herd, and note the incidents of jungle life. When they wish a little excitement, or a change from their milk and rice diet, there are hundreds ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... the bed, and we all got upon this and sat while our hostess prepared our supper. If one of us had stirred we would have been in her way; so there we sat as thick as thieves. When supper was ready six got off their perch and ate; when they were through, six ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... Turkey Pompous said he had a fine bass voice, but no ear for tune. Dr. Parrot was heard to say "Humbug!" when the whole company turned to him for an explanation. He was at that moment taking his morning gymnastic exercise, by swinging himself from perch to perch, holding on by his beak. When he got through, he ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... the room is much too small, but it is the best we have. The wide doors are left open. So are the wide windows, and the boys are even allowed to perch on the wall opposite the entrance, from which place they ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... embarrassed by the old-fashioned saucer. Circular in shape, and hardly larger than the cup that belies its reputation and dances drunkenly whenever another guest joggles our elbow,—which happens so often that we suspect conspiracy,—the old-fashioned saucer affords no reasonably secure perch for a sandwich; responds with delight to the law of gravitation if left to itself; and sets us wishing, those of us who think scientifically, that evolution had refrained from doing away with an extension by which alone we could now hope to manage it. We mean a tail! ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... lord chopped and sawed with unwonted gusto. Branch after branch fell into the lane, and the aged nobleman puffed and sweated with his grateful labor. He had not had such a joyful turn for many a day. The widow moaned like a winter wind in a key-hole, and when his lordship at last descended from his perch she was wiping ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... white shirts; painted a large saucer-like circle round the eyes with vermilion, so as to give themselves something the appearance of the great idols; and having thus transmogrified themselves, each gravely took his place upon his perch; where, leaning back against the prow behind them, they ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... "there is nothing in the phases of the moon. You are not a good fisherman. I can take you to the 'Forked Gum' and 'Stooping Pine' and astonish you." "After leaving the 'Stooping Pine,'" continued my father, "I made for the 'Three Cypresses,' and it was there that I caught these fine perch." "Neddie," said Mr. Woodward, "you are not such a bad fisherman after all. Your success would do credit to the best." My father proposed to Mr. W. that we should have some of the fish cleaned and cooked ...
— The Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, Early recollections - Vivid portrayal of Amusing Scenes • Robert Arnold
... he upward, he will perch On Tuba's golden bough; His home is on that fruited arch Which cools the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... chaffing they finally sat down to the fish-fry—and if there is anything more toothsome than perch, fresh from the water, and fried crisply in a pan with salt pork over the hot coals of a campfire, "the deponent knoweth not," ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... of the party, who is sitting on his horse, are engaged in hewing it away with axes. Two others have climbed to the summit of the neighboring rocky crag, on which they have planted the banner of the Republic, which is seen flapping proudly from its lofty perch. In the foreground stands a manly youth, clasping his father's long rifle firmly, and gazing toward the promised land with a countenance glowing with hope and energy. His sister, as hopeful as himself, is seated by her mother's side, on a buffalo-robe which has been thrown over a rock. ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... for money. He was sent home, and hung upon a nail over against my table. He lived outside a counterfeit dwelling- house, supposed (as I argued) to be a dyer's; otherwise it would have been impossible to account for his perch sticking out of the garret window. From the time of his appearance in my room, either he left off being thirsty—which was not in the bond—or he could not make up his mind to hear his little bucket drop back into his well when he let it go: a shock which in ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... great wall of white flung itself upon the island. Trees, dogs, men, were blotted out, as though the hand of God had wiped the face of nature clean. This much he saw, then swayed an instant longer in his lofty perch and hurtled far ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... since have I seen a horse of such appalling aspect. His eyes were the size of soup-plates, large clouds of smoke came from his nostrils. He had a glass-enamelled surface, and if he was half as tall as he felt, some museum manager missed a fortune. Then the young fiends, leaving me on my slippery perch, high up near the sky, drew afar off and stood against the fence, and gave me plenty of room to fall off. But when I suddenly felt the world heave up beneath me, I uttered a wild shriek—clenched my hands in the animal's black ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... she whispered to Laura, across Cornet Perch's shell-jacket, as Pen was performing cavalier seul before them, drawling through that figure with a thumb in the pocket ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... explained. Being a little light-minded about sunshine, it seemed that they were unable to discriminate between heaven's high lamp and the electric one on the porch, and would dutifully arise when either appeared. Once down from their perch, they would refuse to return until the sun was removed; and when it chanced to be the one on the porch and was switched off, they were unable to return because their endowment of optic nerve was small and their homing ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... Mountain King," and, once recalled, the stately yet staccato rhythm ran in one's ears continually. For if we had many days of cloud and smother of vapor that blotted out everything, when a fine day came how brilliant beyond all that lower levels know it was! From our perch on that ridge the lofty peaks and massive ridges rose on every side. As little by little we gained higher and higher eminence the view broadened, and ever new peaks and ridges thrust themselves into view. We were within the hall of the ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... with a sword, from all the dear little safe things that have made up your life in the past. She glanced from the helmet which the airman held toward her to the monoplane spread-eagling on the ground. I saw her big eyes dilate as they fixed themselves anxiously on the passenger's perch, to which the honoured guest must climb, above the conductor's seat, crawling through the wire stays, or whatever you call them, which were like a spider's web inviting a fly. Diana turned pale. ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... nor evening receptions among the nobility and gentry—there is nothing of the kind whatever.' (He paused a moment, probably to allow me to observe the choiceness of his diction.) 'They positively visit each other but seldom. Every one sits like a pigeon on its perch. And so it comes to pass that visitors ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Pods that she did so, for her resigned eyes beheld the globe of the cabin lamp pitched off its perch by a violent lurch and coming straight at her. Thus she had time to bow to circumstances, and allow the missile to pass over her head into the bosom of Lady Tower, where it was broken to atoms. The effect of mutual concession was ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... are house birds, like sparrows, and perch on the roofs or chimneys—there are generally some on the roof of the Eglise Reformee Francaise, a church situated in a much-frequented part. It is amusing to see a black rook perched on a red tile chimney, with the smoke coming up around him, and darkening with soot his ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... of mine, who was going out of town for a few days, intrusted his parrot to me with the request that I would take care of it during his absence. The bird, feeling strange in my house, had climbed, helping himself with his beak, to the very top of his perch, and looking pretty well bewildered, rolled round his eyes, that resembled the gilt nails on arm-chairs, and wrinkled the whitish membrane that served him for eyelids. Madame-Theophile had never seen a parrot, and she was evidently much puzzled by the strange ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... that the leading horse could barely stagger another fifty yards, notwithstanding the inhuman efforts of the cocchiere to make the most of the poor brute's failing energies. At last the animal stumbled and fell, nearly pulling the driver off his perch. It was sad, but he had more than earned his price, ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... of it showed the bold peaks of Fitzwilliam mountain, back of that yet other peaks were disclosed as they climbed. In that direction there lay an undiscovered country, and they might well reflect that few even had looked out across it as they themselves now were doing from their lofty perch. They knew well enough that the old traders who passed through here rarely left the trail except for necessary hunting, but passed on through as rapidly as they might, this being merely their highway, and ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... to be the only living things about him. Just as my foot touched the ground a double report rang out, and my dog gave a plaintive and prolonged howl. Feeling that all was over, and that no weapons could be of any use, I climbed up again into my perch and looked out. The poor wretch was lying face downwards writhing in his blood; the assassins were reloading their muskets as they ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that my life is consecrated to your service," replied Laoy, with strong emotion. "You know with what pride I would fight at your side, secure that victory must always perch upon the banners ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... soon seen that Louis could not face a Scotch winter, with its raw winds and cold, drizzling rains, and sometimes his wife felt regrets for the sunny perch on the California mountainside, where health and strength had once come back to him so marvellously. It was finally decided to try the dry, clear air of Davos Platz, in the high Alps of Switzerland, which was just then coming ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... Another perch for Noah's duck! Where will I be in a week or two from this? I shall make a mark, twenty pages from here, and see where I shall be when I reach it. Here, most probably; but oh, if I could then be at home! General Carter, who spent the evening with us day before yesterday, remarked that the first ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... for hours, watching the pen run over the paper, occasionally swinging his tail round for a blotter, and then going to sleep among the papers by the inkstand. Or, more rarely, he would watch the writing from a perch on my shoulder. Writing always interested him, and, until he understood it, he wanted to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... very fleet of foot, set off running, side by side, the brigand holding Chiquita by the hand, so as to give her all the aid and support he could, and they quickly passed out of sight. No sooner had they departed than the crows came swooping down from their perch in the nearest tree, and fell to fiercely upon their horrible feast, in which they were almost directly joined by several ravenous wolves—and they made such good use of their time, that in a few hours nothing remained of the poor old horse but his bones, his tail, and his shoes. When ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... unremarkable. One, indeed, whom I found plying his spade in the red evening, high above Allan Water and in the shadow of Dunblane Cathedral, told me of his acquaintance with the birds that still attended on his labours; how some would even perch about him, waiting for their prey; and, in a true Sexton's Calendar, how the species varied with the season of the year. But this was the very poetry of the profession. The others whom I knew were somewhat ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... recapture the child; but Clarence threw a strong arm about her, still holding Phillida on his shoulder, and the three went waltzing merrily down the room, the little one from her perch accenting the dance time with a series of small shouts. Little Geoff looked up soberly, with his mouth full of raspberries, and remarked, "Aunty, I didn't ever know that people ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... took one hour and thirty-three minutes. The bark in which I go is about thirty-five feet long, drawn by one horse, and goes from two to three geographical miles an hour. The canal yields abundance of carp and eel. I see also small fish, resembling our perch and chub. Some plants of white clover, and some of yellow, on the banks of the canal near Capestan; santolina also, and a great deal of yellow iris. Met a raft of about three hundred and fifty beams, forty feet long, and twelve or thirteen inches in diameter, formed into fourteen ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... hornet element seemed by common consent to keep temporarily shady, and even the butterflies seemed to forget that they had wings. But not for long, for now with a shimmering glitter our darning-needle invades the scene, and retires to a convenient perch with a ruby-eyed fly in his teeth, while a swarm of very startled butterflies tells conspicuously of the demoralization which he has left in his path. Among the butterfly representatives I at length observed one individual which at first had escaped me, an exclusive white ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... charm, and he would coax half words of wondrous wit from their little stammering lips. They made close friends with him at once, just as did the mesenges or blue tits who used to come from woods and orchards of Thornholm, in Lindsey, and perch upon him, to get or ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... were over, Sophy sprang down from her perch, and, taking her flowers, followed the procession. She did not walk with the rest, but at a proper and respectful distance from the last mourner. No one noticed the little black girl with the bunch of yellow flowers, or thought of her as ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... before. How could two guilty, superstitious men doubt that the waters were thrown into agitation by the pirate's last words? Yet they glanced fearfully round the whole landscape, far and near. They saw no living thing but a hawk, which, startled from its perch on a scathed pine, was wheeling round in the air in an unsteady flight. The pirate pointed to the bird with one hand, while he laid the other on the pistol in ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... out in long wicker chairs in the shade of a tree covered with purple flowers. On a perch at one side of them an orang-outang in a steel belt was combing the whiskers of her infant daughter; at their feet what looked like two chow puppies, but which happened to be Lady Firth's pet lions, were chewing each other's toothless gums; and in the immediate foreground ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... she had slipped from the table, extracted poor Puss from a clutter of pans in the back of a cupboard, stripped the last shred of masquerade from her outraged form, and brought her back growling and bristling to perch on one arm of the ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... us! here's a flock of people coming; my hair is in a toss, and Nan's without her shoe; run! fly, girls! or the Philistines will be upon us!" cried Di, tumbling off her perch in ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... dal cor dipartire La dolce vista del viso sereno, Perch'io mi sento senza lei morire, E 'l spirto a poco a poco venir meno. Or non mi vale forza, ne l'ardire Contra d' amor, the m' ha gia posto il freno; Ne mi giova saper, ne altrui consiglio: Il meglio veggio, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... flowers, grew there; a stone-lined pool, with water-lilies above, gold-fish below, and a cool, sparkling, babbling fountain in the middle. There was an open space round it, with low chairs and tables, and the parrot on her perch. Indeed, Popinjay Parlour was the family title of this delightful abode; but it might almost as well have been called Mother Carey's bower. Here, after an audience with the housekeeper, who was even more overpowering than ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was saying, "Thar isn't much in the pond 'cept perch and sunfish, but you may take something in the creek above. Your best show for trout is to work along the trout brook as far as the hill, and then cut across to the creek, and fish down. 'Tain't far to cross. To-morrer you can try the brooks beyond the hill. Some of 'em'll ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of rude solitude with which I contemplate this wild and desolate scenery. We often see him perched upon a dead tree that stands in the water, a few rods from the shore, apparently watching our angling operations from his leafless perch, where he sings so sweetly, that the very desolation of the scene borrows a charm from his voice that renders every object delightful. This bird I believe to be the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... all had been injured and lived only a few days. The flying squirrel is the least interesting and seems stupid. It will lie around and sleep during the entire day, but at dark will manage to get on some high perch and flop down on your shoulder or head when you least expect it and least desire it, too. The little uncanny thing cannot fly, really, but the webs enable it to take tremendous leaps. I expect that it looks absurd for us to be taking across the country a small ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... and mopping his eyes with the other. 'Then returned the fear of catching cold; and the Duke of Cumberland, who was sinking with heat, felt himself weighed down, and turning round found it was the Duke of Newcastle standing upon his train to avoid the chill of the marble.' What a perch to select! Imagine the contrast of the two men, and remember that the Duke of Newcastle was for an unprecedented time the great dispenser of patronage, and so far the most important personage in the government. Walpole had reason for some of ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... he cried in jocular surprise, happy to find naught more formidable, perhaps, although a brave man, for he had volunteered to examine the source of the smoke from this precarious perch,—which had attracted the attention of the ensign commanding a little detachment,—despite the fact that a Cherokee in his den and brought to bay was likely to prove ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... started upon the pilgrimage. She had not gone very far when she met a Cock, but he knew the character of Madame Fox too well to trust himself near. He flew up into a tree, and from that safe perch crowed jauntily, "Good morning, Madame ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... golden blackbird standing on a wooden perch, but as stiff and rigid as if he was dead. And beside, was the beautiful cage, the ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... be any sound, 'tis sweet, The hidden rush of eager feet Where robins flutter in the dust, Or perch ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... at first that she was heading straight for his lofty perch, and was perhaps bent on questioning his right to be there at all. But he was promptly undeceived. Her mind was set on one object, and her eyes did not travel beyond it. She no more suspected that an artist was lurking in the shade of the cedars ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... ascent, they now settled themselves down as comfortably as they could upon their narrow perch to enjoy at leisure the magnificent view spread out around them, a view such as no human eye had ever before looked upon, and which even they would probably never have another opportunity of beholding. The atmosphere, most ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... victim to his good intentions. Making a frantic grab at a branch, he raised himself off the log, and it was swept from under him by the raging water, and he soon joined the other two victims upon their forlorn perch. The excitement on shore increased, and almost the whole population of the village gathered on the river bank. Lincoln had the log pulled up the stream, and securing another piece of rope, called to the men in the tree to catch it if they could when he ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... Simeon was free from economic responsibilities, free from social cares and intrusion. Bores with sad stories of unappreciated lives and fond hopes unrealized, never broke in upon his peace. He was not pressed for time. No frivolous dame of tarnished fame sought to share with him his perilous perch. The people on a slow schedule, ten minutes late, never irritated his temper. His correspondence ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... away, and don't miss!" cried Seth, hastily following Sol, who had climbed to the top of the dresser as a good perch from which to view the ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... and held on the same course until abreast of the perch, which was only a forked stick. The men came aft and hauled in the mizzen sheer. Chambers put up the helm. The mizzen came across with a jerk, and the sheet was again allowed to run out. The jib came over ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... better classes; thus, for instance, the soul of the dead man is sometimes supposed to enter the body of a bird, in which case the relatives carefully build a semi-circular stone railing round the mound, so that the winged successor of the deceased may have whereon to perch. ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... if you go on making light of my word, I'll perch you up on my neck and carry you ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... the lobsters, the fiddlers, the star-fish, the waves, the shells, and the gay little fishes of the ocean. They did not harm her, for they saw that she was sick; they pitied her—some loved her. The one that loved her most was the perch with green fins that attended school every day in the academic shade of the big rocks in the quiet cove about a mile away. He was very gentle and attentive, and every afternoon he brought fresh, cool sea-foam for the sick oyster to eat; he told her pretty stories, too,—stories which his ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... shall not only fly and move its antennae, and fold and display its wings like the living insect, but shall even surpass the living insect by showing a fine sense of human character, and refusing to perch on the hand of those who had not a genuine sentiment of beauty. The novelist shall put what springs and wheels he pleases into his mechanism, but the springs and wheels he places in the mechanist himself, must be those of genuine humanity, or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... no mast for them. So, it would seem, few and fewer thoughts visit each growing man from year to year, for the grove in our minds is laid waste,—sold to feed unnecessary fires of ambition, or sent to mill, and there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch on. They no longer build nor breed with us. In some more genial season, perchance, a faint shadow flits across the landscape of the mind, cast by the wings of some thought in its vernal or autumnal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... and he forgets his trouble. It is the sweet song of a bird upon a branch of a tree on the rock above him, and the bird likes the morning air and the sound of the waters, and he is singing his song of joy, and Reuben listened to him and was pleased, and then the little bird hopped down from his high perch and came lower and lower till he was quite close to the child, so close that the little one held out his hand, which frightened away the pretty bird, and Reuben was once more alone again, and commenced his cry of "Mamma, Mamma, come to Reuben, Mamma." But the bird had ...
— Brotherly Love - Shewing That As Merely Human It May Not Always Be Depended Upon • Mrs. Sherwood
... A Spaniard remarked that the scene on board the sinking ship was one of awful confusion. A crowd of terror-stricken human beings were swaying hither and thither, in vain hopes of meeting with some way of escape, shrieking and begging for aid; a moment after, when he looked from his perch in the rigging, not a soul of ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... 'Perhaps in a hundred years, in some flourishing town where I discovered nothing but wilderness, they will commission a second-rate sculptor to make a fancy statue of me. And I shall stand in front of the Stock Exchange, a convenient perch for birds, to look eternally upon the shabby deeds ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... is the same skiff I saw this morning," commented Tom. "I suppose it is some fellow who has been fishing out here. Just think of the fish in this wonderful bay—perch and pike and bass and a hundred other kinds! You must help me catch some of ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... child a name; Nor grave conceited nurse, of office proud, Bore the young Christian roaring through the crowd: In a small chamber was my office done, Where blinks through paper'd panes the setting sun; Where noisy sparrows, perch'd on penthouse near, Chirp tuneless joy, and mock the frequent tear; Bats on their webby wings in darkness move, And feebly shriek their melancholy love. No Sailor came; the months in terror fled! Then news arrived—He fought, ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... he climbed the tower of the old North Church, By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, To the belfry chamber overhead, And startled the pigeons from their perch On the somber rafters, that round him made Masses and moving shapes of shade; By the trembling ladder, steep and tall, To the highest window in the wall, Where he paused to listen and look down A moment on the roofs of the town, And the ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... deep-blue sky and bright sunshine, the soft spring air vocal with the song of birds. As soon as early drill ended I had left the fort-enclosure, and sought a lonely perch on the great rock above the mouth of the cave. It was a spot I loved. Below, extended a magnificent vista of the river, fully a mile wide from shore to shore, spreading out in a sheet of glittering silver, unbroken in its vast sweep toward the sea except ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... of brilliant plumage and monstrous beak. Selkirk passes near it, with his eyes fixed on the branch which serves as a perch, and the toucan, without stirring, looks at him with a species of calm ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... he had gone to the little library where he kept his favorite books and did his writing. She heard the door close after him, and, with unutterable longing, she desired to go and throw herself upon her favorite perch, his knee, and twine her arms around his neck and bury her head upon his broad shoulder. She could think of nothing but that fateful letter from Hays. She wished that it might be Mr. Waring who had come in, ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... matters very hard for Simon. Simon had no sooner seated himself comfortably when Solomon Owl moved to a perch behind him. ...
— The Tale of Dickie Deer Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... his throat it could scarcely have added to the gush of alarm that choked him. He slipped incontinently from his arabesque ledge and dropped upon the floor. Securing the tell-tale viands with eager haste he dashed back into the obscurity and clambered with them back to his perch. And not much too soon, for he had barely settled down when the voice of the scout was heard ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... found there. There were the agricultural and pastoral Wajiji, with their flocks and herds; there were the fishermen from Ukaranga and Kaole, from beyond Bangwe, and even from Urundi, with their whitebait, which they called dogara, the silurus, the perch, and other fish; there were the palm-oil merchants, principally from Ujiji and Urundi, with great five-gallon pots full of reddish oil, of the consistency of butter; there were the salt merchants from the salt-plains of Uvinza and ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... tyranny, the old fable of the frogs and the stork finely touches one form of it; but truth will image it more closely than fable, for tyranny is not complete when it is only over the idle, but when it is over the laborious and the blind. This description of pelicans and climbing perch, which I find quoted in one of our popular natural histories, out of Sir Emerson Tennant's Ceylon, comes as near as may be to the true image of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Launcelot by fortune came to a fair castle, and as he passed by he was ware of a falcon that came flying over his head toward a high elm. As the bird flew into the tree to take her perch, the long lines about her feet caught on a bough, and when she would take flight again she hung fast by the legs. Sir Launcelot saw how the fair falcon hung there, and he was sorry ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... went out, and after a struggle of some minutes, I chained Lord Edward to a post at a little distance from the apple-tree. When he was secure, the tramp descended nimbly from his perch, notwithstanding his stiff legs, and hurried out of the gate. He stopped to make no remarks over the fence. With a wild howl of disappointed ambition, Lord Edward threw himself after ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... by their exertions these workers pronounce God an unmerciful slave driver, an unfaithful and angry Judge. They despise God, make a liar out of Him, snub Christ and all His benefits; in short they pull God from His throne and perch themselves ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... struck a small footpath—the only one for miles, we afterwards discovered—which made the descent beautifully easy and comparatively silent. With some diffidence we made for what we thought was our map reference, and found to our joy, that we were exactly right. Our "perch," as really it should be called, was on numerous ledges on the face of a very steep cliff, and it was a lengthy business getting the Battalion arranged with its different companies respectively in their right places; but by 4 A.M. we were all snug like ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... eagerness to those frequent trips with his father "to the place where Mother dear went to heaven." From his perch on his father's shoulders he could look vast distances into the underbrush and catch glimpses of the wild life therein; when the last nut had been distributed to the squirrels in the clearing, he would follow a ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... of the few persons allowed to climb up to their perch and see their work. When he next came, Esther told him of Wharton's lecture, and of Catherine's sudden rebellion. Delighted with this new flight of his prairie bird, Strong declared that as they were all bent on taking likenesses of Catherine, he would like to try his own hand at it, ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... wine; his hospitality was that of a bachelor, for a man who feels instinctively that he will never own a "house and home" constructs the materiality of his life in chambers upon a fuller basis than the man who feels instinctively that he will, sooner or later, exchange the perch-like existence of his chambers for the nest-like completeness of a ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... important parts in the old village communities. The villani, or villeins, corresponding to the Saxon ceorls, were the most important class of tenants in villeinage, and each held about thirty acres in scattered acre or half-acre strips, each a furlong in length and a perch or two in breadth, separated by turf balks. The villein thus supported himself and his family, and in return was bound to render certain services to the lord of the manor, to work on the home farm, and provide two ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... to its different significations, often has a different origin; as, to bear a burden, from fero; but to bear, whence birth, born, bairn, comes from pario; and a bear, at least if it be of Latin original, from fera. Thus perch, a fish, from perca; but perch, a measure, from pertica, and likewise to perch. To spell is from syllaba; but spell, an inchantment, by which it is believed that the boundaries are so fixed in lands that none can pass them against the master's will, from expello; and spell, a messenger, from epistola; ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... Longfellow put their spring bluebird in the elm, which is a much better place for the oriole,—the elm-loving oriole. The bluebird prefers a humbler perch. Lowell puts him upon a post in the fence, which ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... knocking his bare heels together and thinking idly of Major Dabney and certain disquieting rumors lately come to Paradise, when the tinkling drip of the spring into the pool at the foot of his perch was interrupted by ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... great thing, wouldst thou not have done it?' Yes! Of course he would, and the greater the better. Men will stand, as Indian fakirs do, with their arms above their heads until they stiffen there. They will perch themselves upon pillars, like Simeon Stylites, for years, till the birds build their nests in their hair: they will measure all the distance from Cape Comorin to Juggernaut's temple with their bodies along the dusty road. They will give the fruit of their body for the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... assiduously hidden from the lady beside him, would be revealed. Jean's mouth was already open to speak. He waved her aside. She adhered to her post. He shouted to the postilion, and the huge, lumbering vehicle was set in motion. At the first turn of the wheels, Jean slipped from her perch, her dress caught in the spokes, and ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... and threw him down now one of her eggs, and then one of her young ones. Having done so, for some time, with a great deal of grief and sorrow, and the Fox continuing still to demand it of her, she, at last, made her complaint to the Raven, who chanced to come and perch herself on the same tree; grievously bemoaning her fate, that she, like a good mother, to provide for her children, was at last obliged to make them a sacrifice to such a villain. But the Raven, who was not so timorous as ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... scared away by what is called exact intelligence from the tall forest of great personalities, they contrive to live humbly clinging to such bare plain stocks and poles (Tis and Jack and Cinderella) as enable them to find a precarious perch. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Transit slip where they said the water was sixty feet deep, only it wasn't. An' once, on a Thursday, we dug a lot of clams together, an' played hookey Friday to peddle them. An' we used to go out on the Rock Wall an' catch pogies an' rock cod. One day—the day of the eclipse—Cal caught a perch half as big as a door. I never seen such a fish. An' now he's got to wear the stripes for twenty years. Lucky he wasn't married. If he don't get the consumption he'll be an old man when he comes out. Cal's mother wouldn't let 'm go swimmin', ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... flowered draperies, and of exquisite order. There was a business-like heap of mail on Harriet's big desk; there were flowers everywhere; fan- tailed Japanese gold fish moved languidly about in a tall bowl of clear glass, and Nina's emerald-green parrot walked upon his gaily painted perch, and muttered in a significant and chuckling undertone. Glass doors were open upon a square porch, and the sweet afternoon air stirred ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... section of the mountains, or had his whereabouts been unknown, his situation would have been hopeless. The bear might settle down to a siege of many days, and he had powerful allies in sleep and hunger. If wearied nature should assert her rights and Bert in a moment of drowsiness topple from his perch, or if, driven by starvation, he should make a last despairing effort to escape, the chances would be all against him. The instinct of the grizzly told him that, if not interfered with, time alone was all that was necessary to bring his foe within ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... was so accustomed to his master, indeed, that he allowed himself to be taken from the perch without a single squawk, and the boy took his captive beyond the pen. Once, when the big rooster canted his head and looked into his face, the boy had to wink away the tears; but he thought of the man so near death in the attic, he felt the clumsy ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... a bird, probably a falcon, on his left wrist. This figure is supposed to represent Alcfrid himself. Immediately below the falcon is an upright piece of wood with a transverse bar at the top, possibly meant for the bird's perch. On the east side there are no runes, but a vine is sculptured in low relief within a border. Dr. Haigh observed that the design on this side was the same as on the two sides of the Ruthwell Cross.* The north and the south sides are in a state ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... sat upon his precarious perch trying to reassume the posture which insured a good balance, clinging to the trunk with one hand and to ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... birds on our way; among them the white ibis, the white heron, the snake-bird, and vulture. We found a bluff, with deep water below it, into which we had scarcely thrown our lines when we each hooked a large black bass; after which we caught several bream, cat-fish, and perch, until we had as much as ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... an accurate picture does the creative pencil of our great poet present to the mind's eye! The epithet lofty has fallen through the sieves of all the commentators excepting Theobaldus Secundus. It obviously alludes to the high roosting perch of that valiant bird; nor is the mythological imagery in this sentence to be passed by without its merited eulogium. Lingo, by way of agreeable surprise, informs us that the cock is the bird of Pallas—Pallas ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... wayfarer for the cries of hawks and crows, or the bleating of the mountain flocks. After they had reconnoitred the neighborhood, and finished their singular discourse, they descended from their airy perch, and returned to their prisoners. The captain posted three of them at three naked sides of the mountain, while he remained to guard us with what ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... life is bound up with the welfare of plants and animals and lies at the mercy of rivers that overflow or skies that withhold the rain. To such people nature-myths and sacred animals appeal with a force that Europeans rarely understand. The parrots that perch on the pinnacles of the temple and the oxen that rest in the shade of its courts are not intruders but humble brothers of mankind, who may also be ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... rooms were quickly counted in Redman's Farm, he found her chamber small, neat, simplex munditiis. Bright and natty were the chintz curtains, and the little toilet set out, not inelegantly, and her pet piping-goldfinch asleep on his perch, with his bit of sugar between the wires of his cage; her pillow so white and unpressed, with its little edging of lace. Were slumbers sweet as of old ever to know it more? What dreams were henceforward to haunt it? Shadows were standing about that lonely bed already. I don't ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... was joined by the old crow, who had flown down from his perch unnoticed by Hiranya, and now addressed him ...
— Hindu Tales from the Sanskrit • S. M. Mitra and Nancy Bell
... I'm going to ask you to take it back to your mistress; and then no doubt you'll be reading it on the sly. Here, I must sit down: suppose you let me perch myself on the top bar of the gate. Also, it would be kind of you to put up an arm and ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... exactly at this moment that the Squire, who opened his letters in the library before breakfast, was accustomed to enter the room, and, with a word of greeting to his assembled family, perch his gold-rimmed glasses on his fine straight nose, and with the help of two book-markers find the places in the Bible and book of prayers to which the year in its diurnal course had brought him. The ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... bravely wear Their beauty, recognize a woman's own, Than Clara Mercome. Gilbert Wynne has sown His wild oats for her sake; yet he delays, And with my Lady Bond divides his days. Who bets on beauty, hedges in on age; Which tries the flight to perch in Lord Wynne's cage? Will Lady Bond or Clara be the queen? For Lady Bond is certain of her lien." He heard this talk while standing by a beech— Hugh Wynne—and planned how he might overreach Gilbert and Clara, break the pride of both, ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... swaying over the frightful abyss. But there was nothing upon which to rest his feet. He did not wish anything, and, swinging sideways, threw one leg over the ledge beside his hands, and, half-rolling over, raised himself securely for the time on his perch. ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... ridiculed, are the law-courts, the interminable length of lawsuits, the covetousness and injustice of the judges, and so forth. Among such productions are: "The Tale of Judge Shemyak" (Herring), "The Description of the Judicial Action in the Suit Between the Pike and the Perch"; or, applying personal names to the contestants, "The Story of Yorsha Yorshoff (Perch, the son of Perch) and the Son of Shtchetinnikoff (the Bristly)." A similar production is "The Story of Kura (the Cock) ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... she ventured to open one door—it was the old Laird's dog-kennel, now deserted, unless when occupied, as one or two tubs seemed to testify, as a washing-house. She tried another—it was the rootless shed where the hawks had been once kept, as appeared from a perch or two not yet completely rotten, and a lure and jesses which were mouldering on the wall. A third door led to the coal-house, which was well stocked. To keep a very good fire was one of the few points ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... immediate danger, the road being both good and clear, but as they went on, their pace, instead of subsiding, seemed to increase. The carriage was not of the low build of these days, and the servant hesitated to risk a jump from his perch at the back. Meantime a corner was in sight, which it would be hazardous to turn at this pace. Mary sat, pale and terrified, only just sufficiently mistress of herself not to scream when suddenly, two men appeared coming towards them round the dreaded corner. In another moment the adventure was ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... the Captain in a fatherly tone, "lemme tell you something. While I've been a-roostin' up here in my perch, I've been a-watchin' you boys; a-watchin' an' a-worryin'. What have you been a-doin'? You've been a-raisin' hell, you have. Son, you ain't a rote a word, have yer? An' you, Whinney—boy, you ain't ketched a bug nor ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... old red stage stopped at Enos Devon's door, and his niece crossed the threshold after a cool handshake with the master of the house, and a close embrace with the mistress, who stood pouring out last words with spectacles too dim for seeing. Fat Ben swung up the trunk, slammed the door, mounted his perch, and the ancient vehicle swayed with premonitory symptoms ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... finite hands may not meddle. The problem has but one solution—adjustment. Hedged in by the iron bars of circumstance as surely as a bird within his cage, it remains for the individual to choose whether he will beat his wings against the bars until he dies, or take his place serenely on the perch ordained ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... goat, had leaped down from her high perch, and was now taking a drink from a little sparkling mountain rill ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... saw-toothed mountains cut, to the east, by a stupendous gorge. We stood silent with awe, when we first climbed a winding, white trail to the summit of the mountain and gazed into the abysmal depths. My eye followed an eagle which floated across the chasm to its perch on a projecting crag; thence, down the sheer face of the cliff a thousand feet to the stream which has carved this colossal canyon from the living rock. Like a shining silver tracing it twisted and turned, foaming over rocks and running in smooth, green sheets between vertical walls of granite. ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... Homes of England, Though tenantless ye stand, With none content to pay the rent, Through all the shadowy land, Now, Science true will find in you A sympathetic perch, And take you all, both Grange and ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... at him; he rose and bowed quite gravely. She deliberately put down thimble, scissors, work; descended with precaution from her perch, and curtsying with unspeakable seriousness, said, "How ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... her with curious eyes, wondering where she was. Not in England, of that she was sure—there was a different feel in the air, colours were brighter, scents were stronger, and that radiant parrot would never perch itself so tranquilly upon an ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... might have halted to make sure of his scent. He was circling on the trail of the stallion, with cunning intent of ambush. The end of this slow, careful stalk of the lion, as told in his tracks, came upon the edge of a knoll where he had crouched to watch and wait. From this perch he had made a magnificent spring—Slone estimating it to be forty feet—but he had missed the stallion. There were Wildfire's tracks again, slow and short, and then deep and sharp where in the impetus of fright he had sprung out of ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... friends went down—"Big Jack" David, and Wresmak, the Bohemian, Klowoski, the Pole, and finally Jerry Minetti. Little Jerry waved his hand from his perch on Hal's shoulder; while Rosa, who had come out and joined them, was clinging to Hal's arm, silent, as if her soul were going down in the cage. There went blue-eyed Tim Rafferty to look for his father, and black-eyed "Andy," the Greek boy, whose father had perished in a similar disaster ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... of the 9th the game was thus lost to the Germans. Their armies of the right and of the center were beaten and the retreat followed. The Imperial Guard left in the marshes of St. Gond more than 8,000 men and almost all its artillery. Victory henceforth began to perch on the Allied banners over all the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... the British. It's near about the prettiest sight I know of, is one of our first class Frigates, manned with our free and enlightened citizens all ready for sea; it's like the great American Eagle, on its perch, balancing itself for a start on the broad expanse of blue sky, afeared of nothin' of its kind, and president of all it surveys. It was a good emblem that ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... anxiously, as he threw in his bait, and their delight was immense, when a half hour's effort was rewarded with a half dozen perch, of fair ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... An insecure perch for the radiant wanderer. The inhospitable saurian dives with embarrassing suddenness and dips the airy visitor into the "rank water." The butterfly finds no charm in the gloomy place and flies away, which less ethereal wanderers might likewise be fain to do. Now ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... ran in between the rocks, its shore spread with grey sand, smooth and trackless. At least so Gimblet imagined it at first, as his eye roved casually over the beach. Then suddenly, with a smothered ejaculation, he leaped down from his perch of observation, and made his way to the margin of ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... soon beyond his depth, and we were at once alarmed and diverted at seeing his rider, with surprising adroitness, draw her feet from the stirrups and perch herself upon the top of the saddle, where she held her position, and navigated her little refractory steed ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... them a farthing. How generous he is! The colossus which is the pedestal contemplates the pigmy which is the statue. How great is this myrmidon! he is on my back. A dwarf has an excellent way of being taller than a giant: it is to perch himself on his shoulders. But that the giant should allow it, there is the wonder; and that he should admire the height of the dwarf, there is the folly. Simplicity of mankind! The equestrian statue, reserved for kings alone, is an excellent figure ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Fletcher made a dive in the direction of the offender, and in a moment the whole gathering was in a state of confusion. The majority of those present siding with "Rats," began to hustle Fletcher, while two gentlemen having dragged Bibbs from his perch, jumped up in his stead, and ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... must not make a scare-crow of the law, Setting it up to frighten birds of prey; And let it keep one shape till custom makes it, Their perch and ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... program of postmortem entertainments; it has taken a weary long time to persuade American Presbyterians to give up infant damnation and try to bear it the best they can; and it looks as if their Scotch brethren will still be burning babies in the everlasting fires when Shakespeare comes down from his perch. ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... number of nightingales, goldfinches, canary birds, larks, and other rare singing birds, and the vessels that held their seed were of the most sparkling jasper or agate. The sun went down, and I retired, charmed with the chirping notes of the multitude of birds, who then began to perch upon such places as suited them for repose during the night. I went to my chamber, resolving on the following days to open all the rest of the doors, excepting that ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... hedge and repeated her answer to my lady herself, with a great deal more which need not be recorded. Suffice it to say, my lady thought it necessary to pull up the glass, against which Matty threw a handful of mud; the servant jumped up on his perch behind the carriage, which was rapidly driven away by the coachman, but not so fast that Matty could not, by dint of running, keep it "within range" for some seconds, during which time she contrived to pelt both coachman and footman with mud, and leave her mark on their new ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... voice suddenly shouted: "Fire! Fire! Fire!" Hannigan had flung his pipe frenziedly from him because his lungs demanded room. He tumbled down from his perch, swung over the fence, and ran shouting towards the front-door of the Trescotts'. Then he hammered on the door, using his fists as if they were mallets. Mrs. Trescott instantly came to one of the windows on the second ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... found near Cardiff, and the color of this petrified fish is very similar to the Cardiff giant stone. Mr. W.B. Kirk, of this city, when living at Cardiff many years ago, found near there a good sized Perch, that was perfectly petrified. Third—Five miles further down the valley, at what is known as the Onondaga Valley Cemetery, in taking up a human body for removal some years ago, it was found to be solid stone; still further north, ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... resolutions, we shall here insert them for his satisfaction. The committee resolved, that the ell ought to contain one yard and one quarter, according to the yard mentioned in the third resolution of the former committee upon the subject of weights and measures; that the pole, or perch, should contain in length five such yards and a half; the furlong two hundred and twenty; and the mile one thousand seven hundred and sixty: that the superficial perch should contain thirty square yards and a quarter; the rood one thousand two hundred and ten; and the acre four thousand eight ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... art the centre, in whose close embrace, From all the wild circumference, each line Directly runs to find its resting-place: Upon their swiftest wings, to perch on thine Ennobling breast, which is their only butt, The arrows of all high ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... of the things that have puzzled you about me. Oh! I know they did; you needn't look apologetic. I don't wonder, or blame you. I am a very queer bird for the perch I have lit on; I know that as well as anybody. The only wonder is that you ever took the trouble to try to lime me. Now have another glass of toddy. Why! it is near twelve. I must have one pipe and turn in. ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... long they had him on the grill; but it couldn't have been more'n half an hour, for along about three o'clock I strolls into the audit department, and there's old Dudley back on his perch ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... discovery of three or four dead perch, floating belly up, round and round in an eddy, gave him no clue to the total destruction of all life. He did not understand even yet that the terrific conflagration, far more stupendous than any ever known in the old days, had even heated the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... friend has quieted down very much indeed. It is a little wider, and it may be it is a little deeper, but it flows along very placidly between its low banks. It is doubtful if we should find any trout in it now, but there may be cat-fish and perch, ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... the tiny victim, hurled from its high perch—after making several somersaults in the air—falls right into the jaws of that hungry savage at the bottom of the tree. Wolf makes his ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... mine, who was going out of town for a few days, intrusted his parrot to me with the request that I would take care of it during his absence. The bird, feeling strange in my house, had climbed, helping himself with his beak, to the very top of his perch, and looking pretty well bewildered, rolled round his eyes, that resembled the gilt nails on arm-chairs, and wrinkled the whitish membrane that served him for eyelids. Madame-Theophile had never seen a parrot, ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... the refuge of tempted faith. What was Hezekiah to do with the crafty missive? It was hoped that he would listen to reason, and come down from his perch. But he neither yielded nor took counsel with his servants, but, like a devout man, went into the house of the Lord, and spread the letter before the Lord. It would have gone hard with him if he had not been to the house of the Lord many a time before. It is not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... and she feared evidently to avail herself of opiates, lest in her heavy slumber, perhaps, I should escape. In her normal condition this seemed impossible, for she slept habitually as lightly as a cat, or bird upon its perch, yet lying, and with her key beneath her head (never dreaming of other outlet) she felt at ease. I had already learned that since her illness there were additional precautions taken to insure my safety, and, as she ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... time to begin and knock these birds from their perch," said the thrall, "for that is an awkward corner for our folk to turn with Whitefire and the axe of Skallagrim ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... all had calling-over or prayers, or something of the sort, when the locking-up bell rang? Well, I declare," said Arthur, looking up seriously into Tom's laughing eyes, "I do think he was right. Since I've been lying here, I've watched them every night; and, do you know, they really do come and perch, all of them, just about locking-up time; and then first there's a regular chorus of caws; and then they stop a bit, and one old fellow, or perhaps two or three in different trees, caw solos; ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... the danger he ran in coming to visit him. To an outsider, calmly reflecting, it did not seem a very good bargain for Stubbs, but still very much better than that of Perry, his friend and present companion, who kept a hawk, and vainly endeavoured to teach the bird to know him and perch on his wrist. But Perry was fond of hawks, and much regretted that the days were gone by when hawking ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... came upon me, and through the sleep a dream Of the Frenchman who once was my master by the side of the willowy stream; And he talked and told me tales of the war unwaged as yet, And the victory never won, and bade me never forget, While I walked on, still unhappy, by the home of the dark-striped perch. Till at last, with a flash of light and a rattle and side-long lurch, I woke up dazed and witless, till my sorrow awoke again, And the grey of the morn was upon us as we sped through the poplar plain, By the brimming streams and the houses with their grey roofs warped and bent, ...
— The Pilgrims of Hope • William Morris
... their black titles below, were in the order he had taught Mrs. Bolton to replace them in after dusting; the stuffed owl on a shelf above the mantel looked down with a clear solemnity in its gum-copal eyes, and Mrs. Bolton took it from its perch to show Miss Kilburn that there was not a moth on it, nor the ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... enough to take the end of a two-by-six plank four or five feet long with a single grab-nail in the end,—the springboard of the Pacific coast logger, whose daily business lies among the biggest timber on God's footstool. Each then clambered up on his precarious perch, took hold of his end of the long, limber saw, and cut in to a depth of a foot or more, according to the size of the tree. Then jointly they chopped down to this sawed line, and there was the undercut complete, a deep notch on the side to which the tree would fall. That done, ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... ha!" cried Otter again from his airy perch. "Treachery! treachery! And what if the slaves are loosed? And what ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... quite know why I feel like that, but I fancy it must be on account of some serene and peaceful quality in your poems. Here, then, there are sixty-four little pages of restfulness for those whose minds are troubled. You don't plunge into the deep of metaphysics and churn it into a foam, but you perch on your little bough and pipe sweetly of gorse and heather and wide meadows and brightly-flashing insects; you sing softly as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... that ran through the meadow behind the barn, was one of their haunts. They fished in it for minnows and little perch; they made dams and bathed in it; and sometimes they played pirates ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... vehicle of scientific precision, and the use of a dead language saves your nomenclature from being confounded with your common talk. The use of a Greek derivative gives notice that you are scientific. If you speak of an acanthopterygian, it is plain that you are not discussing perch in reference to its roasting or boiling merits; and if you make an allusion to monomyarian malacology, it will not naturally be supposed to have reference to the ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... heels together and thinking idly of Major Dabney and certain disquieting rumors lately come to Paradise, when the tinkling drip of the spring into the pool at the foot of his perch was interrupted by a ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... history of all the odd litter about the room, and how it came there. I wondered whether the two swollen faces were of Mr. Jaggers's family, and, if he were so unfortunate as to have had a pair of such ill-looking relations, why he stuck them on that dusty perch for the blacks and flies to settle on, instead of giving them a place at home. Of course I had no experience of a London summer day, and my spirits may have been oppressed by the hot exhausted air, and by the dust and grit that lay thick on ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... been, it must be recollected, too, that since its first fall, both the Emperor and his admirer and would-be successor have had their chance of re-establishing it. "Fly from steeple to steeple" the eagles of the former did actually, and according to promise perch for a while on the towers of Notre Dame. We know the event: if the fate of war declared against the Emperor, the country declared against him too; and, with old Lafayette for a mouthpiece, the representatives of the nation did, in a neat speech, pronounce themselves ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... food which these people eat at a meal is prodigious: I have seen one man devour two or three fishes as big as a perch; three bread-fruits, each bigger than two fists; fourteen or fifteen plantains or bananas, each of them six or seven inches long, and four or five round; and near a quart of the pounded bread-fruit, which is as substantial as the thickest unbaked custard. This is so extraordinary that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... streamed in the indolent ripple; beneath them the lake, lucid as some dark crystal, sheeted with olive transparence a bottom of yellow sand; here a bream poised on slowly waving fins, as if dreaming of motion, or a perch flashed its red fin from one hollow to another. The shadow lifted a degree, the eye penetrated to farther regions; a bird piped warily, then freely, a second and a third answered, a fourth took up the tale, blue-jay and thrush, catbird and bobolink; wings ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... and hardly larger than the cup that belies its reputation and dances drunkenly whenever another guest joggles our elbow,—which happens so often that we suspect conspiracy,—the old-fashioned saucer affords no reasonably secure perch for a sandwich; responds with delight to the law of gravitation if left to itself; and sets us wishing, those of us who think scientifically, that evolution had refrained from doing away with an extension by which alone we could now hope to manage it. We mean a tail! If ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... to speak, then settled by our forefathers, they were driven again and again. Now and then they would meet the English with something like equal numbers, and then the eagle of victory would proudly perch upon the stripes and stars. And so they went on as best they could, hoping and fighting until they came to the dark and sombre ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... Olga, smiling with supreme ease, lowered Peggy from her perch, and dropped into the vacant seat beside her. Daisy passed on with a smile to join the Bradlaws. Peggy remained, glued to her ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... light, (as I found upon landing on one of the islands) than from a smoke hole, or from an aperture in the wall, closed at night with a tuft of grass. The calf and pig were seen as inmates, while the little furniture that appeared, was either festooned with strings of dried fish, or crossed with a perch for the fowls ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... lofty wood, that skirts the wild. A vagabond and useless tribe, there eat Their miserable meal. A Kettle Slung between two poles, upon a stick transverse, Receives the morsel: flesh obscene of hog, Or vermin; or, at best, of cock purloined From his accustom'd perch. Hard faring race, They pick their fuel out of every hedge, Which kindled with dry leaves, and wood, just saves The spark of life. The sportive wind blows wide Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawney skin, The vellum of the pedigree ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... absolutely nothing alive in that inviting nullah. I had walked Moolah Bux slowly along, looking down from the margin of the ravine, and upon arrival at Berry's perch I took him up behind me in the rear compartment of the howdah. I felt almost sure that, although we had drawn a blank up to the present time, the tigress would be lying somewhere among the numerous deep but narrow nullahs which drained into the main channel that we had just examined. ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... accepted the flying noose that came shooting straight toward him, placed it under his arms, made sure that his gun was still fast to his back, and then fearlessly dropped off his perch. ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... running, side by side, the brigand holding Chiquita by the hand, so as to give her all the aid and support he could, and they quickly passed out of sight. No sooner had they departed than the crows came swooping down from their perch in the nearest tree, and fell to fiercely upon their horrible feast, in which they were almost directly joined by several ravenous wolves—and they made such good use of their time, that in a few hours nothing remained of the poor old horse but his bones, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... bait is the more alluring and dangerous. But when once the hook has been swallowed and struck, then the Academician takes no more notice of the victim, but leaves him to struggle and dangle at the end of the line. You are an angler; well, when you have taken a fine perch or a big pike, and you drag it along behind your boat, what do you ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... bespoke neither political influence nor the backing of rich friends. Nobody, really, had ever wanted his place. If they did they never dared ask for it—not above their breath. They would as soon have thought of ousting the old clock from its perch in the rotunda, or moving one of the great columns that faced the street. So he just stayed on ticking away at his post, quite like the old clock itself, and getting stiffer and stiffer in the line of his duty—quite like the columns—and getting more and more covered ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... smoke O'ertop the lofty wood that skirts the wild. A vagabond and useless tribe there eat Their miserable meal. A kettle, flung Between two poles upon a stick transverse, Receives the morsel—flesh obscene of dog, Or vermin, or, at best, of cock purloined From his accustomed perch. Hard-faring race, They pick their fuel out of every hedge, Which, kindled with dry leaves, just saves unqueuched The spark of life. The sportive wind blows wide Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawny skin, The vellum of the ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... the country and the lessons we should learn from the Central and South American republics, are really points of a very simple nature and easily deduced. How strange that among all this large number of politicians and scholars, who are as numerous as the trees in the forest and the perch in the stream, should have failed for all these years to notice these simple points; and now suddenly make a fetish of them because they have come out of the mouth of a foreigner. Is it because no one except a foreign doctor can discover such facts? Why even ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... executed under the tree would have frightened even an African lion. Tom hesitated, showed his white fangs, returned to his first perch, and from there climbed as far as he could. The forked branch on which ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... rolled bodily out of the square by the stream, others ran wildly with their arms over their heads. The air was full of leather hats, spinning as the water struck them. Every now and then the hosemen elevated the nozzle and gave Colonel Gideon Ward his share. A half-dozen times he nearly fell off his perch and flapped out like a rag ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... to accept of a Jack, which is the best I have caught this Season. I intend to come and stay with you a Week, and see how the Perch bite in the Black River. I observed with some Concern, the last time I saw you upon the Bowling-Green, that your Whip wanted a Lash to it; I will bring half a dozen with me that I twisted last Week, which I hope will serve you all the Time ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... issue of this momentous contest, he turned to where Rosalind sat, and reining up at the foot of her perch, dismounted. ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... out of springs and wheels so marvellous a butterfly, that the seeming creature shall not only fly and move its antennae, and fold and display its wings like the living insect, but shall even surpass the living insect by showing a fine sense of human character, and refusing to perch on the hand of those who had not a genuine sentiment of beauty. The novelist shall put what springs and wheels he pleases into his mechanism, but the springs and wheels he places in the mechanist himself, must be those of genuine humanity, or the whole fiction falls to the ground. Now ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... foul child. The asphalt burns. The garrulous sparrows perch on metal Burns. Sing! Sing! they say, and flutter with their wings. He does not sing, he only wonders why He is sitting there. The sparrows sing. And I Yield to the strait ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... old Dimsted in the House used to tell us boys all about it, and how he used to catch jack and eels, and roach and perch, in the river." ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... hungry and bethinking myself that it must be getting toward noon, I descended from my perch of observation, and made my way homeward, although it did not seem very much like home to me as yet. The tramp had done me good in the way of satisfying ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... for the donkey. While he did so a woman who wore a white cap, a grey bodice, a thick woollen red petticoat, under which her bare lean legs showed, came to the door, waving the yellow hen off her perch. ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... soon attempt to entice a star To perch upon my finger; or the wind To follow me like a dog—as try to make Some ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... is only rough work; we will first put up a perch or two for them, and then close in the side, and thatch the roof with cocoa-nut branches; but there's Juno taking in the dinner, ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... but I believe the notion of fixing the attention by keeping the room empty, is a wholly mistaken one: I think it is just in the emptiest room that the mind wanders most; for it gets restless, like a bird, for want of a perch, and casts about for any possible means of getting out and away. And even if it be fixed, by an effort, on the business in hand, that business becomes itself repulsive, more than it need be, by the vileness of its associations; and many a study appears dull or painful to a boy, when ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... and gentry—there is nothing of the kind whatever.' (He paused a moment, probably to allow me to observe the choiceness of his diction.) 'They positively visit each other but seldom. Every one sits like a pigeon on its perch. And so it comes to pass that visitors have simply nowhere ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... aviary, where handsome brass cages of various shapes showed through their burnished wires snowy cockatoos, gaudy paroquets, green and gold canaries, flaming red and vivid blue birds, and one huge white owl, whose favorite perch when allowed his freedom, was a bronze Pallas on ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... given to her more than she needed for herself. So she was able to be nearly as kind to the children as she wished, and to feed extravagantly certain small animals. Birds nested in her temple, and ate from her hand, and learned not to perch upon the heads ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... in a crowning state of ecstasy. Rigdum Funnidos was in a hutch in the small garden under the cliff, Begum and two small gray kittens were in a basket under the kitchen stairs, Aga was purring under everybody's feet, Cocky was turning out the guard upon his perch—-in short, Il Lido was made as like Silverfold as circumstances would permit. Aunt Ada with Miss Vincent was sitting on the sofa in the drawing-room, with a newly-worked cosy, like a giant's fez, over the teapot, and ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the worst of tempers, having been just incensed by a boy who had declared that two gills equalled one pint, two pints one quart, and two quarts one rod, pole, or perch. So, when I brought my sum up and giggled at the answer, he looked at me as if he neither liked me nor desired that I should ever like him. Then he indulged in cheap sarcasms. This he was wont to do, and, after emitting them through his silky beard, he would draw in his breath ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... we have certainly grounds for hope that we have got it all to ourselves. One thing I am anxious to find is some sheltered spot or cave where we can pass the rainy season. The place where we now are is charming in such weather as this, that is for ten months in the year; but it is not a perch I should choose in such a gale as that which ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... Harrison was very sick, as a person is sea-sick; and for a long time he clung to his precarious perch without attempting to move. Johansen, however, continued violently to urge him on to ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... fellow in the mizzen-top, my lord, Who made it his affair to wing you thus, We took good care to settle; and he fell Like an old rook, smack from his perch, stone dead. ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... child in the organ loft. Was it possible, they asked themselves, that a child could produce such beautiful music? They remained rooted to the spot, till Wolfgang happened to see them and crept meekly down from his perch. ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... flew all around, Till Colin he found, Then perch'd on his head with the prize; Whose heart, while he reads, With tenderness bleeds, For the pigeon that ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... about sundown to fish, and on Sundays an hour or two to sail quietly without fishing-rod or gun when the lake was calm. Therefore we gradually learned something about its inhabitants,—pickerel, sunfish, black bass, perch, shiners, pumpkin-seeds, ducks, loons, turtles, muskrats, etc. We saw the sunfishes making their nests in little openings in the rushes where the water was only a few feet deep, ploughing up and shoving away ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... came for us at ten o'clock, when, had I been at Gorse Bush, I should have been fast asleep on my perch,—as Drinkwater says, for he loves to plague me about being a Linnet. My Cousin was beautifully attired; he wore a most superb cravat, of a deep ruby colour, and an under-waistcoat of the brightest amber; but, in fact, he always attracts admiration; and I think, without vanity, ...
— Comical People • Unknown
... rarely given trout to eat here in the hotels. A lake fish, called "ferras," a large species of the salmonid genus Coregonus, to which the skelly, powan, and vendayce of British lakes belong, is the commonest fish of the table d'hote, and not very good. A better one is the perch-pike or zander. It is common in all the larger shallow lakes of Central Europe, and abounds in the "broads" which extend from Potsdam to Hamburg, though it is unknown in the British Isles. It is quite the best of the European fresh-water ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... sliding slowly down from his perch on the camping outfit. He emptied the pipe he had been comfortably smoking. "Time enough," he answered. Naki was a man of ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... of wit, realized too late the intention of his tormentor. He scrambled to escape, but the ape-man gave the rope a tremendous jerk that pulled Taug from his perch, and a moment later, growling hideously, the ape hung head downward thirty feet ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... hives are governed by a long lever in the shape of a hen-roost, so that the hives may all be closed seasonably and regularly, by the crowing and cackling tribe, when they go to bed at night, and opened at once when they fly from their perch, to greet the merry morn. Alas! that so much ingenuity should be all in vain! Chickens are often sleepy, and wish to retire sometime before the bees feel that they have completed their full day's work, and some of them are so much opposed ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... to come home at eventide to the small but cosy cottage in that green lane, far, far away in the pleasant country; and she used to stand at the gate to watch for his coming, sometimes running half-way up the lane to meet him, and he would perch her on his shoulder, where she felt, oh! so safe, and bring her home to mother. Or she would climb his knee as he sat by the fire, and watch dear mother get the nice supper; but father was dead now. She had seen the pretty daisies growing above his grassy grave in that distant churchyard; ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... myself at the large gate of New Square, Lincoln's Inn, so I knocked until the porter opened it, and drove in as straight as I could. When I got to the corner of the square, by No. 7, I pulled up, and, tumbling off my perch, walked quietly along to the Portugal-street wicket. Here the other porter let me out, and I found myself in Lincoln's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various
... The old way was to carry the overflow down a pipe in the centre through its surface opening, but an improvement on this system is for the leakage to be at the bottom of the tank and the inflow at the top. Young perch are beautiful too,—and tench, and dace, and roach,—and all are hardy. Feeding them is very simple. The shop from which you buy the fish will keep you supplied with the proper food. The American catfish, with its curious ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... sitting there like a hen on a perch? What did your wife tell you to do? You just get ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... the room looking for a place to perch, trying to find a footing against the wall, slipping down, ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... some high perch Of freedom, and lofty flight? You smile; oh, little wild bird, You are ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... discovery to his companions. The report spread up and down the Rue Mouffetard like wild-fire. In a few minutes two or three hundred ragpickers had assembled about the door of the cabaret, and as many as could get in crowded about the wonderful actor whom they had seen from their perch in the gallery of the theatre. They pressed him to drink with them; they poured out their compliments and praises on him; they wanted to carry him in triumph through the streets. Not relishing the idea of such ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... warn him, or do anything except let out a horrified "Oh-h!" he had leaped lightly from his high perch and was standing in front ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... from Trot's high perch seemed like a magnificent painted picture—was a rosy glow such as we sometimes see in the west at sunset. In this case, however, it was not in the west ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... people to look at him: but Dawson, for some unaccountable reason, was usually suspicious of advice from that quarter; so he "stooped to conquer" and lost all. The shako tumbled from its precarious perch, and hung ignobly suspended by the cap-lines. A lancer with a pair of grey spectacles, and a shako hanging round his neck, would have been a very fancy dress indeed: so he was endeavouring, at the risk of choking himself, to disentangle, by main force, the complication ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... contributed an article to Forest and Stream a few years ago, in which he stated that in the salmon no less than sixteen kinds of parasitic worms have been discovered, and undoubtedly many others remain unknown; four species were tapeworms, and four, roundworms. The yellow perch is known to be infested with ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... Green, with what Mabel called "the most extraordinary people." "What you can find in that Mr. Fargus and that young Perch and his everlasting mother," she used to ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... dingy three-balled tomb of so many hopes and keepsakes. He sketched her in charcoal, dressed (he would have it) in black, with a Spanish comb in her hair and the guitar on a broad ribbon of strange deep Chinese blue; behind her, on an aerially slender perch, stands a gaudy Mexican parrot. It does not look like her to us who know her well (though, curiously enough, all strangers consider it an extremely fine likeness) but as a tour de force it is remarkable, ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... directed Delorier to repair with his cart to the place of meeting, we came again to the fort to make some arrangements for the journey. After completing these we sat down under a sort of perch, to smoke with some Cheyenne Indians whom we found there. In a few minutes we saw an extraordinary little figure approach us in a military dress. He had a small, round countenance, garnished about the eyes with the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... tree in sight, and walked across them until we came to a very rough road—possibly the track which we expected to find leading from Malham. Malham Tarn was not in sight, but we had learned that the water was about a mile in length and the only things to be seen there were two kinds of fish—perch and trout—-which often quarrelled and decimated each other. The weather was dull, and we had encountered several showers on our way, passing between the Parson's Pulpit to the left, rising quite 1,700 feet, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... to this last construction, men seem to have thought that the species should follow; consequently, the regular plurals of some very common names of fishes are scarcely known at all. Hence some grammarians affirm, that salmon, mackerel, herring, perch, tench, and several others, are alike in both numbers, and ought never to be used in the plural form. I am not so fond of honouring these anomalies. Usage is here as unsettled, as it is arbitrary; and, if the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... it was a splendid place. Carmichael and Robinson caught a great quantity of fish with hook and line. I called these Middleton's Pass and Fish Ponds. The country all round was open, grassy, and fit for stock. The next day we got plenty more fish; they were a species of perch, the largest one caught weighed, I dare say, three pounds; they had a great resemblance to Murray cod, which is a species of perch. I saw from the hill overhanging the water that the creek trended south-east. Going in that direction we did not, however, meet ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... it be true, as was mentioned in the World last week, that Mr. Justice WRIGHT has "climbed down," only to be placed upon a higher perch, will any change of name follow on the Knighthood? Will he be known as Sir ROBERT RONG, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... the archbishop's despair at the catastrophe—and feeling the while a proud personal interest in it all. Ah, what good days those were, roaming about knee-deep in heather, catching the rare moths, chasing the squirrels that whisked up the fir stems and mocked us from their high perch, searching the hollow trees for woodpeckers' nests, eating the beech-nuts or pricking our fingers as we tried to open the husks of the Spanish chestnuts that grew by the lake! From among the bulrushes the coots sailed out at our approach, and the tiny dabchick dived so deep that we thought, "This ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... which all life appeared to be suspended, while the little village of Roussainville carved in relief upon the sky the white mass of its gables, with a startling precision of detail. A gust of wind blew from its perch a rook, which floated away and settled in the distance, while beneath a paling sky the woods on the horizon assumed a deeper tone of blue, as though they were painted in one of those cameos which you still find decorating the walls of ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... strange enough in shape to be credited with strange actions: but ichthyologists say positively no: that the noise (at least along the coast of the United States) is made by a Pogonias, a fish somewhat like a great bearded perch, and cousin of the Maigre of the Mediterranean, which is accused of making a similar purring or grunting noise, which can be heard from a depth of one hundred and twenty feet, and guides the fishermen to ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... you will know. But come down from your perch—the dining-room door will not be open again for some time—and I will show you about the rooms upstairs. This is a larger house than Mrs. Petherwin's, as you see. Just come and look at ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
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